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The Slammer – An Ever Growing Web Novel – Chapter 5.6

The implosion was mutual on both ends. All of the suspensions between both the Red Sox and the Yankees placed them in a firm tie for second place, and the Blue Jays were living large with a seven game lead. It didn’t help that Jack completely fell apart in his last start before his suspension. They were wrong to assume that he could handle a different catcher easier than the other pitchers, and aside from the fact that Barceló still gave a stellar performance in his one to zero loss, the six game losing streak was a showplace for how wrong John was too. Their disgruntled catcher completely rolled over and played dead. His enjoyment at watching the team fall apart was so obvious that when Tug sent him down to AAA hoping he would get taken on waivers, nobody did. The final straw was cast on the last day of Lily and Jay’s suspension, when the Blue Jays torched the rookie on the mound and the rookie behind the plate for a twenty eight to one blow out, which saw all of Toronto’s rookies on the field for six of the nine innings.

Now of course the only thing that the Red Sox had going for them which the Yankees didn’t was that all of their West Coast visits were over for the year. The Yankees still had all of their nine west coast games to go, and Toronto still had a sixe game swing out there. In baseball terminology, that is what you call a “pray for five hundred” or just hope you win half of the games. The Red Sox still have more home games than the other two teams, which helps out a bit too, but even with Lily and Jay coming back on this night, they have to gain seven games with twenty one left. The next two are against the Blue Jays though with Jay pitching tonight and Barceló pitching tomorrow night. Jack will come back on Tuesday but against an unusually bad Orioles team. By that time the entire team will be back again, so hopefully there will be more defense for him, or so Lily tried to convince herself.

Lily couldn’t have had a worse warm up actually, because she couldn’t get her mind off of how bad Jack pitched five nights ago. That’s saying something if she is still dwelling on it, but she had been doing everything she could to protect him for a month, and now he had been completely exposed. Her brother was completely nonplussed as he threw warm up pitches to her for the first time in seven days himself. You actually couldn’t ask for a better time for Jay to pitch, so that might have had a lot to do with why Lily’s mind was wandering. A losing streak usually kills a pitcher because they can think themselves out of the game through the desperation to get a win. Jay wasn’t going to think himself out of the game, and it was the furthest thing from Lily’s mind. Who knew what was on Jay’s mind?

Jay didn’t even make a fuss about being suspended. Lily assumed that he may because he is such a creature of habit. He knew it was his night to pitch on Wednesday, but technically he was only five games into his seven game suspension. Jay showed up to the ball park and started his usual routines like he was going to pitch that day despite the fact that Lily tried to explain the suspension to him. He was in the “mode” as she always called it. Every other sentence was “I have to pitch today,” and nothing was changing that. She hadn’t noticed how much better he was about getting into the “mode” over the last few years until he had fallen completely back into it. She finally gave up and took him into the park to let him be all “mode” on everyone else for a while.

He was in the bullpen waiting to warm up and Lily was sitting back in the locker room telling everyone how he would get sick of standing out there sooner or later. Tug then told her that he technically wasn’t allowed to be out there during a suspension, but she shrugged him off, obviously sick of dealing with it the whole day anyway. Tug in turn thundered down the tunnel towards the outfield bullpens barking out obscenities the whole way. At that point they had lost four straight and the Blue Jays had of course won four, so this foolishness was not sitting well at all. Lily was pissed off that Jack hadn’t shown up for the second day in a row. Jay had come walking into the clubhouse a bit later with Tug patting him on the back. He was now on a different track, “I got suspended for fighting, can’t pitch until Saturday.”

He had been acting so strange for Jay for this whole season, so it had taken Lily by surprise when he was acting normal for Jay. She was starting to notice more often when he was acting normal for Jay and not normal for Jay at the same time now a days too. She had been told a lot that he can grow out of a lot of his autistic traits, and around twenty five years into it she started believing that it was a pile of crap. Here he is at twenty eight years and he appears to be growing out of some things so fast that she is finding it charming when he grows back into them. He hadn’t had a burst of free will like the night he went out to the movies with Jack and John, but then again that was so far out in left field she hasn’t completely recovered from it yet. Then there is Chris, who she had been spending more time with alone, and Jay had been accommodating that which in and of itself was rather strange for Jay. Strange for Jay may become a common term in Boston folklore if the Red Sox make it back into the hunt for October that they had no business being in as far as July.

Here it is Saturday night and Jay is taking his warm up pitches and Lily is thinking about Jack. She should be paying more attention to Jay though because his pitches are looking weak and wide. The team’s pitching coach had to point this out to her and it was almost startling. Lily gave Jay an actual signal for a pitch hard and inside. One finger inside thigh, and Jay of course nodded and wound up to throw a pitch outside and not very fast. Trotting over to Jay, she asked him if he felt alright and he ignored her. Well that’s back to normal, she thought as she trotted back to the warm up plate and called for four fingers down and wiggling. Jay wound up and sailed a pitch so far over her head that it went flying into the stands. At least it wasn’t very hard and the kid that caught it with his bare hands even waved a “thank you” back at Jay. This can’t be a good sign.

A half hour of absolutely nothing working for Jay as Lily called it, and she was starting to get really worried. His mechanics were just fine, and his arm was doing all the right motioning for what she was calling, it just appeared that he was fingering the ball wrong. His fast ball wasn’t that fast, his curve ball didn’t fall, his slammer had turned into a sailor, and his slider could probably pass for a splitter that went wild. After she called the ball boy over with the radar gun she gasped to see his “all out” which is signaled by one finger motioned to the ground, came in at a paltry eighty seven. Lily sighed.

“The last thing I wanted to do was have to rely on Barceló to end a losing streak, but aside from the shock of swinging too early for a few innings, Jay might not get far,” Lily said to Tug as they were sitting in the dugout, before the National Anthem. She looked down the bench where Jay was sitting all alone, since the only person that still attempted to talk to him while he is on the bench wasn’t here. The absence of Jack made Lily a bit more pissed off then she had been days previous, and she started wondering if Jay was in a funk because of that as well.

Lily was also not impressed when she ran back into the dugout to grab Jay and make him come out for the National Anthem. There were a few murmurs of laughter as a lot of the fans noticed this Abbott and Costello like performance coming from the teams starts. It was shrugged off by most of them as it almost always is because the Red Sox fans are so used to watching a nutty pitcher giving extra performances. At the end of the performance she didn’t even want to go and walk him out to the mound, but did all the same. This is probably going to get ugly really fast.

This also wasn’t the best time for Jay to start acting human, and stranger than normal because Christian was walking to the plate waving his bat back and forth, still flirting with four hundred at the end of August which means that he is no fluke. One of those terrible Jay pitches is going to be hit by this guy, and he rarely ends up on first. On the off chance that he does, then he is going to create chaos for her struggling brother on the bases. She didn’t exactly know how to approach it all because she couldn’t get under his skin if she wanted to, so perhaps if she was quiet he would just start thinking himself. It didn’t work though as he walked to the plate and said, “Missed you guys last night.”

“Yeah we had to get all the Yankees players off the field so you could sweep them earlier in the week,” and then she added up to him and then added, “Where’s my thank you?”

“I’ll save that for hoping your brother lost a step this week,” he chirped back down at her, “Dare to dream you know?”

