Advice Mom Never Gave Us

Snapshots In My Time, Of My Time.....Hauntings.

DON'T waste money on expensive ipods. Simply think of your favourite tune and hum it. If you want to "switch tracks", simply think of another song you like and hum that instead.

MEN When listening to your favourite CD, simply turn up the sound to the volume you desire; then turn it down three notches. This will save your wife from having to do it.

HOME decorators. Use a roller in each hand and halve your painting time.

HOMEOWNERS Don't hesitate to tell the rest of us how much your house has appreciated in value since you bought it. The more frequently you give us updates, the greater will be our delight at your good fortune and our
admiration and respect for your financial prescience.

WHITE wine splashed onto a red wine stain will clean it up quickly. Similarly, fat splashes on clothes can be easily removed by rubbing salad onto the affected area.

ALCOHOL makes an ideal substitute for happiness.

DRIVERS. If a car breaks down or stalls in front of you, beep your horn and wave your arms frantically. This should help the car start and send them on their way.

Hunter S. Thompson Takes His Life

Snapshots In My Time, Of My Time.....Hauntings.

From CNN
"On February 20, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson took his life with a gunshot to the head at his fortified compound in Woody Creek, Colorado," said a statement issued by Thompson's son, Juan Thompson, to the Aspen Daily News.

"The family will shortly provide more information about memorial service and media contacts. Hunter prized his privacy, and we ask that his friends and admirers respect that privacy as well as that of his family."

A dispatcher for the Pitkin County Sheriff's Department confirmed Thompson's death.

Neither the family statement nor Pitkin County sheriff's officials said whether Thompson left a note, The Associated Press reported.

Thompson, 67, was associated with the "New Journalism" movement of the 1960s, in which writers -- most notably Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese -- took a more novelistic and personal approach to their subjects.

Thompson, who freely dropped cynical opinions and references to his drug and alcohol use into his stories, termed his style "gonzo journalism."

His account of a drug-fueled trip to cover a district attorneys' anti-drug conference as a writer for Rolling Stone magazine was the seed of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," perhaps his best-known work.

Subtitled "A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream," the 1971 book included his lament on the passing of the 1960s and its "sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil."

"There was no point in fighting -- on our side or theirs," he wrote. "We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark -- the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."

In "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72," he described the campaign leading to Richard Nixon's re-election as president with terms like "brutal" and "depraved"; puckishly speculated that Sen. Ed Muskie -- the early Democratic front-runner, whose poor showing in the New Hampshire primary doomed his candidacy -- was under the influence of a psychoactive drug, Ibogaine; routinely mocked candidate and senator Hubert H. Humphrey ("the Hump"); and bemoaned Nixon's looming victory by proclaiming, "Jesus, where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to become president?"

CNN national correspondent Bruce Morton -- who covered the '72 campaign for CBS -- remembered Thompson as a bigger-than-life presence who wrote "good stuff."

"He'd perked the campaign plane or the campaign bus up a whole lot, he'd come out and say, had hey, weird stuff's going to happen, Hunter is here," Morton said on CNN's "American Morning." "He was also, it's fair to say, a very good writer. You read his stuff in Rolling Stone magazine, and maybe it wasn't what you've seen and maybe it wasn't what had happened, but by golly, it was good stuff and it was fun."

Morton also recalled the last time he heard from Thompson -- more than 30 years ago.

"The campaign was over, I think early 1973, and I got a phone call, saying the CIA has me, can you lend me 20 bucks," Morton said. "I said 20 bucks is no problem, but I don't think they'll let me in at Langley [Virginia, CIA headquarters].

"You just never knew with him. He was a free spirit and a gifted one."

Thompson's other works included "The Great Shark Hunt," a collection of Watergate-era essays; "Generation of Swine," his lament on the youth of the 1980s; and his account of Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential win, "Better than Sex."

His lone novel, "The Rum Diaries," was written in 1959 and published in 1998, while a collection of letters, "The Proud Highway: The Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman," came out in 1997.

Hunter Stockton Thompson was born July 18, 1937, in Louisville, Kentucky. He served in the Air Force and was a newspaper sports editor. In 1966, he published "Hell's Angels," a fairly straightforward chronicle about the motorcycle gang, which Thompson had followed around for a year.

In 1970, he ran for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado, on a Freak Power Party platform of decriminalizing drugs. He lost in a tight race.

The peak of his fame came in the 1970s, when he contributed stories to a number of magazines.

His most notable client was Rolling Stone, where the dispatches that became "Campaign Trail" originally appeared. His battles with Rolling Stone founder Jann S. Wenner were legendary; his stories occasionally arrived on odd media, such as rolls of teletype paper, and Thompson's expense accounts were often challenged by the magazine. (Examples of Thompson's Rolling Stone work have been on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio.)

