The tale of Fast Eddie

He never smiled.
Well, he would show his teeth, but it was slightly awkward when he did. Like a Mockingbird whistling the refrain to "purple rain" or a parrot saying the first lines of "Mein Kampf", it was just off. We called him Fast Eddie because he wasn't.
Fast.
Not even a little teeny tiny bit.
A long time ago when I was working for my Dad painting some condos, we had to invent a new speed. We had this older guy working for us that moved at a speed somewhere between super slow motion and dead. We called it "KENtSPEED" and forever in my mind that is what it will be.
Fast Eddie moved just slightly faster then KENtSPEED, but a little slower then a glacier.
Always.
He even talked slow.
In what some might call "irony" but is actually just a happy coincidence, he drove his car really fast. He had a 1978 Trans Am with the Shaker hood, Edlebrock Carbs, Slam shifter and the Big 400 with 350 heads. It was in mint perfect condition.
It was Fast Eddies entire life and existence.
The only thing he ever talked about with any sort of animation, his eyes would glaze and he would stop stuttering. He Might even move his eyebrows up and down a little, to really emphasize a finer point of the "goddsdamned best vehicle that mankind has ever, or will ever see"
Fast Eddie and I got along pretty well, I only saw him one night a week on my mandatory weekly night-shift, he was on a permanent night shift. We tried working him during the day once, but he frightened the customers. So back to night shift he went.
Humans are generally complete asssholes. The guys on the night shift were no exception to this rule. They started making fast Eddie the joke.
I don't know exactly what they would do, probably just the normal stupid things that the cretinous drudges do to someone that is slightly off. Someone that never smiles. Someone whose only interest in life is an old Pontiac.
Whatever it was, it was mean. It changed Fast Eddie, slowly. It was not an instant thing, it happened over months. He started to get this crazed, haunted expression. He reminded me of a cartoon character that knows the ground could disappear at any moment. That any given second someone was going to yank the rug out from under him exposing the endless black pit.
He still did his job, the same as he had always done it. But when the Jackals damage something the buzzards start to circle.
The bosses took notice.
Not, of course, that the animals were biting at Fast Eddie, but that Fast Eddie was suddenly not their idea of an ideal employee.
Because to the Jackals and Buzzards, it not enough for you to do your job, never. You have to "fit in" as well. Run with the herd.
This was years before Columbine, years before the "bullying" bull shit that pervades the media. Even then though, in the halcyon years, I had this niggling fear that one day Fast Eddie was going to come into work with an AK-47 and kill everyone he could find.
It was the not-smiling.
He saw people, saw what they did, how they talked and interacted, how they made nice with one another. So he tried, even though it made no sense to him at all, he tried. He really did try, anyone with half an Iota of empathy, anyone with even an inkling of intelligence or imagination, would have seen it. He really did try.
Some people just don't fit in.
So one night I got to work to find Fast Eddies Trans Am wrapped around the last light pole in the parking lot. The drivers door was open and there was no sign of Fast Eddie.
I went in and no one knew, or would admit, to knowing what had happened. According to all of them Fast Eddie had just suddenly stood up, without a word, and just walked out.
I never did find out what the sons of bitches had done, But later on I had my own run in with their Boss. I still have dreams. happy dreams, about shooting him in the face with a 45lc.
As to fast Eddie?
I watched the surveillance video probably 20 times. He walks out of the building and gets into his car. After a minute the car rapidly accelerates and he drives it perfectly straight into the pole. No brakes, no swerve.
He had clearly made a choice and followed it through. After a few seconds he got out of the car and walked away.
He never claimed the car, or his final paycheck. I like to think that he found a job working on his Pontiacs.
I doubt I will ever know.
I started out to write this memory as a little slice of humorous life.
But that just would not have been fair.

