What I Did On My Autumn Vacation...

...by A.J.

-Family Time. Spent mucho time in the presence of my Family and Friends, road-tripping around Canada to visit various and sundry Important Peeps, some valuable time spent engaged in the annual Autumn Rituals, including the infamous "Hockey Night in Canada!" half-a-beer.

-Hunting for The People. This also qualifies as Family Time, but it's more in the way of community service and preserving Culture and Society. We hunt to provide for folks who can't hunt for themselves and may not have enough in their freezer to get through the season. It's COLD in Canada, and often REMOTE and the Safeway isn't necessarily an option. And not always the most healthy option anywayz....

-Hockey. Got to a fair number of games this year, both Majors and Minors. And local pick-ups at the rink. Found out that my skates still fit.

- *Being OUT and AWAY and STILL. Sat in places where one could not sense the existence of other humans, not in ANY way, for as long as I could sit there. No engine noises, no physical sense of the "civilization" hum....saw no planes for literally DAYS. Could see the stars at night, ALL OF THEM, the Aurora.... with none of that ugly urban glow that tarnishes the night and kills the stars to us here. Couldn't SMELL anything of the other humans....nothing but the Earth and the Wild and the tang of Autumn's decaying leaves... the sense of Root seated beneath the yellowredgreenbrown light filtering through, and in the rattle-clatter of the wind through the forest, and the roaring thunder of the pines that I could feel in my own bones where I lay against the woodland floor. A taste of clear water, cold and pure as the rock it sprang from. .....Far enough North along the ocean that most people don't even WANT to be there.... so no worries about being bothered by them. A different kind of roaring and a different kind of tang... but still Wild and the Rhythm un-invaded and pure without the presence of Us in any number.*

All-in-All........ Beauty Vaycay.

Next year seems so far away now.............

*When is the last time you experienced this for yourself? Think about the last time you experienced a sky that was void of an airplane for more than 10 minutes,(and I mean ENTIRELY- no engine droning away, no sight of one or more overhead, no contrails criss-crossing above you), or the last time you DIDN'T hear a car engine or a lawn mower, or when you last saw the stars CLEARLY, without a glowing rim to your sky from city lights? Can you see some searchlight from a car dealership in your distance? Can you hear a chain saw or a lawn mower or a leaf blower every evening? What do you smell when you step outside each day?

Do you KNOW this Earth that I know? It's worth saving and protecting and getting more of it by Lessening Our Invasiveness, REALLY.

ReAffirmed.....

....that the USA has WAAAAY more wifi coverage than The Great White North does.

And more cellular coverage too....

And that USA people are more likely to be asshats.

I only get to a wifi realm when I hit a metro area up here.

And since much of my deal coming North was to be AWAY from the Metro, it stands to reason that I haven't really done much time in a wifi bubble.

I know, I know; much to the disappointment of my followers, The DogMeatHeads.

And then there are stretches and stretches of interior where there is no cellular signal to be had.

That's a good thing, you know.

IMAGINE:

Thousands of miles of forested,wildlife-friendly land that isn't being blasted by microwaves on a constant basis!

The bees might actually survive if they hang out up here.....

But part of my travel has been to see Hockey.

In THE LAND OF HOCKEY.

Hockey, only as it is done in Canada.

Which has put me within reach of wifi and metropolitan humanity.

I gotta say.

Every time I come up home, get into a city....I see the massive contrast between the Northers and the Americanskis.

The mindset that allows the Southern Neighbours to trash the snot out of the land and the cities.

Yes.

When Canada trashes an area,(say, with mining or with killing a water supply), it's done really really well and thoroughly. Some of the surface mines in Canada are amazingly ugly and really really difficult to clean up. And there are several First Nation,(NDN,Native,Aboriginal), Reserves that are stuck with tanking in water because the nice Euros next door have poured toxins into the aquifer from their industry.

BUT.

You can walk down a city street in the MAJOR cities, (Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa,Edmonton, Vancouver), and, if you've lived in the States for any length of time, be amazed at how clean the joint is.

