Tongue In Check

You know, I firmly believe that life is a lifelong learning process. I pride myself in my pursuit of learning new things and I thought I would take this opportunity to share with you my latest learning endeavor.

I have taken it upon myself to learn HTML. Of course when you get to be my age, nothing comes easy except for maybe the 3 D’s (death, destruction, and dorkiness), but that is a subject for another post which, I am sure, I will get to eventually.

Anyway, I thought I would share with you some of my HTML skills. I am rather proud of them and I certainly hope you enjoy them.

And last, but certainly not least, for 99.99999% of my readers who are either female or gay or gay female, I offer this last picture.

Trust me, I felt totally gay doing this, but I will go to “great lengths” for my readers who like to look at dicks.

See, you can teach an old dog new tricks!

As you all know, I am always looking for an excuse to post pictures of scantily clad women on this blog. Actually, that’s not even true.

I never look for an excuse. I mean I know it is sexist, gratuitous and otherwise wrong on so many levels, but I just can’t help myself.

I think Jimmy Buffett said it best.

During President Bush’s news conference today, he indicated to us that America was still vulnerable to attack from terrorist.

Hmmmm.

I pondered this particular statement for a while and something dawned on me. Something very serious.

In about 4 years, we defeated the very organized and very well trained Japanese and German armies. Not just defeated them. We beat the living shit out of them. 4 years. 4 fucking years and they threw their hands up and surrendered.

Now here we are 7 years into The War Against Terror (TWAT) spending right around 5 billion dollars a month fighting a bunch of backward ass cave dwellers in Afghanistan and Iraq and, according to the president, we are still vulnerable to attack.

Really? Vulnerable to another attack from the cave dwellers?

We are using all manners of sophisticated weaponry and devices against people who probably eat bugs and we are losing. Yes, we are losing. Don’t believe me? Go to the airport and stand in line to go somewhere and the fact that we are losing The War Against Terror (TWAT) will smack you in the face like a ton of bricks.

I’m no politician and admittedly I don’t understand the complicated workings of the sophisticated political mind, but as a mere simple minded citizen, I would have to call this policy a colossal fucking failure.

It’s time to do something different.

After having about a week and a half of almost summer like weather, winter seems to have returned to the Great Lakes State. Last week we had temperatures in the upper 70’s which resulted in soaring spirits on my part. Today they are calling for a high in the 40’s. We are being attacked by a “Canadian air mass.” Why does Canada hate us so? I mean seriously, we attack Iraq for almost no reason at all, yet we allow Canada to continue to bombard us with cold air and beaver pelts. It’s just fucking wrong.

My granddaughter (Leah, Daughter of Satan) was here over the weekend. She’s totally out of control and will someday destroy the world, but hey, that’s the world’s problem and not mine. I discovered a very valuable tool in my war with Leah that seems to be very effective. My daughter Jackie had one of those squirt bottles that she used for training her dog, Fred the Untrainable. I have found that if Leah gets too close to me (she’s trying to kill me), I can start squirting her and screaming and someone will come and haul her away. She looks so cute with all that “disciplinary” water dripping from her face as my wife hauls her away.

Have you been keeping up with the antics of those crazy Extreme Mormons (FLDS) in Texas? What a mess. The real issue here is that this is not so much about polygamy as it is good old fashioned scamming. See, here’s how it works:

• Legally marry some 14 year old girl.
• Get her knocked up repeatedly.
• Divorce her by the time she is 20 and has 5 kids.
• Even though you legally divorced her, she is still your “spirit bride” as far as the church is concerned.
• Have her go on welfare as a divorced mother with 5 kids.
• Have 6 or 7 other wifes just like her also collecting welfare.
• You got yourself a little money-making venture.

Fucking Brilliant!

Many of you long-time readers know that I hate Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson with a passion normally reserved for the likes of Adolph Hitler or The Teletubbies. Recently I have decided to add the Reverend Jeremiah Wright to that list. I listened to parts of his speech at the NAACP meeting in Detroit last night and have come to the conclusion that people like Wright (and Jackson and Sharpton) do much more harm than good when it comes to race relations in America. I know these jack-wads have certainly made me re-think my position on race.

Here’s my new official position when it comes to race relations in America:

Shut the fuck up and sit down. Come back when you are serious. As long as you have “spokespeople” like Jackson, Sharpton, Farrakhan and Wright, I am not going to take anything you have to say seriously.

I also have to ask the media why they give so much attention to these buffoons? Do you really think that you are doing anyone any favors by focusing on the antics of these clown fuck-sticks masquerading as the leaders of the black community? Are there more positive leaders in the black community that are a little less flamboyant and divisive and maybe a bit more worthy of attention?

The movement has gone from the sublime to the ridiculous to the sublimely ridiculous.

I can’t wait to fully recuperate. My world is getting incredibly small. Couch. Chair. Bed. TV. Computer. Deck. Driveway. Yard. Repeat.

Why do people keep saying Jennifer Garner is beautiful? I don’t get it. I have the same problem with Julia Roberts.

The answer, plain and simple. Yes. No two ways about it.

The bills are starting to roll in now.

The bill for the hospital stay and surgery is just a few bucks shy of $50,000. I haven’t seen all of the bills for the trips to the emergency room (3) but my understanding is that one of the bills alone was $5000. I haven’t seen the bills for the MRI’s and bone scans either. I am sure those weren’t cheap.

