Tiny Story

From 2000, here’s my once best friend’s story…

Hawthorn said, “We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest.” There are some who live by this belief. As I boarded my flight for Vancouver I knew I was about to meet one of them. When the airplane touched down in Canada I was asking myself, “How in the world did I wind up here?” Only a few short months ago Vancouver, Canada was a city I knew little about and had no plans of ever visiting. But here I was landing with a six-day hotel reservation, a round-trip ticket, and a million questions. “This should be interesting,” I remember muttering to myself as I climbed up the ramp and headed for customs.

Little Woman, Big Impact

I try to keep up with what’s going on in the UFO field.  These days it’s mostly a casual interest.

In the Pub at the Biltmore, Vancouver, BC

This wasn’t always so.  Once upon a time I came close, very close, to being a published author about UFO’s and abductions.  Yesterday I was watching a couple of vids and like always my mind went back to my friend Tiny.  We had a relatively short but very powerful friendship.  I will never forget her nor will I stop caring deeply for her.

I decided I’d see if I could find her online.  It’d been close to a decade since we’d last had a couple of emails and a long time since I’d looked for her.  So, I looked.  And I was quite shocked and saddened when I found her obituary.  She’s gone.  She died two years ago.  All the rest of the day my stomach felt empty and I felt strangely alone.  Damn.

The best way to explain our unusual relationship is to re-publish the story I wrote about her.  The short story.  It’s called Tiny’s Story.  Click the title to read it.  I flew all the way from Austin, Texas to Vancouver, Canada to see her and talk about her experiences with… um… you know… aliens.  She had one hell of a story to tell, as you’ll read in the story.

Plan was to write her story and publish it as a book.  It was sure to be a bit seller.  Back then the UFO phenomena and alien abductions were big stuff.  So I spent five days with her in VC.  What an incredible time it was.  Afterwards, back in Texas, we kept in constant touch and I started writing.

Just to get things going I wrote the short story linked to above.  I sent it to one of the Big Boys in the field, Fate Magazine.  They accepted it!  No shit.  A stack of rejection letters I had filed away didn’t give me much hope but there it was, an offer to publish.  All they needed was an affidavit from Tiny that the story was authentic.  That’s when the whole thing went to hell in a hand-basket.

Tiny freaked when I told her I needed the affidavit.  She said she couldn’t do it.  Then she vanished.  No emails, no calls, nothing.  I was left holding a useless acceptance, a partial story that had died on the vine, and a heart all twisted from the disappearance of my friend.

More than a year later I managed to get back in touch.  I tried to find out where she’d gone.  She would not say except that she had been stricken with an illness that almost killed her.  We exchanged a few messages and then nothing.  Once or twice in the years that passed I managed to get short emails but never got the story of what happened, why she balked, or anything else.

Many was the time I was tempted to scrape up the money to fly to Canada and find her.  But life went on and her memory slid back to a comfortable spot in my yesterdays.  We were close friends for only a few months but I still miss her very much.  I have lots of mementos from my trip to remind me, things she gave me, and of course some very sweet memories.

Of her story, when she freaked and before she disappeared I asked pointedly, “is it all bullshit?  Is that it?”  She insisted adamantly that it was all true.  Sometimes I wonder.  You know, I just don’t know.  But I think it was.  My trip to Vancouver can be described in two words: wonderful and weird.  Same with our entire relationship.  My life has taken such a strange direction since then.  My views have gone even farther afield.  My personality hasn’t changed much, I don’t think, but the world view and attitude it’s wrapped in has turned inside out.  I think my transformation from hard-core religious right to atheistic skeptic was very much influenced by my incredible friend Tiny.

Tiny was short, quirky, fun, an exquisitely wonderful woman and once, for a short time, my very best friend.  Now, she’s gone.  She’s the mystery wrapped in an enigma that I will never be able to uncover.  So today I say a belated goodbye and deep thanks for all she gave me.  Rest in Peace, my dear friend, I will surely miss you still, and forever.

So… what the fuck, right?

It’s Sunday.  My wife decided to go to church.  My lil’ girl went along.  I told them I disapproved, for all the good that did.  When they started out the door I told them to tell Jeeezussss hi for me.  ha!

Shit.  How to show what a fantasy religion is to people programmed from birth?  It took me a long fucking time to get here.  I was thinking this morning, the one thing my mom did very good for me was to allow and encourage me to think for myself. Eventually reason, knowledge and reality drug my ass out of the abyss.  Sucks that it took so long.  I understand and sympathize with people who cling to religion out of fear and because of their programming.  It still drives me nuts and pisses me off.  THEY don’t piss me off, the goddamn programmers piss me off.  I KNOW there are dickheads and dickette-heads pulling strings up at the top of the pyramid of shit.  But ain’t no way to convince these people who are so goddamned programmed, like the poor schmucks in North Korea who cried over the death of their fucking murdering bastard of a dictator.  Ugh.

To be fair, my wife goes more for the cultural aspect than any deep religious conviction.  My daughter goes mostly, I think, because she wants to dress up.  They go to do something with grandmaw and grandpaw.

Something else that pisses me off is how my kids are exposed to programming every goddamn place they go in this hellish town.  My wife will not reject her religious beliefs because of her fear but she does not do the programming.  THAT is done every goddamn place else here, from school to grandmaw and every other fucking religious prick/prickette in this horrid town.  I am exceptionally outnumbered.

I hate it that my kids are so exposed that they tend to believe religious bullshit, that there is some fruit fairy up in some fucking heaven somewhere.  I tell them it’s bullshit.  I tell them it’s time to quit believing in the tooth fairy, santa clause, and god.  There’s not a hell of a lot more I can do without completely destroying everything I have.  All I can hope for is that they will use their brain and get over their beliefs just as they have belief in Santa.  Sigh.  My wife and kids love me with an incredible intensity.  I KNOW that, especially about my wife because I am EVERYTHING christians are not and still she accepts me.

Yesterday she said she knew I rejected religion.  It’s because I want to cuss and drink and smoke.  ha.  I reminded her how the majority of rednecks in this town cuss, smoke, and drink, and then show up Sunday morning dragging their hangover with them.   Once or twice a year they ‘repent’.  Jeeezuz washes their sins away so they can to fuck up some more.  that’s how it works.  Shit, how stupid is that?

