Mr. Self-Destruct.....Turkey Lurkey......nice comeback, Hudy

Ah, it's been an interesting few weeks since I last regaled you with my prose....

I quit my job as a 911 dispatcher. I gave absolutely no notice, no hints of warning, nothing.

Just gave 'em the word an hour before my shift was slated to start, then proceeded to stuff my fuckin' face at Golden Corral with the free veteran's meal.

Now I only have a part-time job and added about a pound of cholesterol to my bloodstream. Just call me Mr. Self-Destruct.

Guess I should begin taste testing different brands of Alpo.....figure out which one suits my palette the best. It may very well be all I can afford here soon.

Not to justify my insanity at quitting a government job, but I really couldn't pull it off anymore. Going stretches of 48 hours without sleep, watching my grades suffer and my writing decline, was just not my idea of good times.

I'm not proud enough to raise the white flag when it needs to go up....my body was the Alamo and it was being overrun, without a doubt.

So the fat is in the fire, as HST used to say. My career is my writing. Whether I'll be damned for it is yet to be seen.

Thanksgiving, or what passes for a family holiday, was Thursday. Just a few observations from the day that signals the retail world's apocalypse...

-There is always family drama. Either too many liquid spirits flow or someone is still jilted due to a perceived slight from the year prior.

-Every family has an uncle (or someone who might as well be an uncle) who still insists on wearing sweatpants and sporting a perm/mullet to dinner. Odds are they also listen to Scorpions and Accept on a MP3 player, not an IPod.

-All sorts of monstrosities are planned for the leftover turkey, from turkey a la king to turkey lurkey (fuck if I know what that is), turkey casserole, turkey mush, etc. This makes me feel so sorry for turkeys....they are the most mutated, bludgeoned poultry dish in the history of mankind.

-Everyone watches shitty football games.

-Some unbutton their pants when they shouldn't.

-You don't eat turkey again for a damnable year, once you have fought your way through eating the mutated turkey recipes.

I have to commend the Hudepohl Brewing Company outta Cincy. Purveyors of such fine bottled piss as Hudy Delight and Hudy 14-K, they have ventured from the 50's to the present with a new brew - Hudepohl Amber Lager.

I made it through a six-pack without choking my vomit back down. My tongue didn't shrivel and fall off, either.

And, truly, it was better than Killian's Irish Red.

Anyone who has an inkling of knowledge of Cincinnati beers, besides the heavenly Christian Moerlein, knows that the rest - Hudepohl, Burger, Little Kings, Schoenling - were nothing but the city's version of Steel Reserve.

Kerosene, arsenic and elephant piss.

So, it's nice to see Hudepohl steal a page from Dominoes and upgrade a little. In a town with a 2-9 football juggernaut, impending cop and firemen layoffs, a Jesus-savior streetcar and multi-million dollar stadium deficits, it's pleasing to see that something can be done fucking right.

Selah,
Spragoo

Seriously? What the fuck, Amish?

Heat surge heaters....fireless flame technology.....Amish built.

This is in a commercial at 4:51 a.m. The Amish are now peddling themselves out for the almighty dollar. This fecal pile of infomercial has people hanging stockings and making out in front of these abominations.

Seriously? A man and woman on the floor in front of a 3 ft tall box of heat for a romantic evening?

The commercial portrayed that insanity.

Maybe in a fucking trailer park that would happen.....a sweaty, dirty coupling of meth heads swigging Boone's farm and mating without protection.

Protection that should be mandatory for wear before any trailer park sex.

Anyway, I digress. First off, if I'm stooping to having my girl lay in front of the 2010 equivalent of a space heater, expect her to get turned on then wrestle with my engorged phallus, well, not only am I cheap and disgusting but deserve to be jailed for such.

It is kinda cool to see the beards sign off with their approval on the act of fornication, though. Prudish bastards have yet to give the thumbs up to brutal war, but at least they're down to fuck now.

The main point of my rant? When the Amish start selling their souls, how long until the sky falls, the earth opens and Pope Benedict XVI has Slayer played as hymnal music at the Easter Mass in Vatican City?

I'm all for progressive, industrial evolution. Making things better, improving, sculpting.

I also know that capitalism is a hungry beast that will be fed long after I'm ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

But when institutions begin selling out, institutions that have been forever unchanged against the erosion of decency, then that is disturbing.

