As my old friend Neil Young once said, “comes a time.”

‘Comes a time.

I just wanted to share a couple songs from those grungy 90s that I don’t want to forget.

 

First, “Misery” by Soul Asylum.

The CD production clips in this vid come across as a premonition.  If music gets easier to make, does that mean the industry’s standards have gone down?  Or have they just changed?  Lord knows, they ain’t the same.  Check this one out.  “Shimmer,” from Fuel.

 

Just had to break some ice.  The Kid may be back.  Depends on the bore tide, I spose.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Walmart Warm-up

Make no mistake, these fingers are rusty.  The Kid’s return to the blogosphere has been considered for a while, but it’s been hard finding inspiration up in my new stomping ground of Anchorage.

Ready or not.

I guess we’ll break the (very thick) ice with a short story of a Walmart expedition.

Now, for those of y’all who shop at Walmart, I don’t know if I should congratulate you or slash your tires.  Don’t get me wrong; I obviously had to set foot in that cesspool to have material for this post, but I can’t say I respect myself for it despite their mad Rollbacks.  I was on a single mission: to buy a power strip (surge protector, if you will).  Walmart is close to the 383 sq. ft penthouse I in which I reside, and I figured it’d be a quick in and out. (Lord, give me the strength to deny myself a “that’s what she said.”)

It wasn’t easy finding the power strips, but your man did it.  The individuals I encountered on the trek to the hardware department, however, made me wonder over and over again, “Are you f*cking kidding me?”  Based on what I saw, it was quite obvious that not one of these people had a single mirror in his or her home, nor any other footwear than slippers.  As a matter of fact, I do believe these slippers had been regularly washed in mud puddles.  I must say though, their “body love” was inspiring.  I wish I had the self-confidence to wear my 8-year old daughter’s t-shirts even though I hadn’t taken more than fifteen steps a year for the last two decades, most of which were to fetch the mayonnaise for my Frosted Flakes.

At this point it would be unfair to peg the Anchorage Walmart as a special case, as I know for a fact it isn’t.

Nailed it.

Alas, I wish I were more surprised/disgusted at what I saw, but I guess its just part of the day-to-day these…days.

Alrighty.  Power strip, check.  But you know what?  This BadLad could use some spices while he’s here, better fetch that basil.

I proceed to the Mecca of my grandmother: the Walmart food department (I actually think she calls it Walmark, but knows better).  Lucky for me, the aisles here are 3′ wide.  This means that any of these aisles containing your standard Walmart shopper are completely blocked off with an adipose barricade.  Finally I see a clearing and head down the food corridor alone, unaware of what delicacies it may contain.

It’s the seasoning aisle.  w00t!

It doesn’t take long for a mob of six Eastern Euros to join me in the aisle,  all of whom seem to need whatever is closest to the seasoning.  PERHAPS IT WAS ME THEY WANTED.  (I didn’t originally intend for that to be in all caps, but it seemed right so caps it is.)

Well none of these people were speaking English, and they all seemed to be arguing about something.  I got a couple elbows in the ribs due to our ridiculous proximity and their senseless violence.  Senseless, because they were arguing about which canned meat to purchase.  They decided on two units of SPAM, and silence ensued as they peacefully retreated with their succulent meat surprise.

I wandered away with a furrowed brow, inspired yet again at the passion for canned meat that this collection of smelly travelers shared.

I had no idea this post would become this long, I had just wanted to tell you about the little chubby girl that roundhoused me as I was checking out, not before fetching her beautiful mother two king-sized Snickers bars.  I’ve had enough, I gotta work on my blogendurance.

Not that funny, to be honest.

I am a real American.

We have Hulk Hogan to thank for this country, friends.  I don’t care how messed up his family is now, its obviously not his fault.

We’ll throw some Lee Greenwood in there for some…whoop, no we wont because the internet has taken a half-holiday today.  You know that tune though…”and I’m proud to BE AN AMERICANNN WHERE AT LEAST I KNOW IM FREEE.”  I think Lee was actually a Canadian, but that only makes the Hulkster more American.  I’m not wrong.  They played Lee’s song when my dad came home from the Gulf War, so it will probably hang out in its special state in my United heart.

