I rode a Chicago bus yesterday to get up to the United Center for the Black Sabbath show last night, and somewhere around Milwaukee Avenue an older Mexican American fellow climbed aboard with his shoe shine box. He sat there rubbing his hands and wincing as if his hands were very much cold, in pain, or likely both. A woman seated next to must have noticed this as I did and offered him some gloves. You should have seen the look of surprise and appreciation on his face. It was a very tender moment of generosity to observe.

The glove giving gal was thin, looked to be in her late 40's or early 50's, was wearing a John Lennon type Army coat, had really short blond hair, and she had kind of a "butchy" demeanor, for lack of a better word. Actually, after the fact it dawned on me that she looked and acted a lot like like the actress, Jane Lynch, the boss in 40-Year-Old Virgin and the lesbian dog trainer in Best In Show.

"Hey, sport! Want some gloves?"

Shoe shining guy's English was not great, but that didn't stop glove-giver from telling him a bunch of information. After giving him the big and bulky gloves, she showed him the slimmer ones that she was wearing and said "These are for gun handling," and "These are for handling guns" - in case he didn't hear the first time. She said she was a retired cop and for some reason told a story about her and some other officers arresting a drug dealer. Apparently the dealer shot her partner and during the exchange giant bags of "china white" exploded everywhere and exposure to the drug led to her to being laid up in a hospital for 10 days, regularly hallucinating all through out her stay (which doesn't sound all bad).

(A good time. If you have a lot of free time in your immediate future)

Wow.

What started a nice moment of a woman performing an act of kindness for a random senior citizen quickly escalated into a crazy violent crime adventure story straight out of "Scarface." I did not see that coming at all, but you do have to expect the unexpected when you hop on a Chicago bus.

Be kind to others, readers. And watch out for accidental ingestian of dangerous amounts of "China white," whatever the hell that is. 

I had only two topics that I wanted to write about saved in my phone after all this time, and here they are:

1. Man Shed: I have always been fond of the notion of a man cave to house all things too tacky to be displayed for anyone but select guests.  As a matter of fact, the tackiness of my basement would be such that even my closest friends and family wouldn't want to go down there.  I like things like those white Christmas trees.  Not because I like them, just because they suck so, so hard.

Anyone else dreaming of a white tacky-ass Christmas?

And I would have that anamotronic band from Showbiz Pizza down there like the guy in this clip and program them to perform all my favorite heavy metal songs.

"South of Heaven live from South of the untacky part of the house!

Of course there would be lots of sports memorabilia and a bar because I am fond of sports and drinking. The problem is that I will never be able to afford a mystery cave that opens up when you twist a statue like in Bruce Wayne's mansion.  Truth be told, I wouldn't even have the money or space to waste a perfectly good basement on my rebelling against what society says is good taste.  Sadly, that's a fight I would fight out in my backyard, freezing my ass off in my poorly constructed man shed with its walls covered in nudey posters and a roof letting in freezing rain, huddled in the fetal position drinking a can of beer with one hand and with the other trying to adjust the rabbit ears on my black and white television to faintly see the Cubs losing 11 to zip in the fourth.

2. Nursing Home Orgy: Someone was just telling me that there is an increase in STD's in nursing homes now due to the following factors -  (1) An old age meat market up in there due to all the baby boomers getting to that age (2) Older people in better health these days which makes them stay sexually active later in life (3) Old people not giving a good god damn about using condoms in their 70's.  And who can blame them?  I hated them in my 20's.

I looked it up, and it's true that STD's are spreading like wild fire in those joints!  I just don't like the idea of getting a call from the retirement home to hear about my grandpa coming down with a case of drip dick.  Good heavens, Grandpa!  And how much lube must they be going through nowadays around there?  Do they get their morning pills every day and their daily bucket of Astroglide?

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Out of the blog-o-sphere all this time, and this is what I come up with?  My pathetic man shed dream and old people doing the nasty?  The really nasty as the case may be.  What's up with all of you?  I'm going to run down the blog roll and see . . .