Photo Friday

I've told Mark over and over again that I don't like to dress my dogs up in stupid costumes. It's humiliating.

Mark did it anyway. That is an ill fitting squirrel costume that Mark wasted money on.

Chandler's revenge will be.........

.....when he shreds it.

Video Thursday

I Can't Believe He Never Gets Punched In The Face

Kind of a busy day yesterday. Mark managed to get me into the PT Cruiser under the pretense that we were getting haircuts. Yes, we got haircuts, but that was just the start of my travels with Mark. I was now his prisoner, and it turned out that he had an agenda. First off, the drug store where I stayed in the car and fiddled with the radio. That wasn't so bad. Next stop, Best Buy where Mark proceeded to argue with an employee about whether or not they should have the camera in stock that was advertised. It was when he asked to see a manager that I informed Mark I'd be over in the music section, where people wouldn't suspect I was with him. Didn't matter. I could still hear him from across the store.
(in a loud high pitched voice), "This is no way to run a store. You advertise a product, don't have it, aren't going to get it in, that is unprofessional."
The only thing is, I couldn't hear the response from the young lady who he was talking to, so it just sounded like a crazy person was somewhere in the store talking to himself. Which was kind of true.

After leaving Best Buy empty handed, we went on to the Home Goods Store. When our shopping safari at Home Goods stretched the limits of my patience, I pointed the cart towards the checkout and told Mark "It's time to leave. We're done." As we waited dutifully for the little electric sign to light up and tell us which register was available, a short, little man, came sidling past everybody in line, and past us as if we didn't exist. He continued on, walked right up to a register, and plopped his stuff in front of the cashier.
"We were next!", Mark shouted. "Are you blind? am I invisible?", he continued. Mark then got right in the guys face, pointed to the line and told him to get back.

At times like this I often just go numb, and pretend I'm in another dimension. All I know is that the guy started yelling back at Mark, Mark continued with his lip flapping, I paid for our purchases, the cashier handed me the receipt, and I headed for the door. There is a fine line between my being embarrassed, and my finding humor in Mark's behavior. At Best Buy, I was embarrassed. At Home Goods, I was initially embarrassed, and then entertained as the little fat man waddled off through the store cursing at Mark. You've got to admit, Mark getting cursed at by a short fat guy is kind of funny.

Cash Flow

It's just damn depressing. I was just out back looking at my swimming pool, and obviously it's falling apart. I'm not sure exactly when, but about six or seven years ago I had the thing re-surfaced with something called Diamond Brite, and now it is starting to peel away. I have tried to find the warranty for this job, but so far it has eluded me. Chalk another one up to clutter.

One day, when I was about eleven years old, my dad came home with a lovely, colorful brochure. It was a proposal for joining a swim club to be built by the local Lions Club. There were lovely drawings of how the pool would look, and a description of all the amenities. I was excited. I had always loved swimming, but the only outlet we had was the twelve inch deep little wading pool that my dad had dragged out into the back yard. That pathetic puddle was supplemented by our yearly trip to the Indiana Dunes, and/or a vacation week spent at various, small Midwestern lakes. The prospect of a pool in our neighborhood brought joy to my heart. The Lions Club pool was eventually built, and my dad paid the yearly membership fees for a few years. I loved it. Swimming, diving, and just hanging around the pool with friends while rock and roll music blasted from all the transistor radios.

When looking for a new home seventeen years ago, one of the requisites was a pool. Many of the good memories from my early teen years centered around that Lions Club pool, and I just had to have one of my own. On the day I found this house, I was happy. Out in the back was a beautiful, sparkling swimming pool. It apparently was so sparkling that it blinded me to the flaws in this house, like the fire prone electrical system, lack of air-conditioning, and giant piles of garbage everywhere. On the day I closed on the house, I returned with keys in hand and a song in my heart, only to find the pool half full of toads and green slime. The damn thing has been sucking money out of my pocket ever since. Looking out the window at it now, all I see is a watery money pit. I'm going to keep looking for that Diamond Brite warranty, but I think I'll keep my options open. After all, I can always turn it into a skateboard park.

