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Family Issues Trump Moonlight Madness; Who Really Gives A Shit?

Friday, April 26th, 2013

 

So. It’s been two weeks since I last had the freedom to write and post to the pages herein, and even with all the elapsed time since, I find myself verbally tapped-out. It isn’t that I have nothing to say, as my brain is brimming with shit to say—the Boston bombings, the gun control issue, the Boy Scouts of America, the George W. Bushkin Liebary, the new Popester—it is, rather, that I have an overriding issue that plays trump card to even the Ace of Spades.

With me having been so busy—too fucking busy to write—you’d have thought that I’d be spilling and spewing with my usual alacrities and verbosities once I had a waking moment of freedom. But, alas, you’d have been wrong in those thinkings.

The busyness of me started when I accepted a position with a buddy’s business. Having always had my own business since I was a kid, and having always been the guy with both the financial responsibility when things go badly and losses are suffered, as well as the guy who profits from my businesses’ profitability, I assumed, falsely, that I would not feel any pressure from the Big Picture responsibilities of the business attached to my new job. I assumed that I could do my job and only concern myself with the doing of that job to my best and let the rest of the marbles gather as they may.

What I didn’t assume is the simple fact that I find myself more concerned about my buddy’s financials than I ever was for my own. I worry that any imperfect decision made by me will cost another man a buck. And more important than anything else that is involved with this string of misguided thoughts, I’m finding myself worrying about another man’s business more that I ever worried over my own, and I love it—am almost consumed by it.

OK, stop the train before my ADHD drives said train up the ass of the crowd gathered at the station. The aforementioned Trump Card has, actually, nothing to do with my new job, and everything to do with scheduling. See, it’s Spring in Enchantedland, and everyfuckingbody I know wants to pay a visit here to Santa Fe. Normally this isn’t an issue, as I love my friends and the seeing of them, and I love to cook and entertain. But with the job, my many visitors have had to mostly entertain themselves and I have eaten out more times in the last sixty days than in the previous sixty years.

OK, maybe that was a slight exaggeration, yet the slights given by me to my guests have taken a toll on me. I find myself apologizing for not entertaining people who have had a ball entertaining themselves, and then feeling badly for myself for not having balled with them.

Well wasn’t that an awkward sentence construction? I didn’t mean to say that I feel bad because I didn’t sex it up with all of my friends, but, rather, that I didn’t get to have fun with them, and that all said not withstanding the simple fact that it’s been so long since I’ve had any sexing that I’ve forgotten what I’m missing.

And that, dear friends, is sad.

Anyway, I sat down to write last night after driving this last week’s guests to the airport. I had full intentions to tell you about something that occurred to me as I was watching the continuing coverage of the Boston bombings. It dawned on me that this 24-hour coverage is a recreation of the frenzied media circus that surrounds despicable acts by humans on humans, and that this sort of dealio started when OJ Simpson brutally slaughtered his wife and the waiter and then acted like a shitty-diapered baby as he was chauffeured around LA in that fucking Ford Bronco.

I remember that everyone sat and stared at the TV pictures of the Juice’s car as it wound through the streets just as all of America was staring at the Boston coverage. I remember what my Gram was saying to OJ, through the TV, in the repeated staccato of a Mockingbird.

“Shoot yersef and git this shit over with, ya big woman killin’ shitball. Pull tha fuckin’ trigger already. I’mma missing tha Goldie Girlies an’ yer pissin’ in yer panties like a baby. Pull tha fuckin’ trigger!!!” Gram said over and over again.

Which reminds me. Isn’t it ironic that the surviving Muslim extremist Boston bomber is getting his medical care at Beth Israel Hospital?

When I sat computer-side contemplating the entire OJ Simpson connection, the dogs were both attempting to sit in my lap. The Squirt has always been a daddy’s girl, but the goat dog came to me with the standoffishness that can only be beaten into the soul by the brutish brutality of an abuser. But it seems that Yoda has finally begun to truly trust me, and I also sense a little actual love.

“Jesus Christ, Mooner, will you make him get down?” the Squirt implored me. “He’s got his smelly ass jammed against the side of my head and I’m starting to get the gag reflex.”

And that’s when the phone rang. I answered.

Me: “Hey, Gram, how’s it hanging, baby?”

Gram: “Don’t ya go a talkin’ bout my titties, Mooner, they’s startin’ ta look like roadkill. Now tell me what yer doin’ inna middle a June.”

Me: “Well, except for work, I had plans to explore some more mountain ranges. Did I ever tell you that New Mexico has more than seventy different specifically-named mountain ranges? I plan to visit each before the end of the year, and I’ve been to a dozen so far.”

Fram: “Oh, who gives a shit ’bout yer fuckin’ Canadian cookstovies, we’re a plannin’ ta come up yer way tha middle a June.”

Me: “Canadian cookstovies? Gram, what in the hell are you talking abou… Oh, mountain ranges goes to Mountie ranges goes to Canadian cookstoves.”

Gram: “Don’t backtalk me, shithead, er else I’ll come down there an’ kick yer ass. Now make plans. Me an’ Hilda and tha P-Cubed an’ yer sister an’ Annie are a comin’ down ta’ see ya, an’ we ‘spect ta be havin’ a mighty good time.”

Me: “That’s great, Gram, it’ll be great to see you guys. We can go hiking and camping and looking for wild mushrooms and all sorts of shit.

Gram: “An’ line-up some poontanger fer tha P-cubed an’ me. Somthin’ with a little stayin’ power this time.”

Me: “OK,” I said to dead phone air.

“Hey, Squirtie Girl, we’re getting a family visit in six weeks. We need to do some planning.”

The adorable bundle of brown fur rustled in my lap, pushed Yoda to the floor and said to me, she said, “Maybe we can arrange for them to go to a funeral. I met a man who knows a man who can end my miseries with that bug-eyed asshole.”

I picked Yoda off the floor and held him up for a squeeze. “You’d miss him if he was…”

The phone rang again. “Hey, Gram,” I answered.

“Fergot ta tell ya that yer mother’s a comin’ with,” and the phone clicked in my ear again, this time sounding like a shot.

“Huh?” I said to the dead phone in my hand. “Mother is coming to visit? I talk to her every fucking day and she’s said nothing about it to me?”

I didn’t sleep all night and now I’m sitting at my computer at 4:30 am trying to sort my feelings of dread from those of hope. I dread the visit and I hope I survive it. I dread Mother’s words and hope she doesn’t spoil everyones’ time here.

Ugh. Fucking ugh.

In the real-time of this writing, the full moon has just now made its appearance through the thick boughs of the big Ponderosa pine that frames my view of the mountains. It glows with the light of Hope and Calm, and seems to drench me with the same Peace I felt with my first dunking in the smelly, tepid waters in the fiberglass baptismal pool of my family’s Southern Baptist church. I was nine years old and had already been convinced that I was a worthless sinner, and the promised Salvation of a near drowning salved my tattered, wicked soul. For about a month.

And in this instant, the sense that the visit from my mother will be OK—that calm and peace gained from bathing in this moonlight—is already turning into dread. Just as the promised salvation of Preacher Browningwell’s words turned into the realization that my family’s chosen religion was a pile of bullshit, the same instincts in my preteen brain tell me that the Moon’s calming light brings a false calm. The happiness I feel to see my family is trumped by the overwhelming dread that Mother’s inclusion adds.

But like Gram always say when she says to me, “Who really gives a shit, Mooner. Lot kin happen in six weeks.”

It’s daylight now and time to feed the dogs. So I’ll say manana, y’all. OK, maybe I should say, “Semana, y’all.” OK, maybe that should be a couple of semanas, y’all.

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The New Mexico Oil And Gas Association Are Chickenshit Asshole Pig Fuckers!

Sunday, March 10th, 2013

 

So. It is, indeed, another day in Paradise. There’s this miraculous snow falling in the dead-still air—tiny, fluffy flakes that appear to crystallize before my eyes. The flakes are so small and light that they look like miniature feathers see-sawing on their way to earth. I sat at my dining room table this am, with the newspaper spread before me in preparation for a Sunday’s dissection, cup of steaming Joe at my right hand and Chris Hayes’ MSNBC show on the tube.

But it was this marvelous snow—this itsy-bitsy micro snowfall that held my attention. Raptly. I had started to imagine Allie McGraw sprawled nekid, on her back, on Aunt Hilda’s African blanket that I had spread under the leafless cherry tree outside the window. I could see these little snowflakes lightly land and settle on Ms. McGraw’s nipples—pink and puckered from the chill. She had her eyes shut tight with pleasure, the huge smile on her face a testament to my adoration of the scene. Flakes had landed on her lips and melted into small droplets. The droplets began to gather and run down her cheeks.

Allie McGraw opened her eyes and tilted her head to look straight into me. Her lips parted and she carefully extended her tongue out and into a point.

“Hey shithead, snap out of it. We’re hungry!” I was jolted as if slapped with a wet smelt.

It was the Squirt. “Come on, asshole, it’s breakfast time.”

I started to tell her that the seasonal change of time zones had come to interfere with her meal planning, but she cut me short. “And don’t even attempt that Daylight Savings crap again.”

I guess that cheap tricks are quickly learned by old dogs. “OK, little lady. Go get the goat dog and meet me in the kitchen.”

After I fed and bathroomed the dogs, I sat back to the table for the paper. There on the front page was an article about the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association. Turns out those sleazy ground and air polluting assholes have been intentionally breaking the law here to Santa Fe, and… OK, stop.