I remember that night down at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.  I was…5?  My mom drove my sister and I to the air strip at about…1900 hours that evening.  We sat on the cold bleachers with a handful of other families that I didn’t recognize.  No doubt I had no idea what was going on, prolly thought we was there to check out an evening Little League game and my sister was probably drooling and cussing at a cat somewhere.  We just knew that we hadn’t seen our dad in a while.

The plane didn’t land until about 0200.  By then everyone was freezing their balls off and the cats had all been demoralized by MooMoo.  When the plane stopped and the stairs were brought up to it and the door opened, everything around me lost its mind.  We were all waving the “Welcome Home” signs we had made with way too much glitter and stencils even though it was dark out.

Had to.

Out of a megaphone somewhere a man began to dramatically announce the soldiers coming off of the plane, but through all of the screaming and crying I couldn’t make out any of the names.  It was a really emotional and terrifying experience.  When you’re 5 years old and all of the adults around you start tweaking out and crying, it feels like the ground has disappeared beneath you and you really are left to fend for yourself.  So I started crying.  I don’t remember a whole lot after that except getting home with my Pops and getting the cool things he brought back for us.  I got a new gun (a toy, of course, but it was the realest gun I ever got) and my sister got a special bear.  Everyone tells me my dad was stationed in England for the whole thing, but I’m pretty sure he was Covert Ops planting C4 in Saddam’s shitters, just in case.

A real American, no doubt.

I’ll probably re-use this entry on Veteran’s Day, but probably not because that’s disrespectful.

Happy 4th, and I’m glad we’re American.

Unless you aren’t, then I’m glad you’re a friend.

Unless you aren’t, then I’m glad that you’re alive and well.

Unless you aren’t, then I hope you get well soon or call me cuz I’d love to meet a zombie.

Day … almost Month 2. but really 3. of 4.

Nothing worth writing about has happened up here in Alaska. At this point, even if I tripped over the hose in the yard and fell down smiling at the army of grass I would make it into a tale, but regretfully, that hasn’t happened.

I’m obsessed with wolves all of a sudden. Hence the picture in the last post.

How do you feel about a bagel in your mind?

I think I want to replace my pecs with some toast.

Oh, here’s a story. Not as good as me tripping into the yard, but a story. So Big Dave decides there’s too many trees around giving him the stinkeye. I think one of Alaska’s laws is “If Big Dave not intentionally planteth, then that plant shall be killed outright.” So I’ve been using every chemical short of Kim Jong Il’s piss on the weeds on the property since I got here. Weeds are easily defeated and not worth adversaries for the Man himself, so he has me do his bidding on those lil green bastards. Well Big Dave decides he wants a piece of the action so he decides to cut down a tree that has been pissing him off for a minute or two. The prick is a 60′ tall maybe-dead spruce.

Big Dave is one of the most intelligent guys I know, so it surprised me when he cut clear through the trunk with a chainsaw so the weight of the entire tree fell on the blade and stayed standing. Next Big Dave gets the biggest damn crowbar I ever seen and wedges the tree vertically off the stump. I knew exactly where the tree was going to fall before he even started cutting it, and I’m not even smarter than a 5th Grader.

Once it was knocked off its base, the scrawny giant bounced off the branches of the tree next to it (where it was supposed to fall) and came back directly in the house’s direction. It missed it by like 5 feet though, so that’s where this story sucks. I don’t have the energy to lie about anything else.

Speaking of not lying, I made a tennis court out of a whale that I trapped the other day.

A creature cannot learn that which its heart has no shape to hold.

Cormac McCarthy writes in the way that I think, I think.

I don’t know who the hell Jon nor Kate is.

That little girl is too nonchalant for her situation.

“I don’t know what happens to country”

3:01

See you on the other side Mr. Jackson, Mr. McMahon, Ms. Fawcett, Mr. Mays, and the rest of y’all up there (or wherever the party’s at).

