Navigator

There was a B-17 bomber flying around the other day about noon, circling the City while I drove down Wilmington Pike. The glorious sound of propellers made me look up. You don’t hear those anymore like you did when I was a kid. If they were on their way to plaster Dusseldorf, somebody was certainly steering on the wrong compass heading. Eventually it disappeared.

Us one, scumbags zero. Two men with guns invaded a home last week on Burkhart Avenue. One of them got a silver bar and some prescription medication and the other got shot straight through the head once the resident got his hands on his own gun. Dead Fred! The other guy was traced through a pawn shop transaction and police went to his home where they found him dead inside with slashed wrists after a three hour standoff. Sorry Charlie! Two scumbags won’t do home invasions anymore. The resident got his property back. All is well in the Big City. No I am not a pussy-foot social worker.

Us one, scumbags zero, part 2. A high school kid went to the home of his girlfriend who had just broken up with him and beat her senseless, finishing off by dropping a concrete picnic table top on her. He had beaten her up once before. She is in intensive care with fractures of everything. He then deliberately walked out onto the freeway in front of a speeding car and was killed instantly. Bang! Sorry about your kid. One less person to beat up women when he’s unhappy. All is well in the Big City. No I am not a pussy-foot social worker. Ta!

Paid !

The God of my understanding decreed by surprise that last night should be payday and not Monday morning. Last night was Friday. What a stunning surprise! Today at noon I shifted into my shopping frenzy mode. Since my budget is a stretcher for a sick economy, I decided to feed at the Linden Discount Market which is a dollar and produce store run by a couple outlanders I can’t identify and a girl named Hegira (journey) whom I can. I think she is Iranian of Mexican descent. Or Mexican of….well…. She talks nice to me and teaches me Spanish words. I frenzied thusly:

-Six bars of perfumed soap (a buck) made in Thailand for a firm in the United Arab Emirates. Which means it’s likely not to contain pork fat.

- A four ounce bottle of Zmygz aftershave which is made in China by Pujiang Onlyou Cosmetics Co., Ltd. And smells like a cross between Aqua Velva and a tired Hongsan steel mill at five o’clock on a Friday afternoon. With a little imagination it could be a cousin of Fahrenheit 451. This company also makes Vigour for men.

- two peach scented candles from Betty Crocker USA

- a jar of Five Spice powder for Chinese cooking this winter

- various trash bags (droll but invaluable)

- a bottle of Memphis Master Barbeque sauce which I know I can fix with spices if it turns out to be nasty.

- two boxed Thai Kitchen dinners of noodles vegetables and peanut sauce which I highly recommend to anybody, I have eaten them before. You can also get them at Kroger’s for more money.

- a winning two dollar lottery ticket.

- Sharp (brand) wristwatch from the scratch and dent department, but it looks and works fine, guys!

I imbibed later at my favorite four-star Chickenaria with a high tea of 7 boneless wings (chicken breast chunks but don’t tell anybody), slaw and sweet tea. Now I am sitting here smelling like a steel foundry and making plans to go out tomorrow to buy REAL groceries and pay REAL bills.

Hell! I know I’m poor guys! But I gave up long ago lusting for everything that everybody else owned and just being grateful for what I’ve got. It was one hell of a shopping spree for about twenty dollars and I’ll do it again next month. Ta!

Depraved

I like to mess with bill collectors. I never had the opportunity to do that before until this economic mess came up. I owed some small money on three medical bills. When the medical conflicts with the grocery in my budget, the grocery wins because I like to eat. I delayed paying the medical until they were just on the edge of Way Overdue. By that time a couple of the medicals had turned the accounts over to a collection agency. And by this time, a week later, I have paid the bills and have my cancelled checks. So when I get a notice in the mail from one of those (ragpickers) bill collectors, I made up a little form to send back. It goes like this:

“The bill was paid in full (yes/no) on (date)

I have my cancelled check (yes/no)

If I answered Yes to both items, you need to get in touch with your client. I can see now why minimal intelligence is required for your job position. If you want to try making it in a real job, try McDonalds.”

If you don’t like smoking don’t read this next section.

The tobacco companies aren’t stupid. Now that the price of RYO cigarette tobacco has gone up to almost $40 for a 14 oz. bag, several of the companies are making pipe tobacco in a thin ribbon cut that also happens to work really well in cigarette machines. It costs about $15 a pound and is immeasurably better than much of the RYO. Lightly flavored and cheap. I’m thinking of abandoning my ready mades (which I can still afford) in favor of some of the new pipe tobacco even though it’s more inconvenient to roll the equivalent of a pack for 15 minutes a day. I particularly recommend KENTUCKY SELECT FULL FLAVOR which is flue cured Burley with a tiny dab of chocolate and fig flavoring. It’s made by an outfit in North Carolina. Now put that in your Funk & Wagnall’s and smoke it!

