The Madhouse On Madison...

So my second assignment has come due in my English writing class.  Its a story about a place with a great atmosphere.

I picked Chicago Stadium back in the day.  Anyone who has been there will instantly know what I'm talking about.  Everyone else will know what I'm talking about after you read this story.

Humorous aside:  We had to bring in our rough drafts of this story for the Professor to check and to have them peer reviewed.  So I gave mine to the kid next to me, he read the first paragraph and turned to me and said, "You went to a Bulls game in 1992?"  I replied, "Yeah" He says, "I was 1!!!"  (In my head I was saying, "Um, fuck you Junior!")

Anyway, here's the story.  Let me know what you think...

The Madhouse On Madison

I was 14 years old the first time that I strode through the gates of the old Chicago Stadium.  This was before the Bulls played at the space station called the United Center.  Chicago Stadium was old, it was decrepit, it was loud, it was dirty, it was dingy, dark and had a strange musty smell to it.  But no one will ever tell me that there was a better stadium in the NBA.  It was known as the loudest stadium in professional sports at the time, a distinction it fully lived up to at my first game.

My mother had bought us tickets to the game for my birthday, but since the Bulls were in the middle of their first three-peat, seats were at a premium.  So my for my birthday, which is in July, I got to attend a Bulls game in January.  A game where Michael Jordan and the Bulls played against the Indiana Pacers.

Walking through the gates for the first time I was amazed at the sheer amount of people trying to get into the same place at the same time.  I remember thinking to myself that I might be crushed in the swarm of people trying to get into the stadium.  With that kind of crowd comes a lot of noise.  Everyone around me was yelling and screaming, calling out to the beer vendors, the hot dog vendors, the guy selling programs, the cops or to their family and friends trying to safely navigate this tsunami of bodies on our way up to our seats.

It took us about twenty minutes to move from the gate to the stairwell, the mob was moving at a snails pace.  There I was walking through a sea of jerseys bearing #23, and even a few token #33 jerseys.  I remember using this opportunity to point out to my mother that it seemed like every other kid in the world had a Michael Jordan jersey, except of course for me.  If I remember correctly she responded with something along the lines of, “All those kids must have jobs.”  But finally, we made it to the stairwell and began the slow ascent to the 300 level of Chicago Stadium.

Given the incredible championship run that the Bulls were right in the middle of at the time, tickets were extremely expensive and your average middle class family could only afford to sit in the nosebleed section.  So that’s where we were headed, three flights of stairs between me and my first live Bulls game.

When my foot hit the first stair I could already feel the rumble and hear the noise coming from those already inside the stadium.  The stadium was old, rickety and in all honesty in disrepair.  However, that only seemed to add to the experience.  As the crowd cheered inside as they watched the Bulls warming up for the game, the stairwells outside literally shook.  As the music system in the stadium played “We Will Rock You” and the fans stomped their feet I found myself somewhat concerned that the ground may fall out from underneath me.

The snails pace continued as we moved through the sea of people, except now as we climbed up the stairs it was more of a wave of people.  I do believe that I could have picked my feet up off the ground and I would have been carried safely to the top level by the sheer inertia of all those people.

After about ten minutes we made it to the second level and immediately turned and set about negotiating the last flight of stairs up to the third.  When I hit this flight of stairs my feet started to feel like something was pulling on them from beneath me.  I could hear a strange noise emanating from my shoes every time I set my foot down and picked it back up again.  In short order it dawned on me what it was, I was sticking to the floor.  As I said before, Chicago Stadium was famous not only for its volume, but also for its lack of tidiness, and someone had spilled a soda on the ground and now I was going to have to spend the rest of the night listening to that mistake as it had covered the bottoms of my shoes.

Finally, at long last, we made it to the top tier of the stadium.  Luckily, the crowd thinned just a little bit up there.  Not because the seats hadn’t been sold, but because a good portion of the people that bought seats up there were down in the lower levels trying to find seats that were unoccupied.

