Freddogg Off The Chain

Talked to a Blue Collar “got the blues big time” guy I know this morning and asked him what the hell a Ryder Truck was doing in his driveway for two days.
The story commenced ugly and tragic and sad and got long and I had a photo assignment so it was like “man your life is unraveling this holiday season but I really do have to go.”
He talked about his wife moving out and just leaving a mattress on the floor, about still getting over his own Chemo and making payments for his son's funeral from last year and his elderly mother and epileptic brother and the cable company shutting him off and charging him 150 to disconnect and all kinds of credit card horror stories and how his mortgage payment was do but they were going to have to wait until he got paid even though his entire paycheck wouldn’t cover it and perhaps the mortgage company would let him skip a month?
But hearing all that didn’t make my bad hip hurt any less so please let’s refocus and talk about me for awhile.
Life sometimes turns mean on certain people while the rest of us “really do have to go” because like what am I going to do? How can I help my brother and the answer is, I don’t think I can and now I feel guilty about it which reminds me I haven’t bought my Christmas tree yet and I’m thinking Douglas Fur or should I get a live one and watch it die in the wash tub?
Holiday season sinks tragic life events to depths unimaginable. I hope this makes you temporarily unhappy and please pass it on to people who need some real shit to cry about.

I read this morning where a 51 year old sportswriter covering a high school football game died from injuries sustained when he fell backwards down 12 steps after hitting his head on a girder on the way into the press box. He was still clutching his lineup card which was renamed the 12 step program.
Many years ago while emceeing the “punkin chuckin” event I walked up a metal ramp into an open trailer to get a newly charged walkie-talkie. The top of my head hit the lip of the trailer and I dropped onto the floor like a care package on an Iraqi Kurd. “That bitch hurt like a mug” for days and I finally called the doctor who said I was passed the point of sudden death by cranial aneurysm.
Another time on a frozen February morning I double hopped from the boardwalk onto a snow covered sand dune and my feet when out from under me and I slammed the back of my head while spilling hot coffee all over my face. I thought,” what an ignominious ending to a non remarkable life but I deserve it just a variation of god freezing your face for making fun of people otherwise known as Bell’s Palsy.
A fall is a guffaw sort of slapstick and hilarious and actually as I tool around the world of walkers, canes and electric shopping carts, the hunched over, the limps and gimps and barely ambulatory I am disappointed that more two legged people don’t fall. I don’t want to see them get hurt I just want to watch others react, I want to know if it is alright to laugh?
I remember Charlie Queasy from Bristol Pa, a tough guy, who drove to the basket in a pick up basketball game when his feet got tangled up and Charlie slammed to the macadam. He popped right up assuming a fighters stance and shouted,”Nobody laugh!” I knew not to laugh but stifling is difficult when you know failure results in getting your face punched.

I was in Wawa this morning and saw two people I haven’t seen since the last time, which was about 15 years ago.
The woman looked like Margaret Thatcher with a Tammy Faye haircut and makeup and looked like she should have Western truck mirrors coming out of her ears. It reminded me of the song by “They Must Be Giants” “She’s Actual Size but she looks much bigger to me.”
And the other guy a big burly boy builder now sports the carriage of Ted Kennedy minus the horse.
At least I only look like I fell off the butt end of a Wonder Bread loaf.
But the most fun I had after tossing each of my dogs a plain doughnut was when I intended to blend into moving traffic and was angrily cut off by a mini van with a pro life sticker on the back and the driver called me a mother fucker.
“Is this a great country or what, “I thought because I like the angry side of the road. I wanted to follow the guy to his destination and interview him and ask,” How to you reconcile the pro-life position with road rage trying to send me into the Crabby Dick’s concrete sign abutment? And I have the power to make him an Athlete of the Week in the local paper but then more pro lifers will ramp up their Caravans because you know, pro- life zealots really just want to kill adults.
Rage against the machine! Freddoggs

What we need is more transparency. When did that word start appearing all over the place and when did the meaning change form a bad thing to a good thing?

