Friday, March 25, 2005

I'm definitely crazy...

I did it today. I've been kind of spinning my wheels since 9-11 wanting to do something. Since watching the towers fall live on Fox News, I've been chomping at the bit.

No matter what you feel about the war we're in right now, we're in it for better or worse. We have to finish it, not leave it hang like we did in Viet Nam. If we just pull out of Iraq right now my brothers and sisters who died there will have died in vain. I don't want to see that.

Today I contacted the West Virginia Army National Guard and talked at length to a recruiter. I've made up my mind that even though I did five years in the Army back in the 80's, I'm going to reenlist. They've raised the recruiting age from 35 to 40. I'm 39, so I'm just squeaking under the wire but I have to do something.

Sometimes a guy just has to do what he feels is right. I'm going to reenlist, and if I can I'm going to volunteer for service in Iraq.

Wish me luck.

Thursday, March 24, 2005

UFOs are landing

Since getting into law enforcement after I was discharged from the army in 1987 I became a firm believer in UFOs. It was either that or I was the world's biggest nut-magnet.

No matter where I was, some nut case would find me. It slowly dawned on me that UFOs were landing somewhere in Fairmount Park in the night, letting off their crews with orders to find me. No matter where I was, one would somehow hunt me down to drive me slowly insane.

I'd be sitting in Melrose Diner in South Philly at 4AM. I'd be the only patron in the place. I'd be sitting at the counter eating my eggs & scrapple (if you have to ask what scrapple is, you don't want to know) all the way at the far end of the establishment. I'd hear the door open, and like a heat-seeking missile, some nut case would lock onto me. He/she/it would immediately head right to the stool next to me.

"Howyadoonofficer?"

What the fuck! I cant even have a cup of coffee in peace.

"Igottakittenofficerhisnameispookie!"

Nifty.

EPPI (Eastern Pennsylvania psychiatric Institute) must have closed. No. It's the UFOs. Has to be.

But sometimes it wasn't all that bad. I'd have some fun with them.

A lot of times I was in hospital ERs throughout the city taking reports on accidents, victim statements and stuff. One time I was in the ER at Frankford hospital. I was talking to the registrar and noticed a guy sitting in the waiting room acting odd. I asked the woman what his major malfunction was and she replied with a twinkle in her eye that he was waiting for Captain Kapcom from Star Command.

Oh, really? Time for a little fun.

The registrar looked at me and smiled. I reached over and picked up her phone, dialing the hospital operator.

"Hello, operator? This is officer Wolfenden with the police department. I'm down here in the ER and I understand my Captain is here in the hospital somewhere. Could you page him for me? His Name? Captain Kapcom. Thanks!"

All there is to do now is hang up the phone and watch the show.

A wait of about thirty seconds is all it takes. A click is heard and the operator's voice goes throughout the hospital with a metallic rush.

"Would Captain Kapcom please call the operator. Captain Kapcom please call the hospital operator?"

The wayward alien became animated. He stood up and with a huge smile on his face shouted "He's here! He's really here!!!!! They've come back for me!!!!!!!" and ran out into the parking lot, jumping up and down and waving to the sky...

Well, Got rid of one nut and absolutely no paperwork was involved.

But it doesn't end there. Some aliens are in the mainstream. Here's what I mean. Shortly after my ex and I moved to Arizona, we began to frequent the local American Legion post since I'm a Legion member, it was a good place to go to meet new people in the area and get cheap booze. The bartender there was a ditz, and that's putting it nicely. She was a burnt-out cocktail waitress from Las Vegas posing as a bartender. I was already putting her in the "Nut" category when I realized she was an alien.

She was telling my ex and myself one day how her fifth child was a (I'm quoting here) "Spermicide, condom, hysterectomy baby."

I asked her what she ment by that. She said (I shit you not) that after she had a full hysterectomy, everything grew back and she was able to conceive her fifth child.

Grew back? Body parts do not grow back. I told her that and she was insistent. It grew back she said.

Oh, boy. She has to be an alien. Or part starfish of lizard. One's parts don't grow back.

Aliens are among us....

Copyright 2005 Thomas J Wolfenden

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Another one for the books...

Every time I think I've heard everything something comes along to make me want to just shake my head. I really don't know where to begin with this one. Recently I was seeing a woman the same age as me, college-educated with not one but two bachelor's degrees. She was funny and a pleasure to be around. But this I just can't believe.

I am NOT making this up.

I'm not sure how to delicately put this. The last time I saw her, were were in the middle of "The Act" and I suggested and "alternative" activity... After I did the same for her, by the way...

