Sometimes I wish I was a magician,but then I realize I would hate myself more than I already do.

So I'm still blissfully unemployed, sleeping 'till noon, reading and playing video games, rarely embarking on any outings out into the 104 degree desert heat.

This morning, however, I had to attend to my primary financial drain, my car. I woke up around one o'clock, laid in bed reading emails and trying to figure out how the Hell I got home last night. Anyway, my proscribed task of the day was to do a little car maintenance. It's important when unemployed to give yourself tasks to accomplish, thus feeling like you are still contributing to something, even if it's all really just bullshit.

So I went out to the Daubmobile to add a quart of oil (it leaks oil somewhere, I know very little of these things and hope that if I add more than leaks out, all will be well) and change the air filter. This is pretty much all I am able to do myself, and yesterday's quest was to acquire the supplies necessary for this endeavor, so all was prepared.

Needless to say I am quite hungover, and walking out the door is akin to swan diving into the sun. This does not improve my mood, nor my headache. I open the hood of my conveyance and begin the necessary steps involved in this routine maintenance, when I vaguely sense that there is another human being within 30 ft of me. It is as if my senile hermitude has given me some 6th sense, and I could hear her talking on the phone.

I, of course go about my business, the engine parts were hotter than satan's taint and I was swearing quite profusely. I start to get a strange feeling, like when your fly is down and you're in a crowded room. You don't want to draw attention to the mistake by hurriedly zipping up, but you also need to fix the problem before more people notice. The point is, it is at this point that I realize the girl is no longer talking on the phone, she is talking to me. I'm very focused on my tasks, my head buried in my car's engine.

"Hey! Yeah you," I finally absorb from the air and turn around.

"What?" I ask somewhat disappointed that the girl was very not hot.

"Yeah, finally, have you seen a fucking cat come by here?"

"A cat? No, but I've had my head buried in here so..." Between the heat and the alcohol and the oil fumes my IQ is barely high enough to maintain breathing and heart rate.

"You would have noticed a cat come by here, heard it at least."

Uh....I've been sequestered in my apartment for a couple of weeks, did cats get louder while I was away, or maybe she just had large, very loud cats...and she's kinda pissed off, which bothers me 'cause I didn't do shit, and I don't really care a pig's balls about her pet.

"I didn't hear a fucking cat, but I've only been out here about 10 minutes, sorry."

A short pause. She looks at me as if the F bomb was not only inappropriate, but also preemptory. She launched her bomb first.

"No, not a fucking a cat, have you seen a CAB out here, you know a taxi?" she looks at me like I'm a retard, the whole time her cell phone never left her ear.

"Ohh..." my brain ignites like a tetris game waiting for the long, straight four piece and finally getting it, bam! "A taxi, no I haven't seen shit."

She looks at me like I told her the moon smelled funny today and says, "Well if a cab does come by, just yell out for me, ok?"

I have never seen this person in my life, but in the interest of ceasing this awkward social interaction I manage, "If a cab comes by here while I'm out here I will stop it, with my own body if necessary, and if I escape serious injury I will notify you A-Sap."

I then stared at her until she retreated to whatever banal purgatory she subsisted in, and I went back to my task, singing a face to face song in my head, and realizing it had been a couple days since I had looked in a mirror.

end transmission.

Here is the world they’ll try to sell you, here is the ache, barbiturate...

I just realized! I don't know what the fuck I'm doing! I don't have a clue! I'm growing a beard again, that's all I got, and it's mostly grey.

Also, I am not sure it's wrong for a 27 year old mexican dude to beat his 2 year old child to death on the highway, to the point it takes police shooting him to death to end the affair. Why did he do it? Was the kid crying to much? Did he just hate it? I don't know, but it doesn't bother me either way. I feel like nothing people do surprise, shock, or offend me any more, if things like this ever bothered me. I would never beat a child to death, I don't think, but I also thought I'd never see a girl shoot darts out of her vagina....so, what the fuck do I know.

Bartender? Are you sure this has vodka in it?

end transmission.

When you're falling, you're the only one that doesn't see the distance.

Well it's been a while. I've been without the internet, and they frown on drinking and downloading pornography at the library, so, I've been kinda off the radar. Well I turned 30 years old, lost my shitty job, got a sweet infection in my mouth and had to have teeth literally drilled out of my head, luckily it only cost me 3 grand, I saved $400 bucks by staying conscious through the whole procedure, the smell of your own jaw burning with the friction of a drill is something I highly recommend you all endure, it takes your mind to some odd places.

