SporadicSpeak: Vol. 1

Caveat: If you are reading a GreegorSpeak post for the first time, please keep in mind that I am prone to lying, writing total bullshit and with frequent use of extreme embellishment.  It is not uncommon for me to post something on a topic about which I know absolutely nothing. However, in my defense, I use exclusively the highly regarded, internationally respected, award winning, fact finder and search engine, www.foxynews.com, for all my research. There is no better on Planet Earth.

Why SporadicSpeak?

I have been deluged with fan mail asking me why I haven’t posting anything for years. My explanation is simple: I have been begged by my wife, The Little Woman (TLW), friends, relatives, and even strangers, to quit posting political BS because I don’t know what I’m talking about. As I’ve said before, I didn’t give a rat’s ass about politics until 2016 and then I went berserk, as 50% of the country did. Democrat suicide rate went from 10/1 billion to 10/100. That’s right, 10%. The Republican birth rate went from 6/family/year to 12. That’s right, 100% increase. As you know, my facts have been triple-checked by JHS students (grade 8 curriculum) working with a very popular, conservative news service (www.foxynews.com) for research and fact-finding.

Consequently, I plan to post tidbits that I feel the world needs, and wants, to know, but only when I get bored. Too frequently I have been accused of writing soporific, mind-numbing material, so each will be short and fascinating. Topics will range from me to bongos to chess to the Idaho Legislature.

Exactly the Way It Was: a Memoir Vol. 1 (EWIT1)

I am putting together a collection of ten memoir stories that will be very short, with VERY large print, etc., not unlike the NYT No. 1 bestselling memoir about TLW and my experience with the Peace Corps in Mexico, called Going to Mexico (GTM). GTM flew off the shelves as I’m sure, Exactly the Way It Was will. Profits from GTM put both of my daughters through college and will put my grandsons, the Seattle 3 (S3), through college as well as medical school. If Volume 1 takes as long as GTM did, EWIT2 will never get written.

Seattle 3 (S3) Projects

As many of you know I have 3 grandsons who live in Seattle, ages 9 and 6 (twins). TLW and I just returned from a visit with them where we initiated 3 new projects.

Queen’s Gambit. TLW and I have started to play chess again after a 70 yr. hiatus, after watching the series, Queen’s Gambit. This chess phenomenon has happened to millions around the world. It came back shockingly quickly for me. With daily, dedicated, concentration, within a week I had re-learned the names of the pieces and their locations on the board. The S3 have taken to the game like ducks to water. In one week, they are searching Bobby Fischer to take him on. As a team. The one problem is that even though I have told them that chess is supposed to be a peaceful, thoughtful and loving game that helps problem-solving skills, they occasionally fight, usually over an illegal move, knocking over the pieces as they wrestle and punch away on the destroyed board.

Baba Grylls. You may have heard of a British adventurer/survivalist named Bear Grylls, who has a TV series which gives the viewer survival options to get Bear out of some crazy wilderness jam. Usually the S3 vote to have Bear call in the helicopter. Bear trots around the globe presenting survival situations that are simple enough for kids and senior citizens. Bear is a treasure for simple brains. The viewer makes his selection between two extrication alternatives by using the remote. The 2-option formula is always the same: Bear dies in a gruesome, bloody,way, or Bear survives for another day. (Note: Bear never dies). For example, Bear would be dehydrated and waterless in a Death Valley summer, temperature 180 degrees, and needs to decide between drinking his own urine droplets or rattlesnake venom.

The upshot is that I am now Baba (grandfather name) Grylls and am to provide the S3 with wilderness challenges. As a former outdoor adventurer/survivalist, myself, it makes perfect sense. For situation 1, I’m thinking of putting them on a very small Antarctic iceberg that is fragmenting while a killer whale is circling. Do they assume that Killer is friendly like they saw at SeaWorld and wants to carry them to shore or do they swim to shore, a mile away? The S3 know that the water temperature is well below freezing due to salt content, perhaps 20 degrees, but it won’t freeze them as fast as liquid nitrogen. The S3 are a sharp team who also use www.foxynews.com as their info and fact-checking source.