"He may have died relatively young but he made up for it in quality if not quantity of years," Paul Krassner, the veteran radical journalist and one of Thompson's former editors, told The Associated Press by phone from his Southern California home.

"It was hard to say sometimes whether he was being provocative for its own sake or if he was just being drunk and stoned and irresponsible," quipped Krassner, founder of the leftist publication The Realist and co-founder of the Youth International (YIPPIE) party.

"But every editor that I know, myself included, was willing to accept a certain prima donna journalism in the demands he would make to cover a particular story," he said. "They were willing to risk all of his irresponsible behavior in order to share his talent with their readers."

'Shock and dismay'

In recent years, Thompson wrote a column for the sports network ESPN's Web site. In his most recent piece, posted February 15, he describes shooting at golf balls like skeet with a friend near his longtime home -- he called it "a fortified compound" -- outside Aspen.

"The general reaction here is shock and dismay, because he was such a figure in town," Aspen resident John Hoag told CNN.

Still, Hoag said, Thompson remained a private person. "The most news we heard from him was when a pack of dogs killed his peacock, Attila, and he broke his leg in Hawaii last year."

Thompson also was the model for the character of "Uncle Duke" in the "Doonesbury" comic strip. But Thompson strongly disliked the characterization, once telling an interviewer that he would set "Doonesbury" creator Garry Trudeau on fire if the two ever met.

In later years, however, Thompson said he had made peace with the "Uncle Duke" portrayal.

"I got used to it a long time ago," he told Freezerbox magazine in 2003. "I used to be a little perturbed by it. It was a lot more personal ... It no longer bothers me."

In 1980, actor Bill Murray portrayed Thompson in the film "Where the Buffalo Roam." And in 1998, the film "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" was released, based on Thompson's book and starring Johnny Depp as the journalist. A new film reportedly is in production based on Thompson's novel "The Rum Diaries."

The writer himself, Hoag said, will be missed. "There's no one in the world these days who writes the truth ... as he seems to, to me," he said. "He spoke to the world and said what people were afraid to say."

Spiders? Anyone? Not me!

Snapshots In My Time, Of My Time.....Hauntings.
2nd Grade

When people today hear the word, "Arachnophobia", they think of a preposterous Hollywood movie, but arachnophobia is a very real, serious problem for many people. It can become an obsession, affecting their everyday lives in unimaginable ways.

I have seen the movie and it makes me crazy. Spiders make me scream! Just thinking about them makes me jumpy. Even now I am jumpy. I remember when the fear set in. I was in 2nd grade and it was a saturday morning. I woke up and had a slight itch in my head. I scratched my head off and on that morning. I had an itch that would not go away. ((What is that on my leg? Why am I jumping at this computer?? And letting out yelps and stifled screams at the pictures of spiders, I just googled up for an image to place here?))

OKAY! I will try to keep the feeling that something is crawling up my leg to a minimum. Okay...I did not comb my hair right away. The saturday morning ritual was cartoons and then breakfast. And then even more cartoons. The itch persisted. This may sound like a spider urban legend but is is not. It is real. It was real.

I finally wanted to get to the bottom of that itch. I got a comb and tried to comb my hair. Maybe it was dry and it needed some oil on it. There was a small lump or what I thought was a knot of hair caught in my comb. I pulled and it did not come out. I decided to try to separate the hair and untangle the knot. When I put my fingers up there on teh right side of my head. I felt movement. Small leggy movement. Waht the hell was it? I began to scream at the top of my lungs. My mother came running. It was a big ole' nasty spider. (I feel something moving right now in my hair. I need a drink..now!)

A big old spider was caught in my hair and he was moving those legs trying to get out of my hair. I continued to scream. (I'll be back, I am going for bourbon and ginger to calm my nerves...I kid you not...I am freaking out right now.) I could not get it out. I ran for scissors. I would cut it out. My mother grabbed the scissors and would not let me do it. She had my father hold me down and she worked on my hair. My father held my legs and arms and I continued to scream. This was no little spider. This was a big spider that had been in my hair I guess all night and was not all tangled up in my hair. I could still feel it moving. I screamed and my mother got a big book from the book shelf and said she was going to smash it. She could not get it out. It would have to be killed first and them removed.

(I am going back for my 2nd B and G...this time I will make it more bourbon and less ginger ale. Good old Jack Daniels!) My mother told me to hold still. She stretched my hair out and them BOOM! went the book. No more itching and not more could I feel legs moving around. She combed it out and then washed my hair. I never got over that spider. I have had a horrible fear since. It is more than fear. Looking at them makes me scream out loud.

