Do Police Get Tested For Drugs and Steroids????

         Gentle Readers,

Forgive the fomatting, as the PC is still vexing us.  Speaking of vexations, many are disturbed by the presence of man-made monsters, one of the most famous of which is Frankenstein’s Monster.  Some people refer to the monster simply as ‘Frankenstein’.  There are a lot of these Franskenteins in the world, the most famous being the United States Government.  We create and enable them and then they rattle the chains, break loose from the stone walls of the government buildings and come create nightmares in our lives.

At one end of the scale we have Bacarat Obama, Disaster in Chief of These United States and on the lower, lower, lowest end of the scale are those we pay to protect ourselves and our property…the police.  Currently, the Obama administration is using these police as a tool of terror and fear as it employs them into the Neverending War we are involved in.  It used to be nice when wars ended. 

It also used to be nice when a police officer was a sign of safety, not a call for fear.  On Youtube, for instance, you have numerous instances of police beating innocent motorists because the civilians have the temerity to film the jackboot thugs in action.  These days, if you buy a gun or a camera, you need to buy both, not one or the other.  If you buy a gun, you need a camera to show the unjust way the police treat you when they try to take it away from you.  If you buy a camera, you need a gun to protect yourself from being beaten by officers wearing uniforms that you paid for.

We pay a lot in taxes, to the fed, to the stores but most disturbingly, to our local governments.  In our instance, we must pay several thousand to the school district, even though we have never spawned a child.  Why do we have to pay for the education of a bunch of little wankers when we had the good sense to ‘keep it in our pants’?  We pay for our trash to be collected and we just has an increase in our water and sewer bills.  So if you pay for the water, the schools, the trash and sewer – why do you have to fork over even more cash to have the township collect all the other checks we send?  We have to pay the police, of course.

Did you ever get pulled over for speeding or some other minor infraction of traffic codes and have some beast with ‘roid rage bark at you through the window, while flexing biceps which are unusually bulging with veins, like those veins in his neck as he screams at you for asking a question.  If you are like us, and have long hair and look like a liberal, it is even worse.

If noise comes from our yard, we are confronted by one of these monsters.  It has not happened for a long time.  If noise comes from another yard and we call the police, the chief tells us that they do not have equipment to measure decibels and so the ordinance is unenforcable.  So we are paying to have laws unenforced.  A judge told us to sue the township but the fear of harrassment stops us.  If a neighbor is persistent in destroying a section of our property and the cops are called in, the focus is not on the neighbor who is trying to build on my property…we get grief because the officer sees long hair and for some reason ‘roid ragers hate that.  Maybe because a lot of them go bald from using the stuff.

This is a bigger issue than our yard and long hair, however.  The drug war, which is the biggest waste of money ever to face a country which cannot balance a budget and even threatens to take Social Sevurity away from senior citizens. allow police to search homes, yards, automobiles, test your breath and your blood.  In all our years of paying taxes, we have never seen a breakdown which shows payments for drug tests on policia.  A lot of them are known to confiscate drugs and keep them for personal use and it is obvious that many of them use steroids in order to be bigger and stronger than the bad guys…they do not realise that the rage induced by the steroids makes them criminal in the cranium.

Office workers, Walmart workers, garbage truck workers, forklift operators…all of these people are subject to random drug testing…what about the police? The dangerous ones with the guns, pepper spray and lots of buddies to help beat on you.  If you pay a tax, you should demand that police be tested for drugs and, specifically, steroids.  Why would anybody be afraid to do this unless they were terrified of the thugs?

We know that not all police are bad.  Our own grandfather was a typical drunken, irish paddy precinct copper.  He used to beat his wife and kids and they did not even have steroids back then.  The thing is…just pay attention the next time you get pulled over or see somebody else in that unfortunate position.  See if the cop is red in the face.  See if the veins in his neck look ready to pop.  See if you can make him chase you by taking his photo.

They had cops like this in Nazi Germany and also in Russia, back when it was the Soviet Union.  Then, America was too good to allow such shit.  Not anymore.  This weekend, when you are on your way to a fun event and notice the ton of cops on the highway, earning overtime while getting high on confiscated pot, think about the fairness of them NOT being tested regularly.

For ‘Lit Undressed: Fashion In Literature’…My Favorite Bellbottoms

Gentle Readers and Friends of Flesh and Republished Blogs,

We have been tied up in many projects of late and the Fall performance by the Lit Undressed group of Omaha, NE, looms large in our headlights. The Omaha Lit Fest, a wonderful event and one of the many cultural offerings to be found in the ‘NoDo’ (Northern Downtown) area of Omaha, is partly funded by the Nebraska Council for the Arts, as well as many other community-minded organizations. Omaha seems like a great place to live. The more we hear about it, the more we find to like.

The event takes place October 13-15 and rehearsals started this week. Here is a brief summary of the event, this go-round:

The focus of this year’s (downtown) Omaha lit fest is Silk & Sawdust, the heart and mechanics and literature. Authors will participate in panels, readings and discussions to lift the corner of the curtain on their methods and processes, and look at the literal tools of production—including book-making and design, and our curious nostalgia for the typewriter.

Included in this theme are fashions of famous literary characters—from the Tin Woodman’s heart of silk and sawdust in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, to Jay Gatsby’s pink rag of a suit in The Great Gatsby, to Jane Eyre’s grey and black gowns and Virginia Woolf’s explanation of fashion in Orlando, fashion plays a major role in many characters’ roles and sometimes the storyline.

