 Hey, hey, hey…it’s Friday! All you have to do is plod through your job like you know what you’re doing and then you’re free and clear for a couple of days. Sounds easy, right? Ahhh…life in America in 2018, isn’t it grand? Cousin Fred and Friend Lamont drove off The Compound yesterday in the RV. They’re apparently headed out to “rescue” the Hairdressing Hydrologist Gigi from the clutches, or in this case, the locks of Fearless Leader. I pointed out that it’s a long drive to Buenos Aires, but that didn’t seem to register. The RV pulled out on the highway and headed east. I thought about calling to tell them that Argentina is south of here but thought it would make for a better adventure if I didn’t. I also noticed a suspicious black sedan following them as the RV barreled east. Again, I could have called, but didn’t. Of course, with those two gone, I’m left alone to tend to the various enterprises around here. Well, I refuse to have anything to do with frying thin hedgeapple slices into tasty (barf) treats…so that’s off the table. I will however tend to the medical marijuana seedlings that are growing in the special grow space – it’s located on the second floor of the Cabinet Saloon re-replication that has yet to burn down – oh, it’s coming, you’ll see. I could use the distraction after following various news outlets reporting of developments in what may very well become the United States vs. Trump. After watching herds of analysts pick, scratch, and sniff every possible molecule of a very limited amount of information yesterday, all day, I’ve had enough of that nonsense for a while. I’ve tried to keep an open mind about all of this. I keep giving Fearless Leader the benefit of the doubt. After all, we all know he’s a lying fool, but did he do anything illegal? Guess there’s mounds of picking, scratching, and sniffing to be done before we have the full answer. In the meantime, I keep thinking about a report I saw pass through my newsfeed early in the week. It was a short article attributed to The Hill that said Fearless Leader had proposed starting a 24/7 Worldwide TV Network and “…show the World the way we really are, GREAT!” Hmm…makes me wonder about the possibilities. I mean how do you do something like that and keep it from becoming a U.S. propaganda channel? Or, do you want it to become a U.S. propaganda channel? It rather boggles the mind, don’t you think? And, if it is Fearless Leader’s intent that it be a U.S. propaganda channel, maybe you do it in a sneakily subtle sort of way that people don’t realize they’re being “Trumped” so to speak. I mean you could model the entire thing on current network offerings. That would save a ton in development costs. After all, in the big scheme of things there is no original material, just regurgitated storylines with a few tweaks here and there. Maybe, just maybe, you turn Fearless Leader’s tweeting into a reality show…something like the “Fearless Leader’s Fireside Tweets Hour.” There would be several such hours throughout the 24-hour news cycle. Maybe use the cam on his smartphone as a live cam to capture the moment as he angrily punches away on his smartphone screen, the venomous nonsense forming at the bottom of the screen as he types. Think about it, the 3AM tweets would show him in bed with the dead cat on his head all askew. The toilet tweets would show him grimace and punching away. The Oval Orifice tweets would feature his coifed dead cat and orange face filling the screen as he unleashes on his current enemies real and perceived. The Oval Orifice shots might even catch Mike Pence sneaking ever so close with a butter knife in hand. Now that’s great show business! Hey, maybe the Fearless Leader Network (what else would you call it?) could also be a new outlet for that entire first season of my reality show, “Bigfoot: Naked and Untamed” that Viceland so unceremoniously dropped. The Iranians would love that kind of action! Plus, THOSE episodes are a shining example of great American values if ever there was one! Hey, it beats 16 hour a day stints of Tucker Carlson and/or Sean Hannity laying out their zany interpretation of events of the day and telling us what a great guy Fearless Leader is among other so-called presidents. Or, what the hell, you could re-air all the seasons and episodes of “The Apprentice,” but rename it, “The Rise to Greatness.” You know, Fearless Leader may be on to something here! That is all!  Hey, everybody, it’s Thursday! Woot! The weekend is edging closer and just in time, don’t you think? I mean, the news lately is just too bizarre, too surreal really. It seems the world has plunged off the death spire slope when it’s still only qualified for the bunny slope. Cousin Fred will retreat into his subterranean abode known as Das Boot where he will plot the coming week’s nonsense to be hatched here at The Compound. Friend Lamont will hole up in his RV where he’ll binge watch all 39 episodes of “My Friend Flicka” plus the feature-length movie…thank you Amazon Prime. The Wife will plant herself atop the roof guzzling bottles of Old Crow, smoking filterless Pall-Malls and singing “My Philadelphia Home” as she scans the horizon with her newly purchased (thanks QVC) night vision scope searching for