No trash out in the streets.

No litter.

People don't hurl their leftover McD's bags or Tim Horton wrappers out the car window as they are driving home from work.

They don't toss cigarette butts out the window into the oncoming face of the next freeway driver, either.

More use of public transportation, an Underground that makes US Subway look very much like something that is more sewer than rail.

And WAAAAY less texting at the wheel.

Perhaps that lack of cellular coverage has its upside.....

Okay.

If you want to see Canadians at their very MOST asswholeness.....go to a Hockey game.

Preferably, one where there is an intense rivalry between the two teams.

There will be rude remarks made and some bad behaviour.

There will be some fistfights.

MOSTLY on the ice.

And the participants will be drinking together later on at the Hockey Bar, talking about how powerfully they punch each other.

But the worst of that I have seen was from some Americans who had come North for a game, who threw trash onto the ice,(A Sacred Surface, Blessed Ritually by the God Zamboni), puked in the bleachers*, and started a fight in the parking lot.

I rest my case.

Eh?

* A Good Canadian NEVER EVER EVER pukes in the bleachers of a Hockey rink.

That would be like vomiting in the pew at a Southern Baptist church.

ON THE ROAD with The Dog Meat!

Okay.

So I am going on VAY-CAY!!!!

Yup.

Me and the DogMeats are gonna hit the road.

So.

I though I'd share.

There should be some really boring blog moments involved here.

Let's face it, descriptions of Other Peoples road trips often have these maundering* blathers that try to be all prosey and Ernest-Hemingway-in-Spain but they really bore the snot out of us.... and it's kind of depressing because we are reading said road trips from the stupour of our office cubicle on a cheapass CRT screen that is all muzzy with 7 years of coffee-fumes build-up from where you park your daily mug.

Of course, there will be some absolutely RIVETING entries as well:

Drama; "I need you to have this fixed by Monday, as I will be traveling out of town on that Tuesday."

Humour; "Twelve-hundred dollars? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! You're kidding, right? Why are YOU laughing?"

Terror; "What the frack is that noise it's making now? I told him he had to have FIXED it! CRAP!!! We're out in the middle of bloody NO-WHERE with NO bars of any kind!!!"

Suspense; "Do YOU think we'll make it to the next town on the map? Do YOU? I dunno....it's been making that noise for 11 miles and it's only getting louder. And I can feel it sort of grinding something through the steering wheel now..."

Joy; Oh thank The LORD, I have 2 bars now and I think I can see Winnehonkta in the distance there!"

Mystery; "Well I don't know why it's making that noise. I'll have one of the other mechanics take a look at it, I'm sure stumped."

Rage and Mayhem; "I'm going to beat that bastid senseless when we make it home, he claimed it was fixed and I laid out a cool thousand on it! Stankass swinewhore mutherfrocker.

Romance;

Never mind, it's always just a plain BAD idea to pick up a cheap liaison on the road. Especially if you don't have any antibiotics on hand.

Trouble With The Man; "No sir, I am NOT a Terrorist trying to sneak guns into the country, I LIVE there. I'm just pissed off at this mechanic dude in Ohio, and there need to be CONSEQUENCES for the hack job he did to this truck. Hear that Noise? Do you?!? DO YOU?!!?

Yah, that's right, that's what I'm talking about. Well, if you WON'T let me take the glock across the border, would you take a contract? You have a gun, it'd be perfect for the job.

Carnage; "You little fricking pig-dog, you figured I'd never make it back, didn't you? Your sorry luck; they wouldn't let me bring in the gun....but they WERE okay with this machete........ by the way- have you ever been bitten by a human?"

Okay, I may even describe some scenery in there, but only if it's GOOD scenery................

So stay tuned.

Seeya on the other side of the border.

*actually pronounced as ME-AN-DERING, good'ol english, uh huh and we demand that immigrants and children spell this stuff correctly....

CASH EXPLOSION, MOTHAHS!!!

Okay.

I have an idea.

And you can ALL benefit.

