End of June

“Here I am.”

I've already mentioned that this is the second time that I've read the Catfish Tale, but this time it seemed more powerful; maybe the chapter format had something to do with it.  When I read the final three words I got a little frisson, an unexpected jolt that I can't explain.  I wouldn't put it up there with "Call me Ishmael" but it's an excellent choice of words.  I look forward to further stories.  Mr. Google had a few links to articles about the House of Chin, even including a photo of George Chin himself.

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The Hanging Gardens of Uncle Ken continue to fascinate me, cramming a lot of greenery in a very limited space. but what are all those plastic jugs for?  More pics please, I'm trying to figure out the balcony's relationship to the river and the streets below.

Uncle Ken should make it clear that he isn't really feeding birds lest the wrath of the condo board smite him sorely.  It is a fiction, an expression of artistic license, right?  You never know who reads these things.

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It's a pleasure to see new signs on the doors of local stores and eateries, "No mask required if fully vaccinated."  It could be my imagination but folks seem to be a bit friendlier than they were pre-pandemic.

There is something different, though, and I don't know if it's part of a new trend.  I was checking out the feature listings at a local movie house, the Davis Theater, and their website mentions that they are "cash free."  Say what?  No cash?  I don't know how this is handled, strictly credit cards, smart phone apps, or what but I think it sucks.  I don't want my fondness for Raisinets to be part of a database.

 

 

uncle ken's garden

 My poblano pepper was doing exceptionally well with one pepper almost three inches long and another maybe one, and a dozen flowers. But wait didn't it have those flowers a week ago and how come none of them had become tiny peppers?  A further inspection revealed that they were covered with some mysterious dust and looked wilted and kind of eaten away.

Aphids!  A quick ride on the googlemobile and I was filling a spray bottle with dish soap and water and spraying it.  Nothing dramatically changed but a little later the white dust had turned brown.  Looked like it had worked and I returned to the computer for further reading.  What happens is the soap dissolves the membranes of their cell walls.  You know me guys, I am a peacenik and a big proponent of kumbaya, but I have to say that grisly news brought a smile to my face,  That's what they get for invading my garden.

I have maybe half a dozen sunflowers who are doing pretty well. Sunflowers are very devout growing straight up in an unbranching stalk thrusting themselves at the sun.  They are vulnerable to the high winds 21 stories above the ground though.  I woke up one morning to see one bent back and applied a splint to it like I did last year to one and it is similarly effective.  

Most of them have morning glories twining around them which does not seem to hurt them at all, and I believe it strengthens their stalks and when the purple flowers bloom below the big yellow flowers it is a beauteous sight.  

After a slow start, they like really hot weather, they are doing quite well twining up the sunflowers and the railings, and the pepper plants.  I've had kind of a Darwinian attitude towards the battle between the morning glories and the hot peppers, but the morning glories have always won, so this year I am peeling them off the pepper plants to give them a chance.  We'll see.

The tomato plants are bright with yellow flowers and there are some tiny green globes, but they are not growing as fast as I would like and it is almost the 4th of July.

In the winter I had a rowdy gang of sparrows who drove away my more genteel finches, but they seem to have moved along and now the finches are back.  Also pigeons.  Mom and Pop and I am assuming Junior.  

You are not supposed to feed birds on your balcony and you can be fined.  I didn't worry much about the finches because they are pleasant songbirds, but I know a lot of people hate pigeons.  Myself I like them fine, I see Tyrannosaurus Rex in their bobbing bodies and blood red eyes.  I don't feed them every day to discourage getting a whole pack of them on my railing.

So far it is just these three and they are quite tame.  I can approach them to where I can almost reach out and touch them before they flutter a couple feet down the railing all the while watching me.  I shake the bottle that holds the bird seed and they look at me attentively, and when I pour some into a little bowl and sit down in my lawn chair they look around nervously and then flutter to the floor and eat from the bowl as I read my newspaper/

Everything is hunky dory in the garden.  So far.

 

lit crit

 There is a slapdash aspect to the ending.  I felt like this was as far as it far as it was going to go and it was time to wrap it up.  Gina had been slowly moving towards itch and I thought I might as well give her to him.  I should have gone back and built up the scenes where Catfish walks past Claudette's door a few times in the course of the story.  She was his first lay in Champaign and he treated her badly and though he was not much of a guy for guilt you could tell he felt bad about it.  I kind of liked her tragic story, would-be poet living in a drab apartment and having to walk all those miles in her waitress shoes.  I feel like maybe I could write a story from her point of view.

When you write a story after awhile a peculiar thing starts to happen and that is that the characters take on a life of their own and do things that you did not intend them to do when you first put them in.  I don't think Ron was ever a good guy.  Probably why he punched out Big Red was that he didn't like the guy in the first place, and then it fed his ego to take Catfish under his wing, but he was always like a bad influence on Catfish, like the devil standing on Catfish's shoulder.  He left Catfish at the Club 45 because he didn't really care what happened to him.

There was a guy who Catfish was modeled after, kind of a country guy among us University snob types who had a lot of charisma and had considerable luck with the ladies, and did work at the Big Job in Clinton but was never on our softball team,

There was a singing waitress at the House of Chin, an opera student she went down the stairs to the kitchen full of Chinamen singing the song of the Valkyries, she hung around the bar a bit and was well liked but was never a part of our activities.

Itch is modeled a little after me with his pretensions and thinking he is always so goddamn smart, but I made him more athletic than I ever was.

I have a friend who was a writer and actually had a book published and we used to email each other, send our writings to each other and get opinions because it is really hard to get anybody, even your good friends, to read what you have written.  A painting all you have to do is look at it ten seconds and say "Yeah that looks pretty good," but a story you have to sit down and read.  He started writing Catfish and then I started doing my own version because I thought he was getting a little stodgy.  

Well we wanted to tell our story about the gang at Chin's.  I think most people have a period of their life when they were young and hung in a crowd and seemed to have the most fantastic adventures that were distinct to them, but later when they look around, they see that many of their later friends were also part of groups of young people who had fantastic adventures.  

Thanks very much for the comments.  I have other stories and I think I will keep posting them here because it is so good to have an audience.  The next one will be another story about the House of Chin.   

A Good Ending

It was a good ending, kind of a cliff hanger, but not really.  We can assume that Catfish got back together with Claudette and they lived happily ever after, but we don't know that for an absolute fact, which leaves the option open for a sequel if the author ever so desires.  Either way, it was a good place to cut it off because anything that happens after this would be a whole nother story.

I guess Gina wasn't such a bad girl after all.  She was no more manipulative than the average female when her nesting instinct kicks in.  Itch would have been her first choice, but she would have settled for Catfish if that had been her only option.  I am reminded of a line from the old TV show "Everybody Loves Raymond".   Debra tells Ray that she had been planning their wedding for 15 years.  Ray says that she didn't even know him 15 years before they married.  Debra tells Ray that he was the last piece of the puzzle.

Turns out that Ron was indeed the bad guy, but that doesn't explain why he was so kind to Catfish, except for the time he left him stranded at the Club 45, which could have been a genuine misunderstanding.  Maybe Ron was just one of those people who feel the need to dominate everyone around them one way or another.  By taking Catfish under his wing he hoped to establish a mentor-protégé relationship, insuring that Ron would always be the dominant partner.  Either that or, as Uncle Ken maintains, there is some good in the worst people and some bad in the best people.   