Stranger things

Some of the conversations I have with people border on the absurd.
Scratch that, let me re-phrase, very few of the conversations I have with people could be considered normal.
Possibly because I do not fit into the "normal" spectrum, but I think that the universe has a sick sense of humor.
Either that or Karma-man hates my guts for stealing his weed in a previous life.
I had a female walk up to me at work the other day and throw a hand drawn floor map at me. Then she screamed (loudly) "I want my 48 feet back!"
I had no idea who she was or what the hell she was talking about. Fearing that she was having an episode of some sort I plastered the "concern" expression on my face and remained silent.
She plastered the "furious hate" expression on her face and stood staring at me with her arms folded.
I felt that she was ready to stand there all the live long day so I relented and said "Huh?"
She took this for the green light and was verbally off like a shot. After about a three minute rant, three minutes by my watch, which I kept glancing at, I got the gist.
She had given me a hand-drawn request for some small interior project she wanted done the week before, measured out with her very accurate paces, and I had the absolute gall! The nerve! The GOD-COMPLEX! To give her back a blueprint, computer generated from the stupid building plans that reduced her spacious 48 feet to a paltry 32.
I was confounded. Rendered speechless.
She took this as even more encouragement and started wailing about the unfairness of life, the stupid domination of men and their even dumber ability to pee wherever they feel and my idiotic reliance on such inane things as "BLUEPRINTS" "TAPE-MEASURES" "LEVELS AND LASERS" and other such malignant tools of Herr Satan.

I had recovered sufficiently by this point to try and reason with her by explaining that on the 4th floor, there really was only 32 feet between the walls in her area and That I would be pleased to walk over with her and show her. Using the tape measure that, since time immemorial, has given us dumb ass Americans the measure of feet, inches and so forth.
She actually threw her laptop bag on the ground and screamed at me that only if I gave her the 48 feet back which I had taken from her was she ever going to let this drop.
She turned on her heels and marched directly into the CEOs office, slamming the door behind her.
Not before I was able to hear the screamed, "I just want my 48 feet back....."
Stunned Silence.
I heard the click of a keyboard, the hum of a printer.
Then Laughter.
Not a roar of laughter, not a group, not even the dual chorus of two folks laughing at a good joke. 220 people within hearing distance and one guy was laughing.
One.
I turned to see who it was.
A Director, of another Division.
To my somewhat stunned expression, he laughed even harder.
Patted me on the back and said "your job really sucks"
yes.
Yes it really does.

Clout

I was asked the other day what my "clout" score was.
This surprised me. I had thought that the only ones that kept track of the clouting, were Santa with his naughty list at the north pole and St Pete and his list of bad shit people do.
I have not really kept track of the clouting in recent years. No notches in my belt or self mutilation, tattoos or stickers.
So I gave it a quick think.
Most recently I clouted a van. With my boot first and then my special fiberglass and steel reinforced clouting glove.
It was late, I was tired, and the damn juggalos inside the van threw a beer can (1/2 full, I am an optimist) at me. I guess they didn't know that with the kickstand down the motorcycle stands all by itself.
wonders shall never cease.
The wonder to me, even as I was busy trying to clout in the passenger door of the van, is that 6 very large humans of indiscriminate gender and/or sobriety would run from one guy. Not actually "run" per se, but reverse in their jugavan away from me whilst screaming like frenzied frolicking female ferrets.
Not actually "large" either. More like morbidly obese.
Toms clout score: 6 (5 for the door and one for the widow)
Juggalos clout score: 1/2. Had the beer can actually hit me I would have given them 1, had it hit my bike I would be writing this from jail.
I guess I could count clouting the inmates, I could probably even count the clouting of Dan with the golf cart.
How far back do they want this scoring to go?
Do you get a negative clout if you get clouted back?
If your Brother clouts you or you clout him, is that different from clouting strangers?
What about clouting with objects?
If I clout someone with, say, a baseball bat. Is that more or less points if I clout them with the handle I broke off a refrigerator?
Its confusing.
I answered by saying I wasn't sure, but probably somewhere in the low thousands.
To my answer I received an incredulous look.
and a mystifying reply. "That's impossible, Justin Beiber has the only perfect clout score , and its 100"
Bullshit says I. If that little androgynous nymph has ever clouted anything in his life I would eat garden snails. In fact, the only way he has a clout score at all is if you somehow get points for getting the shit kicked out of you in first grade for being a whiny little floppy haired troll.
Blank stare.
Then I saw his piggy little geek eyes light up.
"Its K-L-O-U-T. Its your on-line influence."
I said, no, its C-L-O-U-T, and it means "to hit, or strike."
He sniffed at me. Then started to go into a long explanation of this new "scoring " system that involved your followers, who you follow, what you like, blah blah blah blah. He droned on and on. He started to get supercilious and condescending at the end of his tirade.
So I smiled, and to demonstrate the reality of my argument.
I clouted him.
Tom: 1
Stupid Geek: -230
(he gets -1 for the clout, -1 for being silly and -228 for the squeaky little sound he made when he got clouted.)
Luckily for him, I was not wearing my special clouting gloves.

