A.K.A. Ted White
Month: March 2013
My childhood friend Ricky used to take everything so literal. Once, his father asked if he could kill the light for him. I remember Ricky getting his BB gun to shoot the bulb.
This is my entry into this weekend’s Trifextra Challenge. This week’s challenge is asking for exactly 33 words including an idiom somewhere within.
What is the deal with Toilet paper (or bathroom tissue, or toilet tissue, or ass-wipes)? Why can’t there be a delicate (read ‘delicate’) balance that manufacturers can use to make the perfect TP?
This weekend my family had a guest in the house. His name was Friggin’ Flu. I think my son met him at school, made friends with him, and eventually FF followed him home. When my son came into the house, he had already began to show signs of contact with this unwelcome house guest, his eyes watering, his skin pale in color. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but then my ever gracious host of a son introduces FF to me. In no time at all my temperature was a-rising and I began to weaken. Thank heavens I had the sense not to introduce this rude visitor to anyone else close to me. I told my lady about our visitor and she visited the drug store to pick up a few essentials that may actually scare off the rude visitor before he could ruin the long weekend.
By Friday, my son’s temperature was 104, so along with my ever present box of kleenex, I headed out the door,son in tow, rude visitor with us, and my lady, who drove. Half way to the hospital my son informs us that he was getting sick, and did, all over the back seat of the car. He even threw up on the headliner, as well as on my favorite hat and my lady’s coat. I dropped my lady and my son off at the hospital, and headed home to clean up the car. Of course that idiot of a visitor, Friggin’ Flu came with me. Apparently he had this thing with hospitals, he hated them.
While cussing at FF, I inadvertently turned my head from the road for a brief second and when I looked back up, I see a 2000 lb moose standing directly in front of me on the highway. The good Lord must have been watching over me because somehow I managed to get our rackety Chevrolet Cobalt around the back leg of the enormous animal and then steered right back on the road.
By now the smell of my son’s vomit, coupled by the bile in my throat from that near death experience had caused me to get very nauseous, so much that I had to pull the car over on the side of the road. Bent over the edge of the ditch, I got sick as well, (hey, at least it wasn’t in the car!) I noticed FF giggling as I heaved most of the week’s suppers.
When I got home I worked to clean the car the best I could before experiencing yet another piece of my house guest’s power, Diarrhea. I made it to the toilet when my lady called. She needed me to bring in my son’s MCP card so that they could admit him to the hospital. She said that we were in for a six hour wait to see the doctor. This weekend kept getting better.
I swallowed a few meds that promised to give relief from Diarrhea and I was off…in my vomit filled cobalt, along with that ignoramus of a sidekick, back to the hospital. Getting to the door and running for the nearest bathroom, I just made it to the toilet. I am thinking that I am now in Heaven. A toilet seat, a locked door, no sign of FF, and then I reach for the toilet paper.
ONE FRIGGING SQUARE AT A TIME! What the hell? Piece by piece the small squares of paper break off in my hand. How am I supposed to wipe clean with this? It gets worst. In an attempt to grab enough paper, the roll hooks in the stupid holder and now I am getting toilet paper pieces. Small pieces of the small squares! How the hell do I deal with this? Half an hour later, the toilet paper dispenser disassembled using a dime I had in my pocket and I finally have enough paper to successfully wipe my ass.
When I come out from the bathroom I am greeted by two security guards, my worried girlfriend, and some foreigner doctor who is buckled over in pain. Apparently he had been waiting for 45 minutes to use the only available bathroom in the entire hospital. He rushes in like a madman. I smile while leaving, fully realizing that there isn’t a piece of toilet paper anywhere near that hell hole of a bathroom. Not only that, I think that I may have plugged the toilet as well.
When I get back to the waiting room, we sat and waited another two hours before finally getting in to see the on-call doctor. He looked very familiar! Where did I see this guy? Oh ya, the bathroom (hehehe)
Long story short, our son had a fever, the doc recommended Tylenol and Advil, and we were on our way home. She drove. What a day!