I quit drinking, got hooked on the fun pills from my mouth surgery, ran out of pills and went back to booze. Ironically I've written more in the past 2 weeks than I have in the past year, and I'm happy with about a fifth of it, which is really good.

Before I forget, go buy the new No Use For A Name album, it's the most upbeat depressing album I've ever heard, Tony Sly has always been good at that kinda shit, but he really nailed it here. You don't even know its depressing until after you're done listening to it...that is a magic that is hard to conjure, and is an inspiration to me. It's like falling in love with a girl, having her leave you, sending you into that downward heartbreak spiral for a year or so, only to realize you never really even liked her in the first place.

Anyway...

I guess I glossed over my 3 week awesome return to Colorado. Not only did I get to see all of the people I miss every day, but I got to see a Trevor Keith show, No Use For A Name and NOFX (and my 2 favorite American Steel songs, someday I'll see a whole set, that makes 3 I've misssed). My humiliating Sorry! defeat was not a high point however, and it may have soured me on the entire board game phenom. I really think video games are gonna overtake that market, well only time will tell.

I guess you all would like some witty insight into life or maybe an embarrasing sex story. I can only leave you with this quote from the master himself;

"If you find yourself in bed with a terribly ugly woman, wishing she was pretty will not get it over any quicker."

end transmission.

Happy Birthday Daub, you're fired.

Well, I got laid off. No I didn't fist fuck anyone rich or accidentally pee on the CFO of MGM/Mirage, I didn't kill a hooker, or get caught fucking a waitress on my lunch hour. The corp just needed to save a few million dollars in order to maintain the corporate jet fleet, or to keep their concentration camps open, or whatever they do. On the bright side:




end transmission

Sometimes those simple things won't turn the trick no more.

Whew! I just spent a half hour whining and complaining, only to have windows shut down internet explorer and "poof!" all gone. Lucky for you I got it out of my system.
I'm in the writin' mood, which means more dead latinas/babies per raped estranged spouses than ever before! I hesitate to give you the link to it's web publication until I sober up and read it over first. 'Till then, just wonder and imagine at the terrible world that shits out of my diseased brain.
These moods are so transitory, yet elationary (is that a word), and it made me think, well wonder, at people who write shit like Harry Potter. That Rawlings bitch is one of only 7 female billionaires on the forbes list of rich assholes. What mood is she in when she writes that shit? I don't make shit from the crap I write, mostly 'cause I can't finish anything and no one really wants to read stories that make them feel like crap just for being alive. I get that. But come on?
The itch needs to be scratched, gotta go.
end transmission.

Everyone Learns Faster on Fire.

Well, it's been a while kids, but I'm back! Through the adverse tribulations of sobriety and back again! Yeah exclamation points!
!!!
What nuggets of truth do I have to impart on you as I slowly trudge the uneven path toward my 30th birthday? Simply put....none. I Don't feel like I've mentally/emotionally grown since around 1998. This is ironically the last time I took one in the nuts (a hell of a streak to be certain, though it does cause some inordinate flinching in order to maintain the statistic).
punk Rock bowling was another glaring high point in a life otherwise shrouded in the gloom of monotony. I have awesome friends, and I'm happy and lucky to know all those fuckers. Lifelong friends who I feel so close to that all I can think of is how I want to be the first to die so I don't have to go to their funerals, and so my funeral is heavily populated. This is a vain wish since logevity is the curse of paternity on both sides of my family for untold generations.
Maybe I'm getting sentimental in my old age, but I think I have all the friends I will ever have...sorry new people you're out, just no room for you. My heart is like a hotel you take your mistress...it charges by the hour and no one ever cleans the sheets. i don't know hwat that means, but surely in the future people will look upon the ramblings with the hindsight colored by my genius. Of course you will all know the truth, but they will have only the text with which to judge.

end transmission.

The Outside World is Closing In.

I just got back from an awesome trip to L.A. a place I've never actually been to. After some initial hardships finding the fucking hotel I was staying in (it is honestly the most confusing driving experience I've ever encountered), the trip rocked.