You guys out there, (all 8 of you who read this blog regularly), get this blog spread around to the point that it becomes famous, convinces Al Gore and the rest of the humans to Save The World, AND helps me get Rich......well I will just start handing out random sums* of cash to those of you who helped this Blog achieve these ends.

That's right, I will PAY you to help me,(and Al Gore), to Save The World.

BUT.

1) I have to be Rich first. And I won't get Rich,(or Famous), without The Dog Meat The Video Blog getting me some Payola Based Notoriety. Gotta have the Cash Flow, ya know.

2) We have to get Al Gore on board. And that's only going to happen if he

a) Becomes aware of this Blog, reads it, and acknowledges his responsibility in my scheme to Save The World. I mean. He started it, after all.

b) We actually start DOING the Saving part.

3) I suppose we could let Mr. Obama stand in for Al Gore if neccessary....but I think Al Gore has more of a PLAN, donchyaknow.......

4) I'll have to get a new pack of security envelopes and a sheet of postage stamps so I can mail the aforementioned random sums of cash around to you guys who participaqte in this scheme.

Hey.

It's not even like it's one of those Amw*y Av*n M*ryK*ay C*smetics Pyramid dealies, okay?

So.

Jump on it, get the Blog around, call Al Gore.

He told me you could, so it's okay, Get Bizzy.

Oh.

You'll hafta send me your addy's before I can send you the cash.

When I'm Rich.

*Amounts unspecified and may vary at any time, depending on just how stinking Rich I am on that day, and whether I had enough coffee to stuff enough of it into the envelopes to make it worth the price of the stamp.

But there WILL be cash, I SWEAR.

Little Boy

Arright, Junior.

IT must be about 2 inches long.

Why else would you go all race-car when somebody passes you on the freeway?

I mean.

You must have something seriously wrong with your self esteem regarding that space between your testicles if you feel inclined to take the speed that I am traveling personally.

Face it, it's what you do.

Here I am, driving a big OLD green beater of a pick-up truck with a 2-year old Wally's-lot acquired crease down the side, and a chipped up bug deflector....and when it looks like I'm coming anywhere close to passing your Flame-Thrower Red Z-4 Roadster, you hike up your loins and start this 90 mph careen up the interstate that makes the rest of the freeway look like a strip-mall lot on Black Friday.

You were just vacuously poodling along at 62 with your nose in your phone....and then, out of the corner of your eye you caught the gleam of my fender in your side view.

Oh yeah.

I had the cruise set at 67, so it was clearly aggressive and competitive......THREATENING even, on my part.

ALL ABOUT YOU, yup yup.

I got news for you Tiny.

It's NOT.

They tell ya, "Go with your strengths".....

....so I'm going with mine.

Which are;

Open Hostility,

An Acute Eye for What's Truth,

and

An Unflinching Commitment to Telling It Like It Is.

I am Divinely Hostile.

I generally just hate EVERYBODY, it's far easier.I have a few people that I like, the rest are generally worthy of,(at the very least), a sneering dislike. I'm comfortable with this philosophy; I've sifted through various styles of interactive approach,(general amiability, guarded enthusiasm, zen-ish stand-offishness,etc), and have arrived at the simple,(and time-saving*), principal of cutting through the politics and going straight for the Truth.

I used to dally about with the veneer of Diplomacy. But it was more for the sake of keeping people comfortable around me. And I was mistakenly optimistic about humans in general.

Here's the dealio:

Most of the people I encounter have gone on to demonstrate just what a malignant species humans REALLY are; try paying attention to the nonchalance with which we are killing the planet out from under EVERYBODY,(not just ourselves, and we're doing it all the while we profess to be the species that KNOWS BETTER),...... a careen out the freeway among the 90MPH texting Barbees....... watching the Black Friday shopping melee videos.....War,(any and all of them)..... a powerful awareness of the Victim Market, (you name it,Victims for Profit is in everything from Kiddie Porn to Agriculture), The Oil Industry ,(okay, almost ANYTHING Corporate)....... it can make you insane if you keep trying to comprehensively validate people.....so I gave up on that and I no longer assume that a person is decent without some sort of proof to that effect. I don't generally colour something/somebody as more rosy than they are.

