blogski
Monday, June 17th, 2013
Never mind the thought of your beau rambling in a big rig through a tornado zone or the fear that truck-stop hookers, known as “lot lizards,” will be swarming around him like maggots. The worst part about being a truck driver’s so-called widow is having Willie Nelson constantly run through your head.
“On the road again ….”
This trucker gig is a new thing for my beau since his old career hit a roadblock. Like funeral directors and garbage collectors, truckers will always be in demand. Stats show the demand for commercial truckers is up 20 percent, with more than 230,000 trucking jobs listed in the first three months of 2013 alone.
People want stuff fresh. They want stuff now. And they want stuff that has to be hauled from Oklahoma City to Jersey City or Salt Lake City to Kalamazoo.
(more…)
Tags: gargulinski, job changes, re-careering in tucson, truck driving career, truck driving careers tucson, truck driving loneliness, truck driving tucson, truck driving widow
Posted in blogski, column, danger, life | Comments Off
Monday, May 20th, 2013
Being young, drunk and stupid can come with lifelong consequences. And those consequences can come even if you weren’t drunk. Just ask a Tucson guy we’ll call Sam.
Twenty-something Sam was an upstanding person: a former soldier, an intelligent and compassionate chap who was aiming for grand things.
“I wanted to be a lawyer to help people,” he writes in an email. Sam instead found himself on the other side of the law as a defendant in a crime that got plenty of press due to its grisly nature.
The crime involved a severed arm.
(more…)
Tags: crime, danger, gargulinski, gross, rynski column, rynski's blogski, strange tucson crimes, tucson crime, tucson severed arm, weird
Posted in blogski, column, crime, danger, health, life, police, fire, law | Comments Off
Wednesday, May 1st, 2013
I fear it.
I embrace it.
I let it keep me up at night.
I poke at it with a stick.
I get skeeved when I have to
touch it and pull out an
old pair of pajamas to
wrap up my rat
and bury
him.
I abhor it.
I adore it. I really
don’t adore it I just
liked the way it
rhymed.
I hang doll
heads from my
ceiling fan a
shrunken skull from
my rearview
window.
I want it to go away.
I make it come
for bugs.
I let it sit there on
the porch I
shoo it with
a swatter.
I try to tell myself it is
the ultimate spiritual
experience and there’s no
way to get out of it yet I
still
freak out to think
I may one day
not be me. I
draw
cute little
skeletons
on tricycles.
-Ryn Gargulinski, 05.01.13
Tags: dead pet, dead pet rat, dead things, death poems, death poetry, gargulinski, rynski, rynski poetry, tucson poem, tucson poet, tucson poetry
Posted in death, poetry, writing | Comments Off
Friday, April 26th, 2013
Photographing dead bodies in Vietnam, undergoing 37 operations and suffering from head-to-toe disabilities may make some of us kind of disgusted with life. Heck, stubbing a toe can make some of us disgusted with life.
Unless, of course, you happen to have a pet.
Getting free pets for military veterans is the mission of the new Pets 4 Vets Program launched by the Tucson nonprofit 4-Legged Friends Inc. Once the program is up and running, the group hopes to help provide free pets for any vet who wants one but can’t afford the adoption fees.
“When a vet gets a free pet it gives them hope!” group co-founder Lee Vork writes in an email. The exclamation point is all his. Vork’s enthusiasm comes easily despite his 37 operations, his 100 percent service-related disability status and his being pronounced dead in 2002 after a heart attack.
Another group co-founder is Tucsonan Bill Wilson, a vet who spent four years taking pictures of dead bodies in Vietnam, and whose experiences there include being shot down in a helicopter. His 100 percent service-related disability status is still pending, although he currently rates at 90 percent.
Vork and Wilson both grew up around animals on Midwest farms. They met in Tucson in 2005 and 4-Legged Friends was born a few years later. While the Pets 4 Vets Program is new, the group has been helping animals since the get-go. (more…)
Tags: 4-legged friends, azmira, azmira tucson, gargulinski, holistic animal food, pets for veterans, pets for vets, pets for vets tucson, tucson pets, vietnam veterans
Posted in animals, pets, blogski, column, environment, health, life | Comments Off
Monday, March 25th, 2013
The next time you hear a knock at your door, it might be a bleeding young woman. If it’s the same one who came to my door, she’ll be standing there, apparently in anguish, with bright-red droplets plopping from her face onto your porch.
As a true crime junkie, I knew well enough not to let the woman inside. Her gang of bandits hiding in the bushes would have taken that opportunity, of course, to barge in with semi-automatic weapons and steal my favorite lamp.
I instead offered the woman a paper towel to stanch the bleeding and more water for her empty water bottle.
It turns out she had not been beaten, raped or thrown in a wash and left for dead. She was suffering a nosebleed, which happens when she’s under a lot of stress. And, boy, was she under stress. (more…)
Tags: magazine sales, magazine subscriptions, ryn gargulinski, tucson magazine subscriptions, tucson salesmen, tucson solicitors
Posted in blogski, column, danger, gross stuff, life | Comments Off
Monday, February 25th, 2013
Don’t hate them because they’re pink. The “they” in this case are breast cancer sufferers, survivors, supporters and organizations like the Southern Arizona affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, all of whom are linked to pink whether they like it or not.