We made our way to our seats and sat down.  Which was about the most uneventful thing we would do all night.  After being seated for about twelve seconds I realized that there were three men behind us who were obviously drunk.  These three were not any kind of belligerent drunk, but they were the happy, and seemed as though they were going to provide us with a little extra entertainment throughout the game.

We were so high in the building that if I had run back about 10 rows I would have been able to touch the rafters that supported the roof of the building, and from there it seemed as though the court were a million miles away.  I tried to talk to my mother but you couldn’t unless you were yelling at the top of your lungs and the players weren’t even on the court at the time.  

Then the whole stadium went dark, every light in the house went out.  A deafening roar rose from the crowd.  What I had thought was shaking became little more than a shudder as the entire building began to seem as though it were rocking and swaying.  Someone once told me that there are no earthquakes in the midwest, to which I could only say, “Clearly you’ve never been to the Madhouse.”.

The lights went dark and the music began to play, then the laser beams began to shoot out from behind the players bench.  By this time the music had been effectively drowned out by the roar of the crowd.  No one in the entire stadium was seated, everyone was up, clapping and cheering, and roaring.  Before it was over I would be hoarse from yelling, but I didn’t know that yet.

The spotlight beamed down onto the first player as the music thumped, and the lights flashed and the announcer came with his name, number 24, Bill Cartwright.  The fans in the stands grew even louder.  Number 10, B.J. Armstrong.  The noise grew even louder, by this time I had my hands over my ears.  Number 54, Horace Grant.  As I looked up at the championship banner from last season because by this time they had shined another spotlight on it.  You could see it moving, indoors, you could see it swaying in the wind.  The place was so loud that it moved the air up there.  Number 33, Scottie Pippen.  Now the volume had risen to the point of complete ridiculousness.  The only thing that allowed me to know who was being announced was the name and number on the scoreboard.  Nothing, but the roar of the crowd could be heard.

At long last, they came to introducing Michael Jordan.  The announcer even waited a few extra seconds to let it sink in to all the fans there that they were about to be treated to a game featuring the greatest basketball player ever.  I took my hands off of my ears, I didn’t care if my ear drums burst, I was going to hear every second of this.  I saw him stand up, I saw him bend to slap the hand of the players in line, I saw him run to the middle of the court, and I saw him utter a word or two to his teammates and then they all returned to the bench to begin the game.  I saw all of this, but I didn’t hear but one thing.  The roar.  The deafening, monstrous, unmistakeable roar.  

That stadium, at that time, with that team was one of the most unforgettable things I have ever witnessed or heard.  My mom had a headache for a week, or so she said.  As for me, I spent the game in sheer awe and wonder of the entire thing.  I walked out of there with dried soda on my shoes but it still felt as though I were walking on air.

I got to see the greatest basketball player ever, on the greatest team ever play and beat the Indiana Pacers 109-100.  I saw Michael Jordan score 39 points that night.  


They demolished the madhouse in 1995.  Where it once stood is now the parking lot for the United Center.  Its brand new, its shiny, its clean, its comfortable, and its a marvel of modern engineering.  But regardless of what anyone says, its not the Madhouse on Madison.  There’s too much missing from it now.  It doesn’t shake like Chicago Stadium did, it doesn’t rattle the way Chicago Stadium did, and its no where near as loud as Chicago Stadium was.  Its a beautiful palace in which to see a basketball or hockey game.

However, only those who have experienced Chicago Stadium in all its glory know what I’m talking about when I say, I’m thankful to have heard that roar.






Later,


I love you Mom...

F**K You, Get It Done...

Gotta love the old farts...

They've always got a few nuggets of wisdom in them that can change your perspective on things pretty quick.

So I wrote my amateur diagnosis of PTSD on myself the other day, and the next morning I got up and went to class and then I went to work and I was driving home around 10:30 pm and I got a call on the space phone.  Looked at the space phone (my brother's moniker for any smart phone.  In my case an HTC Hero) and saw the Facebook profile photo of my buddy Tony.  Yeah, these goofy ass phones now will attach your phone number to your Facebook page for ya!  Pretty crazy huh?