Run, Don't Walk

I haven't gone to a health club now for over two years. Besides the fact that it's a pain in the ass, at my age it doesn't take much to cause severe pain in my joints and pull every muscle in my body, so I've given it up. The one form of exercise that I still have available is walking. I walk the dog three times a day, and the shelter dogs twice a week. And since I followed my sisters advice and bought myself a nice pair of New Balance shoes at the New Balance store, my feet have been feeling much more like walking. (Thank you Peggy. Now what do you advise for the rest of my body?)

So it was on Saturday evening, that I asked Mark to drop me off at the CVS Pharmacy on his way out to a night of disco, drinks, and dishing at the local bars. I needed to pick up a prescription and some cat food.
"Sure, I'll drive you home too."
"No, I need the exercise. I'll walk home."
"But you'll get hit by a car."
"For chrissakes Mark, I've been walking for almost sixty years. I think I know what the hell I'm doing out there."
This went back and forth for a few more rounds before I convinced Mark that I really do know how to walk, and look both ways before I cross a street.

It's actually pleasant to go out for a walk by myself. No dogs stopping to pee, smell, and poop every three feet. No trying to either keep up with Mark when he's feeling good, or waiting for him to catch up when he's having one of his asthma attacks. All I have to worry about is me. So there I was strolling down the street with my little sack of goodies from CVS, and enjoying the cool breezes of a Florida autumn evening when it hit me. At first it was just a little rumble in my tummy as I passed the 7Eleven. As I crossed over the wide lawn of the church/gay resort, the rumble turned into a cat fight inside my gut. I picked up my pace. Half a block from home I started shooting jets of methane gas out my ass, and I could feel what seemed like an express freight train moving through my intestines. I broke out into a trot, and then a full run, fumbling for my keys so as to have them ready when I got to the door.

It was my lucky day. I made it to the toilet by three tenths of a second. No muss, no fuss, I had cheated the evil gods of inconvenient poop again. Also on the plus side of that, I managed to get some valuable exercise in as I ran down the street. Running with your ass cheeks clenched really builds those gluteal muscles. My walking for the evening wasn't over however. There were four cats staring at me, wondering when the hell they were going to be fed. It seems I'd have to schlep right back up to CVS for that cat food I forgot.

Welcome to the Weekend, Doggy Style

  I need a home (no not the guy on the left). 

Come on over and adopt me at Abandoned Pet Rescue.

Walli

Estimated to be 8 years old, Walli is a female Pomeranian wearing 

her fashionable summer hair cut. She is very sweet, and not a yapper.

She was taken in to Abandoned Pet Rescue from animal control.

We don't know much about her because she didn't come directly to APR.

Apparently somebody from APR goes over to animal control and

picks out dogs they can save. Since APR has only so much room and money,

they can't take them all. That's one job I'm glad I don't have.

Video Thursday

Warning: Possibly a Very Sick and Perverted Post

 Read at your own risk.

Every day, twice a day, we go through the same routine, the feeding of the indoor cats. I go to the kitchen, and at the sound of the can opening two cats appear, rubbing against my legs, tails up in the air. Meanwhile Chandler is lurking, looking to get in on some of that cat food before it's been processed by the kitties, and deposited in the litter box as tasty, bite sized little treats. So to keep Chandler at bay I feed Carlotta on a table in the sun room, and Fat Kitty in my bedroom. Amazingly it only takes positioning the box fan near my bedroom door to keep Chandler out. As a special treat to him, as soon as Fat Kitty is done eating I move the fan over a few inches and Chandler comes rushing in. Every time it's the same, he takes the bowl in his mouth and skulks off with it to lick it clean of any morsel the cat might have missed.

One thing I have noticed when washing up the cat bowl after Chandler has licked it clean, is that it's very slimy. It's like a coating of some sort of lubricant has been smeared all over the bowl. The same is true for when I wash his food bowl, but on a much larger scale. Is it possible that dogs have some kind of oily substance in their saliva? Honestly, I have even dropped his food bowl in the sink when washing it from the slickness of it.

This has given me an idea, and a way for dog rescue shelters to make some money. Dog spit lubricant. I can collect dog spit by paying a friendly visit to each dog in the shelter. After letting them give me doggy kisses, or licks on my face, I can then scrape it off into a bucket. It would then be bottled and sold at places like Home Depot as an all purpose lubricant. Good for squeaky hinges, wheels, and sticky drawers. Now I know what some of you sick minded people are thinking, and yes, it might even sell well at places like Plato's Retreat.

