On occasion i do "flashbacks" from my younger (and dumber) years. These are from my old blog for your enjoyment.
Do you remember vertical hold?
Now you teenage HDTV'ers wont have a clue what im talkinga bout but anybody over the age of 25 will remeber the littel knob on the back of your TV that was more sensitive than a womens hormone testing facility. I recently hauled an old TV out to teh dump from the plant and realized that yes it had vertical hold! WOOOOO! Memories. Being three years old and the only person in the house that spent sufficent time in fron tof the TV to to be able to fiddle with the knob and crank my head around the TV to see it at the same time. Dad getting me out of bed at 10:30PM cause johnny carson had gone "vertical" he he. Childhood.
Meanwhile back at the ranch....
Well its flashback time again. I havent done one of these for a while. We saw a screech owl here at the plant the other night and it reminded me of this one time out at the farm. (Havent we all heard that before) I was dead asleep on saturday moring after catting around the night before and dad came in the house and told me to bring my shotgun out. There were a couple pigeons in the cow barn that needed to be taken care of. I was still 3/4 asleep and grabbed my trusty stevens single shot and a few rounds. I found out in teh next five minutes i grabbed the WRONG shells. I popped one in the chamber and when said pigeon popped his head around the corner i pegged him. Reload, wait for next bird. Pegged number two. reload. then i scared a barn owl out of hiding and he was swooping around us and tried to rake my hat with his claws. It wasnt until i pulled the trigger that my mind registered the fact the shell seemed a little light. it was confirmed by the swoosh soud of a 12 ga flare exiting the barrel and the meteor-bright streak as the round hit the owl. Now we have a flaming barn owl flying around a barn with 500 bales of HIHGLY FLAMMABLE STRAW IN IT! I was out of ammo at this piont and was reduced to whacking at the owl with a sheep hook. The owl didnt last long and we drug him outside to immolate safely. Dad looked over at me and quipped: "Boy that was a pisser wasn't it?"
Explosive Gas
1992 south dakota state fair. There's this little Indian fella (the kind from India) selling curry. I buy a small cup cuase ive never had curry before. I wolfed it down in about four big spoonfuls. BIG MISTAKE. Two liters of rootbeer later my mouth is still on fire and i come to the stark terrifying realization that this stuff is going to exit my body at some point. which end i wasnt sure. right then the indian guy started singing "I fell into a burning ring of fire.."
GD curry.
The only thing ive ever eaten that was hotter than that stuff was a jar of kimchi my uncle bill borught back from korea. OMHG! I thought the apocalypse was upon us. I ate one, count em one, forkful of that vile concoction. And the only thing in the house to drink was PBR. Yes folks two week old, rancid ass PBR. I killed a whole case. By myself. While Uncle Bill watched and laughed his ass off. After i finshed the beer bill siad "come on we need to go to dairy queen."
"wHat for?"
"Ice cream."
"why?"
"So tomorrow moring you can sit on teh throne and yell "COME ON ICE CREAM!"
GD kimchi
My first Skiing expierence
It was about 1988 or so and our church youth group went to Terry Peak to go skiing. Id never even SEEN a pair of skis before much less tried to ride em'. I get up to the bunny hill and look down. Wow. For a bunny hill this sure looks steep....hey im moving. The next thing i know im doing mach chicken down the hill, passing people who were yelling "SNOWPLOW SNOWPLOW!!" Snowplow? WTF? I look around for this supposed snowplow they're yellling about. Next up, face meet tree. I whacked a evergreen doing at least 20 MPH. My left ski ended up getting hooked in the strap for my snowpants and then comes loose so now ive got a ski stuck right in front of my face and in the meantime im sliding head over tail down the hill trailing clothing, blood spatters from my broken nose and miscelaneous ski equipment. My little adventure ended against the side of an porta-outhouse that contained one very startled park ranger trying to do some buisness. Somehow the ski is still attached to my right foot and has ended up stuck vertically in the snow like some kind of demonic flagpole saying "Hey everybody look at the retard who wiped out on the bunny hill!"
GD i hate snow.
