Picket Line

I had to laugh yesterday on the way home from work. I guess the Firefighters are on strike for something or other and as I was driving through the picket line scattering sign holders like bees and I was not reading the signs or looking at anyone so as not to run over any of them. (It would have given them something to do if I just clipped one) I am not sure why they are picketing but one of the signs seem to say “NASA froze my…. “ I could not read the rest of the sign. My old eyes and slightly dyslexic vision made the word “Penis” out of some letters. I thought, "Well, I would do more than picket if someone froze my penis, and especially if it was a government agency." I do not need or use my penis much anymore but I am kind of familiar with it and the thing IS used for balance also. ( Kinda like a cheetah's tail.) “ NASA froze my PENSION”. Boy, that was a close one. 

Shoe Squeaking

This may be the final straw.  The shoe on my right foot, the one I kick my son with squeaks with every step I take.  I noticed a vibration about two weeks ago just days prior to my return to playing tennis.  I mention tennis because I would be suspecting tennis and stiffness to be causing the squeak if it would have started the day after my first 6:30am tennis travesty.  Now this nudge is a full blown squeak.  Step, squeak, step, squeak.  Sweet Savior on High what is that sound?


Since the noise started, I have tried Shoe Goo, a great product, super glue, not so great a product, Gorilla glue, and I even tried lubricating the bottom of my shoe with joy jelly.   The results are as expected.  I have pulled up carpet tiles because the super glue stuck my shoe to them, I have a lump of shoe goo on the instep of my still squeaking tenny causing me to drag my foot like a cripple and I slipped and fell up the stairs emanating a nice strawberry scent while busting my shin bone.  The Gorilla glue just made my finger tips black (which lasts for 3 days).   I reached for the big knife and sliced off a loose piece of shoe tread that I suspected was the problem.  The noise is different but remains just the same.


If I drag my foot like I had a stroke, the noise stops.  I tried that for about fifty steps and my hip, knee, calf and cow hurt so bad I decided I would rather have the squeak.  By the time I got back to my office, I hated the squeak again because now it was doing it on carpeted floor as well.  Tears cannot express the pain.  When Edgar Allan Poe wrote the The Tell-Tale Heart, he could not have thought a worse haunt.  I anticipate the sound before my foot even hits the floor and I cringe at each bark.  I am losing my mind over a squeaky shoe.  I do not even want to walk anymore. I am in a spiral of squeaky death.


I am going to have to get a new pair of shoes.  I love the way these shoes broke in.  All of my extraneous foot pain went away when I slipped into these shoes. There are a type of children's shoes that are made to squeak.  I guess these lazy parents can keep track of the little terrorists by listening instead of seeing them in the street or twisting with the pit bull by the neighbor's pool.  My shoes are less than two years old.  For me, these are still infant shoes.  I wear shoes for ten years or more.  I restitch them, bleach them, glue them and grind them.  The last pair of shoes I had were the Magic Johnson LA Gear shoes.  I did not care for them.  I gained a bunch of weigh while wearing those shoes.  Come to think of it so did he after starting that company.  I am sure the two are not related.  The current pair is, and I hate to say Nike.  At least I think so.  They do not say Nike but there is one of those obnoxious check marks on them.  The only thing more annoying than the check mark is the branding "Nike".  At least Puma has a cool name and insignia.


I cannot express the aggravation this is causing.  The stress is giving me gas.  I know a headache will come to roost because my club foot is hurting.  This is worse than a hang nail.  Far worse than sticker burs in the yard or fire ants in my pants.  I would almost rather wear toe shoes than squeak my way around the water cooler.  As gas bubbles gurgle through my lower bowels, I can only think of leaving work, buying shoes and wondering when this anguish will end.  I tightened all the shoe laces hoping to change the shape of the shoe.  The sound is back in full squeak.  I must go.

Tree Jumping

As I have spoken before, Bobby was not just a friend.  He was a good friend with a good heart and a complete lack of self control.  There was no finer gift than his friendship to me.  A close second attribute was his desire, no compulsion to try anything that looked or sounded fun.  I supplied the creativity and Bobby supplied the reckless abandon.  I would say, Hey Bobby, you know what is really cool and does not require any money?  Riding your bike off of the dock at Collier's house.  If you hit it just right, you can get great air and distance.  I'll bet with the way you pedal like a madman you could do a flip or something.  Doug went about fifteen feet on a tricycle.

Bobby:  Well, I can out pedal Doug.  Remember that day at the beach with the dead shark.  I was on it that day.

Creativity:  You were all over it, Bobby, you can't run for shit but you can pedal that banana bike.  You have a whole nother gear. 

The hook was set, Bobby would nearly bleed to death with that broken tricycle stuck in his leg.

Then there was tree jumping, I invented it.  It is a modification of the Tarzan vine swinging thing.  Basically you jump from one tree to another by climbing to the very top of a suitable Australian Pine tree and start it swaying.  This tree is very flexible.  Casuarina equisetifolia is native to Australia and is always green but it is everywhere in Florida.  This tree can grow to fifty feet or more and is very flexible and easy to climb.  

