I’m a mucking fess!

WARNING:  Don’t look for any of the usual wit and whimsy and wisdom here.  Mostly today it will be some honesty, and more typos than usual (for reasons that will become clear later) and a lot of bitching and moaning and whining and self-pity.  Here’s the thing.

My sweety, aka Kathy aka SuSu, has written movingly about her Damned Disease, myalgic encephalopathy/chronic fatigue immunodeficiency syndrome, aka fibro.  I have the same thing, only less severe, but mine has been getting worse lately.  A lot worse.

Lately, lots of things hurt, and  hurt lots more than usual.  My feet hurt, my ankles hurt, my knees hurt, my back hurts, my shoulders hurt, my neck hurts. . . you get the idea.  I take two Aleve, and nothing much happens.  Being a recovering dope fiend, the heavy-duty stuff like Oxycontin (which may of us fibro types do take–that or Demerol) is not a viable option, even if I could afford it, which I can’t.

I have no energy.  I wake up tired.  Today when I went to the laundromat for a shower, I just kept sitting and sitting in the car, partly because I didn’t know what to say if the counter clerk would ask me how I was doing, and partly because I just didn’t have the get up and go needed to, well, get up and go. When I do have something I have to do, I take ephedra and/or synephrine and/or caffeine.  If I don’t take it, I tend to fall asleep in the middle of the day.  Sometimes I wonder about what it’s doing to my heart and kidneys and liver and such, but I have to keep going somehow.  I have responsibilities, I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.

And talking about going–I have the runs pretty much all the time, which is largely due to my diet, though–I eat lots of fresh fruits and veggies. Okay, it beats being constipated, but it does get inconvenient and the rectal bleeding can be a nuisance.  And then there’s the loss of bladder control.

Lately I have been pissing myself on a regular basis.  I will think I am all done tinkiling, zip up and–SURGE–another dark stain on the front of my trou.  I have learned to stuff a few paper towels in my pants, which gives me an enviably well-endowed look–at least until the urine-soaked towel comes unmoored and starts creeping down my pantleg while I am pushing a shopping cart at the local Safeway.  This whole business has been annoying, not to say humiliating.

The disease has a mental component, too, and lately I am lots fuzzier, mentally, than usual.  NY Times crosswords that I used to breeze through tend to stump me, at least for a few hours.  Store clerks say “How you doin’” and I’m stuck for an answer.  I go to a store to buy two things and forget one of them–always, it seems, the more important one. I screw up things like fixing a sandwich or taking a shower.  Yesterday, I managed to misplace one of my guns which I was packing at the time.

Then there is the emotional component.  Lately I am getting curt to the point of rudeness with everyone from pedestrians to my sweety, which really sucks.  Kathy, besides having saved my life over and over again and besides making up the med packs for me that keep me as sane as I am, is the one person on the planet who merits my respect and affection and all the best I have to give.  Instead, she gets the worst.  Maybe it is true that no good deed goes unpunished, but she has gotten way more punishment from me than she deserves.

Shakespeare wrote that when troubles come, they come not as single spies but in battalions, or something like that.  Besides all this fibro shit, my business has taken a sharp downturn at the worst possible time, when we have huge credit card bills coming in, and this on the heels of other uncommon stuff, like $300+ vet bills for our pets.  Plus we evidently need a new computer, or a massive repair/upgrade on the existing one.  Plus the funny noise in the front of my car is getting worse, it needs a new drive axle–the part came in, I have’t picked it up yet partly because I don’t know who I can get to do the work.  I can’t afford to have a regular garage do the work.  More and more I am feeling stressed out and inadequate to deal with the financial burdens.

Then there’s the huge shipment of knives that came in last week that I don’t quite know what to do with.  I have so many knives in myh car that they are croding out a bunch of my other stock.  And I have another 386 knives on the way, but I sort of have a clue about what to do with them.  Meanwhile, I have been bugging the post office almost every day. “Are my knives in?”  “No, not today,” they say.  I don’t know who will be gladder when the damn things finally do arrive, me or the post office clerks.  And the shipment will amount to over 100 pounds, and I’m not supposed to lift more than 20 pounds at a time because of my hernia (yeah, THAT’S been hurting a lot lately, too) so I’ll be doing a lot of unpacking and schlepping when they finally do come in.

At least I’m not getitng loaded.  That is something, and kind of a big something.  At least I have a little self-awareness, and a wee smidge of gratitude that things aren’t worse.  I have no doubt that things will work out perfectly, just as they always have.  But right now, I am a cranky, bitchy, pissy old fart and way less fun than usual to be around. 

Even my cat has been making herself scarce lately.  And who could blame her.  So how am I doin’?

“Fine, thanks.  And yourself?”

Woohoo,  I  found my dong!

