Shaggarat's Dream

A Tale of Two Phones, and Two Phone Companies

This is the story of me, a geeky person who bought the Google G1 from T-mobile two years ago, when they first came out, who left AT&T and paid lots of money to get the first Android phone.

Someone who put up with all the billing shenanigans, dropped calls, and less than stellar coverage that I came to expect from T-Mobile, no worries, I stuck it out with you.

When I tried to get a data plan for my computer from you, T-Mo, your own salesman told me to get PDAnet and tether my G1, even though I had wanted to get a usb stick for my computer.

I am a FORMER customer who USED to recommend T-Mo to everyone I met, but who, when I lost my phone recently, EVEN THOUGH I HAD INSURANCE, was told, even though T-Mobile wouldn't dare try to sell someone two year old technology for new, tried to CHARGE me 130.00 just to REPLACE my old G1... with another old G1! Don't get me wrong, I loved that phone, but it was getting long in the tooth.

No chance for an upgrade, can't apply that $130 to a newer phone, even though I was only two months away from my two year contract being over.

All for a phone that was using an ANCIENT iteration of Android. Today Android phones use at LEAST 2.1 some are even using 2.2 Android. But T-Mobile was firm, even though I was one of the millions who made Android a hit for T-Mobile.

So what, forget about me, will ya?

See, that was what I liked about Android from the start, carrier irrelevancy. And the  G2 your salesdude proclaimed was the MOST EXPENSIVE phone you carried, just didn't feel that quality I felt the old G1 had, and is kinda pricey compared to what I got  instead.

Listen up T-Mobile. You lost a customer that JUMPED off another carrier, to come to your network. You had me paying over $100 a month, and I was HAPPY. But then,  you tried to SCHTUP me right in the wallet.

AT&T was running a one penny special on the Samsung Captivate (refurbished) and I jumped across the carrier network barrier AGAIN.

Now you are out that $100 a month, and I am quite happy with my Samsung and the AT&T network. Probably won't try your services again.

Too Bad.

Lesson here...Your never too big for me not to shop you till I get what I want. Big corporations that forget that, do so at their own risk.

I'm off to watch AVATAR on my new AMOLED 4 inch big screen wonderphone.


BTW - the Samsung Captivate (refurbished) is still available for less than $10 from AT&T. It's a GREAT phone.

Dont be so bitchy next time, T-Mo, and in two long years, maybe I will look at your offerings again.

But maybe not, I'm getting tired of corporate "screw me over" mentality.

So I dumped the data plan, took off my texting plan, and lowered my minutes on T-Mo as low as I can go, and got an old DUMB phone, just an old phone that sit's in my desk drawer, two more months, I'm paying you, and then...*pffft* out go the lights, "no mo t-mo" it's worth it to me.

You lost a first adopter, by trying to gouge me TWICE. First on your overpriced bills, then an OUTRAGEOUS insurance scam, and then TRYING TO RIP ME OFF on the purchase of a crummy ill thought out mediocre phone.

Let's see ...

$350.00 for a so so phone with mediocre reviews, the G2,  or ONE PENNY, for the hottest phone this season, The Samsung Galaxy S series.

Hmmmm....

Looks like you got GREEDY T-MO.

Two years, see ya then...if your still in business.

P.S. I am posting this in FACEBOOK, and sending a link to T-Mobile and AT&T.  Updates as they become available.

Letters to Peanut

Date: November 29, 2026 -This is a partial screenprint of what was found in an old box of geneology forum snail mailers recently, claims to be from way back in 2016, but as we have just now found these items, it is most likely an archeo-Forgery.you never know with these old rusty technologies anymore. Six of the ten memory chips still work. We have no way of knowing what was on those other four rusted chips. The Authors name is lost as well, but we think he was from Perhaps Mexico or Texas :

Letters to “Peanut” - A great kid I unfortunately will never meet, who has a splendid family, no one could ever be as lucky as you.

Hey there, I’m stuck for a few months in a kinda loud place that doesn’t have any tv or radio reception. Internet’s too expensive to waste, so I mostly write, and sometimes, I don’t know who to write to anymore.

So I am writing to you, a newborn child, but I am saving these in a time dated delivery chip, so you won’t get these for at least 10 years or so. I won’t be there when you arrive, but feel it’s a shame not to let you know all the terribly sweet and fabulous things I know about your grandmama Gigi. Remember, a man with no family is mostly an unwanted thing, so never lose connection with your family. They are all you will have sometimes. A good family is all you need, so help them. Most kids around you will be undisciplined and rude. Don’t be that way, have self respect.