Rope

How can you not like a rope swing?
Tarzan inspires all of us. Admit it.
Not just the scantily clad Jane, but the swinging on vines.
Like many of us in this country, my first experience with a rope swing came at scout camp.
Scout camp. What an anachronistic group. You do realize that the Boy Scouts were started because a certain Sir Baden Powell thought that the youth of his day were too soft to serve their country in war?
Anywhen, that is neither here nor there.
The rope swing at our camp, went across a "river". Really it was more of a hyped up stream. In the late summer the snow-melt that filled the stream was long gone, leaving us a foot deep trickle to adventurously swing across.
As everyone knows, the rope swing is not so much about skill as it is about hand strength. Panic and fear of water greatly help in this endeavor, as does the natural hand strength found in teenage boys.
Swinging across was not really the problem, letting go was. So we had three of the older boys go first to catch the rest of us. One mighty swing and we would travel the vast 9 feet to the opposite bank.
Leaders went first, then the boys, with one leader left to catch the rope and hand it off the the next boy.
We had leaders, women leaders. Even at that age I found it odd that a group called the "boy" anything would have women leaders?
Ah, well.
All the leaders but one were across, and me. I loved the rope swing. So I stayed till last, pushing the other mewling brats in front of me so that I could have a go with a little run and jump plan I had been formulating.
A leader, lets call her... "Susan" (Her real name) was waiting with me. She was one of the Mom leaders, and she took the  whole "scout" thing real serious. She was all about "regulation" she absolutely refused to wear or do anything that was not in the handbook or the catalog. Even her uniform was immaculate. It was regulation every thing, her husband seemed rich to all of us. His kids always had the coolest stuff and she was always dressed exactly like she should be. She bought the entire uniform thing out of the BSA catalog. She even had the recommended knee high socks that begin where her regulation skirt ended. Pleated and pressed and tucked in.

I had a uniform shirt and a Rambo knife. That was good enough for me.

She terrified me for some reason. It could have been her voice, or maybe it was how close together her eyes were? My younger brother told me it was her fingernails. They were long and painted in breathtakingly garish colors. They were also as sharp as  razors. Whatever it was, she scared the hell right out of me. Her sons were punks. The youngest had bitten a chunk out of my little brothers leg years before and the oldest had gotten his ass stomped by a neighbor for hitting his fiat with a bottle rocket. Punks.
She was their mom, to the bone.

