august angst

i wasn’t going to write anything today just because it’s to damn hot.  yeah, well, here i am any the ways pounding something out.  the ides of august are long past and the month itself is just about to pass as well.  fine by me.  there’s a t s eliot line about something being the cruelest of months.  i can’t remember which one he was talking about but for me it’s going to have to be, august. this august hasn’t been to awful bad till this past week.  actually the whole summer hasn’t been as bad as it can get for these parts but it’s been bad enough.oh, there hasn’t been that 10 or 15 day stretch of over 100 degree weather.  sizzling everything in it’s wake and driving the wackos even wackier.  like back in 1969 when charlie manson and his crew came out of the valley of death and the underground chocolate fountain to wreck havoc with just about everyones sanity.  bad sad times for sure.

though for sheer bad hot summertime juju, hopefully, nothing will ever top richard ramirez’s night stalker august mayhem starting back in 1984 and rampaging up into august of 1985.  surely a mad maniac dredged up from the bowels of hell to give pretty much every sane soul in the los angeles basin a true nightly living nightmare.  hot humid nights spent worrying if the window is left open will the fucker sneak in here and kill us in our pool of sweat.  times of rampant paranoia.  too hot for open windows but not if trip wires are set up and noise makers set to go at the slightest touch.  sleeping with the winchester defender locked and cocked by your side.  enough bad juju in the night air it almost visibly crackled up until he was spotted by some local vatos in east la  trying to steal a car and make another escape.  vato justice almost got him.  they beat the shit out of him.  sadly they didn’t kill him.  though it ended a years worth of mental angst for millions of us.

the night air crackled last night or this early morning with rolling thunder and mad lights in the dark clouded sky.  last nights heat of the lightning and the humidity of the thunder made for that semi sleep stuff that proceeds or returns one to those long ago august nights of mayhem and murder.  a long nights journey into a hot humid sunrise.  hopefully, one without some madman slipping into your room or mind to make things even worse than they already are.

august went out with a bang last night.  we had sorta been lulled into the summer of forgotten augusts past.  well, it seems you can never count august out. not till it’s over and the mexican hurricanes stop slopping over here into the the valley of the smoke  and the city of lost angels.

nice photo. no, i didn’t take it.

jmh

something is in the air pt2

it’s almost here.  just days away now and i can’t wait.  opening day of the college football season.  fucking great.  ok.  so in the spirit of the season, no not christmas, but college football, i’ve looked over the odds and stuff for the upcoming televised games for this weekend.  here’s what i would do if i were still a betting man, lived in vegas or the north part of the state and if i were were crazy enough to take my own betting advice.  this is just for entertainment purposes only and if you take my advice and lose you are dumber than i look.  i am not responsible for your lame stupidity.

utah at oregon st.  interesting match up with neither team getting into to any of the dances at the end of the year.  though you never know. one of them might win 6 games.  oregon st 6 1/2 points.  take them and oregon.

washington at syracuse  ty willingham just might have a team this year.  a good coach who got hosed by the golden domers alumni.  syracuse is syracuse.  a nice small dome for themselves and plenty of loud drunk kids to cheer them on but washington and 3 points is the deal.  go for it.

tennessee at cal.  yes, those of you astute enough to see i’m a pac ten homer.  so?  i don’t care if tenn is an sec team cal doesn’t get the respect they deserve since tedford signed on as coach.  cal 6 points.  take em.

arizona at byu.  another good one here.  well, they are all good that’s why i picked them.  a drift.  this is put up or shut up time for the wildcats and stoops.  if they can pull this one out they just might be for real.  byu isn’t what they used to be.  byu by 4 points.  nope, arizona covers or wins.

georgia tech at notre dame.  charlie and his boys might be in for a rude awakening this year.  time tells.  luckily they have their usual cupcakes on the schedule so they might make it to a end of the year dance.  notre dame by 2 1/2 points.  see what i’m saying?  might as well be a toss up.  georgia tech covers or wins.

idaho at usc.  usc 45 1/2 points.  my goodness.  sure they are consensus number one and expected to run the table but, jesus, that’s a lot of points.  especially for the first game.  though the boys of troy might have a point or two to prove or more like 45 1/2. yeah, let’s pac 10 homer it all the way.  usc and the 45 1/2 points. 

there ya go.  just a few of the many games on the tele this week and weekend.  mind numbing ass numbing eyes glazed over by sunday evening though i think there’s even one or 2 games on monday as well.   woo hoo, it’s like thanksgiving weekend in september.  i’m going to be in college football heaven. 

this is for entertainment purposes only and if you are dumb enough to use my advice for your betting activities you are incredibly stupid and deserve whatever happens to you.

jmh.    

