I spent a short time in the US Navy, just long enough to get a couple of tattoos that I put literally zero thought into. One, a stupid cartoon character done at a whole-in-the-wall shop while I was drunk faded away pretty badly, but the other one, a sexy sailor girl (done by Philadelphia Eddie himself!) stayed pretty nice for quite some time. I was sober that time. That was about 44 years ago. I don’t necessarily regret them, but I wish I’d put more thought in to them, especially dumb old Yosemite Sam…

more prisoners == more slave labor

someone’s gotta pick the crops…

Psychological warfare. Trump’s an easy mark. We need more of it…

going to the grocery store and seeing an employee with a big dust-mop going up and down the aisles pushing along an ever-growing pile of cigarette butts because everyone would just drop 'em and step on 'em and keep on shopping…

this guy used them to power an ebike…

Took a direct hit from Hurricane Ivan. Blew all our roofing off so the rain was blowing in and big chunks of ceiling were falling in while we were all huddled in the hallway. We found the roof of our back porch in the middle of the street, about 4 houses down. We’ve ridden out a lot of hurricanes over the decades, but Ivan was the scariest.

In the end we came out of it smelling like a rose. My wife’s parents had both recently passed, and we were planning on buying their house out of their estate. I was in the middle of readying our house for sale when the storm hit. Our house got wrecked, while the parents house was left pretty much unhurt, aside from a few missing shingles and a downed tree. We moved in immediately and ended up selling our house as-is to the “we buy ugly houses” people for about half it’s normal value, collected a fat insurance check from Liberty Mutual, which combined with the sale was enough to pay off the mortgage and pocket a few grand, which was right at what we hoped to sell it for because we didn’t have very much equity in it at the time. We ended up right where we planned on being, much sooner than we thought we would. We got lucky for sure…

It’s my house. Everyone in the family knows I’ll shut that shit down, so I look forward to seeing everyone 😁

I’m confused… shouldn’t this be happening in one of those liberal nanny states where big government is supposed to be all up in your business?

Oh, right… those people need to tell you how to raise YOUR kids, but don’t you dare tell them how to raise theirs…

we had friends who had an African Grey that mimicked him perfectly every time she heard the modem sound…

I know at least one in our town that’s turned into a cannabis dispensary. Seems to me a smart business man would figure out how to combine the two…

I went through the US Navy’s damage control and fire-fighting training back in '81 and we trained with their oxygen breathing apparatus (OBA). I remember we’d have to pull a pin like in a grenade to light them off, and when we were done we’d have to release the canister into a barrel of water because they were like super-hazardous…

Just yesterday we were at my wife’s sister’s house. They live in a brand-new house in a brand-new neighborhood. Some dingus was going around to every single house leaving flyers advertising a tree trimming service and reminding everyone that it’s hurricane season. The thing is, their wasn’t a single tree in the entire neighborhood that was bigger than a year-old sapling.

whodathunkit…

My wife’s maternal side of her family is all from Mississippi. I was blown away the first time I traveled up there to meet them all. They all seemed like the nicest, warmest people you could meet. Welcomed me into their family with open arms. We had a big meal, and afterwards we were all gathered around just shooting the breeze and the subject of conversation moved to how they all used to torment black people back in the good ol’ days. N-words as far as the ear could hear, and uproarious laughter filled the room. This was about the time I started spending all my time outside smoking. I couldn’t wait to GTFO of there…

My wife has extended family from Mississippi. They are some of the stupidest people I have ever met. They all, and I mean ALL, send their kids to private schools so they won’t have to attend alongside black kids. One of her cousins was just down visiting with us and I walked in while she was ranting about how “I know trump is blahbidyblah, but things were so much better under him… just look at the GAS PRICES screee scrawww hurr durr”. I did the ol’ Grandpa Simpson about face and checked tf out before I said something ugly and upset my wife (not that she actually agrees with her cousin or anything, I just need to be nice…)

Here lately I’ve been watching Camping With Steve. He’s a really likeable Canadian guy who does all sorts of camping videos, and a lot of them are stealth camping, where he camps in some pretty crazy places in all sorts of imaginative and inexpensive ways. I’ve always liked to daydream about camping out in various wooded areas that I would see while driving by them in the car, and this guy actually goes and does it. Along highway on-ramps, in the middle of a round-about, behind billboards, in the wooded lot behind a police station… you name it. I’m too old and comfortable to go do something like that now, so it’s fun living vicariously through him.

As a white guy growing up along the redneck riviera, I can only look back in dismay at the casual racism and homophobia I took part in with my other fellow white boys under the guise of “humor”. Not a single person who knows me would ever accuse me of being a racist or a homophobe, as I reserve all of my hatred for the haters, but it took me growing up quite a bit to realize how terrible a lot of those jokes were.