Dead Kitties Tell No Tales

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I recently received an e-mail about two teenagers microwaving a kitten to death. Once such an idea or ugly picture is engrained in your mind, it is hard to shake it. I spent several hours researching this story, in an attempt to understand what would cause two teenagers to do such a thing. I would rather believe it to be some sick case of abuse, leaving the poor teenagers so disturbed that they could not help themselves. Anything but believe that a fifteen and thirteen year old could do something so cruel on the own accord.

All my searching produced no results, it turns out the story might be a fake. However, don’t get too happy, there are dozens of such cases from all over the world.

In the UK, there is a woman who was recently jailed for 168 days for microwaving a neighbor’s cat to death. Why did she do it? Because the neighbor reported her boyfriend for physically abusing her, some people don’t deserve help. The judge helped her a little, at least he won’t be beating her for 168 days.

There are several cases of small children who are probably too young to know the difference doing it, children under the age of five or so. It seems to be a pattern that burglars are sometimes microwaving cats while burglarizing homes. Maybe reports of such things being perpetrated by deprived individuals are spurring such copy cat stupidity by teenagers. Who can argue that teenagers are inclined to do stupid things?

A lawyer in Maryland recently microwaved a kitten to death and is using alcoholism and depression as his defense. I say a little jail time might at least cure his alcoholism and the severe case of horse’s butt he’s suffering from. How big are prison microwaves? I’m just asking, don’t take it too serious.

Then you have the closest thing to reality that I could find. A fifteen and sixteen year old in Pennsylvania, placed a kitten in the microwave recently and apparently too stupid to grasp the concept of such complicated technology, threw the microwave and the kitten out a three story window. Being cruel is horrible; being cruel and stupid is simply tragic.

All this brings back one of the horrors of my childhood and one of the most horrible episodes in my book, Informally Educated, which was released as an audio book yesterday, September, 23^rd and is the true story of my growing up in an abusive household.

When I was eight, I had a kitten; I also had three younger siblings who were like stair steps. My step father Jack, had named the kitten the N word, because he was solid black and Jack was solid prejudice. The kitten had gotten into the habit of eating food left on the table overnight, biscuits covered with a rag; that sort of thing. Jack had soaked some left over hamburger patties in hot sauce, the night before. They were left on the table, to teach the kitten a lesson.

We all arrived in the kitchen together that morning, there was the kitten eating a hamburger patty. He would take a bite, and shake his head as he chewed it. Then he would bat the rest around, trying to figure out why it was burning him. He would then go for another bite. We watched for a time and soon started to giggle. It was cute, and we had not yet learned that giggling was tempting or possibly defying fate.

 Suddenly, in one bound Jack was at the table. He scooped up the kitten, wound up like a pitcher and threw him against the wall, which was only the width of the table away. We watched in horror as the kitten literally exploded and fell to the table in a pile of intestines and blood, squirming only briefly before it died.

The poor kitten died on the same plate that contained the hamburger patties. We spent the rest of a nightmarish childhood, eating at that table and never knowing with any certainty, which of us were eating off of the plate the kitten had squirmed to death on. To this day I rarely eat at the dinner table. In our home, the table, our bedrooms and Christmas mornings were the main ingredients of our lifelong nightmares.

There are many lessons learned from a kitty, and not all of them are pretty.

Free No More

I remember when free meant free, It didn’t mean, watch your wallet. I remember when dirt, water and Americans were free. Now dirt is sold in bags, water costs more than gas and big business is coming up with ways to charge us for air, an air bill, holy moly. All my life people have been paying to have pine straw removed from their yards, now people pay to have pine straw scattered in their yards. How about green stamps? You could save and don’t forget lick a gazillion green stamps and get anything in the world.

I remember when you could collect an entire set of dish or bath cloths and towels buying flour. You could collect an entire set of glasses buying jelly. I’m not sure if you were buying the jar and getting the jelly free or the other way around.

Remember a certain caramel popcorn that used to include prizes in their product? One of them was a tattoo, now all of them are tattoos. There used to be things similar to scratch off lottery tickets that you would receive for free, simply because you bought something. The government discovered how much money was in the lottery business, and those became illegal. Here is an amendment to an old saying. Don’t steal or have raffles, the government hates competition.

