Well, dear readers, it finally happened. Forty years of addled-brained and oaf-handed skill finally paid off in spades today when some somabitch boosted my wallet in broad daylight with the news guys right there filming and Howard "Stern" camped out in the parking lot.*
Okay. To the facts:
Seems my third-eldest lad, and my namesake, has a penchant for losing things. He is so adroit at the art of addled-brain loss that he has lost the one thing that adolescents yearn for more than almost any other: a permit to drive a car.
The kid lost two of them.
Two.
I would have paid blood to get one back when I was a lad, but that was when Shawnee was half an hour from any town, back before 80 and all that noise. And if I had had my permit for more than a month, I'da lost it too. I got my licence in like seven days and I had no idea how to drive. That would be why I'd swipe my brother's '79 BelAir and then my buddies would stick me in the back and drive instead.
I wasn't bitter.
Anyway, my Driver's Ed. guy taught me all about crashes, and how to do 'em, and all that, so at the end of the day I was doing alright avoiding wrecks, just by not doing what those fellas in the films did.
That's one way to get teens to listen to you, the old reverse-psychology thingumie. Tell them kids to just go out do something so stupid only a teen would think it might work, like driving with your eyes shut, and they'll never do it. They'll shut you down quicker than a hot-house floosy-dancing tart in a bathtub full of Baptists.
If you get my drift.
Anyhow, I've only had two wrecks in my life. The first was when I was driving my boss's brand new Caddy over Christmas Break, back when my family was all busted up and the whole Tocks Island thing had almost all of us near dead, I want to say it was 1973, and I was on Long Island trying to make a few bucks to stay in college. Even then, they wanted money, more long than a lil boy like me could get on a regular basis, but I beat their odds, I got me some scholarship thingumies and I mopped floors--great upper body work-out, btw.
So here I am back on Long Island trying to make a couple bucks, and one night after work, because I'm colorblind, I slowed down and proceeded with caution out into a major highway and got waffled by some guy driving an old Dodge Dart. That hurt.
Didn't do much good for the Caddy either.
My second wreck was a few days after my 48th birfday, driving up into the wilds of the Poconos to argue with a fiddle-player about payment for our second CD, after which time I neglected to stay awake and flipped the van.
All I can say is seatbelts and airbags are two very good things!
Back to the story. Pete and I arrived at the pennDOT place with not a lot of time to spare, and because PennROT doesn't take cash, I had to go and get a money order, and being in a hot rush, left my wallet out in the open where a fella helped himself to it. They got the guy on tape, and he's a regular, so they'll have a chance to talk with him eventually, but the wallet is as good as gone.
The good news is I was already right out there so I could get me a new licence.
So I would like to put a bluegrass curse on the guy right now:
I hope somebody boosts something you really are attached to, like maybe a kidney like the guy I heard about that was a friend of a friend who got picked up by some hottie in NY and woke up in a bathtub packed in ice with a scar on his back on account they stole his kidney. Ha. That'll slow ya down.
And I hope your car stalls on 80, the part with the big cememt mediums** there that mean there's no shoulder for you to cry on.
I hope you live in a world with warm beer and cold women, that your cat pees in your shoe and your dog secretly steals your valuables and buries them. Oh--an poos right were you have to walk to get into your car.
I hope all your frozen food gets wrecked because your freezer craps out while you are on a drunken spree at Atlantic City with the cash I donated to you.
While we're at it, I hope you wake up in AC married to some hideous tart named "Alice" that beats you weekly for the rest of your life for not being able to support her in the manner to which she hopes to get accustomed.
May all your colors run, all your underwear shrink uncomfortably, and may the IRS, even now, be looking over your return very very carefully.
I hope you get new neighbors that really like Ozzie and are slightly deaf and are also insomniacs hehe.
May all your milk curdle, all your take-out food be stone cold, and may you continually and inexplicably cut yourself while shaving until you look like you stopped a load of #6's at about thrity yards.
Yeah. Bless your soul.
*I made that part up about the news folks and "Howard." I did it on account of how I am apposed to be a fiction writer now, and people have come to expect a lil' "stretcher" now and then.
