Her name is Kathi

On a day as fine as they come, it drops like an invisible bomb with a deafening explosion of invisible fear and anxiety - cold and alarming as an ice blanket.  I found myself suddenly on the business end of what was initially thought to be an innocuous and ordinary phone conversation with a dear, dear friend - one of my finest angels.   In a broken moment I was gasping and choking silently - with a mouth full of feathers, eyes full of tears, and a heart freshly broken all over again - from top to bottom. It hurts to say the word - a 'bones-deep' ache of frustration and fear.  "Cancer". It rolls off the tongue far too easily.  A poisoned word that rings and resonates louder and more painfully with every reverberation.

On a day not so long ago when calamity had blessed me so beautifully and sorely - when my motorhome was totally destroyed at 85+mph by an uninsured and unlicensed driver - and I was catapulted at what felt like light speed into the oncoming headlights of a careening 18 wheeler on a twilit stretch of Colorado highway - I felt the tangible presence of very real angels - removing all my fear and holding my hand as my own mortality slid by me and came awake - fully alive - on the side of the road.  These angels - so tangible and real - began to arrive sans-wings within minutes - wearing clothes and smiles and nothing but love and concern in their eyes - for me.  I was not saved - I was lifted - elevated and made aware of a love I had done so little to deserve - A love that I had spent a lifetime denying. I was made humble by the gifts laid before me.

There was one angel whose quiet loving light shone as bright and comforting as all the rest.  Within minutes of my bad news she sprang into action -  setting up a Go Fund Me account almost immediately that provided for me and kept me working.  She facilitated the love and genuine concern of a thousand angels and more - all in my behest.  I was humbled beyond tears -beyond words. She put love in my pocket and in my ear - she gave voice to the angels that held my hands and held me close on impact.  She put a face to their love.  She put the warmth of their touch and all their sincerity in the embrace she held me so lovingly in when we finally came face-to-face after the crash.  She is, and will always be, in my eyes - exactly what heavens finest intent is.

When she called today - to tell me the news - to share that awful word with me.  I found myself at heavens mercy.   That awful spectre is resting at her door today.   She'll be going into Community Hospital tomorrow for a surgery that will dictate the rest of her days on this earth.  To hear fear in her voice is an unbearable weight.  I am asking - begging on my knees - for all of the angels that held me so tightly - on both sides of this mortal coil - to embrace her and guide her without fear - to the safety of the grassy side of this highway where I landed - in love and in the abundance of the angels embrace.

Please - I ask with all sincerity and humility I can muster - with all of the grace I have been so blessedly given solely by her love and grace - to pray today to whoever and whatever God holds your confidence - for my dear friend, my sister, my loving gift - Kathi Rohrs-Bledsoe.  Heaven has never made any finer.  Her place on this earth is far too valuable to comprehend losing.  Pray for her and for every soul walking in that awful garden of darkness this awful disease calls home. Pray - give - cry - give more.

I could put pen to paper till the end of my days and never define the weight of this womans worth.  I can never define the weight and strength of the souls of all who suffer - all who win and all who lose.  But I feel them all today - for her.

I ask again.  Her name is Kathi.  She shines like a million sunrises.  Please ask the God in your soul to watch over her today and all days.  The grace we give is the grace we receive - she's given more than most.

God Bless you all - my angels

This One Oughtta Piss Somebody Off

Lemme tell you about my night!!

Bubba can't read!!!!.....or count......or wipe his ass in the right direction. Bubba is a fuggin' idiot with the IQ of a philodendron. Bubba can't even spell the word "ethically" - let alone live that way. - with integrity or dignity. He frequently lies through his teeth to get what he thinks he wants, and constantly blames all his problems on everyone but himself. Bubba manhandles his women. Bubba is a Trump supporter.


I got to see some of those Trumpeting rocket scientists first-hand last night. Played background music for a Xmas party in Rifle for an oil drilling outfit. It was a Donald Trump love fest. Just about closing time one of the drunken attendees - a big gomer-lookin' MoFo with trouble written all over his face - obviously well-respected by his peers - decided to drag his inebriated wife across the bar in front of me by the neck while she screamed for him to stop. Hurting her. I came up off my chair as soon as I realized what was happening.

