Tongue In Check

Leaving here tonight for a week long stay in the UK.  After a month and a half of temperatures more accurately suited for civilized humans, I can’t say I am looking forward to heading off to the land of 40 degrees and cloudy.

Of course I say I’ll be back in a week, but that is standard US time. Don’t they measure time in metric over there? Don’t I have to multiply 24 by the square root of warm beer or something?

Maybe I’ll find Kate Winslet or something.

Ah hell, who am I kidding. With my luck, it’ll be Benny Hill in drag.

See you in a week….whatever the hell that means.  You’ll have to do the metric conversion yourself.

I spend a lot of time thinking about and talking about women. I mean even looking back over some of these old posts, I can’t help but notice how many times I post pictures of, or make reference to beautiful women.

See what I mean? Even when I am calling myself out on it, I am posting pictures of hot women.  It’s like I can’t help myself or something.

But now it is time for “some” truth. As many of you know, I am old. Hell, I am old enough to be the father of  some of you, and at the very least,  old enough to be the dirty old uncle of the the rest of  you.

If sex appeal could be measured in terms of dogs, well, this old dog lost his bark a long time ago, so for the most part, I just sit on the porch and leave the butt sniffing to the younger dogs. What age didn’t take away, marriage sure as hell did. In other words, my days of humping the leg of every stranger I can are long gone. That’s not to say, though, that every now and then a situation doesn’t arise where I hark back to the days of old.

I am not sure if I have mentioned it before, but I truly have this “thing” for Hispanic women. Oh, wait, is Hispanic the right term these days? Is the new word Latina? Ah hell, it’s too fucking complicated. I am just going to call them Mexican women and by Mexican I mean Mexican, South American, Spanish, and/or Portuguese. I realize that there are geographic, cultural, and language differences, but they all cause instant wood (as instant as an almost 55 year old man can get).

DISCLAIMER:

As many of you know, I am married to The Queen of Poland and she does occasionally read this blog, so if she is reading this, I need to clarify something. Naturally, Honey, by Hispanic women, I mean all women from Poland–especially those highly textured women wearing the babushkas. It’s almost more than I can handle. Someone get me a box of Kleenex.

Anyway, there is a woman where I work who is Hispanic/Mexican/Latina (whatever the hell the PC term is to address these hot looking beeyotches) and I see her walking up and down the hallway all the time.  The other day she stopped in my office and introduced herself.

Now when I say to you this woman is beautiful, you have to understand what I mean by beautiful. She is like weak in the knees beautiful. She’s like “wouldn’t have even been in my league when I was 25″ beautiful.  She’s like “a permanant addition to my own personal spank bank” beautiful.  She’s like” if I had my choice between her and Catherine Zeta Jones, I’d take her” beautiful.

So I was sitting in my office trying to act like I was working and I sensed “this presence” in the doorway. When I looked up, she was standing there and I realize now in retrospect that I might have actually whimpered a little bit when I saw her. The whole thing went something like this:

Beautiful Hispanic/Mexican/Latina Woman: “Hello, my name is Hottest Woman in the world and I just wanted to stop by and introduce myself.”

Me:  hmmmmmmmmeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. (puppy dog whine)

Beautiful Hispanic/Mexican/Latina Woman: “Are you finding everything you need here at [insert company name]?”

Me: hmmmmmmmmmmmeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee zeeeep nort ek.

Beautiful Hispanic/Mexican/Latina Woman: “Well, it was nice to meet you. My office is over on the manufacturing side. Stop by sometime when you can talk.”

Me: Blahahablah hmmmm eeeeee snork jooort lupe ekstof. *Thump* [head hits the table as she walks out the door giving me a perfect view of her perfect ass].

Yeah, women. Fucking-eh, I got a way with them.

NEWS FLASH NEWS FLASH NEWS FLASH NEWS FLASH NEWS FLASH

I just bought a new 42 inch flat screen TV yesterday. It looks something like this.

The bad news is, Greta Van Susteren is 10X uglier on a bigger TV.

The good news is, the following image caused the destruction of a box of Kleenex.

I do apologize to the rain forest for my part in its destruction, but dammit all, who can blame me?

Parts of this post might get a little graphic, so don’t say I didn’t warn you in advance. This post is mostly for me because I just need to do it.

One year ago on March the 17th, I woke up to a somewhat normal March morning. Truthfully, I was secretly planning on going down to my buddy’s bar sometime around noon and having some corn beef and cabbage and “tying one on” as I did with some regularity back in those days.

I had been having some issues for a few days leading up to what will forever be known as the great St. Patrick’s day massacre of 2008.  I had been battling what I thought was reoccuring kidney stone. I had some minor pain from time to time followed by “pink urine” which I attributed to the stone moving around inside the tube that runs from my kidney to my bladder.