So anyway, I pick up the phone.

-Hey Tony, what's up?
-Fuck you kid, get it done!
-WHAT?
-I just read your blog.
-Oh...
-That ain't you!
-I know it, but its how I feel.
-Well fix it!
-I don't know how.
-Figure it out.  Cuz this ain't you.  You're back in school, which you love.  You're writing again, which you love.  You're working.  You're doing what you need to do.  Now this thing, whatever it is needs to get fixed.  Now fuck you, get it done.
-Alright, Tony.
-Ya hear me kid?
-Yeah, I hear you Tony.
-Get it done.
-Okay...
-And fuck you.
-Alright, Tony.
-You be good kid, I'll talk to you soon.
-Later.
-Bye.

Well, how's that for a verbal kick in the nuts?  Like I said, you gotta love the old farts.

I've mentioned Tony before.  He's one of the Vets that hangs out at the American Legion that I worked at while I was going through college.  A good tipper, so long as you didn't piss him off.  He was there when I was going through my "angry young man" phase.  And he taught me the Hindu cow philosophy of life.  Not his name, its mine.  You know, a hindu considers a cow to be a sacred animal.  So them cows in hindu land walk around without a care in the world.  Hence, calm as a hindu cow.  Tony's just one of those guys that is really slow to anger.  Then there was me, who could go from zero to serial killer in a nano-second.  But he taught me how to calm down. Taught me how to think things through a little better before I went flying into a rage.

Tony showed me how to turn testosterone into gasoline.

Best way to put it, and forgive the crassness of it is...you ever heard that joke about the old bull and the kid bull?  Kid bull says, hey old timer, let's run down into that pasture and fuck one of them cows.  Old bull says, "No kid, let's walk down into that pasture and fuck them all!"

Tony's the old bull.

And perhaps to the untrained ear, Tony's little scolding of me would seem a little counterproductive.  But he knows me well enough that somethings don't really have to be said, and somethings are just implied.  The "fuck you" was simply an attention getter.  His way of saying, "Listen up Junior, because I'm about to lay some of that old time knowledge on you."

That ain't you-well that was Tony telling me that regardless of how I feel right now I need to remember who and what I really am.

The next part about school, and writing, and what not.  Well Tony's not the most overtly sentimental person in the world.  So I'll take that to mean that I should be concentrating on the things I love and not this other bullshit.

Fuck you, get it done.

See I like that.  It appeals to the soldier in me.  I'm not a big fan of all the touchy feely, give everyone a trophy, boost your self esteem bullshit out there.  And apparently neither is Tony.  Get it done.  Is very simple, it implies a task, and a task must be completed.  No dicking around, no fucking around, identify your task and complete it.  It disregards everything and states the simple fact that I have some work to do.

By no means am I all better now.  It just doesn't work that way.  Oh, if only it did...but I've got a new frame on things and that just might make all the difference.

I've got a screwed up body...fuck you get it done.
I've got a screwed up brain...fuck you get it done.
I've got a screwed up life...fuck you get it done.

Simplistic, sure.  But it doesn't lessen the truth value of it.  Its absolutely true.  Does it boil a lot of things down into a rather forceful sentence, yeah it does.  Is that something I was in need of?  Yep, without a doubt.

I've got a lot of work to do on all of these things, and I surely will not bore you with the details.  But, from what I know of Tony if I don't get it done I'm going to have an army of old guys to deal with.

General Patton once said, Don't tell be how to do things.  Tell them what you want done and they'll surprise you with their ingenuity.

I think that's what Tony just did.  He told me what to do.

Thanks,

Later.

I love you Mom...

Reality Just Sat On My Face and Started To Wiggle...

There are few pieces of news that I would ever really call earth shattering.

And before you go wondering, I'm not going to tell you what piece of news I got.  Promises were made, and they will be kept.  So don't ask.