Does everyone know what the purpose is of every “Oil and Gas Association” in every state in America happens to be in 2013? To sell fracking as a safe and useful tool to fill our country’s future energy needs. They sell their weird science and job creation and charity and other bullshit, all the while knowing that they are killing our planet as they move from state to state with their grizzly machines of ruination.

And they break the law. They break laws accidentally and they break laws with the strongest of intentions. They break laws both great and small. They break laws with small and major consequences. They break the law and create $Billions in environmental damages with dozens of dead bodies in the wake, and they break small laws that indispose the lives of ordinary citizens trying to protect the livability and privacy of their homesteads. They create the Deep Water Horizon disaster and they create the disruption caused by their continued disobedience of the Codes of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The New Mexico Oil and Gas Association are a bunch of chickenshit, asshole pig fuckers. What they have done is rent a home in a beautiful residential area very near to the State Capitol so that their lobbyists won’t break a sweat walking over to the offices of our elected officials. They wanted to be close to those they pander to and at, and they don’t care any more about breaking the law in Santa Fe than they do about spoiling the environment anywhere else.

As we all know, lobbyists are either lawyers, former Congressional members, former regulators or some of all three mixed together. But each Association has a lawyer who oversees things, and lawyers know that a business operation must operate from a location that is properly zoned for their uses. When the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association rented the home wherein they placed their business, they knew they would be operating outside the law. If not, they are both evil and stupid. They even filed for a “home occupancy” business license knowing that no person would be residing at the address.

So, they knew they were breaking the law, they falsified legal documents to obtain a business license, and they began plying their trade last year in the months before our State Legislature began their Session.

Upon noticing this breach of City Code, neighbors protested to the City and the City responded by revoking that business license and telling the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association to move their shit shop elsewhere. That also was last summer.

But in typical lawyer fashion, the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association has dragged their feet using every possible legal and illegal maneuver possible. And now—just weeks before the END of our Legislative Session—the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association says, and here I’ll quote Mr. Wally Drangmeister, Head Liar… er, I mean Spokesman for the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association.

The Association admits that it has continued to use the illegal office since the City notified them it was illegal. “We have worked on a plan to make it all work out… We are taking care of it. We will be out of here—if things work out—real quick.”

Oh really, Wally? You’ve already continued your knowingly illegal use of a residence for seven months and you plan to be out “real quick” if “things work out”?

What things need to be worked out, asshole? Is it to buy enough votes? Is it to make enough threats? Or might it simply be for this Legislative Session to expire and you no longer have need for this home?

In the article in today’s The New Mexican from which I’m quoting, Mr. Wally’s Oily World continued—and folks, you are absolutely going to love this shit—to say, “It’s one of those things… We are very active in the community, and we are sad to not be able to utilize this house. We are sad that it didn’t work out. But we are going to try to find somewhere else in Santa Fe and continue to work on behalf of our members and doing all that our industry does to support the State of New Mexico.”

Seems Wally and his crew are already targeting new neighborhoods to fuck over. Wally didn’t say, “We are sorry that we violated the law,” he’s instead, “…sad it didn’t work out…” for them. Wally didn’t ask what the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association can do to repay the neighborhood for fucking them over, he just promises to move out “real quick”, but even then only if “things work out”.

Work out for who, Wally? Work out for whom?

When I finished reading this article I was so pissed that I realized I had found my new protestation target. I had started to write down possible protest sign language. “Fuck the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association” seemed to be one side of each idea I had. I always print different slogans on each side of my protest signs.

OK, let me try to wrap this up. My granddaddy told me that the best way to judge integrity is not in the large things someone or something does, but rather, it’s in the small things where real integrity lie. “If you corner a man and he strikes back like a caged animal, that don’t make him a bad man, Mooner. But if that same man’ll smack his wife for getting dinner on the table late, or if he cuts your fence to let his pigs eat your corn and then tell you he don’t know how it happened… That there’s a man needs an ass kicking.”

The New Mexico Oil and Gas Association needs an ass kicking. Fuck the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association. Fuck every Oil and Gas Association everywhere in the World.

Manana, y’all.

 

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Thinking Of Q; Reflections On A Year Ago

Tuesday, November 13th, 2012

 

So. I was just reading some comments from Squattie and Beej and it hit me. A year ago today is when I packed my car and headed back to Austin after BlogCon 2011. That memory should have hit yesterday when I learned that Quincy’s wife died. That’s my buddy Q from over to Thank-Q For Common Sense.

My first stop for BlogCon 2011 was to see Quincy and his wife in Jackson. I thought of how the Mrs. Didn’t feel well enough to have dinner and beers and conversation on that November night I stopped in Mississippi to meet the Q. While he never shared with me any details of his lovely wife’s illness, I have never sensed pain from/in Q. I never sensed that he carried the burden that many people with a dying spouse carry like 80-pound backpacks. He was reverential and respectful and always loving towards his mate. But never a “woe is me” was uttered.

When I tried to say something meaningful in respects yesterday, I realized how insufficient words are. I wondered about how we humans have experienced billions of deaths over thousands of years yet we lack any truly comforting words after death.

Why don’t we have a standard statement that will make everything OK—why can’t we say a few words and have things actually be better?

I left Jackson, Mississippi the next morning last November with a new friendship, a half-dozen smelly beer glasses from The Bulldog, and a learned respect for common sense. I programmed the OnStar system in my little Chevy for the outskirts of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and headed out. I arrived at the McDonalds near to BJ’s place where he picked me up for a “grocery trip.”

The two of us drove central Tennessee for a couple hours and hit four of the best pork and chicken smokers’ establishments in the South. We also established the foundation of one of the best friendships I’ve ever had.

OK, and let me also say that Beej was the assigned vetting agent for Squatlo and the Reckmonster—the toughest of the three of them whose job it was to make certain I wasn’t an ax murderer from Texas who’d driven 1,800 miles to thin the blogger population in Central Tennessee.

Which reminds me. I read that some silly assholes in Texas have gotten enough signatures on a Petition to Secede From The Union to make it official. Got enough other assholes to sign it to force the President to look at it.

“Dear President Obama:

I hear that Texas wishes to leave the extreme discomfort of The United States of America in order to form what they consider to be a more perfect union—a union of one. Please grant their wish.

Sincerely (and I mean it),

Butcher Einstein “Mooner” Johnson, American Citizen and Former Texan”

Do those silly asshole even realize how fast Mexico will invade the fucking New Republic of Texas? Davy Crockett and the boys stole Tejas from the Mexicans and the Mexicans want it back. Don’t know why they want it back, they just do.

I wonder if Rick the Prick Perry would lead the Texas Brigade in the second defense of the Alamo. Take his Texas Aggie sword out of mothballs and lead the charge.

And that reminds me to say, “Hip-hooray for the Aggies football team!!!” Kicked that Alabalama butt and did it in Tuskalooser. And something just hit me.

I have always wondered about the elephant in the room with the Crimson Tide. Might that be because the word “tusk” is in their hometown’s name? What if the actual name was Tiskaloosa? Maybe they’d have Miss Manners as their mascot.

The morning I got up to leave BJ’s house exactly one year ago today, he fixed me several magnificent breakfast sandwiches. Bacon, ham, eggies biscuits…

One year ago today. Wow.

Anyway, our country will remain in good hands for another four years and we can all be entertained as we watch the right-wing talking heads explode. Manana, y’all.

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Hey, Mitt–Mitty Baby. How’s THAT Obama Ass Taste?

Wednesday, October 17th, 2012

 

So. It’s a glorious day here to Santa Fe, New Mexico—cool, crisp and clean. OK, clean except for the continued construction debris that litters La Casita Johnson de Santa Fe. The construction dust is covered with construction dust and I’ve started ordering my tacos “al carbon e sand.”

Which reminds me, what a gritty performance by our President last night. As predicted, Herr Schmidt Rommel gave a repeat performance of the first debate and our main man was very much on his game. Romney lied and obfuscated and gave nary a detail while the Prez was mostly spot on. I’ll not spend any more time to bask in the glory of a big win other than to say:

“Hey Mitt. How’s THAT Obama ass taste?”

I have a big day today and too much to do to sit here at my computer. And I’m hungry, so fuck it. Manana, y’all.

 

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Old Lease/New Lease; Mitt Romney Is Really Stupid

Wednesday, September 12th, 2012

 

So. After Mother announced to the family that she’s moving out this weekend, the family mobilized to pack her bags for her. I wrote to you guys about the move yesterday morning and then took the dogs with me to go pick up my new Rx glasses. Once we got away from the house and free of the terrible emotions of my mother’s pronouncements, I must admit that I started feeling pretty good. And well too.

I called back out there to ask Gram what I might need to get from the grocery store. “Fer starters ya can grab yer mother a case a Kleenex. That crazy bitch is already weeping like a busted whistle an’ she ain’t even gone yet,” Gram told me. “An’ we need one a them bung holy jobbers to finish packin’ yer Mother’s shit.”

Huh? My grandmother needs a bung holy jobber to pack my mother’s shit?

Oh, I get it. I told her, “OK, so Mother has already started packing to move and you need a bungy cord to strap her bags closed and Kleenex to stuff her snuffles.”

“I didn’t stutter, boy, an’ who said anything ’bout Mother packin’ her own shit?”

That cleared up everything. The family got pissed at Mother’s pissiness and decided to move her out in advance of her current lease expiration date. I guess my mother has stiff opinions to offer but a weak sensitivity to stiff opinions offered.

Which reminds me. While I think that President Obama has done a decent job with our military and international applications thereof, my antiwar natures still wish that he would pull back from Gaf-loonystan faster and that he would use our military technologies and might more judiciously. But I’m today reminded that my status as an antiwar human isn’t the only reason for us to think more than twice before playing World Police Chief.

