Goldilocks and the Two Cowboys...

Back in the day, before all of my friends got married, we used to head out occasionally and hit the clubs.

Of course around these parts, that meant driving 50 miles to some less than stellar place, but hey... everyone else headed there too. It was just about the only place in town. Not quite, but it was the college hangout, and we were almost college age.

Anyway... one of the bouncers was about 6'2" and was the kind of guy with a tailored pencil beard, semi bleach blonde hair which was one of those curled mullet type affairs. His name started with a B, but everyone we knew called him Goldilocks. I doubt to his face, but...

Anyway... he jumped from club to club too, working at the pig palace for a bit, then over to a new place then back. We'd see him everywhere, and we became fairly good acquaintances. It was friendly enough, and he turned out to be a pretty good guy.

One winter, one of the guys that I'd go clubbin' with, was out on his snowmobile riding it up in the back country and got stuck. He was in the middle of nowhere, and in about 6 feet of snow so he knew that it wasn't going to be easy getting it out by himself. Right about then, out of nowhere another snowmobile rolled over the hill and got stuck about 10 feet away from him. My buddy looked over there and made the newcomer a deal. He'd help the other guy dig out, if that guy would help him. The deal was made. Then they both took off their helmets and guess who the other guy was... yup. Goldilocks. They both laughed and proceeded to dig themselves out.

A short while after that, Goldilocks started dating a cousin of mine for a little while, and so we got a little better acquainted.

Then things change, and people get married and move on, and the weekly trips to town became more and more infrequent. Fact is... it'd been a couple years since we'd made the trip, then one night my buddy calls me and asks if I want to head over there with him. Sounded good, so we went.

Now when we drove into the parking lot, the place was packed. I hadn't seen it like that in forever, and outside of the club was a group of about 45 people standing around and talking. We didn't think much of it, it was a nice night, and the music inside sounded pretty loud, so I just figured they went outside to talk or something. Turns out... they were all waiting for someone to come out so that they could get in, but we didn't know that. We just walked up to the door, and before we could even get within 15 feet of it, the bouncer looked at us, pointed two fingers in our direction and said, "You two, you're in!" and went back to scanning the crowd. The crowd around us all shouted in unison, "Wha??? OH C'MON!!!" The bouncer? Oh yeah... it was Goldilocks.

We walked through the door before it hit us what had happened, and we started laughing. I'm chuckling about it right now as a matter of fact. Later on, he came inside and found us at our table and we said our hellos and chatted for a bit. I really don't know why people were waiting outside... the place was actually pretty lame, so we drank a few brews and headed out. I suppose if we would have been younger, and closer to everyone else's age it might have been funner, but alas that lifestyle is for the younger crowd.

I haven't seen Goldilocks since then, but then I haven't been clubbin' either. I do have to admit though, it was pretty fun being in the "in crowd", at least for the night.

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And now a big shoutout to my favorite Pixie, Tink. As you've already seen from my comment section, she thought enough to give me this:

I don't quite know what that says about this blog... but it certainly makes me think that the hot Florida sun is starting to get to her...

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Perhaps it's a good thing that I have stopped clubbin'.

A Curiosity...

Even though Tink (and I guess Kath) thinks this blog has some redeeming qualities to it... well... I'm not going to go that far. But you've caught me in a weak moment, so I'm going to actually let you in on a little something. A slight view into what makes me tick... you've been warned.

So I'm over at NAY, Tiff's little corner of the world, and as I leave a comment on her haloscan thingy, the ad is from a website called... nahhh... I'm not going to give their name out. I don't need search hits for that one... but I didn't recognize it and went ahead and clicked it anyway, despite my better judgment.

Turns out, it's one of those "buy a Russian bride" websites. Now I've never been to one of those things before, nor any of the other myriad of online hookup sites, so I decided to go ahead and browse around for a bit. What I saw, fascinated me something fierce.

Here are a whole bevy of girls, for the most part ranging in age from 19 to 30. There were a few 18, and one who tipped the scales at 34, but 95% were within that range. And the other thing is that they are nearly all drop dead gorgeous. Really. I... well... it amazed me. Here they are, in the prime of their lives (mostly from the Ukraine) and are signed up for a trip to who knows where to marry some schlub. Ok... I know the bullsh*t story that they give out... these women are free to choose and all that crap, but...

However... that wasn't the part that made me curious. It was the little write ups that went along with the pictures. Take this one for example...

Here's an absolutely beautiful young lady, Evgenia, who is 19 and this is what she wrote down:
"Character:
I am a creative personality. I adore singing, it is a part of my life. But I don't sing professionally, I am a future economist. I am intelligent, purposeful, sincere and easy-going. I am cheerful and try to be optimistic in any situation.
Interests:
My greatest interests are music and singing. I also like dancing, bowling, skating. I love wild nature, I love sea and mountains. My parents used to take me to camping trips when I was a child. And it is still my hobby.
Her Type of Man:
I am looking for a serious, reliable man who is ready for a life long relationship, who is ready to care and support his family, who thinks love and affection are very important in a relationship. I don't think age and appearance can be very important if two people are a good match and have a lot in common.(preferable age: from 35 to 50)."