But when you hear certain things they gently nudge you into reevaluating your life and what you believe and who you are.

When you hear something like what I heard, you are violently thrown from your seat and forced by threat of serious bodily harm and/or death to reevaluate your life and what you believe and who you are.

So suffice it to say, I've been doing some thinking lately.  And we ALL know that, that's never good.

First step of the thinking process I did was to gather information...

PTSD Symptoms:

Intrusive, upsetting memories of the event: Every night before I go to bed I spend about an hour doing this.


Flashbacks (acting or feeling like the event is happening again):  Not so much as something I see, smell, or hear triggers the memories and my body freezes and I'm literally in another world until either I snap out of it or someone snaps me out of it.


Nightmares (either of the event or of other frightening things):  Once a week without fail.  Sometimes more.  Other people buy 5-hour energy to give them the afternoon boost, I buy it to stay away from my bed.

Feelings of intense distress when reminded of the trauma:  Well duh!

Intense physical reactions to reminders of the event (e.g. pounding heart, rapid breathing, nausea, muscle tension, sweating):  If only you could see me after a sudden, loud noise.  Car backfiring is hilarious.  


PTSD symptoms of avoidance and emotional numbing


Avoiding activities, places, thoughts, or feelings that remind you of the trauma:  No, don't really have this one.

Inability to remember important aspects of the trauma:  I wish I had this problem.

Loss of interest in activities and life in general:  I'm about the only 32 year old guy I know of that spends his every waking moment of free time locked in his apartment.  About the only thing that will get me out is a visit from a dear friend, or the mom.

Feeling detached from others and emotionally numb:  Guilty, but I was always like that to a point.

Sense of a limited future (you don’t expect to live a normal life span, get married, have a career):  Does not thinking about anything past the next day or two qualify?


PTSD symptoms of increased arousal

Difficulty falling or staying asleep: Yep

Irritability or outbursts of anger:  Believe it or not, I'm a lot calmer now.

Difficulty concentrating:  Yeah, and its making my economics class exceedingly difficult.

Hypervigilance (on constant “red alert”):  Try walking behind me and see how I react.  Or guilty.

Feeling jumpy and easily startled:  Drop a book and watch me grab the ceiling and squeal like a 12 year old chick.  Go ahead, its pretty funny.


Other common symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder

Anger and irritability:  Well yeah, but once again I did this before I left.

Guilt, shame, or self-blame:  Nah, not this guy.

Substance abuse:  I don't have enough motivation to abuse substances.  You have to leave the house to get booze!

Depression and hopelessness:  Whole lot of that going around right now.

Suicidal thoughts and feelings:  Luckily, no.

Feeling alienated and alone:  Yep, I mean who the hell do you tell about this shit?

Feelings of mistrust and betrayal:  Not so much.

Headaches, stomach problems, chest pain:  Can't tell if they're from PTSD or my own damn unhealthy habits.


....Well then, that's the symptoms that I got off some website (the first one if you google "PTSD symptoms") and apparently I've got a few issues that need dealing with.


I mean its been ridiculous since things have calmed down and gotten back to "normal".  They told us when we were on the way home that there was going to be a period of time when we got back that they called the "honeymoon" which everything would be hunky dory and we'd be happy, everyone would be all over us and all that.


Which was fine.  I liked that part.  But I wasn't listening when they got to the part after that.  The part where we had to go back to living our lives.  


A few things have happened that make me really mad at myself and a few others that are probably going to eventually kill me.  Since I went back to work I've gone from having a 120 or so hours of sick time, down to having 26.  And that's while I've been earning 4 hours per pay period.  Which means that if you multiply 4 x 26 you get 104 and add 120 to that you get 224 and subtract 26 you get 198 and divide by 8 you get 24.75


24.75 or almost 25 days.  I've taken almost a month off sick in the past year!  Anyone with a civilian job would've gotten fired.  So thank God I work for the Feds.  Almost 2 sick days a month.  Not counting regular days off and vacation time.  


