The Conservative Cave

Current Events => The DUmpster => Topic started by: franksolich on November 07, 2012, 10:48:06 AM

Title: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 07, 2012, 10:48:06 AM
franksolich the morning after.  About four in the morning, I was awakened by the presence of three hunters.  One I knew as a good friend of the neighbor’s; the other two I’d never seen before.   They were going hunting this morning with the neighbor, although not on this property; they’d stopped by because they were delivering ten pounds of beef, sirloin cuts, to augment the two crockpots over the weekend.

I thanked them, but pointed out it wasn’t really necessary, as I considered the cost of feeding droppers-in a “security” expense”--and cheap at that--since I live way out here in the middle of nowhere, and since I can’t hear, people dropping in at various times add immeasurably to my personal safety.  In case something happens, no sweat, because somebody’ll be by.

It definitely deters stalking primitives, especially when they see the droppers-in carrying firearms.

Actually, I was sort of irritated, as someone had apparently not explained something to the guests; that if one shows up here before 6:00 a.m., one is bound to be startled by something.  But as what’s been seen can’t be unseen, I let it go.

They were exuberant over the election returns--for Nebraska, not for the country--especially one of the constitutional amendments, which passed by a vastly wide margin, making hunting and fishing a right in the state constitution.

I’d voted for it too, even though it’s not really necessary, as pigs will fly before hunting and fishing--and the right to own firearms--are banned in Nebraska.

There were three other amendments on the ballot; the first one changed the “eligibility” for impeachment and removal from a state office, making it looser.  I’d voted against it, but it passed.

The second one raised the salary of the 49 state senators from $12,000 a year to $22,500 a year; that failed, and I’d voted against it myself.

The third one changed the term-limits from two terms to three terms; I’d voted against it, and it failed by an enormously large margin.  Nebraskans don’t care much for people making careers out of politics.

And for the first time in about 35 years, the natural order of things has been restored, with both U.S. Senators being Republican.  It’s been a long long drag since 1977, all those years out in the wilderness, with only one, or sometimes no, Republican senators.

All three Republican congressmen won re-election; other than the nonpartisan state senators, there were no state-level races this year, but those are all occupied by the proper people.

It was great in Nebraska last night, but not so much elsewhere.

The friend of the neighbor’s said, “I wonder why we did so well here, when we didn’t do so hot in the other 49 states. It seems the rest of the country is always out of step with us, or us with them.”

“Well, we in Nebraska are what we are, and we do okay as long as we be what we are, rather than trying to be ‘like everybody else,’” I reminded him; “whenever Nebraska follows the common herd, we always seem to get into some sort of trouble.

“So it’s best that we just continue being Nebraska.”

After which they left,  and I finally had a chance to get some clothes on.
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: RobJohnson on November 08, 2012, 04:25:01 AM
It sounds like things were good in NE!

Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 08, 2012, 04:36:55 AM
It sounds like things were good in NE!



Things were great here; I just wish the rest of the country would've followed suit, and my condolences to those members living in places where it didn't happen.
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 08, 2012, 06:31:00 AM
The neighbor dropped by this morning, Thursday morning.  He had to do some work on something, but also told me of a potential invitation for Thanksgiving dinner with a primitive.

Thus far I’ve acquired five opportunities, but alas they aren’t exactly what I’m looking for.

One involves a young chick, an 0bamaite and “fine arts” degree who works as a file clerk until her big chance comes along; a second involves a 35-year-old guy who still lives at home with his mother; a third involves a member of the College Democrats from the University of Nebraska coming home for the holiday; a fourth involves a bitter angry strident grimacing social worker; and the fifth involves a Gandhian “pacifist” from the big city, coming to town to see his grandparents.

Good candidates, but not quite what I’m looking for.

These are all reasonably young primitives, who haven’t yet been ravaged by the consequences of their primitivity; they’re still all whole and intact and sentient.  They haven’t lived life long enough to suffer the consequences of their attitudes and their behavior.

I’m looking more for a primitive like the now-late “Auntie” of the neighbor’s wife, whose brain was mush and her body decorated like a Christmas tree.

I asked the neighbor if this one was similarly decorated, or at least its mind gone.

He wasn’t sure; he’d known the primitive when he was a little lad, about 8 years old.  The neighbor’s now 38 years old, so that would make it circa the early 1980s.  He said the guy was considered a hippie--even though hippies were passe by then--and as a kid, the neighbor remembered the primitive already looked like a wreck, from copious drug use.

“I don’t know if he’s decorated his body, but surely by now his brain’s gone,” the neighbor said.

I said that sounds promising, closer to what I’m looking for.

The primitive, who doesn’t live around here, belongs to one of the wealthiest families in town.  The neighbor said he’d ask around, and as this one seems the most interesting for Thanksgiving dinner, I said I’d evolve a “strategy” to getting myself invited.

I asked him how hunting had gone yesterday, with those three guys who’d dropped in here first.  He said they all got some birds, but not as large as they’ve been in the past, probably due to the Great Barack Drought of ‘12.

He also remarked I’d impressed one of the friends of his friend--”Man, that guy has confidence, nerves of steel, acting as if nothing was wrong.  Me, I’d go run and hide.  Nerves of steel.”

And then the neighbor asked me what that was all about.

I told him I didn’t have the slightest idea.
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: BlueStateSaint on November 08, 2012, 06:48:35 AM
 :popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn:

I want to hear the reason . . . !
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 08, 2012, 07:41:12 AM
:popcorn: :popcorn: :popcorn:

I want to hear the reason . . . !

Near as I can figure out, it must've been something I said.

But as we talked about a lot of things, I'm not sure of the specific "something I said."
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: Dori on November 08, 2012, 08:35:01 AM
Near as I can figure out, it must've been something I said.

But as we talked about a lot of things, I'm not sure of the specific "something I said."

were you nekkid?  ::)
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 08, 2012, 09:36:46 AM
were you nekkid?  ::)

Oh now, that wouldn't have been it, because franksolich is utterly average-looking, hardly worth a second glance.

It's long been a popular custom in the Sandhills of Nebraska to sleep without any clothes on, so as to save wear-and-tear on the underwear, and pajamas are for wimps or the decadent.

There are no wimps or decadents out here in the Sandhills.

As for your unasked, but possible, question, no.  

Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: RobJohnson on November 08, 2012, 10:05:42 AM
Things were great here; I just wish the rest of the country would've followed suit, and my condolences to those members living in places where it didn't happen.

WI did good at a state level.

My state did ok. Dean Heller R kept a seat he was appointed to earlier. When they called it it was close, less then 1.5 points per our friends at Fox. On a local level some Ron Paul types voted to get rid of our town board and let the county take over our town, not a great idea. It lost by less then 40 votes. (I keep hearing different numbers, they are all under 40) We also voted not to raise our fuel tax by .03 a gallon.

Clark County (Las Vegas) had the unions bussing people in to vote. Those union workers had to be picked up and led like sheed to the polls. I'm sure the poll workers started to get the munchies from the smell of second hand marijuana smoke. :rofl:

The union officials were checking the list, like Santa Claus, and checking it twice to make sure everyone had voted, those that did not, were paid a house call.
 
