The musings of a madman...

1,459 Days

1,460 Days

1,461 Days

True Story©…  A Luxury Vaping Lounge                 One of these days I will come up with one of these schemes and make enough money to not have to work with people who actually hate my guts and talk behind my back. There are a great many things I happen to dislike intensely, one of them is the smell of smoke and the fervor for the acquisition of such in those who consume it.  It is not enough that smoke is one of my worst asthma triggers as it is, but the smell of stale smoke in the car or house of someone who smokes often in closed areas. Never mind that, there is a worse version of smoker, even with the smell abated a bit. "Vapers” I call them “vape douches” or “vape bros.”                 One of my theories is that the LAST thing I want to have to do to someone is to EVER have to pay them, even worse to pay them on my own volition.  Something about having to contribute to something I DETEST irks me to my very soul, not terribly dissimilar to my tax dollars ha

True Story©, The process…                 I have been asked – well, once – just where in the hell I come up with my story-a-week presentation. It is REALLY quite funny, actually. Well first thing's first, it was never actually supposed to become a "thing," so much as me being silly in a FB post back in September, which grew to "Phlip, you should do this every week!" which grew to "Phlip you need a blog," which became "wait, I have a blog!"  and voila, I was out of retirement. Now that we have established how this became a thing, back to business... I generally go about my every day just looking at the world as only I can see it and wait for SOMETHING that happens that I can wrap a story around.  Then it becomes a multi-part process. 1 – Wait for something interesting, funny, bombastic or otherwise outstanding to happen.  It doesn’t even have to happen to ME, it just has to happen for me to see or hear.  This is where being

True Story©…                 Do y’all believe in love at first sight? I used to. Like with about any situation one finds themselves soured on, my story begins with me in an unhealthy set of circumstances that didn’t end pretty and birthed a lack of trust in the process that would happen to endure through to the remainder of my adulthood. I might be so inclined to be angry at what happened, but I am largely to blame for it and I learned a lesson from it, so there is not a lot for me to be angered about…  I’m alive to tell the story, so at least there’s that. Enough of the setup, let’s talk about what happened… Back when I first got home from Vietnam, before I found myself in Guantanamo later in life, I happened to see this young lady waiting for the GTA one day on my way to work. Wait, I have something else to explain…  The way my situation at the time was, I had a license but not a car yet so I caught the bus to work and either got a ride or a car dropped off to me to get

True Story©… Sometimes it is solely my decision that the world needs to suffer.                 I’m sure a great many of the two of you are inclined to want to ask “how, Phillip?” and I am here to tell you just how in somewhere between 4 and 700 words. As my woman continues to try to starve me to health I get a full slate of things like green vegetables, various forms of yogurt and very little in the way of junk food these days.  With that said, I am regular as they come and quite often gassy.  I try to be mindful of small spaces that I will have to stay in without ventilation, but anywhere else is up to the limits of my imagination and mood as it relates to public safety.                 One time in Wal Mart with Mimi, I went to the bathroom to pee and there were these four kids waiting on their mother at Online Pickup.  Anyone who walked by them, they made a fart noise and giggled.  Well, when I came back out of the bathroom, I had saved a silent-but-deadly to slowly l

True Story©…                 I am here to help you ACHIEVE that “new you” in the new year. I know I have said this before, but I was on some New Year bullshit too at the time.  We all go through it sometimes, I ain’t mad at myself.  So here’s how it will go.  Sometime between December 30 th (that would be Friday) and January 2 (Monday), you will PayPal me $25 or $50 and provide me with a contact email and phone number. What you will also include is WHAT about you it is that you need to leave behind in 2016. With the $25 plan, I simply call you every day and email you every afternoon to remind you that you’re still doing the same ol shit that you've BEEN doing every other year that you tried to reinvent yourself and that every year on 12/31 you’re still miserable for the same reasons you were on 01/01.  The underlying aim of this approach is to anger you into action, even if that action includes coming to my house – or sending someone to my house – to be shot dead in

True Story©…                 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. This is one that has been up for debate for many years.  We’re to understand that Santa already had his reindeer fleet set to go, and all of a sudden another one shows up out of nowhere with a bright red nose?  Nah dawg, that ain’t how the story went.  It CAN'T be.  Today, I am here to lay it out for real.                 We readily believe that Santa handles his Christmas duties every year with the same 8 reindeer; Dasher, Dancer, Prancer and Vixen…  Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen (admit it, you sang that shit, didn't you?) .  All of a sudden, after 100 years there is a new reindeer at the North Pole?  HOW LONG WAS THIS DUDE THERE?!!?  And to make the story just a little more juicy, how about the fact that one that no one was allowed to see or hear of him from the beginning of the Santa Claus story in 1839 to the discovery of Cocaine in the late 1850s and then still remaining COMPLETELY hidden until th

True Story©…                 Sometimes I like to sit and listen to OTHER people’s True Story©. In my current position, I am downtown Burlington NC.  Before August, my building was right across the street from the public library.  One consistent in the whole of the United States of America is that a public library will draw the infirmed; homelesses, unemployed--…  the needy public in general.  I don’t judge people for their outward appearances any more than a reasonable person would – and trust, ALL people do if they admit or not – but sometimes I would sit outside on my lunch breaks when I was up there or will walk by when I walk around the block now on breaks/lunches and I talk to people about their stories.                 I have gotten a lot of good stories: -           A woman who had a couple of kids by a drug dealer who did well by them until getting caught, but literally didn’t know how to hold down a household when he was gone and now was in this position during the