Then you've got the weight gain.  I've packed on about 2 to 2 1/2 midgets since I came home.  Ballooned up to 325 pounds just recently.  Oh, good times there.  Real good looking soldier boy.  


Then there's just the general malaise that I've slipped into and can't seem to shake.  Don't want to do anything I don't ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY have to.  If I don't have to go to work, I don't.  If I don't have to go to school, I don't.  If I don't have to do...whatever, I don't.  I put on a good enough show for everyone to keep from having to answer all those dumb ass questions.  "What's wrong?"  "Are you okay?"  blah, blah, blah.


Sitting in my apartment watching TV, ordering pizza, smoking and doing nothing is just fine with me.  I mean, shouldn't I be out trying to chase down the next future ex-Mrs. Mud Puppy?  Nah, I'd rather watch the food network.


So then someone told me something that shattered, rocked, rolled, exploded, and just generally fucked up my entire world from top to bottom, side to side and all around.


Reality came up and sat on my face and started to wiggle.


Then I remembered something that Buddha said, "All unhappiness comes from not facing reality squarely, exactly as it is."


With all due respect.  Fuck you Buddha.


But the chunky Chinaman is right.


So tomorrow I'll call the VA.  See if I can't get an appointment.  Now let's just see if I can drag my ass out of bed and go...


Don't worry, I'm not thinking of doing anything stupid or hurting anyone or myself.  


Just got some reality that needs to be dealt with squarely, exactly as it is.


Later,


I love you Mom...

Blast From The Past, Shitlist Style...

THE SHIT LIST: ORIGINALLY POSTED MAY 27, 2009

Alright, so in a testament to my complete inability to mature, and in an attempt to alleviate at least a little bit of the boredom that is FOB Sharana I have composed the following. It is a list, a list of all the different types of shits you take in a combat zone. Each shit is named, with an explanation immediately following. 

It is unfortunate but each and every one of these shits has been taken by this GI at one time or another. These disgusting situations are due to several factors, most important is the quality of the food that they feed us, but also due to the quality of our water, the amazing amount of foreign non-mind altering substances that we imbibe, and just the basic unhealthiness of this entire situation.

This is intended to be not only instructive but also humorous, and a thinly veiled plea for Pepto-Bismol or if you are cheap...Pink Bismuth.

Without further adieu, I present for your examination, THE SHIT LIST.


1.The Bubble Guts Shit: Normally a shit that happens about 3-5 hours after Mexican night in the chow hall. Characterized by a sort of bubbling in your guts prior to an explosive shit. Somewhat akin to the bubbling of a boiling pan of water, right before it comes flying out your ass in the most relieving of waves!

2.The Ambush: Simply put, a shit that sneaks up on you. You may be standing there doing this or that when your body tells you, “Hey We have to shit!” Prior to your brain even registering the 4th syllable of that sentence your bowels begin to vacate themselves. Normally this shit is preceded by some sort of either natural or man made laxative or a healthy helping of enchiladas.

3.Combat Shit: Any and all shits taken outside the wire. (We’ll get to the ones you have while being shot at!)

4.The Ghost: A shit where you visit the crapper and you go through the motions, you feel all the feelings and then when you go to wipe you are greeted by none other than clean paper. On the first swipe, no less. Then when you examine the receptacle you find...NOTHING. Creepy.

5.Blowback: This is when you have a particularly large shit that is taken in a freshly cleaned and emptied port-a-shitter. Which has also been freshly filled with whatever the hell that liquid shit is that they put in there. You drop trou, pop a squat, shit, and the splash from the liquid flies up and gives you a little kiss on the ass. Blowing back, right on your butt. 