As for Telling It Like It Is...

get used to it.

Get over it.

Suck it up.

It's refreshing.

*sneer*

I'm not here to massage your feelings.

If you are out there hurtling around on the freeway with a text phone on the steering wheel and a spoon up your nose....

I'm going to tell you about it.

And, quite possibly, try to run you into the guard-rail.

* You have no idea just how time saving this philosophy really really is;

if you are generally honest/hostile enough to everybody, eventually they just stop bothering you entirely so you don't actually have to interact with anybody that you don't really want to any more.

BRUTAL.

And I plan to become more so, if time allows.....

I am driving to work, stop at a crosswalk. I see a man, with a weimaraner,(sp?), puppy on a RETRACTABLE lead, with this funny, lumpy collar, start to step into the crosswalk...and the puppy, with typical puppy exuberance, bounces into the street, the retractable offering,really, no rapid control of that dog's egress from the curb.

The man, clearly PISSED,turns red as a beet, starts yelling and pulls a box out of his pocket and aims it at the puppy... starts pushing this button, like over and over as the puppy yelps and drops to the ground and thrashes. I'm like, "WHATTHEFRUCK!! He's got a shock collar and he's like TAZING the snot out of the puppy!" I can't help myself, I lean on the horn, then I slam into park and jump out of the truck and go snatch the box out of the bastards hand. He starts to yell and I just look him dead in the face, drop the box to the ground, grind- stomp it and then kick the smithereens into the sewer drain.

3 People applaud, somebody else gives me a horn beep, one guy leans out his car window and shouts, "Now just kill the motherfucker and save the poor doggy!"

Motherfucker looks at me, pats the puppy on the head and slinks off down the sidewalk.

I can't believe they still sell these things.

At least, not without requiring a license and a 4-step personality test of the purchaser....

the Ohio State Fair....

.....is NOT a place that you will find me, not ever ever ever again.

Nope.

.....that greasy pit of swine-land ohio, funnel caking it's way through the sweaty haze of August...

I'd rather walk barefoot,(with paper-cuts between my toes), on the sticky floor of a chili cook-off porta potty than to attend this event again.

It's bad enough that I have to drive past it,(sort of- it's more an experiment in how much not driving one actually does between the 8 strategically placed rent-a-cops stopping hundreds of motorists for 12 minutes and 43 seconds in order for a gaggle of 7 pedestrians to cross from the "5 $$ ALL DAY!!" front yard parking opposite the fair entrance and then have that kid in the stroller have to go and drop its sucker in the middle of the street and the rear wheel comes off and the kid hangs over the side and starts SCREAMINGandthenthebedraggledladybooststhekidonherhipandleavesthestroller just SITTING there....), I get to see the herds of carb-glazed and inadequately-clothed obese staggering across the pavement each weekend that the Fair is open. And it's downright scary in there, amidst the human miasma, the carnies, and the bins of multi-species excrement parked along the rail embankment to the west,(and upwind), side of the grounds.

I know all this to be true because I USED to show horses there every year.

Fact; If you stand near a carnival ride long enough, you will see a carnie fix it, or make an adjustment to it, by wacking some part of it with a hammer.

Fact; It sometimes gets hot and stressful enough that animals being shown faint. You haven't LIVED until you've seen a 9-year-old 4-H girls pig fall down in a swoon in the show-ring.... the ensuing chaos was actually the one thing at the fair that made the price of admission worthwhile.

Fact; They really ARE deep frying PRETTY MUCH ANYTHING in there, and selling it as edible.

Snickers bars. Oreos. Cheesecake. Pickles,(you'vegottbefruckingkiddingme).

And I'm pretty darn sure that most of them are using lard...... fair-season aged lard..........

Fact; And then there's "Get it on a STICK!", an advert cry that implies there is virtue to that concept somehow.

