Friday's Dispatch

Evelyn McHale who suicided from the Empire State Building in 1947. Her suicide note read, He is much better off without me. I wouldn't make a good wife for anybody. She would be in her 80s today. When I first saw this pic as a boy I was fascinated by it and it still stops me dead in my tracks and makes me wonder what she was like.





• The Cars- Moving In Stereo
• Zachary is 5 now.
• I cannot recall a single job I did not get an offer for if I made it to an interview. When I made my first resume a cover sheet was standard, a section for hobbies and clubs etc. was recommended and a small headshot of yourself was common practice. Now, it's pretty much the opposite of all that.
• "Why, yes, yes your honor!" Zac's response to my question, "Do you want more pancakes?"
• It's my guess most people who own pools regret it and don't get nearly their monies worth out of them, but I would dearly love to own one and I'm very sure I'd use it almost year round.
• An old saying: You'll never know how many friends you have until you own a pool or a boat.

I Do Believe

that while I might not be on this earth only for a good time I am only here for a short time

War Pron

A crazy huge IED being detonated by the .50 cal on an M1 Abrams tank.

It Is Only Tuesday?

• Any doubt there will be an explodey head looking Bin Laden mask for Halloween?
• It's pouring out and thundering.
• A worn out cheap Roundtree And York cotton sweater and Tazmanian Devil sleeping pants.
• What I'm wearing.
• Coffee.
• What I'm drinking.
• Lunch? Baby carrots with avocado ranch dressing.
• Rainy days with rolling thunder are still the only days when even though I won't admit I get lonely, it would be nice if I don't have to have someone to hang out with to have someone to hang out with.
• Did that make sense?
• Still can't get UB40's cover of Red Red Wine out of my mind and I'm about to go crazy- it's been days now.
• Help.
• The preceding thoughts were typed out in May of 2011.
• I cannot imagine anybody being legitimately interested in the WNBA and imagine people I see in the crowd at their games only being there to be polite for somebody else or out of a sense of some kind of guilt.

Fredericksburg,

Boerne, Natural Bridge Caverns and Bat Tunnel State Park are all still there I can confidently report. Good food was eaten and memories made during my sojourn. Thankfully, I have returned to the homestead and lived to tell the tale. However it is a tale I will have to tell at a later time- I am so tired my teeth are hurting.

Memorial Day

SSGT. Berry We were not friends although interestingly two of my best friends were his also. I only met him once. He must have touched a lot of people though. I'll never forget the utter look of sadness, the look of being absolutely stunned on so many soldiers faces in the days after his death.

His loss came so close to us getting home- so tragic.

A good man- something I heard over and over in relation to him.

Shinedown's cover of Simple Man.

I Am Outta

here. We depart from this location in about 15 mikes with a rally point at Cracker Barrel to bolster our pancake and coffee levels. After a final equipment shakedown and map check we will roll south for Scarborough Faire then later we head even souther to Fredericksburg where we'll bivouac for the night and Lord willin'  we will trudge even more souther for Enchanted Rock after we look around F-burg.

Actually, we will see how tired I am and how much my butt hurts in the morning and decide whether to slink back home or drive even further away.

Well, anyway I started my day with some Tupac- here is you some. Start it at about 1:30.

Friday's Dispatch

• The Mavericks- What A Crying Shame.
• Woman known as woman cried when she watched Blackhawk Down for the first time the other day.
• Wonder how many pounds of Cheerios the average American child eats by the time they graduate high school?
• In Iraq if you tried to give a child a Nat Geo or other educational magazine they would react as if you were tryong to infect them with the plague. It's very sad, especially since I'm sure it's because they've had the decadence of the American lifestyle theory beaten into their heads and they're probably sure you're offering them pron.
• Zero- the number of pork product MREs we had in Iraq. Every case my unit bought was shipped without any, but again- trying telling a hungry Iraqi that..

Thursday's Thoughts

In the 50s a game show gave away a honeymoon trip to Meramec Caverns aa a goof/challenge. If you stayed the 4 nights you got a trip to the Bahamas- the catch was you had to dress like cave people for the tours. Heck I would have been fine with the 3 days and 4 nights in the cavern.



Caverns if they were known to people during prohibition seemed to always have been used for gambling and drinking- why? You could be just as isolated at a barn in the same area and you wouldn't be trapped like rats when the G Men came around. I could be convinced there is a psychology involved- hiding your sins/crime etc. from God and The Man.



Mr Big the hermit crab who won't die. He is nearly 5 years old.



The old airplane on a restaurant trick eh?




