This past Labor Day weekend, my wife and son went up north to visit grandma. I stayed home to do some chores and to clean up some writing commitments. The weekend was drizzly so outside work got put off again but I did clean up what needed to be done with my writing.
I also spent a solid ten or twelve hours gathering some of the dumber things I have written or said to include in another of my unfinished books. I am fortunate that over the years I have said an enormous amount of inane things so the only work is to try and gather them into one volume.
The title of this book would be, if ever completed, "From A to Z in no particular order: The Funniest Things I ever said: Although I don't remember when."
I have been compiling notes for several years and am quite certain I have failed to jot down or remember many things. Fortunately some of my stranger thoughts made it into articles, short stories and previous books so I have been busy gleaning out these nuggets of burned-out-brain-matter-mumblings.
Here are a few of the gleanings for all of you to read in case you too have problems understanding the real' world.
It seems that in the country of Papua, in New Guinea, there is an entire regency named Fak-Fak. Reading about Fak-Fak, I was initially excited that an entire area of an obviously English speaking country was named after me. I had visions of flying to Fak-Fak. I saw myself getting off a plane, showing someone my driver's license, and immediately being lifted up and carried away amidst a cheering throng, as the keys to the province, and the long emptied castle were handed to me.
Unfortunately, after further studies, I found out that the 90,000 inhabitants of Fak-Fak are aborigines, many who have yet to get over such mundane problems as genocide and snacking on each other. My new vision again saw myself being hoisted into the air, but this time the crowd was delivering me to a cooking pot rather than a luxurious castle. I might still gamble and go there someday. There is a picture of one warrior from the area with two wild boar tusks sticking out of his nose. There is an alarming resemblance between him and an uncle of mine. My uncle of course doesn't wear wild boar tusks in his nose. Unless there's a formal gathering of the family.
I found great interest in some of the Fak first names looking at an ancestry website. There was Tippo Fak who lived a century ago in New York City. I wonder if his wife's name was Tippsy. There was a Moses Fak at about the same time in Miami, Indiana. Pong Duk Fak still is alive in Maui Hawaii as well as Yatu Fak and Takashige Fak in San Francisco. Also in California are Leong and Chu Fak. I'm not sure how the person relates to me, but I would like to someday meet the man or woman who was stuck with the moniker: Chu Fak.
The closest I ever came to eating "The most important meal of the day" was when I was a kid and mom made me a bowl of oatmeal every morning before school. Of course, every morning when mom went downstairs to iron my clothes for school, I took the oatmeal and flushed it down the toilet. I could always bank on mom never having my clothes ready the night before, so this ruse worked well for all the years she fed me that garbage. In later years dad had to completely replace all the plumbing in the house and I will always believe it was because of mom's oatmeal.
I really did learn how to walk when I was eight months old and could open the refrigerator within a week of that. I was almost a year old however, before I could make a Dagwood sandwich for myself.
One of the only pictures to have survived of my grandma, Louisa Fak, is a 1930 picture of her on a stairway with a huge German shepherd next to her. The note on the back of the picture denotes grandma is sitting with King, another non original name to be sure. I suppose the message was to help viewers understand the shaggy looking individual next to grandma wasn't the then missing Grandpa Tony who bore a remarkable resemblance to a German shepherd.
Last week we had what many news reports called a "teeth rattling" tremor in the area. That mini-earthquake didn't bother me at all as while I was in bed my teeth were rattling in the TV room on the snack tray.
I also will have to have a few fund raisers when I run for office. I'm thinking of a ham and beans meal and if a person comes I give them the five bucks. The way I see it, if politicians can get money for their votes so should all of you. Besides the last time I did one of these, all the folks who imbibed on the beans, after the fermenting process, eradicated every mosquito and fly in the county so it's also a public service
I will need a few sponsors to help with bills while I train for my events in the Senior Special Olympics. I have a real good idea on who will help me with that. The entire Senior Olympic field will be people old enough to croak at any minute, so having a funeral home as a sponsor is a natural in my opinion. I can have a track shirt printed out that says on the back: "I intend to be cremated by so and so funeral home". I can have patches on the jersey ala NASCAR that support my principle sponsors. There can be a patch from the crematorium oven people saying they are the "only way to go". I can also get the utility company as a sponsor since for years their slogan was "Things cook better with gas".
Kids going down the street with car stereos blaring so loud they make the glass in my windows vibrate really honk me off. These noisy kids don't need to have the sound up that high with their windows down. I imagine that is required lest the sound shatter their windshield. To make matters worse, they always have some type of pure garbage music on that wouldn't be worth listening to even if it was at a proper decibel level. I think kids who drive around with blaring music, and the store owners who sold them the systems, should be arrested and thrown in jail. They should be tied to a chair and made to listen to Gene Autry sing "Frosty the Snowman" for 48 hours straight and that will end this nonsense.
I have a real problem with individuals who own yappy dogs, tie them up outside, and leave for the weekend. The dog, dumber than a box of rocks, can't get it through its pea brain that no one is listening to them, so they bark and bark all night.
I think people who do this should be arrested and taken to the animal shelter. After they are either neutered or spayed they should be sent home and chained in the backyard for a week or two. The dog should be let in the house, so that it can understand how hard it is to sleep with its stupid owners crying outside all night long.
Freelance writer, columnist, author and writing coach, ex-Chicagoan Mike Fak presently resides in Central Illinois. More information about Mike's services are available at his home website www.mikefak.com
Mike currently writes primarily humor columns for searchwarp bi-weekly and is the managing editor of www.lincolndailynews.com
Mike now offers a 26,000 word e-book on making money as a freelance writer for only $10.00 at this page. http://www.mikefak.com/id45.html
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