** if those things are mediums, I hate to see a biggun!
Saturday, March 25, 2006
Thursday, March 23, 2006
A Bluegrass Tribute to Women
Well, we survived the pub crawl, all six of us, reeling and jigging and horn-piping our way from one establishment to another----nine of 'em in 11 hours, and by jingies were my fingers tore up the next day, and the day after that, where we played another five shows, replete (or would that be repleat?) with kilts, sporins, brats and dirks.*
And now we're back to bluegrass reality, which is kinda like the regular version except it's more fun and not quite as politically correct as many of the circles in which I travel. Actually they are only circles in the morning; by lunch my one leg gets a little tired and they turn into ellipses, and if I have a few beverages, which happens with some regularity, there is no telling what sort of trapeziodal trapsing will be going on.
One day I think I did a tri-dodecahedron all by myself, and the next day when I woke up I was besides myself. Thank God for medication!
Anyhow, yesterday at work I had the distinct,ummm, pleasure of attending a department meeting, which consisted of myself and ten women.
wow.
I can remember the day that I would have thought that was a pretty cool thing--all them chicks and me the onliest rooster there. But age and estrogen have a way of turning even good things slightly not-so-good.
There I was sitting in a room with a bunch of people, and most of 'em were so happy with themselves they was breakin' their own arms patting themselves on the back. I mean, some of them are pretty good, but some of them are also the reason students these days think that sex won't make you pregnant, that driving fast won't kill you, and that you can drink and be smart simultaneously.
This is the same group of of teens who believe that "Survivor" is real and that Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy that involved the NY Yankees, the Pope, the Mafia, Frank Sinatra and the Little Sisters of Mercy. I tell ya, my social security isn't looking too smooth.
Maybe it's because some teachers talk so damned much, what kid can hear themselves think? I'll leave about three of the women folk out of that equation, 'case any of 'em is reading this (you know who you are and I will buy the beverages tomorrow for ya!). The worst offenders prolly won't be reading anything anyway, though, being English teachers and all.
Figure that one out and you are better than Steven Hawkings.
As one of 'em actually said during a rant in which she proclaimed that all students are incapable of learning without her at their side, "I can't be reading books! I'm too busy!"
So, busy doing what? Patting yourself on the back and bitching about us clueless guys, no doubt.
As I read in one of "those books", the lady doth protest too much, methinkses.**
So here's where the bluegrass mystique comes in handy, First of all, us bluegrassers love women deeply. Except we prefer only one or maybe two at a time, depending. And we treat our women right as rain in reality. It's only in songs that we blast the begeebers out of them with our old .44's and make fiddle-pegs out of their fingerbones and fiddlebows out of their long yellow hair before we dump them in the river.
We would never really do such things.
First off, the weapon of choice for indoor use is a shotgun--deadly effective at close range and it won't punch through the wall and kill your hunting dog. And that yeller hair don't hold rosin worth a damn.
And we are against pollution, too, same as those berkenshock-wearing tree-huggers, except we climb ours and use 'em as deer stands.
The trees, that is--not the berken-whatsises.
Anyhow, what made me want to write this was one of those cutesy e-mail thingumies my wife is always getting from her "girl-friends," (hehe) basically reminding all the women of the world how awesome they are, which by default would mean that men are basically only fit to drink beer, poot and dream about sex.
ummmm. Forgot my point there for a second.
Oh--yeah! I 'member now.
These things always go on about how strong and sensitive and supportive women are--all true things!--and about how the only flaw women have is that they are too humble. So I thought I would write one about men, us guys being without any support system at all for our kind and sensitive side. I mean, women have their NOW and their THEN or whatever, but us men folk have no support groups whatsoever, unless you count the NRA, but I don't know if it counts if you have to pay your support group and you get stuff addressed to "Dear Commie-hating Gun-Lover".
Anyhow, here 'tis! Cut and paste this and send it to at least ten men you know, and then ask them to send it to ten men, and it'll get back to me in a minute and a half, because there aren't too many of us guys that give a rat's ass about this stuff unless it has dirty jokes in there someplace, which this one has.***
WHY GOD CREATED MEN.