Lesson learned
I learned something today. When you're taking a shower and hear a goofy gugling noise by your feet, TURN OFF THE WATER! So this gurgling noise goes on and on and finnaly i look down. To see the basement carpet through the shower drain. OH $HIT!!! Imagine a 6'1" tall man, dripping wet, in Guinees beer boxer shorts bailing water out of his basement with a five gallon bucket. yeah thats what i thought too. 45 gallons of water later im sucking up the last of it with my wet/dry vac and looked up just in time to have a sopping wet celing tile smack me in the kisser. Just peachy. I get the rest of the wet cieling tiles down and out back of the house, get the drain trap back in place and re-glued in time to be an hour late for work. What a wonderful day.
Getting in the last word
We all thought the fervor about Hillary's book "it takes a village" had died down long ago. NOT! I went into a bookstore this evening ( i wont mention names) and there right in teh front of the store was a HUGE (read at least 4x6 feet) display of-you guessed it "it takes a village". I asked the owner why he had a display out for a badly outdated and not to accuate book out like that. ( yes i was needling him) He says: "well its such a good book i thought id try to give it more space to generate sales." OK understandable motive. The guy was just trying to make some money. I can live with that. But before i can say anythin else he continues: "Everybody should read this book because i think thats the way children should be brought up." Uh oh. houston we have a problem. You just pushed my BADBADBAD button. At that point i became pissed enough this was the following conversation (forgive any paraphrasing)
"It most certainly doenst take a village."
"why not? Having all the accumulated knowedge of your "village" should help inthe raising of a child"
"No it doenst. All it does is create confusion on the part of the parents as to how thier child shoudl be raised."
At this point other patrons have stopped looking at books and are watching us. The fact i was weaing a camo hunting jacket adn a black beanie probably din't help matters.
"How a child is brought up should be diecided by thier parents not a whole community. What kind of gibbering idiots would this country be made of if everybody were brought up by a whoremongering despot and a ex-president who is so stupid he thinks "harass" is two words?"
Now the owners face is so red i thought he might be having a heart attack and there was a vien sticking out on his temple at least a 1/4 inch. Other patrons are edging twoard the door, not wanting to get involved in what appreaed to be a fistfight in teh making. I continued:
"Take alook at our local native [american] tribes. They think this "village" stuff actually works. They have Grandparents, parents, children, cousins, shirttail relatives and any other straggler who shows at thier door living with them. It really works well. The uneployment rate is twice the national average, 75% of them are confirmed alocholics, drugs are rampant, crime is basically unchecked and they live in houses i woudnt shelter a dog in! Boy this "village" stuff really works great!"
At this point the store is now empty except for him, me and a teenage sales clerk who looks like she wants to be ANYWHERE but here. THe vien on his head th throbbing like a flathead V8 on nitro and he finnaly finds his tounge to blurt out teh following:
"Get out of my store you communist-loving, war-mongering (i still havent figured out where he got that from) pice of hippie trash!"
The hippie trash comment was kinda funny but i took offense at being called a communist. As i walked out i left him with this:
"why don't you go spew your liberal gibberish to someone who actually might be stupid enough to belive it. Oh and by the way, tell all your liberal freinds who think muslims are so great, to pound sand." And i walked out the door. I looked back with a wicked grin on my face to see him raging about the store, pissed beyond all reason. Ah nothing better than getting in the last word.
A cow story
At age 8 i live on a farm with my folks (the absolutly most PATIENT people in the world) we have a milk cow. I bring her in to milk every evening with a beat up honda 90 trailbike. the problem is as i cross the creek adn pull up the other side the throttle sticks. BADBADBAD this is because there is a 1500 pound cow directly in front of me. You get one guess what happes next. Yes my little 90 gains jet assited momentum and runs smack into that poor milk cows ass. I dont recall much of the next five minutes but when i woke up there was cow crap on my arms and head and the front fender of my bike was back int he creek. My left arm hung at a funny angle but i felt so stupid i just picked up the pices and rode in. When i get there dad is waiting for me with a funny look on his face.
"have any trouble bringing in the cow?"
"not really" (im a BAD liar)
"that arm doenst look too good and what happed to the front fender on the 90?"
"um, uh, im not too sure actually."
at this point mom comes busting out of the house jumping up and down like an organ grinder monkey insisting that we need to to go to the doctor. im standing there like a complete retard, covered in cow turds trying to come up with a convincing story why all this happened. three hours later i have a cast from fingertips to elbow. later in life i look back on this and laugh and wish there had been something to record the expression on that cows face when she got a honda suppository.