It took me a minute. I couldn't believe it. I hollered at him to stop as I started frantically pulling my monitor lines off, dropping my guitar, and stepping over cords to go after the fuck. They were out the door in about 3 shakes and gone before I could get my shit together to untangle..

In a room full of mostly men - I am appalled to think that I was the only person that seemed to have a problem with a women getting her ass kicked in public by a man 3 times her size. His shithead friends decided that I was the bad guy, they started shutting me down. Telling me to "let it go" - it was okay because "she's drunk" and "he's her husband".

The barmaid told me she had called the cops but I never saw any. Just tail-lights squealing out of the parking lot with the pedal to the floor. I'm livid this morning, and worried for that woman well being. I don't care what her situation is, or what she said or did. . Only a coward POS worthless gutless fuck puts his hand on a woman. .
I'm getting more and more irascible with age. I don't have any tolerance left for people that put their hands on women, kids, or critters. Those aren't human beings - just plant food waiting to happen.

I had a lot of respect for people in the oil patch - until last night. 20 "hard-working American heroes" stood by and watched a women get brutalized and drug through a bar against her will - and never said a word.. My Dad worked in the oil patch. He was a wife-beater. I guess I should have figured it out quicker.

If you work in the oil-patch and this pisses you off - good. Do something about yourselves. Do something about the trash in your house that likes to beat up women and make you all look like idiot gorillas. Act like men.




I have no idea what happened to that woman last night, but I'm gonna find out who her husband is. I'll keep y'all posted. Women need to know who to look out for -and men of character need to know what POS to look for.

I Would Like To Formally Lodge A Complaint -and it's a Ass Whuppin offense

Okay- so here's my beef with the new big Cheetoh in Washington.  Women.

As most of you know, I was raised by a teenage single Mom and my solid-as-stone country Granny. Both with a head full of dreams...... for me. Screwy old gals - funny as hell and tough as a bucket of hammers. Good to the core and challenged every step of the way.

Moms greatest accomplishment - and the unending testament to her saint-like patience - her true deep, dear love for her only son- is that she did not drown me in my sleep on any one of the numerous occasions when she had the chance and plenty of good reason.

Mom didn't have it easy for a single day that I can ever remember. Worked her ass off waiting tables , driving trucks, schoolhouses, cleaning houses, tending bar, or whatever it took to keep the bacon on the table.

She fought with her own demons - booze and loneliness. single parenthood, The futility and chastising judgements and sideways whispers of the 'proper " Christian community - abundant as tumbleweeds blowing through our  west Nebraska cowtown in the 1960s. She had a few ex-husbands.  She liked weddings I guess.  Not a one of 'em was worth the the paper they wiped their asses with. Redneck booze-soaked shit-howdy reprobates who thought women were cattle.

I saw first-hand, way too many times, the kind of shithead that treats women like property.  Who degrades them, who refer to women as bitch, sow, whore, and worse. The kind of man that insisted she have no voice and no choice. A man like a Donald Trump.  Insulting, rude, conniving, lying, accusatory,  etc. Completely assured of his own right to subjugate anyone physically weaker or in any way dependent upon him. Assured of his own divinely-placed superiority over every one he sees and all they own.

 How in the hell does a person explain this to your daughters or grand-daughters; that the little boy who shoves her into the closet in grade school and sticks his hand up her dress, or the teenager who ignores "no" - and assaults or rapes her against her will - or the man who grabs her ass in a bar or club like she's meat,  or says vulgar things to her or about her in passing,  with complete disrespect - may someday be the president.  "Why Honey" - "Maybe if you're lucky you'll get knocked up by one of these fine boys"

Normalizing the assault or brutalization of women is at least a 250 year slide backward by any metric of civility in human behavior. Normalizing Trumps "Grab her Pussy" philosophy as a laissez faire event is a serious mistake in judgement. It is condoning brutality on a scale that is no different than the broad-scale uneducated ignorance of the Dark Ages.

Have you ever heard the sound a 2" leather belt with a rodeo buckle makes when it hits a woman flesh - when it cuts into her  and splits the skin on her cheekbone? The sharp wet millisecond smack of a closed-fist knockout punch connecting with her bloody crying face. The intensity and agonizing crescendo and fade of her screams as she's punched and violated. raped and humiliated,   The frantic,  angry rage as she tries to get away - as she pleads for the terror to stop.  Have you ever seen hair in handfuls - your own -with bloody bits of scalp still attached?  Smelled whisky vomit from a racist murderous raging drunk - and the flat dark odor of your own blood - your own and your crying, beaten mothers' - lots of it?

