LooseCanon

October…

Well, this year is blowing out in a hurry..

It’s always around this time I start thinking about next year..

Kind of a pre new year resolution thing..

Let see, it’s too late to fix this or that this year cuz, time is running out..

Next year is going to be ‘better’….Yeah, that’s the one…

Next year is going to be better…

I’ve got to be finished wading through the sludge by then…Next year is going to be roses..

Every year October swings around and I am repeating those same lines..

LooseCanon, why can’t you get it though your thick skull, It’s already better…Spoiled rotten…….

October…Her favorite time of year…I never much cared for it before we met..

It’s something about the ‘time’ of the season that always discouraged me…

The magnitude of the relentless awful truth that is the circle of life…

Love changed all that..Love made October ok with me..

That was many years ago, and still it is her reflection that carries me through these 31 days.

Oh man, this isn’t going to be one of those ‘crazy’ LooseCanon blogs again is it??…

You know the ones where he gets all nuts and starts spewing’ all kinds of personal sexual turmoils and shit?

Like a god damn volcano with a hard on?

Nope…

Really, it’s…I wanted to wish her a happy Birthday, and it’s not like it’s that ‘one’ day that happens to fall in the month of October…

It’s not that I am afraid I’ll like, forget about it, and be stuck in the ‘belated’ line…

It’s more like, what October ‘is’ to me…

There were so many October’s that came and went…So many I didn’t even make the ‘belated’ line…

Yet,…not one passed without it being her month, here, inside of me…

So, Happy Birthday, October…I am so grateful you are in the world..

It is the month that marks the fall season, and of some gravity personally, as I am now experiencing the fall years of my life..

Other than some saggy skin and the outside chance of aphasia setting in at any given moment, I would not trade these years for any other…

They have proven to be a totality, and luckily, the mistakes and immaturity of previous times have proven themselves to be of value after all..

What lies behind the falling leaves, gusty winds, fractured sunlight of these days of change is what gives them merit.

Half the living world experiencing a common goal..

A busy time of preparation…Awaking from the long, lazy, forgiving days of summer..

An instinctive anxiety to ‘make haste’…Mingled amongst those sets of gusts, Winter can be heard growling, “I am coming…..It may not seem like it today, but make no mistake….I am coming”…

For most of us American’s, October is the gateway to the holiday season with Halloween on the tail end, (one of my favorites) then Thanksgiving less than a month after…All leading up to the ‘big ones’ Chanukah and Christmas Day with New Years kind of a basking in the after glow…

I think that’s what she meant about October being her favorite time of year….I could be wrong of course, however, she has a knack of ‘thinking’ way down the road from me, so it makes sense…

This year, I am putting my personal shaman hex on the Santa Anna winds and their notorious wild fire havoc here in California…As an added safe guard I have summoned the dead spirit of Hatfield ‘the rain maker’ to assist me in my efforts…

Did I ever tell you guys about Hatfield ‘the rain maker’?….True story…Right here in my town…Filled up the newly formed Lake Morena reservoir, over spilled the dam, and flooded out half of San Diego…

Got some serious magic working with me on this deal..

Trick or treat…

I got this big fat letter in the mail today …In big letters it says “HERE’S THAT SECOND CHANCE YOU HOPED FOR LooseCanon”…

I had to stop for a moment and check the return side of it….Make sure it wasn’t from God or somebody important…..

It was from Mutual of Omaha….

That’s an insurance provider right?…..I’ve never done business with them,…ever…

So it was with some amazement I stood there by my rickety mail box on this hot summer afternoon with thunder heads towering up in the east, causing a slight back draft prevailing from my west…I’d been working under the house making a basement storage area ..Just me and my constant companion Violet…My one female cat…In fact…

….That’s her kicking’ back while I write this thing still fresh in my mind…

I came up from under the house for some air, and the breeze by the mail box felt fine as it dried up the sweat on my chrome dome and shoulders…It’s one of those freebies in life I try to make note of when ever it occurs…

So, Mutual of Omaha claims to have the second chance I’ve been hoping for….Got to love modern technology…How those guys could manage not only to ‘know’ what the second chance I’ve been hoping for was,… but to fit it into an envelope small enough to slip inside my mail box….I am impressed…

I figure I am going to be even more impressed when I finally open the envelope up…Reminds me Johnny Carson doing Carnac the Magnificent….

