Well, dang, after being locked out of my blog for years, somebody makes a comment, and suddenly, the gates open up! I’d say Hallelujah, but I’ve got a rotten cold and have lost my voice, so I’ll jus type Hallelujah. Hallelujah!
See? Told ya I’d type Hallelujah! (No, I haven’t changed a bit. Yes, I’m still freakin’ nuts. Good for me, bad for you, so take cover!) 😀
I’ll do a longer post tomorrow, bring y’all up to speed. Until then, thanks to new buddy MI6 for getting the doors open, and welcome back!
Lord, I thank you for another at-bat,
Before I lay down my head.
Perhaps tomorrow won't be a strike-out.
Maybe a single or double instead.
I'm down in the very bottom of the seventh,
And batting way below .318
I still keep swinging best as I can,
Though a home-run I doubt will be seen.
But I still have a bit of life to go
Before this whole game is through.
I still hope to go on the road to Chi-town
And see Wrigley a time or two.
So Lord, please hear my baseball prayer,
Before I go to sleep 'neath the loam.
Let me hear the crack of ball and bat
And arrive, at the end, safe at home.
What you get when a homesick Chicagoan is watching Ken Burns' baseball documentary.😉
Where were you, when the water came,
And took it all away?
What did you see, when the water came,
And rendered our world all gone?
Where have you been, since the water came?
Rebuilding day by day.
Where will you be, when the water comes?
Right here.
Forever.
Home.
For all those, here and gone, who experienced the Tohoku Earthquake and the Fukushima tsunami.
(Note: This is about Hell, the religious place, not the town of Hell, Michigan. You know, the one just down the road from Climax. Which, yes, can be reached directly from Intercourse, Pennsylvania. The fact that Intercourse leads to Climax and then to Hell is a topic I will let wiser people debate. And now we return you to your regularly scheduled blog, already in progress.)
… and then just plug it in. Voila! You have now created your own cold fusion generator, and can enjoy decades of free electricity. But I digress.
I was watching a Tex Avery toon yesterday (something I highly recommend), when I took especial notice of a refrigerator in the background. It bore the name “Coldernell”, a typical Tex pun (“Colder Than Hell”), but it got me thinking. Always a dangerous event, but go with me here.
“It’s Hotter Than Hell” is an exclamation heard only slightly more than “It’s Colder Than Hell”. It’s hard as Hell, easy as Hell, tall, short, long, complicated, easy … Hell is all these things, all at the same time. What the hey? How crazy is this place? I mean. how does Satan dress? Fur coat and bikini briefs? No wonder it’s a place to avoid. You never know how to handle things from one moment to the next.
So behave yourself, or you may end up in a place both hot and cold, tall and short, and many other dichotomies all at once! 😈
(Sits here grinning, letting the readers wonder that the HELL he’s gonna talk about.)
I know I promised you guys a brief history of my past 3 years while I was MIA, but the more I tried to write something, the more I realised it would just be me crabbing about things going wrong. And who the heck needs that, when the whole bloody WORLD has been about things going wrong for a year-plus. So instead, I’m gonna try to give you updates about my world from a humourous point of view – or more accurately, views of my world through my twisted point of view.
New Neighbours – Yep, we’ve got a new set across the drive from us. Number 11, if I count correctly, in the roughly 14 years we’ve been here – and the house has spent almost 5 years of that time empty. (I guess I’m hard on child-molesting, wife-beating, perennially-drunk rednecks.) Hubby of new family is an African-American. (Sorry, I’m gonna be a bit non-PC and just say “black”. My fat fingers can’t handle all those letters. My apologies to all.) Hubby needs a car, even though he’s unemployed. You know, cigarette and beer runs to our version of a Kwik-E-Mart – the old Fresno schoolhouse. (Yep, we turn schools into 7-11s.) So does hubby get a fuel-efficient little Honda or some such? No, he gets a rear-wheel drive Dodge Ram with a V-8 in write-me-a-ticket Red with silver lightning bolts down both sides. A black guy, in Trump country, unemployed, on beer runs, in a screaming red muscle-car substitute. Welcome to Fresno, Ohio, where subtlety is as common as a college degree. (Sigh.)
Culture – We have a bookmobile that visits our area, coming in from the BIG town of Coshocton. (Go ahead, try to find it on a map. Use a magnifying glass – you’ll need it!) It’s actually kinda cool, using an old bus from the 1950s. They used to stop right across the street from us, which made sense as there are several families with kids around us. But now they make only one stop in Fresno. Where? At the old, closed schoolhouse-turned-Kwik-E-Mart. I guess an adult buying beer and smokes might need a copy of Dr. Seuss or Clifford. (Sigh * 2.)