You never forget it.   You can never excuse it. The rhetoric, the action, the upbringing, the character - whatever it is that coalesces to make up someone of this cancerous disgusting ilk - can never be tolerated for an instant.


12 women came forward with allegations of groping, sexual misconduct, and in the case of a 12 year old- rape.  The dumbass was filmed on National TV describing his technique for getting to know women.  That's plenty enough for me.  I wanna puke on the sorry son-of-a-bitch.

I'm an old man now.  Cranky and irascible - too tired and too smart to believe that the bullshit I'm being fed on an all-too regular basis is caviar. I'm an irritation and a confoundment to my children and a constant stream of left-turns and amazing contradictions to my friends. I have more confessions to make than a catholic hooker.  Worthless by damn near every stretch.  Thank God I sing good and make folks giggle occasionally.  Those are just about my only redeeming virtues.

I've always loved women.  Probably more than I was supposed to:-) Some of 'em loved me back but I haven't always been good about taking it.  I've got more ex-wives, girlfriends, dalliances, and bad-end stories about relationships than Carters got liver pills - (which is surprisingly to my credit - for someone so aesthetically "challenged" :-)

That said; I don't think a single woman I've ever been with or been in the company of has ever had to fear for anything more tangible or grave than her sanity or public standing - The thought of raising a hand to a women or violating a woman is not an option - never has been.  (I can drive the majority of women certifiable "scratch yer ass and holler at the paper boy" batshit nuts in under a week most times though without really even trying).

If and when I see violence against women or children in my presence,  I am not at all above punching' a  UtherFucker right in the lip, takin' a coffee pot to their head, or a Buick to their kneecaps. Generally making' a scene.  I got no tolerance for it.  To me these imitation humans are just speed bumps waiting to happen.

 I'm not proud of what I'm about to confess, but I have once or twice had the pleasure of spending the night in a jail cell.  Nothing too serious, but I do know that there are some things that are damn well worth it.  Smacking kiddy-diddlers, women-beaters, and rapists till they spit up Play-Doh and nickels,  and cease to make breathing noises - is one of them.  I'm praying right now that God will forgive me for what I think about doing to them.

Violence, in any degree, psychological or physical,  directed at a woman by a man,  is an unacceptable paradigm.  I don't tolerate it.  Don't perpetrate it, and I don't condone it  - especially by sitting on my lips when the President-Elect of MY country - the one I grew up believing in and counting on to do the right thing in the end - says about his own documented history of sexual assault and languaging is "no big deal - really".  I don't accept it - Not for a minute.

IMHO Donald J. Trumps ought have his powder-puffed ass racked and whipped pink every morning at 8 o clock sharp, just because the sun came up - in retribution for any number of offenses, and just to make me feel good.   (I'm a sick sum'bitch - I know) For Fomenting hatred and fear, castigating dead American war heroes, POWs, our military, handicapped people, people of color, etc.   All of it.

 His sins are many and his stand with women  may be  only one facet of this cat's putrification; But for this cowboy, the cavalier language and assault of women - that's the one the makes me stop, close my eyes, and shudder - in waves of long-smoldering, raging hatred.  God forgive me. It makes me remember.

"Pop 'at rag like ya mean it"

Well what the heck is in this barrel today? The barrel being my head, where I keep extra thoughts for parts. I'm always surprised at what I find laying around in odd disheveled piles up in the locked dusty chambers of the "Dark Tower".

Memories, bent and twisted into shapes unrecognizable  - old lies and truths- buried in weeds -parted-out and rusted, abandoned like a stack of old long outgrown bicycles behind the barn. Philosophical  and eloquent diatribes of great import, and ass-whuppins for everybody stupid or mean, all exist up there.

All my dogs, past & present, are there, and they're all in perfect health - and they can talk. Apparently they think I'm a God.

There's a closet with a lock on it where I keep my most grievous heartaches and smoldering angers - securely bound and gagged - drugged if necessary, - it's a small closet. I'm blessed.