someone, anyone to take her from this madness. Me? I’ll be hunkered down in bed with the covers over my head waiting for the next shoe to drop. Been that kind of a month or more around here. Well, I’ll also read through the daily hate mail that I get in connection with this blog. Best to do that while one’s head is covered with one’s blanket. Of course, I will come out to watch the OU-Texas Big-XII Championship wearing my downward turned horns t-shirt. I’ll show that two-fingered-burnt-orange-mob-what-crawled-from-a-Texas (aka, Baja Oklahoma)-septic-tank a thing or two. Wienies. “But, it hurts our feelings when they do that.” More on that tomorrow. Today, we'll address that ever-growing number of you blog readers who stay up all night guzzling toxically caffeinated beverages and plotting out threads from this blog on a wall, cross-referencing those threads (with string) that intersect in a paranoid, conspiratorial sort of way. Whew! How’s for a run-on sentence? Mrs. Farnday’s seventh grade English class will spend the remainder of the year trying to diagram that mess, eh? As you longtime readers are only too aware, we here at CCB take a lot of pride in pointing out disturbing trends, particularly when there are crazy people involved. We’ve reported on the woman in Japan who stabbed her live-in boyfriend for pooping and stinking up the house. Our sage advice there was that said live-in go down to the corner gas station to make doody. We were only too happy to talk about the woman who stabbed her boyfriend (seeing a trend here?) for eating all the salsa in the house. We advised that guy to make certain that he left at least a half jar of salsa. Then there was the woman who beat her boyfriend to death with a can of succotash because, well, no one is exactly sure why. Maybe he loaned the only can opener in the house to that no-good shiftless friend of his (you know who you are). We couldn’t advise this poor fellow, because he was after all, dead. Now today, we bring you two separate cases of women who’ve had enough and aren’t going to take any more. Both live in Florida, where a lot of our insightful and pseudoscientific reporting of trends seems to come. Why is that, you ask? Good question fair reader, good question. I haven’t a clue, but I appreciate the Florida fodder. Contestant #1, whom for the purposes of this post we’ll call Gaseous Gurl (GG, for short) was standing in line at the local Dollar General store (generally a center for weirdness in any location) in Dania Beach, Florida. As she stood in line behind several people waiting while the cashier discussed the weather in climatological terms with each customer, she felt a pressure building in her intestines. “I’ll just let a little of the pressure go,” she likely told herself. “No one will notice. After all, my sh*t don’t stink.” Uh huh…we’ve all been there. But, guess what, GG, it does, it does stink. The man standing behind her in line complained. Loudly. Continuously. GG in her best effort to contain the damage turned and engaged said complainer in an argument. In the end, she pulled a knife and threatened to “gut” said complainer who fled the line leaving behind several bags of cheese puffs on the floor. Police arrested GG on a charge of aggravated assault without intent to kill. Contestant #2 (pictured above), whom we’ll call Drunk & Horney or D&H, got drunk on Thanksgiving and decided she needed some lovin’. She burst into the bedroom where her live-in boyfriend lay sleeping off his Banquet frozen turkey dinner (mmm mmm) and demanded sex. Said boyfriend refused at which point D&H went on the attack, beating boyfriend around the neck and face, scratching his eye and causing it to swell. The cops were called, and she was hauled off to jail on a misdemeanor domestic assault charge. She posted the $100 bond and is out now. The thing about D&H is that she was arrested 14 months before for the exact same thing with a different guy from whom she demanded sex when she was drunk and then beat him when he refused. Once again, as has been the case in our previous reports from the Sunshine State, the takeaway is STAY THE HELL OUT OF FLORIDA! That is all!  Here we are, another Tuesday. And what a weird Tuesday it will be for you after reading this post. Of what do you speak Mr. Robin, you ask? Let’s jump right to it, shall we? Friends, do you love Elvis? That’s Presley, not Costello, I’ll talk about him (Costello) later. Again, do you love Elvis? Of course, you do! Especially around Christmas time when songs like “Blue Christmas” and “It’s Christmas Time (Pretty Baby)” done in E’s greasy blues style are being played. Well, they are at my house anyway. In fact, traditionally, “Blue Christmas” is played immediately (and repeatedly) as soon as the table is cleared of Thanksgiving clutter. In fact, give me enough wine to drink and I’ll sing “Blue Christmas” as Elmer Fudd…an event not to be missed. That’s how much I love Elvis and his music. Nothing puts me in more of a Christmas mood than listening to Elvis belt out Christmas tunes, traditional or rockin’. Well, that and free fruitcake. Well, my mood was sapped yesterday by no less a grinch than Fearless Leader himself, who, during a campaign stop in Tupelo, Mississippi (birthplace of the King) told the crowd gathered to hear him that people used to tell him how much he resembled a young Elvis Presley. <sound of crickets making cricket sounds> No, seriously. I was stunned when I heard this. Absolutely stunned. Now, I know many of you who know me on Facebook and even through posts on this blog have heard me compare myself to a young John Wayne, but I’m being facetious, if not ironic. So, I tell myself as I’m watching Fearless Leader make this comparison that he too is trying to be facetious…irony is hopelessly lost on him. But, noooo…I don’t think so. In case you missed it, here is what he said: “I shouldn’t say this, you’ll say that I’m very conceited cause I’m not.” Oh no, Fearless Leader, you narcissistic buffoon, you’re not conceited! No siree, not you. He continued… “But other than the blonde hair, when I was growing up, they said I look like Elvis. Do you see that? Can you believe it?” Excuse me while I go throw up my morning coffee. Oh, but it didn’t end there. Nope. He went to reminisce about seeing Elvis in a concert at the Las Vegas Hilton. As he put it, “…the fans were ripping the place apart, screaming. They were going crazy. And they announced ‘Elvis has left the house…’” But wait, there’s still more. Cue the irony… “If they didn’t say that. I think I’d still be there! Maybe I wouldn’t be here.” Take a deep breath and let that sink in. Go to your happy place. A place where Twitter-prone morons are trapped beneath the rubble that was once the Las Vegas Hilton. Okay, enough with the meditations, back to reality. Of course, he also plugged the fact that the week previous he awarded a posthumous Medal of Freedom to Elvis at The White House. You know, up to that point, I hadn’t considered the award a political stunt, but now I see things differently. Oh yes, I can see clearly now! Let me just say this…Elvis was cool. Elvis defined cool. The dude oozed cool. To this day, I’m not sure there is anyone cooler than Elvis. Nope, not even me and certainly not Fearless Leader. Oh, yeah, regarding the other Elvis (Costello). That Elvis is cool too in own way. After a health scare, he is back recording and going out on the road. That I’m happy to see. Here’s another Elvis Costello fun fact. The Daughter (her name is Veronica) is named for a dog who was named for the Elvis Costello song, “Veronica.” Aren’t you glad you know that? Cousin Fred and I are headed to OKC later today. I have an appointment there early tomorrow morning and can’t have caffeine until afterwards. The thought of driving through the pre-dawn gloom without so much as a cup of coffee is more than I think I can bear. That is all!  Happy Monday everyone! Sheesh, another week, another chance with which to succeed (huh?).
I’m happy to report that after some stops and starts I was able to finish filming a scene in my new (mercifully) short film (due out sometime in early 2019) while The Daughter was here over the weekend. Let me tell you people, filmmaking is hard work. Shot more than an hour of video for what will amount to a few minutes of finished product. And, of course, I kept having to deal with Cousin Fred constantly peering through the front window here at the Main House and knocking on said window to be let in. He so wants to be in the film. Actually, I had intended to use the Hairdressing Hydrologist Gigi in a small part, but she’s off in Florida somewhere keeping Fearless Leader’s hair intact (so to speak). Speaking of Fearless Leader, did you hear that he is now referring to himself in the third person (nothing new) term, “President T” (that’s new)? How creepy is that? The Washington Post yesterday published an article about Fearless Leader attempting to rein in (among other things) the Federal deficit. He reportedly is thrashing his aides and department heads to find ways to slash the budget and close the gap (more like a Grand Canyon) in the budget which has ballooned over the past couple of years. The 2017 deficit was $666 billion (yep that’s billion with a “b”). The estimated 2019 deficit is $984 billion. Hijo de la chingada! Wonder how all those people who so rabidly defend Fearless Leader’s “draining the swamp” feel about that? If you’re among the woefully undereducated of this country trying to do the math, that is MORE THAN $300 billion dollars in two fiscal years. That’s a heap of cash. But wait, there’s more…did you know that as of July of this year the U.S. debt is nearly (hopefully you’re sitting down) $22 trillion? Uncle Sam apparently keeps taking those damned payday loans (there oughta be a law!). I’ll give you a minute for that to sink in as you run off to the bathroom to throw up. How did we get here, you ask? Well, let’s start with an apparently out-of-touch-with-reality administration bent on spending $$$ on a border wall…ummm, then there’s tax cuts for everyone…neither of which has enough funding to back it up. The WP report cites a few examples of Fearless Leader’s out-of-touchness-with-reality – my personal favorite is that he thought the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs (the senior ranking U.S. military member) made something on the order of $5 million a year. Chief of staff John Kelly (himself a retired four-star) informed Fearless Leader that it was less than $200,000. Yeah, Mr. T, here’s a news flash, no one joins the military to get rich…trust me on that. The concept that someone might do so and stick with it because they feel a call to serve their country in whatever capacity is something completely foreign to a certain narcissistic misogynist who has failed at every business in which he’s tried his hand. The WP report is very telling. Granted, the reporting is almost certainly skewed to the left, BUT…if only 1/10th of 1 percent of the reporting has a kernel of truth… We’re doomed, I’m telling you! Read it (and weep) for yourself here. That is all! Alleged exploding butt devices...pick your apocalypse...atypical Thanksgiving...it's Saturday!11/24/2018