When presented with ‘fashion’ as a subject, we immediately blogged about old shoes…a more recent blog which can be found by searching on this page. This time, we decided to write about…well, you can read the title….

My Favorite Bellbottoms

Getting my money’s worth out of the Nehru shirt I purchased was no easy feat. It could not be worn to catholic school because it would not work with a tie. Too nice to wear while out playing in the fields, there was no way my parents would let it see the inside of a church. If the flag of rebellious dress was to be foisted, the bellbottom jeans became the banner to wear.

There were many styles to choose from. Colored denim, red with black patch pockets, for example, were becoming passe’ as the low-riding, button fly, hip-hugger style with the slit pockets and wide flare took top wrung on the fashion ladder. I stuck with the zipping fly, being more practical than trendy. ‘Landlubbers’ was the brand of choice for the hip. Headshops and other counterculture stores sold them, while you could buy Wrangler, Lee and other popular brands, not near as cool, at Sears and other ‘straight’ stores.

Landlubber Jeans also advertised in Rolling Stone, so they had to be good. Dylan, Robert Plant, the Allman Brothers, the Rolling Stones…they all wore Landlubbers.

Eventually, the company expanded from jeans to corduroy offerings.

Worn correctly, they had to be long enough…preferrably, slightly too long. The ideal pair had the heels worn away at the back bottom seam from being tread under bare feet, platform shoes or a pair of Dingo boots with a metal ring on the side, as advertised in Rolling Stone!

Being well over six feet tall, I preferred Dingos and often enjoyed the sight of a friend caught in mud in the middle of a cornfield, trapped by thick sole and heels which had settled into plowed Earth as we stood in a circle and puffed. Enough said about The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys!

At first, bells were available in denim only, which presented a quandry in that denim jeans were ‘play clothes’. For school wear, we had the loud plaid pants with the wide cuffs which fell across the top of our platform shoes. Play clothes stuck around until replaced when worn out. School clothes needed to be new each year. This led many to cut straight-legged jeans up the inseam to the knee and insert a triangle of fabric to make the leg ‘flare’ into a ‘bell’. My mom was not going in for this. It was by skipping lunch and saving bus money by hitch-hiking to school that cash to get a store-bought pair became available.

At the headshop, stacked in neat piles between the vintage WWII gear, which was also en vogue, the slacks beaconed. The wide-wale corduroy, low-rise, slit-pocket with the little flowers, known as ‘Keith Richards pants’ due to a popular photo of him wearing them, proved the perfect ticket to trendiness. Not denim, the nuns could not say a word about them being jeans, just like they could not argue that the black ‘tails’ I kept hanging in my locker for daily wear was not a ‘jacket’. In retrospect, certainly I looked like an ass. This was done purposely to rile the ‘squares’ and the nuns, especially. They had dominated what we wore for all of grammar school and now, in high school, we could fight back. Brandishing the only tattoo on a student – a homemade starfish on my left hand – I had already trumped authority at 16 years of age. With hair to my shoulders, they didn’t even notice the earring. This was 1973.

The Nehru sold at a garage sale but those cords wore down to a frazzle. They attracted attention. Every non-polite epithet for ‘homosexual’ was hurled at me while hitch-hiking in such style…but when you are young, you like the attention! Now, everybody has tattoos and earrings. The starfish was surgically removed around 1990 and the earring came out long before. Both became too popular among the same group they used to annoy. Too old to wear three pairs of boxer shorts, and the tops of my jeans at mid-thigh to reveal them, soon I begin my 55th year…that may sound old to some but I would not be young again, if given the chance…I would miss growing up in the 1960s… things were much more fun.