On a somewhat related topic:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/as-pandemic-eases-fatal-gender-violence-worsens-in-europe/ar-AALw4jB?rt=0&ocid=Win10NewsApp&referrerID=InAppShare

catfish 40

 heeding calls from residents despite no evidence of any impropriety in the county's results.

 No evidence of widespread election fraud has been found in the U.S., despite calls from  Trump and some supporters. State and federal judges have dismissed more than 50 lawsuits over election results.

These statements are ever present on CNN and the lamestream media whenever they discuss that audit nonsense, kind of like that under God phrase in the pledge.

I think it was their absence in that film clip that first led me to think that it was produced by Sinclair.  And whatever happened with that twerking thing?  I just googled it, and nothing since it broke on the 8th.  Maybe those Freedom Fighters should be looking into that.

I know nothing about chimneys, certainly nothing about dampers. nothing really about flues, except that they have something to do with chimneys, but then neither do that rental agent or Catfish.  I have other stories which I may be posting.  So exciting to have actual readers.

And here it is:

It wasn’t all that bad.  Itch didn’t lose any teeth or anything.  He had a shiner, a big one for a couple weeks afterwards, and a fat lip. George told him he could take a couple weeks off, until he looked more presentable, even offered to pay him for it which was not like George sharp businessman that he was, watching every penny.  But I have to say that he was tickled about his team winning the championship.  It was like he had always been an outsider, the Chinaman.  Sure he had this very successful restaurant and had a seat on the Campus Town Board of Merchants (though he never went to their meetings, “Buncha azoles,” the way he always described them and I figure probably accurately), but it was a Chinese restaurant after all, the kind of thing you would expect a Chinaman to run.  But to have the champion softball team, well that was something else. He even had it added to the menu, a little typewritten piece of paper stuck between the menu and the plastic cover, “Home of the Tuesday night softball league champs.”

 He was tickled I tell you, and that was probably why he offered Itch those couple weeks off.  But Itch wouldn’t take it, didn’t mind showing up behind the bar with that shiner and fat lip, was proud of it if you ask me.  “I knew I was going to get my ass kicked,” he’d say, kind of like he was making a little joke on himself, but then he’d add, “but I had to do it.”  And he’d say that last part dead serious, like in a cowboy movie.

 And you have to wonder, I wondered, why did he have to do it?  What was the point exactly?  Well he had to be a man, and you have to admire that, and I did.

 But you know what did it was that Gina crack, that thing about my breaking my back and him having a clear shot at Gina.  That’s what made him do it, walk out into the valley, so to speak.  Up to that point, you know he could tell that this whole argument was stupid, that Ron was baiting him and he was kind of playing along waiting for the chance to slide in some barb, but as soon as Ron mentioned Gina he was up like a ramrod,  His honor, his Lady, like in some knight movie.

 And Gina knew it rightaway.  I could tell even really drunk, laying back on the couch, my arm around her, she stiffened right up.  There was a crowd following Itch out, basically telling him not to do this, and I was with them, trying to talk reason into him, but she stayed behind, sat on the couch staring straight ahead.

 But she was there quick when it was done, cradling his bloody head in her lap, and I’m ashamed to say that what I was thinking was, Oh shit.

 Well that was the end of that.  Nothing happened real sudden, but she didn’t stay over that night, she never stayed over again.  Maybe a week later we had the long talk, mostly her doing the talking, big salty tears on her part, me I licked them up at one point, thinking well maybe, who knows, maybe we can get something out of this tender moment. Wasn’t going to happen.  Just as well I guess.

 And I had the talk with Itch.  A short one, out on the ballfield, playing catch, I don’t know why, just a late summer day, still warm but the sun setting sooner than you would expect it to.  “You like her?” I asked because I felt I was expected to, and he said he did, and so what are you going to do?

 Ron, you know, they put him in cuffs.  Tammy.  Apparently he’d kicked their unborn baby to death, and she’d fled up north to Michigan and they’d finally come down and arrested him.

 I didn’t last long at the Big Job once Ron was gone, lost my choice job and was sent back to the dirt patrol on Big Red’s team and just quit.

 So that was it.  I had nothing left.

 So where do you go when you have nowhere else to go, where Itch said you go so long ago, home where they have to take you in.  Home to the Seven Eleven I suppose where with the benefit of the knowledge I’d gained, I’d know to keep those candy bars spanking clean.  How much effort does it take really to wipe that damp rag across their happy faces, what was the guy paying me for anyway?

 I had everything packed up at Catfish Estates, not that much it turned out because a lot of it was wrecked and all, and I was just walking the streets one last time.  I crossed in front of Carmen’s and past that, the crumby little house where Claudette had the upstairs apartment.  I stepped across the mossy flagstones and to the doorbell.

 There she was, Claudette Bronski.  Splotched and faded and crumpled, but written carefully in that nice handwriting that she had, she was a little proud of that I remembered, her handwriting,

 “If you can’t write well, you might as well write pretty,” she’d said one night, kind of down on herself after she’d gotten some rejection notice.

 “Well sure,” I’d said, just kind of being the good boyfriend, coming up behind her.  She had this little writing desk, that’s what she called it, dumb little table with fancy legs, where she composed her poetry, and I’d massaged her shoulders a little like I knew she wanted me to.  But I was just thinking of making her feel nice, calming her down a little while my eyes were fixed on the little flagstone walk to the sidewalk, down the sidewalk, down the street, and down to the Great Wall.

 But I rang the bell, pushed the button, just to, I don’t know, just because I was leaving, just to say good-bye I guess, nothing wrong with that.  Nothing.  I was about to walk on when I heard some motion behind the door, and there she was.  She didn’t look so hot, blinking in the light, holding unto the doorjamb, like for balance.

 But then she saw who it was and she gave me a big smile. “Catfish?” she wanted to know, and I answered “Here I am.”

More Details About the Audit

It's not unusual for our newspaper to run a day or two late.  They make up the paper at night, then send it all the way up to Sault Ste. Marie to get printed, then ship the printed product back to Cheboygan.  They used to print it right here in town, but went to this system after Gannet bought the outfit that had previously bought the Tribune from somebody else who had originally bought it from the family who had owned it for over 50 years.  They had a perfectly good printing press behind their office on Main Street, but claimed they could save money this way.  

Cheboygan County board will seek additional audit of election results (cheboygannews.com)

Will the next installment of Catfish indeed be the last?  Too bad, I have become accustomed to anticipating each new chapter of the continuing saga.  Oh Well, I guess nothing lasts forever.  By the way, it occurred to me that Catfish might not have had so much trouble with his fireplace if he had opened the chimney damper, which is an honest mistake that can happen to anybody, or so I have been told.

whoever heard of Rin Aluminum Aluminum?

 For some reason I find the term butter burger very appealing, but logically what's so great about a burger with butter in or on it?  Still if I was steps away from a Culver I reckon I would step inside and ask for a butter burger please, a butter cheeseburger seems like some kind of overkill.  And if there happened to be a hot dog joint across the street, well I'd be tempted to cross it.

Tin has an atomic number of 118, whereas aluminum weighs in at a svelte 17.  That's what made it so popular in airplanes, which kind of made it the metal of the future back in the 50's.  Well alrighty then, but I will continue to call cans and foils and the hats made out if it, tin.  Aluminum, hard to say and kind of high highfalutin if you ask me, I will stick with humble tin.