Lily had to think about what to do next because it appeared that Christian was expecting a drop off, and since she was quite positive he was going to get it, she needed to think. She pondered the ramifications of just about every single placement issue he was having, and then decided that the best thing to do was beg fast and hope Christian thinks he’s getting change up. She lowered her finger and then darted it towards the ground. Jay didn’t nod. Jay didn’t do anything, he just stood there looking out into the crowd over her shoulder.

“Oh God, here we go again,” she muttered under her breath which made Christian ask her what she had said. She responded to him with a “Nothing,” and then noted that Jay was looking at her again. Christian signaled time out, and the umpire granted it and then reprimanded Lily for taking so long. She then stood up and held her hands out in supplication to her brother who had gone back to looking in the stands, so she turned around to see John and Chris sitting in their usual places with Jack sitting next to them.

Lily turned around to look at Jay again, and that was when she heard the unmistakable voice of Jack who yelled out, “Throw the ball kid, I’m suspended!”

After another reprimand from the umpire Lily crouched down behind the plate. Christian was muttering to himself, but that was normal for him, if someone broke his stride, which was exactly what was going on here, but Jay was looking in for the signal. She figured that her first idea was her only idea, and she pointed one finger to the ground and then darted it down.

The visor of Jay’s cap pointed down to the ground, as she could see him tightening his grip on the ball in front of him, and inside his glove. She was thinking that his mechanics were still good. Ever slowly Jay started leaning back as his knee lifted off the ground. As he pulled the his leg upward the arm span started fanning out in that fluid catapult that really brings the fear out in the batters. Christian started muttering a bit again. The body of Jay Franklin seemed to reach further back that it ever had, and Lily was starting to worry that he is going to overbalance as his leg started straightening out in a Warren Spawn like strait weight downward, which made Lily gasp to look upon it. She was confused to see what was going to come next as Jay’s entire body rolled over itself with the ball’s release towards the plate. She could hear it. Christian could hear it.

SLLLLAAAAAAAAAMM! Like Thunder echoed through the whole park followed quickly by the obscenity that Christian threw out after swinging at a ball that was already in the glove. Lily’s eyes started tearing up from the pain that at first made her think he had broken every bone in her hand. She looked up at the scoreboard to see the radar reading which was merely flashing “ERR” over and over again. She took the ball from her mitt and tossed it back to Jay who snatched it out of the air like he was furious.

Christian stood next to the batter’s box looking out at the mound to Jay and then looked down at Lily before he said to her, “He knows that I like you two doesn’t he?” … to be continued

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The Chosen Ones – Chapter 1.1

“Happy Father’s Day,” was what I said, as stood over the man that had sired me. His leg had almost been torn completely off from the bullet that had left my gun and struck his knee cap, exactly as I had wanted it to. The only concern I had at that point was that the bleeding was going to drain the life out of him too soon. I couldn’t have that, but then again I couldn’t waste time mulling over what could have been a fabulously vicious ending to the only filthy kike I had ever really known either, with plans that still need to be fulfilled.

He said nothing as he stared up at me with mingled hatred in his eyes. That was when I tossed him the cell phone I had taken off of the man I had killed less than an hour ago. I use the term “man” very loosely, but I don’t want any of you to think that I am only a foul mouthed assassin so early into my tale. “Call them, and tell them that it’s over,” I then barked at him as he tried to stop the bleeding in his leg. This part of the plan was crucial, and if he didn’t complete it, I wouldn’t be able to dissect him with the bullets left in my pistol, and that probably would have made my temper even worse. He spit at my feet.

I could care less about his pride at this point. He isn’t exactly Meyer Lansky, but his place within the family is high enough that this would be a serious black eye to the people at the top. I am here to make a statement, and I’ve been so embroiled in this crap my whole life that I know how to cause pain. He knows that I am going to kill him, and if I had my way I would have done it fourteen years ago, after that flaming wop he works for had killed my best friend and his family. It put a real damper on graduation, but I had simply decided that if ever forced to be near any of these people again I was going to take care of the blight God had ignored for hundreds of years. I am near these people again.

Giving in to his situation, he finally started punching numbers into the cell phone in his hand. I had no idea as to whether he was really talking to whom I had told him to or not, but logic would dictate that he would take this opportunity to warn them all. It was actually what I wanted. Fear from outside their little underworld is very rare, and even though I know that no warning about me is going to scare them, it is very important that it looms. The man that I want him to warn of the wrath of God descending upon him isn’t even the reason I am here, but he is a symptom of the disease. “John, listen to me because I don’t have much time,” finally came from his mouth. The fact that the guinea wop bastard didn’t even have an Italian name always pissed me off too, now that I think of it. “My son is here, and he is going to kill me.”

I actually heard the tirade of ignorant swearing and threatening coming through the phone at this point. It never failed to amuse me how stupid these people sounded when they talked, and knowing that I was probably giving that fat piece of shit heart trouble was practically making me drool. It was nothing compared to the feeling of excitement I had had earlier as his great nephew was crying on his knees in front of me, begging for his life. It practically made me horny, and when the bullet hit the back of his head, spraying what little brains he had all over the pavement in front of him I felt let down. Little boys should always play with their food. It’s all a part of growing up, and my rebirth as something almost as low as all of these creatures should be savored a bit, like that first soda pop your dad gives you as a little boy.

I couldn’t help myself as I loudly started mocking my father’s words in a whiney baby voice while I lurked over him, “Listen to me John, Listen to me JOHN,” but I was starting to feel my “self righteous” lust over flowing in me. The barking on the other end of the phone trailed off a bit, as a little bit of reality probably sunk into his fat head. I pulled the other gun out of the back of my waistband. A smaller pistol, but far more accurate, with less explosion at the end, but still my favorite after all these years. My father’s eyes went horrifically wide as I started sizing him up with the barrel of it. “Say goodbye to your friend dad.”

I guess it’s really hard to explain the wonderful feeling you get when you are doing such unspeakable acts. If you throw in the fact that I had and have no conscience issues over it all, it might make it easier to explain perhaps. In the space of about 3 seconds I had pulled the hammer back on my small .22 caliber pistol and watched with elation as my father started babbling faster into the phone. The loud bang that came from it caused my father to flinch, but not fast enough for the bullet to flee the barrel and shatter the cell phone before slicing through his hand. My aim was off a bit as I had been hoping to take his ear with it too, but the screaming that he started doing from the pain in his hand was almost as orgasmic.

He started shouting, “You rotten little bastard ..” but stopped when my foot hit the side of his head. I knew what he was going to start yelling before he had even started. The predictable old fool hadn’t changed his lines in all these years, and even here at the end, he was going to start by calling ME rotten. I guess it beat being called a nigger like he had thrown at all of the people he had stolen from and then killed in his miserable life. It was the first real rebellion I had had when I told him that I didn’t want to hear him using that word anymore, and the lashing he had given me for being an “ungrateful bastard” was my first badge of honor, that asshole had applied upon me. As far as I was concerned I was a bastard after all and had actually appreciated the use of that word when talking to me.

“A bastard has no father, you fucking stupid little man,” I sneered at him as he writhed around on the floor. “I happen to be without a mother, which I am pretty sure has something to do with you,” I added in a bit of a mock. Something about explaining his sins to him, made me feel better because I wanted him to know that he was on his way to hell. I think it must be horrifying to know that it is your own son sending you to hell, but this godless fuck lying on the floor in front of me would have been the first to joke that Jews don’t believe in hell after all. It was something I vividly remember him telling Jerome Washington before he killed him in the alley out back of his recording studio, an hour before he was telling the police that a gang of “niggers” had killed him right after he finished his platinum album. Gangs of “niggers” always seemed to kill his recording stars, and the corrupt system always bought it. I’m sure that the newspapers will report this as being the same.

