Tag: growing up

Day 30 – Death, Doom & The Beyond

I have been at a incredible impasse the past few days, after not being at one for the better part of a month. I have tried to maintain a balance of thing in life, for once any single task, hobby, or overindulgence consumes me, it can quickly become the main and only focus of a given day.

So I played games all day and wasted away yesterday. Was just empty. Then it hit me.

I mean I know when Michael Jackson died, all the people that liked to scream pedophile or scream molester, well mainly all the people that just like to scream, suddenly were screaming the holy train of praise. There are always people that mainly want to hear themselves scream all the damn time.

I do not understand this whatsoever. I can be quite loud and outgoing at times, I can be quiet and passive (yes I actually can hahaha) but for people who toot their horns nonstop just for some airtime to benefit themselves due to the misfortune of another is frankly appalling.

So I stopped to think the other day…..luckily I had quite a long time away from others and the clamoring going on in their heads. Lucky enough to be able to enjoy a nice day out in the sun and lucky enough to actually shut off my own random thoughts that we going on. I had a few disheartening thoughts about things going on in my personal life and then a few happy ones. Back and forth over the great volleyball net of life…..

The thing that got me the most upset though was relatively simple. It is simply a question:

Why are people so satisfied with mediocrity?

The question stuck in my mind for a long time, longer then most and when I tried to push it away it fought back really hard to the point that tears ran down my face. It just became really sad to me that so many people go from being overzealous teens who can conquer the world or anyone or anything they choose to being complete shells of their former selves.

OK so sure, yeah, it is good to grow up a little bit, but when does growing up mean losing hope, when does growing up mean to not take those risks, and when did it mean that your big idea of a weekend out is fish and chips at long john silvers?????

I’m not saying that everyone needs to go out there and find a cure for cancer or that everyone needs to be so fiercely competitive that they will mow down everything and everyone in their path to succeed. A little something in the positive direction would be helpful. Not hiding beyond all your vices and masks and shortcoming and just being. It’s hard to just be. Take the harder road.

Though if you know you want to be a hard ass waste of time and space, then at least provide the world with something. Make them laugh. Humor makes anyone more attractive, because I have not many anyone who does not like to laugh yet and I’m three thousand years old. I should know about these things by now.

Yeah so basically if you are miserable, have no desire for anything more (at all, i mean you have to stop wanting like cock and ice cream and chocolate even) , and are not funny please do us all a favor and end it now…..

Because there are plenty of people who are not here that would die (well come back to life actually) to be in your shoes to have just that one more chance. To do something nice for someone, to share one last smile, to relish the laughter. To just be.

Written By Spacedog 

A Longstanding Joke Goes From Funny To Fubar* In Seconds.

When I was growing up there where two eccentric’s if you will. One I have already written about in a previous post who was known as Smiley Jesus among the neighborhood kids. This post pertains to the second.

She was a woman in here mid to late fifties with long mostly white hair tied up in a loose bun. She wore a full length goose down style winter coat no matter what time of year it was. She was always sporting  Jackie O. like sunglasses the ones with the huge circular frames. She also had applied so much rouge that it fully covered both of her cheeks in giant clown like circles. Her uncommon attire also included a Golf Visor, and lastly a pair of cheap white velcro sneakers. This may have well been her official uniform because it NEVER changed EVER.

Aside from her bizarre sense of fashion the other key aspect about Her was she never spoke. Not a single word. At most she might have flashed a quick smile as she walked by with her hands in her jacket pockets. Come to think of it I don’t think I ever saw her hands out of her jacket pockets.

Now we fast forward a bit and I’m now 16 or so and dating my first real Girlfriend/High School Sweetheart who lived in the neighborhood adjacent to mine. I asked her one day if she had seen this odd woman walking around in her neighborhood as well growing up. Not only did she yes she had, but she went on to tell me that the Woman in question actually lived somewhere  in her neighborhood.

We tried half assed measure in lame attempts to locate the weird Woman’s house to no avail. We had all but lost interest when we got some additional information pertaining to the peculiar Woman’s back story.

The information came from my Girlfriend’s Mother. It turned out that her Mom grew up at the same time, in the same town, and went to the same school as the strange Woman. Apparently the Woman was not what you would call popular by any means. In fact she was bullied pretty brutally from the few stories we were told by my Girlfriend’s Mother, and she was as guilty as the rest when it came to relentlessly tormenting the Woman as a Girl.