I sat down that morning and wrote out a blog post. I have never been able to go back to it. Here it is. I wasn’t feeling too good when I wrote it.  I knew something was wrong, I just didn’t know how wrong it really was. When I finished that blog post, I went to go take a shower and get ready to head down to the bar. I walked into the bathroom, went over to the toilet to piss, and pissed pure blood. Fuck. That makes me sweat just writing it.  Somewhere around mid-piss, I just stopped pissing. It was like  someone just shut off the flow and that was it.I didn’t know it at the time, but my kidney was sending blood clots down into my bladder and those clots were shutting off the flow of urine from my bladder.

I called my wife, we went to the doctor and later that same night, I wrote this post.

The next month or so was a whirlwind of indignities (there’s no way to be cool when a hot young nurse is shoving a catheter tube up your penis and your penis tries to run back inside your body because it is scared), being frightened beyond belief (the intern at the U of M who blurted out “and it looks like it has metastasized to your liver” after looking at my CT scan),  to quiet resolve (I’m not going to let this fucker beat me).

There have been several points in my life when I realized that there was no going back to life the way it was before–the first time I smoked pot, the birth of my daughter and son, my first trip to China, the day I got my zero radius turn lawn mower, and last, but certainly not least,  finding out I had kidney cancer.

See,  I always figured it would be lung, or throat, or colon, or maybe even esophagus, but I never even remotely imagined it would show up in my kidney.  The announcement that I had kidney cancer hit me like a high speed freight train. I guess that is the way cancer works. It’s smart like that. My doctor told me that my tumor was creating blood vessels where there were none just to feed itself. WTF? Can you imagine that?  Cancer is smarter than we are–way smarter.

So this morning I checked out all of my favorite news sites and I found out that Ron Silver just died of esophageal cancer, Patrick Swayze is not expected to make it much longer (stage 4 pancreatic cancer), and my old buddy Don Imus has just been diagnosed with stage 2 prostate cancer.  Even if these guys beat the disease, the battle  never ends. It’s a lifetime concern.  I haven’t pissed once in the last year that I haven’t held my breath and said a small prayer to the stars above to please let it be alright.  I’ll probably do that for the rest of my life.

So for the record, my cancer was stage 4 kidney cancer. I don’t need to tell you what stage 5 is.  Fortunately for me, they were able to remove my kidney. Now all I have to do is pray like a mother-fucker that it doesn’t show up somewhere else. The really amazing thing about it is that I didn’t feel all that bad until the last minute. Isn’t that odd that you can be that sick and not really know it? Here’s what’s even weirder. The doctor told me that a normal kidney is the size of a fist. Mine was the size of a football. And to think, I wasn’t even aware of it.  Aside from “urine issues,” the only other symptom I had was a swollen lymph node in my nut-sack and that could have come from anything.The doctor also told me that everyone that came in with the same type of cancer I had came in on a stretcher.  I was under my own power right up until the end.

What’s the point of this post? Well hell, there is no point. There never is and there probably never will be.

I’m still alive, and as far as I know at this point in time, I am doing fine.

In the end, that’s the only point that counts.

The other day I was over at Carolina Parrothead’s blog and he was doing this meme about the most significant albums (for those of you too young to remember them, just think of albums as “old fashioned CD’s”) of his lifetime and it got me to thinking about how much I hate memes because that is just a lot of responsibility and you don’t want to let down the person that tagged you….

But that’s not what this post is about.

I am going to bore you to epileptic seizures by telling what you the most significant albums of my life are. I don’t know how many there will be because I am going to make this up as I go.  So in no particular order at all, here we go:

Hank Williams Greatest Hits. For the record here, I am talking about the father, and not the son. Seriously, I kid you not. My parents had the album and I wore it the fuck out. His music and his voice were and still are so haunting.  I can’t tell you how many nights when I was living in Utah that that song rumbled through my head like a run-away freight train.

Highway 61 Revisited by Bob Dylan.  I came by this album the hard way. Sometime in the early 70’s, I was looking to start an album collection. I only had a little bit of money so I was looking to get the most music for my money.  I bought a greatest hits album by Dylan and really liked the music. A few years later when I went away to college and discovered a real record store, I went Dylan album crazy.  When I bought Highway 61 Revisited, my life changed forever and from the first time I heard Ballad Of A Thin Man, I knew there was no going back.

I was a thin man back then.

