Musta been something I ate..........

The icebergs were drifting by my picture window, the sunlight glinting off their blueish-white precipices in the perpetual Antarctic summer. My coffee cup slide down the table as the trailer rocked gently from side to side, and I grabbed it just in time to keep it from falling off. I contemplated taking some dramamine, while simultaneously wondering why I would have any and at the same time thinking it odd that home was floating in ice-cold waters South of the Equator. This wasn't really a problem until I noticed that I only had three cigarettes left in my last pack and I didn't see any seven-elevens floating along with me, or at least any that I could see from my dining room table. Even if there where, the prospect of jumping into frigid water and swimming over before hypothermia set in was not an attractive proposition. Yes, this was a fascinating dream, but it was getting old.

I was thinking it rather convenient, even in dream terms, that my electricity was still on, when one of Howie Mandel's beautiful models stepped out of the game show on the television and walked over to me, a pot of hot coffee in her hand. I eyeballed her up and down as she poured me a refill, thinking that cute miniskirt she was wearing would look better on the floor. She smiled, set down the pot, and took it off. It DID look better on the floor. I took a sip of the freshened coffee and thought that of course this would be the time you wake up, before the really good stuff happens, but I didn't.

Not that it mattered. Turned out on closer inspection that "Mandy" was actually more of a "Marvin", and I don't do drag queens. She, or he rather, gave an impertinent little snort, turned on his/ her high heels, and walked out the front door, a splash of salt wate announcing his/her departure.

Sure enough, as I walked up to close the door, I could see that my front porch, which I was so proud of building myself, had not accompanied the trailer. Well, damn, I thought to myself, that sucks, I put alot of work into that. Then I decided to go ahead and force an end to this rather odd dream and stepped out the door and into the ocean, figuring the shock would certainly awaken me so that I could get back to sleep and experience a more run-of-the-mill dream where the Deal or No Deal model would have been the real deal and the dream more productive.

No such luck.

The shock of the cold water drove the air from my lungs as I plunged below the surface, and I frantically clawed my way back to the surface, sputtering and yelling as every nerve ending in my body screamed "WHAT the FUCK did you just DO?!"
This was not going according to plan. I should have been awake in my nice warm bed, thinking what an odd dream this had been as I drifted off to sleep again. This was ANYthing but a nice warm bed; this was really ice-cold salt water and I had this nagging suspicion amongst all the other emotions running rampant in my brain that I could really be in trouble if I didn't make it back to my front door.

Then the killer whale appeared. Beneath me. Just rose up and there I was, sprawled across his back, hanging onto that dorsal fin for dear life as he took me for a spin around the trailer. This was getting much too fucking surreal for my tastes, but hey, it's not everyday you get to ride on an orca without paying admission to Sea World. As he swam over to my front door and I clambered off, I asked him, "So why didn't you just eat me?" I guess I was half expecting him to answer me, in perfectly fluent English no less, but he didn't, either because he couldn't or wouldn't. He just swam off towards a floating slab of ice in the distance hosting a pack of seals, whom I figured he wouldn't treat so charitably.

OK, fine, this was pretty interesting as dreams go, but I was more than willing to wake up right then and there, shivering as I was like a wet popsicle, but NOOOOOO, this puppy was persisting, so I made my way over to my wall thermostat and cranked it up to "make it warm, NOW". I suppose that the fact that a trailer heat pump is pretty much attached to the house neatly fit into my assumption that it had accompanied the house when it made it's way who-knows-how-or-why into the Antarctic Ocean. As the place began to warm up, I made my way into the bathroom, grabbed some towels, and started to dry off, staring into the mirror and instructing myself to wake the fuck up.

While I was attempting to alter my reality, which by now was seriously screwed up, A Chilean Coast Guard Cutter pulled up next to the trailer and offered me a tow. What I didn't know was that they meant to tow me over to one of their fishing factory ships, making me pay for the tow by dumping a load of freshly caught krill into my spare bedroom, which I couldn't actually spare, having converted it into a workshop for my wife. I knew if she came home to find her workshop smelling somewhat fishy, there would be hell to pay, that is, if the trailer was there for her to come home to. I was saved from this little bit of chicanery when an Iranian suicide navy rowboat came out of nowhere and sank the cutter, along with itself. I didn't even know Iran HAD a navy, much less a suicide one, which probably explains why they don't, usually.