One voter they grabbed when she was still in her bath tub, giving her a free ride to the polls:

(http://www.fooducate.com/blog/wp-content/media/cheetos-girl-in-bath.jpg)

 
Quote
First, a middle-aged caucasian women comes to the door in her slippers.  Her husband isn't home, but she assures Rangel both of them will be at the polls tomorrow, voting for Obama.
 
Three-doors down an African-American male answers. He lives with his mother.
 
"Do you work?" Rangel asks him.
 
"No," he responds timidly.
 
"Then please make sure it's the first thing you do tomorrow," she says. "And take your mother with you."
 
Rangel likes to start with a simple questions like if they have a job.  That way, she says, the person can start mentally planning their day with voting in mind.

http://www.neontommy.com/news/2012/11/nevada-unions-make-final-push-mobilize-voters
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: Skul on November 08, 2012, 10:25:24 AM
were you nekkid?  ::)
Quote
After which they left,  and I finally had a chance to get some clothes on.
:lmao:
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 08, 2012, 10:47:54 AM
:lmao:

I forgot; she's new here, and probably doesn't know.

Most people can prevent such startlements by simply locking their doors, and I assume most people do.

However, because I'm deaf, I can't hear someone knocking on the door, rapping on a window, or yelling from the front porch.  I have no way of knowing there's a person there.

To complicate the matter, I live way out here in the middle of nowhere, but near a highway, and this is the only place someone in trouble can find help, unless one wishes to walk six miles north (of the highway) or six miles east or 42 miles west.

So as a service to humanity, I need to be as accessible as possible, hence the always unlocked doors here.

(There's no worry about theft, because there's nothing worth stealing here; the valuable things are kept in a locked storage rental in town or in a safe-deposit box at the bank in town, and all my important papers are kept in the safe of an automotive dealership.  What's here wouldn't bring fifty bucks in a garage sale.)

From a very young age, I already knew there was much going on around me that I wasn't aware of, especially other people seeing what I was doing (unknown to me).  There was no point in getting paranoid about it though, because I couldn't think of anything I did, that needed to be a "secret."

The only guaranteed privacy franksolich has is the fifteen or twenty minutes a day behind the locked door of the bathroom, doing what one does in a bathroom.  Otherwise, I'm wide open.

Fortunately, most people know I go to bed at 10:00 p.m., and am decent again at 6:00 a.m.
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 08, 2012, 01:58:53 PM
Whoa.  That was easy.

When I went to the post office in town to pick up my mail in early afternoon, by sheerest of coincidences a certain person was also picking up hers; the aforementioned relative of the 1980s hippie as the neighbor remembered him.

But this is a small town; one runs into everybody.

I hadn’t been more specific before, because I didn’t know, but apparently she’s an elderly aunt of the Reagan-era hippie.  Loaded; lots and lots of dough.

I don’t know much about her, but she seemed to know all about me, which is par for the course.

After discerning her nature, I started my song-and-dance, my waltz, to subtly extract an invitation for Thanksgiving dinner.  I inquired what she was doing for the holiday.

She said she and her husband were having company at noon, naming the retired banker--the old grouch who hikes his pants clear up to his midriff--and his wife--the award-winning gardener, who comes out here every so often to collect more of the William Rivers Pitt for her flowers and plants; an older widowed sister of hers; a retired high school principal and his wife; a guy who was town cop a very long time ago; a nun from the convent in the big city, who’s apparently some shirt-tail relative; a retired telephone company operator; the guy who once owned a coal-distributorship in town; a long-retired blacksmith and his wife; someone who was once a maitre d‘ on the Santa Fe railway’s Super Chief; and the errant nephew, who’s apparently about my age and in not good health.

A geriatric crowd, excepting the hippie nephew.

These old folks were going to need my help, I figured, and so I was starting to develop a strategy to get myself invited, when she, to be polite, inquired in turn what I was doing for Thanksgiving.

“Oh, nothing special,” I said; “the cats’ll get their usual holiday treat of pure white turkey, one whole can for each, and I’ll just do my ‘nothing special.’”

She looked at me.  “Ah yes, poor boy, no family.”

Then much to my open-mouthed surprise, she invited me to join them for Thanksgiving dinner.

And here, I’d been doing all sorts of mental gymnastics inside my head, trying to contrive a creative way of disgorging an invitation out of her, and I didn‘t have to.

“You know,” she said, “we haven’t ever exchanged but a few words in passing all the time you’ve lived out here, but I’ve heard a lot about you.  I think you’re quite interesting, and would be delighted if you’d join us.”

Mission accomplished.
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: Dori on November 08, 2012, 02:59:45 PM
Congrat's - sounds entertaining

I hope you are writing stories.  You could be the
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: BlueStateSaint on November 08, 2012, 03:39:39 PM
I hope you are writing stories.

Look around, Dori--look around.  Frank's a great storyteller.
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 08, 2012, 11:16:58 PM
Man, I wasn’t supposed to work the rest of this week after Monday, but then I was called out two times--today, in late afternoon and then in mid-evening.  It’s a good thing I don’t have other people to be around for, just the cats, and the cats don‘t care when I‘m around.

The neighbor came by after supper, and I told him I’d inveigled an invitation for Thanksgiving dinner with a primitive, the very primitive he’d mentioned earlier.

The neighbor had been busy all day, and hadn’t had time to inquire of anyone about the primitive, who he’d seen only one time, when he was eight years old back in 1982, and the primitive was in his early 20s.

“He was scary-looking.  He took drugs, and he had this wild-eyed look on his face, his hair standing out on end.  He was pretty skinny, and always dirty and disheveled.  The way I remember him, he reminded me of pictures I’d seen of Charles Manson, although younger and smaller.

“If somebody tried talking with him, he’d snarl at them.”

Well, well, I thought to myself; it’s a good thing I’m having Thanksgiving dinner there, as the rest of the crowd was going to be all these frail old people, and they needed some protection from this homicidal maniac.

“He wasn’t from here, but he had family here.  But after one saw him one time, one didn’t bother looking around for him again.

“I heard through the years he spent some time in jail, but even more time in mental hospitals and half-way houses.”

Whoa.  This was going to be good.

But, as the neighbor reminded me, this was all a very long time ago.

“People can change a lot in thirty years.”

I expressed skepticism.  “After all, I’m about this primitive’s age, and I haven’t changed hardly at all the past thirty years.  Just a few more scars and a now-absent elbow.

“Other than that one gets tired more easily, I’ll bet he hasn’t changed that much.

“I’ll ask [the property caretaker] about him, the next time I see him.”
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 09, 2012, 10:22:18 AM
“Well, boss, it looks like you’re going to get what you wanted,” the property caretaker said to me this morning.  “That guy, he fits all of your requirements for primitivity.  And yeah, he’s about your age, but I haven’t seen him for twenty-five years.

“I saw him around lots more times when he was younger.

“His folks were farmers two counties west of here, modest, hard-working people, he was their only kid, and they had him late in life.

“Up until he was in the middle of high school, he was an ideal kid; did as he was told without complaining, got good grades in school, and was quite the eye-candy for girls, but then he started running with the wrong crowd, and started smoking dope.