“I’ve lived a pretty full life,” he wheezed out at me after he adjusted his body to look into my face again, “I’m happy to say that you won’t do the same ..” he started before the gun in my hand fired again, searing right through his shoulder. After a loud gasp he spat at me and then yelled out with what he had left, “John’s on his way here you bastard, and he won’t be alone!”

I could actually feel my lips curl in what probably from his viewpoint was a very sick grin. It’s what I wanted after all, that John and his crew should show up to find his mutilated body. Unfortunately I wouldn’t be here to see the looks on their faces when they do, but I can fanaticize about the pain and confusion. “You miss the point father dear,” I started in a very calm voice despite my jubilation, “All they can do is kill me, since I have nothing,” his eyes rolled around which made me a bit worried that I was losing the source of my fun. “My only living relative will be dead when they get here, so they have nothing to scare me with,” I pulled the hammer back on my pistol, and slowly aimed it at his forehead, “they probably won’t realize any of this until after they bury your body, and see no family there to use against me.”

Again, unfortunately it didn’t feel as good as it should have when the bullet hit him right between the eyes. It was a beautiful vision to see my father there with that terrified look on his face, and a bullet hole between his eyes, and I will save that vision in my memory for the rest of my days, but I really would have liked a lot more anguish along the way. I vowed to myself at that moment that I will continue to work on playing with my food as I go, because I should have a lot of practice. Checking my watch I noted that it was 12:18 which means that at top speed with no traffic, John and his crew will be here in about thirteen minutes, which is plenty of time.

My father’s .38 wasn’t in the top drawer of his desk, but there was a nice Sig in its place. There was also a box of ammo, and an open pack of cigarettes. My own sense of humor caused me to say aloud, “Those things will kill you dad,” before I lit one up for myself, and pocketed his gun and ammo. My stockpile of weaponry is quite massive, but there is nothing wrong with adding to it. As surgical as I would like to believe I am, I will start running out of such necessities after all. I took another long pull off of the cigarette before I tossed it into a pile of magazines. I didn’t actually think it would start a fire, but the thought of a small fire in the place for those fucking wops, humored me, as I walked out the back terrace that I had come in through. The boat I had come in on was still running on the river, and after checking my watch again, I saw that eight minutes would be plenty of time for my wake to be gone by the time those assholes got here. Thank God they are all pretty stupid … to be continued

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The truth, the whole truth, but how would I know the truth? I really hate writing about the gloom and doom of my poor decision making skills, but sometimes it is the most pertinent things within my life. In many circumstances, writing about these things and owning them often seems to relinquish the issue at hand. All except for one glaring issue to which I have come to the conclusion will remain with me for about ten years and two months. It appears that the Mother of all the Evils’s {MAE} decided it was finally time to start calling again, and as usually she had taken a long enough break from it to leave me totally unprepared. The good news in this regard is that she may have been relatively harmless in her proclamations, and might have actually turned that corner into being the negative power of example that she was created to be.

She was armed with her usual weapons of guilt, and lies, but perhaps something had happened along the way, because she was totally incapable of ensnaring her greatest ally in the war of the BPD {Borderline Personality Disorder} who would be Captain ADHD. It’s central for all terrible mothers {take notes if any terrible mothers are out there reading this} to clamp an iron fist around the hearts of all of your sons. A boy will unconditionally love his mother and fall for all of her shit regardless of how horrible they are as a human being. I have many years of research in this department as I watched my own son swallow down every table spoon of shit his mother feeds him, and of course my own recollections of childhood from my own mother. In her case it lasted about 15 years until I finally realized that it all was a lie, I was nothing more than ill treated property, and I probably hated her. I don’t recommend allowing this to happen, or to allow yourself to get to this point, but then again it beats the alternatives.

She did try all of the games. Mommy loves you but daddy doesn’t let her see you. The boy had finally been let in on this ploy by his older sister and responded by telling her that she could see him every Saturday, but he had given up on her coming. She started working the angle that she was sick and couldn’t drive out to see him but his daddy is too mean to bring him out to see her. He parried that thrust with another gem about how his daddy had to drive to work every day, and shouldn’t have to spend his day off driving out there. He added that since she never seems to have a job that she should have come out to see him before she got sick. I have a feeling that didn’t go over too well, but she tried another tactic of telling him that she bought another snake. This managed to hold his attention and even seemed to give him that much needed excuse to tell her all about his new cat. After a while he realized that she didn’t really want to talk about him and even handed the phone to his sister saying, “Why don’t you tell Imtoocutus about yourself, I’m too busy,” and she’s probably been crying to any friends she has left about it all night since.

I, of course, still won’t talk to her. I actually blame it on having too much self respect at this point. I talked to her sister about her new issues, and she assures me that she is not dying. Her new con {in theory, it could be true, but let’s get real here} involves her having extreme vertigo every time she gets into an automobile. She states that it is an after effect of having her ovaries removed from having HPV, and most of the people she has around her has fallen for it. Of course it takes some really stupid and/or gullible people to be around her anyway. I still admit whole heartedly that being married to her for 4 years made me the stupidest and most gullible of them all, but I am recovering from that still. I researched HPV to at least have the facts that it doesn’t cause this vertigo she whines about, and probably wouldn’t have started driving the kids out to see her anyway. It has always been about getting the kids out to her place anyway, no matter what the courts say. It’s a simple ploy really because then that way you can fill your place with everything their heart desires {within reason of what people will get for you so that you can fight your evil ex-husband who stole them in the first place .. lack of job always places this caveat on your plans} and then send them home to hate their father for it all. The ploy at least has kept her from having to go to the grocery store and buy your own food {her parents created that monster so they can feed it for all I care} or even go and pay any of her bills. The state of Maine has 3 social workers to each citizen for a reason.

She must be getting really crabby by now though since her new disease has forced her to be with the same boyfriend for quite a while now. Living in the middle of nowhere in Maine is great for being a lay about, but it is a horrible way to keep your inhibitions filled. Now that she can’t hitch rides to the bars she hasn’t been able to find replacements for the guy she has been living with, and her BPD doesn’t allow her to leave one man without the other one already in hand, so she is probably a prisoner of her own realm finally. She has been resorting to using her first husband as her pity post {tidbit from my daughter, since it is her biological father} which means that her habits have probably been supplemented by him, and that always kills two birds with one stone. It gives her the financial strength she needs to not be productive, and it gives her a man to cheat on her man with who is usually willing to drive for it while he is at work. My plan to finally get my oldest daughter into a drivers license so that she can troop the kids around to see their mother if she wishes appears to be falling apart since she didn’t seem to keen on that when she was explaining her bio parents playing doctor to me. Teenage girls love their drama and all, but then again you never actually see soap operas that take place in a trailer park do you?

