I’m over my bronchitis thanks to modern antibiotics, which are  great (I wish everything worked so well in my life). “Zed” was a no-show this weekend, which is too bad. I really wanted to make up for begging off last weekend for the first and only time since I’ve been seeing the lady these past seven years (has it really been that long?), oh well, I’ll see her again soon, that will have to suffice.

John Huntsman has dropped out of the Republican Race, and I’m thinking that the race will eventually come down to a choice between Mitt Romney (Liberal in Republican’s Clothing) and Ron Paul (Orthodox Libertarian) by the time the Virginia Primary rolls around on Super Tuesday and they’re my only choices on the ballot anyway. There is no provision for writing in a candidate in the Primary here in Virginia so I won’t be able to vote for my favorite (Noneof Theabove) whatever happens. Newt Gingrich (Former Speaker of the House and all ’round Asshole), who seemed to be coming on strong before Iowa has now got to win in South Carolina to stay in the race. If he then wins big on Super Tuesday he might even live up to his own expectations, but so far he’s been running fourth in a field that now consists of five midgets, and not even appearing on Virginia’s ballot when he lives here isn’t helping matters.

That will be all for now, I have to get back to work. I just wanted to say hello, but I’ll type at you some more another time.

On the political front as expected, Mitt Romney won the New Hampshire handily. The pundits who previously coined the phrase “anybody but Romney” are now talking like he is the inevitable nominee. Surprisingly Ron Paul had a strong second place showing, which should give pause to the other candidates. South Carolina is next on the Primary trail, and the tone of many of the candidates has taken on a shrieking quality as they desperately try to convince the electorate that only they have a plan to pull our nation out of this effing morass.

That will do for now, these damn meds make me want to sleep all the time. I think I’ll take a nap for a while. I’ll type at you later.

Well over the weekend there were two consecutive Republican debates in New Hampshire without Michele Bachman who dropped out of the race. I missed both debates, I’ve been feeling bad enough without listening to a group of grown men bickering like kids in a schoolyard. I hear that Saturday’s debate was a regular brawl between Paul, Gingrich and Santorum, who are apparently all in second place in the polls right now. Romney tried to rise above it all, but at the end of the day he’s still Romney, the candidate who never met a stand he couldn’t reverse later. He may actually wind up as the Nominee, in which case I think we’ll be saddled with four more years of Obama throwing money around like we still have any and knocking heads with a mostly Republican Congress that wouldn’t agree with him if he said that water was wet. Even if Romney wins the general election, I’m not so sure it won’t be the same thing. Most Conservatives see him as a Liberal in Republican clothing so he won’t get the kind of monolithic support that a REAL Republican could expect in Congress, and as he’s fond of saying, he’s an experienced businessman, the problem is that Government is not a business, and can’t be run like one, though I expect that the idiot will try, and find out the first time he tries to issue an executive order outside the Executive Branch that a consensus with Congress is required to do more than bring in the morning paper.

Enough of politics. “Zed” called yesterday, and wanted to come over for her usual Ogre-sized portion of drunken debauchery. I had to beg off for the first and only time in nearly seven years of seeing this woman. I explained to her that I was just not up to our usual three or four hours of strenuous sex followed by a four and a half mile walk back to my vehicle from her house (I am always the designated driver for these little events, and I have to park far enough away from her place that her husband doesn’t put two and two together). I suggested instead that we go see the movie “Warhorse” together to which she replied that it would be too frustrating to sit next to me for two and a half hours and NOT fuck my brains out. Needless to say, we didn’t go to the movie… and in fairness, the last movie that we went to several years ago ended up with us quietly fucking in the back of the theater. On the one hand I’m gratified that she likes the sex so much, and the other I worry that it’s all she likes.

That will do for now, I still have a job to do. Hopefully this damn cold will be over soon so that the next time “Zed” calls I’ll be able to rise to the occasion.

The Ghost called here several times in the days following our brief meeting. All his calls have gone unanswered. “Beta” commented that she thought he was becoming another “Que” (you really need to download the book), to which I responded that “Morden” didn’t even know who “Que” was. It looks like he’s stopped calling for now, probably because he’s in jail. If he does call back here, I think I’ll talk to him long just enough to tell him not to call again, but hopefully he’s already gotten that message (it took “Que” years to finally get that message even though I beat her over the head with it constantly).

Enough of the Ghost. Mitt Romney squeaked into first place in the Iowa caucuses earlier this week, edging out Rick Santorum by only 8 votes. Ron Paul had a respectable third place showing as well. All eyes are on New Hampshire now, where Mitt Romney is expected to win by more than 8 votes. Time will tell, but I can tell you this much… whoever wins the Republican nomination, this Fall the choice in the general election will be between “Bad” and “Worse” (and it will depend on who you’re talking to regarding which is which). “None of the Above” is looking better every day.