A transparent person used to mean a person you could see right through. You know a person who appears honest and altruistic but you see through them and just know they are totally one hundred percent bullshit.

Now everyone wants to see more transparency in government and on school boards like suddenly seeing behind the door is good for us but anyone or organization that allows a look behind the door is hiding stuff behind another door or a fake wall or bookcase.

“Hi, I am really happy to see you guys, in fact, I am beyond happy I am ecstatic.”

“Really why is that?”

“Well I’m not that happy just trying to be transparent. Is it working?”

“Yes it’s working; we can see you’re not all that happy. Good job at being transparent.”

Freddogg

A quote: “The price of total personalization is total transparency.
Transparency suggests a more active role, rather than an imposed view. You have to BE transparent. And of course, it is impossible to have total personalization with perfect knowledge. “ Seth Finklestein
What Da?

Yesterday I hung out in the waiting room of a Wilmington VW dealer while the front end of a 2000 Passat wagon was replaced along with some major belt. Outside was pouring ran and anyway I am limp biscuit so I just sat in a straight low back office chair and watched CNN for the next five hours.
I knew about the front end and approved the belt job for an additional $200 but the congenial older nice guy service liaison subtracted rather than added the $200 on the estimate I signed making the final bill $400 more than I anticipated. But the good news was I got a 10 percent senior citizen discount I didn’t request which means the old service manager dude saw me as a contemporary.
What I did notice over five hours was just everything including young fat white guy salesmen with no business so they surf the web all day long to self medicate otherwise an awareness of “I don’t do shit all day but I least I work on commission” may crystallize into their consciousness making them depressed.
You know what you learn when you watch national cable news all day? Absolutely nothing! You are like a high school kid who hears everything but processes nothing. I did read a long article in an entertainment magazine of the making of Saturday Night Fever and how John Travolta because a national celebrity with his Vinnie Babarino character on Welcome back Kotter and that when I can to teach at Cape in 1975 all the kids called my Kotter because we looked similar and sounded the same and I taught Sweat Hogs just like him but my stories were funnier and actually true.
How long could you wait for a car in a waiting room without making a single cell phone call, no conversatio,n just steady watching CNN?
I feel I should be a national hero like McCain.

Freddogg

There can be no faith without doubt without challenge and without learning to defend. The crazy Catholic priests from the Sixties that taught religion classes at my high school were so good teaching defense of doctrine.
“Where did the first cow from Dave Frederick?”
“Why me Father? Why do I get that question? Can’t I have the immaculate conception as explained and bought by Joseph who swore” I never touched the women.”
I made every cow joke I could think of including using my aunt Rose and deducing that my grandmother must be god or else evolution was real.
We read the Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky a heavy duty spiritual drama of moral struggles of faith, doubt, reason and free will. Dostoevsky’s own son died at three from epilepsy he inherited from his father so the book is about three sons who kill their father-Russians are all the way whack jobs and sport a population with more magical realists “the dead continue to move amongst us so why not talk to them and set a place for dinner” than any other country on earth.
I have always remembered one brother K who said any god that would allow harm to come to a child is no god to him and the fact that harm did come to some children with proof there was no god.
Last week in downstate Delaware there were two horrible accidents and five innocent children under five years old lost their lives four in a totally combusted Ford Explorer.
The spiritual people will step to the front to comfort survivors and do a good job of it and compassionate friends and community also help. I certainly hope people in close have the deepest faith which assumes there is rhyme and reason to suffering and that they find the strength to endure another day another week
Truthfully I prefer to reflect on the first cow which really is my cousin or aunt than to search for any explanation of why horrific things sometimes happen to children.
I am baffled!
Brother Freddogg