 

My Friend Phil

by Brandon Busch - Originally Published Feb. 2007

There was a mighty warrior king in olden days whose 

epitaph on his gravestone was "If I were alive today, you

would tremble." He would have liked Phil!

My Friend Phil

As I write this little tribute piece, I'm sitting here in the quiet peaceful repose of my small, but comfortably appointed living room. Phil doesn't even know where I live, I haven't seen him for over ten years, and yet,  I'm looking over my shoulder, half expecting this nearly mythical man beast, this semi legendary musical prodigy of the amazing Texas progressive rock music scene of the seventies, my larger than life friend Phil,to come a knocking. 

Fronted, stolen, and illicit pleasure powders in his sometime larcenous but always talented hands, someone else's connived car keys at the ready, looking for a naive and trusting accomplice, for a night's worth of mischief and low crimes, and no small amount of improper merriment. 

Some people are more a force of nature, than a normal human being, like you and I.

Phil, the mighty Phil, was, and perhaps still is, just such a man. I haven't seen him in a long time, and I have quite gotten used to living a peaceful life of reflection, writing, and contemplation. None of which would ever be possible if Phil was within a five county area near me. 

I have known stone cold sober snake eyed defense lawyers, mean and tough as the penal code of Texas, who would rip their own tongues out with red hot pincers, before they would utter his name more than twice - and never his full name. 

Phil had a way of showing up, like you had innocently and unknowingly channeled some west Texas demon banshee spirit from a Ouija board. Hell, at the mere mention of Phil's name, or the telling of some offhand anecdote of his often dubious, and sometimes, (OK mostly) unbelievable exploits, sane people still cover their ears and slink away to safety, he was that unpredictable and, well, fierce.

Some folks still swear he prowls the dark Texas nights, in a stolen black GTO, pawn tickets of musical instruments he's sold for cash flying out into the dark Texas night as he flashes that million dollar smile at all the ladies, looking for virgins to deflower, scandalous women to associate with, yes, and dope to be palmed, ripped, or plundered, or a poker game to be fixed, thwarted, and thrown, by nefarious and scandalous means. 

Or perhaps if the stars are right, and your luck was running strong that night, it's off  to a clandestine meeting with some fabulously famous but fast fading giant of the musical world, for an all night recording session, where you might hear a rock, country, or soul, or jazz laced rock opera and space symphony worthy of the Gods.

IPhil was nothing if not a complex personality. And one of the most tortured, but talented men of the twentieth century.

And one of the most torturing, as well, if you were in his sights.

I'm a good sized man, six foot two in my boots, and well over 200 pounds, raised in Texas, and I don't take much guff from any man living. But Phil is the only human I have ever known, who could refer to me as "his little buddy" and make me laugh when he did it.

He was a bit of my musical mentor late in his career, an artful dodger, a loyal,  yet completely scandalous friend, and a fearsome enemy to one and all if he needed to score.

At various times long past his fame and glory in the music biz, he was my bass player, then my body guard, my chef, and always my antagonist, but Phil was always a boon companion. And slightly prone to fits of extreme adventure, that always included everyone in the room, whether they liked it or not.

That didn't, however, excuse me from suffering from his "unique" sense of propriety. Woody Allen once said "an artist makes his own moral universe". Phil certainly embodied that philosophy more than anyone I have ever known.

He was just drawn larger than most, with a bigger pen, with a few more flourishes than most of us get, all laid out on a sheet of parchment sized to the Maker's own hands.

And he was, as God is my witness, one of the true unknown marvels of the music business, along with the band he helped form in the early seventies. The name of which, I won't tell you at this point, because that is another complete legend of rock in itself, a whole story of it's own.

This ones for you, Phil.

I had heard of him for years before I actually met him. Rumors of his prowess with guitars, guns, and the ladies abounded in our small town. He was the one of original bad boys of the local 70's rock or "hippie" music scene in Fort Worth. He favored mirrored aviator glasses, leather pants, and tight fitting shirts that were cut to accentuate his friendly, but intimidating appearance. He had a most disarming and genuine smile, and piercing dark eyes that would melt most woman's resistance on first meeting him.

I saw him play numerous times before I was old enough to get into bars the "appropriate" way, and he was always the showman, the jack of hearts, the class clown, and Falstaff, all rolled into that crazy hippie genius with a killer bear hug mystique.

He possessed a quick hand, a genuine laugh, and a goodline of B.S. as well as a willingness to face danger down and laugh at it all as he grifted across the country in a rock and roll band.

. 

Trained by a local Karate legend, he was also most formidable in a fight, but like most smooth talking con men, a cool head usually prevailed, till he could size a person up, and figure out just what he could do them out of.

After I graduated from high school, I began to work with some local theater groups and musical talents. Some of them were putting on a play at a local museum/theater, and it admittedly was a drug fueled insanity fest for as far as I could see, from the word go.

