Freddogg Off The Chain

DEFENDING POSITIVE SELF IMAGE

2010-01-11T04:13:00.001-08:00

I can leave a gym of mirrors and never look at myself. I can sit in a hairdressers chair and do the same. ‘Sure the haircut looks great but whose gray/black fuzz is on the floor?
Last Saturday I was cruising Food Lion spree shopping for all things not on anyone’s resolution list?
A woman with a southern Virginia waterman’s accent practically rolled up on my shoe tops and began to wear me out. I hadn’t seen her for years not since the time I heard her tell some people she was in the middle of nowhere and blew a seal and had to pull over and I asked her “are we talking circus or saltwater seal”?
I told her I retired from teaching and she said “I know you retired and got old.” I was taken a hairy back for a second and considered going into attack mode on a person who can’t even reach the Nutter Butters in aisle three but I just said “I see how you roll” and wanted to add “don’t blow any seals on the way out of here” but I restrained my darker side.
The following day I was in gym garb and caught inside a stopped still crowd of indecisive WaWa customers. A tall woman turned to me and said “do you want any fruit?’ then answered her own question “I guess you don’t” realizing I was not who she thought I was. I was about to pay for coffee when the woman behind me said “did you pay for mine honey”? I turned and she exclaimed “you’re not my husband. Sorry he is wearing a gray jacket just like you.”
This extending family was having a high time mistaking me for the patriarch who emerged from the breakfast sandwich warmer he thought was a facial tanning bed, looking all short and fat and bald in a V Neck graying shirt with chest hairs peaking through and I thought “Freaking Priceless!”

Land of Milk and Tuna

2010-01-09T02:37:00.000-08:00

I started my apprenticeship as a writer back in fourth grade by taking hard news stories and rewriting them into inappropriate comic riffs. Some of my confiscated regurgitation and twisting of realities were shown to my mother as evidence “your son needs help” but after mom was done laughing she would tell them “he is funny it is you all that need help.”
Fifty years later none of us need help as our defective society continually produces an army of misfits beyond salvation or redemption.
Take the Pittsburgh “Cat Lady” who ran a no kill shelter called “: Tiger Ranch: The Land of Milk and Tuna.” The place was filled with dead and diseased cats, cats in freezers and mass graves of cats 12 feet long 12 feet wide and 12 feet deep the graves dug by a redneck friend with a rented Bob Cat. Investigators said you couldn’t walk the property without hearing the sound of cat bones crunching under your Timberlands.”
The judge sentenced the woman to two years probation and said she should be in prison but the state’s taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay to warehouse her. The beastly big breasted behemoth paused for seconds before responded “why I gotta be warehoused.” And the Judge was quick to retort” what do you prefer your own hanger?’
The woman known as Miss Marie spoke to the court and said “she was past the lying she had done. She had undergone what she called a "paradigm shift."
A paradigm shift- a science term-is defined as a revolution, a transformation, a sort of metamorphosis in the way people think. It just does not happen, but rather it is driven by agents of change you know like apps for ipods or a four slice toaster.
A cat lover in the courtroom was held in contempt for going dog side and screaming “shift this paradigm you fat bitch!”

Go to Pittsburgh Post Gazette to find this story.

BATTLE OF BURN OUTS

2009-12-29T02:34:00.001-08:00

A retired school teacher walks into a neighborhood corner bar and the bartender says “the first one is on me just do me a favor and shut the freak up! I don’t want to hear about how much you have on your plate because this ain’t no Diner. I don’t want to hear “you are so busy now you don’t know how you ever had time for work?” You have grand children, so who cares, lots of people do, that doesn’t make you in the least bit unique. And kids today just aren’t as tough, you don’t say? Maybe it’s because leftist liberals like you teaching that process is more important than results created a culture where no one can be made fun of for stupid ideas based of a body of non existent facts.
‘Can you see a lunch menu? I don’t see why not unless you’re freaking blind. I’d like to recommend the number 5 which was my GPA in ninth grade before I dropped out.
Am I bitter? You want a club soda with a twist of lemon is that what you just ordered? My god, you teachers are even more boring outside of the classroom. Let me guess you used to drink every night and get up and go to work the next day. But now you just let that life go because you discovered sobriety all on your own. Well that’s pretty darn close to being almost interesting and inspiring.
Is that a 25 cent tip you are leaving me? What’s that you wrote on your napkin, “General Ed?” Who is General Ed? “

Sleeping In Plain Sight

2009-12-05T09:25:00.001-08:00

Traveling north on a crowded Route 1 last Thursday I saw a skinny black man by the side of the highway holding a sign”Music for a Song! Going Out of business. Everything 50 percent off!” The man was horizontal from the waist up resting his hand on top of his free arm. He was sound asleep.
Last Sunday inside the Eagles press box cafeteria and tall young black man in a hooded jacked took up an entire four person table. He was sitting in a chair but sprawled on the table sleeping, actually snoring. So what if 60 minutes of football takes three and a half hours?
Twenty five years ago I dropped three young black men I was supervising on a summer job off in the middle of a field to paint a small white block house. When I go back they were inside sleeping on shutters supported by saw horses. I got mad then one causally kicked an empty paint can on to the floor and they all said, “No paint, can’t paint, what do you want us to do, look busy like a white person who still ain’t doing nothing?”
Thirty years ago I dropped work study special student James off at his two hour custodial job at a restaurant. The owner came in at 9:30 and James was sleeping in a booth. The place was spotless James had cleaned it twice then napped waiting for me to pick him up.
Later that afternoon I began a round table discussion with my special workers on the concept of looking busy even when you're not. Suddenly they all fell out laughing because the other teacher-55 years old white guy-had fallen asleep at the table.
Thirty five years as a teacher I frequently walked into faculty rooms to the sight and sounds of teachers sleeping always men always on their backs with heads back and mouths open. I just thought it was wrong, you know, it’s not like they’re obstetricians on a 24 hour shift. It was their “planning period” and what they planned to do was sleep.
Personally I sleep so lightly and distrustfully that if a skinny cat walks across a soft carpet the noise pounds in my brain and I track his sounds and if he starts to scratch the mattress I scream and pounce snatching him by the scruff of the neck like a dissatisfied mother intent on eating him for the benefit of the greater good.
Sleeping in public is like sex in public, just a cultural taboo, no one wants to see it. But looking busy when you are not is just plain silly.
I’ve had the experience of having a student ask me a question then watching him fall asleep during my answer. I usually conclude it is drugs otherwise I just may be that boring.

Go Respect Yourself

2009-12-02T03:58:00.000-08:00

A few years ago during halftime of a football game a young mother came up to me and asked,” is it true that you told your students that if they haven’t been arrested then they weren’t getting out much? What kind of message is that?”
“It simply means getting arrested is easy; that the branches of enforcement are tripping over each other to collar people and that teenagers are the easiest of targets from underage drinking to squealing tires after leaving a parking space.”
“And did you also tell them to never disrespect someone then just leave them standing there. That it is better to just follow through and kill them that way you know the person won’t go home and seethe before returning heavily armed on a mission to annihilate their entire family. What is the message there?”
The message is “don’t disrespect people especially if it involves the essence of whom they are whether that be student or a worker and never mess with a person inside their own family.”
Last week five students I know, all athletes or former athletes, were involved in a gun incident that involved actual shooting from a moving vehicle and shooting at a stationary vehicle.
The broader community has weighed in like a Jenny Craig encounter group using actual names and saying things like ‘where are the parents, what about the coaches and teachers”—did I mention dropping actual names?
Tens of thousands of innocent extended family members have had the experience of waking up one morning to a story that someone in their kinship matrix has been arrested for violating a cultural taboo or law. Families pull the protection circle in tightly because the community big guns will begin to fire like a pneumatic rifle that shoots ping-pong balls. What about offering help and support? Just a wild thought but the judicial system will kick into gear and teach many valuable lessons many of which will result in a temporary loss of freedoms and a permanent loss of opportunities.

Full Contact Friendship

2009-11-27T05:28:00.000-08:00

The first 10 years of my life were spent in a North Philadelphia row house. It was a colorful neighborhood of young families, war veterans, corner bars and colored people. We even had ‘Aunt Jenny’ neighborhood friend, drop in cook and possibly Poppy’s girl friend and when I grew up and could dunk a basketball some thought Aunt Jenny lurked in my recessive genes.
Last Thanksgiving I covered the 39th annual Cool spring Turkey Bowl a tradition begun in a plowed over cornfield off a back country road by young black kids just something to do until dinnertime.
And now these same guys are 50 years old and serve as coaches, league commissioners, referees and videographers. There is a rules meeting before a draft and the old guys who created the rules tell story of back in the day there were no rules just played for the glory of playing.
The Reverend Debra Ryder had everyone circle and join hands for a pre game prayer a style from the Bishop Jakes School of preaching. Debra left hand clasp that of her son Morris 6’3” and over 300 pounds. The preacher’s right hand was held by an anonymous skinny white guy in hooded sweat shirt with the words ‘Big Dog’ written across the front.
The prayer ended and Peter Cox appropriately named as the father of 12, started going, “gooble, gooble, gooble.”
“Peter, we went from a spiritual moment to gooble in just seconds,” I said to him and Peter responded “that’s the way we turkeys do it.”
The game itself is tackle, two 25 minute halves on a running clock that didn’t work, lots of prolonged huddles, penalty flags but no questioning of the iconic referee Chico.
“Mr Turkey Bowl,”Peter shouted from the sidelines. “It is spoken, it is written.”
The older men involved in this event I have known for 34 years. I was their teacher and coach and we are bonded, wrapped as tightly together as friends can be. They always make me laugh and startle me with honesty. “Fredman we love you.”
If my life has been all about sliding down the ladder as I often joke then I was destined to meet my friends on this soggy day on Thanksgiving morning.
Peter sang it best doing a ham bone verse on the bus back in 1983. “Fred went to the store and forgot the bread…That’s why they call him Cabbage Head.”

Coma and Commas

2009-11-26T06:31:00.001-08:00

Facilitated learning where the facilitator guides the finger of a non speaking person who communicates with a level of prose like none spoken in their presence ever. It was the breakthrough in Autism and you can’t blame parents for grabbing on but sorry to say all double blind tests proved it to be total bullshit.
And now the news heads want to report a story that 23 years in coma brain injured guy has been listening all this time and now he is telling us by typing rapidly with one finger on a keyboard he doesn’t need to look at and he doesn’t need to use the muscle in his arms which never contract. His facilitator just rocks his hand like a "Luigi board" which was the name of my beagle and he was pretty dam smart once building a bomb shelter in 1957 during the cold war.
Can I get a witness! Will somebody sound the Caucasian Please alert? Have we all lost our minds? Whatever happened to critical thinking? Critical does not mean cynical as personally I have nothing against bullshit claims just don’t expect me to support or report them as facts.

Runaway Lexus

2009-11-26T05:52:00.001-08:00

I have a recurring dream of driving a runaway car stuck in reverse with no brakes and pedal stuck to the floor. I never die and make it through lots of intersections. I usually end up spinning across a dirt field and crashing into a chain link fence which stops me as onlookers scream “dumb ass” and “freaking moron”!
Like millions with a paid up Comcast Cable bill I was forced to listed to the 911 tape of four soon to be incinerated innocents in a runaway 2009 Loaner Lexus the pedal stuck under the floor mat and the brakes loosing the match-up as the car passed one hundred miles an hour. The 45 year old driver worked for the California Highway Patrol to add insult to irony.
It’s like calling 911 when you’re drowning. And most operators are like “now calm down. How fast are you going and where are you heading?” They should be screaming-“have the passenger pull up the gas pedal-you push shifter to neutral and turn off the freaking key-look for a field now and take your chances-if all else fail go NASCAR and drive that sucker.”
I wonder “what would Sully do?”
Postscript: It turns out the floor mat was not the factory installed version. Physicists and car people say any brake system will override and stop the car. Going to low gear will slow a car doing 100 to 30. Maybe all cars should have a big red panic button?

Brutal Honesty

2009-11-24T05:34:00.001-08:00

All time is real there is no elapsed time concept for certain special people. And there is no filter so what you get is unedited honesty hence the phrase brutally honest. My grandmother said, honesty is a good thing but unedited and unbridled honesty will eventually get you hurt.”
I walked into a decrepit mall yesterday emerging out a rainstorm like a wet dog invited into the house and there on a bench was a toothless black man that actually looked the same since I last saw him in 1976 with his think glasses and dirty ball cap. He was a “special student” and he is a survivor known by thousands who pull up their jackets like criminals going into court hoping not to be recognized.
I stopped and looked at him and he squirmed thinking I was crazier than he was until I said “Yo, it’s Fredman!”
And then he began to wear me out holding me personally responsible for aging 33 years in five minutes just kept looking me up and down and said "dam you went and got all big on me and how come your not wearing a hat you always wore a hat what’s the matter you don’t like hats no more.”
It went on, ”when you gonna let me clean your car, where do you stay, I’ll come around and clean you car.’ I wanted to say “I’ll pay you not to come around.” Then he said “I’m into church now, the lord is my Sheppard “, so I joked, “Really, does your Sheppard follow you to the liquor store because in all my years both slim and “all big” I’ve never seen a Sheperd follow a sheep into a liquor store.”
He responded,”I knew that was you, same old jokes. Hey man-you ever stop joking”?
“I’m not joking.”

SNAKE EYED NECK GUY

2009-11-23T10:42:00.000-08:00

The image of the tattooed dice on a neck Guy is sticking in my craw. Young and skinny pasty white no butt daddy in Wawa drinking his big-assed fountain poured soda as a little girl says, “Daddy can I get a blue Slurpy” and he laughs like high people do knowing his can rock his debit card because he still has $3.75 on the balance.
He tells the clerk “debit” then sweeps it backwards from the way I do it but It still works then he types in his pin headed number with the corner of the card like real fast and shit like he learned something.
This guy may be the greatest father in the world”not!” but it reinforces my version of America “All people are created equal then their parents pick them up from the hospital and that’s when the bullshit starts.”
“Nice dice daddy,”the teen-aged girl tells her dad followed by “I may come home with pierced nipples I haven’t decided but if I do I may want to borrow your gold “nostril-damas collection so the holes don’t close up and don’t eat my shortie while I’m out I’m saving it for a snack.
In the gym today I saw for the first time this young woman in gray cotton sweat pants and gray tee shirt a little overweight but definitely a clean up pretty person and she was sweating like a bitch from A 1957 no air conditioned gym class wet stains all over and I thought “what the hell is that?” and suddenly her short bald husband showed his gland drenched self and he was also soaked and stained looked the map of the western hemisphere on his back.
People who sweat like that generally don’t have gym memberships. I don’t know why they just don’t. My grandmother said, “If you start sweating profusely stop what you are doing and go look up the word.

Counter Culture

2009-11-20T03:57:00.000-08:00

I am freaky good at instantly naming characters from my past that spontaneously show up at places like WaWa and Food Lion Checkout lines. What’s weird are the ones who are seriously and obviously rocking an alternative if not inactive lifestyle and don’t expect or want you to notice them so they hide in plain view or behind a breakfast bagel.
Like why do I care if a girl from the eighties “came out “rocking the spiked haircut” of many colors so identifiable with same sex orientation, has eyebrow rings and has put on 60 pounds? I jump straight up in all their business.
“Hey it’s Fredman I know that’s you in there. Do you miss me? I’ll bet you never heard such good stories like you did back when you were my student. Remember the dachshund painting I commissioned you to do for my mother in law. She’s still living but the dog died in a collapsing wood pile in the backyard.”
“Really?”
“Yes I thought the dog was lost but on a frigid morning when I tried to put her in the wood stove I realized that what I thought were growing fungus's were actually ears.”
“Oh my god did that really happen?”
“Absolutely not, “I said, as a long line of attention deprived adults were riveted on my every word.
“So what’s new with you?”
“Nothing,” she said and couldn’t disappear fast enough.

Get Off My Lawn!

2009-11-17T03:56:00.001-08:00

There are saintly people in the world who always make the right moral decisions, people who do not envy or lust or wish their successful neighbor would step off the curb and roll an ankle. I have always perceived these individuals as having ice water not real blood flowing through their veins. There is a state of spiritual nirvana where the truly good people live. I have met a few of them and none are out to save anybody.
So many years ago as a track coach I pulled my mile relay team from the last event of a dual track meet we were leading by 100 points and put a team of much lesser talent on the track. A great race ensued, runner for runner battling, and we lost by a lean at the tape. The winning team took a victory lap and my A team wasn’t happy with me.
“Put something back into the sport you took so much out of,”I told them.
‘Fredman is fucked up,” one of them said.
“Create the illusion of class even if you have none,”I told them.
“Here he goes with his dry dumb-assed lessons of life,”said another.
“Class and sportsmanship are a reflection of self-assuredness and confidence and reflect an inner peace. All the great competitors understand that life is about processes not outcomes.”
“What the hell is he talking about now”?
I recently experienced several adults, successful and accomplished and in a position to teach these same lessons, who came up empty basically getting mad at an athletic director who offered a turf field for practice because a northeast four day storm had washed out the field of its rival.
Small minded, caddy, get off of my turf mentality and quite frankly it absolutely blew my fucking mind. I can run this issue up the community flag pole-I am the newspaper guy- prompting a public discussion where no illusion of class will prevail.
“Always come down on the side of kids and grandparents,” my grandmother said. “Too many selfish bastards in the middle!”