Like I said I’ve never had any dealings with the company…

Yea, I know the obvious..They are about insurance…Security….Including life insurance…

The kind of insurance that some how appeals to our fear of death..

Insuring a kind of concrete knowledge that for at least while the benefactors are ‘in the money’, you are still ,’in the show’,…beyond the grave…

….A positive haunting…..

It temporarily beats back the finality of death…….You know, the thing that scares the shit out of us and makes us ‘governable’…..

Life of the party LooseCanon,…..

Only thing I know about Mutual of Omaha is they sponsor that ‘Wild Kingdom’ show on television….It originated in 1963 and the host was Marlin Perkins..

The show was great…..Lots of education about how the other beings on the planet survive and find fulfillment…

It seems to me strange logic that a insurance company would sponsor documentary style television promoting nature’s natural selection process..If anything, a fundamental denominator of all creatures surviving the wild is the absolute knowledge life holds no security….

When an insurance company pays out a claim it’s only the monetary portion of the loss that’s covered..For example, when a subscriber loses their home to fire or flood the best case scenario would be the insurance funds cover complete rebuilding of the structure..

Insurance programs have no means to cover the emotional trauma such a disaster entails…

I was reading recently an article entitled, ‘Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch’ http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/science/14tier.html that suggests we may in fact be living in someone else’s ‘Matrix’….This hypothesis is based on the current standard of virtual technology weighting it against the short time it has taken virtual technology to arrive at it’s current state…

I figure it’s just a matter of time before we see insurance companies advertising a policy that guarantees total protection from the events we now insure ourselves against…Initially the policy will be expensive, just to pay for all that software..

However in time, I expect it will become mandatory ‘State law’ for all citizens to carry such a policy…After all, the burden tax payers are shelling out to support ’social programs’ would be eliminated in a flash if nothing ‘bad’ ever happened..

So, what you think?…Has the future of insurance already arrived?…

Is it possible the ’second chance’ I’ve been waiting for is in fact the program I described, waiting for me inside this large envelope needing only my simple signature (and credit card number of course) on the dotted line?

I’m getting excited!..Are you getting excited? I am definitely getting excited!

I’m tearing this baby open man!…Oh shit…

I forgot…

I got laid off last week and my credit card is max’d out!

Opening this little slice of heaven is just gonna’ get me all depressed…

Well, hell…Story of my life..And to think I missed my second chance by that….much…

It’s ok though, cuz I bet you all are going to get one of these envelopes in your mailbox too!..Yeah, I mean come on, it’s not like I am special or anything…I bet Mutual of Omaha wants everybody to get in on this deal!

Wow, I got to admit, I feel pretty good knowing there’s so many folks out there going to get the ’second chance they have been hoping for’….

First I wanted to thank all the beautiful souls out there who wished me well on my birthday…The proceeding blog is in no way an afront to your kind thoughts..

My writes are personal, and deal with ‘inner’ turmoils and what I describe as the root of those turmoils…I post because as human beings we all have common links in our lives and it is my hope that by ‘addressing’ mine in a public fashion, I will help someone else out there understand their own….

‘TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY’

Birthdays are great…When your five…

Ok that’s a bit extreme…Until your twenty-five..

That’s the year the ‘over the hill’ cards start flowing in.

The ‘quarter century’ mark…The year society has determined your birthday no longer to be a celebration of you, but a joke…on you…

Previous to the twenty-five year demarcation point birthdays are filled with gifts,

balloons, cake and ice cream..Smoking candles magically containing your special ‘wish’…

Did you know, if you don’t blow out all the candles on the first try, the wish doesn’t come true?

…..Always a catch…

I mean come on!…Shouldn’t a birthday be the one day of the year a individual doesn’t have to pass the ’success’ meter in the eyes of the world?

….Always the pressure…

Well today is my birthday and I am here to tell you, I quit!

