It's a Lie, a Scandalous Lie!

Friday morning I got a call from an acquaintance. He'd entered a golf tournament with one of his partners. The partner wasn't going to make it back in town in time for the tournament, the next day, and did I want to fill in. Using that same breath, he continued, "Everything's paid for, it won't cost you a thing." So what could I do?

I had to call Bill to let him know about backing out of Saturday morning golf, but it hit me: I'd be seeing him at 2:00 p.m. and LA Royal Vista golf course. It's always nicer to see people's faces when you've got news that elevates you above them for whatever reason.

But it turns out he had the best of it.

The tournament was at Barona Creek Golf Club, down near San Diego. Their website says they are rated the fifth best public access golf course. Their website lied. A lie on the scale of "wettng the bed is better than sex," or "Politics is an honorable profession."

When I got to my acquaintance's house, his daughter's boy friend was there. He was dressed for golf and mentioned that he'd golfed a number of times at Barona Creek. I laughingly asked if I was losing out by having given up a game at Hidden Valley to go to Barona Creek. He dropped the pleasant smile and frowned at me. "You had a tee time at Hidden Valley and you gave it up for Barona Creek?" I nodded my head. He started shaking his head.

The day went downhill (downhell?) from there.

But I survived. I won't ever bother to play that course again. So now you've been warned. (Another in an increasingly longer line of things for which to thank the internet.)

Thank You Notes from my youngest son

(You have no idea the chill of fear, the knot of anxiety, the drumbeat of morbidity, the staggering of esteem, the frolic of fierceity... ect.)

Andrew wrote these himself:

Uncle Joe & Aunt Emma,
From all the neglect I've received from you, my so called 'aunt and uncle,' you can imagine the surprise I had when I opened your card! I didn't know who you were until I asked my mom.

Dear Uncle Steve & Aunt Leez,
100 buck? C'mon, cheapskate, I know you've got deep pockets. "We're moving to France, but, here's some pocket change, you little bastard." Screw you.

Dear Mrs. Wasielieski,
Hey! It really meant a lot to me to receive a car from you upon the occasion of my graduation! It's tough being the young one and a lot of times I feel like my accomplishments go by without notice, because I dwell in the shadow or my older, more attractive brother who has scaled the Everest of Life, it seems. So it was very pleasing to get the card from you. However, in actuality, it's my brother who is deserving of your pleasantries. I've since forwarded your card to his person and I hear that he has spent the small sum enclosed on underwear, without even wondering where or how the money was earned. It warms my heart to know that he has found pleasure, somehow, in my graduation.

HE CAN'T DECIDE ON WHICH OF THESE FOUR...

Dear Ashley,
Let me say this: Writing thank you notes is hell for me. You gave me 100 dollars for my graduation and you've probably thinking to yourself, "Boy, am I a great relative for dropping a bill on my cousin. I must have made his freaking day." You're wrong, dead wrong. I'll see you in hell

Dear Ashley,
First of all: HOLY SHIT! One hundred big ones!? Where the hell are you getting all this cool cash? My mom says I can't spend it until I write you this letter, but as I'm writing this I'm not thinking about your, your generosity, our great times spent over these 18 years of my life or anything else that Family Circus baloney. No, I'm focusing on how I'm going to blow your hard earned cash.

Dear Ashley,
You think money is going to make it all right that you didn't come to my graduation? I worked, I toiled, I emptied my being into the halls of that school for four horrible years and you can't even break away from your babysitting job to come down to see me? I burned that Benjamin you gave me and you can consider us on hiatus as cousins until I get a personal apology and 200 dollars.

Dear Ashley,
Geez, Ms Richie Rich, you really came through on this one! 100 bucks!! You even beat Uncle Steve! But seriously, I don't want to sound shallow or materialistic, but it really meant a lot to see that amount of money thrown my way. Let's face it, money is awesome, you're awesome by association. The card was cool, too; it actually made me jump a little! Maybe sometime before I go to college I can come down and visit you guys for awhile. It feels like it's been too long. I hear you got a schweet job taking care of some rich people's kids. Way to go! Be sure to weasel yourself into the old man's will. You can take care of the whole family! Anyway, thanks again! You made my day. See you soon, Ash!

- Andrew

Grammiekins leads the way into a new Future

Right now it's voluntary, but I can foresee where it could become mandatory.

What I refer to is having your life 'cataloged' on the internet.

Grammie, of Awaiting Buddha, has basically dedicated a chunk of internet real estate to her first grandson. If she keeps it up, by the time young Owen is in high school, he will have gigabytes of material piled up completely documenting his life to that point.

Long before then Google will offer a service that compiles every fact and fiction written or videotaped about the subscriber. Biographers of the future will have no trouble dissecting the life of the person they chose to study; their problem will be winnowing through the over abundance of material.

And I can foresee where your Social Security Number will end with a ".cit" for the new citizen domain, where every bit of paperwork, every test, photo, medical report, x-ray, .wav file and sex tape will be archived. The micro-chip in the back of your neck will make sure that surveillance video gets copied to your .cit file. The final test of love will be to exchange passwords, so that each lover can rummage through the life of the other.

Can you imagine El Pistolero's biographers trying to pin down what El Pistolero meant to the 20th and 21st Centuries? I can see schools of thought arising regarding what one or another post 'meant.' And schisms will splinter the schools of thought and brother will turn against brother as El Pistolero's words and deeds are argued over.

How much of a post is a metaphor? Where does truth end and begging begin? Can a milkshake really just be a milkshake?

I, on the other hand, will be easily dismissed as a total slacker who succeeded so well that his life ended up the equivalent of soggy steamed rice. But it was all I ever wanted...

In 24 hours people will start making calls on their iPhones.

I won't be one of them. I never even got an iPod. I'm not in the iGeneration. It's that simple.

I thought it was way cool in one of their commercials where they showed an iPhone looking at YouTube video. But then I learned that that only works when you're at a wifi hot spot, which is fine if it's free. Which made me feel better because while my Blackberry does the 'net very well, it won't do videos from YouTube with just the phone connection. Just like the iPhone. I don't think the iPhone will do email as well as the Blackberry.

I bet iPhone 2.0 kicks butt. Since I'm already a Cingular/AT&T subscriber, maybe I'll get iPhone 3.0, the one with the sexual gratification button. Blackberry says they have no plans in that direction.

A lesson in conservation of self, disguised as a joke...

A big city lawyer went duck hunting in rural Tennessee. He shot a fat looking duck but it fell into a field on the other side of a fence. As the lawyer was climbing over the fence, an elderly farmer drove up on his tractor and asked him what he was doing.

The litigator responded, "I shot a duck and it fell in this field, and now
I'm going to retrieve it."

The old farmer replied, "This is my property, and so now the duck is my property."

The indignant lawyer said, "I am one of the best trial attorneys in the United States and, if you don't let me have that duck, I'll sue you and take you for everything you own."

The old farmer smiled and said, "Apparently, you don't know how we settle disagreements here in Tennessee. We settle small disagreements with the 'Three Kick
Rule.'"

The lawyer asked, "What's the 'Three Kick Rule'?"

The Farmer replied, "Well, because the dispute occurs on my land, I get to go first. I kick you three times and then you kick me three times and so on, back and forth until one of us gives up."

The attorney considered the matter and quickly decided that he could easily take the old codger. He agreed to abide by the local custom.

The old farmer slowly climbed down from the tractor and walked up to the attorney. His first kick planted the toe of his heavy steel-toed work boot into the lawyer's groin and dropped him to his knees. His second kick to the midriff sent the lawyer's last meal gushing from his mouth. The lawyer was on all fours when the farmer's third kick to his rear end, sent him face-first into a fresh cow pie.

The lawyer lay there basically dead to the world but then swam back up to semi-consciousness and summoning every bit of his will he managed to get to his feet.
Wiping his face with the arm of his jacket, he said, "Okay, you old fart, now it's my turn."

The old farmer grinned at the attorney and said, "Nah, I give up. You can have the duck."

Many Important Discoveries are just New Ways to Look at Something

Imagine you are stranded in a leafy, tranquil forest, by a babbling brook. You have no food, but thanks to the babbling brook, you won't die of thirst. But there is NO food available. Days pass. The ache of your empty stomach is a constant, unrelenting nag; thoughts of food assail your brain. You have never, EVER in your life been this hungry!

Suddenly a person walks into view and cheerily says, "Hello."

No one in the world is going to criticize you if rather than say, "Hello your ownself, dude" (or dudette), you instead demand to know if he or she has anything to eat. Nothing could be more reasonable, right?

Well, now you understand what's up with men and our sex drive.

You're welcome.

Where are you now, Joe DiMaggio . . .

I watched part of a tribute to Paul Simon last night and they showed him singing this in Yankee Stadium. (Oh, sure, I believe you were there that day...) For thirty years now people have been asking this question. How come no one answers it?

