The Mouse gives up, but sends his henchmen ...

A continuation of last night’s blog …

For those of you who think I’m just paranoid, because I’ve publicly voiced my theory last night about the Mouse having taken over, two things:

1. I pity you. You’re too far gone. You’re in the rodent’s clutches and there is no hope for you.
2. Above, I show you photographic proof that the fuzzy fiend has indeed sent his henchmen to do me in.

As I closed my blog last night, I could hear the pitter-patter of tiny feet outside my Disney door. I had to leave you to go save myself. Obviously, I survived the night. How? A simple yet diabolical plan if I do say so myself. I crawled back and forth from the DO NOT DISTURB sign on my door to the shaded window yowling and hissing like a deranged cat. This went on for hours. Eventually, the mouse lost interest in me and moved on to another victim. I fooled him once. I doubt I can do it again.

But as it turns out, the mouse had just regrouped to reformulate his attack.

Having had only a couple of hours of sleep, I packed my room this morning and calmly headed toward the lobby of the hotel to prepare for my escape from Mousville. But the night left me not only tired, but physically drained. Food. Must have food. Twenty dollars later, I settled down to my sweet roll and chocolate milk. I chose a deceptively peaceful seat by the lake (I believe Granny would have called it the Ceement Pond). As I was enjoying my exorbitantly priced sweet roll, I heard a scream from nearby. True. It was a child in terror. I thought the idea in mouseville was to answer the dreams of all kids. That’s what “they” say anyway. Well, this kid was having a nightmare rather than a dream. There, in the too calm waters of the ceement pond, six feet from where I sat, lurked two black eyeballs. Like the dead eyes of a doll.

The mouse had launched an amphibious, amphibian attack! Gators in the ceement pond! Three of them - and they were HUGE - they had to be 4 maybe 5 inches long!

And as with all well-planned offensive attacks, the mouse general also sent the air force, evil black fighters with beady black eyes descended on me from above and began pecking my table. I think they were dancing and chanting.

As I’m being attacked by both air and sea, I muttered to myself, “You should have kept your mouth shut last night about the Mouse Conspiracy. Now you’re DOOMED!”

I lept from my chair nearly knocking over a concrete trash can (with a mouse silhouette on it) in my haste to escape. Had I brought a suitcase on the trip, I would have left it, but I was able to snatch my backpack and camera off the lakeside table and make a run for it.

Dodging dive-bombing birds from all sides and gators snapping at my ass, I threw open the door to the lobby of the hotel. Safe for now. I get on the mouse bus in an hour or so, surely I can find something to do INSIDE without going back out THERE!

But I don’t think the mouse is done with me yet.

Oddly enough, thinking back on it, as I was running for cover, I think the kids were laughing. Probably at me. Brainwashed by the mouse at such a young age.

Mouse in the House

It's amazing the impact one of the planet's smallest creatures can have on the human race. What creature? The mouse.

I'm in Orlando on an assignment with my coworker, Mandy. Mandy and her husband, Bill, are here because they love to feed the mouse. Yes, Mandy, you ARE obsessed with the rodent. We all have our obsessions, mine is little Japanese trees, yours is a mouse. That's neither good nor bad, not judging here. Just a somewhat twisted observation.

I'm an old conspiracy theory kind of guy. I believe there is really only ONE company in charge of the world. That single company just gives us tens of thousands of smaller company names to throw us off. They actually own them ALL. EVERY business on this planet. What company is it that rules the world? General Motors? Definitely NOT after last week's stock market plunge. AIG? Uh, no. Here's my theory - the Mouse is in the House. The White House that is. At the bottom of the US Government and all its businesses lies the mouse. That damned mouse.

You see, it's all a BIG conspiracy. Mickey has been brain-washing us for years, "Give me your money. Give me your money." He started back in the mid 1900's, when I was just a wee lad. Ever heard the Mickey Mouse Club song? "Who's the leader of the club that's made for you and me? M-I-C. K-E-Y. M-O-U-S-EEEEE!" Once you sing that little ditty, you CANNOT erase it from your mind. It's like indelible ink on the soul. Only a lobotomy will remove it.

The mouse is EVERYWHERE! Especially in Orlando! Even the PILOT of the jet I flew on to get here prefaced his spiel with, "We'll be heading to the House of the Mouse today." That's scary. Right or wrong, our country has separation of church and state; pilots who are responsible for hundreds of lives should NOT refer to Orlando as the House of the Mouse. It's scary.

In short, who or what is responsible for the soaring cost of gasoline? I believe it's the mouse. The stock market crash? The mouse. Mankind's inhumanity to mankind? The mouse.

