FERRERMAN- AGAIN?

On September 11, 2001, I was leading a crew of Ratmo painters in the remodeling of the 6th floor of The Ridgeway Hotel, in Memphis Tn. It was Tuesday and we were in good shape, having until that Friday to finish the job. The powers that be were debating whether to remodel all six floors or tear it down and rebuild from scratch.  I think it was heading up on breaktime when one of my guys told me to look at the TV because a plane had hit a building in New York City. I remember assuming that it was probably a small plane, likely tragic pilot error. How else could that happen?  With televisions on in every room, we watched the drama unfold in real-time while we went about our work. We soon learned it was an airliner that hit the World Trade Center; The Twin Towers. How the fuck does that happen? Who makes a mistake like that? What a tragic accident!  Then the second plane hit the second tower. This was no accident. We were watching a nightmare unfold. Soon the bosses came in ...

 Allow me to explain the vast difference between a democratic form of government and a republic. It may take a while. Might blow some minds. Here we go: "Democracy is government where the people decide laws and leadership directly or through participation, while a republic is government where power rests with the people but is exercised through elected representatives. In the modern United States , it’s accurate to say it is both." Huh. Sounds like looking at identical twins to see which one is prettiest. If I had to choose which system we have here in the US, I would say it's a republic, and according to most all the experts I'd be right. YAY! A democracy sounds a bit more hands on perhaps, but a republic sounds just as busy, but without all the personal involvement of every damn citizen, all the damn time. You don't have to vote on every fucking thing. That is up to the representatives in both systems ultimately anyways. So, same thing; not really different, ...

 Isn't it odd that a political party would run a one term, defeated candidate against the man who beat him (soundly) once already? And that that second-place finisher, angry at his loss, would have gone on to try a futile, half-assed, violent coup against his country in a ridiculous attempt to change the election outcome and to stay in power; and then run again as if it were normal? That's the stuff of South American or Eastern European countries. In what point in US world history had that made sense or even hinted at happening? Crazy, huh? Yet we have moved on from the ugly events of January sixth as if were just a blip on the radar of democracy. Had it even really happened? Are we sure? Well, thanks to the perpetrator himself we know damn well it happened because he won't shut up about it. With no proof whatsoever, he continues to complain that the 2020 election was *stollen* from him and that the winner- Joseph R. Biden- had been an illegal president, having hijacked the...

 We the people are getting regularly chastised these days for not taking the Trump shitshow seriously enough. Many think we should be in the streets fighting ICE and spilling blood instead of getting all excited about college and pro football seasons commencing. Your Ferrerman doesn't really give a shit about college ball, so what's my excuse? Well, I think it is that, even after over ten years of Trump's idiocy, I still find it hard to grasp that billionaires and warped think-tankers would set out in this century to destroy a perfectly OK country like the United States, for fun and profit. Seriously, who does that and why? Historically, revolution, communism or fascism come to the most desperate of countries, not the good ones. You only need to look at Russia, China and Cuba to see how they had no choice but to fight, because they had nothing to lose but their lives. They had been pushed that far.  We haven't been pushed that far yet, I think because we still can't...

 Who do you hate? Is the number too many to list or might it be so basic that you are almost embarrassed to say because it's like "Black people, libs, the transgenders...", as per the usual suspects of our nation's primary hate group, the maga republicans? I have to tell you, I hate but one person in life, and that is Donald Fucking Trump.  Now, don't confuse me with Jesus H. Christ with just the one flaw. I don't like a plethora of people for a myriad of reasons. It's just that Trump is the only one on earth I can think of- having thought things through- that I cannot have compassion for despite my level of contempt. And I've been married twice, to two truly awful women! I got some bona fides! I analyze things and people in life to understand not only where I went wrong, but where they  went wrong, whether with me or in their lives. This may not work for you, but it does work for me. I definitely have been told I'm wrong to do this, spend too much...

 Watched a "Soft, White Underbelly" video about a man who escaped from the clutches of John Wayne Gacy, as a young teen. Being of the Chicago area, I've heard of close calls with Gacy for decades, most of which were after the fact and of the nature of: "I ran across this creepy guy, and he turned out to be JOHN WAYNE CACY!" Probably true, but you never know. People like to make themselves main characters and even supporting characters at times. What was interesting about this episode was, it had happened hundreds of miles away from Gacy's usual hunting ground around Chicago. This took place in a state park in Kentucky. And the guy met Gacy there twice in three years. What was this suburban Chicago area contractor doing way down in Kentucky? As he told the boy when he met him, he was "visiting friends". You really have to wonder who those friends were.  Gacy had a lot of friends all over the country, purportedly, friends with the same interests in b...

 Let's face it: communism is the last refuge of a failed state. Look at Russia after the Czars. China after the Dynasties. Cuba after the mafia. People get tired of being the majority poor to great wealth, and it's not hard to then accept the concept of everyone being equal, in the same boat, with the same chances in life. It fucking never works out that way, but I at least, can see the attraction in the desperation. It's like the bosses I've had that thought they were clever in saying: "Let's do something, even if it's wrong". Communism is very (and always) wrong, but sometimes the only choice people have after a bloody revolution, and it's always all that they can afford.   In America the republican/maga party is making an insane, comical push to paint democrats as "communists". They do this, to deflect from the fact that they are fascists. Both fascism and communism are extremes in the political sphere and not easy sells in successful ...