(JimmyJohns was Blue)

It was down to me and her, the Rope the river and a small horde of boys waiting on the other side.
Later this same day, she pulled me aside and held my head up so that our eyes met, she dug her fingernails into my jaw and leaned in real close, she whispered in my ear "If you ever, ever tell anyone! I will come into your bedroom at night and KILL you!"
It was not until a few years ago that I realized she sounded exactly like Christopher Walken.
So I reached for the rope, thinking she would be the last one across. Actually, I was hoping that she would walk the five feet to the bridge and just let me swing across alone. But the other Leader, lets call her "Shirley" (her real name) had swung across with a hoot and a lithe turn of the ankles. Shirley kicked ass. She wore jeans and a t-shirt, her regulations started and ended with "do exactly what I say", she wore moccasins and drove a 4WD Jeep Eagle.
I guess she had thrown down the gauntlet.
Susan grabbed the rope from my hands and went for it.
Kids today. They will never know the joy of living in a non-recorded life. Had this been now, all the little hipster scouts would have had their phones and DSLRs and GOPROs pointed directly at the action. You tube would have loved this one.
It would have gone viral.
She went in a downwards trajectory, and when the rope should have started to swoop her across to the other side, her fingers, or perhaps the nails, failed her.
She plummeted the 6 or 7 feet straight down with a girlish squeal.
The splash shot up as high as the banks on both sides. She hit knees first and flopped forward on her stomach.
I was the only one left on her south side.
The regulation scout skirt had flipped up on her back.
It took me a second or two to realize what I was staring at. The sound my mouth made when it snapped shut caused Susan, still on her hands and knees, to glance back at me. Realization, em-bareass-ment and sparkly hatred swept across her algae smeared face.
The catalog apparently, did not have a regulation underthing for women.

Cat from The Past

I wrote this on Face Book a couple of years ago. Fat-Jack is a cat. He is still Alive. Elsewhere in these pages you will read of his belief in his own immortality, fighting a Raccoon, Fighting Dogs, and generally spending his lives in living large.

This was the first thing I wrote about Him.

He vanished over a week ago. This itself is not unusual, it used to be a common occurrence before the Dog tried to eat him and tore his throat open. We had him snipped and stitched at the same time. He wandered a little after that, but it slowed to a trickle after he got jumped by a posse of Persians and Siamese, they kicked his ass. After that he has seemed to settle down, sleeping on the porch in the dog kennel he commandeered, eating tasty little morsels his obedient slaves (#1 and 2) brought to him, and generally getting fat and somnolent in his dotage. I say dotage because he is old for a tom-cat, 6 human years, which is the exact equivalent to; 6 cat years! I promise, there is not a feline calendar predicting the end of the world, that’s the Mayans, and they’re wrong. I digress, We picked up Wee Jack at my brothers house in Heber 6-7 years ago. His sister came with us. When they were 8 months old wee-jack was cat-napped by a real estate agent. We tracked her down and got him back. But not before she had claw protectors put on. Dang he felt silly, big tough tom-cat in acrylic nails. Poor little guy. But that’s all in the past, far away and long ago.
He vanished last week, leaving not a wrack behind. Remember, this is the cat that sleeps with one eye open. Because of a scar. He is so lazy that he has been mistaken for road-kill. Not just by me, the mailman tried to move his “body” out of the way once. Not my fault that “dead” cats don’t like being picked up by one hind leg and swung like a pendulum. It was not even a very bad bite, and Fat Jack seemed to like the pepper spray..
But this time, he was just gone. For the first day it was a mild annoyance, an empty kennel on the porch, odd but not really. By the third day, we were all a little worried. Well, the GIRLS were a little tiny bit worried. I was nonchalant. By the fifth day, the GIRLS were getting a bit weepy and I had started looking for his body on the side of the road. Monday, we did the round of the shelters, looking at all three of them that steal animals from this area. We pored over the DOA lists, hoping to not find him, but wanting a bit of closure for the kids. Yesterday we hit them all again, and added in a couple of known cat trappers and feral cat feeder types. 

No dice. 

