BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

In a little over a month, I will be 50.

Yay. Half century. Big 5-0. Surfboards, waves, syncopated Polynesian Hippie Music. Book ’em, Dano…

Actually, I’m sort of excited about it. After all, 50 is technically the new 30. Life should be just really starting to get interesting for me. Not that The Redhead hasn’t made it plenty interesting all along…

At any rate, one of the reasons 50 is the new 30 is advances in medical science, up to and including early detection of disease so that it can be treated before it REALLY gets to be a problem. Therefore, when you hit 50 the first thing the doctor tells you after pulling his hand out of your a$$ – prostate exam, folks… prostate exam… – is that you need something ELSE jammed into your bung hole, that being a 3d Imax Camera.

Okay, so maybe not a 3d Imax Camera. More like a  camera on a rope…

And so, you make your appointment to have a colonoscopy. This is important shit right here, no pun intended. Colon cancer isn’t pretty, and this is the sort of thing that can save your life. However, Dave Barry beat me to the punch on the whole Intestine Spelunking Blog… And Harry Smith had his done live on national TV. I offered to live stream mine on Facebook, but my fans said no. They are more than happy to read one of my books about a serial killer doing truly horrible things to a victim or two, but when it comes to poop they get a little squeamish. Go figure…

But anyway… Or should that be Butt Anyway? No matter, the real deal is that it’s been done. The benefits of having a colonoscopy have been espoused by much bigger names than me, so I’m not about to be a copycat.

I am, however, about to throw down a major bitch about this whole thing… You see, in order to properly film the poop canal it must first be free of poop. Makes a certain sort of sense. I mean, that way the Doctor doesn’t have to keep telling Mister Hanky to move out of the way so he can see, right? And so, in order to do this they write you a prescription for Colon Blow… Okay, so that’s just what I call it. In point of fact it is “Suprep: Bowel Prep Kit.”

Cool, eh? I mean just look at it. A box of awesome. Make you clean as a whistle, it will. But wait… There’s more…

Here’s the bill.

Yes… You read it correctly. $71.43… AFTER the insurance kicked in a twenty. Without insurance it would have been $93.09…

Yeah… For some stuff to make me shit my brains out and feel completely miserable for about 18 hours. Okay… it’s medical progress. It’s the sort of thing that can save my life. Of course, I won’t have any money to live on, so I might as well be dead, but hey, what the hell.

Here’s the rub… For less than 20 bucks I could pick up a box of Dulcolax and two bottles of Citrate of Magnesium, and it would do EXACTLY the same thing. I know this because I’ve been down this road before, plus I verified it with my buddy Dr. Gina, who is, in point of fact, a real doctor, not just one on TV.

So here’s my thing… To celebrate my 50K Exhaust System Check I am pretty much flushing about 75 bucks down the toilet.

But what the hell… You only turn 50 once… Since my ass is getting raped, I guess my wallet should, too…

More to come…

Murv

Back in the 70’s, C. W. McCall (Bill Fries) along with Chip Davis (Yeah, THAT Chip Davis) wrote a song called Green River. If you’d like to listen to the original, here’s a link:

I suppose you are  probably wondering why I am even bringing up an almost 40 year old song. Well, you see, it’s like this: Evil Kat.

Come on… You knew The Supreme Redhead had to be involved in this somehow…

Back in the days when it was just E K and her leashed pets – that being two canines and one husband (I can’t complain, she bought me a really nice collar with an engraved tag that said Property of Evil Kat on it) we used to go on float trips CONSTANTLY. For non-Missourians – as I have found that the term “float-trip” is not universal – a float trip is where you rent a canoe, get dropped off with it and your coolers, and paddle/float yourself down a river to the “take-out point,” which can either be where you parked originally, or a different place where they pick you up and bring you back to your car.

This is intended to be fun. As a rule, it usually is. Like I said, back in the day, E K would leash us up, put us in the car, and off we’d go. There was one year I recall that we went on float trips almost every weekend for the entire summer. AND, truth be told, a float trip was EKay’s and my first official date – and she still married me anyway. But that’s a different blog that I’ll tell sometime in the future.

At any rate, back to the here and now. For several years after the O-spring came along, we stopped “floating” – primarily due to time constraints. However, now that she is older and can come along with us, and can swim, and all that good stuff, E K has made it her mission in life to see to it that we go on at least one float per summer, if not more. With that, she has started scheduling an end of summer float with friends for the past two years. One more year and it becomes a tradition…

Last year’s float, while it had a couple of mildly harrowing incidents, was almost completely unremarkable as compared to this year’s canoeing odyssey – which occurred just yesterday,  Saturday August 27…

I knew it would become a blog when we were less than a mile into the float. Why? Because Steve, Mary, and Tammy flipped. Not as in “flipped someone off,” or “flipped out”… Although, they DID flip out of the canoe, so I guess in a way they DID flip out. Basically, Mary’s sunglasses “flipped” off her head, Steve tried to grab them, they all shifted in the canoe, and… Well… Moments later we were standing on a gravel bar emptying water from their craft and then reloading it with their coolers.