 

a shift in time

i spent several hours yesterday on line at the vietnam center and archive, texas tech university.  lots of good stuff to noodle around and look at if you are a veteran or a history buff.  there’s numerous oral histories and collections in their museum to meander through as well.  it’s a very nice place and i’m more than happy to have given them what little stuff i had from my collecting or picking up days from that place long ago.  what i was looking at wasn’t the oral histories or the museum stuff but their maps.  a very nice and easily negotiable 1:50,000 map of vietnam.  map sections blown up to very large jpgs, everything there.  all the contours, streams, rivers, and mountains with names so long ago forgotten but still remembered when given half a chance.  it’s odd to look at those maps and the places i once traveled thru or lived in and around.  seeing the names again brought back a flood of stuff.

i spent most of the time tracing the road trip from saigon to out where i was stationed in ham tan.  80 miles of 2 lane black top or hwy 1 as it was and is still known today.  the 40 miles or so out to xuan loc were fairly civilized even boasting mp(military police) speed traps.  yes, strange things in strange times.  the last 40 miles or so after xuan loc and a right turn were another story.  particularly the 30 or so miles of dirt road with the jungle closing in on both sides fighting it’s way back to life after doses of agent orange.  that stretch of road had that certain pucker factor to it.  your body telling you, this ain’t right and can’t we just go someplace else, now, please.

that 80 mile road trip was my introduction to the wilder side of vietnam.  i’d spent a few days in the company area in bien hoa but i knew where i was going right from the start.  when the first sargent saw me his first words were, boy, you going to ham tan.  the die was cast and the deal went down a few days later when a solitary deuce and a half rolled into the company area to pick me up. 

i made that trip more than a few times in the old smoking deuce hauling building supplies out to ham tan in order to finish a bunker for our generators and large a/c units.  units used to cool all the communication gear inside the bunker.  that first trip though was an eye opener for sure. 

yeah, for 2 hours yesterday i was back on the road again.  memories exploding like a 105 round.  the last 40 miles of bad road in particular.  just like the old duane eddy tune from the early 60’s.  i think i’m still there today.  oh, i know i am today cause the memories of those single deuce and a half trips have been running pretty much non stop since yesterday.  then again maybe i never left in the first place.

jmh

the days of youth and roses

i’ve been spending a lot of time this week watching the little league world series.  yeah, even with the rain outs and rain delays they have had something on in repeat mode i hadn’t seen yet.  it’s nice to sit and watch baseball.  it’s the perfect summertime sport and or activity.  lots of time in between stuff to zone out or into something.  i don’t watch major league ball anymore.  they are just a bit too much for me.  after the second labor strike i gave up.  oh, i made a few minor steps back when the angels were doing something but these days not even the angels are enough for me to care about major league baseball let alone watch it.  but that’s a major league drift.

watching the kids play a kids sport is something i don’t get tired of.  the little league world series is always on my radar every year.  two others as well, the college world series and the women’s college softball world series.  good stuff and if you are a baseball fan you should take the time to watch them all.

back in my kid days i never got tired of playing baseball. there weren’t too many games on tv so if you wanted baseball you had to play the game.  that we did.  during the summer and most other times of the year there were games starting up in the morning.  more games after lunch.  then some more after dinner.  day in and day out.  oh, of course for the most part not the 9 on a side games but your basic over the line games of varying amounts of people per team, with bicycles set up for the home run fence.  that is if we were playing on a field that didn’t have a home run fence.  i didn’t live very far from the local high school.  there were 6 fields on which you could play baseball.  most of the time they were all full with kids playing pick up over the line games.