My kids are there too.  They're still little.  Their laughter is like sweetened-oxygen, like water and sunshine combined. They still like me, and although they don't entirely trust me,  they'll still pull my finger.

I ran into Shoeshine Bill up there this morning.  Hadn't seen him in years. A small wiry man of color, with a ready smile and a nature as gentle and soothing as a calm lake.  The most polite man I ever knew. He still smelled like shoe polish, Old Spice,  and scotch.   He was stacked proper as always, in a starched white shirt and knife-crease slacks with a comb and a flask in the back pocket. Contrarily neat to a pin  behind a wrinkled  knee length blue denim work vest  with large pockets  at his waist, stuff you see tradesmen wear in old black & white movies.  Smeared in vague dark streaks with the black and brown waxes and liquids comprising the majority of shoeshine color palette.  The denim was patched and frayed, but always laundered.

He took pride in his work.  He had a small store front in Sidney. A solid brick facade worn and old with apartments on the floor above it. My Mom and I lived in an apartment for awhile there, just down the hall from Bill. There were railroaders and old bachelors that came and went to the other apartments in the building with some frequency.  We all shared the same bathroom centrally located halfway down the long plastered hall.Sometimes during the days when Mom would be working or trying to sleep off a late shift, Bill would let me hang out with him in his shop.

Bills shop downstairs was small with big picture windows facing Illinois Street, and brown slatted wood floors worn from 40 years  of dirt farmers and railroaders shuffling their clodhoppers and $100 dollar cowboy boots across it's skin. He opened 6 days a week at 7:00 a.m. like clockwork. Coffee made by 7:05 and floors swept and mopped by 8.

On those "never-long-enough-for-me" days with Bill, I'm sure I must have driven him batshit nuts -  with a million "8 year old kid" questions about goofy shit adults can't even begin to surmise the worth of pondering. Perhaps in self-defense; Certainly out of the kindness of a wise and good soul, He taught me how to shine shoes.

 "Pop 'at rag boy" "Like ya mean it". He gave me a dime for every pair of shoes he let me buff up with the rags.  After a while I knew enough to gather up the rags a few times a day and put them in a box by the door.  I figured out where the broom and dustpan was, and I kept that floor CLEAN. It felt awful good to have someone tell me I did a good job.

The central fixture in the joint was a  large oak 3-seater shoeshine bench , about 10-12 feet long and around 6-8 feet deep.  Chest high to a grown up,  with 3 big steps leading up to red leather seat cushions on top. It had 6 ornate brass pedestals rising off the 2nd step terminating perpendicularly in the hard shape of a shoe ,shiny flat brass  and worn on top - for the customers ensconced on the upper bench seats to rest their feet upon. There were a myriad of doors and storage compartments located all over the structure, and whatever Bill needed at any given moment to perform his duties was always a flip and reach away as this little door or that would open and close in quick rhythmic support of the maestro mid-performance.

He was always appropriate and graceful, with appropriately placed head nods and hm-mms while he swung his brushes , one in each hand,
with the ferocity and finesse of Bruce Lee sand-painting in the middle of a fight scene. Flawless.

What drew  my attention was the way the man could pop the rag.  The soft cotton rags, 6" wide and a couple feet long.  He could make it talk.  Pop-pop-pop-pop.  Sometimes he'd just fall into the rhythm of the song on the radio and he'd have to laughingly caution his client to please refrain from toe-tapping while in process.  They couldn't help it.  Neither could I.

When I'm writing these things sometimes, I feel as if I'm always the last to know regarding our destination.  Here it is.  I can see it on the horizon.

I told you some about her yesterday. My Grandma knew her stuff.  The woman grew up hard in extremely hard times. The Dust Bowl 30s and the Great Depression were more than crushing to dirt-farmers in western Kansas. It's the world she was born into.  Oldest of 5 - to a blind and mentally ill Father - A bitter and often cruel mother. They didn't have a pot to piss in and the window blew clean away in a dust storm.  They lived in tents and barns and sheds in town from Kansas to Colorado back to the panhandle of Nebraska.

 She never knew an easy moment in her life. She knew what it felt like to have people look down their nose at you.  She'd felt the embarrassment of abject poverty.  She knew about the weight of undeserved and unexplained humiliation, and had seen more than her fair share of hunger, abject fear , and loss. She knew, more than she ever should have had to know, about dignity in the face of adversity.  Dignity as a response to stupidity, cruelty.