Like a fool, I’ve played along with society’s birthday brain wash over half a century…

I can’t believe it took me this long to wise up….Maybe I just sold out to the ‘your special day’ stroke..The assurance of a little bit of extra cash coming my way…The odds of ‘getting a little’ from the old lady always go up birthdays….Yea, I am sure of it…I caved into the self centered glitter ball…

I rode that birthday jet fighter right the hell up there…90 degrees straight up to 56 hundred feet and that’s where my plane stalled….Next year? I am 55..The year after that, 54 and so on until my ‘death day’…

How come we only celebrate one of those?

Cuz society is done with us then…No more need to tell us year after progressive year how we should be viewing ourselves…How others are viewing us…How we should behave. How we should not behave… What we should be thinking..What we shouldn’t be thinking. How much more we need to contribute to get that ’success’ meter in the ‘green’…

Well I say “who cares”?….We’re all going to be six feet under the green anyway…

Yea, today is my birthday…I almost got there…I woke up today and for awhile it didn’t click..The programing didn’t kick in…I think it’s cuz for a few years now I’ve been subconsciously doing a ‘birthday intervention’ de-programing thing…

It takes a long time to ‘debug’….It seeped up this year though…To a conscious level..

That’s why I am writing about it…I think it’s a positive thing seeing my birthday plane shuddering…It’s engine fanning out… Coming to a complete stop…Watching it begin it’s majestic tail spin, down…

Gun’s blasting….Wiping out the years…A hundred hits making a hundred holes in the expectations of conformity…Yea baby, yea!

Today’s my birthday,..and for the first time in a long time, I feel I am heading in the right direction..

I am the kind a guy who wakes up in the morning and feels invincible..

Like there is nothing I can’t do…

I’ve been known to remodel an entire room in the house before anybody else wakes up…

Yep, the energizer bunny…That’s me.

Only problem is I’m not invincible.

In fact, the same guy that wakes up everyday with a constant hard on, is the same guy who last night just before he snuffed out his last cigarette of the day, lit the filter end by mistake.

My latest scheme was to take two disabled women in wheelchairs for an outing to Balboa Park.

That’s in San Diego. Next to the zoo.

The women are living in a Skilled Nursing Facility (nursing home) in a suburb of Diego.

I didn’t just walk in and pick out two strangers either.

Which to my credit means I actually gave this idea some forethought instead of doing my usual ‘fools rush in’ approach.

One of the women’s name is Shirley and the other is Donna…..

Shirley is sixty two years and Donna is maybe forty five.

Donna is a slim five nine redhead with milk white skin and big blue eyes that…..adore me…

Shirley is five seven and about two hundred pounds…

Both of these women are spiritually evolved souls..

Even with all they must bear at this time of their lives they can still laugh, smile, and appreciate…

What they have in common is that they are room mates in the facility,….and me.

Donna has lived in this home for five years….

Shirley for six weeks.

Shirley is my divorced wife….

Divorced from marriage, however still the best of friends.

I have been blessed with her friendship for over twenty years, and am much the better for knowing her…

Donna on the other hand is a stranger.

The first day Shirley became a resident I visited and learned that in the entire five years Donna has lived at this facility she had never once been outside.

She didn’t trust the staff or the other residences to risk being forgotten and had bad visions of expiring outside in the courtyard alone in the dark… Just Donna and her wheel chair…

That changed the first day I visited…

For some unknown reason Donna trusted me from the first moment…

I told her I was taking Shirley outside so she could enjoy a cigarette and would Donna like to go outside also?….

She immediately said “yes please” in her soft as a mouse voice…

I swear to God, no less than fifty people at the home were rubber necking, and commenting that “Donna is going outside” as we wheeled our way to the outer door.

I visit every other day to the home and Donna always goes outside.

Once a week, usually Thursday, I bring the two ladies food from the outside world.

This is a big deal cuz it’s what ever they order….

Donna is a Italian food lover, and Shirley usually orders Chinese.

I got them Direct TV for their room. Each has their own receiver so they can channel jockey with out annoying one another.

Enough stroking my own ego (somebody needs to slap me sometimes) and back to the Balboa Park outing.

