oceandoggy.com

Feast.

Posted on March 7, 2011 | 2 comments

A century ago I went to my first Hunters Feast.

Way back then the Hunters Feast was an annual event hosted by local kill dudes coming together to share their season’s deer and boar and bear, eating and drinking and partying and donating proceeds from the invitation-only ticket sales to charity.

It was something I had wanted to attend and was finally invited to. It was cool. It was fun. It was something I felt privileged to attend.

Yesterday I went again. Miss Carol wanted to go too but she lacks the necessary genitalia- yup, you guessed it- it’s a boys only, no girls allowed, event.

And it was, um, interesting?

Like so much in our world, the Feast has moved on and grown and it’s growth has outstripped the local hunters ability to provide the fare. Now it’s mostly catered. A century ago it was several hundred hunters and select invitees partying. Yesterday it was 4 or 5 thousand guys milling about, drinking beer, pissing in the woods, and eating duck, pig, rabbit, squirrel, lamb, goose, deer, bear, boar, brisket, and something called GUTS. Not to mention the chowders and the stews and the jambalayas. And let’s don’t never forget the Rocky Mountain Oysters and Hogs Nutz. It was all there in crispy goodness and it was all good.

A century ago I think it was the novelty coupling with the newness and wrapping itself up in the exclusivity that painted my memories of the Hunters Feast in such glittery happy shininess.

Yesterday? Not so much.

I’ve never been much of a hang out with the guys kinda guy. I don’t golf, I don’t do guys night out, I don’t wanna segregate myself from chicks to have a good time. In fact, just the opposite. I dig chicks and actually prefer female company. They’re just cooler and more fun.

So being around all those guys and what with all that testosterone muddying the air, it flat wore me down. Two hours after the bunch of us got there I was ready to split. Unfortunately that was only about halfway through the event and the guys I was traveling with were guy’s guys thriving on total immersion in a boys only world. They were more than happy to get away from wives and girlfriends.

So I drifted around, drinking beer after beer and sampling everything I could (except the creamy GUTS-nope, no way) until the raffle was done and I didn’t win the shotgun and it was finally time to head home.

WooHOO.

Except that rounding up five other extremely intoxicated guy’s guys intent on STAYING in a boys only world can be kinda tough. Kinda like herding puppies- we’d get a couple together in one place and another one or two would drift away back to the beer truck and buddies they swore they hadn’t seen yet.

We finally got everybody corralled and moving in the right direction and our designated driver drove us home blasting waaaay over-bassed music.

And the whole way home I nursed a beer and itched to balance the stereo and swore.

Never again, baby. I’m full.

2 Comments

Posted in doggy diarrhea

Little house of horrors.

Posted on March 4, 2011 | 13 comments

Ah, dreams.

All along, I knew this would happen. I knew at some point we’d hit the wall.

I knew that the lusty fun of building a dream would slowly succumb to the reality of getting to pay for it and having to see it through to the end.

Shits like that.

Dreams at inception are magical elfin little things dancing around on the periphery, seductively luring you into stuff that the long haul slowly grinds into something you end up hating.

I knew this was gonna happen.

The truly fun way to build would be having enough money to pay everybody from architects to contractors to finishers and designers to build your little dream and paint and stock it with freshy goodness and let you walk into your squeaky new little house beaming broadly with the huge happiness that comes from not having had to work on any of it.

But that ain’t a happenin’ thing at Casa Oceandoggy.

Phabulious Phil and his crew are just about done and the house will be dried in-meaning the siding, the roof, and the windows and doors will be on or in. Rough shelter. You could live in it if you didn’t need running water or heat or toilets. Think plywood tent. Think trailer on fuck me pumps.

And then it’s just me to finish this baby.

Having spent 50K by dry in we’re approaching budget limits that let Miss Carol scream at me almost constantly, which is always nice.

I look up at it and think about the countless hours of my life I’m gonna spend getting it done and I wonder what the fuck I was thinking? I don’t have enough to do keeping my business afloat, writing a crappy blog, and trying to write a book?

And now I’m gonna spend every weekend for the rest of my life working on Casa Oceandoggy?

Dreams baby.

13 Comments

Posted in doggy dreamhouse?