Now I don't know just how the little creature is pulling it off, but hey, if an ant can move a rubber tree plant, well, I rest my case.

I'm staying OP (that's Disney for On-Property). So naturally, the mouse is emblazoned EVERYWHERE! The buses, the carpets, the toilet paper ... I'm actually seeing the silhouette of a mouse in things where it's not! I SWORE I saw a mouse shape in a sailor's knot in a restaurant tonight. Mandy, who has mice on her SHOES, insists I was just seeing things, that it was just a sailor's knot. I KNOW better. The mouse can't fool me. I see him in the wallpaper. Cracks in the concrete. He's all around us.

And as I write this in my Disney hotel room, I swear I can hear the pitter-patter of little mouse feet just outside my hotel room door. He's coming to silence me.

That mouse is a sly one, he is.

Use the Force, Luke.

This is NOT our pug. But I wish it was.

Ashlynn Kay

Has Anybody Seen the Bridge?

My former coworkers (Tom, Scott, Sam) and I were in San Francisco editing the animation on a television commercial we'd developed. Things were going well. So well, in fact, we celebrated that night. Don't remember where. There's a good reason I don't remember.

Anyway, after we left the bar, uh, animation studio, it was dark, but we wanted to visit the Golden Gate Bridge. We could see it in the distance, so we just kind of headed toward it without a map or directions.

I have no clue how we wound up on the street we were on, but it looked like a pretty cool street, it was surrounded by trees and gardens so we assumed we were likely entering Golden Gate Park.

But as we drove further down the street, we noticed it was getting narrower.

Here, in Indiana like many other rural states, we have narrow roads in the country. But nothing quite like this one lane road we found ourselves on in Golden Gate Park. Our rental car barely fit on the concrete. And the further we went. The worse it got.

And then we saw the strangest guardrails we'd ever seen. They almost looked like handrails.

Probably because they WERE handrails.

We'd somehow wound up on the sidewalk to an arboretum near the bridge and thinking it was a street, drove down the sidewalk. Fortunately, as it was after dark and the place was closed, we didn't mow anybody down.

Getting out of there wasn't easy. I mean it's a nice looking place so we didn't want to drive on the grass, so we had to back out the whole way. In the dark.

Never did find the bridge.

FISHERMAN

2 fishers and A LOAF

the Pug Does the Judo

I wonder if they had to pay for carry-on baggage?

China: Passengers push jet after breakdown

ZHENGZHOU, China, Sept. 27 (UPI) -- Passengers in Zhengzhou, China, say they had to push a 20-ton airplane to the terminal after it flew 500 miles and broke down after landing.

Passengers were summoned to help after an airport tow truck broke down and airport staff couldn't budge Shandong Airline's CRJ7 passenger plane, which flew from Guilin in the south of China with 69 passengers and seven crew members aboard, The Daily Telegraph reported Saturday.

The plane landed safely before the engine failed on the runway in Zhengzhou, the Telegraph reported, noting it took nearly two hours to push the jet to its final destination.

"Thank God it was only a 20-ton, medium-sized plane," one airport worker told The Sun. "if it were a big plane, it would have knocked us out."

Blue People

When I was a kid, I made a decision. It wasn't a bad decision, nor was it a particularly good one either. I chose to NOT be a Blue Person.

Those blue guys that play musical instruments weren't around back then. At least they weren't on television. As a matter of fact, TV wasn't around back then. OK, now I'm depressed. Back on subject:

The blue people I was decidedly NOT going to be like were the folks in the Superman comic books. Comics used to be printed on crappy paper using less-than-cutting-edge printing techniques, even for back then. So there was no subtle shading. Shading was accomplished ingeniously by using solid colors or a series of solid colors. When people were in shadow, they were not painted as black, that would be boring. Instead, the basic shape and deepest shadows were inked in black and the artist typically used bright blue for the shadow regions. Never noticed that? Check out Clark Kent's black hair. Grab an old comic and you'll see. It may cost you a couple hundred bucks to grab one ... actually, I'm not going to get into the discussion of valuable comics, I've already mentioned depression. I lost all of my comics. Except a copy of Richie Rich. Big deal. And used my baseball cards in the spokes of my bike. Duh.

So anyway, Superman was always perched atop a gleaming tower of steel and he was always brightly colored (unless he was passed-out somewhere with a Kryptonite hangover, then he was blue too). The huddling masses below, the common folks, were cloaked in shades of blue. Thus, blue people. Hey, it made sense to a nine year old. And it kind of makes sense now.

That was NOT going to be for me.

