"Living in the Desert..."

I live in Midland, TX. If you don’t know where Midland, TX is located, welcome to 99.9% of Americans. Midland, TX is located Midway between Dallas and El Paso (hence the name Midland for those of you who are not the brightest among us).

There’s a vital fact about Midland, TX, and that fact is Midland I located in the middle of the desert. Well, at least it looks like a desert. There’s sand everywhere, there’s cactus and stuff that will stick you everywhere. There’s something called mesquite trees.

Now, if you’ve never seen a mesquite tree, don’t let the name fool you. The mesquite tree is really on tree at all. If you live around trees (I lived in Georgia once and was born in Arkansas so I’ve seen my share of tree….though we still haven’t tress like some of them trees you foke in California got.) you would call the mesquite a bush before you’d call it a tree.

Today the temperature was 103 degrees (yes, Fahrenheit). So let me tell you a story about the heat in the desert.

Today, I decided, would be a great day to move my junk from Abilene to Midland. Only a two hour drive. So, I hook a trailer up to my blazer and hit the road, load all my junk from my apartment and head out of Abilene around noon.

Now, if you’ve ever lived in the desert, you know it starts getting a bid tepid around noon. So, as I’m cruising along in my automobile (feel free to sing along) I notice the temperature gauge getting a bit warm. Ordinarily, this is only a two hour drive from Abilene to Midland. Pulling a trailer in an old beat up Blazer, the trip looked like it was going to take me even longer today.

So I pull over and let the blazer cool off a bit before hitting the road again. Actually, I pulled over to let myself cool off a bit too.

I go into a store and get a Coke Zero. Standing in line the following conversation occurs in front of me:

“BOY Herbert (to the store clerk) it’s hot enough to fry an egg out there”

Let me interrupt this story for just a bit. First thing I noticed about this conversation is the fact that evidently there is an unwritten rule or law somewhere that states you can only fry eggs when the outdoor temperature reaches a certain point. It dawned on me, I have no idea what that point would be! And here I’ve been frying eggs for many years, disregarding the outdoor temperature completely! Man was I lucky to hear about the current law! Just think, I could have been arrested, tried, and put in jail for frying eggs when the outdoor temperature was too low! The shame and humiliation would be enough to ruin a fella! Not just the jail time, but I’m sure I would also have to register with my local law enforcement agency and become forever branded as a registered egg frying felon. You just can’t live with that stigma over your heard! I’m glad I heard this part of the conversation. For the record, I no longer fry eggs until I can find out what temperature it needs to be outside in order to do so. So put the phone down and stop dialing 911 or America’s Most Wanted to turn me in! I’ve changed my ways! I’m now reformed. I’ve seen the light!

Bubba and Herbert continue their conversation.

Now, I should point out, I’m not sure of the other gentleman’s name. But in Texas, if there are two men talking, you are almost guaranteed that one of them has the name Bubba. Since I already knew Herbert’s name, I could only assume the other gentleman’s name was Bubba.

But I digress…

Bubba says, “Yeah, it’s hot out there all right! It’s so hot it could peel paint!”

This bit of news concerned me. After all, I was there with an overheated pile of junk blazer. Now I learn that it’s so hot outside, I also have to be concerned with the paint peeling off the door panels. I decided not to worry about the blazers paint, after all, I was too busy looking around the store to make sure there were no cops staking it out looking for violent egg frying felons. I’m sure my guilt was plastered all over my face.

Herbert says, “Yeah, but this heat sure beats the cold! I like hot weather!”

Now, that last statement got me to thinking, “Does Herbert really like hot weather or was he just saying that?”

After all, nobody likes 103 degree weather in the desert do they? I mean, what creature on God’s earth really likes the heat?

Now I know what you’re thinking, camels like the heat and this is what I thought also. But then I started thinking, “Do camels really like hot weather or are they just stuck living in it because they are, after all, camels?” I mean, if you’re born with a hump on your back to hold water for those vast journeys across the desert, you are pretty much destined to be in the desert.

But do camels really like the hot weather? If I gave a camel the choice, would he (or she) choose to live in the desert or would they rather choose to live in say….I don’t know….Alaska or Canada?

Can you imagine how good the camel hunting season would be in Canada if all the camels decided to live there instead of living in the desert? Can you eat camel? Is camel meat any good? I bet it taste like chicken.

All these things concern me. I imagine, given the choice, camels would not choose to live in the desert! We are placing them in an environment they hate!

So, for that reason, I’m now beginning the “save the camel” campaign officially! Let’s get them camels out of the desert and ship them all to Canada!

I think the world would be a much happier place!

