Baseball

Is there anything more American than our "national pastime"? It is Spring and of course our thoughts naturally turn to Spring training camps and the upcoming baseball season. The St. Louis Cardinals are the defending world champions an honor they will hold until sometime in October. It will be mentioned as often as possible this year so be prepared. When you talk about red states and blue states a Cardinal fan does not think of Republicans and Democrats. It is Cardinal red and Chicago Cub blue. There are some constants in life. If you love the Bears you hate the Packers. If you love the Cardinals you hate the Cubs. You are not required to hate their fans, they are rather to be pitied. When you are feeling sadistic you say things like Cubs- one World Series title 1908. By the way the Cardinals won their 11th World Series title in 2011. It must be tough to go 112 years without a trophy. The reason for this blog is not to make fun of the Cubs but to recognize the team Cardinal fans hate almost as much as the Cubs. Yes, the dreaded New York Mets. In 1964 my grandparents went to New York City to attend the World's Fair. They weren't baseball fans and the picture below was most likely just a shot of a New York City landmark. The Polo Grounds at the time were the baseball home of the then hapless New York Mets. So Mike enjoy this old photo from the Sutor family archives. While it has been a few years since the Mets have been to the "promised land" at least it is something you were able to witness and not have to read about in an ancient baseball history book. Making rude comments about the Cubs just never gets old.

Happiness

It really is something that happens in our heads. The following quote probably says it best. "The key to happiness is low expectations." Isn't that true. How often have we gone to a movie expecting it to be as good as the book we read 10 years ago. A great expectation in our minds invariably leads to disappointment. When we expect nothing we are pleased when we get something. Go to the DMV expecting to be treated like a leper and you will be pleasantly surprised if you aren't and not disappointed if you are.

Success is getting what you want.
Happiness is wanting what you get.

Go out there expecting nothing and get happy.

The picture above is the Sutor family in late 1981. From left to right: Jeff, Jeremy, Tammie, Carol and John. Two things to consider. Who is that thin guy on the left and who in the fuck thought those pants were a good idea? They are good for a laugh now. Where would one find those now? Might need a pair to make a fashion statement. That statement would be- dressed by Stevie Wonder.

Ladders

On June 20, 2011 I had the bottom of a ladder kick out from under me. I rode it down the wall to the concrete floor. The result was a dislocated shoulder and a torn rotator cuff. My injuries are better but I still have some limitations in movement. Today was the day I needed to get back on the horse that threw me. Some work needed done in the basement and I wanted to put a new shelf up in the stairway going down to display some of my Wizard of Oz stuff. So I got the ladder set up on the stairs and looked at it for a while. I wasn't sure I wanted to climb up there after all. I couldn't picture not being able to do work up high but the memories of the fall were right there to tell me not to do it again. I'm not one to give in to fear often and I forced myself to climb up and get to work. I immediately broke out in a sweat but figured as long as I was up there I should go ahead and do something. I marked where the bracket would go and got back down to get the drill to make pilot holes for the screws. It wasn't any easier going up the next time and Carol suggested I get someone to do it for me. Pride got involved then. No way is anyone coming over here to do a simple job like this. I am not crippled, this will get done by me. The holes got drilled and the brackets put up and all the time I was sweating like a whore in church. I forced myself to use my injuried arm because I need it to work as well as possible. Overcoming fear is not an easy thing and I honestly did not expect for this to be so troubling. I have fallen off ladders before but in the past the consequences have not been so severe. It will be interesting this summer when I have to stain the house and I will be 20 feet in the air and not 5 feet like today. Baby steps. Might be a good idea to take this really slow.

Motorcycles

Yup, I got one. A big honkin' Harley Davidson Ultra Classic. I know, I used to say it too. "Another douche bag Harley rider." I used to love Kawasakis. My first bike was a 1973 500cc triple. It was a two cycle chain saw on wheels. We had three kids and I rode that bike like a window licking retarded kid on the short bus to that special school. The next bike was another Kawasaki. This time a two cylinder 750cc Vulcan cruiser. It was fun to ride but not the speedster from my past. The kids got in collie ge and life got expensive. The bike had to go. I waited several years and bought a used Harley Soft Tail standard. I got away from Kawasakis because I got tired of paying good money and 2 years later the bike had lost half its value. It seemed Harleys held their value better. After riding that Harley for a few months I understood why people love them. It is a great American made bike. We took one long trip on that bike and it just wasn't made for couples who want to travel. When I was contemplating retirement I decided a big touring bike would be my present to myself. It is a great bike to travel on. We did lighten our load on the trip by mailing our dirty clothes home. The Postmaster in Ohio was amused.
The thing I learned along the way while I was riding was watch out for the other guys. ALL OF THEM!!!! People do stupid shit when they are driving. The worst is texting. They can't watch the road and the phone at the same time. What happens to their brains when they are talking on the phone? You can hold a conversation when you drive but put that phone to your ear and talk and something goes wrong. Why can't we hold our hand by our head and talk and drive the car? Some people can but most can't. Riding a bike you notice other drivers. Why do people in cars do shit and think they are invisible? You are in a glass room with a finger stuck up your nose digging away like you are mining for gold. Then you pull your finger out and look at the results of your labor apparently on the off chance that there will be a diamond on the end. More likely there is a chunk of brain tissue on there, like they had some to spare. Then there are the dancers and headbangers. They are so lost in the music and the moment they don't realize we are watching their American Idol audition or Dancing with the Stars routine. It's glass all around you! We can see you! Please work as hard at seeing the motorcycles out there as you do goofing around. We always lose when you hit us.