Lately I’ve been kind of dead in my gut.  Not unhappy.  Just so goddamn lethargic and …what… apathetic.  I find it difficult to work myself up towards being indignant.  Blahhhh!  This world is so fucked up and there’s not a goddamn thing I can do about it.  I am beginning to not give a shit about anything any more.  My idealistic streak is dying a fast and ugly death.  And it’s too fucking late.

Oh well.  Whatever.   Pandora’s Hard Rock Radio is kick-ass tunes!  I need some booze… or a bit of weed.  I’ll have to settle for coffee and my little cigar.

May you have a fucking terrific godless day!

DAMN! I can be morbid, huh?

Funny.  Well, not.  But whatever.  Such a fucked up world this is.

If there’s an absolute given in my totally screwy life it is this: I DO NOT HOPE.  Hope is such an idiotic thing to do.  It’s a waste of time and energy.  There IS no fucking hope, not for me, not for the world.  Things ARE what they are.  Deal with it of fuck your head up thinking different.  Your choice.

On this day, whatever it is, I continue to breathe.  I’m not sure if that’s good or bad but at the moment it’s ok.  But don’t go thinking that bullshit “where there’s life there’s …you know, the ‘H’ word.”  Fuck that.

But anyway, having discovered someone discovered my previous and exceptionally depressing post on this idiotic blog thing I thought an update might be in order, especially since I am not quite so moribund… is that the right word… …well, not exactly but it sounds good so fuck it.

For the past few years I have had a school loan from decades ago haunting me like a goddamn ghost.  I have no way to pay the fucking thing.  And now I have exhausted my unemployment deferments.  SO, shit, what to do now?  I have made a stepped up effort to “find a job.”  Ha.  What a goddamn joke that is.  In this town/state/country where there’s hundreds of people lining up for any possible job I have a proverbial prayer’s chance in non-existent hell.  Well, there is a hell and it’s called Lufkin but that’s another story.  I look back at so many logical, ethical, honest choices I’ve made and see how every goddamn one of them has fucked me over.  Just consider the past twelve hears, give or take…

1) DHS… I wound up under the supervision of the meanest bitch I have ever encountered.  She was cold blooded, heartless and cruel.  And she insisted on running her little unit like a goddamn dictatorship.  Maybe her Brit heritage (war bride, you know… damn feel sorry for that GI!) has her frustrated she never was queen.  Whatever, but I refused to cowtow to her fucking demands or be intimidated by her bitch attitude.  SO, I did the honest and by the book thing: filed a complaint.  Of course the rest of the unit had white feathers and laid eggs on her desk.  So, I pissed her off and it cost me the job.  I left because I KNEW the bitch was about to frame me for something, and she had access to my casework in a way that she sure as hell could do it.  She’d already embellished a very minor complaint of a client (only complaint in 3 1/2 years!) and then suspended me claiming I was belligerent when I called her on it.  Bitch.  So, you know…

2) CX Transportation… I did what I said I would never do: run more than one log book.  Hell, they were running me so hard I had THREE!  And I was literally falling asleep at the wheel so I quit.

3) Arnold transportation… it was fun while it lasted.  Of course my long haul dispatcher was a shit, NEVER worked to get me home on time.  I transferred to local/regional.  Ha!  Running the same goddamn loads to the same place as half a dozen drivers one gets to see how the other drivers act.  There was a sonofabitch who literally ran people off the road.  I saw it with my own eyes.  Fucker drove that truck like a sports car.  Ran red lights and never drove the speed limit.  So, being the responsible driver, I reported him.  And of course he knew who did it when they gave him a little, “oh, you shouldn’t do that” thing.  He threatened me, then later ran me into dangerous traffic and when I rather pointedly ask him what the fuck he did that for the sonofabitch assaulted me.  Knocked me up against a truck.  Guess what!  Yep, they fired ME!  Go figure.  Goddamn trucking industry.

4) So, I worked for Soil Fertility as a driver for a while.  Badly maintained equipment and quickly going broke.  I quit when my paycheck bounced.

5) Being the dumbass crusader I used to be, I wrote a three page complaint about Soil Fertility and my experience in trucking in general and sent it off to every motherfucker I could think of.  Senator, Congressman, state/fed officials, and one to the American Reform Association.  Sounded big, “Washington lobby group.”  Right.  Turns out, not so big.  Blew a whole summer and a load of cash to develop a magazine for them and they could not raise even a few hundred to pay me for my work much less the ten grand needed for the first issue.  Fuckheads.

6) Moore North America… What pricks.  I worked for Hutch Aviation a month, damn fun job.  I was looking forward to getting my pilot’s license through them but shit, they went broke and closed.  What luck.  So, onward and forward to Moore.  Perfect example of how totally fucked up American corporations are.  Then one day my wife and I did the grand and noble thing, we took in foster kids.  Ah, my boss says, fuck that.  I asked off to take them to the doc.  Just one day!  Hell no, they can’t have that.   They fired me on the spot.  Pricks.  A couple weeks before I was shitcanned by corporate colon cleaners I saw a co-worker bawling her eyes out because her kid was  home very sick and she’d been told if she went to care for the kid she’d be fired.  So much for the so-called family leave act and all that shit.

7) Foster Parent… what a goddamn nightmare that is.  No, not the kids.  They’re hell on one’s constitution sometimes, but they ain’t the problem.  It’s the goddamn system that’s the problem.  Cold hearted bitches claiming ‘best interest’ for children when all they’re doing is manipulating situations and fucking over everybody, especially kids, to make sure their own goddamn record looks good.  So many kids so fucked over by the system.  They create criminals out of infants.  They support pedophiles and child abuse, they sure as hell do nothing to end it.  And when I tried to build an agency that WOULD do something I discovered… no that’s not the right word… I had my darkest suspicions verified, that people do NOT give a shit for poor kids.  Period.  Fucking religious pricks in this town are the worst, too.

Enough of that shit.  I was not intending to go there but hell, I just had to fill out another application knowing I’m so pissing in the wind.

No, there’s no fucking hope.  Stay a goddamn sheeple.  You’re better off.  Keep your head up your ass and believe all the bullshit, cover your eyes, avoid the goddamn truth, live and die a fantasy.  I sure as Hell wish I could!  But fuck, no, I have to see reality.