Come next year, we’ll all have a big camel steak (or rib) cookout at my place!

Please let me know if you’d like to contribute to the cause.

BTW, did I mention, it was very hot here today?

Oh…and I made it safely to Midland. Thank you for your concern.

"Tattoos..."

Just got in from Abilene so I’m a bit tired and in not a tremendously rambling kinda mood. But I need to get something off my chest….

After speaking with a certain someone (who will again remain anonymous) something occurred to me. Yeah, my mind is twister, deranged, and demented….so it doesn’t take much to get me to thinking weird thoughts.

I’ve noticed a very popular trend, as of late, of people who get tattoos that are written in Chinese or Japanese or some foreign language. They have these symbols you see, and the tattoo artist tells you that the symbol he’s giving you means something like, “Strength” or “love” or “honor” or something like that.

Now, have you ever taken Chinese? How do you know the symbol stands for strength? This certain unmentioned person sent me a pic of a Chinese symbol and said it meant something to that effect (sorry…can’t remember exactly what it meant).

Now, being the sick twisted person I am, if I were a tattoo artist, I would be putting said symbol on you and telling you it means “strength” when in all actuality, the symbol might mean something like, “I’m gay” or “I’m mentally challenged (to stay politically correct here…I’m sure you can see I’m worried about being politically correct)”.

You would never know! There are thousands of people walking the streets of these United States with a Chinese symbol permanently inked upon their bodies. Proudly displaying their symbol thinking it means strength.

I’m sure the guy at your dry cleaners (oops…that wasn’t politically correct at all was it?) gets a big kick out of your tattoo when you show up and HE actually knows Chinese. I see them chuckle to themselves all the time.

So, if you’re going to get a tattoo….especially if you’re going to get one in a different language, my advice to you would be to do some research first. Don’t take your tattoo artist’s word for it.

You never know, he could be a prankster like me!

Until then, I’ll just assume your Tattoo means, “I eat dog dung” or something like that. It very well could.

How to Fix Your Brain...

Ok. Some of you (my faithful readers) have written and mentioned the mental imagery in my last post. It seems me being violated by the doctor was not a lovely thing for you to think about. You think it’s bad to think about or imagine…you should be the one bending over the table!

But, thank you very much, you got me to thinking about our brain and how it functions.

Please understand something. I stated earlier my theories concerning exercise. What you don’t understand is that I’m not just talking about physical exercise; I’m also talking about mental exercise. All this thinking you all are making me do (or as we say in Texas, “Ya’ll”) is starting to take its toll! I’ve thought more since starting this blog than I have in the previous 10 years! As you can see by the dates, this is my third post I’ve made today! My brain is getting a work out today, I’m sure it will be sore tomorrow.

What do you do for a sore brain? It’s not like you can rub Vicks Vapor Rub on it or Ben-Gay (and no….I’ve NEVER been gay!). So, in preparation for my upcoming brain soreness tomorrow, I again had to think, “what am I going to do with a sore brain?”

Then it dawned on me, I’ll just think about Atomic Bomb or some other muscle cream. I figure, if I think about it, it will make the soreness go away.

Someone was telling me (I’m not going to mention any names any longer because some of you have written asking when I’m going to mention you by name….uh….and I’m not going to mention by name who that someone who wrote wanting to be mentioned by name is either…WOW this doesn’t make any sense even to me!) that the mental imagery was dirty.

Well, I suggested they think about soap because I figured if you want to wash your brain, thinking about soap should do the trick.

I mean, after all, when my brain itches (and don’t tell me I’m the only one with brain itches) I think about sand paper to scratch it! Isn’t that what you do?

Since I was the one who gave you the lovely mental images, I figured it was my responsibility to let you know how to fix your brain.

It’s all in what you think about!

Me? I choose to think about nothing. Sad thing is, then I decide to type about the nothing that I was thinking about.

But that’s not as sad as you coming here and reading it! You must REALLY be hard up for entertainment to do so!

Now, think about something clean. Ivory soap for instance, and that should repair the damage I did in my last post.

Oh…and you’re welcome.

"Speaking of Death..."

Even though in my last post I declared I would live to be at least 100 it got me to thinking and I think that I may have over-stated the length of my life. My family has a bad habit of dying off pretty young in life. One grandfather died of a massive heart-attack at 42 years of age. That used to seem old to me, but it’s very young now. Trust me.

Thinking of how my family dies young, and thinking of mortality itself it got me a little concerned. I started thinking of my own impending death.

You should know, I have nothing really to fear about heart-disease, cancer, or any of the other nasty things that can kill you (including old age). It dawned on me, no matter how well I take care of myself, I’m still going to die young.