Not much to say today.  I just finished editing the end of Catfish and will present that tomorrow so that the dawgs can contemplate it over the weekend. 

According to Wiki

 Aluminum foil replaced tin foil shortly after World War II.

Tin foil - Wikipedia

Tin cans have never been made out of pure tin, they have always been made out of steel that has been coated with tin to prevent corrosion.

Steel and tin cans - Wikipedia

Last but not least, the tin foil hat "can be traced back in a very weird and prescient short story written in 1927 by Julian Huxley, brother of the better-known author Aldous and half-brother to Nobel laureate Andrew"^[3] titled The Tissue-Culture King, wherein the main character uses a metal hat to prevent being mind controlled by the villain scientist.^[4][5] "

Tin foil hat - Wikipedia

Foiled again

A good observation by Uncle Ken regarding the "conversational black hole," and I'm not surprised it's often about food, especially in polite, mixed company.  Even if you don't do much cooking yourself you've seen plenty of ads and commercials and have certainly eaten a lot; your opinions have merit.

The discussions can be fun and everybody can throw in their two cents.  For example, the highly regarded burger chain Culver's just opened a couple of blocks from me and I gave it a shot, just to check it out.  Not impressed, too pricey in my opinion for what you get but the chocolate malt was very good.  Maybe it's too new and has some kinks to work out.

But I don't think that sports is the universal language of men, although it is often a good starting point,  It has been my experience that guys will yammer just about anything, as long as touchy subjects like feelings and emotions don't come up.  Context is important and depending on the group you are with you could be discussing cars, gadgets, tools, travel, toys, trivia, tits, topics that begin with the letter 't,' you get the idea.  I've heard there are even some guys that like to discuss philosophy and politics.  Imagine that.

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As I pondered the proliferation of tin foil haberdashery, I realized that I don't think I've ever seen any actual tin foil, it's all been aluminum foil.  No rabbit holes tonight, but I wonder when Big Aluminum took over.  And were tin cans ever made of tin, or just tin-coated steel?  Toothpaste used to come in metal tubes, were those tin?  A rabbit hole for another day.

catfish 40

 That crack about Sinclair making tin hats fashionable in the north, was just a kind of literary flourish.  I didn't mean to say that there was some direct cause and action.  Though that video clip seemed a little slanted to me, I think they only showed one anti-recount person. and her only as she was summing up her speech.  Of course sane people are nowhere near as interesting as the nuts.  

See that's another reason the Foxies and Sinclairs and Qanon are dangerous, they get you being suspicious of all newsmedia and then if you are not sure which one is telling the truth then you might as well just choose the facts you like best.  Thinking back to my days as a draft dodger and commie, I recall that I was suspicious of the mainstream media.  Everything I read that I didn't like I analyzed it for a pro war bias and of course I always found it.  I think I've outgrown that now.

Anyway I have gone astray.  A salient point that Beagles mentions is that Trump carried Cheboygan with 64 percent of the vote.  Well it's kind of a cool thing for Trumpists to do, they know that if He hears about this it will bring a smile to His face, and that alone makes it all worthwhile.  And some of the elected officials are probably of that ilk and the ones who aren't are afraid to go against the flow, and some are thinking that the guys who show any reluctance, maybe they can use that as a cudgel when they run against them in the primary as The True Trump Disciple.

Kind of surprising that the Cheyboygan Daily Tribune had nothing to say about it, but I googled it and apparently there is nothing.

But anyway I know that Beagles is not a Trumpist, and I am in no way blaming him for what is happening in his backyard.  Certainly in the Toddlin Town we have our fair share of crooked politicians, but none, well almost none, of them are cuckoo, is all I am saying.

And now a little Catfish.

“Party,” I announced, “Party as my house!  Party at Catfish Estates!”  Gina’s arms tightened around me maybe too much, her smile a little frozen.  Shit, the place wasn’t really fixed up yet, there were still boxes of stuff here and there.  We had talked about what she’d called a housewarming party, but I think what she was thinking of was something other than a bunch of drunk softball players acting like a bunch of drunk softball players.

 But it was too late for that now.  “It’ll be okay,” I told her, and maybe it would.  Oh there’d  be shit like beer spilled on the floor and maybe some stuff busted up a little, but hell, nothing that couldn’t be fixed up the next day.

 “No it won’t,” she said.

 And probably she was right, but what the hell.

 And it wasn’t that bad, except for when I made a point of lighting up the fireplace and it turned out that that that flue thing hadn’t really been fixed which I’d suspected, but I was drunk and piling on those fake logs had felt so good.  Anyway ended the party kind of early, all that smoke and all, but not before Ron punched out Itch. 

 I remembered that a little.  Stupid thing.  Started out nice enough, talking about my homer. Thing was the bat, my bat, I’d just left in laying there on top of the plate.  The way it works is the runners crossing the plate, they’re supposed to get it out of the way in case there is a close play behind them, so that the runner behind them doesn’t trip over it or land flat on his back on top of it.  Neither of them did that.  It didn’t matter because I didn’t trip over it and I didn’t land flat on my back on top of it.  But Ron, just mentioning it, wondered why Itch hadn’t cleared it away, and Itch wondered why Ron hadn’t, since he’d crossed the plate in plenty of time, and his run really meant nothing while Itch, being the tying run and me being the winning run hot on his heels, had to focus more on just getting in and didn’t have the luxury of doing the housekeeping,

 “Housekeeping,” Ron snorted.  “Maybe what you were thinking was that if your buddy, Catfish broke his back that would give you a clear shot at Gina,”

 “You fucker, you hillbilly fucker,” and Itch is rising from the sofa, and on either side of him guys are trying to pull him back down but he shrugs himself free of them.

 And Ron, having gotten what he wanted, is smiling a little, “You calling me a hillbilly?”

 “I’m calling you a hillbilly fucker.”

 “Outside?” Ron wants to know.

 He could have said something.  He was a clever guy, he could’ve said something that made Ron look stupid, had everybody laughing at him, but he didn’t, he stepped outside.

 Ron let him have the first punch.  It didn’t amount to anything.  Ron gave him a quick one to the stomach followed by a fast one to the face.  That was it for Itch.  About that time the smoke started rolling in from the fireplace and that was the end of the party.

 

Thanks

 Thanks to Uncle Ken for finding that link.  A week or two ago there was a letter to the editor in our local paper that mentioned this, but there has been no article telling the full story as of yet.  I found another bit about it in my news app, but have been waiting to get more details before posting about it.  Last I heard, there was some lawyer from downstate offering to pay for an audit like this at no expense to the county, which sounded suspicious to me.  Somebody questioned whether our county commissioners had the legal authority to accept this proposal and, having heard no more about it, I assumed the matter had been dropped.  I don't know if you can pin this on Sinclair or not, the story seems to have originated locally.

Cheboygan County commissioners request state audit 2020 election results | WPBN (upnorthlive.com)

I know more about a similar issue in Antrim County than I do about this one.  It seems an error was detected and corrected before the vote tally was turned in.  A bunch of votes that were supposed to go to Trump were credited to Biden.  Suspicions were raised because that county always votes Republican.  At first we were told that there was a problem with the machine's software, but it was subsequently attributed to "human error".  Either way, the problem was fixed early on and Trump carried Antrim County, as he did Cheboygan County by a wide margin.  This raises the question why are the Trumpists challenging the vote in these two counties when their guy won both of them?  I understand that a lawsuit was filed in Antrim, but I don't know on what grounds, how it turned out, or if it's still in progress.

