Daredevil's Delight

I like to ride motorcycles as much as the next person, but whatever possessed this guy? While I have hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon many times, the idiot on this bike is only going to drop in once!

Daredevil my ass...this guy just doesn't understand the physics of water!

I do like this daredevil's style…only the second mouse gets the cheese!

Why drive the L.A. freeways for free when you can go to a track and get paid for it. Tallyho!

Man that knocked my dick string loose!

How to make a human "Moon Pie!"

What happened next was too obscene to show and tell….

These mountain climbers have been in this position for twenty five years. Due to global warming, the rescue attempt should happen in about a year. Family and friends can hardly wait.

These daredevil Ozark brothers are the proud father of a baby boy born from their sister, Mable.

The biker lived through this fiery ordeal. Unfortunately the idiot who ignited the fire did not!

Sex is only possible on the wing of a flying airplane if the man is someone other than the pilot!

I be one of the yellow-bellies!

I'm just saying,

Mittster

Writer's Cramp

Yes, it’s true…I have writer’s cramp. Dirty words to be sure, but true nonetheless. I am so embarrassed to admit this condition on the Internet, but someone needs to stand up and be counted for the hundreds, if not thousands, of newbie writers out there who have this affliction but are afraid to come out of the closet. I have tried everything I can think of to remedy this situation, including soaking my hands in hot water and Epsom salt and me in vodka, but nothing seems to work.

I have tried therapy, but alas, no one in the group has writer’s cramp anymore. Instead, they have all become alcoholics from vodka – so why should I listen to them.

Besides, even though the group therapist is not hooked on vodka, she is not even a novelist. How could she know the shame of writer’s cramp?

As I look back on my writing experiences and the colossal challenge of writing and publishing two murder mysteries, it becomes apparent that writer’s cramp syndrome did not affect me until after I started trying to market my books on Facebook, Twitter, Websites, Amazon and God only knows how many other Internet sites designed to sell books. One bright side of not being able to use my hands is that I am not pulling what’s left of my hair out due to poor book sales!

While sitting here poking the keys on the keyboard with pencils taped between each claw hand in an effort to get my message of despair out to the handful of readers who might stumble on my blog, it behooves me to remember that readers are easily turned off by sniffling, pathetic, wannabe writers who can’t handle rejection.

Oh, what’s the use – wait a minute, I am receiving an e-mail from an author friend who claims to have cured her writer’s cramp. Can it be true? Is there a chance for me? OMG, I have finally found the cure as suggested by novelist Eri Nelson in her e-mail. She has lost her Internet connection now for over a week and her writer’s cramp has disappeared. Excuse me while I take a hammer to my modem and router. By the time I am able to replace the hardware and reboot my computer, I too shall be cured of writer’s cramps. Glory be and thank you, Eri….

Write on? Not!

Mittster

The Secret Dirty Look

Millions saw this secret dirty look...rightfully deserved I would suspect.

No explanation needed here. I don't even like wiping my own butt, let alone someone else’s. Yes, I was a bad dad, but I had plenty of company!

"Please, God, don't let my wife find out about last night. I promise never to do it again!" Definition of a man: Rounder, scum bag, cheater, idiot. Why have steak and lobster at home when you can have hamburger and tripe elsewhere.

Not to worry little one, I hated my oatmeal too! My dad used to rap the back of my head if I gagged on a lump. How could you not gag on a nasty lump of oatmeal?

This was not timeout at the mall because of bad behavior. This was my parents leaving me and hoping I would not find my way home. They took my twin brother with them. I knew they always loved him best!

I remember this look from my fourth grade teacher when I brought a horn toad to class and left it in my desk drawer. The old bitty found the critter after class and had to be rushed to the hospital. "It was only a toad," I explained to my dad. "It's only a spanking," my dad explained to me.

Not so secret dirty look from our assistant football coach in high school.

I'm just saying,

Mittster

Surfing the Giant Waves

When I was a young person surfing in California, all we could do is talk about the huge waves off Hawaii during the winter. Sure, we occasionally snagged twenty footers at Wind and Sea in La Jolla and to us they were giants.