 Happy Saturday after Thanksgiving everyone! Hopefully you’ve gotten the relatives out of the house and are now counting the leftovers you’ve hoarded in the back of the fridge. Leftovers hoarding only counts if you can survive at least three days of whatever apocalypse may be headed your way (e.g., zombie, crazed caravans, missile-wielding NoKos, pee-pee tape wielding Russians…pick your poison). Me, I’m one up on the fruitcake count so far. I can last four weeks on one of those. More fruitcake is needed. Heed my call! Corsicana needs your cash! So, we got through Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday without anyone being stabbed, shot, or pummeled. Hell, the cops didn’t even show up this year. Go figure. Cousin Fred and Friend Lamont arrived after everyone else. There was muttering around the table that the Hairdressing Hydrologist Gigi wasn’t there. The empty seat became a 800-pound gorilla in the room. One of the family from OKC seemed particularly disappointed in Gigi’s absence. He had been looking forward to a spirited discussion of hydrologic modelling, especially as it relates to the interactions between biotic and abiotic processes and the ecohydrology of riparian zones. Damned interesting stuff that! But Gigi was a no-show. As I had mentioned in a previous post, I’ve not seen much of Gigi lately. I decided to press Cousin Fred on her whereabouts, but he didn’t seem interested in discussing it. That’s when The Wife, who had been chugging Old Crow whiskey and chain-smoking filterless Pall-Malls flicked her “roach” across the table where it bounced off my forehead, the sparks, ash, and remaining stub landing in my dressing. “You dolt! Are you really that stupid,” she asked (rhetorically, I’m sure)? “Haven’t you noticed that Trump’s (she always calls him Trump for some reason) hair is finally starting to look like hair? She’s probably down in Florida doing his do.” Cousin Fred hung his head down and began sobbing. Friend Lamont began shoveling food his mouth as though there would be no more, avoiding eye contact with everyone at the table. Well, that explained that, I guess. There were other questions I had but fearing another incoming cigarette butt from across the table (she had already lit another and burned it down) or an increase in Cousin Fred’s waterworks (the tablecloth was getting wet), I held my tongue. This morning it occurred to me that we’ve not heard much from Fearless Leader over the past couple of days. Once the one-way shots at the Chief Justice died out there really hasn’t been much going on. Oh, sure there was the report that he told the world that on Thanksgiving he was mostly thankful for himself…his astounding, remarkable, unprecedented, wholly distinguished leadership of this nation. I’m sure he’s very proud. Fret not, CCBers, Sunday is coming (tomorrow for those of you playing along at home), that day when Fearless Leader is best known for spewing forth with the nonsense from his Twitter account. In the meantime, there is still plenty of stupidity rolling past on my overnight newsfeed. Take for example, what maybe could have been a really shi**y situation down in New Orleans. It seems that a man named Arthur Posey (pictured and hereafter known as RingAround) walked into Willie’s Chicken Shack in NOLA and asked one of the dedicated employees what time the restaurant closed. Said employee responded that she didn’t know – NOW THAT’S a dedicated employee that isn’t watching the clock to see when she can return home! RingAround responded with, “Ya’ll about to close right now because I’m going to get a bomb and blow this place up!” According to RingAround’s statement to police, he was talking about the restroom and there was no threat. It’s not known by the po-po whether RingAround was making a general complaint about the food or the alleged service, or perhaps the alleged condition of the alleged restroom. Or if he had an actual bomb tucked up inside his tuckus. Dedicated employee of course said that he never mentioned anything about the restroom in his statement to her. Police arrested alleged RingAround for uttering a threat and dropped him off at the local mental hospital for evaluation. What have we learned here today?
That is all!  Happy Wednesday everyone! Hope you’re all well! You know, I kind of like when you people take off work for a holiday. How do I know you’ve taken off, you ask? Because the number of people visiting the www.cosmiccityblog.com shoots through the roof, that’s how!