Every Picture Tells A Story by Rod Stewart. What can I say about this album that hasn’t been said a million times. In some ways, it defined some of my earliest experiences with love.  How could I ever forget my first real love and the ache of dry-humping to Reason To Believe and how just a few years later the love for that same girl turned into a Maggie May moment?

Dark Side Of The Moon by Pink Floyd. Big fucking deal. Who in my generation wasn’t somehow moved by this album.

A White Sport Coat And A Pink Crustacean by Jimmy Buffett. What can I say? I’ve always been a sucker for word play. Of course this is a take-off on the old Marty Robbins  A White Sport Coat And A Pink Carnation., which was a worthy song in and of itself.

I can honestly say that I saw Jimmy Buffett before he was Jimmy Buffett. Well, he was still Jimmy Buffett, but he wasn’t the Jimmy Buffett we all know and love today. He was a short little midget guy playing in a bar in Key West in 1974. He wasn’t quite famous yet.

Naturally, and without knowing it at the time, a song from this album was about to influence one of the greatest things in my life.

Bridge of Sighs by Robin Trower. Not well known then and even less well known now. I must tell you though, that by merely hearing the opening of the song Bridge of Sighs, I am somehow magically transported back into time and high as a kite.  You have no idea how much dope was smoked while listening to this album.  Fact: this ain’t fucking Def-Leppard.

Blood On The Tracks by Bob Dylan. What can I say? I was in college and part of the great unwashed. I was totally in love with a sorority girl. We were bad for each other, but we just couldn’t stop. This album came out and I wore it the fuck out. She said he couldn’t sing.

Born To Run by Bruce Springsteen.  Actually, anything and everything by Springsteen.  This album though, released at the height of the disco movement that was ruining music in America, was a breath of fresh air in more ways than one. (I could have found a better video than this one, but the sound quality of this one is better than the live recordings from the 70’s and Bruce’s current performances of this song are far too tame.)

Changes in Latitude Changes in Attitude by Jimmy Buffett.  There’s going to be a lot of Buffett here, so bear with me. This album came out right about the time I graduated from college and split up with the aforementioned girlfriend.

Certain songs from that album can still transport me back in time to 1977.  Sorry about the poor quality of this video, but it was the only one I could find.

Son Of A Son Of A Sailor by Jimmy Buffet. (Last Buffet album, I promise).  Man, there is a great story associated with this album, but right now I’m just not in the  mood to tell it.  I will say this though, this was the first concert that I saw with Anne (my wife). She was my girlfriend when we went to see this.  We went with a couple of old friends of mine, my old girlfriend (from college) and her new boyfriend.  It was also the first time that I ever saw Buffett in a larger arena. He still wasn’t very famous when this album came out, but he was well on his way.

At this point, you can probably insert almost any album by the Eagles. They were and still are among my favorites. That whole “country-rock/folk-rock” genre was just the place for me to hang my hat.  I’ve always been disappointed that country music, for the most part, morphed into pop-music and rock and roll morphed into one of the most otiose bands ever known to man–Def-Leppard.

I’ve always loved taking it to the limit, so naturally, I love Take It To The Limit. Still one of my favorite Eagles songs.

So now I need to digress for a moment. If you notice, we are up to about 1978 now. Sadly, for the rest of the 70’s and all of the 80’s, there were no more “defining albums” for me. That’s not to say that I didn’t like a song here and there because I damn well did. It’s just that no one album really moved me all that much.

I have a theory about that. See, I think that I was kind of busy actually living life back then. I was actually defining my own moments instead of letting someone or something else define them for me.  There’s something to be said for all of that I guess.

Or maybe I just didn’t listen to the radio much.

Most of my musical “heroes” started going a little nuts back then. The Eagles were all heading off doing individual projects, Dylan got religion, Buffett got rich and famous, Robin Trower quit recording, Springsteen got a little overly commercial, and that whole disco movement of the 70’s just totally fucked up music.

But then somewhere in the mid to late 90’s a friend of mine sent me a box of CD’s. I am not sure why he did it. We were not much into exchanging gifts of things like that. I guess he just felt like doing it and not being one to turn down a gift horse or a piece of ass, I gladly accepted that gift of fine music from him.

Sorry, I must digress for a moment in case my wife is reading this.

Naturally, dear, that whole piece of ass comment was meant as a metaphor for man’s inhumanity to man. No actual “asses” were ever exchanged in the making of this blog post.

Ahem.

Now that we have that little ass saving disclaimer out of the way, can we get on with this post?

Okay.

In that package from my friend was a seemingly harmless CD by some guy from Texas that I had never heard of.

Picnic by Robert Earl Keen.

There’s not many songs on You Tube from that particular CD, but I was able to find this one. I think I might have linked to it before.  Keen’s music kind of hearkens back to that old country rock/folk rock genre that I loved so much.