“He got withdrawn, apathetic, lazy, didn’t care about anything or anybody.  Sat around all day, doing nothing.

“He never made it out of high school.

"Just went to pot.

“When his parents died, her sister, your hostess for Thanksgiving, got guardianship of him, but she couldn’t control him.  He was deep into hard drugs by then.  He spent a lot of time in jail here, and in surrounding counties.

“He was nuts.  One time he was picked up while wearing a women’s dress, a pot on his head, and carrying a bird-cage.  He told the sheriff he was out hunting for rabbits.

“The sheriff thought he needed put away, at the madhouse in the big city, but his guardian wouldn’t let him.

“But then one day when he was about 23, 24, years old, the sheriff caught him acting funny around a kid.

“Nothing had happened, but it enraged the sheriff, who grabbed him, loaded him into the car, and drove him over to the next county, telling him, ‘I don’t ever want to see you in this town or this county again--I’ve got more than enough to put you away in the looney bin, and if you cross this line ever again, that’s where you’re going. 

“’Just stay the Hell out of here.’

“And then he got everything squared away with the guy’s aunt.

“The last I heard of him, about ten years ago, he was living in a half-way house up in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, part of the time, and in a straitjacket the other part of the time.

“His guardian lost track of him, and the guy who was sheriff then is dead.

“I dunno why they invited him here; perhaps because they’re old and looking at the cemetery, and want to see him one more time.”

“Well, since nobody’s seen him, what do you suppose he’s like now?” I asked.

“I dunno, but he’s probably no improvement over what he’d been before.”
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 10, 2012, 03:35:38 AM
This morning began the deer-hunting season in Nebraska, so I was up early, as there’s supposed to be a crowd around.  The weather’s still reasonably pleasant, but it’s supposed to turn bitterly cold and snow tonight (Saturday night), and be that way all of next week.

I could never figure out deer-hunting season.  From reading the guidebook, deer-hunting season in Nebraska actually runs from September 15 all the way to January 18 of next year, but this week is generally considered the deer-hunting season, as if the other weeks aren’t on the calendar.

But whatever.  Anything to cull them down.  Nebraska in 2012 has four times as many deer as it had back in 1870; so much for this tear-jerking idea that humans drive out Bambi.

I never paid attention to deer until this past summer, during the Great Barack Drought of ‘12, when one night while I was driving on a back-road so as to avoid the prairie fires, I saw a deer standing by the side of the road, and paid close attention lest it decide to cross.

Too bad for franksolich; because I was paying attention to that deer, I didn’t see the one right in front of me.

Yeah, the motor vehicle got some, uh, damage.

But at least it was my car.  I usually have four pick-up trucks and three sedans at my disposal, free to use as I see fit, but those don’t belong to me.  Although everything’s all insured, I would’ve felt badly if it’d happened to a vehicle not mine.  I take responsibility very seriously, and if something happens to something due to my negligence, best that it happens to something that belongs to me, not to other people.

I haven’t gotten around to replacing my own vehicle yet, still driving it around with its bashed-in front, as a matter of ego.  There’s many who think franksolich hasn’t fully experienced life around here, that he’s a bit soft and citified and challenged in machissimo, as if someone from effete Connecticut or decadent Maryland, and this helps give lie to that slander; franksolich hit a deer.

I’ll drive it until the sheriff finally tells me to get it off the road, after which I’ll look around for another one.

One of my college classmates and roommates is coming up from Omaha on Sunday morning, to hunt.

I dunno how it is in other places--I lived in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, yes, but I wasn’t paying attention--but this one-week deer-hunting season in Nebraska isn’t just a weekend deal.  There’s almost as many hunters out on weekdays as well as the weekend.
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: ExGeeEye on November 10, 2012, 04:33:44 AM
Hunting and fishing now State Constitutional rights?  What visible effect does that have?  Are there differences in hunting season, license procedures etc.?
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 10, 2012, 05:01:55 AM
Hunting and fishing now State Constitutional rights?  What visible effect does that have?  Are there differences in hunting season, license procedures etc.?

It's pre-emptive, as it's been anticipated the "friends" of animals will keep increasing in influence and power, until they pretty much get all hunting and fishing banned everywhere.

By making it a constitutional amendment, it makes it tougher to do that.

Otherwise no changes in seasons or procedures.
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 10, 2012, 05:34:25 AM
Hunting and fishing now State Constitutional rights?  What visible effect does that have?  Are there differences in hunting season, license procedures etc.?

To further explain.

Vermont, once one of the most reliably Republican states, as you know, has been dominated by ultra-left moonbats ever since hippies started moving there, from their blue hell-holes.

However, despite all this primitivity, gun laws in Vermont are pretty permissive.

This is because the Vermontese of old wanted to ensure residents of their state enjoyed the Second Amendment, and so put the right to own and bear firearms into their state constitution.

It's difficult to repeal something from a constitution; despite that the lunatic moonbats have owned Vermont for almost forty years now, the right remains instact, because it's in the constitution, not in a mere law or regulation.

This amendment in Nebraska was inspired a couple of years ago when the most-liberal member of the state legislature casually commented, "Oh, hunting and fishing's so popular in Nebraska it'll never get tampered with."

When a Democrat, liberal, or primitive starts talking like this, it's time to nail it down, to engrave it in granite, to make it permanent, to ensure that what they want will most certainly not happen.

It was pre-emptive, as I mentioned.

Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: ExGeeEye on November 10, 2012, 10:53:24 AM
Thanks.

Though I might have a word or two to say about how the Second Amendment preempted NFA34 and GCA68, except that it didn't.

Good luck to NB and VT.
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 10, 2012, 06:41:35 PM
Well, as of suppertime this evening (Saturday evening), it’s pouring rain but still 55 degrees; however, it’s supposed to be snow and temperatures about 40 degrees lower than that, during the night.

I had nine hunters here during the afternoon, none of them having any luck.  The Great Barack Drought of ‘12, combined with all the massive prairie fires here this past summer, apparently had an effect upon deer copulation and where the deer now call “home.”

Nobody was especially disappointed though, as it’d been expected.  Not hoped for, but expected.

There was some conversation about the elections, the gist of it being the big-city bosses in corrupt blue cities stole it again, what with their manufacturing “votes” out of thin air.  And so those of us who cast our honest one vote got disenfranchised again.

Nebraska beat Penn State this afternoon, which was some cause for elation.

There was some talk about what happens to this place, but the most credible rumor seems to be that the owners are just going to go ahead and develop the property despite that the kleptomaniac Democrats might try to steal it; after all, they’re pretty old and want to have something in place for their children and grandchildren.

That means only one more hunting season out here with franksolich.

“But maybe because you’ll have to move, you’ll be a lot safer around more people,” I was advised, an obvious reference to strangers and primitives stalking franksolich who show up here, out in the middle of nowhere.

I said I wasn’t so sure about that; the whole world is a dangerous place if one can’t hear things, so it doesn’t make any difference where I eventually go, congested with other people or not.