Supper is over, the dishes are done, I am showered and shaved and I think I am going to plunk my tutu down in front of the TV for a bit. Ta!

Big Doings in the Fair City

...or Fair Doings in the Big City. Take your pick. This past week I have:

- had abdominal cramps for a day and a night because I ate some too-old refried beans out of my own fridge. This was not nice and I will heat them with a blowtorch next time.


- broke up with a girlfriend. I know you're all ready for the juicy details but you have to talk to me in person to find them out.
- been babysitting a hedgehog named Codger who snarls when I feed him.
- been sleeping normally and not all day. This has been very good for chores and appointments.
- have seemed generally peaceful in and out of the rain.

Why I mistrust organized Bishops (from ABC News Australia):

"Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne Denis Hart has been accused of saying to a sexual assault victim: "Go to hell, bitch". The Age newspaper has obtained court transcripts which show the outburst happened after the woman knocked on the Archbishop's door at 1:20am in March 2004"

We had a spectacular accident on North Main Street yesterday near where I used to live. Possibly one driver had a medical problem and jammed his foot down on the accelerator. Possibly another driver got road rage thinking the first one was doing some oneupmanship and also floored it. They both hit solid things (10 blocks down after hitting 12 other cars on the way) at Main and Forest, driver #2's car blew up after his full size Cadillac was reduced to the size of a motorcycle and he blew up with it. The other driver shuffled off this mortal coil shortly after in the hospital and 10 other people were removed by ambulances. What actually got this going may never be solved but it made some great pictures.

Now I am going to have some cheerios for supper so Ta! to all of you good and mellow citizens!

Why Wake Up when you can Sleep?

Earlier when I was eating my mangos and chutney I kept hearing this buzzing and figured it was a fly or two caught in the toaster. But it started again later and I had to check, to find that it was my two-dollar phone that I got the other day from the thrift shop. On Low it doesn't make any sound and on High it rings but I had it on medium and it just kind of vibrated. I think I'll sit a water glass next to it so the vibration is a little louder in case I'm in the other room.

In this episode you just get me. I have been absent in more ways than one the past few weeks and here is how I am today. Back in April? May? when I discovered I was having depression - courtesy of others - and checked with the doc, she started by putting me on Paxil CR (time release) 30mg. And I wound up sleeping most of my life away. Then we went down to 20 mg and I slept half my life away. Then we went down to 15 mg and I slept more than usual. Than I talked to my pharmacist and found that 1/3 of his clients had the sleep problem with the CR version specifically. Back to the Doc and on to 20mg Regular, not time release. Not quite enough. So, to 30 mg Regular and it appears (knock on wood and say a prayer...) that it may be just right.

Trouble is that for each change of dosage it takes about a week and a half or two weeks for it to kick in so I can see what I've got. During that time I had no depression but I slept so much that I kind of shied away from doing some regular things like writing emails. You see. And that's where I've been pretty much. Now I know what people are saying when they talk about the ups and downs of adjusting medication. I just never had that happen before.

Got in a little bit of a twit last week because I priced root canals and caps for a molar tooth and, with insurance, the best I could come up with was $1200. So I went to my old ghetto dentist and had him pull it for $50. (Tom Kernan at E 3rd and Irwin) Haven't regretted it for a minute. The big house up there is his office. They told me that if I saved the tooth (I did) and put it under my pillow I would get a red-headed bride with money. It has a permanent place of honor there. No wonder Obama's trying to reform those health care idiots!

Today, as we speak, I'm doing ok. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, no depression. Grateful for many things, most of them pretty everyday. Hitting my meetings. Working with my Rotten Kids who are all doing really well. Doing some projects at home for relaxation -- a couple new summer scrub shirts, one in a scarlet Chinese cotton pattern, another of loose-weave unbleached muslin... Dyeing some stuff.

Made a wristwatch band out of a $1 dog collar from the dollar store just because I could, and for the experience and skill. Mayhaps I'll make some to sell. I've done pretty good on pipe tampers and tobacco pouches. Have a boxful of pipes I'm ready to sell on eBay. Done a little cooking, new stuff, and all on the diet. Have been doing my special refried beans, scrambled eggs and chopped tomatoes for breakfast once in awhile. And still managing to lose weight. Blood sugar is ok.