In the way of evidence, I give you Libya. We step into the frayed fabric of that Middle Eastern cesspool to prevent their leader from slaughtering hundreds of thousands of his own citizens and our thanks are recent events there. In my personal opinion, the millions of religious freaks that populate that part of the world are much less dangerous to America when governed by the iron fist of a strong dictator than they are when freed to not govern themselves.

If you examine each and every example of the US using its military and financial muscle to intervene in another country’s politics, you will see the long term failure of the strategy. Start with Viet Nam and come on down, America, you’re next up on The Price is Just Too Fucking High.

If we had the money we wasted on our attempts to stabilize unstablizable chunks of mineral-rich political geography instead on sustainable energy resources, we would be energy self sufficient by now.

In fact, my Gram had what I think is a brilliant idea just the other day. “We need ta have all a them convicts and soldiers and tha fucking politicians all blow hard to tha south. Put one a them wind chime dealies down to tha border and make ‘lectricity an’ clean tha global blanket too.”

When I reminded Gram that having political blowhards blow hard would likely have little effect on global warming, she corrected me.

“Them silly fuckers can’t talk and blow too, Mooner.”

While I’m still skeptical as to the reduction of greenhouse gas with Gram’s plan, I can see that the noise pollution might be nearly cured. Add to that the total insane stupidity of Herr Field Marshall Rommel’s attempt to lie about the President for a political point over the attacks on American embassies and I’m even more ready to move to the Land of Enchantment.

Anyway, I stopped to get the Kleenex and stretchy straps and headed home. When I arrived, I found Mother sitting on the back porch amidst a broad assortment of luggage and black plastic bags.

“Why all the plastic bags, Mother? We have plenty of luggage to get you moved,” I told her.

“Your grandmother wouldn’t let me use any luggage but my own—said that since I bought a one-way ticket I’d use the plastic bags.” Mother sighed quite deeply and added, “I’ve never been more humiliated!”

Really? Arriving at her new address with plastic bag luggage is her most humiliating moment? Me, I was most humiliated when the half a Kotex pad I used to pack my infected ass fell out over to Dr. Sam I. Am’s place when I was mowing the grass that one time.

Or was it when I had a wet dream on that American Airlines flight back in 1982? That’s why I always wear long pants on the plane these days. And how sheltered has a woman been to have plastic bag luggage her most embarrassing moment?

Anyway, due to familial intercedence, Mother has moved a few days in advance of her plans. I asked her as she sat beside her possessions if I could load her stuff into the truck and take her to San Antonio.

“Oh, don’t you worry about me, Mooner. Pastor Browningwell has sent the church bus to pick me up. Now kiss me “Goodbye” and leave me alone.”

I did, and except to ask her to phone when got settled in, I have. That was 1 pm yesterday and we haven’t heard from her since. But I’m not worried. I’m relieved.

Sometimes life actually serves you the lemonade.

Manana, y’all.

 

 

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Drink More Coffee Grandma; Lessons In Remodeling

Monday, August 20th, 2012

So.  It’s Monday morning and on today’s list of activities are:

1.  The plumber to replace the nearly collapsed tile sewer line.

2.  The HVAC/Electrician to finish rewiring and install the new furnace.

3.  The Carpenter to finish replacing half the master bath walls from the leaking shower tile enclosure.

4.  The Stone Masons to finish work on the retaining wall and flagstone patio and walkways.

Of those four items, the only work I had planned to do was the flagstone patio.  They have beautiful stone here and I love flagstone patios and walkways in a landscape.

The home I purchased was built in the 1940′s and before modern building codes.  It was right after the war and construction materials were still scarce here in the mountains.  When those scarcities were combined with the already deeply entrenched construction materials practice I have now labeled “Scavenger Materials Acquisition”, you’ll find some interesting things when you scratch the pretty patina of an old Santa Fe casita.

Like the coffee can heating ducts running deep in the crawl space.  Rusty Folgers and Maxwell House cans with both ends cut out and duct taped together.  That part of the crawl space was too shallow for either the inspector or me to travel when I did the inspection.  But my cave rat HVAC guy got back there when I had him here to start working on the electric wiring–a known replacement.  When he managed to wiggle himself over into the tight area of confined space, his laughter could be heard–was heard by me–through the pretty wood planked floors above.

“Yuk-yuk-yuk… Heee-haaa-yuk-yuk.  You won’t even believe what I found,” was an approximation of what I heard.

Then there was grunting and banging and clanging and then the sounds of him crawling back out and also the sounds of him dragging something.  I went to the front bedroom where the opening to the space is, and the first thing I saw was his sweaty,  dirt covered face poke out.  There was this huge shit-eating grin plastered on it.

“Wipe that fucking smile off your face, Brother.  I’ve learned that those smiles cost me money.”

Likewise, I’ve learned that here to Santa Fe we say “Brother” instead of ‘Dude”.

His grin widened enough to allow a cow patty to pass his lips and he said, he told me, “You, yuk-yuk-yuk, are NOT gonna believe this one.  Ha-ha-yuk, this one’s goin’ in my book, Brother.  Here.”

And here he passed me a rusty metal tube that turned into a rust, green, gray and red metal caterpillar of old coffee cans.  I pulled it out of the opening in four sections totaling maybe twenty feet in all.  “Fuck me running,” I said, and then I started laughing too.

“Looks like they had the whole family save coffee cans for a year for this one,” HVAC guy said.

Then there would be the actual foundation of the house.  The original structure sits upon a perimeter foundation and then piers and beams that form the aforementioned crawl space.  When you inspect the foundation, you will see several feet of rough-poured concrete, then several feet of stacked stones, then some poured concrete blocks called “prison blocks” (appropriately-named), then some more poured concrete and repeat.  It is as stable as if a continuous concrete pour, but maybe you can get my drift about Scavenger Materials Acquisition.

Whatever we can find to fit the gap in space and time.

Which reminds me of the 2012 Republican President-Vice President platform.  Except that the gaps are filled with scavenged lies and reality is an immaterial building product.  Hell, in today’s paper the Mallard Fillmore cartoon even retold the lie that claims President Obama said that small business owners didn’t build their own businesses.  That out-of-context fabrication is so fucking stupid to me that I still find it difficult to see why the righties keep at it.

I want to think that they are so desperate that this is all they have.  But my gut tells me that their base is so fucking bigoted and stupid that it plays straight with them.

Which brings up another point.  Whereinthefuck is the mainstream media on all of the lies and swip-swapping of Etch-A-Sketch moments by the R Boys?  Even AP news, likely the most dead-center of all mass media, reports Romney’s contradictory statements on consecutive days without comment.

While I think Walter Cronkite was a cranky old shitball, at least he would have asked what is up with this?  And of course Edward R. would have skewered all politicians for the state of their business.

Which reminds me of something else.  I had to climb on top of the house yesterday and I discovered that Honor the fucking cat has been using the gravel on the flat built-up roof as her litter box.  When I got down I started bitching and going on about the fucking cat to anyone who would listen.  I guess the Squirt had heard enough, so she said, my little puppy told me, “Hang on, Bwana Mooner.  Did you buy her any cat litter?”

“Uh, no,” my reply, “I didn’t even get her a cat box.”

Squirt giggled at me and said,”Scavenger Materials Acquisition, my ADHD-addled boss man.”

She was right and she is totally fucking adorable when she giggles.

Manana, y’all.

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Be Carefull Who You Bunk With; A Thirteenth Birthday Story

Thursday, August 16th, 2012

So.  Today is my birthday and I awoke early this morning and found myself in quite a mood.  I’m old enough to not really care about my birthday, but I’ll likely not ever age to the point of forgetting events that occurred on my thirteenth birthday.

As a child, and until my thirteenth, birthdays were a wonderful time for me.  Cake and candles and cards and gifts and parties and all that brouhaha made my birthdays some of my favorite days.  I would look forward to them for weeks as I wheedled and charmed my way to better gifts and bigger parties.  I would do extra chores and be extra polite and promise to not be a disruptive little shit.

In the mid Twentieth Century ADHD and its little brother, the ADD, hadn’t been invented.  My crazed antics were considered to be “behavioral issues” the result of my free will rather than something mostly out of my control as a child.  I would promise to behave and  would do everything I could to be the best boy possible in those pre-birthday weeks because my birthdays were always terrific days with many great memories.

Until my thirteenth birthday.

I got my first BB gun on my tenth birthday and a bow and arrows on my eleventh birthday.  My first bicycle was at age six, roller skates at seven.  I was first kissed meaningfully on my ninth birthday and I touched a breast in a quite meaningful way on my twelfth.  Life and birthdays were truly wonderful days for young Mooner Johnson.

Until my thirteenth birthday.

My thirteenth birthday was fifty years ago today.  On that birthday I was at Boy Scout aquatics camp up to the Texas Panhandle with one other scout from my troop.  My thirteenth birthday fell on the last day of this camp and my mother was going to pick us up at noon on the last day.  She would drive from my cousin’s house in Amarillo to arrive by noon and take my buddy and me back to Austin.  We would stop at Underwood’s BBQ in Brownwood for dinner and roll into Austin at about 9 pm.

So you can imagine our surprise when our Boy Scout Leader, an insurance agent and big wig Deacon of our family Baptist Church, showed up at the camp late on the afternoon of the 15th of August, 1962.  The day before my birthday.  My thirteenth birthday.