She told me at that point she didn't want to get pregnant.

Well, I told her I was going to wear protection, but she didn't mean intercourse. She was talking about oral sex. At first I thought she was joking, but no. She was adamant that a woman could get pregnant by performing oral sex. Pretty far to go just because you don't want to go down on me. Make yourself sound like a complete moron.

I was dumbfounded. She became defensive and was firm on her belief. I asked where on earth she heard this and she told me from an heath inservice from the state (She's a state employee) and the instructor told her this was absolutely true, so she believes it.

I couldn't convince her otherwise, even though just getting a blowjob was the farthest thing from my mind at that point. I just couldn't believe that a very educated person in this day of age would actually believe this load of bullshit. This thinking is from the Stone-Age.

Just tell me you'd rather not go down on me. I'm a big boy and can understand. Don't give me a bullshit line and in the process make yourself out to be an idiot. But I really believe she believes this.

Ok.

You can get pregnant from oral sex, get venereal disease from a doorknob and AIDS from a handshake. Martians are beaming laser beams into the Whitehouse. Elvis is still alive. The French are really grateful to us for saving them twice in two World Wars. Israelis and Palestinians really can get along. Gas will cost less than one dollar by the summer.

Sounds silly doesn't it? But this person really believes this.

I'm still shaking my head over that one.

Copyright 2005 Thomas J Wolfenden

Friday, March 18, 2005

Me Bitter? No, not me!

I've been asked many times why I'm so bitter.

I don't know. You tell me.

I met my ex ten years ago. I restored her credit, paid off her student loans, and got her a great paying job away from the little shithole of a town where I met her. I quit my well-paying job in Philadelphia, moved from Philly to Chino Valley, Arizona away from everything I ever knew, friends and family not to see them for years. When we bought the house in Arizona, it was my credit that got us the mortgage. When my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, I was told by my ex (she had taken over the finances at that point) that "we" couldn't afford my trip back right away. Because of that, I never got to say goodbye to my mother. I was the only one of my siblings not at her bedside when she died.

While we were in Arizona, I found out after we separated, that my ex had signed up for at least thirtyseven credit cards in my name, running them all up to the max and defaulting on them effectively destroying my credit. I also discovered she became pregnant on a "business" trip to Atlanta, and the only way I found out she was pregnant at all was she miscarried three months later. I wondered why all of our friends slowly stopped coming around while I was home. All "our" friends were rapidly becoming "her" friends, she had been telling them all I was some pedophile, effectively leaving me alone two thousand miles from the only family or friends I had left.

When we finally separated, I got a job working for the railroad in West Virginia. I would be gone six to eight weeks at a time. I'd get "home" to my little hovel I was renting in Arizona, I'd have numerous voicemail messages and emails from her new boyfriend, giving me graphic play-by-play reports on what they were doing in my bed. During the divorce, she let the house go into forcloseure just so I didn't get half of the equity, saying she couldn't keep up the mortgage payments (Even though she was spending well over $450 a month in three separated bars in Paulden & Chino Valley, AZ. I have the cancelled checks) and at the time was making over $17 an hour at her primary job and $400 a week under the table at another local bar where she bartended two nights a week.

My divorce was final on the 3rd of February. She was awarded everything, the house, (In forclosure) my F-250 pickup, my camper, horse trailer, two horses, two dogs, the cats, the furniture. Everything. I was able to get out of town with just what I could fit into my 1989 Ford Taurus. I still have yet to be able to register that here either because she refuses to put the title into an envelope, put a 37c stamp on it and put it in the mail.

Now, you'd think she'd be happy just to destroy me financially and emotionally and leave it at that, wouldn't you?

Of course she couldn't.

Like I said, my divorce was final almost two months ago. She just couldn't let it go from there even though I had told her and her high-dollar attorney I was done with her and hoped I'd never see her again. She just couldn't let it go. Even though I moved back east and was trying desperately to forget her and move on with my life. I was finally happy for once for the first time in ten years. I had moved on. She was out of my life. I had no contact with her or even tried to contact her since April of last year.

I had met the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. We started dating and I though we might just have a future together. I had never met anyone like her before. She was like a carbon-copy of me, only with ovaries.

Do you thing my ex could let me be, even after the divorce was final?

Fuck no.

Again, unbeknownst to me, she had broken into my Yahoo! Email account (she had already broke into my MSN hotmail account back in September of last year) and started logging onto all kinds of porn sites using my real name and email address. I never found out she was doing this although I had gotten some weird emails from time to time, I brushed them off as spam. She was sending emails to people in my name (who really checks there "Sent Messages" box anyway?) and other things. When she intercepted emails from the woman I was dating, she emailed her, giving her a whole bullshit story on how much of a pervert I was, telling her to go to these sites to see for herself.