After the fireworks had subsided and the sea around me was reduced to a salty slick full of Chilean and Iranian flotsam and jetsam, I fished a survivor out of the water and offered him some hot coffee. He politely declined, insisting he had to return to Punta Arenas to report the loss of the cutter to his government, in case they wanted to send an army ice-cream truck to join the Allied Coalition and extract some revenge on the Iranians by taunting them with dream-cicles in the desert. I wished him well and loaned him one of the bathtubs and a broom to make his way back in.

By now I was seriously in need of getting out of this insane dream and started searching for a Jerry Springer episode on the television, reasoning that anything Jerry Springer could come up with was always weirder than any dream I could have dreamt up. Unfortunately, the only station I could pick up this far south was the weather channel, which was showing how nice the weather was somewhere other than where I was presently located.

Then I tried reverse psychology, and accepted the reality of the situation, which promptly triggered a rebellious questioning of my circumstances, and I found myself wide awake. Leaping out of bed, I ran to the nearest window and was greeted with the scenery I was more accustomed to seeing from my trailer. That set off a severe case of depression, having hoped against hope that my reality was actually living in this trailer smack dab in the middle of Denali National Park in Alaska.

So I went back to bed and tried again.

All I got was Kermit the Frog singing "It's not easy being dreamed....."

Reruns aren't so bad.........

This was something I posted awhile back that either got overlooked entirely or was so bad that everybody politely remained mum. Call me deluded, but I thought it was rather.....shall I suggest......funny?




In the beginning, the universe was created, which was regarded by many to be a very bad move. Some believe it was created by a God, but this God was never pinned down for a proper interview, so the jury is still out on that one. However, it is an accepted fact in some circles that since the universe WAS created, it stands to reason that it will end, thus a whole cottage industry was created for the sole purpose of predicting when and how this will occur. One consortium of various species have banded together to open a restaurant, aptly named "The Restaurant at The End of The Universe", which will open somewhere, sometime, to host a gala event to witness this very phenomenon, and since this is the very last phenomenon worth noticing that will ever occur, the guest list is very exclusive and the cover charge quite outrageous. However, a rather chipper little crustacean that is considered a delicacy on the planet Vogon will be on the menu, which to some degree should negate any distress induced by this extreme example of price gouging, a practice which was copied from merchants on the Planet Earth, who tend to get rather more prosperous in the wake of natural disasters, with the possible exception of the destruction of same said planet, which had a similar detrimental effect on same said merchants.

It is very interesting to note, at least to those who pay attention to notes to begin with, that none of this would have come to anybody's attention had it not been for a book, the second in a series, actually, by a fiction writer by the name of Douglas Adams, also, by coincidence, a resident of Earth. He became somewhat famous for having described in painful detail the "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy", a very famous publication known the Universe over as a bad copy of a very good idea. How this descendant of a primate happened to have guessed, however unintentionally, that such an instrument even existed, is still hotly debated by slug-like creatures that inhabit the second layer of a very scummy pond on a planet somewhere in the Crab Nebula. The story, which is actually quite factual in just about every detail, was even made into what humans describe as a "movie", which didn't quite make it to syndication and broadcast on terrestrial television in order to be sent into deep space along with other interesting cultural artifacts as "Amos and Andy" and "Friends", before the planet was demolished to make way for a hyper-space bypass.

Hidden somewhere deeply in all this is a true tragedy, for just 37 seconds before the planet was destroyed, Mrs Beverly Brokesdale of 3795 Martin Luther King Avenue, Port Sanders, Idaho (which incidentally has no body of water to host a port to) discovered cold fusion while attempting to program her coffee maker with the aid of a badly translated Japanese to English operating manual. Careful study of this event, most experts who study just this sort of occurrence agree, would have finally brought peace and prosperity, as well as perfectly toasted bagels, to the beleaguered planet, after years of strife and repeated elections of Republican Presidents. This method of energy generation, in fact, was so far in advance of anything that any other civilization had so far managed, that a superior race of beings on the planet upchuck (not to be confused with the Earth slang for "vomit") designed an advanced computer expressly for the sole purpose of recreated the conditions that led up to this discovery. Part of the Matrix, strange as it may seem, that comprised this computer, included the eventual birth of the exact duplicates of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, whose fight for the supremacy of the personal computer market would result in the galaxies' most advanced operating system failing miserably to win market share against the galaxy's worst example of computer code ever written, strangely named "Windows", which indirectly would have something to do with an indian programmer being hired to translate Japanese owners manuals into English.