How come knotty pine ain’t cool anymore? What happened to dark sheets of paneling and painting over it with textured sand paint? Where did aluminum siding suddenly go? And stucco rocks the house and can be easily re-brightened adding something called bluing. Fake brick is good in 4 by 8 sheets. Where is my past? I want a gym with linoleum floor and half moon metal backboards. I want to see school girls in jumpers and letter sweaters with all kinds of freaking pins.
Linoleum and Congoleum and freaking Formica and porcelain double sinks weighing 800 pounds. Car ports with crap piled underneath them what happened to car ports?
And why aren’t all refrigerators white, with rounded edges at the top with big-assed levers to pull to get inside "the Icebox".
And satin warm-ups for basketball teams and short pants with fake belts and high numbers on the back like 55? Modern basketball uniforms go all the way back to old ass Chris Weber and a Fab Five and they are baggy and stupid and impractical.
And my favorite furniture the wrap around couch especially the wrapping curved piece, That sucker was bad just so many way to arrange the living room and I want a calico cat on top of a black and white t v. and I want it to bite and be filled with static electricity.
And no diet products or freaking wheat bread or multi-grain just full blown Wise Chips mayonnaise and Frank’s soda in bottles too cold to touch.
The only place to find these things in 2008 is at retro gay parties which is ironic because prior to 1967 there where no gay people it was the majority class of off white crumb bums who decided on labels which were never flattering and no one was immune the entire country mocked every variation and peccadillo of everyone else.
I threw the cat at the flat screen last night right in the middle of a Vagisil commercial. I don’t need to see a pretty girl with an itching problem where’s the allure and respect in all that.
And I want nicknames to be clever and accurate and reflect intelligence like my boy Congruent Head from back in the day you never knew if he was walking away of coming towards you. Friends called him S.A.S. for side angle side just to be geometrically consistent.
Now where’s my IPod I’m off to the gym for some passive exercise.

Freddogg

The day after the crowning of the king watching political pundit bright white people talk about black people a few even saying in a round about way “some of my best friends are black people” and the joke would be Obama replying “that’s nice, not mine.’

Barack is new world –new age- Channel One-everyone looks like the lead singer of the Fine Young Cannibals –he is Hootie without the blowfish perhaps Charlie Pride on a solid gold country revival show.

The most prominent stereotype revealed during this process is stupidity no longer rocks. McCain made the big mistake of calling himself a maverick then following the advice of strategists who threw him out there behaving like the guy we knew he wasn’t.

The real John has a sense of timing and humor and is self deprecating and has been known to appear places without his wife on his shoulder like an albino parrot from the pet store.

This morning I was in a high school to take pictures of two athletes. A strange looking new hall Monitor came up and asked if I was a member of the fourth estate. I told him no that I preferred to be viewed as a media type.

He then went off saying it was the media who won the election giving Obama a free pass and that “we” would have to answer questions when it was determined Obama was not a citizen and that by constitutional law he would not be allowed to assume the office of the presidency.’

By the way I’m a sportswriter, ”I told him, I am but a single cell inside the breathing monolithic beast of media types. And cheer up because Barack said he is raising the minimum wage.

The good news is I looked like the media guy and not the HVAC guy sent to fix the boiler.

freddogg

Africa is a continent improbable and impossible to comprehend and so in America we don’t because the bottom line is we don’t care. And call me Afro American but I can’t think of a single political pressure group in America that gives a second thought to Africans.
We have a half African about to win the election to the presidency yet Barack is never asked a single question about American foreign policy towards the dark continent. Just in the last two weeks there have been stories of Somali Pirates boarding vessels in the shipping channel and holding crew for ransom, stories of public stonings of 13 year old rape victims, then there’s the East Congo, Darfur and smuggling services that regularly pitch their cargo into the deep blue sea.
And yet not a single campaign question is posed as we all are too busy watching Saturday Night Live. I do not have a bleeding heart on-I am just taking notice and saying we live in a morally fucked up world that we choose to ignore and that is inarguably dangerous.
And speaking of Afghanistan, going back to the Russian invasion of 1980, just exactly what is our mission and why don’t we have enough people on the ground and like Vietnam people who won’t stop fighting cannot be defeated they can only be killed.
Maybe that should be a foreign policy-kill all peoples who may fuck with us in the future. Or while on vacation.
All the debates and all the questions and the bottom line less than 24 hours before this historic election is “ain’t nobody saying shit about nothing to nobody”

Third World Freddogg