Unfortunately, I can’t find a video for my favorite song from that album. It’s a great little song called “Over The Waterfall.” That song contains what may well be one of the greatest  lines ever:

The beauty of sadness/Is feeling the pain.

Probably not.

Well, honestly, that’s it. As I said earlier, there were other songs that I enjoyed, but I really can’t say that I was really moved by the entire  album or the artist.

This was probably far to long to make any sense whatsoever. Oh well, maybe when I get old and senile I can look back on this and remember what music I liked “back in the day.”

Or not.

Oh, and how could I forget this, The. Best. Song. Ever.

Oh bullshit. This was The. Best. Song. Ever.

One part of my job that I might have neglected to mention is that I may have to make semi-regular trips to the UK.

Naturally, I only mention this because I am polite and would like to give Kitty and Reluctant Blogger a warning that there will no longer be a large body of water separating us so there is no need to feel safe and secure in knowing there are many miles and an ocean between us.

As we speak, the powers that be are booking my flight to the UK for the end of this month. So if you have locks on your doors, double them. If you have locks on your windows, triple them. If you have a large guard dog, get a larger one.

I love a challenge.

You’ve been warned.

First of all, sorry I haven’t been around much. I don’t seem to have much time for blogging these days, despite my best efforts. I am not sure how I was able to work and blog before.

Oh wait, now I remember how I did it. I didn’t work much.

Apparently these guys I work for now are pretty serious about getting work done. I wish I had known that before I took the job. I’ve made a career out of bull-shitting people and I’m too freaking old to actually start working now.You want to know how serious these fucking people are?

They gave me a Blackberry. As far as I am concerned, that means porn on the go.

My wife has been down here with me for 3 weeks. She is flying back to Michigan today to coordinate the move with the moving company. Since I’ll be here alone for 10 days, I expect all of my female readers to send me naked pictures. I won’t post them on my blog, I promise.

So far, I will say this about Texas. These people are exceptionally friendly. I mean seriously friendly and for a northern boy(most of my life)  such as myself, this is  unusual. For instance, if you are walking through a parking lot here, someone you don’t even know is very likely going to look  you in the eye and say hello. In Michigan if someone looks you in the eye when you are walking through a parking lot, they are going to shoot the hell out of you for no reason at all.

I wonder why I didn’t move here 30 years ago. I mean seriously, it all makes sense. I love Mexican food, BBQ, and Mexican women. The only thing I have no use for here is Cajun food, but so far, 3 out of 4 ain’t bad. Cajun food might be fine if you are a Cajun, but so far everything I have eaten has tasted like some crazy combination of dirt and mold.

The best thing about Texas so far:

wearing shorts in February.

It just dawned on me that I can’t walk into a restaurant and order a Mexican woman to go. This is 2009 for the love of Christ, why is this not possible.

I know, I am supposed to say Hispanic or some other damned silly form of politically correct word for a woman from Mexico, but I am pretty sure that a person is only given so much political correctness in one lifetime and I have used up all of mine. Sorry if I offend anyone, but you should have known me when I was younger and had more political correctness to spare.

Batty Old Boss was down here last week for a few days. I only had two meals with him and other than drinking the cup of au jus that was served with the meat dish he had, I have nothing to report. Yes, you read that right. After he was done with his meal, he had about half a cup of au jus left, so he drank it. Fucking-eh, that’s my old boss.

Ever since I had that surgery last year, I don’t like being alone. Isn’t that weird? I mean it never used to bother me at all. Hell, I even preferred it. Now, I don’t like it much when the brain turns inward. I don’t like where it goes.

The good news though is that when Anne gets back in 10 days or so, she’ll have Carmen with her. That will make it ocmplete for me.

Speaking of Carmen, I made a huge mistake yesterday. I accidentally walked into Pet Smart when they were having one of those pet adoption drives. It was all I could do to walk out of there without adopting them all. The hardest one was a a small chihuahua mix mother and puppy. I wanted them both so that they never had to be separated.

Did I ever tell you that I hate Sears?

If I didn’t, I do. I hope that as a result of this economic downturn they are forced to shut their doors. You would think that in these economic times they would be so bone-headed, but they are. I’ll spare you the details, but yesterday Sears lost a 700 dollar sale for the sake of an 80 dollar delivery fee. Fuck them. I hope the little Vietnamese lady who was the supervisor thinks about that 80 dollar fee when she is standing in the unemployment line.

See what happens when you don’t win a war with someone? They get all freaking uppity. I shouldn’t be that way though. She could probably buy 50 rats with that 80 bucks and feed her entire family for a year. Bitch.