A common misconception is that this amazing computer was "Deep Thought", which was created for a similar, but entirely different project altogether. The computer we speak of here was cleverly disguised as a blueberry Imac, whose insides were actually designed to hold a 87 billion million quadrillion ziga-bite hard drive spinning at 789 million RPMs, a processor so fast it arrives at conclusions before they could possibly be computed, and a nifty little bottle opener, which oddly enough, only works on Heinekens. Originally, on the false assumption that an auditorium full of chimpanzees working double shifts were responsible for Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, twice that amount were bred to operate the keyboard, which they trashed within minutes. Then it was discovered that out of work American programmers, who had lost all their jobs to India, could be hired to do the job for half the cost, as long as they were supplied with pizza and at least one week of vacation at a Star Trek convention. Finding these programmers was the most complicated part of the process, considering no one was sure how and where these humans might be found now that their home planet had been vaporized, but it was assumed that at least a few might have been kidnapped by those infamous grey aliens with large heads and even larger eyes who enjoyed performing medical experiments on any one dumb enough to get talked into boarding an alien spaceship with promises of a lifetime of debauchery with blonde, large breasted women with the IQ's of toaster ovens. Just such a human was found on the planet Magrathea, where he was in the middle of a hunger strike to protest having been given a brunette, large breasted woman, instead of a blonde. The aliens were more than happy to part with him, as it turned out he rather enjoyed being experimented on, which ruined all the fun. One interesting offshoot of all of this is that having once worked for Microsoft, the programmer innocently incorporated the infamous browser known as Internet Explorer into the computer's matrix, which set off alarms all across the Galaxy, and almost resulted in the whole project being terminated.

The downside to all this was that Mr Douglas ended up dying, as humans have a bad habit of doing, and everybody lost interest in anything remotely having to do with his epiphany, such is the attention span of most inhabitants of the Universe, as measured in milliseconds on a very inaccurate device now out of favor with anyone wanting to time anything. Now, a very interesting thing happens when this many sentient beings lose interest in something simultaneously. The sudden disappearance of all that interest creates a sudden vacuum in the space-time continuum, which when it collapse in upon itself, causes such an upheaval all across all existence, that everything careens into everything else, which is a fairly close approximation of the end of the universe, which if you really want to get technical about it, IS the end of the universe, which incidentally occurred just five hours before the opening of the restaurant of the same name, which really pissed off those who had payed inordinate amounts of their planets' gross global product to attend the final show. However, it was finally agreed to amongst all the galaxy's philosophers just moments before the end that none of this would matter once there was no one around to worry about it. Which brings us back to this God character, who having been harassed for what seems an eternity to come clean on the big question, i.e. Life, the Universe, and Everything, finally agreed to an interview, which incidentally he did so only because he knew he would not have to carry through, and having such supreme foresight, took the advance and spent it all in one wild night at the Hard Rock Cafe in Miami Beach, without the slightest bit of guilt over the whole bloody affair, since in reality he had utterly nothing to do with the whole mess to begin with.

Now, I am sure that somewhere in your mind the question is being asked, "How in the hell could I possibly know all this, or even report it on it if it were true, if the universe has already ended? Well, I can answer that question, just let me program it into my Imac G-5, give me about 15 years, and you will have your answer. I will even set my processor to the "You're kidding me, right?" level just for you, because I like you, I really, really like you. All I know for sure is that it has something to do with relativity, like how time behaves when you are waiting for Friday to come along, which takes an eternity, and once it does, the next three days accelerate to 57 times the normal time it takes a weekend to pass, and you find yourself right back at work before you even left. So, if the Universe HAS already ended, that does not necessarily mean we are aware of it, since frankly ceasing to exist is not one of our priorities. Matter of fact, most of us will probably insist on finally getting our tax refund checks before we bother to acknowledge that there is no longer an IRS to send one from, which will have doomsday waiting impatiently in the wings so that it can do it's thing and put a stop to taxation altogether, which will please many people to no end, at least for as long as they are capable of being pleased about anything. So, let me get to work on this question so that I can answer it before it sinks in that doing so would be totally pointless, considering that I could spend such valuable time drinking Pina' Coladas and sunning myself on the septic mound instead.