PYSCHO PUSSY

2009-11-16T05:05:00.000-08:00

The New York Post had a Sunday Headlined Story “Pussy Whipped!” I was outraged and appalled-not really- that such a crude and vulgar expression indicating an emasculated male who is bossed around by his Alpha female could appear in print on a Sunday no less. The term “whipped” says it all you don’t need a modifier but wait; what if the “pussy whipped” victims are not male- they are no less whipped.
This is a Bronx tenement story of a 10 year old house cat with a medical condition losing its mind and drinking and eating all the day long ballooning to 16 pounds which is one fat=assed cat then going carnivore making psycho noises skulking in doorways barring its teeth ready to eat the woman of the house and her 10 year old son.
These two had to hide behind a door and call 911 on a cell phone. Multiple police responded thinking an actual big cat had escaped first laughed but try extracting a homicidal cat skinning your lower leg down to the bone. The cops had to get the cat “into a bag” and in this era of non descriptive language all bystanders could say was “too funny” actually in the Bronx I believe it was “way too fucking funny-I am not worthy of such hilarity. “
If there were a fight to the death between you and the neighbors lawn cat-you have to be naked-no weapons allowed- you may win but you are going to look pretty dam silly doing it!

Artillery Battery

2009-11-15T05:17:00.000-08:00

I was waiting at the Sam’s Club tire center counter for miss Big Hair and her head of multiple piercings to return to my ‘I’ve just got a couple of questions for you self” just please stopping counting them on your fingers.
And while I was waiting an older man, slightly bent over, touched my arm, smiled and said, “there you are I think you’re the guy who can tell me if I need a new battery.”
“You mean cold cranking amps and shit like that? I am definitely not your man. Just because I’m wearing a black shirt with white logo doesn’t mean I’m the tire guy although I am flattered if you think I can change four tires in less than four days.”
So we both waited and somehow he got in front of me and we did a history of tires banter and at one time he mentioned Baldies and during the war. I ask him what war he had been in and he said ‘Two” and I consider saying “thanks for your service” but real guys don’t talk to each other like that so I responded honestly “Holy shit man! That was the real deal. Where were you?”
He mentioned Guadalcanal and the Philippines and I was like ‘Yikes’ that’s heavy duty and he responded “yes but don’t get the wrong idea. I was attached to an artillery unit and drove a jeep. The seat belts back then could cut you in half. He told me “we were young and dumb. We were told to do something and we did it. I don’t recognize this volunteer army. We are sending 40 year old guys into stuff and they’re just too smart. You can have an army that thinks about much of anything other than following orders."
The United States recognized Philippines Independence on July 4 1946 and my Tire Center buddy was there. I was wondering how you recognize the Independence of a Sovereign nation then start building airports for your planes and stay another 50 years?
My Buddy drove a 2003 Dodge Caravan and his battery cost $79 dollars and it would take an hour and twenty minutes if he cared to wait in the food court area with a bunch or morons eating fat pizza slices from the wrong end.
I blew the opportunity and should have bought the battery for him just thanks 63 years past due.
That’s why ‘thanks for your service’ are bullshit empty words, these craggy old bent over Dodge drivers should have an “Uncle Sam’s Club” card and if your in line behind one you should be handed the check and be happy about it.
Freaking Guadalcanal ---are you kidding me?

BaTann Man meets Fredman

2009-11-15T04:15:00.001-08:00

The tabula rasa--blank slate--theory of mental content and personality development goes back to John Locke, which makes perfect sense; otherwise, babies are popping out all over the earth saying, “This is the shit I be knowing.” We know what we know through experience and perception and if you don’t pay attention and assimilate experiences and adapt them to new and unanticipated realities, you run the risk of being a lifetime perpetual non-adaptive dumb ass.
Personally I’m more of an etch-a-sketch type learner, most empirical stimuli evaporating except for the grainy pebbles stuck in the corners of my piggy bank of memories.
The home town of Penndel, Pennsylvania evolved from hamlet to borough after World War Two and I, a precocious, inquisitive and investigative little boomer boy with an underdeveloped sense of a moral consciousness, snapped up snippets of war stories and re-enacted them: capturing weaker kids in the neighborhood, knocking them from their fat fender bikes by a trip wire tugged taunt across a road of ruts or launching dirt bombs like howitzer shells into backyard gatherings.
I grew up under the piercing, non-blinking eyeballs of “Death March” guy from two blocks away and two rungs down the social ladder. His hovel was a flat roof row house of clapboard crap, the best asbestos on the market. Bataan Man, who had survived the infamous march, drove a black Chrysler Imperial Crown and got a new one each year. By 1957 with the advent of the finned car, he had arrived. I loved Bataan Man and he never gave me a smile or a nod. He was burly and non expressive with a giant head and unlit stogy. He never came out of that car not to work or play or grocery shop. He drove around and watched people in a relaxed state or permanent shock.
“Life is a death march,” my grandmother always said, “otherwise, how do we know when it’s over?”
Personally my Chrysler Imperial Crown has always been a three-quarter ton pickup truck with a bench seat. I have driven around Delmarva for 35 years imagining myself as Bataan Man although I am in no way worthy. I park at the beach and observe people or cruise down to the Little League Park and watch games. I do walk long distances in the heat and call them “death marches” and I always think of those young men in 1942 in some godforsaken place and 20 thousand of them dying ugly on a 60-mile forced march.
Literature can be an escape or an embrace. I brought the hard back book “Tears in the Darkness” by Michael and Elizabeth Norman to my hip replacement surgery and rehabilitation at Beebe Hospital last July 16. I never read in detail what happened to those 75 thousand surrendered men. I simply strafed the story but now as I was cut to and from the bone, I was looking for courage from distant men who endured what I could not.
And my revelations expanded as I drove through the book like Bataan man himself reading at odd hours and caring little about history and more about endurance and toughness and the incredible cruelty people can inflict on one another.
Hospitals are insults to human dignity staffed by humanists wearing white. It is just necessary to catheterize surgical patients and ask them embarrassing questions like “Do the concept of black tarry stools mean anything to you Kingfish”?
Back in 1964 when I was taken on a walking tour of Temple University being recruited to play basketball, the Hall of Fame coach Harry Litwack said, ”You could read one book every day for the rest of your life and not read half the books in that library.”
“Right or I could not read any of them in no time at all,” I answered, then pointed to my head. “Tabula Rasa Forever.”
Bataan Man has stayed with me since he came back to my hometown after the war. He watches over me like “Garden Angel” in Philly vernacular. I knew I had to read of his plight as a 63-year old guy in a cranked up bed who just had the ball of his femur sawed off and replaced by titanium.
I am back, death march driving the back roads of Delmarva, thankful for the brave young men who made that possible. Ironically, I drive a Toyota Tundra. Tabula Rasa Forever!

POPPING THE BALLOON

2009-11-13T15:08:00.001-08:00

A person I know through the far reaching extension network of social contacts of my long life saw me someplace and said how much they enjoy reading my stories on Face Book. Several other “trackers” have issued similar compliments.
“That’s nice,” I said. “But 420 characters over five sentences hardly constitute a story.”
I don’t “Tweet” but I do write messages in the Face Book window and occasionally wish someone a Happy Birthday. Mundane and boring are words that come to mind for most Facebook posts but perhaps friends find it interesting that someone is tired or wants the rain to stop.
Other themes are the vacuous rants from the right wing Obama haters. Like I always told my students, ’by all means have an opinion on domestic and foreign affairs but try to bolster your position with a logical presentation of facts. Now these same students are quoting Glenn Beck.”
So what about Balloon Boy and his parents? Brilliant I think to dupe most of the country. I can tell you when I first saw what looked like micro waved popcorn sailing across the sky I quickly concluded “That balloon boy bitch ain’t in there! And what’s next, scrambling jets, putting Norad on alert?
A few days ago I saw this poised 12 year old blond girl looking like an extra from Village of the Damned Two. Her clone of a mother was sitting with her on the Today Show because the kid could not stop sneezing and it was so obviously fake-no snot no watery eyes- and she doesn’t sneeze when she sleeps and will somebody please give me a freaking break. Somebody smack this kid as black cheerleaders chant “whoop upside the head whoop upside the head”!
And who the hell stands outside an arena hoping to get a dose of the H1N1 vaccine? There are thousands of fat and flaccid, smoking and hypertensive slugs, many with resting pulses over 100, waiting in line for vaccine. There should jump in the ocean and kick start their immune systems and they will be fine. That’s the way I see it and I’m proud to say no medical experts agree with me.
“Freddogg Off The Chain” is returning and sometimes it will be anecdotal and funny other times caustic and edgy but behind it all I am always happy.

Hemocidal Herbivores

2009-05-29T02:57:00.001-07:00

“The Hippo is responsible for more violent attacks and deaths of humans in Africa than any other herbivore.”
So is the Hippo responsible or irresponsible and if responsible then subjected to the laws of man which means what exactly being as one hippo pretty much looks like another and I wonder what goes through your head when attacked by a 5000 pound buoyant beast with mostly mashers for teeth except for those four foot long incisors.
“Oh yea, you’re jealous Mr. Bull Hippo like I am interested in riding your cow like an amusement park paddle boat or my Tugboat Auntie in the above ground pool.
Here’s an idea, don’t swim in moats! Rhinos are prehistorically stupid with their big bodies and sloped heads and aphrodisiac horns but they are always dry and dusty not to mention crusty and instinctively know better than to risk being butt plugged and mashed on the neck by a frustrated homicidal homo herbivore hippo screaming like Marv Albert’s in an algae wig surprising his Friday night girlfriend, “Coming at you from downtown, Yes!”
And remember a Giraffe may kick your ass but you will never kick his.

freddogg

A Hoagie in Hand

2009-05-25T08:29:00.000-07:00

Today I shook hands with a retired urologist in WaWa as he was waiting for a six inch Shortie with oil and no mayo. An Indian guy-could be a law-he said “oh yes you are sports/coach person.” I did notice he shook my hand like a limp dick there is no other way to describe it, I mean it’s not like he choked chickens for a living.
And of course his two sons are incredibly successful one is a cardiologist and the other a corporate lawyer in Manhattan. And I’m big assed white sock wearing hip degenerative sports/coach guy.
There was a strapping young guy ordering a sub and wearing no shirt. Think hoagie then think no shirt and already I am feeling oily. What a freaking moron to be an under 30 poser dude in Wawa like how desperate are you to want to be acclaimed “Best Brunch Body on Beach Getaway Day at WaWa hoagie counter”?
Yesterday's news produced two winners. A purse snatcher “sucker punched” a blind lady on a bus-how else do you punch a blind person-and a suicidal Chinese guy held up bridge traffic for five hours until a citizen broke through a police barrier and asked the man “do you really want to jump” then pushed him off saying he was just looking for attention which is no reason to hold up traffic.

Freddogg

Three Sided Box

2009-05-19T07:46:00.001-07:00

“You’re in Time Out you bloated biscuit now get your phylum of dinosaurs and magic markers cause it’s solitary time for you and all your imaginary friends to be sequestered inside the three sided appliance box so the rest of us can catch a much needed break .And if you keep screaming we’re putting the top on.”
CNN interviewed this pair of young morbidly obese parents who have sued a school district for putting their “autistic” child-himself in the 99th percentile of the teeter-totter elite- in a time out box for two hours allowing the kid to draw all over himself while screaming “I’ve got your diplodocus right here!”
“And the teacher is still working while the suit is in court” speaking of which check out the food court at Wall mart and indoor playground at McDonald’s because this family is milking this like a cream filled Borden cow.
Parents today cry “no discipline” and agree kids “want discipline” but if Brandon is punished and no amount of lobbying will sway the teacher in charge then the parents go on the attack. That is why so many sensible people are leaving the business.
Parents calling CNN and the cable news Barbie’s and Ken’s “how horrible to punish a kid with time out” but it is aversion therapy along with respite for the majority who may get their own ticket to the three sided box.
I have a special needs grandson who gets timeout at school, home and at his grandparent’s house. He sometimes pouts; it tugs at your heart but appropriate social behaviors must be inculcated early or it’s hang around the institution for an adult lifetime.

Peace

Biggie Smalls

2009-05-17T08:53:00.000-07:00

I know hundreds of former athletes across an age span that makes some of them grandparents and others not old enough to vote. I knew them all at their high performance no body fat svelte selves. They know me as a coach “who’s got jokes.”
And so they roll in front of me many twice as big and I simply say hello and they wait, wait for the joke but honestly I don’t do weight jokes because those who have lost it know who they are and cruelty from a positive memory icon of your previous life is just so unwarranted.
I was heading to the track last week to take a team picture when a Wellness Center counselor rolled up on me and said,”You look like Santa Clause with a camera.” The guy is a great guy and wasn’t trying to be mean and I remembered Joe Frazier commenting on Ali calling him a Gorilla and saying “I know what a gorilla looks like and I don’t look like that.” If Joe said that to me face to face I would be careful not to smirk but Santa Clause with a Camera? Why that image” Say, what are you trying to say?
‘Fredman tell them that this fat girl was a conference champion sprinter. Tell them this blimp from the blocks could bust a 200 meter dash like a greyhound on a fake rabbit. Tell them coach cause my sons need to know their mom didn’t parachute to earth a fat girl. They need to hear it from you.”
“You mom has the state record in the 100 and 200 while running in a dress,” I told them. “Now that got their attention and it is true and they wanted to know, “You ran in a dress?”
‘It was a religious thing back then but now there are body suits where the young athletes look beautiful=poetry in motion=but if that fashion gains broad based popularity and are sold in Wall mart it is going to get ugly.

WHO'S GOT THE FUNK?

2009-05-15T05:11:00.000-07:00

A classy older black man-my age-in a ball cap with work van parked outside the Verizon store was getting a new phone. He had a voice like Brook Benton and I would have offered him a 50 dollar rebate to sing the Bolweeval song.
The sales assistant dude looked like the dork guy in the Verizon Network commercial except he was “a lot mo fatter.”
What struck me was as he went down the list of ring tones the black gentleman didn’t bite on any of them and when he got to the George Clinton Parliament Funkadelic Interplanetary Funk version of Atomic Dog ’yippie yo yippie yey’ he kept playing it while bobbing his head up and down as if to say,” I can feel you my brother, I can feel you.”
I tried to imagine a reverse situation, a younger hip hop dude trying to ensnare me with some Toby Keith because not being a classy older gentleman I would react “Move on Bro Dot Com. Why I gotta be liken Toby Keith”?
The man settled on the sound of a phone ringing while I choose something called 'wah wah' because it reminded me of my favorite dining establishment.

Peace

Atomic Freddogg

Humerus Not Funny

2009-05-10T05:20:00.000-07:00

I sat on the gurney and listened to the Technician of the Fluoroscope explain to me how my hip injection was going to work. "You will lie on your back pull your shorts down to your knees I will cover you with a sheet then the doctor will do the injection. He is running a little late because he is up in the operating room fixing someone’s Humerus as he tapped his thigh for a visual.
“That’s interesting,”I said, “Because the Humerus is in your arm.”
“Three guiding by nuclear imaging probes into my hip socket –it didn’t hurt in the tradition pain sense but the imaging in my own brain signaled my weird shit alarm response. The doc said I won the “bad hip of the year” award and he replaces 400 a year. He agreed I was tough and didn’t have to throw in stupid because we both already knew that.
And I discovered the pain medication prescribed gave me a headache and you know the advice “never take medication prescribed for another” well it turns out that Jesse Dog and me were exactly on the same pain meds which explains my urge to drag my butt across the driveway.
I just hope the day of my hip replacement surgery that I don’t get a new shoulder.

Freddogg

Soft side of Sarcasm

2009-05-08T08:10:00.001-07:00

The soft side of sarcastic man that’s what makes observation and humor fresh and vibrant and wit meaningful otherwise you’re just a grouchy bitch.
Yesterday I was taking pictures at a girl’s lacrosse game when I heard a little voice scream “Hey Fredman!” It was two year old granddaughter Lina so I snapped her photo through the chain link.
Then I saw this cute redheaded girl leaning by the fence and I joked “trust me” and snapped her photo with a long sports lens. Her dad is a former student of mine her last name is Catts I wrote down the first but promptly lost it because I’m a forgetful idiot.
Also pictured is the Tower Hill goalie who turned and charged her own net factoring the element of complete surprise into her life tired of just playing defense because where is the glory?
Speaking of goalies, the greatest sign ever in sports at the Spectrum during a Flyers game: “Only God has more saves than Bernie Parent.”
And the worst sign was at a Rangers game after Flyers goalie Pelle Lingburg was killed when his Porsche hit a wall at 100 p.m.h.
Ron Hextall was the new goalie and the sign read “Hey Hextall Drive a Porche!”

