the fatty?

     I was tagged in a photo on Facebook. Not really a bad thing. Usually. This time I was tagged as a cartoon caricature. I am not really sure what kind of animal the picture depicted, but it looked kind of like a chicken hawk. Maybe just a chick, but I am going to stick with chicken hawk. Again not such a bad thing. Then I saw the caption. “The Fatty”

     Seriously? Really? Thanks Jenna-Loserface… I could understand “the good looking one.” Well, that may be a bit of a stretch. I may be man-pretty. Then again I may not. It seriously depends on the hair day. If you take into account the amount of smack I talk on the rink during Hockey ball, I would relish “the loud one.” Kirk Maltby nor even Rich has nothing on me when it comes to being “chippy.” However, I am “The Fatty.” Nice. The bloated Elvis I am not. Nor am I the overweight Jim Morrison.

     Chunky. Yup. Under tall. I buy that. Portly, okay, but the fatty? Stocky? Maybe. Might as well braid my back hair and call me a Sasquatch.

     I know those six pack abs have turned into the 12-pack variety. I know the gun show is a more like a pistol show. The waist has seen a few too many nights being wasted. I do not even want to address the buttocks. Suffice it to say that I am not in great shape.

     Once upon a time there was a buff Bruce. I am not making this up. I think there may be a picture or two that supports this hypothesis. There are definitely some people that are still alive that can support this. Right now the buff Bruce is on life support. What put buff Bruce on life support? The answer is long and complex. Not really. Actually, he may be dead. I do not know. He may be hanging with JFK, Elvis, Mr. Mo Jo Risin’ and all the others that may not be dead. He could be chillin’ with old Walt Disney.

     I do know that I LOVE McDonalds Mcdoubles. I love fries. I REALLY love gas station hotdogs. If it is bad for you, I probably like it. I like chips. I like both the potato and the corn variety. And not those baked ones. I have had dog treats that taste better than baked potato chips. And yes, as surprising as it may be I have had Milk-Bones dog snacks. By choice. And more than once. Don’t ask. I also have had a cat treat. Also, don’t ask. These may be a story for another blog.

     The cigarettes may also have something to do with it. I can blame the lack of desire to watch what I eat, take a run or exercise after a long day of work. That may have something to do with it. My wife’s cooking may have had something to do with it. Probably not, as she rarely makes me meatloaf, one of her specialties. And I do most of the cooking. I could blame myself, but really, why? I am not to blame for my own mistakes. Oh wait, I am. Well, that and the love of Alfredo sauce, anything with melted butter, and pork skewers wrapped in bacon.

     At one time the buff Bruce ate a diet of lean meats, and low fat stuff. He worked out at least five days a week. He also and did yoga, aerobics and Pilates. Not really. No, real men push real weights. He did that. Buff Bruce pushed free weights. Max weight, low reps.

     Can you picture me doing Pilates? If you can, do not Bogart what you are smoking and/or drinking, because that is the only thing that would make me be able to picture that. Even stoned and/or drunk I would have a hard time imagining me doing Pilates. BTW, I do not really even know what is involved in Pilates, other than some movie star and an instructor.

     Seriously, the fatty? I prefer to call it the under tall. Maybe a bit overweight. Possibly the out of shape, but the fatty? If I were sensitive I may be hurt, but since I show a smidge of a lack of sensitivity, according to a few people, that cannot be the case. Miffed. Maybe just a little. Not really, it is more than a bit amusing. Regretful? Not really, I made my choices. Determined. Definitely. Maybe.

     Buff Bruce did not die, if he is dead, overnight. The lapse into the fatty did not happen overnight. No, it was series of bad choices, and beer goggle bravado. He is still alive. I think. Plugged into a machine that is keeping him alive. But he keeps getting punched in the nuts by smoker Bruce, McDouble Bruce, beer and booze Bruce, and of course, Gas station Hotdog Bruce. As you can probably imagine there are few more Bruce’s in my head as well.

     There is time before the hockey ball season. Buff Bruce may come out of this. He may not be dead. He may show up at training camp in the best shape of his life. Ok, at least not as the fatty. Maybe we can hope for the nearly buff Bruce. That, of course means Goodbye gas station hotdogs. Goodbye Mcdoubles. Goodbye beer and booze. Goodbye smoking….Yeah, right, let’s be realistic. Let’s see how it goes after Wintercamping.