you don’t see much or any of that these days.  kids out playing baseball all day long in the summertime.  for whatever reasons.  smog, sun, heat, and all the other reasons kids sit around the house all day long now a days.  a sad thing actually.  none of those things mattered to us as kids.  the smog was much worse in those days, at it’s lung burning worst.  i have skin carbuncles from the sun as well but i don’t care.  those days of summer and baseball all day long until it got to dark to play are well worth any presumed damage the elements might have handed out. 

watching the youngsters play this week is just a fine reminder of what youth and baseball are all about.  sadness joy and just being out there playing a kid’s game.  even when getting beat by 20 runs the kids on the losing end still found ways to smile and laugh about something.  no shame or dishonor in that.  because after all it’s just a game.  a wonderful timeless game played by all of us kids.  a true existential game if there ever was one with no real set time limits and in a truer sense it can be played with no fences.   making it even more timeless and existential.  of course, none of that matters to the kids playing this week in williamsport, pa.  it really doesn’t matter to those of us just sitting and watching the kids play a kids game this week either.

jmh

crappy jobs pt3

before i worked at the winery i wrote about yesterday i had another winery job.  it was at the winery my grandfather worked for many many years.  if i’m not mistaken, it was the winery where he first got work when the family moved from the central valley to socal in 1929. 

i did various jobs there.  the main job was running an antique wine bottle labeling machine.  the thing was ancient but it worked.  you had to constantly tinker with the fucker to get it working just right but it ran ok.  the major problem were the ladies at the end of the bottling line.  always complaing about something or another.  usually that the labels were crooked.  they rarely were but it gave them a break  because i had to go find my boss and get him to tell them the lables were ok.  i was just the stooge who ran the machine.

that old bottling line was an amazing piece of antique winery machinery at work from the filling machine to the other end where the wine went into the cases.  actually it wasn’t wine on that line but champagne.  not very good champagne but the bubbley anyways.  or it would either be cold duck or moscato.  equally not one of my favorites. 

on a side bar drift.  when the line was humming along with the clinking of the bottles and the clink clank of the machines there was a rhythm to the whole affair that was very nice.  a bit loud but musical in it’s own way.  having been in and out of many a wine bottling area since i was a child i guess the noise/music grew on me.  the closest i can come to it musically would be frank zappa and the mothers tune ‘weasels ripped my flesh’.  most folks hate that tune and the entire lp of the same name.  that would include most zappa heads like myself.  not me though.  ‘weasels ripped my flesh’ is one of my favorites.  the uncanny drone of the tune is the rhythm of a bottling assembly line or probably any other assembly line.  

the winery did make some really good champagne.  the bottle fermented stuff.  really good.  not cheap either.  i dreaded bottling the stuff.   it had to be corked with another antique machine.  a machine that was powered by me.  an odd use of feet, hands and eye co-ordination.  another rhythm deal.  kinda like being a drummer.  only trouble was if you missed a beat you might break the bottle and it happened a few times every time the stuff got bottled.  once requiring a trip to the emergancy room due to glass shards bouncing off my eye.   yeah, all this before osha and any sort of safety shit.

the winery’s other claim to fame was some of the best zinfandel ever put into a bottle.  just amazing stuff.  dago red at it’s all time finest.  superb vino.  this got bottled on another line which was a bit newer and easier to operate. the filling and labeling all done by one machine.  pretty simple but a nasty hand and finger grabbing piece of equipment.  another trip to the emergancy room for some stitches on my hand.

when things got slow i’d drive a small panel  truck all over socal delivering champagne to hotels and restaurants from downtown los angeles to palm springs.  a piece of shit truck that was so unstable with a load of vino in the back it would almost flip just driving straight down the freeway.  on rain slick streets it was a fight just to keep it on the road and right side up.  especially considering i’d go pick up a friend to keep me company on the driving days and we’d light up the whole time.  yes, gracie, i know.  not a sane thing to do but it was a long time ago in a job far far away. 

music provided by, the mothers of invention, ‘weasels ripped my flesh’.

jmh

crappy jobs part 2

this is a re-working of my old ‘crappy jobs, part 2′.  in it’s new form there are new added bits plus the old stuff.  it veers around a bit but i think you’ll find it amusing if not interesting.    

