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I’d started this post about the MEN of Deadliest Catch and how I I’d thought that maybe I could maybe dream about throwing myself up against the marathon mountain that is crab fishing in the Bering Sea and how cool it’d be to be able to be one of them.

And so there I was typing along, living longingly vicariously, when I got (ok, received? I get it, Ms. grammar) an e-mail from my father?

And everything dilated and dehydrated.

I hadn’t and haven’t spoken to the man who calls me son in over twenty years. And I’m good with that. I don’t care. I don’t know who he might be or who he might have become. I just don’t care.

I don’t know how he got my e-mail address and I don’t know if he reads my shit.

But if he does? Listen up motherfucker.

We’re done, we’re over, we’ve been waaaaaay over for a loooooonnnng ass time. Get over it.

The bruises will never go away.

I mean honestly?

Miss Carol and me went to lunch at a place across the street over the weekend. It’s a place we don’t frequent much for lots of reasons.

One is the bartenders.

They’re kinda scummy and kinda ugly and, more importantly, kinda MEN?

Sorry dudes.

Bartenders should ONLY be cute babes.

I don’t want some tattooed stoner sliding my beer across the counter while he growls out the lunch specials.

I want Trixie in hip huggers or a bikini and a push-up pretending to find me fascinating.

Call me Mr. Dickhead but even Miss Carol agreed. She was all like-chicks rule.

So I sipped my beer and I said, Ya know what? I think if I ever hire people instead of 1099’em I’m thinking it’d be really cool to hire really cool, really good looking chicks.

Whatya think?

Miss Carol heaved a sigh.

Sometimes I think I make her tired.

Miss Carol LOVED this book.

I think I did.

Set in the Ozarks, Ree Dolly needs to find her bail-bond-jumping father before the courts call in the tab and Ree and her two little brothers and brain-addled mother all get kicked to the curb.

I fucking loved Daniel Woodrell’s prose and the way he shone a light on mountain life.

Folks, them’s hard people.

I’ve read other books with ancillary stories about mountain people- be they Sierra Madres or Appalachians- and I don’t know if it’s the constant contact with mountains and all that rock and hard stuff but holy jeebers you don’t want to mess with them. They’s HARD.

At first I hated the obscurity and obliqueness. I thought there were parts of the story that were being kept from me, that I wasn’t privy to ’cause I wasn’t a mountain person, ’cause I wasn’t an Ozarky native son.

But then I tackled my Mr. Narcissism and wrestled him to the ground and sat on top of him and thought that maybe that was EXACTLY what Mr. Dan was trying to accomplish.

You are left out. ‘Cause you don’t belong.

And I think that’s the beauty of Winter’s Bone.

So, yeah, I think I love this book too.

Man, I hate walking you guys, I said.

Cutter trotted ahead and strained to look up at me.

Why? he said.

Tug tugged in a different direction.

‘Cause it’s a chore, I said. Just another thing I gotta do every day.

Cutter stopped and sat and stared at me. So we’re a CHORE? he said.

Well, yeah, kinda. I said.

I mean, I gotta walk you guys twice a day every day no matter what, I said, feeling peevish and feeling like I was losing something.

Dude, Cutter said. You’re kidding, right?

And he got up and shook his coat clean and clear and Tug said, kidding right? while he was licking the grass.

And Cutter said, You really don’t get it do you?

Maybe not I said.

We LOVE parading you around every day, he said. It’s what makes us sensational, he said.

Sensational Tug said, sniffing the air.

wave-particle duality – superpositions – quantum tunneling

I’m not quite sure why I ever bought this book.

infinite-sum wavefunction – zero point energy – allowed states

And I’m definitely not sure why I EVER decided to read it.

quantum randomness – light polarization – the many worlds interpratation

But I did and I did and somehow kinda queerly and eerily I’m glad I did?

wavefunction collapse – decoherence – separate universes

‘Cause the author, Chad Orzel, makes quantum mechanics and theory almost understandable.

Allllllllllllllllmost. Maybe?

the quantum zeno effect – entangled photons – quantum teleportation

So would I do it again?

a/V> + b/H> and E = hf and 1s + 1/2s + 1/4s + 1/8s … = 2s

Not a chance.

It’s an interesting ride, but it was like wearing ill fitting jeans.

So this is how it goes.

About a year ago I gave up on local radio, ’cause the churn rate is just way too high. Same songs over and over and, like, over again? Softly caressing and mind numbing.

Even Howard Stern was getting a little tiresome. Same old, same old. Yawner.

Am I getting cynical?

So I turned to books on CD to keep me company while I drive MR.GREENE.

I love reading and didn’t want to not read something good, so I chose fluff to listen to- Lee Child and Clive Cussler- that kinda stuff.

It’s like eating marshmallows. You’re never gonna be full.

Anyway.

The other day I was in the library looking to replenish and I saw Don Quixote. And I said, well shit, I’m gonna get me some refinement.

I mean, I certainly kinda sorta know the whole Don Quixote story but I’ve never listened to it and I’ve certainly never read Cervantes’ 1605 novel.

So I grabbed both volumes and scurried to the check-out counter. I was kinda surprised that the book spanned 35 CD’s but I was all, like, hey, whatever it takes to get me smarter. Right?

Maybe not so much.

