Blessing or Curse

Ooops. My failing memory again. Not remembering is quite often a good thing. I've discovered that the less I remember, the happier I generally am these days. Luckily, I've always had a tendency to forget bad things. It's always startling when a friend or family member will remind me of something really rather awful from my past. "Huh. Now that you mention it, that DID suck." More luck: avoidance is my friend, and my mind just skitters away from bad things.



Not remembering is quite often a bad thing. Pay those bills? Ooops, forgot about that. One time I forgot I took my car to work and hailed a taxi to get home. Husband was rather not amused by that one. I thought it was kind of funny.



I'd completely forgotten that I had this blog thingy. Now I've remembered. But I can't think of anything witty or intelligent to post, so you're going to have to suck it up and live with this meager offering. At least the little animal is cute.

All!! Star!! Wrestling!!

The news about Verne Gagne, Mr. Wrestling, doing a biel throw to a 90+ year old co-resident of his nursing home, just breaks my heart. Verne, in case you didn't know, has Alzheimers and must have thought he was back in the ring with Baron Von Roshke. The poor old geezer on the receiving end died, though not immediately. There is talk about charges being filed, but I'm quite sure that won't happen as Verne isn't in charge of his faculties. He apparently hasn't lost much in terms of physical prowess, however.

I grew up with All Star Wrestling, watching it with my grampa. Grampa always got quite the work out during those 1-hour matches on television. He'd sit in his rocking chair and go through the moves along with his favorites. Much grunting accompanied his feigned grappling holds and illegal punches as he watched his favorites: The Crusher and Verne Gagne. I got as much enjoyment watching grampa as I did watching the actual "wrastlin".

Grama generally made an appearance every 10 minutes or so. She'd come out of the kitchen with her butcher knife (I swear she used it for everything including making jello) and would brandish it at the television screen, shouting obscenities at the bad guys. She always had a few moves to exhibit too, between "Get that Russian bastard!" and "I'll slit his throat!".

Grampa took me to a real live wrestling match one time at Falls Senior High School. There it was, the actual ring, right in the gymnasium. Vince McMahon was just a young guy at the time, but already in full swing as a promoter. The Crusher and the Bruiser (who were maybe the same guy, they had the same build!) were the good guys. Dr. X pulled his usual cheating routine with a tire iron hidden (!) under the ring skirting. Why couldn't the referee hear us shouting about that?? Baron Von Rushke pulled out The Claw and was victorious in his bout.

Of course, Verne Gagne was the hero of the night with his Figure Four Leglock. That was his patented move and it was so good of his opponent to lay quite still while Verne applied it and then cranked up the pressure until submission. Cheers all around. I was hoarse by the time the night was over, and grampa damn near had a stroke.

I've tried to watch wrestling a few times recently, but it's too much glitz now and most of the wrestlers look like pansy-ass rock stars rather than the brawny beasts of my past. Nowadays I have to settle for MMA and toughman competitions, but it's not nearly as thrilling as old time wrasslin.

Rip off my ears, I have heard it all now.

Well, I'm on a roll. Now that I started noticing how many stupid phrases are overused ad nauseum by people trying to sound hip, innovative or smarter than they actually are, I can't stop. A few from this weekend that just irked me to no end, and most of which I realize I hear all the freaking time.

Hut! Hut! Hike! It's time to play SMASH MOUTH football!! (The Combine was this weekend. Hours and hours and hours of Combine. If your husband is anything like mine, you are well acquainted with the NFL network, and Mike and Mike are your TV boyfriends). These commentators should be smashed in the mouth for the overuse of this stupid phrase.

I HAVE A FULL PLATE. Really? Well, scoop some onto mine, I'm hungry. Is it impossible to say that you're just really busy?

Have you noticed that when someone wants to sell you a gigantic load of crap, they start spouting off about a PARADIGM SHIFT? I'm sorry, but I'm old and cranky. Did I mention old? That means that anything you come up with is not new, it's not a paradigm shift, it's just an overly complicated way of doing the same old shit.

AT THE END OF THE DAY. I wish it really was the end of the day. Then you would go home and shut up.

Have you ever noticed that only the most condescending people use the term EMPOWERMENT in relation to other groups of people? You cannot empower anyone unless you are a god. So shut up.

A movement we really have to keep an eye out for is this WELLNESS movement. These are the lifestyle police folks. They are (as usual) condescending, superior, snobby, do-gooder asses. In the olden days, we used to call them busybodies. It's really the busybody movement.

