Punct this

It has been brought to my attention that I do not use punctuation. I realize that this may make some people upset and unable to concentrate on what I am actually saying. I also understand and admit freely that I do not understand or really even care about rules. Especially rules about dots dashes and silly little marks that try to confine words into a scientifically diagrammable construct. Piss on that.
I like my words to flow unimpeded from my brain to the page, without speed-bumps and hindrances. Its hard enough for me to get them out and on to the page without worrying about the weird old biddy in 9Th grade who mumbled around her false teeth trying to impart the importance of punctuation, the only thing she imparted to me was how hard it is to read the lips of someone who has no teeth and refuses to use denture glue.
I started out in college as an English Major, that lasted One quarter. I could not, can not, will not bend my slowly solidifying mind around something so petty. So I switched to Anthropology, the study of the weird ass rules that people make and follow called culture. The weirdest thing of all, is that some things are only "right" because the majority in a particular culture decides through some mystical cabal what is or is not "kosher".
Punctuation is one of those things that has changed a lot over the years. Shakespeare used it much differently than Tom Wolfe, and Hunter S. Thompson had a very distinctive style. I predict, in spite of the popular book, Eats, Shoots and Leaves (which I read, and enjoyed) that punctuation will continue to evolve and progress. Until one day it catches up with me.

Chasing Tail

I am not a runner. In spite of this fact I often run. It seems that about 8 years ago I looked in the mirror and there was this fat guy looking at me, I looked down to make sure I had not body swapped someone in the night but no, same scars. But something was different, ah! I couldn't see my feet! So I started on the StairMaster for a few hours a week and then the elliptical and finally I graduated to the treadmill. After a couple of years on the treadmill I decided to run outside, you know, on the road and stuff. Well, after this it seems as if everyone we know is a runner of some sort, road runner, trail runner, drug runner. Pretty much all of the facets of running covered.
This story is about is my Wife's Cousins Wife. Charlotte. She had just had a baby and wanted to get back into shape, Me and the Wife had just started taking the Em to sugar park every weekday night to ride her scooter. So we all hooked up, Me and the Wife's cousin would race on Rollerblades around the park while Charlotte and Caprice chased Emma on her scooter. It was a lot of fun. I got really used to seeing the wives running, Charlotte pushing a baby stroller and Caprice chasing Emma.
One of the things that we have always done as a family is take part in the Murray 4th of July festivities, after my Wife began running we started running in the 5k. We had ran in it for 3 years and we started talking up the fun potential to the cousin and his wife, because misery loves company. They agreed to run it with us. I should probably mention two things at this point. 1) I have been cursed with a competition gene, for some reason it kicks on especially bad with relations, blood or otherwise. 2) Charlotte is a RUNNER, she has legs that start at her armpits, she looks like she just floats over the ground. On the other hand I have had many people comment on how when I run, it looks as if I am pushing the Earth down. So we all signed up for the 5k run.
That morning I could feel the gene starting to overreact so at the starting line I lost myself in the crowd to try and avoid seeing any family members at the start. The gun went off and I started running at my usual leisurely pace. About 1/4 mile into it I saw something ahead of me that triggered my gene. It was a blond Ponytail. Swinging happily back and forth behind a jogging stroller, so I started to speed up. I ran as hard as I could just to get within 20 feet of that tail. It was as if she could sense me. As soon as I got that close she picked up the pace, pushing that damn stroller. I was overcome by the gene and really started to run, I ran as hard as I have ever run in my life. I was wheezing and blowing snot bubbles and I am sure that people were swinging wide to give the crazy guy room. I could not catch her. She floated along chatting with a friend about 20 feet in front of me. The last 1/4 mile I gave it all I had. I was going to catch that swinging tail if it killed me. She never even looked back, just waved at her friend and powered that hellacious stroller right down the road and through the finish line 26 seconds before me. Son of a BITCH was I mad. I was never going to hear the end of this. Ever. Now I can handle getting beat, but by my wife's cousins wife! That was just a bit too much for the Tom ego. I was thinking of sneaking away and faking an injury, aneurysm, breakdown, allergic reaction to losing, I don't know, anything! But the good shoulder angel was doing a bit of whispering in my ear (yelling) about being a good sport and not embarrassing myself any more then I already had. So I sucked it up and walked over to Tell Charlotte what a good race it had been. I put my arm around her and said, "hey coz, great race" and she looked up at me........and what the hell! who the hell was this! Some chick with the exact stroller, shoes and stupid freaking ponytail! WTF! I didn't even say a word. Just took my arm back and shuffled off to find a drink.
7 minutes later Charlotte crossed the finish line. I was too exhausted to be happy, I went home and slept till fireworks. Oddly enough, that was my best 5k time. Ever.