I thought the following was another spider urban legend but is is not. There are a lot of spider urban legends but this not. I got this email awhile ago and was upset for 4 days. Seeing this picture now had just made me scream outloud.( Hopefully the neighbors have not called the police thinking that something is happening over here. After seeing this and hearing about these camel spiders that our troops have to deal with, I knew that I could never go to the desert. NEVER !!! EVER!!!!

This came from a soldier over in Bagdad.

From someone stationed in Baghdad. He was recently bitten by a camel spider which was hiding in his sleeping bag. I thought you'd like to see what a camel spider looks like. It'll give you a better idea of what our troops are dealing with. Enclosed is a picture of his friend holding up two spiders. Warning: not for the squeamish!

This picture is a perfect example of why you don't want to go to the desert. These are 2 of the biggest I've ever seen. With a vertical leap that would make a pro basketball player weep with envy (they have to be able to jump up on to a camels stomach after all), they latch on and inject you with a local anesthesia so you can't feel it feeding on you. They eat flesh, not just suck out your juices like a normal spider. Here is what Camel Spiders look like in all their glory.

All I can say after seeing that picture is God be with the troops.

The Life of Pi

Snapshots In My Time, Of My Time.....Hauntings.

I have just begun this book: The Life of Pi

Rats In the Corn

Snapshots In My Time, Of My Time.....Hauntings.

Circlets of dung,
dried and powdered
plug my veins,
till they run cold.

Rats in the COOOOORRRNNNNN!
Rats in the corn!

Pools of dreams
emptied and mottled,
escape my mind,
void and scummed.

Rats in the COOOOORRRNNNNN!
Rats in the corn!

Haloes of happy,
vanis and in wake,
leave a trail-
heliumed with hate.

Rats in the COOOOORRRNNNNN!
Rats in the corn!

Forks of pain
stab and pierce,
a blue bowl of violence
swirled with hate.

Rats in the COOOOORRRNNNNN!
Rats in the corn!

Like rats in the corn
feeding non-stop,
you devour my life,
stealing heart bites.

Brand New Look

Snapshots In My Time, Of My Time.....Hauntings.

Something was going haywire with my last template. I really liked it but...it had a bug or two. I may go back to it sometime in the future, but now it is this look for a while. Happy Valentines Day!

The Rock, The Window and the Lawn Chair

Snapshots In My Time, Of My Time.....Hauntings.

2nd Grade

Up until the 4th grade, we lived in a big 2 story house in the city in a quiet residential area. We were a block away from the city park where there was a zoo inside. A small one but they had a good selection of animals. There was a big lion that roared all day long and you could hear him from blocks away in the day and in the middle of the night.

One summer day on a saturday morning I was sitting in a lawn chair under the cherry tree. There was a big cherry tree in the back and side yard that towered over the house and most of the yard. We had lots of birds and cherries were always dropping. We never really ate any of the cherries as the tree was so big we could not really reach any of them to pick. So there I was sitting in a lawn chair minding my own business. I was alone listening to the lion roar and watching the birds flit from branch to branche eating cherries.

The silence was soon broken by the sounds of my brother who was three years younger than me running around. He was running and playing by himself and soon decided to pick up a rock. He threw lots of rocks at nothing in particular.

My parents car was parked in the driveway on the other side of the chain link fence that divided the front and back yards. I watched my brother pick up a rock and he threw it up into the air. It landed. It landed with a lot of force. It landed with a lot of force right on the car's front windshield. The windshield cracked. There was a small gooseegg in the center with a spider of cracks spreading out from the gooseegg. I looked at him. He looked at me. He took off running to the darker recesses of the back yard.

I got up and went into the house to let my parents know what happened. That the car windshield was broken and that my brother did it. I saw my mother first and told her. She called my father. I told them both that my brother did it and what happened. My mother sent for my brother. They asked him what happened and he lied. He said that I did it. I defended myself and said that he was lying, that I was sitting in the lawn chair, just sitting and he was throwing rocks. They believed him and not me.

They always believed him and of course I got his beating. I was the whipping child. Out came the extension cord, long and black. I was whipped with that cord until whelps appeared all over my arms and legs and still I protested I did not it. The more I said it was not me the more they whipped. You would think that if a child is still protesting during a beating that maybe they really were innocent. Not may parents. They only struck me more. Finally it was over and I went to my room and cried and tried not to let the bedspread touch any of the places on my arms and legs that had whelps on them.

They always believed him and I got many of his beatings due to his lying. I finally learned to avoid him or not be in the same place at the same time when things happened so that I really could not be associated with it.