So, whatever, I’m ok.  Sure.  I have a new mission.  I am working towards a pseudo-career as a singer.  Ha.  Is that funny or what?  I’m really not bad.  And I have a buddy who thinks I’m great.  And he’s a musician, too.  SO, fuck it, I have nothing else to do, I shall write and produce a couple dozen songs that will somewhat piss off most everybody.  I’m taking METAL attitude to the max, baby.  Although my music isn’t exactly Metal.  I’m sort of a mix between Godsmack, Blue October and Willie Nelson.  Ain’t that the shits, right?

I ain’t never been worth a damn.  When I was a kid I was told, “what matters is that you TRY!”  What bullshit.  No, baby, it’s winning, not trying.  Try and fail is worse than not trying at all.  LOVE, makes the world go ’round, right?  Not.  Buddha, and probably Jesus, were pretty good guys who had great ideas that almost nobody on this whole fucking planet ever paid any real attention to.  If Buddha was still around I’d go get myself a robe and follow him around.  Hell, if I had the money I might even go to Asia and disappear into a monastery.  But I’m in this fucking world right here, stuck, and so I stay pissed off and bitter.  You goddamn right I’m bitter.

I started out this post intending to soften up my previous one.  Hasn’t worked, has it?  Funny that.

Truth is, I still do give a shit, about all of it, but I know without a doubt it’s all headed down the fucking tubes.  In a few years I’ll be dead and it won’t matter a fucking bit, right?  There’s only a coule things I can do.  One is speak the truth via song as pointedly and insultingly as possible so some motherfucker some day will actually QUESTION the words.  Not holding my breath on that one.

The other thing I can do is love my family with a passion.  And I do.  I struggle to reduce conflict in our home to near absolute zero.  It’s been tough but we’re getting there.  I love my wife and kids with more passion than any other person in the world.  They KNOW they are loved at least by one person.  That is a very good thing.  I am proud of my son and daughter.  They’re great kids.

I don’t know about futures.  Hell, they’ll probably drop right into the flow of sheeplehood and do fine.  My wife and I will grow old and fade away.  boo hoo and all that.

I have wasted too much time on this shit.

Toodles.

 

All Those Yesterdays…

A cool front passed through today.  It’s a hell of a nice day today outside.  Fall is arriving and with it my usual melancholy mood.  I got it bad today.

When my dad died, on the day I knew he would, I went to the liquor store and stocked up.  Before I left him to make the trip to the liquor store, on the way out the door of his hospital room, he looked at me with that look of his, kind and loving, and said, “I love you twice!”  My cousins thought it was a weird thing to say but it was classic Dad and it meant the world.  He drifted away a couple hours later.  I went straight for the bottles.  My best friend was gone.  I was so pissed at god and the world and even him for just giving up.

Some time in the early morning before sunrise, after I’d been lying in bed a few hours totally fucked up and trying to figure out how I would live any longer, I thought of my little hydroponics garden attached to the side of our cabin.  Tomato vines were growing very well, and blooming.  I built the thing as much for Dad’s appreciation than for tomatoes.  Suddenly I rose up, went down the stairs, outside, and tore that thing all to hell.  What was the fucking use, Dad was gone?  My wife and brother who was staying with us thought I had gone stark raving nuts.  They tried to stop me but I shoved them all away and demolished the whole thing.  I  had to.

For the next few days I stayed totally fucked up.  I was drunk at the planning of the funeral and pretty smashed at the funeral itself.  We dressed the old fart in overalls and a white shirt, the clothes he wore all the time.   Somebody stuck a pen in his bib pocket to make it all the way it should be.

When they put that box in the ground I went with it.  I  have never been the same.  My life has always been one of confusion.  I’m weird, different, fucked up, screwy, strange, you insert the adjectives.  I was, and am, that to every fucking person on the planet, even the rest of my family and my wife.  My mom loved me but my dad was there, always there, and I was too goddamn busy in the world to be there when I should have been.  I will never forgive myself for not sending him something for the last father’s day.  I was such a goddamn dick.  But he was there, always, loving me without question.  He actually turned to me for advice and information.  There’s been nobody like him in my life.  Not ever.

Today, with the fall wind blowing through my shop I’ve been wandering around, lost, looking at stuff I have.  We, my Dad, brother and I, used to dream about a real shop, a place with every tool we need at hand.  I have it.   A lot of the tools I have were his or my brother’s.  I have so much shit of his here.  Up on the wall are his hand saws, a tube checker for old electron tubes, his soldering iron.   It still pisses me off I can’t show it off to him.  He’d have been here with me building something, just anything, fucking around with wood or whatever.

My family limped along without him for years.  We were never the same.  I live a couple miles from where Mom lived.  I saw her often.  She visited and I could show her the shit I was working on.  I saw my siblings now and then though they never visited.  I visited them sometimes.  Then Mom got really sick.  She got cancer.  When she was reaching the end and was all totally fucked up from what the idiotic doctors did to  her they flaked out.  I stayed with her, kept her company, was there ’till she was gone too.  When she died I knew in my guts that we buried our family with her.  The last time we were ever all together was at her house after she died.

Dad died what, some thirteen years ago.  Mom died three years ago.  Now I am totally fucking alone.  Yeah, my wife and kids are here but it’s not the same.  My family are all wrapped up in their religious bullshit.  I’m the reprobate.  My wife loves me and my kids adore me but I’m lousy to them because it’s just not in me to be happy.  Happy won’t come.  Happy got cancer when Dad died and it died with Mom.

I picked up my old hard hat I wore when I was hauling sand and put it on my head today.  Got sawdust and dirt in my hair.  It’s been  hanging on the wall of this shop.  This shop is so Dad.  It’s so yesterday.  It’s my refuge but it’s a melancholy refuge where purpose does not have a home.  Sometimes I make shit.  I tinker.  The other day I made a 12 volt power supply from a scrap tranformer and rectifier.  Dad taught me how to do that shit.  He taught me all the skills I  use out here.  He was the ultimate tinkerer.  But what the fuck, why make anything if it’s just going to sit in the goddamn shop and he don’t see it?  Nobody else is  interested.  Nothing I make is pretty.  Sometimes it don’t work but sometimes it does.  What difference does it make?

Religion.  Goddamn religion has cut away my family.  Their fucking god is all they see or know.  I am a reminder to them that it’s all bullshit.  I don’t even know why I’m writing this shit.  It’s do this or lay in the floor and scream or just sit here and cry.  Everything is so fucked up.

Now I’ve run out of words.  I’d really rather be fucked up but I have to go get the kids and besides, I ain’t got much to drink.  I lit my pipe but I can never keep that goddamn thing lit.  I gave up and got another cigar.