Although I meet a great number of those qualifications (especially the appearance aspect), her preferable age knocked me flat. 35 to 50??? And she's 19? Good gadfry... I know 19 year olds and they don't even speak to 35 year olds, let alone look at them as husband material. What's the deal? This my friends... is the curiosity, and is a glimpse into how my mind works.

What makes these women put themselves out there into an online meat market like this? Are things really that bad in the Ukraine that they're willing to leave their families and all they've ever known and risk it with some internet stranger? Are they just listening to the other girls, or someone with the website, telling them to put that down because that age group is the one that is desperate enough to use the site? Is it because that age group is, for the most part, financially stable? Are these women that much more mature because of their upbringing and responsibilities? I dunno... I've got to say... it amazes me.

It's not just her either, damn near all of them put down a preferable age range of either 30-42 or 35-50. Now the 26 or 29 year olds, I can see putting that age range down, hoping for the 30 end rather than finding some guy older than their dads... but the 19s? Really?

These girls could have their pick of any guy that they wanted if they were over here. Seriously. Look at another one!


I have a buddy who went over to the Ukraine for a lark or trip to see the world, and he told me that these girls were amazingly beautiful, and incredibly mature compared to this neck of the woods (he raved about their traditional values). Shoot... later on he went over to Kazakstan on a little tour and fell for a gal and they're married now and living in Nevada. Just as a side note, she had an incredibly tough time adjusting to the homesickness. Which makes me ask... do these girls really know what they're getting into?

No wonder the old bald fat guys pay these websites bucks for a chance to meet these girls.

So tell me... you readers of the female sex... would you do the same thing? Or... do you have any idea of what their motivation is? I'm all ears...

They're Coming to Take Me Away...

Over at a BB that I frequent, I happened to mention that I've actually seen a black helicopter, and of course that led to someone asking me to tell the tale...

Since that's more blog fodder than BB fodder, I decided to put the story up here.

Ok... now despite the definitions put out in wikipedia, to me a black helicopter is any helicopter without the mandatory tail numbers or markings indentifying it. Now I never thought that it had to be black in color, just "black" as in "off book".

I've heard tales of black helicopters for years, and although I never dismissed the stories, I never really thought much about them as being true either. I guess they're just like Nessie, some people say they've seen her, others think it's crap. I dunno...

But there I was one late summer afternoon, up in the middle of nowhere hauling hay. I was putting along in my stacker just minding my own business, when I happened to notice something out of place. I couldn't tell you what it was, but for some reason my mind just said... "That ain't right." So I ignored it, and went back to picking up the bales, but I kept looking back up that way just to see.

Now this area is actually in an MOA and so I'm accustomed to having military jets and things sneak up on me all the time, but this time... it wasn't the same. So I wanted to figure it out. Now I've seen F4's, F-111's, B-1B's, B-52's, F-16, F-15's, A-10's and a few real screamers that I couldn't identify, and they're always right at "tree top" level practicing their terrain following skills. It's pretty cool. I'll tell you a few of those stories sometime too...

But anyway, I turned my outfit back around, scanned the skies, and finally had some movement below the horizon (actually about 200 feet off the ground) catch my attention. "What the heck is that?" I asked myself, and could see that it was heading toward me. It was a dark spot against the grey mottled sagebrush sidehills. "Oh... that's a helicopter. Ok." And went back to my task.

When I recognized it, it was a couple of miles away, and so I didn't think anything more about it, but every time I had to turn back that way, I looked up there and it kept getting closer. It was about this time that I just pushed the clutch in and stopped to watch it, and it was fairly easy to see now. And there it was... a black helicopter. Literally. It was black in color. It was also one of those little bubble choppers like TC flew in Magnum P.I. and it came right to me and started hovering. I got a pretty good look at it, because they were hovering at about 80 feet. There were two guys in the front of it, and they hovered there for about 10 or 15 seconds, then the turned on the steady axis, and I was shocked...

There were no markings on the chopper. No numbers, no letters, it was a solid matte black. I'd never seen anything like it before. As they finished their turn and headed around the little mountain I was stacking next to, I could see the other side of the helicopter. It was blank too...

Of course at this point, I knew nobody was going to believe this story, but I also know that my cousins were around the mountain putting up their own hay, and that's where the chopper headed. That evening when I quit for the day, I drove down there and stopped in to ask them if they'd seen it too. The answer kinda surprised me. Yeah, they'd seen it, and this was the third day in a row that it'd done the same thing...

I looked for it the next day, but I've never seen it again. And there you have it, my not-so-famous black helicopter story.