Day 44: I’m never gonna replicate.

I’m pretty sure the “day count” is inaccurate, but let’s give it a standard deviation of 3 days to be sure.

I don’t know what a standard deviation is, really.

It rained all weekend. It was really somethin else, you know. Just rain and rain and rain, completely relentless and there I was stranded in my little shack waiting to go for a bike ride. I spent most of the time just sittin around and reading All The Pretty Horses (excellent read, by the by), but after a couple of hours I decided to look outside to see how she was doing out there. Apparently while I was lost in the pages of Cormac McCarthy pretending to be John Grady Cole, a moat was forming around my soon-to-be fortress, and I’ll be damned if that dragon wasn’t on his way back to finish me off.

I had no choice but to adorn my suit of armor and reinforce my feeble door with the decor of the chapel, much to the dismay of the plump-yet-holy friars. The spruce in Castle Shack’s vicinity were doing toe-touches on account of the wind, and the volume of water from the heavens was sufficient enough to obscure anything else looming behind the moist curtain. The beast was no exception. The Law of 18-Wheelers told me, however, that because I couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see me.

Risking detection, I slowly cracked a window and crawled out into the deafening downfall.  I proceeded to maneuver my way up to the steel roof through a series of impossible backflips, and lay still atop my fortress as the rain pounded my armor like a starving Jamaican on a kettledrum.  As I watched the soaked distance ahead of me, sluggish orange flashes manifested themselves beyond the veil of cloud excrement in a pattern akin to tumultuous breathing.  The dragon was waiting for me, as I him.

The standoff lasted but a few minutes.  As the rain began to ease, I could make out the massive shape in the yard yonder and with courage or perhaps fear, I rose to quickly assess my surroundings.  The rain was now fading like Gary Glitter in the moments preceding a hockey face-off.

But alas, friends, this was not hockey.

The troglodyte was completely visible now and he was eyeballing me like a Latina wanting a shot of Patron.

Well vamos entonces, nena, vamos a bajar.

A running start atop the Klip-Ribbed roof provided my body of armor with enough momentum that my leap carried me the thirty yards required to meet my foe.  I landed a few steps in front of the dragon with my knees bent and both feet firmly planted in gravel, my left fist in the dirt between them and right fist wielding my cold dripping weapon above my head ready to defend everything in the world that was good.  The creature stumbled backward, suprised at the gleaming silver savior who had just appeared without warning.  Taking note and taking action, I struck first.  My weapon glanced off of the burly, scaled leg and hit the gravel ground to its left.  Bits of debris sprayed upward, further confounding the beast.  Savagely, he swung his mighty tail toward me as he frantically clawed at his yellowed eyes to regain his demonic gaze.  I backflipped to get out of its path but I was too late.  The scaled bludgeon propelled my dented armored body through the air and I ground to a stop in front of my moat, a gravel wake behind me.  Dazed, I lifted myself from the ground with my weapon when I realized, to my intrigued horror that it was just a shovel.  Catching my reflection in the castle window, I subsequently discovered that my platinum helmet was indeed a coffee can.  The sharp metal rim had gouged the side of my head where the dragon’s tail had made contact, and the coffee residue was entering my bloodstream all too quickly.  As my heart began to race from the caffeine, my awareness began to peak.  Everything was moving slower now, and I could see the scaled monster closing the distance between us; He, the burner of worlds, and I, the liberator of cats.

Open your eyes.

Guys, I didn’t set out to write a novel here or even a short story for that matter.  I just wanted to tell you about how I helped Dave dig a trench to drain the yard of the puddles collecting from so much rain.  Instead I pulled out every cliche heroic action that entered my deteriorating mind and applied them to myself.  The man who I want to be, and the man who I almost am.

