Sunday Night....

Just did another crazy stretch. Such is life in the retail industry, especially when one of the other managers goes on vacation. Life becomes: Sleep, Work, Hamburger. Not much else. The Man from the Cheese aisle asked if I was making adequate time to move the bowels.

In a word, no.

But that's neither here nor there.

8 days out of nine. Right at 100 hours, or so.

Masochistic much? Dumb as a damn backpack full of Ebola virus.

Your old pal Tommy's tired.

In lieu of witty comments, I would like you to listen to this cover of Seven Nation Army, as performed by the Oak Ridge Boys.



It makes me smile.

(Heh heh heh).

Just in case you haven't had your fill, here's Elvira. If you made a movie of my life from age 5 to 8, this song would be on it, right up there with Born in the USA and the theme to Dukes of Hazzard. And because I am half insane with work, sleep deprivation and Sweetwater 420, some guy's animated trucks singing the song, and I found myself laughing myself shitting silly about it:



What else?

Lou Piniella retired today.

I was sorry to have it happen the way it did, but I think my friend Rob said something that's resonated with me today. The 2008 Cubs were the best Cubs team of my life, and indeed, maybe of the lives of a great many Cubs fans. And to have them get thrashed in the first round of the playoffs by the Dodgers that year...it ripped a lot of people's hearts out. I've said before that it's really affected me. Sad to say, it's affected me for a couple of years, now.

Did it affect Lou?

I know it's easy to say that Sweet Lou's made a handful of million dollars in the past couple of years, but I'd have to say it'd be hard not to be affected after swaggering your way through a baseball season, only to have it shut down that hard. Now, overcoming, I think that's what I'm paying $8 for a beer for. But, that's just me.

And, I grant you, I still have anxiety dreams any time I go to ask somebody out, so I get that, completely.

At the end of the day, I'll say this: I'm sorry that Lou's going out on this note. He's been one of those Baseball Guys who's been in the game pretty much since my personal fandom started in 1983 or 1984. I wish he got to call his shot and leave on his own terms.

That said, do I think he'd be making this decision if the Cubs were in contention?

Absofuckinglutely not.

_____

Um. I've gotten sucked into the show Ice Road Truckers.

I don't know why.

Well, I do know why.

There are animations which portray people being hurt in horrible fashion.

I dig that kind of macabre shit.

Also, I think the blonde driver is kinda hot.

And I like shows where people curse a lot.

Fuck. Fuckity Fuck.

And I like when people pronounce about "aboot."

That shit's hilarious.

Exhaustion Induced Lysdexia

I went to this video from Fark, because I thought the headline said "a tool to unclog your brain."

http://www.maniacworld.com/tool-to-unclog-your-drain.html

I am very tired, and I am going to bed. Good night, John Boy.

Brain Break

Wrote for an hour and a half. A couple thousand words, which poured out easily. Then, I got a leg cramp. Going to get up, take a shower. Gotta go get the oil changed, get new tags and go fight crime under my vigilante name: Rufus Q. Throatpunch. Also, I will buy bananas and water. It's like 392 degrees. I saw an e-mail from the local TV station with the subject "Heat Advisory" and read it as "Hell Advisory." Almost works.

I will write more this afternoon.

Here's a little bit of what I listened to while I wrote:

"Intergalactic" Beastie Boys
"Mo Ghile Gear (Our Hero)" The Chieftains with Sting
"Tragedy" The Bee Gees (Oof...this one might be in my head for days, now...)
"Margaret in Captivity" The Decembrists
"No Roads Here" Corb Lund (I just love this song....)