Wind and Sea at La Jolla, California

We even made the trip to Northern California a few times and surfed large waves at places like Steamers Lane. The water was freezing, but we thought the waves were awesome.

Steamer Lane, California

We still kept dreaming of the really big winter waves at the North Shore of Maui, but unlike the stars who made surfing movies all over the world, we were sand bums, stuck close to home working as grocery clerks or gas station attendants. While the surfing stars rode new boards in exotic places, we were content to use hand-me-down boards that needed repairs on a weekly basis. We even rode homemade skateboards made out of plywood and caster wheels during the times the surf was dead or the wind was blowing from the west so hard that the waves crashed on the beach like tsunamis.

Even though we never surfed the giant ones, we still had a great time on the coast of California when you could build a fire and sleep in sleeping bags right on the beach while waiting for the first set of early morning waves that beckoned at first light. We barely took time to eat, but when we did, it was always the most tasty cheeseburgers and fries ever made. Small diners dotted the landscape from San Diego to San Francisco and the food was the best in the west. You can’t find food like that anymore and especially for a dollar, which included fries or onion rings!

Life moved on for me and thousands of other beach bums who ended up married and working at higher paying jobs to feed the family. Our boards hung on garage walls that were located inland because that was where the work was. Every year we rode the waves less and eventually the boards were sold in yard sales and replaced by construction tools. I even moved to Michigan due to construction advancement and surfing was just a distant memory.

I remarried in 1995 to a wonderful woman who had raised her children and was at the executive level for a large company. I was divorced and still working construction in Michigan. As it turned out, my wife loved to travel and we made our first trip together to France in 1996. The amazing thing was that after that trip, we started planning a trip to Hawaii. OMG, the surfing bug fired up big time and I thought I would die before the trip day arrived. I would like to add at this time that the Parisians were not rude to Americans during our trip to Paris. The bastards were rude to everyone, including themselves! Thank God there was no surfing there.

We finally arrived on the big island of Hawaii and I was dumbstruck with how beautiful it was and the ocean beckoned to me like the sirens in Homer's Odyssey. We have made three trips to Hawaii since and my favorite island is Maui. We found an older condo with a small surfing cove right next door. It was the perfect place to find my youth. I thought because I had been a construction worker for many years that surfing would still be easy. After all, it was like learning to ride a bike. Once learned, never forgotten, right? Wrong, and I mean with a capital W!

I thought my arms would fall off after paddling out beyond the small breakers, let alone giant ones. I made two trips out past the surf and after washing ashore and crashing like a beached whale the final time, I realized that Old Man Time had made me Old Man Surfer. My wife sat patiently on a blanket, smiling, while asking if I needed oxygen and a litter to get back to the condo. After resting while lying on the hot sand, I finally got up, dragging the board over to some grass for the last time as my surfing dream faded into oblivion. I dreaded taking the board back to the rental shop. I knew the young salesman was going to ask embarrassing questions of which I would be forced to lie about. As it turned out, wifey took the board back for me because I was too tired to make the trip downtown.

It has been eight years since our last trip to Maui and I doubt we will be able to go again. I hate airplanes and money is tight. I still ride my Harley and that gives me some solace. At least when I am riding my bike, I feel younger and memories always flood my mind about the early days. There is one thing about surfing that now scares the hell out of me, and this picture explains that fear without question!

Surf on, idiot,

Mittster

Where have all the hippies gone?

Once upon a time, there lived a long-haired hippy named The Mittster. Life was good, pot was tolerated,

and milk, cheese, eggs, coffee, gravy, meat and coffee cake were considered good for you. Cigarettes were OK too as long as you kept it down to a pack a day. Drinking beer in the truck was also tolerated as long as you didn’t miss the bed of the truck while throwing an empty can away and hitting a motorcycle cop hiding in your truck’s blind spot. Hard liquor was good for you, but only if you lived in the Deep South. Northerners were not allowed to drink moonshine because it could turn them gay, which is exactly what happened in San Francisco. At least that is what my grandparents tried to tell me. Did they really think I was that stupid?

