Monthly Archives: August 2011

I know everybody works really hard, that we all crawl home at the end of the day in the gathering darkness, gasping and grasping, and I knew these two months of added work would be tough for me and I knew that something or maybe some somethings would probably slip off my plate and slide onto the floor and slowly gel and be forgotten. But I never thought it’d be my blog- my little oceandoggy.com.

Guess what?

She was the first thing way-sided, the first thing pushed off into the bushes and shuffled past.

So what’s been happening? Quickly?

-I aced a sixth test and finally received my CDL permit (honestly, the tests aren’t that hard EVERYONE should be acing them)

-I bugged out for a hurricane that never really happened (call me Mr. Sissy, or maybe Mr. Pussy)

-I found that spending 30 hours of quality time with Cutter and Tug in a truck isn’t really that much fun

-I finally realized that I’ll never make Miss Carol happy about tractor-trailerin’. Like EVER.

– and that I’d wanted to write a better post, I always do, but I’m blown out so I guess I’ll fill in the empty spaces later on, you know, when it’s less insanely busy.

Dear Mr. Russell Banks,

I’m one of your biggest fans, let me just say that right up front. I love you and I’ve read and commented on several of your books and I know my opinion as a critic counts less than nothing in your big scheme of things, but Mr. Banks?

Rule of the Bone sucked.

When I first started reading it I was blown away with your amazingly energetic first person narrative as a 14-year-old fuck up. But’cha know what? as the pages turned, it began to pale and then it got old. And then when you touched on all the same old, same old shit that your generation seems to feel is the root cause of all the fucked-up-itness (divorce, drugs, shitty step-fathers) it just got older and paler. Deep breath.

So I marshaled on, hoping that you’d somehow save it and me.

But you didn’t. Instead, you plunged me into something so completely nonsensical that I kept reading just for the wow, wait a sec, ain’t no way he’s going THERE, factor. And you did. You pushed the limits of credulity. Not only did you verve into ridiculousness but the ending of Rule of the Bone was a pfffft to the rest of the book. The whole mess was a colorless, washed out, weakly supported relationship between Bone and I-Man that could have been colossally moving if you hadn’t decided that telling the story from the viewpoint of a 14-year-old fucknut meant, in your mind, somehow squandering it.

In your defense, maybe nobody could have pulled it off. But then again, maybe nobody should have tried. Maybe at some point you or your editor should have said enough, this is nonsense skipping down the road to silliness.

Rule of the Bone’s a fairly desultory nonsensical ride to an unsatisfying conclusion that left me wondering- did I miss something? Am I retarded?

But I didn’t and I don’t think I am. Retarded, I mean.

I’m just glad that it reads really quick and didn’t squander too much of my valuable time.

Thanks for nothing.

oceandoggy.

I have a ball cap that reads “Scars Are Tattoos With Better Stories”. I like that hat ’cause I generally believe this to be true since most tattoos are generally the result of something that seemed like a good idea at the time and scars tend to be something else entirely.

But’cha know what? I was walking down one of the main thoroughfares of the hospital last week and I ended up stalled behind a radiologist leading this frail little old lady down the hallway to MRI. Teeny and tiny, she was probably all of 80 lbs. sopping wet.

As I got closer and tried to pass them I noticed that this frail little old granny lady had blurred, bleary, tired old tattoos on her arms and legs. And I was like, wow, that’s weirdly interesting. Then she accidentally dropped her crumpled pack of cigarettes and when she bent over to pick them up, her ill-fitting KISS t-shirt drooped away from her scrawny chest and I saw she had tattoos on her shriveled up old lady boobs too.

Ewww. I WAS SO NOT LOOKING AT HER BOOBS, OK?

But so anyway.

So I passed them by and moved on with my life and presumably they moved on with theirs but it made me wonder- what kinda strange and possibly interesting life had that little old lady led that had resulted in all those now indistinct blue-black blobby tattoos?

Maybe sometimes tattoos can have a good story too, ya know?

I mean, c’mon, who doesn’t wanna know HER story?

Don’t lie.