So I set about not necessarily to be Superman, but in a reversal of the accepted road-to-success process, to NOT be NOT successful.

And it's thinking like that, that has me so screwed-up.

Draw what ever moral values (or lack thereof) from that if you'd like. Knock yourself out. I've spent a fortune in therapy trying to figure it out. It's just easier to assume I'm nuts and let it go at that.

And to this day, I will NOT wear blue. Except for denim.

Sue went to school with this guy ...

Why I Do What I Do.

Eleven

Poultry in Motion

1970 - I’m an Army brat. My father is a retired Lt.Colonel in the US Army. At the time, he was the CO (that’s Army talk for Commanding Officer) of an ammunition plant in the midwest. They no longer make ammunition there, I think they’re turning it into a shopping mall or something.

Coming from a military family, I’m used to Post Housing. Cinder blocks, usually pale green, cheap linoleum floors and about as much ambiance as an Operating Room. This particular assignment, however, was unlike any other we had seen. Sure, we spent 6 years in Germany, France and England, but nothing compared to this place. The “Housing Area” on the ammunition plant is known as River Ridge. Good reason for that. Our home, which was a mansion, sat on a cliff overlooking 12-mile Island in the Ohio River. We were surrounded by acres and acres of beautiful, rolling fields of grass and woods. There was even a gorgeous reservoir set aside just so the residents of River Ridge could swim. We called it “the Pool” though there was no concrete, just a nice, clean pond surrounded by grass and trees. Like something you’d see in a Disney movie. Sort of.

The home was not your typical Army quarters. I’ve already described it as a mansion because that’s the proper word to use. 3-car detached garage. 5 bedrooms, 3-½ bathrooms, formal living room, casual living room, dining room, etc. Even a detached outbuilding in which my Dad kept his awesome audio equipment. In short, the house and surroundings were like something out of a dream.

Being a teenage boy at the time, and hanging around with other teenage boys, this place was a true adventure.

Now I know that not all teenagers drink alcohol. I don’t drink today. But I did back then. And so did my friends. We drank whatever we could get our hands on . The particular night I’m about to describe, I think the drink of choice (all we had) was Sloe Gin. If you drink and you’ve never tasted Sloe Gin - don’t. Just grab some cooking oil, mix it with Vodka and throw half the spices in your kitchen into it and you’ll come pretty close to that taste. And it was hot. And I was drinking it from one of those squirt-type ketchup bottles, you know, the kind with the little spout on the top? Didn’t take me long to go to LaLaLand.

The rest of the story is pretty fuzzy.

My friends and I spent the night, kind of a camp-out sort of affair, only no tents or camping stuff. I’m not really sure what our intentions were. But, while we were doing whatever it is that we were doing, we got hungry.

I have no idea where the fried chicken came from. I’m really not sure where the Sloe Gin came from either. But they were there. And we were ravenous, drunk teenagers. Other than drinking, we weren’t doing anything illegal or harmful to others. We were good boys. Hell, I was the Commander’s son! I’m supposed to be setting an example for the rest. I never asked for that job and I wasn’t very good at it.

Being the ecologically minded fellows we were, when we were done eating a piece of chicken, we threw it in the reservoir. At least that way the raccoons would have to swim to get it and in the process get some exercise.

Erase the next 8 hours or so because that’s about all I remember, chicken in the pool.

I came to with a throbbing head and little recollection of the prior night. I vaguely recalled flying chickens or some such hallucination. As reality began to wash upon me like waves crashing against the shore, I noticed my face was wet and there was a large, black, moving shadow above my head blocking out the eye-scorching morning sun. The shadow barked. Shadows don’t often do that. I liked this shadow. My eyes began to focus and I discovered my whereabouts. I was in a drainage ditch, head facing down toward the drainage pipe and there was a large dog licking my face. My guess is that unless you’ve drank warm Sloe Gin from a Ketchup bottle, you probably haven’t found yourself inverted in a ditch with a dog licking your face. Actually, it was kind of nice.

I have no idea where my friends were. They must have gone home. So I drug my hung-over, dew-and-dog-saliva-laden body home and crawled through the door to my room. My bed - ahhhhh.

A couple of hours later, I woke up with Monkeys pounding gongs in my head so hard that my eyeballs were actually bulging from their sockets with each clang of the gong. I smelled like dog and chicken.

I trudged down stairs and as I did I could hear my Dad, the CO, on the telephone. He wasn’t happy. Apparently the person on the other end of the line was in the same mood. I could hear my Dad yelling, “WHAT! YOU FOUND WHAT IN THE POOL?! AND YOU CAN’T OPEN IT UNTIL WHEN?! PUT MORE CHEMICALS IN THE DAMN THING AND GET IT CLEARED OUT - MEMORIAL DAY IS NEXT WEEK!”