DOWNSIZING. Congratulations! You're fired!

It's kind of difficult to talk about something being NEXT GENERATION when the last generation was only 3 months ago. Shut up.

If anything is described to you as a SEAMLESS transition, you can bet the farm that it's going to definitely be a clusterfuck.

BROMANCE. What the hell. It's either your guy friend, or you are gay and don't know it. Figure it out, already.

STRATEGIC. Everything these days is strategic. A strategic move, a strategic partnership, a strategic transition to a collaborative effort toward empowerment. Really. Shut. Up.

My blood pressure is just about high enough now.

Catch-phrases and the stupid people who use them

I've just about had it with catch-phrases, euphemisms, and stupid ways of saying simple things. Why is it that the higher up the corporate ladder, the more difficult it becomes to just SAY THINGS NORMALLY?

There are so many to choose from, some old, some new. A few on my current and on-going hit list include:

SHARING. "I want to share something with you." Well you damn well better have a cookie in your pocket. Otherwise, shut up and go blather to someone else.

Here's an oldie but a goldie: CAREFRONTATION. Because I want to say something really rather rude to you, but I figure you're stupid so if I pretend I give a shit while I'm saying it, you might actually thank me when I finally shut up.

For that matter, CONFRONT. Why does everyone think they need to "confront" someone about everything. I guess just talking won't cut it.

OUTSIDE THE BOX. "Old Roy over there in corporate, man, he's really thinking outside the box". Anyone who uses this lame phrase should just shut up. Because it's not in the least innovative or creative.

Here's a new one: ONBOARD. People don't get hired anymore, did you realize this? Nope. They get onboarded. Can I get a ticket to Mexico during the onboarding process? No? Then shut up.

SUMMIT. It's a stupid, boring meeting. Shut up.

BEST PRACTICES. I'm beginning to think that perhaps 10% of the people who use this phrase might have a remote idea of what it actually means. The other 90% are talking about policies (good or bad), or are simply applying the phrase to whatever it is that THEY are doing. Shut up if you don't understand what it means.

ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT. You are a secretary. I was a secretary, a pretty good secretary at that. But I was smart enough to know that getting the new title of Administrative Assistant was in lieu of a damn pay increase.

STAYCATION. How sweet. You're too damn broke to leave town.

ACTION ITEMS. This used to be called the to-do list. Nice and simple, shit you have to do. We peons still have to-do lists; corporate has an action list.

PUSH BACK. Christ on a rope. You're just disagreeing! I'd suggest you duck if you start with any actual pushing around me.

WINDSHIELD TIME. What the hell? It's driving in your car. It's the time you spend driving to the stupid summits to hear about onboarding. Shut up.

ChaCha the Boston Terrier

The interwebz, it haz me.

Explain to me, please, why I feel actual emotion when I play PetPupz and "stroke" or "fuss" a puppy described as "completely unloved", that hasn't been "fed" and is at zero, and is "starving".

Life with Ron

Well I was up until after 2 a.m. (long story involving a friend in the hospital and his son who is staying with us for a few days as a result). Went to bed, finally fell asleep.

Back story: earlier in the evening, like right when I got home from work, I saw Three with his head OVER the electric tape, munching on some hay on the other side. Yes indeedy, his neck was right on the tape and obviously no shocking going on there. Husband came home right after and I said "you have to get that electric fixed tonight when you feed or the horses will be out". You all know where this is going. Husband went and fed horses (his turn) and I asked him if he got the electricity going over there and he said everything was "fine".

So at 4:30 a.m. (Ron gets up at 4 a.m. and had been in bed since 10 p.m., as opposed to ME, waiting for really, HIS friend's son to get here and then entertaining the young man with lively chat until 2 freaking o'clock in the morning), Ron is thumping up the stairs to the bedroom "Laurie! Laurie! The horses are out!". Me, groggy from sleep, "Wah?" Him: "ALL the horses are out".

We have the horses in 3 separate pastures/paddocks and so of course I'm imaging all 8 horses wandering. Mind you, husband was already up, but somehow or other I managed to
a) get on sweats and get downstairs
b) toss on the snowmobile suit and boots
c) get outside and call to the 3 (not 8 ) horses who were wandering around in the yard, less than 100 feet from being out on the county freaking highway in the pitch dark
d) get all three to follow me into the barn and put in stalls
e) get the remaining horse from the pasture into the barn (he hadn't left the paddock, the electric tape was on the ground and he wouldn't cross it) and
f) have a very lengthy swearing fit in the barn at the top of my lungs.