One hunter, who I didn’t know but who was with another hunter I did know, joked, “Well, I suppose there goes the skinny-dipping in the river,” at which I bristled.

It really bothers me that other people know more about me, than I do about them, but I accept it with as good grace as humanly possible.
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: notaDUmmie on November 10, 2012, 08:44:28 PM
Things were great here; I just wish the rest of the country would've followed suit, and my condolences to those members living in places where it didn't happen.

I live in Virginia, and I'm truly heartbroken.  Not only did my adopted state fail me, my beloved home state of Florida did as well.

I became concerned when I went to vote at 2:00 PM...due to a glitch with the paper ballot tabulator, I had to alert the Chief Election Officer (who was as useful as a job for a DUmmy), and when he did nothing, the ORCA representative for the Romney team that was on-site.  To say that I was less than impressed with him would be an understatement, but while I waited for him to make his call, I chatted with the Republican precinct chief outside, and she told me they still had 1000 Republicans that had not yet voted.

That concerned me, so after I left, I drove about 7 miles away to the precinct where I had served as an election officer in 2008...heavily Democratic...and at 3:30 PM, the lines were still outside the door.  I knew that meant that they were wrapped around inside the school, meaning very high turnout. 

At that point, I became quite concerned, and the rest of the night didn't get any better.  I followed the Fairfax County Twitter as the precincts came in, a printed copy of 2008 results in hand, and I saw within about 30 minutes that Virginia was most likely lost.  I called it by 7:45 PM.

I'm glad that Nebraska came through for the country - wish I could say we did.
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 10, 2012, 08:54:16 PM
I'm glad that Nebraska came through for the country - wish I could say we did.

Here, after showing identification and checked in the register of voters, one's given a paper ballot and a pencil, and fills in the circles of one's choice, and then puts the ballot into a box.

It's a snap; easy as strawberries-and-cream.

I suspect a Democrat invented the voting machine, so as to make it easier to screw with the numbers.

Those things should be tossed into the junk heap.
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 11, 2012, 07:33:39 AM
Well, because south of here--Omaha, Lincoln, the Platte River, whatnot--got snow while all we had way up here was rain, the expected guest from Omaha decided to not drive here, and perhaps come next weekend.

It won't break his heart if he didn't nab a deer; he prefers hunting pheasants anyway, and there's a lot of time to do that.

So, it's a drab dull grey day here today, overcast skies, damp, and the temperature's in the low 20s, which is about as high as it'll get until Wednesday.
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 12, 2012, 08:05:24 AM
Thanks.

Though I might have a word or two to say about how the Second Amendment preempted NFA34 and GCA68, except that it didn't.

Good luck to NB and VT.

By the way, sir, in all this flurry of election news, there were a lot of stories that got overlooked.

At the same time Nebraska was making hunting and fishing a constitutional right, North Dakota overwhelmingly made farming a constitutional right.

Yeah, that's right; farming's now a constitutional right in North Dakota, and I suggest other states quickly follow the two of us.

That, again, was inspired by that a couple of years ago, North Dakota's leading moonbat pooh-poohed the idea that farming would ever be restricted or outlawed in North Dakota.

Now, when a Democrat, liberal, or primitive talks like that, suggesting "oh, there's nothing to worry about; it won't ever come that," is when one should worry, and get the thing engraved in granite.
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 12, 2012, 03:32:18 PM
There was just one hunter who dropped by today; an older gentleman.

As mentioned earlier, the Great Barack Drought of'12 apparently encouraged deer to migrate to more hospitable areas, as it appears to be a lean year for hunters around here.  This guy however had bagged one on Sunday, but as one can get two this week, he's looking for his second one.

Actually, he hadn't planned on being around to hunt this year, but because of FEMA, he is.

There's a church in the big city widely known for its humanitarian aid to people in need--anywhere in the United States to as far away as Africa and the Pacific.  It's a very "pro-active" group; it doesn't just send money or stuff; the people actually go places to distribute the aid, in conjunction with other organizations.  One of the food-and-medical missions, which lasted about six weeks four years ago, they airlifted tons of stuff to Zimbabwe, along with about twenty people from the church.

They'd made plans to go to the northeastern states affected by the recent hurricane, and had a couple of trucks loaded up with.....coffee and hot chocolate; the trailers were filled to the top, pallets of stacks of cases of coffee and hot chocolate.

Well, there's logistics involved with the distribution of hot drinks to battered civilians and relief workers, and so they sought to coordinate things with FEMA.  FEMA told them not to come; that they (FEMA) had everything well under control, and they weren't needed.

The older gentleman thinks that Christmas food-baskets for the poor of this part of Nebraska this year will inevitably include a lot of coffee and hot chocolate, each probably more than what a family can reasonably consume in a year.

He'd heard that I purchased a big stack of raffle tickets for the local Lions' Club, in which the prize awarded is a Benelli Super 90 12-gauge shotgun, and much like others around here, he operates on the impression that in a raffle, it's the person who doesn't need or want the prize, gets it.

"I think that if you win it, you probably should keep it, rather than selling or giving it away to someone else."

I reminded him I bought the tickets simply to support the fine work of the Lions' Club, and besides, I already have a weapon of choice for self-defense, that S/K adjustable wrench with a 17" handle and 1-3/8" spannage.  Best to stick with what one knows how to use.
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: Ballygrl on November 12, 2012, 03:47:43 PM
Not nice at all that FEMA told good people who are trying to do something, not good to tell them not to come.
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 12, 2012, 03:52:32 PM
Not nice at all that FEMA told good people who are trying to do something, not good to tell them not to come.

This just posted in the "Mind-Numbing Stupidity" forum:

"Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s food police have struck again!"

 http://www.conservativecave.com/index.php/topic,80783

Just how bad is the situation there?

Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 13, 2012, 05:40:09 PM
One solitary hunter dropped by this afternoon, Tuesday afternoon.

He’s somebody from town, although I don’t know him well.

He hadn’t gotten any deer himself the past four days, but plans to keep going through Saturday, unless he bags two of them before then, that being the legal limit.

We talked about the election, and apparently are of the same mind; the Barack Milhous regime is going to collapse prematurely from its sheer weight of arrogance and incompetence, so best to just sit back, relax, watch, and wait.  The guy in the White House is not exactly high-IQ material.

He’d heard I was looking for a primitive to have Thanksgiving with, but I told him I already found one, and who it was, curious if he knew anything about the primitive.

He has, and he suspects I’ll be disappointed, without mentioning how.
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 14, 2012, 09:09:12 AM
The neighbor and the property caretaker showed up about the same time this morning, Wednesday morning, and I mentioned the deer hunter from yesterday, who’d opined that I’d be “disappointed” upon meeting the primitive for Thanksgiving, but I didn’t think he said why, unless I didn't catch that part.

“You know, maybe he’s reformed now, turned a over a new leaf,” I said, “and that’d be all good and everything, but I was hoping to see a raw unrefined primitive.”

Neither could guess what the guy’d meant; as far as the neighbor knew, the primitive lives half the time in a half-way house up in Sioux Falls, and the other half the time in a straitjacket in the nuthouse there.

“That doesn’t sound like to me he’s reformed,” the neighbor assured me.