And it makes me wonder....

Would big George W. have signed off on his face to be used on the dollar bill, had he known the of the murder, pillaging, rape and other soulless acts committed to gain that bill?

I'd like to think not. But when the Amish are standing at the corner, trolling for johns to buy their heaters, well....

We really don't know shit anymore.

Spragoo

Instrumental.....hear dem Bengals choking, meek and crappily.....heartbreaking pawn man

I'm in a musical mood, so we're kicking out the jams today by talking a little aural shop...

I've been listening to the soundtrack from the film "The Road" recently, a haunting compilation courtesy of one of music's greatest Australian troubadours, Nick Cave.

Actually, probably music's only Australian troubadour.

If you get the opportunity to, check it out. Even if you haven't seen the film (I haven't), the music portrays the desperation, glimmers of hope and ultimate agony of the story (I have read the book.)

Of course, such a disc got me thinking, as most music does, about how unappreciated and unnoticed instrumental compositions seem to be these days.

If it doesn't have fuck, pussy, ho, or bling in the song, or even words at all for that matter, than it simply doesn't exist to the carnivorous listeners of today.

They want their music like McDonald's — great tasting, quick and easy to consume.

Have you ever really researched what McDonald's makes their food with, though?

Yeah, you guessed it. Shit. Much like what's on the Billboard Top 40 today.

We resemble, philosophically, the alien race from "Independence Day."

Instead of devouring planets, we devour pop culture and its 29 different flavors, then excrete it in an unintelligible mess.

That aside, I decided to compose a "Top Five Best Instrumentals" list that I've been struck dumb by, time and time again. Compare it against yours, just for the hell of it.

I included no jazz, simply because jazz is a glorious realm unto its own.

Da top five....

1. "Orion" — Metallica
2. "God moving over the face of the waters" — Moby
3. "A Warm Place" — NIN
4. "Layla (Piano Exit)" — Derek and the Dominoes
5. "Green Onion" — Booker T and the MG's

Honorable Mentions: "Anesthesia (Pulling Teeth)" — Metallica, "Eruption", "1984" — Van Halen, "Ghosts I-IV" —the entire album by NIN, "Ride of the Valkyries" — Wagner

Alright, enough of me aping John Cusack.

Does anyone know how I can overdub the Bengal's fight song?

Last night's performance against the Steeler's ranked right up there with, well, the entire 43 year history of Bengals football in Cincy.

Only in this town would we have a dark horse Super Bowl contender — I'm wondering if those "experts" were on angel dust at the time they decided that — trip over their own dicks like this team has.

Pundits far better than I have already pummelled the Bengals ineptitude dead, folded the flag on the season and presented it graveside to Bengals fans.

"On behalf of the President of the Cincinnati Bengals and the players of a grateful team, may I present this flag as a token of appreciation for the honorable and faithful patronage you fans have rendered this organization."

"Taps" moans in the distance....and now I'm left to masturbation to fill my Sunday afternoons.

Speaking of broken hearts, the faux-reality/anthropological study TV show "Pawn Stars" is a parade of human disappointment.

And I laugh. Because I've been there and financial misery with its delusions of grand quick-fixes deserves the company of other begging, destitute paupers.

Just this morning, I watched a lunatic expect 25 grand for an 1860 Lincoln presidential campaign ribbon. And I thought this.

"Hey jackass, this isn't the baseball card of Honus Wagner."

It's only Abe Lincoln. Let's get realistic.

Much less to say, he limped home with said ribbon between his emasculated legs, having refused an offer of three thousand dollars.

After it was appraised, by an independent expert, for that very amount.

This twit has been added as another photo for the definition in Webster's of the word "dumbfuck."

What do people truly expect when dealing with the lecherous plankton of the business world known as pawn brokers?

I once was lost in a pawn shop, trying to rid myself of a nice Washburn acoustic guitar that I had dropped $500 on.

I was quickly found in that pawn shop when the greasy fuck offered me $30 for my $500 guitar.

I walked out of that shop smarter and with a gee-tar I'm still fiddling with to this day.

Hopefully these 5150's get straight and figure out another way to score quick green — no, not slinging dope — instead of whoring the detritus of their lives to heartbreaking pawn thugs...