Years prior to meeting my lady, I dated a lot. One of those dates was with a new woman who had just moved to our town. She had classy written all over….and those leather pants…drew me right to her.
We had dinner a few times, nothing more. I wanted more, but there was just something inside that warned me of impending danger. Then I wanted her even more. I could tell that she was fond of me as well, or at least that is the impression that I got. She would call almost every day, asking me to drop by, have a drink and a chat.
She had the longest legs I ever seen on a woman. Long and sleek. Cold black hair that fit her just right, and a perfect face; even her perfume was just right, not too strong, but strong enough to tell you that she was in the room. I wanted more than friendship, a lot more.
I never asked for more because I just never had the courage, that and I witnessed her shoot down guys who were far more confident than I was.
It was easier to be her friend. Sure she would ask me to do things for her,mostly computer work, but hell, it was worth it, just to spend time with her.
She moved on, so did I, but I always regretted not pursuing her a bit more. Years passed and I never seen her, and then, just last week, she called, “My laptop crashed, could you fix it please”.
Her husband dropped it off, I explained my rates, he agreed and left. When they came to pick it up, she flipped. “Pay you? For What? Friends don’t charge friends! No hello’s, no thank you’s, just an endless barrage of curses at both him and me. To think that it could have been me in his shoes, married to her, abused by her.
I now consider myself a lucky guy for letting her go.
This is my entry into this week’s Trifecta Challenge. The word is Lucky (Adjective)
I found out something this weekend…men and women are different. No, I don’t mean that one sex has more bumps than the other, everyone knows that, but we are different in different ways. Take for instance the way in which we think.
This past Saturday we were treated to a beautiful sunny day. Given that I live in Western Newfoundland, that is quite the mouthful. Usually around this time of year we are up to our knees in snow (well we still are actually), but the temperature actually rose to +10 degrees Celsius (That’s 50 degrees Fahrenheit to our American cousins), which is really warm for this time of year. I woke up the minute the sun came up, and naturally I wanted to enjoy this beautiful day.
When my lady finally awoke ( I had already ate, fed the little guy, and cleaned up after him), I approached her to see how she wanted to spend this glorious day. I even provided a few fun suggestions such as taking a bicycle ride, going to the beach with the dogs (the shoreline has been snow free for several weeks and the dogs really needed a good run), going for a car ride somewhere, and other great ideas, and her response was “Let’s clean the basement”. My heart sunk.
Why spend the day in a dark basement, among the winter’s junk and dust when we could be outside? I had so much energy. Her response? “The sun obviously energized you, so why not make good use of this energy by cleaning the basement?” I could have thought many many good uses of this energy other than cleaning the basement, but like I said earlier, women and men think differently.
Okay, I tried to work with this. “How about we clean the basement this morning, and this afternoon we do something I want to do?” That didn’t work, because her response was “We will see”. I remember mom telling me “We will see” and it didn’t mean squat, I feel that this situation is much the same. What did we do in the afternoon you may be wondering? We cleaned the garage. Oh well, now that the basement and the garage is clean, that frees up next weekend…right?
Nope, she already has next weekend planned. She plans to paint the entire house. My girl is a hard worker, and yes, I know exactly how lucky I am…
Thanks to a very kind nomination from The Imaginator, (Check him out, his blog is equally awesome) I have been awarded the Awesome Award of Epic Awesomeness (try saying that ten times with crackers in your mouth). As with most of the other blog awards, there are three rules (some have more, some less), and they are 1. Write 10 awesome facts about yourself ( I suppose I should try and think on this one, and make the facts at least mildly amusing or entertaining); 2. Nominate ten other bloggers who write equally awesome content; and finally 3. Inform the others that they won. (the easy part)
First I guess I should start with ten awesome facts about me (Only ten??? I could write for days…). Here goes, in no particular awesome order:
As for my nominees, I have a blogroll that features many amazing writers. Below is a list of the blogs I checked out this morning.