The tree in the background of this picture is perfect for tree jumping.  Near the top you can start the thing swaying back and forth and bend it over to get near a neighboring tree.  At the appropriate time, one "simply jumps" to the other tree.  Bobby, having the ability to learn from his mistakes and not being made sport of, said,  "I am not sure how to do this, you show me".  Bobby was at that adolescent age where his eyes, arms, feet and brain were growing way to fast and not at all talking to each other.  He was bigger than me even though I was older.  At any given time, every part of his body was doing something different and going in a different direction.  Today they would classify him as ADD or have him on drugs.  In those days we called it "entertainment".  I climbed the tree and started it swaying.  Since I was the greatest tree climber in these parts, I had a reputation to uphold so I really got the tree swaying.  When the tree bends  back up and slings me to the other side, I remember asking my grip to not fail me.  It took everything I had to hang on and swing my body out because in the next moment I was going to "jump" to the nearby tree.

Yes, I felt bad about Bobby landing on a shrubbery and getting the breath knocked out of him.  I told him that since this was not the first time he could not breath and he was going to be "OK", I really did not have to stop laughing.  I called him Bobby the flying squirrel and he started laughing but without any breath he just turned red and then blue.  The only other time I had seen him that blue was when he held is breath for four minutes at the Holiday Inn pool.  On the walk back home he got over being mad at me for laughing and he said, maybe we can do that again sometime!

Dandruff Shampoo

Dandruff shampoo or anti-dandruff shampoo?  There is a grammar war going on in the shampoo isle of the grocery store.  Technically, shampoo to fight dandruff would be anti-dandruff shampoo.  I see anti-itch but not itch shampoo.  I see anti itch dandruff shampoo.  I do not see anti itch anti dandruff stuff. 

I have always assumed "dandruff" shampoo is for those who have dandruff and that they prevent flaking and itching.  Well here is a news flash.  The medical community does not completely understand Seborrhea or flaking skin mostly associated with dandruff.  What are we paying them for, geez louiz.  I mean we have the human genome project and we do not understand dandruff. We spend a billion dollars a year on shampoo that the medical people do not make any money on.  I find that hard to believe.  According to my sources, most shampoos and treatments are directed toward reducing inflammation of the skin.  The skin must flame up and flake off like heat tiles on the Shuttle.  The itching is associated with the skin flaking.  The shampoos try to reduce the inflammation.  I know, that sounds quite simplistic. 

I do not think we should be anti dandruff.  Have we walked a mile in their shoes?  Have we tried to imagine being dry skin, a flake?  Well, I have and sloughing off to be left behind for a mite's dinner is no way to live.  Flakes have rights.  Give me adhesion or give me dandruff shampoo.  Don't chafe on me.  I will itch no more forever!

I would be happy if all shampoo would eliminate or reduce dandruff.  It is possible, only to dream.  I wonder if they had dandruff on Star Trek, they did not have headaches.  Mom said children cannot have headaches. 

To go forward

I wonder if I could get on with my minimal hermetical lifestyle.  I have eliminated so many constraints of a capitalistic lifestyle.  Henry David Thoreau may have been proud of me for shunning much of society. Would Jesus be proud of my socialist bent, my care for the poor and the widowed?  I do not think He would feel I have done close to enough.   Could anyone more sane than insane deal with this society, this world?  Was society always this frustrating, this hedonistic?

Thoreau would not even notice me, our types are invisible.  Not only do I live in seclusion, I shun the light of cameras, the light of day and the light of life.  Jesus will keep prodding me, giving me not only the opportunity to see the light but join the light.  Shadow dwellers will see a great light!

What I can see is a logical end to a position and none of the ends to any positions have light in the tunnel, not to mention at the end.  No, I am not depressed, I am resigned to long suffering.  I am sure the end years of my life will not be better than the beginning years or the middle decades.  My children will not have an easier time than I.  I have not prepared them properly, how can a wannabe hermit prepare his children.  My grandchildren will have such a completely different life, I assume much harder, certainly more complicated and less prosperous.  Danger, not fear will play a major role in shaping the next millennium. 

I am not afraid of something so uncontrollable as nuclear war or a Cuban hoard invading the US.  The danger will be from my neighbors, people with no hope, starving people with starving children.  I will be attacked by extremely well armed people that will take what they want.  Some of them will be the same ones that hate working, hate immigrants, hate people with less than white skin.  Some of them will just have hungry children, sick kids.  They will look across the fence and see a house, a yard and people with fake smiles.  They will see a car seemingly going to work every day.  They will see fat horses, cats and a swollen dog. 

Our society is collapsing and all we can do is dig in.  Well that is not all.  We will need to dig in as we reach out to help others dig in.  We will need to create a survival network. An atmosphere of love, not enablement.  It would be so nice if the end would be a meteor hitting the ocean or all the continents slamming into each other.  The end would be swift and very few would survive to blame, or to be jealous of anyone.  How can anyone really blame a government for a meteor although some would try.  I can hear these words already, "They should have hired a Sunni to run the government, or a white guy, or at least make sure it was a guy. "

A cave is a better hiding place than my farm, and better than a secret room in a boarding house. Instead, I am going to hide in plain sight.  I will keep the lights off, keep the dog quiet.  I will make sure the house does not look too fine or the yard too well kept.  I will have yard sales once in a while to make it look like I need money like the rest of us.  I will wear cloths with holes in them but we all know they are the most comfortable.  I will plant a useless garden, one that does not really produce anything.  I will wave to all the passerbys and force a frown from my face.  A crooked down spout and a leaning fence will go a long way to forcing others to assume I am needy and broke.  Hiding in  plain sight is harder than living in a cave.

We will all have to do with less, and there is less time to do what needs to be done.  Minimal pay, minimal work.  Minimal life.  Niiiiiiiice!