A Rambling Saturday Post

A Rambling Saturday Post

Just a few random thoughts, this first little bit where I've sat down to try to put words to paper (or computer screen, as it were).

I've been really lazy with the writing. Really lazy. I mean, lazy even for me, and I'm lazy on the scale that if there were an Olympics, I'd medal, if I weren't too lazy to travel to wherever they'd hold a Laziness Olympics. I've been working the night schedule for a month now. I told myself that the new schedule would give me an opportunity to write without interruption, but I haven't taken advantage of that. Gonna fix that this week. I have a plan.

You see, I'm gonna forego the sleep cycle. I ain't sleeping. It's a waste of time. See, this way, I can work the evening. Then, I can come home and write for the six or seven hours I usually sleep. I mean, what kind of waste of time is that? Lie in a bed for seven hours when I could be writing a magnificent treatise on why the WWE seems to succeed despite all attempts to run itself into the ground, perhaps some opus on a sneeze I just made.

Then, I can watch my full slate of daytime television (Price is Right, E.R. re-runs on TNT, that informercial with the two midgets who know how to convert real estate [or perhaps sailboats] into cash....)

If I'm to judge by the advertising, the only people who watch daytime TV are wheelchair-people up to their ears in debt, obesity and incontinence.

And apparently, the U.S. Army wants them all.

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Changing the subject. The Sloth hasn't been posting of late. He wanted to take some time away from the Cubs, and especially didn't want to ruin their seven-game-win streak. Well, Adam Eaton and his San Diego Padres ended that win streak last night. I blame the fact that I opened the e-mail.

I've done my best to not comment on Cubs when they're doing well. You see, any time I note that something's going right, even if it's in random conversation, or as an observation to myself, that thing, by the next game goes wrong.

I make a mental note that they Cubs have won a few in a row, and that streak goes caca. Padres win 6-2.

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I have never won anything from one of those coin operated claw games. You know, the big, clear glass (or plastic) box where you put your money in, and you maneuver the claw on a track over the toy prize you'd like, and your push of a button makes the claw make a grab at the treasure?

Never won anything off one of those. I got close, one time at Showbiz Pizza, when I was seven or eight. There was a beanie type hat, on it was a Billy Bob, the bear who wore striped overalls who worked as a spokesbear of sorts for Showbiz, before the Chuck E. Cheese onslaught took Showbiz over.

I put my token in the game. I wasn't trying for the hat, necessarily. I just saw the hat as the easiest thing in the machine to pick up. I got the claw there. I dropped it. I had the moment of childhood elation (pooped my pants) when the claw picked up the hat. It picked the beanie up, carried it from the back corner, and was moving over toward the slot where it drops it for my hands to grab it. I was a split second away from being a walking, talking advertisement for Showbiz Pizza.

But just as the claw was coming to its stop point, where it would give me my treasure, it hit a bump or a jolt or something in its track, and it jarred the beanie loose, dropping it right on the plastic divider between beanieville and nohatland.

I tried jarring the machine a little bit, to see if I could get the hat to drop down the slot. But it was to no avail.

The fact that I write about it 20 years later would make you think that I think about it often.

Naw. Not much. Just 8 or 10 times a day.

You know, I think even at 7 I realized that the stuff in the claw machine was pretty much crap. On some level, I realized that. Still, that doesn't mean that every now and then, I'll look at one of those machines, and decide to give it a whirl for old time's sake.

There's a Cubs pennant in the claw machine at the local K-Mart. I took a stab at it the other night. I contemplated the prize for a second. Looked around to see if anybody I knew would be there to taunt me. I put my fifty cents in (Fifty Friggin' Cents these things cost now! And I thought Gasoline was expensive....) I maneuvered the claw...I was happy that this was the kind that let you move the claw more than once in each direction. I figured I had a chance.

Didn't even pick the sumbitch up. The little puffy pennant just slid through the claw.

You know, it's a little weird. Any sense of accomplishment or appreciation I would have gotten out of the Made-in-some-faraway-Asian-or-Latin-land-cheap-as-hell-polyester-stuffed-fire-hazard-for-sure-burn-my-house-to-the-ground-if-it's-left-next-to-an-open-flame-Chicago-Cubs pennant was far outweighed by my disappointment at not having gotten it.

That's why, when I get paid this week, I'm getting that sumbitch cashed in quarters. That costs 19 cents to make puffy pennant will be mine. Whatever the cost.

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Lastly, I'd like to close with a picture.

My Dad took this picture. He was walking out in a field, when he came upon a couple of deer. He's good like that. He's 6'3" and built like a bear, but he moves silently like the night. He's managed to sneak up on me more times than I can count. He's got ninja skills. Scary thought? He's probably snuck up on you, too.

Anyway, he managed to get close to a couple of deer and snap a few pictures.



In this one, they've noticed him, and they've started to fire up their defensive eyebeam lasers.