Fresno Schoolhouse, From Wikipedia
Infrastructure – About 5 years ago, we finally got sewers out here, to replace our pain-in-the-butt septic tanks. Mind you, we still pull water out of the ground through wells at each house, but we take the waste water and ship it off to the next town. (West Lafayette, and before you ask, there is no Lafayette, North Lafayette, East Lafayette, or South Lafayette.) Anyway, they had to tear up the street out in front, that had last been paved decades ago but was in good shape. The township swore the plumbing company would repave the road. So in they came, ripping up whole blocks and screwing the locals over for just shy of a full year. Then, because they were running behind schedule and were running into winter, they hastily repaved the road and vanished. Now, there are numerous potholes, huge cracks, and one side of the road is at a different level than the other – sometimes higher, sometimes lower. Oh, and when they hooked up our sewer lines, they filled the old septic tanks with concrete so we couldn’t reuse them. So now, or shit tanks are well paved, and our roads are paved like shit. (Sigh Cubed)
So that’s a little insight into country living. Next time, I’ll tell you about the Amish around here – the greatest rules lawyers on the face of the earth! (I’ll explain that term, too, so don’t worry.) See ya soon!
Just a quick one here, folks. I’m so exhausted answering the thousands … um, hundreds? …. dozens? … Okay, okay, the less than 6 responses! (How many? A gentleman never tells – and I won’t, either. :p ) I’ll try to give you a quick overview of the last few years, including the loss of 3 of our cat collection. Yes, fate has not been kind. But I’ll try not to be too maudlin, just hit the highlights … well, more like lowlights of my absence.
So stay tuned, and stay patient for just a little bit longer. The voices are screaming to let their lunacy out, and I’m not sure how long I can keep ’em restrained……..
Hey Ho! It’s me again! Nope, not dead (though it was close a year ago thanks to Covid), not off to my homeworld (just a brief vacay before I came back to DiseaseWorld), but back here to terrorise and amuse, not necessarily in that order.
This is a little work inspired by DC’s Legends Of Tomorrow. If you aren’t watching it already (and why the heck NOT?!?), this could be an internal monologue for the lead female character, who DC & CW allowed to be a lesbian – so any “she/she” references I make are gender correct, and not just my legendarily fat fingers. Enjoy
– – – – – – – – – – – – – –
What Shall I Be?
Leader Or Lover?
Sister-in-arms or girlfriend embraced?
The tough captain or the soft, warm other half?
How do you decide between two heartaches, knowing that both will remind you of what you’re setting aside, and of what could have been? Both choices leaving you to wonder whether the love each brings, will outweigh the hurt they will cause.
So you look into her eyes, seeing your own torture mirrored, and you both make the conventional, the reasonable, the logical choice – and then go your ways quickly.
So she won’t see your tears, and you hers. Once again, you’ve chosen against love. Once again, you ask those words that will endlessly haunt your thoughts:
Yeah, I haven’t fallen off the edge of the world. It’s just been a long and weird winter/spring shift. We’ve had record high daytime temperatures and record low night temps withn 24 hours of each other. I’ve been having to switch from A/C (window units) to heat, which involves a LOTTA work! (Cover over the A/C units and feed the fire during cold, then uncover the A/Cs and juggle fans around, plus the inevitable water in the basement from rains that goes right through the firewood storage, etc.). Plus I have to go to the doc every 3 months, as opposed to the previous 6, thanks to some Ohio state congressman trying to head off the opoid crisis (Here’s an idea – don’t prescribe oxycontin for a stubbed toe!), and of course, getting the lawn warfare gear ready. Lotsa work, little to show for it. And of course, my hardware is once again wrestling with me (my COMPUTER, ya filthy-minded schmucks! 😉 ). Yep, fun fun fun all day long!
But we’re all well, all 13 of us. Seems like 10 cats is a good number, no more, no less. The new-ish neighbors across the drive are a Godsend, causing no problems whatsoever (and getting more and more angry with the rental agent who always wants to war with us, so that’s a double gift), and the rednecks on the other side are terrified of us, so we got that going for us, which is good. No Email service yet, but I’ll keep an eye on these posts, so be patient, I will try to get to comments as quick as possible.
So enjoy the previous post, and I’ll catch y’all later!
A Windy City boy, lost in rural Ohio, just shooting the breeze.
Commentality - Lotsa Comments .... 