Later gators

Freddogg

GLAND HANDER

2009-05-07T08:09:00.000-07:00

One minute you are minding your own business and the next you are watching four women wrestle an old porky retriever dog and the specialist has a rubber glove, another is your wife and you are thinking “oh my god” I once saw a slow motion dog bite and the mouth opens wide enough to carry a cantaloupe.
I excused myself feeling suddenly weary and useless plus who needs to see that. But it was too late and there was talk of impacted anal glands “vet woman never felt any so full” and I never knew any existed but somehow improper vigilance of my dog’s anal glands was making me look like a low class owner.
Hey the next time I go searching for impacted anal glands on a dog there will be a bazooka trained at my head.
I suggested the Hannibal the Cannibal dog defense mask but my suggestion was shaken off like ear mites on a summer night. That’s another disgusting dog trick, ear mites. Why did god even make them? I know why because he thinks it’s funny like all the creepy parasites that invade mammalian bodies the price we pay for being higher order animals.
I’m thinking of a group of rockers “ The Impacted Anal Gland Band-hitting that high lonesome sound-so lonesome I could cry. Express Yourself!

Freddogg Dragging my Butt across the hot blacktop driveway or life

Two and Pooh

2009-05-06T04:35:00.001-07:00

Why do neighbors who don’t own dogs always put “two and pooh” together and deduce that your off the chain pets are defiling their bullshit properties.
These people need multiple layers of low strata families to cohabit in my house down the street. Let them run out to Lowe’s and purchase more motion activated security lighting.
I stopped in my truck to say hello to an elderly neighbor walking his Bichon Frise described by the AKC as “a small, sturdy, white powder puff of a dog whose merry temperament is evidenced by his plumed tail carried jauntily over the back.”I call it a gay bitch.
“Have you ever considered getting a dog, ”I joked to which the man said, ”Who’s there” so I stayed with the dyslexic theme and said “Knock Knock.”
The point is from two feet away he couldn’t focus my big head filling up a truck window but then said “My dogs were crapping in his yard” and four other neighbors have told me the same thing which is pathetic and I know it’s untrue and all I can say to them is “That’s all you got? That’s the weak game you are bringing? “
Then yesterday I saw a trash man taking a digital photo of strew trash and I know the neighbor who hasn’t spoken or waved to me in 10 years will summon up the courage to accuse Porka Choppa Jessie “your dog” of ripping his flimsy white tied with red bow garbage bags apart and I will respond “Get another trash can you cheap ass.”
Jesse and Darby are my last dogs because I don’t want to talk to neighbors about such matters anymore ever again. When we lived in town we had this cat that would walk from car to expensive car leaving paw prints and sometimes even sleep on the roof. It was all the way freaking hilarious.
"That's not my cat" was my defense and I had no problem going Judas on his selfish self because if he could talk he'd sell me out for a fish stick.
Peace

Rocking The Old Guy

2009-03-14T06:17:00.001-07:00

I must admit to living my life as a pretty handsome guy. Now I’m just another old guy and a witty guy who doesn’t get to kill people so my electrician friend Doc tells me “it’s just not allowed.”
Some years back at a happy hour along the canal a high school principal from Pa half drunk leaning into a bowl of steamed shrimp started wearing me out saying things like “you’re the guy in the newspaper but you look fatter in person,. Why don’t you update your picture?”
I looked at the guy then looked at Doc who said. ”You’re the school teacher and funny guy in the newspaper and you just don’t get to kill people it’s simply not allowed.”
Then Doc looked across at the principal,”I don’t know how long I can convince this man that killing you is a bad idea because I can tell you he is a bit of a bad rig and I know you can’t hurt him and I don’t know why he likes to break up gang fights but he’s dam good at it.”
The sportswriter extraordinaire Dan Jenkins said, “When I was a younger man I used to fall asleep each night thinking about women. Now I think about killing people.”
Anyone wanting to see a 63rd birthday picture of me just look at my seven grandchildren. I am the composite hologram of them all I’m a lucky old dog with a soft bite rocking the cone collar so I don’t bite myself or anyone else.

Tweeter

2009-03-03T05:23:00.000-08:00

I was going to write about Twitter this morning when this Tweeter went Fat Albert Poulos in my backyard. And what sound does a 300 pound Cardinal make? TWEEET!
Ironically the Remington Type writer has died while I have entered the Remington Sleep Cycle of my corrupted hard drive intuitively rapid acuity phase of my checking out slowly years.
I dream weirdly just a cat breath away from consciousness like early this morning my granddaughter hit a 3 pointer just at the halftime buzzer but dropped a F bomb on the ref and was ejected but her all star grandfather from another galaxy was allowed to take her place but my pocket was picked clean on three straight possessions and little girls with pigtails made lay ups while my own teammates said ‘Sit down, you suck!”
And so I went to the scorers table to join my sports writing colleagues except they were all naked young guys and I asked an old guy question I would never ask while awake “Who approved this?” and some guy stood up and grabbed himself and said “The same person who approved this!”
The final vignette had my friend Steve calling for a ride home from the hospital which he does each day they don’t plan to let him go and I said “Fine but first set down that hovering mock up of an airplane.”
And so Steve pitched and plummeted going power dive into a dirt pile and the rescue truck was right there and the medic said “Looks like your friend “stuck the landing.”
And yesterday while awake I heard the Tramp say to a distraught Lady “What’s wrong Bitch?” “He said Pidge,”my wife said. “Maybe you should get your Hamster Head Hearing checked out?

Freddogg

Cartoon Netjerks

2009-02-24T04:21:00.000-08:00

A teacher and a hall monitor, the teacher a Phillies fan, said,”The fans of the Phils have nothing to say about A Rod, not if they cheered for that 93’ team with Dykstra, Dalton, Hollins and company.”
I asked if they had seen the caricature of A Rod on the cover of the New Yorker signing autographs for little leaguers with piped out arms. Instantaneously I became leftist liberal commie faggot “in the house.”
The Hall Monitor had a copy of Ann Coulter’s book on his “who was late to class” clipboard. He looked at me askance and I refrained from calling him a freaking moron. I stated to them both “My original question was ‘did you see the cover’ I thought it was clever personally I don’t care what is on your list of banned magazines but the bottom line is “too many conjunctive compound complex sentences the more likely a liberal bias.”
Those to the political right of center are a little edgy these days their paranoia only heightened by Slum Dog Millionaire with all those Indians getting Best Picture and Sean Penn of all people being chosen Best Actor for playing slain activist Harvey Milk who by the way had a Gay Charter school named after him in Greenwich Village.
Two years ago a pair of transvestite students at recess were attracting Johns on the street, then beating them up and stealing their money. I think one was dressed as Ann Coulter and the other Laura Ingram.
Poetic injustice on the mean streets of the metropolis.

Juan Solution

2009-02-18T14:08:00.001-08:00

Introducing Juan Solution, the single purpose Mexican! Actually the woman on the panel said one solution but my mind makes things up as a defense mechanism from boredom.
My brain is like millions of corrupted files bleeding into one another, That’s why the older and truly insane among us tend to come from education and accomplishment because you have to be fundamentally smart to reach into the barrel of all the way crazy.
I purchased a Toyota license plate for the front of my truck. The guy asked me what color do you prefer and I said “Black Pearl like my women” a reference to the movie Airplane the I asked him if he heard about the man who was half black and half Japanese and he said, “No, Actually I have not.” Now I have learned that people who break apart contractions almost never have a sense of humor “do you know what I am saying?”
“Every December 7 he bombs Pearl Bailey,”that is the joke, now hardly ever funny because people don’t know history or Americana like December 7 or Pearl Bailey.

Peace

Fit Fish Out of Water

2009-02-16T03:57:00.000-08:00

Some of my friends look like fit fish out of the exotic aquarium pet store tank. That’s the price you pay for too much working out, regular people stare at you and ask questions like “Do you workout?” and the answer should always be “No, I’m a tax accountant.”
And it’s all relative. When I walk the halls of a nursing home I feel way too big and strong and by the way anyone spending their days and nights in one of those places should have access to anything illegal they want if it makes them feel better including steroids and live performers.
What do you call a fit lesbian in a wife beater shirt? I call them sir because I know they bite and I’m not about to pet one figuratively speaking.
And older men who work out a little then wear wife beater shirts couldn’t beat up their wives, like my Grandmom Rose told suddenly fit Poppy Frank years ago “Go baggy you big German faggy” leave those sleeveless shirts to Buster Crabbe.
And here’s a gym aside: As much as I hate water bottle people especially those new one that look like miniature office coolers never drink from the one public fountain in the gym. I saw this workout freak last weak slosh water around in his mouth then spit it back onto the chromium plutonium silver drain and I though you freaking skuz bucket you just ruined water fountains for me forever.

SIAMESE SLAUGHTER

2009-02-13T04:37:00.000-08:00

Check out the haircut that’s all you need to know. You can’t always judge a book by its cover but sometimes the book itself smacks you over the head. Would you let the guy in this picture anywhere near your children, your daughter or even the family cat?
This “muke’s” photo-Largo, Florida- trailer park double wide could be a law- is plastered all over the internet because his girl friend said “get a haircut and a real job” so in retaliation he catnapped, tortured and dismembered her "Siamese if you please" and now he is in jail with the authentic bad guys who by the way surf the mainstream net because it’s part of their stimulus package.
And maybe it’s not cool for convicted sinister multiple victimizers to be cat lovers but the ones who are tend to be large and bald weight lifting sick bitches and they will find this joker and exact cat like tortuous behaviors on him like smacking him about and watching him try to hide under furniture.
Could you kill a trusting domesticated cat for a million dollars in cash like a cat contract but you have to use a knife and cut off the head? We could all use a million dollars but cat capitation?
I’ll tell you right now I could not indulge in inhumane behavior for cash goes back to family backyard gathers and my grandmother saying,”I dare you to go kick that cat” and I’d say “but that’s my own cat” then it was double dare followed by a five dollar offer and I’d say no and she would say “good boy. You are a good boy.” but Cousin Harry had his hand out and I warned him “you kick that cat and I’ll kill your frogman ass.” Just fun at the family phylum party.

Swamp Thing!

2009-02-10T03:00:00.001-08:00

Valerie Bertinelli got fat and that made news. I get her confused with an actress from an earlier generation

Adrienne Jo Barbeau A popular sex symbol during my era, she is now 63, her more notable film work includes The Fog, Creepshow, Swamp Thing and Escape from New York. During the 1990s, Barbeau became known for providing the sultry voice of Catwoman on Batman:and she was the tough bitch in Grease.

The movie Swamp Thing had some moth eaten not all the way wrapped mummy chasing Barbeau the Body through the muck wrapped in see through consignment store sundress, the Hollywood premise “You don’t need to spend money on monster when the damsel has breasts money can’t buy because back in those days Augmentation was an Italian mobster.
And so we root for the damsel in “da dress” it’s the latent ‘what a waste to have her eaten by a monster” but if the damsel were a queen size target with a large landing zone X on her back the average man in the audience becomes a participant screaming ‘Catch her fat ass! There’s plenty more where she came from!”
And that is not cruelty but reality that’s why vulnerability in films is always played by someone in shape. We don’t care if fat people get caught, in fact, the men in the audience say things like “can you believe that jive ass monster can’t find the fat bitch behind the curtain?”
And as Eric Clapton sang, “Before you accuse me take a look at yourself.”

Liver Large

2009-02-09T14:48:00.001-08:00

Just got back from hospital where I went to visit a colleague in the CC Unit but enough about him.
I was walking through the emergency waiting area and saw a former student and football tackle not yet 30 sitting there was an admissions bracelet.
I delicately inquired as to his condition “what the hell are you doing here?” and he said he thought he pulled a muscle lifting weights but it just wouldn’t stop hurting. He had been there for six hours.
“They told me I drink too much,” the young man said and I asked what led them to that conclusion and he said an ultrasound revealed an enlarged liver.”
“Do you drink a lot” I asked him and he responded in measured speech “Everyday I drink like a fucking fish!”
I congratulated him on the use of his simile and said it also looked like he ate like a horse and by the way it’s not crazy like a fox but sly like a fox and he wanted to know why I was talking about foxes and I told him I was a psych outpatient and just there for my medication.
But seriously weight lifting alcoholic enlarged liver guy what a package. People are delightfully all the way nuts and I think that’s a good thing.
My colleague less than 12 hours from major surgery hooked up to hoses and monitors generating numbers behind his head he could have cared less about managed one strong sentence in between fading n and out of deep sleep.
“Daytime television fucking sucks! It’s worse than reading.”

: Some of my friends us blue language and it’s not my job to change it.

Frogs and Hogs

2009-02-06T03:40:00.000-08:00

Thirty four years ago I was a bronzed and bored lifeguard sitting on a single stand by the ocean watching a fat Buddha mother encourage and contribute calories to the little obese obelisk sharing her blanket.
The boy had a greasy fried cheeseburger in one hand, a fountain syrupy coke in the other and mom was feeding him French fries by hand. The kid may have been sexually excited like my dog Darby when he rides in the front seat of the V8 Tundra.
Fat parents don’t reflect fat children but follow the fat kid home from school and it’s usually fat mom and her cake batter ass waiting for him at the door.
I can see no reason for children to be fat and weak maybe one or the other but not both. I’m saying by fifth grade the kid should have a personal trainer at school and I don’t mean some playground physical education teacher with arrested development and leap frog fixation. .
Rigged and ripped brings confidence, the body and mind are a closed system, a single entity.
Kids who play all day and don’t have idiot parent at home, are leaner, stronger and have a better sense of humor than those who are slowed by metabolic digestive disorders.
Back in 1960 I watched and listened as Marion Zarankowitz a science teacher and Russian dude-culled the herd of baseball prospects.
He looked at one kid and said,” O.K. way too fat now, take off!” The kid started whining and Zarank told him,”Don’t be a little girl now, take off!”
Plus when the fat kid plays leap frog everybody else stands up.

Spatula Sex

2009-02-05T07:10:00.001-08:00

I am the guy who back in the day bought his wife a frying pan for Christmas purchased at Western Auto no less and it was not a joke I actually thought it was a good idea at the time. It was the nicest never used frying pan I ever saw and the only one I ever coveted which I think breaks one of the commandments. “Hey Moses take two tablets and call me in the morning.”
Remember when Bill Murray in Stripes went after the WAC with a spatula and egg beater and she finally admitted she was sexually stimulated. Don’t ever try that with plugged in appliances.
I recently have been eating less so I compensate by buying kitchen tools specifically designed for fatty and unhealthy foods. I find them at Marshals cleverly placed near the rack of action wear that goes from sizes 2X to 5X. That can’t be a coincidence.
Stainless Steele scooper for ice cream don’t tell me that’s not sexual and how about a sadistic slicing roller to cut pizza from the sorry frozen discs of delight which taste just like the box so why not just eat the picture and save the propane?

I’m out in search of an omelet maker. I love the word omelet especially with the word cheese in front of it. Cheese cutter tool? Those things are crazy cool. Where do I find one?

Morning Has Broken

2009-02-03T04:27:00.000-08:00

Cat Steven’s “Tea for the Tillerman” album is one of the most beautiful compilations of music in the history of the freaking planet.
And then came the Iranian hostage crises and the Iranian Revolution and American ignorance and Cat a British citizen of Greek and Swedish origin converted to Islam auctioned off all his guitars and changed his name to Yusuf Islam and went about trying to promote peace in the world as American got drunk and played discus with his album.
In a land of democracy we are not real good tolerating differences and dissent. This current war the Dixie Chicks became the enemy during Vietnam it was Country Joe and the Fish.
Born in the USA by Bruce is a major protest of Vietnam but no one realizes it they just run around screaming Bruce and Born in the USA not realizing the message.
The quote from “draft resister” Muhammad Ali remains one of my favorites.
“Ain’t no Vietcong ever call me nigger”.
Listen to the Cat Stevens music utube linked below. That’s what I’m talking about!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ESHjYat9rk&eurl=http://allspirit.co.uk/morning.htm l

Butterfinger Bars and Barking Dogs

2009-01-31T05:27:00.000-08:00

Eight years ago I bought a female lab from a guy named Denny who lived in Rock Hall Maryland by the bay and drove a white panel truck with “Labs and Lawns” written across the side. Denny said,”I won’t sell my dogs to the people around here because I see how they raise their kids.”
I assumed many of Rock Hall’s children were tethered to rotting wooden lean-tos in the tall Phragmites.
Yesterday I was rocking it old school doing photo journalism first at a boys late afternoon basketball game then over to a wrestling match.
Both had food tables offering skinny boiled dollar dogs and bars of candy. You can’t beat a butter finger and a bowwow. Both basketball and wrestling offered the same Friday night fare.
I have attached a couple of wrestling photos which is really a sport for little wiry and wily athletes, then the team if filled in up top by big guys recruited from the cafeteria refill line with nicknames like Hulk,Two Ton Tommy,Slim and Pink Albino Elephant.
The Guy sitting on the bench just won his 171 pound bout while the other combatants are heavyweights working on unnatural rules and moves of engagement as the referee signals “potentially unnatural if not downright dangerous.”
The final photo is what happened when two 125 pound strong teenagers with 5 percent body fat got after each other in the name of sport.
The adult with the basketball is a former star athlete shooting a halftime free throw for a free chocolate bar of candy,hot dog and diet coke.
Stay fit!

