Home sweet home

The house I grew up in was a monument to learned incompetence. My parents both had advanced degrees, yet we weren't allowed to hang pictures on the walls for fear of damaging the plaster (it was an old house). Apparently the technology to repair plaster was lost sometime after the fall of Rome and still had not been rediscovered.
You put white clothing in the hamper at your peril. It was understood that anything in that pile was doomed to mysteriously turn pink.
No one wanted to reveal that they possessed basic domestic skills. The masequerade went on for close to two decades.

X-mas Blues

Another lonely ape started hanging out at the dog-park.

The holidays are tough on everyone.

Death Face

We painted our death faces and sharpened our knives. I may have looked like an evil clown with a Kabar, but I was ready to face my doom.

Radar weren't born up here, but he took to our ways. Whatever they did to him Underground was just as bad to the things I seen up Dirtside. His eyes were painted red and black teardrops on his cheeks marked every man he killed. He was awful upset about Jackie and he wasn't planning to come back without her.

The cloud-girl looked at us like we was insane. Ain't no way we could explain that this might be our final battle, and we was ready.

Campfire Chat

I approached the fire to reheat my rations. I came up to one of the squad, cleaning his rifle near the fire. I dropped my tin on the coals at the edge of he fire. He had been alternately refered to as goat-lover and crap-face, so I wasn't sure how to address him. I vaguely remember him being Libyan. He spoke first, in French.

"Lieutenant, may I tell you something?"

"Of course."

"I love my rifle. She is a Lee-Enfield Type 4 Mark 1. I found her near El Alemain after the English retreated. She was the most beautiful rifle I had ever seen."

I looked at the rifle. The woodstock had been stripped and refinished. The barrel was evenly blued and unblemished.

"My uncle taught me to shoot with his Turkish Mauser. After the Germans came I stole a German Mauser. There were good guns. You could shoot straight with them and reload quickly. But they were not my Enfield."

He turned to me and smiled. His teeth gleamed brightly, reflecting the fire.

"Her name is Veronique. We have killed many Germans together. When the fighting stopped in the dessert, I took her back to my village. I took her apart and stripped the lacquer from her wood. I restained her with Khalesh oil... it is a vegetable we grow. The blacksmith resurfaced the steel. She is the most beautiful rifle of her kind."

I shifted a bit, nodded, pulled my tin out of the coals, and started to eat.

"The Sergeant calls her Avril to try to annoy me. He is a pig-lover, and stupid besides. He is jealous of the great love we share."

At this point I resigned myself to riding out this conversation. Veronique's man was either insane, or pulling my leg. I was determined to show my patience and/or sense of humor.

He smiled again.

"You are a good man, Lieutenant. I hope you find a gun you can love someday."

He put down the barrel brush and oily rags on a cloth and inserted the bolt back into the rifle. He rolled up the cloth and gently stepped through the camp back to his tent.

Catholic Sacraments vs. Age

Baptism: 6 months

First Communion: 6 Years

Penance: 12 years

Confirmation: 13 years

Marriage/Holy Orders (either/or): 18 to 35

Last Rites: As close to death as possible

Kind of a gap between the first six and the last one. If you're not making babies or running the Church, there's not a lot to do in the middle decades.

Back to the theme...

Back in July of 1995 I was working at a pizza supplies warehouse in Staten Island. I'd work a 7am to 11am shift, loading trucks and restocking the warehouse.

The refrigerated room was always a good place to work, given the 90+ degree heat and high humidity. The high value items in the warehouse (sausage, Jamaican beef patties, spices) were kept on the top palette shelf. There was no ladder in the room. To get to the top, you had to climb several palettes stacked in steps. Think Mario Brothers combined with Tetris.

One day, after a quick load of the 8 outbound trucks, they sent me in to FIFO the top shelf (restock the items from back to front). I climbed on top of a palette of 40 cases of Mozarella cheese, and was deposited on top of two other palettes of the same. After about 15 minutes up there, I had a revelation:
40 cases per palette times 50 pounds per pallete times 3 cases = 600 lbs

I was standing on 3 tons of cheese.

Unfortunately I began to shout this realization out loud. Several times. Loudly.

This prompted a visit from Pablo:
"Blanquito, que gritas?!!"

"Nada. Hay mucha quesa aqui..."

"Aye conyo diablo!!! Que stupido..."

In an unfortunate twist of fate, I became lactose intolerant three years later.

TOTALLY MENTAL!

All I need....