Seems God was walking around in heaven and it was a slow news day, and he decided to make a world that would be kind of like "Survivor" meets "American Idol" with a dose of "Believe it or don't" tossed in, just to have something fun to watch.
And he thought, "I'll create a creature
that will have two eyes to weep for those in pain,
and two arms to hold onto what they want with preternatural strength,
even if it isn't really theirs---like closet space, for one,
and they'll have two feet to stamp with
when they don't get their way,
and a heart as big as a house for
little children or puppies
that magically shrinks to
the size of a bug ( a very small one!)
when anyone says the word
"Sex",
and a head for dreaming of all the things that could be
but which are not presently,
and which will get a headache when you say
"Sex",
and I will call this creature
"Man!"
And He went ahead and did it,
except God was a guy
and
so he got all that stuff backwards except the name,
and it turned out the dude was pretty happy,
dreaming about sex,
which he wasn't really sure
what it was but it seemed like it would be fun,
and he was eating fried chicken and
fishing, but it bugged God
because He was supposed to be all-powerful and all,
(and of course He is, just has a touch of dyslexia and some ADD in there (see "Bluegrass, the Novel" for more on this condition)),
and so He made
another creature
one with the same specs and
this time He got it right,
and he called this one "Woman."
And woman took one look at man and said,
"Wow. I'm looking pretty good compared to this bozo!"
but since God was still a little dyslexic,
for some odd reason
despite the fact that she was
all that and a bag
of chips
she took a shine to the guy
and they hooked up
once and
the man thought the woman would never change
and
the woman thought everything could change,
even the man,
and neither of them did
what the other thought
and they spent the next 20 centuries
or whatever
getting mad at each other.
The end.
So fellas---send this on to all your "boy-friends" (eww!) that you love so well, those creatures who are good only for fixing things, earning money, and making women look good, and congratulate them all on making the world all round and stuff.
And have a plate of fried chicken and some sex dreams on me!
Poot!
*yeah--if you have to ask I can't tell you since it's all super-secret. But chicks dig it!
** see Bluegrass Barditude for more of this! Methinks.
*** try every third word and see what-all this says. And if it's dirty, send it back to me. Thanks. Pete "the bozo" Poot-man.
And now we're back to bluegrass reality, which is kinda like the regular version except it's more fun and not quite as politically correct as many of the circles in which I travel. Actually they are only circles in the morning; by lunch my one leg gets a little tired and they turn into ellipses, and if I have a few beverages, which happens with some regularity, there is no telling what sort of trapeziodal trapsing will be going on.
One day I think I did a tri-dodecahedron all by myself, and the next day when I woke up I was besides myself. Thank God for medication!
Anyhow, yesterday at work I had the distinct,ummm, pleasure of attending a department meeting, which consisted of myself and ten women.
wow.
I can remember the day that I would have thought that was a pretty cool thing--all them chicks and me the onliest rooster there. But age and estrogen have a way of turning even good things slightly not-so-good.
There I was sitting in a room with a bunch of people, and most of 'em were so happy with themselves they was breakin' their own arms patting themselves on the back. I mean, some of them are pretty good, but some of them are also the reason students these days think that sex won't make you pregnant, that driving fast won't kill you, and that you can drink and be smart simultaneously.
This is the same group of of teens who believe that "Survivor" is real and that Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy that involved the NY Yankees, the Pope, the Mafia, Frank Sinatra and the Little Sisters of Mercy. I tell ya, my social security isn't looking too smooth.
Maybe it's because some teachers talk so damned much, what kid can hear themselves think? I'll leave about three of the women folk out of that equation, 'case any of 'em is reading this (you know who you are and I will buy the beverages tomorrow for ya!). The worst offenders prolly won't be reading anything anyway, though, being English teachers and all.
Figure that one out and you are better than Steven Hawkings.
As one of 'em actually said during a rant in which she proclaimed that all students are incapable of learning without her at their side, "I can't be reading books! I'm too busy!"