Charging The Jeep

2009-01-18T03:36:00.000-08:00

There were two great writing prompts from this Sunday morning’s news reports. . In one an innocent bystander caught in the middle of a spontaneous group spasmodic street conflagration was bitten by a police dog.
It reminded me of the bomb scare at the high school where I taught when a fight broke out in a crowded gym, the cop and his passive drug sniffing dog came to help quell the disturbance and as an always unemotional English teacher backed into the doorway the dog bite her on the ass. It was kind of funny because she just looks down then gave the dog a note to go to the office.
The second was about three rampaging elephants escaped from the elephant car wash trampling to death some Indians who worked for Hewlett Packard computer technical support team.
I would guess that a tee shirt “Survived Elephant Trampling” doesn’t exist and speaking of Tusk carrying bull elephants do they mate the way I think they do and make the noises I’m sure they do? My god, most of nature is so “nobody needs to see this!”
And what is up with the nearsighted Rhino and his aphrodisiac horn? Ask not so little Miss Rhino I guess? Will that be cash or charge Mr. Rhino. “Hello, All State? Another Rhino tried to mate with my Willy. No, it’s a jeep!”

The above writing is an example of Freudian fixation which means I left my creative game in the sixth grade

Progressive Obsessive

2009-01-15T05:41:00.001-08:00

Progressive is moving in on the insurance market going after Geico by using dumb and annoying Ads we hate but are nonetheless imprinted on our brains so we find them familiar then make consumer choices actually believing that by saving money were are getting equal service. “Low balers only look good in baggy pants,” my grandmother said
Yesterday I encountered a progressive obsessive insurance adjuster bitch at the local body shop. Pancaked pink with a bad make up job, blue eye shadow like a 57 Ford Galaxy there was just body shop adjuster irony everywhere.
This woman was talking Cadillac parts and just like sideline reporters in football the bitch had no background but she was a rusted Monkey wrench challenging the computer system talking after market wanting no returned already ordered parts sent back.
Then she went out to her dopey Progressive SUV with swivel mounted on board laptop and started looking up shit so as I passed her window I said, ”Richard said you should leave you are scaring off customers.”
Richard of course didn’t say that but he is a guy who collects cannons as a hobby so I know if she pushed him too hard he might nail her in the back of the head with a charge of wadding as she left the parking lot. "What's that noise?" Whap!
Junkyards are in fact a man refuge and most women are totally cool with that like the one who works there I just love her because she allowed herself to be assimilated into the culture and not try to change it.

Dismemberers Only

2009-01-13T04:33:00.000-08:00

There was a horror movie some years back “I Dismember Momma” and ever since I’ve been struck when ordinary people do extraordinary things like killing a family member before cutting them up with a chain saw into smaller pieces then placing the body parts around a city to avoid having the original crime traced back to them.
I just read of a case in Jenkintown outside of Philly where I was offered a job 35 years ago but there was something so chainsaw massacre in the eyes of the local populace that I turned it down.
Some young women with of course a degree in Psychology was upset because her single dad yelled at her, so she had her single boyfriend, shoot her dad with a single bullet, in the back of his single head.
The two took off for a week before coming back with new chain saw for a “dismemberment only party” hacking up a decomposing fully clothed nuclear relative only to have his clothes jam the chain saw and I wish I was kidding about this but what kind of sense of humor makes up dismemberment scenarios?
The boy friend wasn’t testosterone over the top in lust with this feline fiend rather he just needed the thousand tax free dollars easily earned better than being a humiliated retail clerk at the nearby going out of business Strawbridge’s store.
If you check all the daily papers across the country like I do everyday then you know there are always at least two dismemberment stories up and running like a wobbly zombie on a midnight jog.

Annoyance and Avoidance

2009-01-12T05:34:00.001-08:00

Avoid bad food and avoid the fat I get that. Work out and enjoy the benefits I get that. I am an avoidance approach kind of guy. I have avoided the Golden Globes, Survivor, American Idol, The Apprentice and Regis Philbin. But riding the bike at the gym under headphones listening to “Leave the Mud People Alone” by the Subdudes and there is Cute little Kelly what’s her name on the television overhead. I am intrigued by her carefully scripted vulnerability. How does one woman learn all those subtle cutesy maneuvers? Give me a smirk over a pout any day.
I want to get away from all things Ophra but she keeps rising like a biscuit in box of friend chicken tenders. One hundred million a year and in her own words “how could I do it? How could I let it happen?” She is of course talking about getting fat again then annoying the nation about it. She is talking about being so fat that when a friend practices the Heimlich maneuver on Ophra her body plays Lady of Spain like a Lawrence Welk accordion.
People who used to be fat take a compliment and turn it into a food depth charge then marvel when they don’t blow up. And so the subconscious says “you can eat whatever you want because you have changed your metabolism and your now naturally hyper kinetic like all those type A efficient vice free overachievers that you’d love to sugar smack down at the sugar shack.
Like a necktie in the washer diet is all a vicious spin cycle. Fight the power!

Bypass Buck Rodgers

2009-01-11T03:47:00.000-08:00

I listened to Gil Gerard on the Discovery Heath Channel talk about his disappointment going from Buck Rodgers t.v star 25 years ago to modern day fat guy at the please don’t strip mall.
Wikipedia on line talks about Gerard’s weight ballooning to 365 pounds and I wondered “why do weight gainers always have to be ballooning” which may be the yeast of their problems in an economic downturn when the only thing expanding is their stretch waistband Wall mart olive green dingo work pants. By the way did you know in gay culture one just never wears stretch pants it is just so “oh my god he didn’t” socially unacceptable.
So ballooning Buck now talks about how mini gastric bypass surgery was right for him, choking the neck of the circus balloon all chicken choking jokes aside and saving his life as he has dropped 145 pounds of carbon dioxide squeaking loudly with every discarded ounce . That’s 580 pounds of pressure released from his hip sockets which is why he does the ecstasy moan with each step around the golf course. “Oh yea”!
Gil did say he avoided many social functions-and by the way he is a great guy very much involved in charity work like serving as a nun buoy for special Olympic polar plunges -because he never felt right in his fat guy cloths even though he was the fat guy.
The zone where will power yields to surgery and success is claimed as the prize. Isn’t this just another example of body augmentation and adjustment?
I imagine being the pharmacist at the Happy Harry’s express lane you qualify by having your name, condition and medication read over the store’s loud speaker, I mean how much fun would that be?
Pizza be with you!

Belly Times Four

2009-01-10T06:00:00.000-08:00

A stupid friend of mine once said “My wife calls me algebra because I’m always hard.” Then I saw his wife in the grocery store-insert your own produce joke- and I asked her “Where’s Algebra?” And she said,”How did you know my cousin’s nickname?”
Speaking of the worthlessness of a slide rule in the hands of the masses yesterday I met with renowned hip surgeon and he never asked for x-ray update of did any motion test he just actively listened to things I said, answered questions then said I was absolutely not a candidate for hip replacement surgery and on bad days I should just use a cane, you know, like in the gym on my way to the triceps press down station.
He did throw out the factoid that for every 10 pounds of belly fat it translated into 40 pounds of hip joint pressure the old X for belly is equal to 4times Y for hip socket.
“That would explain the preponderance of fat limping people,”I said. “But not all limpers are fat and some joints just deteriorate from over use, no use, or bad diet. And by the way, I know what you did there, just burying the belly fat factoid in the middle of a sentence so that I wouldn’t make anymore jokes about you in my column like twisting the legs off IGA barbecue chickens just for recreation. “
So my wife and I go to a Diner last night-I take a night off from airborne viral attacks from the uninsured inside high school gyms and I order Chicken and egg plant Parmesan. The plate comes so stacked with food it looks like a joke and the waiter brings an extra plate why I have no idea.
I ate only a little because I was already filled up on salted sour dough pretzels I boomed craned from a barrel on the kitchen counter.
A self designed program of weight loss and core strengthening is my prescription which I will follow religiously as long as no church is involved.
“It’s hip to be square.”

Attached is picture of paternal grandfather Frank Frederick I am estimating he is 52 years old and I am 2. Yes he is big strong German dude with bad attitude and most likely bad hip.

Psycho Santa

2008-12-28T07:01:00.001-08:00

About 35 years ago the post dinner living in an apartment routine was to watch the local Philly news on black and white television then settle in for the Untouchables narrated by Walter Winchell and starring Robert Stack as Elliot Ness and Neville Brand as Al Capone.
One Christmas season the program began with street corner Santa ringing a bell on the Chicago sidewalk. Three year old Dave a very verbal first child started to chirp.
“Santa! There’s Santa. Santa Bell. Why? There’s Santa.”
My wife said to me,”Do you think it’s a good idea that he watches the Untouchables every night after dinner?”
“I don’t care”I said. “I’m watching it. Let him go bury his head in the toy box.”
Just then a car with running boards came speeding around the corner. And of course there was a hit man on the running boards with a Tommy gun and he shot Santa full of holes as it turns out Santa was really rival hit man ‘Stromboli Sal.’
“What happened Santa, Davey asked?
“Santa just got waxed! Swiss cheese baby! God I love this program!”
“Santa Swiss cheese” “that’s right son, and that’s no bologna.”
And so 2008 a guy puts on a Santa outfit straps a gas tank to his leg along with semi automatic pistol goes to the house of his estranged in laws and X dog, knocks on the door, an eight year old answers and he shoots her in the face (she survives with flesh wound) but nine people inside are not so lucky.
This story is so ugly that a movie is unthinkable and Self Inflicted Santa went beyond crazy –premeditated Santa Savagery- what, he looks in the mirror like Dinero in Taxi Driver “You talking to me? Are you talking to me?”
Human behavior, the old explanation of, the lord works in mysterious ways and ours is not to reason why but maniacal Santa shooting little people in the face? There is no good way to spin that but you can bet the Catholics noticed that Saint Nick is some German protestant boogie man.
I could give the mass sermon to close this case. Everyone stands up, offers each other the international no idea sign of the shoulder shrug,then moves on to the parish hall for sandwiches and talk of NFL playoffs. What else is there to say?

Ice Ice Baby

2008-12-27T07:17:00.001-08:00

Why do people who achieve some modicum of fame and money to go with it make stupid decisions like being drunks and drug users and perhaps spouse and/or girlfriend batterers? And peep this, the face betrays all lies I don’t care who you are if you burn the candle at both ends your face ends up in the house of wax.
Vanilla “ICE BABY” is my boy his one hit rocks old school like no other. I love watching black people watch white people get down to that song. At first Ice was cool like a cube but then he melted but wanted to stay in the Tupperware tray of fame with his stupid haircut low self esteem distorted self image self.
O.J. excluding that likely double murder personality blip just makes me laugh and the more infamous he becomes the more money my lithograph purchased at an art auction 20 years ago the only question remaining is “why was I at an art auction and did I steal the art on the way out the door? “

And the CSI dude sleeping in his car by the side of the road In Palm Springs and pleading guilty to possession of cocaine and ecstasy which means he was guilty of a lot more like that haircut.

I thinking of stealing a 52 inch high definition plasma flat screen just by holding it over my head like a thin crust party pizza and walking past the security girl with an attitude and over those dumb-assed sensors that only go neck high. The heart would pound the blood pressure would elevate my entire reputation on the line and if I’m caught I claim adrenaline addiction.

Scuz Santa

2008-12-26T05:19:00.001-08:00

Early Christmas morning I went to WaWa looking for pudding, grandson Davey’s favorite. Two women in Santa hats were leaning against a side wall used as a wind break to catch a smoke. They looked somewhat harsh but I least they were working and I wasn’t as I turned to the dogs and said,” Nice!”
Inside were more Santa hats and a hefty portion of not right looking white people. I thought my eyes were deceiving me but there was this guy about 40 years old wearing a fleece warm up jacket that looked like he rolled on a rug in a 40 dog house as the zipper was pulled half way up to his belly shelf.
I stared some more because he was in the out of focus zone where near meets far sighted and there was this black matted chest hair escaping like crab grass around a boat trailer that has been left unmoved in the yard for the last 16 years.
This looking like a hijacker of a chicken truck dude was just plain nasty looking and all the nasty people waiting in line grimaced at each other and nodded “that dude is nasty.”
Scud Santa sails through the air in fleece warm up and matted hair and as he soared behind mangy reindeer up into the air the crowd on the ground shouted “that bitch don’t care!”

Now I'm Done!

2008-12-23T13:34:00.001-08:00

You know the Brady Quinn workout commercial that ends with him saying “Now I’m done.”
I’ve been finding pictures of myself playing basketball in the Penn Palestra going back to 1964 and I know hardly anyone cares how good I was but I’m motivated to tell my story after writing stories about other people for the last 25 years.
I think I must be psychologically damaged or needy but not really because I know I’m not that guy. But I am a person who believes that most people do good stuff everyday and that’s it’s o.k. to reflect and say” I did a good job with that” as long as you don’t look for affirmation from a friend especially if you brought up the subject in the first place.
Number 54 I am finger rolling in a basket versus four helpless defenders and number 55 I am up and over 6’9” Maurice who dunked in my face earlier in the season back when no one did that.
If you have picture highlights of yourself from better days or yesterday you would like me to post send them along because I am the image maker.

Freddogg

Too Blue To Fly

2008-12-23T01:55:00.000-08:00

Picture is Dot Frederick with her problem Child David in row house Philly

Picture David and Checkers the calico cat. Checkers was a biter.

picture is Tommy in the army and dog Tippy.

Below links to tracy chapman song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wijqg5KD5tc&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNaNN9c-Hk4

I hear beautiful voices that talk to me like Wissahickon cool mountain water washing over the muddy shorelines of my memory bank as I breathe in and out under the IPOD doing my Gold’s Gym “available apparatus” workout.
Last weekday morining I was swimming in a pool of depression going from Tracy Chapman to the Cowboys Junkies singing the Hank Williams classic “I’m so lonesome I could Cry.”

Hear the lonesome whippoorwill
He sounds too blue to fly
The midnight train is whining low
I’m so lonesome I could cry

I’ve never seen a night so long
When time goes crawling by
The moon just went behind a cloud
To hide its face and cry

Did you ever see a robin weep
When leaves begin to die
That means he’s lost the will to live
I’m so lonesome I could cry

The silence of a falling star
Lights up a purple sky
And as I wonder where you are
I’m so lonesome I could cry
Hank was a seriously messed up individual.

But it was Chapman’s new “I used to sing for you” humming lullaby that brought me back to 1963 standing by the bedside of my Father who was dying at the age of 41, emaciated and done in by a virulent case of multiple sclerosis.
My grandmother Rose sat in the rocker and hummed. She rocked and hummed as her fifth child and only son was soon to depart the earthly dimension to the non bodied spiritual world and that I understood.
I also absorbed the image of Tommy’s girlfriend her head on the bed a woman who nursed him through years of his illness and raised three kids and a variety of dumb pets with names like Luigi, Ox, Skungi, Checkers and Cheney State. Mom was just 38 years old and the part of her life she cared about the most was shutting down.
I listened to Tracy thought of my grandmother and parents and the sad story and willingly backstroked through the pool of depressing memories because it is nature’s way of soothing and healing without medication.
Even at 16 I was the “empathy it ain’t about me” person as I looked around the room and felt sadness for the lives that created me but really had lots more fun before I showed up.
John Prine wrote: “I never will remember what I never did forget.”

Sole Man

2008-12-15T12:00:00.000-08:00

Eight years and George Bush had never looked so cool. Some stupid Iraqi journalist stands up and throws a shoe-a high hard fast shoe-right at Bush’s head and he just moves to the side like Ali in his prime and flashes that stupid self assured smerk before easily bobbing away from shoe number two.
And then old white guys emerge from back doors like a Marx brothers movie. Where were the young studs with cat quick reflexes? Take a shoe for the president and five minutes later it’s a million dollar book deal.
Wouldn’t it have been great if a shoe riot broke out inside the tent? What if Bush weren’t so quick and took a hoof to the mouth. The ultimate insult in Iraq, we are told, but you know Bush would have been on the phone to Cheney,” Bring down the shock and awe just wait until I’m safely back inside the green zone. Throw a shoe at my head? I don’t think so!”
One year teaching some dirty white boy threw a desk at me when my back was turned. It bounced off the blackboard. He ran from the room and for a minute I thought of chasing so I could beat him into another standard deviation to the left of normal.
But if an adult threw a shoe at my head how would I react. Not as quickly as the president. He is a shoe dodging all star.

Blue Christmas

2008-11-29T08:52:00.001-08:00

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.

12 Step Deprogram

2008-11-21T05:00:00.000-08:00

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.

Enraged and Righteous

2008-11-18T09:28:00.000-08:00

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

Transparent like a Cat Scan

2008-11-15T14:42:00.000-08:00

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?