Parties were many and loads of fun. You really didn’t have to play any macho head games to see who was the stud of the group. Everyone got the girls, including dorks and nerds! All you had to do was pass the bogambo weed around and everyone turned into Burt Reynolds and Goldie Hawn. Of course, there were the few who indulged in acid and climbed walls while singing “I am the Walrus,” but they came down after a day or two.

Some of our elders accused us of perverting the English language, but to them I said, “Groovy man, I can dig it!” Their reply was always the same. “Disgusting hippies, why don’t you take a bath?” Little did they know that during the week I was a construction worker and made more money than their old asses had ever seen. The terminology for my group was “weekend hippies” and “weekday hard hats.” During the work week we would kick hippy butts, but on the weekend we would transform into the very thing we professed to hate. Secretly we were jealous of their free lifestyles and their half-naked cutie girlfriends. Yes, I have tucked my hair up under my hard hat to keep from getting my butt kicked!

The older generation couldn’t see past Sinatra. Who in the hell wants to look like lop-eared Frank Sinatra, let alone sing like him? At least my parents liked Johnny Cash. His music wasn’t my kind, but anyone who dressed in black couldn’t be all bad. Elvis was cool, but I was getting tired of his music and movies. Then came the Beatles and life became one big party! Then the Stones, and then the new groups were endless for twenty years. That is until Richard M. Nixon – that’s the day the music stopped.

The pendulum started swinging back to the far, far right and, in time, everything became a felony. You could legally drink yourself into a coma, but if you got caught with a seed from some weed you could kiss your butt goodbye. It was prison time and you got to marry some guy named Bubba in a not-so-fun jailhouse ceremony. The powers in government knew we were having way too much fun, and it is not good for slaves to have fun.

God, I miss those days of free living. We weren’t all street hippies panhandling our way through life at the expense of others. Most of us were hardworking stiffs just trying to have a break from the weekly grind. We were polite, grateful, unassuming taxpayers living good lives and obeying the laws that were on the books at the time.

Now, instead of going to the refrigerator to gobble some munchies, I go there knowing I will be lucky if my wife lets me have a stick of celery. The only time I go to a bar is on the way to the restaurant in the back of the building. I have to cross the street so I won’t walk in front of a pastry shop. Don’t ask about parties – the last one I attended was my high school reunion and all I found there were old people.

Who said there can’t be a coven of old hippies somewhere in the world? Please, I am begging you, if anyone knows of an old folks’ hippy coven, call me at 1-800-OLD-FART….

I’m just saying,

Mittster

Chutzpa!

We all are painfully aware of the state of the Nation and the world for that matter. I see tweets, blogs, and Facebook statements that indicate most hardworking (if you even have a job) Americans are fed up with the status quo. The young idealists are even taking to the streets, which reminds me of the late sixties and seventies during the Vietnam War.

I actually see a parallel between then and now. Nixon knew that we were just about bankrupt because of Vietnam, just as Obama knows the same is happening now because of Iraq and Afghanistan. Nixon also knew that the awful unrest in this country during that time meant disaster for re-elections and the survival of the Republican Party, as the current President knows the Democratic Party is in big trouble for the same reasons.

Corruption was the common denominator in both cases. If fact, corruption has plagued every war since records have been kept. Even ancient history teaches us the same lessons. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and the futility of war is not just some catchy phrase coined by the left wingers. I could pen catchy phrases all day long and not one will help find peace in the world.

Even though I am a conservative Republican, I am also a naturalist who will fight long and hard to save abandoned and mistreated animals whether they are in my hometown or in the remote jungles of the world. The animal kingdom, while being savage and violent, is based on rules that seem not to apply for the human species. The wild animals that exist on this planet take only what is needed and never in malice of forethought. Nature’s balance is insurance that there will be enough for survival of the fittest, while the human species keeps taking and taking even after we are old, weak and feeble. If there is a case supporting the Ancient Alien Theory, this is it. We don’t fit in very well with the scheme of things on Earth.