6.The Mountain: These are rare, have only seen them in Sharana. They have really bad shitters here. Sometimes they are without water, which doesn’t stop the GI’s from dropping a deuce. Sometimes these nasty pricks shit in one that already has a load sitting in it, left by some undiscerning GI who couldn’t care less that he couldn’t flush. Anyway, another GI will sit down and drop his present off right on top of the other one which creates a pile somewhat similar to a mountain. Note: Some of these piles have been known to exceed the threshold of the toilet seat. That guy, whoever he is, is one nasty fucker.

7.The Two-Fer: These are hilarious. As I said previously, the military shitters are notoriously bad and they also are notorious for not being able to handle the bombs we drop. Given the caliber of food we eat here you would think that someone would figure out we need like industrial shitters made to handle a 2000 pound bull, but I digress. So as a courtesy you flush at least once mid-shit just to make the room tolerable to the other nasty GI’s in the room. When you do that, you promptly clog the toilet making the continuation of your task an impossibility. So you have to pull up your pants, and carefully, move the operation to another stall. This is especially funny if, at the time, all the other stalls are full. Yet, due to the low quality of the shitters, when you get to the next one you clog that one too. Hence, the two-fer!

8.Torpedo in the door: This is the name given to your shit, after an ambush between where you are ambushed and where you are going to shit. It is basically a synonym for the Frankenstein. Used also by some to describe a particularly large shit. The only way to characterize these is to say this. When you are done with one of these, you ask yourself what women are bitching about with the childbirth thing. Because you are fairly certain that no child has ever been born bigger than that turd you just dropped.

9.Shittus Interruptus: A shit that interrupts anything you really want to be doing. Perhaps you are courting your own personal “desert rose” and you have an uncontrollable urge to make a B-line for the shitters and take care of business, during which time your “desert rose” is yanked for some detail that needs to be done, or perhaps even worse she is surrounded by four guys from another unit and is enjoying the attention. Making her of absolutely no use to you.

10.The Marathon: Fairly self explanatory. Any shit that takes an inordinately long time. This can be used as either the descriptor of a particular shit, or it can be used to modify another type of shit. For example, “I just had a marathon bubble guts shit!”

11.The Gotcha: These are especially funny to watch. This is a shit where the GI in question thinks he or she is finished with their business, has cleaned up, and is walking away from the shitters when their body informs them that they are so very, very wrong and they have to quickly face about and move back to the shitters posthaste. Basically, this is your colon playing with you. “Ha Ha, you thought you were done! I gotcha!” (That’s what would be said if your colon could talk. Which after a year or so of Army food is not beyond the realm of possibility.)

12.Whistling Ass Piss: Everyone has heard the phrase, pissing out your ass. Which is when you have a particularly watery shit somewhat similar to what comes out the other end. The only difference between that and this is, in this you add a nice long bit of flatulence that whistles out along side of it.

13.Midnight Prowler: Any shit that wakes you up and forces you out of bed. Every GI knows that in a combat zone, shitting is a process that will take you far from your bed. So even if a shit wakes you up, you have to decide whether you have to go and get it taken care of. If it can wait till the morning it will. There is no reason to get out of bed for a non-emergency.

14.The Tease: This is a real pain in the ass...literally. This is when you feel all the tell tale signs that it is time to visit the shitters. You get there, you may even drop trou and sit down. And you get nothing! Basically, you colon is teasing you. “I got to shit!” then you get there, “Oh wait, I was only kidding.”

15.A.M.M.R.E.: A military acronym for the After Mission Meal Ready To Eat Shit. Anyone who has ever eaten an MRE or even better subsisted on them for any length of time exceeding 1 day knows this utter joy. It is a commonly held belief amongst GI’s that MRE’s are laced with a constipation producing chemical. After having eaten these things for any length of time you become about as clogged up as a Polynesian whore after a long weekend. Which has led to another bit of slang, “Popping the cork”. In our case it has nothing to do with wine. But you will be whining when it happens. So you have to get back, and you know you have to shit because you have about 27 pounds of MRE shit waiting behind the blockade that has now taken over your booty. So its time to pop the cork. You sit down, and you push, and you push, and you push and finally the dam breaks and every MRE, along with a burger you had in 1985 comes spilling out your hind end.