Oh, and thanks for all the fish........



P.S. I would like to thank Mr. Adams for posthumously inspiring me to create this post, which was innocently created strictly for the purpose of producing some smiles in the wake of yesterday's sad atmosphere. I wish he was still with us.

Delivery

Yea, I know, I'm an irritating little shit most times, the kind of know-it-all that loves to read himself type and can't seem to shut off his fingers before they fall off. I know people just like me and yes, they irritate the hell out of me too. Bob bless us all. Then there are those who just-can't-seem to loosen up and let it fly, to release that pressure building up inside in a satisfying explosion of expletives and perhaps some totally made-up words in an effort to make a point. They are mild. Annoyingly mild. Prim, proper, and oh so measured. Well, OK, mild is fine. It works for them. Some of the best writers are extremely restrained, and they produce excellent writings. But do those writings reach out, grab you by the throat and say 'PAY ATTENTION! You NEED to THINK about THIS!" ? Hardly. You'll forget everything they said before the sun has set, or has risen, whatever.

I know, this sounds alot like a put down. It's not really. Even in this tightly knit bunch we have here in bloggerville, we have some gentle souls who just don't have it in them to froth at the mouth when the urge strikes. They gently make their points, and most often they are the equal of anything I could rant, rave, or outright have a seizure getting across. It's all a matter of style associated with personality, which is why I believe the way a person produces their blogs is a pretty good indicator of what kind of people they are demeanor wise. Take Buffalo, for instance. (Put that gun back, old buddy.....grin) There is a fair amount of passion packed within his delivery, yet it comes across smooth, mellow, more like a lethal stiletto slipping ever-so-delicately between your ribs than a 44 magnum hollow point plowing itself through your delicates. The man doesn't NEED a megaphone or white-hot fonts dipped in molten ink to get your attention. You have it by the first sentence.

So, there you have it. We each have our own personal delivery vehicles, and they each deliver the goods in their own unique way. Mine is written in such a diabolically sublime fashion (as in garbage truck with flowers and peace signs plastered all over it) that you really have to hold your nose to really enjoy it, but enjoy it you do, or you wouldn't be reading this post today, having fled in horror at the things I've done to the art of blogging that no educated, sophisticated, god of grammar could dare tolerate. Which actually works out pretty good for me, to tell the truth......it cuts down on the amount of comments I have to answer, and being the lazy SOB that I am, that is a Good thing........grin.

Hearts of Gold

To those of you virgins who are witnessing this Blog for the very first time, allow me to introduce myself. I am THE Michael. Short of hiring a private investigator or referencing my file at the NSA, CIA, or whatever entity deems it necessary to keep an eye on me, you will not know my true identity, for I have learned from the example of Salmon Rushdie that sometimes a small degree of anonymity is necessary when one dares speak his mind at the risk of offending those who seem to think that they are somehow so special that I nor anyone else should dare question their sacred opinions of themselves or what they hold to be God-given truth. If my lone voice in this wilderness is such poison to them, then may they die slowly and painfully of it, for I will not submit to silence while I draw a breath.

That little bit of "vitriol" out of the way, allow me to get to the major point of this post. As a proud proponent of the freedom of unfettered opinion, as well as the loud and sometimes grating nature of it practiced with reckless, if not well reasoned, abandon, I would beg your forbearance of my proclamation of my love for this forum of which I am a most humble and joyous participant, this medium of the modern age called the BLOG. Not since quill met papyrus has such a revolution in communications been visited upon us, all courtesy of the overwhelming need to reach out beyond ourselves and build a village free of the shackles of narrow minds that strive to sew our lips shut that they might have dominion over our very thoughts, that, and a few geeks good with code. Thanks to Blogger and other such portals, we now can venture out of our cultures and peek into others, those who despite skin color, latitude or longitude, religion, creed, economic status, or taste in music, are very much like us, in that they love life, seek love, comfort, purpose, and meaning. Most of them live in relatively free societies, some are hamstrung to some degree by the sensibilities of their cultures, while others risk their very lives and liberty to express their feelings. There are parents, grandparents, kids in college or middle school, convicts with special privileges, politicians and wanna-be legislators, teachers, firemen, pilots, and soldiers from many nations, all dipping their toes into these strange new waters and learning how to "swim" for the very first time. It's 1984 in reverse, the revenge of the nerd, the liberation of the timid, and the realm of the sublime and ridiculous all wrapped up in one wild party. You either won't do it, can't help but do it, or wish you could.