More About Heading West

Recently, the editorial ‘We’ left the East Coast and headed west. “The west is the best,” Jim Morrison said. It is true and it is also kind of sad. After fifty-six years in the same time zone, the Eastern Standard Zone lost the fun it used to be.
Personally, we first heard rock and roll in New York, as Roy Orbison exposed his whiney heart over radio in my parent’s old Desoto singing Born On The Wind. At five years old, we watched the Beatles arrive at Shea Stadium on the tv and the resulting new British revolution followed on the screen. In our teens we spat at the stage of CBGB, pogoed and slammed.
New York City, the City that never sleeps must have been napping when the Hip Train arrived in Colorado and Washington with legal weed. How can it
be the hippest city in the world when the most delectable commodities are easier to get here in the west? Our eyes moisten with tears of sorrow when we consider this. We think of the swinging forties and fifties when the Rat Pack ruled the dark streets and the punk rock in the seventies that restarted the heart of rock and roll in the face of the disco machine uptown at Studio 54.
Recently, the editorial ‘We’ left the East Coast and headed west. “The west is the best,” Jim Morrison said. It is true and it is also kind of sad. After fifty-six years in the same time zone, the Eastern Standard Zone lost the fun it used to be.
Personally, we first heard rock and roll in New York, as Roy Orbison exposed his whiney heart over radio in my parent’s old Desoto singing Born On The Wind. At five years old, we watched the Beatles arrive at Shea Stadium on the tv and the resulting new british revolution followed on the screen. In our teens we spat at the stage of CBGB, pogoed and slammed.
New York City, the City that never sleeps must have been napping when the Hip Train arrived in Colorado and Washington with legal weed. How can it
be the hippest city in the world when the most delectable commodities are easier to get here in the west? Our eyes moisten with tears of sorrow when we consider this anomaly. We think of the swinging forties and fifties when the Rat Pack ruled the dark streets and the punk rock in the seventies that restarted the heart of rock and roll in the face of the disco machine uptown at Studio 54.
We miss the dirty old New York City of our youth with her dirty pavements, leering pervs and beggars with outstretched hands. They brought a sense of danger that seemed vital to the city, like the visage of Moondog standing on Sixth Avenue shouting his poetry and scaring more timid foot traffic to the other side of the street with his two-horned Viking helmet. Philadelphia still sports a layer of dirt on it but Disney constipated the Big Apple by cleaning up Times Square, the once-beloved center of sleaze. The last time we walked down to Greenwich Village and got thirsty for a beer, we had to walk eight blocks…eight blocks!!! In NYC for a beer? The real indignity came with viewing the Lower East Side out the window of an Applebee’s because that was all we could find.
And what happened to the 25 Cent XXX Sex Show on Forty Second Street? As bad as it turned out to be, how could anybody resist finding out how much of a show you get for a quarter?
Well, now we reside in Washington, home state of the most prolific serial killers. The Son of Sam fell far short of some of the body counts we see here. To the south a couple of states, we have California so that gives us our minimum daily requirement of nearby whack-jobs. What is the difference between bad behavior at the Jersey Shore and bad behavior in LA? LA dresses it up better and has blondes. It all comes out the same on TMZ, though.
We arrived here at 70 miles per hour. That, in itself, tells volumes about the gap between coasts. We crossed some areas in Montana where there was no speed limit whatsoever. At 70 mph, we do not feel inclined to speed. Therefore, the police have no need to pull us over. If they did, they would find something that is legal, anyway. When they put out the DUI patrols here, they are kind enough to tell you which night of the week and during which hours on which road. That is so kind!
In fact, if we do not agree with the way things are run, they even have legally assisted suicide! How can we go wrong?
Some eastern states go to 65 mph but the norm is the old ‘stay alive at fifty-five’. Go 65mph there and they have a good reason to stop you. Take Pennsylvania (please…haha), if you are stopped and ‘suspected’ of being high on marijuana, you must consent to the urine test. The test used by the state police is so sensitive that it can spot the tiniest amount of THC metabolites in urine so that it can even turn positive if you smoked six months ago. If you prove positive you lose the license, get the fine, etc…if you refuse, you get the same thing…not nice!
No such things happen here. There also seems to be a great paranoia in the east. Before we left and as we packed, we heard numerous friends and associates warn us about the dangers on the road. “Keep your guns in the storage locker!” “Don’t keep any paraphernalia on you!” “Remember the facial recognition scanners every mile along the road!”
We left with two shotguns and a rifle lying right behind the seat under the open case of Pabst Blue Ribbon, which we drank all the way from Harrisburg to the bottom of Lake Michigan one June night and did not see a single police until we waved at one in a rest stop outside of Fargo. There is really nothing new to be scared of on the road. Take it from us, it’s the same old road. Be free.
Here, hitch-hikers still stick their thumbs out and serial killers smile at them. Beggars guard entrances to the shopping areas, mostly young methed-out tweakers with nothing to look forward to. Older ones drifted north after then-NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani solved the city’s homeless ‘problem’ by rounding up everybody in the parks and giving them a free bus ticket to LA, but only if they promised not to return. So we have all types here.
Most exciting, just to the south in Portland, the city hums with activity. We can feel the energy and a scene is taking place there…either that or the place is loaded with poseurs. From the many small music magazines we see, we know Portland has tons of small venues with live shows every night. Big acts tend to play Seattle and skip down to Cali. The scene in Portland feels organic, the visiting acts at local clubs seem to be an esoteric mix which blends with and compliments all of the fresh new faces releasing new songs on vinyl and playing crowded gigs.
Where can we get the best price for our old vinyl? Portland, of course. So many record and alternative book stores line the streets here that it reminds us of the Village in the old days, before Bleeker Bob’s and other old rare record/cd haunts vanished. If we sell an LP in Portland we get cash as opposed to the dreaded store credit, which has so often dampened our spirits. We take the cash and go to small clubs where the vibe reaches out from the city center into outlying neighborhoods.
Count up the clubs and the acts per night and we do not think NYC can keep up, not with the rock and roll end of things. We feel the loose, mellow, friendly haze of the current heroin epidemic there, as well. Funny how those things seem to keep time with each other.
Seriously, though, the scene in Portland, so robust you can taste it, may just break out and unleash a new twist, a new alternative to alternative, a fresh coat of paint to a passe’ form of music. What is happening in rock and roll right now? Who is hot? Where is the innovation? When did we last see a ‘movement?’ Was that way back when grunge hit?
The biggest sellers remain in place from the sixties, seventies and eighties. The geezers sell more ducats than youths do and that is wrong. College students listen to Pink Floyd and the Beatles. These may be old bands but soon we ought to be hearing from the young and angry again, unless rock and roll really is dead.
We’ll be sitting right here, watching from up close.
See ya!