And it’s not over yet. I have numerous follow-up visits to the urologist and numerous follow-up visits to my regular doctor who seems determined to get my blood pressure under control once and for all. Ha! Good luck with that one bitch. Many have tried. Many have failed.

Actually, it is pretty close to normal now. I am sure that is a combination of the medication, not smoking and not drinking. Great. I am a vegetable with regular blood pressure. Hoo-fucking-ray.

Fortunately for us, we are double insured, so the insurance is going to take care of most of this.

Imagine how it works for those that aren’t insured at all? Jesus.

Honestly, I hate to see the government tackle the problem of a national health care program, because those idiots can and do regularly fuck up wet dreams, but something has to be done. Is the money spent to fix a serious problem exorbitant? Yes it is, but what are you going to do? Are hospitals largely inefficient bastions of incompetency? Yes, they are, but who is going to fix the problem. Was my nurse Katy the hottest thing on two feet? Hell yes, but she was only 24 and just saying that makes me feel like the dirty old man that I am.

Seriously, when it is all said and done, it is going to end up costing close to $100,000 to save my life. There are many that might say that it wasn’t worth it. Personally, I would pay twice that much because there is still so much I want to do.

Even if I have to do it sober and nicotine free.

How do we get a national health care program that works?

Oh, and for the record, the Mormons injected me with that tumor. I am sure of it.

I am going to try to taper off on the “medical” posts after this one. It’s time to get back to normal around here.

Back to normal? Was anything ever “normal” around here?

God, I hope not.

Recuperation.

It’s not all it is cracked up to be.

I can boil it down for you:

Carmen

Okay, maybe the last one is just a figment of my oxycodone fueled imagination, but a one-kidneyed guy can dream can’t he?

I had to go to the Dr. today to get my surgical staples out. 30 of the little fuckers. My Dr., Dr. Abdul Hussein Bin Laden Ali-baba, said everything looked fine. He reminded me that I am not to lift over 10 pounds for the next 5 weeks.

He also said something that a lesser man might be upset about. To me, it was meaningless.

Dr: (Spoken in heavy Arabic accent): No vigorous sex for 6 weeks.

Me: I haven’t had vigorous sex since 1977.

Dr: Blink.

Me: And I got carpal tunnel syndrome from that.

Dr: Blink. Blink.

Me: Seriously. For real. Just one time was all it took.

Dr: Everything looks fine. See you in 2 weeks.

Me: Blink. Blink.

This is another fine example of why you simply cannot take me anywhere.

Honestly, I am not exactly sure when I started smoking. The question has come up a lot lately and I am not trying to avoid the answer, I just don’t know for sure how to answer the question. Should I say I started at birth since all of my relatives smoked and in 1954 we just didn’t have enough sense to go outside? Should I say I started smoking at inception because my mother smoked when I was in the womb? Should I count all the times I stole relatives cigarettes as a small child just to see what it was all about?

The first time I ever really remember smoking was when I stole one of my Grandfather’s cigarettes. He smoked Camels without a filter–as if a filter would ever postpone or prevent the inevitable. To this very day, when I crave a cigarette, I crave a Camel without a filter. One of life’s guilty pleasures I guess.

I grew up with the Marlboro Man, Lucky Strikes, Old Gold, and Tareytons. In the late 50’s and early 60’s smoking was not only good, it was good for you. John Wayne single-handedly won WWII with a cigarette hanging from his lips. All the cool relatives smoked. The non-cool ones huddled in corners reading bibles, exchanging baked bean recipes and sipping lemonade. The cool ones smoked, drank home made whiskey, and danced to the music on the all night radio. God, how they danced.

My life has been marked by smoking. When I was in the 10th grade, my parents caught me smoking. It made no difference to me and I told them as much. “You can ground me till hell freezes over and I won’t stop,” I told them. How could they expect me to stop? They both smoked. Early on in my senior year of high school, I stood on the front steps of our house one evening, lit a cigarette and walked into the house. My parents looked at me. My mom looked at my dad with her mouth agape in abject horror.

I told them I was going to smoke and there was nothing they could do about it. I had a job pumping gas making $1.25 an hour and I was buying my own and there was nothing they could do about it. My dad just looked at me and said, “It’s your nickel, spend it any way you want to.” End of the war. I won.

Over the years, I have quit many times. The problem has always been that I have always started exactly one more time than I have quit. Quitting was never hard. Staying “quit” was. A few years ago I began resenting being a slave to cigarettes. I hated being a slave to my own addictions. My eyes were constantly scanning the horizons for the nearest “smoking friendly” spot. I dreaded meetings, airports, prolonged restaurant visits, car rides, air planes, public events, time at home, and any other occasion that wasn’t smoking friendly.

As of this moment, it has been 1 week 3 days and somewhere around 12 hours since I last had a cigarette. On the night before I was to check into the hospital, I stood on my deck at midnight and smoked my last Marlboro Ultra Light. I smoked it slowly and very deliberately. I inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly. I watched the smoke expelled from my lungs blend with the smoke from end of the lit cigarette. I watched the smoke drift off into the night. I wanted to drift off with it but I couldn’t. My dad’s words were burning my ears badly that night.

“It’s your nickel, spend it any way you want.”

I thought you’d like to see my scar.

Well, it is much more than just a scar. It is the end of my modeling career.

Guess I’ll just have to find a new line of work.

Oh well, maybe I’ll just spend a little more time fishing with my wife.