That will do for now, I’ll type at you again later.

Today is the first day back to work after over two weeks paid vacation, and I’m still vertical (barely), so I thought I’d take a few minutes to type at you before rolling up my sleeves and getting back to work. There are so many dead soldiers in the kitchen waiting for recycling day tomorrow that it looks like a screen shot from “Battlefield 3″. If I had just a few more days off, I might have hurt myself, but enough of that… the real reason I’m typing this morning is to tell you all about my visitation from the Ghost of Christmas Past.

This Ghost is actually a person that I knew many years ago and haven’t seen at all for like sixteen or seventeen years, and frankly wasn’t friendly with for two or three years before that. I speak briefly about this person in my e-book “The Soapbox Files” which can be downloaded at lulu.com for the price of one dollar. However since exactly one of you has actually gone out and bought it (in spite of my constant nagging to download the damn thing), I have to assume that the rest of you (and that number may be up to four or five by now) haven’t got a clue who I’m talking about so I’ll take a few minutes to explain and expand.

Way back in the day, to keep me outta trouble and to help me earn a little cash, my father took me to work with him at the “Wretched Room” (Fairfax County, Virginia Land Records), which in those days was in the basement of the old red brick Courthouse that’s been standing at the corner of Routes 123 and 236 in the City of Fairfax since Colonial Times. These days there’s a much bigger concrete monstrosity close by that serves as the Courthouse, but might as well be called “Fortress Fairfax”. Anyway, at the “Wretched Room” I met another teenager, just a year younger than me, doing the same thing for his father. I’ll call him “Elmer Talltree”. That’s not his real name of course, but here in “The Soapbox Files” I change the names of the people in my life so that they know who I’m talking about, but unless you’re really close to me you do not. This protects their privacy and hopefully will protect me from getting sued since I rarely have anything good to say about anyone in “The Soapbox Files” or else I don’t want their husband to find out what’s been going on.

By default, “Elmer” and I became friends, after all the closest people to our age were twenty-something adults who had little time and less affection for a couple of high school kids in their midst. By association, I got to know the rest of “Elmer’s” family as well. Like me “Elmer” was the eldest of a large brood of siblings. Here’s the rundown:

Mr. “Talltree”: Patriarch of the clan, six foot four or thereabouts, a lawyer with the annoying habit of always being right.

Mrs. “Talltree”: Matriarch of the clan, soft spoken and petite, somehow found the time to also be an aid to a Democratic Congressman.

“Elmer”: Eldest sibling, male, as tall as his father, something of a geek. We were friends for a few years until he went off the deep end, took an undisclosed number of hits of acid at a “Grateful Dead” concert, lost his mind and found Jesus (for the record, I have nothing against Jesus, but he’s a poor substitute for a mind). He did all this while I was away at my second year of college. According to the Ghost, he’s still crazy after all these years.

“Ellen”: Second sibling, female, petite like her mother but not so soft spoken. She’s important to the tale only because I dated her for a few years, shortly after the incident described above… it didn’t last and it wasn’t pretty. The Ghost did not mention her when we spoke, which I suppose is just as well.

“Ernest”: Third sibling, male, also tall like his father, and sharing his annoying habit of always being right, without the benefit of actually being right most of the time. The Ghost had nothing to say about him either.

“Morden” : the Ghost. He’s the fourth sibling, and don’t ask me how he latched on to me because he’s enough younger than me that when I met his brother in the “Wretched Room”, I was a senior in High School and “Morden” was in the Sixth Grade, and that’s two different worlds when you’re that young. I guess that in the two years that it took for his brother the melt down and in the three years after that when I was dating his older sister he was able to make the jump (in my eyes at least) from larva to adult. I’ll come back to the Ghost later.

“Elvira”: the fifth sibling, and female. She impressed me as a little creepy back in the day, I haven’t seen or spoken to her since though the Ghost tells me she’s doing well. Other than that the Ghost mentioned her last week, she doesn’t figure in this tale.

“Evie” and “Ellie”: the twins, and cute as buttons back in the day. They reminded me of miniature freckle-faced versions of their eldest sister. When I last saw them they were only fifteen years old. They do figure in this story though I wish to the Goddess that they did not.

“Elbow” the baby of the family, and other than that fact the Ghost mentioned her when we spoke I would have forgotten to include her here.

There’s the “Talltree” family at a glance, I told you that it was a large brood.

Anyway, last week on Wednesday night “Beta” comes into my room with the handset for the land-line and tells me I have a phone call. It went something like this…

Me: hello

The Ghost: Is this Frank?

Me: Yes, who is this?

The Ghost: “Morden”

Me: “Morden” who?

The Ghost: “Morden Talltree”.