He's dead! Stop asking the frickin' question!

But it's being asked less and less as time goes on. One day people will have finally forgotten the question.

Once the human races learns how to cheat death, a lot of questions won't be asked and go unanswered.

Speaking of which try this one: "If all your friends refused to jump off a cliff would you refuse to not jump off that cliff, too?"

In other words, parents DO want conformity and running with the herd when it suits their plans!! So what does this tell you about parents?

Coexisting with People who don't want to coexist with You.

I know it's hard to believe that there are people out there who want you dead rather than have to share oxygen with you, but it's true.

There may come a time when these people, radical Islamo-fascists, your father-in-law, the waiter you left a dollar tip on a $22.50 lunch tab, et al., decide that there are better things to do than kill you. If we ever reach that point, there will be some things you'll need to know.

Many of the people who hate you wear explosive vests, carry guns/knives or drive ton and a half vehicles. If you bug them, they'll explode the vest, shot/stab you or run you down and marmalade you. So what you need to do is learn to leave them alone and tip better.

What would the IRS do to a man wearing an explosive vest if he refused to pay his taxes? Lots of things, I'm sure. But one thing they wouldn't do is confront him. Same with a cop who saw a man wearing an explosive vest urinating in public. If you had the state of mind necessary to put on an explosive vest, and you were one of, say, 20 million people wearing such vests, what do you think it would do to law and order? Because the ultimate leverage the State has is to deprive you of life or liberty. If you're willing to use your vest if you don't get your way, you're going to get your way a lot more than someone not wearing a vest. The ultimate 'F-U' to the State. You think you'd be pulled over for a traffic infraction if you had a big bumper sticker that said, "Warning, Driver is wearing an Explosive Vest"?

And what about a movement that enlisted people over 70 to put on such vests? They either get their way or they flip the switch on the detonator. Civil Disobedience to the max.

It wouldn't take long before being polite, and respecting your fellow man became the absolute order of the day.

Or maybe I should just get more sleep?

A play on words...

Heather Ivy was a tall, thin, pale blonde. With a bit more meat on her 5'11" frame, people would have used 'nordic' as a descriptive word. But thin as she was, 'gaunt' was a word often used by the more literate of the English majors in her life.

She was a junior at IOU Tech and this year she was an RA in her dorm, the most obvious benefit of which was that she had a private room and bath.

In November of the year, three months into the semester, she fell in love with a Puerto Rican kid who lived off campus. He was a Freshman, but older than her. She was all farm, he was all ghetto, but with a mind that understood and accepted the differences. He molded himself to fit what little yielding she had done to try to fit into what was still a strange world to her. People who knew them both could not understand how they had come to be a couple. But their 'understanding' was not something the couple needed and individually each one refused to answer any questions from the butt-inskies among their friends.

They hadn't been a couple long enough so Christmas Break wasn't a problem; each returned home alone. They emailed, IM'd and texted constantly. Her cell phone wouldn't take, send or receive photos, but she did have a digital camera and so they exhanged a number of photos, to the amusement of their respective families, none of whom gave the couple a snowball's chance in hell.

Back in school in January their 'coupleism' continued to prosper. And so did their academic endeavors: they both made Dean's list at the end of Spring Semester.

They'd held desultory talks now and again as the end of the semester approached, about what they would do, couple-wise, during the summer. He was honest and told her that the thought of spending time on a farm, where he couldn't make love to her whenever he wanted to, didn't appeal to him. And she was equally blunt in letting him know that being the only tall, skinny White girl in his barrio was equally unappealing. So they agreed to part for the Summer.

When the last school day was over, and they were packed and ready to depart, he held her in a final embrace. Their sadness was acute. She told him that the sadness was making her heart feel like a medicine ball inside her chest and it seemed to be trying to sink into her stomach. He put his hand over her heart (for a last quick feel) and told her that not seeing her for two and a half months was going to be the saddest thing he'd ever experienced.

And she asked him, "Will you still love me in the mourning?"

She had to finally explain her joke to him, writing it out, because he kept saying he'd miss her EVERY morning, AND the afternoons and evenings... When he finally got it, he laughed. But it was too late. She knew she'd just sown a seed of destruction and no weed killer in the world was going to prevent it from sprouting. What was going to grow from that seed would drive a wedge between them. Naive she might be, but she was farm girl practical and she figured he'd still be good to have around during her senior year, what with him being a great lay, and all. She was smiling when her taxi pulled away from the curb, leaving him standing by his bags, his eyes bright with moisture.

Breaking News v. Breaking Gossip

I have found a way to differentiate between what is news and what is gossip. Not that anyone in the modern media really seems to care, but I've never been deterred by the fact that something I had to say was not only pointless, but possibly in bad taste.

Like most tests, it's simple and very effective. Here's an example... Read the two declarative statements below. One of them is gossip and one is news:


Adolf Hitler ordered the invasion of Poland, which took place on August 31, 1939.

Adolf Hitler once tied a kite string to his penis, ran the string up under his shirt and out over his neck tie and told Eva Braun that if she pulled on it, he would yodel for her.

It's easy to see which one is news and which one is gossip. And here's the thing: old news is NEVER interesting, but old gossip is! None of us cares about what our grandparents went through during the Depression, but we're always interested in their stories about embarrassing moments involving nudity, sex, alcohol, or best of all, the three combined.

So when you're watching Cute Katie Couric, if what she is talking about would ALWAYS be interesting to hear about, it's gossip.

The Penis Diatribes

My wife is currently watching some type of Vagina Monologues presentation. As I sit and type, my back is to the TV, so I can only hear these various women find different things to say about their vaginas. Apparently the American Female has spent a lot of time in denial with regard to their vaginas.

And so we come to The Penis Diatribes. Or as they are called in East LA, Chupame la verga, chulita.

There will never be an audience who would pay to hear what a penis has to say. Why on earth did people pay money to hear women talk about their vaginas? I certainly never figured it out. Men would certainly never get near them if they, the vaginas, could talk.

Okay, apparently, from what I'm hearing behind, the majority of women don't like their vaginas! Their vaginas have been the cause of pain and rejection! Well, that wasn't the case on my watch! Another reason why my 300 million daily fellow travelers should have had more to say about how this world is run.

What kind of a world is this where there are so many women who don't delight in their vaginas.

Richard Condon & Carrie Fisher each wrote a book in praise of the vagina; he wrote The Vertical Smile and she wrote Surrender The Pink. More people should have read them.

I heard there's going to be a new show on cable, The Penis Whisperer

I met a man...

This is going to freak you out! It freaked me out and I was there watching it happen. You could see it coming so it wasn't like it totally caught me by surprise, like it is you. It's just the extreme unusualness that gets to you, because if you fit it into the context of WWII, it's not really that big a thing.

Okay, I believe I've mentioned that I was a Mormon Missionary. It was a long tme ago, in the 60s. Technically, I could be a grandfather to the little Missionaries out there today. I did my Mission in Mexico, in one of four territorial divisions the Church had set up. My territory included Mexico City. Mexico City is old and there are some very, very rich people there.

One day, in a very old section called Coyoacán my companion and I met a man. He didn't tell us his name. He invited us into his cozy home. It reeked of reclusive erudition. It was dark and there were books everywhere. I don't remember much of what was said. Remember, I was just 19, callow to a very alarming degree, and although I was a voracious reader, back then my preferred genre was science fiction. So when this gentleman started telling us about how foolish we were to talk for god and salvation, it was easy to feel smug and superior, what with my Companion and I possessing 'The Truth.' I do remember him telling us, calmly, almost dispassionately, that he had seen things that would convince the most stalwart of believers that god could not possibly exist. He looked fairly old. I never forgot that man, mostly because of the setting. I'd never that kind of stuffy, educated reclusiveness. And then there was his certainty.

Anyway, I men him today. He is 74, having been born in 1933. He now lives in San Bernardino. I would never have remembered him; I never 'developed' a picture of his face to go with the rest of the recollection of that brief event. I was painting addresses on curbs and as is often the case I had people coming out to talk to me. There's this thing about me: I don't speak "street Spanish." I was a Missionary who learned Spanish while a Missionary and then I took my minor in Spanish. I'm sure most Spanish-speakers realize there's something 'stuffy' about my Spanish be he was one of the very, very few who questioned it. So I explained. He asked where I'd served my Mission. I answered. He asked if I'd ever been in Coyoacán. I said I had. He asked what year. I answered. He asked me if remembered meeting him in his stuffy, reclusive study. I gave him a long look and said I did. We talked a lot more...

But to cut to the chase, the gentleman, Gustavo Merced de la Torre, is now living with his remaining relative, a nephew. And his claim to fame, or notoriety, is that he was the only Mexican to spend time in a Nazi Concentration Camp. Or as he corrected me, un Campo de Exterminación Nazi. Not a subtle difference.