Robo Call

The caller i.d. said 'Out of Area', as it had for the last ten calls. "Hello!" I screamed into the phone. Once again I could hear the din of a boiler room in the background, and then 'click'. They hung up.......  again.

Welcome to election season.

This is one of the benefits I receive for voting in every election. I get phone calls, constant, irritating phone calls at all hours. This time it was morning, between nine and ten thirty, and it was non-stop. At least a dozen calls before finally somebody announced, "Hello, this is Blah, Blah, from Blah, Blah, we'd just like to ask you .....". I cut her off and started screaming into the phone, "What the hell is wrong with you people!? Why the fuck do you keep calling me!? Are you ........"
'Click'! They hung up again.

The problem is that it's just starting. Before November fourth I will probably get a thousand phone calls, all with mysterious caller i.d.'s from out of state. It's really terribly frustrating. I've been told that I receive so many calls because I'm a reliable voter who votes all the time. I feel so special for that. I can now add that benefit to the rest I receive for voting, like getting called to jury duty every few months, and being governed by greedy little bastards who lie about everything while they suck on the teat of lobbyist's money. Oh, and don't tell me to vote for Tea Party candidates. That's like kicking out a freeloading relative, and inviting a crazy, axe murder to come and sleep on your sofa instead. Well at least it will be over in two weeks, after I go and cast my vote for the least evil of the choices I have. Meanwhile, I can vent some anger and frustration by cursing at all the poor saps manning those phones in the boiler rooms.

Tyler and the Slug

Around the back of the house is Mark's death camp for plants, a.k.a. his garden that needs weeding and tilling. Out front, in plain sight of all my neighbors, is my tiny little lawn that has turned into a weed patch of epic proportions. Going around to the back of the house again is the swimming pool I've neglected to the point that it is about to bloom into a lovely algae farm. Finally, inside the house are some little chores that I've put off for the last three months, including patching up the inflatable mattress that my friend Dennis is scheduled to sleep on when he visits in two weeks.

I am a slug. With all the crap I have to do around here, all I've done for the last three days is lay around the house, drink some vodka, and finally on Sunday afternoon, sit back in my recliner and watch a crappy football game. If it weren't for the fact that I do get up to take care of the animals, they would have to take my pulse just make sure I'm still here. That is the one redeeming thing I did all weekend, I took one of the dogs from Abandoned Pet Rescue out to a flea market for a 'Meet and Greet'. The little guy I took out Sunday was named Tyler. He was quite the charmer, and drew a lot of attention. He and I spent a couple of hours at the flea market, enticing people to come around to the shelter and adopt him. Tyler did his part, wagging his tail, and looking cute, while I did my best extolling his virtues such as sitting on command, and the fact that he only humps other dogs occasionally. It was fun, but after a couple hours I cut the outing short, and took him back to the shelter. After all, I had to get home and watch that crappy football game. I'm such a slug.

Photo Friday

Fall 1984, Michigan

Video Thursday

The crazies are supposed to be Mark and me. I suppose I could work on it some more, but I'm tired. 

Try it here, click.

Googled

I remember the first time I used the Google search engine, I was amazed. It not only found porn quickly, but helped me find other things that I could actually use. Within one day I was off of Yahoo, and using Google exclusively. Now Google has come up with another useful tool that just might benefit me even more in the future. The driverless car. Yesterday it was all over the news, Google has been testing a number of driverless cars they've developed, around the San Francisco Bay area. They have even sent a car without a driver all the way to Santa Monica, over three hundred miles. Do you realize what this means for someone like me? A nearly blind, aging old fart? It means I don't have to rely on Mark to drive me around any more. It means I don't have to explain to Mark why it's faster to take the interstate than poke along on city streets because Mark is afraid of 'curves'. There will be no more asking Mark to take me somewhere, and I can actually go to that place when I'm ready to go.

If you remember our road trip to Chicago earlier this year, Mark had promised to drive all the way. He had a nervous breakdown and crapped out before we even got halfway to Orlando. I ended up driving, with my bad eyesight, almost three thousand miles. Google will make it possible for unlimited road trips in the future, and this time not only will Chandler be sitting comfortably in the back of the car, I will be happily snoozing in the passenger seat. Mark had better be wary, this is one more thing that I won't need him for. In fact, other than doing my laundry, and feeding me, Mark is pretty much useless. If Google wants to hit a grand slam with me, they need to start working on the Google self loading washing machine, and the Google chef. Oooh, now I'm really day dreaming..... a Google clutter remover, a Google shop blocker, a Google noise filter for when I'm watching a movie. Google me baby.