I hate to highlight my shallowness, but by the third CD I was over it. Don Quixote was a crazy old man and he’d already gone through several fucked up adventures and I’m thinkin’- there’s still 32 CD’s left? Where is this going?

So yeah, I got bored.

And I went back to the library and dumped Don Quixote and picked up a coupla more Lee Child Jack Reachers and Clive Cussler Dirk Pitts ’cause sitting in the shallow end and eating marshmallows sure can be nice.

Hey.

So check it.

One of my jobs last week was at the Women’s Imaging Center which is a really nice name for Miss Carol’s most favorite place- the boob moosher. You know, the place where you ladies go to get tortured checked for breast cancer?

When I got the work order I was all like ooh baby, baby.

I’m thinkin’ my day’s gotta be filled with Playboy bunnies and Penthouse Pets and Victoria Secret models parading around topless waiting for mammograms while I try to work and not stare, right?

I am such a turd.

Nothing could’ve been further from the truth. After tossing and turning through an anxious and anticipatory sleepless night, I strode manfully into the Women’s Imaging Center breathlessly expecting endless eye candy.

And guess what?

The waiting room was chock-a-block full of really old, REALLY FAT women. Women that I would NEVER EVER want to see topless. Women that I didn’t even like looking at fully clothed. I mean, women that even really old, REALLY FAT men wouldn’t want to check out.

And ya know?

It reminded me of a different similar experience. Decades and centuries ago when Miss Carol and me were first married, we were living in Florida, and the company I was working for scheduled me for a service call at a nudist colony.

I was all like, yesssssssss.

But then I got there and reality slapped me.  Nudist colonies are crammed full of pasty, pear shaped, ugly, white people with flappy boobs. Even the chicks.

Shit.

Why is it that my fantasies can’t be my realities?

I mean, c’mon.

Anybody who reads my crap knows this ain’t a chick self-help feel-good kinda website.

But.

I’ve noticed something kinda interesting over the last year or so. Something that seems to help with the day-to-day crap. I don’t know if it’s meant for everybody, but, hey? Call me dr. ror.

Ya know how lots of times your day totally sucks? And you’re pissed and you’re over all of it? And you just want to move on to something but you know not what?

Hang with me, we’re all with you.

Start doing this- grab the mindset that everything, and I mean EVERYTHING is simply purrrrrfect.

Check it.

So you’re driving to work in the morning and you’re texting and spilling coffee on your best jeans-don’t get pissed off, think, hey, the stain is in a purrrrfect place and the coffee that’s left is the absolutely purrrrfect amount.

Then, when you get to work and you have to park all the way in the back- think, well shit, it’s not raining and it’s a purrrrfect amount of walking.

Are you getting it?

And when you land in your stinky little cubicle of work-time hell? Think, gosh, it’s a purrrrfect size for me and I’ve purrrrfectly decorated it with pictures of my lonely little life. And let’s don’t forget, the walls are the purrrrfect shade of gray.

Later, while you’re eating lunch all alone at the crappy, greasy fast food place that you know the guy you briefly dated until you found out he still lives with his mother will never visit is purrrrfect for it’s solitude and loneliness.

And then, while you’re sitting in rush-hour traffic on the way home to your lonely apartment be sure to remember it’s a purrrrfect time to reflect and maybe read. If only you’d brought a book along, it’d be purrrrfect, right?

Once you finally get home and you’re munching on a microwaved macaroni and cheese dinner and watching the emptiness of TV think about

whoa. stop. Fuck.

It’s weird sometimes where writing something sometimes takes you. You go along for the ride thinking it’s gonna be backseat fun with cute little cheerleaders and you end up driving your demons.

This started as one thing and went way south.

shit.

sorry.

So I’m walking the boys and I’m grumbling and all the sudden Cutter bristles and sits down.

I tug at his leash but he just glares at me.

What the fuck is the matter with you now, he asks.

I stare at him and then look away. Whatta you mean? I ask.

You’re being pissy, Cutter says.

Yeah, Tug says, straining at the end of his leash to smell some poop.

I stand and I look skyward and I say, I don’t know. I’m just tired. Work and working on the house and working on oceandoggy.com and other stuff is just wearing me down. I feel like I don’t have any time for the things I wanna do.

And Cutter says, hoo, boy, that’s some kinda good shit right there. I’d laugh if I had lips.

He fidgets for a minute and then sits up straighter, glaring at me. So, let’s check it, he says- you live the life you want to live and do pretty much what you want to do and you’re pissed because of the choices you made feel like you don’t have the time to do the things you want to do, even though they’re what you chose to do? I’m confused, he says.

It’s baffling, Tug barks, coming up and sitting next to Cutter.

Yeah, well, ya know, when you put it in THAT context, I say, you’re right, I sound like a big whiny pussy.

And what other context would I put it in?, Cutter hisses. (I hate it when he schools me)

Content, Tug says, licking himself.

Put it in perspective, Cutter says, standing up, YOU have ALL the choices. You get to choose what you want to do and when you want to do it. Your life is a dog’s dream of happiness and heaven.

Lifting a leg and peeing, Cutter says, think about it- we don’t even get to choose when we get to go to the bathroom. Think dude, he says, taking off after a feral cat and snapping my arm.

Yeah, dude, Tug says, slamming past me and surging to the end of his leash after his brother.