He's never made a serious inquiry, but he spent all of WWII in Germany and never heard of any other of his fellow countrymen being there. So that's why he says he is the only Mexican survivor of the death camps.

See, I told you it was weird.

Crips 'n Bloods and the Spice Girls

I'm combining two posts. This could be a wave of the future, combining posts. It saves, time, money and energy, which will keep the planet from overheating before I die.

I searched for evidence that Crips and/or Bloods blog. Crips and Bloods are Black gangs. Legend has it that Crips was founded in South Central Los Angeles way back when... Members identified themselves by wearing a blue banadana on their persons. Legend goes on to say that leaders added a red bandana, to denote rank. Schisms occurred and before anyone could write a paper on it, the Bloods proclaimed their existence and took over sole use of the red bandana.

In searching for evidence of Crip or Blood blogs I found this sparkling burst of erudition: "yo id anint bout red or blue id's bout faimly most people who joyin crips or bloods been abused or sum din its like cristians and afyeist if you a cristian then other cristians your family if you and afiyist they your faimly id's like dat we only gots bad blood between us bescuse we dont agree on stuff same thing as religions but in sted of religion blood and crips are like familys gid it" You can't make this stuff up, you know...

I never did find any blogs but I bet one exists and I just have to keep looking. There has to be one or two introspective gangstas out there who have computers.

Which segue-ways us into the Spice Girls. There's no way to sugar coat this so I'll just blurt it out: I read this morning that they are going to get back together and go out on tour and stop global warming. They are going to bring to bear/bare their awesome power for good, but there will still be no nipple. There will be some name changes, to reflect where the girls are in their lives now:

Posh Spice she is totally satisfied with her life and wouldn't change a thing.

Smelly Spice she has liberated herself from the pedestrian cares of the world and from slavish conformity to 'regular world' rules.

Stealth Spice She doesn't want you to see her coming... or going.

Aspirin Spice If you've had too much to drink, play two songs then call her in the morning.

Trojan Spice There's more to her than meets the eye.

I could be wrong on some of these names. What have you heard?

Speaking Excrementially

I made this word up: Excrementially. Naturally I had help. I'm nothing by myself. I'm the first to admit it; admit one, non-smoking. A guy named Hilary had something to do with it. Go figure...

I trust that my faithy (not faithful, not faithless, just faithy) readers will be inspired to incorporate this handy word into their week day and weekend nights conversations. There will always be plenty of opportunities because excrement is all around us. It's going to be the adverb of the 21st Century. And you're in on the ground floor.

Lucky you!

How come hardly anyone fantasizes about being Mundane?

Mundaneness doesn't get a fair shake. But then, what does?

Mundaneness has it's time and place. Where would the music of the 60s have been if we hadn't been ready to settle for mundane? And Disco! Disco was all about being mundane!

See?

Mundane gets a bad rap because individually none of us wants to be mundane. Fine, individually you are certainly the cream of the crop, A number 1, the top of the heap.

So how come 72.5% of high school graduates can't read at a 12th grade level? How come we let 34,000 fellow Americans die in alcohol related traffic accidents? How come being part of a mob is preferred to being stalwart and somewhat alone? How come a whole bunch of things?

Maybe it's who we're listening to? Getting good grades is mundane. The two extremes to good grades are being a merit scholar or a flunk out. Not everyone can be a merit scholar. So in that light, being mundane is better than flunking out. But inner city kids and wannabe inner city kids don't see this.

So I'm saying if you can help one person achieve mundaneness instead of flunking out, you're doing a heck of a good thing.

Yours in C+, dreaming of a B-,

Bert H.G. Bananas

The Perfect Shape

You may have never considered this fact, but it's important, because it will help you as you consider the species you were born part of and what we've become.

Wind resistance... Ever swing a tennis racket with the head cover on? And then when you take off the cover, it's like 100 times easier to swing...(96.1 times easier to be exact, but the exact measurements aren't as important as the hyperbole). So wind resistance is a major factor when it comes to automobile fuel efficiency. The more aerodynamic a shape is, the more efficiently it cuts through the atmospere.

I'm sure you can grasp the logic in this statement: There is a perfect aerodynamic shape for a vehicle that has four wheels, one at each corner, and which has to carry humans in comfort and safety. Wind tunnel testing would make finding this perfect shape very easy.

And you can tell that automobile manuacturers kind of know this. But they won't accept this basic truth, so you have different designs. But if logic were followed, cars would all look exactly the same. What does it say about us that they don't?

Yes, the exact same thing that me being overweight says about being human. Thanks for pointing that out...

You Didn't Know I Left and Now I'm Back...

The rest of this song is probably very sad, so I'll just skip to the facts.

Big T, of T-Words, convinced my wife that it would be cool for me to go to Mesquite for five days of golf and reading novels. There were 18 of us, but I was the only who brought books. So after the golf I was lonely. But not bitter. Just lonely.

Mesquite, Nevada was founded by the Mormons. It's on the Virgin River, just a stone's throw from Bunkerville, Nevada. Bunkerville has been manufacturing Bunkers since 1884. Paula Bunker was manufactured there and she broke my heart. I refused to even look at signs mentioning Bunkerville. But the whole time I was there, I knew Bunkerville was mocking me, asking me how I like it now, and if Paula Bunker and what she did to me on Graduation Night was still at the heart of all my problems. I never said a word back, but Bunkerville knew that it had my number. I was the poster boy for "Ineffectual." Grammie asked about my pic... Look I'm ineffectual and you'll see me frowning at the camera.

Five days of golf, books and missing my wife. But on the plus side, I learned to play three card poker and pai gow poker. Luckily I had remembered blackjack and how to lose gracefully.

I did get on the computer one night, but not for long. I should have done some work but all I did was play in blog land.

Slim 'n Lift Supreme . . .

I am old enough to remember the girdle. Just barely. I dated one girl who wore a girdle on a date. As a gentleman, I shan't discuss how I know this. But I will tell you that I came to know that girdles could double as chastity belts.

And now, while watching this evening's replay of today's second round of the U.S. Open (a golf match...) there was a commercial featuring the above named product. They're not calling it a girdle but trust me, it's a girdle.

My take on why girdles left the fashion has to do with openness and honesty becoming important in interpersonal relations. If I'm right, what does it say about where we're going, interpersonally, that girdles are coming back?

The women featured in the ad are perhaps a bit lumpish. They have unhappy looks on their faces in their before shots. Then they are all smiles in the after shots, telling us how happy they are to look so slim and trim, "...without diet or exercise!"

In other words, by paying out a little money, they are happy to be "fooling" the world into thinking they did something that most of us find very difficult. But what about when the 'truth' comes out?

You Stink!

I took this photo at the Indian Hills Golf Course. Or as it's soon to be known, The Noble Native American Hills Golf course...

People with even minimal rural experience know the smell of a skunk. Imagine, if you will, the evolutionary process involved that resulted in the skunk, armed as he is with a smell so bad that no one will dare approach him. I wonder if there were any false steps by Mother Nature? Like some branch of the skunk family emitting a spray that smelled like hot bread and melted butter... Or the scent of a really great meat loaf... Mother Nature isn't always the sweetheart many make her out to be.

What's the worst smell you've encountered?

What were you up to when you ended up smelling so badly that no one would get near you and how long did it last?

You can't make this stuff up!

Paris Hilton, to Barbara Walters (I kid you not!):

Asked how her first days in jail were, Paris is quoted as saying, "I was severely depressed and felt as if I was in a cage." She felt as if she were in a cage!!! And here I was thinking she was a not all that bright... but she figured out, almost immediately, that being in jail is like being in a cage.

Asked how she is now that she was sent back to do more time, Paris said: "I used to act dumb. That act is no longer cute. Now, I would like to make a difference...God has given me this new chance."

Which means Paris knows she screwed up the old chance. How far do you think she'll go before the allure of being a trust baby reasserts itself? You think she'll hang around being 'normal' long enough to marry a poor guy from the other side of the tracks? Wouldn't that make wonderful press, if she fell in love and married a plumber or a mason or a dry wall installer? It could happen!

Standing Tall

I'm not saying I'm tall. 'Cuz I'm not. But at least I can say I'm tall enough to have kids. That's a good thing...

The standing tall is how I've decided to being this recounting of today's infamy. I am infamous for this sort of activity...

Unbeknownst to me, I put a pair of roomy (meaning the elastic died and went to saggy heaven) boxer shorts on this morning. So, clean, but old, which 50% of the time defines me!

Later in the morning, what with the 24 ounces of premium Diet Coke I'd consumed with my bangers & mash, I had to pee. So as I am always one to yield to my baser urges, I went.

And I go in and unzip and then spend a ludicrous amount of time trying to get in touch with myself. But with my boxer shorts on backwards, the effort was essentially futile.