Needless to say, the woman I was seeing broke up with me. I'm still kind of pissed that she didn't ask me about any of this stuff, but I do see her point. She doesn't need the aggravation, and she has a twelve year old daughter to worry about. I am definitely not a pedophile, but the damage is already done. I don't blame her, but I do blame my ex. She just won't let go, and is bound and determined to further destroy me.

No, I have not a fucking clue why I'm so bitter. Do you?

Copyright 2005 Thomas J Wolfenden

Out of the loop

Last Monday I was doing the USA Today crossword and one clue shocked me. I was dumbstruck. Three letters, "Barbie's Ex".

Barbie's Ex? When the fuck did that happen?

I didn't even know she was married! Shit. Poor old Ken. She probably took him for everything. Barbie probably had Lesbian Feminist Attorney Barbie sue the shit out of him and humiliate poor misunderstood Ken in front of the judge.

But he was always such a wimp anyway. Between my GI Joe with the life-like hair and Kung-Fu grip and my Steve Austin Six-Million Dollar Man "Action Figures" beating him up all the time and Barbie emasculating him by forcing him to ride around in that pink Corvette and the Winnebago covered in the flowers like some pussy, he had to have some issues. Barbie had been cuckolding him for so long he probably snapped one day, took one of GI Joe's M-1 rifles and shot the shit out of Barbie's Dream Penthouse.

Oh, well. Ken will survive. With a lot of therapy and psycotropic drugs, he should be back to normal someday. Barbie must have been a plastic screw anyway...

Copyright 2005 Thomas J Wolfenden

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Am I going mad?

I've been out of sorts the last week or so. I set up this blog to post my humorous but irreverent observations on my life but I've really been doing some bizarre things lately.

One of my favorite shows on Fox was "Rescue Me" with Denis Leary. In it he plays a NYC firefighter, "Tommy Gavin" who has PTSD and has been seeing ghosts. It's a character I can really identify with. Watching the show I can really understand where the character is coming from.

Like seeing ghosts. It's been a while, but I've started to see them again. Not like in the show, where they actually have conversations in with Tommy and get beer out of his fridge. I've been seeing them in my dreams. Last night was particularly bad. I woke up around 2 AM in a ice-cold sweat and then couldn't get back to sleep. I was doing so good after a year of separation and even better when I found out my divorce was final a month ahead of when I thought it was going to.

I'm quite content now, not totally happy, but I'm content. I'm not depressed, not in the slightest. I still hate waking up in the morning alone, hate it with a passion but I'm being smart and not hopping into bed with just any woman just so I'm not alone.

So I'm doing ok. Not depressed. Content in what I'm doing right now.

But about a week ago, I started crying. Crying over dumb shit. Not just getting a little teary-eyed, but outright weeping. I was watching a little TV the other night and I started bawling uncontrollably over a Goddamn toilet paper commercial. Today on my way home from work I actually had to pull over to sob over a song that came on the radio. It took me fifteen minutes to pull myself together. I've always been the kind of man who isn't afraid to show his feelings (Yes, I cried at the end of 'Old Yeller') but this is a little ridiculous. I'm even getting a little weepy right now and I just can't explain it.

The ghosts at night now this crying....

Am I going nuts?

Friday, March 11, 2005

Cop Humor

A lot of people out there just don't get my humor. It's called Black, Dark, Cop or Gallows Humor. It's defense mechanism. I, like many of my fellow cops, EMS & soldiers out there use it as a defense. If we didn't laughed at some things we'd go completely insane.

My humor is also the reason I could never again be a cop. Political Correctness has driven itself in too deep into the job. With the proliferation of "Civilian Review Boards" (ie: A group of folks who have no clue what it's like to be a cop, telling us how they think we should do our jobs)

My humor has gotten me into trouble before and I'll get to that, but here's a story I think is funny as hell. Apparently in Austin, Texas there was a night club. This night club was what we like to call "A pain in the Ass". Numerous nuisance calls over a period of years. The cops hated going there because it was such a pain in the ass. Bullshit calls. Calls taking up time that could otherwise be used doing real police work. So the cops were fed up with the place.

I can identify.

So, apparently on February 18th of this year, when the place was burning to the ground, several Austin, TX police officers and dispatchers messaged each other with some "Gallows Humor". Things like "Burn, baby burn!" from the 70's disco song and "It smells like victory'! One officer messaged: "I'm laughing too. I was thinking the same thing!".

