The musings of a madman...

(that ol Charlie is a good boy)      Funniest thing has been happening here for the last few months... Well, I'd say it's not "funny" so much as it is "peculiar."      As we've documented here at length, I prefer my friends and family text me instead of calling on the phone, it forces the conversation to whatever point needs to be made more efficiently. I say that to say *they* as the people who actually know me and my habits are not the problem, but people -- or more specifically, companies -- who do not respect this layer of my relationship with my phone are. It's loan offers after loan offers, sometimes voicemails suggesting some kind of urgency. It's people offering to buy a house I sold four years ago. It's spectrum and whoever else trying to sell me on their services. A couple of them are just random toll free numbers with just dead air!     A s a general rule, I'll send a call to voicemail once and if they really want somethi...

       Y'know, sometimes it is hard for me to conceptualize people continuing to exist when I am done with them, or as it were when they're done with me...      In the summertime, work-work is slower and USUALLY lawn care is too because it doesn't normally rain in June like it just did. That said, I was "normal" at the bill-paying job and running ragged on the side hustle staying caught up in between storms.      On a particularly rainy day last week, my phone kept ringing. I should say that I've gotten an exorbitant number of spam and out-of-state calls from areas I have no business, usually shilling some kind of high interest loan I have no desire for. That said, I am adept at quickly dismissing them without interrupting whatever I'm doing on YouTube at a given moment.      On this day, though, I kept getting a particularly persistent call from a High Point number. The only person I have any business with who has a H...

       Y'know, maybe I have been chasing the wrong things... I'm damn good at cutting grass. I'd like to think I'm a decent writer. The raise I've recently been served notice of at my full time job suggests that the person in charge of me is pleased with how I perform during bill paying hours. My daughters and grandbaby are ENAMORED with me, as is basically every dog I ever met.      But again, maybe I'm going about it all wrong. I've cultivated these abilities based on things that I was already serviceable at. I mean, I've unwillingly participated in a few criminal investigations into things that I may or not have been personally involved in, but I don't claim that. This all comes down to a phonecall I received last Saturday... Me: "Hello?" Them: "Phlip, what's up man?" Me: "Trying to keep it in the road, y'know... Sticky side down" Them: "Huh?" Me: "Enough smalltalk, get to it." Them:...

       Okay, so I'm chilling in the house on a random-ass Wednesday morning with the Baby Bird™ . It should be noted that "chilling in the house" means I am on the clock, whereas being "at home" would have meant I was on the couch, in my bed or in the garage. Also, Baby Bird™ is my new nickname for my grandlittle as she physically outgrows Tiny Little™ . Anyway, chilling in the house with an infant. The phone rings... Me: "Hello?" Caller: "Hey Phillip, it's Chris." Me: "Whatup Chris? You usually just text!" [ Phlip note : Chris is the guy who bought my old house, he texts me to come grab straggling mail items when they happen to show. The house is right on my daily travels and is only 8 minutes from my new place ] Chris: "Yeah, it's not mail this time. You got a visitor." Me: "A--... visitor? No one even visited me when I LIVED there! It ain't the cops is it?" Chris: "No, he is insistent t...

       Man, I promised Santa Claus …      Is there anything more infuriating than being quite clear and succinct with someone, only to have them continue to respond to what they had in their minds that you would say and not what you actually did?      We closed on and moved into this house on October 20 rd and 23 th in 2021 respectively.  The in-between days involved some fuckery on the part of the seller’s agent that I will not rehash at this point.  As a good most of you know, 2021 was a WILD time in real estate in the middle of the Covid era and I happened to get lucky in making more than I expected on my old house and spending less than expected on the new one. One element of the above-mentioned agent is how she didn’t fully do her follow-through when it related to removing the damned listing when it closed.      Again, 2021 Covid-Era real estate had large companies cold calling home own...

       It’s rare that I just get to be “me” anymore.   My life is pretty mundane to be honest.   Work, clean, daddy/husband, sobriety…   Rinse/repeat.   I find myself in need of an outlet, sometimes to the point where I seek mischief to entertain myself.   Not unlike a puppy learning to test your limits.      Sometimes the “mischief” finds me.   Sometimes even still, the mischief finds me from prior shit.   We’ll call that the wheel of mischief .      Moe fuckin’ Phillips…   That guy will be the death of me one of these days. I’m minding my business on my couch on lunch three weeks ago and “Moe’s” burner phone rings… [ Phlip note : I dunno WHY the hell I keep that thing ] Me: “Hello?” Caller: “Is this Moe?” Me: “Indeed it is” Caller: “I got your number from a friend of mine who says you have given sage business advice--…” Me: “I wouldn’t call the advice ‘sage’ so muc...

  (not to be confused with the SONG that never ends...)      Funny thing, this whole living a life chronicled in True Story©… [ Phlip note : there’s the thing, already! ] You’re told in school to take notes knowing that the information covered and ostensibly noted will come up when it is time for a knowledge check.   Similarly, typing out the exploits here to be followed by interested onlookers allows anyone reading to look back and realize that this comes off as not a collection of stories, but an infinitely expanding connected singular one.      Chronicling the exploits in detail also lays immediately bare the “dammit, this again” feeling when some shit I dealt with before decides to fall back into my life. Something I should have learned about supervillainy watching superhero cartoons for the last 89% of my life is that villainy, as karma is concerned, is NEVER ending.   You can do dirt, but that also means you will have a...

  (yes, this is what a Nauga looks like)  Image Credit: Somewhere on the Googles      Part of the act of being a newly-decent, no-longer-a-supervillain human being includes advocacy for those with less than myself.   I’ll slide a couple bucks to an unhoused person, canned goods to food drives; even Shaggy Thunder was an SPCA-adopted puppy. Say hi, little buddy. (note: this is an old picture...  he's much fatter now)      … so yeah…   One of my soft spots is for dogs in particular but for animals in general.   I kind of RAGE at the very thought of people abusing/abandoning puppies, yet the BookFace algorithm and my apparent obsession puppy videos serves it that I see such shit daily in suggested Reels. In the interest of not triggering myself, we will not go any further into the whole animal abuse thing.      Week before last, though, while I was scrolling on The Bookface™ , and one of those sad...