We miss the dirty old New York City of our youth with her dirty pavements, leering pervs and beggars with outstretched hands. They brought a sense of danger that seemed vital to the city, like the visage of Moondog standing on Sixth Avenue shouting his poetry and scaring more timid foot traffic to the other side of the street with his two-horned Viking helmet. Philadelphia still sports a layer of dirt on it but Disney constipated the Big Apple by cleaning up Times Square, the once-beloved center of sleaze. The last time we walked down to Greenwich Village and got thirsty for a beer, we had to walk eight blocks…eight blocks!!! In NYC for a beer? The real indignity came with viewing the Lower East Side out the window of an Applebee’s because that was all we could find.
And what happened to the 25 Cent XXX Sex Show on Forty Second Street? As bad as it turned out to be, how could anybody resist finding out how much of a show you get for a quarter?
Well, now we reside in Washington, home state of the most prolific serial killers. The Son of Sam fell far short of some of the body counts we see here. To the south a couple of states, we have California so that gives us our minimum daily requirement of nearby whack-jobs. What is the difference between bad behavior at the Jersey Shore and bad behavior in LA? LA dresses it up better and has blondes. It all comes out the same on TMZ, though.
We arrived here at 70 miles per hour. That, in itself, tells volumes about the gap between coasts. We crossed some areas in Montana where there was no speed limit whatsoever. At 70 mph, we do not feel inclined to speed. Therefore, the police have no need to pull us over. If they did, they would find something that is legal, anyway. When they put out the DUI patrols here, they are kind enough to tell you which night of the week and during which hours on which road. That is so kind!
In fact, if we do not agree with the way things are run, they even have legally assisted suicide! How can we go wrong?
Some eastern states go to 65 mph but the norm is the old ‘stay alive at fifty-five’. Go 65mph there and they have a good reason to stop you. Take Pennsylvania (please…haha), if you are stopped and ‘suspected’ of being high on marijuana, you must consent to the urine test. The test used by the state police is so sensitive that it can spot the tiniest amount of THC metabolites in urine so that it can even turn positive if you smoked six months ago. If you prove positive you lose the license, get the fine, etc…if you refuse, you get the same thing…not nice!
No such things happen here. There also seems to be a great paranoia in the east. Before we left and as we packed, we heard numerous friends and associates warn us about the dangers on the road. “Keep your guns in the storage locker!” “Don’t keep any paraphernalia on you!” “Remember the facial recognition scanners every mile along the road!”
We left with two shotguns and a rifle lying right behind the seat under the open case of Pabst Blue Ribbon, which we drank all the way from Harrisburg to the bottom of Lake Michigan one June night and did not see a single police until we waved at one in a rest stop outside of Fargo. There is really nothing new to be scared of on the road. Take it from us, it’s the same old road. Be free.
Here, hitch-hikers still stick their thumbs out and serial killers smile at them. Beggars guard entrances to the shopping areas, mostly young methed-out tweakers with nothing to look forward to. Older ones drifted north after then-NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani solved the city’s homeless ‘problem’ by rounding up everybody in the parks and giving them a free bus ticket to LA, but only if they promised not to return. So we have all types here.
Most exciting, just to the south in Portland, the city hums with activity. We can feel the energy and a scene is taking place there…either that or the place is loaded with poseurs. From the many small music magazines we see, we know Portland has tons of small venues with live shows every night. Big acts tend to play Seattle and skip down to Cali. The scene in Portland feels organic, the visiting acts at local clubs seem to be an esoteric mix which blends with and compliments all of the fresh new faces releasing new songs on vinyl and playing crowded gigs.
Where can we get the best price for our old vinyl? Portland, of course. So many record and alternative book stores line the streets here that it reminds us of the Village in the old days, before Bleeker Bob’s and other old rare record/cd haunts vanished. If we sell an LP in Portland we get cash as opposed to the dreaded store credit, which has so often dampened our spirits. We take the cash and go to small clubs where the vibe reaches out from the city center into outlying neighborhoods.
Count up the clubs and the acts per night and we do not think NYC can keep up, not with the rock and roll end of things. We feel the loose, mellow, friendly haze of the current heroin epidemic there, as well. Funny how those things seem to keep time with each other.
Seriously, though, the scene in Portland, so robust you can taste it, may just break out and unleash a new twist, a new alternative to alternative, a fresh coat of paint to a passe’ form of music. What is happening in rock and roll right now? Who is hot? Where is the innovation? When did we last see a ‘movement?’ Was that way back when grunge hit?
The biggest sellers remain in place from the sixties, seventies and eighties. The geezers sell more ducats than youths do and that is wrong. College students listen to Pink Floyd and the Beatles. These may be old bands but soon we ought to be hearing from the young and angry again, unless rock and roll really is dead.
We’ll be sitting right here, watching from up close.
See ya!

Whatever Happened To This Blog?

Gentle Readers, for months, perhaps a year, we have been putting you off and have let this once-heralded blog slip into near obscurity. Today, we return and not only that – we return with our original name.
We remain uncertain as to whether we were trying to protect ourselves or trying to get laid when we changed the words ‘substance abuse’ to ‘substantial abuse’.
Too much information on one’s pattern of substance abuse can put low on the list for certain social invites. The fact remains that, as a result of being fed beer regularly as a baby (imagine yourself sucking from a beer bottle as tall as yourself…but just on weekends…), the editorial we naturally became alcoholic. We missed out on all the fun of gateway drugs – ha, ha, as if such a thing exists. We are not Hippies because we were born too late but we did manage to ingest LSD in every decade since the seventies, inclusive, and still keep the old neuro-plasticity working well enough to keep your attention!