The caretaker, having the same information, agreed, but then added, “I’ll have the wife ask around.”

Good, I thought; the caretaker’s wife is the biggest gossip in the whole county, and if she wants to find something out, she does.

- - - - - - - - - -

There were three hunters who dropped by this morning.  I knew one of them, and the other two were apparently friends of his.  The one I knew, is the husband of the woman who owns one of the bars in town.

Formally and outwardly, the two of us get along fine, but his body language has always betrayed a contempt for me, although I have no idea why.

He’s about 65 years old, born and raised in this area.  He’s a long-distance truck-driver who cooks some nights at the bar when he’s home in town.  Apparently he used to cook full-time, but getting tired of his wife every so often, he hauls loads down to Texas or out to California.

I dunno his background, other than that he’s of Norwegian derivation.

However, oddly, his culinary specialty is Italianate dishes, and he is famous for them.

Maybe he learned it in the army or something, 45 years ago.

This was long before my time, but back when he’d been a full-time cook at the bar, there were six Italianate exchange students attending a college about two hours’ drive away from here, who made it a point to come whatever nights he was working, because they alleged he fixed dishes Calabrians and Piedmontese would find exquisite.

About the same time, and back when Omaha, Lincoln, Sioux City, and Minneapolis were more “ethnic” than they are now, proprietors of Italianate restaurants in those cities would come here to dine, and discuss dishes with him.  And usually they took back some of his recipes, to use in their own establishments.

I like his stuff too, but franksolich is a man of simple tastes.

He glares at me every time I got to the bar to place a “take-out” order.

The usual-and-standard hamburger, extremely well done, pressed down hard on the grill so as to squeeze out every drop of grease, and French fries cooked on the grill, not in the fryer.

I’m perplexed that he doesn’t seem to appreciate me, because I make his job a snap; something very simple and quick to make, and I’m an easy person to please.  He doesn’t have to do anything fancy, he doesn’t have to worry about getting it “just right” to please a fussy customer, he doesn’t have to sweat and toil over something fancy.

Here franksolich is, always being a nice guy taking up a minimum of his time and effort, and he doesn’t seem to appreciate it.
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: Skul on November 14, 2012, 10:26:15 AM
The gentleman sees himself as a Michaelangelo in the kitchen, and you ask him to put a stick of dynamite under a gallon of paint. :lmao:
I wonder if his wife knows how to prepare lutefisk?
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 14, 2012, 12:53:04 PM
The gentleman sees himself as a Michaelangelo in the kitchen, and you ask him to put a stick of dynamite under a gallon of paint.

That's been pointed out, but I reject it.

The guy sweats and labors fixing food for other people, trying to get it just right, trying to please their critical palates and tongues.

And here once in a whille comes franksolich, who causes him no worry at all, making a simple order.

I think he should rather like me, because I don't demand as much from him as other people do.
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 15, 2012, 04:48:02 AM
“He was in the army about the same time I was over in Vietnam,” the property caretaker told me this morning, when I inquired about the glum husband of the owner of the bar in town.

“He was stationed on some special project in Italy, and like with you over in Russia, he didn’t waste any time hanging around the fancy places or the tourist places or bigwigs or other Americans; he went right to country, to hang around with the peasants.

“Just like you did, boss, when you went to Russia, excepting unlike you, he learned a lot about the food there, while you wouldn’t eat any of local stuff, wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole.

“He never learned the language, though; he said knowing English and Norwegian was enough to get him around most parts of the world anyway.

“This used to perplex big-shot Italian restauranteurs from Chicago or Milwaukee or Kansas City, when they came up here to try out his cooking.  They already knew before coming that he wasn’t Italian, but thought he’d at least know the language.

“So they had to resort to watching him cook in the kitchen.

“As you know boss, that kitchen isn’t very big, like a small narrow kitchen in a railroad dining car or a closet or something, and when he and six or seven Italians were standing in it, there wasn’t even room for air.

“He taught them things about their native cuisine their great-great-grandparents had known, but they didn’t know.

“He didn’t make any secret of his recipes, lots of which were adopted for use in these big-city Italian eateries, during the late ‘60s and all through the ‘70s.

“Sometimes people wondered if he’s sneaked some Norwegian elements into his Italian cookery--he can be sneaky, remember--but apparently no.  His Italian cooking’s the real thing, pure and unadulterated.

“When cooking, he’s an honest man.”
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 15, 2012, 01:31:33 PM
“Well, boss, I still think you’re going to get what you wanted, a real primitive for Thanksgiving,” the property caretaker assured me at noon when he came over to get some tools for another job.

“The wife asked around, and he’s still nuts, still out of it, from all those drugs he took when he was younger.

“He just may make Auntie look a paragon of sentience.

“He’ll be here not because his people are old and looking at the cemetery, and want to have one last look-see at him, but because they’re finally going to cede complete guardianship of him to the taxpayers of South Dakota, washing their hands of him.

“They figure they’ve dealt with him for more than thirty years now, and can’t do him any good, so they might as well fold their cards.

“But being decent and civilized people, they’re not going to just have a lawyer up in South Dakota take care of it; they want to have one last final look to assure themselves that no, there’s nothing they can do for him.

“I think you’re going to get just what you wanted,” the caretaker repeated; “a real live primitive paying the consequences of his behavior.”
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 15, 2012, 04:55:29 PM
When I went to the post office in town this afternoon, I encountered my hostess for the Thanksgiving fete, who seemed delighted to see me.

“You know, we’re all really excited you’re coming, to be a diversion for all we old folks.”

She paused.  “Well, there’s the nephew, who’s not geriatric, but--

“It’s going to be great, having a young man join us.”

I arched my eyebrows.  “But you know, madam, I don’t look at other people the same way other people do.  I look at their insides, their souls, their spirits, and when I see you, I see someone in her first bloom of youthful beauty and vivacity, probably as you were when you were 21.”

“Oh bosh,” she answered; “I was 21 back in 1948, and there’s none of that left in me.”

No, really, I insisted; there was still a lot of that in her.  One just has to look for it.

- - - - - - - - - -

The neighbor’s wife came over later in the afternoon, to remind me that she’s bringing a turkey over sometime late Sunday, and gave me instructions as to its care; the same instructions she’s given me twice a year the past seven years.

The neighbor and his wife live in a big house, built in 2002, with a large state-of-the-art kitchen, stainless steel all over the place, but when cooking something big, she prefers to cook it here.

This is a very large kitchen--larger than her large kitchen--with acres of empty counter-space, and a stove and refrigerator that were probably meant for a hospital kitchen, as they’re both rather large and capacious.

I assured her yeah, sure, I remember what I have to do.

Then she told me she’d found out that the primitive coming for Thanksgiving is my own exact age, actually six weeks older than franksolich.

Ah, great, I mentioned; an excellent opportunity for observation and analysis.

“Okay, so he’s my same age, and there’s some other parallels between us--we’re both male, we were both born to parents later in their lives, we were born and raised in small uncrowded areas, we both had happy childhoods, we were both orphaned as teenagers.

“Two peas in a pod.

“The only significant difference being the presence, or absence, of pharmaceuticals.