 When I'm not watching hockey fights on YouTube, my go to for REELS is women's college softball. The REELS are usually set to John Fogartey's "Put Me in Coach" (which fits like a glove) or Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" and "Beat It" which doesn't fit but has a good beat and is easy to dance to- at least for him. The REELS are short, but they include dancing in with the exceptional plays. Yeah, I like the dancing, but these ladies play damn good baseball. They know what they're doing. They know how to play the game. It's a smaller field than MLB, of course; 60' between the bases (compared to 90') and the pitcher's mound isn't a mound at all, but a flat circle of dirt, 35-43' from home plate. This is fast pitch underhand of an 11" softball, reaching speeds up to 77mph. Life does come at you fast! The players tend to be very attractive, fit women whom you might look at and think, "Oh, she could be a ...

 Over the past few months, the reception in my truck's radio had been spotty. I don't do a lot of serious driving these days, so I didn't hurry to remedy it. I reasonably figured it might be an antenna problem and ordered a new, sleeker, cooler one hoping that might be the cure. Thought then about a new radio. It's an older truck, came from the factory with SiriusXM- the subscription to had long since lapsed- but I thought I might check into that in the near future. I was right about that. Saw a deal from SiriusXM a few days ago where I could get 3 months for $1. How could I not? That wouldn't solve my local station problem, but maybe it would replace it.  I got on YouTube and found a couple few videos that were specific to my truck and my dilemma. Turned out it was a common problem. The videos showed how easy it was to access the radio by removing the portion of the console that housed it. I feared exploratory surgery until I saw the videos and they showed me how e...

 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...

 In sports fandom, there are just some teams that you seem born to hate. I love California as a state, but I hate west coast teams. Always have. Always will. All things being equal, I pretty much hate east coast teams every bit as much. And if somebody mentions the Packers or the Cardinals and Braves, it becomes pretty obvious that I have no love for the Midwest or southern teams. Fuck it- let's narrow it down. I'm a Chicago sports fan. In my old age I'm even softening towards the Chicago White Sox. I have Sox fans in my family; please don't tell anyone! But Dey Doyers?? I was an early adopter of hatred for them before their recent visit with Trump at the Whore House in DC. I'm glad to see the rest of the civilized country catching on to this contempt for Doyer blue.  I think championship teams being hosted at the White House is silly, regardless of who is president. Why are you doing this? What does any POTUS have to do with your winning season? The 2016 Cubs went ...

 There was a viral video of a senior Cubs fan slapping a young whippersnapper in the back of the head for not standing up for the national anthem. This was a few days ago at Wrigley Field in Chicago. No audio to hear of, but you imagine the old guy first said something like, "On your feet, ya little shit!". Then, when the kid refused to comply, the geezer gave him an open hand across the back of his head.  I don't think anyone but me has pointed out that yelling at and hitting someone during the anthem is not proper anthem etiquette either. I'd rather people sit than hit! This is like turning around and screaming at people talking in a movie theater. The correction is often worse than the infraction. This is because people like to suffer in silence, at the top of their lungs. It's why we have 'Karen's'. We always did, but the internet made them viral.  The old guy (and no one knows who he is) got a lot of support in various threads across the internet....

 War makes strange bedfellows. Politics does too, of course. No surprise that the two have always been so intertwined.  I watch a lot of YouTubes. There are so many stories out there that layout how connected the world is; what makes us tik and tok as humans. One guy I have found interesting is a former Army Ranger sniper, known as "The Reaper". This African American, now-Rastafarian looking fella is one of the most laidback professional killers you will ever see. He's very lowkey and matter of fact about his wartime experiences. He's got that thousand-yard stare and he came by it honestly. Not all of the Special Forces bro's you'll find on YT do. SEAL's, for instance, tend to create and embellish stories, like actors do on talk shows so that they might be invited back. Reaper is more matter of fact, honest and blunt.  One podcast he noted that he and a few other Rangers entered a room where their Afghani tribal allies were having sex with boys. This is ac...

 The one good thing that has come out of the Trump presidencies has been that he has shown that absolutely anyone  can be president. Most should not, but if Trump can get in, you can't disqualify anyone for any reason. He set the bar low, for sure, but how could there be a bar at all after him? People like to handicap potential presidential candidates all the time, just like sports fans do with ballplayers. The only thing worse than political punditry is sports punditry.  The latter is more brutal and soul and psyche stealing than politics. Get on a fan site and see sometime. Better yet, don't! Those people are fucking insane.  Even though we are currently watching democracy being murdered in the streets and on TV, people are talking about who the next democratic  president should be. Or shouldn't be. Oh, sure- all this horrible fascist, Project 2025 shit is just what republicans are doing on their term. They are unpopular and we'll take over on downs, just as w...