Phil was playing the lead in this production, (the name of which mercifully escapes me, it was that bad).

 

The whole play became a shambles within the first act, but Phil's fine acting abilities were shining even under these atrocious conditions. This was a man uniquely suited to carrying the whole production on his own shoulders, and looking back, I realize now that he never had much use for supporting actors, or stunt doubles, band members, or well, anyone but his next mark.

The audience, however, always remained in a hazy place of indecision for Phil, because while his ego needed them, but his Orson Wellsian need to control everything meant he had nothing but disdain for them.

Phil would only meet them halfway, (the audience that is). God help their poor unsuspecting little souls if Phil turned on the helpless spectators.

As the pproduction followed the flight plan of the Hindenburg Zeppelin and metaphorically burst into flames, somewhere in the second act, a stage prop used in the now doomed production unnerved even the most adventuresome of the audience members, (I believe it was a twelve gauge shotgun), and when the blank shot went off in the theater, most of the now rapidly retreating audience beat a hurried path to freedom, but one poor schlep just had to make his debut, and have his say, in the unscripted and yet starring role of "audience member as  theater critique specialist".

He stood up from his third row seat, and proclaimed loud enough for most people to hear, "This play sucks, this music sucks, and you suck, too" just as he looked right at our leading man, Phil.

At this point in my narrative, I have to rely solely on what I saw, not on the fantastical and "mostly" not true stories, that would embellish this farsical night with near slanderous infamy in the local music and theater scenes for years to come, as to what actually happened in that theater, on that night, in that particular little town in Texas, this is what I saw, let them say what they will in rebuttal.

As soon as those fateful words left the unsuspecting theater patron's lips, a large, worked up, wound up and rampaging Phil left the stage, bounded through, no, over, the orchestra pit, and then he seized the now wide eyed and trembling man, reared back his pile driving meat hook of a right hand, and cold cocked the gentleman right out. 

Out Cold...

The poor fool fell right out flat over his chair, and went down for the count. As the man lay unconscious across the back of the seat he had  so recently occupied, Phil look around at the few remaining and now completely and utterly horrified audience members, and asked "Do we have any more theater critics in the audience tonight?"

The cast party afterwords was a great success, whew, but quite lacking in representation from any members of the audience, who had all chosen, en masse, to leave the confines of the museums fine theatrical facilities at a most prodigious pace.

Phil was just an enigma, wrapped in a mystery, shrouded in lies, half truths, and innuendos. But he was also one of the best musicians you could ever hope to hear. My own birth mother, who is a God fearing Christian woman and is hardly ever wrong about the real goodness of a person's inner spirit, LOVED Phil.

Go figure. 

He wrote songs that to this day, could bring a tear to the eyes of hardened criminals, and devout church goers alike. At the same time.

I never met the like of his talent, not in Texas, not in Hollywood, nor anywhere else. Not often in my travels have I heard more beautiful, more perfectly composed, gorgeous and heart wrenching songs played anywhere.

He was simply that damn good.

A genius I would say. A genius with a dark twisted need to tool and torment / enchant and delight his fellow man and woman, everyone of us he could reach, almost to the point of madness. But no doubt, Phil was a genius. And boy, could he write a song. Still, the lifestyle he chose cursed him to wretched excesses only kings and madmen are usually privy to.

Don't think I'm making it up. 

Anymore

Phil White & Peggy

 

Of course, when I knew him, he sold every damn one of those songs for a pittance of dope, or booze, or even a handful of macanudo cigars. Every damn beautiful one of them. They were like his precocious children, and he whored them out like they were little innocent street urchins in a war zone.

I never knew him to own things, persay. See, that seemed to be beneath his voracius and Godlike ego assessment of his needs versus yours, or anyones's for that matter. His Modus Operandi was more like he engulfed, he nationalized, he more precisely,  simply "obtained" things. 

Guitars, cars, girlfriends, houses, he seemed to have had the grifter's touch unlike most I have known, and back in the day, I may have known quite a few members of the grifter's guild, it's embarrassing to admit.

His exploits were truly mythic and bombastic, never staying within the confines of normalcy or logic, and in a business based on half truths, legends and hyperbole, Phil stood out, as a manic blessed Saint of melody, harmony, and higher thought in your rock and roll or county laced songs.

The man could play, he could write, and before the life he chose robbed him of his health, he was one hell of a performer.

He claimed to have met many of the stars of the old, now fading worlds, of Rock and County music, (insert breathless crowd noises here) names I won't besmirch with the telling, but most of them would cringe if they knew what I have heard, and that I am also a writer. No worries, it's still too soon...