I think my Higher Power is getting a good laugh out of all this. I ask "What am I supposed to be learning?" and something new happens. So that is how I am. This all may change tomorrow but today I am good. Today is fine! Ta!

Here's Part 2 !

The first part of this is the entry just below this.

In 1942 there was a Navy recruit who trained to be a gunner on an aircraft carrier. Being somewhat hygienically conscious he asked his trainer if he would have time to brush his teeth after battle stations were sounded. "Why certainly!," said the instructor. "Who in their right mind would send a sailor out to battle with dirty teeth." That was before the Battle of Tuvalu Sea when the sailor spent 72 hours on continuous duty shooting enemy planes, getting shot at and becoming generally dirty and messy. By the time the last surviving plane had landed he had lost his toothbrush and was using a cold chisel to clean the grit and gunpowder off his teeth.

Today I got the cheapest estimate for the Root Canal. It would cost only $528 out of pocket. "Then there's the Cap," said the receptionist. Apparently a Cap is necessary to protect the Root Canal stuff. It will cost only $1050 out-of-pocket. I think it is made out of a titanium-gold alloy. You understand that for $1600 I could buy a small farming community in northern Russia. It felt a whole lot like the gunner after the battle.

Tomorrow I am going to call up the Clinic and tell the Battle Surgeon to prepare for an extraction. For about a hundred bucks and a hammer and a pair of pliers much can be accomplished. The hammer is to knock me out and the pliers, well........... Soon maybe I will be able to whistle out of the side of my mouth. Ta!

Here's a Blog !

Three years ago I decided take advantage of my fancy dental insurance. I never had it before and it cost only $19 a month. I thought I'd have my teeth cleaned so I would look like like a movie star and called Aetna (yes, that's who it is) to find an in-network provider. And they sent me to Doctor C1 who had flat-screen tv's in his waiting room with ads for cosmetic restoration of teeth and some tear-off Botox coupons at the receptionists counter for me to take care of my battered nose. Provided really excellent dental care. And I wound up paying him a lot of money from time to time and didn't worry about it too much because I figured everything's gone up in price including dentistry. If I hadn't had the insurance I would have been paying a lot more and taking a part time job.

But the Big Kahuna came down last week. I had a toothache, just little, and went to my combat-zone basic tooth-pounder. Who took an xray and told me that I would need a root canal proceedure and he didn't do that except with a nine millimeter in burglary emergencies.

In my investigations with Aetna and a couple other dentists who actually did root canals, I suddenly found that my original provider, C1, was an out-of-network practitioner, Oh Horrors!, and that his associate in another location, C2, was an in-network person. Thank you Aetna! So I went racing to C2 who said they were accepting new patients, but they didn't do root canals and they always referred Root Canals to C1.

Now this might be something to just laugh about or sue somebody about except my dental clock is ticking. What is just an occasional zing in my #15 molar today is going to be a screaming siren in a week or ten days and I don't have time to shop around. So C1 is going to get my money. $600-and-some after the 65% Aetna pays for out-of-network services. (Not the 80% an in-network would pay...)

Once this tooth is fixed and I stop worrying about it, I am going to do something not nice to Aetna. I don't know what it will be yet. Maybe hack their computer network and charge their top executives for the Federal Bailout.

But today it isn't hurting much at all and I am going to have bacon and eggs for supper against next week sometime when I will eat baby food for a couple days to be nice to the newly manicured molar. Don't you just hate it when that happens? Ta!

The Bitch of Life.

This has not been a great year. Back before Christmas a couple family members got diagnosed with something bad. A good friend died in February. Another one in March. One of the family members died in June. The other one is still hanging in there. And I got depression which I didn't know I had until somebody told me I should go see my Doctor. Who fixed me up with a time-release antidepressant, all 37.5 mg worth. Then I had no depression and I was rocking and rolling until I started sleeping the best part of every day. At night. In the mornings. In the afternoons. After supper. So we cut the dose in half and I was sleeping in the mornings, at night, in the afternoons and sometimes after supper. And we cut THAT in half and I was sleeping in the mornings, at night, in the afternoons and rarely after supper.

There must be a song about sleeping that much, and it goes to the tune of The Music Goes Round and Round but I haven't figured out the words yet. So I conferred with my pharmacist, then called the Nice Lady Doctor and she put me on the Classic version of the medication, the non-time-release version. There I was yesterday, two days off the sleepytime goodies and the new stuff hadn't kicked in yet. Every time another driver cut in front of me on the road I wanted to yell "Die, Bitch!" or "Hope you wreck!" They wouldn't have heard me, I had the air conditioner on.