It did not matter what I said about anything, I got beatings if it was raining outside and if my parents really wanted to make a beating bad, they would wait until I was in the bathtub taking a bath. That extension cord on wet skin is 1000 times worse than it was on dry skin. I was the whipping child but eventually I got old enought to defend myself. I would not hit back but I would run if I could get away or I would pick up a sofa cushion if I could not and use it to block blows. Finally I was old enough to get out of that house permanently.

Yes, I was the whipping child and the extension cord was not the only thing used. Just the main one. Shoes, large metal kitchen spoons and hair brushes can do just as much damage.

Glassy Burgers

Snapshots In My Time, Of My Time.....Hauntings.

3rd Grade

When I think of hamburgers now I think of wonderfully, juicy chargrilled burgers. Warm and hearty. That was not always the case. When I was in third grade I had the wonderful opportunity to have some glassy burgers. If you have been here before, you know my parents were not the best of parents. In fact they were extremely abusive...mainly my mother.

I remember one summer day, it was a saturday afternoon and just my mother and I were in the kitchen. She had made me a hamburger...just me. My father was at work and I cannot recall where my brother was. It looked good. It was the average hamburger on a whitebread hamburger bun. I took a bite. I felt a crunch. I chewed again and I felt more crunching. It was glass. Glass in that hamburger. She had put it in. I just know it. My gut told me so and continues to tell me so to this day. I spit out what was in my mouth and told her it was crunchy like glass. I was not going to eat anymore.

She just looked at me and then told me not to eat it. There was not any of the normal alarm or panic a mother would have if their child had just eaten glass. Imagine what glass, ground up can do to your insides. Not a good thing at all. She just calmly told me not to eat it if it was crunchy. I rinsed out my mouth but there was still glass in it. I felt crunching for a few more minutes. I brushed my teeth and still from time to time there was crunching for the next few hours.

There was only a hamburger for me...not hamburgers made for the whole family. She did not eat one. I felt this was very strange and it dawned on me that even more that I was an unwanted child. Always had been an unwanted child.

Soon after that I began to have all sorts of stomach problems that lasted for months. I would eat and get sick. I was constanely throwing up and deemed to have a delicate stomach. I was not really taken to the doctor to get any help. I was doctored up at home with lots of Pepto Bismol. I began to eat ever so slightly and soon I got the name of "Chicken Bones" because I was so thin. So thin that for years, my mother tried to fatten me up by making me eat a piece of bread with butter on it and a glass of milk each night before I went to bed.

I do not know if she was trying to undo what she had done. I will never know. How do you ask your mother if she is trying to poison you or kill you? To this day I have gastro problems..lower and upper GI issues. I know they started in childhood. Ground glass and lord knows what else can do damaging things to a small child.

Fish Bones

Snapshots In My Time, Of My Time.....Hauntings.

My entire childhood

When I was small my mom liked to serve fish. Baked. Fried. The bad thing about it is that it was always fish with bones. Tiny white bones that made the fish impossible to eat. I grew to hate fish and it did not take long for that to happen. I was always getting fish bones caught in my throat. My mom would always say be care to look for bones adn to be sure to pick each piece apart to be sure you are not going to swallow a bone. I always looked yet I always swallowed a bone. Bone after bone after bone.

Those bones always got caught in my throat and then the panic would set in. I could not get it out yet I could feel it in the back of my throat sticking me. No matter how hard I swallowed it would not go away. What was the cure? Bread. My mother would get up from the table and get me a piece of dry white bread and tell me to eat it. The bread was supposed to be stronger that the delicate fish bones and break, removing it from my throat. Well that never worked.

I would eat the bread and damned if those bones weren't flexible. They would bent but they would not break. I remember some times I ended having to go to the pediatrician because 2 days after the fish the bone was still there. Finally as I got older I began to rebel.

I would refuse to eat any fish and we would have lone battles at the dining room table because I would not eat fish. I remember my mother sitting across from me and staring at me for 3 hours in a test of wills. Needless to say, I won. I did not eat the fish. I grew to hate all fish and never really ate any fish as an adult until I decided that not all fish was bad....just the fish with bones.

I bought all sort of bonelss fish, filleted fish and salmon. Today I am a fish lover. The thing that I still cannot understand to this day is why my mother would give fish with bones to kids knowing that there was always a bone stuck in my throat? How many times does it take tolearn that lesson? Apparently she never did. She still eats fish with bones it in. That is just about the only kind of fish she eats. When she came to my house many years ago, I served grilled salmon and that really was the first time she had fish at home with no bones. Now she does buy that.

To this day I never eat fish at her house. No matter what kind it is. It brings back memories of too many bad angry mealtimes, me choking on fish bones and me being unable to get that one fishbone that was stuck in my throat out... for days.