Offensive? Probably. Get over it.

People from time to time tell me that I have an odd sense of humor. I don't know. How do you tell?  I can't seem to objectively look at myself and determine if it is odd or not. It is just there are some things I find funny that maybe you do not. You may be offended by some or all of the following. That's okay. I'm not going to run for political office. I may be stupid but not that stupid.

Come on now that is funny. Don't you really wish you had invented that hot dog cooker? Clearly the weiners are not to scale or the holders would have to be 10' tall. Perhaps that is too much personal information.

Well I suppose he must since He is God and we are taught as Christians that he is omnipresent. If he sees my every sin he must be there watching porn with me. Hope he doesn't want a hand with anything.

If she could have played like the Pinball Wizard from Tommy maybe she would see something different. Like the caption says, she will never see this. So if it is offensive, big deal.

If you have ever been in the working world you know this is true. You get fucked a lot (and not in a good way) and then everyone wants to pat you on the back. Watch out because some of them have knives in their hands.

Humor is subjective and often offends our sensabilities. We often act offended because we think we should while we are roaring with laughter on the inside. I just don't hide mine any more. No sense and no sensability. 

Girl Scout Cookies

I have spent most of my life fat. You could be politically correct and say things like overweight or obese but the truth is FAT. I get gifts from friends like Fat Bastard wine. It doesn't offend me, or at least not enough to make me lose weight. Yeah, ok, maybe I die young because I am fat. Maybe I die in a motorcycle accident. When it is my time it will be my time and I think nothing can be done to change what will happen. It won't matter to me anyway because I will be dead. I have no reliable sources but I think when you are dead you don't care much about anything. If I have the opportunity I will let you know. What does that have to do with Girl Scout Cookies? Dear God people Girl Scout Cookies are like crack cocaine for fat people. We wait all year for the chance to stock up our freezers and hope the supply lasts until those little bitches decide to sell again. Why the attachment to Girl Scout Cookies? It is simple, they are guilt free. When I buy cookies at the grocery store I am just a fat guy buying cookies and perhaps hastening his own death. When I buy Girl Scout Cookies I am helping young women develop life skills and self esteem. It is probably not the best idea to help them develop self esteem since it will make them less likely to date the fat boys in their future. Oh well. Yes girls I will do my civic duty and buy your cookies. Since I see them as crack cocaine I thought the picture above was appropriate. If I don't buy cookies they may actually come back later and burn down my house.
Do your part, don't let a good girl go bad. Buy some of those damn cookies!!!!!!!

History

I continue to go through old family photographs trying my best to figure out who these people are. There are old tin type photos and family pictures on post cards. So many of the pictures were taken in Galesburg so you would think that would be a help. Well for better or worse my grandfather John J. Sutor live in a house built by his father and Grandfather in 1878. My great grandmother Emma Parsons Sutor was raised on her family's farm near Henderson and they were in the Galesburg area before the Sutor's arrived in Sparta township in 1868. So I have been pulling photos out of albums hoping that someone put a name on the picture. It happened in only about 6 out of about 500.
Having said all that there were some gems in the box I went through. There was a photo album given to my grandfather John for his 10th birthday in October 1916. I found several pictures of Grandpa with his airplane taken in the late 1920's or early 1930's. Pictures of my grandmother Byrdis when she went to Europe in 1933 following her graduation from Knox College and preceding her marriage to John.
Carol wishes I had asked my grandparents who some of the people in the pictures are. I am certain that many of them were known only to my great grandmother and she died 23months before my birth. So unfortunately many of the pictures will never have names associated with them. The goal is to get as much family history down as possible so someone in the future will have a better sense of their roots.