the window of the absurd

I think that most people miss a lot of really fun stuff because they only see what they expect. My Family is convinced that I am some kind of weird magnet because of all the completely odd and random stuff that seems to happen whenever I am around. Mostly I do not think this is true, yes I have had a lot of random strange things happen that seem to happen to nobody else, but at the same time it is the stuff that I notice happening that makes for the strangest stories. For example: I was sitting at a stop light and the back end of a rat fell out of the sky on to my hood with a bloody squish. I was a bit surprised, usually it rains toads. When I leaned out of the window to see what other mammals would be falling I saw a very confused looking hawk sitting on a light pole directly above me, It was opening and closing one claw with a look that said "what the hell?" Speaking of rats, my very first Job not for my Dad was on the mow-boys crew at Three Fountains East. Since I was the FNG I got stuck hand mowing the banks of the canal on the golf course. Very first day I was mowing and a RAT tried to run in front of the mower. He did not quite make it. When I went to empty the bag the other mow-boys saw the blood and tail and told the Boss. He asked me what had happened and after he caught his breath from laughing and finished wiping the tears out of his eyes gave me a fifty dollar "rat" bonus. Sometimes the weird stuff pays.
One of my favorite weird happenings was a couple of years ago when our Jeep exploded on the way home from visiting both of our families at Mill Hollow. Yeah Caprice's whole family and my whole family were camping, not together, but in the same place on the same weekend. I had to work the next day so we had just gone up for a visit and were headed home in our awesome 66 four door Wagoneer. We had just got on the merge to I-80 coming down from Kamas and the Jeep's engine exploded. It really exploded, a large piece of something went through the hood shooting flames and an even larger piece went down through the engine and shot out under the Jeep shooting flames and sparks. It didn't just throw "a rod" it threw all of them. We had enough momentum to pull into the rest area that used to be right after the junction. It's gone now but every time I drive by I remember this night. We pulled into the rest area and coasted right into a parking space under the light about 1/2 way between the restrooms and the exit. It was about 1145 on a Friday night and the rest area was pretty empty. Our first dilemma came when we realized we had no one to call to come get us, all of them being back the way we had just come and way out of any sort of cell reception. So we called Brandie to come rescue us and a tow truck to come and get the Jeep. Jeep was obviously dead, all of its fluids were leaking out and when I crawled under to look their were four fist size hole in the oil pan. I figured that this was probably not a good thing. I had a "Jet Pull" in the morning and so I was determined to get as much sleep as I could. I stretched out on the front seat and Caprice and Emma played little nervous waiting games in the back. After about 1/2 hour I am informed from the back seat that the time has come to escort the women folk to the potty. I was a little irritated, here we were in a well lit rest area, only one other car visible, the bathrooms also well lit, only about 60 yards away and me really wanting some sleep and they want an escort? What the hell? So I put on my "I am in charge here" voice and softly agreed to walk with them to the potty. (yeah, that's the way it is)
So we make a party out of it, Me walking with the flashlight and Caprice carrying the Emma, who was five years old, so this was a lot longer ago then it seems. We are still laughing about the exploding of the Jeep and generally just happy that we were OK and together when I stop about 15 feet shy of the restroom and Caprice and Emma continue on to complete the moment. The door has not even shut all the way and Caprice kicks it back open and comes running out carrying Emma. Both of them have this stunned look and Caprice is sprinting as fast as I have ever seen her. I started to ask what was wrong but before I could Caprice screamed (yes, screamed) at me that "THERE IS A GIANT TRANSVESTITE IN THERE" and ran behind me and hid. Now hold on, when she said "giant" what did she mean? I was thinking that she might have meant "gross" or "amazing" or maybe even "disgusting" but "GIANT"? Come on. Then the door swung open. I am not even exaggerating a little bit when I say this guy was a giant. He was huge. He ducked under the door frame and when he stood up I almost pooped in the pants. Even without his heels he had to be just under 7 feet tall. With his heels, pretty ruby red slipper types with a 5 or 6 inch spike heel, he was pushing 7'2" or more. He was built like a pro football player and had thick black body hair. I know this because he was wearing nothing but fishnet stockings and a little red and white polka dot dress that would have been small on me. On this guy, well, if it was cold he would have been better off with napkins. He sashayed towards us holding a little red purse and covering ground as fast as Caprice had. I had a mag light in one hand and I was holding Caprice behind me with the other, I was telling her to run to the Jeep and lock the doors when Fagsquatch stopped about five feet in front of us. I couldint see his eyes cause he had on a huge black wig that covered most of the top of his head. I was getting ready to see how hard he would fall when he rumbled, "sorry, didn't mean to startle you" and turned and walked away. As he was walking away Emma, my dear sweet, brilliant little smart ass says. Very loudly. "Him does not look pretty in that dress"
He shook his head a little but kept walking, right to the only other car in the parking lot. A little Toyota celica. He got in and the little guy behind the wheel kissed him and they left. Two minutes later Brandie and the tow truck showed up. We made it home. All was well. When I told my family they all just shook their heads and I could see that my weird magnet status was confirmed. After I just re-read that I am afraid that I think I might agree. I am a weird magnet.