“This is going to be an excellent opportunity to see if it’s true, ‘better living through chemistry.’”
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 16, 2012, 06:18:33 AM
“I think you’ll be disappointed because there’s nothing in or about him to see,” a hunter advised me this morning.  This was the same hunter who’d the other day told me that.

“I went through country school with him, and then after we went to our own high schools in town, I saw him every so often, competed with him, in football games and track meets.

“He was the top of his class in school, until he was about 15, 16, when he started running around with the kids of middle-aged peaceniks living off the charity of the county, and got into doing marijuana with them.

“He get very apathetic; didn’t care about anything but smoking dope and staring at the ceiling.

“It was sad, because his parents, who were pretty old, lived just long enough to see it start.

“They were scared for him, and set up the farm as a trust, with the sister of his mother, his aunt, as the guardian, so somebody could take care of him.

“Well, they died, and he came to town here, to live with your Thanksgiving hostess.

“He didn’t care for the school here, and dropped out.

“He was on hard drugs by then, and even though his aunt gave him an allowance, it wasn’t enough, and he got into stealing. It got so bad that even pawn-shops in the big city refused to do business with him, because all that he was turning in ended up going back to their rightful owners.

“He was always causing ruckuses in town, doing weird things like looking at the moon and baying like a dog, or running around in a dress, getting all sorts of tattoos and piercing, shoplifting, wearing black costumes, and generally scaring little children and old ladies.

“The sheriff wanted him put away, but his aunt wouldn’t let it happen.  She insisted she could cure him; she just hadn’t found the right way yet, but was confident she eventually would.

“When he started becoming a public hazard, the sheriff kicked him out of the county.

“He ended up over in Sioux City, where over a few years he had ‘relationships’ with sick women that resulted in progeny and desertion.  Somewhere along the line, he got the idea that if he could feign insanity, he could avoid child support, but that was superfluous because he was nuts anyway; he didn’t have to fake anything.

“He wandered as far afield as Minneapolis, but eventually turned back, ending up in Sioux Falls.

“He got into some really big trouble with the law there about 10, 12, years ago, and ended up being slapped into the nuthouse, where much money was spent on ‘drug therapy’ to ‘correct’ ‘chemical imbalances’ in his brain.

“He became docile about 5, 6, years ago, and was released to a half-way house up there.  But he’s still bad enough that he sometimes has to be shut up again, until he’s all calmed down again, and not a hazard to himself or to others.

“The aunt finally sold his parents’ farm and converted it to cash for the trust fund, and as it was a lot of money, and given her careful stewardship, it lasted quite a while.

“But now it’s pretty much all gone--just barely enough left to buy a casket and a plot at the cemetery any more--and his aunt and uncle are pretty old.  Since they have their own expenses to worry about, they really can’t afford to carry him.

“And so before the end of the year, he’s going to be signed over to the taxpayers of South Dakota, to take care of the rest of his life.

“He knows, and understands, nothing of this.  He’d always wanted to live life to the limit, to go to the furthest extreme, to surpass all boundaries, and I guess he did, to where he’s not even really alive anymore.

“You’re going to be disappointed; I think you should’ve looked around more, when looking for a primitive.  As God knows, we’ve got plenty of them, some of them even running the country now.”
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 16, 2012, 01:03:16 PM
“That is sick,” the femme protested, when she was here in mid-morning; “wanting to spend Thanksgiving gawking at a pathetic human freak.

“That is disgusting; I’m surprised at you.”

She was, obviously, not in a good mood.

Uh, I reminded her of something.  She, like most everybody else, watches television.  I don’t, because it’s too much of a hassle for a deaf person to figure out, and so best just to not bother with it.

However, just like hearing people, franksolich has the “need” to look at things, to examine them, to study them, to marvel at them.  And since television won’t fill that need, one seeks other means of satisfying the curiosity.

In this case, watching certain phenomenons in real life rather than on a screen.

Just because I don’t do television, does that mean I must sit around, my eyes tightly closed?

And actually, I suspect examining people in real life is healthier, mentally, than examining fictitious characters on a screen.

“Well, I still think it’d be better if you spent Thanksgiving with the neighbors,” she insisted, “in that aura of family values and love you want so much.”

Nope, not in a good mood, she.  This is something that seems to happen about, oh, maybe a dozen times a year.

The femme is spending Thanksgiving with her sister and her sister’s family in Omaha.

The femme’s sister in Omaha doesn’t care much for franksolich, which is why that’s always out, when one considers options for holidays.  She thinks I’m a prude, somebody who doesn’t know how to “have fun,” and nothing will change her mind, so I pass.

There’s always been problems about holidays, between the femme and myself.  I’m a live-and-let-live sort of person, willing to accept anyone coming my way, and she’s not.  She’s very selective about who she chooses to like, and to dislike.

I must say she exercises pretty good judgement about people, but still--

The biggest problem is that the femme is one of the two most important people in my life, at least at the moment.  And the other one is the business partner.

The femme gives me all those things a man wants from a woman, fulfilling my emotional needs.  The business partner provides most of my bread-and-butter, fulfilling my practical needs.

And they loathe and detest each other with a passion.

It’s been a very confusing and conflicted life so far, and it doesn’t look as if it’s ever going to change.

I have no idea why, but ever since franksolich was a little lad, I’ve been a subject of tug-of-war competition between people.  In my younger days on the grade-school playground, “I want him,” “No, I want him,” “You can’t have him because I want him more,” “You don’t need to have him,” “You don’t deserve to have him,” “If you take him, I’m going to beat you up,” “He’s mine,” “No, he‘s mine,” &c., &c., &c.

I have no idea why this is, as I‘m sure I have no special characteristics or qualities that would appeal to others--in fact, I‘m a rather ordinary, boring person-- but there it is, there you have it.

It actually became physical, when I was wandering around the socialist paradises of the workers and peasants, and oftentimes found one arm grabbed by a peasant, and the other arm grabbed by a worker, and nearly torn asunder between the two of them.  “I met him first, so he’s mine,” “He was in my house before he was in yours, so he’s mine,” “I speak better English, so he’s mine,” &c., &c., &c.

The only way I’ve learned to deal with it successfully is by withholding myself from everybody, and just going a third way, by myself.
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 16, 2012, 04:28:14 PM
“You know, that pisses me off that she said that,” I said to the neighbor’s wife, who was by later in the afternoon, after I’d failed in my attempts to buy a Hostess Ho-Ho at the convenience store in town, and gotten a haircut.

“She accused me of getting some sort of merriment out of looking at human monsters.”

I was of course referring to the femme, who hadn’t been too thrilled about my spending Thanksgiving dinner with a primitive, and undoubtedly a grotesque one at that.

The neighbor’s wife was sympathetic to “listening,” so I went on.

“What she doesn’t understand is that I’m not looking at the flaccid flab or the crossed eyes or the carbuncles or the dead eyes or the bad teeth or hursite neck or a big bump on the chin or whatever, that betray primitivity in the physical, visually observable, senses.

“Those outward characteristics exist, but in the case of primitives, they’re merely outward manifestations of a twisted, depraved, barbaric, monstrous, decadent mind and soul.