We thank all the people who kept reading old entries of the blog while we were out of action.

We also thank Paul Krassner – for inspiration. We contacted him regarding some Beatdom business. Although he influenced us greatly over the years, from MAD to High Times magazines, we felt a pang of guilt when viewing his bibliography. He never shies away from a topic. He is fearless. He wrote a lot about drugs and put them in the titles of his books. He has integrity. We were afraid we would never be able to get laid if we had to explain our substance abuse issues…a pretty lame excuse, looking back.
Mr. Krassner helped change the course of American history to a degree. His activities during the sixties – his outspokenness, sense of humor and respect for Truth – allowed many others to open up with their personal views. Somebody always has to break the ice in a repressive situation and he melted minds. Conversely, The Realist allowed so-called ‘broken minds’ to melt the ice of the oppression of the time through humor. We remember how you Dear Readers love illustrations, so here is the book to look for……if you do not buy it and read it, you will not know what we are writing about when we refer to it in future important dispatches.
Anyway, there is a lot to learn about him and we encourage you all to pick up copies of his books. The best place to find them is on his website, http://www.paulkrassner.com

So, with all that being said, we shall now resume the blog as it ran a few years ago, three to four times a week. We will try to be more politically-minded and will try to be less silly. Things have gotten a lot more serious since we reported Governor Christie getting stuck in his gubernatorial bathtub and being pried out with two boat oars and a handy few pounds of butter from the larder….ah…”larder”… We thank the Gov for allowing us to resurrect an old word! May we gain from his girth.
Another reason for our return lies in the excitement we feel as we explore new lands. Native to New York, we left the east coast and drove west this past summer. After a lifetime in the Eastern Standard Zone except for vacations and other excursions, we find great novelty here in the State of Washington. We knew the diversity of topography to be extreme but the last thing we expected was to wind up stuck in a desert, much less the scablands. Everybody said it rains all the time here.
Not so.
We never experienced such pesky sunshine in all our days. Sun, sun, sun…nothing but sun, all summer. Like Bob Dylan asks a recent LP, “Don’t you know the sun can burn your brains right out?” Speaking of Dylan, we can’t help but compare the area to the locale depicted in the film Masked and Anonymous. With all the Native Americans, Mexicans, sand and abandoned junk cars, the resemblance strikes us as uncanny. In fact some areas here are so bleak as to resemble Afghan mountain ranges; so much so that troops bound for that bloodbath got used to the elements by training near here.
Fall arrived and clouds followed and as the sky got darker, things got brighter. We love rain! The first good rain to come in brought our first dust storm along with it. A fantastic sight! A cool thing to view from the safe confines of a car with rolled-up windows.
There is so much here to discover in Washington, we didn’t know where to start so food is never a bad idea. Crossing the US, we noticed portions of food increasing in size as we pushed westward. True, we settled for road food but it actually tasted good and we had to start comparing fast foods, just to see the cultural anomoly we are faced with.
It started at the ‘Steak’N’Shake’ somewhere in Michigan. Years passed since the last fast food burger touched my lips. It came down to ‘eat or starve’ so we went with Steak’N’Shake. It was amazing! The first thing that freaked us out was the whipped cream and cherry on the milkshake…we remembered that from soda fountains in the distant past. When we opened up the burgers, a cornucopia of veggies stuck out from the bun. While we chose our move to a liberal land where pot is legal, as is same-sex marriage and assisted suicide, liberal portions never occurred to us.
So amazed were we, that to push the idea to the limit, we tried a McDonalds…we must report that our two kitties, along for the trip, actually ate some of the ‘meat’. We tried the same thing in Pennsylvania and they shunned it. Finally, even McDonalds had a cherry on top of the shake.
Now here is the rub.

It is sort of like Lenny Bruce’s ‘Jew vs Goy’ bit…only it seems like Lenny was wrong on that one. He said anybody who lives in New York is jewish, whether they are goyim or not. While admittedly goy to the catholic degree at childhood, we can’t help but feel that the whole northeast seaboard, as well as points as far west as Chicago, create the true demarcation.
Try to find some real foods, foods we grew up with and now we seem to have entered a weird zone of culinary depravity. Perhaps being in the east, where European immigrants first landed, exposed us to a variety of victuals. Ethnic foods spread out from immigrant neighborhoods as they became popular with other cultures.
Brie, capers, anchovies, hummus, halvah, Finlandia or Jarlsburg brand swiss or Parmigiano-Reggiano, olive oil from Italy, couscous…mention these items and prepare to be met with a blank stare. Other seemingly unbotchable staples – pizza and bagels, for instance – get ‘the treatment’. To find a simple slice of pizza (crust, sauce, cheese and spices) the closest option is to send out for a Papa John or Domino imitation pie and cut it in the shape of a slice…or make your own. The concept of an italian pizza shop where you can walk in and buy a slice is exactly that, here on the eastern part of the state, a concept. It is an idea that does not exist. Maybe you can get it in Seattle but we have not gotten that far yet.
Forget bagel shops…but the street tacos rule!
We admit to enjoying a bagel at the most fabulous hotel we could find this side of the Cascades, The Davenport Hotel in Spokane. Here, birthplace of Crab Louis (after Louis Davenport), they referred to the smoked salmon as lox and knew well enough to put capers on the plate. For as many salmon as swim through here every year, we expected that most people would be familiar with lox. Maybe they are better off. I did see a number of big fish float belly up in the Columbia River just around migration time, when the state warned residents not to eat the local fish due to dangerous levels of pollutants in the filets.
Hordes of homeless tweakers who live under bridges and eat these fish since a little added protein never hurts a meth binge, are likely unaware of these warnings. A lot of homeless drifters hang here, though, so that makes us feel welcome. Hitch-hikers spot the roads, too. We hadn’t seen one since 2003 in Ireland. No wonder the serial killers like it here.
There is so much to say, so much to compare, so much to type that we will hold it for another day, tomorrow maybe…
~

