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Showing posts from April, 2018

True Story©... The Big Payoff pt IV

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     Mother fuck me… I knew when I got into this shit that I would find myself flirting with international improprieties sooner rather than later.  I’m on the way from service on the car, about to get Ava from school one day and the phone rings… “dafuq, what the hell are all these plus signs and extra digits?” It was an international number.  I wish I had saved it. Caller: “Good afternoon, Mr Phillips.” Me: “No ‘Mr.’ needed, Phillip is my first name.” Caller: “Oh, I am very sorry.  Please excuse my English, it is not my first language.” [ Phlip note : why the fuck am I only now realizing that I should probably be using Moe Phillips for this operation?] Me: “S’all good.  With whom do I have the pleasure of conversing with?” Caller: “My name is Mr. [somethingsoutheasterneuropeanish], I am calling on behalf of my local government in search of a product that you apparently have a unique ability to produce at a very attractive price.” Me: “Ahh shit.” Caller: “
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True Story©... Paranoia!

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     So check it… Last month, my man Marlon came to visit for a weekend with the plan of mopping up behind an old conquest he had failed to take action on in the moment.  As it were, the--…  wait… Read the damn story and come back. Welcome back.      So anyway.  Anyone who knows anything about Greensboro knows that we are the 3 rd largest city in NC and the 68th largest in the United States by population (links for reference/proof) .  With that said, we are not the tiny little Podunk town that public schools in larger states and The Andy Griffith Show would have you believe we are. Until it comes down to who is fuckin’ who.      If I never told y’all this, my True Story© is always rooted in things that actually happened.  Somewhere, somehow, some way.  I leave it up to you, dear reader, to decipher where in the presentation I might be pulling your leg – IF I am pulling your leg. And that is the fun of it.      So as it happened, soon after I posted that story,
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Overstaying...

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October 13, 2008… A Monday      I had been called into a supervisor’s office and asked my honest opinion about the day to day operations in the department.   Pressed for my honest opinion, I gave it and some suggestions for opportunities for improvement with it.   Because, naturally, a problem without a solution is just a complaint. Despite having asked for my opinion and received it quite professionally, the only response she would muster was – and I remember it like it was yesterday – “things just aren’t going to get any better.”      At that moment, I decided that I could no longer remain in that situation and began shopping my resume around the company for a situation that would not land me under one of those “well at least we have a job”-ass supervisors. My problem was my effectiveness.   I can have a laundry list of complaints about something, but if it is what I am tasked with doing to be sure to it that my mortgage gets paid, then I am turning over GOD level wor
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True Story©... My Emotional Support Rooster™

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     You’ve seen them in the news and on the internets.  People showing up to the airport with the damndest of animals; squirrels, peacocks, sugar gliders, children, hamsters/gerbils, untrained dogs and basically any other animal they probably shouldn’t be trying to bring into the passenger compartment in an airplane.  Laws are catching up with these silly-ass attempts at shirking an otherwise ill-defined system and I guess it is all for the better.      But did I tell y’all about my emotional support rooster? Stop laughing, it was a real thing.  I didn’t even bother giving him a name. As the great both of you may be aware, I LIVE for a good inappropriate double entendre, and there is no doubler of the doubles of being able to talk about my cock and not having it exist as a reference to my winky.  One could go as far as to say that my gymnastics with the English language is important to normal existence for me, so the existence of my pet rooster was an exercise in emotional s
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Writing About Writing, Vol 11

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     Sometimes you don’t know what the fuck you want to write, you just know you want to write when you sit down to do so. My trick when I find myself in this spot?  A key word or phrase… What do I mean? Come back to August and September with me. Work Spouse : ALL I knew I wanted to include in that story was the “Pennsylvania into her Virginia” line and had been thinking about it for THREE WEEKS before the scribe. Quaaludes : I was talking about The Get Down with someone the day before I wrote this story and the only thing I could think of was “boogie oogie Disco Biscuits.” I wrapped ENTIRE stories around getting those words/phrases into the mix.      Sometimes, that is about all the spark you should need.  A “why” to your “what.”  Having one goal to write toward is what it took to get you typing, the real fun is making it JUST there. To me, that is the fun part; sitting down with NOTHING to go on and remembering some silly shit that happened in a text
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True Story©... King of my Village part 2

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     So when I left you , I was king of a small village, if only because the people who lived there were enamored with my Americanized sense of humor.  It is worth mentioning that Muhammad Ali was dead right when he said “ain’t no Viet Cong ever called me n**ger!”      At home in America, I was a threat.  Too smart and too vocal for “them,” and too weird, too “them” for my own.  And best believe there weren’t enough Viet Congs to not call me that word back home.  Outside of the fact that most--…  fuck it, ALL of these guys had never even seen a black dude in their lives, they basically treated me like another dude.  Until, as I mentioned, they took my weirdness as commendable and made me their leader.      With all of that said, I didn’t wanna fuckin’ LEAVE the place!  They fed me first and best as their king.  As king, I didn’t have it in me to mistreat or even handle them unfairly at all and life inside of the village was never really that difficult.  The rest of the wor
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Small Victories...

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I collect things…      I collect things that are of interest to me.   One of the things I collect most intently and intensely is Hot Wheels cars.   I pass by two Wal Mart super centers and one Neighborhood Market on my EVERY day trek.   That will change soon (more on that Sunday) .   But I used to – say about from the early 00s-09ish – be hardcore about finding and possessing hot wheels that were of interest to me.   It was something fun to do, going from store to store to store, seeing what they had and picking up the ones I liked and bringing them home just to have them.      Someone who was living with me at the time basically told me that all of my hobbies were stupid and I lost interest. But then it became obvious that I was what was stupid, not necessarily my hobbies, so she left me with a lesson to continue to be me and enjoy all of what makes me me.   Around 2014/15ish, I was back in the stores all over, thumbing through the racks and pegs and bins of Hot Wheels
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