(sonuvabitch)

You can imagine my surprise. The Ghost and I had a falling out back in the twentieth century when my wife “Ecks” and I had a drunken three-way with his girlfriend without inviting him. In fairness, he was getting ready to dump her, and had already started bring along his future ex-girlfriend while he was still seeing his soon to be ex-girlfriend. “Ecks” and I were getting kinda tired of the whole getting close to these women just so “Morden” could throw them away thing, so we talked it over and decided that if we could only keep one, this time we’d keep the girlfriend and “Morden” could get lost.

Me: So, what can I do for you “Morden”?

The Ghost: I don’t know if you know this or not, but my sisters have passed away, the twins, both of them are gone…

(sonuvabitch – those cute little buttons, both gone – sonuvabitch, and you called me up after all these years just to brighten my day with this news… thanks a lot asshole)

Me: I’m sorry “Morden”, I don’t know what to say…

The Ghost: My friend “Rich Moneybags Who I’ve Been Sponging Off For Years” passed away recently too… you remember “Moneybags” don’t you?

Me: Yes, I…

The Ghost: And my other friend “Someone You’ve Never Heard Of”, he died too, and my girlfriend “Future Ex-Girlfriend Number Eleven” passed away from lung cancer and I just wanted to talk to someone so I called directory assistance to get your number.

(sonuvabitch… I knew I should have paid extra for the unpublished phone number, you live and learn)

So, do you really mean to tell me that in the last year or so, five people who were close to you have died, and you decide out of the blue that now would be a good time to get reacquainted with someone you haven’t been close to for years? Really? Were you hoping that I’d be number six?

I suppose that in his mind I did him wrong, so I guess that I owe it to him to hear what he has to say and maybe apologize for fucking his girlfriend when he wasn’t looking, but seriously, that’s all I owe this guy.

Me: Why don’t you call me tomorrow and we’ll go somewhere for a couple of beers and talk about it.

The next day I drove out to his parents house where he’s staying (temporarily of course). Both his parents are still alive, and while they look much older than I remembered, they still looked like themselves. I looked around and there was the Ghost, also looking much older than I remembered, in fact he looked much older than me, but even beyond the differences that time imposed he didn’t look like himself. The first thing I noticed was the “Crazy Eyes”. “Morden” was always wound kinda tight, but now I no longer think he’s entirely sane. Since I haven’t seen him since VHS was the popular format for home movies I can’t say how much of this is caused from the grief of losing five friends and family members in so short a space of time, and how much is just native madness taking root and growing. Water under the bridge, now I just want to get this over with and go home. I told his parents how sad I was to hear of the twins’ deaths, then I left with the Ghost to talk awhile and have a few drinks.

I pressed him for details on how his sisters died, turns out that alcohol and drugs figured prominently in both girls deaths. When I last saw these girls neither of them used either alcohol or drugs, and if they developed a problem with either I’m thinking that “Morden” had a hand in it and I’m gonna leave it at that. As for his friend “Moneybags”, well he flew off to Las Vegas, rented a nice room and took a 9mm aspirin. “Morden” said that near the end it seemed like he was putting his affairs together. At this point I put my hand on the hilt of the dagger I was wearing under my jacket in case I was one of the details “Morden” wanted to attend to before he killed himself. I wasn’t, so I didn’t.

During the conversation he asked about how “Ecks” passed away. I told him about the cancer, the chemotherapy and the funeral. He pointed out that someone who drank as much coffee and smoked as many cigarettes as “Ecks” did when he knew her was bound to die of cancer. Did he really just go there? While my ears were still burning with those words he adds that she was holding me back, and I was better off without her. Thank you Mr. Sensitivity. You do realize that I have an eleven inch blade under my jacket don’t you? Oh my Goddess, Thank You for not letting me lose it and kill that asshole where he sat. Then he gets to the point. It seems that the future ex-girlfriend who he was seeing when “Ecks” and I had our way with the soon to be ex-girlfriend gave him a son before she left him and that he owes her nine thousand dollars in back child support before next week or he’ll go to jail. Enjoy jail asshole.

Some good did come out of all this. Lately I’ve been feeling that my life sucks what with the two grown kids and I sharing this crappy little apartment, and the stolen moments with the married girlfriend, and the never enough money shit. One look at the Ghost drove home the fact that things can ALWAYS be worse, and I have two New Year’s Resolutions that I should have no problem keeping.

First: do not let that asshole back into my life. Second: Whatever happens be happy that I’m not that asshole.

That will be all for now, this went a little long and I’ll have to work late to make up for it. I will type at you again soon.