I flew out to one of the remote projects with Big Dave this week, a village along a river just above the Arctic Circle.  I don’t know what the arctic circle defines, but I think it stole a part of my soul when I crossed over it.  I don’t have lots to say about the trip, really.  The natives are an interesting people and would have been better off without any outside influence, in my filet opignon.  Now they just eat Hot Fries and ride around four-wheelers full of gas that cost them $12/gallon paid for with government cash.  This is not the case for all of them as a lot of the natives are stand-up, hard working people.  I want to tell you that four-wheelers are all called “Honda”s up here.  It’s like that one part of the country where any kind of pop is called “Coke.”  Well anything on wheels (as long as there are only 4 of them and it’s not a car) is called a Honda.  Snowmobiles=Snowmachines.  John Denver=Johnny Fairbanks.

Just kidding, rest in peace, bro..

That faux-epic tale back there really exhausted me, I have no idea what I was trying to do to yalls.  I ‘pologize.  Maybe it’s too late.

Here are some of my pics from the dilly.  I’m glad I finally have the cajones to show you some of these things.  Casey Jones, that is.

Away with the fairies, this one.

Fly-by

Droppin in a manhole. Easy there.

How much do you think it cost just to start these things out there?

Each of those took about a day and a half to upload just now.

Oh, I guess I better reference the title.  Son of a bitch.  Here.

We got back to the Anchorage airport (I made it through all sorts of security without an ID.  This guy decides to leave it back in Tok, 300 miles away.  Ask me about it later, I did some things I’m not proud of.) and Dave bee-lines (maybe B-lines…I dont know the origins of the word) to the pisser leaving me confounded as a dragon because our good friend Chris doesn’t even know we’re in Anchorage yet (Chris was the engineer/Anchorage office manager that came with us up to Buckland.  He’s the one that could be dubbed the White Wizard in the pictures).

(I didn’t want to tell you everything that I’ve put in parenthesis in that last paragraph (and here in this sentence) because I’m trying to wrap this up, but I had big ambitions for this post and ruined it with a goddamned fairytale.)

Anyway, Dave went to piss, we got our bags, took them up the escalator (to my surprise actually, because Dave always takes the stairs if he has the option.  Especially because he can take on four of them in one step no matter how many bags/bodies he’s carrying.)  On the way up the UP side of the automated staircase, a couple of honeys were on their way DOWN with a stroller and a baby and a few bags.  These former teen-preggos (sorry if you’re pregnant and not yet 20.  I mean no offense but you better get your shit together and take an elevator when you can.) were on their way down giggling their applebottoms off cuz their bags were crushing them against the side and the stroller was about to get consumed by the interlocking steel teeth they stood on.  I wasn’t paying attention and Dave apparently noticed.  We get to the top of the escalator and Big Smirkin’ Dave goes, “What’s the matter with you?  You could have saved a couple of damsels in distress!”  Naturally I go “huh?” and he acknowledges the girls at the bottom of the escalator.  I just laugh and tell him I guess I wasn’t paying attention (although I probably was, I don’t know what I do) and he replies “Well you better learn to get re-acclimated or you’re never gonna replicate.”

I think he was telling me I better get my game in gear or else I’m never gonna knock-up a gigglybitch.

Day 25+9=34; Catching Trees, but not before The Game Changer

I was going to put the word benevolence in the title of this evening’s post, but it turns out it sounds a lot cooler than its actual meaning.

Last night I decided to put to use my $150 fishing license and go for some good ole fashioned rod flickin.  Then I went fishing.  Anyway, enough about me.

Like the newfound badass I never was, I decided I was going to ride my steel dragon down the the fishin’ spot cuz it was nicer than a Palomino outside (and they’re GORGEOUS.)  After putting on my badass shirt and shorts, I threw on my shades and fingerless biking/fightin gloves capping it all off with my sleekass helmet.  Then, like the badass I had just then become, I turned and looked in the mirror.  Slowly I lifted my arms together and extended them toward my reflection and pointed at the Sultan of Bike before me.  As the lightning began to erupt from my fingertips, a voice straight from hell rose inside of me until I could contain it no more.  Blood pouring from my mouth and nose, my mouth exploded:

“I’M GOING FISHING, GUYS.”