While the subject of this blog is somber, it is not without hope. I am not one to point out problems without trying to also come up with solutions for those problems. One fact remains obvious; we have nowhere else to go. We can only hope that our technologies help us save the planet from our overindulgence. We have already started the process of conservation mainly due to a global recession that is teaching us to do more with a lot less. How much is enough to make humans happy? I am finding out that, in reality, less is really more. The challenge of stretching resources can and does make our lives more meaningful. No, I don’t need a new vehicle every five years. My current one is paid off and I enjoy knowing I don’t have to make any more payments. Proper maintenance is far less expensive than payments every month. This holds true with all large ticket items.

Here is a really bright spot; I am in constant touch with not just my community, but the entire planet! The Internet has enabled the people of the world to glean information that is not biased by special interest groups. Until the Internet, we had to depend on televised news reports that were not in real time, and the reports were certainly part of “spin city.” Most people I know don’t read newspapers or watch televised news programs anymore unless they are reporting something live like the earthquake in Japan.

Of course, we all know about spam and virus dangers while on line; but on the whole, with the use of good virus protections, we can safely find out about any topic under the sun. This gives us an advantage about what is really happening on our planet. It also brings the human community closer together so we can help solve our planets problems. Technology is not enough; the masses must be willing do their part.

Stamping out corruption in government is also a priority. I am going to repeat myself yet again. November, 2012 is a month everyone should have highlighted on their calendars. It is time to take control of our “Government, by the People and for the People.” We have all been sold down the river by traitors of the Constitution of the United States of America and the Bill of Rights! Forget what party your parents, grandparents and great-grandparents voted for. The time for change is NOW! I absolutely refuse to vote for any candidate with name recognition.

What better way to purge the White House and Congress than to vote for unknown or third party candidates? One thing is certain; the unknown politicians can do no worse the all the known candidates who are up to their armpits in special interests and corruption. It will take chutzpa to vote for unknown candidates, but we are a country of gutsy, hardworking and daring folks. It’s time to step up and be counted for the sake of our country and the world.

Write on,

Mittster

Fifteen Minutes to Live

What would you do if you only had fifteen minutes to live? We all probably would want to see family and friends one last time; that’s a no brainer. I would want to pet our dogs and talk to our parrot one last time too. Of course, praying for forgiveness for any and all hurt I had caused in my life is also high on the list.

Perhaps calling distant relatives and friends would be in order, although I wouldn’t know what to say. After all I haven’t talked to them in years. What communications we have had have been e-mails. Come to think of it, I haven’t written a letter in a coon’s age. I’m not sure I could actually sit down and handwrite a letter to anyone. It would take forever and snail mail would even take longer. Besides, now I have only eleven minutes to live.

I have never been very good at saying goodbye to people in the first place, and in the second place, not that many people would miss me anyway. You could say that I have remained distant from many acquaintances simply because I didn’t want to go through the pain of them passing, let alone them suffering because of my passing. It’s selfish, I suppose, but true nonetheless. I used to be that way with pets too, but now I have suffered many times when our pets passed on and I understand that “This too shall pass.” Before too long we replace Fido with yet another pet. Our parrot, Pickles, will undoubtedly outlive all of us. I wonder if he will miss me. This, by the way, reminds me I have only seven minutes to live.

How do I tell my wife how much I love her? Words fail me with that task. I guess a simple “I love you” will suffice. The same holds true for my twin brother and children. An “I love you” will have to do. The only problem is that our Internet, cell phone and land line are down due to a power failure. There is no way to contact anyone…especially when you only have two minutes to live.

I have never felt so alone and isolated as right this minute. What did people do before the inventions that enabled instant communications? How did someone communicate their love of live and family with only one minute to live? I guess they just couldn’t. That is truly sad.

Wait a minute – the power just came back on! I hear the TV playing and my computer booting up. Thank you, God, we have Internet again! Just in the nick of time I, might add. I only had thirty seconds before I was going to throw the toaster in the bathtub full of water and jump in. Life is not worth living without Internet!

I’m just saying,

Mittster