On October 23rd, 1925 in Corning, Iowa, Johnny Carson was born.  It’s strange how the life such an interesting character like him can go virtually unknown.
     Neat little tidbits… Like…

     The fact that he was an Ensign in the US Navy, and reported for duty on the USS Pensylvania on August 25th, 1945?  Yep, the last day of World War II.  On the Pacific front, no less, a mere two weeks after the ship had been torpedoed.  His first job?  Superivising the removal of twenty dead seamen as the carrier made its way to Guam for repairs… After that, he went on to become a communications officer, decrypting encoded messages…

     He graduated from college in 1949 with a minor in Physics.  That makes it even less surprising that he was an amateur Astronomer who owned several telescopes, including a grossly-superior Maksutov-Cassegrain Reflector Telescope by Questar.  The Maksutov-Cassegrain shows about three time the light of other reflectors (I’d almost kill for one).

     In the 1950′s, Carson filled in for Red Skelton, who’d managed to knock himself unconcious before one of his shows.

     In the early 60′s, Carson was considered for the leading role, Rob Petrie, on the show that eventually became “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”  He was a regular on several game shows as a panellist and host.

     Throughout the 60′s, 70′s and 80′s, he regularly rubbed elbows with the rich and famous on The Tonight Show.  There are plenty of stories, some of which were proven untrue.  Especially the one about Zsa Zsa’s cat… In answer to her question, no, he didn’t reply, “Sure, if you’ll get that cat out of the way.”

Your chances of getting struck by lightning go up if you stand … you stand under a tree, shake your fist at the sky, and say “Storms suck!”
— Johnny Carson

     In the 1980′s, Carson was a major investor in DeLorean Motor Company, the failed auto company of John DeLorean.  It’s too bad, too … It was a great looking car.  All stainless steel, and especially cool when tricked out with a 1.21 jigawatt flux capacitor.
     He also had a moderately successful clothing line.

     Probably one of the best known facts is that Carson didn’t care for Leno, who inherited the Tonight Show in 1992.  He’d actually asked that David Letterman fill his shoes, but the network chose Leno instead.  There was a lot of animosity on all sides. 
     Carson reortedly continued to send Letterman jokes for his monologue until his death in 2005.
     Interestingly, that’s about the time Letterman started to suck so vehemently…
     It’s amazing the crap we get stuck with on TV…

     After this evening’s seance with Johnny, attended by another dead friend, I had the opportunity to ask Carson what he thought of this whole David Letterman and Stephanie The-One-Who-Shall-Be-Called-Vicky Burkitt affair.  Pun not intended, but there it is.

     The obviously disappointed Carson furrowed his brown and dead-panned (again, pun not intended, but there it is):

     “When turkeys mate, they think of swans.”

     So, Happy Birthday, Johnny. 

     You’re sorely missed.

     *Golf swing in your general direction!*

     It seems like I’m the only person who still knows what happened a year ago.  Someone else made some rather half-hearted apologies about it, and claimed to have lied so much about the incident that it couldn’t be reversed.  Meanwhile, I’ve taken the brunt of those lies and accusations, and even had those lies used as further evidence for more things that never happened.
     It truly sucks to watch someone you care about devolve into paranoia and mania because of past trauma.  It’s even harder to watch them drink themselves into oblivion, effectively brainwashing themselves into believing their own bullshit because they’re too weak to stand up and say, “Hey, I have a problem, and I need some help.”  Sure, I’ve self-medicated the same way myself at times, but I’ve also known enough to realize when I needed help — and sought it out and taken it.

     So, suffice it to say, I’m more than a little down today.

     And my shoulder is killing me.

     Last week, I threw it out pretty bad.  I kept eating Ibuprofen, putting FlexAll on it to try and deal with it.  But by Friday, it was so bad that I had to go to the doctor.  I dreaded the Cortisone shot as much as I might dread a catheter, because they always hurt like Hell.
     This time was worse.  The shot was easy in and of itself, but filling an already inflamed joint with a thick paste adds tremendous pressure where you’re already feeling it.  That’s usually tolerable, except in this case, the entire bottom of my arm went cold and numb, and the fire shooting through my arm’s nerve tunnels had me pretty damn close to tears.
     “Keep your mind off it,” I kept thinking on the way to get my prescription filled.  I gave Mushy a random call, knowing he’d gone through a worse bout of it last year with his shoulder.  Didn’t work.  “Horror stories.  Fuck.”

     And then, of course, came time to deal with the idiot Pharmacy techs who can’t read, “ALLERGIC TO ACETAMINOPHEN” on a prescription.  Nor did they have the brains to figure out the milligrams for a one-size-fits-all drug.  Nor did they have the social skills to treat me like anything less than an addict, even going so far as to say, “This doesn’t look like a real prescription.”
     The third pharmacy, of course, was the charm — but not before going back to the doctor’s office to get them to fill out the prescription form properly and call in the medication to the pharmacy of their choice, who also missed, “ALLERGIC TO ACETAMINOPHEN,” as did the third after having that one called in by the second pharmacy.

     I finally got the drugs I needed.

     And I logged in here after an extended absence to find a rather overwhelming amount of spam.

     “Are tose numbers even close to right?“  I can’t even tell.  Since the spam filter only shows twenty per page, the page numbers I can click to are also in expoential notation … all thanks spambots, page scrapers, content theives, and Southeast Kentucky Rednecks, thanks to the bullshit in the first part of this post…

     Some days, I just shouldn’t bother.

“I’m gonna bar-b-que your ass in molasses!!!!”

Sorry – I removed the video as embedding wasn’t allowed.

(Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnRwQjTYfGI)

     “Hey, you should come over Wednesday night.  Plenty of food!”
     “So, what, you’re havin’ a party?”
     “Well, I hadn’t thought of it like that, but lots of food, a few friends, drinks…”

     Yeah, I remember those days… I’ll bet Mr. McCaughan does, too…

     Just a “few friends,” indeed…

     Then the next morning, you’re trying to figure out who shat in the cat’s litter box and why all the deck furniture is in the trees.  The VW Microbus sitting in the den can never be easily explained.

     Exasperated due to many futile attempts, I’d usually just scream, “Those damn raccoons!”

     I mean, what the hell was I supposed to say?

     It’s not like anyone ever actually believed me when it was so clearly the work of Sebastian Cabot and his evil horde of winged monkies…

     Damn evil hordes of winged monkies!

     [ It never happened, but we wanted it to.  Her Mom got sick, people protested, there was drama.  And finally, she started back at her Job on February 4th, and that was the end of that.  On the 3rd, she told me, "No job is worth losing you, Mark."  It was left unfinished... I moved there, and what we have now is a bad end of history... Yet, I still feel exactly the same way. ]

     It’s Friday, January 18th, 2008 at approximately 10:30AM EST … and the Wildcat and I are making our last trip back to Kentucky where I leave her and come back home alone.

     The last six months feel like forever, yet they have gone by so quickly at the same time. 
     Apart, thoughts are consumed with things we’ve done, things we’ll do.  Together, we’re consumed in each other.  When we stumble, we hold on tighter.  When we’re down, we lift each other up.

     Every experience I’ve ever had prepared me for the moment that I met her.  Every bit of agony made me appreciate her that much more.

     On New Years Eve, at thirty seconds to midnight, I stooped on one knee and asked for her hand, the hand that I knew would hold mine for the rest of our lives.  With a resounding “Yes!” and a ring set on her finger, we entered the New Year with a kiss and a promise.

     And now, it’s time that promise was realized.