Now if I could just figure out how to monetize that I could rest on my laurels (Latin word for butt cheeks) and spew forth daily nonsense. What can I tell you, lots of traffic across the site does make me happy. It takes so little really. Traffic across the site and fruitcake, of course. How’s that for a subtle reminder? Seriously, I needed the pick up that people reading my drivel brings. The stock market has been pummeling my IRA all week. I’m more convinced than ever that Fearless Leader is manipulating the stock market. No, really. Think about it. For instance, over the weekend SNL brought a skit with Steve Carell portraying Jeff Bezos doing a Trump-trolling rap about how he is worth way more than Fearless Leader. The segment goes viral. Starting Sunday night, Fearless Leader begins pounding on Amazon (again) and how they’re ripping off USPS (not really true) and then went on to shoot holes in Facebook (again). So what happens? Tech stocks take a dive this week with Bezos, Zuckerberg, and the Apple Dude watching their net worth drop before their eyes…along with mine! Okay, there was more to the tech drops than just Fearless Leader’s tweets, but still… Often, we’ll be going along just fine. The economy by most measures is doing well. Things are perking along. Unemployment is low. Then Fearless Leader finds where his Chief of Staff hid his smartphone and begins tweeting in the middle of the night about one thing or another and suddenly the stock market takes a dive and people panic. Enough, already! And then he (Fearless Leader) appears on TV the next day with that stupid smirk on his face telling us little people how stupid we are to invest in those companies. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, he’s manipulating the markets because he can, and it feeds that narcissistic megalomaniacal soul of his to see the result of his finger f-ing the markets. Plus, if the “family” is betting on futures, it’s entirely possible they’re raking in the cash every time the markets dive as they have been since early October. Now, he’s sucking up to that murderous gang of thugs in Saudi Arabia in order to keep “America first.” Uh huh. America First in this case means not letting trillions of dollars in Saudi weapons and equipment sales go to Russia or China. Fearless Leader figures, “Eh, the guy was a fake journalist, who cares? My hands are clean. I have the cleanest hands of any president in the universe!” Are they? You know the problem with this country? I served it in one capacity or another for 35 years, so I guess I can make this statement. The problem with this nation is that since the end of WWII, we’ve built a “brand” based on a phrase coined by President Eisenhower way back when: the military-industrial complex. Ike (a Republican by the way) derided the concept as a detriment of America’s greatness. We spend more money on weapons, etc., than Russia and China combined, yet according to a new study done for Congress, a shooting war with either one of them would pose a significant struggle, if not outright defeat to the U.S. Beyond that, if one or more of the rogue states (let’s see, there’s North Korea and Iran) decide to jump into the fray suddenly you have World War III. And, then we’re back to the military-industrial complex model as a way of life. “America first” should not include putting children in cages or waiting on the edge of our collective seat to read the latest nationalist pandering the individual we apparently elected king issues forth with his thumbs. It’s not about standing around and shrugging off news that a journalist who was living in the United States was murdered in a foreign consulate of his native nation. It’s not standing idly by as one person (again, that we apparently elected king) seeks to single-handedly manipulate (dare I say destroy?) the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. And this morning I see that Fearless Leader is promoting himself as the leading candidate for Time magazine’s Person of the Year. Curiously, according to a reader poll released on Tuesday by Time, he is tied for 13th place along with Bezos, Zuckerberg, and special counsel Robert Mueller for the title…oh, the irony! Happy f-ing Thanksgiving, by the way! That is all!  Happy Tuesday everyone! Here we are, day two of the annual Deliver Fruitcake to The Compound campaign, and…I got nothing. Oh sure, I could go buy my own damned fruitcake, but it’s more fun when people give them to me.
You don’t have to converse with me (honestly, I don’t want to talk with you either), just drop the round tins or foil packages (if you make the homemade kind with alcohol) on the lawn in front of the Main House. It’s just the right thing to do. After all, you don’t like fruitcake. You never have. It isn’t vegan. It isn’t even vegetarian. There’s no meat in it (although I’ve heard there is an abundance of rats in Corsicana). Don’t throw it out. Throw it on Mr. Robin’s lawn. He’ll give it a good home (his belly). The gates are open (but only during the day), and I’ve made Cousin Fred and Friend Lamont stow the weapons (out of sight). You’re welcome here (for a short time and ONLY if you have fruitcake). Help me, help me please (how’s that for pitiful?)