Putting this blog aside for now

I really don't think people have been reading this blog. That is fine. I have seven others under a pseudonym(s), one of which many people read. I don't have time for any more niche blogs and will be stream lining it down to just three for now. If you want to know the other blogs, well, I think people other than me would have to be reading this post for that to be an issue.

The reason that I have been away is that I've been fighting cancer. I have been doing well in that fight and my doctors told me that my chances of recovery are great. So, by February of 2008, I should be totally done with chemo and radiation. I just don't have the time to write posts for all my side project blogs, no offense.

I'd like to thank my one fan that I know read my blog, Andrea. You are a doll. I'll still drop by and check on you still. As for the rest of you that have lurked, why you so scared? Bock-bock-bock!

The End?

I've been gone from here awhile, sorry

I'm not sure who reads this blog, but if you do, then I have some e'splaining to do. I've been sick, sick, sick! There, happy now? Plus, my computer crashed and the hard drive is completely toasted. So, on top of a couple of thousand dollars that I've spent on various things, such as auto, medical, and pirate gear, I've got to throw down a "G+" for a new 'puter.

Life is grand.

Enough negative thinking, I at least have a backup computer that is charged by not one, but two hamster wheels featuring "dual rabid squirrel power". If this one fails then I must dig out my 286 from the stone age. Starting tomorrow I will brush up on my DOS.

This line contains no relevant information.

Why didn't Arby's make a deal with "Pirates of the Caribbean" to sell merchandise? To me it was a no brainer.

Aaaaaaaaarbeeeeeeeeeez!

My nephew was staying over the other day and said something amusing. He told me, in a very concerned tone of voice, "If I don't have my earplugs when I sleep I will develop mental problems." Even though it was funny as hell I ran straight out to Walgreen's and bought like six boxes of that shit. No nephew of mine is going to be mentally ruined on my watch.

Did I just say shit? Oh no he dee-int! I'm allowed to say it once in awhile. I have a "Just say shit" punch card. I have other punch cards that aren't sandwich related, too. Maybe I can hook you up. That's three punches, in case you were counting. I'm almost tapped out for the month.

I just used up my "Oh no he dee-int!" punch card.

Fadder's day...ha-toy-a-toy-tee-toy!

(Photo removed, sorry)
Um, the title was supposed to be me doing an Irish accent. This is my family, sans the three girls, or as we refer to them: The family pride (as apposed to the "family shame"). So, you have my big bother (not a typo) Mickey the Mexican, moms, pops, and me, the li'l sh*t. This was taken back in the late '90s. My dad still looks older than Yoda, but now sports an awesome 'stache. My mom still looks way too young for her age and my brother (Los Zapato) is getting closer to his life-long dream of becoming a sumo star in Japan. I haven't wore my hair in drapes in a long time and I believe I just shaved off my soul patch in order to look halfway decent for this picture.

See, here's the deal: my family is close, but, then again, not. I don't have many pictures of me and my pops. We all depend on each other for various reasons and the struggles over the years of dealing with each other have put both of us in a relationship of "Are you alright? Ok, then, quit yer bitching!" We aren't clamoring to be side by side so we can get documented proof of our closeness, but don't ever doubt the love. See, you just have to substitute "I'm not yelling" and "I'm not angry" with " I love you daddy" and you get "us".

The honest truth is that my dad has been the best dad he could be given all of the health and psychological challenges he's faced for about thirty years. I am amazed at how he stuck with it through all of the crap. A lot of people doubted the trials he went through. I remember the last time he worked, around '85, that was a real blow to me. I used to think that he didn't want to work. I used to believe the other grown ups who used to talk to me about him, when they'd suggest that he was just being lazy. They thought that severe depression, panic attacks, and anxiety were either the cause of sin or just fabricated maladies--like he could just repent or snap out of it. I remember a respected man in our community coming into our home and tearing my father to pieces in front of the whole family, humiliating him, basically telling him that "Everybody gets depressed, Milt. Snap out of it!" My dad refused to let all of this do him in.

Today, dad's body may not be getting better, but over the years of adjusting certain medications, he has been able to live a more normal life. I don't know what life would have been like if he were able to have been healthy and working, but that is not the life I got to have. What I do have is my father, of whom I've learned to be proud of. It is too early to tell how all of these experiences and my relationship with my dad will benefit me in my life, but I know for a fact that my humor and sensibilities were forged from them. I love you pops!