I went out to see a band called the Playing Favorites at the Viper Room (apparantly a famous club?). It was their very first live performance, though the band is comprised of verteran musicians from many bands, most notably to me is the fact that Joey Cape is in the band. Their album was put out by Virgil at Suburban Home Records, an old college friend of mine. Awesome album, go buy it.

Anyway, the show was rad and best of all, I ended up drinking, eating tortilla chips and bullshitting with Joey in the kitchen of some random dude's house after the second show saturday night. I've already espoused my man-crush on this dude, and anyone who knows me knows I'm a fag for his music, but it's amazing what a normal guy just like any of you guys I would sit around with laughing and talking 'till all hours of the morning with. It was crazy hanging out with these guys, drinking, telling stupid stories, looking at bullshit on youtube...a fucking awesome time.

I'll prolly have more to say about it after I get some sleep and process the whole thing, but for now that's it.

end transmssion.

The Terrorists have already won, at video poker!

Check this out kids! I apologize for the crappy image quality, but I had to snap this picture all stealthy with my phone since I didn't want to get in trouble. I might get in trouble anyway, but it's funny enough to risk.


Also there is an unexpected fat girl doing a superman pose in the background.

end transmission.

Yeah, that's the way things go some days...

Fucking christ! I can't even go to a bar a 2 in the morning after work to enjoy a free beer without stepping knee deep in bullshit!
There I was sitting at the bar playing, playing nickel poker, enjoying my Guinness, contemplating the how I was going to make rape funny in a story that has been keeping me awake, when POOF! Here comes some asshole from LA. Well he's actually from Vegas, but he's back! He knows the bartender and they start talking. the asshole pulls out an Iphone and starts showing everyone pictures of his newborn son.
Wow, a biological miracle to be sure!
Well, it turns out this kid has a serious birth defect. He has Spina bifida (which due to my insomnia coupled with an uncomfortable curiousity for fucked up illnesses, and the fact that I have been watching 3 episodes of House MD a day, which is an awesome show, I highly recommend..I digress, I know a little about this disease), basically the spinal column doesn't completely form around the spinal cord. It can be mild, or super shitty, but it is never good, and the most sketchy points in the disease are right after birth.
This guy kept alternating between "he's totally healthy" and "He's got this really scary disorder" followed by, "he's gonna be fine, we have the 4th best surgeon in all of california."
Something told me a assistant PA in LA was not really on the A list for doctors. I kept my mouth shut. But I thought, "If your new born son is in this kinda turmoil, why are you in Vegas at 2 in the AM drinking budlight with a waitress from PT's. Are you an asshole? or just a complete douchebag lier?
It turns out he was just an asshole, his "baby's mama" was taking care of it for the weekend, he needed to get away.
Wow.
I fucking hate children, and I wouldn't leave that hospital if my dick and balls were on fire and the only estinguisher in all the world was in Angelena Jolie's pussy, which was in the hospital parking lot, prepped and ready ( well maybe then...but my point is easy to see anyway).
Was this guy in denial? Then why did he keep bringing the kid up? Did he just not give a shit? I just don't know, never hving concieved a child with a potentially terminal disease. I can only think that the frailty of every day life both terrifies and intrigues me.
and though I truly hope that child is ok, I got the distinct impression that his dad hoped the kid would die quickly and save him a lifetime of trouble.

end transmssion.

There's a coldest day in every year.

