Creative Endeavors, The Home of BoxcarOkie.com

MARCH 2008, date, brief description and direct link to posts.

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• 01: CHECK IS IN THE MAIL Budget shortfalls, dogs of war in Iraq
• 02: THE GOVERNATOR California, logging roads, Gray Davis, ecology
• 02: TANKS A LOT High price of motorfuel, cheap gas locator link
• 02: HORNY TOADS Prose, Oklahoma
• 03: TELL ME YOUR DREAMS Dreams, good news, Everybody Loves Raymond, humor
• 03: VOTE NO Recent attempts to bring basketball to Okie City
• 04: VOTE NO II It passes, results and comments, let’s play ball!
• 04: AFFAIR OF THE HEART Prose, rommance
• 05: BE NICE Emails, negative people, dealing with them and encouragment
• 05: TEST ON FRIDAY HIghschool, humor, overnight brand new skin
• 05: WISHBONE IN MY POCKET Prose
• 06: STILL WATERS Western Drought, water woes, California
• 06: TABLOID SHOCKER South American mystery death, humor
• 07: DIRTY EGG SUCKIN DAWG Ranting and raving on the net
• 07: I ASKED GOD Anon prose God
• 08: A NEW JOB Wishful thinking, dressing for success, a new life
• 08: THE BOX IS FULL Controversial Emails, Mexicans in America
• 09: ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING Nostalga, humor, things change
• 09: HOT/COLD DRINKS Heart Attacks, strokes, warning on dangers of consumption
• 10: CLEANING THE KITCHEN Spiritual, God, calling home
• 10: AMERICAN LAMENT Prose
• 10: COMMITMENT Spiritual, God, good stuff.
• 11: BUFFALO WINGS Stink bait, kids, thinking outside the box, humor.
• 11: OUT OF THIS WORLD Universe, leaky roofs,termites, awakenings, humor, bad science
• 11: PICK A NUMBER The trilogy, spritual, God
• 11: UNCLE SAM Prose, Viet Nam, when I was young, I carried a gun
• 12: HAMMER DOWN Trucking, the American Highway
• 12: ANOTHER DAY Prose
• 13: MEMORIES Memories of growing up in California, Hayward, Highschool, the valley
• 13: NATIONAL PARKS Couch potatos, high gas, future generations, tree huggers
• 14: DISINCLINED RECLUSE Disconnecting from society
• 15: NEW SIN The Pope comes to Dallas, Rome tells us we need to do better.
• 15: PEDAL PUSHERS Sex perverts in Tulsa, skirt peepers at Target Store.
• 15: WINDS OF MAY Prose
• 16: ICE AGE Al Gore, glaciers, global warning.
• 16: ICE TRUCKERS Trucking on frozen lakes in Canada
• 17: RAISE EM RIGHT Judge Judy, unruly children
• 17: REMEMBER WHEN Getting older in America
• 18: MT MAIL BOX Finding yourself alone, and not liking it
• 18: PICK ME UP Good news, joke telling, misconceptions people make
• 19: FLY AWAY Early morning thoughts
• 19: NOT TODAY ANYWAY Prose
• 19: NUTHIN MUCH Emails, life, positive input
• 20: GIVE EM THE FINGER Technology, computers
• 20: GRAY WOLF Hunting in Idaho, bad day to be a wolf.
• 20: OCEAN OF TIME Prose
• 21: I.R.S. BEAT THE RUSH Humor on taxes, if there is such a thing.
• 21: A NEW YEAR Resolutions, new beginnings, changing times
• 21: HOPE IS AN ANCHOR Prose
• 22: PSA Emails and the net
• 22: CRUEL AND UNUSUAL Frogs, life, humor
• 23: BY THE MILEPOST Prose
• 24: TREE HUGGER California, humor, water conservation in the west
• 24: RUNNING DOWN THE TRASH Story telling, stolen cars, nostalga, wishful thinking.
• 25: ALPHA & OMEGA God, spiritual, the Universe.
• 25: RUDE AWAKENING Emails, compassion, the other shoe drops.
• 26: GLOWIN IN THE DARK Bush, government, downwind power plants, humor
• 27: SEAT OF POWER Bad government, tree gets a letter
• 28: DONT GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS Change, nostalga, books, life
• 28: SATURDAY MORNING MELTDOWN Life, living in the moment, somewhat poetic
• 29: FEELS LIKE TODAY Google, computers, life
• 30: PROOF OF INSURANCE Marriage, life, humor
• 30: DON’T GET CRANKY GRANDPA Aging, life, nostalga, grandchildren
• 31: BACK TO ROMMANCE prose
• 31: SOMEONE SPECIAL Good news, positive re-enforcement piece

Hard for me to get used to these changing times, I can still remember when the air was clean to breathe, and sex was dirty. Underground nuclear testing, defoliation of the rain forests, toxic waste … Let’s put it this way, if the world were a big apartment, we wouldn’t be getting our deposit back.

