Idle Ramblings of a Slightly Mad Man

I am not a romantic guy.  Not even close.  It is a fault of mine I guess. 

I bring this up because we were having a conversation, since Valentines Day is coming up, about husbands and wives and dating and romancing and all that yucky stuff that I just don’t get.  (Don’t even ask how I got married.  I am still shocked about it too.  I did not woo her with my romance, that is for sure.)

The thing that I am amazed about is how guys will go out and buy flowers for their women.  Why?  They die in days.  There is nothing like sending a message that everything is temporary like giving something that is going to die in days to a woman that you lust or love.  And women are fine with this. 

You know flowers are like the only thing we buy where when they die we don’t return them to where we bought them and demand our money back? 

When I give a gift at least it is more permanent and will last longer than a few days.  I buy things that signify that I plan on being a more permanent fixture in her life than flowers.  I buy kitchen and cleaning products.

Buying flowers baffle me.

Do you usually write your blogs out in advance and save them for a later date or do you just write them just before you post them?

 I write mine out just before I post them but I did notice that you can write and save for a later date.

I am just curious as to how you all create your writings.

Driving home last night from Manhattan, I had the time to think about death and dying.  I was thinking about if I died today who would show up to my funeral and viewing.  I thought about if I lived a life that was memorable to other people and if they would remember me years after I had passed.

 You see, I am not a world leader, Hollywood superstar or a role model.  I have made no huge impact on this planet Earth in anyway, shape, or form.  I am just an average Joe.  Many of us are. 

Some of us don’t like knowing that they will live and die anonymous so they go out and do something about it.  Unfortunately we know the real names of the people who shoot up schools, that blow up federal buildings and assassinates presidents.  Those we can remember easily.

Jim Morrison wrote in his composition The End “… Did you live a good world when you died?  Enough to base a movie on?” 

For me, the answer to that would be a no.

I don’t fear death.  I don’t fear what comes after death, if anything.  I don’t fear that I will be vaguely remembered by those around me after I am gone.  For me, I am ok that I am not going to leave a legacy.  I am ok that I am who I am.  I don’t seek fame or notoriety.

I have had time to think about my compulsions lately.  Maybe it is more than thinking, maybe it is more like obsessing over them.  I started a list of the compulsions I have.  As I got to writing these things down I never realized how compulsive I am. 

• When I make a sandwich with lunchmeat and cheese I have to put down the meat on the bread first then cheese.  Cheese never goes first.  But Cheese is always the last.  So this means that on one side the bread, condiment and meat touch and the other side the bread, condiment and cheese touch and yet I have to make the sandwich by laying the meat first.
• When I make peanut butter and jelly, I have to make the sandwich with first the peanut butter and then the jelly.
• When I drop the Browns off at the Superbowl, I have to wipe a minimum of three wipes.  No less no matter how clean the TP looks after the wipe.  (You know you all look too so don’t get all grossed out.)
• When I first enter my hotel room, the first thing I do is to put the shampoo and the conditioner and soap in the shower. 
• When I cut the grass it is always the same pattern and direction. 
• Every Sunday I have to listen to Breakfast with the Beatles.
• In my office at work I have to sit facing the door.  If I am away from my own office and I don’t have my own desk to work at I will find an empty conference room where I can sit at the table facing the door. 
• Dishwasher has to be loaded with cups all in one spot, plates together, spoons in one slot, forks in another, etc…
• When I am in the shower I have to wash my hair first, and then face, then the rest of the body from shoulders to toes. 

 I am sure I have more and just the few I have written so far is enough for all of my regular readers (all 4 of you) to give me hell over. 

I wrote up the below post while on my flight home on Friday.  I got caught up over the weekend with family stuff and never posted it.  I almost was not going to and then I decided I would but edit out the language.  Then I thought that you readers deserved a little insight to the mind of the Mad Man and see how I really felt about what was happening.  So below is the unedited version of my flight back from the West Coast. ……………………..

 Normally I don’t go off on these wild, rage filled rants but God Damn it I am pissed.  Let me go back a few moments to earlier this morning as I was getting ready to fly back home.  Everything was going well this morning, the weather was looking nice from my departure site and my arrival site and I was even the first in line dropping off my rental car.  Life was good up until that point.  Then it all spiraled downhill from there. 

I come to find out that the TSA flagged me for extra security screening.  That is not really a big deal.  I understand why, and I support the need to keep flying as safe as possible.  I am happy to do my part and be patient.   