Were these messages over the police radio? No, they were text-messages on the police in-car computer. But, alas, a concerned citizen didn't think it was all that funny and reported them. So now, good cops have been suspended without pay. Austin, Texas is short two or more cops on the street for a few weeks because some dipshit who has no clue what it's like to be out there decided it wasn't funny.

A little excessive? I think so.

These dildoes who think they know how to be a cop... Save it. You have no idea what it's like. Stop trying to tell the cops how to do it better, ok?

I was crucified by a little thing I uttered one night. I had responded to a motorcycle vs. tractor-trailer one day. The biker's arm had been severed. The paramedic on the scene asked my partner and I to find the arm. After about fifteen minutes, I found the arm under a parked car. In passing, carrying the severed arm to the ambulance I noticed that the arm still had a wristwatch on. I said in passing to my partner: "Hey look. It takes a licking and keeps on ticking!"

A kind citizen who overheard that didn't take too kindly to it.

Fo that I was suspended for thirty days and had to attend "Sensitivity Training".

Cut me a fucking break. Get over it.

Let cops have there jokes. It's the only thing keeping them from going insane.

Copyright 2005 Thomas J Wolfenden

Thursday, March 03, 2005

Law & Order... Again?

Ok. What's up with NBC? Now another series on Law & Order? Now we have Law & Order, Trial by Jury... What's this, about the twelfth spin-off now? Look at the NBC line up for one week. I think it's about two thirds of their programming is some sort of "L&O" episode...

I think we should start calling NBC the "Law & Order, All the Time!" network. Jesus. The show was great. But talk about beating a dead horse. In between the A&E network and CBS, turn on your TV anytime of the day or night and you have some sort of Law & Order show. Can't the NBC executives come up with something else? Oh yeah, they do have "Survivor"... Another no-brainer.

What's next? "Law & Order, Garbage Enforcement Unit" or "Law & Order, Bike Patrol Unit"? "Law & Order, Parking Enforcement Unit"? I know, how about this choice: "Law & Order, Health Code Enforcement Unit" where each week you'll see the nefarious health-code scofflaws.... Is there really cat in the General Tso's Chicken? Or did that cook wash his hands? Oh my God! The Jewish Deli on the lower east side has roaches!

All said and done, I'll still read a book...

Copyright 2005 Thomas J Wolfenden

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Smoke em' if you got em'!

I was reading the paper the other day and I came across this little paragraph in the science section from the AP. In a yet-to-be published paper, it was found that women who smoke think like men.

I don't buy it. If that were the case, all the women who smoke would be walking around with the same baffled expression on their face as I have saying "What the fuck!" all the time...

Copyright 2005 Thomas J Wolfenden

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

French Toast Time!

I thought when I moved to Arizona in 98' I'd seen my last snow storm. But of course I had to move to an area there that gets snow measured in feet, but only stayed around for a day or two... So now I'm back in the east and dealing with my first real snow storm in nine years. But I'm also realizing some things never change and I'm really starting to believe that it's all in genetics. It's in our primal instincts. It has to be.

French Toast.

Here in my new home state of West Virginia we've been getting snow since Sunday morning. Calling for six to eight more inches of the white stuff over night again. On my way home from work tonight I realized I was running low on some staples in my kitchen like milk and was down to the heel of the loaf of bread I had. I stopped at the local Kroger's to get more.

Do you think I could get a gallon of milk, a loaf of bread or a dozen eggs? Of course not! It's the French Toast gene.

It's got to be some primeval drive in us homosapiens to make French toast every time it snows. I bet the Cro-magnon man living in the caves in (where else) France! Why do you think the call it "French Toast"? were the first ones to do it... Grog says to Mog... "Look like white stuff fall from sky! We must make fluffy egg-bread-milk things over fire!"

And that's where it all started. So to this day humans have been unknowingly buying up all the dairy products in the grocery store every time it snows because of our ancient, inbred instincts that go back to the time before recorded history...

Snow storm = French Toast.

I got home and wanted to prove my hypothesis. I phoned the anthropology department at West Virginia University. They basically laughed and hung up on me. Undeterred, I phoned Marshall University's Behavioral science department and this is what I found out!

They basically did the same thing... Laughed their asses off and hung up on me...

Again, I believe in my heart of hearts I'm right! I can't prove it, but just TRY to but a dozen eggs, a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread during any snowstorm! You can't, because everyone has bought it all!

They're making French toast...

Hey, give me a call! I'll bring the syrup!

Copyright 2005 Thomas J Wolfenden