Years ago, a superstar legend of country music, still young in his career, hired Phil to join his backup band for his first national tour, after hitting number one on the billboard country charts. 

Unfortunately, Phil's first introduction to him was at a Nashville nightclub filled to the brim with record executives, and industry heavy weights. 

So naturally, at least the story goes...Phil got so drunk and whacked out on a plethora of substances, that moments after he was introduced from the stage, and invited up to join them, he bounded onto the bandstand, kicking the country star in the shins, knocked him down, and smashing a most expensive show piece guitar to pieces.

You could say he had a way of entering a room that defied normal laws of, well, almost everything.

Phil was just too large for the little roles that most people had for him, and went on to produce a fine body of work, most of which never saw the light of day, and more's the shame of it.

No one could possibly embody what Todd Rundgren called "the ever popular tortured artist effect" more than Phil. Someday, I will tell you more, but damn it, now someone is knocking on the door. I fear I may have called him from his morphemic slumber bhy even daring to think of those heady days, and I now must huddle quietly in the back room, remaining perfectly still, and hope he goes away.

I'm getting too old to join you anymore, Phil. But I hear you never stopped being the man behind the legend.

They say imperfections gives the diamond it's color.

And you my friend, were a diamond, all the way.

And by the Gods, you were very, very colorful.

Here's to you, you amazing Son of a Texas mother. You will always be the one and only Phil, a musical genius, a wizard and a true star of Texas music lore.

"When the truth and the legend collide, print the legend." 

Postscript Aug. 2009: When the door bell rings these days, I am a little less apprehensive, albeit a little disappointed at the same time. Word has reached me of Phil's passing. Peace. I could have gone to the funeral, perhaps, if I had heard of it in time, but how do you look down on a legend and a rascal of cosmic proportions in his frail and mortal death? I choked, I just couldn't make it. My loss. 

Phil, remember how you said when you died I could have my custom made Leddy snakeskin boots back that you borrowed that night in Vegas? Keep 'em good buddy, I could never fill your boots.

You were fierce. Your likeness will not soon walk this world again anytime soon. Where you stood, marks, suckers and chumps and bullies will always tremble and feel a cold chill, and not know why, but I will. 

As they say in the theater, break a leg, my good friend. But go easy on em, Phil. Don't break too many.

May you live on in a million wild mythical stories, each one bigger and more outlandish than the last. Only you know the real story, but now your voice has gone silent, for the first time since I met you, all those years ago.

That's a first.

Payment for a debt not billed...

The person who took this picture is unknown to me, but i found it a low point in my travels on this earth, and it helped me no small bit. This is my only way of saying thank you.

I have nothing but hope some days. Yet today, despite all the problems of the world I see around me, for some strange reason, don't ask me why, I just had a little extra hope today, and I'm sending it to you.

Whoever you are, whatever is troubling you or causing you pain or discomfort. Here is this small insignificant little piece of hope, It's worthless, weightless, but lasts forever, if you don't misplace it.

When your done with it and don't need it anymore, perhaps find someone who does and send this message to them.

Couldn't hurt...

The Mighty Hercules - Medusa's Sceptre

Time travel is possible when you get old enough. I have heard some of the sounds in this for the first time in 45 years, and it sound like yesterday to me. Freaky. Great production from the studio that gave us those awesome Felix the Cat cartoons. Anybody have a guess who sang the theme song?

If you guessed Johnny Nash, you are correct. You might remember him for his early seventies hit "I Can See Clearly Now".

Over from Vox. First Digg, now Vox. My world crumbles sometimes.

And just like Peter Tosh said, you got to walk and don't look back. Hey y'all. That's Texan for hello.

Icky Twerp and Slam Bang Theater

Back when America was great, there was this guy, Icky Twerp, and there was this show, Slam Bang Theater. Begin nostalgia warm fuzzies in 3....2....1...

ICKY TWERP FINE DINING

The Rain People

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I saw them, and now they know, I know.�
And that's what scares me...

It was about three A.M. when the storm hit.

Frightening winds, and a blast of rain like I have never seen before, hit my house like a freight train, and woke me up. I looked out the window to see what was going on, and I caught sight of one of them, from the corner of my blurred vision.�

Not merely standing in the rain, he was made up entirely of the rain.�

The lightning flashes just made his outline more distinct, but as my eyes adjusted, I began to make him out more readily, and to see others like him scattered about like chess men on a board, moving in abrupt and jagged jumps.�

Never staying put, never walking, nor leaping, just ceasing to be in one place, then, in the
next instant, suddenly being too far away to have made that move by any means I could understand.

The Rain People.

