oceandoggy.com

In a different lifetime I used to have to drive a LOT for my job- going to meetings, checking on installation crews, picking up and delivering materials, etc.

Being on the road so much, I found myself unconsciously, or maybe subconsciously, “reducing” the numbers on the license plates of cars in front of me. By “reducing” I mean that I’d add up all the numbers on the plate and then add the subsequent digits together until I arrived at a single digit for that car’s plate.

Why’d I do this? I have no idea. But I did it anyway. And I know this all sounds like the ramblings of a mind running on stripped gears but hang with me just a little bit longer. OK?

Anyway. What I noticed early on was the significance of the number 9. Any combination of numbers adding up to a number divisible by 9 always “reduced” to a 9.

Fascinating, right?

*crickets chirping*

So fast forward to today. I’d stopped at a convenience store to pick up a bottle of water when I noticed it cost $.99 (9+9=18 which reduces to 9). While I was in line I saw that the MegaMillions jackpot was at 27 million (2+7, get it?) and the drawing was scheduled for today, Friday the 13th (which has nothing to do with the number 9, but has everything to do with my mom’s birthday which, since she was born on a Friday the 13th meant I was eventually born, makes Friday the 13th a very lucky day for me).

*doink doink* anybody still out there?

I never play the lottery. The odds are just too astronomically ridiculous to make it a justifiable waste of a dollar.

But I was getting excited.

So when it was my turn to pay, I put my bottled water and my credit card on the counter and asked for a MegaMillions ticket. The clerk looked at my credit card like it’d grown hair or maybe pus and told me I’d have to buy the ticket with cash. I checked my wallet and pants pockets and go figure? No cash. Which isn’t really that strange considering I very rarely carry any money with me. To easy to spend.

I took my water and left.

I was driving to the bank to meet Miss Carol ’cause we needed to get some papers notarized and I just couldn’t get the seeming significance of the numbers out of my head. I was feeling lucky. When we were done and were walking out to the parking lot, I asked Miss Carol if she had any cash and told her the whole story about the convenience store and the number 9 and how we could really use $27 million.

She gave me one of those pained, patient looks she’s been giving me a lot lately and found $11 in her purse and handed it over. She kissed me and told me to be careful and be sure to win the $27 million ’cause we’d need it for my treatments. And then she patted my arm and gave me one of those patient looks again.

That’s my Miss Carol. Always the kidder.

So anyway, I left, whistling my millionaires tune (which sounded a lot like Pink for some reason) and headed to my next job. While I drove I wondered where I should purchase my winning ticket. Not back at the convenience store. I figured it was a bad mojo sign that I hadn’t been able to buy a ticket there earlier. As I drove, I argued with myself. On the one hand I thought, it shouldn’t make any difference- pre-ordained fate will always find you. But, then again, I thought, what if maybe pre-ordained fate needs a little help from time to time?

*helloooo is anybody still awake?*

I was churning through these thoughts when I pulled into a gas station to get more diesel for the ever-thirsty MR.GREENE. It was a prepay place so I went in and gave my credit card to the attendant to hold hostage while I pumped. She thanked me and told me she’d turn on pump number 9. I paused and hesitated and then went out.

When I was walking out to MR.GREENE. I noticed, not for the first time, that my tag numbers add up to the number 9. Hmmmm. While I was pumping I was kinda daydreaming when I saw the speed limit signs on the road in front of me-45 mph (4+5?). Hmmmm. Just then the pump clicked off and as I put the nozzle back I glanced up at the sale amount- $68.58 (14+13=27=9 baby) HMMMMMM.

I knew I’d found my place.

So after I paid for MR.GREENE.‘s thirsty diesel habit, I smoothed out my lonely crumpled dollar bill and asked for a MegaMillion ticket, my voice cracking with nervousness and excitement. And guess what the last number on my winning ticket is- 18.

I’m so excited I can barely stand it.

Haven’t we been here before?

According to some religious zealots- Christian, this time- the endtimes are nigh, and by nigh, I mean, like, this MONTH. Oh, wait, I’m sorry, let me check my watch; I mean, like this WEEK.

Oops. I mean, holy crap dude, like, tomorrow?

Shit. er, umm, I mean, shoot. I’m not ready for this- I mean, do you dress up for rapture? What’re you supposed to do? How’re you supposed to act?

If you, like me, think that all religion is silly nonsense, what’re your chances?

Do you just hold on tight? Are we totally fucked?

I certainly have no idea but, the upbeat is that, if you google The End of the World you’ll find that the rapturous Christians are either so extremely excited about their upcoming rapture that they’re messy with the date or possibly just dyslexic, ’cause it seems they can’t decide if the rapture is gonna happen tomorrow or maybe on the 21st.

12 or 21. 21 or 12. Silly digits.

So given its last minute direness, what’ya do? Do you hunker down for the end-of-it, whatever that is, or do you just keep stroking along? Or, caught by the surprise of Armageddon, do you rush out to WalMart and buy a bunch of shit and build up a mountain of canned food and sacks of dog food to await the apocalyptic lurch?

I honestly don’t think anything’s gonna happen, but to be on the safe side I figured I needed to flip ahead on my Playboy calendar and check out all the future months I might end up missing.

You know, just in case.

*brief pause *

Wow. OK. It’s a toss up between Miss August and Miss December but I think I’m going with the cuteness that is Miss August.

I swore I wasn’t going to comment on this, but then I did.

I’d written a 400 word post about Osama’s double tap and when I went to save it WordPress kicked me out and erased it.

Interesting.

So let me try again.

I was trying to be objective. Trying to understand the epiphanies.

‘Cause check it.

We’re being asked to believe that a lanky long drink of water, huddled with two 14″ portable TV’s that your grandmother would clutch to her drooping bosom claiming they’re OK, a digital decoder “probably tuned to Al Jazeera via Pakistani satellite network”, a 17″ color computer monitor (read laptop), a Sharp 12 digit calculator with printer (the horrors), a remote control (probably so he wouldn’t have to scramble the coupla feet to change the channels on his shitty TV), and a bolster pillow somehow brought the greatest nation on earth to it’s knees?

Long, deep, breath.

Are you telling me I have to undergo a strip search when I fly to Atlanta because Mr. Lanky’s watching bad TV with rabbit ears? That my whole world has changed and a whole new layer of government bullshit has been added to protect me from a guy with a Sharp 12 digit calculator and a bolster pillow?

You’re kiddin’ me, right?

What is it we’re being fed here? Now that he’s dead and gone can we get back to normal?

Hope wanes.

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.