Truckin' - July 2009, Vol. 8, Issue 7
Welcome back to a (very) late summer issue of Truckin'.
1. Trading Pickles by Paul McGuire
Sven worked in the largest pickle factory in Western Norway. It was a dreary town, but Sven's options were limited since he had a terrible habit of holding a steady jobs. In the four and a half years since he graduated from university, he held no less than 76 jobs. All of them had something in common... he was fired from all 76... More
2. Learning to Steal in the Boy Scouts of America by Johnny Hughes
We had a code similar to the Boy Scout code in some ways. There was no stealing from the mom and pop grocery stores that were on every other corner. No stealing from houses. No vandalism. And as I said, we did not steal while in our Boy Scout uniforms... More
3. Yellow No. 2 By Betty Underground
He had pulled the mirror and the little box from the coffee table shelf and was cutting and lining up the next round. It was the 90s in Los Angeles. We had fallen into the alteration that cocaine had provided for our creative minds. Neither of us addicted to the drug, but walking a fine line of destruction to our relationship. Being almost unable to communicate with each other without it... More
4. The Grays by Milton T. Burton
We froze and they smirked, their bright, gleeful eyes drinking in our fear. Then two of them pulled knives. Large knives. I put my arm around my daughter and drew her close. Cozart was calm beside me but I could hear him whispering a prayer in what sounded like Latin. Old habits die hard, I guess... More
5. Justin Masterson By Broseph
The game was interesting enough, but I needed more excitement. I noticed two young ladies standing on the rail near us, decked out in Bosox regalia and holding a bottle of sun screen. About my age, they were attractive and fit the profile of girls I would normally bone sober... More
What a Long Strange Trip It's Been...
From the Editor's Laptop:
The July edition of Truckin' is late but it's definitely worth the two week delay. Betty Underground is back with one of her sultry stories of living the hard like in L.A. in the 1990s. Johnny Hughes goes back, way back, to his days in the Boy Scouts with his contribution this month. I'm honored and pleased that Milton T. Burton shared another one of his fantastic short stories. I'm also excited to announce the debut of Broseph. I have a feeling that we'll be reading more from him in the future.
If you help spread the word about Truckin', you will increase your karma substantially! Tell your friends and family and co-workers about your favorite stories. The scribes here write for free and you'll be doing me a huge favor by helping get the some publicity.
If anyone is interested in being added to the mailing list, or perhaps you are interested in writing for a future issue, then feel free to contact me.
I have to sincerely thank the writers for sharing their bloodwork. Thanks for taking this leap of faith with me. And a special thanks goes out to you, the reader, for your loyalty and support over the years.
Be good,
McG
"Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities." - Aldous Huxley
* * * * *
My sincerest thanks for dropping by....
7/21/2009
WSoP November 9, is already Riggsed....
My jaw breakin' chaw chewin' brudder, went and made me think. I will SO get him back for that the Damn azz.
His opinion can be found HERE, but the general synopsis is as follows;
1) Ivey being at the final table, means squadoosh to Poker's main stream success.
2) Button mashing Fishies are out there.
Well he's right about one thing, I am out here!
For the few years that I have been writing my crap & drivel on the intertubes to share, I've hoped that two simple messages would always come across. First and most importantly, have some fun in what you do. What your doing will NEVER happen again. And secondly, always remember that despite our best efforts, history itself leads one to believe that history.... well..... has a way of repeating itself.
The fun part, any idiot like me should be able to comprehend. If not, I pity you. It's the history part that for some unknown reason to me, mankind as a whole seems to totally blank out on whenever it starts it's crazy cycle.
In a synopsis type nutshell for myself, ('cause I have neither the talent nore desire, to spew forth my self-righteousness to the masses) I want you folks to think NASCAR.
Is Ivy the man that changes the face of Poker for an eternity? Hell no. Is our Phil going to be remembered as the man that helped take a gambling, (and therefore dark and sordid) game of chance to the next level? Damn skippy he could be!