They seemed to only exist in a space that dwells within the falling rain, and the more rain, the harder the downpour, the more of them I could see that night. Maybe they have always been there, perhaps I just never saw them before.�

But on that stormy night, I saw them, and more terrifyingly, they saw me, as well.

They don't get wet, how can water become wetter? Looking at them made the skin on my neck tremble, they seemingly searched for eyes that looked upon them, and when they noticed me, they all seemed to focus on my tiny dark unlit window, till I pulled the shades down, and shivering, tried to go back to sleep.

But I knew they were still there. The incessant rains kept falling. The winds blew so hard, and then, the electricity went dead.

In our man made, and contrived world, we feel so safe. And yet...

You can't believe how fragile our existence really is, the puny human mind just refuses to believe how fleeting our pitiful protections are, till you lose them.�

But in the dark, as I lay there, I could feel them, not apart from, but a part of, the raging and relentless storm, as they erratically darted and jumped from place to place, their presence never quite confirmed or denied.�

But the strange sinking feeling in my heart had already told me they were there, and when I dared to look out the window again, I could see one of them standing right there, looking intensely at me, seemingly only a few feet from my bedroom window.

And just as my mind adjusted to the shock, he transpired, he melted, he evaporated into the rain, and yet he found form again, in a split second, a hundred feet away, staring back at me, through me, from the middle of the street, as the raindrops painted his presence in my view.�

I have never been so terrified, and I still don't even know what is was I saw.

Who knows what primitive man was afraid of, when the winds howled, and the rains fell.�

But that night changed me, and I must get away, I must flee. I know they exist now, and worse,they know I know. Whatever they want, I couldn't tell you. But a more malevolent and sinisiter sense of evil and foreboding I have never experienced in my long, and until now, uneventful life.

I must get away, immediately. At any price, any cost.

I have found a place in the desert., humble yes, poor, and shabby, but located where it seldom, if ever, rains. I am moving soon. Oh God, I hope I can get packed and out of this place. I fear more and more each day, they will be back, and I could never bear having to see them ever again.�

The apprehension rises in my throat like water in a well as I type these words.

Even now, I am throwing all my possessions in boxes like a madman.

I only hope I am not too late.

Tomorrows forecast calls for rain.

I have to go, I have to leave...

-------------

originally published on the Internet April 12, 2008

copyright Brandon Busch 2008

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vanessao/ / CC BY 2.0

Henry Rollins hates dating

Henry Rollins let's it all hang out. Happy VDay.

With Sincere and Abject Apologies to Pedro Neavis Gonzales, Esquire

Tg05

Were we really as bad in school as I remember, back in the 1970's? Shit, we were worse. Turns out, I was just blocking all the gory details...

The story you are about to read is true. The names have been changed to protect the guilty. And also because I'm not sure about the statute of limitations on stuff like this...

Way back in the heady years of the early 70's, 1972 to be precise, Nixon was soon to be threatened with impeachment, we were all scared as can be we would be sent off to Viet Nam in a few years, M.A.S.H was a brand new T.V. show nobody thought was funny at first, (you see, before reruns it didn't have a laugh track), The Godfather was the smash hit at the movies, T-Rex was everybodies favorite band, and Derek and the Dominoes were having a big hit with Layla, and because of that very song, I wanted so bad to become a rock star, that I decided that  year, 1972, I was going to Hollywood someday, and was going to make my name shine bright in those tinseltown lights as a musician. Kids...

I was going to school in Fort Worth, Texas at Springstone Middle School. No cell phones, no iPods, this was before CD's and even cassettes, hell, we only had records and a few crummy stretchy 8-tracks for music, for cryin' out loud. No video games, or computers, we all played sports, and that meant football, basketball, and baseball, (except the freaks, and we chased them around the playground enough for them to all get track medals).

The War on Drugs was just in it's first year, barely getting started, so we did manage to find all kinds of mischief to get into...

Just like today, I rode to school, and home again, in fact I rode just about everywhere, on a beat up old brown and green ten speed Dawes english racer bicycle, I thought I was cool because I had purchased a Brooks leather racing saddle for $20.00 new and installed. That hard leather saddle busted my ass for the entire 8th grade year, but it finally got broke in about the time I gave up riding to high school the next year as a freshman, because that was just not cool.

Anyway, it was spring, and back then, there were no air conditioners in the classes. Seriously,  it was always hotter than the blazes in that building that late in the year, and nobody really tried to do too much in the way of serious instruction. The building was an old monolithic three story brute of a place, built back when imposing structures were the style. I remember it always smelled of sweat, piss, and fear, like jails and old schools always do, but with a rich overtone of old concrete funk and wet mildew for a finishing touch. The class I was attending was what we refferred to as "cincher" , that meant easy, because it was being taught by a wonderful old teacher named Mr. Gorge.