He drove an Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser station wagon–white cream body with a candy apple red top. I always thought he was a great man–church elder, Boy Scout Leader and respected family man.  He had a successful insurance business and was great as a Scout Leader.  Under his guidance I was not quite thirteen and was already a Life Scout (the last rank before Eagle Scout),  I was to be awarded my 20th, 21st and 22nd merit badges (21 were required for Eagle), and I had been evaluating community service project options to fulfill the final requirements to become an Eagle Scout.

My thirteenth birthday was to be a very special day for me.

“I told your mother I would pick you boys up on my way back to Austin from Dallas.  She was able to go home from Amarillo yesterday,” he told our surprised and curious faces as he exited his Vista Cruiser.  I loved his car–it had every possible option and he had turned the back into a camping-out bedroom.  All us scouts though it was a neato car.

My first thought was that aquatics camp is NOT on the way from Dallas to Austin.  I had just gotten my Pathfinding Merit Badge earlier in the summer so I knew that as a fact.  I remember thinking that thought in that instant and I have rethought the curiousness of his words many times since.  I sensed something amiss but was too young and too excited to be only one day from completing the next-to-last steps to become an Eagle Scout.  I was to complete these steps on my birthday.

My thirteenth birthday.

Our Leader left us to the rest of our day and he went to pow-wow with other adults.  He told us he would return after dinner to our camp to spend the night, and we could tell stories until late.  He promised we could stay up until midnight because we both had met all the requirements for the badges offered that summer at aquatics camp.  He would pilfer some marshmallows and we’d tell stories and gorge on sticky burnt sugar.  “And I have a special surprise for you–I’ve got an ice chest with Coca Colas hidden in my car.  Don’t tell anybody.  Shhhh.”

OK, let me stop right here because this morning’s Santa Fe New Mexican had a couple stories I can’t let pass. The first says that a man in Sparks, Nevada was in a theater watching the new Bourne movie, shifted in his seat causing his legal firearm to fall out his pants where it hit the floor and shot the man in his ass.  A fitting result if the bullet had hit his balls of whacked his pecker off, if you ask me.  But what if that happened in a large theater instead of in tiny Sparks, and what if that theater had been–as many NRA right-wing Repubbies have recently wished–full of legally gun-toting fuckbags?

Next, the New Mexico tourist industry will lose $50 million of business this year due to Global Warming.  Most of that loss is due to fewer ski days on the state’s beautiful ski ranges because of higher temps.  “Oh, Mr. Republican VP Candidate Pookie Ry-an.  Hello, Poo-kie!”  That quote there was to be read like you were sing-songing it.  Please go back and sing to Pookie Ryan for me.  It’s my birthday, so induldge me, for shitsakes, so do it.

The third and most interesting was that New Mexico has been named the second clumsiest city in America when it comes to cell phone usage.  It is estimated that over 30% of all New Mexican cell phones will be damaged this year from being “dropped”.   Here, again, I have personal knowledge to verify the veracity of this prediction, and once again the evidence comes from a visit over to the Ace Hardware.  I got out of my car last week and this guy was standing outside the Ace store fumbling and cussing at his cell phone.

“Chinga tu madre’, you fucking I-Phone sonofabitch!”  And “BOOM”,  “Down goes I-Phone, Down goes I-Phone!”

Did you know that an I-Phone, when hurled with same force one would use to remove a dirty baby diaper from one”s face, will make a sound not unlike the crack of a .22 cal. pistol as it smacks into a concrete sidewalk?  To me, another instance to cause a rethinking of that whole gun ownership dealio.

Anyway, my buddy and I returned to our camp after our tasks and duties and dinner where our Leader had things all set up.  He had the fire going, ice chest of Cokes and marshmallows and sticks at the ready.  We told stories and recapped our two weeks at aquatic camp and ate and drank sugar to the buzz state.  When we all seemed to be sagging, Scout Leader looked at his watch and said, he announced, “Well, it’s after midnight, boys.  Why don’t one of you bunk in comfort in the Cruiser with me.  Mooner, you’ve never had the honor.”

To place perspectives, when that Baptist Deacon Boy Scout leading, respected family man and successful businessman said, “… it’s after midnight…” those words meant that it was now officially my birthday.

My thirteenth birthday.

My Boy Scout Leader gave me a very special birthday present after I accepted his invitation to bunk in comfort, a birthday present that has affected my life immeasurably every day since.  It wasn’t a present of money of toys or a card.  He didn’t impart great insight or tell me the secret of living a successful life.  Instead, he gave me the worst present any adult ever gave any child.

He raped me.

Fifty years ago today, on my birthday, my Boy Scout Leader molested me and almost ruined my life.  Screw that, because he did ruin giant pieces of it.  And he did it on my birthday.

My fucking thirteenth birthday.

Now look, everybody, and I mean friends and foes alike who trip over this post.  I don’t want sympathies and “poor sweet babies” for something that happened a half-century ago.  What I want–my birthday present from you–is for you to be ever-vigilant and watchful for any abuse of a child.  In my youth, 90% of all molestations went unreported in any way and very few of those offenders were punished unless a child’s family saw to the punishment.  Tell kids to report to you any strange behaviors of any adults when alone with them.

And understand that the vast majority of those assholes are friends or family or a respected authority figure.  Like a Baptist Deacon or a Boy Scout Leader or a respected family man or an uncle or auntie.

Having said all of this, I suddenly feel pretty damned good.  It took me forty years of healing and thirty years of intense psycho therapy to get here, and I didn’t even acknowledge to anyone the fact of it until ten years ago.  In this last decade I’ve managed to be able to speak of it and even in an open forum such as here in Loonyland.

But I’m a lucky one and I know it and am mightily grateful for it.  Life has given me a terrific birthday present.  Happy birthday to me!

Manana, y’all, from beautiful Santa Fe, New Mexico.

 

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Ace Hardware Encounter; A Crow Bar Of Different Feathers

Tuesday, August 14th, 2012

So.  Today is a stunning day here in the Enchanting Land.  I awoke at 4:30 am with a head full of  To-Dos, and since getting up and starting my day was less stressful than dealing with a head full of ADHD-fueled swill, I got up.  I took the dogs to the backyard for our first outdoor bathroom trip.  The air was crisp and cool and the night’s stars were close and bright.  There was an owl of some sort in the tallest of our three Ponderosa pines and it hooted a greeting at us.

I’m guessing that after almost two weeks it’s his greeting rather than a warning.

Yoda and I have been marking all the territory inside the tall adobe wall that surrounds our place, and all of it each day.  On this morning’s visit to the wall that borders the ally in back, my formerly-abused half Whippet sniffed and went on high alert.  And then he went totally apeshit.

“Fooph-fooph-fooph-fooph… Grrrrrrrrrrrlllll…. Fooph-fooph-fooph………….. Grrrrrlllllllllllll!!!”

The little puppy mill escapee, whose voice box was clipped with a pocket knife because he likes to bark, was taking exception at some odor coming off the wall.  He kept it up for a full minute and if his bark was more than fifteen decibels I’d have quieted him.  As it is I allow him to bark with a free will and spirit–my way of giving him his voice back.

Fucking puppy mill assholes.

I called the Squirt over to translate Yoda’s rantings and she told me, she said, “He says he smells stray cat and raccoon and he doesn’t think we should have any fucking raccoons here in town.  He seems to hate raccoons.”

Go figure.  I try to not hate anything, but raccoons are way down on my list of favorite animals.  They’re mean and nasty and tear shit up for sport. I brought the pellet rifle so maybe we’ll do us some raccoon hunting tonight.  My gun is a .22 cal. pump action and I can pump air into the chamber to a range from “Ouch” to “Please notify next of Raccoon Kin”.  Maybe we’ll try “Ouch, ouch that really hurts” for starters.

Which reminds me.  I went over to the Ace Hardware store yesterday and…  OK, stop. I go to the Ace Hardware every fucking day and several times each flip of the calendar.  I can’t ever seem to get everything I need for any project in one try.  ADHD is a terrible thing to waste.

So, yesterday I was over to the Ace to get a small, flat pry bar and when I got to the right isle there was a man standing in front of the pry bar display.  He was about 6′ 6″ tall, maybe 180 pounds, and he was dressed like a Down-Easter fisherman–yellow rubber rain slicker that was hooded with the hood up, black matching knee-high boots–and he had a burned-out cigar stump poking out the side of his mouth.  His hands were hanging limply out of at the ends of the slicker sleeves, and he was stock still save the crinkling of his rubber suit as he took deep, wheezing breaths.

I watched him for a few minutes, mesmerized.  Why in the hell was he dressed like this in Santa Fe, what the hell is he looking for, and, I’m wondering, what task requires this level of focus that needs a pry bar?

After some time, he grunted.  I took the grunt as an entre so I asked him, I said, “Might I offer some assistance with your choice of pry bars, sir?  I have quite a lifetime with pry bars and I can be of some good for you?”

Gloucester fisherman guy grunted again and slowly turned his entire body to face me.  It sounded like thirty school kids in new tennis shoes walking on a clean marble floor as he twisted his tall, skinny frame to face me.  The yellow rubber hood framed ET’s face–giant, round and leathery, with huge blue-grey eyes that were focused a thousand yards beyond the present.  He remained silent.

“What task requires you to purchase a pry bar, sir?” I inquired.

He grunted once more, and said, “Crows,” and re-squeeked his way back to face the display.

Huh? Oh, he’s thinking “crow bar” and thinks he can pry the birds out of his barn.  “Sir, maybe you need another type of tool.  Have you tried getting a cat?  Crows hate cats.”