Or should I be honest here and call it what it was?…

Fiasco..comes to mind….

Shirley can walk…I mean she can get from her wheelchair into and out of a car pretty much independently….

Not the case with Donna…She weights only about 120 lbs. So no big deal right?….

This is what I mean about me, waking up feeling invincible…..

I wore a back brace that day…

I am not completely out of touch with reality….

Hurt my back several years ago while working as a landscaper and have learned the hard way how to protect myself.

I was ok picking her up out of the chair, but leaning over to get her into the front seat of my Honda….

The roof is too low man, and I really banged the hell out of my forehead cuz I was so worried about my fragile package…

I saw stars and think I made a quick loop around the universe and back before I grabbed the door to steady myself……

Really smooth LooseCanon….

So I get in the car right? My hands are shaking, my head is throbbing, and now I know just how Donna feels about going ‘outside’.

Anyway, I blow it off cuz I am a man and I don’t want to freak out two already freaked out girls…

I mean, it wouldn’t be cool,..and I am always about the cool…

No brag, just fact.

We get to Balboa Park, and it’s a nice day.

Big white clouds mixed with blue skies, a soft breeze, not cold at all.

I park next to the zoo entrance cuz, always thinking ahead, I know the lanes into the park here are pretty level.

Shirley has assured me she can scoot along using her feet as propellers.

I just have to manage Donna’s wheelchair and get Shirl out of the occasional bad spot.

We hit the Spanish Arts Center, one of my favorite haunts…

Lots of artisans hanging out in quaint little shops with the coolest stuff made from anything from tree bark to exotic gold jewelry. The folks working these art galleries are always busy doing their thing, and come on to you real lay back and mellow…..

I’ve done this kind of thing in a past period of my life and I can tell you…

They are really sweating it inside. Hoping against hope your going to buy something, any damn thing so they don’t have to close up later feeling totally depressed.

It a tough, scary, insecure, way to go…Man, I got so much respect for all of them…

Donna is in a lot more pain than I realized…

The foot square tile pavers all over the Spanish Art Center are bumpy and she feels everyone.

It must have shaken something loose cuz next thing I know, ….she’s got to “pee”…….

Like I said Donna is a stranger, and Shirley,…God bless her, can be of no help on this one…..

I think it safe to say Donna and I are no longer strangers after today.

We tooled around and made it over to the Organ Pavilion.

I am sweating by now as it turns out there are no actual level spots at Balboa Park.

It just appears that way to the casual visitor, the untrained eye, or those that think their invincible…

The girls are munching on tacos and sodas while I lay down on some really pretty green lawn.

You can’t really appreciate all grass has to offer until you lay down on your back, resting your bones..Looking at the faces in the clouds peering back at you with a big “I told you so” grin on their faces.

The girls ask me why I am not eating with them….Like I am disin’ them or something…Kind a pouty..

Like I just turn down sex with em or something….

…I tell em I ain’t hungry…

Truth is I am afraid I’ll puke cuz I am tired, hot, and horny, but not for them…

I just want to get done with this whole thing and go home….

It’s cruel to the capacitated when the disabled try to show how much they can do for them selves…

Yea, I know, it’s a self esteem thing and all…

In this case however, a woman’s got to know her limitations. Shirley is always pulling this and it aggravates me cuz ninety percent of the time it escalates into a hassle.

I don’t mean between us, we actually hardly ever fight.

In all our years together we only had one major blow out….

I mean, it causes complications..

On one hand it’s healthy for her and I’ve got to grow up to it….

On the other, it wears me out…

I am laying on the grass right?

Catching my breath, resting my eyes, slowing down the heart rate.

Feeling the sweat on my brow drying up when I hear the soft mouse voice of Donna calling my name…

She doesn’t have a lot of emotion in that voice I must say…

I casually answer “yea?”, and after a couple of seconds I look up to her pointing a rail thin arm toward the horizon…

First I think she playing ‘let’s make a sundial’.