Donate some plasma instead. $30 a pop, two times a week and track marks on your arms that give you instant street cred.

It can't be beat.

Better than trying to hawk that porcelain bedpan, decorated with the Courier and Ives pattern, that your gran-pappy shat it 70 years ago.

Too-da-loo,
Spragoo

Tribute

George "Sparky" Anderson died Thursday. If you have even a lay person's knowledge of baseball — or live in Cincinnati — you know the man.

Three overall World Series titles; a baseball hall of famer.

Yeah, you get the drift.

He died from complications due to dementia. A horrible malady that strikes the mind, rendering you unable to remember how to chew, swallow, move...

This tribute is not to George Anderson.

It is to a woman many of you do not know. A woman who is facing the very same situation as Anderson, in fact, was lying in her deathbed in a Columbus, Ohio hospital just last week.

Her esophagus punctured from swallowing a chicken bone she had forgotten about.

No IV or feeding tube was inserted for her. She was moved to the hospice unit of the hospital in order to be "made comfortable."

Doctors gave her no more than two weeks to live. Doctors, like weather forecasters, are right a vast majority of the time.

As of this writing, 79-year-old Mary Jane Teague (nee Johnson) sits in a Columbus nursing home. She has a soft food diet in order to prevent damaging her freshly healed esophagus.

Mary Jane has around the clock care now, something her family had been discussing for a while, yet now has been forced to provide.

She's in good spirits, given her travails of the previous weeks. She is maintaining her sense of humor and stubbornness, refusing to wave a white flag.

In fact, she had enough piss and vinegar left in her veins to tell a nurse she "doesn't have any vitals" when the nurse entered the room to check them.

Mary Jane can be one tough old bird.

I love her with every ounce of my soul.

My grandmother was a mysterious sort to me as a child. She was not overly friendly to my siblings and I.

She seemed more focused on the adults when we would visit, chatting with them while admonishing us for interrupting conversation or making noise.

In addition, she had absolutely no toys or items of intrigue in her home for children. The place was a museum — shelves of books on religion and war, collectible owls and WWII miniatures of my grandfather.

Instead of driving us away with her aloofness — making us distant and cold towards her — it gave us a drive to achieve adulthood.

To finally chat with Grandma and to be taken seriously.

We all longed to reach our 21st birthday, not to be able to legally drink in a bar but to finally toss back a Busch Light with Mary Jane.

Once you earned that mantle of adulthood, Mary Jane rewarded you with her unwavering support.

At times when my choice of joining the military was quite unpopular with family, she was in my corner.

When my choice of becoming a writer was questioned, she was in my corner.

And upon visiting, I'd be greeted with the biggest smile, a warm embrace and enough flattery to make me feel like the best thing since, well, the last time she had seen me.

Handwritten letters while I was in basic training.

The Ohio State Marching Band concerts the Sunday's before meeting Michigan in "The Game."

A Columbus Clipper minor league baseball game, made memorable by my intoxicated aunt actually getting into a shouting match with the first base umpire.

Teague family reunions in Toledo.

All memories that I wouldn't have had, if not for Mary Jane.

I stood at her side two Monday's ago, blubbering uncontrollably. Telling her she was the matriarch of our family; that she was the greatest grandmother a boy could have.

Tears moistened my shirt.

I told her that we all loved her and that she had done enough for us — it was now time to relax.

Reassured her that she had earned heaven through her faith and acts.

Without a doubt, I was saying my last goodbyes to her.

And she asked me, in a quiet rasp, what she had done to deserve this love.

I explained that it was from her just being herself.

Had I heeded my words, I would have known that she was going to pull herself up on the ring ropes and only be counted to eight.

She's still standing and still fighting, not ready to relinquish the title of Columbus's most fervent supporter of owls.

I felt like a heel for putting her in the grave early.

Yet I feel more blessed that I can stand in her corner, one time, for her.

Much like she did for me.

This is a tribute to Mary Jane Teague (nee Johnson).

Wife, sister, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother.

And one damned tough old bird.

We love you, Grandma.

Your beloved grandson,
Jim

Voter-5 is alive...the more things change, the more of the same lecherous bullshit....George Hamilton, new speaker of the house

Ah, no more fucking campaign commercials to worry about.