I woke up Friday morning, after five or six hours of turning inmy bed, thinking about everything. I had a dentist appointment at 2:00, so I had planned on getting up at noon. That would give me plenty of time to fuck around and jerk off or whatever I was going to do.
I woke up at 1:15 and ended up going to get some food at Taco Bell. In front of me in line at Taco Bell was a Mexican couple. The girl was petite, attractive, and pregnant. She had a child in her arms, and her "man" was some kid barely 20 years old, with an ECW t-shirt. He had a sweet mullet, and looked like he was one chromosome away from being retarded.
Why is this important? Because after my dentist appointement, I went to Wal-Mart to purchase a notebook, underwear and check the prices on electric toothbrushes. ANd guess who was there?...the smae fucking mexican couple, right there, shopping for tortillas or whatever. Strange, to be sure, but whatever.
After I went to Wal-MArt I went to 7-11 to put some air in the back right tire on my Jeep (it has a slow leak somewhere) I then went inside to buy a slurpee. The mexican couple was not there, but there wa sa guy who asked me for change. I told him no, and he insisted that my entrance into heaven was predicated on my charity. I told him I was terrified at the prospect of eternity in Hell, but I had limited funds and my immidiate frozen sugar needs took precident over my afterlife concerns.
I ran a number of other mundane errands, and ended up at Autozone to buy some new windshield wipers and a new gas cap. I shit you not, the Mexican couple was there, the same family, buying...whatever.
So I ran into these fucks a few times in the same day...I remarked on it, but did not think any more on it, until I went to food for less later that night (8:30) to get vodka, soda, and peanuts.
Those fuckers were there renting a movie from a vending machine! Are these fuckers following me? Am I following them? Are they inept CIA agents passively tailing me? Fuck, how is my life and theirs so similar that we're at the same places at the same time all fucking day long? What the fuck was going on?
I got over it quietly and went about my business. I went out for some drinks at about 11:30, and met up with a girl I had met about a week before. We hung out 'till about 2:00, and as we were leaving, I saw the mexican dude in the bar! Same ECW tshirt, it was him!
I apparantly have a parallel life with a young mexican family, and all I could think about was wether or not they noticed me, running into them all day long.

end transmssion.

If you could hear the dreams I've had my dear, they would give you nightmares for a week.

Something I've been running into constantly lately is the idea that the the same actions produce the same results, or the idea that if you do the same shit, the same shit will happen to you.

That seems logical, and it is an appealing philosophy for change. But what can I change? What is it about what I do (that has caused an outcome I do not enjoy) that I can alter? The problem is not in me, and if it is it is so intrinsic that to aliviate it would destroy me. So what is the njkl;h5tare4uiorfjlk

in the infinite hours between 6PM and 2am.

This is the first blog I have written at work. There are days at this job when I have absolutely nothing to do and so I am left alone, walking in circles, with only my thoughts. My mind Is a twisted and terrible enough place to visit, and to be sentanced to hours within its confines with no distraction is a horror beyond words.

Usually, this type of situation is what leads me to write. Somehow there is catharsis in removing ideas from the aether of my troubled head and chisling them into reality. Without this release, the ideas and arguements bounce around my skull like a handfull of rubber balls thrown into a bathtub, costantly increasing in both velocity and quantity, until I feel like I'm going mad.

It is the focus of the composition that allows me to mute my conflicted musings to a dull roar, and thus stave off a complete mental meltdown for a few more hours.

This silent desperation for distraction in leu of my favored method of management has led to some of the most asinine conversations with some of lamest people on earth.

Just minutes ago I literally had a conversation about dust! Fucking dust! I have rarely had the opportunity to be involved in such an intellectual treatise on, what is truly one of the most fascinating issues facing us today!

Never before have I been so engrossed by the topic of comparative weather conditions; ie in Ontario it is apparantly already getting really cold, but here in Vegas the temperature is quite pleasent!

Currently there are no boobs to oggle at, so I am consumed with the desire to find an ugly old lady so that I may debate the pros and cons of coin operated slot machines, certainly a topic that remains interesting even after exploring its nuances hundreds of times.

End transmission.

Bowling Racecar Driver

When I woke up this morning with a slight hangover and a more than slight mad-on for the human race, I would have never guessed the day would turn out so awesome.

I was wondering around, 7 hours deep into my shift, wallowing in my usual reverie of self disgust (I went to college so I could end up pushing in chairs and giving directions to the bathroom?) and loathing for people the world over precipitated by dealing with the constant, unyielding stream of stupidity and asinine behavior.

Then I see a very small man at an atm. Not really noteworthy in itself, until he turned around. He had a fuck off black beard, and holy shit! It's fucking Joey Cape...I think. I kinda orbited around, slowly convincing myself that, yes, that is the man responsible for some of the greatest music made in the past 15 years.

Fuck it, I thought, and I walked over to him.
"hey man, I don't wanna bother you, but are you Joey Cape?"

He kinda looked at me, surprised that maybe I recognized him.
"Yeah, I am."

"I'm Kris (I always introduce myself thus, explaining Tom? Bob? No, Daub, is very frustrating), and I think your music is the shit."

"Thanks dude." And we shook hands. He accepted my praise with humble appreciation and a smile.