This got another grunt and a second, slower and noisier 180-degree turn.  “I have the spirit of a Crow Indian stuck in the wooden  baseboards of my home and he wants out.  His entreaties are keeping me awake at night.  What will I use to free his spirit and not abuse the spirit of the wood holding him hostage?”

A very good Santa Fe question. I selected a small, flat bar that had a thick rubberized coating and held it up to his face.  “See, this is thin enough to slip behind the baseboard trim but won’t gouge or dent the wood so long as you’re careful.”

I held the pry bar out to him to hold but he didn’t move to take it.  That’s when I also noticed that his eyes didn’t move or blink either.  He was blind.   I placed the bar into his hand and said,  “This one’s $9.80, sir.  Do you need anything else?”

He grunted once more, his official favorite word, said “No,” and walked off.

Me, I chose my little bar, paid and left.  When I got home I grabbed an icy-cold Carta Blanca and a lump of this medicinal pot in cream chocolate that a buddy gave me, and went to sit on my portal with the dogs.  Without invitation, Yoda sat down on my feet and stared at the spot where he caught the Raccoon scent and the Squirt sat in my lap and stared up at me with adoration in her eyes.

“You’re a good man for a loony fuckball, Bwana Mooner.  I love you, dude.”

“I love you too, little lady.”

Next time somebody asks me why New Mexico is called the Land of Enchantment I’ll tell them this story.  If they can’t figure it out, I’ll encourage them to move to Texas.  Or Tennessee.

Manana, y’all.

 

 

 

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Frack This, Motherfrackers; Bend Over For Some Driller’s Mud

Thursday, July 26th, 2012

 

So. Please allow me to begin today’s missive with a hearty “Thank You” to all the readers who offered their empathies to me over Mother’s memory losses. I want to thank all of you who thought empathic thoughts and I especially want to thank those of you who wrote me. Living with a loved one or a family member who suffers from any form of dementia is a mixed bag of tricks. One minute you’re angry at them and the next you’re sad for them, and the entire time you feel emotional losses that match each of their mental slippages.

The costs of administering care for the physical and mental health of dementia patients are astounding. Thank goodness I have always provided the best health insurance I have been able to afford for all my family and extendeds. I have no earthly idea how people without health insurance survive it from the financial perspectives. The cost of medications alone would bankrupt a small country.

But to quote the general masses of conservative right-wing shitballs currently running our country into the ground, “Who gives a shit about them poor folks? I don’t have time to worry about indigents, I got me some fracking to do.”

Motherfuckers are fracking the foundations of our entire society if you ask me. If you don’t ask me, fuck you too. They speak to their “conservatism” constantly yet they are using up our air and water and scarring the beauty out of everything. The truth is, the average conservative wants to conserve what he thinks is his own property and rights and he wants the rest of us to pay him for it. These assholes don’t care about the future, they only want theirs and want it right damn now!

Wake the fuck up, folks. Fracking for oil pumps millions of gallons of chemical swill through a little hole in the earth and forces it miles underground. The claim is that this toxic stew is “chambered”–locked in place with a cement casing along the length of the drilled hole. The claim continues by telling you that when they finish their work and pour cement inside to plug the drilled entry wound, Mother Earth will hold that chambered mess in place.

Right.

This is the same lie as men have used for a million years in their efforts to get some nookie from a naive young woman. That lie goes like this, “I’mma gonna put in everything but the head.”

Conservative assholes are using that same logic and lie to ruin our public school systems, our Medicare/Medicade systems, our public safety sectors and our infrastructure. Every important social system, the systems that have long distinguished America as the best country ever, are getting fracked into oblivion.

I’d like to frack back. I’d start by removing all not-for-profit benefits from religion. I’d run drill pipe deep into the treasuries of churches and first suck them dry and then fill ‘em up with driller’s mud made from the earth of ground truth wetted with the tears of the religiously abused.

Anyway, I’m in a pretty good mood today because I’m getting the papers to finalize the purchase of our new hacienda over to Santa Fe. I’m headed over there end of next week to do some stuff to make it ready for occupancy, and I intended to take Mother with me. Not gonna happen. In a moment of lucidity, Mother informed me that Santa Fe is, and here I might give you an exact quote as she said Santa Fe is, “… filled with homo-sex-u-als and hedonistic heretics,” and further that, “You will promise me, Butcher Einstein Johnson, that you WILL NOT take me there, EVER.”

Have I ever told you that my born and given name is Butcher Einstein Johnson? To save us both time, go over there to my Bloggie Roller and buy my silly fucking book, Full RisingMooner. You’ll find the story therein.

Wait, let me attempt to undangle my mangled modifications. Therein, the story is to be found.

I explained carefully to my mother that she had just managed to summarize the whys of my home purchase in Santa Fe, what with all the gays and heathens I would feel more at home than here to home. Then I told her, I said to her, “And guess what—no such promise. I’m taking you over there the first minute you forget that you hate Santa Fe and me. You’ll be all happy and shit one day and you’ll snap to and remember that you’re a bigoted old shitball, and there you’ll be—stuck in a city full of me.”

She cried, I cried and apologized without taking it back, and then we had a debate on the Mittster’s tax returns and that whole Bain Capital dealie. Every time Mother would make a stupid-ass remark about the issues, I would simply say, “Santa Fe.”

She said, “We don’t need to see his tax returns because they are his private business,” and I said, “Santa Fe.”

“He said he wasn’t involved with Bain after 1999,” and I said, “Santa Fe.”

Then, she said, “Well, Mr. Romney is a Christian and Obama is a Muslim!” and I said, “You really are a bigoted old bag, Mother, and I’m packing your bags for a trip over to Santa Fe.”

Maybe I should feel badly for calling my mother a bigoted old bag. Maybe I should have tried living with women a few months before wedding them. That said, I attempt to have honest relationships with everyone I love, even the bigoted old bags.

Which reminds me. I had an epiphany, or whateverthefuck those things are, and I decided to build a Kiva oven in the back yard to the new house. That’s the Native American oven used for centuries to cook and especially to bake bread. Maybe it’s the one thirty-second’s worth of Native blood mixed in with the rest of my hemoglobin that epiphed me. But like Gram always says, “Who gives a shit, Mooner. Build yer fuckin’ oven and make me a peetzer.”

Gram loves thin, crusty crusted pizza with fresh tomatoes, pork sausage, basil, garlic and what she calls “moots yer fella” cheese. Last time I made pizzas out back on the big grill, Gram came out of the kitchen with a giant stainless steel tray with all of the fixings. Her ropey, muscled arms were shaking with the effort required to carry the heavy tray and she tottered to set it on the work table at my side.

“Yer mother’s being a downright cranky bitch, Mooner. Don’t put no moots yer fella on her peetzer. If’fn she bitches, I’ll tell her she told me not to put no cheesies on it.” Gram giggled and added, “I’ll tell her she done forgot.”

I laughed and Gram snickered like a schoolgirl. She said, “Mother’s gittin’ battier than a fuckin’ fruitcake, sonny boy, an’ we’re gonna have us some fun with her.”

Anyway, now my ADHD has taken over Mission Control, and among other things, I’m wondering what the Native American population of New Mexico want to be called. I’m guessing that they would want to be called Navajo or Arapaho or like me, Blackfoot. You know, distinguish them by tribal connections as opposed as to a group. Like Native American.

Then again. That would really screw up my mess kit because I don’t have that good an eye. Then again, again, who really gives a shit? Manana, y’all.

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The Bright Side Of Dementia; A New Cure For Bigotry

Wednesday, July 25th, 2012

 

So. I’ve finally let Mother’s cat out of the bag and I cannot even begin to tell you how good it feels. To share with you Mother Johnson’s trip down Memory Loss Lane has freed me in ways I hadn’t realized. Most importantly is freedom from censure and censorship. I don’t like bridled truths because real truth is unbridled. If I’m going to talk about anything, I want to be able to talk about that anything’s anythings.

It’ll take a moment, but that made perfect sense.

See, when I started this stupid fucking bloggie dealio, I promised that I would be full disclosure on all things except the children I have with Dr. Sam I. Am-Johnson. I only made that promise to Sammie to save myself from a/an extended stay/stays over to the Loony Bin at Shoal Creek Mental Hospital. My lovely first ex-wife’s precise words were, “If you do anything to draw unwanted attention to our children, Mooner Einstein Johnson, I’ll lock your ass so deep into the bowels of The System you’ll never again see the light of day.”

I wonder how she learned to speak so properly and not dangle her modifiers or prepositions. I would have said, “… you’ll never see the light of day again.”

She was right, Dr. Know It All, and I’m glad that I’ve kept my kids off limits to the blathering. I don’t have a need to disclose anything about my children because I don’t say anything about them. But when Mother asked me to secret her memory losses from you, I didn’t feel right about it. Not because the landlord of my initial Earthly home has become a bigoted old gas bag and I want to make fun of her in all ways possible, but rather from, again, the full disclosure perspectives.

How can I fully-disclose my life without fully disclosing it? How can I address my life with my mother and withhold her dementia?

It’s like the fucking Republican lawmakers back East to Washington in the D.C. Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office—those stalwart non-partisan bookkeepers for the US Congress—announced that the Affordable Health Care Act, aka Obamacare, would actually SAVE about $84 billion. That’s right, folks, a bunch of accountants with no political ties or agenda have said that not only will all Americans be afforded top notch health care, that in the act of providing that care we will also save $Billions in debt!

Affordable health care for all Americans saves all Americans money. Me, I say, “Yippy-Skippy and a Hip-Hip-Hooray!!!”