16.The Frankenstein: This is a bi-product of the ambush. First you are ambushed, then the dump in question sets up residence half way out your butt so you are forced to clench your butt cheeks together so hard that you can no longer bend your knees when you walk because you need all those muscles to keep the beast at bay. So now you are relegated to walking from wherever you are to the shitters with your legs straight and unbending making you look like a camouflage Frankenstein.

17.Radio Watch Shit: You have radio watch. Maybe you are on the Quick Reaction Force for your FOB. You proceed to the shitters to do your thing. You are sitting there mid-poop and the radio screams to life. Something bad is happening, the Taliban is coming over the wall, there are mortars falling everywhere, the Sergeant Major just showed up. (All these things are equally horrible.) So you have to either force the rest of this out in about a nano-second or you have to stop, and return when you have available the time that this beast requires. Whatever you do your life will suck.

18.The Taliban Assisted Shit: Some GI’s may refer to this as a combat shit. Possibly you have been out on mission for several days and either you don’t want to shit out there or because of your MRE consumption you have been unable to do so. Either way there is quite a back up in the pipes. Then the Taliban decides to do something, whether it be shoot at you, drop a few mortars on your head, launch an RPG right at your face, or maybe you just drive over an IED. Promptly after which your bowels vacate and you are all better. Except for the rather unfortunate mess in your pants.

19.The god Hates You Shit: This is a shit where everything goes wrong for you. First, this is a bubble guts shit, but you didn’t feel it because you were asleep at the time. The trip to the shitters reveals that this beast is also a “Frankenstein” And the fact that you were asleep also makes it a midnight prowler, you get to the shitters and find out that it has now become a “blowback marathon” and finally you are confronted with the fact that there is no TP in the shitter and you forgot your baby wipes. Not to mention even if you did have them you wouldn’t know if you were clean anyway because you forgot your headlamp. Everything comes at you at once, everything goes totally wrong because god hates you!

20.The Glorious: This is where everything goes right. The polar opposite of #19. Not to mention it should alleviate some deep seated stomach problems that you had been having. The sense of relief cannot be described in words.

Yes, ladies and gents this is how bored I am here. So bored that I actually took the time to name and describe all the different sorts of shits I have taken while here in country. I just want all of you to remember that I did this during working hours, so all of you paid for this. So I hope you enjoyed it, it is the end result of your tax dollars at work. I hope the President will remember that the next war he decides to start!

Later,

I love you Mom...

What The Mother F*&#...

Its official.

The entire country has gone nuts!

Just got home from work and read a little tidbit from the Chicago Tribune.

Jobs aren't coming back...

And then I turned to the opinion page and I read this gem...

Greedy Fucks.

So I couldn't help but get to thinking that I needed to move.  I'm already looking in Indiana.  I'm sure there's enough foreclosures that I can get something wicked cheap.  Nice, I get to profit off of someone else's misery.

Now I would have to say that the majority of you, so long as you don't live in Illinois, don't have to deal with the never ending bouts of corruption that we have here.  However, I'm sure that you've got your moments.

As I look out over the ruin that has become of the country of my birth, which I gladly and willingly volunteered to give my life for I cannot help but shake my head in utter disbelief.

While millions are out of work, some of whom will never work again.  These politicians continue to draw on public funds to line their own pockets and award themselves ever cushier pensions.  Ha, a pension.  When's the last time that a private sector worker even heard that word?

Work is something that makes a person valuable.  Makes a man feel like a man.  And I would imagine its the same thing for a woman.  I don't know, since I'm not a woman.  I don't see how anyone could not want to work.  I understand those that don't want to work for someone.  But I don't see how any logical, thinking person could not want to work.  Earn.  Be productive.  Be a valuable member of the community.  I just don't see how anyone would not want that.

So let's agree for the sake of argument that most people want to work.  Where's the problem?  And more importantly, how do we fix it?