I did this once before, in high school. And the memory came rushing back. Unlike this morning, when it happened in high school I was not alone. The young man standing to my right, George Wield, watched me struggling for maybe a minute and then made this offer... "Would it help if I could find you some tweezers?"

Okay, another quick memory: I'm working for a big company out at the east edge of Beverly Hills, where Wilshire and San Vicente come together. There's a place called Cathay Circle... It's the first time that I've had 'out of the closet' gay co-workers, which for a hick Mormon kid was a pretty big thing. I got teased outrageously by the gay guys because I'd get so embarrassed. So finally it happened that one of them had to go take a leak at the same time I did. I walked in behind him. Not wanting to seem a bigot, I took the urinal next to him. He'd already started peeing. As I was beginning the process involved in voiding one's bladder, he looked over at me (well, over and down) and said, "Well, helllooo there!" I zipped right back up and left.

Putting on a good face...

I have one of those faces that create an unfavorable first impression. I've learned to live with it... When I was growing up, I didn't have a choice, I was stuck with what I was born with. That's just the way it was, back in the old century.

But instead turning inward and becoming a loner, I let my inner brain-brew burble along and worked on getting people to laugh. My only tools were my whirly-gig eyes and my snappy patter. Because most people are starved for attention, with a little patience, I eventually get a chance to spin my eyes and snap my patter.

It's a bitch getting 'profiled,' of being judged by what people see in your face, clothing and body. But it's a reality in the real world. Well, at least until the plastic surgeons say your body is old enough...

Thank gawd for the internet, where you people are only judging me by my words! Thanks!

SUCKERS!

Take a Gratitude Pill . . .

If you tilt your head a little, and then put your glasses on upside down and squint, you could make out a case that anti-depressant medications are just "gratitude pills." There's a case to be made (as opposed to a maid to be chased) that 'depression' is just the inability to appreciate all you have. "Gratitude pills" open up the mind to counting one's blessings and reveling in them, no matter how humble they may be. A strong enough "gratitude pill" would allow you, as the Ebola virus dissolved your entire body into putrescent blob, to love the fact that you just took a breath... "Wow, I just took another breath! Isn't this wonderful?"

Maybe pharmaceutical science could even cut it so fine as to market "anti-comparison" pills! People taking such a wonder drug would not compare their Tojorama 32" flat screen HDTVs with the 60" Sony their neighbors just bought, thus cutting off 'depression' at its headwaters.

Right... I can see that all I did was turn around and look at the river flowing at me, rather than watching the river flow away from me.

But I'm grateful that my brain chemistry has me positioned not to give a rat's ass about the fact that my fly is open. In fact, I'm grateful it's open!

N'Dyah

N'Dyah is a name I came across today. But for the name I wouldn't have given her a second thought.

There should be a reality program devoted to punishing parents who come up with 'original' names. Viewers would listen to the junkie single mothers explain how they came up with the different names and then vote on the intensity and duration of the individual punishments. The kicker would be that each contestant would be afforded a hefty life insurance company so that if the voting warranted it, death would be a reward for the mis-named offspring.

Fair Haired Gamin with Pluck!

Hats off to KatDion, aka CelineRocket, for making fun of my use of the word 'pluck.'

Words that rhyme with 'naughty' words are fun to play with. Like pluck.

And then there are words that are spelled differently, but sound the same as the naughty word. I'll let you 'come' up with your own examples...

Remember the brouhaha that erupted when someone described a Black politician as 'niggardly?' Who was everyone pandering to? How come no one will pander for me?

I once masticated in public... I'll probably do it again, given the proper motivation.

Do you know exactly where your loins are? I used to beg women to gird my loins. But I always ended up having to gird them myself. And no,it's not the same as being a "hirdy-girdy" man.

There must be over a hundred Vietnamese restaurants in the United States with some variation of Phuc Yu in the name.

Hoisted by one's own petard sounds very lurid. It isn't. But anyone who wants to touch my petard has to get my permission first. But if you want to hoist it, just go ahead; no permission needed.

And how about all those euphemisms for words we can't use in polite society? Unless you're on Uranus, or I'm on mine, then you can go for it.

What an amazing bunch of silly primates we are! One great lament I have is that we gave up sitting around grooming each other and playing with our feces. Which makes me wonder, how come the Women's Auxiliary of the Plantagenet Anglican Church in Exile hasn't called for Monkey Houses to be equipped with toilets and toilet paper?

How come prostitutes don't accumulate and use the power at their disposals? They could have it all if they had the guts to go for it! What a bunch of pussies!

Fake Blogs of Famous People

There would probably be some amusement in faking a blog of a famous person. It might be a bit dicey to fake a blog of a living person, but the dead cannot sue for defamation of character. Apparently the dead are not felt to have much character...

Who would you like a fake a blog for? And isn't it a bit unfair that pretending to be Hitler would result in calumny heaped on your head? But people wouldn't say much if you faked being Stalin, and he killed just as many innocent people, if not more...

Okay, I've been sitting back on my three-legged milking stool, here in front of my laptop, which for convenience sake I keep on my wife's ironing board, and after a lot of careful pondering, I think I would like to fake a blog for Lee Harvey Oswald or Bruno Hauptmann. These guys are generally seen as losers and I'd be doing either one of them a favor by getting them a few laughs. And pleading 'my' innocence would give me a lot to work with.

Another 'fun' person whose blog could be humorously faked would be Paris Hilton. Right, she's not dead, but I wouldn't call what she does on a daily basis much in the way of a life. And besides, it just occurred to me that 'famous people' don't have the same libel and slander protections that we humble folk enjoy. For example, I could claim to be Paris Hilton blogging from the LA County Jail and talking about going down on anything that moved and she couldn't successfully sue me, whereas if I even hinted that El Pistolero was in any way a deviate, he could successfully sue me for every last gallon of curb paint I possessed or would ever possess! Oh, the humanity!

It now occurs to me that the person whom you 'fake blog' says a lot about you! So therefore I now tag the entire civilized blworld to respond, and then pass it along to blworlds on other planets.

My next post may or may not have to do with fake orgasms... Remember the first time you faked that you were faking it?

The Japanese way of Bushido v. The Bananas way of Bush-eato

The title has nothing to do with the content. I just needed to get that 'bush-eato' out of my system... you know how that can be: you come up with something that you just can't wait to use. Waiting was never one of my strong points. If I could have a nickel now, it didn't matter to me that a dollar would have been available later.

With regard to my recent vacational stint, I offer the following two photographs. First:

This is a building at the indian casino. The public is not allowed in this building, except in the days leading up to Halloween, when they have an "indian casino haunted house" in here.

Now this next photo shows me at one of my finest hours. Not that it shows me, but it shows what I'm capable of. So hey! maybe I'm not that far off with my pride in the bananas way of bush-eato, because I did eat the whole thing...

Someone left the cake out in the rain...

I'm back.

All I was doing was playing golf. And eating at an indian gaming casino buffet; one photo to come...

But what if I'd been out there plotting? As a plotter I bet I would excellent. I would have code words and recognition signals. Like the title of this blog. I'd walk up to a contact and say, "Someone left the cake out in the rain." And my contact would give the counter-sign, "Was it a pineapple upside down cake?" And then we'd exchange identical brief cases. All this would take place in a Starbucks in Duluth, with a view of the ore boats pulling in to dock.

But as I say, nothing like that happened this weekend. It was just: eat breakfast, play golf, eat lunch, play golf, shower, take the shuttle to the casino, eat, take the shuttle back to the suite, sleep, get up, eat breakfast, play golf, eat lunch, play golf, shower, take the shuttle to the casino, eat, take the shuttle back to the suite, sleep, get up, eat breakfast, play golf, go home, take a nap, eat dinner and then watch the Yankees pull out a miracle in Boston. Even the Dodgers won!

I'm happy to be home and back in touch with you band of brothers, you band of plucky brothers.

While my Life is Pretty Much a vacation as it is, I am taking one...

I am leaving the office in a few minutes, heading for Menifee, and then onto Hemet, where I will be taken to dinner by Filipinos (who speak excellent English). I will spend the night there and then in the morning the male Filipino and I will head for the Sycuan Resort, where we, along with six others --two foursomes-- will spend three days golfing our large butts off during the day and relaxing at the casino in the evening. It will come as no surprise to my regular readers that I will not spend even one nickel gambling.

We will have a 72 hole individual tournament, and then a final two-team scrabble. Moderate amounts of money will change hands. Of the eight contestants, six will needlessly tire themselves out gambling into the wee hours. The other adventurer and I will go back to the motel very early and ignore any homo-erotic fantasies that might occur to us. Well, I will...

So content yourselves until my return... talk among yourselves. And know that if nothing exciting happens, I will certainly make something up when I report on the outing.

Hey, people, let's be careful out there...

