« EVERYBODY’S DANISH – Poly High & renewed friendships | Home | Wishful Thinking and Indecisive Wars – by Ralph Peters »
GEORGE, COFFEE, REFLUX, FART & OTHER IMPORTANT SUBJECTS
By fred | July 3, 2009
GEORGE, COFFEE, REFLUX, FART, AND OTHER IMPORTANT SUBJECTS
by UNCLE FRED!
Of course, all of you are going to think your old buddy Fred went ‘bonkers’ – hey, maybe you are right! It is a hot day in Washington, highly unusual for us, I am tired of constantly redoing listings for my eBay Costume Jewelry store so I figured I would sit down and relate some advice, do a little bitching and relate my feelings about many important issues, most of which may not concern you – but what the hell, knowledge is knowledge.
Most of my buddies are rich, well Sally and I are not exactly poor, just they got more money than I have which makes me jealous as hell – they all are likely busy counting their money all the time so someone like me has to develop intelligent dialog, discuss important subjects of the day.
Most of em, my buddies, the ornery bastards just got rich so they could give their old buddy Fred the finger, it almost scares me to add new buddies, as they all are on that side of the ledger. Like Mark Levey, tickled to find him after a zillion years, my memories of him when we were young bucks is super, turns out he is rich too, that’s all I need — another rich buddy. It would be nice to find an ooooold buddy that is poor, ha, life it not fair. At any rate getting rich, may mean that my buddies have a one track mind, they do not have the capacity, the ability to let their minds examine important subjects like I do, – the ability to have their minds wander to really important subjects like their buddy Uncle Fred does.
Before I get into some excellent advise related to the problem of reflux with us elderly old farts, let me digress, I used the expression ‘fart’, I hope, I sincerely hope that the word did not offend you, I have used it a number of times in this document, so lets start with that. In researching my book ‘Soda Pop Soldiers’ years ago I looked up the word ‘fart’ as it is used quite extensively by soldiers, hey, that is not even considered a bad word in the military. In fact I looked up a lot of words, I used the AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY, I looked up words that were a part of the daily language of a soldier. O. K. they are not words that you would use daily even if those stout defenders of our nation’s liberty use them, not daily, but often minutes apart.
The results of that research in ‘The Heritage Dictionary’ are in an excerpt from the forward of ‘Soda Pop Soldiers’ my book, – as follows:
QUOTE
Those that are brothers in arms, military men; and most of the male population of this great nation, will have little trouble understand the terminology and the distortions of our written language used in this book. Being specific, the language referred to is just being soldiers and the conquest of the fairer sex. My concern is not for them, it is that a more ‘sheltered’ individual, probably a lady, protected from the vulgarities of our world. If the lady, for some unknown reason, may decide to read this literary effort, she would be shocked and likely either put it down, never to be read, or grab a dictionary and become further confused.
As a writer I am very uncomfortable using explicit terms related to male and female body parts. For some reason a constant referral to ladies vagina area is not acceptable to me. This area, by the way, is of prime interest to young teenaged soldiers. Young energetic males in their prime, where the testosterone hormones are exploding and all their instincts are pushing them to promote the longevity of the human race.
You can well believe that young soldiers are far more devoted to the conquest of beautiful ladies than any combat with the enemies of our nation. I am not interested in the vulgar words many crude individuals use to refer to that exciting and private area of our ladies. They will often refer to a lady, a girl, as a slut, cunt, or worse. I do not know any sluts or cunts. I do know some wonderful, delightful, warmhearted, ladies that may be more sexually oriented than others. Should they be punished by verbal abuse for their granting of favors? I think not. To my mind there are many more acceptable words in relating some wild exploits that refer to fun and games between the sexes. Inasmuch as many of these words are in the dictionary, I will attempt to explain the American Heritage Dictionary’s translation of the words and then relate how we may use them in army life.
I hope you will not consider me a prude, believe me I am far from that. I have no reluctance in using vulgar words in stories where the reality of army life demands it. Expressions such as ‘fuck off’ or worse will be used, however hopefully as little as possible. Before you continue reading this novel I hope you will glance over our use of the English language in the very last part of the book. A glance at those few pages first, before starting the first chapter, will enlighten you to the interruption and double usage of words we as young men and soldiers used so freely.
The American Heritage Dictionary did disappoint me in a few cases. Words that are crude, and vulgar, yet used constantly by our citizens had no translation of content except the word, ‘Vulgar.’ So who is the prudish one now? To my mind words no matter how vulgar in content, if in constant usage, a word should be translated to an inquiring mind. These words include ass-hole and fart; both received the word ‘Vulgar’ as the only interpretation. The last word ‘fart’ most of us considers a normal bodily function, nothing more, nothing less.
In fact I was furious that the word ‘vulgar’ was the only wording beside the word ‘fart.’ I am not being in the least bit humorous when I ask you, -what single word would replace it? There is none! ‘Fart’ is the only four-letter word in existence denoting that common bodily function. ‘Gastric expulsion’ does not fit the bill; the nearest would be a longer group of words such as, ‘Expulsion of gas, possibly odorous.’ I have no idea then why a tiny short word that in four letters describing a constantly occurring bodily function should be so badly treated and receive the putdown of the word ‘vulgar.’
You will also note that a really vulgar word such as ‘fuck’ receives almost a full page in the same dictionary. It even relates the history of the word, which may have some interest. ‘Fuck’ believe it or not, is the first word ever recorded in English history (according to the dictionary) it was first used in a poem entitled ‘Flen flyys.’ The poem was written somewhere around 1500, over six hundred years ago. It had shock value then, and still does, although it is in print far more now than then. I do not want to get into a big dissertation of the whole thing, it is just my frustration that such an offensive word can have existed so long. That it can be eulogize for so many years and another word like fart that has meaning, is short, and is not offensive in my mind, should be unjustly denoted as ‘vulgar.’ Somebody weird is writing his dictionary.