! The lovely hairdressing hydrologist Gigi made an appearance above ground yesterday from the underground abode that she and Cousin Fred share on the north lawn. For someone who spends most of her time lately underground, she looked remarkably tan. Cousin Fred intimated that, “She has her methods.” The two of them along with Friend Lamont came up to the house yesterday for lunch. I was replaying the now somewhat infamous Friday interview on Fox News with Chris Wallace and Fearless Leader. It aired Sunday morning. Gigi, who used to sculpt the dead cat atop Fearless Leader’s skull into something vaguely resembling natural hair, made a telling comment regarding the structure of said dead cat. She pointed out that for the first time in weeks the “wings” that began in his sideburns, traveled across the tops of his ears, and ended somewhere at the back of his head beneath the wave of hair that starts atop his head were gone. The hairdressing hydrologist commented that finally someone was doing his hair properly. As she made the comment, I noticed Cousin Fred was casting furtive glances around the room. Friend Lamont had his head down staring into his soup. I made a mental note to pursue his reaction or, rather, his very telling reaction with Cousin Fred later…he’ll cave. One of the things that really struck me from that interview was Fearless Leader admitting that he should have made the arduous two-mile journey to Arlington Cemetery to honor this nation’s fallen military. Bet he was thinking: “Eh, why would I do that? Dead people can’t vote!” No, but the live ones who saw what you did can vote, fool. But I digress… So, Fearless Leader tells Chris Wallace that he was too busy making phone calls that day. “I should have done that,” Trump told Wallace. “I was extremely busy on calls for the country. We did a lot of calling, as you know.” Of course, he didn’t elaborate as to whom he was calling. He made the now patent excuse for not attending World War I commemoration ceremonies at a cemetery in France in which he blames everyone else for not being able to get out of bed that morning. This, even though his Joint Chiefs Chairman and his WH Chief of Staff (a retired Marine general) made it there in great shape. But the weirdest part of that entire interview (for me) was when he went on the attack of retired Admiral McRaven who led the effort to kill bin Laden. Fearless Leader was quoted in the interview (this is not fake, disgusting news), “Wouldn’t it have been nice if we got Osama bin Laden a lot sooner than that, wouldn’t it have been nice?” the president said. “You know, living — think of this — living in Pakistan, beautifully in Pakistan, in what I guess they considered a nice mansion, I don’t know, I’ve seen nicer. But living in Pakistan right next to the military academy, everybody in Pakistan knew he was there.” An apparent slam at McRaven, a vocal critic of Fearless Leader’s leadership of this nation. For the record, McRaven and the SEAL Team warriors who took down the world’s most wanted terrorist had NOTHING (read as ZERO) to do with finding bin Laden. Their job was to terminate his time on earth, which they did. Finding bin Laden was the job of CIA. But then again, Fearless Leader has long derided the U.S. Intelligence Community, saying that his sources are far better. Yeah, good luck with that you draft-dodging, orange=skinned dead-cat-wearing idiot. Good luck with that. Okay, enough vitriol for one day. That is all!  Happy Monday again, everybody! We’re off on an uproariously chaotic journey this week! Let’s see, today we’re filming one segment of a short film in Cosmic City. If all goes well with that, we’ll film the second segment on Saturday. And, if everything goes well (meaning I get off my lazy ass and get to editing), we’ll enter it in the Twister Alley Film Festival this year. Oh, and The Daughter arrives this Wednesday, so I’ll have to make a run to OKC to pick her up (she’s leaving the truck behind in Virginia). In the meantime, I intend to record the narration for a SECOND short film this week and POSSIBLY shoot it next week. Well, that may be a bit ambitious considering I have to drive The Daughter back to OKC on Sunday. And then Monday I’m over in Enid for an appointment. Wednesday of next week I’m at Oklahoma Heart Hospital for another early morning appointment. Beyond that, I’m working on a feature-length script for a movie about everyone’s favorite lawyer with a gun, Temple Houston. On and on, it goes… Am looking forward to Thanksgiving this coming week, with The Daughter, The Folks, and even The Relatives from OKC. Cousin Fred is wringing his hands over the fact that he and Friend Lamont failed in their attempts to bag a sand hill crane (ribeye of the sky). I haven’t told him yet, but I anticipated said failure and bought a big-ass turkey. He’s off the hook, but I won’t let him know that just yet. For some reason, I enjoy seeing him sweat. He’s been prowling around some wild game site on the dark web hoping to buy a black-market sand hill crane to claim as his own. I fully expect the FBI to show up at The Compound sometime this week to drag him off in cuffs. It’s been awhile since their last visit, I think we’re due. Oh, yeah, the other thing I want to get done before I check in to Mercy Hospital (whose commercial tag line should be “Have Mercy!” spoken by Billy Gibbons) in OKC in early December is to finally shoot and post the first of several YouTube videos. I know I’ve been saying for more than a year that I intend to do that, but you have no idea how hard it is to set up for a video shoot and then tear it all down again. And, as I mentioned before, I am something of a lazy person. Of course, Cousin Fred doesn’t want to see me do the staid sort of cooking videos where I share some of my BBQ secrets gained over the past decade that I’ve been pursuing BBQ and smoking perfection. Cousin Fred seems to think we need to up the game a bit and become extreme YouTubers. Take for instance, this guy who developed a new use for a blender. Honestly, I hadn’t even thought about mashing the YouTube stuff into everything else I have to do over the next few weeks. Cousin Fred came running into the house yesterday waving his iPad around and telling me I just had to see something. What I saw was a YouTube video made by a bunch of guys in west central England who cemented one guy’s head into a microwave oven. Okay, while you’re trying to get that image into your head, what I’m talking about here is said guy (we’ll call him Cement Head) literally putting his head inside a microwave oven while his “friends” (we’ll call them the Evil Bastards) poured mixed cement into