Komen’s 15th annual Southern Arizona Race for the Cure kicks off March 17 at the University of Arizona Mall, which means the route won’t even clog up most city traffic (unless, of course, you plan to careen through campus in your Hummer). You’ll even get an Olympic silver medalist as the honorary race chairwoman. High jumper Brigetta Barrett doubles as a UA undergrad and her mom is a breast cancer survivor.
Despite the hard hits Susan G. Komen for the Cure has taken of late, our local branch does some pretty amazing things.
Those things don’t include paying administrative salaries at some Komen corporate office out in Dallas, either, but things that help women right here in Tucson and its environs.
“Komen Southern Arizona is the only local breast cancer foundation to turn donations into treatment dollars,” says Gillian Drummond, Komen SAZ’s communications consultant. “Many of the others are helping diagnosis and screening only. Our grants include programs for chemo and radiation and mastectomies.” (more…)
Tags: gargulinski, komen race for cure, komen tucson, tucson breast cancer, tucson breast cancer events, tucson race for cure
Posted in blogski, column, danger, health, life, notable folks, heroes, politics | Comments Off
Monday, January 28th, 2013
Man can land on the moon, and digitalize and stream endless reruns of Columbo, but we still can’t beat the flu. Sure, we can get flu shots based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s “best guess” on what virus may be kicking around on any given year. But a sensational strain stretching across our fair land is blissfully immune to the standard vaccinations.
We’re calling it the Lucas virus, in honor of my 4-year-old cousin, who we are convinced brought it to our Michigan Christmas Eve family gathering.
As news reports said, this year’s monster virus did indeed stem from the Great Lakes region. And Lucas did indeed open his mouth really wide at least once to scream in the middle of the living room. As family members hugged, laughed and shared pierogies, no one was the wiser that we had become carriers of this abominable bug.
The Lucas virus made its way to the West Coast via my brother and sister-in-law, who brought the thing to Sacramento. It came to the Southwest on US Airways Flight 281 from Detroit to Phoenix, then shimmied down to Tucson thanks to a ride from my beau from the airport.
Once it hits your house, don’t be surprised if you don’t think it’s the flu right away. Mom was actually ordered to get a CAT scan since her version of the virus decided to seize the muscles on one side of her chest, making it nearly impossible to breathe.
On my end, I was sure I was on death’s door. Never mind that I also thought I was on death’s door when I got a spider bite some time back—this was the real door. Symptoms included aching muscles, aching eyeballs and aching bones. Even my cuticles ached.
(more…)
Tags: flu, flu 2013, flu epidemic, flu in tucson, gargulinski, great lakes flu, lucas virus, new year flu, tucson flu
Posted in blogski, column, danger, death, environment, gross stuff, health, life | Comments Off
Friday, December 28th, 2012
The world did not end on Dec. 21, as all of the fear-fueled hype predicted. Damn.
Although doomsday has seemingly come and gone with nary a hiccup in the overall scheme of things, don’t worry—there is still plenty to fear. Society makes sure of it.
Ours has become a paranoid lot, fearing everything from the sun that shines upon us to the very air we breathe. Fueled by misinformed Internet postings, random rumors, hyped-up headlines and our neighbor’s offhand remark, we become consumed by terror. What a crummy way to live.
Paranoid parents raise their kids in captivity. Women get both their breasts removed as a preventive cancer treatment “just in case.”
On the local level, we see fears fueled all over the place. Strict anti-smoking laws fuel the fear that a single puff of secondhand smoke will instantly send us, our children, our pets and our houseplants to an early grave.
(more…)
Tags: fear in america, fear in tucson, gargulinski, paranoia, paranoid americans, tucson fear, us paranoia
Posted in blogski, column, danger, gross stuff, health, life, stupidity | Comments Off
Friday, November 30th, 2012
Pima County gets a big, fat slap on the back for finally being on the cutting edge of something. Too bad we are on the cutting edge of one of the most inane trends wafting across the globe.
No more smoking on any Pima County property. This means you. This also means outdoors.
Pima County parks remain exempt from the ban, despite at least two news stories that stated otherwise. But the ban does apply to parking lots, outdoor county-sponsored events, and those grimy little cubbyholes behind Dumpsters where smokers had been previously “allowed” to puff in a Quasimodo-type stance so no one would see them and complain.
It’s not just the traditional cigarette that’s banned, either. The ordinance applies to “cigars, pipes, smokeless tobacco, water pipes, hookahs, e-cigarettes, chewing tobacco, snuff and other products containing tobacco.”
(more…)
Tags: new smoking ban pima county, no smoking, pima county smoking ban, pima county smoking ban 2013, smoking ban tucson, smoking bans arizona, tucson smoking ban 2013
Posted in blogski, crime, danger, death, environment, health, life, stupidity | Comments Off