"La Bamba" Los Lobos
"Up Above my Head--I hear Music in the Air" Randy Travis & the Blind Boys of Alabama
"Glory Glory Hallelujah" The Rev. Peyton's Big Damn Band
"You're the One" The Vogues
"What Am I Doing Hangin' Round?" The Monkees



"Ruby Soho" Rancid
"Godzilla" Blue Oyster Cult
"The Boxer" Me First and the Gimme Gimmes
"Modern Man" The Arcade Fire
"Finnegan's Wake" Malarkey Brothers
"I Don't Want Anybody New" The Smart Brothers
"I'm Going for Myself" James Carr
"Dump Road Yodel" Th' Legendary Shack Shakers
"Can't Find My Keys" Mojo Nixon

Welcome to the Flip Side...

When last I left you, I spoke of a stretch where I would work some 33-35 hours in a 52 hour stretch. The actual number was 37 hours in that same stretch. If you had that in your pool, I would like to have a discussion with you about the possibility that you are affecting reality with your wishes. You may be 1/3 god, you Mesopotamian shithead, and I'd like you to stop making it so that I miss Wipeout when it's on my television.

Seriously. People bouncing off giant rotating arms and giant red rubber balls makes me happy.

So. Ridiculously. Happy. No purer joy have ever I known.

None. No.

So, my big ass came home, damn near exhausted. I napped for 22 minutes.

We wandered out for Trivia. We led much of the game, but lost when an argument over whether Dana Carvey was older than Drew Carey went the wrong direction. Morally, I feel I was correct. Drew Carey is a much older soul than Dana Carvey. However, chronologically, Dana Carvey was born three years before Drew Carey.

Or so the media would have you believe.

And then, in what I've called my favorite moment in weeks: I had to go to the Wal (hyphen) Mart for sundries. Entering the store, around 11:30 or so, I passed a man who was leaving the store, a spring in his step. In one hand, a 12-pack of Charmin toilet paper, the blue variety. In one fluid motion, he tossed the package up in the air, where it turned a couple of flips, and caught it, and tucked it under his other arm.

Spiffy.

Surely, Broadway is missing a star.

If all our lives depended on it, I would never be so slick.

Were I to try such a move, it would probably end with my having to explain to the insurance agents how I blew out both knees, an elbow And had to have 2 rolls of toilet paper pulled out of my poopchute.

Anyway. That guy would get a gold star, if I had them to give out.

Which I do not.

More the pity.

Monday Random....

Just a couple random thoughts, as I wander through the morning, and look headlong at a 52 hour schedule where I'm gonna be working 33-35 hours of that stretch....

I've been writing, lately. That's important. I have a project. But, there's something more. Call it a fear of a career of working 60 hours a week, where there's not much time for much else. Call it a fear of not being able to take days off when I need them for the next 30 years. My lazy ass has been deluding myself about being a writer for the past dozen or more years. So, I've been setting a couple hours a day to write. And considering there are days where 2 hours, after work, commuting, and need to get at least five hours of sleep make anything else scarce.

I don't know if writing will be a way out of that situation, where my time doesn't feel like my time at all, but at the very least, I can take some solace in the process. When I'm writing, and it's going well, and especially when I have a finished product, there's a sense that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. The trick, I think, is to find somebody to pay me for my drivel. (The first person who says something about "monetizing the blog" gets punched in the throat, though. That's a rant for another day....)

I don't mean to turn it into a rant about work. Suffice it to say, time's short, and I'm a little tired of bullshitting myself about being a writer, being afraid of failure and all that shit. I may not be around the old blogamathing, as much, is all I'm saying. I'll still be around. It's just a thing where my other writing has to take priority.

But anyway, with a nod to Elisson and Sheila's road trip, here's what I listened to this morning, while I wrote:

1. "The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)" Ryan Bingham
2. "Kyle's Mom is a Bitch" Eric Cartman
3. "Every Little Thing About You" The Mavericks
4. "The Boxer" Simon and Garfunkel
5. "Feb 14" Drive-By Truckers
6. "Worker's Song" Dropkick Murphys
7. "Good Times" Finger Eleven
8. "Maybe Tonight" Nicole Atkins
9. "The Man in Me" Rodney Crowell
10. "Paradise City" Guns & Roses
11. "Yes to Booty" Elizabeth Cook
12. "Stand by Me" John Lennon
13. "Startin' to Hate Country" the Asylum Street Spankers
14. "Heading for the Light" The Travelling Wilburys
15. "Hey Mr. Postman" Henry Phillips
16. "El Camino" Elizabeth Cook
17. "Lucky Ball & Chain" They Might Be Giants
18. "Love at First Feel" AC/DC
19. "Here Comes the Rain" The Mavericks

My Nephew...