The geegaw souvenir we brought back from Meramec Caverns when I was a boy was made of cast pewter. The analog today is a lucite block engraved on the inside with a laser.




OK tiger easy there- calm down. Don't give yourself an aneurysm.





This exhibit is closed. It should remain as an example of ugly, impractical architecture that was thrown up in days gone by.





Fake wood from recycled plastic used to build friend-girls mom's balcony and staircase. It has been up for 6 years and looks good and is as solid as a rock.



• Many years ago an acquaintance asked me to sell him a motorcycle I owned offering me 50 dollars and "an old .410 gauge shotgun that was my wife's grandfathers." I agreed since I had already given the motorcycle once to a friend who backed out on me and told him to leave the money and gun with my mom as I wouldn't be home and take the bike. When I walked in the house later my mom was furious and pointed to a sawed off shotgun on the dining table next to a small pile of cash. The gun was about 18 inches long and pretty much was the embodiment of illegality. When it crosses my mind I often wonder what would have happened if a cop had stuck his head in the door of the house that day. You mean you accepted an illegal gun from someone who other than a name you know nothing about and hadn't spoke to in over a year before the day you accepted said gun from him- the ownership of which is a federal offense?
• I love all the Naked Gun movies although it's a little hard to watch OJ who after his pro football career and before his pro double murderer career stole the show in those movies as detective Nordberg.
• My nose is hurting.
• An aquaintence whom I know to have had an old drinking problem is drinking again and I really don't know what, if anything to do about it.
• Lost In Space is on Hulu. I'd never seen the pilot episode before.
• I understand from a radio blurb after her conviction Jodi Arias murder stabbed an ex boyfriend. Will somebody explain to me why we should care what she otherwise did that should make us so obsessed with that case?

The Rockets Red Glare- or A War Story

I have a few answers ready to be pulled up when asked, What's the strangest, grossest, saddest etc. thing you saw during the war? Also, a fair answer to, Were you ever scared? Here's my comparison for, What was it like being near a rocket blast? Imagine the time that you were the closest in your life to a lightning strike. The time that made you realise all the other lightning crashes you'd heard in your life that made you nearly made you jump out of your skin up to that point must have been miles away. Imagine the one that humbled you, made you feel small- that one that gave you some respect for what it might be like to actually be struck by lightning. That's what it's like to be near enough to a Katyusha ( Russian for Little Kate) rocket strike to say you've had a close call.




A reported Katyusha rocket strike in Israel. It is possible that's what it is, but the explosion looks low grade for a Katyusha. If I had to say I would guess it's a Kazzam. My rationale for this statement is plenty of Katyushas will be duds, but if they do explode on impact the blast will always seem larger. My understanding with the Kazzams is when they explode the blast size can vary greatly. Also again, my understanding is Kazzam use is more widespread in Israel today than Katyushas.




Initially Katyushas were a barrage weapon. German soldiers called them Stalin's Organ.




The most dangerous town in Israel.

Wednesday's Digressions

I found it! Pizarro you are vindicated my friend- rest in peace.

• Sooner Or Later by Breaking Benjamin. I hate to sound like a fan boy, but they really are way underrated.
• Sometimes I have to get away from everything and sort things out. The last time I did that I ended up in Big Spring TX after saying,"I think I need to point the car west, put the cruise on 100 mph and stop wherever the sun finds me while it's setting."

  

  This pond in KCMOs zoo is like a million other exhibits in zoos across the country- somebody with about  enough construction skills and knowledge to be dangerous slaps a structure together and its called good. What an ugly mess.

• My buddy won't answer my text messages and that worries me.
• When I was coming up everybody cruised to meet people. Denton was a big hangout, but we were just as likely to go to Bridgeport TX as kids from Bridgeport were as likely to go to Decatur. A weird coincidence that I'll have to be vague about: I thought a former in law was familiar to me when we met officially, but could not place how until the first time I went to one of her side of the families house for the first time- it was not the first time I'd been there. She did not remember me and I kept my mouth shut, but I'd been there before.
• I don't know if the preceding thought made any sense. I don't want to be rude or ugly and a couple of people who may read this will think it is them and it is not and another may think they know who I'm talking about but they may not.
• I just made it worse. 
• My air mattress popped. The flocked side will make a nice rug for Big Agnes (our tent) and the bottom will work for a footprint to save the floor. 

  

  This guy almost gave us all a chance to see what God thinks about us freaks- he pulled out in front of us like we were invisible. He had probably been drinking Keystone Light since he left Arkansas.

  
  

  

  Kansas cows. I thought they would look more wind blown and  aireborney. 