I finally found my dong this morning.  I was happy to get my hands on it, but to tell you the truth, I hardly realized that my dong was missing.  It had been a week since I had seen it.  I don’t use it, and at this point in my life, I’m not sure that it is even good for anything.  Considering my dong’s age and condition, it probably isn’t worth much.

Still, it WAS my dong and I enjoyed showing it to people.  I have always been careful about who I show my dong to–not everyone wants to see or touch an old man’s dong.  The few people who do are special to me.

I think the cat was playing with it.  I had been keeping my dong on top of the stereo cabinet I use as a bedside stand, and she knocked it down, along with some rocks and some other collectable coins.  The dong I refer to is a one-dong coin minted in 1964, the “dong” being a unit of Vietnamese currency.

What did you think I was talking about?

Valley Trash and proud!

I think SuSu mentioned the great Valley trash controversy.  If  you missed her blog, here it is in a nutshell–some woman (D. L. Mooney) sent an unsigned email to one of our sleazier state legislators (Ben Stevens–Alaska’s answer to Dubya, as he is the idiot son of an over-achieving dad–in Ben’s case, his dad is Ted Stevens, one of the most powerful men in Congress).  She called him a “whore” for getting $300,000 in consulting fees from private industry–I’d call  the money bribes, but what do I know?  Anyway, he wrote back (in a particularly ungrammatical email) that she was just ” more valley trash.”  He referred to the Mat-Su Valley, where many of us live. We prefer the term “valley rats,” but never mind.)

A veritable shitstorm ensued–the Anchorage daily paper implied he was unfit for public office (duh!), many other politicians publicly criticised him and called for him to apologize.  I have to give him credit, he is standing by his statement, but like many other sleazoids,  he is blaming the media for making his deeds known instead of taking responsibility for said deeds. (Mooney forwarded the exchange to the media, which is how the whole thing became public in the first place.)

Then someone started printing up t-shirts saying “Valley trash and proud of it” or something like that.  The shirts go for $22 (plus postage and handling) a pop–to date, he has sold like 1,000 or so of them.

This is ironic on several counts.  One, true Valley trash would never (would, hell–we couldn’t afford it!) pay $22 dollars for  fucking t-shirt.  We get ours at thrift shops for a dollar or less each.   Plus, the guy who did this owns a graphics company and is prexy-elect of the Wasilla C of C–he doesn’t even live in the Valley, fer gawd’s sake.  Okay, technically, Wasilla is in the valley, but to us true valley rats, Wasillans are just more soft city people.

Some asshole DJ in Anchorage bought one, proclaiming that he “was one of us,” then proceeded to make a joke about some guy in Palmer with three teeth.  Many true valley rats are missing numerous  teeth, like my sweety who is missing about half of hers. Her ex had welfare pull all of his, then discovered to his horror and chagrin that welfare would not pay for dentures.  It is a sad and pitiful sight to see him try to gum beef jerky. I have almost all of mine, however, but I have been known to go a month between showers.

I am waiting with bated breath to read the letters to the editor that will ensue.  The paper called me on Wednesday to confirm authorship of mine, and the caller said they got a large volumn of letters on the subject.  I assume they will save up and devote a whole page to them, as the paper has done so befor with hot topics.  I don’t know if they will print mine or not, so I will wait until Monday and I can get back on the library computer before I finish this.  As I write, it is Friday morning.

UPDATE:  Well, they printed the letter, but censored the “whore” comment–I said that to call Stevens a whore is to insult whores.  I was not surprised, the timid folks at the paper  have censored my letters before–the last time, they cut out the word “half-breed”–I was referring to myself as a half-breed Indian–I guess that isn’t politically correct enough.  Well, fuck that shit, I say.

Anyway, they did print my comment that the good Senator’s language proved that he was as ignorant of the English language as he was of ethics.  Several other writers zeroed in on his lack of proper grammar and spelling.  One real moron–an Anchorauguan who moved to Washington, D.C.– said that the real problem was lack of urban planning in Wasilla.  (WTF!?!)  Someone else pointed out his naivete in thinking of email as “private,” which was a very good point, I thought.  Evidently, Ben is stupid and clueless, besides being crooked and arrogant. Only one writer defended him.  Obviously a die-hard Republican.  Anyway, the Wasilla dude is still making money off it, and we true Valley rats are still amused and bemused by the whole thing, and the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and as of the latest newspaper report, 4.1 million acres of our forests have gone up in smoke.  As the firefighters say, black spruce is “gasoline on a stick.”

More Felicity at Felony Flats

I think I already blogged about the abandoned cats at Felony Flats who I named (Smoky, Silky, and Spooky), feed regularly, and pretty much fell in love with.  Silky lives at my end of the strip, Smoky stays with Spooky (who I haven’t bonded with ’cause she’s, well, Spooky) but  Smoky sits on my lap in my car sometimes in between customers at my flea market stand.