Today, the 8th day since his vanishing act, we decided to give it one more shot. We hit The Humane Society, the County and the City shelter and the nearby vets. Not a hair or hint did we find. As we are coming back into the neighborhood, glum chums all. #1 starts up about this house. She just knows that Jack is there. I am disinclined to check, but you want to be a good dad right? So I hoof it up to the door and bang a few times. No answer, but I do notice an odd aroma, something like the lion house at the zoo. Just for the hell of it I yelled JACK! Instantly there was a loud caterwauling from the garage. It sounded like just one cat, but hey, my ears are broken so I hoofed it to the car and grabbed #1 whose ears work perfectly. The second she got out of the car she starts “I can hear jack!” etc. So then I get the Wife, whose ears also work perfectly. She saunters up to the window of the garage and starts calling “Jack” “Jack” before she could get to the third “J” this furry object comes flying out of the darkness of the garage and splats on the screen next to the wife’s face. Guess What? It’s himself, The Fat Jack. At this point we know that no one is answering, we also know that it’s Jack. His scars, especially the eye, are pretty distinctive. So what’s a guy to do? I smashed the window. Reached in and pulled out Jack. I put the screen back just in time to prevent the other 30 or so cats from pouring out to freedom. Yeah, that’s right. At least 30, all shapes and sizes. The Fat Jack had fallen victim to a cat hoarder. 

The dumb cat.
So, now we are home. Jack is bathed (holy snarking shit!) and wearing a fresh collar. He ate two cans of cat food, farted loudly and fell asleep on the dog. Who seems to be the happiest to see him.
I made an anonymous call to the fascist authorities; they informed me that they have already removed 20 plus cats from this garage. But they will come out tomorrow and look again. Wow, A cat hoarder. So The Fat Jack is safe once again. 

The saga of the fat Jack.

Fat Jack as a a wee un (he was just Jack then)

Fat Jack in his formative weeks ;-)

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Methdirection

I am not going to tell you how to make meth.

 Honestly, I do appreciate the thousands of hits I have been getting on my normal blog since posting "Methadventures" but really, seriously, I am not telling you exactly how to make it.

Ever.

I will tell you the story of "Torch" as an object lesson.

"Torch" aka Little Bill, Tiny Bitch, NoWanker and Ned, was one of the longest lasting inmates on my crew. He was in for involuntary Manslaughter, plus manufacture and distribution of a controlled substance.

He was a meth-cook. A chemist that graduated from some tech school and went straight into the business of making his own. 

Surprisingly to me, he started out making steroids. But, as he told me, "Those Guys are CRAZY!" so he switched to what he thought was a safer product.

Meth.

He was a font of information, chemical structures, balances, cellular level absorption and on and on. By education and inclination I am an Anthropologist (I know, worthless culture studies) so I really had no Idea what the hell he was talking about.

It seemed incredibly complex and dangerous for a little bit of money.

Thats what I thought until he told me how much he was making in a week. As much as I made in two years.

Oh, before I forget and ramble on, boring you to death, I should describe Torch.

He was skinny, and wasted looking. He had all of his own teeth and some hair. The rest of his face was melted. He tried to grow a beard to hide the ugly, but it came in all patchy and different colors and coarsness. He said that was from the skin grafts. His neck and chin looked like pitted black plastic. With a thin covering of elmers glue over it, making it a little shiny.

The process of making meth includes a lot of flammable steps, one step, I seem to remember reacts violently with oxygen. You know, Air.

He was cooking a batch with two of his friends and someone blundered. Both his friends, and the Lady that lived next door died. He was "Lucky" and just got his face melted off.

He got ten years for each of his buddies and double Life for his neighbor. He said she used to bring them cakes. 

He was resigned to his life. One of the very few inmates I ever met that accepted that he was being punished, and he felt he deserved it. That lady Haunted him every night. He didn't have much in the way of eyelids so sleeping was difficult for him.

One day I saw a piece of his face fall off.

Medical care for inmates, in spite of popular misconception, is neither good, nor free. They had to pay it back. And when you only make a dollar an hour and have to pay the prison 30% of that to cover your meals, skin grafts take a really long time to pay off.

So, a piece of his face fell off. About a 3 inch square piece. I was sickened and alarmed. Everything I knew about everything told me that this was a BAD thing.

Torch was unconcerned.