Sinclair certainly didn't bring tin hats to Northern Michigan, we've always had our share of them.  

This just in

 Tuning into the ballgame tonight I paused to check my favorite political site one last time for the night and I found this:

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/559721-michigan-county-pushes-for-hand-recount-of-2020-election-results

Looks like that Sinclair tv station is making tin foil hats popular up north

catfish 39

 That was 1959.  Both of us were eighth graders in Sawyer School and in Tonti. I was a Cub fan but out of loyalty to my city I outwardly showed nothing but support for the Sox, but deep in my heart I felt schadenfreude when they lost it two games to four.

The sirens went on late at night (I checked), well late for an eighth grader.  I seem to remember waking and turning on my little red transistor radio, as I always did when there were sirens and I wanted to know if the bomb had been dropped.  It had not.  I may be wrong here, but I seem to remember people coming to their porches in their bathrobes and murmuring to each other what is going on and finally somebody said that it must be because the Sox won the pennant and everybody went back into their houses and to bed.

West Side Story came out a couple years later and when they sang that Officer Krupke song I think there was some line about the bomb, kind of as an excuse for their being juvenile delinquents.  I think I may have weaved that into my adolescent story, how I grew up in the shadow of the bomb, but I don't recall being all that afraid of it at the time.

Well in retrospect the cold war was not all that bad.  There was no actual war, and the sides were clear, anymore who knows who is on what side.  

When I was subbing about 2000 to 2007, the girls were always better behaved than the boys.  Before the kids arrived I would go down the aisles and read the names and if girls outnumbered boys I was happy, but if it was the other way around I was unhappy.  I remember this one class, third grade I think, where I handed out protractors to the classroom, the girls ran all over the room measuring every angle they could find, and the boys pretended that they were pistols and ran all over the room shooting each other.  How,  I wondered had we ever established the patriarchy? 

And those Champaign Bar Association assholes, they were cagey fuckers.  Tiger you know, nobody could hit him hard, but if you held back, took a short stroke, you could bounce one into the infield, which was no problem with Tinkers and Evers slapping them up in that casual way they had, but with the second stringers it was a clown circus.  They scored one here, one there, by the time we got to the seventh they had scored five runs to our three.  Bottom of the seventh, after two outs Ron had a double and Itch scratched out a single, first and third and two outs and I was at bat. 

Shit, I didn’t need that drama, but there in the stands George, drunk as a skunk, is yelling and Gina is shrieking, Gina.  Shit fuck.

Okay, I’m keeping my eyes open like Dan taught me, watching the ball, and the first, second and third pitches come in and they’re nowhere close.  “Pitcher’s getting nervous,” I hear George and Gina and the other girlfriends chanting, and I’m thinking this is great, I can coax a walk, nothing wrong with a walk, puts the winning run on base.  And then taking a little time at the plate, adjusting my hat, making sure my shoelaces are tied, just killing time to make the pitcher more nervous, I glanced back at the on deck circle,  It was one of those second string infielders.  These guys never played when Tinkers and Evers were there, they just drank beer till game time and sat in the dugout waiting for the game to be over so they could drink some more, and this guy had clearly had plenty, could barely stand straight doing his warmup swings.

So I swung at the next pitch, missed it by a mile, almost fell over in the batter’s box.  The clapping from the stands stopped rightaway, and there was kind of an almost a gasp, thought I heard it, like the air going out of something.  It started up again, but not so strong, and I don’t know why, I was kind of swept up in the moment, but I held up my hand, time out, and turned back to the stands and zeroed in on Gina who had her hand in her mouth and blew her a kiss.

It was grandstanding, I knew that, It was okay, I wanted to piss off the pitcher, rattle him so he wouldn’t want to walk me after all that, smirked at him, kicked a little dirt off my cleats, waggled my bat over my head as I stepped in.

 He pitched fast, wanting to catch me while I was still waggling the bat, but I was expecting that and I was expecting that it would be hittable, and one thing I did wrong was that I closed my eyes.  Knew I shouldn’t, did it anyway.

 And that smack.  I’ll be able to feel that the rest of my life.  So pure, so clean, a white slice into the night.  Time was frozen.  I could see the whites of the centerfielder’s eyes, uncertain at first, then stepping back, then just turning tail and running into the darkness past the lights.  I almost wanted to laugh, but then I heard Dan yelling, “Run asshole run.”

 Oh shit.  Got a late start, but it looked pretty good going past first and rounding second the centerfielder was still running after the ball.  My back was to the action as I came into third, and I almost slowed but then I remembered the drunk in the on deck circle and just came in.  Saw the white flash of the ball over my head halfway to home.  It landed splat in the catcher’s mitt and he stepped back to cover the plate and there was no way to it except through him. 

 White Sox baseball.  Bounced my butt just in front of the plate and went in spikes high, caught him in the mitt, tore into it, knocked it out, saw it dribble onto the ground as I slid in safe.

 I was a fucking hero.  I was laying there, the poor catcher yelping and swinging his bloody mitt, the ump swinging his arms in that safe sign, and there was Dan reaching out a hand to lift me up, and almost pulled me off my feet so that I fell heavily against him, and for a moment I thought he was going to kiss me, but then the whole team was there and I was like actually lifted on their shoulders, hauled around on top of them like you see in the movies. 

 They weren’t really athletes, like I’ve said, the second stringers, and I was let down pretty quickly and there was Gina and a big wet one.

White Sox Summer

 That was the year the Sox won the Pennant, it must have been in the '50s because I was still in elementary school.  It was Jimmy Next Door who got me interested in baseball, not that either one of us played it, we just watched most of the games on TV at either his house or my house.  I never saw much of Jimmy during the school year because he went to the Catholic school, but there was a summer or two when we hung out together like that.  One time his mother took us to see a live game in person at Comiskey Park.  I guess it was fun if you had nothing better to do, which neither Jimmy nor I did at the time.   I must have lost interest at some point because I forgot to watch the last game of the season when the Sox clinched the Pennant.  I was walking past a local bar on 51st Street when I heard a lot of hollering inside.  Then the air raid sirens went off.  Since it was not the normal time for their weekly test, I figured it meant that either the Sox had won the Pennant or we were all going to die in a nuclear attack.  Nothing I could do about it either way, so I just kept walking.  Although they won the Pennant, I don't think the Sox won the World Series that year, seems I would remember something like that.

I do remember that guys behaved better when there were girls around, but that was a long time ago and I don't think it holds true anymore.  When I was driving school busses the girls gave me just as much trouble as the boys.  It used to be that boys settled their differences by fighting and girls settled their differences by tattling.  Last I knew, girls and boys were both fighting and tattling equally.  Big improvement!

catfish 38

 When I was writing that thing about large groups of people of the same sex not being a good thing, I got to thinking about my experience with women.  Not the kind of experience which would make for a short post indeed, but of being in groups where I am the only man.  When I went to edukashon skol I was the only male in a group of seventeen, and not that watercoloring isn't very manly, but in classes and various doings I am often the only man.  

In such groups it is common for there to be a conversational black hole, a topic of such consuming interest that once it is brought up the conversation can never return to other subjects.  With women I would have thought it would be clothes, but actually it was food, cooking it, eating it, contemplating it, it is the universal language of the fairer sex.