i grew up here in southern california.  east of los angeles in the heavily dreaded inland empire.  yeah, the butt of many jokes.  though it wasn’t so bad back when i was a kid.  still pretty much farm land and dairy farms as well.  the farms and grapes are gone.  the dairies are damn near gone.  new tract homes being worth way to much money to leave things bucolic.  however, on an overcast morning you can still smell the cow shit in the air.  breathe deep.  atom heart mother.  i still love the smell of cow shit in the morning.  it smells of youth and long ago dead dreams.

beginning in the early 1900’s grape vineyards made their arrival to southern california.  the italian half of my family worked in the vineyards and wineries here starting in the 1920’s and earlier. this would be in guasti.  everyone in the family worked at a winery for years or just off and on over the years.  including myself.  my norwegian father even got into the italian winery action for many years starting right after ww2.  most of the family were working there when secondo guasti was around.

i got into the winery work much later in life.  after my time in nam and a few half ass stabs at doing whatever other work didn’t work out.  it may have been the drugs but i don’t know.  plus golf always seemed to be calling me out to hit some balls around.  or the beach beckoned.   or…yeah, a wasted life for sure.  but that’s for another time.  today is for shitty winery jobs.  damn, i had a few. 

i grew up going into wineries.  back in the day when they were for the most part still redwood fermenting tanks and storage tanks.  another atom heart mother smell from a long ago time.  you could tell just from the smell of the cellars if the wine was any good or not.  sure you could taste it but the oozing wine from the old redwood tanks had a smell.  that smell told you what the wine would taste like.  that taste of smell that hung in the air like a rain sodden cloud.  um, yeah, nothing like it.

more to the point.  like anything else there are really crappy jobs involved with producing anything.  producing wine has a large number of those shitty jobs.  i think the worst job i had was washing down the floors in the fermenting tank area of this one old grape crushing plant where i worked for one crushing season.  we had to do it 2 or 3 times a day.  at least.  in the crushing stage making wine is not a clean job.  we had tons of granulated chlorine which we had to sprinkle liberally on the the wet floor and then we had to brush the shit around.  wafting chlorine gas is not an atom heart mother smell.  no.  more like the trenches of world war one.  after the brushing we hosed the floors down with water.

any the ways this nasty job was for brookside winery.  their main office was in guasti.  they had purchased the property from the last company that couldn’t make a go of it.  brookside eventually folded as well.  the other nasty jobs in the blog are from my time at brookside as well.

more world war one trench warfare was the addition of sulfur gas to the fermenting wines.  dragging a small tank of the stuff up to the top of a tank and sending the gas down a tube to do it’s job.  of course, at some point you couldn’t help but get a very unhealthy hit of the stuff.  guess i’m lucky to still be alive in more ways than one.

then there’s the clarifying of some white wines with powdered carbon during the fermentation process or just after.  or maybe it was to help clear up a red wine at times.  i forget.  maybe either one.  what i haven’t forgotten was dumping bag after bag of powdered carbon into a mixing machine that pumped it into a huge wine tank.  a dirty nasty job for sure.  a photo of a coal miner after a day in the mines would give you a similar picture of what i looked like after doing that job.

you can’t have a winery without doing the job that cleans out a fermentation tank after everything has been pumped out and sent off to the next tank in the process.  the crushing plant had huge stainless steel tanks for fermentation and in the building where the floors had to be kept spotless there were concrete settling tanks.  kinda like bunkers.  the size of large enclosed swimming pools.  they were occasionally used for fermentation as well.  once they were properly aired out and the co2 was gone.  hopefully.  you went inside with a hose and washed the damn thing down in order to get it ready for the next batch.  it was endless.  washing the floors washing the tanks.  over and over.

the fermentation tanks were scary. they could be very deadly as well.  back when my dad was working in the olden winery the tanks were redwood and wide open like a swimming pool.  there were narrow redwood catwalks going over them.  he watched a fellow worker fall into one of the tanks while it was doing it’s thing.  nothing could be done.  with temperatures well over 200 degrees and enough co2 in the air to kill an elephant the man was pretty much asphyxiated and boiled to the death.  very quickly.

fast forward to my time doing similar work.  the cement bunkers when used for small batches of grape fermentation had to be well ventilated with fans before we went in them with a hose to wash them down. one of my fellow workers said the tank was ok and started down a ladder into the tank.  he only made it about 3 or 4 rungs down.  then he started to pass out from the co2 still in the air.  lucky for him another guy and myself were watching.  we both managed to grab his belt and we hauled him up and out of the tank.  he was shaken up but ok.  you never went into a fermentation tank unless someone was watching you the first few minutes.  very dangerous.