I have a shelf with Dad’s stuff on it in the house.  I call it my shrine.  He was a “radio man,” an engineer who worked for radio stations for fifty years or so.  I have his ancient headphones and a tube out of an old RCA transmitter.  When I was a kid I spent a lot of time with him at the radio station, the transmitter building where huge AM transmitters hummed and buzzed, massive 303’s in the RCA glowed like candles.  I have one of those 303’s.  I’ve held on to it since I was a kid, over forty  years.  It’s a most prized possession.  I have the Scotch bottle that I emptied the day he died, too.  Sure wish I had a new one!  Full.

Fall always fucks me up.  Always has.  The forties music on the player probably doesn’t help.  I love everything about the forties.  And my dad lived through them.  I miss his stories.  He used to tell such great stories.  Once I recorded him and wrote them down.  I’ve lost the tapes and most of the writing.  That sucks.  I remember some of them.  I wish my memory wasn’t so fucked up.

Frank Sinatra and Tommy Dorsey is playing now.  “Polkadots and Moonbeams.”  Just a slow tune with smooth a vocal and lots of brass.  And now it ends.  Another Frankie tune, “My One and Only.”  Sinatra was such a selfish prick but he knew how to croon.  I miss those sixties variety shows with the crooners, fading into the past by then.  KTRE radio, dad’s station for eighteen years… well not his but where he worked… played this stuff.  Hamp and Eggs, that was the morning show.  Hampton Kiethly.  I remember the studio, the smell of smoke and hot tubes.  Massive turn tables and a board with huge knobs.  …

All my yesterdays.  Song now is “Pennies from Heaven.”  That is a great song.

Shit, my cigar is done.  I need to pee.  Guess I’ll go.

 

All the bullshit… and a song: Hate Me!

I posted this on A Lonely Life forums. The heading was “Hate Me.” For what it’s not really worth but what the hell, here it is…

NOTE: OK, so I deleted it from the forum but whatever…

Blue October. I love those guys! They so speak to me!

OK, so here’s the thing. I’m just all fucked up. Always have been. Oopsidoop kind’a nailed a big part of the reason in her post about being a bit too attached.

Ever since I was a kid taking crap from bullies most every day and coming home to a family who didn’t have a clue and who at times threw the same things at me that I got at school I did not, like many kids in that situation, get bitter. Instead I developed an incredible sensitivity to suffering people. I never understood why bullies are bullies. Still don’t. I have always identified with the victims.

For decades I was on a quest to find out why. Just why. WHY?! And what I could do about it. I could write a book about the times I either started up or was involved in efforts to help people. Every time I crashed and burned. Bam! The way people acted, what they said contradicted what they did. It’s probably my fault in the end that everything went to shit but still I did all I could.

I have studied in great depth many, many subjects that most people run from or hide their eyes from. I had two classes on Nazi Germany/holocaust. I studied satanism. I’ve been personally involved in an assortment of dealings with demonology. Once I worked for a christian counselor friend as his office manager. His special clients were satanic ritual abuse victims. On top of what I already knew about the incredible cruelty of nations, dictators and despots I learned about things humans do to humans that I simply cannot tell anyone. These were not the kinds of things one hears or reads about, they were case histories about the deepest levels of horror reality. When my wife and I became foster parents I dug into child abuse and was horrified to discover how some humans destroy their own children. What I’ve learned has so fucked up my head it just ain’t funny.

In the world outside my window I’ve seen bullies and fools run right over everyone else and take power. I’ve stood with my hands in the air trying to figure out how the public can be so blind and stupid. My generation failed miserably, chasing a buck or wallowing in entertainment that has taught them and their kids and their kids’ kids the worst kind of nasty shit. Courtesy, friendliness, kindness, respect, all gone. My wife and I are complimented so many times about our kids simply because they know how to say yes ma’am and yes sir and thank you. They are polite. What a horrid, nasty attitude people have. No wonder so many young folks show up here.

I cannot understand humanity. I’ve been married to my wife for over thirty years. I know her extremely well. I can taste something or see something and know precisely how she will react to it. But still how her head works is a puzzle. Because I cannot fathom how people think, why they say one thing and do another, how they will react, I have always fucked up.

I have never once given a damn for my own safety, pleasure, or financial status. Who knows how much money I’ve put into efforts. I never counted myself important. That’s pretty much why I’m stuck where I am with nothing.

For too many years my quest to save the world over-rode everything and I failed in being a steady provider. But that wasn’t all. I refused to compromise ethics and what is right. I’ve walked away from crooked employers. I filed a complaint about a supervisor who was a bully and incredibly cruel to people in our unit. One of my co-workers wound up having a nervous break down because of it. Being ordinary humans they did not in the least have the guts to stand up to her and when I did I was framed and summarily pushed out. …I could tell other stories, too, with similar endings. Bullies win because the majority kow-tow to them. Whatever it costs, I’ll never hit my knees or give in to them.

I’ve always been good at my job and I’ve had lots of jobs, so many that most people think I’m full of shit when I tell all I’ve done to earn a buck. If you’re curious I’ll give you the link to my blog. Anyway, I can DO a lot of things. Like that matters. I’m not working now because in ’03 we took in foster kids and my boss fired me for asking off to take the kids to the doctor. Another story for another time. I became full time foster parent, hell of a job for a forty-something who has never even been a babysitter.

Since then I’ve been “blessed” with physical ailments that severely limit my ability to do any kind of steady work. In this market, at my age, with my disabilities, I don’t have a prayer’s chance in hell to find work. I’m a good writer and have sold pieces, too, but everybody with a keyboard thinks they’re a good writer so the market is way over saturated and nobody is making money at writing unless they know someone or are a celebrity. So, I am unable to contribute to our household budget. This just makes the shit in my head worse.

I have never written all this out before and probably will not ever again. I will regret it. But it’s cathartic so here it is. Critique away.

I have always been plagued with two deficiencies. Although I can write a short story to make people laugh or cry, in general conversation I have found it impossible to convey what I think or feel without someone taking it the wrong way. Some on this forum have concluded a few things I wrote were meant unkindly but they were not. The other deficiency, related to this, is that in my experience people tend to judge superficially, or mis-judge, and leave me in the dust. I’ve become a bit paranoid, expecting to be criticized when I really mean no harm.