Wait 300 Minutes

2008-11-14T09:08:00.000-08:00

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

Violence and Innocence

2008-11-11T15:57:00.001-08:00

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

Stucco and Calico

2008-11-11T05:52:00.000-08:00

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

MEDIA TYPE B PERSONALITY

2008-11-05T08:37:00.000-08:00

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

Keep Rocking in the Third World

2008-11-03T07:54:00.000-08:00

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

Joe the Dumber

2008-10-31T04:02:00.000-07:00

I am so not getting this we are all “Joe the Plumber” campaign of McCain especially since Joe is no real Plumber and he is a tax delinquent.Let's not forget his girlfriend Jill the Plumper. And after the campaign is over and tripping Joe goes back to his previous life of anonymity I predict Joe will end up on the scrap heap of society sizzling in the winter sun of who cares then will become despondent and hurt somebody because after all he is a big jar headed non certified apprentice poser.
Woody Allen’s movie “Take the Money and Run” had a snippet of a bank robbery and a masked thug named “Willie the Logical Positivist.”
Logical Positivism is a philosophy based on agreed upon observable facts- Joe the Plumber is not a real Plumber therefore: Joe the Schmo.
There is an opposing philosophy which would take the position that if Joe is not a Plumber than what is he doing on the national political stage representing poser plumbers everywhere?
That prompted best selling books like “What is Reality” and as I watch this campaign head towards its sure to be dramatic conclusion on November 4 I keep asking myself that question which remains unanswered because agreed upon realities are just not attainable.
“All Ravens are black “But perhaps somewhere there is a hybrid Raven like Crow Raven Man because who knows if even all Ravens are Ravens unless you know the sexual history of all ravens as things are seldom what they seem to be.
I admire my buddies from the blue collar world because while I may be a logical positivist these guys actually know how to fix and make shit work. In education we would call that application of higher order thinking skills. I prefer to stop at the thinking part then go to my redneck Rolodex of problem solvers.

Fredric Von Freddoggy

Alaska is Plenty Cold!

2008-10-29T06:14:00.001-07:00

This is an actual conversation I had with an institutionalized mental patient back in 1960. The man named Henry had a Masters in business from Princeton but after a car accident rattled his brain a different Henry emerged. Still a millionaire as Co-owner of the Rheingold Beer Corporation but unfit to swim in the mainstream of American society where people will smack your face if you get smart with them and refuse to back down.

“It’s cold up there in Alaska plenty cold.”

‘Yes I believe it is Henry.”

“Maybe it’s not!”

“Have you ever been to Alaska?”
“No, I haven’t Henry.”

“Maybe you have though. It is cold, plenty cold?”
“I’m sure that maybe it is.”

“You’re sure that’s maybe it’s not!”
“Do you like snow?”
“No I don’t!”
“You do!”
This went on and on and finally I saw a flaw in his logic and figured incorrectly that the laying of logic on the illogical mind is a moment of revelation that makes them better.

“Alaska is cold plenty cold. Do you like Alaska?”

“Yes and no Henry. Yes and no.”

He did not hesitate. “Yes and Yes”!

There is a lesson to be learned here then again maybe not.

Freddogg

Go Granny Go

2008-10-24T03:59:00.001-07:00

Twenty five years ago a long term substitute shared a special education room with me at Cape Henlopen High School. His name actually was Rocky and he was an Episcopalian Minister in search of a parish.
This one day he is sitting next to James who always scored in the low range of intelligence on standardized tests but like many from the society of the unsophisticated James had unsuspected and unmapped intelligences.
Once at a football game a kid from another school said to James, “I’ll bet you five dollars Seaford beat Cape.”
James responded,” I don’t want to take you whole paycheck.”
Another time he came into my room and said,”Fredman I just got back my heath test that you helped me study for. Twenty five questions guess how many I got right?”

“I don’t know, twenty one?”
“Three man! Thanks man! How you gonna give somebody a three. Yo man can you figure it out so I can tell my mom what a three is?’”

‘Tell her not to worry it’s more like a 12,”I said, and James came over with a big smile shook my hand and said”Thanks for all you do man.”
Wrap around back to Reverend Rocky next to James. Rocky sits down shoulder to shoulder looks at James and asked,”James when is the last time you cried.”
James responded,” I don’t know, when is the last time you got off?”

Five years ago James was in front of the school to pick up his daughter. He said he wanted to give me a piece of his artwork.
The next day he gave me the penis nose granny character. The writing says, “your granny son is coming home soon good-by granny mother love.”
I asked him what I should do with it and he said “have your wife hang it in the living room.”
And I asked him, “What is with the blue and gold finger nails and penis noses?”
James answer,” It reminds me of all the good times when I was in high school.”
And as he was leaving he turned around and said,”Hey Fredman you are my boy. Don’t you remember---12? Thanks man.”

freddogg

Dressed to Kill It

2008-10-23T09:34:00.000-07:00

You see hank Williams on stage with naked girls and only last week on stage with Palin therefore she pals around with guy who likes to appear with naked women.

My name is Fredman. I am a person named by black men and dressed by gay men and my name rhymes with Palin.” I own a tie or two, not a single suit, I am neurotically committed to only sneakers and white socks and I just don’t care. At times in my past I have worn a shirt and tie and high school girls would comment in complete astonishment, ”you look really nice ”meaning most of the time I am an acceptable non remarkable sort of fellow.
We all know that fat people don’t get the best jobs and polyester people work at Popeye’s and if you must play the part why not look the part say Auto Parts guy with blue striped shirt and name over the pocket. That’s the entire point of the Verizon Network guy who by the way I have grown to hate for no good reason I just hate him!
Personally I find Sarah Palin scary and did from the beginning if I were a state cop in Alaska she would be after my ass and the Asses of my supervisors. A man can just sense those things you know a bitch that doesn’t like him
But spending 150k to upgrade her act from the Dwight Yokel Outdoors action wear catalogue I think is a masterful idea.
Why not? That is her appeal I hate to burst anyone’s bubble but even men holding down the republican base with a hand inside their pants could care less about Palin’s political posturing. It’s all about the ideal woman for them far to the right as possible while still staying in the bed.
My grandmother used to say, “sometimes I am so right that everyone else just needs to shut up.”

Freddogg

Opinion Pole

2008-10-22T04:35:00.000-07:00

Devon as adult tries to interview W. "The Mic is hot! The Mic is nice!"

Should a teacher of social issues keep his opinions to himself? Obviously a teacher shouldn’t foist personal positions on a captive classroom of teenagers with lamp shade eyes and tepid commitment to anyone outside the sphere of the self. But isn’t a person devoid of preferences just a robotic boring ass straight down the middle automaton?
I taught a class that was very friendly to divergences of opinion I only asked that students use knowledge and agreed upon facts and god forbid deductive and inductive reasoning to arrive at their positions.
Back in 1988 a College Prep senior classroom discussion on homosexuality learned or genetic was on the floor and I was talking about legal rights and levels of social acceptance and some boys were just very opinionated spewing forth stupid and rude comments when suddenly this little artistically dressed black kid with an effervescent personality jumped up on top of his desk and shouted “I’ll tell you all right now that I am gay and if you don’t like it you can kiss my chocolate ass.”
I looked at the football guys and there were several of all colors and ethnic backgrounds. They all had this stunned half smile on their faces when Polish Frank said,”Sit down Devon. Like who don’t know you’re gay?”
I asked these guys if they would defend Devon if strangers surrounded him threatening a bit of hate crime violence. They all said,”Dam right!”
I told them, “Exactly, because he is your friend who happens to be gay so in your own way you defend his gayness.”
Then Polish Frank had the light bulb go on in his vacant storage shed and he looked at me and asked “Hey Fredman? If your son Dave came home and told you he was gay what would you do?”
Frank nodded to the class like “see; let’s hear him get out of this?”
“I’d tell him to go decorate the living room,”I said, employing my grand mom’s advice of “joke first-nobody cares what you really think.”

FReddogg

Break A Leg

2008-10-21T02:43:00.000-07:00

A perpetrator tried to pilfer a puppy from a pet store but was stopped by the proprietor at the store door. Assault with a deadly puppy ensued as the pooch pugilist swung the puppy by its back legs at the clerk’s cranium ignoring his screams of “take the bitch just get out!”
The man honestly pleaded “my bad” left the store only to be arrested by a police K9 Unit with an agitated spitting Sheppard in the back barking in dog code “Just give me 10 seconds with his sorry ass!”
Meanwhile back at the pet store the puppy has a broken leg and is traumatized with deep seated repressed feelings of distrust and resentment over all species human.
Do you remember when Saddam’s sons and grandson were shot full of more holes than Bonnie and Clyde after an army reconnaissance dog was shot from an upstairs window. There was no call back to base on how to handle the delicate mission. The order to wax and waste was given with absolutely no remorse because most Americans view dogs as the sacred cows of their culture.
And what if you have to wear an eye patch for two weeks because you have a cracked orbital bone after a collision with a baby bulldog’s brow? "What happened to your lazy eye?"

Freddogg

Hail Mary

2008-10-17T03:15:00.001-07:00

Image One:Robert as Adult werewolf

Image Two: Father Canice ask Mary for forgiveness.

Young protestant football fans think the Hail Mary is a desperation pass. They have no idea about catholic payer and the holy rosary and buying time back from purgatory.
Back in 1963 a massive study hall in a cafeteria minus food and books at Bishop Egan high school we were being force feed 10 Hail Mary’s, one Our Father and a Glory Be to the Father.
The priest in proctor position was Father Canice, nicknamed The Possum, spoke like James Cagney in the “You Dirty Rat” scene. The possum was a scary sick bitch who could strike with either hand at lightning speed.
He came to the head of the table where I sat with my boys as we all looked straight ahead speaking to each other with our eyes. It was a simple game of who would break first as the tension grew and Canice got more Cagney like with every word that someone was going to crack and not giggle but rather become totally unraveled.
It was poor white boy Robert nicknamed The Werewolf. He cracked and got cracked but the praying went forward unabated and uninterrupted. Was the praying for something-lord give me better reflexes- or to pay homage-thank you for this moment as mine is not to reason why but to do or die and I understand that but dam! “

I’m out! Freddogg

Get out of my Pants

2008-10-17T02:33:00.001-07:00

The place where funny meets respect the decision to remain silent or tell the story that is the zone where I find myself.
Last weekend it was a gathering of old friends from high school-all the boys now over 60-aging in action but we don’t care like I always say "men love each other just ask their wives."
Perhaps the best of us is in the worst of conditions. Wade has early onset Alzheimer’s and we were all scared to see him but Saturday at the bar/restaurant it was story telling and laughing even going into a sit down sitcom of “Guess who Died” because when you are young it’s a game of seconds but over 60 we know of lots of people and the most fun is when you introduce a new player”he died? You’re kidding me?”
Wade was roaming around my house Sunday morning having left his bedroom and was just opening doors looking for himself. He stepped into the room where my brother was sleeping at 6 a.m said “hi buddy” then took his pants that were hanging over a chair.
Big Tom is 6’5” and 380 pounds while Wade is more 6’3” 215 pounds.
Wade was wearing the pants holding them up at the waist. My brother came out holding up his beltless Bermudas. "Have you seen Wade he took my pants and belt?" Later sister-in law Nancy appeared smiling. I said ‘If you live long enough someone is coming into your bedroom saying “hi buddy” and leaving with your pants. It is just going to happen." Nancy said that I can always see the humor in things and that was very therapeutic.
Wade was led back to his room and moments later his wife Mary returned the pants.
It was all a bit of insider fun because Wade was in fact wading in a world where everyone loves him but in the big pond it is not that understanding or forgiving.
Perhaps there should be a tee shirt “I make strange decisions”.

Impact Player

2008-10-10T04:51:00.001-07:00

All I wanted was one air filter for my furnace. I knew the size, the old width, length and height trick that so impresses insider traders of heating supply parts. The warehouse was huge and there were filters all over the freaking place.
I stood at the counter in my black Under Armour shirt just looking all wrong. There was no name on my shirt pocket, in fact, no pocket, no ball cap, and absolutely no depth of humorous stories centering on impact wrenches.
I patiently waited and listened to counter interactions as we went from Phillips heads-who was this guy Phillips-to slot drivers throwing in words like torque and ratchet. I was being iced, made to wait, it was revenge of the redneck clique from the high school general ed track.
Finally Mr. is it a supply or ignition problem furnace unit troubleshooter dude took his lame brained stories to his white Chevy van with roof racks and bunged PVC storage pipes in the parking lot.
I stepped to the counter-‘Yaw got this animal-air filter-20-24-2 although I believe it will also take a 20 ½.”
I figured maybe I was in although admittedly I didn’t squint my eyes and look bewildered like the previous “I service what you don’t comprehend dude.”
‘Do you have an HVAC contractors license, ’I was asked, and the body language from “now I have to stand here and wait for the answer” counter guy assumed I didn’t have one and so I responded, “How about a Food Lion MVP card? Do I look like a contractor to you?”

”Can’t sell it to you,”he said.
“Let me ask you a question,”I asked. “Does the filter exist in real life and is it in this warehouse?”
He said, "yes" and I said "cool" stayed away from all sarcasm and left driving to my personal heating and plumbing service guys who took me into a warehouse and said “take all you want you can have an entire box of filters.”
Turns out there is a law which says ordinary citizens who are not licensed HVAC contractors cannot purchase supplies directly from distributors because one too many household repair guys have blown up one too many houses and apartment buildings and somehow Barack Obama has been implicated in the new republican strategy of "blame the black guy for everything."
Personally I like being shut down, told that I am not air filter worthy, or too stupid to purchase one, but I can do impeller versus propeller jokes which are way more sophisticated than some impact wrench riff.
By the way, what the hell is an impact wrench?

Chillin like a Chile Dog on a summer afternoon

Guilt By Association

2008-10-07T02:39:00.001-07:00

I have shared a cup of coffee with members of the SDS, Black Panther Party, Guardian Angels, Warlocks, Pagans, Hippies, Yippies and even a few Yuppies.
I’ve been friendly with homosexuals, bisexuals, transsexuals and transvestites.
When I visit the local prison of 1400 inmates men yell my name from windows as I walk across the prison yard once causing the deputy warden to ask “how do you know so many of these people? I was even the graduation speaker at their boot camp program and one of my remarks was “they call it boot camp because there are members of society who will keep the wet leather boot of moral righteous on you neck forever continually pressuring your head back into the muck wanting to mire you in your mistakes. Those people who don’t understand forgiveness ain’t worth knowing and ain’t worth talking about. It’s not about them anyway it is about you leaving mistakes behind and walking forward and away from the garbage that got you in here in the first place.”
I am personally uncomfortable with the tenor and tone of this presidential campaign that in finally cranking to a close. I can no longer watch anyone debate or make speeches or listen to party operatives. I am not a paranoid person but I really distrust individuals who can argue positions just to defend a party that signs their paycheck.
I often told my students to take beliefs they held strongly then argue the opposite point of view. The Religion classes of the Sixties taught me that but I was so good arguing the devil was a good guy that I was smacked by the teacher and told to shut up.
Watch any debate for Ad hominem arguments which basically leave the argument at the side of the road in favor of attacking the person. These arguments are always invalid in syllogistic logic as Barack learned in his Harvard Law classes.
I had this really smart friend Joe from West Philly who was arguing with a cop commander one night about all kinds of stuff and finally cop commander said,” Well it all gets down to a matter of opinion. It’s my opinion versus your opinion.”
“That’s a self referential self negating paradox,”Joe said. “If everything gets down to opinion then so does that statement.”
“Go fuck yourself! Cop Commander shouted. “Is that self referential enough for your fat ass?”

Dance To The Music

2008-10-06T10:58:00.000-07:00

I covered a Parents Day football game last Saturday afternoon taking lots of pictures but at halftime the real show broke out as Hampton University and Delaware State threw down with a battle of the marching bands.
These traditionally black college bands have a well earned reputation for taking halftime shows to an entire different level of entertainment including mascot races. I stood up and snapped pictures of musicians and dancing girls flying through the air and rolling on the turf. It was so cool and so energizing but the photos were out of the realm of what usually appears in the newspaper.
It is a fact that readers can’t handle any truths which are self evident unless it’s a line of white tuba players doing a choreographed hop.
Perhaps it’s not fair to make a cultural linkage but I taught in public school where the talk was always of diversity but when real diversity was encouraged schools couldn’t handle it and I’m not just talking white and black there is diversity of all kinds including diversity of political and religious position. What schools really can’t handle is confusion at the edges of the norm that produces noise. Noise is the enemy of the status quo but have you ever seen and exuberant quiet and motionless person?
I have and they usually say things like “This is really enjoyable I’m really having a good time.”
Don’t forget to “Dance To The Music!”

CARNAL COWS

2008-10-03T03:29:00.000-07:00

A New York City patrol officer was suspended from his job after being charged with six counts of sex with cows. That’s right chew on that sentence for a few minutes before arguing “do we really need bestiality laws to stay on the books?” What in Carnation?