Pirates.

Posted on March 2, 2011 | 4 comments

Well I’ll be goddamned- there’re still REAL pirates out there.

I mean who’d a thunk it? In this day and age when technology trumps everything and GPS can track little kids walking home from school or triangulate car accidents and send rescue almost as soon as your air bags burst that something as anachronistic-seeming as real pirates still exist kinda bends the mind.

I mean, really?

And yet, out there in the cold salty spray of the Indian Ocean Somali pirates armed with automatic weapons are loping about in small open boats and preying on ships and shipping seemingly willingly at will.

The World denounces them and their piratical ways. Like they care. The pirates, I mean. At last count they held more than 660 hostages and around 30 vessels that they use to pirate more vessels if the owners can’t or won’t pony up the big bucks to release them, running them until they’re used up pieces of floating garbage.

A part of me, hopefully the biggest and best part of me, joins in the denunciation and wonders why we (we being the rest of the world) can’t just rock and roll into Somali and kill everything looking remotely pirate-like.

But. And yet.

A little squeaky part of me, and probably the part that still hopes I’m not the big pussy I am, secretly cheers for the loping pirates. I mean, can you imagine attacking a bazillion ton container ship from a 26 foot panga?

Does desperation breed courage or is it vice versa?

4 Comments

Posted in doggy diarrhea

Guns.

Posted on February 28, 2011 | 8 comments

I own guns.

There.

I said it.

Not a lot- a coupla rifles and a pistol grip 12-gauge. I don’t have any problem with guns or with people owning guns or with people carrying guns concealed or otherwise. Shooting guns is FUN. If you’ve never done it, try it. Honest.

I’m not one of those people that believe if you get rid of guns you’ll get rid of senseless killings. Setting aside the extremely random shoot-em-ups, people will find a way to kill one another if they really want to, whether it be by bullet or knife or baseball bat or rock.

Nor am I one of those people that believe that if we don’t have guns the wurrrrlllddds guuuunna ennnnndddd.

I just think playing with guns is like gay marriage or abortion or breast implants. If you’re an adult and you wanna do it and you’re not hurting anyone else, fucking do it and please, oh please, can’t we just STOP talking about it? (I can’t wait to see the e-mails I get ’cause I just compared guns to breast implants)

So I was surprised by my reaction to something that happened on Sunday.

I’m down on the Island, working on the doggy dreamhouse, and I’m ferrying shit up the ladder from MR.GREENE. when I see two little kids standing huddled at the end of our dock looking like little kids do when they feel like they’ve been caught doing something wrong.

They’re practically standing on top of the NO TRESPASSING sign we have on the dock that Miss Carol and me hope’ll litigiously protect us were anyone to get on the dock and get hurt. I don’t really care who uses the dock as long as they don’t set in on fire or something.

So I wave to the kids to let ’em everythings fine and I’m cool with it and I go up the ladder with another load and when I come back down the two boys are walking across the lot towards the road. Just walking and talking and cutting up and looking like kids everywhere.

Except they’re both packin’ shotguns.

These boys couldn’t have been more than 10 or 12 years old and they were carrying those big ‘ole guns the way a mechanic carries a wrench. Nonchalantly bleah.

Initially? I was shocked. And even though I have no problem with ’em, they’ve been portrayed for soooooo long as things sooooooo inherently evil that to see them outside of a TV show or a movie is, I don’t know, unsettling? Guns, I mean, not little boys.

But as I watched those kids walk up the street I had to marvel at where I’m at geographically and where we’re at societally. I mean, can you imagine an urban metrosexual coming down here and seeing two little boys openly packin’ heat?

I let my mind run around in it for a little bit and then just shrugged and went back to humpin’ materials up the ladder.

Dorothy, we’re not in Kansas anymore.

8 Comments

Posted in doggy diarrhea

Update. Finally. Right?

Posted on February 25, 2011 | 3 comments

Last week was gonna be the week My Brother and me were gonna put the deck up.

But The County and Mrs. Weakneed Engineer and Mr. Dickhead Inspector and everybody else that makes building a house a nightmarish breaucratic clusterfuck had other ideas.

Get this.