The rainbow flying over the storm cloud in all of this appears to be that she is having a very hard time creating the chaos that she desires in the kid’s lives to prove that they are her property. My mother used to be the master of that, but my father was too weak to place firm enough restrictions on what she did when she came blowing into town every two years. My ex is NOT allowed on school property, or to see my son’s psychiatrist or therapist, so she can’t create the painful situations my mother did. It might have been one of the only gifts I could have given them that they will never know about if I have my way. As she has just started calling them again it should last for about 2 weeks, and that would then allow her to retreat back into her little world where her friends can console her for being mistreated by us all for the next 3 months of no contact. If it stays as null as it was yesterday when she called I may not need the entire 3 months to repair the damage that she causes, but by the way my son worked out the riddle of “what does an unemployed woman who doesn’t visit her kids need a 300 dollar snake for” by himself last night, I think she may have finally crossed that line that took me 6 years longer to reach in my own childhood. Then again, like I have always pointed out about how I didn’t get diagnosed with ADHD because I didn’t have two sisters making it worse, I also didn’t have two sisters to help me realize that my mother wasn’t worth my tears either. ;8o)

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It was a hot rainy night, with thunder and lightning engulfing the sky above. The mood throughout all of Megalopolis these days appears to be a bit grim, and the last place that everyone’s favorite super villain turned super hero would like to be is the Pink Mafia Headquarters, playing double agent for fun and profit. Said mood of dismal in Megalopolis could easily be caused by the unemployment in the area, and perhaps it could be from the cost of getting to your job if you have one. The Superdaddyman knows this all too well from the cost of filling both the Superdaddymobile and the Superdaddyvan. On the other side of the general malaise, the Superdaddyman has far too much knowledge as well. He himself has been replaced in his most lucrative surveillance position in the Pink Mafia, and this makes it far more difficult to acquire the knowledge necessary to bring down this blight on humanity. Alas, it is a far more serious issue that demands the Caped Pervader’s attention at this time, as there appears to be another invasion of the dreaded No Hablos from the far off land of Tempspanica.

Now as we all know the No Hablos are only invading Megalopolis to do the jobs that Megalopolians won’t do. Even over burdened super heroes have time to watch the news, and it has been a big story after all. Unfortunately the Superdaddyman has had a quite different experience with the No Hablos from Tempspanica that would seem to undermine the efforts of those that would like Megalopolis to be annexed by Tempspanica outright. The influx of Tempspanicans that are brought in every night in a Minivan from where they are holed up an hour away has increased to astronomical amounts as of late, and unfortunately so has the amount of Megalopolians that have been pounding on the door of the Pink Mafia Headquarters each night swearing that they will do the jobs that the Tempspanicans won’t. It’s getting to be a real ordeal, but aside from the obvious there are just too many issues with Tempspanicans to list in one tale of heroic doings. Of course we will try to get to a lot of them.

Now we must be honest about this, as much of the Superdaddyman’s issues with Tempspanicans is the fact that they force him to have to ally with one of his arch enemies. In days past he has had to ally with various fiends from the netherworld {the Evils’s for example} to save such important people as Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, but those were on Presidential orders, and we can’t fault the Superdaddyman his opportunities to perv-on the Secretary of State. The downright refusal of the Tempspanicans to speak English forces the Superdaddyman to have to resort to communication with the fowl and villainous Paco Taco, and that is completely unforgivable! Left to their own devices though, the Tempspanicans are downright dangerous, through their own lack of verbal skills, and the Superdaddyman ends up spending more time fixing his old job than doing his new job. Last night for example one of the Tempspanicans used oven cleaner to clean the plastic fixtures throughout the PMHQ, and it not only destroyed them but created a gas that made everyone sick. Superdaddyman had to eat his pride and kiss the ring of Paco Taco to go yell at the idiot that just stood there smiling as he played the game of “No Hablo Megalopian Dude?”

“No Hablo Megalopian Dude?” is the mantra around the PMHQ these days, and the Superdaddyman actually does Hablo Tempspanican so it infuriates him when they switch to “No Hablo Tempspanican Dude?” every time he tries to get them motivated through their own tongue. The ingrained mentality of “we work cheap but we refuse to understand” is so centered in them that simply speaking their own language complicates things for them so they pretend not to speak it either. They don’t appear to speak “horn” either as they constantly walk out in front of the Superdaddyman as he is trying to move heavy, and precariously balanced items throughout the PMHQ warehouse. It was another ego defeating walk to the office of the Paco Taco to get him to come downstairs to force the Tempspanicans to clean up the collapses that they caused.

Now of course in all of this Paco Taco is being a useful ally. He hasn’t put up with a single bit of their “No Hablo”, “Deafness” or “Stupidity” that tend to be all of their weapons used in the war of Megalopolis. On the other side of the coin, there are so many of them now that he can’t keep tabs on all of them, and while one is burning plastic on one end of PMHQ, another two are standing in front of fork trucks talking about something in Tempspanican. All during this there are another 3 more hanging out in the parking lot doing God knows what. Did I mention that Megalopolis is roughly 3000 miles from the nearest Tempspanican border? Even the Touristbecians attempt to speak Megalopian when they make the two hour trip down here, and their *&^%ed up country doesn’t force them to speak the other language of their country at all! The Superdaddyman is simply perplexed by it all.

After a long night of having to fight back the Tempspanican terrorism, while trying to get his own job requirements finished our all powerful super hero was exhausted to say the least. He didn’t even have any time for intelligence taking, but then again there didn’t appear to be much intelligence to tend to in the whole place. The Evil HR Director who has opted to allow the PMHQ to be co-opted by the Tempspanican Empire has been totally unreceptive to the rantings of the Safety Committee about all of this, and why should she? We have two presidential candidates that are both completely ignorant to this problem, and walk in lock step to make it all a permanent reality! The Superdaddyman of course has been befuddled by the whole ordeal and doesn’t appear to have any solutions to it, since he has no desire to run for president anyway {despite all of the begging from the throngs of adoring fans} so he must try to bring down the dreaded Pink Mafia while fighting back their new wave of militant invaders, the Tempspanicans! Thoughts and prayers must go out to our favorite Super Hero, because if he can’t do it, then nobody can. Let’s hope that they don’t get joined by the evil penguins, or all hope may be lost ;8o)

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No good deed goes unpunished after all, so I wasn’t too surprised when the owner of the cat came looking for it. It was a bit of an emotional struggle as to whether or not I would give the cat back or not as the person was quite obviously a loser, and the fact that his girlfriend hadn’t even noticed that she left it in a parking lot was a bit dubious. All the same I ended up handing the cleaned, brushed out, taken to the vet, given to my kids, cat over to the idiot, and he was nice enough to offer me a kitten. Great! I refused of course because quite frankly I had had enough personal involvement with this particular inbred faction of southern New Hampshire. Now of course it can’t end there as I had to promise my son that we would go to the animal shelter on Monday and find him another cat. It seemed like a good idea and I went back to work to hand the cat back over.

The next morning I was woken up by my kids who had spent the entire morning driving to hell and back with my aunt {the cat killer} looking at pure bred cats from every breeder within 100 miles. They all had picked out the ones that they wanted {Maine Coon Cats at about 400$ a whack} and were waking me up early so that we could go get one, maybe two. My mind was racing as I had faint memories of a loser Aussie Sheppard {the thing would cower at your feet and refuse to move whenever you carried something heavy, and then peed when you kicked it out of your way} that she had taken my ex wife out to get many years ago. To be honest with you I loved her and all but I was happy when she left me and took that fucking dog with her. That was done completely against my wishes and started the war in the house between Greektradgedius Inyiddish and EX3 that went on for months until I gave up on both of them. My aunt played innocent after that ordeal as well.

Now aside from the fact that I have had to bury so many of this woman’s animals {all pure bred, all needing drugs from the inbreeding that killed them young} I have had it up to my eyeballs with her taste in animals and her interfering with the controlled chaos that is my life. Everyone was forced to have a sit down {too early if you ask me for my temper to be under control} so that I could explain how things are ACTUALLY going to work around here. Then I compromised because I have never actually had any control over how things are going to work around here, but it was a lot easier when I explained the amount of money I was going to pay for a new cat, and convinced the kids that their aunt would pay for their Coon cats, and even suggested they get 3! It was amazing how easily everyone was willing to compromise after that, and I at least agreed to go to the animal shelter and get a cat that day.