How or why people accept others is beyond my comprehension. I tried most of my life to “live up” to certain expectations. I put on the plastic face as best I could. It rarely worked but I played the game. But then, a few years ago, I said, “Fuck that!” Why should I play the stupid game? Even if someone became my friend because of my plastic face then I’d have to glue the damn thing on. I looked inside myself, figured out who I am, and I’ve been me ever since. I make no apologies for who I am, what I think or believe, how I live, or how I look. I’m genuine, I’m real, and what you see is what you get. This has not endeared me to plastic people… which is the majority of people I’ve known.

Christians constantly blather about how atheists have no moral standards or do not live by any ethics. That is bullshit. My atheist/free thinking online ‘friends’ are screaming about injustice, war, etc., while the religious nuts hate the poor and promote war. I believe in the value of the human race. I believe in the value of life. I don’t subscribe to bullshit religious rules that mean little even to those who promote them. Instead I respect every human, no matter who they are. Some things, many things, people do is horrible, but the person, the life, is valuable. I respect laws designed to keep us safe. Basically I am a nice guy. My wife has seen all my incarnations and even though she’s entirely puzzled about what goes on in my head she has stuck beside me all these years. She knows I am troubled but she does not know why, and does not want to know, and I wouldn’t tell her if she asked. What I know would fuck up her head. But she knows my heart. Nobody else does, with one exception, a young friend who is too much like me for his own good but too far away to spend time with.

I’ve been thinking about all this shit for a few days. I debated on laying it all out. But there seems to be a few here, at least, that might in some ways identify. Most won’t. But one of my other quirks has been saying too much, telling too much, putting people off. Whatever. I have nothing to hide.

The last thing I have to say is to the many young people on this forum. You should not disregard the advice or views of older folks. We’ve been on the planet long enough to pick up a lot of information by default. It’s true many of my generation and the older ones are full of shit. So am I sometimes. But we have been there, we’ve watched the world go to hell in a gunboat. We can give you a few pointers. Respect the elderly, they’ve paid their dues.

Another thing, when you’re twenty or twenty five and “different,” when you are stuck in an apartment alone or can’t figure out what life is about never forget that as long as you are breathing and are fairly healthy, you can do something. You can figure out who you are and be yourself. You can chose to be not necessarily “better” but more aware and more determined. Don’t run to shrinks or pop pills to fix your head. Figure your head out and learn to control it and move forward. But you have to have guts. You have to have a lot of guts. I’m not talking about walking over other people, I’m just talking about stepping out and being a part of the human race, learn to forgive, learn to keep your mouth shut sometimes, learn when to speak up, and for heavens sake don’t fall into a pity party and sit around waiting for someone to feel sorry for you. They won’t.

OK, that’s it. I feel better now, for a while. Take what I said however you want to. Like the song says, “hate me,” if you like. But I sure as hell do not want pity. I showed up here because there are times hanging around this house alone all day drives me up the wall. A friend with whom I can talk freely about the shit in my head is all I’ve ever wanted. Ever. Otherwise, life is just peachy.

Have a happy day! Time for a smoke…

The Story of Me

There’s a website, a forum, called “A Lonely Life,” which I ran across a few days ago.  I sort’of jumped in to see if I could meet people and find fellow travelers in this fucked up world.  I was prompted to explain why I am lonely and started writing what turned out to be a little autobiography.  I realized it would be too long for a post so I decided to put it here on my occasionally visited and off the wall blog.  The website is http://www.alonelylife.com.  Here’s my would-be post:

I’ve been thinking about some things I might post on here but I hesitate to write some things and others I haven’t quite nailed it down.

I found this forum by typing in “I have nobody” in the Goog.  That’s not exactly true.  I’m married and have two little kids, well, not so little any more.  I have a wild-child friend in San Marcos, a 22 yr old rock and roller but never get to see him.  But outside of those people and a couple of my rock band buddy’s friends I have no real friends at all.  It is probably my own damn fault but there’s still little I can do about it, or know how to do about it.  Thus my search and arrival here.

On another place here I talked about how humanity seems to be divided into two types: sheep and goats.  It’s an analogy that comes from christianity.  The majority are sheep; happy, or at least content to be secure, in a fantasy world created by their Masters and held together by determination and fear.  Those Masters are religion, government, peer groups, sometimes family.  Goats, a minority, are those who cannot and will not live in a fabricated world.  They must see the world and everything in it for what it is.  They recognize the Masters as evil and self-serving.  They demand truth, insist on evidence, refuse to suck up the bullshit the Masters dish out.

It is no accident that the sheep/goat analogy is deeply planted in christian mythology.  Along with it comes promises of good stuff for good sheep and curses for goats.  Sheep can stray and be found.  Goats are doomed by their very nature.  Goats are to be scorned, abused, ran off, or killed.  Christians have compassion, theoretically, for sheep, lost or found.  For goats they only have hatred.  Remember, the devil himself is depicted as a goat.

This cornball analogy translates in the real world to how people act, what they believe, who they follow.  Christians, religious sheep, are incredibly determined to believe an extreme load of bullshit and illogical ideas.  They follow the Masters, those who claim to interpret ‘the word’ or speak for Jeeeezus, and rarely question.  Of course sheep of other herds do the same.  Non-religious sheep find another Master to drop in behind.  Maybe they follow some corporate schmuck or suck up the lie of capitalism.  Many fall into the liberal camp, actually think O’BamBam is trying to be good, and join the right wing fools in scorning those who point out the absolutely obvious truth that 9/11 was a lie and a setup.  Whatever.  Sheep follow.  Sheep have their fuzzy little heads up their asses.  Sheep are cowards.

To christians, goats are atheists, evolutionists, hedonists, etc.  People of other religions, to christians, are merely misguided, but those who dare question religion itself, those who scorn and scoff at the idiotic ideas they teach (and point out how really badly they follow what Jesus taught them themselves) are goats.  And goats deserve no mercy, no rights, no respect, and no love.  Why bother, they’re bound for hell anyway.

The US is dominantly, and frighteningly, christian.  Right wing nutcases are in a minority but they push the buttons of a lot more christians by designating goats as the cause of all our ills.  They always exaggerate and lie, but what the hell, sheep don’t question and never look up facts themselves.  Just consider the politician who called for a “registry of atheists” a few days ago.  We who question the status-quo, who dare challenge the violations of our civil liberties by DHS, who demand an end to war, etc., are not the opposition.  We’re ‘terrorists.’  We are the Enemy.  The right wing sees its supposed rival as no problem.  The opposition “liberal” class is a collection of pansy-ass do-gooders who spend their corporate-supplied dollars at Whole Foods and moan quietly about the environment or some bullshit while they nibble on sushi and drink expensive wine.