The County requires a nailing inspection before we cover the exterior. I’m not sure why, I’m kinda baffled by what The County thinks we might be using to hold this house together, but hey. You do as you’re told.

So we had the first one. For an hour and and half Mr. Dickhead Inspector stared at nails, making notes. Phabulous Phil kept looking at me, winking, going WTF? is with this guy?

So he had issues. You gotta realize- every time Mr. Dickhead Inspector can flunk me he can force me to cough up $50 for a re-inspect. Tiny money but gnat-like annoying.

So we fixed those issues and called for the re-inspect. And Mr. Dickhead Inspector found new issues. Gosh go figure. Some of the issues were things that he said had to be engineered before he could sign off on them. Do these guys drink together and dream up this shit or what?

Soooo. Instead of hitting Mr. Dickhead Inspector in the head with a hammer until my arm got tired and burying him in the bay, I called in Mrs. Weakneed Engineer. She’s a he but maybe only barely.

Short aside- Engineers are the folks with the knowledge, the know-how, the collegiate training to calculate all the shit that needs calculating to build stuff like bridges and skyscrapers and maybe, just maybe, a tiny 1600 sq. ft. house.

And so Mrs. Weakneed Engineer thought way long and way hard and came up with the engineering solutions necessary for us to satisfy Mr. Dickhead Inspector’s and The County’s overbearing wants.

And we did them. To the letter.

But before we could even call for the $50 re-inspect Mr. Dickhead Inspector called me to say he had problems with what Mrs. Weakneed Engineer was proposing. It just goes round and round, right?

Loooooonnnnngg story short? Mrs. Weakneed Engineer folded immediately and Phabulous Phil and I had to spend the weekend getting other opinions and forcing Mrs. Weakneed Engineer to come out to the site so that he, um she, could get a first hand look and honestly? she, I mean he, agreed with us and told us he’d (she’d?) re-do the engineering letter to The County and Mr. Dickhead Inspector.

So loooooooonnnnnnngggggg story shorter? My Brother and me managed to get up three (as in 3) girders for the deck. They are the pale fleshy white things hanging horizontal on the pilings in the picture.

It’s FUN building a house.

3 Comments

Posted in doggy dreamhouse?

Bad Girl.

Posted on February 23, 2011 | 8 comments

Ya know?

There’s a reason some people win the Nobel and some don’t. There are books you read that’re really good and books you read that’re really great.

This one’s really great. Honest.

It’s kinda a chick story about a life-long one sided love affair. The bad girl keeps popping into the good boys’ life for brief visits over the span of their life constantly re-igniting his never ending lust and love for her over and over again.

It’s kinda like the Time Travelers Wife with the chick driving the bus.

And it’d be timelessly boring except the writing is sooooo fucking good. Translated from the spanish by Edith Grossman it’s lyrical and endearing and constantly cool.

If you’re a guy you want to hate the bad girl but you can’t. It’s that damn good.

And hey, on another note, like anyone cares- a LOT went on last week and I just haven’t had time to digest it all yet and that’s why I’m posting lame shit about books.

But that’s assuming anyone cares.

8 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Fight Club.

Posted on February 15, 2011 | 8 comments

Ya know- when you’ve been married for decades and centuries shit shifts.

Blaring, glaringly, mega-watt spotlight on this weekend for example. What looked like, on the cover, a fun filled couple of days partying rapidly deteriorated into something not so much.

Saturday was my brother’s long awaited divorce party. We were girded and ready. What’s four or five hours of driving to drink in the sweet, sweet, nectar of freedom, right?

Even if that freedom roams freely about until three or four in the morning and Miss Carol and me have to get up at five sos’ I can drive MR.GREENE. back home again. Hey, whatever.

Then.

We have brunchy brunch with our friends who’re housesitting and dogsitting the boys and the Bloody Mary’s spill over into the beers kinda flowing with the eggs and sausages and before you know it, it’s starting all over again.

Then.

We saddle up AGAIN and drive to P-town where I’m thinkin’ we’ll be honeymooning in a hotel room overlooking the Elizabeth River swapping spit and body fluids all afternoon.

But then.