Swinging my leg up over my dragon, he immediately sped off toward the trembling waters.  Too bad I hadn’t gotten my leg all the way over him yet, so I had to ride my bike to the river.  The Little Tok River.  Adorable.

Well by the time I had gotten to this place, it was already bout 8pm.  I wasn’t too worried cuz I had about five months of daylight left.  The trail down to the river ended up being not short.  It was like the trees on either side of it tried to make railroad tracks with their roots, but then realized they didn’t have the iron rails so they decided to piss all over each other.  There was no way I was about to leave my new bike by the road, so I chucked that thing over my shoulder and cussed all the way down to the river.

After a few minor mishaps (I decided to try to ride my bike down the wretched root stairway), finally, there she was.  The Little Tok.  I stood there for a second on the bank taking in the complete silence around me.  Then I realized it wasn’t silent at all.  It sounded like there was a giant, shitty kazoo orchestra hiding in the trees around me.  The flies were on bass, the mosquitos on tenor.

And my bug spray was back on the kitchen table.

Within seconds, those winged terrors were all trying to get my number.  “Ladies, please.” I said, “I came all this way, I gotta be good for at least a couple casts.”  I tied the spinner on the end of the line with one hand while spankin some fine bug booty with the other.  I was probably layin on them things a little hard because those dark-skinned angels were dying left and right, but they just kept begging for more.  So I kept giving it.

First-chair tenor kazoo player.

I was all set to fish, so I told those ladies “no more” with my foot and crept up to the bank to find my target.  Across the river, maybe 10 yards away, I spot a nice downed tree sitting part-way in the river. “There’s gotta be some grayling hangin out underneath that thing.” I thought, and proceeded to cast my lure nowhere near where I was aiming.  I watched my line disappear into the tall grass on the other side of the river as a little fly decided to take a bubble bath in my right eyeball.  I gently punched myself in the face with my left hand while yanking hard on my rod with my right hand so my lure would fly clear back across the water and hit me in the nutsack.  It worked well.

This spot obviously wasn’t working out for me, so I decided to march left into the woods to approach another tree sightly downstream.  Upon arriving at my destination I looked down to check my reel and noticed that I was wearing socks made out of mosquitoes.  “Wonder where the hell I got those from…”  I thought to myself while cocking my rod to cast.  I was able to hit my mark this time, and fished the spinner across the river to no avail.  I cocked to cast again, only to catch a pine tree of some sort behind me.  Like a record, baby, I spun right round and grabbed the tree by its sticky trunk and calmly ripped upward, uprooting the entire tree.  I then delicately ripped every branch off of the son of a bitch until I had my spinner back.  Using this club-of-sorts that was left I bludgeoned my new ‘skeeter socks until my legs were both broken and covered in a red-gray pulp.

“I have to catch a fish, just so I can bite it’s head” was my next thought as I sent my lure to its final resting place; 20 feet in the air wrapped around a greedy birch tree’s middle finger.

“Alright then, have a good night.” I said to anything that was listening, to which a bird responded, “BLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEPBLEEP…”

I threw my bike at him.

"It's still there."

At this point, every bug around decided to have a pool party on my face, so I went home to go to bed.

But not before the game changer.

**WHICH I HAVE DECIDED TO EDIT OUT UNTIL I LEARN MORE ABOUT THE RULES OF THIS GAME.**

But seriously.  If life is a game, then this is a game changer.

What do I do.

Day 32: Big Day of Big Dave

This morning I lay in bed (perhaps I lie in bed, I don’t have a Flipper handy) and from about 7:08am through 9:02am I kept drifting off and waking up horrified to the sound of Big Dave marching up to my door.  It was never really him, just some Tyvek flapping in the breeze, but understand my fear; he has woken me from my bunk twice in my life, mainly because he doesn’t believe in sleeping in nor allowing others to do so, and waking to a Big Snide Dave isn’t exactly Folgers in my cup.