The deadly power of imagination: Accompanied by the song "Yellow Submarine" by The Beatles

"In the town where I was born,"
Phoenix: yeah, it was hot. Kind of like what Matthew Broderick's character, Eugene, in "Biloxi Blues" complained during basic training when he uttered, "It's hot. Damn hot. Africa hot. Tarzan couldn't take this heat!" Good thing there were plenty of pools to swim in. Hey, this was how you picked your best friend if your family didn't have a pool.

"Lived a man who sailed to sea,
And he told us of his life,
In the land of submarines,"

My best friend Jason and I were always coming up with strange games to play in the pool. One game involved live crawdads captured from the irrigation canal and unleashing his mammoth German Shepard into the pool where we would proceed to watch "Schultzie" swim to and fro, catching these little creatures in his snapping jaws. Cruelties to critters aside, we had a dream...a dream of sailing the ocean beneath the pecan trees in Jason's back yard. An episode of "Gilligan's Island", and the featured song, fueled our imaginations of what was above and below the chlorinated depths we sought to conquer.

"So we sailed up to the sun,
Till we found a sea of green,
And we lived beneath the waves,
In our yellow submarine,"

Boxes are like a world unto themselves when you're a child, so full of possibilities. In our case, we came up with a solution for a problem we had faced: what to build our submarine with. Boxes, loads and loads of boxes left over from his oldest sister moving in after she got divorced. Honestly, I don't know what we were thinking. It seemed so simple, so right. We were going to tape together a bunch of boxes, get inside, and by some kind of magic, motor about his pool. We even incorporated a periscope into our cardboard submarine's design. Hello, cardboard tubes anyone?

"And our friends are all aboard,
Many more of them live next door,
And the band begins to play."

There was a kid that we sometimes let hang around us: Kenny. We tolerated him a bit, but we really wanted to keep our cardboard "skunk works" away from his know-it-all "I'm older than you" crap. I was five, so was Jason; Kenny, being about a full year ahead of us, kind of put him in a position of unwelcome authority. Oh yeah, he'd give in long enough for us to let him join in a given activity, but then invariably would take over and start lording over us. Tips for kids: If you aren't considered cool amongst your own peer group, find some younger kids and start bossing them around--they love that sort of thing! Yeah, we didn't want this project fall into the enemies hands.

"As we live a life of ease,
Everyone of us is all we need (is all we need)
Sky of blue (sky of blue) and sea of green (sea of green)
In our yellow (in our yellow) submarine (submarine. Blaaaha)"

Jason and I had the vessel ready to go. We didn't even use duct tape. The best I can recall we poked holes around the boxes and joined them together with bits of string. I'm predicting that in fifty years all sea going vessels will be using this method of construction. It has been my dream to be mentioned in the same breath as Da Vinci and the Wright Brothers. I guess I will have to settle for Michael J. Fox and Richard Dean Anderson (MacGyver to you). Technically, we would not have been the first to have sailed in a submarine, but we certainly would have been the first to do it using cardboard boxes.

We dragged the vessel out to the edge of the pool, no christening or ceremony. I think one of us cried because a bee started chasing us. Just as we were about to take our maiden voyage in this death trap, Kenny spied us through the slats in the fence, shouting, "I'm telling your mom. You guys are gonna get drowndeded!" Yeah, we were totally busted. Jason's mom got the news from Mr. Killjoy and put an end to our hopes and dreams of becoming Captain and "Super-Duper" Captain Nemos. The lecture we got from his mom actually made sense to us, enough so that we finally understood why what we had planned on doing would have been dangerous. Not being a complete mean old hag, Jason's mom told us that we could play with the "submarine" indoors. She even fixed us grilled cheese sandwiches. The only real downer was having to deal with Kenny's sense of smug self satisfaction, knowing that he was right. It all worked out. We didn't let him in the submarine.

All together now!

"We all live in a yellow submarine,
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine,
We all live in a yellow submarine,
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine."

This experience did not deter Jason and I from playing "Three men in a tub" (sans a third man) using an empty kiddie pool as a raft. His big brother had to rescue us from drowning then. Ah, good times!

Excedrin for Humpback Whales

Ok, imagine you are outside walking around minding your own business. Out from the clouds a loud, booming voice is broadcast frantically, saying, "Aieeeeee! Shut up! You are giving me a friggin headache, you jerk! Why won't you stop? I'm in so much pain right now!" This would be pretty perplexing, no?

Still with me here? Good.