So, busy doing what? Patting yourself on the back and bitching about us clueless guys, no doubt.
As I read in one of "those books", the lady doth protest too much, methinkses.**
So here's where the bluegrass mystique comes in handy, First of all, us bluegrassers love women deeply. Except we prefer only one or maybe two at a time, depending. And we treat our women right as rain in reality. It's only in songs that we blast the begeebers out of them with our old .44's and make fiddle-pegs out of their fingerbones and fiddlebows out of their long yellow hair before we dump them in the river.
We would never really do such things.
First off, the weapon of choice for indoor use is a shotgun--deadly effective at close range and it won't punch through the wall and kill your hunting dog. And that yeller hair don't hold rosin worth a damn.
And we are against pollution, too, same as those berkenshock-wearing tree-huggers, except we climb ours and use 'em as deer stands.
The trees, that is--not the berken-whatsises.
Anyhow, what made me want to write this was one of those cutesy e-mail thingumies my wife is always getting from her "girl-friends," (hehe) basically reminding all the women of the world how awesome they are, which by default would mean that men are basically only fit to drink beer, poot and dream about sex.
ummmm. Forgot my point there for a second.
Oh--yeah! I 'member now.
These things always go on about how strong and sensitive and supportive women are--all true things!--and about how the only flaw women have is that they are too humble. So I thought I would write one about men, us guys being without any support system at all for our kind and sensitive side. I mean, women have their NOW and their THEN or whatever, but us men folk have no support groups whatsoever, unless you count the NRA, but I don't know if it counts if you have to pay your support group and you get stuff addressed to "Dear Commie-hating Gun-Lover".
Anyhow, here 'tis! Cut and paste this and send it to at least ten men you know, and then ask them to send it to ten men, and it'll get back to me in a minute and a half, because there aren't too many of us guys that give a rat's ass about this stuff unless it has dirty jokes in there someplace, which this one has.***
WHY GOD CREATED MEN.
Seems God was walking around in heaven and it was a slow news day, and he decided to make a world that would be kind of like "Survivor" meets "American Idol" with a dose of "Believe it or don't" tossed in, just to have something fun to watch.
And he thought, "I'll create a creature
that will have two eyes to weep for those in pain,
and two arms to hold onto what they want with preternatural strength,
even if it isn't really theirs---like closet space, for one,
and they'll have two feet to stamp with
when they don't get their way,
and a heart as big as a house for
little children or puppies
that magically shrinks to
the size of a bug ( a very small one!)
when anyone says the word
"Sex",
and a head for dreaming of all the things that could be
but which are not presently,
and which will get a headache when you say
"Sex",
and I will call this creature
"Man!"
And He went ahead and did it,
except God was a guy
and
so he got all that stuff backwards except the name,
and it turned out the dude was pretty happy,
dreaming about sex,
which he wasn't really sure
what it was but it seemed like it would be fun,
and he was eating fried chicken and
fishing, but it bugged God
because He was supposed to be all-powerful and all,
(and of course He is, just has a touch of dyslexia and some ADD in there (see "Bluegrass, the Novel" for more on this condition)),
and so He made
another creature
one with the same specs and
this time He got it right,
and he called this one "Woman."
And woman took one look at man and said,
"Wow. I'm looking pretty good compared to this bozo!"
but since God was still a little dyslexic,
for some odd reason
despite the fact that she was
all that and a bag
of chips
she took a shine to the guy
and they hooked up
once and
the man thought the woman would never change
and
the woman thought everything could change,
even the man,
and neither of them did
what the other thought
and they spent the next 20 centuries
or whatever
getting mad at each other.
The end.
So fellas---send this on to all your "boy-friends" (eww!) that you love so well, those creatures who are good only for fixing things, earning money, and making women look good, and congratulate them all on making the world all round and stuff.
And have a plate of fried chicken and some sex dreams on me!
Poot!
*yeah--if you have to ask I can't tell you since it's all super-secret. But chicks dig it!