DMV

There are days when you have experiences that are so strange you are pretty sure no one would believe it wasn't made up. Our oldest son, Jeremy, had an expired drivers license. We went to the Secretary of State's Office(DMV)this morning to have it renewed. We took a number and waited about 20 minutes. Not bad considering there were as many employees on duty as there were patrons in the building. Jeremy finally got called up to the counter.
DMV: "Is the address on your license correct?"
Jeremy: "No, I have moved."
DMV: hands him a paper and states "you need to bring 2 of the following to prove your current address."
We leave and go to our State Farm insurance agent to get a copy of his renter's insurance policy which has his street address. We have to drive 10 miles back home to check his car to see if he has anything in it to prove his address. He finds his car title and car registration both listing his P.O. Box address in Macon. We go back to the DMV. We wait another 20 minutes and he is called back to the counter.
DMV: "Do you have two documents with your name and address?"
Jeremy: "Yes" he hands her his renter's insurance printout with his street address.
DMV: "I'm not sure let me check with supervisor." Receives supervisor approval.
Jeremy: "Here is my car title and registration provided to me by your office."
DMV: "These are not acceptable because they only have your P.O. Box number on them and not your street address."
Jeremy: "They were sent by your office to my address."
DMV: "I can take your vehicle registration, change the address in our system, hand it back to you and have you sign it. Then I can accept it as proof of address."
Jeremy: "WTF? With no other documentation proving my address?"
DMV: "No, that is all you will need."

I love rules and bureaucrats. It doesn't have to make sense as long as the rules allow it.

Trust Me, I'm from the Government

The article above is from the April 21, 1952 Galesburg Register Mail. I am going through some old family papers and for whatever reason this newspaper was in the box I am working on at the moment. People wonder sometimes why I don't trust the government. I hope this article puts those questions to rest. I can just hear the commanding officer describing the exercise to the troops.

" Men, tomorrow we are going to drop you off in the desert. You are to each dig a foxhole about 4 feet deep. My advice is not to skimp on depth. Once your foxhole is complete I would advise you to get in the bottom of it and shield your eyes. We have about 300 invited guests and we are going to set off an atomic bomb for them. Should be quite a show. Hope they brought sun block. Anyway after the explosion, assuming you are not incerated, we want you to jump out of your foxhole and charge toward the spot where we set off the bomb. We call it ground zero because that is how much living stuff there will be there. Now so you fellas don't feel like your the only ones who will get cancer in the next 20 years from radiation exposure we are going to drop in 120 paratroopers. They were selected because it was either this or prison. Thanks men. Best of luck tomorrow, remember your sunglasses and I will be way in the back with the invited guests wearing the lead lined underwear."

Trust the government? Go ahead, I'll catch up with you later and see how well that worked out for  you.

Apathy

There are two things I really don't give a fuck about today. One is that overgrown rodent in Pennsylvania who predicted there will be six more weeks of winter. I mean really I have seen a few weather men who look somewhat feral and rat like but a ground hog predicting the weather. I don't think so. It is little wonder we cannot be taken seriously around the world. We have nuclear weapons but get excited about a prediction by a rodent. Maybe I should be so tough on the little guy. The way things are going we may end up with a weasel in the White House.

We took my mother in law grocery shopping today. Now that, in and of itself, isn't what I am complaining about. We can shop wherever we want but I thought we should leave the choice up to her. Much to my dismay the response was WalMart. I hate that place. The level of service sucks. The customers are rude and ignorant. They claim every day low prices while they screw consumers over by not passing on a significant portion of the huge discounts they demand from suppliers. In addition finding something on the shelf that is made in America. You could die of old age waiting in one of the two open checkout lines while 25 others have no cashiers. They don't care how long you wait and won't open another check lane no matter how many customers are waiting. There we stand in line like sheep going to the slaughter not saying a word. We wait silently while we crawl slowly to the front and get bent over the counter and sodomized by the ghost of Sam Walton. While we wait for the finishing touch on our screw job the clerk plays that popular WalMart game and tries to see how many plastic bags she can put your order in. I think the winner ends up being employee of the month.

So fuck that rodent Phil the Groundhog and WalMart!

Fear

I got busy this morning and did not think about going out to the road to get the newspaper until about 10:30. The picture above is the view out my front door. It shows only a few of about 200 crows that were in the front yard at the time. Fear? Big guy is afraid of a murder of crows? Thank you Alfred Hitchcock. I don't like scary movies. I'm not talking about the gore in today's horror movies, that has gotten so out of hand it is almost comical. No, scary movies are the ones like The Birds that can take something you see every day and make you wonder what would happen if the world was altered just a little. Stephen King has the same gift in print with books like Cell which make you wonder if you should answer your cell phone. I have lots of tattoos and my lower legs are both dedicated to the Wizard of Oz. Why? Well for one the movie always scared the hell out of me as a child. The flying monkeys, the Wicked Witch melting, Munchkins, etc.  The other reason is the Tinman didn't have a heart and I am a heartless bastard. So, next time you are out and you see a large flock of birds close, maybe you will wonder what might happen. Maybe just a little. Have a nice day?