You know you are all thankful for that. It tires the human eyes when we are barraged with a torrent of politicians flagellating each other for two months straight on television.

Now we can peacefully go back to our "Dancing With The Stars." No more visions of Strickland dancing through our heads, eating babies, stealing jobs and having raunchy intercourse with illegals.

That's all Democrats do, right? Or so media leads us to believe.

Much like the old robot Johnny-5 from the film "Short Circuit", Voter-5 was alive last night in the case of Ohio Rep. Connie Pillich and Cincy Tea Party founder and porn aficionado Mike Wilson.

The street fight over the 28th District seat in Ohio's House of Representatives came down to a five vote difference. Five voters that felt Connie Pillich's proclivity for child labor was a lesser evil than Wilson's grand plan to change the state song to "I'm a Little Teapot."

Five votes. The size of a basketball team. And, surely, a result that neither candidate wanted to deal with.

Automatic recount, anyone?

Victory can't be celebrated, nor can defeat be mourned.

There will be absentee ballots still coming in, provisional ballots, messages in bottles, telegraphs, etc., etc., etc.

All needing to be counted.

Nothing will be decided for at least a week.

And the voters of Ohio's 28th district will have the political equivalent of blue balls.

For Pillich, her tenuous grip on what power a state rep has rides on this. Wilson, meanwhile, is looking at the incineration of his short political career if he loses.

He is a flavor of the month, and the Repub's probably consoled him, pumped him up with the fallback of the recount and surely questioned the integrity of the vote count.

Should he lose, however, his usefulness will be done and he will be tossed to the curb like a rotten bag of trash.

Thanks for the mid-term excitement, Mikey boy. Now step back and let us professional thieves get back to work, after we hijacked your grassroots uprising.

Well, the Repub's dominated the election. Doesn't really make a fucking bit of difference, does it?

Instead of cat burglars, we now have armed robbers in office.

But hey wasn't that a cool sticker we got for voting?

Looks like George Hamilton, er, ahem, I mean John (Boner) Boehner will be the next speaker of the house.

Perfect choice, actually. He is the epitome of Americana....

Blow-dried, fake-baked and cutthroat.

God shed His grace on thee.

Spragoo

Merci, beaucoup.....Buck McNeely....to fake or not to fake, that is the question

We're going with minty refreshment as the vibe of the piece today.

A huge hug and exultant "Merci beau coup" to those that picked up my dried-up carcass outta the gutter last week after my post of self-loathing....

I didn't ask, but yet I truly received.

The real measures of friendship. Extra credit points to the staff at The News Record.

All of you. Hooked me up with a righteous shot of esteem.

Now, with formalities aside, let's get it on....

How cliche is it to have the name of Buck McNeely while you host a show titled "The Outdoorsman"?

Christ, really?

I spotted this show on the boob tube about 2 a.m. one morning last week and immediately fired off a check as a charitable donation to an organization bent on assisting insomniacs.

Those poor souls don't need Buck McNeely in the wee hours regaling them with tales of the leopard-spotted, white-haired 7-toed sloth.

We want them to sleep, not toss themselves in front of cars.

No, I didn't watch it either. I exercised my freedom of a mandible thumb and navigated to "World of Jenks" on MTV.

Not much better.

Mr. Jenks, you tread no new ground, sir. Following around a rapper, a mixed-martial arts fighter and a professional poker player with a video camera is nothing that a slew of groupies has not already beaten dead and cold.

Credit goes to you, however, for having some mush-brained exec at MTV buy off on your formulaic, dusty idea. I eagerly await your bastardized, inbred show covering the Fantasy Factory.

MTV shit out its originality much like a bad night of Mexican food years ago.

Now they just fuck themselves in order to conceive new ideas.

"Real World" killed the video star.

Now on to sports....

My Bengals bring only one question to mind....

Are you ready for Cincinnati Cyclones hockey?

To fake or not to fake, that is what runs through my mind as we close our chat today.

An old high-school acquaintance recently added me as a Facebook friend. I did an Irish jig afterwords, for I had now added a new friend to my harem of 200-plus and counting.

Popularity can be such a heavy cross. (dripping severely here if you can't tell)

This aside, I noticed that said acquaintance had slimmed down quite significantly from our high-school days. Not that she was unattractive then, but she has only improved herself like a fine wine since.