Sports of course is the universal language of men.  Two guys shipwrecked on a desert island with nothing in common will perk up when one of them mentions the 84 Bears say.  Even if the other guy knows nothing about that team, he will not say so, lest he be thought less of a man, but will spill some platitudes, which are legion in the field of sports, and try to steer the conversation to the Cleveland Indians of 1987.

As I said with the Hoosier hurricanes we went to Wrigley to walk around and the kids to clean out the sports stores and at Comiskey we want to a game.  And I was sitting there with my beer in my hand and my Cub hat on my head, but being pleasant to the Sox fans as they were to me, and you know there is something about being out to the old ball park.  The fans mostly, some yelling and screaming, some staring at their phones, but all under god's blue sky watching the players go through the arcane motions.  Because you know, football and basketball are pretty simple, this team wants to go this way, the other that way, this team wants to put it in this basket, the other in the other.  

But baseball, three strikes and you're out. Unless it's a foul ball, and then you can foul off balls for eternity, unless you are bunting than a foul after two strikes is an out, unless the catcher drops the ball, then you can run for first.  If you get four balls, you can walk to first base, or if you hit the ball in fair territory than you can run to the base and if you get there before the ball the ball gets into the first baseman's hand you can stay there, unless the ball is caught on the fly.

I remember as a young kid, I was a rabid fan but when Dad took me to my first game I really didn't know how it worked.  I decided that I would watch just one guy and see what he did, and I picked a guy in the outfield and he didn't do anything at all for an hour, but still I was all excited.  It was baseball after all.

So that's what I was thinking sitting in the stands watching these two little kids so excited about the game even if half the time they were hitting each other or running off to get a hot dog or some pennant or whatever, they were loving baseball.

And as long as the kids of America are watching this stupid arcane game with that excitement in their eyes, the indomitable spirit of America will live on.  

Or maybe not, who knows?

But speaking of baseball

So everything was running pretty smoothly on the Catfish line.  And I wasn’t that much into that whole softball thing but it looked like we were going to win the Tuesday night championship, and that would be cool enough.

 But then the Tuesday night game got rained out, no big deal, we would just beat them on the rescheduled game, but then it turned out that the game would be on Sunday night which didn’t seem like a big deal either, except when we got out to the ballfield, Dan was looking glum.  What was that all about, and I asked him.

 “You see Tinkers and Evers?” he asked, and now that he mentioned it they weren’t there which was a little peculiar since they were usually the first guys to show up on game day.

 “I guess not, where are they?”

 “They’re not here, that’s where they are.”

 “How come?”

 “Because it’s Sunday.”

 “So?”

 “So they’re Mormons, you idiot.”

 “Morons?”

 “Not morons, you moron, Mormons.  They can’t play on the fucking Sabbath.”

 “Sabbath?”

 “The Sabbath, Sunday, the day God rested, the day we should all be resting, and not racing in for those slow rollers, or jumping up for those line drives just a leap away, or smacking the beJesus out of the ball, the day we should be huddled in our stupid churches giving praise to the almighty for Chrissake, and that’s where they are, and that’s why they’re not here.”

 “Jesus.”

 He’s not here either, it’s just our pansy ass hitters, and our lead gloved second string infield, and God help us.”

 “You think He might?”

 “No, because He’s sitting in that church, listening to those sweet fucking Mormon songs.”

 

should i get married

 Those army guys I don't know, they all seem to think that women are deviously using their sex to hoodwink guys into something.  Well they are mostly young guys who like to toss off those flippant cynical tropes like they are all street savvy and men of the world and been to a dozen county fairs and a couple buzzard fucks as well.  It's not really the army it's the fact that they are all men, and in my opinion guys don't behave as well as they should unless there are some women in the crowd.  

When I was tending bar I would sometimes get these groups of guys drunk and bored, who thought it would be an amusing sport to give the bartender a hard time.  But if there was even one woman in the group they were much better behaved.  And sometimes you'd get a group of drunk women and they would be just as bad.  They weren't so intent on giving the bartender a hard time, but those shrieks would break your ears.  

And this is not relevant to the above but those groups of tourists who went to the capital to hug and kiss the police, there were an awful lot of women among them,  I don't know what to make of it

Well three days of the Hoosier hurricanes has snapped my patience.  Oh it was mostly a good time but there was my friend, his wife, their daughter, and her two kids.  We saw Billy Goats, my balcony, the river walk, Wrigley Field, the Clark Street Ale House and Comiskey Park.  In between the daughter took the kids shopping on Michigan Avenue and State Street.  And now I am alone in my apartment and just getting set to take the paper out to my balcony and read it all by my lonesome self and that will be very sweet.

Reminds me of a beatnik poem that I liked way back.  I'll give you a Catfish tomorrow.

'Marriage' by Gregory Corso

Should I get married? Should I be good?

Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustus hood?
Don't take her to movies but to cemeteries
tell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinets
then desire her and kiss her and all the preliminaries
and she going just so far and I understanding why
not getting angry saying You must feel! It's beautiful to feel!
Instead take her in my arms lean against an old crooked tombstone
and woo her the entire night the constellations in the sky-

When she introduces me to her parents
back straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie,
should I sit with my knees together on their 3rd degree sofa
and not ask Where's the bathroom?
How else to feel other than I am,
often thinking Flash Gordon soap-
O how terrible it must be for a young man
seated before a family and the family thinking
We never saw him before! He wants our Mary Lou!
After tea and homemade cookies they ask What do you do for a living?

Should I tell them? Would they like me then?
Say All right get married, we're losing a daughter
but we're gaining a son-
And should I then ask Where's the bathroom?

O God, and the wedding! All her family and her friends
and only a handful of mine all scroungy and bearded
just wait to get at the drinks and food-
And the priest! he looking at me as if I masturbated
asking me Do you take this woman for your lawful wedded wife?
And I trembling what to say say Pie Glue!
I kiss the bride all those corny men slapping me on the back
She's all yours, boy! Ha-ha-ha!
And in their eyes you could see some obscene honeymoon going on-
Then all that absurd rice and clanky cans and shoes
Niagara Falls! Hordes of us! Husbands! Wives! Flowers! Chocolates!
All streaming into cozy hotels
All going to do the same thing tonight
The indifferent clerk he knowing what was going to happen
The lobby zombies they knowing what
The whistling elevator man he knowing
Everybody knowing! I'd almost be inclined not to do anything!
Stay up all night! Stare that hotel clerk in the eye!
Screaming: I deny honeymoon! I deny honeymoon!
running rampant into those almost climactic suites
yelling Radio belly! Cat shovel!
O I'd live in Niagara forever! in a dark cave beneath the Falls
I'd sit there the Mad Honeymooner
devising ways to break marriages, a scourge of bigamy
a saint of divorce-

But I should get married I should be good
How nice it'd be to come home to her
and sit by the fireplace and she in the kitchen
aproned young and lovely wanting my baby
and so happy about me she burns the roast beef
and comes crying to me and I get up from my big papa chair
saying Christmas teeth! Radiant brains! Apple deaf!
God what a husband I'd make! Yes, I should get married!
So much to do! Like sneaking into Mr Jones' house late at night
and cover his golf clubs with 1920 Norwegian books
Like hanging a picture of Rimbaud on the lawnmower
like pasting Tannu Tuva postage stamps all over the picket fence
like when Mrs Kindhead comes to collect for the Community Chest
grab her and tell her There are unfavorable omens in the sky!
And when the mayor comes to get my vote tell him
When are you going to stop people killing whales!
And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottle
Penguin dust, bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dust-