We talked for a little while about some work he's doing with a mutual Friend at Suburban Home, Virgil, and some other bullshit.
Now for those of you who don't know, Joey is the lead singer/song writer for Lagwagon (arguably the most awesome band ever), as well as the Guitar player in Me First and the Gimme Gimmies, and the creative force behind Bad Astronaut.

This guy is like a god to me, I can't really remember a day of my life since I was a junior in High School that I haven't listened to at least one of his songs, and here he is randomly crossing paths with me on a "normal" day at work. It was surreal, I still feel like it was some kind of boredom inspired hallucination.

But it really happened, I shook hands with one of my heroes today.



end transmission.

The Note From Which the Chord is Built.

Speaking of AIDS....

I got my test results from the Doctor today. My cholestoral level is perfect, my thyroid is good, and I don't have herpes, hepititis or AIDS. In fact I am in perfect health and there are no sores on my asshole or genitalia. That bump thing on my cock turned out to be an ingrown hair, which I've had hundreds of before, but usually on my face, occaisionally on my leg or arm. Anyone up for some unprotected sex?

end transmission.

Look into the future, all I can see...the next generation looking back with pity on me.

Alright, today (well yesterday for all you people that live like a normal human being) is the 4th of July. The celebration of our country's birthday. There is a lot of YEAH AMERICA! shitting around this time of year, and it got me thinking about nations, nationality, and the world as a whole.

Obviously, back when you were lucky if you went 20 miles away from where you were born in your lifetime, the commradery necessitated by locality was important. There was a lot of scary shit out there, and it all wanted to eat your food and rape your family.
This concept gradually expanded to the scale of a nation, loosely bound by common language and common foes. Them and Us. You are like me, and we must protect what we have from those who are different than us because, well, how could I trust some dirty fuck who doesn't speak my language, much less love my god?

But today, at least in the US, I don't feel like an American. I don't really agree with 95% of the things my government does, I don't agree with most of the opinions of the majority of my fellow citzens, and I sure as fuck don't feel like I want to. I'm embarassed to be labeled an "American."
I feel more like a tenant, who must pay a monthly rent to live and drive and breathe in the borders of the complex. The US government is just a landlord that, for some reason, is allowed to take my money away, whether I want what their selling or not, and I get something in return, though I don't really get a say in what it is (voting is for suckers, don't think for a second your voice counts, but that's another rant) and they take a nother taste if I buy something I do want, and then they take a cut of my shit when I die.

To make a long story short, the world is so interconnected, finacially as well as culturally, it seems so stupid to base your most highly regarded affiliations on something so trivial as geographic similarities. The Nation-State paradigm is foolish, and more to the point, dangerous.

Terrorists have learned this, or perhaps they were the first to figure it out a long time ago. Who do retaliate against, when violence is perpetrated by a few, acting not out of patriotism, but in their own self interest? You can't go to war with a country just because a few of it "citizens" blew up some of your shit. Why hold entire populations of people responsible for the work of a few, just 'cause they live in the same town? Why think they think the same way?

But we have, and I say "we" because my taxes paid for those tanks, and bombs, and bullets. My money, though pratically stolen from me, paid for these things, and I AM responsible and there is nothing I can do about it. All because I was born here instead of Japan.

end transmission.

The agony of De-Feet.

A 13 year old girl's feet got fucking cut off on the Superman ride! Some cable snapped and chopped them right off above the ankle. Wow. What a shitty vacation. It kinda makes me want to get a job at an amusment park, I mena, shit, hooker fights and drunk tourists are amusing, but no one ever gets any of their limbs violently removed right in front of me. That's fucking terrible and fascinating to behold, I reckin'.

"But Daub? What about the poor little girl who got hurt? Have you no compassion?"

In a word, no. She got hurt voluntarily doing something fun. Fun things are often dangerous. I mean, come on, it's a ride that you strap into and then it drops you 200 ft at 55mph! You could get the same thrill jumping off a building, though argueably the Superman ride has a lower fatality rate than that alternative.

Besides, the cable could have just as easily severed her head.

end transmission.

If you don't remind me, I won't forget you.

If you don't already know, "Dear You" by Jawbreaker, it will kill you. It's the most powerful album I've ever heard.

Aside from that, I guess I don't have a lot to say. "I m jet black, I am stone cold."



end transmission.

If what you seek aint free, then fucking steal it.