** see Bluegrass Barditude for more of this! Methinks.
*** try every third word and see what-all this says. And if it's dirty, send it back to me. Thanks. Pete "the bozo" Poot-man.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Saint Patty-grass OR The Tale of The Emerald Blue
So we are getting ready for the patented Lost Rambler reverse Pub Crawl on Saint Patrick's Day*, where we go to the patrons round-robin style while they stay and get nice and "toasty", which is a good thing to do when the weather is spitting snow, something which happens with some regularity here. It's a grueling schedule, although we mercifully will not also have to eat gruel, which is some awful grey glop like, ummmmmmmmm...I dunno, farina or something.
Those breakfast mushes, whether they be gruel or grits, I never really understood. Library paste, yes. But not them.
Anyway, we will march merrily with kilts asaunter to nine bars in 12 hours, five of us brave boys and girl and we will no doubt imbibe a few non-citrus flavored carbonated adult beverages and get a mite toasty ourselves.
All this talk of toastiness puts me in mind of a Saint Patrick's Day parade we were playing in one year, and we were on the back of this flatbed truck. It had no rails or anything, I suspect we had been topping off the old tanks with anti-freeze, if you catch my drift, and so every time it lurched forward, on account of we weren't the onliest ones to be getting ourselves shined up, we would shoot forward a couple steps, or have to back up quick.
We'd do that and kinda hope we were facing in the right direction or we'd shoot off that truck like, well, kinda like the dragoons that were marching right behind us. We'd be getting ready to rip into "ST. Anne's Reel" and ka-POW! they'd leave off a volley that would scare the bejeebers out of us, nearly stained our drawers, I tell you what.
Then there'd be like this big cloud of toxic smoke that would drift over us, so we were kinda like sooty angels part of the parade: people could hear us but they couldn't see all of us or sometimes any of us.
This went on through the town of Stroudsburg, but just as we got to the top of the interboro bridge, an engineering marvel placed there after the '55 flood and perched away up high so it didn't get washed away again, some Shriner in one of those little clown cars runned somebody over and the parade stopped with us sitting up there getting blowed over by a twenty mile an hour upstream breeze.
Man oh man that was cold. The pedestrian turned out to be okay, just a lil bruised up, those clown cars not being the biggest things in the world. But it took awhile for the ambulance to get there, because they were all already in the parade, I guess, and the whole time we were perched up there a hundred feet over the stream, and the dragoons behind us got bored and weren't marching, so they really laid a barrage out.
Of course they were still upwind enough for all that smoke to find us, and when we came off that bridge we were about froze, anti-freeze or not, and we looked like we just stormed the beach on D-day, all smudged up like that.
I was so cold I had to walk backwards to take a piss, and that's some cold, I can tell you.
So we gave up that parade stuff and we'll stick to the indoor venues, eat lots of corned beef and cabbage until we poot and pucker our way into Irish Rambler heaven. And the best part?
The next day is Saturday!
ha!
So---a very happy and blessed Saint Patrick's Day to all!
*A number of people complained that my last post did not contain any of the insoucinet footnotes with which they had become accustomed, and so I felt compelled to add one here, as my readers are worth every acccomidation. Both of them.**
**This is like a "hidden track" on a CD. Here are some FAQ for you.
Q: Why does a Sicilian guy wear a kilt and play Irish music?
Mr. Irish Rambler Answer Guy (IRAG): Because Saint Patrick was actually a Roman citizen that was kidnapped and raised in the forest by seven dwarfs...no, wait. Umm.. raised by...wolfs? no--that was those two boys, Rommel Uz and his brother Raim, founded Rome. Oh, no wait! It was monks that raised St. Patrick up and made him the man he was, with the snake-non-handling and all that. So naturally Saint Patrick is like a star in Italy and Sicily and all. Everybody knows that.
Q: What do you wear under that kilt?
IRAG: If you have to ask, you don't deserve to know. Unless you're a really cute chick. Then the answer is, "I'll show ya mine if you'll show me yours."
That answer really frosts the cupcakes of those guys that make fun of kilts, I can tell you that. Then they want to get them some and we say, "No way!" and laugh.
Q: Cute chicks dig kilts?
IRAG: Is that a proper question?
Q: Sorry.