Yes if I should get married and it's Connecticut and snow
and she gives birth to a child and I am sleepless, worn,
up for nights, head bowed against a quiet window, the past behind me,
finding myself in the most common of situations a trembling man
knowledged with responsibility not twig-smear nor Roman coin soup-
O what would that be like!
Surely I'd give it for a nipple a rubber Tacitus
For a rattle a bag of broken Bach records
Tack Della Francesca all over its crib
Sew the Greek alphabet on its bib
And build for its playpen a roofless Parthenon

No, I doubt I'd be that kind of father
Not rural not snow no quiet window
but hot smelly tight New York City
seven flights up, roaches and rats in the walls
a fat Reichian wife screeching over potatoes Get a job!
And five nose running brats in love with Batman
And the neighbors all toothless and dry haired
like those hag masses of the 18th century
all wanting to come in and watch TV
The landlord wants his rent
Grocery store Blue Cross Gas & Electric Knights of Columbus
impossible to lie back and dream Telephone snow, ghost parking-
No! I should not get married! I should never get married!
But-imagine if I were married to a beautiful sophisticated woman
tall and pale wearing an elegant black dress and long black gloves
holding a cigarette holder in one hand and a highball in the other
and we lived high up in a penthouse with a huge window
from which we could see all of New York and even farther on clearer days
No, can't imagine myself married to that pleasant prison dream-

O but what about love? I forget love
not that I am incapable of love
It's just that I see love as odd as wearing shoes-
I never wanted to marry a girl who was like my mother
And Ingrid Bergman was always impossible
And there's maybe a girl now but she's already married
And I don't like men and-
But there's got to be somebody!
Because what if I'm 60 years old and not married,
all alone in a furnished room with pee stains on my underwear
and everybody else is married! All the universe married but me!

Ah, yet well I know that were a woman possible as I am possible
then marriage would be possible-
Like SHE in her lonely alien gaud waiting her Egyptian lover
so i wait-bereft of 2,000 years and the bath of life.

A Fair Trade

The Catfish story has taken an unexpected turn.  I thought he would never hit a home run with that woman.  I figured she would lead him around in circles until his money was gone and then dump him.  Well, she still might do that eventually but, for now, he's getting what he wanted and she's getting what she wanted.  Sounds like a fair trade to me.  I am reminded of an old army proverb: "There is no such thing as free pussy, it's all paid for one way or another, and the one you think you're getting for free ends up costing you the most."

************************************************************************

 I seemed to remember that there was some stuff you could put in the water to encourage plant cuttings to root.  I tracked it down on Wiki and here's what I found:

A rooting hormone may be administered to "encourage" growth and can increase the success rate of plant growth.^[20] Though not essential, several compounds may be used to promote the formation of roots through the signaling activity of plant hormone auxins. Among the commonly used chemicals is indole-3-butyric acid (IBA) used as a powder, liquid solution, or gel. This compound is applied either to the cut tip of the cutting or as a foliar spray. Rooting hormone can be manufactured naturally, such as soaking the yellow-tipped shoots of a weeping willow tree in water, or by preparing a tea from the bark of a willow tree. Shoots or bark do better when soaked for 24 hours prior to using.^[21] The extract obtained from the crushing of leaves and bulbs of coco-grass (Cyperus rotundus) is used as an excellent rooting of cuttings and seedlings of various plant species.^[22][23] Honey, though it does not contain any plant hormones, can also aid in rooting success through its natural antiseptic and antifungal properties.^[24][25] Cinnamon^{[citation needed]} or an Aspirin tablet in water^[26] can also aid the rooting process.^[27

Cutting (plant) - Wikipedia

You should be able to find a commercial product at your local garden shop, or you try making your own as the article describes.

I seem to remember reading something about that archeological find under Lake Huron in our local paper, or maybe it was on TV.  I was surprised, however, when the video mentioned that the water level was low as late as 500 years ago.  I thought it was at its highest right after the glaciers receded and has gone down in stages ever since. 

Here's one for the "every time you think you've seen in all" department:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/indonesian-officials-give-away-live-chickens-to-residents-willing-to-get-vaccinatehttps://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/indonesian-officials-give-away-live-chickens-to-residents-willing-to-get-vaccinated/ar-AAL87Ee?rt=0&ocid=Win10NewsApp&referrerID=InAppShared/ar-AAL87Ee?rt=0&ocid=Win10NewsApp&referrerID=InAppShare  

Mid month minimal muttering

"...I have acute angina."

Haw, Haw, Haw!  I didn't see the punchline coming but it brought a smile to my face.  Good job, Mr. Beagles.

-----

There is no Wednesday Only rule, Uncle Ken; it's a figment of your imagination, a coincidence.  I'm being patient with the care of Groot but nothing has changed.  As near as I can tell it's just a little stick in a small flask of water.  I've added a couple of other cuttings to see if any of them will develop roots but at this point my expectations are low.  If there is nothing to report I will report nothing, so you can quit asking.

-----

I never considered the possibility of human settlements at the bottom of the Great Lakes, but you learn something new every day.  Artifacts have been found at the bottom of Lake Huron, dating back thousands of years when the water level was much lower.  Very interesting reading, and I wonder what else can be found down there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2eGkCIErFY

 

 

 

catfish 37

 That reminds me of the older but still hot woman slipping her ticket stub to the good-looking car valet and whispering in his ear, "I have an itchy pussy,"  and the guy replies "Those Japanese cars all look alike to me, but I'll find it."

I think a week has passed and nothing has popped up about those three girls twerking on that cop car, so I don't know what that means.

I had hoped that Old Dog would have given us an update on Groot.  Perhaps he only reads the blogs on Wednesday, or maybe he has seen it, but feels that his Wednesday Only rule is more important than the distress of his fellows at The Institute.

I have a pal from Indiana who is coming to town this afternoon and he is not leaving until Wednesday afternoon so you may not hear from me until the end of the week.  Perhaps you fellows can discuss something among yourselves.  

We were the terror of the league.  Nobody could hit Tiger.  Nobody could keep Evers or Chance from hitting. Ron hit some too, Itch a little,  myself I was keeping my eyes open, keeping my eye on the ball as it twirled up over the plate, getting a walk every now and then, but mostly those half hearted slow rollers, but every now and then I would hit a good one.  That whole thing between me and Ron over centerfield faded out because the other team hardly ever hit one to the outfield.

 It was well boring, standing way out there in the outfield, looking in to home where the other team was mostly striking out, and trotting in to mostly wait for Tinkers and Evers to come to bat and score the three or four runs that was all we needed to win the game.

 So you’d think we’d be leading the league, but we weren’t, the Champaign Bar Association was.  The Champaign Bar Association, that was the name of the team.  You’d think they’d have a better name than that, they all hung out in this bar in Urbana, The Office, maybe they could have called themselves The Officers or something, I don’t know, they were mostly a bunch of assholes.  They took that lawyering thing right into the game.  They had a book of the softball rules right in their dugout, and they had three or four guys who did nothing but look through it after every play, maybe some guy had an illegal bat.  A bat’s a bat for Chrissake, but there were rules in the book about how long it could it be and how heavy and how much pine tar it could have on it.  And if they thought the other team was using a bat that might be illegal, if the guy made an out they wouldn’t say anything, but if the guy got a hit, especially if it was an important hit, out they would march with the book and the arguments.  All the other teams hated them, but even without all that lawyering they were still a pretty good team, and they’d only lost one game.