First of all, I might be the last person who has heard of the BBC documentary "Planet Earth." If I am indeed, next to last, and you are the last one, let me tell you, it is fucking incredible. Run, don't walk, to the internet and buy it. The great white jumping out of the water in slo-mo....jesus it's fucking incredible, the whole thing looks like it's CGI, it's such an odd perspective on wildlife footage, I guess it took 5 years to make...anyway it's awesome. If you know how to use torrents, you can watch it for free, if you don't know how to use torrents, you are an archaic relic, and are falling so far behind the herd that that you deserve to be eaten. Seriously, you're like that old lady who is wasting everyone's time trying to pay with a check, and you left your driver's license at home, ad you demand that you be trusted due to the fact you've been shopping here for 40 years. Get with it!

What was I going to say...fuck?

I was late for work today. You all know how punctual I am, how could this have happened? Did I oversleep? Did I take to long jerking off in the shower? Whas there a traffic accident? All viable reasons...but alas, no.

I was feeling a little sluggish, so I stopped at a gas station for a Sugar free, So-Be energy boost. I grabbed the can out of the fridge, and went to pay for it. There was only one person in front of me, some scraggly looking dude buying a 12 pack of MGD. The cashier rang it up, and asked for the $12.37 needed to purchase such an august item. The dude had only a ten dollar bill.

A dilemma to be certain. So what does this asshole do? He turns, and looks at me, and says, "Can I borrow a couple bucks? I'm a little short."

You can imagine my response.

He said, "hold on," and went, slowly, out to his car. I told the cashier, who I have seen on more than one occasion, due to the gas station's prominent location on my route to work, "Here's the 2 bucks for mine (the beverage was technically $1.99 with tax)."

She told me she had to ring it up first, and she couldn't do that until she cleared this guy's order. My rage gauge was in the red, I looked at my watch and debated whether I needed the energy drink that bad. At this point, the guy comes back, somehow he had acquired $1.34. Now he had $11.34, which was not enough, but he was hopeful he could barter the beer's price down to this level.

I am now purple with rage. I look at the people behind me in line, they seem to be content to wait. I slapped a dollar on the counter, took 3 pennies from the little bin, and said..."Ok, come on. I gotta go."

The dude smiled, told me thanks. He grabbed for the 12 pack, but before he could grab it, I tore open the top, took one of the cans out, and put it in my pocket. HE looked mad, but stifled his protest and left.

end transmission.

Daub's a decent guy, until he drinks, and then his liquid mind takes over how he thinks.

Well, fuck me. I forgot I still had more story to tell. I got off on a tangent writing a story about cannibalism, and I just forgot about it. Anyway.

Grandpa had found his brother in Mexico, and found that he was very paranoid about who he would and would not meet in person. The lovely girl with the gun was Robert's 17 year old daughter. She eventually led them to Robert and there was general merriment at the reunion. Garner and Robert when off to get drunk and catch up, and Grandma and the girls were set to preparing the feast for the celebration, in fact, a pig was to be slaughtered for the occasion!

So while my kinda prissy grandma helped kill and gut a giant hog, Robert caught Garner up on what he was doing hiding in Mexico. It turned out that Robert had started to make a quite a large amount of money running guns from California to Mexico (and onward to where ever, apparently getting them out of the U.S, is the hard part), trading them for drugs and cash and then bringing the drugs back to the U.S.

He did this largely by boat, but used planes sometimes. This went on for years, and Robert amassed a shit ton of money, laundered through an few legit businesses in the States. No one noticed that a pet shop, a home improvement store, and bar were making tens of millions of dollars a year, until the bar was failed it's liquor license recertification for serving underage drinkers. This, in itself, was not a big deal, until it came time to file the tax returns, and a bar that was supposedly shut down for the last 8 months posted record profits.

An audit ensued, and Robert abandoned ship, left his wife in CA, clueless as to where he disappeared to and even less informed of her husband's actual profession. (Garner said that Robert had always hated this woman, but because a divorce might reveal his secret monies, had to endure her. So when he bailed, he left her with nothing, since all his assets were confiscated, fuck you hag!) He had set up this safe house in Mexico years before, and so there he was for the past 7 years, hiding from the FBI. He got married again to some mexican chick (I think she was his housekeeper at one time) he had knocked up years before, and just kinda drank and hung out. He covered his tracks pretty good, since the U.S. Government had yet to find him, but the fact that Garner's P.I. was successful was a miracle.