There are people who think the tractor pull actually has value in some way. The fair generates upwards of 800 tons of refuse during the 12 days it is open. It's really stinking hot. The people behave rudely,trampling and shoving. And stealing. HotStickyCrankyWailing children get separated from their parents(...which may actually be a strategy).... Raccoons, rats, cats, and opossums,(abnormally large ones), cruise the garbage after dusk.........

Don't get me started on the abuse and suffering that many of the animals being shown are subjected to in order to produce a State fair champion.

I'm lactose intolerant...so I don't really miss the Butter Cow.

(The dairy building is just a bad idea anyway, if you are lactose intolerant and trying to show a string of horses that day and the only restroom within a 2-minute sprint has had a 7-year-old clog the thing into flood-stage by attempting to flush a sugar-dusted elephant ear and a cup of french fries down there. )

If just watching them cross the street turns me off to "the horde", I can't imagine ever again going in amongst them.

And remember...... there's always, "GET IT ON A STICK!!"

Lazy Swinewhore.

Yes.

I was a lazy swinewhore again.

DonchyajustHATEme?

What can I say, springsummer on a farm.

But the good news....

I've been just STORING it up.

ALL of it.

Soon to be yours.

Amish......So much for that "Witness" movie.....

We weren't supposed to notice that you were shopping for wireless phones,(which do require electricity, you know), at the Walmart store yesterday?

You'll have to dress differently, if you want to blend in.

How about those Mesquite BBQ Pringles and that pack of Pampers in your shopping cart there, 20-something Amish dude?

Pringles,(especially the Mesquite BBQ ones), and Pampers aren't particularly plain, now, are they?

Are those.....AMISH Pampers decorating the parking lots of rural America?????

Putting a sheet-metal housing around the "cockpit" of your tractor, adding a back seat, and using that tractor to drive the family into town to dine at the Bob Evans is NOT tilling the fields..... what you've done is convert the tractor into a CAR, and I'm pretty sure that driving cars is an activity that is not in strict accordance with the Pennsylvania and Ohio Amish Association bylaws.

Even if that car only goes 25 miles an hour.

Now I don't give a ratsass if the Amish have electricity or cars....but they're getting assistance, (y'know, food stamps, vouchers, WIC...), based on the claim that their lifestyle is impoverished

enough to qualifye them for aid in order to feed themselves and their kids.

So how is it they're shopping for PHONES?

It's the fact that they're cashing in on their POSE, their image, that I resent.......

Did you know that a lot of these guys are breeding and selling draft horses that pull HUGE amounts of cash at the annual draft horse auctions?

Last year I watched Amish guys selling their horses, matched Belgians and Percheron pairs going for more than $100,000 per pair.

That's more than I make in a year.

And I bet they didn't pay taxes on it.

They buy up HUGE spreads of land, with all the cash they haul in from horseflesh and expensive "HandBuilt Amish Furniture"... it's hard to find public record of the property ownership and hard to know how much property tax they actually pay.

They are big in high-profit-low-overhead puppy mills, hidden away in the deep rural back on these spreads.

Nobody knows they're there, until a bag or two of dead puppies turns up in a ditch at the end of a road between corn-fields.

Eventually, this 6-figure plus un-taxed illegal operation will get busted down by county deputy sheriffs,($22,500), and Humane Association volunteers,(free, and they donate money and time too), there will be a slap on the wrist penalty, and then Amish dude will re-start his operation way back on yet another one of these huge spreads of Amish family land.*

Bet he knows how to use a cell phone as well as I do, too.

*I'm not kidding about this. I've been in on these busts, two of which were the SAME GUY, a year apart, on two different locations in two separate counties. The conditions were beyond what can successfully be described in a blog. It's impossible to put the smell alone into a blog, and the screaming horror of the dogs has to be felt to be understood.

HANG UP THE PHONE,YOU DIMNITZ SOW!!!

Or are you TOTALLY uninvested in the little girl you've got riding in the backseat???

Perhaps you are a kidnapper, and, having already absconded with the $122,000.89 in unmarked bills, you are entirely blithe about the survival of the fluffy little blonde tyke in a pinky-lavendar barney toofer suit,(with matching drool bib).