Nothing is free now, and the word has become the twenty first century’s newest curse word. Internet companies use it as a trap. If they want more visitors to a web page, all they need to do is tag the page with the words free and sex, it’ll get us every time. We are a nation of suckers. The only way to get anything free today is by buying a new car and paying three times its worth. Someone has to pay those people who make them, three times what the rest of us poor suckers make. Of course, that’s not entirely true either, but merely a rumor started by the bosses, to shift attention from the ridiculous salaries they make, to those sweeping the floors. If you buy a car and get a free vacation and more importantly believe that you did, you my friend will buy beach front property in Arizona.

The housing industry is in the toilet, sorry no matter what anyone says, it still is. Now the rental industry has a captive audience. The bankers, lawyers, real estate people, credit companies and finance institutions have had their way with the American public. Now it’s time for the rental industry to take its turn. The average American has no money and no credit. That means we are allowed to rent an apartment for twice what it’s worth and pay three deposits to do it. People are being forced to provide bogus documents and use others credit and income to qualify to rent. What happens when the rental industry crashes? Crap that is too insane to imagine, but it may be next. Does anyone else believe that this industry is being controlled by the same idiots who shoved high interest homes, we could not afford, down our throats?

In some places, driving is not free, the police use us as money farms, we are pulled over for the craziest stuff. Remember when even a scary dude with a gun had to have a reason to search your home or car? It’s not their fault; it’s another way for our governments to extract taxes they can’t legally steal.

How about parking? Parking has become another way for the cities to have their way with us. See, that expensive air I was talking about earlier isn’t as crazy as it seems. My car was towed in Athens last year, and ten bucks worth of yogurt cost me two hundred and sixty bucks. It was towed in Miami Beach recently, and I still believe I was parked legally and simply had the misfortune of having out of state plates. I had just written about the television shows Cops and South Beach Tow, talk about ironic.

So in the process of trying to get back my property that I had already paid for once, I taught those at Tremont Towing a few colorful words and a few others we only use in Georgia. I left with lighter pockets and my old car. The next day, South Beach Tow, called me and asked if I’d like to be on the show. On my fifty second birthday, I taped an episode of the show and it will air on trutv in November, on the fifth episode of the season. Of course, by the time we had finished shooting, I had made the star of the show so mad, she had to slam, taze and pepper spray me. Turns out, getting beat up by a girl and enjoying it on your birthday, is still free. Life is peachy.

 

Bigger And Better Battles

Bigger And Better Battles

Kennesaw

We are smack dab in the middle of a war we engage in every four years. A war that divides average Americans so deeply that it takes four years to heal the rift created. Ok I’ll buy it; somehow this is good for the country.

Political parties decide the two biggest bullies and then try to make us believe we made the decision. Once we buy into that bull, we get busy buying into all the other bull that goes along with it. We will fight amongst ourselves for at least a year before we presumably decide who wins. Millions of dollars will be spent by those who prove to be terrible stewards of our freedom, in the end, to prove one is better than the other.

Millions are spent to make thousands. Does that make sound business sense? How can we place our trust in anyone, who would take on such a losing proposition, to make decisions that are beneficial to our country?

A popular debate, campaign reform is akin to military intelligence and always concentrates on where the money comes from. Maybe we should pay more attention to who writes the lies. Wouldn’t it be better if we removed the spin factor? Make the politicians write and research their own lies. It would be much harder to come up with and keep the lies straight if they could not utilize speech writers and fact checkers. I dare say many would be caught in there constant web of lies and found out for their twisting of statistics and truths.

Who honestly cares where the money comes from? It might be better to look at where it ends up. Once you reach a certain amount of money, and for average Americans that amount is somewhere in the thousands, it becomes relative. For politicians, that number is in the millions. There is such a ludicrous amount of money involved in the election process that there is no way, someone exposed to that much filth can ever respect money or just how vital it is to the average American, ever again.

Take a guy who has more money than he could ever spend, throw so much money in his face and dare him to commit every form of deception imaginable and then expect him to represent the land of the free with integrity. Why are we shocked to get the same guy wearing the same smile, stealing the same money, wearing a different suit?

There are several things we as Americans love so much that they start earlier each year, such as Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween and of course presidential elections. What do all these have in common? They are all about or have become about money. Many people Christmas shop year round, and soon the election cycle will run continuously. We may be able to vote for the next president when we buy gas. Would you like cash back? Would you like a car wash today? Would you like a receipt? Who would you like to vote for as the next president? After four years, the oil companies would count the votes and determine the winner of the election.