The one story I remember was my Girlfriend’s Mother telling us she and her gang of friends from school lured the Woman then just a girl to some near by woods. They then tied her to a tree and berated the shit out of her non stop for over an hour. Once they got tired of teasing her to the point of tears they up and left her there tied to a tree. No one knows the exact details but obviously someone heard her crying for help or passed by and cut her free.

Needless to say as the story got darker the more I found myself fascinated by the morbidity of it all. A months or so after hearing the tortured tale of the Woman’s unhappy childhood (on no day in particular) my Girlfriend and I decided to go for a late day walk. It was the middle of July so we hid inside clinging to the Air Conditioning until dusk when it was cool enough to venture outside.

We had only gone about 5 or 6 blocks when all of a sudden we became aware of a extremely heated argument. This wasn’t surprising since being Summer many people left the front door open optimizing their screen doors to enjoy the cool Summer evenings.

The chaotic commotion was coming from a house to our right that stood atop a small hill. The front door was indeed wide open allowing anyone passing buy to hear the insanity inside, and I do mean insanity. We heard a lady screaming at the top of her lungs, and we knew that we had accidentally stumbled across the Weird Woman’s house. We both turned and stared at one another in shear shock and awe at first, and then we returned our attention back to the madness raging inside of this otherwise absolutely normal looking suburban home.

The sounds emulating from the front door where like none I had never heard before in my life, and have rarely heard since. The Woman was in the middle of what seemed to be an argument that was spiraling out of control. The Woman was intensely enraged and her blood curdling screams in were purely primal.

I couldn’t tell you what the fuck the argument was about, but that is more than likely because we only heard one side of the argument. This was due to the fact that whoever the Woman was yelling at so savagely DIDN’T EXIST. They weren’t imaginary either like a hallucination (though now that I’m mulling it over she could have been hallucinating, but not because of Drugs but due to Mental Illness of some sort.) Anyway for all intensive purposes it appeared that the Woman  having a knock- down-drag- out fight with her Dead Husband.

We stood there for several minutes completely mesmerized by the madness we were witnessing. It was quite clear that this Woman was just an eccentric  she was legitimately batshit crazy. Once the terrible trance wore off my Girlfriend and I hightailed the hell out of there, and didn’t even pause for a brief second to look back.

And ever since that fateful evening We have  never passed by that house again even though the psychotic Woman passed away many, many years ago.

(*FUBAR stands for Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition)

Thanks for Reading,

Les Sober  

The Tale of The Hellacious Hospital

I was 13 years old and it was the beginning of Summer Vacation. The first 2 weeks went splendidly as all I did was fuck off with friends all day, and cause minor trouble as our Town was boring as shit. Then one random morning I woke up with what felt like the worst cramp of my life in my lower left side. In addition I was nauseous as all get out as the pain increased to the point I walked virtually bent over at the waist. After a couple of days of this my Parents took me to our family Doctor. It took him less than 30 seconds to double check his almost instant diagnosis, and then informed us it was Appendicitis that would require immediate treatment. So instead of heading off to camp the next day I headed off the the local Hospital.

Now Appendicitis (along with Tonsillitis) are the two easiest fucking things not only for a Doctor to Diagnose its equally as easy for a Surgeon to remedy through simple Surgery. As one might imagine it plays out as your sick, you go to doctor, doctor makes his/her diagnosis, go strait to the nearest Hospital, get Admitted, and then immediate Surgery. This is specially important for Appendicitis as the longer it goes untreated the higher the risk it could rupture causing Secondary Infection(s) a real bitch.

Well thats not quite how it went with me thats for fucking sure. The first part went normally until I arrived at the Hospital as shit went down hill from there rather quickly. Now once I was admitted in stead of preforming the needed immediate (not quite an emergency but pretty damn close) Surgery they did the exact opposite they waited. They waited for the sole fucking reason of using me as a case example for the small Army of Interns. The next 36 or so hours Doctors came in and poked and prodded the shit out of me in-between marching in groups of 6-10 Medical Students/Interns?Residents.

Nothing like lying in the Hospital as your Summer Vacation rots away, but to be treated like a fucking Lab Animal was the worst of it all. Doctor’s are such disconnected Cunts, they really are. Doctor’s have no what they call Bedside Manner, and Bedside Manner translates to Talking/Treating the Patient like a human not a project. So all these Medical Motherfucker’s keep parading in apparently whenever the fuck they felt like it.