So Garner told him about his twin sons in Germany, and Robert (who had apparently wanted to marry his german nurse, but was not allowed to by the state department) decided they would leave for Germany as soon as possible, his hiding be damned.

If I was making up this story it would end with the twins being an FBI sting and Robert would have fought his way out of the trap, kinda like in Scarface, but alas no. This story has a pretty happy ending. They stayed in Germany for a few months, getting to know his long lost progeny. Unfortunately, Robert's nurse had died five years previous, but had always spoken kindly of him.


end transmission

We want to not know you, to better know you.

So where was I...

Oh yeah, well my Grandfather's 2nd eldest brother (my step-great-uncle? I dunno.) was shot three times by the surprised Nazi's in the foxhole he mistakenly charged, a flesh wound on his left leg, and two shots in his right arm/shoulder. He made it back to his unit and was med-evac-ed back to a hospital somewhere in Alsace, France which for those of you who don't know is on the German/French border, and is super fertile land. Almost every war those two countries fought were over this small strip of land, and everyone that lives there are as much German as they are French.

Anyway, he spent the rest of the war sitting there with a shattered collarbone and a broken arm.

Now we fast forward 28 years. My grandfather, Garner, is just sitting around doing whatever, and he gets a call. It is from a young man, stationed in Canada. A german soldier on some kind of training stint. The boy says he is trying to find his father. The lad's investigations could not reveal the location of anyone else in the family, and Garner was the only person related to his father he could track down.

Garner flies to Canada and meets the boy, who it turns out is a twin. Moreover, he is the son of Garner's brother (I guess I should start referring to him as "Robert," since that is his name) their mother was a nurse in the hospital where he recovered.

Robert knocked up this nurse (good work, dude!) and was shipped out of the country before he found out she was pregnant. She was unable to get word to him, obviously there was a little animosity toward the Germans in 1945. Garner told the kid he would like to help him, but Garner had not seen Robert in almost 13 years, he could have been anywhere, but Garner promised to do his best to find him and tell him he had twin sons in Germany.

The last Garner knew his brother was somewhere in California, but all his old addresses were all abandoned, and no one seemed to know where he was. Garner hired a private investigator to find his brother, and just waited.

It took the guy almost 7 months to track Robert down. Garner got a call; "Your brother's somewhere in Mexico, I need more money to go find him." Garner paid the man and waited again.

2 months later he gets a call. "I found Robert, if you want to see him I know where he is." So, Garner grabs my grandmother and heads down to Mexico. It's funny imagining a woman who doesn't even know how to pump her own gas going on this adventure...but it happened.

They flew into Mexico City and then drove in some shitty bus north to Guadalajara. At this point Garner is a little suspicious, he's not sure what the fuck is going on, and the PI won't say shit. The PI gets them a "cab" (some asshole with an old VW bug), and tells them this is as far as he goes. So it's Garner and Grandma alone in Fuck Off MExico, alone and headed out of town.

About 5 miles out of the city they come to a huge complex, i guess you would call it. A house surrounded by 15 foot walls. The cab drops them off, and leaves them at the front gate.

Neither of them speak Spanish, and Garner walks up to the gate and basically just keeps repeating "Robert Payne?" over and over to everyone he can see. Finally a guy let's them in, and not too gently walks them into the main house. Apparently the estate was massive, all kinds of side houses, stables and such.

They are brought to patio where a Mexican woman is sitting in a wheelchair, a blanket over her legs. She smiles at them and says (in broken English) "You are looking for Robert?"

Garner says, "Yes, he's my brother. I've been looking for him for a while."

The woman is skeptical, "If you are his brother...prove it."

Prove it? "Uh, I don't know. He's my brother," was all Garner could think to say.

The woman was unconvinced. Then Garner told her, "He has a big scar on the side of his face that he got from a farming accident in Wisconsin when we were kids, and he's also missing these fingers."

This seemed to convince the woman. She smiled. Then she pulled the blanket off her lap to reveal a double barreled, sawed off shotgun, aimed at them. "I think you are who you say," she told them.

I told you every one of Garner's 9 siblings were self made millionaires? Not all of them did it legally.

There's more.

end transmission.