I suppose it never occurred that chugging a large quantity of beer from a plastic baseball bat might’ve been a bad idea.

How does one start to tell a story?  It’s an interesting question and I’m tired of pondering it.   So let’s just start by saying that I’m sitting on the back porch.  It’s raining.  It’s hot.  I’m tired.  The cars driving along the street, just beyond that rickety old fence, are driving ever so slowly.  So slowly that after finishing off this last case of beer, I can still count them.

The woman in the blue convertible japawhatever, the kid in the old beat-up bug, the man in the old Chevy Nova, wearing a fedora and burping up noxious clouds of who knows what.  Makes me want to do something, educate someone, enlighten him as you will, but, as time will tell, I am just too….

I stay put, perfectly pressed into the cushion, hand chilled by the touch of the cool perspiring glass.  Comfortable.

     Right now, I’m just reflecting a little about how everything is my fault.  You see, for whatever reason, everything is my fault.  There are different reasons for it being my fault, but it usually revolves around the fact that I have a penis.
     This all started when I was a born.

     Being a rather healthy newborn didn’t help matters.  You see, it was my fault my mother had such a difficult labor.  It was my fault, too, that she ended up married to my father.  In fact, it was also my fault when she was tired, when she was sick, and even when it was just too damn gloomy outside.
     Now, you know for certain that this crap we’ve called weather for months in East Tennessee is all my fault.  Because I can control the weather.  Seriously, you know, I am a minor Weather deity.

     Apparently, when someone I don’t know calls me up screaming and yelling at me, it’s my fault.  A few years ago, Bellsouth hooked me up with this great telephone number, 865-544-5750.  The reason I post this is because, ya know, it’s published in about one hundred fourty-four thousand places as the number to the Knox County Public Library, not including every book that’s ever passed through their doors, and the fact that the number changed ten years ago.
     You see, I was just screwing with people when I told them I wasn’t really the Library.  Yes, asshat, you owe $6958.42 in late charges for the book you didn’t return in 1963.  I know this because it’s my fault you dialed the number without checking in your telephone directory.       It’s my fault because I am the Library.

     It’s my fault when some guy who wants to bone my girlfriend starts harrassing both of us to no end.  It’s my fault when he makes up an elaborate story about how I came to his house to beat the crap out of him and he’s afraid for his life.  It’s my fault.
     Apparently, when I’m sitting on a plane and half way across the country, I have the ability to make people do really stupid crap like make up stories.  And when I land at DFW Airport for a layover, it’s my fault that he’s calling the police right then.
     You see, I have this effect on people I’ve never met.  I can be in two places at once and control people with my mind.

     It’s my fault, too, that someone finally decrypted a password on one of my old computers.  I didn’t have a chance to wipe it before they took it from me, and, well, you know.  I planned it all.
     I planned, a year later, for them to start sending Yahoo messages to anyone who sent me a message, digging to see whether or not I was screwing them.  I also planned for them to use the Desktop SMS App and start sending text messages to random bloggers.  And I intentionally didn’t change my phone number just so this could happen.
     It’s my fault, because I’m a sociopath who can plan things down to the miniscule detail, just to screw with people for no apparent reason.

     It’s my fault, when two people who were trying their damndest to get me to do something I didn’t wanna do pop up a year later with phone calls and threats.  You see, by not having sex with these two — well, yeah, hot — women who threw themselves at me, because my heart and body belonged to someone else, I’m a complete asshole.
     Because you know, I am God’s gift to women, and the biggest player ever.  Totally.  I just make women want me by not doing a damn thing and telling them to go away.  It’s all my fault that they don’t take their medication and fuck off like rational people.

     Meanwhile, 378 people in the background are yelling, “Mark!  You need to get laid!”  And right now, I’m starting to agree.  That’s my fault.  Because I’m human.
     Amazingly, I know that if there were 100 women in the room who wanted to, I would end up with the one who’s more fucked up than a football bat…

     And that’s my fault, too… because when I see somebody who’s hurt, I give a damn…

     I’m sorry.  I just suck like that.  My fault…

     And just for that … I’m gonna make it rain again!  You’ll see, you bastards!

aka  Before It’s Over, I Have to Say Something

     I usually write a post on Veteran’s Day.  Last year, I couldn’t.  I’d watched a friend get shipped off and returned a few days later, and had quite a lot of subsequent conversation with him that left me dry.
     He had really high expectations of himself.  He went through his education and training with honors.  He knew where he wanted to be, what he wanted to do.  He’d planned his entire life around his career in the military, and everything was going to be okay.
     When he finally got to Iraq, however, anxiety took its toll.  Sent home, he felt like a failure, like he hadn’t lived up to the expectations his family had.  Though all of them were supportive, he felt that they didn’t, even couldn’t, understand.  
     More than that, even, he wanted the respect of the people with whom he’d served, and knew that he’d let them all down.