foam of death

I realize from time to time that I am an Idiot. I was remembering an incident the other day that proves this assumption beyond any reasonable doubt. More then a few years ago I slaved for the evil orange empire, I was an apron wearing member of the worlds largest keeping up with the Joneses store. Yes, I worked for home depot. That in and of itself proves nothing, but what happened shortly after I left the embrace of the whore of the earth does. I had just gone through my first mid-life crises and ended up with a motorcycle, an awesome motorcycle. I also had reconnected with my super cool cousins who also had motorcycles. We had been on several rides together and with larger groups and had one scheduled for the week after I departed the HD. Because we lived all over the valley and had several friends that were still enslaved we had decided to meet in the parking lot of purgatory before heading out for a ride. It was a combination of thumbing my nose at them and bringing a few of them along for the ride. I will have to give a little bit of a backstory here so bear with me. I had been a nominal supervisor over what was called the "pro-desk" we handled large ticket sales and commercial customers. The delivery guys worked with us and we had kick ass schedules that were the envy of the rest of the slaves. We were close, I had worked with Franz (his real name), who was over deliveries since my very first day seven years previous to this encounter and between us we had either hired or recruited everyone on the team, except the jezebel-judas-slime troll whose name we will not mention. She was and probably still is, evil. Moving right along, we all got along. Very well. Wes was my number 1 right hand guy, the one that actually did most of the work and Ryan, Ben, Aarron, Kelly, Kirby, Beagley, Angela, Paul, more then pulled their weight. It was a great team and I was actually sad to go. On the day of the ride I had been a non-slave for less then 10 days and the wounds from my last whipping were still bleeding pretty fierce. I went into the store with some of my cousins and my other Brother Darrell to ostensibly use the facilities but in reality to say hi to everyone. It was Saturday and oddly enough, very slow. So slow in fact that Franz and Ben had been doing all of their work with a grabber. It was pretty funny, they had been pulling paperwork with it, typing orders and signing slips, all with this cool little tool that is usually only used by inmates and oldies with bad backs.

We were laughing at their cleverness and just sort of hanging out when Ben handed it to me to try.