The third part of this award is to inform the winners that they have won the award. The letters are in the mail.
There you have it, I fulfilled all the requirements of this award. Now if you will excuse me, I shall go and hang my award next to all my other trophies and awards. Well to be truthful, I hung it next to my 1976 Spelling Bee award, my most and only prestigious award to be posted on my wall of fame.
33 words for the picture above: My entry to Trifecta.
Crawling from the ashes
of our almost destroyed Earth
it’s newest inhabitants surge forth
a building on the hill with stories of fail
a warning for all
protect the earth or it shall fall
He walked tall, all six foot five of him, mostly with his head held high, looking high into the heavens. A proud man who dressed the part; but that was about it. For everyone else in town he was but a joke.
His parents had money, you could tell from the clothes he wore. Three piece suit, long sleeve shirt with solid gold cuff-links. He wore the same thing every day. We used to wonder if he washed his clothes every evening, or he had several the same style, or he just wore em dirty. Nobody ever got close enough to tell whether the clothes were clean or dirty, nobody gave a damn.
Some families would have had him committed, but his parents were too proud. They raised him and he stayed at their side until the day they had both passed, his mom and dad each in their late nineties. Then he was on his own. Alone. No brothers and sisters; I guess that after raising a son like that, they probably didn’t want any other kids. He must have caused them grief for sure. Back then nobody understood disabilities.
The first week after the funeral he walked up and down the street, still proud, but different. His proud smile replaced with a tired frown. Sad really.
The second week his clothing grew tattered and worn, and he looked hungry. Merchants and store owners offered him food, but growing up proud, he turned them away. Some said that he slept in ditches, others say that he still lived in the old house where he grew up.
By the end of the month, nobody seen him anywhere. Some worried, but most didn’t seem to care. We rode out to his house on our bikes, and we found him.
There he lay, sprawled across the kitchen floor, his parents’ picture grasped in his hands. I guess it was his time to go. He still wore his fancy clothes, all three pieces, tattered and worn.
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this is my entry into this week’s Trifecta challenge. The word is ‘time’
: an appointed, fixed, or customary moment or hour for something to happen, begin, or end <arrived ahead of time>
b : an opportune or suitable moment <decided it was time to retire> —often used in the phrase about time <about time for a change>
It is 1974 and our community road was just paved. All us kids are running on the new pavement, barefoot. The new pavement feels hot on our bare feet and we know that when we go home with black feet, our moms are gonna kill us (or at least ground us for the weekend). The pavement is a welcome improvement over the old dirt road that we lived with so long, and from the dusty days when the trucks blew by and the wind stirred up dust storms everywhere.
Dad was working as a janitor in one of the old barracks that the United States had just abandoned. There was a ton of work in the town, not always easy work, not always work that paid good money, but a job just the same. In fact, if you wanted a job back then, you found one.
Groceries cost a fortune, but we grew most of our own food anyway,so mom and dad never complained. The air was fresh to drink, water was clear and clean, and any food you did buy was safe to eat. Those were without a doubt the good old days.
Flash forward to 2013. That same pave road has never been repaired and is in a state of disrepair. Governments refuse to spend money on rural areas, so most small communities are in the same state as ours is. Work is like a dirty word, with cuts to government jobs occurring on a daily basis. Nobody’s job is safe. Most of the money is spent on the larger areas where work is also focused, and nobody seems to care for the environment anymore. If you want to work,you are forced to pack up and head for the wealthy provinces where family values are a thing of the past, and crooks and drug dealers flourish.
We now have to deal with the environmental impact of Fracking, Which is a dangerous process of extracting oil from the ground, one that pollutes both the land, the water, and the air, but nobody cares, after all, someone is going to get rich from this. Not the people whose lives will be cut short from side effects and disease, caused by the chemical and toxic waste created from this process, not the poorer people in the province.