the pure physical labor of dragging pumps and hoses everywhere to pump wine in various stages from one tank to the next.  a rats nest of hoses and pumps.  all of these activities at a break neck pace because it was the time of the crush.  the window when the grapes are at their peak and the time of year where, even here in socal, a rain would ruin everything.  mind and body numbing work.  i’m sure lung ruining work as well.

i love the smell of the wineries.  i love a good glass of vino or 3.  hell, even a sorta good glass of vino or 4.  i love it all so much i would probably still be doing winery work of some sort to this day, had something not happened late one afternoon long ago.  something that i’m sure, got me added to the lil old winemakers, black book.  the book where if you are in the fucker, you are forever more screwed, winery wise.

the big boys, the winery owners, had some special grapes coming in.  white ones.  not many, just enough for a special pressing.  a few thousand gallons of vino or less.  for some reason the usual workers weren’t available for overtime or something or the swing shift guys were going to be busy doing something else.  any the ways, i was asked if i would run the crushing machine for that special load.  sure, no problem.  i’d done it a few times and it was just pushing a button to start it and stop it.  plus keeping an eye on things.  yeah, no problem.  sure.  uh, ha.

things were going well.  just fine.  i left my post and wandered to the back of the machine where the other guys were loading the grapes.  this was a sorta usual trip as the machine was so loud you really couldn’t hear anything and if there was problem at the other end you needed to know about it.   perhaps i dawdled a bit longer than i should have.  yeah, when i got back to where i belonged a good portion of the special load of now crushed grapes was all over the concrete outside the machine.  this would also include a good portion of the grape juice.  yes, indeed, a major fuck up.  i really don’t know what happened to the special stuff or even if it was still usable.  we shoveled it back into the machine and it went on it’s way.

however, the boys were not happy campers.  i’m not sure how i avoided instant death.  or a ride out to someplace very private.  i made it through the rest of the crush season and even got some side work later in the warehouse in guasti.  over the years when i’d occasionally apply for other winery work someplace here in california, it was always the same.  not even a no thanks or we’ll get back to you or the usual mumblings of some h r person.  just silence.  dead silence.

music provided by, the art farmer quintet, ‘blame it on my youth’.

jmh

ode to donna, of sorts

donna di’monico

yeah, donna di’monico was her name.  a contract player for warner bros in the 40’s and 50’s.  lot’s of b westerns as second leading lady, plus the last of the serials.  she once told me, in a round about way, she had fucked howard hughes.  but she wasn’t one of his hayseed bimbos locked up in one of howie’s fuck pads.  no, not donna.  she moved and grooved to a beat all her own.

donna was an early lipstick lesbian.  when doing a bit part on an early ‘colgate comedy hour’,  she blew dino while playing dildo momma to marilyn maxwell and some make-up lady.  jerry sat and watched.  nice work if you can get it, i suppose.  as time passed she got fewer acting calls.  she never got into the older character stuff.  too much work she used to tell me.  but every once in awhile she would get some commercial work.  lever bros or one of the other yid soap joints, as she used to call them.  nice work.  easy 2 day max work.  plus the residuals were good, even in the late 60’s early 70’s.

don’t get me wrong she wasn’t hurting.  no, not donna.  she did ok.  she had plenty of time to prowl the bars on la cieniga and ventura.  out looking for some young cooze who may have seen her when she was a kid, like they were.  some kid who wanted to munch down on that well manicured carpet.  so they could say, hey, ever hear of donna di’monico?  we fucked last night.  nice old babe and still holding up ok.  god, she ate my snatch like she hadn’t eaten anything in months.  great fuck.

yeah, donna di’monico, the older she got the more genteel she became. doing charity work and joining historical societys. she got off on the historical stuff.  the older the shit was the more she was into it.  like trees.  she really got into old trees.  say 450 year old california oaks in some old downtown southern california berg gone to seed or illegal aliens.  or like this old cork tree where i live.  it’s at least a good 500 years old, probably the oldest around.  left standing when they razed the old hotel it had stood in front of for decades.  rumor has they had built the hotel there, where the cork tree was, because it was such a beauty and old way back then.