You see, if you know me, you know I’m a bit accident-prone. I believe I mentioned this in my first post. I have been in 14 automobile accidents (at last count), I have totaled 4 cars just setting at a red light and being rear-ended! I have a big scar on my fore head from when a CRAZY WOMAN driver ran a GREEN light and rammed into me! She didn’t even look!

Not only automobile accidents but I have had other accidents as well. For instance, I’ve fallen over 20 feet off a ladder that was SUPPOSED to stay in the tree. (FYI, when you cut a limb it gets lighter and even though your ladder is on the tree side of the branch, your ladder will have nothing to lean against any longer. There’s such a thing as gravity, you may have heard of it? It will pull you ever more rapidly toward the ground. Now, the fall didn’t hurt me. It was the sudden stop at the bottom. -looking through my Guinness Book of World Records- Just what IS the longest recorded parenthesis ever written? I think I’m in the running but not sure.) What was I even talking about? Oh yeah…my brushes with death….

So, I figure I have no worries with all the ailments that plague your “normal” folk! I’ll be terribly disfigured, possibly decapitated, in a horrible accident of some kind. And, knowing as how I’m FAR from normal, this will be no typical accident like an automobile. No, I will be the guy you watch on the evening news that was trampled by a herd of platypuses. Mmm…..that’s interesting. I’ve never thought about what the plural for platypus was. Is it platypusi? Or, platypuses? Or perhaps it’s platypusy? Who knows? And another thought just hit my ADHD brain….do platypuses actually run in a herd? Or is a group of platypuses a tribe, a flock, a pride? Mmm…all interesting questions to research on the internet later. Be sure to get back with me on what you learn.

But I digress (don’t I say that a lot?).

I started looking for some symptoms that I was dying. After all, I’d just seen the doctor and even though he’d told me I was completely healthy, I didn’t really trust his opinion since he’s out to kill me anyway. I learned at that doctors visit that I don’t have prostate cancer. I learned this by being brutally violated in unspeakable ways by my doctor! I thought about calling the police but felt too ashamed to call. I doubt they would have believed what he’d done to me anyway.

But again, I digress.

I started looking for signs that I was dying and I’ve come up with a theory. Please allow me to explain….

One day, not long ago, my wife decided I would look really cool if I started wearing sandals like all the teenagers are wearing. Of course you realize, there’s absolutely no way a 37 year old fat man is going to look anything like a teenager. Nor is he even going to look cool wearing sandals. He’s going to look like a 37 year old fat man TRYING to look cool wearing sandals to look like a teenager. Well, that’s the look I pulled off perfectly.

If you’ve ever worn sandals, attempting to pull off the impossible and look like a cool teenager, you will know you wear said sandals with no socks.

I feel it only prudent to mention here, that this is indeed the correct way to wear sandals. Apparently something happens when you pass the age of 50 and you forget this fact. At that age, you go find the longest socks you can possibly find, doesn’t matter what color, and you wear those long socks with your sandals. If you’re one of those people, SHAME ON YOU! And then you stick those wrinkly legs in shorts as well? I’m shuddering now with the mental image. If you’re one of those people, put some pants on and put your wing-tips back on. Do your part to clean up the environment!

But yet again, I digress…..(hard to keep up with an ADHD mind isn’t it?)

That night, I get home. Mind you, it had been a long HOT day in the Houston area. If you’ve never been to Houston I’m still sure you’ve heard about Houston’s humidity, it’s legendary. Just about every day the humidity runs in the 210% range so there’s a lot of moisture in the air. I take my sandals off….

WHAT IS THAT???? I knew what that was…it was the smell of death! That putrid, decaying, rotting smell that is the smell of decaying flesh. The smell of death.

So my theory is this, you start dying from your feet first. I know, apparently my feet are already mostly dead. They already have the smell of death when I wear sandals with no socks. I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before they start smelling like death when I too wear wing-tips.

I can deal with dying feet. You can always cover them up. It’s when it moves up my body and the rest of me starts dying. If it starts at the bottom and moves up, there are some parts there that I don’t want to die. There are some parts that I would rather die FOR.

So if you’re worried about death…start smelling your feet at night.

I now amend my last post and say I’ll probably live to be 38. And that’s only 3 weeks away.

How to Slowly Kill Yourself

In case you are just a reader and not a friend (actually, not sure if I have any friends left after all these years) you are probably not familiar with all the details of my life. Don’t worry, you don’t have to be well versed into the intricacies of my life in order to follow this blog. As a matter of fact, I somehow find it highly improbable that you could follow this blog in the first place.