She took me to Bills shop  to get my shoes shined once after she'd bought me a new black suit over at J.C. Penneys,  to wear to Great-Uncle Alex's funeral.   As it turned out , the day I told her about my new "job" at Bills , was probably a pretty good day for her.  They were friends.

She always saw past color.  Made sure I did too. She understood and fully appreciated, the strength it must have taken for so many years, and on so many occasions, for Bill to unfairly bear not only the weight of his own mahogany-toned flesh, but the weight of all the well-intentioned stupidity and xenophobic bias one little Nebraska town  in that dark era could produce over the course of one good mans lifetime.

The day I told her about my new career She smiled a little, and her eyes smiled a little more - as she nodded her head at me through a haze of Lucky Strike smoke.  Grandma had known Bill for what I imagined at least a hundred and thirty years. "You pay attention to that man"  "mind your manners"

She knew, and she felt it important that I know, that 25 cents bought you more than a shoeshine with a man like Bill.   It bought you a tutorial in noble dignity.  A smile, an ear, a friend, and a wise counsel. A good many folks were just too redneck dumb or adamantly racist back then to see it for what it was.  Bill listened to each and every one of their commiserations , the tasteless jokes, the rude digs and slurs and the patronizing attempts at justification of poorly veiled racism in a small Nebraska farm town in the fifties and sixties. Never said a word about it.  Looked like a boss doing it.

Come to think of it, Bill was the first person to ever propose the concept of RHYTHM to me.  The radio on his shelf and the shoeshine rag snap in sympathetic syncopation made a connection in my little brain that I had no idea of the importance of at the time.  (Too bad for him that he didn't get to stick around long enough to hear me practice my drums at 130 db along with Led Zeppelin records in Jr. High, eh?)

I stumble and stutter, and stagger through this life a lot now  - like most of us. Through the grace of God, and the sheer kindness of strangers -  I make my living playing music now .  I take pride in my work, although the wardrobe could probably use some "spiffin', I've made a habit of giving it my best.   Bill would be proud I think.  I am, on occasion (when I'm not busy chasing my own tail and doing' other  stupid stuff :-)


As a professional (musician) and smart-aleck par excellence - of good standing and unidentifiable mastery, I will today pass this tidbit of wisdom forth to you all  from the Senseii hisself - my old friend Bill;    "Pop 'at rag boy" "Like ya mean it"


"Peace Out"
"Don't take any wooden nickels"
See ya manana:-)

Sometimes it has to feel bad before it gets better

Grace is a hard word. I don't understand it fully.  I don't understand  greed at all quite frankly.  I know that collectively we are constantly in short supply of grace somewhere, and perpetually we are choking for air on unfettered greed, and somewhere in between the two lies the whole of humanity, waiting for a verdict.

 Grace and greed, since the beginning of time, locked in a perpetual struggle, clamoring and clinging, rattling sabers and sounding the never-ending battle cries of good vs. evil. Mass media today claws at our senses leaving indelible stains of anxiety and frustration on us all, while the air around us grows thick and purple with vitriole and innuendo. Folks are nervous.  I am too.  Maybe for the same reasons.  The "Land of The Free" is starting to look like the "Land of Too Freaked Out To Poop Right".



In our great nation, Intentional blockage of the system has become common-place as a negotiation
technique.  I know what Grandma woulda' done.  I experienced it first hand as a child.

If your mule is stopped up, you slip a plug of chewing tobacco into his oats and wait.  If your elephant is stopped up I imagine you'd just use more tobacco.  If someone you love is bound up to the point of discomfort - then it's time for the red rubber hot water bottle - and a few rather delicate "Come To Jesus" moments.  After whence, the sun will shine glorious once again, and songbirds will fill the air.

I hate to admit it, but that old woman could put the fear of God into me when it came time to "fix what ails you"  Her approach was "Take No Prisoners" .  Colonics, Poultices, Whiskey, Cinnamon, Voodoo, burnt horse-hair, prayer, more whiskey, charcoal, and that damned hot water bottle. I stayed real healthy because I knew that getting well could very well kill me.