Remember when Polish jokes were fun? Like the guy who used up all his sick days so he called in dead. Well a recent study in England suggests that certain medical conditions associated with workplace absences may identify people who have an increased risk of premature death.

In America “calling in sick” has a different meaning most times having nothing to do with actual sickness. In fact, the American workforce invented the term “mental health day” rationalizing “I’m not coming in for the good of everybody. I think I’ll spend a relaxing day in a cow pasture.”

I was part of the work force herd who never gave up a sick day being sick when I could come to work and get paid for it.

I took an English Literature class long ago when most campus bovines found me attractive and my teacher with the author/poet James Dickey who wrote the Novel “Deliverance” and actually used his own son as a stand in for Ned Beatty in the 'Squeal like a Pig' Hillbilly scene. Dickey also wrote a poem about a Wholly Baby inside a jar in a Georgia Museum. I remember him saying that every small town in America had a story about some guy who had sex with a sheep and you know he’s right I just saw curly headed Sheep Guy in Food Lion the other day in the express line right behind Vacuum Cleaner Guy. I only wish I were making this up.

A why do people count sheep or make up rhymes about cows jumping over moons or “how now brown cow” just what the hell does that mean?

I think I’ll call in sick and vacuum every rug in the house. Imagine when patrol cow/cop returns to work and pulls over a motorist for a mooing violation.

* This posting is regressive writing. It is so eighth grade I’m expecting any moment to be attacked by a penguin with a stick.

Stupid Rules!

2008-10-02T09:47:00.000-07:00

Stupid white people scare me because the have no excuse for their bewilderment as they try to reduce everything abstract to the concrete level and still their bubble is always off no matter how obtuse the angle of their cocked head .

Why can’t those who achieve beyond their innate talent levels just admit it? And why can’t they admit stupid as reflected on academic transcripts from their student days.

John McCain, Joe Biden and Sarah Palin were mediocre students which is actually inflating them because the bottom 10 percent of one’s class is looking up from the cellar- like a spinning spider on a rough hewn beam. An average grade of C is usually the lowest grade attainable for those who walk, chew gum and have long necks during college exams and when is the last time you heard of someone flunking out of law school or a military academy?

Why can’t someone admit,” I really tried as a student in all my classes I’m just not very smart. Sometimes I just get lost. I just don’t follow. Is that a crime? “

No, everyone has a story about being a rebel or party animal and not taking things seriously. You know like I’m really smart in spite of all hard data evidence that points to a different conclusion. “Dumb white person” should be a tee shirt and I would wear it because I’m not one but I wouldn’t care if people thought I was as long as everyone admitted such people exist and can be found throughout the government. .
Everything we stress with young students is totally devalued as people move into the work force. It really is the old joke “everybody likes a little but nobody likes a smart ass.”

I worked a career with teachers most with master’s degrees and some doctorates. Ninety percent of these individuals are not of raging intellect they are more diligent and more or less organized. Like a special student once said to me “you don’t cut nobody you ain’t no doctor.”

freddogg

Toxic Asset

2008-10-01T04:05:00.001-07:00

Caveman Hit-"Will you still love me tomarrow"

I woke up this morning with two words in my head “Toxic Asset.” What in the freak is a Toxic Asset?
I guess it’s like “you owe me money with interest accruing daily BUT it ain’t like I’m ever getting it back from your sub primate self. I have a better chance collecting owed bones from Australopithecus or Home habilis or as spell checker prefers Homo Chablis and god knows lots of homos drink white wine straight up-hold the Elliot Spitzer. ”
And so the government buys these assets from banks with real money-the bank is like Whoa good deal- and then tries to collect them toxic assets like a pump truck on a porta-potty- assets like defaulted student loans but everyone knows that college people with degrees ain’t paying for something they already have hanging on their wall.
There is no more faulty strategy than buying bad debt and turning it into a profit. I think on the street it’s called pay day loans or just plain loan sharking. How about those yuppies that flipped houses like pancakes? They should be made part of Strike Force Bin Laden and sent into mountainous Pakistan on the mission to find the arthritic 6’5” Arab on dialysis hooked nosed home video maker and to toss his dead carcass over the back of a donkey and parade him through the streets shouting “All you Turban Taliban, Paragons and Octagons can get some too-hear what I’m sayin?”
Somewhere the land carps of the economy are mapping a bottom feeding plan of attack. It happened yesterday on Wall Street because that’s how the game is played. If you can stick your head in to the bailout money pipeline-it has to flow somewhere- you can capitalize on your neighbor’s misery and shattered dreams all the time acting the savior like you are doing him a favor.
The problem is I don’t know how to do that just like I don’t understand how people made millions on the Dot Com Bubble.

Freddogg

Off The Peep End

2008-09-30T08:29:00.000-07:00

I’ve wanted to bust a few onions over 35 years of teaching but I am a master of restraint and anyway when you’re Teacher Man and Funnyman in the newspaper you just don’t get to hit people otherwise know as Assault Third.

Last week after dropping off newspapers at two different schools I went to Gold’s Gym. I pulled around back of a ghetto parking lot and to the dead zone corner to allow my retrievers a few moments to defile nature’s beauty with mammalian waste products. The average price of the houses facing a lake on the other side of the fence was 3 million or more.

A double gate was wide open and the dogs crossed over into the No Landscape for Labs lush flowers and shrubbery albeit fake flora.

I patiently waited when suddenly appeared a short round and scraggly beaded bright white guy who commenced to scream at me relentlessly about his property and dogs and to keep them out like suddenly I was showing up everyday. I though of saying a lot of things but just shook my head up and down like “I am in total agreement with you.” My pressure did not rise because as a public school teacher for 35 years his assault on me was downright amateurish.

But he left then came back into my sight line and was talking about babies and chicken and I thought “dam there was a baby eating chicken roll and the dogs just snagged it so I considered offering him 20 dollars for chicken but then I heard “baby chickens” and realized this woefully unhappy person was raising chickens in the backyard of a Mc Mansion with a water view.

I have so many joint rotation infirmaries right now that if I got in a fight I’d look like a robot in a 1957 black and white science fiction movie. My corner man would have a long spigot oil can to keep me limber.

Baby freaking chickens!

Freddogg

Off Road Economics

2008-09-30T04:45:00.000-07:00

Bailout-Schmailout! I surfed the cable channels for an hour this morning and quickly realized that the money game being played by Wall Street and bank speculators is beyond the grasp of the players and commentators and elected members of Congress.
How can so much happen when nothing happens? It’s all a cyber cerebral game played by the genus hydrocephalus, a bunch of water head losers all of whom think Manuel Labor is an illegal Mexican.
House Speaker Nancy castigated and castrated the Republican members of Congress and was bitch slapped in retaliation. Barney Ball Park Frank steps to the Mic and you wonder “where is this guy late Saturday night?”
Is my 401 safe? How about my 403b? How about my state run pension plan? Can I get a car loan” Do I want a car loan? No comprende’ on all of the above.
My investments are diversified because that’s the kind of portfolio I want I only wish I knew what I was talking about and although I could do a stand up routine of 45 minutes on any prop from a messy garage I could not speak for more than 30 seconds on how to get my retirement money and if I could do I have to give it back and don’t even start with me about Social Security because I know that the same speculators who like midget prostitutes sell short are banking on me dying on the short end of bad financial decisions.
We as a nation value education but we place power in the hands of elected C students the closest most got to 3.0 was their BAL.
I am rich at WaWa, so off I go, and if this crisis renders me personally destitute you can bet your ass between Food Lion and WaWa I will steal enough calories to power a Winnebago.
Yes that is a ring bologna in my pocket!

FReddogg

Freak the Frugal

2008-09-26T04:08:00.000-07:00

The last two weeks have not been kind to the McCain/Palen ticket and as a result new tracking polls have them rebounding and now in a virtual tie with Barack/Biden. That may seem mystifying to many pundits but I get it as the American electorate reminds me of an Under Review high school stocked with the child left behind in all of us.
It’s all about backlash and blacklash. It’s about name calling, ageism and sexism. I have been lumped into a category of “you Libs” and that got my attention because like a lot of independent thinkers I don’t identify with liberals or conservatives I’m just out here trying to figure it all out and not exploiting people for personal gain and profit.
I recently bought a queen size mattress for the guest room because my king sized brother is coming to visit. ‘You don’t understand a man who makes a frivolous expenditure for a mattress and box spring set do you,”I ask me wife and she said,” No, she didn’t, or why men buy flat screen televisions” and I reminded her it was because she grew up in the household of “Cruller Man” the most unimaginative doughnut in the case of coconut and cream filled, so who makes that decision? “Frugality is a personality disorder,” Grandmom said. “Poppy stores nuts because who feels like looking at them.” And then she stared back like “you don’t need an explanation, linkage is intelligence and you are missing linkage just like your cousins.”
Speaking of bakeries, religion and politics, in my home town of Penndel, Pa, the German Bakery on Main Street was owned by the Catholic Church and was tax exempt as was the movie theater where the usher always had a flashlight in his pocket and if you think about it how phallic is the collection basket being passed down your pew, stopping and jingling above you lap top? You drop a dollar from a distance because you instinctively know to touch the basket is creepy.
The big wagon wheel keeps on turning and I left the hub on the spoke of my choice and now I’m circling the outer rim like an old baboon looking in at the breeding population. It figures that the Baby Boomer generation-everybody out of the gene pool- would mortgage the future knowing they wouldn’t be around to pay it down.

freddogg

GREED AT LIGHT SPEED

2008-09-25T04:43:00.000-07:00

I admit it. I don’t understand how 700 billion dollars is just lying around and why it should be used to bail out private companies to protect our private investments. And I don’t understand why we don’t forgive our own debt as we forgive those debtors in third world countries who trespass against us then want to make nice. ”AIDS vaccine my ass! Pay your freaking bills!”
McCain is riding into Washington like Mighty Mouse “Here I come to save the day.” I have mentioned before I thought a sub prime loan referred to interest rates not sub primate trashy people who were granted huge loans for mortgages to live in houses and neighborhoods above their class level “Anybody know where the fucking cat at?”
How about letting the forces of capitalism run their course? Hedge fund traders ,bond speculators, short sellers ,let them fly out of windows, just more fun for the rest of us who have never traded anything online besides fantasy football players.
Question: Can a dumb person be an anti intellectual? It would make a good writing prompt in a state testing exam.
Speaking of the economy and macroeconomics my grandmother Rose said,”The only macro you need to worry about ends with cheese. Contract and save during wild times. Learn to siphon gas without freezing your lungs and dying. Repay loans sporadically and hide your car at night. Ignore student loans and if you do answer the phone remember it ain’t you, you are never home.

freddogg

Afflicted and Conflicted

2008-09-24T02:34:00.000-07:00

Remember the Dylan Album “Blond on Blond” well I was thinking of a Boomer 2008 version “Bone on Bone.”
I am fit with great body chemistry like a 136 cholesterol reading but my cushions otherwise known as cartridge and sometimes meniscus are just disappearing. I re-injured my right knee in bed rolling for the remote. I had to call the First State Orthopedic office to see which leg I injured two years ago because I honestly had no idea.
Doctor tried to talk me into chicken fat injections and I told him “Shut Up” cause who knows of the side effects like Pecker Head syndrome.
I am afflicted with conflicting syndromes on the one hand I am now remembering everything and everybody from my past with instant recall the flip side is that twice in the last week while remembering things I forgot I was in traffic and nearly got sideswiped at 80 m.p.h. by a Dodge Dually Quad cab with a camper then broadsided by a teenager on a cell phone popping zits and doing 90.
Last Friday a black face from my past called me over to the fence at a football game and asked me to remember him and instructed those around him not to help and for me not to look at any of them for context clues.
“You are Rowland from 1991,”I said. You have nine brothers and sisters and some extra curriculars like that skinny boy over there you all call Mert. And do you remember your pet name for me?”
“Fredman,”Rowland said. “Everybody knows Fredman.”
“Then why I gotta be a white mother fucker,”I joked, and Rowland remembered when I pulled him out of a fight 17 years earlier and he turned to me and said,"Get your hands off me you fat white mother fucke,"and I snapped "Who you calling fat?"
Everybody along the fence was laughing because in a tight community where you share history that’s just they way we do it.
I’ll never forget breaking up a hallway fight and Juan keep trying to get through me to get to some kid. Amy the Homecoming Queen was light skinned and part Indian and yelled to Juan.
“Can’t you see Fredman is trying to help you? Why don’t you just stop?”
“Why don’t you just shut up you freckle faced Howdie Doodie looking puppet bitch, ”Juan said.
Amy jumped forward, stuck the landing and pointed to her crotch with both hands. “Why don’t you come over here and eat my pussy you frog eyed coon.”
Of course neither of these student qualified for creative language class which caters more to not funny NPR bullshit.
I am so out I don’t even know how I got in.

freddogg

Pop Pop My Balloon

2008-09-19T04:37:00.001-07:00

Speaking of big loser boy grandfather sports reporter dude yesterday I was doing my community service work taking pictures and collecting insightful commentaries of a high school girls field hockey game when the bottom fell out of my feeling pretty good about myself afternoon.
It started with me being blown off by the winning coach who after I said,”Good job” on her team’s 3 to 0 win which moved the season record to 5&0 she made that whisk away motion with her hand followed by some sound which translated in all languages to “will you please get lost?”
And then I headed for the comfort of my bench seat Tundra truck and was accosted by a parking lot parent who began to dress me down like Sarah Palen on a dead moose. ”Oh, I see your leaving and not covering the j.v. game. They are undefeated and the best team in the school but they get no coverage and no recognition and it’s just not fair to the girls who work so hard and there are other issues as well and I find the entire thing very upsetting.”
I considering unraveling the sexual frustration argument but instead directed her attention to a pod of Yuppy parents sitting in lawn chairs and that perhaps one of them or her could use the education wasted on them to help hype the needy and neglected under appreciated and over privileged field hockey bunnies that live like princesses in their households.
And so they question is: what had changed? Is it them or is it me? Am I less tolerant? Certainly. Are there more asshole parents than ever in history? Ya think?
In a way it’s kind of cool that the coach with a traveling fan base of 35 thinks it’s not worth talking to the experienced writer with an audience of 25 thousand while the parents view me as the journalistic Chia Pet capturing stories and photos for their child's scrapbook.
One middle school parent after a soccer game the day before actually tried to water me with a bottle of Dusani.
Tonight it’s high school football and it could be managers or cheerleaders perhaps the drum major but someone is coming after my ass for not paying enough attention to them. I think I will just listen and calmly respond, ”You suck. Go buy me a hot dog”

Freddogg

Rent A Casket

2008-09-18T11:51:00.000-07:00

Happened yesterday in Delaware. A young guy robbed a bank in a decaying shopping mall and used a Rent-A-Center truck to make his getaway. How did he get the truck? He worked there and had the keys.
Rent-A-Robber was pursued by several citizens driving leased cars. They called 911 as two state cops and a county cop joined in the chase of a box truck with a governor on the engine. Well not actually Delaware’s governor because who wants a truck that can’t go uphill?
The guy turned down a service road was boxed in and so came out brandishing a non-loaded pellet gun designed to shoot plastic pellets.
Three cops went center mass with deadly force and that was most emphatically that.
The cops were placed on paid administrative leave and immediately and ironically ended towards the beach to rent umbrellas and chairs and potato air rifles to shoot tennis balls into the surf for the retriever to fetch.
It’s a fine line between good and really bad decisions.

Piracy of Privacy

2008-09-13T09:34:00.000-07:00

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - The Tennessee Titans called police Monday night for help searching for Vince Young because his therapist told Coach Jeff Fisher the quarterback mentioned suicide several times before driving away from his home with a gun.
This A.P story may be fair game but it is socially irresponsible. Most newspapers have a policy of not reporting on suicides because of the copy cat factor.
I assume the same policy is in play for failed suicides and people who go into counseling because they are thinking about suicide.
Suicide is an overriding of the instinct for self preservation and therefore a chemical and cerebral imbalance which may be triggered by life events. Suicide if often described as the most selfish of crimes and I have actually written stories of suicides at the request of parents who wanted the story told.
The freaking NFL is a depressing place stocked with upsidedown values and overemphasis on stupid shit. Vince Young is extraordinarily successful and famous and rich but he also retains his right to be sensitive, pensive, introspective and just tired of it all.
Remember when T.O. was rescued by paramedic and his bitch scheduling woman said,” Terrell had 20 million reasons not to commit suicide.” That may have been the dumbest statement ever in the history of quoted sycophants.
The are no sacred cows outside of India but publicizing thoughts of suicide by celebrities or anybody seems seedy to me.

freddogg

MIss Piggy Gets A Pass

2008-09-11T08:27:00.001-07:00

Remember the war when John McCain was held prisoner for five years? What do you think would happen if the 9/11 terrorist parachuted out of their soon to collide with the Towers planes into New York City?
I know McCain was a honorable military man not a terrorist but how was his mission defined by those who lived near Hanoi?
And how did the Vietnam War, inarguably a flawed policy that cost 57,000 American lives, end? I believe it was Richard Nixon around 1970 who declared it was time to hand the war over to the Vietnamese. It took five years and 10 thousand American lives to go back door because we wanted to save face in a war we had already quit on.
This Iraq situation is eerily similar and anyone who says “let’s just get out” is a quitter and admitting that all those American lives were for nothing. And so we stay, more lives are lost but the question persists “for what exactly”?
And on the eve of September 11 attacks the talk is of whether Barack called Palen a Pig by inference.
“Mr. Frederick I heard you called me a fat pig.”
“No mam, I certainly would never do that. Who told you that?”
I heard you were talking in class and said that fat pig was a redundancy like little baby and that sometimes fat pigs ascended to positions of power and authority so if you weren’t talking about me who were you talking about?’
“Mam, I was talking about my aunt rose who was promoted from the drive in window of the sperm bank to director of erotic literature. What would ever make you think I was talking about you? When I hear fat pig I don’t assume someone is talking about me?’
“Well maybe you should?”
“Maybe I should? Now that is precious. But seriously if I ever decide to call you a fat pig you will be the first to know it. It will go something like this,”Hey has anybody seen that fat pig around here?”