  

You'll Know You're In An Unhealthy

relationship and love the other person way too much when you could not bear the thought of them being treated as awfully as they treat you.

Mondays Missives

From the gift shop at Meramec Caverns- I think it was 400 bucks.

When I see beer cans some cretin left on the bank of a lake or river I pick them up and crush them  for the old can guy to find.

We got covered in ticks visiting a park in Lee's Summit.

I cannot wait to view tigers and orangutans with a feeling of, "bamboo thickets , exotic birds and ruins".  Also, isn't it great the orangs and tigers will finally get to experience, "invading forest with canopy trees"?

A pack of wild wheelbarrows rest between kills in the KCMO Zoo.

There is a commemorative highway, marker, memorial, museum etc for everything you can imagine every other mile in Kansas.

• I have always loved the Wise County Messenger paper. When I was in Germany my mom sent me a subscription. I fairly often received the copy addressed to a soldier also from Decatur in a different unit who I was in the same scout troop with as a boy. The interpretation is someone at the main USAEUR post office recognized the paper as belonging to a guy in 3/11 Armored Cavalry Regiment and sent it to our region where someone remembered a guy in Bad Hersfeld getting the same paper where it went to my squadron where someone knew to send it down to my troop- correct? It seems impossible, but sometimes I'd get it with my name and address and others I'd get it with his name and unit address. I want to bump into him someday and see if he had the same experience and recall.
• I have recounted the convoluted trail those papers would take to get to me and remember my interpretaion being doubted but do not recall peoples rationale. What else could it be? I would receive papers with the other kids name and Army Post Office address at a Kaserne 200 miles from my own and it happened multiple times.
• One of my best friends in that unit was a black guy named James Brown (not making that up). He ran the mail room and would read my paper and comment on there not being any black people pictured and tease me about him being the first black person I ever saw without making trips to the deep south on vacation to lynch folks. I told him about knowing lots of black kids growing up and playing football and basketball with them, but yes- we did have to cross the tracks to see each other. When he would find pictures of a black person in my paper I would later get it with the pictures of those people circled in red.
• Citizen Cope- Let The Drummer Kick
• Children if left to their own devices are solar and water powered. It's not even summer yet and I can't keep Zac out of the pool.
• Zac and are going to build a rocket this year. I bought several kits on clearance a couple of years ago. Chloe and I spent hours building one of them up just right with her choice of colors. I taught her about space travel and aeronautics etc. On its first flight on cue at it's apogee the orange chute popped open and we watched it drift away- never to be seen again.
• I have known of multiple cases where a manic depressive person's moods have been balanced out with meds and the person would fuss at their doc because while yes, they no longer have those lows they also don't have the highs.

Saturday's Situation

• Norm McDonald is an awful actor and a mediocre comedian yets we all love him. Why is that- is it because we all love him that well, we all love him?
• Willy Nelson is a great songwriter and decent guitarist but that voice- yikes, yet we all love him. Have you ever heard him singing Crazy? It is creepy.
• A one time patient was placed on home isolation since she may have been infectious until lab results were available that proved she was OK and could go back to work. She called and nearly frantically said, I really need my lab results so I'll know if I can go back to work. She called from the office I personally recalled her stating she worked at. Ahem, little miss patient- allow me to introduce you to a thing we like to call Caller ID. Also, I will translate your part of our conversation into the language of truthiness: Kevin, I need to know my lab results so I'll know if I have to stay at home like I was ordered and not infect any more innocent people with an awful disease...
• I have known exactly one pathological liar in my lifetime. It would be easy to focus on the damage that person caused by their need to lie but I was always struck by how much harder they made their own life in that they would lie when the truth would fit better. I mean, if they said Good morning, you automatically checked your watch. I will say though, over time your expectations were lowered. You simply didn't believe a word they said and did not adapt your thinking or what you did based on anything they said.

  

  I forget the name of this cave but it was used by prehistoric people for shelter.

  
  

  

  Retarded vandalism

  
  

  

  Same view people had thousands of years ago when they would wake up in the morning.

  
  

  

  Magic Bullet outside Meramec Caverns

  
  

  

  Lone Biker of the Apocalypse

  
  
  
  
  

  

  Zip line outside of Meramec Caverns. This guy sailed over us as we parked.

  
  
  
  
  

  

  Why yes, that goober is trying to catch a snake off the walking path in a zoo- why do you ask?

• Frank Sinatra singing Summer Winds in 1992. Summer Winds was first recorded by Wayne Newton. Bonus: Frank and Louis Armstrong singing the blues.
• I'm losing. were Sinatra's last words before he expired.