Right away I began to show off, I mean hey, if they can do it I can do it better! So I was pinching all the girls I could reach and picking stuff up and throwing it at the guys and generally acting like a complete knob. That was when I spotted the "GREAT STUFF™ Insulating Foam" for those of you who are not familiar with the hardware movement, Great Stuff is the bomb! It is a maximum expansion foam that sticks to anything, is completely waterproof and expands to 4 TIMES its size as soon as it hits the air. You use it to fill cracks and crevices in anything at all. I picked up a can with the grabber, threw it up into the air.............and caught it. I was the man o the minute. Then I heard the words "bet you cant do that again" and I think he may have even thought "I double dog dare you" because I jumped to the challenge and threw the can even higher! Now take a second to notice the picture of the grabber above, if you look close you will see the sharp angle of metal that is between the two pincher arms. I was following the can with my whole face to enable my super cool catch to succeed. That way when I caught it above my head and the angle of the grabber punched a hole in the enormously pressurized can the resulting stream of foam went directly into my open mouth, nose and eyes. I must have panicked a little because I squeezed the grabber a bit too hard at this critical juncture and caused the can to EXPLODE. It completely covered my face, chest and hands. Ben had been standing directly behind me and had a tom shaped clean spot, the rest of Him was splattered. Everyone else had managed to get out of the way. It was now that I realized a few things. First, foam was warm, that struck me as odd at the time. I guess I imagined it to be cold for some reason. The next thing that occurred to me was that I could not see, hear or breathe. The first one I can do without, the second I never can anyway but the third was problematic. I started pushing my fingers into the mass of foam in my mouth and quickly got it semi cleared. Then I started laughing. I mean, Holy Shit! How funny is this! I think the guys thought it maybe was not so funny cause I felt two of them grab my arms and we started to run down the hall. I figured we were headed for the bathroom to clean me off and I was trying to clear my eyes so I could see where the hell we were going. We made a quick stop by the commercial cleaning supplies and grabbed one of everything then we were in the bathroom and I got my left eye cleared. I looked like I had exploded, that actually made me laugh harder and we started pulling chunks of foam out of my nose and ears. Previously I may have mentioned that this stuff sticks to anything. I was not kidding, and I now learned that it is some super toxic oil base nuclear gel that BURNS your skin. Especially the tender parts under your eyelids and in your nose. At this point I may have been screaming just a little. The door suddenly opened and someone, I am not really sure who, handed Ben a large can of something and said "Biss ish z only fing zat vill tak it off" at least that's what it sounded like to me. The next thing I know Franz (his real name) had grabbed my arms and Ben had dumped the can over my head. It certainly cut through the foam. At this point I am positive I screamed. It was Acetone. For those of you that have had Acetone in your eyes, nose, ears and mouth. I can totally relate. For those of you who have not. Don't. Ben scrubbed at my face and head with the Acetone and Franz held me down, it was a riot. We got as much as we could off and I staggered up to the front. Another quick side note, I had not known that Caprice and the Kids were outside with the bikes until this point when caprice came running in. It seems that Franz (really, its his name) had called her. He was a veteran of calling my wife and knew just how to phrase it. "Tom is OK, But....." Hell, he had seven years of practice. Since Caprice, and my cousins and my friends were all there I had no choice. Even though I wanted to go home and cry I figured I was tough (tomspeak for dumb as a rock) enough to go on the ride. So I went. By the time we got home that night the outer layer of skin was gone from my face. I was bleeding from cracks on my face and forehead. My hair was sticking straight up and was two or three different colors from the chemical soup I had bathed it in and hard as a rock. It was fantastic! Wes's wife had to cut most of my hair off and me and my cousins laughed at me all night. It was a great ride. On a strange ending note, Home depot tried to bill me for the cleanup and every time I go back into that store, even now, I have an immediate attack of IBS. Nerves.

Mornings with Wife

My Wife hates mornings. I am told that many people hate mornings, but my Wife has a special little place in her heart burnt black and crisp with the hate of mornings. Just to clarify, Mornings are anytime after 2am but before when she wants to get up. I actually realized this some several years before we were married. I went to her house to pick her up for some school function and was witness to "the morning silence" for the first time. She does not speak, she glares at everything through sleepy eyes and grinds her teeth if a bird even thinks of singing. A nod means yes, no and shut the hell up. I love mornings, always have, A brand new day full of surprises! Have I mentioned that my wife also hates surprises? I have never been a big fan of sleep so the first person I see when I wake up is usually subjected to a dialogue on the dreams I had the night before just to warm up for the jokes of the day. My wife is not fond of this habit of mine.

In fact I remember a time, not so very long ago, when I found that my wife had already woken up and was sitting at the kitchen table eating a bowl of frosted flakes. This had never happened before, my wife up before me! I was so happy to see her that I immediately started telling her all abut the dreams of the night and plans for the day. She subjected me to the full power of the pissed off wife stare. (Those of you who have a wife have no doubt experienced this so I wont go into detail.) The stare was such a shock to my system that I stopped my spiel and asked my wife if she was OK? In the middle of the stare she said, through clenched teeth "Its just that I am not chit-chatty in the mornings" and went back to her sugar coated bliss. I went in search of dog, who is always glad to see me in the mornings.

I mention all of this now because recently I got a new alarm clock.

I usually wake up on my own "internal" alarm clock (bladder) around 4 and go to the gym. But if for some reason I sleep past that I have an alarm to wake me up for work at 5. I hate lighted alarm clocks, so when we found one that only lights up if you want it too I bought two. One for me, and one for the wife. As an added bonus for my wife it has a huge "snooze" button. She likes to "snooze" I think that the "snooze" button marks the beginning of the end of advanced civilisation as we know it, but I digress. The problem with this alarm clock is that the buttons to turn the alarm off are small. I have sausage fingers, I wear a size 14 ring, and I cant feel the tips of my fingers. So, to turn the alarm off if I am the least bit drowsy is quite the ordeal. This morning for example was not smooth. The alarm went off, so I picked it up and dropped it on my own head, then I couldn't find it in the comforter and when I did I had gotten turned around and pressed the wrong button, or no button at all, so the alarm kept going off, so I had to turn on the light so I could see but I flubbed the light switch (sausage fingers) and dropped the alarm clock back into the bed. At this point I felt my wife reach through the covers and with a precision born of fury snag the alarm clock. With one fluid motion she picked it up turned off the alarm and hit me on the head with it. It was awesome. I laughed (quietly) all the way to work.