yeah, donna di’monico.  she really got into that cork tree.  at some point she started badgering this local pbs tv guy, who was into trees as well, to come out and take a gander and shoot some video of the tree.  the cork tree and genteel historical lady, donna di’monico.  for donna that meant another shot at some air-time, 21st century air-time.  she would email the guy weekly.  she always got a return email from some staffer saying, thanks, we get lots of ideas and email.  we’ll give this one to the boss.  donna kept it up.  the guy finally said, ok.  the tree sounds ok.  they are coming out tomorow morning.  only trouble is donna bought the farm last night.  yeah, donna di’monico, is dead.  so i guess i’ll have to meet the guy out by the cork tree in the morning which means  i’m going to be her last stand in.  adios, aunt donna.

jmh

 

a fictional life(?)

i was a priest for a time.  the head vicker at a young girls, well, not that young of a girls school.  it sat on the border of southern france and northern italy.  the school was equally divided between the two countries.  a strange thing indeed but just a simple hold over from the middle ages.  some of the parents didn’t appreciate some of the things i thought necessary to teach the young ladies.  i used to tell them, better me than some lout from the streets, with no prospects teaching them, things.  sadly, they weren’t amused.  of course, the police of both backward countries had to became involved.  i made a hasty departure.  fond memories for me none the less.

at some point or another i became a doctor.  just how, is still clouded in mystery.   with the help of a good plastic surgeon and some minor facial reconstruction i was able to make my way back into italy.  where i secured the position of, dean of tarts, at the university of bologna.  the position suited me well.  as a tart is a tart, in any man’s language.  and believe me they were tarts, with much to learn.  after a time, as things generally go with men, i became bored with the dean of tarts gig.  don’t get me wrong, the young italian ladies were spectacular.  but like i said, i was bored.  so i just up and left when i noticed the police were on the campus. 

i wandered about here and there living by my wits and good looks for what may have been many months.  it was so long ago and furtive i can hardly re-call that time with much clarity today.  then one day i found myself in shanghai, china, drinking beer with a portly, good natured chinese gentleman.  he suggested that i should come to work for him at his all girls school there in shanghai.  teaching of course, english, to those lovely pearls of the orient.  had he known just what else i would be teaching them he may have had second thoughts.  things went swimmingly for some time, as the girls had a rabid desire to learn from a great master.

i blossomed in china, even starting a side job teaching english and other arts to the girl’s mothers.  in the process, i nearly wore myself out,  causing great consternation far and wide.  culminating in another hasty departure during the wee hours of the morning.  something, of course, i’m an expert in doing.

set adrift again in life’s waters i roamed far and wide.  teaching what i could in what little time it always seemed i had.  whenever i tried setting down some roots.  the roots never took as the time between moves grew shorter and shorter.  it seemed i always left a bit of myself behind with each furtive escape into night’s darkness.  just like some depraved 20th century johnny appleseed.

so there you have it.  a somewhat condensed version of my of pathetic life.  i trust you will keep it under your hat as there are still husbands and fathers out there searching for me.  though in my new life, as an internet douche bag, i doubt they will ever find me.  sadly, if they do.  i’ll have to pack my kit and sneak off on yet another lonely moonless night.  to perhaps wend my way through life’s byways and highways to…your town. 

this mornings music provided by, miles davis, ’sketches of spain’.

jmh
 

a flash of fiction

john zen, pi 

the hot anvil sun had finally dipped into the pacific as john zen pulled up to his office, a second floor walk up in downtown la.  not really l.a. anymore but more like downtown tj, zen thought, as he slipped the key into the lock.  tired, gritty, and thinking only of velda, his busty secretary, he didn’t notice the the door was already open.  yeah, velda, he thought, some cheap scotch and a bubble bath with velda.  wash away the grime of crime from this world weary soul and partake in her lusty charms.  in your dreams, zen, he thought, as he pushed the door open revealing a scantily clad mexican babe of indeterminate age.

senor, zen?
that’s me, honey.
oh, senor zen, you must help me.  my brother, he has been kidnapped by columbian drug lords.
i see, so why don’t you just call the cops?
i can not, senor zen, i…we…are not in your country legally…and the drug lords will kill my brother if i do.