Antarctic Slide Show. Because I knew that the S3 had an interest in penguins, I took a box of 600 35 mm. slides from my Antarctic summer in the 1960s doing research. The slides were totally disorganized. The S3 had never seen a slide projector or a slide show and they fell in love with the process. Our first night I showed them a few Adelie penguin shots and some nice ones of ice. Next day, I turned the box of 600 over to them and took a much-needed siesta. That night we gathered around their show of 140 (tray maximum) slides, randomly picked. Perhaps 100 were of ice and rock and 40 were of penguins (all like 2 below). For us adults, it was a grueling experience before our dinner and booze. It helped by starting Happy Hour during the show. They were upset that I had no pictures of Emperor penguins.  

Harmonicas & Bongos

All my life I have loved playing the harmonica. I had my big moment when I played with a geriatric blues and oldies R&R band for a few years called Code Blue. We usually carried away $5-25 each per gig for 4 hours of play. We were that good. We always had an ambulance waiting in the parking lot with their engine running at each gig. At our favorite and only regular bar gigs, the cowgirls would play a game called butt darts. At intermission they would clamp down on a quarter somehow miraculously lodged between their skintight Levi butt cheeks and seductively 2-step their way to a shot glass with money tucked beneath a shot glass. They hovered over the shot glass and bombed away. If you hit the target, you got the money donated by drunk, leering cowboys and band members. Occasionally cowboys staggered down the course and never won, and I was the only band member cajoled and drunk enough to try, and I won $1 on my first attempt.

For many years, due to a serious case of OCD, I have driven family members and friends to various asylums due to an incessant desire to beat on anything that was flat. In desperation, TLW bought me some bongos one Christmas over 2 decades ago and I immediately fell in love. With the bongos. Since I can’t afford a soundproof music room like all great musicians, my practicing was causing problems on the home front. At that time, there were 5 of us, 4 humans and 1 dog in a small house. The dog, Bela, would howl as she did when I practiced harmonica, until she became deaf. Recently, TLW bought herself a very expensive set of Bose noise-cancelling Bluetooth headphones. The problem is that she loves them so much, she wears them all the time. With my serious deafness, it makes communication between us difficult.

Alien Legislature

Throughout the world, the Idaho State Legislature (ISL) is regarded as being unique as a political body. Their only competition might be the U.S. Congress, but Congress can’t compete when it comes to proposing and passing legislature that is other worldly and always unconstitutional, absurd, and from a time when we used sticks to make fires and beat our women with clubs. Occasionally, I find myself longing for that time in history. In a desperate search of Star Trek lore, I find no clues as to where ISL originates from. I do know this much, their saucers in the parking lot are all silver, if that helps. Spock or Kirk might be able to help me, but they haven’t returned my calls. Wherever the ISL comes from, it is mind-boggling that their people haven’t gone extinct. Maybe they did eons ago and the ISL is the last of a demented alien civilization from a faraway galaxy.

The ISL is now trying, for the second time, to put future citizen grassroots initiatives on a ballot impossible to do. Thus, revoking a constitutional right of Idaho citizens. Much of the time, they ignore the state constitution. The governor vetoed the bill the first time they tried this stunt, but our legislature and its fanatical rightwing base of 1 billion out-of-work cowboys, loggers and female wrestlers, are tenacious, not unlike Trump’s peons. Normal people in Idaho (10 university professors and doctors) are petitioning the governor to veto it again. Pray for us.

Joe X and Joe B

I have a very casual friend, Joe X, from HS, whom I don’t think I ever met. HS ended 60 years ago and I’m currently working on my recollections of a few minutes ago.  We communicate and debate politics very civilly on Facebook.  Joe X sounds like a very nice and patient guy. He is very conservative, and when I post something radically left, Joe X responds radically right. In one of my recent FB posts I said that with Joe B, we now have an opportunity to return to normalcy and move forward instead of backward. For 4 years we were gaining ground exponentially in our time travel back to the Dark Ages. Joe X was upset with that, and he responded with the very polite, following comment in regards to Joe B’s politics, including the stopping the Keystone Pipeline, “……About 3,000 jobs, but their jobs, and do you think digging up some dirt will really affect the environment? Also, Biden’s open door or make it easy for illegals to get into the USA is good for a hurting Economy? Biden has some good plans for covid-19, but he needs to rethink some of his decisions.” I am not going to openly imply or generalize that Joe X is a typical conservative, but……… Currently, I am working steadily on crafting my response.

That’s it, folks, until the next SporadicSpeak comes out again.