The oldest was at work by this time so I just had the two little ones with me, and the half hour drive to the animal shelter allowed me some time to explain moral issues as it pertains to pets. I explained to them that human beings are actually very shallow people and it is our responsibility to overcome that. I didn’t go into the whole boring lectures about how “cat breeders” sell you inbred and inferior cats that probably shouldn’t have been born in the first place, but took a more healthy approach explaining to them about how you need to take the animals that really need a home. They seemed to understand their civic duty to grab an older cat, as opposed to a kitten, and try to choose the ones that aren’t auditioning. By convincing the kids that the cats auditioning for a home would be gone within a few days, they seemed to get into looking for the mellow cats that probably wouldn’t get adopted if it weren’t for us, and took a little more pride in the affair.

The lesson was really easy to demonstrate as the cats and kittens that were all full of energy by the door were getting scooped up by other people the second we let go of them. In the end we managed to get to the back of the room with the cages, and found a very sweet natured cat that wasn’t too full of energy, but seemed interested. Her name was Duchess and she was a very long haired 8 year old female. You could feel the bones through her fur, but despite her obvious starvation over the years she didn’t get angry about being bothered while she ate. This is a very good sign of a cats temperament, and more over she seemed to be perfectly happy to forgo food to get attention, which I think sold her to us almost immediately. I filled out the adoption paperwork, paid the 60 dollars for the cat, 15 dollars for the transponder, and another 12 dollars for a “getting started” kit so that Captain ADHD would be all set with his new cat. Oh then another 22 dollars for the bounce charge on my checking account because I hadn’t paid attention to my budget. Oh well.

The cat actually happens to be better than we thought. She’s overly affectionate, and will follow you around all hours of the day and night demanding to be played with. My son has taken to standing by the food dish so that she will eat, because she doesn’t really like to be alone too much. I tried all the tricks to annoy her into leaving me alone and not a single one seems to work. I have petted her rough, and against the grain of her fur, and she loves it. We all have started picking her up and carrying her around, and she adores that too. You can wake her up, and she acts like you are doing her a favor, because she had forgotten to play. She is still having a hard time jumping up on the beds because of her weakened body, but we set op series of stairways using the Staples boxes I keep bringing home from work obsessively, and she gets the concept. If you were to drive by my house today you would see her perched in her favorite window in the basement where the Captain and I live. It takes ten Staples boxes to make that stairway for her, but she seems to appreciate it, even when it’s raining. Of course I think she knows that wet fur means a half hour of brushing out from the kids ;8o)

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Well there is a little black and white cat sleeping downstairs on the futon, which wasn’t here a few hours ago. I actually could have avoided this one, but I decided to go across the street and get some more work done at the offices about 11 pm and there she was wrapped up in the back axle of one of the trucks. I really did try to ignore the thing as it whined for help, and I even went as far as to turn my headphones up so that the noise was drowned out, but it couldn’t drown out the tapping on the window of my car. This tapping was from one of the guys that work’s in the company downstairs from the office that I clean. I was so screwed at that point.

He stood there holding this limp black and white bundle with a knotted rope hanging around its neck, and that was how it had gotten hung up in the back axle of the truck I so desperately tried to look at. It was pathetic, and didn’t appear to even have the energy to struggle as it was held out to me, and I opened my window, like a moron, and took it. Her fur was so nasty that you couldn’t even tell there was white in it, and the matted balls of fur {that later I had to cut out} numbered in the several dozen. The poor thing sat on my lap as I drove across the street to call the local police, and laid perfectly still against me as I carried her through the plant to get to the phone. Again she didn’t seem to have the energy to struggle, but as I talked to the police, I realized that I didn’t like their way of dealing with strays like this, which would be a call to the emergency vet and a needle.

I filled out a PTO {Paid Time Off} slip for the last three hours of work and took the cat to my car with the makeshift leash still on her. To be honest with you she had obviously been living on her own a while and with a 5 foot leash hanging off of her was a miracle she survived. It was a bit worrisome because the factory is nowhere near any houses whatsoever, so the search for her home is not going to go well, but then again why should it? That leash I left on to get her home and make sure she stayed ok {which ended up being moot as the cat passed out on the passenger’s seat and didn’t move a muscle the whole half hour ride home} but was a bad statement towards whatever owner she may have had. I am such a sucker for cats, it’s horrible.

She wasn’t exactly thrilled with finding herself in my kitchen sink when she got to my house, but I wasn’t allowing her into the general population here without being cleaned of fleas and ticks, but in the end she just basically stood there with her face in a food dish while I brushed out all the gnarls, cut out all the burs, and washed out all of the fleas. She remained quite docile throughout it all actually and didn’t even show any free will until I took her downstairs to the section of the house that my son and I live in {in seclusion because of the girls, and in an area that my other cat can’t get to} where the second I put her down she went straight under my antique ice chest and refused to come out. At this point I thought it was probably a good thing since she could adapt in her own time. About an hour later she had popped out demanding some attention, and then went even further downstairs and set up residence on the futon I sleep on when my father is in town. The rope and the home made noose collar have since been removed.

Now of course my other cat is furious with me. If I try to go near her {see you can never have two women of any kind under one roof} she hisses at me violently and takes swipes at me with her claws. I even tried to bribe her with a chunk of ham and she sniffed it and then spit on me. Little brat went scurrying into my oldest daughters room and I have a feeling that she won’t want anything to do with me for a while. Upon coming back downstairs the new kitty runs away from me so I just put the food, water and the kitty litter box {which she used the second I put it down thank God} that I made out of a copy paper box so that the two of them don’t get all snippy over the other one. I’ll simply figure out what I am going to do from here after I get some sleep but I am sure that she won’t be able to stay here long term. In the end if I have to take her to the animal shelter I will, but I will have to have some sort of arrangement that they need to call me if she goes beyond the “remains alive” period that they give them there. Of course I hate going in there because I can never handle looking at all the cats that are in there begging me to take them. I better get into heaven for this crap ;8o)

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This is a repost of my writings from Itching For Coffee ... Where I often post writings with other talented writers ...

My forehead is still throbbing as I sit here and write this today. I have been to the gym already, and it was a slow day there. Most of my gang didn’t show up so I got to get my workout in without much interruption, but as I sit here I am amazed at the pain that is coming from right above my eye. It will sound like a long story but it really isn’t. I think the whole event took a little under 15 minutes, but it felt like it was a lot longer, and to say the least, I am too old for it all.

Let me start by saying that this July, God Bless, I will be 19 years sober. It is a small miracle for the most part, but not too shocking anymore to any of those that had seen me drink. I was an unearthly monster that was full of rage before I drank everything I could get my hands on, and alcohol managed to strip what little conscience I had left to get the rest of my rage out of my system. Since the last day I drank back in 1989 at the ripe age of 19 {yep, you know you were bad when you never even made it to legal drinking age before the gig was up!} I have formulated the belief that I am completely and utterly intolerant to alcohol, and I have no control over it. Before I get all preachy here, let me say that this relates, because I also happen to have no control over alcohol in other people as well. For many reasons I also happen to be intolerant of alcohol in other people. Again to specify, I don’t care if anyone drinks and actually envy those that can quite good naturedly but I have never been able to tolerate those that let alcohol do to them what it did to me.