Mr. Gorge was an retired Navy man, and he was mostly prone to two things. Falling asleep in class, or rambling for the whole hour about just about anything that came to his mind. And let me tell you, that man had traveled the world in the Navy. He told us stories of faraway places, life on a Navy ship, ports of call he had visited, and really deliciously creepy and gruesome things as well. He had been a WWII sailor, and had served at Midway, I think.

"War is Hell", he told us often.

He had a thick latino brogue, but was as literate and well read as anyone I ever met. He introduced us to Joyce, Twain, and even Coleridge, which I'm pretty sure would get your ass in deep dutch these days, exposing young impressionable 8th grade minds to such literary scoundels as these men. We didn't have lockdowns, metal detectors, piss tests, or cops in the hallways, man, those were different times.

We had pretty much decided sex was gonna be really cool, but only a few of us had even been lucky enough to have experimented with it. We had also discovered pot, boones farm, and ripple, and could usually find some wino down on Vickery Blvd. to get us a bottle, if we bought one for him, too. And somebody or other's big brother usually had a matchbox of what I would barely call pot today, that we could buy for the massive price of $10.00.

But we were good kids. See, the hippies, the coming revolution, womens lib,  and the Viet Nam War dominated the news, and we just did what the society, through the news, our teachers, coaches, and Vice-Principals, told us constantly NOT to do.

Nostalgia was unheard of, we all loved the Beatles, and we all knew they were gonna get back together any day now. Bell bottoms on our pants were stylishly huge, and were only cool if they were  so big that you could not see your four inch platform shoes underneath them, and life was about as good as it gets.

The aformentioned hippies congregated at the local duck pond park, and did hippie things, but none of us had dared to grow our hair that long, and most of the local establishment either looked like Mr Burns from the Simpsons, or just like old country western singers do today, with greasy slicked back hair, long sideburns, cowboy boots, and a pack of lucky strikes or winstons rolled up in their short sleeve button down shirts.

Anyway, this particular day, the class was being especially unruly, and Mr. Gorge had had to call out two or three boys for a few minor disiplinary cautions. Yeah, I admit I was one of them, being the class cut-up and having a close friendship with one of the most wicked boys I ever knew, Bart B. didn't help.

I had a reputation among the teachers as a bright, but hard to manage, and easily bored pupil. Bart and I were semi-famous for dirty tricks and such, but we just wanted to have some fun, you know?

Well, just as we were being asked to stand up and take our fair share of the shame and embarrassment of Mr. Gorge's derisions for talking in class, the old crackly Intercom system speaker up on the wall called out..."Mr. Gorge, come to the Principals office, please".

He looked at that speaker on the wall with the consternation fitting for a king deprived of his chance to behead a peasant, but before he left the room, he turned back, pointed a massive fat and knarled finger at us, and said..."Stay in your seats, children, I don't want to hear a peep out of anyone till I return." Yeah. like that was gonna happen.

As soon as his massive and heavy steps stopped echoing from the hall, the whole class exploded in righteous and anarchic mischief. Spitwads flew across the room, girl's pigtail's were pulled by brutish little fingers, and Bart and I looked on with a certain sense of pleasure and satisfaction from so recently escaping the teachers wrath, just by the skin of our teeth, and due to nothing more than pure luck and timing.

Now, here I have to say looking back, that this was one of those days that changes a kid. Forever. Not me, or Bart, maybe, or the thirty odd students now running back and forth and up and down between the desks, but for two boys in particular, fate, in the dark and sinister form of Bart B. and myself, would soon lay it's cold, clammy hands upon them, and change their lives forever.

As I luxuriated in my crummy graffiti covered wooden desk, as only a gangly 8th grader can, I looked over at Bart. He had a particular demonic smile I recognized that meant as much as, "well how do you do, boys, let us bring some wickedness to the surroundings", on his face.

In his hand he held a tack, a single carpet tack, a tiny thing really, a small half inch type of carpet tack in reality, but in my long held tortured memories of that day, a mean and malevolent looking thing as I have ever seen.

Now Bart's specialty was incriminating other kids, and getting them in scads of trouble. He was the perfect angel to his parents, and to teachers and principals alike, and to most people who know him today, they would be aghast if they knew the real Bart as a young man. He was evil incarnate at times, and I felt awfully proud to be his accomplice in most of his shady games. He could throw a goofy face at a kid from ten paces, and you could place a good sized bet in Vegas that that same kid would get called out for laughing in study hall, while Bart remained stony faced like a professional poker player betting the moon. He was money, he was just magic that way.