Sitting at home because of the motor fuel issue. I understand now, that the flu virus can stay alive on money for up to 14 days. If the bill is wet or has some kind of moisture content to it.

A lot of food commercials on television tonight, sure makes it rough on a guy who is trying his best to slim down, y’know it? I find myself moody and out of sync with my surroundings, once again battling my demons … both physical and mental.

One thing I find irksome, is all this constant “flippin’ around from one shot to the next, on a lot of these television shows” this machine gun style of video journalism. I have a theory on this, and it is this. Most of the people in television these days are of the Internet generation, they grew up flittin’ from one page to the next, surfing.

Now they are just applying that behavior to this old medium. All of us Old Coots find it somewhat irritating.

Not easy growing old, change is hard for me to adapt to. I seem to be heading towards a lifestyle of separation; will I now become a hermit of sorts? Internet, and cable TV, recent additions that will consume my time. Just this week shelled out for a new 24” video screen for the computer, would rather spend the coin on myself, than give it to the Oil Executive’s Retirement Fund.

More time is gradually being spent on books, even tho’ they are cost prohibitive. Magazine subscriptions are increasing, all of it designed to promote an isolationists lifestyle. Slowly I am retreating deep into a cave of my own making, is this good? I dunno.

Looking back on this past week, it has had its fair share of snares, pitfalls, and bear traps for me to step into, and I have. It isn’t good for a writer to be introspective. First thing you know he starts thinking about what he’s thinking and he’s in trouble. It gets so he can put words down on a paper without considering how wrong, inadequate or idiotic they are and he ends up not being able to write anything at all.

Such as the case here.

***

I guess I hurt you considerably
More than I imagined was heavenly possible
I guess I should be sorry for your misery
Your grief
Your sorrow
But I am not.

All the pain is yours, My Dear
All the frustration
Worry
Despair
Because you cast away a love so rare
In your haste to kill our love.

Now I am mostly alone
And I know that I am not ready for most of this
Losing my appetite
Doing the drugs and booze
Long days
Longer nights
This eternal emptiness
Mostly alone
Burning brightly on a short fuse.

The absolute best Email of the week … “Hey Don? If you do not get this, let me know.” It must really be HOT in Arizona! (Someone find the key to the liquor cabinet again?)  Here we go boys & girls, another rip-roaring episode in the whacky world of the marginally insane, cabin fever enduring, freewheeling, frontier changing, rule breaking permanent resident of the dark side of life.

Man, I need some sunshine and a day at the beach. If’n me and you were gold prospectors, and were locked in a Cabin, deep in the Sierras, somewhere like Bodie, Ca., one of us would be dead right now.

Pass them donuts, share.

In 2001 the Southampton, England, city council sent a letter to a tree to reassure it that it was safe from being cut down. I am not making this up. According to the letter, which was stuck to the trunk of the 60-year old tree on University Road.

The last letter I received was a terse thing on the windshield of my car, which read, “Thanks for taking up two spaces you inconsiderate no good _________ !” (he basically implied my parents were not married, which I know is a lie.) But that is another post all together, later on that.

This poor tree was issued an “official notice from these elected short sighted malcontents.” The tree was given a preservation order after environmental campaigners (Tree huggers/Conservationists) raised concerns about the poor tree getting axed.

The letter goes on to tell the tree that if it has any comments, it should make them in writing and send them to the city council. I really liked that part of the story. Let’s all form a committee and pool our ignorance. Now one more time ……. We need politicians and government because …..

Let me know if you didn’t get this.

***

BAD NEWS: The Bush administration announced today that they are NOT going to hand out radiation, fighting thyroid pills to all you lucky people that are living downwind or somewhere near a nuclear plant (10-20 mile radius). A little known law passed about five years ago because of terrorist threats, mandates that the pills be distributed unless the government doesn’t deem it necessary.

If you happen to live down wind from one of these oil producing, or nuke electric plants and you start dreaming about stuff like: Encounters with drunken judges, passive-aggressive meter readers in your backyard, semi-repressed cat people, and co-dependent enablers in your neighborhood.

Don’t worry …… that is perfectly normal, I do it all the time.

Now conversely, if your next door neighbor, who happens to be a recently divorced, Air Force B-1 bomber pilot starts speaking loudly to himself, running madly thru the yard with his weed-whacker in his Michael Jordan underwear and acting in a particular manner.

If the people across the street start glowing in the dark, or if all your fruit trees in the backyard suddenly start humming.

If you find yourself in the local Denny’s at three in the morning, sitting next to some stranger who is sitting on a well worn, rumpled, Valentine’s Card, while writing frenetically on white paper napkins.

You could possibly have a problem.

Then I suppose …. Mr. Bush will then give you the pill …. But I wouldn’t count on it. These are the same people who could not deliver a Hurricane victim a bottle of water when he was standing on the roof of his house in New Orleans a few years back.

***

More pain at the pump, $3.59 a gallon in Paoli, Oklahoma and the gasoline thing continues to plague the nation and my lifestyle, I don’t know where this is going either. What seems to be especially disturbing is the fact that EVERYTHING IN THIS COUNTRY is tied to oil one way or the other.