Perhaps she's the offspring of your 65 year-old Dad's autumn-spring marriage with a 22 year-old Acapulco cabana girl,(6 months younger than yourself), that occurred only 15 minutes after he surprised your Mother,(who thought they were on vacation), with a Mexican shot-gun divorce, and you have finally discovered that the Barney-ette in your backseat stands to inherit EVERYTHING. So you don't really WANT her to make it back from the BigSister BabySits angryshoeshopping trip to the mall.

Maybe you really WANT her to be ejected through the glass at 92 mph when your distracted careen comes to a suddenly clumsy completion against the driver-side bumper of the Peterbuilt that you failed entirely to notice because you were squinting into the sun-glared "contacts" screen of your Backbleery* 2110XZ TextoSupreme.

But.

What if she's YOURS, you BEET????

Why don't you care MORE, for your little girl?

Do you even KNOW that you are driving like a Baghdad suicide-bomber who has suddenly realized that he forgot to put his bomb in the car, and must now exact his jihad with the limited resources he has at hand..... namely speed and a chaotic drive-path through roadways that are densely occupied by other high-speed careening maniacs?

You are so So SOOOOO preoccupied and self involved.

Really.

They should be working on some sort of sensing device in these cars that picks up when a cell phone gets turned on and immediately locks the top road-speed down to 67 mph.

Or perhaps cell phones should come with sensors that refuse to allow the phone to communicate if the vehicle's speed is anywhere above......say.......ZERO mph.

Listen up, Barbee.

GET YOUR DAMN HEAD OUT OF THE MICROWAVES.

Your cell phone has clearly damaged your brain.

*Name changed to protect me from any corporate bullshit lawsuits, as she was clearly using that device and they should be ashamed of enabling her behaviour.

SO FUCKING REGULATE, Arready!!!!

I mean.

C'MON!

The Boss,(yes, The New Guy), needs to put a damn CAP on what they can rape out of us, dammit!

The ONLY people who wouldn't welcome a LIMIT to how much they can take are...welll...think hard, think hard.....

THE TAKERS.

They rape us at the pump, they are jacking our interest rates around....and they are being gifted bail-out money with NO STRINGS ATTACHED....and they aren't being held accountable for where the bailout goes.

ATTACH SOME STRINGS.

How hard is this, really?

We are in a crisis that actually deserves some Federal intervention ON BEHALF OF THE CITIZENS, something that calls for some emergency legislation to just STOP THE RAPE of the bill-paying, tax-burden bearers.

Look.

If I am paying my credit bill monthly, like a good little citizen, why are you guys allowing them to make my credit bill un-payable by jacking my interest rate up?

They see me paying and they think they can help balance THEIR books by increasing my debt to them by raising my rates.

I think they selectively raise interest to people who honestly pay their bills....

And then there's the gasoline rip-off where middle-income-america is shedding their pay-check at the pump in order to drive to work so we can earn enough to feed the kids and pay taxes to the Fed...

HELLO?!?!?!?

Us regular peeps need some help here, Boss.

We need you to stop the rape.

You need to tell them they can't charge more than a buck-twenty-five at the pump, you need to tell the very banks you've given freebies to that they can't raise the interest rates higher than 8%.(They'll still make a profit, maybe more-so if people can pay, it just won't be so upfront obscene). Make it POSSIBLE for people pay their damn bills, instead of indulging the cannibalism that ultimately results in the death of the client base that allows the banks to exist in the first place.

Once they've eaten that client base alive, why is it rational to give the cannibals a side of beef so they can feed long enough to bounce back and continue that same cannibalism?

WE THE PEOPLE are paying for this...so cut us some slack, arready.

They got the cash, it was supposed to trickle outward, and it didn't.

If it did ANY trickling, it was only to the secret servants the bankers have sitting in the comfortably upholstered chairs of the congress and the senate.......

FUCKING REGULATE, DAMMIT.

GRR.