Sorry for not really promoting the substance abuse this time. We did drink beer while driving across most of the states, though. We shall make up for this in due time.
Thanks all, for coming back to read this blog, and it feels good to be back!

Tips For Road Ragers

 Clever Cohorts and Miffed Motorists,

Daily, if we drive an automobile, we are forced to deal with all sorts of things on the newly Obamasized highways and roads of our nation. Many of  them can and will annoy us, while others drive us, literally, to distraction.  Manners are in short supply but nowhere is the supply shorter than on our roads.

People do not care about the other driver anymore. It is like a battlefield out there some days. In the film, It’s A Gift, starring W C Fields, we see roadhogs get their due when our tipsy hero buys a whole fleet of cars to follow him around and purposely crash into roadhogs.

Roadhogs are one of the worst problems. They cause a lot of the rage. Roadhogs come in all shapes and sizes, like the Harley-Davidson rider who feels he belongs in the passing lane while going 40 miles an hour, because he is a ‘biker’. No wonder we hate bikers so much. It brings back the Carlin line about how people used to ride bikes to piss off the squares and now it is the squares who ride the bikes.

When not slowing traffic down, they often feel the should ride on the center of the double-yellow lines, to show their ownership of the road, which they bought with the title to the cycle…probably because they could not afford a decent car. If you see one on the double-yellow, swerve towards them. You are really doing them a favor, since the increase in heart-rate and blood flow will keep them more alert and less prone to injury. Plus, the look of terror on their faces is always a gas, too. Bicycles are the same way. They really do need to make separate paths for bicycles, as these idiots in the shiny pants (which leads one to question their sensibility to ride a skateboard, much less a bicycle) are some of the rudest variety of roadhog…the self-righteous alternative transportation roadhog. A blare of the horn as you edge up behind them always gets a little jump out of them, if you do not have a squirtgun full of warm milk handy.

Tailgaters are maybe the worst of all, next to the cellphoners. Tailgaters show some of the more developed asshole tendencies. Often they will drive 45 mph in a 55 mph zone, and to be sure they slow down everybody else, they do this in the passing lane. Remember the passing lane? It used to be for passing. If you pass a tailgater on the inside lane and then shift over to the fast lane because you are in passing mode, they will often speed up just to tailgate you for passing them. They were in no hurry before you passed them but they took the move as a personal affront and feel like they must tailgate your car so you know they can go fast, too. Of course, we know the most common way to deal with this is to ‘brake check’ them, that is to hit your brakes hard so they almost hit the back of your car. Keep in mind that if they hit you from behind, it is always their fault, by law.

Sometimes such an action will rile up the offending party and they will continue the dangerous habit of riding your bumper.  If you have a car (which is really the only thing to drive if you do not haul heavy junk and are environmentally responsible), you may have windshield wipers that spray washer fluid over the roof of your car and onto the windshield of the car behind you. If so, a good thing to do is to lay on the sprayer a few times until you see the car behind you put on the windshield wipers. When they are distracted by that and cannot see clearly due to the wipers, hit your brakes then! It usually scares all hell out of them. Again, it may only rile them up, so we suggest keeping a few rolls of pennies or a cup of old rusty nuts and bolts in the console of your vehicle. These metal objects, when flipped over the top off your car, will bounce off the highway and, depending on what speed you are traveling, bounce up into the  grill of the car behind you or, if you are lucky, the windshield. Old golf balls from the shag bag are good for this, as well, as the large white orb has a scarier effect when flying toward you. The good thing about using pennies is that they are barely visible, should an officer look for evidence of projectile-influenced rage.

Sunday drivers have been an annoyance for nearly a century now. They are usually old and have no idea what is going on. If you rage at them, it does no good. They have to turn up the hearing aid just to hear you honk at them and that action alone slows them down by another 10 mph. If you have to drive on a Sunday, take valium.

Most offensive these days is the cellphone user. Most roadhogs and tailgaters are cross-addicted to the cell. This works in your favour because they are distracted. To them a brake check is especially terrifying. They really ought not to be on the phone and most states have laws against it. As much as we at CFYSA hate the law, we try to help the enforcers of the laws when it comes to these selfish, talkative bastards who think they are so important that if they do not phone to say where they are at the moment, the world will stop.

 If you see someone on a cell, lay on your horn. The person on the other end of the line will get an earful, as well. Better yet, here is a trick we learned by mistake a few weeks ago. Sitting at a red traffic light, we looked over and saw a driver yapping inanely on the cell, waiting for the light to change. We were not even with this car but our hood was about even with the driver’s window, perfect for a blare of the horn. We were in a two lane left turn exit from a shopping plaza that dumped onto a well-trafficked road. Reckoning to give the driver/cell-user a little blast of sound, we hit the horn. When we honked, the car abruptly pulled out, through the red light, into traffic.  Apparently, they were used to being honked at for sitting through green lights while yapping and thought they had done it again. Luckily, they did not get hit by another car but it certainly opened a whole new avenue of fun to us. Try it sometime and see for yourself! We encourage you!

