READ 'EM AND WEEP

Blog number sixty-three                                    23 Nov 2006


In this book I am currently reading - Blue Blood, the cops are scoping out buyers and sellers.  The guy with the binocs tells the street guys what to look for, "It's in his sock," "it's in the cast on his right hand."

"It's in his cheek -- sorry guy, the other cheek, check between 'em.  I mean it's in his ass, copy?"

The author then notes that, "There was nothing quite like watching someone sniff a bag of dope that was fresh from a dealer's ass."

He's telling of a cop friend of his dad's -- Davey, who has been investigated for stealing guns, is used as a finder for money in DOA houses, a generally funny guy, but a bit larcenous.

Davey tells the story, "A lot of times in a car wreck, people get knocked right out of their shoes.  Now there was one wreck where a priest was killed, thrown clean from his car, and he's lying dead in his socks.  You know how well priests dress, and I found the shoes, they were better than anything I had ever seen and they were brand-new.  And wouldn't you know, they were my size, exactly!  I thought, is this a sign from God or is this a sign from God?"
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When we lived in Sacramento I was friends with a little neighbor girl -- about three years old.  She had just gotten a goldfish and often talked about it. One morning I chanced upon her when out for a walk and I asked her how her fish was.  She said, "Oh, he's in fish heaven."  I asked her where fish heaven was and she said, "Down the toilet."

I THINK IT'S KINDA FUNNY, I THINK IT'S KINDA SAD. THE DREAMS I DREAM OF DYING ARE THE BEST I

Blog number sixty-three                                    21 Nov 2006

First off, I'm reading a good book -- an autobiography about a New York cop whose beat was the projects.  I'm going to tell you a few things from there, do a little quoting.  OK?

He's telling about the sass the cops get from the tenants. 

"I did take some pleasure on one downward trip, with a DOA.  The gurney was too long for the elevator, and it was stood up: the bagged body was on its feet, just out of sight of the doors.  When we stopped on a floor, midway, a man stepped toward us and I said, "Sorry, you'll have to get the next one."  He made the spit-face and the spit-sound,--ptuh!-- because nobody was going to tell him what to do, and he strode inside.  He met the corpse, face to face, and fell silent.  His deliberately reversed footsteps had the quality of mime: Here I am, leaving.  "Thanks for your cooperation and have a nice day."

A complainant called because her cat had turned vicious.   "...it's a mystical cat you know, a Jewish cat. I tried everything, petting it, feeding it, throwing boiling water at it -- nothing works, nothing."

And my favorite so far, a lady called because "Three white men in white suits locked me in the bathroom and stole my cigarettes."  Not wanting to put out an APB for the Bee Gees, he began asking her questions.  "Want an ambulance?"

"No."

"Sometimes you don't know you're hurt right away, the shock and all.  Are you under treatment, take any medicines?

She nodded, "Yes.  For the voices."

I once read in the Elk Grove Citizen, the local paper, the full blurb, that Mrs. so and so was recovering nicely after the Post Office door fell on her. 

And this next one is kinda eerie.  Might not let the kids see it.

I was talking to one of my sergeants one day, just shooting the bull, and he told me about being on C. Q.  (Charge of Quarters) one night and he was to wake this one guy and when he did, the guy slugged him and went kind of crazy.  After the guy calmed down he explained that he was once stationed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and he woke one morning to find that the man on either side of him had his throat cut during the night, along with every other sleeping man in the barracks.  One alive, one dead, one alive, one dead -- all through the barracks.

I worked with this one Staff Sergeant at Mather A.F.B.  Good worker, good Sergeant.  One night he and some other guys went to Reno, gambling. He won big on Keno - I think ten thousand or so of 1956 money.  One day I'm working on an aircraft and he came out asking if I could loan him some money -- that he was asking everybody, and those that lent first would be the first paid back.  He had written some bad checks up in Reno and was being pressured big time.  I turned him down.  He seemed to expect it because he just said "OK," turned around and left.

One night I'm watching TV and there's a breaking story about an Air force Sergeant wanted for robbery that had dived into the Sacramento River and was swimming across at that very moment, trying to escape from the police.

It was him.

Gambling is a drug to some.   Best thing when you gamble is to loose big time the first time out.  If you win big, seems like you might get the idea that you can do it again.

And you can't.

WRITE ME A POEM, BABY

Blog number sixty-two                                      21 Nov 2006
I got this e-mail from my nephew after he read my blog entry about almost drowning.

