Some Liquor for today. And a few toasts.
"We drink to your coffin. May it be built from the wood of
a hundred year old oak tree that I shall plant tomorrow."
"There are good ships,
and there are wood ships,
The ships that sail the sea.
But the best ships, are friendships,
And may they always be."
"'Beannachtam na Feile Padraig!'
Happy St. Patrick's Day!"
The devil invented Scotch whiskey to make the Irish poor.
You know what they say about Irishmen with big noses, doncha?
Another damn year must have come and gone. I don't really remember it, much anyway. I was a day shy, really only missed it by less than an hour, of being born on St Patty's day. But every year I get the green fever. I celebrate my day all that week, this year won't be different. I really should interview designated drivers.
First Irish Joke of the Month
An armed and hooded robber bursts into the Bank of Ireland and forces the
tellers to load a sack full of cash. On his way out the door with the loot,
one brave Irish customer grabs the hood and pulls it off revealing the
robber¹s face.
The robber shoots the guy in the head without hesitation! He then looks
around the bank to see if anyone else has seen him.
One of the tellers is looking straight at him and the robber walks over and
calmly shoots him in the head also. Everyone by now is very scared and
looking down at the floor.
"Did anyone else see my face?" calls the robber.
There are a few moments silence then one elderly Irish gent, looking down,
tentatively raises his hand and says...
"I think me wife may have caught a glimpse."
OK, so let's first address the fact I watched "The Bachelor" this season.
I hunt and fish, I kill and gut animals, then I eat them. On occasion I eat at KFC. I wear animal products and sport T-shirts with off-color words on them. I smoke cigars and drink Irish whiskey. But this season I watched that chick-reality series. I'm still very much a man secure in my masculinity.
Jason Mesnick needs some reality awakening. First, he had to waddle through 25 gorgeous women, many of whom made their first mistake by speaking. But still, it was fun to watch and easy to get into. This turd nugget from Seattle really knows how to bleed an audience. It's all scripted of course, he's a decent enough actor.
Listen up, we guys have been dumping women since before HOOTERS was a place to get chicken wings and watch UFC. And truth be told... <sniff> ... women have been doing the same. But this years' Bachelor did something last night on live TV that makes pretty much all men look bad. He told all watching he was dumping (Sweet) Melissa for who he really is in love with (" No, I really mean it this time!"), Molly. and Molly accepted Jason's bail-out, ("Let's see how it goes.").
Dumb meets Scum. Dumb drops panties for Scum. Scum leaves Dumb.
He actually could have had a good thing if he had started at the beginning doing this... 25 women in a few weeks?....sheeeeet!
My February closed with a bang!
Tuesday night I was driving to Corpus Christi for a much needed two days of fishing. My buddy has a house there on the water. Three covered boat slips, about 3000 square feet of deck loking out over his part of the bay. I'm sure there was an inside to the house, but I wasn't there much, only to sleep.
We hit the water Wednesday morning in his boat, a MOSCA flats boat. Whoa! I don't think it was missing much, if anything. Running into 30+- mph winds, sure we got wet, but much not much. Low gunnels allowed us to jump out and simply step back into the boat in most cases. A sweet ride on the water.
Laguna Madre is what it translates to in English, Mother. With cool temps and the high winds, there were not many other anglers out those two days. But I'm sure this huge bay could handle the traffic. And even with the big blow, most of the usually blue/green bay waters were only milky with mud.
The fish? I'm sure they were there the first day, but we managed only dink trout. The second day the trout were still avoiding us very well. We charged the MOSCA over to the King Ranch shoreline and spied a sand bar that wound along the shore for about 5 miles or more. At the edge of the sand bar was a drop-off of about 3 feet into grass covered soft mud. We waded and fished those drop offs. We caught fish.
With 10 pound test on my ALL*STAR rod, a 1/4 oz. jig head, and a pumpkin seed chartreuse colored paddle tout, we caught reds. Lots of reds. Those bay carp would hang in the mud at the drop-off of the bar, and in my mind I could picture them digging into the soft mud in an effort to escape whatever was pulling them shallow. The gold, large scaled fish were unsuccessful in each case, we landed every one of them.
Pictures? Aint none. I guess with so many fish, it just escaped my thoughts to capture it on film. Like every fishing trip, every fish caught, every time a salty wave slapped me in the face, I won't forget a single part of of this trip!
Spring weather will be here in a few weeks. I can feel the fever growing. Fishing will turn on as the water warms. I'll be ready, too.
Another of my child hood friends has died. It's becoming a common occurrence, and we all knew it would, at our age. Roger died of brain cancer. From what I've been told, his family knew of it, but then, in about a week's time, he went blind and then died in hospice care.
Death makes you reflect. Death of a friend, a peer, makes you wonder what your number is. Death of a loved one makes you ask, "why?"
I wonder about this "faith" thing. Belief. (Half the time I can't remember how to spell that word.) It makes me almost laugh when someone says that if you don't have faith you are weak minded. I've had plenty of opportunities to prove my faith and belief, and done so. The thing is, I'm damn tired of being tested. The old argument arises, "I didn't ask to be here. I'm not perfect. Why does my faith need constant testing then?" But ironically, I never fell for that, "once saved, always saved".
I'm just tired of it all. Maybe I lack the endurance to run the race, to "fight the fine fight of the faith." Maybe it's because I can't feel, touch, see, the "reward." One is born and brought up being taught to believe in the tangible, physical. Another truth be told, I really don't have the desire to float around in heaven as the pension for dying on earth. I don't want to walk through walls or spy on my loved ones still living.
My faith is God is there, to be sure. My belief in why stuff happens is best explained by the T-shirt stating the vernacular, "Shit Happens". That's the best I can do right now.
Faith and belief in God, or a God, is cheapened every day of the year. If a sports team prays to God for a victory over their adversary and wins, did they have the most faith? Then why doesn't a prayer to God to stop the raping and killing of women and children ever get answered?
I'm just an ignorant man of faith that keeps wondering why I believe. Maybe I just want to believe.
So my buddy Roger is gone. I'm glad he's in no pain and I hope his family deals successfully with their pain.
Here's wishing all a great 2009!
I was listening to some shuffled music last night, and Rob's turn came up. I think of the pigmenteer on occasion, so it was a nice surprise. I haven't heard how his estate ended up...I'm hoping it was reserved in a trust for his boy, but then, trust funds have admins, so unless it was supervised by an unbiased party, I don't have much hope that the funds will be there for the kid when he needs them.
Looking around at the blogroll I noticed it really is lacking decent content. Some of the players are extinct now, the others as mute as I have been. Just doesn't seem like anything is blog-worthy, nothing fresh or new.
I'll hang as around as long as they will let me, hoping for something good to share.
Thirty three years has not erased the stain on Halloween left by the "Candy Man."
The following story happened in Houston on October 31st, 1974.
Ronald Clark O'Bryan earned his sweet-sounding nickname most distastefully: He killed his 8-year-old son with cyanide-laced candy after a night of trick-or-treating, for $20,000 in insurance money.
You're never gonna look at pumpkins the same way again.