Here though is where it really begins.  This flight that I was on was packed full.  Not a seat to be spared.  As a passenger, I do my part, making sure that I follow directions and I have my one carry on luggage and a briefcase, laptop bag or purse as my additional item.  I DID NOT HAVE A PURSE, BY THE WAY.  I had my carry on and my laptop bag.   

There are some lofty pricks out there that believe that the rules do not apply to them.  They bring on their carry on luggage, briefcase, garment bag, laptop bag, shopping bag of snacks and their Starbucks, that’s right, your trip is not complete without your fucking Starbucks.   

And no one employed with the airlines will say anything to these assholes with all the extra luggage.  I don’t care if you are first class or economy class, the rules are the fucking rules.  Follow them.  But does it stop there?  Oh no the hell it doesn’t.  When they go to board with all their shit they have their hands so full with their luggage, laptop bag, briefcase and Starbucks that they are unable to give the ticket clerk their ticket so asshole has to hold up the line while he makes the attendant go through his jacket pocket and dig out the God Damn Ticket.   

HELLO!  TICKET LADY!  Here is your fucking opportunity to tell this prick that he has too much shit.   

Of course you all know me all to well (all 4 of my regular readers) and know that I am not one to let stupid shit like this pass by, I speak up and loudly say, “There is always one on every flight that has to hold up the line”  He shoots me an angry look but so what.  What can he do?  His hands are full. 

We board the plane and once inside we all have to wait while all the passangers that brought more than 2 items stow and secure all of their shit and they don’t even use the space under the seat in front of them.  No, the arrogant pricks have to put all of their stuff into the overhead and completely fill up the bin.  The whole line again has to wait for these pricks and expect the rest of us to wait because they can’t follow the rules and guidelines.   

I know what is going to happen once the plane lands and we are ready to disembark from the plane.  These guys are going to hold everyone up again as they gather all their items out of the overhead bins.  Assholes.  Learn to travel  within the rules.   

People piss me off.  The airlines piss me off.  The rules are made simple.  People need to follow them and the airlines need to enforce them.   

And if you are one of these arrogant, asshole pricks that just has to bring everything, including the kitchen sink as carry on, I hope you learned something from this rant.   

Thanks USAir and thanks for another wonderful flight experience. 

And thanks to the assholes that provided me the material for this posting.

As I was reading others posts the last few days a common theme or a pattern was emerging.  More than 3 of the blogs I read mentioned that they keep their blog secret. 

They have never told or they hide the existence of their blog from friends and family.  Why is that?  Why do people have to hide their blog?  Then is occurred that for most of the blogs I read, blogging is a diary of sorts.  No different than hiding a diary under a mattress or hidden in a drawer. 

I don’t keep mine a secret but I don’t blab or brag about it either to my friends and family.  I posted the fact that I have a blog on my forums and they read my forums but that is about the extent of it.  So does that make me secretive?

I am not judging what other do with their blogs.  I just thought it interesting how it was a reoccurring theme the past few days.

 Carry on as you were.

I read about this place in Seattle called the Gum Wall.  I don’t remember where it was that I read about it but I know that there was supposed to be wall where people just placed their chewed gum.

On my last trip out to Seattle I could not find it.  I looked around for it but not really knowing the area I was not sure where to look..  I also did not ask anyone for directions because I didn’t want to be embarrassed.  So I ended up leaving Seattle without ever seeing the Gum Wall.

Which leads me to tonight.  I was walking around Pikes Place Market when I took a wrong turn and stumbled out into an alley and what was right before me?  The Gum Wall!!!!  The wall I had read about.

Here I was before the wall and I did not have my camera and my cell phone was out of charge so I could not even take a picture.  I did happen to have in my mouth gum which I left behind on the wall. 

Now in Seattle there is a small piece of me left behind in that chewing gum that I stuck on the wall.  I contributed to a part of modern art.  Odd as it sounds, there is something fulfilling about that. 

Have you ever caught a scent that triggered memories? 

I just had one.  Let me take a moment and back up and set up the scene. 

I am on the road again, traveling for work.  I am out on the West Coast and staying at a very popular brand name hotel.  As part of my routine when I first enter my room I take all the complimentary bath supplies that I use and put them in the shower.  So this morning I enter the shower and I open the hotel supplied shampoo and conditioner and wash my hair with them.  I then moved to the soap.  When I opened up the soap I catch a smell that flashed me back to elementary school. 

The soap smelled like paste.  Elmer’s white paste.  The kind we used to use on art projects.  The kind we used to eat.  The kind we used to try to permanently glue our fingers together.  I have not smelled a jar of Elmer’s Paste in decades.  Art projects I made in grade school all flooded back.  Past elementary school teachers flashed back in my mind.  A huge chunk of my childhood recalled in a quick instant.