There are many other ways to deal with the rogues of the road but we just wanted to throw out a few helphul hints for the novice ragers in the ethernet. Happy motoring!!!

Gas Shock Clocked, Writer’s Block Stopped

     Understanding Readers,

     We have not posted for a week or so. One of our last posts detailed problems with the pc and an outage at Verizon’s internet banks.  Yesterday, a Verizon worker came to my house after three days of me switching out old wires, phones, jacks, you-name-it, only to tell me that my phone line had been disconnected at the main office, for no reason.

     Falling off the face of the earth, with no phone or internet, was a very strange, lost feeling.  I felt disconnected and could not communicate with friends or go on the stock market or watch videos of fuzzy kittens.  Once used to it, the amount of work that had been put off for no particular reason became easy to tackle without the interference of the web.  I got a lot of interference from my cat, Inkie, but she is just a bug no matter what.

     Nonetheless, my trusty auto, which has been taking me from here to there since 2004, sucked up over $50 worth of gas the other day.  In seven years, it never took $50 worth.  This does not bode well for my idea of the crosscountry kittie caravan in the 30foot RV.  It makes me wonder how much more people will take. 

     Of course, as usual, there is always somebody to blame…now who would we blame if America was rich in oil and natural gas, yet the people living here are not able to afford to fill their cars, trucks and oil tanks at home?  Who would we blame if all the gas and oil we are allowed to consume has to be shipped from halfway across the world, while people who produce gas here could do it cheaper but are not allowed to because of hidden political agendas?  Who would we point to as the Anti-Christ?  If you said ‘Obama’ you could be right on all counts.

     My next door neighbor does not like Obama.  She is 82 years old and was a nurse for many years of her life, in facilities around Long Island, NY, where she is from.  She says she learned to read people’s faces and can tell when people lie about being in pain or caring about others or other facial ‘giveaways’.  She does not like the look on Obama’s puss and you have to admit, he is one of the MEANEST-looking presidents we ever had.  I can only remember back to Kennedy but nobody in that office ever gave the dirty looks that Obama can deal out to those who disagree with him. Sorta like this…

     So, it can be pretty obvious that he does not like people.  That would explain why he wants to screw his own country in a way that will take the rest of history to undo.  Five states now have gas above the $4 line and he can ride around on Air Force One and look down on us.  He could tell SecRATary of the Interior Salazar to stop the moritorium on american oil companies.  BP is drilling in Alaska, where a lot of people think our reserves are…guess what? They are BP’s reserves now…we are not allowed to drill but BP can because they are not American, yet they drill on our soil.  We are giving our resources to BP so they can resell them back to us at an elevated price.

     Why?

     Because we let him; because we elected him (not me), and because we do nothing about his actions now but to watch in awestruck horror as he dismantles the economy and ruins the lives of countless millions in the Gulf.

     Soon it will be April 20.  420.  We suggest that on that day, nobody take any substances which will muddle their thoughts.  We suggest that you get together, as planned…but instead of getting high, figure out how to use your votes to get this disaster off our backs and out of office.  Once that is done, you can get high…if you are lucky.

Better Call Henny Penny

     Frightened Friends,

     Is the sky falling?  Not really, it is just disappearing. Yesterday scientists reported that the ozone player has gotten even thinner than it was in November, when it was discovered that whales were getting sunburnt in the ocean because they had no SPF and the sun is too bright.  Gov. Cartman of New Jersey, who also is not too bright, said there is nothing to worry about.  He has no proof of global warming so he prefers to ignore it.  Here in Pennsylvania, Military Governor Tom Corbett has said that Cartman is his ‘role model’ so do not expect much for the survival of the species if  we are gonna depends on dolts like these.

     Besides being scorched from above, we have the Japanese directly dumping the ocean water that was contaminated in the cooling process back into the ocean, where it can travel all around the world and ride the jet streams and get in the tissue all of the fish which are not radioactive already.

      Besides both of those, we have new earthquakes in Japan today, which further unsettle our belief in a long life in a non-glowing body.

     The Japanese government announced that it was going to dump the contaminants back into the sea before they did it.  Naturally, there is no United Nations anymore, at least not the kind of United Nations that averts worldwide tragedy and keeps us safe.  The United Nations was really formed as a way to enforce Harry Anslinger’s morbid anti-marijuana laws worldwide and, aside from contributions to UNICEF (a CIA cover) they do nothing for us.

     All we want to warn you on is to give up the seafood.  It was badly polluted enough before these latest events and if you value your health, you do not eat it, particularly if you are prone to bad affects of radiation already, like if you are a cancer survivor like Your Humble Narrator.

     We have to get this world together or all you people with kids and grandkids are gonna carry pics of cinders around in your wallets, when your bloodline is boiled in their skins.

     Wake up Everybody, for the sake of Christ and yourselves and start paying attention to what you can do to make your legislators recognize the inherent dangers of us destroying the world from the outside in.