In the news today, the Virginia GOP announced that Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry failed to qualify for the Virginia Republican Primary on Super Tuesday next year. Neither candidate collected the requisite ten thousand signatures of Virginia registered voters. This has to be especially embarrassing for Newt Gingrich who has lived in McLean, Virginia since leaving Congress (of course that may explain his failure to collect the signatures since so many Virginians already know him). As for Rick Perry… oops!

It seems that Santorum, Huntsman and Bachman didn’t even attempt to get on the Virginia Ballot so its going to be between Mitt Romney and Ron Paul in Virginia on Super Tuesday. So the plot thickens, and it’s possible that Virginia voters won’t even get the opportunity to vote for whoever the front-runner may be on Super Tuesday next year, and that may actually change who the front-runner is on Wednesday. We’ll see.

That will do for now. I’ll type at you all again soon, in the meantime Merry Christmas.

In political news, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) has launched an unusual attack on the First Lady, basically saying that the woman has a big butt. Yeah, that’s right, with everything that’s wrong with the economy and unemployment, the failed “Fast and Furiuos”debacle selling guns to drug lords and the general discontent of the American People with the leadership in Washington, this particular idiot goes after the First Lady for having a little junk in the trunk (I hear a lot of men like that). The moron’s point is that the First Lady has embarked on a very public campaign to get American kids up off the sofa to start exercising and eating a healthier diet, and her enormous ass (I’m paraphrasing here, and no I do not really believe that the First Lady has an enormous ass) does not send the right message to the children that she’s trying to reach. Rush Limbaugh chimed in his support of the Congressman’s comments essentially saying that anyone with a butt that big shouldn’t be preaching about diet and exercise. I can just imagine Michelle Obama’s reaction right now (I know that if I said anything disparaging about “Zed’s” ass I’d need to duck – don’t worry “Zed” I think you have a remarkable ass, and I remark about it every time I see it don’t I).

In this not-so-humble Ogre’s opinion, the First Lady’s efforts to get American kids up off the couch, and her decorum in public are the only aspects of this Administration that are above criticism (OK, so she touched the effing Queen a few years ago, BFD), and for the Republicans to go after her at a time like this is just another example of the weakness of their positions and the sleaziness of their character. As for Rush Limbaugh, I’m surprised anybody still listens to the wheezing old gas-bag, and how would he know how big the First Lady’s butt is since he’s practically blind?

That will do for now, I’ll type at you all later.

That will do for now, I’m up early and have the place to myself. I think I’ll make pizza. I’ll type at you again soon.

The other day I saw something that gave me pause, a pure black wooly bear caterpillar on my patio. For those of you who don’t know, the wooly bear is the larval form of the Isabella Tiger Moth Pyrrharctia isabella, which is indigenous to eastern North America. The adult moth is particularly unimpressive, but the caterpillar is quite distinctive, rather large, two to three inches long and thickly covered with bristles that look like fur. Now usually the wooly bear has three distinct bands of color, black in front, orange in the middle and black in the rear. Native people thought that the caterpillar could predict the weather and that the size and position of the orange band in the middle of the caterpillar indicated the severity of the coming winter. A broad orange band indicated that the winter would be mild, and a narrow orange band indicated that the winter would be more severe, and if the band of orange was positioned more towards the front of the caterpillar then the winter would start out milder than usual and if the band were positioned more towards the rear of the caterpillar then there would be an early spring. I’ve been familiar with this folklore all my life and anecdotally speaking found that these fuzzy little meteorologist were typically more reliable than the TV news when it comes to predicting general trends in the winter weather, but never have I seen a pure black wooly bear before this. If this little insect is correct we’re in for a terrible winter this year. The last few weeks have been more overcast than usual with lots of rain. If this trend continues that translates into lots of snow in the coming weeks. Luckily I work from home, so as long as the power stays on (knock on wood) I can continue to make money, and there are two grocery stores within walking distance, but maybe I should stock up on nonperishables just in case (if you live in the Northeast US, you may want to consider doing the same).

Well, that will do for now. Seeing as I’m on vacation I’ll have no excuses if I don’t type at you again real soon.

This morning all the pundits are having a field day dissecting the debate in every particular, most agreeing that this round goes to Newt, even though some still remember what an asshole he was as Speaker of the House and don’t have anything nice to say about him now. Personally, I think that everyone over the age of six (and a few precocious four and five year olds) is an asshole, it’s just a matter of degree (and admittedly Newt’s degree is white hot). That a person is an asshole shouldn’t disqualify them for elected office if they can get the votes. Obviously if a flaming asshole can get votes then the perception is that they must be more qualified for the job than the less offensive assholes they’re getting more votes than. Soon enough the voters will decide which asshole gets the Republican Nomination; it’s still too early to call a winner, if past Primaries are any indication then the front-runner before New Hampshire is rarely the Nominee.

Well, that will do for now, I’ll type at you again later.