That's my nephew. He's a good boy.

He doesn't know any tricks, unless it's pulling his own hair (which puts him pretty much ahead of the curve--we Acuffs specialize in pulling our own hair out).

He tires of my antics pretty easily, and he either didn't get, or didn't approve of, my jokes about the Space Shuttle Challenger.

But he's pretty cool. He weathered the family discussion about the way the space-time continuum works in the Back to the Future movies well enough, and without getting himself involved in the fisticuffs. He even threw up a little, while he was here.

Consider yourself: at home....
Consider yourself: part of the family....

Your Weekly Big Stupid Tommy Update....

Remember folks, it's not the heat, it's the stupidity.

Your old pal Tommy's wandered through another workaday week. After taking a poll of every dog I know, we may not necessarily be in the Dog Days of the Summer just yet, but judging from the smell after my folks' dog Max farting when I asked, it's close enough for government work.

As for Tommy? He's still speaking in the third person, when the mood strikes him, and he's settling into a routine in a new store. It's a good store, and he's not unhappy to be there. It's 10-15 minutes longer a drive, and it's having to be there earlier than he's accustomed, so there've been more than his share of 4:55 and 5:05 mornings. It's not a huge adjustment from the 5:20 he's used to waking, but it's a vital 15-25 minutes. As we all know, Tommy cannot afford to miss any beauty sleep, whatsoever.

An omen I am submitting for your consideration: There are apparently blackberry bushes somewhere nearby the store I am working near Loudon. And the birds apparently love both eating blackberries and using my truck for target practice. One particular drive home was made interesting by the five purple, seedy splotches on my windshield, which smeared rather than cleared when one of the now customary summer thundershowers rolled through during my drive home. I don't know if it seemed odd to see a man stopped at an Exxon station washing his windows with squeegee provided during a summer downpour. I just know it was what it was.

Anyway, I've found myself wandering through an all-too-rare weekend off. Caught a baseball game up in Kodak last night, in which the Cubs' Double A charges threw a whooping on the West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx. I just want the world to know that Robinson Chirinos has no place on the North Side, what with his patience at the plate and his ability to hit for different results based on the situation. That's just good fundamental baseball, and we all know the Cubs have no use for that.

And the Cubs? I don't know if I mentioned it hear, but if there was no official concession speech when the Cubs did not fire Lou Piniella when he announced his retirement, it was pretty much a white flag. That 17 run beatdown by the Rockies the other night passed irksome, almost to the point of amusement.

I'm sorry to see Ted Lilly go, inasmuch as I liked that he was a gamer, who seemed to get more out of his B-grade ability with his A-grade smarts. I was dubious when he came aboard as a Cub, but I grew to dig the dude. I didn't want to hang on to him forever, though, and I wish him well on a quest for a Championship.

(And there are not words for how happy I was to see TOOTBLAN Theriot, who got less out his B-grade ability using his D-grade smarts, go out to the west coast....)

I'm guardedly optimistic for the future. I'm retarded that way. It's called Big Stupid Tommy I like what I'm seeing out of Castro & Colvin, to this point, and having seen both Iowa and Tennessee this year, there's a gamer or two wandering around both Triple and Double A....

Also? I still root for Kerry Wood. But it was made difficult when he wandered into the pinstripes this weekend.

Anyway. Doing the family thing today. As I settle into a routine, maybe we'll see more Stupidity on the blogamathing...