The Republicans, however, responded with their typical fuzzy mathematics to make a misguided and decidedly stupid point. Ignoring facts and hiding realities, they continue to snark about this Bill. “It’ll cost $Trillions,” said Speaker of the House Johnny “Does My Skin Match My Cleveland Browns Cap Yet” Boehner.

How can these assholes sell that load of non-disclosed bullshit? Who, inthefuck, is buying it? And they say they are Christians, for shitsakes. Christians? Really?

They can’t even help their neighbors with health care and save the entire country billions of dollars because they hate our first black President so thoroughly. And don’t you even start to tell me that Obama’s skin color doesn’t matter to the likes of Cantor and Romney and Limbaugh and Beck. Do not even start!

I thought the fucking Dark Ages were over. I thought the days of persecuting people for their thoughts or who they are was history. Patricia, from over to Polygon Blog has asked if maybe we should bring back the Stocks. You remember the Stocks, right? It’s that dealie where an offending person would be seated with arms and legs sticking through holes in a wooden platform and made to sit for days.

Oh, and Patricia, darling, why can’t I comment using my name and URL? I don’t have any of that other shit to use as ID for a comment. I spent thirty minutes this am writing a thoughtful and clever response to your “Stocks” posting and then discovered that I can’t comment thereto.

Thereon, maybe? Wait, might it would be therewith? Am I dangling shit again? Whateverthefuck, I was really bothered, from the intrinsic perspectives, by hiding Mother’s fast creeping dementia. I was forced to not tell you when she was acting like a true Christian woman because the only times she acts it are those times when she forgets that she became a right-wing bigoted asshole.

And that is the foundation for what I want to say today. Why is it that when my mother forgets things, she forgets to be a bigot? Why is she forgetting to hate people just because they are gay or Muslim or liberal? Why is she forgetting that she thinks that abortion is a choice to be made by politicians? Does that mean that her bigotry was learned or taught and not truly her thoughts?

I have always wondered at Mother’s views on abortion. See, my mother didn’t want a third child when the third seed sprouted in her womb. I guess that Sister and me were burden enough. So she starved herself until she miscarried, what we might call a do-it-yourself abortion.

I could never understand how she can now oppose a safe medical procedure when she spent sixty days starving a fetus she had already carried almost three months. If abortions had been legal when she got preggers that third time would she have had a medical procedure instead?

The Squirt and I took her to her brain doctor yesterday afternoon for a checkup on her short term memory. It wasn’t good. Twice she asked me where we were going in the car on the way, and she likewise had to ask me twice if I minded taking her. Her doctor told us that she thinks Mother’s dementia is fast-paced and was inherited from her mother, my grandmother who was murdered. I told the doc that Grandma was sharp as a tack at a ripe old age and she told me it didn’t matter. “Your mother’s dementia looks genetic in nature. A family sort of thing.”

“Huh?” I asked. “You’re saying this is an inherited malady?”

“Yes sir, Mr. Johnson, and it likely doesn’t skip any generations.”

Fuck me running.

I need a Carta Blanca beer. Manana, y’all.

 

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An Eagle Almost Landed, Or, “Hello, Boy Scouts, Reality Calling”

Thursday, July 19th, 2012

 

So. I’m pissed. Major League, big time pissed. The Boy Scouts of America has continued to run any openly homosexual member or employee ceremoniously out their doors. That’s right, if you are openly gay, you can’t be affiliated with the Boy Scouts and they are more than happy to announce it to the entire fucking world. I’m so pissed about this that I have written to them, as follows:

 

Mr. Wayne M. Perry

President, Boy Scouts of America

1325 Walnut Hill Drive

Irving, Texas 75015

 

Dear Mr. Perry,

 

I am writing you as a former Boy Scout—a Life Scout who quit Boy Scouts with 23 merit badges and lacking only the completion of my community service project to become an eagle scout. The reason I quit is because my adult Scout Leader raped me at aquatics camp on the night of my thirteenth birthday. He raped me after spending several years grooming me for that night. It was only after decades of psychotherapy that I came to realize just how much harm was done to me by that man. I also now know I likely had not truly earned my ranks and merits. How many boys have become Eagle Scouts before their fourteenth birthday? I now understand that this man groomed me—he maneuvered and manipulated me to gain my trust and to get me to like him.

Then he raped me. The rape changed me in ways you will never know unless you have suffered likewise. What he did was hideous and unconscionable. Were he alive I would prosecute him.

Having said this, you might think that I support your anti-gay policies. But you would be dead wrong. You see, Mr. Perry, the man who raped me wasn’t an openly gay, mentally sound scout leader. He was a pedophile, an animal who rapes children while hiding behind the veneer of respectability. He was a married father and a Deacon of the same Baptist Church that sponsored our Troop. He spouted religious platitudes like a preacher and he worked closely with his scouts’ parents. He was upstanding and well thought of, he was above reproach.

And he was a child molester, a pedophile. A monster. He was a rapist and he was sanctioned by The Boy Scouts of America. Except for the pedophilia, he was your model leader, Mr. Perry, the kind of man you say you wish you had more of to lead young boys into adulthood.

That man is the sort of man you need to exclude from your organization, Mr. Perry, not proud openly gay men. It isn’t openly gay men raping children, sir, and it isn’t openly gay scouts turning their fellow scouts homosexual. It is rather the deviants in your midst who prey on young children. The rapists in your organization will not openly identify and mark themselves with a red “H” on their foreheads. No sir, Mr. Perry, your rapists are cloaked in capes adorned with the medals of Christian platitude and living “model” lives outside Scouting.

Use you head, sir, and stop reacting politically. It’s time you pull your head out of your ass, scrub it down and do something smart. Do the right thing and stop persecuting some of America’s finest men.

Me, I never thought that your organization was responsible for my getting raped by your fully sanctioned and authorized leader. I, maybe mistakenly, thought that you only had my best interest at heart. But I might be wrong, Mr. Perry. Maybe just like the Holy Roman Catholic Church, you have taken the road to punish the innocent rather than truly fix your problem with child rapists. Maybe you are no different from the Pope and you care more for your institution than you do for your charges.

Should you decide to change these stupid and useless policies against gay men, I applaud you, sir. Should you not, then please allow me to say, “Fuck you, asshole.”

 

Sincerely,

 

Mooner Johnson, Life Scout (retired)

 

Manana, y’all.

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Some Of My Best Friends Are Conservative; Bullshit And Other Lies

Thursday, July 12th, 2012

 

So. I’m sort of back into the grooves after my extended visit over to Santa Fe. I’ve had a knock-down drag-out with Mother, it’s hotter than a two-dollar pistol and more humid than a sauna, and SAC Ellen just called to say that she won’t be back to Austin until next weekend. Maybe.

Maybe. And maybe I’ll have some skin left on my pecker by then. It’s been three weeks since I’ve had any sort of multi-person sexing and I’ve just about gone through a 12-pack of Ivory bath-size soap bars. Why is it that I’m happy with actual sex a couple times a week yet, when deprived of actual sex, I masturbate six times a day?

Whatthefuck is up with that silliness? Maybe it has something to do with the relative levels of satisfaction each variety of sex provides. While I’m quite adept at bringing matters to a successful conclusion when placed in my own hands, I must admit that I’ll never hold a candle to the sexual pleasures provided by a woman.

Which reminds me. Today is comedian/actor/author Bill Cosby’s birthday, which reminds me of Mitt Romney’s visit to the NAACP yesterday. Cosby was the first black man to have a lead role in an American television series when he starred in I Spy. As I recall, the show started in 1965 and it had huge viewership and ratings all across America.

Except in NBC TV stations in Georgia, Alabama and Florida where bigotry and racism were the program directors. As recently as 19-fucking-65 America harbored that kind of racism. Which puts Herr Schmidt Rommel’s visit to Houston yesterday into sharp perspective for me.

In 1965, whenever a white person wanted to prove that he wasn’t a racist, he would say, “Why I’m not a racist, some of my best friends are black.” Recently the “I have a (fill-in-the-blank) as a friend” justification for bigotry has included gays, Muslims and Hispanics, and if the best you can say for yourself is to repeat that stupid mantra, you, dear friend, are a bigot.

For yesterday’s NCAAP meeting, Romney flew in a group of black Republicans to be his cheering section. Since I don’t know who all of them are I won’t call them Republican houseboys. But I will call them hacks. The candidate attended that meeting to get in the face of America’s major minority for the sake of his fan base, and he made inflammatory and denigrating statements to some of America’s finest people.

When the soirée was over, Romney bragged that he was cheered by the members of the NAACP and then bragged that he spoke with several anonymous black leaders who spoke badly of President Obama and said they would vote Republican.

Mitt Romney is a liar. And a bigot.

For starters, the only black folks he spoke with after his speech were his hired hack attendees and then he used the old “I have black friends” method to demonstrate that support.

Mitt Romney is a fucking bigoted liar. I just can’t get my head around the fact that he is the Republican nominee to be our President.

Ugh.

What do you call a man who will say anything to get what he wants? Among the several things that come to my mind, “Mitt Romney” is one. But how about you—what would you call such a man?

Manana, y’all.

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Supremes Get One Right; A Vacation Story

Thursday, June 28th, 2012

 

So. My plan was to tell you that I’m going on vacation and will only be writing to you in the form of Comments I’ll place at the end of this posting while I’m in Santa Fe, New Mexico. But the Supreme Court of the United States has added an over-layer of conversation.

“Hey, right-wing conservative shitballs, how’s that ass taste?”