I have decided to take Silky home with me, since she has not bonded with any other cats, hisses at all the ones she sees, and is chased by them–she’s kinda small.  Lately, I have been hardening my heart and discouraging the more aggressive cats from being on my porch–I have a feeding station for them around toward the back of my cabin.  Well, the situation got a whole lot more complicated last night.

There was this cat-crying, I checked it out, and there was this polydactyl calico in heat.  She wanted some pets and affection more than food, and warily entered my cabin while Kathy and I were watching Hamlet.  She welcomed all the attention, got loaded on the catnip I had put out for Silky, and just generally had a high old time exploring the cabin.  But I drew the line when she jumped up on the table with my stereo and a lot of more-or-less fragile rocks on it.  Anyway, after Kathy left, the cat (who I named Cassie, short for Cassandra–you wouldn’t believe how big her feet are!) came back in the cabin, jumped up on the bed and snuggled against my legs while I was reading.

I was hoping/dreading Silky would come back, to see how the two of them would get along. But she finally left, I shut the door, and a bit later, Silky came in through the wondow I leave open for her.  She seemed okay with the strange cat-scent Cassie had left, but hissed and growled when she saw Cassie outside.  Ideally, the two of them would get along well enough for me to maybe take them both back home for the winter, but Cassie will probably be dropping her litter in October when I’ll still be at the Flats.

So I dunno.  I do know I am more grateful than ever that long ago, I decided that having kids was not worth the trouble and expense.  My gosh, making decisions about cats is so agonizing–how could I ever make decisions about  domesticated primates in my care?

$%&#@!!! Cell phone!

Beautiful woman goes to an eye doctor, says she can’t see right.  Doc gives her a bunch of tests and sure enough, her vision is off but for the life of him, he can’t make a diagnosis.  Frustrated and aroused, he drops trou and exposes his engorged member.

“Can you see THAT?,” he demands.

“OH yes,” replies the woman.

“There’s your problem.  You’re cock-eyed.”

An ongoing cell-phone problem reminded me of this old chestnut.  I have Cellular One service–arguably the worst on the planet, except maybe for the state-run service in Abu Dhabi.  Plus I live in a cell black hole, plus there is lots of sun-spot activity lately, so a conversation with my sweety goes like this:

“Can you hear me?”  crackle crackle

“Are you there?”  crackle crackle

“SHIT!”

Invariably, she hears “Shit” just fine.  Obscenity and profanity goes through great.  So our last conversation, which was kinda important since it involved my briefing her on the latest sales went like this:

“Okay, I have the mother-fucking cock-sucking Carr’s flyer here, damn it.  The assholes have a sale on seedless fucking grapes.  I also have the goddamn monthly fucking flyer from fucking Fred Meyer’s, and the bastards have cereal on sale. . . .”

And so on.  No fucking problem.

The One That Got Away

I worked a gun show this weekend in Anchorage, did fairly well despite an unprecedented amount of competition–there were maybe two dozen other dealers selling knives, but no one, NO ONE, could beat my combination of quality, value, and selection.  (So there!)  Seriously, I do have the goods to back up my statement–I have dozens of decent cheapies at $10 each or three for $20, plus brand name knives by Buck, CRKT, Camillus, Kershaw, Gigand,  and Spyderco.  (Don’t get me started about Case knives.)

Anyway, the second day, I fell in love with this gorgeous little Iver-Johnson small frame revolver in stainless steel.  The coolest thing was, it was a seven-shooter.  They  would have let me have it for $125, but I held back, saying “I’ll be back after I sell my samuri sword set,” which was the biggest ticket item I had.

Sure enough, I sold the thing and scurried over to the table where it was for sale.  Someone had beaten me to it by maybe ten minutes.

The Further Adventures of Captain  Blogfodder

In our last exciting episode (actually, it was the first exciting episode, but is it not written in the Book of Ftagg’hhhh that the last shall be first, the first shall be last, and don’t fuck with Mr. In-between?), the Captain is actually Peter Porker, a smart, sensitive, but overweight teen who gained awesome cybernetic powers after contracting a radioactive computer virus.

What follows is more backstory, which will continue until our hero is fully fleshed-out and delineated, and/or the author thinks of some more plot.

Peter came by his latent spiritality naturally. Both his step-parents, Aunt Fey and Uncle Ben-ibn, were deeply religious.  Aunt Fey had been sexually abused as a child by her hard-shell Baptist father, who would violate her repeatedly (and other things) while shouting out justifying verses from the Bible, such as the books of Genocide, Exfiles, Levistraussncuss, Numbnutz, and Dewdropinnonme.  She became a Wiccan high priestess.  She did not lead a coven, she was just high all the time, referring to weed as the “gaga gift from the gracious green goddess.”  She talked like that a lot, as her mother won a ride in a jet plane with Upchuck Yeager (she took 23rd prize in the Betty Crapper Bake-off with her brownie recipe) and was subjected to (you guessed it) a lot of G-forces. (Until she tired of it.)  (Author’s note–the previous in-joke will only make sense to residents of Wasilla, and it probably isn’t worth the trouble to explain.  Consider it as one of life’s little mysteries.)