“That’s what attracts me, the fascination with the monster that’s inside of them.

“And you know as well as I do, that I’ve oftentimes been attracted to people who are utterly normal-looking on the outside, but disgusting creatures on the inside.”

I repeated my story of visiting a “special school” for retarded Native American children up in North Dakota some years ago.

“These kids were superintended by utterly normal-looking ‘social workers,’ whose primitivity was the most monstrous, the most depraved, I’ve ever observed, especially after I noticed the ABORTION NOW and KERRY-EDWARDS bumper-stickers on their cars.

“They were all women, younger versions of the Die alte Sau, wire-rimmed eyeglasses, frowning, scowling, grimacing, sourasses angry and bitter at the world and everyone in it.  They weren’t pleasant-looking, but they were pretty normal-looking.

“However, despite the outward appearance of normalcy, these were some of the most hideous monsters one could ever hope to see.  I couldn’t take my eyes off of them.  I wasn’t looking at their bodies, but glimpsing into their dark Hate-filled souls.

“Believe it or not, even decorated-like-a-Christmas-tree Auntie was comely when compared with these fetid monstrosities.”
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 17, 2012, 10:02:40 AM
“No, I think it’s interesting, looking at interesting people,” a hunter advised me this morning; “and if you want to look at primitives, well, you got ‘Exhibit A’ for Thanksgiving.”

This hunter’s in his late 40s, early 50s, and recalls the upcoming primitive from school.

“I haven’t seen him for almost thirty years now, but even back then, you could tell where he was heading.”

Changing the subject, I bitched about the femme.

“You know, she gets cranky about, oh, probably twelve times a year, and she obviously has advance warning the crankiness is coming.  She can’t do anything about it…..but…..she can make adjustments for it, so as to soften its impact on other people.

“Sometimes I know I myself am about to descend into a funk, a short spell of melancholia or grouchiness, and nothing can stop it; it’s going to come, and I have to ride it out.

“Since I’m aware this is what’s going on, and it’s bad manners to take such feelings out on other people, I adjust what I do and say accordingly, so it doesn’t show to, and trouble, other people.

“’Grin and bear it’ is an utterly appropriate way to be, and I wish she’d be that way too.”
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 17, 2012, 08:01:56 PM
The wife of the retired banker came over about supper-time this evening, dragging grumpy with her.  Her husband is one of these old guys who wears his pants hiked clear up to his midriff, and who doesn’t say much, other than an unintelligible “harump” now and then.

She’d brought along with her a history of the Harvey House restaurants of the old Santa Fe railway, which I knew she had, and I wished to read, in preparation for Thanksgiving with this new primitive.

“We’re so excited you’ll be joining us,” she told me.  “It’s gotten very boring with only old people at the table.”

She also mentioned she was bringing food to the dinner too; pickled herring and lutefisk specially prepared by the husband of the owner of the bar in town.

I was gracious about it, but inwardly grateful I still have four days to tell her “no, please.”
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 18, 2012, 01:27:34 PM
The neighbor's wife stopped off here at noon, bringing two frozen turkey carcasses.

One is 24 pounds, the other is 14 pounds.

They'll be cooking in this oven very early Thanksgiving morning, and about noon the larger one will go to the neighbor's house, while franksolich heads to town to have Thanksgiving dinner with a primitive.

It'll just be the neighbor, his wife, and their four children for dinner at their place, until the business partner and I show up circa 6:00 p.m. that same day to chow down on what's left over.

And then we'll show up again there for lunch on Friday, to deal with the left over leftovers.

She told me the "why" of the smaller one, but I didn't catch it.  I suppose I'll find out sooner or later.
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 19, 2012, 03:40:13 PM
"Don't worry about it, boss; I'll have the wife take care of it," the property caretaker assured me this afternoon.

The caretaker's wife is the biggest gossip in town, and in this case it's good.

I'd expressed concern because the wife of the retired banker, who comes here to collect tub-loads of the William Rivers Pitt to use in her award-winning gardens, had told me she was bringing Danish-style pickled herring and lutefisk to the Thanksgiving dinner.

I have a good stomach, but it tends to, uh, upchuck at the odor of dead fish.

"She [the caretaker's wife] already found out that the house to the west of them is having the usual turkey, and the house to the east of them's having steaks, nobody having any fish, so the coast should be clear.

"But boss, you got the queerest stomach I've ever seen, getting queasy at the strangest things."

I can't help it, I said; I was born that way.

"Now, I'll be over on Wednesday afternoon," he also told me; "because I got to talk to you about the situation you're walking into on Thanksgiving.  It's not all what it seems to be."
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 19, 2012, 07:25:05 PM
Three hunters stopped by this evening; they’d been out duck hunting, as the deer season’s now over.

Actually, the deer season in Nebraska goes on into January, but one just can’t use a firearm, unless a musket or blunderbuss or flintlock, I guess.

These hunters are from another county, but they’d been here before, in prior years.  One got five, the limit, another got four, and the third got two.  They’d of course hunted early in the day, and then went off to do other stuff.  They came back here because two of their motor vehicles had been parked here, when I was gone.

The recent elections are still news, and the hunter I know best expressed surprised that I don’t seem quite as upset as most are.

“What’s going to happen, what’s going to happen?

“We’re going down the drain.”

At which I expressed equanimity; it’s going to be rough, very rough, at least until the mid-term elections of 2014, when the Republicans get their second shot at gaining the Senate and improving their margin in the House--but one we’d better not blow--in fact, it’s going to be damned hard on tens of millions.

And one hopes the hardest blows fall upon that 50.5% or whatever who voted for the incumbent.

My idea of utopia, a perfect world, is a world in which each of us, rather than other people, pay for the consequences of our individual actions.

For example, if the primitives want welfare, they should be the ones paying for it, not other people.

But the problem is, decent and civilized people are going to get hit too, by hard times coming as a consequence of the actions of those 50.5%.

I confessed I’m sort of nonchalant about it--we’ll get by, and brighter days are coming--simply because franksolich is way out of the mainstream of socio-economic trends (I’m walking along the bank, my feet not even getting wet) that affect most other people.

When times are good for most everybody else--such as during the Great Reagan-Bush-Gingrich-Bush Prosperity--they’re not quite as good for franksolich. 

And when times are bad for most everybody else--such as during the Hard Times of Jimmy Carter and the first two years of William Clinton--they’re not quite as bad for franksolich.

I get by.

And so I’m looking at the whole thing as if watching something on television, detached from it.
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 21, 2012, 05:00:54 PM
The property caretaker came over this afternoon, while the neighbor’s wife was also here, preparing the two turkeys for franksolich to cook for her early in the morning.  She told me again why two turkeys, but as I was preoccupied, I didn’t catch it.

The caretaker and I sat in the dining room and talked; I dunno if the neighbor’s wife caught all, or much, of it, but probably she did.  It wasn’t confidential anyway.

“Well, boss,” the caretaker started, “ I have more information about the primitive for you, stuff everybody but you seems to know.