Foo Foo

Foo Foo is the two word phrase I use to describe hoity-toity-ness. As is, she was way to foo foo for the likes of me, or, Mexico is not a very foo foo nation.

I was in a Nordstrom's yesterday. It's way to involved to explain why I was there. But I didn't feel as badly as I might have, given that I found a 'premo' parking spot and beat another car to it. That car was driven by an adult female Hispanic with a car load of Hispanic teenage girls. It was a Taurus and she had five girls in the front passenger seats, and at least nine in the back seat. As I pulled in to the spot, she began honking. I finished parking, got out and approached the still-honking Mexi-harridan, motioning in time-honored tradition, "Hey, what's up?" She rolled down her window and began complaining that she was entitled to the spot. I told her she wasn't, which was 100% true, I had seen it first and gotten to it first, it wasn't a case of her waiting there. Her retort was that if I were a gentleman I would do the right thing. I said that I might, but only for a lady. There were "oooooo's" from the back seat. I walked away and she flpped me off as she drove by me. So I waited til she was out of sight and then moved my vehicle. No way was I going to let it stay there! You have no idea what Hispanics are capable of!!

Once I was done with my business in Nordstom's, I stopped to take this photo:

There were FIVE different counters devoted to women's make up and the application of women's make up! That's how foo foo this store is. Except for some Rodeo Dr. establishments, Nordstom's is about as foo foo as SoCal gets. Certainly no other major SoCal chain even comes close, in terms of foo foo-ness.

When I met my wife, she had a Nordstrom's account. She once ran into an ex-girl friend of mine in Nordstom's. They were in the same elevator, each with a stroller. Liz told me that I did the right thing marrying her, because the ex-girl friend's baby was ugly. It's nice when you have such graphic confirmation of a prior decision. My wife is in total agreement that she is no longer foo foo, if she ever was. I take full credit!

My Position on illegal Irrigation.

I'm for irrigation, legal or not.

No one knows, or could ever hope to know, how much of what we eat is the result of illegal irrigation. And no one in America is about to stop the fevered bending of the elbow, shoveling food from plate to maw, at least not that I can see.

So the inevitable conclusion is that it really doesn't matter what we say, because what we do is what counts, and we eat all the food we can get our hands on, without a thought as to whether or not it was produced via illegal irrigation.

So I say, if we're going to eat the food, what does it really matter? Legal or illegal, without irrigation, we're going to be a hungry, grumpy lot.

Bill Moy, Gentleman Golfer . . .

See, there's this guy, Bill Moy, with whom I play golf. The thing about him is that he never gives up. Another of the guys in our group commented on this trait recently, saying something to the effect that no matter how far behind Bill was, you'd have to cut off his head before he'd quit. So when I saw this Sherman's Lagoon comic (SLagoon.com/toons) I appropriated it for this tribute.

If She'd had kids, she could be a Grandmother by now!

The title is not meant to be taken negatively. Isn't Nancy Wilson just the All American Girl? I want to star her in "Nancy Drew and the Mystery of the Rocked Guitarist." It would flirt with an R rating, but the old Mormon "No Nippleage" rule would save the PG rating.

You know who took this photo?

Me!

At a concert!

In my pajamas!

With my very own camera!

And my very on HDTV!

Except for the absence of the crush of bodies, the splitting headache from the sound, the reek of weed, the bowing and scraping to get a ticket, the drudgery of getting to the venue and finding parking and then the fight to get out and get on the road home, it was just like being there.

Notice how she's flipping off JFS?

Solemnity

Solemnity . . .

I'd always known I had a problem in this area, but the cap stone on the edifice of my inability to be solemn came at what has to be considered a tender age, 19. A hallowed edifice dedicated to me being a jerk.

I was once a Mormon Missionary. It was Old School. I don't know what they do now, exactly, but it's way different. Old School, we spent a week at the Mission Home in Salt Lake City, about a block from Temple Square. We were there for seven days, and we got preached to by everybody who was anybody, except for David O. McKay, who was at the point the Prophet, Seer & Revelator, aka President of the Church. He must have been out of town...

The most notable Church dignitary in those days, other than Pres. McKay, was Joseph Fielding Smith. Joseph Fielding Smith was made an Apostle in 1910! JFS succeeded David O. McKay as President of the Church. One thing you could have taken to the bank during his tenure was that God was not going to give Blacks the Priesthood on his watch! Old School, he was the last of the really Heavy Hitters. I don't know now to what extent JFS's writings are venerated, but Old School, he was the Boss. JFS was succeeded by Harold B. Lee. He was New School...

My Missionary Companion was Elder Bowler. Melvin Bowler. He'd be a force in Utah politics right now if he hadn't been killed in a solo car accident during his first year back at BYU after the Mission. According to Mormon Theory, these things just don't happen for no reason, so it was commonly accepted that Elder Bowler was Called Home... Don't get me started...

So there are Elder Bowler and Elder Bananas sitting side by side, at the left edge of the room, about three-quarters of the way back, looking solemn as all get out, part of a group of about 200 solemn as all get out Missionaries. We'd been in this stuffy room for most of the morning, being preached to. The current speaker finished and one the Mission Home staff moved to the podium and with great (but hushed) excitement told us that Joseph Fielding Smith has decided to address us! And in he walked!

At this late stage in my life I can no longer remember what he was talking about, but I do remember that he was after audience participation. He asked a question to which the answer was three. When he posed the question, he asked that we show him the answer by holding up the correct number of fingers. I knew the answer was three, so my hand shot up, and while my cognitive center was sending out a message to motor control center to hold up three fingers, motor control center got a message from, probably, the primitive lizard brain part of human mind and I flipped Joseph Fielding Smith the bird.

If one accepts that 'these things just don't happen for no reason' then one must conclude that I am definitely following a plan... Which, of course, would raise more questions than it answers. Were I a solemn chap, I'd think about it.

Intervention Time!

I am in favor of letting people do whatever they want, even if it ends of costing me money. Take for instance, motorcycle helmets. Those in 'authority' would tell me that when I say it doesn't matter to me whether someone wears a helmet or not that it really DOES matter to me, because if that M/C rider falls and cracks his skull and ends up a quintuplepalegic, I'm going to have to help pay for his care, in one way or another. And there is some merit to that argument. But I believe that I'll be paying taxes, and more taxes and even more taxes no matter how many men are saved from quintuplepalegia by being forced to wear helmets. So in the end, it's not going to cost me less money if they don't, or even 'more' money.

But now I have to take a stand. Big T called this morning, wanting to play golf. I called another friend, Ralph, and we have decided an intervention is required. We are going to meet Big T at Hesperia at 11:30 a.m. to try to get him to see that he just might be playing too much golf. We'll listen to his always well reasoned arguments, and if he can convince us that there is no such thing as too much golf (which he has successfully argued in the past) we will not force him to stop.

So if you have any thoughts on this subject, it would be good to hear from you, as the more input we get, the more likely we are to find Truth.

"Top Medical Journal Blasts 'Designer Vagina' Craze

The above is straight from Drudge. I didn't click on the link because no way was the reality of the story going to come close to what my imagination was dealing with...or with which my imagination was now dealing.

I've never met a Designer Vagina. I don't think anyone has even offered to introduce me to one... you know, as in, 'hey, my sister is back in town and she brought a friend, with a designer vagina. Wanna meet them?'

I did once meet a vagina with training wheels. But that was okay, because my penis also had a training wheel.

First on the imagination block was a tasteful racing stripe. Then custom pipes. then fat slicks on the rear end...

Then I switched allusions and thought about electronic enhancements, something like upgrading the software so the the hardware had a better time... and HighDef audio.

Speaking of which, Heart was on Video1 rock honors. Followed by Genesis. I danced and held up my right arm and waved it back and forth, thus cementing my place in the world of Rock 'n Roll.

Kicking Fate's Fat Ass

I don't believe in "Fate" with a capital fate, as in it was Fate that the two of them should meet that sundown at her father's bris...

But I do believe in fate, all lower case. As in, if you drink that entire 12-pack of Natural Lite and then to defuse my exploding chastity belt, I think we're fated to die virgins. In other words, I see fate as mostly self-inflicted.

What most people consider to be "Fate" is merely coincidence. It is not God calling someone home via a twelve volt truck battery coming through the windshield at a combined speed of 140 mph.

God and Coincidence appear to have a lot in common, in terms of not always understanding the why of this or that, much less whether it was God or Coincidence that led to the creation of the Internet. Mark my words, within 30 years there will be a tribe in New Guinea, thanks to the $100 laptops, which will worship the Internet. Internet Cults, with paypal accounts.