But then I was turned off to the smell, who wouldn’t?  There I am, in the shower, in all of my naked glory (good luck getting that image out of your heads today) with no choice but to use this paste smelling soap.  I am now hoping that my clothes do not stick to my body because I used this paste soap. 

I think I will see if there is a CVS around here to buy one of those sample/travel bars of soap.  There are worse things to smell like but I don’t need to have a trail of grade school kids following me like I’m the Pied Piper of Paste trying to get their fix from the past man.

It is interesting how past memories can be triggered just by a scent.

I have not been able to shake this damn cough of mine.  It is now like two months and I have totally given up on my doctors.  I have had steroids, antibiotics and medicines that should be leaving me fit as a fiddle (How fit is a fiddle anyway?) and yet I still cough like my mother, who has been smoking for 40 years. 

Yesterday, I wrapped up my class and had just finished packing up and threw my laptop bag over my shoulder as one of my students walked up to me to talk and catch up on old times.  He is someone I have known over the years and used to work with in a past life.  He is one of those close talkers, you know what I am talking about, no respect for your personal space, the type that will stand toe to toe with you and likes to get right up against you to the point that if him and I were women and we had breasts our nipples would be rubbing against each other.  As it were, our nipples were almost rubbing against each other.

I am not ever one to back away from these types of people because I know it is what they like, making people feel uncomfortable in the conversation and in their presence, or at least this guy does.  Oh, and I forgot to mention that this guy is like 6′ 7″ and towers over my little 5′ 9″ frame. 

After talking all day, I can feel the cough wanting to come out, to be unleashed like the tiger it is.  I have been fighting it, controlling it and doing a damn good job of it.  As we stand there toe to toe, nearly rubbing nipples (ok, my nipples don’t reach his.  The reality is that my nipples would be rubbing his belly button and that is an image that even I don’t want stuck in  my head) a sudden and uncontrollable cough overtakes me. 

Being the gentleman that I am, and with the gracious manners my mother has taught me I covered my mouth, but not before this mucus launched out of my mouth like dragster out of the starting gate.  The guy politely waited until I was done coughing and then resumed his story without realizing what had happened.  There I stood, gazing at my phlegm, eye level to me and leaving me to wonder what to do next.  He didn’t see it.  He had no clue what I did.  If I say nothing, what is the big deal?  Who would know?

He paused in his story and stood looking at me like he was waiting for me to respond.  I had no clue as to what he was saying or even asking.  I wasn’t paying attention.  I was worried about the huge lugger on his chest.  What did he say?  What should I say?  Damn!  Now I am feeling uncomfortable for sure and it is not because he is standing over me and staring down at me.

I take a step back and away from him and I reach over to the table beside me and pull a tissue out of the tissue box and hand it to him.  “Here, I think you might need this,” I say as I walk past him. 

He stood there dumbfounded as I left the room. 

I am sure in a few months, when we cross paths again he will have a comment or two to say about what happened yesterday but that will give me time to come up with some sort of witty response.   

I’ve seen my own death.  I know when and how I am going to die.

 I had a dream one night and it was so clear and so vivid.  It was so real.  It was not like most dreams that are kinda fuzzy and odd.  This was was very specific.

It was several years ago and I was very sober when I went to sleep.  In fact, I can clearly recall that it was weeks since I had alcohol or drugs.  I could explain this away if I smoked some pot or ate some ’shrooms or finished a bottle of Jack but this was not the case.  I was stone cold sober.  I awoke with the realization of what it was, a premonition of my own death. 

I die in a tragic way.  I don’t do anything silly or stupid to cause it but I don’t die pretty.  I am thankful that there is no one with me at the time it occurs.  I die alone.  Some might say that is sad to die alone but I find it rather comforting to know that no one has to watch me slowly slip away into the grasp of the reaper. 

I see the how, the why and the where.  I know it occurs at night, late night, around 2:33 AM, that is what the clock in my dream said, and it is a cold winter night.  As I said, very real, very vivid and very detailed. 

Could this be happening soon?  It is possible that it would be this winter, maybe next winter, what year I am unsure of.  I am not scared to die.  I don’t live in fear.  I am curious to see what happens after this life, if anything.

If, one day, you come to this silly little blog of mine and see that I have not posted in some time and it is still winter, Google “one car accident on route 476 north just past Route 3 exit”.  Chances are that is where you will find me.