“You already know his parents died when he was still a teenager, leaving the farm to his mother’s sister in trust for him, because he was still a minor, 15, 16, years old, and had already been into drugs for a couple of years by then.  His mother was afraid he’d waste it.

“So he went to live with his aunt in town, but drugs--he was w-a-a-a-a-y past marijuana by then--retarded his social and intellectual development, and he didn’t like it here.  He was always trying to get away--to where, nobody knows--but at the same time he was shackled here, as the money was here with his aunt, and he couldn’t have any of it without her okay.

“He dropped out of high school, and by the early 1980s, when he was in his early 20s, he was a full-time professional-level drug addict.  In fact, he was one of the first known cases of methamphetimine use in the county.  He was way beyond cocaine and crack and Qaaludes and all that stuff then in vogue.

“There wasn’t any hope for him; the best that could’ve happened would’ve been that he’d wander out onto the highway and get pancaked by a semi-truck.

“It’s too bad that didn’t happen, because it would’ve spared a lot of people a lot of grief.

“His aunt, your hostess tomorrow, has the same sort of conscience you do, boss; never give up on somebody until you’re spent and wasted to nothing yourself.  It must be a Catholic thing, I dunno.

“For years and years and years, the sheriff advised her to have him put away, but she felt she’d be reneging on her promise to her sister, that she’d take care of him.  She took this vow seriously, and wouldn’t give up.

“Well, a farm’s a lot of money--it could’ve sent him all the way through college, given him the means to start a business or something debt-free, and afforded him a life among the Jet Set.

“But over the years, it had to be squandered on medical and psychiatric treatment, bail bond, fines and other monetary penalties, keeping women quiet, because he couldn’t stay out of trouble.  But mostly on psychiatric treatment.

“Well, he’s well into middle-age now, and the money’s nearly all gone.  There’s about enough to buy a piano case for his carcass, and a double lot in the cemetery, and that’s it.

“And his aunt’s now 86 years old, hardly a spring chicken.

“About two years ago, [the local priest] started talking to her about it, trying to convince her it was time to cut ties; he was beyond redemption, his money nearly all gone, and she needed her own money to keep herself and her husband in their old age.

“It took a very long time, and it eventually also involved the sheriff and her attorney and her two younger sisters, but then a couple of months ago, she agreed to relinquish guardianship over him--he’s been certifiably incompetent since 1977 or something--to the state of South Dakota, where he currently resides, in a nuthouse.

“Those papers are to be signed on December 5th, up there, her attorney representing her.

“However, because of her troubled conscience, she wanted to see him one last final time, and decided she’d have him down here for Thanksgiving.  She hadn’t seen him since the early 1990s, and wanted to be absolutely sure he was beyond saving, before abandoning him.

“She’s ancient, and doesn’t travel well, so she couldn’t go up there; he had to be brought down here.

“She was making arrangements for his transport, but she was fooling only herself--and you.

“Everybody else knew he wasn’t coming down here; he couldn’t come down here.

“[The local priest] told her last night the doctors up there had vetoed the trip, and she seemed to take it okay.  Not great, but okay.

“So no primitive for Thanksgiving.  I’m sorry.”

Damn, I was disappointed, let down.

“And here, the primitive’s my exact age--just six weeks older than I am--and it would’ve been interesting to see what I’d be like, if I’d been a primitive,” I said.

“Well, boss, the sheriff saw him about ten years ago, in a wheelchair in the nuthouse up there, when he had to take somebody else there.  He just passed him by, and didn’t recognize him at first.

“Back then, the guy was about 400 pounds, his jowls spilling over his shoulders, his beady little eyes unseeing, his opened mouth drooling, hardly any hair left, and reeking of dirty diapers.

“I don’t imagine he’s improved in looks or body odor any since then.”

The caretaker shifted in his chair, uneasily.

“I hope this doesn’t mean you won’t go now, because there are some people going to be there, who are looking forward to seeing you.

“You’ve been around here for more than ten years, and while everybody knows who you are, you’re as slippery as an eel, elusive, suddenly appearing out of nowhere, acknowledging their presence, and then just as quickly evaporating again when they blink their eyes.

“I dunno why you’re that way, but you’re that way.

These are old people who are going to be there, half of them from the nursing home, and most likely in two or three years, they’ll be gone.  They really want to meet you.”

I took a deep breath.  “I didn’t have any intention of not going, no matter what, as I’d said I’d go, but the primitive not being there really makes it all pointless.  I’ll go, but it might be uncomfortable, me being the youngest person there.   These people are decades older than I am.”
Title: Re: perhaps some comedic relief for today, I dunno
Post by: franksolich on November 21, 2012, 07:42:59 PM
“I’m so happy you’re still going,” the neighbor’s wife said to me after the caretaker left.

She was just then finishing up whatever she was doing to the turkeys, which I’m to put into the oven beginning circa 4:00 in the morning.  And then about the time I’m heading to town to the primitiveless Thanksgiving dinner, her husband will be here picking it up for their own dinner.

“But I have a problem with it,” I admitted.  “All these people old enough to be my parents, give or take a few years either way.  They’re almost exact contemporaries of my parents, and seeing them as they are now, it gets discombobulating.”

“How so?” she asked.

I can’t explain it, I said; there’s no way I can articulate what really bothers me about it, only that it bothers me greatly, causing enormous internal convulsions.

“As you know, my father died when I was 17, and he was 59.  And then the next year, my mother died when I was 18, and she was 54.  When a person dies, one’s image, one’s perception, of them is frozen, petrified, in the mind, as they aren’t going to get any older.

“Now, 59 and 54 isn’t young, but it isn’t old either.

“All my adult life, I’ve seen my parents as they were then.

“I can’t possibly imagine them as being ancient; no way. 

“It used to freak me, when meeting the parents of college classmates and roommates--of course, years after college--who were about my parents’ age, and how old they were. 

“My parents using a cane or a walker or sitting in a wheelchair; my parents absent-minded and forgetful; my parents in old age?  No way.  Despite all the mental gymnastics, I can’t see it, I can’t imagine it.  There’s a ’block’ somewhere.

“Oddly, it’s the same at the other end of the spectrum, when running into a high-school classmate of my younger brother.  My younger brother died when he was 17, and I was 19, and there’s that ’picture’ of how he was then; it’s never changed, because I never saw him grow any older.

“And then I run into one of his classmates, now middle-aged, maybe pot-bellied, maybe balding, and in some cases a recent grandparent.

“No way; this can’t be somebody who was once a child with, a playmate with, a classmate with, my younger brother.  No way in Hell can I imagine my younger brother being like them, if he’d lived. 

“It’s dispiriting, it’s melancholy, how that happens.  I can’t explain what it is or why it is, only that it makes me feel very disheartened, that such happens to people.  On the outside, I handle it okay, but I’m always in a funk for several days afterwards.”

Then deciding I’d probably become even more incoherent about the issue, I quickly changed the subject, asking the neighbor’s wife why I was going to be cooking two turkeys.

But barely had I begun to ask the question when her cellular telephone rang, and she had to take off. 

- - - - - - - - - -
--okay, this is the end of this narrative, in which things aren't turning out the way I'd hoped they would; a new one starts after the primitiveless Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow