Yesterday, I said goodbye to Gina and hello to BOB.
We dropped Gina off at the bus station in Olongapo on our way to the supermarket. She was a hard worker, and we’ll miss her, but I understand that family always comes first in this culture. I wish her the best.
The highlight of my day was attending the Battle of the Bars, which I call “the BOB” as it seems to be a derivative of the recently deceased SOB. It’s a dance contest featuring girls from five bars, although the format was a little different from what I’m accustomed to.
So, what did I think? Well, the BOB is a quarterly event, so the gals participating seemed much more enthusiastic than I saw at the weekly SOBs. Overall, I’d say the gals were sexier, or at least wore sexier outfits, like t-backs.
There wasn’t an empty seat in the house, and that created some issues. Late arrivers stood around the stage, blocking the view of those of us who had arrived early and secured what we thought would be good seats. Another problem was that the capacity crowd was more than the aircon units could handle, and the room grew uncomfortably warm.
But on with the show. Only the Alaska team bothered with wearing costumes, similar to what they used to wear during their SOB days. The other gals just let their shaking bodies entice the voyeuristic crowd of horny old men. Some of them were better at it than others (or had better equipment), but otherwise, there wasn’t a whole lotta difference in the performances.
Some of the routines went a little long, and it was decided by the powers that be to skip the twerking competition. That was disappointing because I was looking forward to seeing some of that booty jiggle. A couple of the banana-eating performances were disgusting. One of the bar owners dressed like a gal, t-back and all, and joined his team on the stage. Except his dick and balls kept falling out of the bikini bottom. That was something I didn’t want or need to see.
When it was all over, no one came to collect my score sheet, so I was thinking the fix was in. And sure enough, the host bar, Thumbstar, won the event (I had them in third place). The consensus of my group was that the show sucked more than it didn’t. I might consider attending a future performance if it is held at Queen Victoria, a bar with a large stage and plenty of seats with unobstructed views.
The BOB offers a VIP entry ticket for 1,000 pesos that includes all-you-can-drink at all five bars for one night. I purchased one and made sure I drank my money’s worth. I was pretty much at capacity after the show, but visited Queen Victoria for a couple more anyway.
I was tempted to stay for the Queen Vic live music that started in an hour, but good judgment prevailed, and we called it a night and headed home while I was still standing.
From the March 2016 LTG archives, this post was written in response to someone who took offense to my calling the Prophet Mohammad a pedophile. Except they didn’t call me out in the comments; they complained to my employer, the 8th US Army in Korea. Since I was a reemployed annutant, I didn’t have any civil service protections and could have been fired. Fortunately, the Army lawyers took a stand for freedom and said that since what I had written was just my opinion and was written on my own time, no adverse action would be taken. I was told to include a disclaimer in future posts stating that I spoke only for myself on the blog and that my views did not represent those of the US Army. For the record, Mohammad married a nine-year-old, so I stand by my pedophile description.
In today’s YouTube video, the vlogger talks about things in the Philippines that will turn you into a grumpy old man. Well, I already are one, but some of the things he mentions can trigger the scream equivalent to “get off my lawn!” But I try to remember my mantra, “Take a deep breath. Relax. Accept the Filipino way.” It does help.
To the humor we must go:
Alright, time to get on with it then. I picked up my blood work results yesterday and have an appointment with Dr. Jo this afternoon to discuss what they mean. And since I wasted my Tuesday at the BOB, I’ll venture out to the floating bar after my appointment to do some rockin’ on the water.
Good luck with the blood work, John. One never knows what one might find, or what one pain might lead to. When I got pancreatitis back at the start of 2016 it started with a dull ache in my lower left abdomen, like a bruise that’s sensitive to the touch. First few big gulps of breakfast vodka mixer I immediately spewed up. I didn’t feel ropey or queasy or anything; I felt fine. But as soon as I swallowed a mouthful, a handful of seconds later it was immediately all vomited back up. If I drank even a half cup of water that came back up too. I thought maybe I had a stomach bug or something, and the abdominal sensitivity was from banging into something at work and not remembering it because I was so busy at the time.
It was only by having sips, of water or vodka mixer, I was able to keep anything down.
As my work day progressed I rapidly declined. The dull abdominal ache turned into one of the worst pains I have ever felt, like a saw slowly going in and out of my pancreas. It was agony. I turned fish belly white and was dripping with sweat, shuffling off to the toilets, holding my arm close to the painful area, to spew. Most of my workmates knew something was up and I had a bunch of people asking if I was ok or saying I looked unwell.
I thought, I hoped, I’d break through and eventually feel better, but I only felt worse. In the end my work wife had to trick me into a mutual friend’s car (“I feel like we don’t hang as much as we used to, Thompson. Let’s all go for a ride!”) before they drove me to the hospital, because I’d said earlier I didn’t want to go.
When the nurse said she had to search my backpack in case I had drugs or alcohol I was nervous about what she’d do/say about the remains of the handle in my bag, but the fates intervened and she was called away before she opened my backpack, and she just stuffed it in a locker beside my bed without checking it.
Had like a three day stay. Banana bag, no food, no water. Sweet, sweet, morphine.
Hospital waived the bill because I was homeless, and some church people put me up in a hotel for the weekend as well as gave me like $200 worth of grocery store gift cards. I was sober for maybe a couple of days before I was back on the vodka and back on the streets.
About halfway through that year I started puking heavily one night and I was worried it was pancreatitis again. Scared me right into dropping vodka as my beverage of choice. I maintained on beer almost exclusively for maybe 8-9 months before the vodka gradually crept back in and took over.
annutant
I believe the word is “annuitant,” as in “an annuity.”
The punctuation stinks more than the fart.
What’s the corrected version? Let’s have it!
Alright, time to get on with it then. I picked up my blood work results yesterday and have an appointment with Dr. Jo this afternoon to discuss what they mean.
Good luck with that. Oh, and… spot the error! (not a comma error)
John, as a daily drinker/alcoholic, what would you say prevents you from stopping the booze? Childhood trauma or something like that?
Jerry, I have no desire to stop drinking beer. I enjoy it.
Kevin, yes, I meant to say annuitant but spelled it wrong.
My attempt at correction:
Well, my fix of adding an “I” requires a comma, right? I also reworded the sentence for clarity:
Thompson, it sounds like you are lucky to be alive. I’d rather read about pancreatitis than suffer from it. How are you doing now? Back to work? Still homeless? Published any of your creative writing yet?
[Second attempt. Please delete the first.]
Well, my fix of adding an “I” requires a comma, right?
So you went for a comma anyway. I did say it wasn’t a comma error. Let’s try one more time with a hint. Here’s the sentence with the error:
I picked up my blood work results yesterday and have an appointment with Dr. Jo this afternoon to discuss what they mean.
And here’s a huge hint: look for the phrasal adjective. What’s missing?
Before, the lack of a comma was appropriate because the original sentence had a compound predicate; it wasn’t a compound sentence with two clauses. By adding “I,” you needlessly made the compound predicate into a second clause, once it was a second clause, it needed a comma. The “I” adds no clarity (but it admittedly helps with a tense-control problem). No—the problem is the phrasal adjective.
As for your correction of the meme: the meme starts off with “Have you ever…”, so you know it’s a question. The most obvious correction—and when you said “the punctuation stinks more than the fart,” I thought you were thinking this—is to change the period at the end to a question mark. But the meme’s language had other problems, too.
Here’s the original:
Have you ever looked at someone while they’re doing something small like driving, laughing or eating and just smile because they don’t know you farted yet.
This sentence is a mess, especially with tense control. There’s also, arguably, an Oxford-comma problem—not technically an error, but the sentence would be improved if it had an Oxford comma. I would change tenses, add the Oxford comma, and stick on that question mark at the very end. Rewrite:
Have you ever looked at someone while they were doing something small—like driving, laughing, or eating—and just smiled because they didn’t know you had farted yet?
Memes are petri dishes of bad English. I’m stealing this one for my Substack. It’s one of the worst ones I’ve seen, and it’s great for discussing tense control.