Ok that wouldn’t be much of a change; the oil companies, insurance companies and the biggest asset holders in the country, the Chinese, already do that. So once we listen to a mounting pile of mess we as Americans go to the poles and try to make our uninformed decision. Of course if you believe the system we are not smart enough to figure out how to use the voting machines, and it is ultimately our fault that we elect dubious characters. Forget the fact, that ultimately the electoral votes decide our fate.

I would just as soon not get involved in that can of worms, but here goes. It was decided long ago we were not smart enough to make our own decisions and that system was created to save us from ourselves. It might need to be ended, but we continue to prove the creators of the system right, with the decisions we think we make.

As we wage war on ourselves, the rest of the world takes advantage of our ridiculous preoccupation. We have been attacked all over the world this week because someone who isn’t an American made a hate movie against the Muslim religion, in America. I wanted to write an article about that, but there are so many instances of atrocities on both sides throughout history, that I decide it was asinine to try.

Religious war is the purest form of an oxymoron to be found. The facts, lies, and idiotic justifications swirl in such a heated vortex that it’s best to stay out of it entirely. The war between Muslims and Christians is ten times older and ten times bigger than our elections, but they have many similarities and we love to hate both.

Sanitation Santa's

Sanitation Santa’s

I remember Flip Wilson talked about his uncle getting a job on a garbage truck. It paid twenty-five bucks a week, and all he could eat. Driving behind a garbage truck is pretty awful stuff. It only takes one stop to understand that there is always garbage truck juice dripping from it. That means when the truck is moving, the wind is atomizing that juice and you can never be sure where it’s going. Driving behind one on a motorcycle is even worse. These are the rational thoughts of an adult.

The memories of a child are an entirely different affair. In the summer of 1968, my siblings and I were moved to the city of Savannah, it was a far cry from the rural area we had grown up in. There were drunks on the streets and crime on every corner. In the world, we had grown up in, one did not ride in cabs, use umbrellas and knew everyone who lived as far as a young child could wander in a day.

Trash was walked into the woods and dumped in a large pile, usually near where the old outhouses stood. The outhouses had only recently been abandoned in our corner of the world. Many adventures, injuries and a few treasures were found playing near or on old abandoned trash piles. Old cars were not traded in, but were driven as far into the woods as possible, wherever they stopped is where they died. Many became playground equipment for children, some still drivable were used to drive through the woods until they finally gave up. A toy such as this required no lights and even brakes were optional. These old cars taught many how to drive.

In Savannah, the world changed for us in many ways, most bad. My family lived in Port Wentworth and actually lived in the projects. This was a time before I knew what projects were. The houses were long rows of small brick shanties attached together, streets ran along in front of them, but between them on their backs, ran long dirt alleys. My memories include those alleys always being filled with mud holes filled with water. They were like rivers flowing for blocks and were a source of constant entertainment.

Garbage trucks parted those waters at least a couple times a week and the smell or juice that they dropped into the rivers of mosquito producing stagnant water matter little. In fact, their smell was only slightly worse than the fetid air already thick around the waters. It lasted only seconds, then the truck moved on.

I can remember the two old black gentlemen, who rode on the back of that truck, like it was yesterday. They wore black coveralls, which had started life, gray. Neither had teeth, or at least not enough to notice them as teeth. Both smiled continuously and laughed heartily. They hardly spoke anything resembling the English language and smelled worse than the truck.

None of this mattered to the kids who lived in the projects. These guys were Sanitation Santa’s. They would spend the week collecting abandoned toys and store them in side compartments on the truck. As the truck moved slowly through the projects they would pick up the garbage, all the while distributing smiles and toys to the children following them along, desperate for any good thing they could get. The truck was only slightly less exciting, but much worse smelling than the ice cream truck which cruised the same mud hole every day with its colipie of colorful music.

Not all of those kids could buy ice cream, but all of them got a toy. It was many years before I truly understood what the dozen of kids without ice creams were thinking while they watched the few who had them, eat them.

I have talked about the teachers and relatives who touch so many and left lifelong impressions without being aware of how much they changed those around them.

How about Katharine? She was an old, black nanny we had when I was young, sure we were white, but our lives were only separated by a thread, which consisted of a little money and a lot of color. She was the best cook and the sweetest person I’ve ever known. I think of her daily. She taught me much more valuable lessons than the gaggle of good ole boys who tried to keep me mired in a belief system left over from the Stone Age.

These two old unassuming garbage collectors influenced several generations of children, possibly providing the only joy they received while young. Did they understand their importance; did they have any clue what prominent examples of kindness they were? Maybe not, but I wish to believe that this was the first secret God whispered to them when they looked into his face for the first time.