Miss Carol decides it’s nappy nap time. ALL afternoon. Into the night. To the point where I give up on the honeymooning and spit sharing, and take a lonely shower and wake the somnambulant Miss Carol so’s we can catch the water taxi to Norfolk and the Mr. Anthony Bourdain Show.

So then.

Miss Carol wakes up cranky. Honestly? It’s the reason I DON’T take naps- I always wake up cranky and hating everything and everybody. I’ll sleep when I’m dead thankyouverymuch.

And the much more then?

I’m no where NEAR Mr. Perfect. In fact, I’m Mr. Asshole lots of times. ‘Nuff said, right? So we endured the evening gritting it out like only peeps married for a VERY long time can and do. And then we endured the rest of the night. And then we endured sharing a hotel room. And then we endured an early morning ride back home.

And now we’re enduring tonight.

Is marriage and its’ decades and centuries spent together fun, or WHAT?

8 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Looooooser.

Posted on February 11, 2011 | 5 comments

I want to be a winner and yet I can’t.

For my birthday, along with the tickets to see Anthony Bourdain (my personal god), Miss Carol gave me a bunch of those scratch-off lottery thingies.

Thanks babe. Can you maybe steady the pistol while I blow my brains out?

Jesus.

These glittery jewels of scratchy hope are the most despairingly tiny little roller coasters of dashed dreams I’ve ever seen.

Their glitzy little whispered promises of $20,000, 10X, $50,000, bonus prizes, and millions and millions, make your palms sweaty and your nerves twitchy.

So you get caught up in it and you scratch.

‘Cause you’re drawn in. Who doesn’t want free money? And pulled in, you play the game, whether it’s matching PAYDAY NUMBERS or Aces and 8’s or bingo numbers or, my fucking favorite- The Super Bonus Crossword.

And you work it and you sweat and you hope and when the scratchin’s done and the scratching shavings are everywhere?

Nothing.

Nada. No way baby, not here, not now, not today, not never, now get your ass HOME boykins.

But, even through the relentless loserness, I keep trying, keep thinking, keep hoping, that my fortune is just a scratchy scratch away.

What DO they put on those things?

5 Comments

Posted in doggy diarrhea

And just like that.

Posted on February 9, 2011 | 9 comments

9 days after they rolled onto the property we’re framed. Phabulous Phil says we’re not dried in until we’re black (30# felt on the roof and walls) but I’m feelin’ pretty damn topped out and I’m hopin’ Phil’s gonna be flying his flag off the roof tomorrow.

It’s so goddamned amazing I’m fucking beside myself.

I mean, who says you can’t draw up your stupid dream on page after page of stupid graph paper? Huh? And who SAYS you can’t wear down county gov’mint ’til they finally acquiesce? Hmmmm? WHO SAYS???? HUH! AND WHO-THE-FUCKALL-SAYS-YOU-CAN’T-MAKE-IT-HAPPEN????????

HUH!! ‘CAUSE YOU CAN!!!!

And who says you can’t throw yourself down in the muddy mess that will one day be a driveway and just revel and wallow and roll around in it and stare up at the bright blue sky and bright white scudding clouds and smell the fresh new lumber and squeeze your eyes shut and think-

It’s a house, baby.

9 Comments

Posted in doggy dreamhouse?

Phabulous Phil.

Posted on February 8, 2011 | 4 comments

I have to be careful here.

I don’t want to get all gay about Phil ’cause one of his kids might find this and read it to him and then he’d seriously kick my ass.

But ya know what? He’s flippin’ amazing.

I’m not sure if his son Nick and the boys work as hard as they do because they love and admire Phil and strive mightily to please him or if they’re terrified of an unhappy Phil.

Maybe some of both of it.

Whatever it is- Jesus monster they work their fucking lungs out.

A week ago Phil and Sideshow and Johnny and Crockett and Nick showed up and started framing our little hacienda.

Phil strode onto the scene of our lonely pile driven tapestry, settled on the motorcycle that is his company, started shit up and grabbing a handful of throttle, dumped the clutch and burned rubber, pushing his crew relentlessly.

Day after day he drove them mercilessly. And yet they didn’t seem to mind. Nick and the boys sprinted lumber and spat nails and made my poorly drawn feeble ass dream an amazing reality.