I noticed a plethora of "Wow, you're so beautiful" or "Absolutely gorgeous" comments to her photos.....and it made me think.

Did we compliment her and adorn her in high school as we have now?

Did her spunky, effervescent personality earn her as much praise then as her looks do now?

Or are we, the peanut gallery of commentators, just plain fucking fake?

Did it take weight loss for us to notice a bright, shining human being?

I can only wonder if she had similar thoughts as she responded back to the comments with an air of humility and class; or did she ask the question of "Where were you 15 years ago with your flattery?"

I commented that she had aged well, much better than I had. I lobbed her a softball that complimented her and lessened my filthy lacquer of hypocrisy.

The acidic taste of that hypocrisy coats my tongue, for I never complimented her years before either.

Well, I received my just desserts.....karma can be a bitch.

She truly did age better than I have.

Spragoo

Where am I at?

If you've read my previous posts, I normally try to be biting, witty and humorous...

Not today. Today I'm melancholy personified. Where am I at in life?

I spent last night alone. Not a new concept for me, but for some reason it just got in the bones more that it normally does.

I'm 33 years old and alone. Without a clue of where I'm headed.

Shouldn't I have crossed this bridge 10 years ago? Shouldn't my life be set at this age, with a home, children, marriage and sterling career?

Instead I sat in my fortress of emotional solitude last night, wondering why I was spending a Thursday night solo and had nary a soul to call up.

Being a college student at 33 is a bitch. My colleagues at the paper have different lives, lives that still bubble with the anticipation of the future. Me? I've waved at the future as it passed me by about 15 years ago.

The cavernous divide between us is noticeable, if only in the responsibilities.

I long to be one of them, to be a part of them. Yet I'm not. I'm a grizzled veteran of life that has seen too much and experienced too much to be one with them.

My life would rain on their parade of anticipation.

The children portion of the American dream I've accomplished, though. Three wonderful, sparkling children (all from the same mother too!) that give me some drive to get through days.

Other than that, it's blah. I strive to attain degrees in journalism and communication, knowing damn well that I probably will not make shit with either one. Writing is a passion, but how long can writing sustain me and be my only partner in life's journey?

I work a job as a 911 dispatcher. Boy, that just makes people trip over their feet running to talk to me about my "cool as shit" career.

I won't even discuss my current living arrangements, with exception to say that I'm not homeless nor living in my car.

I was married at one time. In fact, would have been celebrating an anniversary the first week of November. Somewhere along the way that marriage bust through the guardrail, fell off the bridge and hit the river.

I'm still trying to get to the surface on that one. Every time my head pops above the water, the fucking current of regret, depression and sorrow drag me right back down.

Halfway to retirement in the US Army, I threw it into the garbage disposal and flipped the switch. Ground that fucker up. Nuked it. For some goddamn reason I wanted to start anew, figuring it would benefit my family and my relationship by lessening my stress.

Instead, about six months after the move, I'm whacked with a two-by-four and told "I don't love you anymore."

Now I twist in the wind. Oftentimes I go 48 hours without sleep, only so I can busy myself with two jobs, class and my kids to distract my mind from the burning heap my life has become.

I really don't know why in God's name I am writing this. To ruin your day? No. To seek your sympathy? No.

Maybe to just get some of this tapeworm of bitterness out of my body.

Even as I do this, though, I still hide even more hideous details as I transcribe this. Treacherous "friends", indiscretions, you fucking name it.

It's hard for me to grasp how ignorant and blind I was for so many years to problems, how gullible I was in believing, or why I thought I had the plan.

Even more foolish was the thought that love would sustain through everything. I have a journal given to me that has "love eternally" inscribed to me on the inside. From either the driver or passenger in the car wreck of my marriage; Her nor I have figured out our respective positions in the car yet.

When I read it now, I fucking laugh. Love and eternity are just words. Funny words.

Words that seem to mean nothing, other than affirming my stupidity in believing them.

Don't worry, friends. Sarcastic and jolly Me will be back on the blog soon enough. I've made it quite the habit of being able to easily toss on a skin of funny guy, entertain long enough to satisfy, then slink back to my hole.

A hole that never looks like it will be filled.

Salutations,
Jim