But I digress. I have made a recent change in my life. Well, that’s not exactly true. The soon to be X wife decided to make MANY recent changes in my life when she left me. Let’s just leave it at that for now. I’m almost CERTAIN this will not be the last time she appears in this blog.

Mmmm…that got me to thinking….I like to keep my anonymity and I’m sure she would also. I picked out a nick for me, maniacalramblings, I think it would only be fair to pick out a nick for her. So here’s your challenge, my faithful readers (as if there were any), we need to come up with a cool nick for my x-wife. Send me your ideas (maniacalramblings@yahoo.com) and I’ll post what her new name will be at some point in the future.

ANYWAY, I digress again. One of these recent changes is a move from the Houston area, to Abilene and now to Midland, TX. When I arrived in Midland I decided I needed to see a doctor and get a full physical. Now, I know what you’re wondering, “why a full physical?” You have to understand, I’m of the male variety of our fair species. If you’ve ever known a male, you will know that we are allergic to doctors. We refuse to go to doctors. We believe if we just don’t know we have cancer, everything will be ok.

But I have kids to take care of and heart disease runs in my family…blah…blah…blah (that’s all I caught from the speech my mother was giving me…..I’m sure it went on from there but I just heard Charlie Brown’s teacher after a certain point).

Now I know why I never went to doctors….they are only out there to kill you! It’s true! My doctor has me committing slow suicide! I’ll explain in a bit.

But I figured I needed to document this fact so that when I die, my kids will have proof that it was the doctor who killed me and they can sue the doctor and live in the lap of luxury they so richly deserve! So I’m leaving it up to you, my faithful readers (both of you) to make sure this reaches the proper authorities in the event of my untimely demise!

You may wonder, how is your doctor trying to kill you? To wonder so would be wise on your part. So allow me to explain….

The first thing my doctor told me to do was to start getting some exercise! Can you believe the utter disdain and nerve of this man? I told him my fingers are in better shape now than they’ve ever been in all my life!

You may be thinking to yourself (provide your own echo) “exercise is good!” But you’d be wrong. See, I have a theory…..

I figure your heart is only going to beat so many times during your life. Right? So this doctor wants me to go out there and start running? We all know what happens when you run, your heart starts beating faster! The more I run, the faster my heart beats! Every beat it beats it’s one less it’s going to beat! YES! YOU SEE IT NOW! I CAN SEE THE RECOGNITION IN YOUR FACE! I’M JUST TAKING DAYS OFF MY LIFE EVERY STEP I TAKE! The doctor is trying to kill me, he’s just doing it slowly so he can get away with it! (how did you like THAT hanging participle Cindy?)

Pardon me for the personal reference in that last paragraph but I was dared to include her in my blog J

Another thing the doctor is doing to kill me slowly is he’s taking me off the so-called “fatty foods”. I find this to be a current misnomer in our culture as well.

What do you do when you want your car to be well lubricated? You don’t want your piston to weld itself to the cylinder wall after all! You add what? OIL! It lubricates. I do pretty much the same thing.

When you change your wheel bearings, when you pack an axle, what do you add? GREASE! Why? Because you want it well lubricated. I do pretty much the same thing.

See, I figure I need my blood flowing smoothly through my veins. I figure the best way to accomplish this is to lubricate my veins. Makes sense doesn’t it? How do you lubricate your veins? Bacon GREASE, gravy, hamburgers, all that stuff with grease in it is probably good for you but the doctor won’t tell you that because he’s trying to kill you slowly!

NOT ME! I’m not going to let him do it to me!

You make your own choice. If you want to die a slow and painful death. If you want to commit suicide slowly at the hands of your doctor then so be it. But as for me, I’m going to do the best thing for my body and sit on my fat butt and keep that heart rate down! And just to make sure I keep that blood flowing smoothly, I’m now going to eat another piece of bacon!

I’ll probably live to be at least 100!

The Purpose of This Site

It dawned on my that many of you, my readers, would at first wonder what is the purpose of my blog. Actually, when I told a friend I was going to author a blog again she said, "A what?" "What's a blog?"

Seeing as how she’s probably going to read this post, I’m going to refrain from making any snide comments concerning her.

But every good blog (of which, this is not one) needs to have an over-riding purpose. Wouldn’t you agree? There are so many great causes in this world that people rally behind. I could write a blog about saving the whales and a great many people would come and post comments about how we indeed need to save the whales. (I have no idea why whales need saving to be honest. I’ve never even eaten whale meat before! It must be good though because everyone’s out there saving them whales. Probably because they are pretty to look at when they crest the water…that’s all I can figure they’re good for).