But what REALLY told me this would be a blog was that while we were reloading their “boat,” some other canoers came around the bend, merrily singing “Row, Row, Row your boat.” To this, a waterlogged Mary muttered under her breath, “I’ll show you row, row your f*cking boat… Quit your damn singing.”

After that, it was all over for us. The river proceeded to exact revenge upon each and every member of our group. E K, O-Spring, and I flipped – something that literally has NOT happened since the second time E K and I went floating (We are actually pretty damn good “canoe drivers”). Mary was taken down by a slippery rock and banged the crap out of her knee. Same thing then happened to the O-spring. We were caught in a snag and I had to bail out of the canoe and fight the current to get us free. Later, during a similar operation I was sucked under the canoe while E K and the O-spring were still aboard and became a speed bump after I loosed it – then the current popped me back up above the surface, but still had hold of me and I tumbled over rocks for several feet until I could get a handhold. Of course, E K and the O-spring were now 300 yards down the river and I had to walk the rocks to get to them. There was plenty more, actually, but this blog is already over 1000 words, so I need to give it a bit of a rest… Instead, what I will try to do is recount our adventure through rewriting C. W.’s tune…

Meramec River

It was daylight on the river but we weren’t having any fun
And we couldn’t find our cooler cups no more
But we felt the boilin’ current and the spring was runnin’ cold
As we headed down the river two plus four
And the rocks were kickin’ our asses
On the day we ran the rapids of the Meramec

[Chorus]
And we died a thousand times in that nine miles of hell
The longest day of life we’d ever seen
But we lived to tell the story and we know the story well
Then we ate some dinner at a truck stop

We were four plus two in number when we gathered on the shore
And we loaded up our coolers full of beer
But we summoned up our courage an’ we said we wouldn’t scream
And we ran that rocky river without fear
Yeah, the logs were kickin’ our asses
On the day we ran the rapids of the Meramec

Echoing Shouts:
Steve – Paddle RIGHT!
E K – HANG LEFT!
Mary – WHAT THE FUUUU–
Tammy – GODDAMIT!
Murv – Here, hold my beer…
O-spring – Squeeeeeee!

And we saw a thousand floaters hung up on the snags and logs
As we fought to keep ourselves from their fate
And we saw the bobbing beer cans and we heard the ghostly cries
Of the drunks who ran the river long ago
And the rocks were kickin’ our asses
On the day we ran the rapids of the Meramec

Echoing Shouts:
Steve – Paddle LEFT!
E K – SERPENTINE! SERPENTINE!
Mary – STOP SINGING!!
Tammy – GODDAMIT!
Murv – Here, hold my beer…
O-spring – Squeeeeeee!
Steve – Whatever…
Mary – Dammit, Steve!
E K – Those assholes just threw trash in the river!
Tammy – GODDAMMIT!
Murv – (clunk clunk) … I’m okay… I think…Gimme a beer…
O-Spring – Squeeeeee!

Now the memories are swirlin’ down the campground shower drains
But the waters of the Meramec flow like tears
And the rocks and snags and crashes will be a long remembered tale
To be told around the campfires through the years
Yeah, the rocks were tryin’ to kill us
On the day we ran the rapids of the Meramec

[Chorus]
And we died a thousand times in that nine miles of hell
The longest day of life we’d ever seen
But we lived to tell the story and we know the story well
Then we ate some dinner at a truck stop

Echoing Shouts:
Steve – Paddle RIGHT… NO, LEFT!
E K – O-spring, give me the paddle!
Mary – I can’t bend my knee…
Tammy – GODDAMIT!
Murv – We should have brought Scotch…
O-spring – Squeeeeeee!
Steve – Lookit that fish…
Mary – How does our canoe look?
E K – Look, Mary, a snake…
Mary – (SCREAM)
Tammy – GODDAMMIT!
Murv – There’s a blog in this…
O-Spring – Here, hold my Gatorade…

Fade out

And there you have it. We made it home alive… Late. We’re bruised and battered and sore and blood was shed (I’m not kidding)…

Funny thing is, I have a physical tomorrow. Before you ask, there’s nothing wrong. It’s just a “coming up on 50,000 mile” service check sort of thing. I suspect the doc won’t even mention the bruises and scrapes. He’s used to seeing me after E K has been “in a mood”…

More to come…

Murv