I've talked about this in the past and its kind of a pet peeve of mine.  Whatever happened to Americans acting like...well Americans?  When did we become so infantile, so needy, so helpless that every time something goes wrong we look straight to Uncle Sam to fix it for us?  Not to mention, the ever increasing levels of power we as a society are more than willing to hand over to our government in order to save ourselves the trouble of having to do things for ourselves.  Its truly sickening.

And I do believe that the founding fathers would literally shit themselves if they saw it.

The government bailed out the airlines, they bailed out the banks, they bailed out the auto manufacturers.  They spent how many trillions of dollars stimulating the economy and backing up state unemployment benefits and on and on and on.

I have one simple question that, as yet, has not been answered.  How many mortgages could the government have paid off with the money they bailed out the banks with?  That one always gets me riled up.  If the G had used that money to pay off mortgages, then not only would the people have more money to buy shit (stimulate the economy), but the banks would have been flush with all that cash from the recently settled mortgage debt.  Sounds to me like a win/win all around.  Ya know, two birds with one stone.  But I'm just a worker bee.

Oh, oh the banks had people's money.  If the government hadn't bailed them out the people would've lost their money.

Wrong.  The FDIC insures your deposits up to $100,000 or something like that.  If your money was in an account that was uninsured, well then sorry.  You should've picked an account that was.  You rolled the proverbial dice and lost.  Not the taxpayers problem.

Oh, oh what about all the people that would've been out of work without the auto bailout?

What about them?  Its not the government's job to make sure that a bunch of workers in Michigan who have been being well overpaid for years now with ridiculous pensions that no thinking person could believe were sustainable.  But once again, regardless of that, its not the governments job to make sure that you or I have one.

What is the government's answer to all of this?  More and more government regulation, bigger government, and more and more government employees.  I have worked for the government in one capacity of another since I was 19.  And let me enlighten you with one simple fact.  It is unarguable.  It is not theory, it is fact.  There is no flip side.

WHATEVER THE GOVERNMENT TOUCHES, IT FUCKS UP!!!

Get that through your precious little skulls.  There is no way around it.

More and more of your paychecks will fly away as the government gets bigger and bigger until it damn near collapses under the stress of its own weight.

What part of simple economics do people not understand?  First of all the government has no incentive to do things cheaply, and efficiently.  They have no incentive to cut their size.  As a matter of fact the only thing the government has an incentive to do is grow.  The bigger they get, the more people are dependent on them for their livelihoods, the more likely they are to get reelected to make themselves that much bigger in order to make more people dependent on them so that they get reelected...and on and on. You see the vicious cycle into which we are gladly plunging ourselves?

Freest nation on the planet?  I don't think so.  This county seems to have been bought and paid for.  We have created a class of politician that worries nothing about the well being of the nation.  They simply live election to election and draw their ridiculous pensions in the process.  Oh yeah, they get a pension after only one term.  Anyone ever had a job that throws out a pension after only 2 or 4 or 6 years?  Didn't think so.

They have all got to go.  Obama, on down.  We're headed down a road that will lead us straight into the abyss.  We may have slipped too far down the hole already.  But if we gotta go out, we might as well go out with a fight.

That's why I'm calling on everyone that reads this to vote against any incumbent.  Any and all incumbents gotta go.  I don't care if the only challenger is an illiterate oxygen thief.  They'll be better than what we've got now.

Find out who's in office now, and vote for someone else.  If there is no challenger, write Mud Puppy into the ballot.

Maybe if we rise up and throw every single one of these mother fuckers out then the next round will be at least a little concerned about doing whats best for the nation.  Who knows?  Stranger things have happened.  I mean some where over the past few years we voluntarily left behind everything that made America great, and jumped on the socialism bandwagon.

I mean, how is it that a body of lawmakers or any body for that matter can be allowed to exist that votes on its own compensation package?

I realize there are probably a few million holes in my argument but this was just a rant.  So now I'm done.  But at least think about it.

Later,

I love you Mom...