We don't have to like anything that the Poker insiders like Pollack do to our game, by way of changing formats, time frames for the series or whatever the hell they do about the television coverage or schedules for the main event. But if you give an honest effort at reflecting on the NASCAR starting formula and take a good, honest, long hard look at what is happening right now in Poker as a mainstream product, is it really that hard to compare the current day Phil Ivy, with say the past glory of Darrell Waltrip?
Say it's a stretch if you will. This here is my opinion and who am I to tell you what the hell to think?
I'm just sayin' that if you can't see that mold for bringing the ol'ladies TIDE into a sport full of criminals and moonshiners, who had a freakin' fist fight on camera for the first ever televised race in what the current Poker genius' are trying to do, you'd best look the other way whilst Poker runs away without you.
Poker right now is as close as it's ever going to get, to being the once proud game of Past-Presidents. Phil Ivey is a conduit to bigger and better things. Rich men and women far smarter than me, have already started organizing a plan. A plan that they hope, will make them and Phil a whole shitload of money.
So there you have it. I also agree with Riggs on that point too. It's all about extracting every penny you can, from the fish that are we the mainframe of the game. Don't think for even one second like my much loved brudder Riggs, that someone somewhere isn't going to take full advantage of Phil and the November 9. Folks if they can change the recipe for Coke and not go out of business, anything has to be considered possible or at the very least, certainly plausible! Oh and don't give me that crap about how that change almost destroyed the company either! I'll just say think UIGEA and how that totally destroyed on-line Poker and how right now, no one ever plays besides the 36 gazillion still on-line the main three sites.
Hell if I was in the current Pokerati, I'd be trying to find out what Phil Ivey's prop bet on a sponsor is worth right now. I bet it already covers the $8 million main event winners purse!
My sincerest thanks for dropping by....
His opinion can be found HERE, but the general synopsis is as follows;
1) Ivey being at the final table, means squadoosh to Poker's main stream success.
2) Button mashing Fishies are out there.
Well he's right about one thing, I am out here!
For the few years that I have been writing my crap & drivel on the intertubes to share, I've hoped that two simple messages would always come across. First and most importantly, have some fun in what you do. What your doing will NEVER happen again. And secondly, always remember that despite our best efforts, history itself leads one to believe that history.... well..... has a way of repeating itself.
The fun part, any idiot like me should be able to comprehend. If not, I pity you. It's the history part that for some unknown reason to me, mankind as a whole seems to totally blank out on whenever it starts it's crazy cycle.
In a synopsis type nutshell for myself, ('cause I have neither the talent nore desire, to spew forth my self-righteousness to the masses) I want you folks to think NASCAR.
Is Ivy the man that changes the face of Poker for an eternity? Hell no. Is our Phil going to be remembered as the man that helped take a gambling, (and therefore dark and sordid) game of chance to the next level? Damn skippy he could be!
We don't have to like anything that the Poker insiders like Pollack do to our game, by way of changing formats, time frames for the series or whatever the hell they do about the television coverage or schedules for the main event. But if you give an honest effort at reflecting on the NASCAR starting formula and take a good, honest, long hard look at what is happening right now in Poker as a mainstream product, is it really that hard to compare the current day Phil Ivy, with say the past glory of Darrell Waltrip?
Say it's a stretch if you will. This here is my opinion and who am I to tell you what the hell to think?
I'm just sayin' that if you can't see that mold for bringing the ol'ladies TIDE into a sport full of criminals and moonshiners, who had a freakin' fist fight on camera for the first ever televised race in what the current Poker genius' are trying to do, you'd best look the other way whilst Poker runs away without you.
Poker right now is as close as it's ever going to get, to being the once proud game of Past-Presidents. Phil Ivey is a conduit to bigger and better things. Rich men and women far smarter than me, have already started organizing a plan. A plan that they hope, will make them and Phil a whole shitload of money.
So there you have it. I also agree with Riggs on that point too. It's all about extracting every penny you can, from the fish that are we the mainframe of the game. Don't think for even one second like my much loved brudder Riggs, that someone somewhere isn't going to take full advantage of Phil and the November 9. Folks if they can change the recipe for Coke and not go out of business, anything has to be considered possible or at the very least, certainly plausible! Oh and don't give me that crap about how that change almost destroyed the company either! I'll just say think UIGEA and how that totally destroyed on-line Poker and how right now, no one ever plays besides the 36 gazillion still on-line the main three sites.