My story.  I was, at one time, an extreme christian zealot.  I believed the shit my mom and the church taught me.  As a kid I saluted the fucking flag every night when the TV station signed off and played the national anthem.  (Ahh, the sixties!)  But I believed if christians were going to be christians it was their responsibility to BE christians.  I tried.

On this board (A Lonely Life) I read young folks’ posts.  They sound like I would have thirty five years ago.  My home life was  hell growing up.  I went to a redneck segregated school where the only available victims redneck bigots had to torment were the clumsy and the fat.  I was not a lot of either of those but I was available and enough of both to start catching hell in grade school.  My first name didn’t help.  The cruelest thing my parents ever did was give me a name that is sure to bring ridicule.  My parents’ feet were deeply planted in the ground where we lived so I endured year after year of the worst kind of hell from the same people.  Picking on me was institutionalized by the time I reached High School.  And it was such a part of my personality I manged to carry a target on my back wherever I went for a long time.

Rather than coming to hate all those people who shoved me off sidewalks and stuck gum in my hair I felt sorry for them and wanted to get them saved.  I started a decades-long crusade to save the whole fucking world.  I bashed my head against walls over and over.  I tried to rally the ‘christian soldiers’ so many times it ain’t funny.  But they sat on their lazy, cowardly ass and called me a fanatic.

The older I got, the more I read about the sheep/goat analogy, the more I began to think I was a goat.  I felt it in my gut.  It scared me but I just made up my mind not to be one.  Years passed and my open eyes and ears saw and heard just how stupid, blind and dumb sheep are.  Eventually I saw  how stupid, blind and dumb I was, too.  One after the other the things I thought were true proved to be bullshit.  There finally came a day, far too late in life, that I finally realized I had been fucked over, there is no god, and I’d been a total fool for decades.

The thing is, most people saw that I was a goat even before I knew it.  I had too much confidence, even when I was confident about things that were not true.  I had too much determination.  I was not one of them.  I was not accepted.  Goats never are.

I’m not a blubbering sod but there is a deep compassion in me.  Always has been.  I hate bullies and mourn for their victims.  I hate all things that destroy humanity and the earth.  My conversion from patriotic right wing nutcase to extremist socialistic pacifistic environmentalist came about because I saw how destructive and horrible super-patriotism and blind faith can be.  I studied war in great depth.  I recognized the cruelty of religious domination.  I’ve been broke and homeless and I’ve been a welfare caseworker so I came to understand and care about even those who are often considered trash by the world’s standards and even by religious people.  I’ve been a foster parent and learned the depth and breath of the horrors children suffer from in this country.  All of these things are important because they have motivated me to try and DO SOMETHING, over and over.  But I’m a fucking goat.  People don’t like goats.  I’ve built several organizations over the years, worked my ass off and spent thousands, only to have it blow up in my face because so-called christians walked out when things got a little bumpy.

I’ve suffered humiliation and repeated defeat.  I have literally become everything I used to warn people about.  I love Heavy Metal music.  I smoke.  I drink any time I can afford it and excessively ever chance I get.  And I don’t give a fuck how fucking offensive my goddamn language is.  But I am still filled with compassion, a desire for peace, a wish for a world where humans are respectful to each other.  In that world my music, my habits and my language would not matter.  What would matter is that I’m a human being worthy of respect, love, companionship.  But we don’t live in that world.  We live in Orwell’s world, a world of cruelty, selfishness, hatred, meanness, and vanity.  The only difference between the christian version and the ‘secular’ version of this nightmare is that christians wear crosses representing a man they claim to worship but upon whom they piss with regularity by their attitudes, actions, and beliefs.

I am a goat.  And I am pissed off and disgusted.  I believe in the principals of peace taught by Buddha, the real one named Gautama, because they are the answer to the world’s problems.  I am convinced Jesus was a Buddhist, too, but self-serving bullies preempted his teachings, bound them to the nightmare world of Judaism, and created an oppressive,  hateful fake religion which they used to manipulate the sheep for centuries, and still do.  They have so ingrained the western world with this horrible shit that goats never stand a chance.

I believe the teachings of Buddha are true and good.  I try hard to follow them towards others.  I respect people.  I respect good law designed to protect us all.  I drive the speed limit.  Cruelty, selfishness, and meanness pisses me off.  I hate the actions of bullies.  When I befriend someone I do everything in my power to be a friend, even if it means giving someone everything I have.  I teach my children to respect others, to care when nobody else does, to be good people.  I’m not so good at following his teachings for myself because if Karma is true I’m fucked already and either way I really don’t give two shits about myself.

But none of my compassion, my desire for peace, my choice to respect others, etc., matters because I am a goat.  I am unworthy.

I tried to ‘conform.’  I tried faking it.  But I felt like shit and a liar, and I was.  The last expensive fiasco I was involved in, the one that could have saved thousands of children from abuse and neglect, taught me that the world is a hopeless case.  It also taught me that I am hopeless, too.  I am fucked.

Success in this world comes either to those who don’t give a shit about anything but making it to the top, no matter who they crush on the way, or to pansy-ass sheep who are gifted with a personality that I do not have.  The former are goats without conscience.  The latter are cowards without a conscience.  Neither type speak truth or act honestly.  The ambitious prick does whatever necessary and the pansy will absolutely never do anything to rock the boat filled with his little followers.  Because I am neither I don’t have a prayers chance in the proverbial hell.

I love my family, the three of them.  They love me.  They are the only anchor holding me to this fucked up world.  Even so, my family are also sheep.  I am still alone.  Sheep cannot understand a goat.

My decades of crusading and standing up for what is right has cost me dearly.  I’ve lost the best jobs because I refused to be bullied and/or I took a stand for what is right.  I would do it again, too.  I am incapable of bowing to bullies.  I refuse to lie, cheat, or steal, or fuck over clients/customers, or break the law to keep my job.  Companies want sheep.  They roast the goats.  Thus I’ve been pushed through the exit repeatedly.