I approached him, warily. He was lightly rubbing the newly skinless section of his chin and grimacing a bit.

To my unspoken question he replied.

"Oh, its just the plastic working out of my skin. Anybody that cooks meth without the right gear gets it. Little deposits of plastic from the process get absorbed into your skin and the body pushes them out over time. I cooked for a long time"

And, as he scratched another few crunchy bits out of his skin. I left him to his contemplation of past trangressions.

So, I will never tell anyone how to make meth.

Ever

Methinformation

I know how to make meth.

Not from watching television or movies, not even from wiki. 

Its a strange story.

Years ago, I needed a job. Badly. It wasn't the money. I had a little legal dispute with the evil orange empire and they lost. So I was getting a paycheck every two weeks. However, I was going crazier. I have worked since I was 12, part time during school and full time plus during the summer. That's what happens when the Family business is landscaping and construction. You want to eat and not be naked, you work.

So sitting around doing laundry and watching the infant was making me nuts. Really. For three days I rolled dice and wrote down every number that came up to see if there was a predictable pattern.

(Incidentally, 5 is the least common number rolled while 7 and 9 share the title of "most rolled")

At the end of this time of random number prediction the wife took matters into her own hands and started applying me for jobs. One day, when the mental anguish has faded I will write a blog about the painful process of  a 30 year old white guy with a background in construction and money collecting for various semi-shady money lenders interviewing for jobs in the real world. With real humans. As a last resort she applied me to a job working for the Military, the last line of the job description made me laugh "MUST BE ABLE TO DEFEND ONESELF AND OTHERS FROM PHYSICAL ATTACK"

Yeah, right.

So I applied, interviewed and they overlooked my various eclectic skills (I can stick a knife or a 16 penny nail into anything 20 feet away for example) and hired me.

The first day on the job, my hair cut, my steel toed boots and canvas pants fitting quite nicely I reported to the "Chief" to meet my crew.

Federal inmates. All of them facing life and multiple life sentences. Murderers, Rapists, Drug Dealers, Unsuccessful high dollar item thieves, and soft pasty white squishy accountants.

My crew.

I asked if I got a gun, they handed me a shovel. I had a guard, he was supposed to shoot the crew if they tried to escape and or tried to kill someone. (me) He didn't seem to be to enthused about his job, cant say I blamed him. He was half my size and I was half the size of 1/2 the crew. The accountants never lasted more than a week or two. Some of those guys actually scared the hell out of me, some I felt bad for, most though. Were just tattooed bodies getting out in the sun to work away from their box. We talked, a lot. I learned really quickly that there are certain words used in the real world that have entirely different meanings in the box.

As a hint, NEVER call a 6 and 1/2 foot inmate a "punk" they take it badly. Luckily I had my shovel with me.

I got some really cool scars at that job. Got pushed into a roll of concertina wire and got to have the interesting experience of pulling myself off while grown men howled and wept with laughter at my predicament. Saw a little tiny dude knock a really big dude out cold for throwing a spider at him. He really didn't like spiders I guess. It was a job.

Oh, and I learned how to make gin, tattoo ink, tattoo guns and meth.

I've never put any of this knowledge into practice. Although I did think seriously about making the garbage gin for a Halloween party......

The thing about Meth. The thing that astonished me, really truly hurt my brain. Is the fact that it is poison. Really. Poison.

In the real world, the non "breaking bad" real world. Meth is made from the strangest concoctions of chemicals anyone has ever heard of.

Blue aquarium rocks. Drano. A specific brand of stainless steel cookie sheet. Certain paints. Certain permanent markers. A lawn fertilizer. A gopher poison.

Anything you could think of that would kill you to ingest.

Here it is, the thought that I thunk during all of this. 

Who?

Really. Who was the sick minded human that one day, playing in his shed, his lab, his bedroom? Who was the guy that saw evaporated crystals as the result of a botched lawn treatment gopher poison application and said.......

"DUDE! We could TOTALLY smoke that shit!"

Possibly this guy?