The line, “YOU FOUND WHAT IN THE POOL?!” was the one that got me. My brain cells, the ones that survived and actually chose to work that morning, were linking my father’s words to memories of the previous night. I think a “gulp” left my throat as the synapses aligned as best they could and a semi-clear memory of flying chicken manifested in my mind.

My father turned to me after he slammed down the phone. I’m dead. “YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT CHICKEN IN THE POOL? SOMEBODY THREW CHICKEN IN THE POOL AND THE ENGINEERS TELL ME THE BACTERIA LEVEL’S TOO HIGH TO OPEN THE POOL NEXT WEEK!”

I managed a weak, “no” as I tried to keep the chicken from exiting from my stomach and throat. Oh, I’m so dead. But the God of Mischief was on my side that morning and my father just left it at that.

I’m sad to say, the pool did NOT open on schedule. And the entire housing area was pissed. Mumbles could be heard everywhere of “if we ever catch the jerks that did that … lynching … torture … death by firing squad …”

Fortunately, my friends also kept the secret, probably for self-preservation sake.

And the dog never ratted on us either.

Now let’s jump forward 30 years. I decided the drinking life was getting me nowhere and I was hurting a lot of people in the process. I’m in a recovery program. Part of that recovery program involves admitting to all your past misdeeds (as long as it doesn’t hurt someone else to do so).

I had a long talk with my sponsor about that particular night. I mean, Good Lord, I had NO IDEA what the consequences would be of my actions. All we did was throw chicken bones in the pool so the raccoons would have fun!

There were a LOT of other things I’d done that were far worse and over the coming years, I’d made up with those I’d harmed and made things right to the best of my ability.

Except for the damn chicken.

You can’t believe how many times I’ve balked at telling my Dad about that. How many times I’ve talked to my sponsor about it. It’s ridiculous!

Last month, 9-years sober, I finally told my Dad. He laughed. He thought it was hilarious.

Shit. Some desperado I AM!

Sorry again, Dad. I had no idea.

Keystone Cops

It was 1971. Mike, Gumby and I were out for a cruise in my ’67 Mustang (yes, I know a fellow named after a tall, green cartoon figure). Cool car. Made even cooler when I cut the tail pipe off in front of the rear axle, put a Cherry-Bomb muffler on it and a chrome extension that exited just in front of the oversized rear tires. Illegal, but way, way cool. Unfortunately, it was a 6 cylinder and Volkswagen Beetles gave me a run for my money. Actually, it generated more noise than power. But it was my poor-kid’s version of a “muscle car”.

I smoked cigarettes in my youth but had run out of cigarettes this particular night and decided I needed some before we drove over to cruise the local scene. Can’t look cool unless you’re smoking right? (stupid)

I turned around in the lot of a bar to head back towards a convenience store where I could buy cigarettes. Remember the bar. In a minute, it will be important to this story.

We drove to the convenience store, Nite Owl, and bought the cigarettes. In retrospect, Nite Owl was a strange name for a convenience store that closed at midnight when all good night owls are just getting fired-up. Sorry, back to the story - as we were returning to my car, the one with the illegal muffler, we couldn’t help but notice the two police cruisers sitting right next to it. Uh-oh. There they sat, side by side, they were pointed in different directions like cops do when they share donuts and talk. Suddenly they hit the lights and sirens and in a cloud of smoke, they peeled out of the lot. COOL! No ticket for me and HEY! - they’re after somebody – let’s follow them and see who!

We would find out later that it was US they were looking for. But I’ve interrupted my own story …

So off we drove, following the police that were looking for us. But we didn’t know it and neither did they.

In two blocks, the two police cruisers turned in opposite directions and shot off. OK, enough of that, I’m not following them any more. The light they turned at was now red. So I stopped. That’s what law-abiding citizens do, right? Now we're back where we started, sitting opposite the bar where we turned around.

As we were sitting there, I notice a very large, black mountain of a man standing next to a much smaller guy in an apron. The mountain was wearing a police uniform. This was Officer L. I hadn’t met him. Yet. Now I’m REALLY paranoid. Here I sit, in a glaringly-white Mustang, blowing very loud smoke rings out of my illegal muffler with a badge-wearing mountain standing on the opposite side of the street.

Suddenly my heart froze! The little guy in the apron looked up, pointed at my car and the mountain lost interest in his notes and gained a new-found interest in me. Or my car. Oh, crap. I gets worse. He, the very large cop, motioned for me to drive over there.