Or I could write a blog about the rights of the heterosexual. I know what you’re thinking….but everybody else is writing about gay rights. I care nothing for gay rights seeing as how I’m not a gay. Someone needs to stand up for the little guy! Write a blog about the rights of the heterosexual! Let’s have a tv show about friends who AREN’T gay! Let’s have ONE SEASON of “The Amazing Race” without stuffing in our token gays! For that matter, can we NOT find 12 people in America to be stranded together on some far away place and “Survive” without having a gay parade around in front of us nude (Richard Hatch on the first Survivor for those of you who missed that reference)? YES! We need someone standing up and writing a blog that says, “I’m tired of having it shoved down my throat! (uh…no pun intended). How about our heterosexual rights of not having to see such things!!!!

But alas, this blog is not about that either.

Ahhh….political! There are a great many political blogs out there for you to read. Whether you are Right leaning (conservative) or Left leaning (Gay…oh…sorry….Freudian slip….Liberal) you can find a blog out there beckoning us to follow their cause. But this blog is not political in nature either (though I may tend to wander there from time to time).

The rain forest is being burned away at a remarkable rate! But I don’t really care about rain forest. I’ve never been so this blog is not about the rain forest either.

AIDS? Do we REALLY need a blog about AIDS? I mean…come on….how difficult is that to understand? Keep it in your pants and you won’t catch AIDS. Seems pretty simple to me. So this is not a blog about AIDS either.

Oh sure, just like the aforementioned causes, I could make this blog a very pertinent to our times kind of blog. But I’ve chosen not to do such a thing.

No, what I’ve chosen to do is sort of make this the Seinfeld blog. You remember that show don’t you? (You’re showing your age if you do!) It was a show about what? That’s right, nothing. So, that’s exactly what my blog is going to be. It’s going to be a blog about nothing at all. Natta. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Yeah, it’s pretty much going to be what it’s titled, a blog that’s the ramblings of a pure ADHD maniac.

Pretty much whatever POPS into my head I’m going to type and then post. I’m not going to proof-read (I’m sure you’ve already noticed I’m not…it’s pretty evident). I’m not even going to go back and read what I typed. I’m just going to type whatever comes to mind (or fingers) and give you an idea what’s it’s like to have ADHD the best I can!

You may notice, from time to time (or actually more often than that) that I LOVE Parenthesis. You know why? That’s how an ADHD mind works. You’re on one topic (or at times three or four) and something else pops in your mind and you have to say something about what you just thought about (if you can remember).

So if you’re wanting to read a blog about absolutely nothing….you’ve come to the right place. If you’re wanting to read a blog about some great cause out there, you suck.

Who I Am

So here I am…sitting at the computer…wondering, “What in the world can I do to kill more time?” I mean, I already chat with a lot of people on yahoo. I’ve made many friends. But for some reason, I always pick people with life’s to make friends with. Seeing as how I don’t have much of a life to speak of, I find myself with free time while all my friends are at work.

Many of these “friends” have encouraged me to get back to keeping a blog. There, that’s my first and last short story. From here on out, hang on! I tend to ramble (uh…please notice the title to my blog).

I have to warn you, you are reading the maniacal ramblings of a 37 year old man with ADHD. Hopefully you can keep up!

WHO AM I?

I’m not really anyone. Actually, a more accurate phrase would be, I’m a nobody. I’ve never done anything particularly courageous. I’ve never pulled someone from a burning building. I’ve never saved a dying cat (on the contrary actually but that’s for another article), I’ve never even caused anyone to barf up a huge chunk of food they were choking on because they refuse to chew properly! (uh…how many times is it again? 20? 10? 3? Yeah…I think 3 is it).

I have never done anything daring. I’ve never jumped out of a perfectly good airplane and there’s a good reason for this. Something you should know about me is, I’m very accident-prone. I’m sure you’ve read about people jumping out of airplanes and the very first time they do so, their parachute doesn’t open. Well, I’m the guy whose parachute would have opened, had I remembered to strap it onto my back before jumping out of said airplane.

Yeah….I’m a nobody. You won’t find my name listed on any of the pages of “Who’s Who”. No, not even in the honorable mention section.

I don’t know anyone famous, I’ve never donated a kidney or any other body part to anyone famous, I’ve never even met anyone famous (well…actually I have but that fact really didn’t fit into this paragraph so don’t start writing me e-mails later when you read I’ve met famous people). I’m a nobody.

As a matter of fact, if People Magazine were to do an article on my life, they would quickly be sucked into the black hole of my infinite lack of notoriety and bankrupt themselves.

That’s who I am.

Hope you enjoy reading what I have to say! Believe me when I say, I’m not planning on saying much, but more about that in my next article.