UNQUOTE
So, now that we have fully explored that subject lets move on
First off, a common ailment of us certified old farts is reflux, where if you go to bed too early, before your dinner is properly digested you may have to upchuck, a polite word for throwing up. Not a lot of fun. To find this out your regular physician will send you to a specialist, you will get an appointment for a several hour minor hospital or lab stay where they put you out and stick a tube down your throat and look around. You got to figure that the doc is not squeamish because looking into folk’s throats and stomachs has got to picture some disgusting stuff, but that’s why they make the big bucks to look at stuff like that.
If you gave reflux, acidity is bad, very bad. Something that gives you a ton of acidity is coffee. Now I was raised on coffee, the English may have their tea, but the Scandinavians, in fact most of the rest of Europe, the Middle East areas, Turkey, etc, coffee is the big beverage. For me to live without coffee would be horrible, a major disaster of the first water – when it was found that I had acid reflux it was either a strict diet of food and beverage – OR – a pill.
I opted for the pill. That was a few years ago, hey I have forgotten the name of the damn pill maybe because I am so darn mad at it. One day a few months ago I went to my Costco pharmacy to fill the prescription, they wanted almost $300 for a thirty day supply. The manufacture had jacked the price up , for what reason, I have no idea. I told the lady at the counter, to forget it, no way was I going to pay $300 a month to drink coffee. She asked the head palmist to come out, a lanky, old timer that got to – over the past few months become a super buddy. He took me to a stack of pills called ‘Omeprazole’ it is a bit over $18 for 42 pills almost a month and a half’s supply. The prescription would have cost me over $9.50 per day and the non prescription my buddy suggested cost only .43 cents a day.
Is this a commercial? You got it, if you have to take some expensive pills for reflux, try em out, they work just as well as the expensive ones. I drink most of a pot of coffee each day, eat spicy stuff, and no problems at all.
Last and not least we have to discuss George. George is not a human, George is our coffee maker. We first met George, rather we purchased George from our local Costco, he was not cheap, Sally and I never conserve on the truly important stuff in life and coffee is important to us both.
George is the loudest coffee maker in exsistance, or so we believe. George will snort, bubble, and make weird noises for the longest time. In fact we were going to pack him up and take him back, only problem when George is done, when he quiets down he produces the best coffee you have ever tasted. So Sally and I decided that we would put up with George and he has remained a part of our family life for the past few years. God willing George will have a long life, we may bitch about his daily noise but what the heck it is one coffee maker that when the coffee is finished, ready to drink – you know it is so goooood. The quiet, the lack of sound lets you know that George finished making your coffee.
How a coffee maker got the name of George? Don’t ask me, Sally and I have no George friends or family, one morning when I entered the kitchen Sally said George is ready, that’s what she said, — she is not sure I am right here, but who cares? George became George and for my part I hope, no I pray that he has a long, long life as George does one heck of a good job, so if he has to sound off, bitch a bit about all the work of making my coffee, that is O. K. by me. An artist deserves to make a bit of noise.
There is one other commercial I wish to bestow on family and buddies and that is the coffee Sally uses. Sally uses Folgers coffee – NOT THE REGULAR FOLGERS – the can has to say “Simply Smooth” – I’m sure the regular Folgers or other coffee may be good, but if your coffee is a bit ‘sharp’ or a bit ‘acidy’ give this a try — to me it is about the smoothest coffee you can drink. It is not one of those decaffeinated coffees either, can’t stand those, gotta have the caffeine jolt to get us going.
I guess I will have to get back to real work, watering our lawn, stuff like that. After all if I can’t be as rich as my buddies the least I can do is put my massive intellect to work show them that my mind is superior to theirs. I doubt sincerely if Mark, Fuzz, Eddie, Joe, Art, Ronnie and the rest of you could ever discuss coffee, reflux and yes – farts – with half the passion that I did. Hey, you gotta be number one at something!
Love ya, Fred
PS Several of you have wondered where most of my stories, my written thoughts are stored. Just go to – THIS & THAT from Uncle Fred – in the ‘category’ section, just keep scrolling back. Fred
Topics: THIS & THAT from Uncle Fred | 1 Comment »
July 9th, 2009 at 5:26 am
I was surprised to read about your addiction to good coffee. When Stuart and I first started visiting US we thought the coffee was terrible – weak and tasteless. We didn’t think anyone in the US knoew what good coffee was; we should have known that the Danes did.
Stuart is really fussy about his coffee and over the years we have accumulated various coffee makers and fancy ’systems’ all which get relegated to the back of the cupboard. The best, by far, method of good coffee is finely ground in a paper filter.
My mother will make fresh coffee in a fancy jug and I have to rummage in her cupboards for a filter paper for Stuart’s coffee to remove the sludge that you get at the bottom of the cup.
We take filters on camping trips and fill a kettle of water, leave it to boil (20min using the car cigarette lighter) while going for a shower, then make the best coffee in the world, sitting outside our tent looking at the wildlife flitting around us. If we’re in the US often we’ll have bought a couple of pieces of cheesecake the night before and brought it back to the campsite. Excellent.
Over the years we’ve tuned ourselves to South American coffee more and more although it’s nice to have a channge.
Anyway, since these earlier trips to the US the coffee has really improved with coffee shops on every corner giving the customer any variation of coffee, milk, foam and water required. Even McDonalds are doing better coffee.
The Scandanavians do like strong coffee, but even there the Starbucks are changing the tastes of the youngsters to a more frothy format. I’m not sure your parents would have approved!
Just finished my breakfast ‘Killer Coffee’. I only have one mug a day.
Take care,
Alison