Within this vast new universe that arrived far faster than the spawn of the big bang, are cells, clusters, and whole virtual villages that never existed before, with diverse and eclectic characters that cannot be replicated exactly from one group to the next, for the total flavor of any one of these groups truly does exceed the sum of it's individual participants. When I painfully typed my first entry on my blog, I had no idea what lay before me, and felt I was destined to be a lone voice in the wilderness that no one else would care to hear, yet I was proven wrong as other voices responded, sharing the same fear of irrelevance, and reacting quite positively to the echos they heard. Along with our differences in opinions, experiences, socioeconomic situations, and geographic locations, we discovered our similarities, not always in lockstep, but still within the realm of familiarity, and it sounded good. It sounded GREAT!

I sat in awe and read the wellspring from the heart of a crusty old Aussie, shy of vocabulary, rich of wit, and wealthy beyond compare with a love of comradeship, express his desire that all those things we pined for ourselves be granted, courtesy of his gratitude for being so welcomed to our far flung commune of free spirits. Of all the remarkable authorship I have been witness to since I joined the cult of Blog, this moved me perhaps more than any I have enjoyed. His one disjointed and heartfelt post I think spoke well of all of us, the kind of people we are, with all our faults, all our delusions, all our aspirations and offerings of sage advice, and I am proud beyond measure to have met, albeit in such a far removed and roundabout way, a man I know as Whiteshake. His bite may be lethal, but his heart is solid gold.

Respite

It's a quiet night here at Pendragon Hold, my little acre of sand and oak trees. I've just gotten home, nuked me a TV dinner, let out the dog, and perused my e-mail. "Prairie Home Companion" is on the radio, and most blogs haven't been updated, probably the dreaded weekend effect. So, while I wait around before heading back out to retrieve the wife from her job, I'll whip out a post, and maybe play a video game, since television is already in reruns or seasonal pap, and I finished off my Dan Brown novel, which wasn't bad.

I had to replace another tire yesterday that a bad alignment ate right down to the belts before I had the cash to replace it. Now I have two new tires up front, and two in the back that are on their last legs. I'll have to change my oil as well, as it is way overdue. I wish I could just feed this beast grass and hay like I do the goats....sigh.

I'm starting to adjust to sleeping on this new bed I put together. I seem to have solved the problem of staying on my side thru the night by hugging onto a king-sized pillow stuffed between my legs; it keeps me pretty much in one position, the result being that I haven't awakened lately in searing pain. I'm still hoping to get that memory foam overlay to complete the transition from the old waterbed.

I've been giving hell to a very conservative-minded commenter lately, but I must say I do admire his staying power and his decorum in the heat of disagreement. Despite his right-leaning philosophy, he has yet to suggest that I do not have the right to voice the opinions that I do, and for that he has so far earned my respect. In return I will not suggest that his world view is flat wrong, and I will defend with vigor his right to continue to think the way he does even in the face of what I would consider a narrow mindset. Such considerations are what made this country great to begin with.

The lame duck congress performed their last hurrah the way one would expect them to, catering to special interests and insuring that rich people stay that way. Like the scorpion said to the frog, "I can't help it, it's in my nature...."

I've been watching alot of Lou Dobbs on CNN and I swear that man is the perfect blend of liberal sensibility, conservative pragmatism, and libertarian zeal. If ever a public figure came close to the kind of man I think understands what this country is all about and what most of it's people think, it's him. He ought to run for President, but then again, to do so would probably ruin him. It's amazing what politics can do to even the best amongst us. It's a thought, at least.

I would be so happy to withdraw into the womb of my humble abode and ignore the world closing in all around me. It would be nice to stick my head in the sand (and I gots plenty of THAT) and just wish it would all go away, but it isn't going to. I sometimes envy the Wife's ability to focus simply on the narrow confines of our precarious existence and not waste mental energy on the woes of the world at large. I guess that's what she depends on me to take care of.......laugh. Bob knows I have this strange capacity to file the worst of everything in the background and deal with what has to be dealt with as it's coming at me. Practice, practice, practice.

Well, that's it for tonight here at Pendragon Hold, my humble little abode on the edge of the great big world, where all the inhabitants are royalty, the livestock lively, and the Queen a witch with fine taste in Kings..........grin.