When I made my way out of bed at 9:03am and indeed had my Folgers (it wasn’t really Folgers but it makes for a convenient sentence connection) I decided to begin to repay my lifelong debt to my confession, Mocha, and take him out back to play in the woods n’ creek.  We had a hell of a time back there, and no matter where I threw a stick, Mocha would always come back with the same exact one no matter what.  It was actually pretty impressive.  I even tried to lose it on purpose just so I could have some quiet time to sit on the boulder next to the creek and wait for a bear to come steal my hat, but after a couple minutes I would be scared shitless by a stick dropping in my lap.  The same damn stick.  We played fetch with the same stick all day.  Well…all day for an hour.

I chained him back up, but he was so tired he pretty much thanked me.  I shook his hand and departed to kill every damn weed on the property.  Not an interesting part of the day, so I’ll skip it.  All the while, it’s just me and Big Dave here.  Somewhere in there, Dave wasn’t very happy with Mocha’s whining so he went over and kicked him.  In the face.  Uncalled for, sir, but you’re my boss and I’m legitimately afraid of you so I’ll pretend I didn’t notice….

We finished our yardwork and went on our usual Uncle-Nephew bike ride through the gorgeous weather and mountains.  We only went about 15 miles today though, because of Big Dave’s leg.

Big Dave’s leg.

Big Dave isn’t a young man.  He is 63 years-old for the love of Pete and, well, his legs aren’t what they used to be.  His left hamstring is nonexistant (Literally.  He made me feel it.  The thing ripped completely in half a few years back and that was it.  She ain’t comin back.)  and his right leg is suddenly prone to blood clots.  A couple years ago Dave rode his bike from Tok to Skagway.  It’s a hefty trip at 400+ miles, and to do it at 61 all alone is impressive.  Somewhere along the way he realized he had a serious backup of blood in his right leg just above the knee and it was becoming painful.  Refusing to let it slow him down, Big Dave pushed through until he got to a nice place to set up camp.  Finally, he could cut his leg open.

His own leg.

With his pocketknife.

Blood clots don’t exactly occur at the surface of the skin either.  He held up his fingers to show me how far he had to go down to get to the vein, and it looked like it was about 3 feet.  And he said the 5 paper towels weren’t sufficient for the amount of blood that came out of the thing.  Beautiful.

The clotting has happened again, friends.  This time Big Dave was able to go see a doctor in Anchorage, but they pretty much told him to go pound some sand because the issue will work itself out after 6 weeks or so.  Until then it’s going to get a lot more painful though, so they gave him a handful of Vicodin, slapped him on the ass and sent him packing.  Of course Big Dave didn’t take kindly to this diagnosis, so he decided to turn his basement into an O.R. last night.  Cutting into his leg again, he discovered a family of badgers having tea.  Being the guy that he is, he let them finish their sips before turning the hose on them to clear them out.  It didn’t work.  The badgers apparently needed the water so they could make more tea, and now they won’t be leaving for a long time.

So that’s why Dave’s leg hurt today.  There’s an entire family of tea-sipping badgers living in it.

C'mon in for a spot of tea!

I obviously have nothing more to write right now.

Long live the King.

Month 1: These are my confessions.

Man, I’m grown.  And I don’t know.  What to do…guess I have to give ya part II.

Of my confessions.

It happened yesterday (this isn’t very juicy by any means, nothin on Ursher’s confessions, but don’t stop reading yet; there are lessons to be had.)

I don’t know why I use parenthesis so much, I might as well just make them into regular-ass sentences.

Anyway, I digress (naturally).

It happened yesterday…you know what, let me start over.

Back in the late 1970’s (perhaps?) Big Dave and Kath had a son they decided to call Eric.  Long story short, Eric is my cousin and he has a dog, Mocha.  Mocha is a chocolate lab with nuts the size of testicles.  (Mocha=chocolate.  These Alaskans are about as creative as a Nascar T-shirt.)  Now this dog is the second most hyperactive dog I’ve met, the first being, Carrick, a Jack-Russell who decided my leg was a sperm bank a few years back.  He has since met his maker underneath a PT cruiser.