But on this particular day, he had his eyes on a particular victim, more than that, two victim's, a double play if you will, and he showed that carpet tack he grasped so knowingly, to a poor lost soul of a kid named Chuck, that wanted desperately to be as cool as we constantly told him we were. Chuck would always be the patsy or fall guy for our games, he was a little heavier, a little slower, a little less sharp to see the dark side, the potential harsh consequences, of our sometimes evil childish pranks.

Bart leaned over like a practised card sharp, almost silently whispering something in Chuck's ear, and grinned maniacally, as he pointed out the intended recipient of this sticky gift.

Poor, poor, Pedro. If only he had been sick that day, if only he had stayed in homeroom a little longer, his life might have been different. He was one of the good kids. He studied hard, he wasn't a stuck up jock like us, in fact he was too slight to even play sports. So, why he was chosen I will never know. Fate, I think, just wanted to rip on him, and I tell myself we were just the messengers of that awful sharp pointed telegram of destiny.

And, most importantly, he was not sitting in his desk, and was occupied talking to somebody else, and looking away as the weapon of ass destruction was delivered to the sweating little hand of Chuck.

Chuck had a snickering kind of laugh, kind of raspy, and could barely contain his noisy glee to be included in such a horrible stunt. With the skill and timing of hitmen, both Bart and I raised a single finger to our lips for stealth and silence, then pointed at the exact spot where the carpet tack would have maximum effectiveness and total penetration, if Chuck would only contain himself, and stick that pointy sucker down in Pedro's desk seat. As we leaned back in our desks, and waited, little did we know we were changing two boy's lives for better, or most likely worse, on that hot May day.

We watched as the room became more and more animated. Would Pedro see the sneaky present we had had specially delivered to him? Would he brush it away before sitting down? Not on this day he wouldn't.

Silent like the lambs we weren't, we watched as Pedro sat down, right in his seat. He didn't just sit down, he landed. Many kids had a way of sliding into a desk, and if he had chosen that approach, that day, well, no one can say what might of been. Instead, he landed HARD.

He dropped into that desk seat like a heavily laden helicopter transporting a full load of something just a bit too heavy for an elegant landing.

POW! That sucker stuck in his butt, and it stuck good and hard. Chuck had made the placement exactly correct for a perfect, dead center career killing punch of the right cheek of Pedro's posterior.

At first, it was like those scenes in war movies where everything becomes focused on a single thing, and pulls the focus in tight, and sound is an afterthought. Three young hoodlums watched in first glee, then blending to a bit of anxiety, and finally heading into full scale alarm as we realized the awful and total effectiveness of this hateful trick, just lately played on unsuspecting Pedro, by our soon to be severely chastised playmate, Chuck.

The sound of Pedro's agonized yelping seemed to be coming down a long hall, a train tunnel almost, as the young scholar realized that something terrible had punctured his derriere. It was actually simply  the doppler effect as his throat was being turned around and around  by his head, as he reeled about to try to see just what was happening, you know, back there.

Pedro shot out that desk like, well, I saw a man shot out of a cannon once at the circus when I was 10, and Pedro was much quicker, with significantly more velocity, and simply tons more acceleration. As he danced like he had a miillion or more bees stinging his bum repeatedly about the room, gradually most of the kids in the class dropped their mouths open and stared disbelievingly at what was transpiring right in front of them.

Bart and I had already sat upright in our chairs and folded our hands on our desks in anticipation of what surely must come next. As the sound of poor suffering Pedro got louder, the class became icy still, and unearthly quiet. Try as he might, no amount of pulling, clawing, screaming or cursing, in equal parts Spanish and English, seemed to have the slightest effect on that carpet tack's tenacious grip on, or in, the thickest part of the muscle of his gluteous maximus.

He circled around and around the front of the room, grabbing like a crazed madman at his ass, shouting things I only thought I knew how to say at that tender age, as Bart and I exchanged the glance of warriors fully expecting a terrible onslaught of withering enemy return fire.

And poor Chuck just...sat there, almost unaware of his hideous, and rapidly approaching fate, for his hand in this awful fiasco.

Now I have heard, or read somewhere, that the bull elephant, and also the water buffalo, of Africa, are both said to "bellow" when angered. This I cannot confirm or deny. But the sound made by our sweet old retired Navy history teacher, as he walked into that classroom, and saw the one mexican boy in his class, screaming and cursing to beat the band, as the child grasped desperately at his own now twitching and spasming backside, to try and relieve the agonizing pain he was experiencing, could well and truly only be called bellowing.

How he knew what had transpired, I can't say. But he knew...

Mr. Gorge LOUDLY, with the full authority and tone of a man who was used to military discipline, bellowed at the top of his lungs in the direction of the class..."WHO? I repeat, WHO put the tack in Pedro Neavis Gonzales' seat?"