Finally they preformed the Surgery or Appendectomy, and shit went back to normal as far as protocol was concerned. I hung out post Opp for a day or so and the Hospital Released Me. Once again I settled into a regular Summer Routine until one day I woke up sick as a dog. I a fever, Cold Sweats, Nausa, Diarrhea, No Appetite, and all that Super fucking Flu symptomatic shit. Again after several days it became apparent this wasn’t a cold, flu or food poisoning and I went back to the Doctor. He couldn’t tell us the root cause, but he did strongly advise taking me back to the Hospital and my parents did.

Long story Shorter I was readmitted, examined, and tested. The Doctor’s came to the conclusion that (and this is the only fucking way we found out this even happened as in They never said shit about it) because my Appendix had in fact Burst that there were 2 pockets of Infectious Puss lingering around the Surgical site like two Sepsis Clouds. The Doctor’s next task was to locate the pockets of infection, and then administer proper treatment due on location alone.

Long story shorter I had to go through 2 additional Surgical Procedures to actually drain the infections. Now of these 2 Procedures I’m only going to take the time to address is the first of the two. This is how it all went down. One of the Diagnostic Tests was an MRI which located the pockets of infection in the first place. Now based on the MRI Results the Doctor’s opted to preform this fucked up little maneuver. This one must remember was in the days LONG before Twilight Anesthesia was even considered. In spite of lacking the current anesthetic options of today came over to me (I’m shirtless and still laying prone on the MRI Machine arms stretched above head) and inform me their going to attempt to drain one of the pockets of infection right then and there. Their reasoning was that it was very close to “the skin” if by that you mean under all 5 layers of skin and then the subsequent muscle. They then I shit you not hit me with 17-21 shots of Novocaine in my abdomen as Anesthetic.

Then this little feeble wobble of a man came out of the control room and over to me. This guy looking like a goddamn 5th grade Science teacher mustache, Bowtie, and all. This douche informs me that he is going to take a  very thin needle (about 2 feet long I shit you not) and then jam it into my abdomen. From there he is going to manual suck out the puss and shit with a large syringe attached to the other end of the motherfucking needle.

Things didn’t start well as the Fat Fuck stabbed me and fucking missed the Soft Ball sized pocket of infection in spite of being able to see exactly where the fuck it was. Once we withdrew the needle he had to insure there was no internal bleeding by pushing down with all his might (not to mention body weight) on the injection site. He then manages to finally after over a fucking hour of this horse shit torture got the job essentially done. To this day if I ever see this Guy on the street I’m going to stab him repeatedly in his fucking fat little face with a rusty Screw Driver, Just Saying.

With the pockets of infection drained I spent a few more days on intravenous Antibiotics, and then sent on my way once again. Summer was back on track for the next 3 weeks anyway. See this is where shit gets really weird. I woke up one day exhibiting the exact same symptoms of Appendicitis though my Appendix for all incentive purposes had been Surgically removed over a month ago at this point. Needless to say I was off to and readmitted to the Hospital. I honestly have no fucking clue why my parents would take me back to that Shithole Hospital for a 3rd time, but I digress under protest.

Long story shorter the Doctor’s spent days subjecting me to what turned out to be every test in the fucking book to No Avail. The Doctor’s were perplexed as they to couldn’t figure out how a surgically removed Appendix could affect someone with a classic example of Appendicitis. After toiling away with machines and men in the Lab they were no closer to finding the reason. Exasperated and exhausted the Doctor’s came to talk to us about what the fuck to do. The Doctor’s started by stating the now obvious that regardless of all the fucking tests, everything for all intensive purposes looked absolutely normal.

This left the Doctors with only one last option and that was to do an Exploratory. See Exploratory Surgery sounds all nice and fucking official with a hint of NASA to it, but here is what Exploratory Surgery is in Laymen’s terms. Exploratory Surgery means going more Medieval in Medical Methods. That is the Doctor’s can’t figure out why your sick so they actually cut you open, and literally poke around like a car mechanic under the hood of a car. Thats it, they slice you open to actually see if they can find shit out first hand since the million dollar machines produced shit as far as results.

What they found was truly intriguing. Since the Scumbags waited so long before operations that my Appendix had ruptured, and ruptured spectacularly (meaning huge amount of infectious collateral damage) that we all knew already. The Doctors went on to explain that the middle of my Appendix blew the fuck up when the Appendix ruptured, and when the Surgeon went in initially  he removed the base or bottom part of the affected Appendix. Now what no one could have foreseen the Tip of the Infected Appendix broke off with a independent blood supply (not sure to this day exactly what the hell that means), and then slid down by my right Kidney. Once it reached my right Kidney it proceeded to hug up against it so tightly that on tests it just appeared to be part of the Kidney’s natural exterior.