I have a routine. My routine is what keeps my day to day going along smoothly, and for the most part holds my sanity in for as long as it possibly can. It consists of getting up each day by 11, hitting the gym by 12, getting some writing done by 3, getting the kids off the bus around then, getting dinner into me by 4, and heading out to work by 5. The second part of my day consists of getting through work as best I can, leaving at 2, stopping at Dunkin Donuts for a large Ice Coffee {which I will keep adding ice to and drink from until it is water the next night when I leave work}, get home by 2:30, sleep by 4am, rinse, repeat. Anything that interferes with all of this is a burden, and that includes all of the doctor’s appointments I take the kids to, picking them up for sporting events, etc etc etc. With three kids there is a lot of etc etc etc. What really drives me up the wall are the extra things that really should have never happened at all, and especially if they are pointless. At one time rescuing raccoon cubs might have filled that bill, but I have grown up over the last few years and have incorporated “The Next Right Thing” theory that has allowed for “extra” hassles in my day to day.

What happened last night was not an acceptable “extra” hassle from start to finish, and my head still hurts so I am a bit pissy about it. On my way through the Dunkin Donuts drive thru there was a sign saying “Window Broken Come Inside” which I hate to do because it takes longer and my clumsiness often forces me to drop my coffee. Of course it is the only one that is open at 2 am so I haven’t really got my choices in the matter. I went inside and there was a crowd of sorts in there that appeared to be exuberant over the Celtics win over the Lakers, and had probably closed the bar they watched the game at. One of these guys was a belligerent Lakers fan that appeared to be barely old enough to drink if he was at all, and he was explaining very loudly to everyone about how the Celtics cheated. This is typical for a Lakers fan, because like their baseball equivalent {the New York Yankees} they have never actually lost a game in the team’s history, but have been woefully screwed repeatedly thus interfering with their perfect seasons they inevitably would have had. The entire country is used to this mental disorder and usually ignores it.

This is where I come in, of course, because I have never known what was good for me or prudent in the least, so after 5 minutes in line I ordered my coffee with this yappy little twit bumping into me, and shouting at everyone. When I finally had my coffee and could have made my big escape unscathed the little red Jeremy on the left shoulder said “Come on, be a smart ass. That’s always fun isn’t it?” and the little white Jeremy on the right shoulder had nothing to say about the matter. I said in an undertone as I walked by, “The Lakers had no business even being there,” and continued on my way. Hey! The truth hurts and all, but sooner or later someone has to educate the poor lad, and who better to do it than me?

The little prick wheeled me around and punched me hard in the forehead. The combination of drunk and stupid had interfered with his aim because I am pretty sure, looking back that he was aiming for my nose or my eye. Twelve inches of solid bone surrounding rock, was none to kind on the little moron’s hand, as he staggered back from what was probably 2 or 3 broken fingers. I barely noticed this because I had stars in front of my eyes and I think tears were probably welling up. I had dropped my ice coffee after all and that always makes me sad. Phase 2 had to be executed though because this little Peckerhead was about 4 inches taller than me and easily half my weight. To be honest with you, my arms were bigger than his neck, and I was rather pissed off that all of the mouthy assholes in the place simply cleared off and left us a lot of room. I am way too old for this shit!

It is after all the responsibility of the old to teach the younger generation things like manners, tact, and dignity, so I did end up grabbing the kid by his neck and dragging him outside while he started yelling in beergoggle about how I was assaulting him. As I had to wrench him from the door that he was clinging onto with his good hand I was starting to get really angry. When I finally got the twit outside I punched him with sober aim clean in the nose and he laid there until the police came and picked him up. I stood there smoking a cigarette until they got there and since the gentleman was a known issue in the area after sporting events the police just took my name and number and let me go about my night. They of course wanted to know if I wanted to press charges and I said no, because I was probably owed from when I was his age. It made the officer laugh actually, when he responded in kind. My head still hurts, so it isn’t exactly bragging.

I went back inside to get another coffee, which the girl behind the counter gladly gave me free of charge, and several of the idiots in there were cheering me, so I told them to shut it, because they were equally as embarrassing to me. The recent events probably made it so that the rest of the beer balls had been put away. I then went home and slowly poked around the web through my cloudy vision, and slept pretty good albeit with a harder time getting out of bed than the last week or so had been. Fortunately I have this little writing side line that I do, and I can find some humor in this crap, and am already planning on incorporating this into my article for my mouse fart this week. That drive thru window better be open the night the Red Sox win the World Series though ;8o)

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Another Father’s day, and I woke up this morning to head out to the gym like I have been now for a week. Weight 191 {6lbs less than last week} belt size 32 {still straining at that} and soreness just about everywhere. I’m actually really good at this, and I have an associate’s degree that says I should be. Back in the day I used to be the one person that everyone in my circle could count on to come up with creative ways to shed pounds and build muscle, and nobody who ever followed my directions ever failed. The fact of the matter is that most people rip on body builders for being dumb, muscle heads, you name it, and they may not be that far from the truth. I have met some intelligent body builders over the years, and when I was in college I had met a lot of the most famous pro body builders in history, but realistically the intelligent to non intelligent ratio was about 1 in 10. This really isn’t an insult either because I found that only the slower people that I ever trained could grasp the programs, and the more intelligent someone was the more likely they were to be too smart for proper diet and exercise.

Some things never change though, and inevitably as I started working out and dieting again, I find myself forcing through on pure logic and dealing with a lot of factors outside my own realm that are torture to say the least. I do after all live with my “reality disaffiliated” grandmother who has been going to weight watchers for 30 years now and has the whole program memorized. She also has honesty issues that interfere with any of her own weight loss, and she tries to inflict her twisted wisdom on anyone else that might be making any progress. She gets extremely bitter as well when you don’t follow “her version” of a diet, and it creates wars and sub-plots within the household. Needless to say, since I am not a Weight Watchers employee my opinion doesn’t count, but at the same time I doubt that the Weight Watchers employees actually do tell her that using 80% lean hamburger and only 2 eggs in a meatloaf makes it perfectly healthy. On the other hand, if they did I wouldn’t pitch a temper tantrum if I made them twice a week and someone in the house refuses to eat them.

The second thing that never seems to change is my presence in the gym. Within two days of my triumphant return to “My House” where I used to work out with some verve before my accident a few years back, a few of my old associates appeared looking for guidance. A couple of them make really good workout partners. One is as dumb as an ox, but he’s big and strong and does absolutely everything you tell him to, to the letter. He appeared to be much in the same state of affairs I am, which is a bit larger around the middle but can hide it well with a baggy shirt thanks to his huge arms and shoulders. The other one has been one of our best friends since elementary school and her aversion to male contact {lesbian} makes her the perfect beard for men that really are at the gym to work out. As always she hasn’t gained a pound in 20 years and I don’t think that is a good thing, but then again I am not sculpting her into my Venus either. Then there are a few that just don’t belong at all, like my former best friend and his sister, who I will get to in a minute. In any regards we have now all met at the same time each morning at the gym for the last 3 days so I will assume that it is a habit now.