Hell if I was in the current Pokerati, I'd be trying to find out what Phil Ivey's prop bet on a sponsor is worth right now. I bet it already covers the $8 million main event winners purse!
My sincerest thanks for dropping by....
7/20/2009
If I don't tweet, am I a twit....
Four days........... Hmmmmmmmm......... not quite cutting it.
Four glorious days off the grid, as it were.
There was no blog requiring a post by me and I'm slightly sorry to say, there was not one blog post out there on the web, that just couldn't wait until Monday or Tuesday for a read. No e-mail switched on for a check either! Not personal or work related and barely the once was the FaceBook account checked, for new requests and updated pics.
Four incredible, calming, un-plugged and luxuriously quiet days sans the web.
Four days inside my own head with no distractions. Time for thoughts other than the hammer I was wielding, the saw to make a few cuts with and the steady flow of birds on limb, that remind me of just how poorly I can whistle.
Four days considering the hold that these intertubles can often seem to have on a kid, new in relative terms to their strength and their magic. What a tangled web we weave indeed!
Of course, I sat down this morning with a revived spirit and immense desire to 'catch up' on everyones weekend goings on, only to find myself 'wanting' for nothing at all..
The boys whooped it up celebration style, as BadBlood joined the frey with Al and Otis, both celebrating the imminent return to homes they'd both so sorely missed. The Steel Panther show capping a night of fun and frivolity. Yet quite seriously, the only tweet that actually forced a Spock like raised eyebrow from me, was this one.
@evybabee: I went to a Steel Panther show and as I was leaving I noticed that somehow my panties had disappeared?!
It's not that I wouldn't have loved to have been there and join in on all the fun, it's more of what I would have missed had I not had these last four days as they were.
It's all a bit jumbled right now, as the need to gather thoughts is by far crushing the talent to process them. As I stagger through the random thoughts in my head, I may put them out here for perusal. But then again, I may not.
Who knows?
But just so your aware, it's certainly not this kid!
Off the grid and totally un-plugged is where I come from. Who the hell says, "you can't go home again?"
My sincerest thanks for dropping by....
Four glorious days off the grid, as it were.
There was no blog requiring a post by me and I'm slightly sorry to say, there was not one blog post out there on the web, that just couldn't wait until Monday or Tuesday for a read. No e-mail switched on for a check either! Not personal or work related and barely the once was the FaceBook account checked, for new requests and updated pics.
Four incredible, calming, un-plugged and luxuriously quiet days sans the web.
Four days inside my own head with no distractions. Time for thoughts other than the hammer I was wielding, the saw to make a few cuts with and the steady flow of birds on limb, that remind me of just how poorly I can whistle.
Four days considering the hold that these intertubles can often seem to have on a kid, new in relative terms to their strength and their magic. What a tangled web we weave indeed!
Of course, I sat down this morning with a revived spirit and immense desire to 'catch up' on everyones weekend goings on, only to find myself 'wanting' for nothing at all..
The boys whooped it up celebration style, as BadBlood joined the frey with Al and Otis, both celebrating the imminent return to homes they'd both so sorely missed. The Steel Panther show capping a night of fun and frivolity. Yet quite seriously, the only tweet that actually forced a Spock like raised eyebrow from me, was this one.
@evybabee: I went to a Steel Panther show and as I was leaving I noticed that somehow my panties had disappeared?!
It's not that I wouldn't have loved to have been there and join in on all the fun, it's more of what I would have missed had I not had these last four days as they were.
It's all a bit jumbled right now, as the need to gather thoughts is by far crushing the talent to process them. As I stagger through the random thoughts in my head, I may put them out here for perusal. But then again, I may not.
Who knows?
But just so your aware, it's certainly not this kid!
Off the grid and totally un-plugged is where I come from. Who the hell says, "you can't go home again?"
My sincerest thanks for dropping by....
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