IRAG: Don't mention it.
Q:Do cute chicks dig kilts?
IRAG: What girl can resist a nice jumper like that? Don't be silly. OF course they dig it.
Q:Thank you.
IRAG: What is, "Are you welcome, Alex?"
Those breakfast mushes, whether they be gruel or grits, I never really understood. Library paste, yes. But not them.
Anyway, we will march merrily with kilts asaunter to nine bars in 12 hours, five of us brave boys and girl and we will no doubt imbibe a few non-citrus flavored carbonated adult beverages and get a mite toasty ourselves.
All this talk of toastiness puts me in mind of a Saint Patrick's Day parade we were playing in one year, and we were on the back of this flatbed truck. It had no rails or anything, I suspect we had been topping off the old tanks with anti-freeze, if you catch my drift, and so every time it lurched forward, on account of we weren't the onliest ones to be getting ourselves shined up, we would shoot forward a couple steps, or have to back up quick.
We'd do that and kinda hope we were facing in the right direction or we'd shoot off that truck like, well, kinda like the dragoons that were marching right behind us. We'd be getting ready to rip into "ST. Anne's Reel" and ka-POW! they'd leave off a volley that would scare the bejeebers out of us, nearly stained our drawers, I tell you what.
Then there'd be like this big cloud of toxic smoke that would drift over us, so we were kinda like sooty angels part of the parade: people could hear us but they couldn't see all of us or sometimes any of us.
This went on through the town of Stroudsburg, but just as we got to the top of the interboro bridge, an engineering marvel placed there after the '55 flood and perched away up high so it didn't get washed away again, some Shriner in one of those little clown cars runned somebody over and the parade stopped with us sitting up there getting blowed over by a twenty mile an hour upstream breeze.
Man oh man that was cold. The pedestrian turned out to be okay, just a lil bruised up, those clown cars not being the biggest things in the world. But it took awhile for the ambulance to get there, because they were all already in the parade, I guess, and the whole time we were perched up there a hundred feet over the stream, and the dragoons behind us got bored and weren't marching, so they really laid a barrage out.
Of course they were still upwind enough for all that smoke to find us, and when we came off that bridge we were about froze, anti-freeze or not, and we looked like we just stormed the beach on D-day, all smudged up like that.
I was so cold I had to walk backwards to take a piss, and that's some cold, I can tell you.
So we gave up that parade stuff and we'll stick to the indoor venues, eat lots of corned beef and cabbage until we poot and pucker our way into Irish Rambler heaven. And the best part?
The next day is Saturday!
ha!
So---a very happy and blessed Saint Patrick's Day to all!
*A number of people complained that my last post did not contain any of the insoucinet footnotes with which they had become accustomed, and so I felt compelled to add one here, as my readers are worth every acccomidation. Both of them.**
**This is like a "hidden track" on a CD. Here are some FAQ for you.
Q: Why does a Sicilian guy wear a kilt and play Irish music?
Mr. Irish Rambler Answer Guy (IRAG): Because Saint Patrick was actually a Roman citizen that was kidnapped and raised in the forest by seven dwarfs...no, wait. Umm.. raised by...wolfs? no--that was those two boys, Rommel Uz and his brother Raim, founded Rome. Oh, no wait! It was monks that raised St. Patrick up and made him the man he was, with the snake-non-handling and all that. So naturally Saint Patrick is like a star in Italy and Sicily and all. Everybody knows that.
Q: What do you wear under that kilt?
IRAG: If you have to ask, you don't deserve to know. Unless you're a really cute chick. Then the answer is, "I'll show ya mine if you'll show me yours."
That answer really frosts the cupcakes of those guys that make fun of kilts, I can tell you that. Then they want to get them some and we say, "No way!" and laugh.
Q: Cute chicks dig kilts?
IRAG: Is that a proper question?
Q: Sorry.
IRAG: Don't mention it.
Q:Do cute chicks dig kilts?
IRAG: What girl can resist a nice jumper like that? Don't be silly. OF course they dig it.
Q:Thank you.
IRAG: What is, "Are you welcome, Alex?"
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