Now my former best friend is about 6 foot 4 in 3 different directions. I got over all of my old issues towards him years back because the fact that he still lives with my first wife reminds me that I got my revenge the second I left my wedding ring on the table and walked out on both of them. The 300 pounds he gained since then simply proved that I had escaped a miserable existence with that woman, and he simply was the perfect man for her. I had left there with the assumption that I would have expected nothing less from him years before it had happened, but she on the other hand had me fooled. She has since taken great pride in the fact that the woman whom I ended up with in the end gave me 2 beautiful children {and I stole the one she had before I came along} and cheated on me every chance she had, so realistically I think we are square. My former friend here is a medical situation in waiting, and looking at him really didn’t make me feel any better at all, so he was included into our gym troop, along with his sister who is still good for my ego after all these years, and thankfully half his size and married now. You can actually see the relief, in her face, as other people are attempting to take on the burden of getting her brother back into better health, not to mention the fact that one of them knows the bitch he lives with pretty good. If she thinks I’ll mention her name around anyone she’s in for a surprise though, as I have since moved on, married and divorced worse. In any regards it’s nice to have a half a dozen people I can call friends for a change.

Then of course there is the psychodrama that entails getting healthy again. I am already starting to have those compulsive traits that make me the most undesirable individual in the world. My irony to honesty ratio raises and lowers with my testosterone, and I start falling into my own head to psychoanalyze everyone around me. It makes for wonderful humor and all but it also creates a shield that doesn’t get penetrated very well. I was musing today about how the gymbos play the gym “stock market” between whatever it is they do to make their asses firmer. My intimacy issues come full circle when I believe that a woman is playing an angle whether she actually is or not, and I always manage to surround myself with people that will encourage this bad behavior. The women that flirt with me now are simply brushed off as “upside feeders” who see a guy that obviously was in great shape at one time who appears serious to get that way again. We joke about this, and my status of “aloof” remains intact while at the same time after I leave the gym and drive back to my hoard of screaming monsters it rather hit me today that I was the one who was going home to nobody other than my kids. Holding court for an hour doesn’t always seem to make up for that, but in the same frame I have had enough of trying to fit a relationship around an already hectic life, regardless of how desperately I miss it. I have too many feelings and emotions that I am enslaved to, to try and decipher another set, despite the best of intentions to begin with. Maybe I’ll spend a little more of my psychoanalytical bullshit on myself for a while and see where it takes me, within reason after all ;8o)

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It’s usually a very calm and casual drive home from work every night. No matter what time of the year it is, 2 am around here most likely means that the streets are perfectly clear, and it gives me a wonderful opportunity to think about whatever it is my little brain desires. Friday’s are the best because the fact that I can sleep in on Saturday usually makes the drive that much more casual. Some days, I take a different way so that I can simply take the extra time to mellow out more, but tonight I felt like getting home and writing a Superdaddyman adventure that I had been shrugging off for the last few days. I’m sure it would have been droll and at the best amused me only, but I was looking forward to it all the same.

The regular, back road route home {27 to 151 to 1 to 1a} was the one I took, and my mind was wandering about as to how I would frame my next great adventure, so as to make it amusing, yet based in small part on reality, while at the same time I was keeping my mind on the areas that I knew I could speed, and those that I couldn’t. The disadvantage of driving home at 2 am is the bored North Hampton Police Department that is desperate for something to do with less people to perpetrate quota on, so I do have to watch what I am doing. The worst of these locations is that intersection between 151 and 1 that almost nobody really stops for, which is where they almost always sit and wait for people. It’s an easy mark, and often they pull you over and simply tell you that you didn’t stop, but have learned to leave me alone over the last couple of years since I raise a very good stink about it all. I still slow down to a crawl when approaching the intersection so there is no doubt about it.

Tonight there was a rather large lump in the middle of the road, which usually signified a raccoon that wasn’t smart enough to get out of the way of oncoming traffic. My Scottish mind started appraising the critter from about a quarter of a mile away as to how much meat I could get off of it and what sauce to use when I prepare it. Mind you, I never actually do that but it is the instinct of the Scottish part of me that will always look at various road kill and think of what a waste of good meat it is, and this one was so huge that I could see it the second my Silverstar headlights touched it, which made that craven feeling come out almost immediately. As I approached it and it started moving in a very peculiar manner though, I was startled into slamming on my brakes in front of it, and staring at the 5 babies crawling around their mother. It hit me really hard for some reason, and it took me about half a cigarette to sit there and contemplate what I was going to do about this.

The mother raccoon was quite dead, and in the dead center of the side of the road I was driving on. One of the babies was in the process of dying, but the other 4 were the size of baseballs at best, and didn’t comprehend getting out of the road with headlights staring at them. They couldn’t have even had their eyes open more than a few days to a week, because I have had raccoons in my backyard my whole life, and have never seen them this small. Getting out of my car and walking over towards them didn’t move them a bit, and unfortunately started tugging at my heart as these babies were so small and defenseless that they hadn’t even grown into their instincts beyond, “Follow Mother.”

A car passed by after about 15 minutes of my standing there in disbelief. The car full of teenagers were obviously in a much bigger hurry than I was as they wailed around my car and blared their horn at me. The girl driving might have even flipped me off, I really only glanced out of apathy towards their momentary frustration. That didn’t swerve the cubs at all who still took no notice of me whatsoever as they sniffed around their mother oblivious to their own peril. I couldn’t really think, and my mind went into one of those dozes that it often does before a good old fashioned panic attack. Rationally I did finally come to my senses and assumed that the best course of action was to pull the mother off the road with a broom that I had in the back of my car. It was disgusting to be honest with you and might have actually cured that Scottish gene that always seemed to make me hungry at a road kill. To be blunt the entrails of the mother dragged behind her as I pushed her with the broom, but the cubs did follow her off to the side of the road. I then went and pushed the now dead baby that I had the wonderful fortune to watch wriggle for a while beside the mother, but realistically thought that it might have had the better road. I was now concerned about these babies that really didn’t know what to do next. It would figure that this would be the only time one of those stupid cops wouldn’t be at this intersection wouldn’t it?

A half hour is gone now, and a car finally pulls in behind me, and an older man gets out and asks if I need assistance. I told him what I saw and showed him the babies who were now starting to make whining chirps beside their mother, and he came over to look at them. God don’t make junk, I always say, and he happened to know a little bit about raccoons. He walked over and picked one up by the scruff of the neck and the thing didn’t even squirm much as he walked it over to his truck and put it in the back. I happened to have a couple of Staples Paper cases that I take home from work to store things in so when I brought it out he scooped up the other three the same way, and put them inside, and then placed them in the back seat of his truck.

It just so happens that this retired man lives in the woods on the other side of North Hampton, and his wife feeds the raccoons out back of their house, so he has a lot of experience watching them. He just so happened to not be able to sleep, so he just happened to drive out to Exeter to surprise his wife with morning coffee and muffins. He told me that raccoons aren’t like most animals in the fact that they don’t care if another raccoon smells like humans or not, and they happen to be very community oriented. He had friends that in the past just left homeless cubs in the backyard with the food, and some other mother will assimilate them into her pack, and that was just what he intended to do. I thanked him profusely for helping me out of this because I think in the end I would have had to leave them there and it would have eaten at me for many days, if not longer. I have a very good tendency to take on a lot more stress than necessary and if I catch up on my stress I can so easily find more.

It was amazing how my roller coaster of emotions could be run through the entire wringer in under 45 minutes, but then again perhaps that is why these types of things happen after all. The last 15 minutes of my drive home was dedicated to micro managing the situation over and over in my head and looking at all of the “other” circumstances that had gone on. Being a man who often wishes death on the mother of my own children, it was quite a quagmire to see the destructive nature of babies being without one. I moved on to wondering what would have happened had I gone another way home, because I can almost guarantee that the asswipe that loved her horn so much would have wiped out the rest of those babies in one fell swoop, had I not been there blocking her path to them. Then of course the kind old man {which is rare in New England trust me} who just happened along, and the more potent fact that I could have left by then but was still just watching the poor cubs for a bit. He probably never would have seen them himself.