The odd thing (at the time it didn’t compute with my parents) was my Parents were approached several times by various Doctors not associated with my case reassuring them the Hospital handled my case fine, and all this other shit was unavoidable. What that says to me is “We fucked up bad, but we don’t want to get the shit sued out of us so we’re backpedaling to save our asses with False Reassurances.

Any who for all the bullshit, time, and consequent suffering I did achieve one thing note worthy. On the Medical History for said Hospital I’m on the Books as the only Patient to have His Appendix out Twice.

Thanks for Reading,

Les Sober 

The Gas Station Ganja Guy

Back when I was growing up in a shitty little town (in an even shittier little state) there was a Hess Gas Station that I visited quite frequently. Out of all of the usual Gas Stations Hess always had the cheapest Gas in town hands down. Are there even Hess Stations anymore? No Really I can’t remember for the life of Me when the last time I saw a Hess Station. I know the Christmas Hess Truck is still some sort of tradition deal, BUT you don’t need Gas Stations to manufacture a Toy Truck once a year.

Now I lived in one of those states that thinks its Residents are too stupid to know how to pump their own gas. There was this Hess Gas Station Attendant that worked at there that went by the name Lazlo. Lazlo was a young white guy with long black hair (a couple years older than Me) with the classic slacker mentality.Lazlo was an extremely nice guy who always seemed to be smiling in a “Cat That Ate The Canary” type manner like a mischievous child. I have no idea where Lazlo came from so to speak as I have said I grew up in a small ass town so everybody pretty much knew everybody else if they liked it or not. All anyone basically knew was his name and that he worked at Hess. Nobody seemed to know any other details about Lazlo no last name, no actual age, school he went to, if he had siblings, where he lived etc.

One fine Summers day The Arminian and I picked Spacedog up, and We hit up Hess since I needed gas and Hess was located just a round the corner from Spacedog’s. When We pulled in and up to the pump We saw Lazlo coming out of the office towards us at a vigorous clip with His trademark sly  smile. We got out of the car as We usually did when Lazlo was working because he was a cool guy to just hang out and shoot the shit with. I walked around to the back of the car where Lazlo was standing next to the car beside the gas pump as it whirred and thumped gallon after gallon into My so old its almost legit “Classic” first car.

It was then that for the first (and only) time Lazlo asked Me if I could score him some Weed, and I told Him sure it be no problem. I then asked Him what amount was he looking for in particular, and Lazlo reached up grabbed His Hess employee jacket which was apparently being used to conceal something. He turned around and placed his jacket on the trunk of my car and opened it as he answered My previous question by answering this much. I looked down and saw the biggest fucking bag of buds that I had ever seen put to that point in My life, if I had to guess it was a very generous QP (quarter pound) or perhaps a QP and a half (6 Ounces total). Now like I said this was more Marijuana then I was accustom too as the most I had ever dealt with was an Ounce before.

I looked back up at Lazlo who was grinning from ear to ear utterly delighted that his surprise had worked so well. I just stood there in a state of awe until Lazlo told Us to come by later in the evening and He’d smoke us out so obviously We said hells yes. It was around 8 pm or so once We returned to the Hess Station to take Lazlo up on his offer. Lazlo again came out to meet us, instructed us where to park, and then We followed Him into the Hess Station. There was a small area with racks of oil, air freshners, AntiFreeze, wind shield wiper fluid, and other auto odds and ends with a cash register that had Maps of the State on the counter next to it. We walked back into the Office which was a 10″ by  8″ room that housed a beat 1970’s office desk, crappy old office chair, phone, and a couple of run down filing cabinets that looked as if they had been thrown down a flight of stairs. There wasn’t a Computer because they hadn’t become the omnipresent force that they have become over the last 20 some years.

Lazlo plopped himself in the chair behind the desk and brought out the big  bag of buds, and started packing a fat ass Dime Bag into a corn cob pipe (Yes a strait out of fucking Tom Sawyer and shit), and as rather confused by this as We were nobody called attention to or questioned it We just went with it. The 4 of us smoked continuously for over an hour, We hot boxed the absolute holy hell out of that office. The Smoke hung thick in the air as We had to duck our heads and squint to see one another. At last We said fair well to Lazlo and thank you for the generous smoking session as We piled into My car. Lazlo said to come back and see Him again and We drove off into the night words home.