So what's all this have to do with the photo? Well, Grasshopper, we went to lunch at a Chinese buffet. When they brought the bill, there were fortune cookies on the little tray, one for each diner. That's mine in the photo. I never opened it. I never open fortune cookies. It drives people crazy. Especially astrology buffs. Yeah, astrology buffs and people with that permanent disability, Nopesarelcraccophobia. You've seen these latter sufferers, intently watching the sidewalk as the move along, making sure they don't step on a crack.

I once opened an umbrella indoors as I walked under a ladder, wearing a jersey with the number 13 on it, with 666 lipsticked on my forehead and then broke a mirror with a salt shaker, spilling salt everywhere and wound up lighting three cigarettes with one match. It was a great bachelor party, and what followed for the next two years of that short marriage was totally a coincidence.

Laztheists are huge on coincidence and use it to explain almost everything good and bad that happens. Suicide, however, is seldom a coincidence.

Searching for Immortality, sort of...

I'm out and about a lot.

I read a book, by a humorous writer, first name Carl, I think, with a funny last name with two identical vowels side by side, in which a minor character collected those home made crosses that are left on highways and byways all over America, as memorials for people who died in traffic accidents. Locally we have Hwy 138 which has a nice collection of them.

This particular one is out in Phelan, on Phelan Road. It's quite elaborate, as these things go:














Tomorrow I, along with Big-T and the gang, are playing a golf course on a former military base, The General Old Course at March AFB. Many of the holes have plaques on the tees naming different officers who did notables things for the game of golf.

This one isn't one of them, but it's typical of the genre:


Team captain... That's a lot of responsibility and I can't help but wonder if it didn't contribute to his demise.

I have myself convinced that when I'm bored with being old and decrepit, I'm going to hike out into the desert with some very fine strawberry wine and high powered sedatives and give myself to the coyotes. 100 years after that tragic event, no one will remember my name and my the pixels of my blogs will have evaporated into the ionosphere, to lock in adulterous embrace with cosmic rays.

I am a romantic nihilist.

Would you ...

hug your father if he were naked?

buy me lunch if I weighed 545 pounds?

subscribe to a magazine called Rectum Peppers?

ever tell the Pope he was as nutty as squirrel turds?

sell one of your kidneys for less than you paid for it?

give a sitting (well, standing or laying down, probably) President a BJ?

marry a corpse (your choice of sex) and love, honor and cherish him/her for as long as ye both shall live?

wonder as you wander?

be surprised if I quit now?

I found this fascinating!

If you have an interest in disputing with the Al Gore's and Leo D'Cup-rio's, you might enjoy taking this test. One thing that's cool about it is that when you guess incorrectly, it give you info about why you might have guessed the way you did and why it's incorrect. What you should do at that point is scroll down to the bottom and click on the link back to that question so you can take another guess. You'll learn something from each wrong answer, as well as from the correct answer.

After you finish the test, your reaction will tell you whether you're an independent thinker or just another hanger-on.

For those of you still looking for more laughs, check DeCaprio's comments at the Cannes Film Festival about humanity's bleak future...

Thanks to Ms. Incognito for featuring this global warming test in her delightful blog, Confessions of a Closet Republican.

A Story with no moral

The setting is a suburban mall. In the summer time there's no way to know what part of America you're in, such has become the interchangeability of the commercial suburban landscape.

Nestled in one bank of stores is a Subway, the ubiquitous sandwich chain. Inside there are three people behind the counter and five customer, three waiting for their sandwich construction to be completed and two, a young couple, sitting at a table.

Suddenly two ski-masked men burst through the front door. The first man in, later described as the taller and heavier-looking of the pair, carries a very brutal looking shotgun. The second man is empty-handed. The first steps to the left side of the door and yells out, "This is a hold-up! Nobody move."

The eight people in the store freeze. The second man runs into the interior of the store and through a door, the unisex bathroom. In less than ten seconds the man emerges from the bathroom, carrying a toilet plunger, which all the witnesses agree had a yellow handle tipped with black rubber plunger apparatus.

As the shorter man runs out of the shop, the taller man yells, "Nobody move! Count to 60. If I see a head stick out of this door before a minute is up, I'll blow it off your freakin' shoulders!" Then he retreats.

There's an immediate babel of conversation in the shop, but no one moved for the required 60 seconds, and then some.

Later the police would dismiss the entire episode as some kind of college prank.

What do you think?

WARNING!! If you scroll down, you could be changed forever!!

Can you remember what you were like before you knew about how our species reproduced?

I can. Weird, huh. I never gave it a thought. I've always been practical, pragmatic. And I vividly remember wanting to be alone with a female. I don't remember her name, but she was cute. And I just wanted to be with her. Not knowing about sex, there was no agenda; I simply wanted her company. I knew it would be better than being alone. Amazing how it all sounds so good on paper...

So then I learned about human sexual reproduction. I'd been gathering clues, and then I got a hold of a brochure that explained it all. Cute drawings. It didn't make a lot of sense, but I had faith that things would work out.

Anyway, while sex is a natural function, we don't treat it as if it were. We being those people who aren't porn stars. Porn stars treat sex like the rest of us treat combing our hair. Can you imagine being that free?

I can't imagine it either. It's going to take a while. Even for me...

Anyway, while at the golf course we saw these creatures "combing their hair..." It's supposed to be beautiful. It's all part of gawd's plan, so ...

Travesty

I've yet to meet a woman named Travesty. Which in itself is a travesty. I was so sure they had to be out there that I check Google and found:

Travesty Jones, 31 year old Black hooker from Chicago, just hitting her prime.

Travesty LeBeouf, 16 year French-Canadian varsity cheerleader.

Travesty Luna, 25 year old cocktail waitress at Mandalay Bay, not even close to her prime.

Travesty Geldstein, 34 year old militant lesbian and co-owner of a coffee house in Tribeca.

Travesty Broadview, 45 year old biker chick, wending her way down the coast and down and out.

Travesti, 19 year country-western singer taking the country scene by storm.

Dummy

When I was in high school, and a Mormon, I didn't have sex. Well, not with another person, any way... Later, when I got back from my Mission, I learned that my high school main squeeze, Paul B, but not the Paula B who sometimes reads this blog, was GIVING IT AWAY while I was gone. I could have had me some of that!! Dummy...

I played Bridge in college. It was fun. And the first time you were the dummy you could start eating your pie. See, the four of us, me, my girlfriend and two of her roommates, would each buy a pie. And you could eat on your pie when you were the dummy. So there was a period, before that first marriage, that I was one fat dummy.

In 1981 I was "dating" a young lady from the office. She found someone "better" and dumped me. It was the second most grevious dump in my life. So I quit that job and didn't leave my apartment until February of 1982. I didn't even go home for Xmas. I had an answering service and I'd call it every day, just to hear another voice, even though the message was always the same, "You have no messages." I already knew that because I'd never been away from the phone. I didn't even take out the garbage for four months. When the manager would come to collect the rent, I'd just shove the check under the door. I'd spend the day reading the bible, backwards, and playing Pac-Man; I could go around and around, piling up higher and higher scores. When I finally went out to check my mail, there was a note from the mailman instructing me to come to the post office, and to bring a truck. I was dumber than being a dummy.

But I'm mostly okay now. And I still like me some pie.

Blame El Pistolero . . .

In response to one of his comments to some post of mine, I asked him (and now I'm asking you) which is better, Truth or Happiness?

Yes, yes, you can have both if you're rich, 19, handsome/beautiful and have bodyguards.

But the rest of us have problems because there is usually a dichotomy, you can't have both Truth and Happiness. And so we each make our choices. This divide may help explain where Religion came from...

What's yours? (Choice, not Religion...)

A Theory suitable for Gnashing of Teeth

Imagine George W. Bush, our current American President, winning the 1932 presidential election. He watches the built up of Nazism and being who he is, he wants to attack it. He starts building up the military. He is re-elected in 1936 and he keeps building the military and he lambastes Hitler at every outrage Hitler attempts. And when Hitler invades Poland, GWB finds a way to get a declaration of war out of Congress. The Japanese, who were STILL not ready to take us on in late 1941, would have folded their tents and sat on the sidelines for the next few years and Russia could have built up a massive force in Siberia and kept the Japanese at bay. In the meantime the vaunted Blitzkrieg would not have resulted in Dunkirk and the fall of France. I haven't figured out what Russia would have done, but it wouldn't have been good for the Germans.

The war would be over by 1942, probably a negotiated settlement, with Hitler going into exile in Uruguay, there would have been no Pearl Harbor, no humongous death camps issue, no D-Day, no atom bombs, etc. There'd still be an Israel, though. (See? I'm so totally a Romantic at heart.)

So is it possible that GWB today is saving us from horrors we can only theorize because based on WWII and what was allowed to unfold as it ran its course? This is twisted logic and only the more "free-form" among you will allow yourselves to follow it.

But I do acknowledge that it's just a pipe-dreamer's game; those of you who need to hate opposition politics and politicians, please know that you won't hurt my feelings by doing so.

