FERRERMAN- AGAIN?

 Last night was rough on this 21st century Ferrerman. First the power went out right at the beginning of the Cubs game. That meant no a/c, no TV and no lights. No Xbox either. And because I have an electric stove, no early dinner. It had rained that morning (and not that  bad) so, I ferrermansplained to myself (and later the Gilmore Girl daughter) that they were probably just fixing something that happened earlier and simply needed to shut us down to safely work on the powerlines. I got no problem with the utility guys living to see another day. In fact, I love the Glen Campbell version of "Wichita Lineman" and I probably started humming it. Not sure, but after all these years, I know me. So, I ventured outside into the pretty decent early evening where I saw said GG going across the street to purchase a bag of ice. They had just gone to the grocery store, and she feared losing all their goods. Well, I know your food is safe in the freezer for a good 24 hours in these situati...

 Back in the day, when Mags and I were on the defunct site, Topix, it was kind of a warm bed of conservatism. I don't know if there were paid posters, but there was quite a bit of ordinary weirdos who had really stupid takes on what the US needed in the way of a president. They were the kind of takes that were so dumb, I felt like people could only say them for money. I don't think these people even knew much of Trump then, as I really don't recall his name coming up as an ideal candidate, but they did like to pound on their notion that a businessman should be POTUS. They also admired Vladimer Putin a lot, which was odd because they touted themselves as *American Patriots*. They loved the Constitution and stuff, but some of them would have been quite fulfilled if Vlad (a non-US born person) could step right into the White House and start purging America of liberals and pigmented people. Him, or a businessman. He actually kind of covered both bases as he was and is very, ver...

 Finally met the child molester downstairs. It wasn't on purpose. A nice cool morning with the windows open, I could hear him and his mom talking about what a lovely breeze there was. It being Sunday, I figured they might be off to church. I had a piece of mail for the mother that didn't need to be hand-delivered, so my plan was to let them get on with their business and just slip the mail in their box. Oh, the best laid plans of Ferrermen... As I strolled up the handicap ramp, they had had built for them, I saw that the screen door was propped open. Uh oh. Someone was home. My record of not meeting these people for a year and a half was about to be broken. Shit.  Sitting in a wheelchair the doorway, enjoying the breeze was the guy. I immediately noticed the reason for the wheelchair. His left leg had been amputated above the knee. Via the Gilmore Girls I had known of his toes having been amputated as a result of diabetes. This was quite a surprise. Seems like I had just recen...

 Watched a pretty good video of the life of Herbert John Streicher, who essentially was America's first male pornstar. He was a reluctant star at that, never intending at all to get into porn acting as he had his sights set on Broadway. That's a familiar story; one often told about young actresses who go out to LA to make it in Hollywood in TV or film, whichever comes first. Back in the early 70's porn was the domain of the Gambino crime family in New York City and consisted of peep show 'reels' of people screwing that were shown in creepy 'movie houses' and performed by prostitutes and guys off the street who needed the little money that was offered or just wanted to get laid. Porn had been that way for decades, probably from the moment Thomas Edison invented film and the motion picture camera. It was never legal in those years, so no one wanted to be a breakout star. The Gambino's changed that. They were making good money with the reels and stag films,...

 " When Justice is blind, bad guys take the fifth. When justice is corrupt, good guys take the fifth". I'm not very vested in these Fauci hearings in congress. Honestly, I wasn't all that vested in Covid at the time as, around it's beginning was when my 89-year-old mom fell and chipped a bone in her hip. I was housebound taking care of her from then on anyway, so the quarantines and disruptions of people's daily lives were already in my domain. I certainly kept up with the news via the media and cringed along with my fellow sentient beings at the republican exploitation of the pandemic though. What a shitshow! People were dying all over the world and our *leader* was telling people to drink bleach, take horse medicine and also ignore it. Yeesh... And I know a witch trial when I see one now, and that if a guy like Rand Paul takes a stand on anything, there is a 100% chance that he's completely wrong and doesn't know what the fuck he's yammering abou...

This had to be mid-eighties when steroids were first becoming popular amongst non-athletic males. I was tending bar and across the street there was a Chicago Health Club. I never went in there as the place wasn't for me. They probably wouldn't let me smoke in there anyways. We would get good looking, fit girls having a post workout cocktail and that was nice. But we would also get young, inflated males who always seemed on edge. Why anybody would want to look like an NFL linebacker to sell shoes or cars or whatever, was beyond me. I don't recall any real problems with them, but the potential was always there. As I understood it, the side effect of the steroids of that time were bad skin, shrunken testicles and bad attitudes. One afternoon, a young barfly named Dave chatted up the overly muscled fella next to him and mentioned the name of a workout enthusiast he knew. The big guy took umbrage and screamed: "HE'S SMALL!!" Uh oh, I thought. Dave was the posterchi...