Uncle Ben was born a High Episcopalian, but got tired of being High all the time and became a White Muslin.  Yes, he was a man of the cloth.  He had a good thread on his shoulders and no one needled him.  As I once said to Condoleeza,”Uncle Ben’s converted, Rice.”

Peter’s biological parents were killed in a tragic and ironic accident, as explained in Episode One.  Peter himself was a mod on the popular bulletin board, rotsem–refuge for the screaming emotional misfits.  More on rotsem follows:

There were many mysteries associated with rotsem, like “why bother?”  But the greatest secret was the fact that rotsem was backed by an evil conspiracy, a consortium of parents (who didn’t want to deal with their kids or waste time talking to them), big business such as Microsoft (which wanted the kids to get used to spending countless hours in front of a comp doing useless shit, thus getting them ready for employment as adults) and government (which wanted them to be diverted by trivia and thus pay no attention to the man behind the screen).

The code name for this evil conspiracy was the Republican Party.  The real name was, in fact, the Republican Party.  It was run jointly (but only when they couldn’t find a bong) by Richard M. Nixon and Elvis Presley, both of whom are, in fact, still alive and aliens from the Beta Diverticulosis system. 

Thus endeth this installment.

(Stay tuned for more shocking revelations about rotsem, rotweilers, and Johnny Rotten.)

A Tale o’ Nine Cats (more or less)

I was a lonely little kid.  My folks were poor, my dad was a drunk and I talked funny–had  a high IQ and used big words, plus I had a North Carolina accent which did not go over well with Pennsylvania kids.  Oh, and I was uncoordinated and had thick glasses.  Anyway, at one time, my best friend was this orange kitten.  We got along great until the little guy got up into the engine compartment of dad’s 1949 Pontiac and sustained a broken neck when he started the car.  I remember holding the furry little corpse, marvelling at how its head rolled around, and something inside me died.  At some deep level I decided never to love again, if loving hurt so much.  Between the poverty and the parental neglect and abuse, I hurt enough as it was.  In the following years, mostly all I loved was money and expensive toys (stereo sets, designer clothes, a Porsche, shit like that).  Oh, and drugs.

Since moving to Alaska, I have been getting many lessons in loving from my sweety and god and rocks and my shamanic power animals.  I need all the help I can get.  Recently, I have fallen in love with three grey girl kittens.  Someone dumped them off at Felony Flats, the place where I spend the summer, rent a cabin and sell stuff at the flea market there.  I noticed them, started buying food for them, and named them–Smoky (the aggressive one), Spooky( the shy one), and Silky( the grey and white dink).  Smoky and Spooky play together down by my stand, and Smoky comes into the car and sits on my lap.  Silky stays down by my cabin, starting coming in and sitting on my lap while I watched TV.

A week ago, I left for work, not knowing that Silky was hiding under the bed.  I came home and she was at the door, and calmly strolled out when I slid it open.  (The cabin doesn’t have a proper door, but a set of sliding glass patio windows I secure with a padlock when I’m away.)  She didn’t make any messes or destroy anything, and I was mightily impressed.  After that I started leaving her in the cabin for short periods of time.  She made a comfy spot under the table on top of a salesman’s sample case full of Kathy’s jewelry (her work, not her personal stuff).

At the latest Wasilla farmer’s market–where I rent a table and sell knives and rocks and Alaskana–I got a live catnip plant for Silky.  I tore off a few leaves and she really got into it.  She didn’t know what to make of them at first, but then got to biting them and rolling on them–really got a nice buzz on, it seemed to me. 

Our relationship went to another level the other day when I retrieved a discarded litter box from the local dumpster and put it in the cabin, along with a food and water dish.  Now she stays over in the cabin at night, and I wake up with her at the foot of the bed.  She is a sweet little thing, and intend to take her with me (I don’t know why I’m getting ital all  of a sudden, I didn’t ask for them–shit, the more I use computers for writing, the more I miss my old Olivetti) back up the valley when I move back home.

I don’t know what to do about Smoky and Spooky.  I can’t take just one–they play together, and Spooky would be desolate and I assume so would Smoky, if I broke up the set.  If I leave them both there, they both may freeze or starve this winter.  I am hopeful that Spooky will get less afraid of people over the summer, so that I can take all three home with me.

Then we would have six housecats–okay, eight, if you include the two local feral cats who come in sometimes.  That would be fine with me, but I don’t know what the dog would think of the situation.