I will never forget that moment as long as I live. As tiny beads of guilt ridden sweat rolled down my forehead, I could barely move. No one made a sound, not one child chirped, not one student sounded off. But with the awesome skill and perfect precision of a Chinese Olympic drill team, the whole class, every single long since forgotten child, every single one, turned their heads, as if attached to only one body, and stared right at....Chuck.

My heart raced incessantly as I realized NO ONE knew of mine and Bart's very slight but still sinister complicity in the whole sordid affair. Not one student in the whole classroom had seen us chide and tempt Chuck with the task he was being set up to completely take the rap for. But two things led to his total undoing.

First, someone HAD seen Chuck place the tack right before Pedro's posterial arrival, and as Pedro danced the dance of the tortured all over that hot steamy Texas classroom, word had spread quickly, as only children can spread it, that Chuck had in fact, done the dirty deed.

And secondly, Chuck just had a guilty face.

The look of disgust, mixed with rage, tempered by outrageous and protective anger for a boy of his own heritage, on the face of my history teacher, will haunt me till three days after I am dead.

Chuck quickly realized the fix was in, and that he had been absolutely fingered by every single kid in that classroom. Including me and Bart. We couldn't help it, it was instinctive. We were just staring at Chuck in disbelief at our double lightning strike of luck, and his imminent downfall, all occuring in the short space of a few minutes.

The scene in my mind nows shifts to a slow motion sort of Sam Peckinpah finale reel, as the enraged teacher tries to both comfort and relieve the suffering of the afflicted Pedro, as well as bodily lift Chuck out of his seat by the closest earlobe Chuck possesed. This was a man used to the horrors of war, the strangeness of anything the far east had to offer, but he was LIVID at the shameful transgression he was seeing acted out in his classroom. As he put his arm around Pedro's shoulder, Pedro was drug closer and closer to the desk Chuck would only occupy for an instant more. Then Mr. Gorge reached over and uplifted the now terrified Chuck completely out of his desk, by his earlobe, I swear, and as Chuck just hung there suspended in midair for a moment, I couldn't help but think of a little squealing piglet, hung up on the butcher's sharp and merciless meathook, and I truly shuddered for him to the depths of my soul.

I shot one furtive look at the ringleader of this whole grimy mess, but Bart was perfectly and astonishingly composed. That dude was bad.

Then the words rumbled, no, more like exploded. from the incensed history teachers mouth..."YOU..Chuck...are in quite some trouble, my friend", and he let Chuck slip from his grasp momentarily, only to grab him by a more substantial portion of Chuck's now quaking frame, and drug both boys, both now kicking and screaming, out the door of the classroom, and down the hallway.

Even now, the aftermath of that moment is terrible and wretched to my memory. I felt awful, just awful, for the plight of the two obvious victims, Pedro and Chuck, but there was also such a surreal and bizarre air in the room at this time, after what our young eyes had just witnessed, that it was only just a matter of seconds befor the whole class erupted in almost frenzied and side splitting laughter.

Appparently the school nurse had been able to quickly assess the entire situation concerning the interloper in Pedro's bottom, and relieved him in as just as quick a fashion. His voice died down, just as the plaintive cries of Chuck could be heard coming from the echoing halls, emanating from deep inside the Vice Principal's office, as louder and louder Chuck proclaimed his complete and total innocence of any wrong doing.

These hearfelt but futile sounds were quickly drowned out by the singular and still hard to remember sound of at least 5,000 hard blows with a paddle being dispensed with true relish by the now also enraged Vice Principal.

Then the bell rang, and reality reigned once more in the classroom I was occupying. All the kids looked about at each other, and then scurried out of the door like rats off a burning, sinking ship. The hallways were instantly filled with that high pitched drone of sound that is normal between classes in any school, and I sped away from that classroom, as fast as my shoes would allow on the hard, slick, cement floor.

Perhaps, Pedro was not really as badly injured as I might have feared, but I never once spoke to him again, fearing he might know somewhere in his heart of my small part in that horrid practical joke gone horribly wrong. Bart and I remained good friends till college, but my heart was never in another scheme he concocted the same as that day, and then wouldn't you know it, he was the one who made it to Hollywood, years later, not me. I wish him the best, and hope I never get on his bad side, for he could be murderously deviant in his quest for practical jokes, at least back in the day.

I wish him well.

Poor Chuck was never the same. God willing, he will learn to live a more normal life someday, but I fear we put him on a path in life he was only marginally willing at first to tread. And me, I am just a wisened old man, sitting in front of a computer tapping out my confession to one of the most amazing, hilarious, and embarrassing events of my life.

Peace.