Wallmart Moms

2008-09-09T04:42:00.001-07:00

“Wall mart Moms for Palin” is an expression I heard this morning. I also heard “playing down her Pentecostal past.”
Hey Sarah, in the words of Madeline Kahn while kissing Gene Wilder goodbye at the train station in the movie ‘Young Frankenstein ‘“No tongues!”

I am an adult product of a failed catholic indoctrination but I think for me and most of my heathen friends we never quite could come to grips with the Holy Ghost. He is the most mysterious of the blessed trinity and then there’s god the son who said to his father “the next time someone goes to earth why not have it be you?”

Friends should never go political on each other but some of my friends I find mystifying having gone from 1970’s hippies to new millennium republicans. “How about that Sarah Palin” one Dixie Chick Hater recently said to me and I measured a calm and balanced response before saying “Are you out of your ever loving fucking mind? Do you have any idea how scary she is? “
I listened to FOXX satellite radio yesterday as in Jamie Foxx and it gave a fresh insight into a segment of black America who resent Cross Dressing Giuliani busting on Barack in a convention speech and referencing McCain a panelist said, ”That nigger’s speech was too long.”

Is this a great country or what? Today is vote in the state primary day in Delaware. John Madden, talking about the choice between quarterbacks Kyle Orton and Rex Grossman of the Bears, said, ‘It’s a question of making a choice between the better of two evils.”

And Madden is a billionaire because of his rambling and pointless commentaries. Speaking of mysteries, “how does our culture function and why do we remain the most powerful nation on earth? Maybe it is the Holy Ghost steering the ship of fools.

freddogg

Don't Look Back!

2008-09-08T10:30:00.000-07:00

Fast backwards! Are the good times really over for good? What ever happened to large classes where the retarded kid sat in the back? And mixed classes, with the boys in the front and girls in the back? And ridicule and derision and picking on the fat kid or the poor kid or the speech impediment kid? All that crap happened every day so why don’t we lament and pine for those memory moments?
And when did cleavage show up? And Russian girls slicing Sara Lee honey ham? I want my Russian women to have mustaches; they did when I was young.
I cannot deal with another forward lamenting the good and god old days. How sad we sound when we play those tunes to the young generation. The see it for what it is, resentment that our lives didn’t work out like we planned.
Watch old sitcoms and quickly realize that they weren’t funny but slow, taking way too long in plot development.
Fat doughnut eating and salt shaking young mothers and their good timing alcoholic husbands, people who didn’t know shit about anything and didn’t care, those were my role models and relatives
The hover parents of today and their precious little asshole children shielded from an awareness of failure at every turn are annoying for any time period but so was I, drinking Near Beer at Frank's Diner by the skating rink and making fun of everyone and I was good at it and only 10.
And let’s not forgot Darwinian play ground abuse or the sheer pleasure in messing up someone’s hair and laughing in their faces. I sure do miss those days.
Perhaps I should write a book: “When we were assholes” That’s what wrong with aging Boomers. They suffer from long term memory distortion throwing out all embarrassing behaviors which is fine just shut up about the old days.
And the nuns and priests indoctrinated-or tried to- me and others that only Catholics got to heaven which was socially stratified with clergy getting the preferred streets and houses and if a protestant made it in a weak moment of mercy they lived in the scrub and had scabies and dumb looking dogs.
Yes those were the days.

Freddogg-by the way I couldn’t be happier.

Macing a Moose

2008-09-05T09:19:00.000-07:00

The Minneapolis police outside of the republican convention Thursday night bagged a two legged Moose. I am not sorry, I found the spectacle of some young fat retro hippy hoohie-mama or as my spell checker prefers- hoagie momma-repeatedly maced in the face to be downright funny. Like my grandmother said,-“funny is funny-it ain’t your fault.”
Seriously they told the bitch her chosen career pathway to the convention hall was closed so move or face the consequences “don’t you know?”
This woman wearing a stupid back pack and thin soled cheap shoes was blasted with enough mace to drop the entire offensive line of the Vikings. She went to her knees and then “this side up”, cops did the knobby tire roll over her carcass then went in reverse and did it again. It seemed a bit sadistic but who understands Minnesota humor certainly not me.
I love watching old film of the Chicago police riot outside the Democratic Convention in 1968. I supported Eugene McCarthy so you think I would be appalled or outraged but watching a cop chase a hippy an entire block then into a discount store so he could have the closure and satisfaction of whacking his boney ass across the legs with a night stick is funny.
Demonstrations are part of dissent and are questionable as protected speech when the power structure in armed. Remember the words of the great German sociologist Max Von Weber. “The absence of power is force” in other words, the guys with the clubs usually win the rest of it is just argumentative.

Freddogg

ENERGIZER BUNNY

2008-09-03T08:59:00.000-07:00

Biden Photo Caption Contest: "Pick a hand Palin or please pick two."

I’ll weigh in on Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin if she wants to field dress a moose.
Pat Buchanan said his late father would have fallen in love with Phalin in five minutes-now that he’s dead it may take 10-but the translation is that Pat’s base and bat are energized by this under qualified woman with the Fargo accent. When I heard she was runner-up in the Miss Bridge to Nowhere Beauty Contest I began to look at the 44 year old mom more critically just to see if attractiveness was a motivator in McCain selecting her without prolonged petting-excuse me vetting.
I think it is wrong to allow some old white guy speech writer to put his words on a teleprompter then all Sarah has to do is deliver it just like a baby and how women’s rights is that? “Tell me again how it feels to be a mom and governor?”
I think in the classic sense of a strong woman in charge that Sarah has proven herself to be a scary bitch-works for her- and so if she wants to succeed on the national level she should do the same thing with a few alterations.
First she should come out of on stage representing the book banning librarian with home made beehive and dumb ass glasses look but during the speech she should let the hair down and toss her head just a bit, pitch the glasses, pop one blouse button revealing the shadow of cleavage and say, ”Sarah is in the house. Who’s your mommy?”
Biden can then just fold his tent or pitch one if he’s a real guy.

See you at the petting zoo. Freddogg

Iron Lady Unplugged

2008-08-26T03:13:00.001-07:00

Dementia is not funny but what if it is? Dementia is such a cruel decaying disorder and it’s even more outrageous when it befalls brilliant people who lived a life of accomplishment and now can’t remember the difference between the battles in Bosnia and the Falkland Islands and neither can most of us but we never knew the difference in the first place.
Carol Thatcher has written a memoir about the mental decline of her famous mother the former prime minister of England Margaret Thatcher subtitled ‘The Iron Lady is Unplugged” actually the title has something to with living in a Goldfish Bowl swimming in tap water.
It has been reported that 1 in 3 people who live past 65 will die with dementia and I’m starting to think it is nature’s defense mechanism like “you don’t know where your going if you don’t know where you’ve been 30 seconds ago.”
This is what kept me up at night after reading of the Iron Lady’s condition. Her daughter said that Mom-or is Mum the word- has to be reminded that her husband of 50 years Denis passed away in 2003 and so everyday is “I have bad news for you Daddy is Dead Day.”
What ever happened to lying to protect mommy. We all grow up doing it-that pipe ain’t mine- then later in the interest of honesty we eat oatmeal for breakfast and answer mom, ’Daddy won’t be joining us because he is dead just like yesterday, today and tomorrow.”
Why not lie? “Where’s Daddy?” “Camping in Bosnia”
“Where’s Daddy?” “Daddy who?”
“Where Daddy” “Ran away with row house lady across the way”

Seriously, whatever, anything is better than “Look if you don’t see him here and until you see him here he is most certainly still dead. Now can we please move on to other questions?”

Everyone repeats themselves, forgets things and thinks they have chronic fatigue syndrome. I don’t need to be reminded “You ate 7 cookies five minutes ago you don’t need to do it again!”

Freddogg: If it looks like a moon---I am barking!

The Name Drop Game

2008-08-24T03:40:00.000-07:00

There is name dropping all up in Delaware this Sunday morning from Church parking lots to bagel shops as every citizen claims to know Joe Biden personally and the crazy thing about that is they probably do but dropping his name cuts no ice because in a small wonder of an egalitarian state like Delaware everyone is better than no one and as good as anyone. If you know Joe has hair plugs you may know him.
I have only been impressed once on a name drop and that was when my late friend Buck Thompson nonchalantly said to me, ”Last weekend I was at the Naval Academy watching a football game with Buddy Ebsen” and I immediately jumped in,” That is the greatest name drop ever! Jed Clampitt! “
Buck went on mentioning Buddy was a “great dancer you know” I do know that after 41 years of marriage Epsen got divorced telling his wife “I’m just tired of your dumb ass!” Actually I don’t know what he said maybe he left a note on the table?
I was in Senate chambers the last time Biden won re-election watching the new Senate crew get certified courtesy of a rouge ticket that ended up in the pocket of my Perma- Frost slicker from the outlet Mall and don’t tell me I didn’t wear it along with sneakers and white socks which is why a security stood next to me in the balcony and finally I turned “what do you want?’ and he said “Fredman you are awesome! Perma Frost?”
The Usher in the house was a runner and I knew him because I take pictures at road races.
Later my friend Dennis and I hobnobbed in the Rayburn Room where the Watergate Hearings had been held and I met Biden’s aid who lives in Lewes “What’s up Kevin?” and he just smiled “Perma Frost? Excellent touch.”
I saw Press and Buchanan doing a CNN show-I was surprised how tall they are-and I saw Press nudge Pat and say “Perma Frost” and everyone in their dumb-assed blazers and red power ties were starting to get on my freaking nerves dropping the name Perma Frost.
As you get closer to power you realize “anybody could do this if allowed” because what is the worse that could happen it’s not like you have to repack a set of brakes.
“Mr Fred your rotors need turning” “then turn the bitches”! Who knows what that means?
I have a great Biden story about how I called him from the Yacht Club bar on a Friday night to solve an immigration problem of a Costa Rican woman but upon refection I’m pretty sure I made up the story.
But I didn’t make up the story about two high ranking members of the Russian Air Force-a long story I knew them from the Walrus Club- who wanted to defect to Delaware beginning with asylum in my house- and I wrote and told them I knew Biden and they both disappeared forever and I could drop their names but then I may disappear prompting a novel “The Spy Who Came in For The Cold Cuts!”

Dr. Freddogg

Cheeta Sings Country

2008-08-23T17:02:00.001-07:00

Pictured above Cheeta and a Herd of Zebras
I was driving to a football scrimmage today listening to a country station on Sirius radio as Merle Haggard was singing the 1967 hit “Lonesome Fugitive” as opposed to “beleaguered by a crowd of too many people Fugitive” and I heard the lyric “I used to raise a lot of cane in my younger days while momma would pray my crops would fail.”
I have been having a problem lately controlling my anger and so I screamed out loud,”That is the dumbest fucking lyric I’ve ever heard and that includes rap.”
Then I’m at the scrimmage and I heard this young coach-looked to be about 25-say to a sweaty high school player on the sideline “You look like Tarzan but you play like Jane.”
But Jane was an old school nasty bitch all scurvy and parasites with malaria and Trypanosomiasis delivered by the dreaded Tsetse fly that nibbled on her nipples at night and she later fell asleep while having sex with Tarzan because Trypansomiasis is actually sleeping sickness and Tarzan had no game anyway. Anthropology professors prefer the technical word to pump up the pompous lecture as saying “flies and shit” reflects badly on the science that ain’t a real science anyway.
Edgar Rice Burroughs created Tarzan in the 1920’s and there have been 27 feature films with different titles all equally stupid of plot centered on good versus evil-the Ho Jane- and a back flipping chimp named Cheeta that is still alive at 76 composes country lyrics and plays the piano.
I taught Americana stuff in high school back in the 80’s and once had a Tarzan yell off won by Charlie Dolson soccer star in 1986 and all teachers though that meant I was a goof off but my class was off the vine and I took busloads of seniors to the zoo which placed me in the role of district wide goof off but all disappearing habitat for “Homo habilis” aside those Darwinian dead enders didn’t understand that citizens of voting age need to visit zoos to develop a sense of global responsibility.
Why can’t I just watch football?

Protect My Houses!

2008-08-22T04:37:00.000-07:00

We all encounter those POW license plates but don’t understand why we don’t initiate contact with the driver to thank him for serving his country and being a genuine war hero? Perhaps the driver is a teenager operating his grandfather’s car and playing rap music and parking in a handicapped space and nobody gives a “top of the morning to you” to some anonymous teenager because we hate them all with their baggy clothes, body piercing, planned dumb hair and slinky body posture.
John McCain is often described as a “genuine war hero” but to use a sports metaphor “isn’t that like making the guy who dropped the winning touchdown pass hero of the game after the opposing team locked him in their own locker room for five years?
The object of the mission is to drop bombs and get out of there. How about the guys who returned to base? What are their names? Aren’t they heroes too?
I watched in amazement in real time when McCain walked from the airplane to great his family after five years of being in a North Vietnamese hut. I was like “wow, who survives that?”
The North Koreans held 100 sailors for a year after hijacking the USS Pueblo in 1968 and beat their asses every day. That ship still sits as a North Korean monument of might over America in the harbor of Pyongyang and forget Space Cowboys-no Poontang for a year- I think the walking survivors of that ship are heroes and should be organized into a strike force to go get it back. “Go mash some mutton and bayonet dummies in the school yard. We are placing the Pueblo on an aquatic rollback and taking it to San Diego.”
And so John McCain who will construct a joke if you hand him the elements like North Koreans on a nuclear bomb recently responded “No, I don’t know how many houses I own” and was told the number is seven and he said “O.K. seven” and you just know owning all those properties that somewhere English as a second language landscapers are trimming his bushes.
Speaking of Obama he is the ultimate guy who doesn’t get it. First of all he can’t play basketball- anyone can shoot around. Back in my prime I’d take his boney ass to the rack at will because he just don’t got nothing for me. But I do respect the fact he can read waves and go left or right with the break. He would be the first body surfing President.
The Conventions are about to begin and to go with the sports comparison. Have millions of dollars ruined professional athletes? The answer is positively absolutely and now in politics we have millionaires vying for the power to protect us all.
We are all right fielders on the global stage.

freddogg

Prince Octopus

2008-08-12T02:42:00.000-07:00

A flyweight Olympic fighter from Ghana lost a bout to a Cuban fighter yesterday. His name is Prince Octopus but close friends just call him Prince Octopus.
In Philadelphia there is no such marine animal called an Octopus because the spoken tongue is genetically and environmentally engineered to slur words. I believe the correct pronunciation of this athlete’s name would be Prince Occupus.
You know inside the phone book of the world a Sammy Squid is just waiting for your call. But even that has a certain lilting rhythm to it. Prince Octopus –royalty followed by sea creature moniker-just has no precedent and speaking of Presidents perhaps George Bush could be President Marmoset “but you can call me Snow Monkey.”

Freddogg in your Corner

Chatty Re Cathy

2008-08-08T06:51:00.000-07:00

Emergency room doctors in South Central Los Angeles speaking on the Discovery Channel ER program said if you want to clear “Gang Bangers” out of ‘Cubicle City’ on a Saturday night just yell “who here needs a catheter?”
And have you ever seen a black person in the Emergency waiting room? That is a trick question because once the word gets out the entire extended family including the children of cousins and great aunts are showing up. You never see A person! I didn’t make that rule it’s just what happens.
Speaking of the ‘insert your own catheter’ home kit and what is covered by insurance commercials I think some fat face curly headed dumb assed white woman lamenting “I am tired of re-cat –boiling them on the stove because insurance won’t cover the cost of new tubing” and I’m like “Yo Bitch! It’s 8 a.m. on a weekday. I didn’t know and don’t want to know how many re-cathing women are doing evacuation drills on a given morning! I’ll never look at Chatty Cathy again! Again? The next time will be the first right after Botox Barbie or as spell checker prefers Booty Barbie.
Men from my parents generation and older only got as technical as “women'" problems” and beyond that no man worth his testosterone wanted to know a dam thing and I’m sure there weren’t self cathing women behind curtains because I never saw one in my mothers nursing books and I saw plenty and I could never understand how they got the hideously deformed to wear black electrical tape over their eyes while a photographer with a Yashika twin reflex camera took photos of asymmetrical breasts and trust me-you have no idea.
If I ever see those Flomax bikers and hikers and deep sea fisherman meander through my neighborhood I am going to kick all their asses before they get to the men’s room.
The drug companies are evil and all their commercials should be banned from regular t.v because it is not in the public interest to know any of this stuff. “Certain realities require ignoring” Grand mom Rose used to say after I told her there was a picture in the nursing hard bound book collection of a man with elephant balls or elephantiasis if you’re a medical professional.
She made me tell her the volume and page number and as I left my footprints on the dirty linoleum floor banging the windowless aluminum storm door on the way out I heard grand mom scream “Holy Coconuts!”