"I almost drowned (maybe in the same pit – north of Graettinger).  A friend of my brother pulled me out.  I was not scared and didn’t get short of air and swear that I was close to being able to absorb oxygen from the water through my skin.  I remember being a little pissed in later years that he pulled me out.  I could never duplicate the circumstances or the sensation.  I was very young at the time.  As I got older it still stuck with me that maybe just maybe I was on the edge of a great discovery.  The older I got the more I dismissed it as foolishness.  Humans can’t take air through the skin or get nourishment through breathing food cooking. (another idea I swear would work)"

A number of years ago my diving buddy told me that he once ran out of air underwater and had to take a breath of water.  He asked me how this could be and I had to tell him I didn't know.  I don't really think he expected me to have an answer, but the event puzzled him so much that he felt he had to at least try to find out how such a thing could be.

After reading the same entry where I mentioned not being afraid until after I had time to think about almost drowning, my nephew wrote the following,

"I do know fear of stuff is learned.  I learned it from my Mom.  One time I got hit in the head by an ink bottle my cousin and I were throwing into the tree to make the helicopters come down.  It gashed my head pretty good.  We thought it was kind of cool with the blood running down my head.  As with all cool things I wanted to show dad.  He was in the house so I went in and AHHHHHHHHH!!!  MOM FREAKED OUT AND STARTED AHHHHHHHHH!!!  YA KNOW . 

Now I was real confused and didn’t know if I was going to get an ass whippin’ or what so I just started tocry.  My cousin got chewed out (he was older and I found out he should have know better) and I was pampered.  Very, very confusing but I remembered that.  Mom scared the shit out of me that day and I learned to be afraid when blood appeared. 

I used to be afraid to fight.  I was a maniac if I got in one.  I thought it was because I didn’t want to get hurt.  I later found out the embarrassment of losing was what I feared.  I just quit getting into fights.  If I did get into a fight, and it was only maybe two fights after that, it was to protect myself from someone who wouldn’t leave me alone.

GET THEE BEHIND ME. OR AT LEAST TO WHERE I CAN SEE YOU.

Blog number six-tee one                                      17 Nov 2006

'Ja ever have one of those times when "funny" things happen?  Funny things that are as personal as dreams which no one else can fully comprehend since they weren't there so that if you tell them about these strange things, you will set them to wondering why an extremely intelligent man such as yourself is wasting valuable time and vocalization techniques, or in this case, writing techniques, that could better be used for something interesting or important?

The story that follows is one of those.

Get rrready.

A few days ago I'm walking to the post office - about a mile away.  In front of me is an old man walking in the same direction.  I follow him a little ways when he suddenly makes a right turn and walks across the street towards a six foot high wall fronted by those bushy cacti that if you look at them cross-eyed they will attach themselves to your skin and you have a new appendage that hurts you very much. 

Now most people, walking along a roadway, if they want to go to the other side, will make a forty-five degree turn, not a ninety degree one.  So he made an unusual move toward  a harmful milieu.  An unusual goal.

I figured that maybe he was nervous having a stranger walking behind him.  No big deal.  But where he was going and the turn he made engendered a curiosity in me.  So I turned around to see where he went.  He was gone.  Disappeared. Huh.  That's odd.

On the way back I carefully observe the wall that surrounds a trailer park to see if there is maybe an opening that he could have went through.  There is not.

Today I'm walking back from the post office and at about the place where the man made his move, I see a pair of shoes neatly set by the side of the sidewalk, the soles on the ground, the heels touching the sidewalk.  Who's walking around in the desert in their stocking feet? Why lose the shoes?  They were of soft leather - a lot like a moccasin.  I don't imagine they were hurting his feet.  Never in my seventy five years of traveling the streets have I ever seen a pair of shoes lying in the street.  But here...

I'm thinking maybe the rapture has started in this area and this guy was one of the first to go.

As I'm thinking this about the rapture, I hear, on my earphone radio, that the upcoming song is "(something) capture" 

"Rapture capture," I think.

See?  You think that an entirely uninteresting and not unusual event to be writing about.  I told you you would, but you wouldn't listen.  Oh, no.  You know better.  Next time pay attention to what I'm telling you.
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We used to live out in the country near Sacramento.  The land was divided into two acre lots, so the neighbors we had didn't live that close together.

One night my wife and I were out walking and I noticed her looking in an un-shaded window.  I said to her, "Teresa!  Don't look in people's windows."