Just another day in paradise

Armageddon is just around the corner

     There is a lot of talk about the end of the world. 2012 is the latest guess on when the world will end. Armageddon is just around the corner, like some 70’s movie mugger that you see, but the characters are oblivious to. We are all doomed. Guess what? They are right. We will all die. It is a fact that we are mortal. But as Ronald Reagan said “Facts are stupid.” Well, they are not stupid, but I prefer to not stick with the just the facts, if I can embellish, a bit, embroider a smidge, and well, stretch the truth a tad, for the sake of the story, I will do this. I have my poetic license and I am not afraid to use it.

    I am not going to throw in the towel just yet. As my father used to say, “You live until you die.” And as much as I would like to disagree with the statement, it is true. He did live until he died. He also used to call me a dumb ass. And as many of you know I do have a bit of the dumb ass gene. Many people may refer to this as a component of the Y chromosome. Whatever. I seem to have forgotten the purpose of this blog.

     Oh, yeah, Armageddon. The end of the world. Doomsday. Seems like every religion has a day of reckoning. A day of atonement, and passage to the great beyond. Even that bastion of truth, Hollywood, is on the bandwagon of bad endings. Several times. We are over exposed to the possibility of what can happen. The world can end in a various array of poor probabilities and outrageous outcomes. For example, we can nuke ourselves to kingdom come and apes can rule the world. We only find out that we are still on earth, but a future earth, when we see the statue of liberty half buried on the beach. “Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell! ...!!” www.imdb.com/title/tt0063442/quotes

     The fact, Mr. Reagan, is the world will end. For reach of us. At some point. But why worry? It is totally out of our control. We will live until we die.

     My generation has survived the nuclear proliferation of doomsday devices, the Vietnam War, the two gulf wars and perhaps the dumbest man to ever hold the office of President Of the USA. (P.O.T. U.S.A.). You can decide who I am talking about, pick the one you liked the least and run with it. I know who my choice is, and although I have two close candidates, there is only one to hold this esteemed honor.

     We are also surviving Global Climate Change. The jury is still out on whether (or weather, hee hee…) we will survive this or not, but I am going to live as green as possible. Well, not really, I am slow to change and do not really know what is green or not green. There is way too much subterfuge, spin-doctoring, and talking head blathering for me to really decide. Besides, peeing outside is a god-given right, and I KNOW that cannot be green. Even if you drink a bunch of green beer, or eat a bunch of asparagus, it is still more yellow than green.

     Last Friday night, I drank a bit more than I have in many moons. Well, I was actually just over served. I truly felt green. Well, green around the gills. I felt like it was Armageddon on Saturday morning. I survived, but not without a few scrapes, bumps, and bruises. Or at lest that is how I felt. I felt kind of like I climbed in the dryer and went for a spin, after taking a bath in a mixture of booze and beer. It was a tie one on type of night.

     It started innocently enough with sitting on the glass at the Van, and dollar beers. Sitting that close to the ice is awesome. I suggest you do it at least one time before the world ends. I guess you have until 2012. Even if you do not like hockey, which I cannot believe is even a possibility. You should pop the $30 or so for the seat. The Griffins lost. Always a bummer when the team loses. So drinking away the sorrows of a home team loss we went on to Founders, and Hop-Cat, and rounding out the evening with a stop at the Meanwhile. Damn those over serving bartenders, anyway.

     There are a lot of things I will miss if I happen to survive the Day of Reckoning. I will miss tap water, hot showers, indoor plumbing, cable T.V., the internet, Facebook, and fast food. I will miss the microwave, a/c and heat. I will miss my friends and family. I will also miss booze and beer. But not so much as the rest of these things. Well, yeah, I probably will…but I will not miss Lemon Drops…not the candy, but the drink. Seriously Libby, what were you thinking?