SPINNING CYCLE THEORIES

2008-08-05T04:22:00.001-07:00

Free to roam the wild while trapped inside the cycle of abuse? Speaking of abusing cycles, I once tried to adjust a balloon in the spokes while under power and ended up mangling my hand while crashing into a wall. Did I ever try that again? No, I didn’t need grand mom Rose asking me over and over,”tell me again-slowly- how you hurt yourself!”
I know it’s a syndrome and I know I can’t understand the psychological power of dominance and control but when a middle aged man says he was abused as a teen by Father Murphy over a four year period exchanging sex inside the confessional for the teachers edition of the textbook I’m like “oh yea, like that could happen to a normal hormonal emerging savage of the male sex.
There was this young nun with a “habit” of bumping her breast into the side of my skull when she checked my math computations and when she patted me on top of the head and said “nice job” I wasn’t really sure that long column addition is what she was talking about. Or in Philly Euclidian Geometry “I’ve got your long column right here! Parabolaba Ding Dong ”
Back when I was teaching psychology to fantasy frustrated teenagers I had a guest speaker from a battered women’s shelter. She had all the background to tell stories high school kids would pay attention to but instead she talked of love and esteem and faulty relationships and I kid you not a young black student smart as anything raised his hand and looking straight at me like the woman wasn’t even there said, ”Fredman when is this woman going to talk about bitches getting slapped? Cause if you slap a black woman you had better follow it up with a punch and then move to another state because she is coming to kill your ass and we all gotta sleep sometime.”
Another time I had an experienced psychiatrist who spent a career chairing in prison group therapy sessions for repeat pedophiles as we cycle back to peddling.
This dude brought a therapy dog to class-a welsh corgi- and I asked him if the anti vivisection society knew about his dog and then the guy pouted and petted his dog for 45 minutes and said absolutely nothing of interest so when he left my students asked,”Fredman tell us some sex offenders stories because with all your friends I know you have a couple and yes there was Vinnie who dressed in all white and washed dishes at Frank’s Diner and paid boys a dollar to show him their heinous heinies and when Teddy told me the heiny exchange rate was easy money I told him about inflation and stagnation and supply and demand and my grand mother’s “sick bitch” theories of society and Vinnie was breaking the law of man while Teddy was breaking the laws of nature.
I knew all this in third grade
Trapped inside the cycle my ass!That's why wheels roll.

Father Freddogg

Snatching the Cover Bands

2008-07-29T04:47:00.000-07:00

Here in the resort area there are cops of all kinds-state and local-real and rent-a –cops, marine police, ferry police and a host of under cover brothers tripping over each other hoping to arrest those with arresting faces.
A few years ago a parent of one of my students cornered me at a football game and asked,”Is it true that you told your students if they haven’t been arrested then they don’t have much of a social life.”
‘That is true, ’I said. ‘There have been kids in boats arrested by cops in cars and kids on boardwalks arrested by cops from the beaches. And there are no Miranda warnings, local cops believe they can take a person into custody on suspicion of “underage drinking” handcuff them to a bench in the police station then solicit testimony from them I could go on but that’s my probation officer on the cell and I really should take his call.”
The latest infringements on the rights of people just out there living a life are the cover band police. Did you know that if you have a band playing cover tunes like a medley of lame ass classics that should have been jettisoned to outer space with the rest of the golden oldies 45 years ago –by the way I outweighed sputnik 57 pounds-when it was launched by the Russians- you are supposed to get permission and pay a fee.
“Imagine a bar at the shore on a Wednesday night and sitting around are Sham the Sham, Question Mark minus the Mysterians, Bee Bumble who popularized the “NO NO” song before leaving the Stingers–Nobody can do the Popeye like I do-Chubby Checker who stole the twist from Hank Ballard in the first place and Bobby Rydell who is never far from a shore bar where he may be recognized by an aging Italian blimp who still sees him as a rock star.
What you don’t find are Motown police because the culture is way different. I have seen the Drifters live in shore bars 16 times with never the same people. Some manger dude drives the narrow streets of North Philly recruiting singers then filling gigs in a two hundred mile radius as old white people wax nostalgic from Under the Boardwalk-half of north Philly was there in the summer of 58’-no white people and up on the roof where you could find the other half-“we talking flat roof..
Bust one of those Cover bands and you’ll be covering your ass on the way out the door in a very special Magic Moment.

Just a walking the Freddogg

Don't Ask! Don't Giggle

2008-07-28T03:35:00.000-07:00

Don’t Ask! Don’t Giggle!

I just by chance captured this photo from a road race I covered last Saturday in honor of a fallen marine. Three marines with multiple tours of Iraq under their belts ran the 5k but none of them could get to the finish line before Carla the transsexual work in progress.
I love Charlie/ Carla who used to run for that California Club of recovering Heroin addicts. He is a gentle person who wouldn’t hurt anyone and I’d go to war to protect his rights to be a really different kind of cat.
I just wonder if the marine in hot pursuit would say the same thing and if perhaps Charlie/Carla should show up at Advanced PT on Paris Island-in the Springtime- to show them a bit of the rigors of proper training and how you have to be a lot tougher as a grown man in a two piece than a guy who sports a high and tight haircut.
I personally know CIA gay guys and a few WAC’s that were whack before there were summer softball leagues.
You must watch the video produced by the greatest of USA track and Field athletes Carl Lewis and then tell me you would want him in your platoon.

http://withleather.uproxx.com/post.phtml?pk=3058

Pool Slug

2008-07-19T05:20:00.000-07:00

The seven deadly sins are: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride.
The seven parallel and counterbalancing virtues are chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness and humility.
I think it is possible to be a combination of all the sins which if you are honest sounds like more fun than being a balled up and hung up paragon of seven deadly virtues. Where is the fun?
Nuns in the old days sometimes called out students like me as a good for nothing sloth and I thought why not throw in gluttony and lust because once you find one fat assed sloth his bitch is sure to be nearby and they are prideful as well and if you pet one sleeping in the crook of a tree he will instantly become “unwrathed” and start humping your face with steel claws.
Yesterday I went by “the Yacht Club” swimming pool and there he was the omnipresent “pool slug” wallowing in the shallow end sitting on a yellow noodle used in morning aqua size class.
This 60 year old too tan short stepping sloth is at the pool every hour it is open. He just keeps being there-it is all he does. He can’t be Catholic not from my generation because of the sloth/guilt matrix.
How do adults camp-like on a beach- and just sit there?

Joke: A guy is watching Monday night football when there is a knock at the door. He groans, gets up and answers. A slug is on the front porch. The guy uses his thumb and finger to propel the slug into the wet grass.
Three years later on a Monday night it’s the same slothful and gluttonous guy watching football. There is an annoying knock at the door. The guy answers and there is the slug on the front porch. “What the hell was that all about,"the slug queries being a queer slug?

In education it’s called the dead man’s trap. Never reward a person for doing what a dead person can do. "Tyrone just shut up and sit there with your hands folded and don’t bother anybody and we’ll all get along fine.”

The noodle keeps the pool slug from the trap.

Peace

Freddogg

Deadpan Expression

2008-07-13T13:10:00.001-07:00

E Harmony has taken the place of Cognitive Dissonance the basic instinct and negative emotion generated by people who do not attract but are repulsed or is the word repelled?
Back in the early days of computer data processing–remember those IBM cards and number 2 pencils- the high school where I work had a computer match fund raiser and yes in retro it was a dumber idea than the slave auction in the cafeteria during spirit week which was cool until the black people deduced it reflected badly on them but if there were a fag auction who would dare open their mouths-that doesn’t sound right at all.
Anyway I picked up a questionnaire and card and choose every undesirable and loathsome trait that was available by forced choice and later dropped it in a box with the name Gorilla Monsoon and for homeroom teacher I put Fredman.
Day’s later cute kids & student council types accustomed to being lust targets showed up at my room to give kids who played the dollar game their 10 person match list. I had forgotten all about it.
Big white Sharon- clumped hair and stained Hulkamania tee shirt and -god bless her it was so sad-because she had a good heart- looked down at her list to the soul mate in number one position.
“Hey! Who the hell is Gorilla Monsoon,”she screamed. I never worked so hard to remain expressionless as 28 other kids stared at me. Do you know how hard it is to look clueless when you are not? For a battered Catholic boy it’s not that hard. And I have even been falsely accused often in my life and rightly accused. I always have remained calm just once or twice saying "Sister I didn't fucking do it!"followed promptly by a smack down which only stings it doesn't hurt.
Later that spring when coaching track I had to provide an adult official to the state track meet. No one volunteered so I wrote in the name Gorilla Monsoon on the entry sheet.
The Meet Director from a private school went on the public address system and announced in perfect pitch and resonance “Gorilla Monsoon of Cape Henlopen please report to the long jump pit or your team will be disqualified.”
I got that same look from my team. They knew Gorilla Monsoon was Fredman their coach but I was so deadpan and even told the Meet Director that Gorilla Monsoon had to attend the wedding of his older brother Bo Bo Brazil but perhaps Chief Big Heart would do it if I could find him.

Freddogg

One Morningwood Drive

2008-07-13T03:36:00.001-07:00

I watched a documentary yesterday on Belleview Hospital in New York. The psychiatric emergency room sees 60 new patients a day. I can’t think of a single place with more fresh material for a writer and I’m trying not to say one with a minor in comedy.
Did you know that most mentally ill people are substance abusers and it’s hard to know what came first the psychotic chicken or the coconut egg? The psychiatrists on staff said cocaine is the schizophrenics’ drug of preference because it chases away negative feelings and voice activated messages “you are god” are mostly positive not “you are such a schmuck” negative.

One dude was asked “and why would you be chosen to be the messiah to come back to earth” and he responded “why not me it has to be someone”?

Another woman with broken glasses scotch taped together-and those were the new ones- said she just wants to wake up one morning and not be afraid and to have “slices of roast beef with Swiss cheese wrapped around them.”

Another guy was begging for release and a woman doctor said, ”We have to keep you here for awhile for detoxification and to get you on new medication.”

He objected said lots of people drink two bottles of vodka a day to chase mood elevating pills and she said, ”Yes but didn’t you call the police and tell them you were going to commit suicide by jumping out the window of your apartment building?”

“Yes I did,”he admitted. “But them I called them back and told them I lived on the second floor.”

I know, I know, none of it is funny but the good news is if you drink and drug enough you can become as crazy as the next person.

I walked the second floor at 6 a.m of a private institution for exotically mentally ill adult males whose families have lots of money. I was just in high school. A counselor guy told me “If you are interested in psychiatry you must observe the wake up ritual.

I believe in pornography it is called “morning wood” and no joke it was a loggers convention every morning just non inhibited lumberjacks standing in door ways some actually talking in casual conversation to a person across the hall. That’s why all Psychology texts are bullshit because they can’t handle the truth of human behavior when it goes off road in a two wheel drive convertible.

freddogg

QUICK AND THE NEAR DEAD

2008-07-11T07:11:00.000-07:00

I limped through the main door of Saint Joseph’s Hospital in Northeast Philly last Wednesday looking like Cabana Boy from the movie “Cocoon.” A community band was practicing in a big room, lots of brass and an audience on wheels and balancing on walkers. The were playing the Irish anti war song “Johnny I hardly Knew Ya” and somewhere is a lyric “you’re an armless boneless chickenless egg soon to be armed with a bowl to beg” and I thought “at least it’s not “My Way.”
We were visiting my wife’s aunt, Sister Martina 91, who had been unceremoniously tossed from the mother house of the gray nuns, an order she entered at 14 years old to play out her remaining days plagued by a sharp mind all senses on overdrive who must look up everyday and think ”How did I end up in this mother fucker?”
The lobby looked like a convention of Homo Semi Erectus Sapiens with all styles of walkers. Once every 10 minutes and alarm would go off when a patient tried to ‘steal away or slip slid away as Paul Simon wrote “the nearer your destination the more you'rE slip sliding away.”
The walkers had paste on sensors to nab those who would rather take their chances in the ghetto than on a floor with 24 patients and one nurse's aid with a bad attitude.
There was bent over old Joe standing in the middle of the room looking at his shoe tops. Joe had been in the men’s room and came out and halfway across the lobby before he realized he forgot his walker. Inside the men’s room is a bolted to the wall urinal. A big puddle is underneath it that glistens and teems with super mutated micro organisms.
Sliders to sofas traffic everywhere and a room of false starters those who try to get up behind the walker but it just ain’t happening so the room rocks and pops like the ballroom of an ocean cruise to the end of the earth as REM sang “It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.”
We drove home touring the North Philly ghetto streets where my great and no so great grandparents lived. And my parents and my smart ass. I remembered houses and corner stores and fat-ssed aunts and half ball games. “Who owns the ghetto, “I wondered?
My wife asked me,”If you get stashed in late life would you prefer Saint Joseph’s or a ghetto front porch.
“Not even close and hopefully next door to a crack house,”I said. “But I must be alone I can’t worry about protecting your bag lady self.”
I’ve said this before but I think everyone on Medicaid should get free street drugs including Balco cream. Shit I’ll be making balloon animals out of walkers and laughing my ass off behind McDonald’s food.

And that was “My Summer Vacation”

freddogg

JAP BEETLES

2008-07-08T05:49:00.000-07:00

What it is-is those damn Jap Beatles!

An octogenarian willingly playing his role as “old guy on the bench” dressed in tractor cap, light weight flannel shirt, green dingo pants, suspenders and boots was sitting on a bench at the Bay watching the world go by. I was on the bench next to him playing my role as famous community person who most times moves inconspicuously among the throngs and thongs as my alter ego “Big Loser Boy”.
Neighbor lady who was also old but kept bringing up people in stories and by way of introduction saying ‘I am of course younger than them” to which the man would transition “well anyway”.
The talk was of Cousin Ernest who passed that day to pancreatic cancer but he didn’t tell nobody and every thought it was the bad heart that would get him. And quickly the conversation turned to tomato plants and those pesky "Jap Beetle" and I wanted to ask if they were related to Krout Cockroaches or Gook Gnats and I thought of Black snakes but too pejorative and not funny.
The man said,”Those Japs ate all my bulbs” and the woman responded “every dam one of them” and he said “yes, all but three” and then she said,” Have you seen that groundhog living under your neighbor’s shed out in the back and the man responded “He mined hisself under there is what he did- well anyway.”
This cute couple had run the limit with me as I thought “what if I just wanted to watch the sun set and not listen to this bullshit what if I preferred Jap Zero with my Coke Zero?
And poor Ernest got no play whatsoever. The tomato plants drew more refection.
The woman’s parting shot “It’s supposed to be hot like this tomorrow. Don’t even look for me I won’t even pop my head out” Well anyway.

Freddogg

Extension Ladder Day Saints

2008-07-03T05:19:00.000-07:00

Uptown Girl or not who marries Billy Joel with their eyes open, his are big enough to see for two people? That dude could walk the Congo Basin at night without a flashlight.
Now Brinkley’s fifth husband is in open court on the short end-insert pun- of a divorce trial because he preferred Doe-Eyed Girl he discovered working in a Toy Store-I’ll take that one-to Uptown Girl.
Her husband ironically named Peter-ironic in that he had a 3k per month porn site Jones and thought it was a good idea to ‘Choke his Chicken’ for the Hewlett-Packard web cam. “When is somebody going to clean this LCD panel?”
By the way “We didn’t start the Fire” was a stupid Joel hit with world events stolen from a chronology book I stole from the school library years ago. And grand mom Rose told me when I was 14,”You are so smart but unless you get up and learn how to play that stupid blond piano in the corner of the room no one will listen to a dam thing you have to say.”
People have pointed and clicked their way into prison and community disgrace so follow my basic rules of asking the question: “Is this a good idea?” three times knocking down three stop signs before scanning your penis on a piece of classroom hardware then hitting import –doing exaggerated adobe adjustments- then attaching it to a mass email and sending it off into the world of Cyber Creeps just like you. This happened to a school teacher down south who was also a grandfather and deacon in the local church of extension ladder day saints.
A sociology professor of mine 35 years ago told the class “the upper classes are the ones going outside the norms into the realm of taboos and hanging sexual behaviors over the edge.”
I raised my hand,”Hanging exactly what over the edge of exactly what?”
George Barnard Shaw defined a pervert as “A person who only knows one way of doing things?”
No perverts in this story.

Freddogg