Forgive them (fill in the blank), for they know not what they do...

Protecting the FAMILY

Italy's defenders of Family and Family Values are hitting the streets to let Italian authorities know that they are committed to 'protecting the family.'

What does protecting the family mean?

For centuries, part of family life was dad out whoring around on pay day, or looting day, or pogrom day, whatever it was that they called it. Family life used to be a well-spring of violence. There probably is still a lot of family violence. But we've been June Cleavered mercilessly and we like to pretend that 'family' is the ultimate good, as in sacred. As if!

"Family" has definitions from one end of the 'good-bad' continuum to the other. Just as there are people from one end to the other. Didn't you once think that if a girl (remember, I can only speak from a male point of view) was pretty she had to really nice to be around? If you're like me, you know better now, but you've buried the memories on how you found that out.

I want same sex marriages. I want polygamy and polyandry and line marriages and part time marriages and secret marriages and enemy marriages and partial marriages and concubines and semi-concubine and cucumber concubines...

Humans are family-oriented, but there are no rules, NO RULES, about what a family is! When it comes to families, they should be all they can be!

Wherein I confess to being intrepid.

Today I was intrepid. I've been intrepid before, so this wasn't that big a deal for me. Probably my first intrepidness was bluffing Jean Chambers into asking me, "...just what the heck are you doing?" The fact was, I wasn't doing anything, but I wanted her to notice me, so I pretended to be bicycling boxes full of important stuff by her house and she did in fact notice me and I acted mysterious and we had at least an eight minute conversation. This was fourth grade.

My life is strewn with many such acts of daring and intrepidness. I shan't pummel your fragile 21st Century emotions with the details of the gusto with which I intrepidly ravished the late 70's and early 80's.

Today's intrepidness was more in tune with this century. It was an act of brainy intrepidness. I figured out how to find the 'as the crow fly distances' between any two points on the earth. It involves Google Earth and this site, http://www.movable-type.co.uk/scripts/latlong-vincenty.html.

First you go to Google Earth. As your cursor moves about the map, the exact lat/long figures of the point where the cursor rests are seen at the bottom right. You find your first point and write down the lat/long figures in degrees, minutes and seconds of arc. Then you find the point you want to get to and do the same for that point. Then you go to the site featured above and plug in your figures. Click on "calculate distance" and viola, it gives you the distance in kilometers, which you can then convert into the measurement of your choice, be it miles, feet, deciliters or ounces.

You can do this with the distance from your back door to your outhouse, if you want to and happen to live in France or the deep South... Remember, this is the shortest distance between the two points.

Not bad for a mathematically illiterate curb painter... Yes, yes, I agree, it was very intrepid!

This is why I'm determined to remain a human!

Well, it's just an example of a basic attraction...

Bono, the U-2 singer and love child of Sunny Bono, was with his group, in concert, in Scotland. As is his wont lately, he took a stab at raising the consciousness of his audience. Things were going raucously rock 'n rollish, the crowd was wild and exuberant. And suddenly Bono called for quiet. In fact, he called for silence. He hushed and he hushed and he quieted the crowd down.

When it was silent he stepped to the edge of the stage and stood there, unmoving, for a couple of seconds. Every eye was riveted on him. Then he lifted both arms in front of him and clapped. He let three seconds pass and then he gave another somber clap. He did this twice more over the next nine seconds. And then to accompany this somber clapping he announced, "Did you know that every time I clap my hands, a baby dies in Africa?"

To which an alcohol befuddled Scotsman responded with remarkable sharpness of mind and purpose, "Well, stop yer fooken clappin' then!"

I have it on good authority that this really happened. What I don't have is any report of what Bono did at that point or what all of this did for the consciousness of the audience.

"I can't imagine anything more awful than Polygamy."

I think the title of this post quotes Presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Maybe I have the exact wording wrong. But I know I have his sentiment accurately recorded.

There are certainly millions of American voters who would echo his sentiments. But no real, true, committed Latter Day Saint does so. That's correct: Honest to gawd Mormons remain in favor, and look forward to, Plural Marriage.

Here are the first four verses of Section 132 of the Doctrine & Covenants, which is the LDS Scripture that codifies Plural Marriage:

" 1 Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you my servant Joseph, that inasmuch as you have inquired of my hand to know and understand wherein I, the Lord, justified my servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as also Moses, David and Solomon, my servants, as touching the principle and doctrine of their having many wives and concubines—
2 Behold, and lo, I am the Lord thy God, and will answer thee as touching this matter.
3 Therefore, prepare thy heart to receive and obey the instructions which I am about to give unto you; for all those who have this law revealed unto them must obey the same.
4 For behold, I reveal unto you a new and an everlasting covenant; and if ye abide not that covenant, then are ye damned; for no one can reject this covenant and be permitted to enter into my glory."

If you like to read the entire Section, it's here.

Okay, here's my point: Chameleon Politics has struck again. It is in the nature of politicians to try to maximize their voter appeal. So while it may be that Mitt Romney personally may abhor "polygamy" I can tell you that "True Believers" do look forward to it. And to my knowledge, it is still being practiced within the LDS Church in an abstract form.

If a man marries a woman in the Temple, that marriage being for "all time and eternity" and she passes beyond the veil (dies), that man can marry a second time in the Temple, for all time and eternity, and thus he has two 'eternal' wives, one for now, two for later. Theoretically he could do this any number of times, so there's a book/movie in this where a lunatic Mormon male keeps doing this...

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints do believe in Plural Marriage. While I understand Mitt Romney's decision to decry Polygamy, I don't like it because if he's a good Mormon, then it's an act. And if he really doesn't 'like' Plural Marriage, then he's not a good Mormon and that opens a real can of worms, because it means we don't know who he really is.

But if he gets the nomination, I'll vote for him. I'll be a bit perplexed, but I'm sure I'll get over it.

The Untold Suffering of Mother's Day

Even-Handed Hope remarked today that her mother was aware that today's "holiday" is nothing more than a commercial construct, more designed to fill coffers, than it is to honor "mothers."

Which reminds me, my dad once sent me a Mother's Day card...

But on to today's theme:

First, I had to make my own breakfast. I offered to make some for my wife, but she doesn't like my specialty, tuna on heavily buttered sourdough toast, so she passed.

I had asked her to buy me a one pound See's Candy assortment at the store when she went to get her mother a box of candy, but she says she forgot. So now I don't have anything to give her, expect my eternal love and undying devotion, but I can tell it's not enough... I even reminded her that I would gladly lay down my life for her, but even that offer was received with a disdainful sniff from her patrician nostrils.

And I was hoping to take her to dinner, put some alcohol into her system, thus liberating her libido from ordinary civilized constraint, so that I could spectacularly remind her how she got to be a mother...

But it isn't to be. Her brother, a darling chap, has made a surprise visit. He'll be staying here. So she's going to fix dinner, and probably not have any alcohol. Which means her libido will remain civilized.

Oh Lord, why hast thou forsaken me?!

A Common Mistake . . .

If there is a purpose to life, you don't really know it.


But that's not what this is about. The Common Mistake my title refers to is believing that you can say today what the final outcome will be of America's Iraq Adventure.

Looking at it simply as a body count situation is way, way false. Death is cheap; death is what humans do best. America loses more innocent, we-didn't-sign-up-to-die people per minute than Iraq is costing us per day in people who DID sign up to die.

Critics fume that the Iraq deaths and dismemberments are 'wasted,' which is a horrid thing to say to the survivors. Because the critics, most of whom are politically, not morally, motivated can't know, now, what the future has in store for this American Adventure, which is where a final judgment might finally be made.

I'm pro-war. I think I'm simply recognizing that war is what humans do really well, both as art and as science. I believe that the quality of the minds engaged in promoting and preserving the arts & sciences of war are of a higher quality and capacity than the minds of those who want humans to forswear violence and apply for Kumbayan passports.

Answer me this: if mothers didn't want to lose their children to warfare, why do they, the world's mothers, allow war to exist?

My answer is that women like violent men.

Wherein I find a reason to get "Turned On"!!

Not having been raised Catholic, I have no sense of reverence when it comes to Nuns. Looking at Nun-hood, or Nunnishment, in a logical manner, the primary focus would seem to be their "untapped" potentials. At least from a logical male point of view. And being both logical and point of viewish (you thought I was going to say "male" didn't you?) this must be my view.

So the mere thought of a Nun brings to mind, among others, Shirley McLaine in that movie with Clint Eastwood where she was in drag, posing as a Nun, in the old west. And I think I saw movie, or a clip, of Raquel Welch dressed as a nun. And perky little Sally Fields. Etc., etc.

So when I saw this sign, I got mildly excited. I was in a hurry at the time, so I'll have to get back to visit the "center" part of the establishment, in hopes that the convent girls are the ones 'manning' the center. (Manning the Center has a degree of sexual weight, n'cest pas?)