P.S. check out the give away on the Bliss Farms blog site, just click on this sentence.

Delusion

Working with Alicia has been fascinating. She is the mistress of illusion. In fact you may not even have realized that Alicia isn't even a woman, but a man in a wig. Those voluptuous breasts are really nothing more than a pair of my anklet socks rolled up in a ball. And that voice, when Alicia speaks it is as feminine as a sweet young girl, like melted sugar at the bottom of a glass of iced tea. You would never guess that sound was coming from a virile manly man.

In making the Alicia videos, I have had to learn how to create a theater of mind for the viewer. For instance, in 'House of Boobs' I had to recreate a state of the art medical setting. One that would be convincing. I think I succeeded quite nicely, you would never have guessed I did that in my living room. Then there are the 'Real Housewives' series, where the illusion is that I am truly interacting with the vacuous broads from Bravo. Once again, through seamless editing the viewer is conned into believing I am right in the room with them.

Like I said, I'm having a great time with Alicia and her spectacular illusions. Right now Alicia and I are working on a hilarious video set in the dead of winter, and I have to recreate a snow laden landscape. I've been told that recycled asbestos, chopped up and blown all around with a big box fan looks just like new fallen snow. We'll see how that works out.

Child Labor

I was talking to my mom yesterday and she mentioned that her Sunday morning paper hadn't arrived. It was already noon.

I was a paper boy when I was a kid, and I dreaded Sundays. My route covered five streets with about fifty or more subscribers. Many of those subscribers had special instructions.
'Put the paper between the storm door and the main door.'
'Have my paper on my porch before seven in the morning.'
'Don't walk on my grass.'
'Don't read the comics before I do'
(Wait... that last one might have been one of my sister's rules.)
The only problem with fulfilling all those requests is that the Sunday paper usually weighed about five pounds, and I had to lug them all around on my bicycle. I'd first stuff my front basket with papers, then the rear saddle bag baskets, and then on days that there was a particularly heavy amount of news and advertising, I'd drag a small wagon full of papers behind the bike. Through snow storms, rain storms, and in the heat of summer, I'd do my duty and deliver the news, all for the pay of a penny per paper. The biggest problem with delivering Sunday papers was that I could never get off my bike until I was almost done or the shear weight of the news would slam my bicycle to the ground, and I'd need a crane just to upright the thing.

Now in the age of internet news and dwindling circulation, the Sunday news has shrunk to the size of a large pamphlet. It isn't even delivered by little rosy cheeked boys on their bicycles anymore. Instead, a fat assed guy in a beat up Mercury flings the thing out the window as he zips by at fifty miles per hour. Yet with all the benefits of being an adult in a car, with a heater, air-conditioning, and a good throwing arm, he still can‘t get the paper to my mom on Sunday morning. Of course chances are she actually has her paper, it’s just that she hasn’t looked behind her neighbor’s bushes.

Photo Friday

Video Thursday

Splice Girls

Tuesday night is movie night at our house with Mark as the arbiter of what movie will be seen. Some weeks his picks are very entertaining, and don't suck. Then there are the weeks he picks crap. Bad chick flicks, children's movies, or even worse, kiddie movies that are also chick flicks like 'The Littlest Mermaid'.

Last night Mark had a choice between 'Nightmare on Elm Street', 'The Human Centipede" (A disgusting sounding movie that I'm sure I'll see soon.), and the 'Karate Kid'. He brought home none of those. Instead he got something called 'Splice' starring Adrian Brody. It turned out to be a pretty decent horror/suspense movie, and I'd recommend it to anyone with a strong stomach. Unfortunately Mark is not that person. He cannot take gore, it sends him into a fit of puking convulsions. All during the movie if he wasn't about to barf, Mark was running out of the room screaming. That's another problem with watching movies with Mark. He won't stay in the room if there is about to be mayhem. Then he expects me to explain what happened when he returns, without any of the disgusting details.

Mark keeps telling me that it's a black thing, screaming and retching through the movie. I don't think so, I don't believe that's true. I've been in theaters with black people before, and they didn't go running down the aisles screaming and puking. Maybe a few dumb asses might have talked through a movie, but there was no running and puking. I just think Mark is a big chicken shit who is making excuses for his goofy behavior. Then there's the other question, why does he rent these movies in the first place?