the oven and around his head. Guess what happened next…go on, guess! Nope, not that! His head became encased in the block of cement which became stuck inside the microwave oven. Who knew that could have happened? It took calling out the British version of Fire & Rescue to: 1) dismantle and remove the microwave oven; and, 2) free Cement Head from…well, the block of cement around his head. Now then, the Evil Bastards worked for nearly two hours on Cement Head’s weighty cranial tomb before calling in the professionals who took yet another hour to bust dumbass (not to mention) numbnuts Cement Head out. The Fire & Rescue dudes later tweeted that they spent far too much time trying to free a dummy from the cement when there could very well have been people with “real” emergencies that needed assistance (the Brits have zero sense of humor). Cousin Fred’s point is that he feels we need to do something a bit more extreme to get noticed on YouTube. He immediately ran off for secret planning meetings with Friend Lamont to come up with something that will fit the definition of extreme. I can’t wait to hear it…in the meantime, I have plenty enough to keep myself busy. Oh, if you want to see the British version of Jack Ass…it’s here. Kids, don't try this at home! That is all! Mr. Robin finally gets it(?)...hand over the fruitcake and no one gets hurt...it's Friday!11/16/2018
 Happy Friday everyone. This week has flown past without me being able to complete half the crap on my to-do list, but hey, there’s always next week, right? I’m 39 now (and holding), so you would think I’d learn to prioritize things in life. Eh, not so much. Here at The Compound I’m happy to report that the attempts by Cousin Fred and Friend Lamont to shoot down migrating sand hill cranes (the ribeye of the sky) for Thanksgiving have thus far failed. They just lay on their backs out there on the center lawn with rifles pointed skyward, but the cranes seem to be detouring around this place. A waste of time, but not a bad thing really. It keeps the two of them out of trouble. I suspect I’ll be heading into town to purchase a frozen turkey sometime today. By the way, today starts Mr. Robin’s annual fruitcake collection drive. So, if you need to make room in your freezer for stuff and have a few tins of dense molecule-packed confection that are in the way, drop them off here at The Compound! Fruitcake is always appreciated! We’ll leave the gates open (during the day) so you can swing up the U-shaped drive and drop them on the lawn near the main house. Don’t mind the two mental cases with rifles on the center lawn. They’re harmless. If you’re one of those rare individuals that actually makes their own fruitcake with the rum and/or brandy, I will drive to your location to take possession. Just drop me a line. Can never have too much fruitcake!…that’s my motto. Or in Latin, “Non potest habere nimis fruitcake!” That’ll look great on a flag or banner. Make people think I’m educated or something. Friends, I get it now. I’ve finally come to realize that Fearless Leader isn’t nearly as goofy as I originally thought. No seriously. I have, in the past, been quick to point out in this stupid blog that I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt…that surely, he isn’t the moronic fool that he often portrays. Okay, actually I think he is, but he comes up with some gems occasionally that the American public buys into. This latest epiphany came to me the other day as I was the almost-daily local newspaper here, the lead story quoted our governor-elect Bull Stitt proclaiming that he needed every Oklahoman’s help in keeping his election promises. Huh? Seriously, they delineated each and every promise that jackass made to win the office of governor and it’s up to us make sure he keeps those promises? Hey, dumbass, you made the promises, you figure it out! But, I digress… The point there is that I was suddenly reminded that all politicians are lying c*#ks*&kers (to quote Mojo Nixon). Okay, so where is this going? I’m getting there! Have you noticed that Fearless Leader’s much ballyhooed middle-class tax cut that he assured everyone would be passed prior to the mid-term elections has died out (even though Congress was in recess)? Even GOP diehards were scratching their heads trying to figure out what the hell he was talking about. How was the Congress going to pay for such a tax break? What form would the tax cut take? When the media tried to talk with Congressional types in charge of putting tax cuts together, they would refer them to the White House. When the media types went to the White House for answers, they WH would refer them to Fearless Leader’s top economic advisor who would, in turn, refer them back to the Oval Office. It’s a vicious cycle, I’m tellin’ you! So, that’s the (dare I say it) genius of Fearless Leader. He knows that the woefully undereducated electorate that shoved him into office is gullible and generally desperate enough to buy into the whole “…tax cuts before the mid-terms, re-elect Republicans or it’s doomed!...” Well, guess what? It is doomed, but it was never not-doomed. Guess that makes him smarter than the rest of us. Hmmm. We’re doomed I’m tellin’ you. Give me fruitcake and I promise to stop badmouthing Fearless Leader! Yeah, that’s the ticket! That is all!  Okay, I know I said we were back live and done with reposting past posts for a while, but then this morning's news feed shoved something back in my face that I thought was worth a relook. The post below made it into this blog in April 2015 (we were so young and innocent then) when I saw something on the news and recognized a face and a memory long forgotten came rushing back. Namely, my close encounter with a serial killer while living in California in the 80's (again, so young and innocent). Prosecutors across the country now think they can pin 90 murders on this dude. You'll find the updated latest story on Samuel Little here.