I could be called a natural born fuck-up.  No question I’ve had a reputation for being that many times.  But the fact is I have always done my job very well.  I was a damn good driver, a dedicated caseworker, an excellent pizza cook, a skilled technician… the mechanics of a job I do well.  I’ve been commended and respected for my actual abilities.  But when it comes to dealing with situations where ethics are involved things have always gone to shit.  I was fired because a fuck-head driver ran me off the road for reporting his reckless conduct, I confronted him, and he hit me.  They kept the fuck-head bully driver because he got the load there even if it risked lives and broke the law to do it.  I was nailed by a vindictive bitch bully because I filed a complaint against her for abusing her staff.  I did not fuck up, I stood up.  Sheep hate people with guts.  At one job, a rental agent for Enterprise Rent-a-car, a discussion of promotions and ambition came up one day between me and a co-worker.  I said I would never walk over anybody to get ahead.  She said, “you will not last.”  She was right.  The story of my life.

Yeah, I have fucked up quite a few times.  I alienated my wife by my misplaced zeal for ‘god.’  I was a goddamn fool for doing that.  Quite a few times I’ve taken up the banner, collected a few ‘soldiers’ and charged ahead into the battle only to look around and find the soldiers were all chickenshits.  I have trusted far too many untrustworthy people and expected sheep to have balls.  Most recently I worked my ass off for a bunch of bands who sang good songs and who I thought believed what they sang.  Their challenge to the world was bullshit, a lie, and I should not have counted on them to be anything other than the sheep they are.  My bad!

So here I sit in my little shop, drinking my coffee and smoking my little cigars and writing this idiotic little biography.  I am alone.

I am alone because even though I love my wife and she loves me we live in entirely different worlds.  She will not even talk with me about the things I think about all the time, the idiocy of religion, the horror of war, the fucked up state of this country.  I am  alone because the few people in the world I know of with whom I might have fellowship do not live anywhere close and to have their friendship would mean to leave the only anchor in this world I have, my family.  I am alone because I can’t stand the fucking idiot attitudes of these deep woods religious rednecks in this part of Texas and I know full well to them I am the worst of human beings and the most evil of enemies.  I am alone because this fucked up country is falling apart, jobs are hard to come by, and employers not only want sheep but young, healthy sheep.  I am neither young or healthy.  And, of course, I am sure as hell not a sheep.  Thus I can’t even afford to travel occasionally where there are a few sane people I could befriend.

When I was young, in the military, I didn’t have too many friends but enough to not always be depressed.  Even so there were times I would go to a park with my guitar, alone, and sing songs, wishing I would attract some person or a few people to befriend.  Through the years I had friends, virtually all of which turned out to be less than I thought them to be.  I did not abandon them, they abandoned me.  Sooner or later, being the goat that I am, I fell below the standards they had for friends.  People, sheep, set limits and boundaries of acceptability.  One must not go outside those or the sheep will scatter.  And people, sheep, are cowards.  Challenge them to have courage and they evaporate like water on a hot skillet.

I’m not like you, I just fuck up.  Words from a song by Slipknot called “People=Shit.”  If people, sheep, especially christian sheeple, actually gave a damn like they say they do me being a fuck-up would not matter.  But they don’t.  And they get all snooty and self-righteously offended and indignant when we who do fuck up, who are goats, who refuse to kiss the Master’s ass or accept his bullshit lies say and do things in protest.  Only we understand the meaning of “People=Shit.”  They just think we’re being rude and crude.  Slipknot and many other metal bands sing their rude, crude songs to young crowds of kids who feel something just ain’t right, who feel the need to rebel, but who eventually will sink right into the morass of shit, follow a Master, and look back on their days of “rebellion” thinking how silly they were.  Not even they really get it, except for the few who are goats.  Those kids, I so feel sorry for them because they, like me, are fucked.

I am alone, most of all, because I just don’t understand sheep.  They are an absolute mystery.  They do stupid shit, think stupid shit, act stupid, and then look down their self-righteous noses at goats like me even though I know more and can do more and have a hell of a lot more respect and compassion for my fellow man than they do.  I do not fuck up in their eyes because I am a moron.  I fuck up because I’m like a redneck in Japan, a guy far from what he knows trying to survive a culture with extremely alien ways.  That is the way it is.  It cannot be changed.

There is no hope for this world.  Everything will get worse.  The earth is doomed.  Sheep are going to follow their Master vultures right down into the abyss.  And I’m going to sit here in this little patch of woods being lonely, hurt and bitter for another few years, maybe a decade or two, and then I will die.  I’ll watch with a broken heart while everyone sinks into the shit.  When I die my family will mourn me, miss me, and then follow everybody else right down into the pit.  This is about as fucked up as it gets.  And then, the end.

My haven!

If there’s one thing in this world I’m pretty happy with it’s my shop.  It’s not pretty or glamorous.  Hell, it is about as redneck cluttered as it can be.  But it’s MY shop and it’s a damn good shop as shops go.  I spend a lot of time there making, fixing, or just contemplating.  My shop is mostly a wood shop.  I have a good collection of tools and equipment.  My baby is my table saw.  She gets one hell of a workout.  I have a drill press and an electric coping saw, too.  The drill press is very handy.  The coping saw I don’t use much.  It’s almost new.  I bought it with the idea I’d make wooden guns/toys for sale.  Made up a bunch but haven’t sold any.  I’d sell the coping saw for a hundred bucks!

My green shack and shop

Of course I have all kinds of hand tools and power tools too.  My drill gets used the most.  I had to buy another one a few weeks ago, wore the chuck completely out on the other one I had.  I have a jig saw, reciprocating saw, skill saw, router and …um… forget what you call it, like a router only smaller and faster.  ha.  It’ll come to me sooner or later.  The router is in the pawn shop but I’ll be getting it out soon.

Old tools.

My shop is half work space and half museum.  I inherited my dad’s tools and stuff.  On the back wall I have hand tools that are very old.  I have a tube checker!  What’s that?  It’s a device that checks the quality of electron tubes, the ones that used to be in radios and tvs.  My dad worked on that stuff.  The tube checker is probably a good 60 years old or more.  I remember fooling with it when I was a wee kid.  I have an old hay rake, a collection of old fashioned cross-cut hand saws, some other cool stuff.  I have plow parts, a hay hook, even an old gasoline torch.  My dad used that thing when I was a kid.  I was sure he was going to blow himself up.  I have no idea how to use it and I wouldn’t even try.  It’d be KaBOOM!