Nighty Night

I was awakened from a bizarre dream where I am being pushed off a cliff towards certain doom. In the blackness of the night I quickly figure out that yes, I am being pushed off. Only it's not from a cliff, it's from my own bed by my beloved dog Chandler. He's stretching his legs out again in an effort to claim more territory, and I am apparently in his way. I never wanted the dog to sleep in my bed. It was Mark that invited him up when he was still only half the size he is now. Eighty pounds later, Mark admits that yes, he made a big mistake.

When Chandler was still a puppy I introduced him to his predecessors bed.
"Here boy, this was Molly's bed and now it's yours."
He took right to it, curling up in the funky smelling thing that Molly had left behind. For exactly one full day Chandler stayed in Molly's old bed, and when it came time to go to sleep I figured he'd be fine sleeping there. The next morning I awoke to find Chandler standing in the living room, wagging his tail furiously, surrounded by a mountain of white stuffing. He had gutted the dog bed.

Back to my current problem, sharing my bed with a skinny black guy and a dog that can make himself seem twice as big as he actually is. Seeing that one of them has the ability to drop a little strychnine in my dinner, the choice was easy. Chandler would have to get his own bed. Off we went to the store where I found a nice little dog bed, perfect for Chandler. Unfortunately he isn't going along with the program. I've tried everything to get him to sleep in the thing. I've put his chewy strips, his toys, a piece of my clothing, and a cookie on the thing. No luck. He just looks at me like I'm crazy, and grabs the cookies and chewy strips off the dog bed, then jumps up onto my bed with them. I've pulled him over to the dog bed and told him to sit, which he did, for a nanosecond. This morning I found Carlotta Kitty curled up, and sleeping in the middle of the thing. Okay, so it's turned out to be nothing more than an expensive cat bed. If nothing else, it will keep the cat off my bed. That will result in about two square inches of extra space. I'm sure Chandler will appreciate it.

Teetering on the Brink

When it comes to shoes, I'm fussy. I have bad, very bad feet, and I will spend an inordinate amount of time shopping for shoes. By that, I mean instead of breezing into a store and running out in five minutes or less, I will actually spend as much as thirty minutes looking for the perfect fitting shoe. Mark likes it when I wander into the shoe store. It gives him a little extra time to run over to Home Goods and buy some more useless crap while I try on shoe after shoe.

This past Friday I fell for some television advertising. There they were, cool people like Joe Montana, spryly walking along, exercising, and losing weight just by wearing shoes. I just had to have me some of those Shape Up shoes. I was confident that these were the cure for my bad feet, and asked Mark to take me over to Famous Footwear. I couldn't wait to blow a hundred dollars on a pair of these magic shoes. Yes, I did try them on in the store, and because they were above my usual limit of how much I will spend on shoes, I walked back and forth through the store. Up the main aisle, through the women's section, and around the back at least three times. The shoes seemed fine. Very cushiony, well fitting, and they seemed to propel me forward as I walked.

This is what I don't understand. Every time I buy a pair of shoes, they seem fine in the store. Once I get out into the real world, however, they turn in to pinching, rubbing, ill-fitting torture devices. Shape Ups were no exception. I put them on to take Chandler for his walk and an immediate problem arose. I couldn't stand up. It was as if I was trying to balance myself on a pair of tennis balls, and when I tried walking out the door with Chandler I literally fell off the shoes. After managing to make it out the front gate I realized the shoes worked fine as long as I was moving forward at a good clip. It was when Chandler stopped to smell who had peed on his favorite bush, or to eat some grass, or when he tried to scrape up some road kill from the street for a quick snack, that I started teetering. I felt like one of those Weeble dolls that wobble. Unfortunately, unlike a Weeble, I wobble but I do fall down.

Luckily Famous Footwear allows you to return shoes. It'll be on my list of things to do today. I'm sure Mark won't mind. It'll give him another shot at combing through the Home Goods store for just the right piece of crap he can't live without.

Photo Friday

Ain't she pretty? Halloween 1986, or 87, or 88?

The old guy with all the jewelry used to carry a big gun in his 'man bag' even though it was illegal in Chicago to carry a gun.

He was never mugged.