Nowadays it is less expensive to buy a two liter bottle of pop than it is to buy a liter of milk for your kids, and some people living on low income are forced to choose between eating healthy or not eating at all. We buy water because we poisoned the fresh stuff that passed through the ground beneath our feet. Most areas cannot boast fresh air, or even a view of the sky, a result of trading poverty for employment and selling our souls to the companies that poison the environment.
Not meaning to sound bleak, truth is stranger than fiction. I wish instead of flashing forward to 2013, I could go back to 1974, when things seemed so much better. Where have we gone in 39 years? Just Saying!!
My kid came home from his bicycle ride yesterday carrying a candy bar. When we asked where he got it, he said that some guy needed directions, so he helped the guy out and was rewarded with the candy bar.
Just the thought of some stranger stopping my son on a roadside and giving him candy scared the hell out of me and my lady. Thank heavens our little guy had the sense not to open the candy bar. God only knows what could have been injected in it.
It got even scarier when I questioned my son to find out that the guy’s car was a silver SUV, the same one that made several other trips up our street. When I went after the idiot in my truck, he took off out of town. I made a report to the police, but since he didn’t actually do anything wrong, they couldn’t do anything.
We live in a very scary world where such acts can be considered dangerous. Those days trust is such a delicate thing that a person has to be cautious to his actions. Possibly the guy didn’t mean any harm, but when you have child abductions occurring basically on your doorstep, you cannot afford to take any chances.
When the incident was over, my lady and I had a talk with our son, congratulating him on coming directly home and not eating the candy bar. At the same time we explained the dangers of helping that stranger on the roadside, describing how the guy could have easily grabbed his arm when he went to retrieve the candy. I hate to scare my kid, but I believe the best way to protect our kids from the pedophiles and maniacs out there is to explain the dangers. God! Things were so much easier when we were kids!…or at least it seemed that way!
Above you see a photo depicting SnB getting ravished by two wordpress groupies. Before you jump to conclusions, this was not me. This was a photo of me altered using easy to use software on the www.faceinhole.com website. This photo is just one example of the harm that can be caused by an overzealous imagination, a cell phone camera, and a bit of software.
Imagine a world where your every move could be photographed, or even worse, videotaped. Imagine a world where anyone could take that picture or video, upload it to a website and alter it. Sounds like science fiction to most, but this happens each and every day.
To add to this grief, a person can take your picture, and in minutes, send it to thousands of their friends, all without your permission. We don’t have rights anymore, at least not when it comes to privacy.
A while ago a friend of mine thought it was funny to take a picture of some lady who was stuck in traffic and post the picture on Facebook. The poor lady looked frustrated, and the girl who posted it thought it was a big joke. What if the lady was dealing with painful personal matters, a family death, etc? Hundreds of thoughtless people commented on the photo, poking fun at the lady, whom of which none of them knew anything about.
Ah Facebook. Damn Facebook. I know countless people who have been hurt by pictures posted on this incredibly popular website. Pictures of people in nightclubs, drunk and disorderly, consuming alcohol underage, half dressed, etc., all featured on people’s Facebook with our without anyone’s permission or knowledge. Where are our rights?
If twenty years ago or so, someone described a time where everyone carried video equipment, and filmed you whenever they wanted, someone would accuse you of being paranoid. Nowadays it is quite normal. With high tech devices such as the iphone in even the biggest moron’s hands, everyone is capable of not only videoing and photographing a person without their knowledge, but also altering the picture into whatever compromising situation they feel fit.
This past weekend a friend of mine received a suspension from their job. Apparently he and his lady were at a popular nightclub, drinking and dancing. Seeing how his job entails working with the public, one of his clients thought it would be fun to take a video of him dancing with his lady, and altering it so that it appeared that he was acting in a porno video. The video was then uploaded to Facebook. Sounds difficult, but it really isn’t that hard. Like the saying goes…”There’s an app for that!”
Personally I believe there should be a worldwide ban on cell phones that contain cameras. At least with a real camera, a person has some knowledge that their privacy has been violated. Just Saying!
SightsnBytes 