The musings of a madman...

  (New WaW image, y'all!)      Y'all know True Story© is a whole construction/production process and I am 90% of the crew? It starts with a spark. I see something out in the world as I do my daily "life" thing. Something will happen in my field of view/hearing and--... Wait... Y'all DO know that there is always some element of something that happened in every story, right?      Anyway, spark... I see something out in the world and I use that as an idea. I break out the ol' phone and start typing furiously in a Gmail draft that will auto-save as soon as I navigate to another app or out of that message: (okay, so maybe not a REAL story forming) I will continue to grind out that wall of words, really only concerned with the idea of the story, minding grammar and making sure to establish properly-formed sentences and paragraphs. I do this in my Gmail drafts because that automatically saves them right where it is until I get to the PC.    ...

       Fall officially began this week on Monday. For those of us here in west-central North Carolina, the piedmont and foothills region, that means people will trek an hour or two west up to the Blue Ridge Parkway for nature's annual light show in the changing of the leaves. As mundane and unworthy of the trip as this sounds, this is a thing that people drive into the region for every single year. [ Link ] [ Phlip note : I have never personally made this trip and likely won't, September is the latest I've ever been up there ]      Although the parkway sits right on the way to one of Wife Person™ and I's favorite weekend getaway spots, we haven't been since April of last year. Not that we wouldn't WANT to or haven't had the capital means, we just haven't had the time to get away with my spring/summer side hustle and our now one year-old grandlittle.      As y'all may or not remember, but should after this paragraph, our last trip up t...

       Frequently, I find myself waiting on the other shoe to fall. This is not, like, an ACTIVE thing in the very least but for someone with my kind of history it is just kind of understood that bullshit begets bullshit. I'd say "trust me," but I'm comfortable that most of you are not new here and even if you are there are hundreds of thousands of published words to make the case.      So it's late summer now. The rains of the early/mid summer started winding down a few weeks ago and were replaced with a welcome cooldown in temps. This series of elements saw to it that when I caught up with my lawns that I offered to move all my clients off of scheduled lawn work to "as needed" so as to not be a greedy person for their money. ... I say that to say I was bored...      To combat the malaise, I decided to open up the Moe Phillips email and see what I could make shake. I started back at the end of August. The first one I acknowledged, ...

"I'm worried that I cannot trust my wife..." Oh shit, this gon be good! Lemme keep reading... "We met in high school, and I actually lost my virginity to her..." SHIT!!! We all gas and no brakes here. Aight, aight, I'mma chill and just read now. "The circumstances of even that are kind of wild, though. While I lost my virginity to her, I was not her first. In fact, I'm kind of embarrassed to say that I was not even her first on that very night..." Fucking WHAT?!!? I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm trying, y'all! "One of the homies from high school had convinced her into meeting at a house party and letting him and four homies run a train on her. I drew third go before we left for the party, so naturally I waited outside the room door for my turn. I went into the room when it was my go, put on a rubber and did the thing. Sometime during, I decided that she didn't need to be in this situation and that I could be the one to get he...

       For reasons all at the same time weird, ironic and obvious to anyone paying even a small amount of attention to recent goings-on around these parts, I've spent the last few weeks rehashing the minute details of everything I have done and chronicled around these parts.      Somewhere in the midst of the work of it, reading and listening back, I began to feel something like contrition over the shit I've done. I knew that contrition is one thing, but to seek absolution is a whole other thing. To seek absolution, one must redress the thing they seek absolution from. That means that declaring myself done with the supervillainy is only the first step. The next -- and more important -- one is to do the work of making it right.      One might think that a step in that direction might include seeking to be held legally responsible for the things one has done, but that is one hell of a rap sheet and I'm too beautiful for prison so that i...

  Y’all know why I do this? For the practice of it! [ Phlip note : I know today is Monday, I still got y’all on Thursday! ]      Several years ago – September 1, 2017 – I made a silly BookFace post that started with the words “True Story©” and proceeded to tell an absolutely unhinged short work of fiction. It made no sense, I did it because I was bored and people REALLY enjoyed it. Because people enjoyed it and I am often thirsty for positive reinforcement, I did it the next Thursday morning and a habit was formed.      In the intervening years, I have continued to do this – at a monetary and time cost to myself – because I have always wanted to write and needed something to motivate me to do so. For anyone who has been around while I have been doing this, and I can honestly say that there are six who have been on for the WHOLE ride (no matter how many “both of you” jokes I tell), have actively seen that I am approaching this developmentally. Where...

       Y'know, perhaps the best means to me getting out of my own way is for me to get the fuck out of my own way... I have created such a network of problems and solutions through the years that sometimes people randomly pop back up almost after I've forgotten they even exist. I could continue describing what I'm talking about, but I think it'd just be best to fill you in on the email I received... "Moe,      I found your contact information while going through marital belongings as I prepare to finalize my divorce in a couple of months." Oh shit. This is not going to be pleasant for me if she's emailing Moe Phillips about a pending divorce. The email continues... "... apparently, a friend of my husband contacted you in December for help on how to vet his partner before proposing to her. It seems my husband knew the girl from their school days and was assigned to use his professional position to press her and see if she would go through with it or...

       They say the dog never has a plan for when it actually catches the car... As I've mentioned before, some wild hiccups that ended in the ER back in December and the fallout wound up setting fire to my PTO at the full time gig clear through April setting things right. Once I was back into the rhythm of accruing my time like I've become accustomed to over the last 18 years, we were more than halfway through the year and I was in full panic mode over how to take days so as to not lose them. I know it sounds weird to be thinking like this and it is still only August, but bear in mind that I am in a  very small department of only six specialists so a maximum of two can be off at a given time, with the exception of extreme emergencies and after the fall and winter I had, I've had enough of those!      So anyway, time off... A few weeks ago I looked at the team PTO schedule, counted up the time I got left and the time I will need or have alre...

       I knew this day would come... I have used the Moe Phillips name quite loosely and without thought of consequences because, frankly, I was clearly sure that there were none. For the most part, that has proven mostly true, save for a couple of little embarrassing happenings here and there.      But this? This could almost be skewed as karma paying my dumb ass a visit... As ever, I'm chilling in the house, scrolling YouTube on the clock between tasks at the ol full-time. In the corner of my eye, I see the screen light up on the Moe Phillips burner phone. It's the Gmail icon. Defying my better senses, I picked it up and read it...      "Moe, What I come to you today with is kind of embarrassing... I own, or I should say I used to own a diner in town. One day last year, I was approached by someone named Maurice who arranged to buy out all of our food for the day if we agreed to feed the community without charging. The day was a hug...