I have no idea where husband was as it was after all this (admittedly, I'm quick and it took about 10 minutes) that he showed up in the barn, "Are they all in?"

Now I'm wide awake but kind of shaky from adrenaline and pissed-offed-ness. Apparently by "fine" Ron meant that he had done nothing with that fence and had instead determined that said horses would simply not go through. It was just late this fall that all 4 of these horses were out during the day when we were at work and WERE on the highway and there were so many cops in our yard trying to get them back in that it looked like a meth bust here. That time husband had left the freaking gate open.

Seriously, I apparently have to feed the horses myself morning and night as husband is a dunce. We've had horses for years and years. Now I'll be up peering out the window multiple times each night thinking that I heard hoofbeats on the driveway. And obviously I'll have to get the electric going as husband just hung the tape back up in that area and thinks it's again, "fine".

Don't get me wrong, he's a good guy and all that but jesus on a rope. We've been married 30+ years and I'm telling you, I can't do a thing with him in this regard. Thank you for listening. My heart rate is nearly back to normal now.

(edit for angry typos)

Criminal Element(ary)

Everyone is worried about crime these days. But I'm here to tell you that the state of our criminal element is in sad decline. Here's the breakdown as I see it:

True criminal masterminds (1%)

Vicious, horrible people (5%)

Folks who murdered loved ones (5%)

White collar criminals...

embezzlers, scam artists, etc. (5%)

Drug dealers, including horticulturists (30%)

Girlfriends of the drug dealers who weren't dealing themselves, just living at the house and getting high, and couldn't give the DA any names to bail themselves out of a jam (10%)

People who got in bar fights or did other stupid shit while drunk, like attempting to drive a vehicle (25%)

Dummies who can't get off probation and are in jail for doing seemingly legal things (all the rest)

I've been working with the criminal element for years, and criminals ain't what they used to be. It used to be that if you were seeing a criminal, you damn well better hide your purse, keep your office door open, and tread lightly. Those days are gone. Most of the criminals we see today don't know how to open a can of soup. Not even the cans with the flip tops.

Oh, we still see the regular folks who ended up in prison. You know, the grama who started going to the casino and ended up embezzling $248,000 from the bank where she had worked as a teller for the past 30 years. The college kid who got in a drunken brawl while in a blackout, and woke up in jail charged with a hate crime and felony assault. Yeah, that last guy he smacked in the face was gay, even though our college kid wouldn't be able to pick his victim out of a line up consisting of said gay guy and 3 Weimaraners. The gal whose drunken husband was beating on her and then foolishly handed her a gun and said, "Just shoot me". And she did.

But believe me, the vast majority of offenders or inmates or criminals are no criminal masterminds. They are not very good at crime at all, that's why they're in prison. They decide to rob the neighborhood bank at 7:30 a.m., forgetting that it doesn't open until 8 a.m. So they leave their car in the lot and walk over to McDonald's, eat breakfast, and then walk back to the bank. They don't have masks and approach the teller, who used to babysit for them. They get about 1.5 blocks away before the local constable pulls them over with their "take": $176.

Most of the people in prison and jail on drug charges are just alcoholics and junkies. We all know that the War on Drugs doesn't scoop up a whole lot of the major dealers and distributors, that's why it's such big front-page news when they actually do get one of those guys. Of course now we have a new wave of prisoners sitting in stir for murder. Yeah, it's the junkie who yesterday went to Joe's house and Joe got him loaded on Fentanyl and anything else within reach. Today, Joe went to the junkie's house and scored the Fentanyl, but died of an overdose. Voila! Murder!!

The saddest group are the probation violators. These are the brainiacs who are back in the can because they did things that, had they just finished out those last 6 months of probation, would have been perfectly legal. They had a couple of beers (or a lot of beers). They didn't show up for a drug test. They signed a contract. They moved out of the county or out of the state. They didn't get a job. Had they just gone about their business and followed a few simple directions for another 90 or 180 days, they'd have been home free. But no.