I’m all over the place, I apologize.  I think my mind is starting to go (which is the first step in becoming a Jedi I think).

Let’s see if I can do the rest of this without parenthesis.  Or the word “lil.”

Mocha has probably spent his entire life chained in one back yard or another.  I’m afraid to ask if he’s kept outside during the winter up here.  Eric is always away at project sites around the state so he never had time to train the dog, and the rest of the family seem to treat him no differently than a plastic lawn chair that simply exists to sit in the yard.  Right now, Eric is away on a site visit and the rest of the family is in Anchorage so he dropped Mocha off here, at Big Dave’s place, to chain him up to his tree out back.  Mocha is whining constantly craving attention, good or bad.

Understand that Big Dave will not be bested by nature, and it seems that every chance he gets to express his dominance, he does.  The new building that he put up on his property is structured to withstand an earthquake with a magnitude of something like 9.5, for example.  I don’t think that’s an example of the point I’m trying to make, but perhaps it adds another color to the picture of Big Dave.  One of these days I will dedicate a long blog to he.

Dave hates it when Mocha whines.  He yells at the dog every half hour.  Walks up to him like he’s gonna kick it clean off his chain, stares him down with a gnarly scowl on.  Kicks him and walks away.  This shuts Mocha up for a time.

Big Dave and Kath were away for the weekend, so Mocha was my responsibility.  I feel so damn bad for this dog that I can barely stand to leave him chained up.  Every time I walk up to him to give him food or water or whatever, he literally loses control of himself.  He wags his tail so hard that he can barely hold himself up and he repeatedly jumps straight in the air, his back feet at least 2′ off of the ground.  I took him off his chain and led him for an exhausting walk through the woods and creek.  In the creek he decided it would be a good idea to pick up as many rocks off of the bed as he could without drowning, and in the woods he wanted to fetch every stick the trees had to offer.  It was like watching Tim Robbins sanding a beached boat just outside a small Mexican town.  I guess I’d act the same way if I knew what I had to go back to.  Mocha and I bonded for a little bit.  I was able to get him to sit while I threw a stick, and stay sitting until I told him he could go get it, even though he was trembling over the thought of finding that stick.  It got cold, that’s where it ends.  So I told him we’d still be friends.

It happened yesterday.  After a long day at work, a girl who had driven six hours from Anchorage to interview for a job at our office decided to lock her keys in her car.  Sweetheart, we’re in the middle of nowhere, no need to lock your goddamn car.  Since I was the only “guy” around, the girls decided it was my job to figure out a way to open the wagon.  After an hour of battling the Alaskan sun with nothing but a coat hanger for shade, I unlocked it.  The girl offered me her body in thanks, but I respectfully declined because I’m a Christian.

It was now 6pm, and them dogs were hungry.  I was a little annoyed at the coat hanger ordeal, but more angry at the fact that I still had to water every plant on the property before I could finally jus chill donkey.  Only after I fed the animals, though.  Pouting to myself, I wandered over to Mocha’s little plywood shack to grab his bowl.  When he saw me, his new best friend, he got so excited he couldn’t contain himself.  He began jumping all over the place at the end of his chain, tears of joy streaming down his lonely, dirty face.  Not in the mood to calm this guy down, I ignored him and bent down to grab the empty bowl.  As I stood up, Mocha jumped on me, put his dirty paws on my nice shirt and tried to give me a hug and tell me that he loved me.  Instead of hugging him back, I grabbed him by the wrists and shoved, yelling “STOP.”

The slow-motion image of Mocha pawing helplessly at the air as he lands on his back on the hard packed dirt has been playing in my mind ever since.  As I stood there in remorse, he got up and walked back into his shack to peek out at the relentlessly cruel world of humans, just as he always does after Dave storms over to growl at him.

I’ve never felt so bad in my life as I do right now.

Mocha and I have since made amends, but he has lost that loving feeling.

