The lighter side of cancer
By Roger Owens
Attention on deck. Our interim action report today will start with a subject near and dear to my heart: boobs. That’s right, titties. Tatas , tits, bazoomas, gaboonzas, breasts, bosoms. The top hamper, headlights, hooters. Jugs, melons, cans, knockers, yabbos, tetas grandes! I like ’em. Love them in fact. I like to look at them, see them move, touch them. Most guys do. Guys have code to talk about them when their wives are present: “Look at the nuts on that dog,” to a buddy, refers to a fine set going by at the mall when the wife might not appreciate a more direct comment. Even gay guys can appreciate a shapely rack. Some guys like them so much they want to get a pair for themselves, and, thanks to modern medicine, they can have them!
The other shoe
By Roger Owens
In 1861, before the start of hostilities in the American Civil War, both sides held their fantasies, those delicate, oh-so-vulnerable baskets into which we are forevermore enjoined by our mothers never to put all of our eggs. The Johnnies said the Union boys didn’t have the sand for one real fight, let alone a real war. They didn’t have the honor, the pride that would sustain the Southerners through the few months it might take to kick those invaders from the sacred soil of Dixie. The Union fellows told each other they had the vast advantage in manufacturing, which would provide the railroads, the cannon, the powder and shot and food and horses and rifles, and those Rebs wouldn’t have a chance. Many of the Union boys were from the cities, and they saw themselves as legion. How many Rebs could there be, after all? Just a bunch of farm boys. Neither side listened to their mothers, as so many generations have not, to their everlasting regret. So, as the shooting started, each side marched smartly off to disaster, figurative baskets of eggs clutched uselessly in their hearts and minds.
By Roger Owens
In Windows 10, you hold the power button down for 15 seconds, then release. Press it again and begin tapping “F11,” until you see the boot menu. You select “Troubleshoot” from the menu, and then click “Advanced Options.”
By this point you feel a little smug; that feeling gamers report when “reaching the next level,” that sort of thing. You are now confronted with options including one known as “System Restore,” and when you click on that, you get to chose from a few dates in the not-too-distant past at which time, in your fondest dreams, your system had not been corrupted by God only knows what virus, power surge, plague, disaster, war, famine, or election gone awry that might have had illicit cyber-congress with your hard drive and impregnated it with some vampiric succubus.
By Roger Owens
In just the next few days, life, for my wife and me, will be turned on its head. The Devil has invited us to dance. It’s not the kind of invite you can turn down. You see, there’s this lump. Yeah, that kind of lump. It’s been x-rayed and ultra-sounded and mammogramed – the medical equivalent of an RSVP for the invitation, if you will – our grudging, involuntary response that, yes, we will be attending the ball. We really have no choice, do we? They, and the biopsy tomorrow, may be the first salvoes in what could be a long, hard war. Or what could be, heaven forbid, a short, deadly skirmish. It’s like this: by itself, the lump isn’t too terribly scary; lots of women have them. They could be fibroids, which run in Cindy’s family, while breast tumors do not. Even if it’s a tumor, they can do so much these days, right? Right? But then there’s this cough. The cough has been around for a few weeks, a bit longer than we have known about the lump. Just a holdover from that bout of bronchitis last year, you understand. Or so we have been telling ourselves; but then, the lump. Yeah. So now the cough has grown claws and teeth and turned into something entirely different than a “lingering viral infection.” Quick: name another situation in which a “lingering viral infection” would be a thing to celebrate!
Get in the house before dark
By Vic Midyett
Anita and I were too young for watches, so Dad told us the following:
No matter what you are doing, come home and get in the house before your shadow becomes as long as you are tall. The reason for this is that the animals of all kinds would be needing water.
My first hunting trip
By Vic Midyett
The only meat we ate in Assam, where I was born, was what Dad shot in the jungle. The reason no meat was available for purchase is that the locals were all Hindu by faith. They didn't eat meat. Many animals were sacred in their faith.
Dad had a twelve gauge shotgun and a .30-06, and he would go hunting in the jungle once or twice a week. The jungle was about a ten-minute walk away through some rice paddies. Because the average annual rain fall was about 350 inches, it was an extremely dense jungle. One would walk about 20 feet into it, in some areas, and be required to turn on a flash light to see. Dad had a watchman by the name of Beejooly (who slept all night, but that was another Missionary Kid story) whom he took with him for security. Beejooly would cut a path with a machete when needed.
Beejooly and Dad
By Vic Midyett
My parents arrived in India in 1950 as missionaries. I was born on the kitchen table soon after they arrived, and my sister, Anita, was born four years later. There were no paved roads where we were—only four-wheel-drive access.
