Some words about the "f" word...

when I was younger...especially in my early Army years and most especially in Viet Nam when our language matched our living conditions...the "f" word was way cool. Our nouns started with "f"...our verbs started with "f"...even our dangling particples started with "f"...no time or energy to find a "real" word and the "f" word was so effin adaptable.

Then I grew up.

The resemblance is uncanny

but the guy holding the Saddam Hussein photo is my brother. I hope they captured the right one.

Are you one of those (apparently) very few

who don't care about the Pope? Too bad. Cable news, whether you like it or not, is giving you fifty-seven minutes of the Pope and three minutes of (mostly inconsequential) other news. I myself happen to like the Pope but I wonder what's slipped by under the radar during this death watch. Makes me also wonder if the cable news head honchos are Catholic?

I must confess

to a bit of anger tonight. Why is God taking the good and holy leaders such as the Pope and leaving us with the smaller men (like Bush the simpler), the men with lesser minds and lesser hearts. This seems so unfair. How is the world to manage? It seems that a divinely inspired dark ages of the mind and soul is upon us.

If I consider dandelions

as beautiful as daffodils then I can turn my irritation to a smile when they take over my lawn.

Like milions of others

I'm captivated by the news this morning. I'm not Catholic but still sad that a good man and a holy man is passing away from us.

Winter and spring.

I found this life lesson in the morning's early sun.

I find this Administration's

platitudes about erring on the side of life after bombing over a hundred thousand Iraqi civilians into smithereeens and lying fifteen hundred of our finest young soldiers to an early grave just a tad insincere.

There is no Atom XML link on my site because

you don't really need it. If you're using BlogExplosion simply open my site in its own window , add /atom.xml, go there, then copy the address to your atom/rss reader. You can do this with any blogger.com type blog unless, of course, the blog owner took the trouble to turn xml off.

God took Terri Schiavo home this morning.

God could have given her a miracle medical cure, yet He didn't. Though sad for all concerned, God's (the all-powerful God of life and death) will was done. If Christian pundits and protestors continue to rale against judges and the Bushs and how Terri was murdered, it may be that these Christians' faith in the hereafter and their faith in God's power is a bit limited.

May she rest in peace.

I'm flora challenged.

Anybody recognize this early spring visitor?

A stange afternoon

is when you drink a half rack of beer and watch "Hamburger Hill" for the thirteenth time. I have a friend who made it back from a hill like that. All his wounds are invisible....yet I see his wounds each time he says a man's name and says that man is dead. What I don't see or feel...is the fear...the terror. The futility. What I don't see is what these young men who died could have been or could have done had they lived.

What I don't see is why we would do this all again.

She's not dead...

if I care enough to post her picture. Poor old Sophie was absolutely blind and couldn't find her food dish. She bounced off walls and tripped over furniture constantly. Mostly, though, she couldn't romp and play anymore. She couldn't be a dog. She wasn't really alive, so I had to "pull the plug." I miss her.

It's been a fascinating evening.

Imagine. We've got a practicing amatuer politician expounding on the virtues of Rush Limbaugh. And to the left soldiers sipping beer in battle dress uniforms. And over there an almost retired retiree (with his married girlfriend) just off an eighteen hour shift who wants to sleep but is drinking instead. We've got a bar owner with allergies and a bartender with a body to kill for...and just a bit too much sobriety.

Loud music and smoke and a growing alcohol haze.

Meanwhile I'm sitting in a quiet corner talking with a friend reasonably and very logically about the possibilities of a 9-11 consipiracy. And yet we allow as how this is probably the best place we've ever lived in.

Only in America. Only in an American bar

An island somewhere near here.

I joined the army at seventeen

in 1969 (against my father's wishes) because there was a war on. Because in my young, naive way I loved my country. Because as high school ended the army promised a job, however dangerous, and training. Because I wanted to get away and Viet Nam was away. Because I supported the war and was not running away to Canada or running away with excuses about why I couldn't do it.

I didn't think I might die... or that war, when I finally saw it, would prove so devastating it would destroy the rest of my life. I didn't think the war could wait for me while I attended college or worked at a fledgling career.