When I heard the news that SCOTUS had upheld the Affordable Care Act I almost choked on my Carta Blanca. I started drinking early today in anticipation of a ruling more consistent with that august body’s recent history to strike against personal welfare and civil rights—I felt they would strike down the health care initiative.

After hearing the news, I put my beer down and turned on the tube to catch the spin from the right to this news. Grasping the threadbare rope handed them by Justice Roberts, the right has taken the stand that the President lied when he said this wasn’t a tax.

Really? Is this all you’ve fucking got?

Of course switch hitter Mitt “Uh, What Did I Say” Romney has promised to undo this “job killing” mandate on his first day in office.

Really, Mitt? The same legislation you forced through the State of Mass was good for the Bean State but is a job killer for America? Really?

Then I caught the bad boys of the right for the few minutes I could stand, and guess what their spin is?

Anarchy. Really, Rush? Because you don’t like it you are telling people to revolt? Really? Do we Americans now refuse to obey any law we don’t like?

By the way, did you notice that all three women on the Court voted for health care? What does that say?

And House Speaker John “Pass Me the Orange Dye Number 16” Boehner said something to the effect that, “Women make the health care decisions for their families 86% of the time. We want to repeal Obamacare and put the health of American families back into women’s hands.”

Really? You don’t want women to decide about their own bodies and you want to strike down a law that gives women health care options and covers their family members by protecting them from the denial attitude of insurance companies and helps women sleep at night when one of their kids is sick.

But you “want women to have the power to make health care decisions” and you will do that how? By taking the power they have now to do just that away from them?

Oh, and hey, Rush and Beckster and Cantor and Rove and the rest of you assholes. Guess who did this to you. Have you thought about that yet? This one’s on your pet Supreme Roberts, boys.

Oh baby does this feel soooo gooooood!

OK, enough gloating, I’ve got to pack. I’ll try to check in with all my blogger buddies and I’ll post comments here Re: New Mexico.

Manana, y’all.

 

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God’s Sense Of Humor; Water Rings On The Dock

Monday, June 4th, 2012

 

So. I’ve been having visits from god for a year now and the resulting thoughts, feelings and desires are a mixed bag of tricks. For starters, after many hours of conversation with god, I have no better clue as to his/her/its origin or identity, powers or desires than anyone else on the planet. Other than to tell me that Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Brigham Young, Pope Anyone, and the rest of the “preachy” preachers are mostly full of shit, my new best buddy, god, hesitates to tell me what is right, and wrong.

When god paid me a visit yesterday he said to me, he said, “Look, Mooner, the basic tenets of most religions are sound and mark cadence with my wishes for you humans and the world I gave you to foster. Peace, Love and Caring are my middle names.”

God laughed at that one, then added, “I like deprecating and especially self-deprecating humor, sonny boy—like your refusal to capitalize me and my pronouns. You silly human shits have gotten so self-centered and exclusionary that you can’t have any real fun anymore. And you keep oppressing and killing each other.”

We were down to the dock—sitting with our legs dangling over the side—drinking Carta Blanca beers that kept materializing from nowhere, and enjoying the mellow from some nifty mushroom buttons. Each time I’d set an empty down, a fresh new bottle of beer would be sitting in the water ring of the last. And let me tell you this. God’s beer was no colder or tastier than that which I purchase by the truckload down to Mexico and smuggle across to Texas. When I asked him why that was, he answered, “How can I improve on perfection?”

How, indeed.

On his last visit, god came in the form of a shape shifter, changing faces and forms faster than Mitt Romney flips his flops. Yesterday’s visage only changed a couple times as points were made to me. I was sitting alone, contemplating life when my cell phone rang in my pocket. I saw on the caller ID that it was my buddy Bill from Tennessee. When I answered my phone, Bill’s voice said, “Look over your shoulder, brother.”

I did and there was Bill, or rather there was god in Bill’s skin. It took me a moment to figure things out and when the thought hit my brain to jump up and hug a welcome on my friend, I was told, “Keep your seat, Mooner, it’s me—god. Have a fresh beer.”

That was when the first new beer materialized in place of the last beer’s water ring. Maybe for the sake of clarity I’ll use the name Bill-god for this visit, and say god was a he and him. “I brought some mushrooms from the Far East for Streaker Jones and Dixie. I’m testing to see just how smart your pecker-wood buddy might be.”

A Zip-Lock baggie appeared in Bill-god’s hand and he opened it, grabbed half-a-handful of buttons, ate three and handed me two. “Best we start you on two of these, son. I need your focus for a little talking.”

I chewed and swallowed the shroomers and noticed the flavor of truffles and the perfume of lilacs. “These tastes like a French countryside, sir. Where in Asia do they grow truffles and lilacs?”

“They’re cultivated in Hanoi, Mooner, but the flavor is all from that mushroom. Truffles can’t grow in Viet Nam.”

Bill-god sat and dangled his feet towards the water, he and I swinging our legs back-and-forth. “It’s too fucking hot here, dude. I know you want some cooler weather so why don’t you look for a place in the mountains?”

I had started sweating like a goat in a soup pot, rivulets of fat, salty drops soaking my tee shirt after running off my face. “Man, these mushrooms hit quick,” I said, “I feel like I’m in a sweat box.”

Bill-god tipped his bottle for a swig of beer, wiped his sweaty brow with the front of his Oakland Raiders tee, swilled and drained his beer, and said, “Not the spores, dude, that’s pure Texas heat beating you down. You need to be drinking more water.”

“If I get a place to the mountains where would I go? I need to stay close to home, so the Appalachians are out, and I’m not crazy about Colorado or Arkansas. I’m not all that excited about Colorado. Everybody’s too intense about something or another—exercise, work, avoiding work, church,” I told him. “And you know I need to stay out of Arkansas after that little indecent from back when we played them in football.”

Bill-god gave me a quizzical look. I said, “Back when we were in the Southwest Conference, remember that year when we tail gaited up to their place and smoked the wild pigs near the front gates to their stadium?”

“Oh yea,” he said. “That was a close one right there, dude. I never knew you could run that fast.”

We laughed about how I almost got my brains bashed out by drunk hillbillies wearing pig helmets, and then reveled in the fact that Texas won a national championship nipping and tucking the Hogs in the game. Bill-god started giggling and said to me he said, “Can you believe old Tricky-Dicky Nixon trying to steal the Horns’ thunder after that game? Catch this action…”

He shape-shifted from Bill-god and transformed into the spitting image of Richard Milhouse Nixon, former president of these United States. He held up peace signs on the fingers of both hands and made that stupid pose and expression that Nixon used when he was attempting anything light hearted. He twinkled his eyes at me, shook his jowls with a “bluuubb” and said to me, he said, “I… am not… a crook!”

“Holy shit but that’s a great impression,” I told Dick-god. “Did I detect a little Dan Aykroyd in there?”

Dick-god did the Nixon jowl shake again, then told me, “I was trying to do Chevy Chase doing Dan Aykroyd doing George Carlin doing Nixon. I think I got too much hard C sound in the crook. Let me try again.”

He did, and then repeated the “I’m not a crook” line over and over with different inflections and voice characteristics. He had me in stitches. When I got my breath back and the tears wiped from my eyes, I said to him, I asked him, “Look, you’re god and all, and I need some help. I need a second home, someplace cool of weather and liberal of thought. But someplace where I haven’t already pre-worn my welcome. And not someplace musty, like Oregon. My balls are growing air roots like Spanish Moss and I need a dry climate that isn’t Colorado.”

Dick-god turned into Michele Bachmann and said to me, her pissy-nasal voice and posture Ms. Bachmann’s spitting image, and answered, “Look at the Land of Enchantment, asshole. Santa Fe is full of communists and fornicators and homosexuals in need of conversion.”

And with that, Michele-god vanished in a fragrant mist of Chanel Number 5 and fresh-pressed linen. All that remained from god’s visit was the memory, a baggie filled with purplish mushroom buttons and a solid dozen empty Carta Blanca bottles.

“Santa Fe, why didn’t I think of Santa Fe. I love Santa Fe.” I said aloud to myself. “Maybe I’ll get a place up to Santa Fe.”

My cell phone rang again, and again it was Bill’s caller ID. I flipped the phone open and said, “Hey, god, how’s it hanging? You coming back for another talk?”

“No, Mooner, I was just calling to tell you that my tomatoes are coming in and the weather here in Tennessee is cool and sunny. Are you stoned already? It’s not even noon out there in Texas.”

Oops. It was the real Bill. I said something like, “Uh, well ah, I was just talking to god and he called me on your phone, and when I answered he was here to Austin standing on the deck behind me, and when I turned to look at him… Well, Bill, he ah, he uh… Would you just listen to me all Chatty Kathy and shit. It’s your dime, brother, what’s up?”

“Jesus, Mooner, you need to get out of the heat. Are you drinking plenty of water?”

Bill’s a good friend. We talked about stuff and laughed at a present he gave Squatlo and Cindy and we rang off the call after a few minutes. I peed in the water off the end of the dock, gathered my empties and headed back to the house to start the smoker going. I was halfway there when my phone rang a third time, and for the third time it was Bill’s number.

I wondered if it was Bill or god this third time, and I figured that whichever it was, he was just calling to fuck with me. I let it go to voice mail.

Manana, y’all.

 

 

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A Letter From A Fan; Not A Prick Perry Story

Monday, May 7th, 2012

 

So. I wish I was gay. Wait, I wish I were gay. Crap, but that “was/were/is/are” dealie always messes me up. Let me try again.

I want to be gay, but I’m not. Maybe if I didn’t like women so much I could be gay.

“Why,” you might ask, “do you want to be gay, Mr. Johnson?”