We never saw Lazlo again after that night. When We did return to the Hess station a few days later  We asked the Attendant working When Lazlo would be working, and he said Lazlo had been taken off the schedule but didn’t know anything beyond that. Obviously in all likelihood Lazlo got fucking fired for smoking pot at work in the Boss’s office. I like to think though that  Lazlo returned to the Parallel Dimension from whence he came.  That or that He sat in the office for the rest of that fateful night and smoked Himself out of existence all together.

Thanks for READING,

Les Sober 

 

Dear Me Oh My Shut The Fuck Up Already!!! By Spacedog

Life is about many things to many different people. Family, friends, money, health, wealth…. the list is endless. Each means something different to us. Some mean nothing at all.

Then there is the other end of the spectrum. Our vices. The sex, drugs and rock&roll part of our brains. Everyone has one or ten or hundreds. I tend to gravitate towards the higher end of the spectrum. I’m not sure if I could list 100 vices off the top of my head but if I could I would easily be into more than half of them.

Not that I do them every day or really all that often at all. The worst things I probably do on a daily basis is smoking cigarettes. Everything else is merely on an as wanted schedule. Sometimes there is discipline involved. Other times it is just complete debauchery and out of control.

Age has mellowed me somewhat though. Instead of indulging way too frequently like in my 20s, I usually just get angry now at certain things on my television set and in the real world.

First of all, ANY AND ALL anti commercials really need to get the FUCK off my television. Tell me to quit smoking while I have a nicotine patch on and haven’t thought about a cigarette in 3 days and well I got the subconscious thought to go out and buy a pack. Tell me not to drink and drive and I then am thinking about whether I should get drunk tonight.

Fortunately one such thing I have grown out of is trying that one random drug or ten. Most of the unknown drugs I tried I heard about on the evening or nightly local news. I get that these news types think that no druggies are watching their programs because obviously how could they possibly be interested in anything other than drugs. All promoted under the guise of protect the children which leads me to the next point.

FUCK THE KIDS! Not like Michael Jackson fuck or like Ray Rice fuck the kids in the face. I always hear about stupid shit to protect the children. I can’t go buy a pack of ten cigarettes because of oh the children. The children. Yet I can buy an airline bottle of alcohol, a single bullet of ammo, a nickle bag of weed (yes they still exist), or a small amount of pretty much anything  else considered a vice.

Some states are incredibly ridiculous with the save the children crap. Hawaii just passed a law making the smoking age 21 and New Jersey just attempted to do the same. So you can serve and die in the military and potentially die at any moment yet you can’t go on the 30-50 year death sentence known as nicotine. They need to chill out. New Jersey is even worse. They want kids to drive around with a sticker on the back of the car if under 21 and not have them drive after certain hours. Now I know I said fuck the kids but while that would stop me from well fucking kids or buying someone underage alcohol, it only means one thing. The cops get to fuck the kids. I don’t want to fuck them like that hard, unless they are in college and sex with someone potentially that inexperienced is like A Tale of Two Cities. The best of times, the worst of times.

So I’m kinda drifting like a butterfly. I really should have wrote this earlier in the day when I was just raging mad. I got a call from a friend after I left an angry voicemail about Sprint sucking fat donkey balls. I can’t roll around and listen to Spotify with them and the several phone calls I do make a week well sadly unless I call people at midnight they drop like an 80 year old’s nutsack.

So I bitched and then she said don’t drink tonight. Not that it was any of her business what the fuck I am doing later on. I really had not even given getting drunk tonight even a glance. It all goes back to do not tell me what I should not do. If you want to give me something positive to do by all means just do not tell me what not to do.

It is the reason I also have total beef with any of those absolutely fucking retarded anonymous programs. I have been to many and will be going to many again soon as part of my undercover look into boring myself into a bottle of rum. Let’s sit around and rehash old stories and bitch and whine and moan and talk about Jesus.

I seriously had issues with alcohol in the past and would be chill with well just not drinking. It makes me fat and severely obsessive. No thank you. Yet through AA I can honestly say the only thing positive I ever got out of it was roughly 10 blow jobs. Other then my 12 pack of Miller Lite cure for the common cold I had not touched a drop for over a month. (Save your fucking medal and clapping.) I only thought about it twice before I got sick. Yet in an average AA meeting alcohol is brought up 20-40 times depending on the type of meeting. Whatever happened to out of sight, out of mind? I guess stupidity won this ballgame.

So I think my beef has run out for this evening. If I typed every vice related issue I want to address, I would never leave this seat. So what exactly gets on your last nerves? Or who would you like to tell to go fuck themselves?