Her hands weren't soft.  She wore Grandads old work shirts and carpenters jeans most of the time.  Worked her ass off from sun-up to sundown.  I never remember hearing her complain about a single thing.

Mom was a single mother  with a hungry little gorilla to feed and not much education or opportunity at her disposal.  She waited tables and tended bar at night.  Grandma  raised me when Mom couldn't .  I know she raised me right. On the day Martin Luther King died she held me with tears in her eyes,  and  made me promise on my life that I would never be like those sad terrible souls that carried that awful hate inside them.  Any shortcomings I have displayed or fostered since , have been  of  my own device, and contrary to her tutelage.

Grandma was who I came running to every time I did something stupid:-)  I ran to her alot. Bleeding like a stuck hog  when I caught an huge ball of ice with my nose in the 1st grade.  She was who I ran to when I fell off my horse and broke my arm (7 yrs old).  She was who I wanted at the hospital when they took my appendix out. a couple years later.  She was rock solid -and I knew she had the advice I needed to hear.  If I could just hold on to her words , I knew I would be ok.

She would hold my hand, and with the most beautiful voice God ever made, she would remind me " "Sometimes it's going to feel bad before it gets better" "I'll be here with you"

Granny's been gone for a long time now. I think about her every day.  I thank God for everything she ever said to me. Her voice comes back to me often - in times of worry or frustration.  She was always right.  Her wisdom has outlasted a lot of governments, a lot of administrations, a lot of life-changing stuff.

I wish we didn't have to deal with idiots saying and doing hateful stuff and being rewarded for it.  But I am sure glad we all have each other.  We're gonna need one another.  At times like these I have to have faith.  In God , in my dogs, in music, In you,  in my children and my friends, in Grandma.

The world is a scary place right now. But we must be brave.  Things are probably a lot more hopeful than they appear. Healing isn't easy. - but to the black, white, red, green, gay, straight, conservative, liberal, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Lakota,, Hindu,  NRA, & PTA -  Let's not forget how to forgive, how to give and receive  grace , how to live in the example of a simple carpenter from Bethlehem, how to laugh , how to sing, and how to love

I hear her voice as plain as day.  It sounds like Gods voice.  Can you hear it?

"Sometimes it  has to feel bad before it gets better" "I'll be here with you"


"Peace Out"
"Don't take any wooden nickels"
See ya manana:-)

March 2, 2016 - Getting back on The Pony With Spurs Pointed In The Right Direction:-)

Well damned if things ain't a real mess. I woke up this morning to a world that had gone relatively unchanged from where it was when I fell asleep.  More noise on the news. Another idiot did something mean or stupid, or the next "Somebody like somebody else"   made teenage girls and rainbow haired millenials squirt tears of rapturous joy over a bang-up imitation of a Lady Gaga cover of a Whitney Houston version of an Aretha Franklin smash on "American Idol" -   Events unfolding around me of cataclysmic importance...............................and still.  -----I needed a cup of coffee like crops need the rain.  I needed a shave (as usual).  My breath was makin' the dogs roll their eyes and paw the air, and I had to pee.

This day began with a set of challenges in front of it that frankly scare the hell out of me.Breakfast,  Laundry, the microwave, Plaid button-down or T-shirt , Pants ????  I am thoroughly unequipped for adult life. While other men my age  stare at the challenges before them, and the land around them, like noble warriors assaying the perimeters of their dominion - I wonder what kind of bugs are in the dirt.  Hope I find a quarter, --or maybe a spaceship.

It's been a while since I wrote anything on the blog, and I apologize for that.  Frankly, I've been blocked up. Literarily constipated.  I was intimidated.  Performance anxiety:-)  Last year I wrote on the thing every day for a month.  I was amazed at the number of people who actually read it in that time, and who continue to read it now.  I continue to get emails and comments from all over the place. I'm completely stunned and I always try to issue a word of warning questioning the wisdom of encouraging my behaviour.