 We’d lost those first two games before we got Tiger and Tinkers and Evers, one of those was to The Champaign Bar Association who had lost a couple too, so if we could beat them that would give us the league championship and we were looking forward to stomping them,  but with Tiger and Tinkers and Evers that didn’t look like it would be too hard to do.  This would be great winning the league championship in the final game, it would be like a movie. 

 Not like I cared that much about it.  I had all these other things going on, like my new apartment and Gina, and her buying all this crap for it, fancy stuff, and I’m thinking why do I need all this crap, and not only that but it cost all this money, not that I cared that much about money, but maybe I did, because I used to have this whole sockfull of bills, and then they just became these numbers in a book, and then all those numbers kept getting smaller and all I had to show for it was like tablecloths and more sheets and comforters which are just fancy blankets, but that was okay because they would cover that black water mattress and that would make Gina happy and I looked forward to whispering those sweet nothings into her pink ear as she modestly covered her breasts up with that soft pricey bedspread with all those pale flowers all over it, but giggled a little naughty.

 And that all happened, the giggle the naughty.  And it was great, just great, the whole little drama, acted out in my very own bedroom, Catfish finally getting what he had worked at for so long, and all those darlings between us.  It was, maybe it was love. 

 Because after the fireworks, wrapped up in each other, when normally I was into slipping alone into dreamland, she would be talking, whispering really although who could hear us.  Strange stuff really odd bits and pieces of like when she was a little girl, the candy store she used to go into after school was out, and stuff that happened yesterday like some dumb conversation in the hallway as she was waiting to go into her next class.

 I never could figure out how to take my part in this conversation, I just didn’t think that way, that kind of, I don’t know, dreamy talk, to me it was more like this happened and then that happened, and that was like the whole story.

 And the thing was I kept thinking about that Denise thing.  It didn’t mean anything, it was just something that happened.  Could’ve happened to anybody really.  It would be a good thing to get out of the way, if for no other reason than it was eating at me, well Catfish you know he gets drunk, sometimes he does stupid stuff.  Damn that wouldn’t work.  No. Let it go.

 And anyway the whole thing would probably never come up unless I brought it up.  Itch knew, and that was a little worry because even though Gina and me were tight, she still mentioned him every now and then, but not very much lately, and anyway he wasn’t much into her.  And there was Ron, he knew about it too, but we were pretty tight lately.

Fish On!

 It's beginning to appear that our Catfish is solidly hooked.  Of course all hooked fish are not successfully landed, so there is still some hope for his escape.  Interesting that Gina so easily manipulated him by dangling the lure in front of his face just out of reach.  Although that was common practice before the Sexual Revolution, I was not aware that people were still doing it as late as the 80s.  This reminds me of a story:

A long time ago, young couples were expected to wait until they were married to have sex, or so I have been told.  In those days, a certain bride-to-be was diagnosed with a minor heart condition and told by her doctor to avoid any strenuous or exciting activity for awhile.  "But Doctor", she wailed, "I'm supposed to get married next week, plans have been made, and the invitations have been sent out.  What should I do about that?"  After some consideration, the doctor replied, "Go ahead with the wedding, but you'd better delay the consummation of the marriage until we get this thing cleared up."  The lady decided not to tell her boyfriend about this because she feared it might cause him to have second thoughts about the wedding.  After the ceremony was safely completed, she finally confided in him:  "Honey, I have to tell you something, I have acute angina."  The groom laconically replied, "Well I sure hope so, 'cause your tits aren't all that great."

catfish 36

 Well what to make of this then, Beagles and Uncle Ken in agreement twice in a row and not that much time between the two events.  I was wondering if it was photoshopped or staged, but both seemed unlikely.  On the other hand, someone must have videoed it, it had to take place at some point in time at some point in space, so where was that?  Checking back I noticed that the other 'events' have dates and places and are attributed to real news sources.  The only attribution to the twerking thing is SBG which turns out to stand for Sinclair Broadcasting Group.  

And looking back at the whole thing I see something I hadn't noticed before So there it is, by KRISTINE FRAZAO, Sinclair Broadcast Group the tv station is just a catspaw for that syndicate.  I imagine they will allow objective news sometimes, but whenever they want to toss in some lurid editorial Challenges mount for American cities beset by crime they will and surely they are putting out scripts for their employees to read as if it was their personal opinion like they do for all of their affiliates.  I suggest that from now on when Beagles watches this captive news station he keep a salt shaker on the table next to him.

I'm familiar with the Washington Examiner it is indeed right wing.  When googling on the twerking I noticed that right wing sources like Fox and the Washington Post all reported on the twerking like it was a real event, whereas the lame stream media generally took a more skeptic view saying something like this is an odd video that nobody knows where it came from.

Enough of this falsity let's get to the honest story of Catfish.

And so I did.  Gina came with me to sign the papers and get the keys and all, and there we were two sweethearts walking arm and arm, and I’m figuring this it, the big payoff at last, but then it developed after getting a twelve pack for me and a bottle of wine for Gina and sitting entwined on the couch by the fire, and all cozy and cooing and all that stuff, and me dramatically wrapping her up in my arms and carrying her into the bedroom, that that magnificent waterbed was just a big rubber mattress.  I’m no better homes and gardens guy, but even I realized that we would need sheets, pillows, stuff like that, you need something to recline on to do that sweet talking, that, call me a romantic, but you really need to get into a romantic encounter.  And those eggs and that bacon that I had gotten from the Seven Eleven along with the booze, well you need dishes to eat them off, and knives and forks to eat them with and a Goddamn frying pan to cook them in.

 “We need to go shopping,” first words out of Gina’s mouth as I stood holding her above that rubber mattress. 

 Shopping?  We?

 I settled her gently on the rubber mattress.  She looked good there, her hair spilling out beneath her head, her back arched just so, but not so good as she’d look on a nice white sheet, her head nestled into a pillow, her legs tangled up into a blanket.  She was right, she was absolutely right.

 But shopping?  We?  I had this picture, like you see in the cartoons, the husband sitting in that uncomfortable little chair while the wife frolics, “Oh Dear, do you like the sheets with the blueberries on the edges, or these other ones with the morning glories twining around?”  And the husband with that weak smile thinking Oh God kill me now, and muttering something like, blueberries are nice, only to be asked what he has against morning glories.

 The husband, the wife?  And I saw her in that white dress on the curb, and the realtor in his preacher clothes, and I remembered what Ron had told me, and I was afraid. 

 But facts were at hand.  After all this time, after all this effort, this just had to happen.  And sheets would be nice, and pillows, and no way around it, that frying pan, and those dishes, and those knives and forks.    

 Kind of a dangerous move, I know, but I’d be damned if I was going into any department store.  “You know Darling you’re right, you’ve hit the nail on the head.  I, we, definitely need to get some stuff, but work, you know it’s really busy right now.  Lots of markups do be done, because um, we’re just moving into sector six right now, and they really need me, and anyway I don’t know anything about this stuff, and I’m thinking maybe you could go and pick out stuff so the place would look good, you know.”