I was thinking about whale researchers who blast back whale songs in order to illicit a response back from the whales or the mighty sea unicorn, if you believe in such things (I do). Well, I found out recently that submarines and other sea going vessels give whales headaches. So, I did a little hypothetical thinking. I usually don't try to do too much of that sort of thing on an empty stomach, but what the hell. Here's what I hypothesized: Some of the whale songs recorded are actually whales complaining from massive headaches caused by the vessels recording them. Not having to adhere to any scientific standard kind of helps in this case.

Further, I thought that the rebroadcast of the "I've got a headache this big" whale songs back to the whales, or better yet, to new and unsuspecting whales would really mess with them. I mean, that has got to be a trip to be bombarded with screams coming outta nowhere.

Just for fun I came up with a whale headache haiku:
Throbbing veins in head.
Where is that sound coming from?
Please kill me, Bubba.

I end all my haiku with "Bubba". It's my signature. Plus, Bubba is totally a whale name and you know it.

Peace out.

It happened again...

You know what? I even looked at my neighbor's dog catch a fly with his mouth and it still didn't effect me. That stuff is pretty damn compelling action right there, but I was still bored. So, what did I do about it? I started fixing things. Anything I could get my hands on I fixed. If I were a veterinarian I probably would have fixed dogs and cats, maybe even a ferret.

Ferrets need fixing too, you know!

When I wasn't fixing something I was taking stuff apart and putting it back together again in my mind. I needed to get out and do something fast. I went and saw a movie.

I forced an unsuspecting family member to go with me.

There was a guy in the movie theater; his hair was all wrong. I prayed to God that I might be blessed with super Moses powers and part this guy's hair correctly--part it from across the theater. God didn't think this was an appropriate use of his power. How did I know this? Oh, God and I go way back, so I sort of know when he's not really chuffed with certain requests of mine. Usually I am bombarded with double doses of Barry Manilow, one song per ear, simultaneously.

Aversion technique: tre clever, God....Touche.

Bored again, or so I thought. The lights dimmed and the trailers started. I was pleasantly distracted long enough to not fix a single thing in my head, except for teenager's droopy drawers and a loose armrest. Okay, two things--a world record. The crowd that lives in my head goes wild, "Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

This is normal behavior, no?

Continuing, the lights now go all the way down and the movie starts. I resist the urge to fix things in my head. I even say this, "Must. Stop. Fixing! Things!! IN HEAD!!!"

Cue birds singing peacefully.

Oh, now where was I? Oh yes...it all stopped--the fixing stuff in my head. I started playing a new game called, "What would I do?" Yeah, I totally wouldn't have done it the way they did it in the movie. A bunch of morons is what they were. This isn't still "Fixing things in my head", is it?

I am so in denial.

I got bored today...

So I built a fort. Yeah, I invited all my "turn of the century" period correct friends over. We had a ball. I have no idea what was up with my friend Wayne blowing the bugle, but we had to lock him in a room for a time out. That boy can get on your nerves. After awhile, the fort party got a bit out of hand. Things ended up with tea and crumpets getting tossed all over the place. I'm going to have to take my leisure robe and fez to the dry cleaners now. Marmalade stains are really hard to get out, you know.

I don't know what keeps me, or any adult for that matter, from just going out (or in) and building a fort. This stuff is fun! When did this activity become passe or childish for me? I'm sure that building a fort would not involve a landlord or weird neighbors. It might involve people laughing and pointing at me, but screw them. If I want to build a fort then I'm gonna!

Are any of you out there feeling me on this?

How to survive between pets

Get a slinky. There. Done. Simple!

Okay, I know you already think I've got taffy for brains, but hang with me a sec, alright? I gave my slinky a name: Ralph. Why Ralph, you ask? Well, just look at him. Doesn't he look like a Ralph? He does to me and as long as I'm happy that is all that matters.

Ralph still doesn't obey commands. Um, that's not true; he can sit, stay, play dead, and roll over...with some help. Really, though, what Ralph needs is a pair of googley eyes and a felt tongue. You know, that really would help people warm up to him and it just might help me pick up women down at the park.

I might have to change which park I've been going to. The last lady that found Ralph and I a hot item turned out to be an undercover cop dressed as a gypsy hobo. Is there such a thing as a gypsy hobo? Well, that's what she looked like to me. Come to think of it, I don't think that was a cop at all. No wonder why that pat down was a bit peculiar. Why must I be so trusting?

Welcome all to my Sofa Cushion Childhood.