Being a smart enough fella I look where she’s referring and see Shirley’s run away wheel chair hauling down a thirty percent grade…

Napkins flying off, taco wrapping flapping in the wind. Paper plate laying next to the trash can she felt compelled to discard her used utilities into…’All by her self’….

I caught up to her..My left knee will never be the same.

A nice guy saw the whole thing going down before I ever got off the grass and saved the day….

I am thanking the guy, Shirley is crying and thanking the guy, and I am noticing how my damn knee is giving me the third degree…

Like there’s just bone on bone holding it together when I put weight on it….

Anyway the nice guy and his girlfriend go strutting off..(he’s getting some tonight, I can tell)……

I get,….. to push Shirley (that’s the two hundred pound Shirley) back up the hill…

……God hates me.

Yep, some guys feed their male ego with quads, dune buggies, dirt bikes, toy haulers, high performance trucks and motorhomes, and that’s just for the desert season.

Summertime the ‘river rat’ crowd takes the lead with jet skis, power boats, and God knows what all.

Half the fun is tooling up the road showin off the toys. I bet these guys get a hard on every time they pass a rig ‘less than’.

What can i say, i am just as guilty.

My thing is vacuum cleaners.

Yea,i admit it, i’m a vacuum cleaner junkie.

Buy probably three or four used ones a year. Got to, cuz I am real tough on em. No mercy.

Any given day one can see me blastin around the house drivin one of these big dogs, doin wheelies, dounuts, bashin in to walls, suckin it up baby, big time.

Take for instance this little slice of heaven i just picked up for fifteen bucks!

A bad ass DIRT DEVIL with high performance 12 amp power plant, hepa filter, bagless technology, swivel casters, and canister accessories all standard! Not to mention the wide angle headlight.

I think i’m gettin an erection!

I took this sweetheart for a test drive this mornin after cleaning and polishing it’s illustrious hunter green body, and wow what a rush! Made my entire day by 8:30 am!

Yep, I am a material boy livin in a material world.

The planet Saturn is blowin’ everybody away right now. 20 years ago Voyager 1 and 2 saw a perfect hexagon shape 1,500 miles wide over the north pole of the planet. This is a bit strange cuz there is a constant grand a mile per hour hurricane blowin on Saturn every day. The South pole looks fine, or like it should, you know, a huge eye of the huricane circular in shape, like what you’d expect.

First NASA scientists figured the hexagon at the north was just a fluke, or like a mirage playing with our limited perceptions. The bets are off now with the new Cassini spacecraft shootin pictures of the north pole and the hexagon is still there.

“We haven’t seen a (geometric) feature like this anywhere else on any other planet,” said Cassini scientist Kevin Baines of the NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “It’s unbelievable.”

I figure the Saturnites must be freakin out right now. They go and spend all this time and money to create the ultimate “keep out” sign by manufacturing and maintaining a hurricane like condition on the face of the planet so off worlders like us will take a peek and say “too windy” then move on. There’s no doubt in my mind they know we’re lookin. I mean come on, the center of the hexagon has no wind at all and its a straight shot down the funnel to the interior of the planet. Those guys are lookin up at our spacecraft shootin pictures, tryin to figure out if the piece of garbage floatin around their planet is going to fall right through the hexagon and hit them in the head.

Da shit’ah goin’ah hit da fan’ah if we don’t at least ask if we can “poke” around in somebody’s back yard.

Didn’t one of those Voyager spacecraft like,…suddenly crash..or disappear? Maybe I am thinkin of one of the Mars probes….Probably got them pissed at us too.

You can check this out at Discovery.com and draw your own conclusions.

I think it’s kind of strange that one of Saturn’s moon’s Enceladus is “opening up” blowin out huge plumes of ice and water into space.

www.saturndaily.com

Like if we had the capasity to stage our millitary defenses on our Moon instead of painting big bull’s eye targets on our underground silo’s in Colorado, wouldn’t we do it?

Man those Saturnites got to be some cold blooded folk…That big bitch is like..out there, man, far away from the warm rays of the Sun. I got it! Maybe we’ll luck out on this deal….You know like in War of the Worlds, the aliens couldn’t handle the bacteria around here…..Maybe when the Saturnites invade us they will like….just melt.