From plastics to medicine, delivery or service on goods, it all comes down to that gallon of whatever it is that runs the country. Much like an iceberg, we are only seeing one third of what is above the surface on this, and it is going to progressively get worse as time goes on.

Think about this.

A gallon of milk, $5, a gallon of automotive paint, $125.00+, a gallon of channel #5 about $1,500.00! Aftershave $75 or more, bottled water, about $15 a gallon … When you look at stuff by the gallon, gasoline is, I hate to say it, “cheap.”

What then? We complain, we moan, we groan, we look for someone to save us …. From ourselves mainly. We vote these people in, but we do not have the guts to remove them when they do a sorry job. For the most part, we are reluctant to hold their feet to the fire, we cannot find the courage to stand up and say get your sorry *** out. So we plead with them and hope for the best.

Voter: “Do what is right!”
Politician: “But you will kill me!”
Voter: “Maybe, but do it anyway! I hired you to go to Congress to make hard decisions to help our country. Take your term, do it, and then go home. Kill yourself!”
Politician: “But I have seniority and expertise and I am up to speed on the issues. Replace me and it will be six years before he (the replacement) knows what I know.”
Voter: “Well, maybe we don’t want him to know what you know. Maybe we want someone dumb enough to know what is impossible and brave enough to want to do what is right.”
Politician: “But I love this job.”

The rafters sag … and the house leaks.

America moves on.

***

My daddy used to have this expression he would use, he would say, “One of these days boy, you are going to be in for a rude awakening.” I used to sit around and wonder about that, and of course, why we had Volleyballs, important stuff like that. We have Volleyballs incidentally, because we need a place to store air, I thought everyone knew that.

Here is something else I am dealing with today. What is it about bloggin sites that make ordinary citizens feel compelled to trot out every rancid detail of their miserable lives and exhibit this to the general public. I cannot understand that. I mean “If I am six feet four inches tall, and I weigh in at approximately 224 lbs, I am NOT about to tell everyone in the Free World that my wife beats me up!”

That just isn’t going to happen.

Having slept rather well last night, feeling somewhat refreshed, I came in here this morning and sat down to a cup of micro-waved coffee that was only 16 hrs old and began to browse the net. First one out of the chute is some mother lamenting the fact that this is third anniversary of her child’s death and how it was “all her fault” (as she puts it) because she was not there to protect him.

Never explaining how it happened, where it happened, how it was that “she was at fault” just line after line of pain. (Five rules of Journalism: Who, What, Where, When and Why?) Now why she chose to send this dirge to me, I don’t understand either. I understand her pain, her sorrow, but why share it with a complete stranger and 1.5 million other people on the same site?

Internet blogs irritate the fizz out of me sometimes. Bad grammar, lousy sentence structure, all of it, I can live with. But a constant stream of nothing but “down stuff” tends to drag me down with it. It is getting to the point where I see the name, and I run right on by.

This medium should be a place where one could come and find something uplifting to take their mind OFF of stuff like that. How is a nineteen year old can hate life? At nineteen, you haven’t even experienced life …. not like most of us know it anyway. People should be posting something interesting, lite, humorous, or enlightening, why this compulsion to vent negative stuff? I don’t understand it, it just doesn’t make sense to me.

Where in the world is Dr. Phil when YOU REALLY NEED HIM. Why is it people want to do this to other people? Now I don’t want to sound unfeeling, insensitive, personally removed or any of that, but I don’t need this ….. YOU ……. Don’t need this.

This is a personal thing; it should be shared with “family or close friends” not total strangers on some website. If my little Billie wants to buy a bra, and have me take him to the Mall for some new pumps, Okay. But I am not going to tell everyone about it. This stays in the closet with all “those other things” we seldom talk about. It doesn’t go on something like MySpace are you outta your mind dot.com.

Maybe it is just me, but I want to know who is the youngest person to climb Mt. Everest might be (Temb Tasheri of Nepal at age 15) or why it is called the “Department of the Interior” when it mainly deals with things that are outside. Why people yell “Heads Up” at ballgames, when it should really be ”heads down” and stuff like that.

Here is another one …. “I slept like a baby” …. What does that mean? A baby wakes up every other hour for cryin’ out loud, someone sleeping like that suggests to me, that they could possibly have an over-active prostrate, serious stuff.

Why is it so hard to remember how to spell “mnemonic?” (I suddenly have this mental picture of all of you right clicking on that word and heading for the dictionary. Rest assured, I am not going to vent on you today or any other day for that matter.

I am not going tell you that I am depressed or that “my world is coming in around me.” I am just not going to do that. I will tell you that the largest piece of fossilized dinosaur fecal matter ever found in Utah, measured 22”X8”X7.5” or something like that.

I mean, when the doctor comes in, sits down, looks me in the eye and says the X-Ray results are in ……

Well ….. That’s MY business.

***