     Through the course of the conversation with him, I tried to put it in real-life terms, hoping he could get his perspective back.  I told him to think of it as a job, and nothing more. 
     It was a job he was trained to do, and, many times, trained through repetition.  His job, a lower management position, was to manage and train others, often by repetition, as well.  Sometimes, no amount of training can prepare you for the reality of the job.
     I explained that it was like going to McDonald’s and training to be a run the drive through, and being thrown into it busy as Hell on the first day.  Things will happen, mistakes will be made.  People will be upset at you.  Some will even hate you.  But you do the job until you either get better, or you’re laid off, or you quit.  At either of the last two points, you find another job.
     “But you know,” I told him.  “What you tried to do carried with it a lot more prestige than some crappy job flipping burgers, or even selling advertising a company who’ll never last two years.  You were part of something bigger than yourself, and went duty-bound into something that most people are terrified to even think about.  And that, right there, is why you haven’t lost anyone else’s respect.  Not even the guys you served with.”

     It’s one of the things I always enjoyed about Military.  Guys who worked together consider one another friends.  Sometimes, they only see each other in an aeon, but will still have a clandestine beer, perhaps even in silence for the friends they knew and lost.

     That fact was driven home for me even more over the next few months.  Pretty much all of my uncles were in the military, and I just never was cut out for it.  But I’ve worked with and around them in a civilian capacity for quite a while.
     In December last year, a few of them looked for me, found me, and all but twisted my arms.  “Mark, what?  Man, you were right there with us.  Get your ass out of that damn house!”
     I was going through a really rough time a year ago.  If it hadn’t been for them, I was so stressed I might never have left the house again.  I never really told them what was going on, and just took the opportunity to get away, to get out of Knoxville, even, if only for a little while.
     Almost exclusively, it was just a bunch of us sitting around in a hotel bar.  We told stupid stories about each other, making sure to exaggerate as much as possible, smoked cigars, bitched about politicians, drank copiously and laughed a lot.  And then, there was always the silent drink to the ones who weren’t there…
     Philip, Joe, Terry, JD, Nate, John, Larry, Joel, Paul, Tony, Dennis, Neal… and I know there are more, but I just can’t remember right now…  You guys don’t even know what you did for me.  And I thank you all.

     Those little road trips always ended the same.
     “It was great to see you again, man.  If you ever need anything, you give me a call.  I mean it!”
     There’s an unspoken rule of mine, and that is that I respect them too much to ever ask them for anything.

     To my surprise in January, “Mark, I’m shipping out for Afghanistan.  You fixed this Xbox for us, so, uh, we won’t need it, figured you’d want it?  And give me your address… we’re gonna send you some games when we get tired of them.”
     So now you know the root of my other time-waster / stress-reliever…

     And so, back to Lt. Cpl. Jared…

     Jared, you didn’t get to serve your entire time, but you were let out honorably.  You did your job as best you could, and I seriously think it was just bad timing.  But for all that worry, all that being down on yourself, and all that crazy shit you were thinking back then… look at how you’re doing now. 
     You’ve got everything together, just like I told you would. 😉

     And those people you crawled through mud and walked on sand with, even the ones you sat at a computer next to, or sat around all night in the barracks playing Xbox with, they are the salt of the earth.

     And I’ll guaran-damn-tee, after they’re back, given a little time, they’ll call you up and wanna go out for a beer…

     Jared … and everyone else … Happy Veterans’ Day, my friends.

     The history of the purely American phenomenon of Halloween includes Trick or Treating for the kids (where they play welfare punks and sponge off neighnors for free sugar), some rather dastardly pranks, and, of course, women dressing like role-playing prostitutes.  Apparently, we have a special fondness for Nurse outfits, especially when they’re showing lots of cleavage, which is probably the reason I’m still totally in love with that sexy CNA from 2007, but I digress…

     We, at Blogitude.com, wish you all a happy, and, above all, SAFE Halloween.

     That means, don’t call us at 4AM to come pick you up because you’re too drunk to drive.  Call a cab like all the other poor sods.  Especially, do not call us to bail you out of jail tomorrow, because, regardless of the fact that we may look like we’re made of money, you must remember that a significant portion of our income comes from Writing, and nobody wants to pay for this crap.