I tell you this story for two reasons.  First, to let you know that I’m mean so I can now work on stopping being mean.  And second, to tell you (myself really) that just because you had a bad day at work doesn’t make it okay to punch your friend in the face, especially when he’s happy to see you.  Maybe he’s been tied to a tree all fuckin day and just wants a hug.

I know I used parenthesis.  Thanks for reading my confession.

Day 24? Guess so

Fridee already, wowser.  My apologies for not keeping up with myself.

I’ll address today while she’s still fresh, cuz the stale ain’t gonna get no staler if I wait.  Today it rained, and spilled my coffee on my shoes while I tried to close the door to my shack.  Because it rained, the satellite internet didn’t work, but Big Dave refused to acknowledge that nature was the cause of his temporary technological defeat.  The highlight of dinner was the fact that it was moose steaks, and Big Dave told me the story of eating his first jalapeno pepper in Canada…not one of his more entertaining stories.

!....?

I spent Memorial day weekend down there in Anchorage with Kath and my lil buddy Ethan.  I bought (another) bike for a 200 mile race that me and Big Dave are gonna be taking on in July, so I’ve been riding the thing a lil bit since.  I planned on dropping $1,200 for the bike I wanted, but found another one on sale for a mere $750, so I had some extra cash to play with.  I got meself a fishing license at Wal-Mart for 150 non-resident dollars from a man that may play Ebenezer Scrooge during the holidays in the local theatre, but I say this only because he had circle glasses and shoulder length white hair.  Otherwise is breath smelled like Tiny Tim’s crutch and…well he worked at an Alaskan Wal-Mart (for 15-years of dedicated service according to his shitty name-tag).  Minutes before I interrupted his lazy ass to buy my goods, he was having a heated debate on which gun was better to shoot halibut with.  It may sound a little unorthodox (although everyone always shoots fish) but halibut really mean business.  They weigh anywhere from fifty pounds to thirty-seven thousand tons and have a quicker draw than Clint Eastwood and John Wayne ever even pretended to have (not as fast as that one guy in 3:10 to Yuma though, goddamn he was quick).  F’real though, halibut don’t really carry guns, but they are some scary sonsabitches.  They’s huge flatfish that make you feel like you’re trying to reel up a 737 off of the ocean floor because of the way their bodies work.  Once you get one of these finned-ogres up to the side of the boat, you throw a I-Know-What-You-Did-Last-Summer hook through its side, shoot it in the head with your favorite short-rifle and call in an air strike.  Then you get to eat that thang.  It’s on my to-do list this summer.

S'about right.

I’ve been a little drained this week, perhaps from the lack of socialization, perhaps from my environment.  While in Anchorage I saw many Alaskan honeys that caught my eye, but I think its cuz I forgot what girls looked like for a minute.  There was a cute redhead teaching some little girls figure skating lessons at the mall (yea, an ice rink in the mall.  It was a dumb mall.  Everything seemed to be made out of carpet-covered plywood, but again, I digress).  I was looking down at her with my buddy Ethan who just so happened to be scopin’ on the lil girl she was teaching.  While we were staring, they both looked up at us in mid-double axle and giggled.  Like a couple pimps, we flipped them off and I went and bought Ethan a cookie that was covered in the 1980’s.

That little boy is absolutely haunting.

Since the trip into Anchorage I’ve just slugged around the crib.  I’ve moved from the apartment into my cabin which isn’t much more than a shed with bunks made out of 2x4s and a table complimented by a nice aroma of fresh paint and boyfarts that I left here the last time I was in Alaska.  Feels like home.
I’m pissed that I haven’t written in this thing earlier.  All during the week something would happen and I’d be all like “yeaaaa boiiii, ima blog about this!” and then five minutes later I catch myself staring at the woods wondering how I’m going to kill my bear when the time comes.  It’s become an obsession, and after reading about it I’m now convinced the odds are very much against me.  Wherever odds exist though, there’s always that one chance.  I’ll let you know how it goes.