Don’t get me wrong, because I am quite sure that these feelings of having done “the next right thing” will probably wear off before I even get to work again on Monday. If they haven’t then they should be wiped out of me about an hour into my shift as I firmly sit myself into my usual state of self pity, and self loathing that often follows me around like a storm cloud. I’m not perfect after all as I am just trying to work out all of the kinks in this little life that I call Jeremy Crow. The fact of it all seems to be that we are all put on this world for something. I have a few friends that will vehemently deny that fact, and will assume that I am trying to bring some notion of a higher power into all of this, but I have never really been able to simply sit back and assume the great accident theory either. At the very least I will have a wonderful story to tell my kids in about 5 hours when they are jumping up and down on my head demanding that I wake up and entertain them. Then I can go back to reminding myself that there is a chance that they were put on this planet to do something other than give me something to bitch about. Well maybe not, but the theory is sound ;8o)

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The Slammer – An Ever Growing Web Novel – Chapter 5.5

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Chris said in a matter of fact sort of way, as he continued to massage the back of Lily’s head, “I think the black eye gives you a little color,” he added as he looked over at John who was still staring at all of them in disbelief. Lily just swooned mildly as his fingers did their job, but the swelling in her eye had noticeably gone down in the last hour. Jack was swishing through his French fries left on his plate, and staring down so John wouldn’t start reprimanding him about his black eye and the split beside his mouth. Jay, the only one noticeably free of harm was looking through a copy of ESPN the Magazine that had just come out with his face adorning the cover.

“You’re tied with the Yankees and one game back of the Blue Jay’s, and this is how you idiots decide you want to celebrate a great come back?” he said while looking at all of them. “You all should teach Jay, better than this!” he barked out for what now is the thirtieth time. “He cocked three guys with his throwing hand, and as for YOU,” he started as he looked directly at Jack, “How many cracks to the eye, do you think your already soft and old skull can take?”

The strangest part was that it was Chris that responded to John when he said, “Come on John. You’ve been watching these types of fights between these two teams since you were a kid and your father told you about the ‘good old days’ when you were still in diapers,” he looked around for courage from the others and didn’t get it. “I used to hear about it back in Chicago growing up, and my old man used to talk about it by explaining how the Cardinal, Cubs brawls were nothing compared to those.”

“That isn’t exactly Carlton Fisk sitting next to you!” John barked back at him.

Chris blanched a bit and then recovered rather gracefully by stating, “Thank God, he was a lousy kisser,” which got Lily and Jack sniggering. Unfortunately it didn’t change the usually light hearted John who continued to scowl around the table. “It’s part of the game John. You can’t expect a team to go from last place to contention without creating harsh feelings that often turn into violence,” his look strengthened when he said, “We’ve been paid to watch this sort of thing for years, and the rest of the division is going to be pretty scared knowing this team has turned into a family.”

“Well this family is going to find itself seven games back after all of the suspensions, and I am sure that you all thought about that?” John added refusing to give up on the argument that easily. “I’m under the impression that half the team at best will get suspensions, because there wasn’t a person left on the bench. The managers were in on it, and the ball boys even went and attacked the mascot!”

The only person silent at this point while the whole table started arguing was Jay. He tapped John sitting next to him on the shoulder, and getting his attention, showed him a picture of him and Chris sitting together at one of the games. It stopped the arguing long enough for John to read the caption under it out loud, “Lead Scout Chris Pollard and Veteran John Reilly found this young hurler while scouting talent in the Atlantic League, and with the help of wily veteran pitcher Jack Foster, encouraged the Red Sox to bring his sister along to the big leagues as well. They deserve as much credit for the Red Sox recent success as anyone,” and then he smiled at Jay.

Jack finally ended his silence by stating, “We haven’t had a losing streak in almost two months, so it’s probably a good idea to get it out of our system now. We’ll get through this, but the kid is right, if we didn’t get this out of our system it would have started showing up at the end of the season and we wouldn’t have recovered from it,” he reached across the table and patted John on the hand, “We’re a good team now and the other teams in the division are starting to resent us, but that beat down that we put on the Yankees will keep the other teams a bit worried if they think that they are going to bully the kids, I could hear it in their voices every time they started talking smack.”

“If I were as slow as most catchers, I’d have a broken bone by now from all the pitchers that take shots at me John,” Lily chirped in, “I’ll take a black eye if I can get less pitches in on my thighs, but I think it’s more important to get the other players to stop chattering. It had been getting so nasty, that I figured it was going to turn into dirty play,” she looked directly at John, “We still have our best short stop out from taking spikes in the face from the last Yankees game, if you haven’t forgotten that one, so I think that everyone on the team wanted to get some anger out.”

“Make sure everyone get’s desert,” Jay said over his shoulder to the waitress walking by, taking everyone by surprise. The waitress shot him a smile and he added, “They’ve had a bad day.”

The waitress started laughing a bit and then said back to Jay, “We were all crowded around the bar watching your bad day. Everything stopped and the people in here were cheering you guys on,” she then leaned into Jay and said to him rather softly, “Your wicked cute when you’re angry, but it didn’t look like you guys were having the bad day,” and then she walked away to deal with another table.

“See, they gave the fans something to get excited about,” Chris stated as if that settled the matter, and John sighed to demonstrate that he had had enough of the whole topic finally.

“The league offices will call tomorrow and tell us what suspensions will be met out,” he looked at John probably to see if this would start another tirade and when it didn’t he started calmly again, “Since you two are new, you need to know that under no circumstances are either of you to talk to any of them. The Players Union does all of your talking for you, and you can manipulate your suspensions that way,” and he stopped to think for a moment. “Tug will think up the way he wants the suspensions to go, which works out good because we won’t be back to New York for a month, so they can’t force your arbitration.”

Lily nodded and then said, “I understand, and Jay doesn’t really have to understand,” she then looked across the table at her brother, “He’s probably going to get it the worst too, but it doesn’t matter since a five game suspension would only push his start back a day if he just drops his arbitration after his next start.”

“He and I don’t matter, but the team is going to have it really tough without you for whatever amount of games you get,” he laughed at that thought, “we have a rookie and a disgruntled catcher who blames you for not playing to back you up.”

“I scouted that jerk, but he isn’t an idiot,” John piped in and for the first time tonight he didn’t sound angry, “He’ll play his ass off to try to get a trade prospect. The timing might be better than we thought because the absolute August deadline for trades is coming up, and if he plays on fire he could get onto a play-off caliber team,” he looked at Jack, “Try to be civil when you explain that to him tomorrow,” … to be continued

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So I have been spending the morning trying to find my spine. I know I left it around here somewhere, but it always seems to escape me during times like these. My greatest weakness has always been my overly emotional nature, as most people know and despite my best attempts to be “the Troll under the bridge” decades of being beaten down through Yiddish guilt has made me an overly emotional character in my own cartoons. No humor, no glory, and above it all I seem to have a wanton need to have everything just flow by as easily as possible. On the other hand every cat I have ever owned has been a stray that gave me attention, and I never could stand seeing them alone in the world and inevitably bring them home and give them a name.

This characterization of self a