She said, "If they don't want people to look into their windows, they should draw their blinds.

Fast forward to five or six years later and Teresa and I were again walking the neighborhood street, only this time downtown.  I looked into an un-shaded window and Teresa exclaimed, "Don!  Don't look into people's windows.

I replied, "If they didn't want people looking in their windows, they should pull the shades."

We switched ethics, you see.  I learned from her, her ethics, she learned from me, my ethics.  I think that this is a common way that ethics and ideas is transmitted.  I don't think we two were all that unusual.  One other thing -- neither of us realized at the time that we had learned from the other.  To both of us, it seemed like our own ideas.

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In 1941, during the "Great Patriotic War" between Germany and Russia, The Germans captured many Russian weapons that were superior to the Wehrmacht's weapons.  They took them back to Germany and copied many of them, including the vastly superior tank, the Russian T-34.

The Allies knew in 1939 that the Germans had a superior antiaircraft gun that was also the ultimate tank destroyer as well as an artillery piece in support of the infantry.  A devestating weapon for infantry.

We called it "the 88 mm,"  or more properly, simply "The 88."

Mobile and easily deployed, it was far superior to anything the allies had all through the war, yet never was any attempt made to duplicate this deadly weapon by either Briton or America.  Why was that?  I have never seen this explained.

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In my search for God, I visited many churches as well as cults.  I once attended a service at a Four Square Church -- founded by one Amie McPherson in 1917.  Right in the middle of the services, the small congregation stopped in order to pay homage to the minister and his wife, giving them an award.  

For excellence in preaching.

It was here that I realized that in Christian churches, except for hymns and prayers, God is never mentioned.  Just Jesus.

Well, maybe not never, but rarely anyhow.

It was also at this same church -- could have been the same service, I don't remember, a woman took her fourteen year old son to three of the church elders for a laying on of hands in order to chase the devil out of him.  I thought the whole thing a bit like a secret boy's club ritual.  It looked very amateurish -- as if each of the layer-on-of-handers were looking to each other for guidance on the proper method of driving out devils.  I don't think there are text books on the practice.

I thought it strange that a boy so young would want to be a party to such a farce, but as the ritual finished and the mother and boy turned around to walk back up the aisle, the boy looked at me and rolled his eyes.  I immediately understood that none of it was his idea -- it was his crazy mother's idea. 

"Don't blame me," he seemed to be saying.

BOTTOMS UP!

Blog number six-tee                                       17 Nov 2006

I did some volunteer work at a detox center.  Just talked to the guys.  One guy was telling me about being in bars and pulling out large wads of cash when he happened to get lucky at the tables or got paid a large lump sum for some work he did.  A little later he was telling me about getting robbed.  One guy followed him into the bathroom at a bar and took all his money from him.  He said he only got robbed when he happened to have a large sum of money with him.  After he told me this, he looked off into space and kinda mused out loud, "I wonder how they knew I was loaded?" 

I told him that he showed them he had money when he showed them the wad of cash.  He looked surprised and said, "I did!  THAT's how they knew!  I told them!  Well I'll be damned."

One morning an old guy was being told by one of the ladies that he couldn't come in.  The old guy was nearly in tears.  I felt so sorry for him.  I asked what he had done to be barred and the lady said, "He knows what he has done."

I said, "Maybe not."  Sometimes people just don't realize they have done something wrong."

She said, "He tried to smuggle in some whisky through a window."

I said, "Oh."
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I found a book store close by the detox center that sold "Alcohol Anonymous" books at a very low price.  I don't think the author gets any royalties for them and they are probably printed cheaply because of the solidarity of recovered alcoholics.   I bought a case.  I don't remember the price, but I think I got a box of a dozen for ten or fifteen dollars.

I took them to the detox center and laid them on the floor by a post and left for lunch.  When I came back, the box was gone.  I asked at the desk if they knew what happened to the books.
The lady told me that someone left a case of the books and she had to take them into the office because they would get stolen if left out there.

When I left the books where I did, I had already reasoned that if any get stolen, at least they would be in the hands of somebody that wanted them, for whatever reason.  If they could sell them, then the person buying them would want them for whatever reason and they still could be in the hands of someone who wanted them.  Seemed like a win-win situation to me.

I told the lady that I had left them there and I didn't care if they got stolen that I would replace them as needed but she would not be swayed.  So I didn't buy any more.  I guess maybe I could have kept buying them until the office was packed to the ceiling with them, but I didn't think of that.