crap, just what i need, zen thought, as he pulled a flask from a desk drawer and drank heavily from it.  lighting a fresh pall mall he spoke again.

look, sister, i’m tired, ok?  this is not a job for me.  it’s for the cops or somebody else, dig?  i’m just a private dick.  a one man army against a tidal wave of crime.  plus, and it’s a big plus, they will not only kill your brother they will kill me too.  now scram. i have bills to pay.

oh, senor zen, you must help me…puhhhleeseeezeee…

the micro mini she was wearing dropped to the floor.  her ample yet firm breasts teased him from across the desk top.

all of this is yours.  whenever you want it, she cooed.

hmmmmm, yes, perhaps i’ve been a bit rash after all, my dear.  come, kneel here under my desk while i go over these bills and you go to work on my tool.  ah, yeah, that’s nice…ahhh…yes.

in his blow job bliss, zen, missed the dark columbian sneaking into his office.  the narco terrorist killed them both with a single shot.

jmh
 

life in the fast lane(?)

last week i was wandering around upstairs and noticed, out of the corner of my eye, a ball of gray fur huddled in a corner of one of the balconies. the ball of fur was a kitten.  not an extremely young baby kitten but more like pre-teen sorta kitten.  i have no idea how it got up on the balcony.  i opened the sliding door and it zoomed off into the air.  i heard it’s thud when it hit the landscape.  by the time i got to the railing it was going like a rocket up the drive and off to god knows where.

a few days later that same kitten was laying dead in the parkway.  no idea how it met it’s fate.  given it’s skittish behavior anything is possible.  well, of course no one wanted to pick the dead thing up and dispose of it.  i’m usually the one that ends up doing those nasty chores around this place.  though i’ve grown weary of doing the nasty work so i just left the poor kitten there to fester.  i was going to wait and see if someone else was going to step up and take care of the problem.  of course no one did.  god forbid, i suppose. 

the dead kitten sat in the parkway for i don’t know 4 or 5 days.  it was sorta close to the gang mailbox out front and i’d have to look at it when i went and got the mail each afternoon.  it wasn’t a pretty sight.  but i’d made up my mind, i wasn’t taking care of these assholes problems anymore.  someone else could suck it up and do the deed.  of course, no one had whatever it takes inside just to do the fucking deal.   no, not these sorry fuckers.

sunday night i decided that if poor kitty was still there come monday morning i’d take care of it.  that is if none of the supermen macho hombres/ninos couldn’t come up with the cajones or whatever to do it.  yeah, none of the vatos could manage, the kitten was still there monday morning.  so i gloved up, got a plastic trash bag and picked the little guy up.  tossed it in the dumpster and said a silent goodbye. 

you would think the sad story would be over but it’s not.  i guess the post office workers decided that the dead kitten was too gross for them to deliver the mail anymore.  we didn’t get any mail yesterday.  i saw the truck just drive on by.  the kitten was long gone, taken out to the landfill hours before.  i was wondering what was going to happen today.  i still am because there was an l.a. county animal control truck out there when i came back this morning after doing some stuff.   i guess someone called them about the dead kitten.   maybe the post office did.  i don’t know.   i didn’t because i’ve called animal control in the past about stuff and they are pretty much fucking useless twits.  kinda like postal workers.

we’ve had trouble with those dolts in the past, ah that would be postal workers.  a couple of months ago we didn’t get any mail for like over a week.  seems someone had dicked with the lock on their side of the box and they couldn’t open it to stuff the junk mail inside.  of course they didn’t bother to tell anyone what the fuck was going on.  one of the neighbors finally got a hold of the local yokel postmaster and got the skinny.  she reamed him out.  she also hipped me to his super secret number and i called as well.  i wasn’t happy.  more reaming.  well, the box got fixed the next day but it took them long enough.  i wonder how long it will take before they start delivering mail again this time?  how long will it take for them to realize the dead kitten is long gone?   for that matter will the twits in animal control even bother telling the dolts at the post office there wasn’t even a dead animal there when they finally showed up?  questions questions questions. 

i lost the damn postmaster’s super secret phone number so i will have to make a personal appearance there bright and early tomorrow morning if they by pass us again today.  it’s always one damn thing after another.

jmh