Christmas Trees

I was standing between two Christmas Trees. Twice during our residency in our current home I bought live Christmas Trees. And then following X-mas I planted them. I was standing between them last Sunday, after doing chores all morning, so that if Big T called in the afternoon, my wife would let me play.

I saw the dog under her tree, to my right. To my left, under the other tree, was our cat. So I took photos. I would like to read some symbolism into the juxtaposition and history of it all, but Laztheists don't do that shit.

Here they are. You're welcome.

Yes, he called. It cost me $4.00.

Things I still don't know:

One measure of a human's successful integration with his environment is the ability to know what he doesn't know. In other words, generating a complete list of one's ignorance is a fundamental step towards controlling the risks attendant to life its ownself.

If you do this right, the list just gets longer and longer. It can become very daunting, especially when you compare it to the list of things you do know. Which is why many people get disheartened and concentrate on feeling empowered by the list of the things they do know. This is like putting on blinders and then trying to cross a field across which mighty pendulums are swinging; with the blinders you have no chance to see what's coming from the sides.

Here are a few things I don't know:

What scotch tastes like
How often Paris Hilton bathes
What the half life of fresh Twinky is
The names of every gay teenager in Palestine
If there is a meteorite approaching the Earth with my name on it
My weight at death
If everyone has a price
etc., etc.

Some of these things can never be known. Some can. I have to decide which ones are important and act accordingly.

What don't you know?

Just Because you can spell it doesn't mean you'll get it.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

How many human beings can you name who respect you? Tough question because "Respect" has such a flexible definition. And circumstances impact on how it's defined and people's understanding of each situation vary.

This is a formula situation in movies: A husband and wife are at a party. There is a bombshell of a woman there who has the eyes of most of the men present riveted on her ample bosom as displayed by a plunging décolletage. They're all thinking of something they'd like to get plunging. So then one brave (read 'idiot') husband finds himself talking to the stunning beauty. His wife walks up and tries to talk to him, something about her water just broke, but he's not listening. When she finally gets her point across to her, he suggests she get a cab because Tiffanie's garbage disposal hasn't been working properly and he's going to stop by her place to see what he can do with it...

Years later they make look back and laugh about the event, but at the moment it was happening, the pregnant wife was feeling an absence of the respect she felt entitled to. His take may have been simply, "hey, we've got two other kids, so it's not like this is anything new here, and my gawd, look at that rack!" I'm not saying it's a valid point of view, because it isn't. I'm just saying that at times we all get a little wacky.

A little far-fetched? Okay, maybe a little, but you get my point. There are people in this world for whom you have done things but who will never respect you. But it's okay, because you're shorting some very deserving people yourself. It's a bumpy merry-go-round we're all on.

Barbarians take matters into their own hands, by which I mean they take what they want, when they want it. This is not conducive to frictionless inter-personal relations. Our way, the way of 'please' and 'thank you,' is far superior when we examine what it is to be born, to live and then to die.

So it boils down to this: I'll respect you in the morning.

Paris Hilton Going to Jail Naked !!

Good luck to the troubled young lady... She is much misunderstood, as are most people ahead of their times.

But that's not why I blatantly sucked you in with that provocative title. Nope, I just wanted to direct your attention to a much misunderstood situation. I intend to shed, hopefully, enough light on this matter so as to correct, at least in those who read this, the misapprehensions that undoubtedly exist in your mind.

The problem is how to enjoy your life even though you seldom get your way. Many people despair when confronted with the realization that they are living lives so constricted, so remote from who they really are, that it actually comes down to the fact that many of you are not who you think you're fooling us into believing you are!

Startling, isn't it?

It all boils down to out of town conventions. Remember the fool Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt made of himself when he went out of town to a convention? That's when the real YOU is revealed. Maybe you don't even know who that is, because you've always taken your spouse or significant other with you when you went out of town.

Take a deep breath... Now don't answer this question immediately. Let it simmer...

What and who would or wouldn't you do if you had a week in Vegas with a brief case containing $100,000 in C notes?

That's the real you!

Wherein I play with my Food, because there was no one to pinch my ear lobe...

Pinching my ear lobe was my mom's favorite punishment. What E.R. doctor checks the ear lobes for signs of abuse? So I was quickly trained to not play with my food. Of course, like all of you, it was one of my heart's desires. While I had to sit and dolefully eat my crab cakes, I could only imagine the fun the rest of you were having with them... It turned my meals into gall and wormwood, figuratively speaking. It was only the Wednesday T-bone steak cookouts that gave me any relief: I was allowed to gnaw the bone (as in gnawledge, as in telling a woman I wanted to get to gnow her, so I could say I gnew her when...). Gnawing the Bone should have become part of the psycho-sexual vocabulary long ago, but alas, the phrase just never caught on.

So there I was last night, alone at dinner time, in Huntington Park, south and east of downtown Los Angeles. The town is 137% Latino, when you factor in the number of illegals aliens, or as they are referred to in the popular press, undocumented Americans of illegal heritage, which in verbal shorthand is Illegal-Americans.

I'd already hit the snooze button on my body's alarm clock a couple of times, because I was taking my time, looking for just the right place to stop and eat. I thought it would have been too outré to avail myself of Mexican food in the heart of a Mexican Barrio, so that limited me. Subway seemed to be an over-reaction in the other direction. Yoshinoya would have been okay as would have KFC. But I finally settled on King's Buffet, at Florence and Pacific. A Chinese run, all you can eat buffet featuring Asian food, with a bit of an emphasis on sushi. Plus it had the delightful added benefit of a Spanish-language tele-novela playing on multiple big screens, with nothing but Latinos in the place, of which the female portion's eyes were all glued to the closest flat screen. It was a weird bit of Americana.

Apparently Latinos don't tip all that well because my waitress wanted to come home with me when I tipped her 20%.

All I had was sushi, some fruit and three big glasses of Diet Coke™. And since I had time on my hands, along with all the food I could possibly eat, I took my time and played with my food. I kept looking over my shoulder... It's sad what a life time of conditioning does to a person's spontaneity.

I took a photograph...

...But my digital camera hasn't developed it yet. It'll be ready tomorrow.

But in the interim, are you ready to die?

Of course not. No one is every ready to die, who doesn't know their about to die. Or expressed in the opposite way, only people who know they are dying can be ready to die. And this, obviously, includes suicides. If a guy is about to pull the trigger on the gun whose barrel he is almost gagging on, it's because he's ready to die.

So I'm thinking about the possibility of a business based on a Mission Statement that goes something like this: "Death is inevitable, and no one is ever ready, but with the help of Dieron Corporation, we can guarantee that if there is an Afterlife, you can count on looking back and seeing us make the people who discomforted you, and whom you put on a list for us, are being tormented, based on the plan you purchased from us."

It'll be like life insurance, but if it was called a type of insurance, it would be 'We'll get even for you insurance' but we'd have to come up with a name for those who would be the 'anti-beneficiaries' if you get my drift...

So while you still wouldn't be ready, at least if you do check out ahead of time, you'll die knowing that there will be some people who won't be relieved. Which I believe fulfills a genuine psychic need.

This is still in its formative stages, but as soon as I hit 'publish' I will send my lead counsel an email to get him started on fleshing out the details.

My new favorite marriage proposal...

Seriously, I lost count of the number or women I've asked to marry me. It's a big number. Not up there with King Solomon, the Shah of Priapus, or the Emir of Emoticon, but still, above the national average. I simply figured that if I started my pitch to get a female into bed with an indication that I was hot to marry her, it could tilt the scales in my favor. I am very "if A, then B" kind of guy.

I had all kinds of proposals, always choosing what I felt was the best pitch for the time, place and situation. I can't recall exactly what I said to Sue Smith in 8th grade, but she said no. Now that I think about it, my first couple of dozen times, the answer was always no. But then my luck changed and I started getting a nice little string of yeses! It was intoxicating, which could explain my lack of any need for booze or drugs.

Anyway, I was flipping channels and came across a movie with Gary Shandling and Annette Benning. He was an alien. She was a human female, so she was also an alien. It was just before the movie ends. Apparently they'd gotten married some time earlier and they were renewing their vows. The priest said, "Gary and Annette have written their own vows. Gary, please go ahead."

Gary says, with evident sincerity, "Annette, when I first met you, I just wanted to get into your pants. But now I know I want to spend the rest of my life getting into your pants."

See? This is what they talk about when they say fiction often being more revealing than the truth.

What woman wouldn't want to hear this from the lips of an adoring male? It's the very essence of what holds marriages together. And it's why I think that Jesus and Mary Madeline were an item; He is just the kind of Guy to be that direct and to the point.

I'm going to work this in somehow on Mother's Day while I'm explaining to my wife why I didn't even get her a card. (Hey, she's not MY mother!)