July 2016 – The Life of C.L. Boss

Random Semicoherent Thoughts – Volume 15

Yup, changed my colors because I can. White was getting to be a little much on the eyes.

From the comments department…

I was just looking at your Random Semicoherent Thoughts – Volume 11 – The Life of C.L. Boss website and see that your site has the potential to become very popular.

Wow! You don’t say? Tell me more…

Now, let me ask you… Do you need your site to be successful to maintain your way of life?

Now there is where you lost me. You apparently can’t be that big of a fan – I’ve already said that this blog is a money-losing proposition. I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that if I get tangled up with what you have to offer, it will make it even more so. Try again.

Work this week involved attendance at the local county fair for a couple of days. While I was all about the fair in my youth, it’s not necessarily my idea of a good time anymore. The last time I actually paid to go to the county fair, my five-year-old daughter coerced me into going on the ‘pink ride’. I consider it to be a miracle that neither of us lost our lunch in the middle of the midway as a result. That daughter is now seventeen. Fortunately for me, my time was spent not doing a whole lot of anything while sitting in an air conditioned vehicle far away from any rides.

While I started this blurb ready to make the claim that I consumed no ‘fair food’ while there, I must admit to consuming some kettle corn. I like me some kettle corn – sweet, salty, crunchy, and full of fiber. The other two food items I consumed can be bought at local restaurants and do not include the word ‘fried’ so they don’t count… do they?

I was once convinced by someone not to eat a fried Twinkie. I was pretty sore about that missed opportunity for the longest time. Two years running I have had the opportunity to right that wrong. Two years running I have passed. Consuming fried snack cakes is a young man’s occupation – I’m not one of those any more.

Here’s a little factoid about C.L. for you – I once made the second best bread exhibited at the fair in the rural county that I lived in. My reward was a nice purple rosette and a small cash prize in addition to bragging right thirty years late. My only blemish – I baked on a very humid day and had a few too many bubbles in my bread. At various times in my life I’ve made bread, but these days bread is carbs and carbs are bad. I’ve finally gotten over this disappointment. My daughters, however, have not.

You only need four ingredients to make bread: water, flour, yeast (in some form or fashion), and salt. You can not believe what you are able to do with those four things with just a little bit of practice.

One of the great tragedies of my life is that I had no idea what the difference was between margarine and butter until I was well into my twenties. I thought they were the same thing. They are, I can assure you, not the same thing. My family was a margarine family – we had copious amounts of the little containers to prove it. When I discovered the awesome goodness that was butter, it was an epiphinal moment. Only on the rarest of occasions has margarine ever graced my house since then.

I want to apologize to you, dear reader, as well as my junior English teacher for the large amount of passive verbs that have been used (see, there’s another one… and yet another one) in the writing of this blog entry. It took quite awhile for the world to convince me that passive verbs are (damn it!) evil, but I now comprehend how they lead to dull writing. Perhaps I now have…. er… never mind.

Random Semicoherent Thoughts – Volume 14

I had one of my fans reach out to me today and ask me why I haven’t been writing in my blog lately, but it wasn’t as much what she said as how she said it. May I offer a heartfelt ‘thank you’ to Ms. Boss for her encouragement.

Another fan offered additional piece of advice in a comment on Random Semicoherent Thoughts – Volume 7. It reads as follows:

It’s hard to locate knowledgeable people on this matter, but you sound like you know what you’re talking about! Thanks

So there you have it folks, straight from user ‘darkness reborn hack free’ – I’m knowledgeable AND I know what I’m talking about, especially when it comes to random semicoherent thoughts. As someone famous once said…

You can always believe everything you read on the internet. – Abraham Lincoln

We need to get caught up on some ‘goings on’ since I haven’t published any of my natterings for the last month. Here’s a highlight – I marched in a Gay Pride parade last month, I even held the sign for the group I was marching with. Yes, you remember correctly, there is a ‘Ms. Boss’ in my life. No, while I’m not the most machismo man in the world, I’m not gay. Why did I do this? It’s simple, someone I care for asked me to. You know what? It was a lot of fun. I’m absolutely willing to do it again.

Not thrilled with either ‘the Donald’ or ‘crooked Hillary’? There is an alternative – https://www.johnsonweld.com.

Even before I knew much about soccer, I’ve wanted to attend an English soccer match – there’s something about the atmosphere that I’ve always seen in highlights from those games. I got half a chance a week ago when I saw and English Premiere League team take on my local team. It’s definitely on the bucket list now.

When I say I didn’t know much about soccer, here’s kind of what I mean – my rural high school did not have a soccer team until I was a senior. Reason? Soccer was something that Communists played, real men played football. Yes, I was a ‘real man’ and did what I was supposed to do, but looking back twenty-five years, I wish I would have had the alternative.

August is rapidly approaching and hot, humid weather brings back memories of ‘two-a-days’. For those who aren’t privy to the term, a ‘two-a-day’ is a high school football practice where you work your ass off for two hours, enter a vegetative state for about two hours to recover, then work your ass off again for another two hours. Despite drinking a gallon of fluid, it was not uncommon to lose five pounds by the end of the day. It was difficult, but I do look back on the fact that I survived it with pride.

I played football from seventh-grade to twelfth-grade. I wasn’t very good – while the letter I got when I was a senior wasn’t a ‘gimme’, I didn’t have the required amount of quarters played until my last game. I enjoyed playing in the games and some of the fringe benefits of being a football player in a small town, but I didn’t much care for practice or, truthfully, being near the ‘jock culture’. If I knew then what I know now, I might have been a better player, but I also might not have played football at all.

In some ways, I think football is dying in this country as due a number of factors – sociological, physiological, technological among others. I was a fan growing up, but if I watch sports in the fall these days, its more likely to be something else. Disagree? This page has a comments section – use it.

Random Semicoherent Thoughts – Voume 13

It’s been awhile. I’ve been busy.

I really feel that I should say something about the Orlando shootings, but I just don’t know what to say that would be meaningful.

I’ m a straight guy and I marched in a gay pride parade last weekend because I was asked to. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I don’t understand homosexuality. The thought of being intimate with a man just really doesn’t do it for me. I do, however, know a thing or two about love. If two men love one another and their being together makes them happy, why should I care or interfere? Just because I don’t understand something, doesn’t mean I should condemn it.

Why are Christians so quick to condemn Muslims as a whole for the actions of a few radicals? I seem to recall someone saying something about sin and casting stones…

I don’t understand guns. I even work in an environment where guns are a large part of the culture – the majority of my coworkers have assault rifles. I shot a few beers cans in my younger years and it didn’t do much for me. However, much like homosexuality (brace yourself for an awkward statement), just because I don’t understand it, doesn’t mean I condemn it.

I do understand media. They make a profit out of other people’s misery. I will condemn that. Unfortunately, they are a necessary evil.

Here’s something that annoys me. My work exposes me to many things that make the news. Time and time again, I see them get the facts wrong. Yet when they cover something I don’t know about, I accept it as the gospel truth. Seriously?