     I went home and went to bed. When I woke up a few hours later while it was still early dark thirty to piss out some of the filtered alcohol, and take some Advil, I wandered out to the kitchen to the refrigerator. I needed something wash down the Advil and to quench the parching arid desert that was my mouth. I nearly had to get a pry bar to separate my lips as they had become zipped together by that crusty post drunk saliva paste. It was either that or my wife had super glued them together in an effort to squelch my snoring.

    OMG!!!! IT was ARMAGEDDON. Just around the corner. The corner of the kitchen, that is. I reached into the refrigerator for the Orange Juice. I thought about how great it would taste and how much I would miss it if the world as we know it ended. There is something almost nirvanaish about O.J. Definitely my favorite of the juices. Unless you count carrot juice. Not really. Come on, seriously? Carrot juice?YUCK!!! While the color is similar, it does not compare.   I unscrewed the cap, and poured the cool orange liquid into a glass. Instead of a gush of orange juicy goodness, there was nary a trickle.

    IT was ARMAGEDDON. Just around the corner. “Ah Damn you! God Damn you all to hell!” "They really did do it...." I looked around for something else. There was nothing!! Well, there was tap water. “Ah Damn you! God Damn you all to hell!” While there were no human-like apes in my kitchen, someone HAD nearly finished the O.J. and PUT the nearly empty container back in the fridge. I savored the nary a trickle AS IF the world slipped into oblivion.

Just another day in paradise

trash or trashures

     My life changed drastically when I married a woman with a 3 year old daughter and a 10 year old son. I was ill prepared for the scope of work that is fatherhood. I foolishly believed I understood how my life would change. I did not think much of it until we moved from the house she and her ex-husband had bought to the first house she and I bought together. I found out what baggage was. And I am not talking about the emotional or psychological type. I am talking about baggage. And boxes. And tubs. And more.

     I had few possessions when we married, as I was fresh off a stint as a traveling musician/carpenter. I moved from living in my van and or my sailboat into her house. I had construction tools, guitars and clothes. And, yes, I did have the Sea Monkey, but that is a story for another day.
     It is amazing how much stuff you acquire when you have more space. Soon, however, the space is used up. We live in a consumer driven world. Buy, use, and throw out, or take to goodwill. Throw out is almost like taking things to Goodwill. I call these items trashures. As defined by Bruce’s Dictionary of made-up Phrases for the Purpose of Blogging. A trashure is: “Any item that could and maybe should be thrown away, but is instead donated to a second hand store, a such as Goodwill etc.” The landfill has trash, Goodwill has trashures. One mans trash is another mans trashure. Right? EXACTLY RIGHT!!
     Well, they might as well be the same thing. Once items are there, they are gone forever. I noticed recently that nearly the same sign is posted at the landfill as at Goodwill. Do not remove items from the drop off spot. Removing stuff from either place is punishable to the fullest extent of the law.
     I can understand the idea of taking a cool item from goodwill, but the landfill? I admit that there are times when I have a hard time throwing out stuff. I am good at getting rid of stuff that belongs to my wife and kids. Just ask them, they will concur. Every time we move I hear “what happened to …..” I am always guilty until proven innocent. You would think just because I did throw out some items that appeared to be trash to me, one time when we moved, I am suddenly the prime suspect. However, I am also a pack rat. Ironic, huh?
     Items in plastic bags look like trash to me. I use a lot of Home Depot, Menards, and Lowe’s bags for my job for small trash items. By the way, Menards bags are far superior as far as strength, to the other two. My wife uses bags as some sort of odd organizational system. We had not been married long when I discovered this quirk. Er, I mean endearing quality.
     When we went to Las Vegas on our honeymoon I purchased a tiger striped jacket for my wife. It was cool. It was not cheap. She really liked it. At least that is what she told me. It was pretty cool. She looked good in it.
     I was going to Goodwill. My wife asked me to take some items in a bag, out of my her car, to Goodwill. She told me the bag was in the back seat of the truck. I grabbed a bag off the seat. I ran off to goodwill. I dropped the bag and the other trashures. My wife thanked me for dropping off the trashures. Then she went to the truck to get her jacket. It wasn’t there. It was not pretty. I grabbed the wrong bag. I toyed with the idea of seeing to what extent of the law they would punish me. I guess she really did like that jacket.

Just Another Day In Paradise