There are very few hand tools in my shop that I haven’t had for decades.  I haven’t actually bought a tool in years!  (Well, that’s not true.  I did buy one of those fancy pvc pipe cutters a few months ago.  Easier than a hack saw!  I love it.)  With my green shack project I’m always snipping pieces of pipe for drains and stuff.  There’s not a lot of tools I don’t have that one might need.  Besides the ones in my tool pouch (the pouch is 30 years old!) or on my work bench I have a big metal cabinet full of older, less useful or extra tools.  Ain’t nothing a bigger pain in the ass than needing a tool you ain’t got!

Inside my shop.

I built my shop several years ago from lumber I got from the deconstruction of my wife’s grandma’s house.  The old house used to sit up at the end of our drive.  Grandma Thigpen was a sweet person.  She was in her nineties when she passed in 1992.  Couple years later my pawinlaw took the house down and my shop went up.

I got junk, too.  It’s really hard for me to throw anything away.  When I decide to make something or have to fix something I clamber over my junk boxes, piles, and etc., for parts and stuff to do the job with.  I keep screws and nails and bolts, too.  I am always needing something out of a bin here or there.

My work bench.

Electrified tiller!

Sometimes just for the hell of it I take stuff apart.  I took apart a broken microwave oven the other day.  Totally cool parts in that thing!  Sometimes I scrounge and invent some kind of thing I need and sometimes I work all day and it don’t work.  I mounted a washing machine motor on an old tiller with a dead motor.  It works pretty damn well so far.  Some other projects, well, not always so good.  Ya live and learn.

My dad and I opened a repair shop once.  I was going to fix appliances and him electronics.  It was the wrong era, though.  Appliances were becoming junk that cost less to replace than repair and solid state electronics was slipping away from dad’s expertise.  It was fun for a while, though.  Never made any money at it but had quality time together!  Our motto was “we fix anything but a broken heart.”  ha.

The thing is, people these days spend small fortunes on repair bills because they don’t know shit and don’t know when they’re getting ripped off, which is often.  I worked for a couple of shady service companies through the years.  I refused to screw customers though.  Cost me a job or two.  I could tell stories!  Even the legitimate repair companies make a mint doing easy stuff your average homeowner should know how to do.  It amazes me how many guys I run across these days who don’t know which end of a screwdriver to use.  It’s worse with younger people.  Sad.  I’m not always good with esthetics but there’s nothing around a house I can’t fix and/or know nothing about.

Today I rebuilt the pedestal for my table saw.  I put a bucket under it to collect the sawdust.  I fill a five gallon bucket with sawdust ever few weeks.  Last Monday I rearranged everything to make room for a wood stove.  I am so looking forward to cold weather!  I have my dad’s old pot belly stove I’ve talked about putting in there for years.  Now that I have a good chainsaw and can stock up with wood I’m going to get it installed.  Come winter I’ll just hang out there and watch the fire!  Yeah, baby, maybe cook some campfire coffee on top!  Gonna be goooood!

Anyway, so here’s my shop.  It represents a lot of what I do these days.  Some days I go fishing, though.  Anybody want to come along?

The days of my life…

are boring.  But besides that, I don’t have a lot of time but I figured I should update this thing.

Know all that save the world stuff, all that activist stuff, all that Rock Texas stuff and stuff like that stuff?  Well, fuck that.  I give up.  And if you don’t like people who give up tough shit.  I figure it is just stupid to keep banging into walls all the time.  I could list all the walls I’ve  hit over the  years but you’d just be bored and not believe me anyway.  It all comes down to money and attitude.  I was a good guy with pats on the back as long as I could offer rock bands something.  Once they figured out they would have to actually do something themselves they blew it off.  So, with the exception of a few good bands, fuck’m.

I shall express my unadulterated contempt for two bands who I trusted, who were the inspiration of Rock Texas, and who ultimately blew me off.  May they live in fucked up anonymity as they so truly deserve.  They were good bands but lousy people… a curse of the music profession I’m told.  I would not cross the street to piss on them if they were on fire.  Oh, the bands names… Downfall Rising and Inura.  Got that?  So, yeah, I’m pissed.  But fuck’m.  No need to let jackasses ruin your day, right?

More recently…

Summer is over.  Kids are back in school.  Damn it’s quiet around here.  I’d really like to escape some now but no fuckin’ way I’ll get to do that any time soon.

My plants died.  All those cute little plants in the other post, they grew up and then died.  I think it is our horrible water.  Central Water sucks.  I have some test strips ordered so I can see how fucked up the water is and try to figure out how to fix it so maybe something will live in my garden past plant puberty.  I want some tomatoes!  Damn!

Today was the first day of school, you know.  My family is off having their lives and I’m stuck here without one.  I redid my shop.  Needed to do that for a long time.  By the end of the week I’ll be all ready for a winter I sure hope gets here soon.  Well, I’ll probably have to wait to get the stove pipe but I’ll have the wood stove up in there.  It’ll be my daily escape.

I’m not much on the computer these days.  (See, I’m not here now! haha!)  Actually I spend most of my days outside.  I don’t mind the heat.  Getting to like it, almost.  Almost!  Sitting on this damn computer sure is boring.  What’s there to do?  Virtual schmirtual, it’s boring.  I want a real person friend to keep me company.  How the hell do I find that?  People have their misconceptions, preconceptions, judgements, attitudes, all that.  Is there not one wild and crazy bohemian minded person anywhere within short driving distance of this horrid town?

I suppose not.

So, it’s, you know, darkness and gnashing of teeth time.

I need a smoke.  And a big, strong drink.  The smoke I got.  The drink I’m shit out of  luck for.  I think I’ll run something over the scales in a few days and get some dough so I can get myself a nice big, huge bottle of alcoholic entertainment.

If you have a bottle bring it over, we’ll have some jolly good fun, maybe.

OK, so I have to go get the kids from school.  And fix dinner of some kind.  I so do not like being a homemaker.

Sigh.

Growing stuff!

Well, so far so good on the hydroponics!  I had to replace the first pump, it didn’t work well.  It was an old one that I’d fixed. It wouldn’t hold up for continuous running.  I stole the pump from our little fish pond.  Wasn’t using it anyway.  I have to fix some stuff.

The cool thing is that some of my seeds have already sprouted.  Totally cool.  Only four days!  These are cucumbers.  With luck we’ll have cucumbers for Thanksgiving!  Now the tomatoes and squash need to pop up.