Let’s get one thing straight here from the get-go. I’m pretty much a law-abiding citizen. Well, most of the time.

That explained, I continue: I was terrified of getting a ticket for an illegal muffler, so I kind of, well, looked the other way and pretended I didn’t see him flagging me and I well, kind of drove off when the light turned green. Yes, yes, I know, it’s illegal to ignore the orders of a police officer. But if you didn’t actually see the police officer? (Kind of the tree falling in a forest with no one around to hear it – has it really fallen? – kind of thing) Any way, I got the hell out of there. And drove as quickly as I could about 4 blocks to a burger joint.

Safe at last. I’d avoided a ticket.

My buddies and I bought soft drinks and were seated in the burger joint laughing about our brush with the law.

And then it started.

One by one. Every Jeffersonville Police cruiser on duty that night pulled into the parking lot of the burger joint. Even the K9 unit showed up.

And they all started walking around and around my car. With flashlights. Even the police dog is interested in my car. It looked like Christmas in the lot with all the flashing lights.

Oh SHIT! All this for a friggin’ muffler violation?! Well, you DID run, dumb-ass.

It became obvious that they weren’t going anywhere. So as much as we hated it, my fellow-felons and I decided to go face the music. Maybe they’d just give me the ticket, all get a good laugh and leave.

Uh … no.

As we walked out of the burger joint, there stood the mountain. And he did NOT look happy. I’m not quite sure how a mountain can actually LOOK happy, but this one didn’t. And he was a telepathic cop-mountain too because somehow, he KNEW who we were when we walked out of the door! I suppose the piss in my pants might have given me away.

And then the mountain spoke, actually it was more of a command, “LINE UP ON THE SIDEWALK BOYS.” Mountains ALWAYS talk in capital letters. And when a mountain commands you, you listen. We lined up. Quickly.

I’m not a courageous person. Never have been. Truth be told, I’m a complete coward. But from somewhere in my inner ooze rose just enough courage to utter, actually, it was more like a squeak, “What’s the charge officer?” I knew what to ask. I’d never been arrested before or since, but I’d seen it on TV. So I was an expert. I was holding out on the big one, “I want to see my attorney!” until I actually needed it.

At this point, I figure these guys are REALLY pissed about this muffler thing.

A quasi-law-abiding citizen such as myself generally doesn’t have the misfortune of hearing the words next barked by the mountain, “ARMED ROBBERY.”

what?

did he just say, armed robbery?!

It’s hard to describe my feelings at that point: nausea, fear, simultaneous bladder AND bowel release, dizziness … and one more thing … elation. I was HAPPY that he’d just said, ARMED ROBBERY, because I sure as hell knew we didn’t do that!!! And he hadn’t said anything about my muffler. Odd thoughts for a boy about to be detained by a mountain.

With a little more courage, I replied, “We didn’t do THAT!”

His response, “I HOPE NOT BECAUSE I KNOW YOUR DADS AND THEY WILL KILL YOU.” Or something like that. It was kind of hard to hear because my brains were oozing out of my ears at that point.

No handcuffs. Darn. We DID get put in the back seat of the cruiser and got to listen to all the cop talk on the radio. We were REAL desperados! They were talking about the “alleged escape vehicle being a 1967 Mustang, white in color, 3 dumb-ass kids, etc.”

After about 15 minutes of sitting in the back of the cop car, off we went with the lights on. Had we not been scared shitless, it would have been fun.

Where we went next was NOT fun.

We were taken to the hospital emergency room for a victim ID.

At this point, the story is funny in no way. What had happened was that some person(s) had strong-armed this poor guy in the parking lot of the bar (remember the bar?), the bar tender heard him screaming, ran outside to see what was going on, and saw and HEARD my bright white Mustang leave his parking lot and take off (toward Nite Owl).

There, in the ER bed, surrounded by monitors, beeping and blinking machines, laid this fellow, who had been beaten pretty badly. Officer L. asked him if we were the guys that did it.

My friends and I compared notes later and ALL were afraid he would look up and say, “yes.” But he didn’t. He said, “no”. Thank, God.

The mountain took us back to our car, and as I recall, told us that we needed to get home and get off the streets because it would take a while to clear the APB on the Mustang.

We did. And that was my last brush with the law. Until 30 years later. But that’s another crazy-magnet story for another time. And it’s VERY similar to this one!

The cops never did say anything about my muffler. But I got it fixed anyway. I wish I still had that car. But time marches on.

I hope the guy was OK.