Today it is four in the afternoon, I have just finished my breakfast and I'm starting my day such as is left. And I had to call the dentist a few minutes ago because all the sleeping has given me a cavity which is starting to talk to me loudly. For the last couple years I went to a fellow who had a nice office, video presentations in the waiting room about cosmetic dentistry and bills that I had to dip into my savings - now non existent - to pay. And I had the firmest, shiniest teeth in the county. Before that I hadn't gone to anybody for ten years because I had no problems with my teeth. And back when I was a legitimate working stiff I used to go to an inner city clinic that sat just in front of a public housing project at an intersection where there was a wreck or a robbery now and then to spice things up. And, years ago, my wife and four kids went there too. Nothing fancy, if something hurt you went there and got it fixed with no frills.

I am going back tomorrow to the good old clinic place with the old chairs and no TV in the waiting room and moderate expenses for services rendered. And the dentist who is older than God and still has a steady hand. I will get a filling and no sales pitch about caps or crowns or botox-bo-teeth. Half the clientele in the waiting room will be poor folks or meth addicts with no teeth to speak of. Kind of like having an experienced battle surgeon remove a mole. And it will be tight and right and only I will be responsible for having the shiniest teeth in the county. Unless I ask.

Patience! Patience, Dammit! Ta!

You Choose

A couple times a week I view the website of ABC News Australia. It is very similar to USA news except that the police don't have guns - well, most of them don't - and everybody drives on the wrong side of the road. This week there is a contest of wills going on between the Australian Meat Producers and PETA. The Meat people who want to keep making lots of money with their packaged carcassian product have commissioned a series of video ads for Australian TV on the benefits of red meat in the national diet. Here is an example:






The PETA's who want everybody to become vegeterian, give up natural fur and not kill animals, have also commissioned their own set of advertising posters of which one is here:



Now you can figure out which side you like. Personally I think baby pigs are a lot more fun than dogs and certainly more intelligent. I also have no objection to eating their garlic and pepper coated loins with oven-browned potatoes when they get too big to play in the living room. Ta!

Fly Paper

Is that one word or two? Well, I got some today. I have a couple flies and this is the best stuff anybody ever invented for that. It's not green, it's only a dollar for four rolls and the FDA and Homeland Security haven't gotten around to evaluating it yet. It's hard to find because everybody has too much Green insectiside with no phosphoric acid in the propellant. At $4 a shot. Old Cranky Fart and 1943 ride again! Flies don't!

Cindy got funeraled and buried a couple days ago and it was nice. Lots of flowers, solo piano with old Protestant hymns (long may they wave!) subdued emotions. The preacher was a young kid who probably will become a really good preacher with some practice. We had a show and tell on a couple psalms and his entreaty to ask ourselves where we would be spending eternity. And something about a ship sinking.

My first impression was that I was shocked at how old the brothers and sisters seemed to me. We haven't been in one place together for 15 years. One seemed the same, he is always himself. Another - Joe Slick - is still slick but with gray hair. Aside from an Elegant Lady all the rest of us including the aforementioned are beginning to look aged like old...........life preservers? Every one of us has weathered unexpected death or chemical dependency or living with chemical dependency or poverty and the wrong kind of stuff to eat. Having jobs, getting laid off, having rotten kids, having good kids, paying the bills on time or not. Disastrous love affairs. Disastrous affairs.

I love you all kids, these are observations which is why you are unnamed. If you think my perception is skewed, you're right. Say a prayer that my skew gets un-.

I wore to the funeral: A pair of khaki ladies cotton slacks but you couldn't see the elastic waistband; a khaki t-shirt; a dark blue vest that I sewed up out of an old combat jacket with pockets from blue jeans material made from a ladies skirt. Thank God for sewing machines. I was so proud of myself that I didn't wear a suit. But half the rest of the bereaved apparently also hit the thrift stores before the funeral and looked at least twice as good as me in no suits. God bless us everyone!

My brother Steve commented that we are all survivors. I think that expressed what we were all about, and Jesus loved the outfits and the people. Kind of reminded him of the reprobates He used to hang around with.

So we are all home in scattered locations in the State and brotherhood and concern has been served. We are all so much happier sitting on somebody's front porch freshly shaved and cologned, and dressed like trailer trash with a guitar in the front and the NASCAR races in the back! Safe journey Cindy! Bless us one and all! Ta!