    You are not feeling it now…but wait until food and oil prices REALLY go up.  You have no idea about suffering unless you have done a lot of it.  Get prepared for a new experience.

Taking Dad To Ireland, Blood Across the Shannon and Kilts Are Not Irish

     Exhaulted Readers,

     As we stumble upon Saint Patrick’s Day, we thought that a few blogs about the old sod may prove appropriate.  To cut to the quick, let us make one thing clear.  If you see some big goon in a kilt at a bar or Irish function on Wednesday, it is surely an idiot who does not know the difference between Scotland and Ireland and probably bought the kilt as a convenient way to get into a fight.

     Avoid men with kilts, in general, in America, 364 days of the year.  They are allowed one day unless they are first-generation Scot.  Now, that we have annoyed that foolish segment of the population, allow us to continure with the actual story.

     As this is a personal (albiet ficticious since nothing on here is real) tale,  permit me to continue in the first person, I, to make it a bit easier.  The ‘I’ in question is full of bright ideas.  Many are fueled by booze and sentimentality, so the term ‘bright idea’ is a touch of the old sarcasm.  This time, this bright idea, came to pass beginning in late 1999,  the year my mom died.  It was a particularly grim holiday, either turkey day or xmas, and the old man and I sat at the table with the full meal and fixings.  It must have been turkey day, the first holiday without my mom around.

     He was getting teary and, in an effort to switch up the mood of the meal,  I suggested that we take a trip to Ireland the following year.  He was one of those types with the ‘honk if you’re irish’ license plate holder and was easy to deal with on holidays because you just needed a new book on Ireland, which he would never read anyway.  It was a chance to go to Ireland, which I had been thinking about anyway; it was also a way to show that life was not over and there were still things for him to do that he had not even dreamt of.

     As it turned, a golf buddy of his, Louie,  ran tours to the Emerald Isle for several years and we joined a trip he was putting together for the upcoming May.  It took all the planning off my hands, so that was just perfect…until we got there and it dawned on me that he went to sleep at 10pm every night and the sun didn’t even set until close to 11pm that time of year.

      I had never considered the implications of taking an 80-year-old man with a 70-year-old tobacco habit on a plane or how the altitude would affect his lungs.  We started off with a couple days at the Royal Dublin Hotel on O’Connell Street, with the statue of Parnell, the Great Patriot of the Irish Nation.  The old man took it easy, after the scare at the airport, where they put him in a chair and gave him oxygen for a bit.

     So, here I was in Ireland, the only young man in a group of senior citizens, the youngest of whom may have been in her mid-sixties.  At least nobody would try to hang around with me.

     It was great to be on the main street of the city, in walking distance of Trinity College, the famous old government buildings, the Book of Kells, the house where Bram Stoker labored over his novel, Dracula, which would sell many hoodies, hundreds of years after it was printed.

     There was a stain on the pillow, which I noticed the first morning and took to be a result of drooled-out tobacco juice, which stained a number of his clothing items.  There was another stain the next morning, as was discovered as bags were packed to leave Dublin and head down coast to the Munster area, where many of the first great kings of Ireland came from and where they fought many of their fiercest battles, defending their homeland from the inevitable pillaging which plagued the People for centuries.

     While in this corner of the Isle, we stayed in Clonmel (meaning honey meadow), near Tipperary.  The Hotel Minella was home for a few days, in the middle of the orchards where the apples for the wonderful Magner’s Irish Cider are grown.  The hotel was an extravagant affair.

                                             

    It lay along the River Suir, with the Comeragh Mountains looking behind.  Here, again, we spent a few days.  Dad had gotten a bit tired and so was I, so after a few drinks, we retired to the room on early-afternoon to get into an argument over the television.  I was watching the movie Butcher Boy, the disturbing tale with Sinead O’Connor as the Holy Virgin Mary.  While an excellent flick, it was beyond his sensibilities, so I tried for a short nap and went for a walk.

     The grounds were fantastic and, as stated, were surrounded by the orchards and farmland.  A dirt road ran sort of parallel to the river.  Apple trees and livestock ran along the gurgling waters of the Suir.  This was more like a creek than a river.  This was not the grand, majestic Shannon but it was lovely.

     Returning from my walk, a shower was in order and as I shaved before stepping into the tub, a few specks of blood near the mirror got my attention.  It was not a lot but it was in a small ‘spray pattern’.  I cannot even say that i knew it was blood at that point, looking back.  It totally surprised me.  A nice meal and an evening of drink, and at the light of dawn, the little dirt road beaconned.  Nobody was awake, not even the hotel staff, as I slipped out the door in my running shoes.

     I found some cows, feeding in a lot along the road, just a quarter mile from the hotel.  Having seen cows many times before, I am not sure what attracted me to them but I sidled up to the gate which held them in, to take a picture.  They all were chewing at the tall, green grass.  I got a shot or two of them chewing and thought it may be a good time to practice my ‘moo’, so one was brought up for the benefit of the bovine and it got their attention, as you can see in the photo.

                                                       

     Having made a good impression on the cows, the brisk walk continued and after a few hours, the hotel appeared in site again and it was just in time for a continental breakfast.  I stopped at the room to shower.  There was no blood on the wall, but here were bloodied paper towels in the trash.  It looked like he had been spitting up into them.  This was starting to get serious and we still had more than half of Ireland waiting for us.

     We will pick this up tomorrow, at the Hotel Minela.  Thanks for your patience.