by "Buck"

January 20, 2005

Last weekend’s Toughman contest lived up to the billing.   The heavyweight title went to a guy from Kentucky who works for a portable toilet company.  I’m not making this up.  His ring name is Porta Potty.  Then there was the Ring Girl competition... and there was an obligatory array of t-and-a on display.  Gotta love that.   They don’t have the postings of the Huntington event yet—but they do have a website.   Also, one of the big moneymakers for the promoters is the 50/50 drawing—which is actually a raffling off of 500 dollars.  They’ll clear substantially more with a 500-dollar prize rather than half the pot.  I bought tons of tickets for no apparent reason when this girl was selling them.  One new twist this year—they were seizing all cameras at the door... so the fish has no proof of attendance this year.

More phrases that drive me out of my fucking mind:

GIVE SOMETHING BACK… e.g. “I just want to GIVE SOMETHING BACK to my community.”   From my experience, nobody ever GAVE me anything—therefore I owe nobody anything.  Screw your feel good bullshit.

OUT OF THE BOX… “We need to think OUT OF THE BOX.”  If I’ve heard this once, I’ve heard it a thousand times a day.  Could somebody show me the box where ANY thinking is done—in or out?    This is one of those catch phrases created by motivational speakers and human resources corporate cheerleaders to make you feel good about your job and keep you happy—yet oppressed while you make millions for somebody else.  Bastards.  

If I were still in high school, the phrase this week would be, “It’s colder than a witch’s titty out there.”  Sometimes, for added effect we would quip, “It’s colder than a witch’s CAST IRON titty out there.”  I haven’t heard that one in years—it’s one of those overused phrases that fell out of style, and now can be brought back in retro fashion.  

It was -4 when I left for work today.  The hair on my legs froze to the inside of my pants.  It was so cold, it actually HURT to be out in it.  

Well, I guess I’m going to have to take the truck back into the shop.  As comical as this may seem, it’s actually true.  Anytime I turn the steering wheel in a hard-right turn…the horn blows.  Somebody in a Dale Earnhardt Rest In Peace cap got a wire or two crossed up when they repacked the airbag.  Now I’ve got to give the thing up for another day or two—I’ve not dropped by yet—but I better not get any shit about it.  It’s fairly comical, except that you don’t anticipate the horn and nearly wreck when you’re startled by the horn out of nowhere.

We have the worst experiences in restaurants.  We ate at the Olive Garden last night and the little waitress in her haste to get another cheese grinder across the dining room was clearing our table and dropped a bunch of marinara sauce on the floor.  The resulting splatter hit my wife’s coat, hair, and new shirt.  The worst thing was the girl didn’t even realized she’d hit us.  I finally told her about it and she summoned a manager.  They offered to pay the dry cleaning bill---cheap fuckers, they should have picked up the check or at least thrown in a free cheesecake to go.  Dry cleaning my ass.

I know many of you don’t live in West Virginia , so I attempt to inject a little hometown news for those who may have once lived here and now live somewhere else.  That’s the case with about 90 percent of people who call themselves West Virginians .  Our own Jeff Kay and Chris the Angry White Guy are like that.  Those two are from Dunbar , WV .  Today Dunbar was in the news as Mayor Rigney will not seek reelection.  There’s a clamoring of chairs to see who gets to run for the job.  Also yesterday in Dunbar , there was a drive-by shooting…in freaking Dunbar !  It’s not the same as you guys remember it.

When I was growing up in Virginia our hometown paper was called The Post.  It came out every Wednesday and largely involved news about local stuff.  The folks there did a decent job reporting, but as usual there are pages to fill so they would have “freelance columnists” who wrote about a certain section of the town or county that everybody was familiar with.  For example, there was a section called Cracker’s Neck News, A View from Butcher’s Ridge, Seminary News, Keokee News, and so forth—all of the “suburbs” or a town with fewer than 2,500 people.  I used to get a kick at what passed as news for these “freelance columnists” who were really nothing more than little old ladies who passed their time talking on the phone to other old ladies and writing down their conversations.  Here’s a fictional example of what you would find:

--Missy Jones and her friend Jake from college were in town over the weekend.

--Ellen Rogers is in the hospital.  She has the gout.

--Roger and Ruby McMurray had their son Chad and his wife Jewel and their three kids Barry, Tonya, and Little Joe over for supper on Sunday.  A good time was had by all.

--Kyle Davidson is selling pecan logs for the Powell Valley Middle School track team.

--Ruth Parsons is back in the hospital with gallbladder problems.

--Kendra Spence and her new boyfriend Jason Douglass went to the movies Friday night and saw Blade Runner.

--Ronnie Marcum and his wife Joyce are going to Nashville this weekend to see their new baby.

Shit like that would go on FOREVER!  Crazy.  

I’ll never forget when I used to deliver “The Grit” I had an old woman on the route that looked forward to my arrival on Saturday with the paper.  She was lonely and was happy to see anyone at the door.   However, I stopped delivering the paper the day she came out on the porch holding a jar and told me it was a goiter they had removed from her neck, perfectly preserved in alcohol.  Who in the name of sheep stomach pie keeps that kind of thing around?  I think my mother still has a cataract they took off my Grandpa’s eye in 1981 in the bathroom medicine cabinet.  Have you ever heard of such a thing?  I mean, holy shit….why does one leave the hospital with a removed body party?  What’s the fascination with O-R souvenirs?  I cannot explain or understand the concept.  

I gotta run, but if you want to give me some feedback I check e-mail now and then.  The address is Moonshinebuck@yahoo.com

BUCK OUT

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