There are a few folks that would love to bury me head first in a whale turd over some of my foolishness  - But for the most part, the majority of people who email me, or come talk to me at gigs  have been very, very supportive. Always actively and vocally encouraging me to write more.  I most certainly appreciate each and every one of you good folks.  And I want you all to know right now that YOU are my prune juice - and with your gracious encouragement and support- "Here Goes  "


Since my last writing I'm sure you will all be pleased to know that Elvis and June Carter are both in magnificent health and splendiferous disposition.  They can still hear a grocery bag rustle from about 3 miles and they still sniff butts.  They are my role models, my confidantes, and my spiritual advisers. They can sense imminent danger at every traffic light or passing chihuahua.- and are not afraid to bark at foghorn level volume directly in my ear when issuing their warnings. I'm partially deaf now because of my dogs.  Serves me right for telling them I drink too much because they bark.?????

I'm gonna keep things short and sweet today. Sorta sneak up on your sensibilities slowly after my long absence.  (It's exactly the tactic I was forced to take with all my ex-wives at least a time or two ) I think that august alumnus would all agree that what I may have lacked in material sensibility I more than made up for in sheer idiocy:-)
Is it a gift or a curse?  Who am I to judge? All I can say is that I am always  more than willing to share my psychotic confusion  with anyone who'll listen....on your screen...........on purpose.

What I'm tryin' to say is........"Screw yer' boots on and hang on to yer' saddle-horn Pilgrims"  "I'm back, and it's probably gonna require some sort of medication or therapy!!!!".  If I haven't irritated you over something stupid yet, just stick around, I'm working as fast as I can.

"Peace Out"
"Don't take any wooden nickels"
See ya manana:-)

.."Was It Something I Said?"

Cars rolled by - out on the blacktop, about a hundred times a day

never knew where they were going, they were just going away

An intelligent man knows when to speak up and when to shut up.  That's always been a gray area for me.

Language is such a useful tool. It sets us apart from at least a few species (not prairie dogs). I think it's safe to say that "human homo-sapien  erectus" are the only critters with a 1500+ word vocabulary, that have thumbs and can be trained to do simple mathematics - and we use tools.  The big 4 triple-threat that makes humans the lords of all they purvey.

Not only is language useful, but it is a comfort.  It is the single-most expedient way to convey information among humans - except for Iphones, Google+, and Facebook.

It allows us to tangibly author emotions into full bloom. Imagine your favorite love scenes or heroic scenes in your favorite movies.  Now imagine it without any language. It can get weird in a hurry - (Like nudist camps in Utah).

Picture that poignant scene - the tortured gaze of longing, or the ferocious riveting stare of a vanquishing hero(ine). Relying solely on the "viewable"  occular acrobatics and body language- well.......they sort of go nowhere until somebody says something, or the credits roll - unless it's a foreign film.

Conversation is the garden hose of the soul - for you medical types let's say urethra.  It is how the by-products of thought are passed through the body into the bony light of reality.

The down side of conversation is that it's absolutely impossible to un-say things. Once that brainstorm crosses the soft-palate, it's as permanent as Catholic sin.

My transgressions are many and , most certainly unforgiveable, in some many camps. To my transgressors I can only say  "I apologize whole-heartedly  for my obtuse verbosity - and again for your own apparent lack of critical perception:-)  See...........I told ya I wuz smooth :-)

I confess: I get frustrated and shoot my mouth off all to often. Please forgive my indiscretions.  It's straight up fear. Our society spends so much time and does so much damage,  worrying about and  following the Dems or the GOP, the Conservatives or the liberals, the right or the left, etc.- and I know in my heart of hearts that that stuff is all pure old-T Bullshit.

2000 years ago a carpenter from Galillee laid it all out - as simply as possible. Love one another, give to each other, make a difference in the lives of those around you, be rich by the things you do and not what you take from those who have less. It's the only way we survive,. and yet so many are so slow to come to the party.

 Selfishness and greed are a cancer.  Humanity has to trump politics at some point.That, in a nutshell, is my frustration.  Maybe my only significant one , aside from tamper-proof packaging.


It has a lot to do with why I can't shut up - believe me I tried and failed more than once - through the whole first semester of the 5th grade, and again back in '80 when my ex-wife asked me if I thought she was putting on a few pounds in the hips .  It like to killed me both times.  Sometimes it's best just to give up.

So, I guess the world has to make room for one more ragged-voiced raven on the telephone line. I'll cackle and caw with the best of 'em. If a large target presents itself - and this is truly one instance where size doesn't matter - well...........Watch your heads - I got mad skills when I'm aimin'

"Peace Out"
"Don't take any wooden nickels"

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