Nope. I just did it. I pasted no yellow ribbons on my SUV.

How to feel really technologically challenged:

I woke up this morning at two a.m. and discovered Comcast internet wasn't working. A horrible, frightful thought...hours of early morning hours with no blogging...yikes! I physically reset the cable modem. Activity light flashing but still no web access. I reset the Vonage router. Still nothing.

Comcast must be doing scheduled maintanence, I thought (and prayed). I watched five rather boring hours of CNN news, but by seven a.m. I'd totally lost patience and was suffering severe internet withdrawal. Coffee and TV just wasn't doing it. I needed to call Comcast for a fix but my home phone was piggybacked on the internet and therefore useless. I went to a friend's house (I'm sure he was very pleased to see me banging on his front door at 7:30 a.m.). He let me in and pointed me to the coffee and the phone.

The nice service tech lady asked if I had physically shut down the modem AND the router at the same time. Doh! I walked back, shut both down then brought the modem up first then the router. Voila!

For good measure I kicked myself in the boot for not seeing this simple solution on my own.

The real way to repair the military

would have been to ditch Bush the Simpler in 2004. But since that didn't happen...let's start the draft again using politicians' kids as the first cannonfodder...followed by all clueless dittoheads waving flags and braying meaningless wind about supporting the troops.

Media message to Terry Schiavo's politicians

and protestors...you've been preempted by an earthquake and Michael Jackson.

Madness.

Strange mood this morning...maybe the increased dosage of zoloft...maybe the Budweiser...maybe both. Maybe I shouldn't combine the two.

There's a pallor on my personal cosmos just now. A need to retreat. Yet I resist. I write. I sing. In the end, I laugh myself to sleep, the bedsprings cackling.

So cruel this joke of a race...but nevertheless...a severe joke. The absolute joke. Me...the human race. ..you...them...all of us. We ARE the race, but a race to where?

Have ya ever noticed how, in spite of themselves, those who "know" sound like a broken record? Stop drinking...yea...stop smokin...yea...stop screwin..yea. If I could, in my wildest dreams, accomplish such purity and reject these needs and vices, would I then dance with godlike joy?

Those who "know" can never tell me that.

With Budweiser the only weapon neaby...

I think of Bukowski...he didn't pretend. He lived...he drank...he screwed...he cussed...and he wrote. Crude and clean and sleek lines. Readable. Beyond pretension, nudging nirvana with crudity, with humanity. Read him and know life...as it is, as most hope they never see.

Soon though comes the rage, an anger so hot the heart withers.

Enter Rimbaud. "Seasons In Hell" leaves me shaking with the horrors of deja vu gone bad. Rimbaud so vile, so anti-social, none could stand to be near him...yet what wonders he wrote.

And on like this it goes. One misfit after another. One alcoholic after another. Or opium addict. Or queer.

And they ALL cry their desperation, struggle for survival with their writing...writing always...recording...imagining...hurt so many times, they peer off the page with wide eyes and cowering hearts...born to a world not ready for them.

Phew! One heck of an Easter party.

What really disgusts me most

about this whole "Terri Schiavo is about to die any moment" media spectacle is the millions of Americans glued to tv and hanging on every soundbite, sucking in every grisly detail, feasting on other people's pain and death. The media is only too happy to oblige. This is the sickest form of voyeurism. Change the channel. Go open an Easter egg.

When it comes to Easter egg hunts...

it's not the hunt...it's the laughter and smiles on the faces of the children when they find an egg in the leaves of a newly blooming flower.

I escaped Darwin's Law this morning.

When I woke up I noticed the apartment was a lot warmer than usual...then I noticed I left my empty gas oven burning all night at 425 degrees. A waste of gas...but other stuff, including myself, could have also been wasted. Not nice to fool with Mother Nature (especially if you're wasted).

I'm not in the photo because the floor reached up and slammed me down.

Whether Terri Schiavo lives or dies

the unspiritual right wins. You can bet, come mid term elections, they'll be reminding us at every turn of this "right to life" struggle and how they fought for life. By then, of course, the facts in the case won't matter. Many voters will see the unspiritual right as the "good" guys in white hats which in turn means more votes. THAT's what matters.