In The Future

everything will be amazing.

Friday's Dispatch



Horse head nebula



• I was very hyper at work yesterday (05032013). There was no hiding it or denying it- multiple people commented on it. My heart was not in the place and was not from the moment I walked in the door. I left at 10 minutes 'til quitting time- no clocking out, no checking out with anybody. I just left. I couldn't get way from the place fast enough. When I got home my back was bothering me so I tried to soak in the tub- it wasn't happening. I couldn't even sit still for that. Today I'm cool as a cucumber and look at the yesterday me as somebody I was observing but don't really know.

  

  Tracks from Mars rover. Get your mind out of the gutter you.

• One of my nursing buddies retired recently. I was unusually busy so I didn't have a true idea of the turnout for her lunch but I sensed it was poor. I'm tempted to think she may have rubbed people the wrong way and so they were less sad to see her go than I but again, I'm not sure.
• Waffles with peanut butter on them: It is what was for breakfast.
• There is a guy who sells hardback books at First Monday 2 for 5 dollars.
• I jacked this from Keith. It's a Bollywood rip-off of the Terminator and The Matrix. It's awesomeness is awesome. I call it Terminatrix.
• Zac got a copy of Clash Of The Titans for his birthday. All is well with his world.
• By the time this publishes I'll be somewhere between our beloved Tejas and KCMO and closer to the KC. We plan to visit Laura Ingalls Wilder's home, Fantastic Caverns, Merrimac Caverns and KCMO's zoo. Also on the list will be BBQ but I don't know for sure where and a riverboat ride but I'm not where, when or type etc.



Here Laura's autograph. when she gave it to me she said, Kev. take your time and don't live too fast. Troubles will come and they will pass. Go find a woman and you'll find love and don't forget there is someone up above. And be a simple kind of man- be something you love and understand. Forget your lust for a rich man's gold all that you need is in your soul. Hey I know its corny but I didn't make it up- she did.

Wednesday's Digressions

• Yesterday (05032013) our Xray tech was showing me his new camera in my office. During our conversation his phone rang. Saying, Here you can check it out. I need to go answer that. he left the camera in my care. That is a big mistake for you to make if you're my friend- unless you're into pictures of my butt, the pelican carving in my window, the little man and woman symbol on the bathroom door, my nursing buddies flowers, a close up of the study nurses eye, a close up of a vision chart...
• Recently a patient I knew to be a little off but mostly harmless caught me off guard. He said, You know that disease where turn from black to white? Thinking he meant vitiligo I said to the effect,"You mean the pigment disease where the skin lightens in places? He replied, Yeah, the pigment disease. My daddy had it. Shoot, my granddaddy had it- we all have it. One minute we're black the next we're Chinese, then we'll turn back black. Then one day we wake up whiter than you. The next day we might be Chinese- with the slanty eyes and all. Its hard. Its tough. Its a trip.
• I'm sure it is my friend.
• My children I believe must be watching a lot of TV when they're not around me. They beg for it here and turn into instant vegetables when I turn it on.
• A hard thing for people to get: just because a TV is present in a home doesn't mean it has to be on.
• Drop Dead Fred has been added to Netflix. I wonder how well it has aged?
• Well very often comes out as weel for me.
• Most people I encounter who believe in conspiracy theories aren't very well put together psychologically or emotionally in my opinion. They also tend to be poorly educated.

  

  Rock bottom- you'll know when you get there.

Just A Tuesday

• Humans are weird and irrational: You would not have to look too far to find someone for instance who works in a high rise who won't go to work on September 11 for fear of an attack. This is the  same person who would drive 80 mph while doing her makeup, texting, drinking coffee all while tailgating the driver in front of her when driving to work every other day of the year.
• I wish I could remember the dream I was having this morning (05052013) right before I woke, it was pretty funny and deep? It involved an elderly former politician explaining to me as a kid how you could tell a lot about a person by how they threw a baseball. It boiled down to the one who held the power over people was the one who could hold an audiences attention rapt while he discusses the stitching of a baseball and makes you believe he knows what another person thinks or feels based on how they handle a ball.
• We're going to Scarborough Faire today. If we don't open the place we'll at least get there early. We didn't tell the children we're going, just got everybody bathed and fed and put in bed reasonably early last night.
• This computer is still randomly jumping up a line and my typing ends up in the middle of the previous thought. I must be hitting a key stroke short cut I'm not aware of but it is annoying. It comes out a jumbled mess. Ha-ha, I get it- just like it starts in my brain.
• Mudvayne Scream With Me