Friday, January 28, 2011

Pets In The Afterlife

Brovic - Blogging since 1903
1.28.11


KHUK KHAK, Thailand - Some of you people* out there with fifteen, seventeen hundred Facebook friends - you keeping up with all those folks? Just wondering. I've only got seven, and half of them don't write. Don't bother sending a request. Three of my seven friends are my kids. What's left...four friends? I consider myself lucky.

Confirm, Deny, Remind me later, Don't Bother Me With This Shit. Make one choice.

Welcome to the new readers! Hope you enjoy the stories. Most of the entries are written from here, and Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, and a figment of my imagination, and my computer screen, whichever is closest.

The people mentioned are introduced in earlier writing, like, who Mrs. Murphy is, and who's Manny, and who Lupe' is, and Damon, and so on, so I'll presume you'll know who's who, and that you've read the material like a book, from the beginning.

Who's got that kind of time? Well, it's just like college. You party your ass off the entire semester, and then come finals, you find yourself up all night, cramming, or you have no idea of what's going on.

If you can't relate to cramming for finals, then how about waiting to mow your grass until it's up to your calves, and you're going reeeal slow, three, four times the time it would normally take, backing up, pushing down on the handle until the rmps rev back up, and one, two steps forward, RRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrr. You needed a bush hog.

You hear your neighbor out there, cutting his grass like that, and a smirk forms at the corner of your mouth. Shoulda kept up with it. It's hot, too. The dummy.


This blog extends back to...gee...1903, I guess...you can check the archive. Most of the time, the stories are lies, but, but, they're based on tru...something real! Or maybe something that might have happened, or something that could happen.

The circus fire? A lie. All lies. I didn't start it. Stand-up comedy act? Complete fabrication. My years with the high wire act? It was only one summer. Shot out of a helicopter in Vietnam at a thousand feet and fell through triple-canopy jungle during a hot hoist mission? Who's gonna believe that shit?

Everybody knows you can't pull a hoist mission from a thousand feet. Especially when you're sitting behind a typewriter in Saigon.

Me in space? Aboard the International Space Station? I got the T-Shirt at a yard sale.

Just because it could have happened doesn't mean it didn't. And just because it didn't happen doesn't mean it could. It's no less believable than some of the many things we've witnessed in our lives. Besides that, everybody knows if you tell a lie often enough, but you can't make him drink.

Right here in 'the Real 3-D World'**...as opposed to your computer screen, or a figment of your imagination. You've heard that before, and you'll hear it again. It's been very slow to catch on, albeit one of my top three favorite what I call 'dynamic phrase coinages'.

Maybe you've already noticed, but 'big-ass', and anything, hyphen-'ass' has caught on, evolved, and 'went viral', as they say. I coined that one way back in...'07. You can check the archive story. Remember? 'Big-ass house? Big-ass hairdo?'

I know, you're saying, "C'mon man. 'Big-ass' started on the the reservation."

You are correct! It did start on the reservation. By me. It's what I do.***

Who would've known that rappers would have made it take off the way it did. Now, every rap star wanna-be is spitting out lyrics full of words like, 'ghetto-ass', 'chump-ass', ' punk-ass', and 'one hood-ass nigga', so, 'big-ass house' is blase' now, check. Overused. That would be the minor leagues for CAFS, cliches, axioms, and figures of speech, which is, technically, what I do, you know, for money, for a living. Everything else is on the side.

'Big-ass house' is out. So is 'went viral'.

Thanks to rap, white boys who wish to rap, rez Indians who want to talk gangsta, and the god of communication, 'big-ass' anything, or anything-'ass' is now in common circulation and usage, coin of the poetry realm, including prime time television and National Public Radio. Cool, huh?

Toss 'Real 3-D World' to a rapper, a songwriter, an economist. See what they can do with it.



Is that all? To the new readers? Is that all you need to know? Humor, social commentary, a lot of fiction, some dicey stuff, some war stories, some paranoid delusional (still against cell phones), creative ventures, bending and breaking the rules of grammar and social propriety.

You won't hear me talking about the weather, but I see where it's seven degrees where you're at. Here, it's been balmy, about 84 all day. Rained, and then the sun came out, then it rained again. Now it's stopped. It's been a bit cooler than normal for this time of year...

("I don't like to talk about the 'Nam," said Aaron Running Hawk, a Vietnam vet, in the truck with Tom Cook on our way to DIA, Denver International Airport. In the next breath, he says, "One time we was out in the bush..." and proceeded to tell three war stories).

You can write directly to brovic48@yahoo.com, and I'll respond. I like to hear from you.



Once in a classroom, Communication 101, a putz course, I put forth the suggestion that God is communication, deduced from communication being the most important thing in the world, because even if you believe God, an abstraction, or relationships, here in the real 3-D world are most important, the basis of relationships, with God or anyone, is communication.

That's why you smile when you get mail.

How 'bout you, Bobby? Your gods communicate? You communicate with your God?

Yes. Sent Him a text message. Told Him it was all in His hands.

Sure, you can argue against that premise. But tell me, what is more important? Your health. Okay. That's pretty important. And communication is an act. A verb.

Okay.

What else? Even if what you're thinking is more important, I won't argue. But you'll have to admit, communication is pretty important, isn't it?

Otherwise, you're in a bubble, a isolation chamber, and everybody knows an isolation chamber will make a ni...will make you go bananas, eventually. That's why extended isolation is considered torture, because it breaks you down mentally and snuffs your spirit.

That's what they're doing now to Bradley Manning, the kid who let loose the flood of wikileaks. By the time he ever stands trial, and yes, he will eventually stand trial, he'll be a basket case, a casket case, a vacant shell of a human being. You watch.

A person needs to communicate.

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There are these dogs in the neighborhood, three of them, trained through ESP to come over when I put out scraps. I put the scraps out, and then tell them through ESP, 'I've got something for you here,' and then they show.

But they also appear every day, regardless of whether I've put out food. That's not ESP then, is it? That's classical conditioning. Intermittent reinforcement. Those dogs will come over until kingdom come to see if there's any food. Maybe there's chicken bones, maybe not. Gotta check.

Can you work ESP with your pets? Will they come to you on mental suggestion? Everybody knows all dogs except Cujo go to heaven. Will yours be greeting you in the Spirit World, happy to see you've come home?



-end


*what do you mean, 'You People'?

**The Slim Buttes 335th Tactical Aviation Squadron, for instance, is in fact a real entity. Don't believe me? Ask the pilots.

***a couple of you wrote, saying you enjoyed my 'ramblings'. Thanks, but, ha...ahhhh, just to let you know...this stuff, my material, is THOUGHT OUT, man! Look, there's a catchy title, an introductory graph, a theme running somewhere through it, the body, the connective thread tying it alllll together, and the snappy ending. Ramblings? What the hell.

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