I wouldn’t normally burden my faithful blog readers (which, as of today total zero) with this sort of crap, but something happened to me in the early 80’s that jumped back out in front of me almost two years ago AND jumped back out in front of me again today. Think of this as a study in how seemingly random events in someone’s life (in this case, my life) can tie to something much larger. So let’s start with what happened nearly two years ago…April of 2013 to be precise. I’m minding my own business perusing a local news site online when I came across a link to an article entitled, “Cold Case Arrest Prompts Cross Country Probe”. There is a photo of the guy LAPD had arrested next to the link. Something about the photo flipped a switch in my brain so I clicked the link to read the story. The story was about a 74 year old named Samuel Little who was arrested in a Kentucky homeless shelter and was being charged in California for the murder of three women in the late 1980’s. The article detailed things about the guy’s life over the course of 56 years. In all that time, he only spent 10 years in prison for stuff like shoplifting, armed robbery and rape. He had been suspected of and tried for murder twice, but there was never enough evidence to convict. This time, they had DNA evidence. The article also mentioned that while he had been living in California he had driven a beat-up station wagon with the fake wood paneling down the sides (remember those jewels?). It also said that he had used the alias, George McDowell. That did it for me. The guy I knew was driving a station wagon like, but called himself George McDaniel. Too close for a mere coincidence. The reason for publishing the article nationwide was there was now a large law enforcement task trying to pin more unsolved killings on this guy and they were looking for anyone who could shed some light on Little’s movements. States involved included California, Florida, Kentucky, Missouri, Louisiana, Texas, Georgia, Mississippi, and Ohio. So now, let’s step back in time a bit to around 1984 (the exact date is a bit unclear to me…hey, those years all run together). I had just come home from work while living in San Diego. I always parked my Chevy pickup on the street out in the front of the condo. As I was going into the door, I heard a loud screech of tires and turned to see a car hit the left rear corner of my truck, swerve off across the street, jump the curb of a vacant lot, and do a complete 360 in the lot before coming to a stop. I went out to see the damage to the truck. The guy saw me and got out of the car (the beat up station wagon with the fake wood panels down the side). In the meantime, a neighbor came out and told me he called police. The driver reeked of alcohol though he wasn't stumbling around or anything. I could see there was a young woman still sitting in his car. He shook my hand and identified himself as George McDaniel. He apologized for causing me trouble and told me that his daughter (who is still in the car) said something to him that distracted him and he veered into my vehicle. He assured me he had insurance. When he heard that the neighbor had called police, the guy started getting really nervous and crosses the street to his car. He said he wanted to check on his daughter though he got back in on the driver side. We could hear him trying to start it when the police arrived. One cop gets the guy out of the car and is talking to him. The other cop goes over the passenger side and is trying to get the girl out, but she refuses. He saw that she was injured and called for paramedics. By now another patrol car shows up and the cop driving that car came over to talk to me. Soon thereafter the paramedics and were trying to coax the girl out of the car so they could treat her though she still refuses. The original article mentioned that he had been a professional boxer in his younger days and it certainly fit. This was a big man; I would have made him as a heavy weight. The police conducted a sobriety test on the guy, which he failed. One of the cops pulled out handcuffs and the guy resisted...it took both of those officers to take him down and cuff him. The girl refused treatment so the paramedics left. The police put the girl in the back seat of the other police car. One of the cops came over and gave me an accident report so I could file with my insurance company. I mentioned to him that the guy said he had insurance. That’s when I learned that he didn’t have insurance. In fact, he didn't even have a valid driver’s license. Then the cop tells me that they recognized the "daughter" as a known prostitute. The cop said the guy admitted they were fooling around as they were coming down my street and that he just veered into my pickup. Okay, hopefully you’re still with me here. Let’s jump to today. For some reason I was thinking about all of this stuff and Googled the guy. Turns out, he was convicted in September 2014 and sentenced to three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. His attorney indicated that they would appeal (insert attorney joke/insult here). Who knows, if they’re able to finally pin other cold cases from other states on him maybe they’ll just heap on more time. I guess it just goes to show how weird life can be sometimes. How random acts may not be so random after all. |
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