The irony is that the lady, in trying to save the books, lost all of them except for that one case.  I stopped going there after that.  I hate stupidity.

HEADS UP!

Blog number fifty-nine ******** 15 Nov 2006

All the evidence points to the fact that there probably isn't anything out there at all.

I'm sure I'm missing something here. Did you give the evidence or is that something we need to get later;

Naw. I didn't give the evidence. But here it is.

The only thing we have in order to "perceive" what is "out there" is our senses. But we do not see with our eyes, we do not feel with our fingers, nor do we hear with our ears. We do all those things with our brain. The whole physical world is "perceived" inside of our heads.

Since everything "out there" is actually and really, "in here," we don't have anything that can give us any indication whether or not there is really anything out there at all.

Basically, there are absolutely no facts supporting the idea that something is "out there." None at all. Nada.

There exist, however, some facts that indicate that there is probably nothing at all out here, that it is all an illusion. One of these facts is the fact that when we dream at night, we create rivers to swim in, people to talk to, dogs to bark at us.

Our minds can create worlds, time, space, people, reality. It does it every night when we dream. No problem at all. And if you ever wake up in a dream, have a lucid dream, everything looks, feels, and IS "real."

If Mind can create reality -- which we have seen it does easily, then why would nature need anything else in order to create reality? Why not let tried and true Mind do it?

Besides, anyone who watches their thoughts notices very quickly that the reality we are talking about is seen to be created by what we believe. That's how we create strangers, enemies, wives, countries. By thinking these things exist and then believing what we are thinking.

GIVE ME BACK MY MEDICINE

Blog number fifty-seven                                      02 Nov 2006

In Midtown Sacramento we had this street person that used to attend church services in a church run mostly by and for young people.  One time I heard one of the girls tell this person, "Ray, I told you.  Don't hug me when you've been dumpster diving.  You smell."
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We lived in a housing development in Sacramento and I used to walk to my favorite coffee house wearing my bib overalls.  One day, coming back, three houses from my house, a little girl about seven years old stopped me to talk.

"Do you have a horse?"

"No."

Pause.

"Do you have a cow?"

"No."

Pause,

"Do you have a barn?" 

"No."

"You don't have a cow or a horse or a barn?"

"No."

"Well, what kind of a farmer are you then?"          

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I just found out today that in Bolivia they write the date, using numerals in the order of: day, month, year, while in the US it's month, day, year.  That's bad enough, but with me, I always have to ask my wife the proper sequence while bemoaning the fact that there would never be any confusion if everyone would just use day, month, year like they do in the military.  14 Apr 31.  Seems obvious to me that that is the way to go, but then, that's just me.  I have no power at all.  If ever people stop blocking my ambition and let me become my life's dream of being a benevolent dictator, the first thing I would change would be that.

Next I would get rid of  daylight savings time and AM and PM nomenclatures and just have military time.  0100, 0200, 1600, instead of 1:00 AM, 2:00 AM, 4:00 PM.  Then I'd rewrite and eliminate laws and have lawyers leave that profession and retrain into professions that benefited other humans.  Like grocery clerk.  Or garbageman. Or acting.

And the only permissionable election ads will be in the newspapers or magazines.

Bolivia is still mad at Chili for taking it's coastline in a war.  Bolivia is now a landlocked country, but it still has a navy that is stationed in a lake, awaiting the return to the ocean.

I was stationed with a guy that was from Chili.  He had green eyes and his surname was, "Thackery."  He said they had real war heroes over there.  He said during the war with Bolivia, one of Chilean cooks on a ship jumped onto a Bolivian warship and stabbed their captain to death. 
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I was at Barnes and Nobles Bookstore and Coffee Shop this morning and saw a book entitled, "Science Explores the Afterlife."  I thought, "Whaaaaaat!"

Ever notice that you can tell your fingers to type out the word, "type," but you have absolutely no idea how you tell your fingers to do that?  Maybe science should explore THAT phenomena. At least they could get photographs, unlike with the afterlife.
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Did I ever write in this blog about the time I stepped on a nail that ran through my foot and it got infected and the doctor shot Novocain in it and started to clean it out and the big toe got large beads of sweat standing on it like it could feel the pain but I couldn't?  Huh?  Did I?
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I did write about somebody in the emergency room stealing my morphine though. I remember writing that.