They actually show up for a breathalyzer and blow .24. Seriously?? A few get all cagey and hightail it. They think they're like Al Capone, "on the lam". They imagine that the entire law enforcement community is frantically scouring the city, that their mug shots are posted far and wide. The truth of the matter is no one is looking for them at all. Oh, there's a warrant out, but no need to go looking for these rocket scientists. They are on the lam alright, at their girlfriend's place or in their childhood room at mommy's house. And they will always turn up again like a bad penny, saving law enforcement any hassle in terms of hunting them down.

Here's your criminals:

http://failblog.org/?s=jumping+jack

pwt

We might as well establish something right from the get-go. I'm basically poor white trash. There's no shame in that. It's not like I'm "White Trash".


"White Trash" encompasses that group of people who:

• make their mutt churn out litter after litter of spectacularly messed up mixed-breed pups, and then tries to pass them off as some bizarre designer pooch, worth hundreds and thousands of dollars.


• never even intend to pay their freaking bills, but are always the victim


• have a severe case of chronic work-avoidance syndrome


• are stupid - - not ignorant. Ignorant people, as we all know, can be edumacated. But as the saying goes, "you can't fix stupid".

On the other hand, poor white trash is more a state of mind. We're poor white trash, and damn proud of it. We tend to like animals at least as much if not more than most humans. We are sometimes crude, but not generally intentionally mean and vicious. We really don't care about keeping up appearances. We don't follow trends and fads. There's generally at least a partial picture of a dog or two in most every family photo. We sometimes make ignorant decisions or get in a bind, but get ourselves out of it and can actually learn from mistakes. We don't take hand-outs.

Case in point: how many of you have had something repossessed? C'mon, raise your hands. What? :::squinting, trying to see hands::::

We had a car repossessed. Yep, we got ourselves in a helluva financial situation, one so bad that an attorney said, "Cut your losses, file bankrupcy". But you know, poor white trash has that crazy pride. No bankrupcy, just years of paying for things we no longer owned, right down to the last penny. When the decent car was repo-ed, we bought the Bondo Wagon. I'm not really sure why we called it the Bondo Wagon, as there was no Bondo on it whatsoever. Just acres of rust and some rather neat accessories. We had the no-hands-access to the trunk: just reach right in there through one of the rust-holes and grab what you need. And who the heck needs all those gears? Since Bondo stalled out at anything less than 20 mph, we just learned to throw the car in neutral when slowing down, and hit the gas pedal. The holes in the floorboards eliminated the need for any of that fancy-schmancy air-conditioning. You get the point.

We drove that $50 car for about 18 months while digging out of the financial mess, and drove it with pride. Any poor white trash worth their salt realizes that you have to beat people to the punch: flaunt your "I'm a financial idiot" status before anyone gets a chance to start talking behind your back.

Fast forward about 20 years: we're still somewhat financial idiots, but the money situation is actually pretty good. We have a nice little rural spread, horses, dogs, cats and the kids are grown and out on their own, both with good work ethics (yay kids!). We're the King and Queen of "oh geez, it's good enough". The best is for someone who has too much time on their hands and wants to spend the time, money and effort for that perfection jazz. We laugh inappropriately at the most inopportune times, swear too much, have several bad habits between us which we have no intention of changing, watch reality television, have been known to order pay-per-view for professional wrestling extravaganzas, and put off today that which we could certainly do tomorrow or perhaps avoid altogether.

I just wanted to get that right out there for you, the poor white trash thing.

Embrace it.

Down Goes Your Meathouse

That was grama's favorite saying when she was really pissed. She was directly off the boat from Finland, having come to America on her own at age 18. She was a pistol. I never remember seeing grama without a large, well-used butcher knife in her hand. She liked to threaten to slit throats. This was said to the dog barking incessantly next door ("SHUT UP or I'll SLIT YOUR THROAT!") and to the drunken hockey player who foolishly knocked on her door at 3 a.m. demanding a glass of water. Believe me, he tottered off her stoop when she greeted him with the butcher knife and the throat-slitting threat. The threat was always effective as she had at hand the means to turn it into a promise.



She never threatened to slit my throat. But she often said, "You keep up that racket, and down goes your meathouse!". The exact point of her threat would reflect what it was that I was doing that was driving her over the edge, but the dire threat of my meathouse going down was what held me in check.



A couple of years after grama died, I asked my mom what the hell "down goes your meathouse" meant. I think I asked her because of course she used the same phrase. Imagine my chagrin upon discovering that ma had absolutely no idea what it meant. She used the phrase simply because of it's effectiveness.



I've been in a quandry over this since 1988.