 And she kind of hemmed and hawed a little bit, walked around the place a little bit, and I could tell that she was thinking of what kind of stuff would go where, and I’m kind of thinking that she’s thinking that if this stuff was left up to me, that it just wouldn’t look so hot.

 “Okay then.  Alright I’ll do it.  I don’t have any classes tomorrow, I’ll go over to Kuhn’s.  I don’t suppose you have a credit card?”

 A credit card?  “No I sure don’t.”

 “Well maybe you could give me a check then.”

 A check?  “Don’t have any of those either.”

 “Where’s your money?”

 “In my socks, well not in these socks that I’m wearing now, in my clean socks, in the bottom of my duffel bag.”

 “Catfish, you have to start living like a human being.”

 Sounded like good advice.  Lost some of its charm when we went down to the bank the next afternoon and all those fine green bills, wadded up one against another, turned into a little book with some numbers in it.  But her smile when I tore off that first check and signed my name to it kind of made up for it.

Backfilling

 When I saw that on the news last night, I was hoping to find something on the net that I could link to.  After several false trails, it occurred to me that the TV station has its own website and that I might find the original story there, which I did.  I decided to link to that one so my esteemed colleagues could see exactly what I saw and we could compare notes on it.  I considered adding my own opinion, but I didn't really have one yet and I wanted to get the perspective of my esteemed colleagues before forming one.  

After I signed off, it occurred to me that the twerking video looked like a staged event, possibly made to accompany one of those goofy thangs that passes for music nowadays.  First of all, twerking is a dance move, not a sex move.  If a woman moved like that during sex, she would likely break her partner's dick off, possibly dislocating her own pelvis in the process.  The ladies in the video were obviously experienced dancers, maybe professionals.  My wife thought they looked like prostitutes, but I have never seen a prostitute expend that much energy while plying her trade.  Since Uncle Ken had not seen the video before I posted about it, I concur that it's probably bogus.  If something like that had really happened in Chicago, it would have been all over the local news.  The rest of the article is indeed anecdotal, but so is most of the stuff you see on the TV news.  

Before I found that link, I came across another story with more detail in it, but I decided it wasn't exactly what I was looking for at the time.  This is from the Washington Examiner, which seems to have a definite starboard list to it, but it's hard to find a truly objective source these days.  See what y'all think about this one.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/seattle-police-union-chief-fears-losing-400-officers-in-a-year-as-crime-levels-soar/ar-AAKInDi?rt=0&ocid=Win10NewsApp&referrerID=InAppShare

  

groot?

 

After posting I realized that Old Dog had said nothing of Groot and I fear the worst.  I know he posts only on Wednesday but I wonder if he can break that rule just once to tell us the bad or good news.  The photo is of my sunflower that I have named Groot in honor of the scrappy little fellow from the north side.

unreliable sources

 There is not much to discuss in that strange posting by Sheboygan's ABC affiliate.  There are no statistics, no discussion, just a series of lurid scenes.  Curiously at the end there was footage of the Portland mess, but no mention of the sack of the capitol, usually the two go together as kind of a show of being even-handed.  And if the general subject was violence in American cities how was that left out?

I have heard nothing about this twerking incident here, so I googled around.  It's basically a viral video with not much backup and it has been on many tv stations.  Hmmmm.  Didn't we have a recent discussion about Sinclair owning a station in Sheboygan?  A short google search reveals that it is indeed this station.  This is one of those things that Sinclair adds to the newsfeed of all its affiliates,

That certainly looks like a Chicago cop car the ladies are being lascivious on, but all the figures are very blurry and there is no mention of the date or what street this is taking place on.  Apparently this video has just appeared a couple days ago and the Chicago police are looking into it.  Myself I believe it is bogus, but that is just my opinion and I will wait until further developments before making a formal statement.

But even a lying liar (Sinclair) sometimes tells the truth, and violence is up in the wake of the pandemic and general ferment.  I suppose we could discuss further, but not today.  Usually when you want to put something up for discussion you give your opinion first.

There has always been that UFO thing.  Barry Goldwater was a big believer, but since then it has not tainted the halls of congress, but now with the Trumpists who are lately presenting doctors who claim that getting the vaccine magnetizes you so that metal objects will stick to you and not one of the reps in attendance dared say she was full of shit, are getting in on it.  But to be fair Harry Reid a prominent dem is a big UFO guy, so I don't know what to say except that the whole UFO thing is full of shit.

What you have to realize is that Catfish is relating this story and he is not the most reliable of sources.  He does have an inflated view of his own studliness.  In the story I do think he did at one time get a lot which was there to be gotten in the late sixties and early seventies of which I most definitely did not get my share.  But that was then and this is now.  Catfish is maybe ten years older, more of a bum, and that whole free sex thing has faded a bit.  Also he is smitten by Gina and is pursuing her at the expense of other pursuits.  

Catfish was really loaded when hooked up with Denise and we all know that he is not a deep thinker.  Apparently the Dawgs have more experience of the behavior of hookers than I do, but I will say I have often read where the prelude of some sordid incident is that the john refused to pay the hooker afterwards and then the shit happened.  So not all hookers demand the money up front.

But then I have often asked to the point of begging for comment on the story, so I can't complain.  And criticism is much more important than bland praise, so I thank the two of you for thinking about it and giving me a piece of your minds.  We are near the end of the story, maybe five more episodes to go, but you'll have to wait another day for a new episode.

This Just In:

 I saw this story on the TV news this evening, and was able to find a link to it:

Challenges mount for American cities beset by crime | WPBN (upnorthlive.com)

Discuss.

Friends in low places

 ...if I can find something worth discussing...

No kidding, Mr. Beagles.  There is a lot of goofy stuff in the media and I wonder if some of it is to distract those of us further down the food chain.  A lot of smoke but no heat or light, it seems to me.  Wasn't there a lot of hoopla not long ago about UFOs only to find out there is not much to get worked up about?  No aliens, folks, kindly go about your business.  This week I've been reading about billionaires that are in a race to go in orbit aboard their shiny new rockets.  Their stockholders must be thrilled.

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I've found the Catfish saga a more pleasurable reading experience than I did four years ago when I read it all in one go.  The more leisurely pace allows me to give certain aspects of the characters more thought.

I still think, however, that Gina is a manipulative bitch.

Maybe, but not unreasonably so.  The Catfish can talk a good line but I think he is a chump, ready to be picked clean by any cutie who may give him a second glance.  Low hanging fruit, as they say.  If this story is in the 1970s timeline, and I think it is, he would have been up to his eyebrows in pussy, especially in a bar/tavern/roadhouse environment.  But the Catfish acts like he's never been laid or had any long term relationship with a woman.  The 70s were a wild time and folks were frisky in those pre-herpes and pre-AIDS days; the worst that would happen would be crabs,  the clap, or a dead rabbit.  Or so I've read.  But that bit with what's-her-name in the motel defies belief.  Wouldn't the Catfish think that, despite the allure of his animal magnetism, she was a little too easy?  I almost expected her to say, "Hey, Joe!  Want some short-time boom boom?"  And since when do hookers not demand payment up front?  Or so I've read.

I think Gina is playing it smart, testing the Catfish to see what kind of commitment he is willing to make.  She's not making it easy, so Good for Her!