“Because, silly, I’d be a better man,” my frank and well though-out answer.

I know that many of you think I want to be gay because I’m not a good christian man and the only christian men who are not good christian men are either gay, or near-gay. At least that’s what pastor Browningwell told Mother in her most recent religious counseling session. “Any christian man who supports hom-sex-u-als is a homo-sex-u-al, or very near one,” was the god pastor’s words.

And that reminds me to remind you of something. Unless and until the modern American christians pull their heads out of their asses and start treating all people as equal humans, I will refuse to capitalize their associate names. Until they can embrace all people with fully open arms, they will be the baptists, catholics and mormons, it will be christians, and pastor and the pope and such.

I was over to Brandini’s place at Lost in Idaho and he posted this dealie about Klouchbag, this rating site for a blog’s douchbagginess. I scored a 53 to Brandini’s 50 and it was remarked that I don’t capitalize enough.

Too fucking bad.

As long as those christian assholes keep marginalizing humans for their ideas and personal preferences, I’ll marginalize them. Small hearts and minds—small letters.

I don’t usually print Emails from readers because I assume you would write a comment if you wanted me to share your thoughts, but use Email to make expressions between the two of us. I’m violating that trust here because the writer of the following Email said that they assumed I would publish it, and I accept that as tacit approval of my publishing it hereinafter.

Don’t you love the word “hereinafter”[?] What an expressive gem. It’s much akin to the word “fuck” and another of my favies. The following has not been altered in any way except that I reformatted and italicized the original layout to fit my bloggie site. I left the capital letters where they stood. Anyway, before my ADHD takes control of the bus, I give you one reason to be gay:

 

Dear Mr. Johnson,

 

You are a creep and a very sick man. The things you say are dead to God. Gay people are the pawns of the DEVIL they will burn in Hell at your side. READ THE BIBLE. It tells you to scorn homosexuals and stone them from your Temples. Any man who promotes evil is EVIL. You are EVIL. I will pray for God to strike you down and make your flesh burn while your still alive. I hope God burns all of your kind in Jesus name. Jesus hates fags and died on the cross so we can go to HEAVEN and never have to see any fags. You like anis sex Mr Johnson? I hope HELL is the DEVIL ramming his pitchfork in your nasty anis. People like you need to be in HELL. Your sister too and you need to bow down at your mothers feet and kiss them. A good Christian woman doesnt deserve a son like YOU. Change your ways before its too late. I hope you print this so more good people will come and shame you.

 

In GODS NAME,

A child of JESUS

 

Uh, what do I say to that? Thanks for your prayers?

While A child of JESUS seems to lack good prose, he/she has no problem communicating that they do not approve of me. I do like the creativity in both the death and afterlife scenarios. Burning alive would be awful and perpetual ass rape with a pitchfork would be one definition of hell. Maybe more of that type will speak out. I find it comforting to know where they reside, as in this case, Houston, Texas.

I was going to tell you about a chance encounter I had Friday night with the one, the only, Governor of Texas and namesake of my gay ostrich—Little Ricky Perry. You likely won’t believe me when I tell the story but there are photographs. But not photos in my possession. I’m working on the pics and thinking of how to approach the discussion of Friday’s events. Either way, you are in for a treat.

Just think the lyrics to Babs Streisand’s song He Touched Me. Seriously.

Manana, y’all.

 

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White Wedding Woes; I Miss My Father

Thursday, May 3rd, 2012

 

So. At yesterday’s breakfast Gram revealed my mother’s most closely-guarded secret. While I laughed at it and made jokes at the table, I find myself more than a little unsettled with the findings. Mother was being pissy about my ostrich wearing white to his wedding when he’s obviously not a virgin, and Gram reminded my Mommy Dearest that she wore white to her wedding and was anything but virginic. And why isn’t virginic a word? I don’t want to use virginal.

Virginal sounds like a porcelain bowl where you place used virgins.

And a used virgin is precisely what my mother was when she married. It turns out that she had not only had sex with my daddy, but my daddy didn’t even ask her out on a date until Junior Spellman told him about Mother’s skilled hands. According to Gram—whose story was not questioned by Mother at any phase—Junior and Daddy were hanging out down to the South Congress Pool Hall where Daddy was the under-18 champ. They were playing Rotation—my father’s best game—and Junior said to him, he said, “Chigger, you need to take this girl out to Walgreens for a soda. I swear she’ll do most anything for a chocolate phosphate, and she’s got a firm, but gentle hand with a man’s privates.” Everyone who knew my father called him Chigger.

Daddy, according to Gram, talked to his daddy, my grandfather, and asked him if he would go to hell if he got a hand job from a girl before marriage. Again according to Gram, Granddaddy said to Daddy, he said, “Well, Chigger, if that would be the case, I reckon I’ll meet you in hell. Your momma could rub the chrome off a flagpole—still can for that matter.”

My randy old grandmother had a wistful smile on her face when she recounted Daddy’s first encounter with Mother. She said, “Chigger comes home real late after his date with yer mother an went right straight ta bed. I didn’t hear him a huffin’ inna bathroom so he didn’t rub one out. That boy beat off more ‘an you, Mooner, an’ tha bathroom was right next ta my bed.”

She sighed deeply, chuckled, and added, “Didn’t hear that boy rubbin’ off ’till after they was married an’ little Miss huffy-ass over there cut ‘im off.” Here she looked Mother’s way. “I still blame you, Mother Johnson, for givin’ my boy tha ass cancer. He must a been so stoved up that his insides ate their ownselves right up.”

Gram got up and opened her first Carta Blanca beer of the day and sat back down, took a healthy swig. “I told that boy don’t never let a woman use sexin’ agin him, but he didn’t listen ta me.”

Gram fixed her eyes to the spot on the paper where Mother’s face was on the other side. “Hell, after you took tha nookie away I told ‘im I’d hold yer skinny ass down fer him if need be. An I’d a done it!”

Mother finally peeked from behind the newspaper where it was hidden for most of this conversation. “Mooner,” Mother addressed me instead of Gram, a tactic calculated to ease tension, “your father would use the lord’s name in vain, he read girly magazines and he kept asking me to do unnatural things in the bedroom. The only way I could get him to do the right things was to withhold sexual pleasures. I’m a christian, lady.”

“OK, first, dear Mother, I agree with Gram and would like to say that I too think you sent my father to an early grave. You were mean and spiteful and you never let Daddy have a sense that you were glad he was your mate. And don’t give me that look, Mother, Daddy told me that himself.”

After saying that to my mother, the memories of that conversation with my father came flooding back into my memory. It was the day I graduated from high school, the traditional day when fathers told sons about life when I was a kid. It isn’t that my parents and grandparents ever spared me any embarrassment or life lessons, it’s just that this was the first conversation we had when my father made certain that I felt like a man as we spoke.

The memory brought tears to my eyes. Hell, I’m starting to leak eye water as I tell you about it now. Back in my time, the day you graduated from high school you had a big all-night party with your senior classmates. Everybody would “sneak” out to chug drinks hidden in their cars and then return to the party. Many high school girls lost their virginity on these trips for booze, boys as well, and Daddy knew this.

Me, I had been hoping for weeks that this would be the day I first got laid. OK, wait. This was when I hoped to get the first sex not sex inflicted upon me by my baptist deacon Boy Scout Leader. Getting raped as a thirteen-year-old had stunted my sexual development and relational health, and in typical victim form I had wondered if I had encouraged the asshole to rape me. I thought I might be gay for several years and withdrew from all my peers save Streaker Jones, the smartest human I have ever known.

Like I say, I lived a couple years in an angst-filled depression and Streaker Jones grew tired of it. One day we were sitting down to the creek under the big cypress tree and Streaker Jones said to me, he said, “I’m sick a yer shit, Mooner,” and he took his pecker out of his pants. “Iffn yur homosexual, stick this in yur mouth. Otherwise, git you a girlfriend.”

Like I say, my best friend is a smart sumbitch. His method wasn’t very scientific, but I quickly realized I wasn’t gay. In the next few years I began to repair my stunted social and sexual development and grew a healthy interest in girls. By graduation day, I’d had hand and mouth sex with a girl but no actual intercourse, and I can tell you that I was ready. R-E-A-D-Y ready for sex.

Daddy and I were on our backs under the farm truck making a repair to the u-joints when we had my first man talk. “Look, son, I’m not tellin’ you that you can’t have sex, I’m tellin’ you to be real careful who you sex with. Pussy is powerful, Mooner, maybe the most powerful thing on Earth, and you ain’t got one. You get to borrow them son, not possess them. Once a woman let’s you borrow hers the first time, you’ll do most anything to get more. Don’t. Don’t do anything to get more. Don’t ever sex it up with a girl that thinks givin’ you a taste of her pussy is some kind a prize for doin’ what she wants. If a woman tells you that you can have the pussy if you just fill-in-the-blank, Mooner, don’t fill her blanks for her. And don’t ever fill her pussy either. That’s a woman who’ll hurt you with sex.”

My daddy had tears in his eyes at this point, and he locked mine with his wet eyes and said to me, Daddy said, “Hardest thing you’ll ever do is walk away from pussy, son. Learn to do it before it’s too late.”

Even back then I knew my father’s advice was rooted in a hard-learned lesson of his own. I’ve always known that my mother was a prissy, martyred and pious baptist matron. After a wild child adolescence, Mother turned into a petulant christian prude in the early years of marriage to Daddy. I guess she used sex as a weapon on him. I also know that men can use sex as a weapon as well.

Ugh, but this is unpleasant shit.

Which reminds me. The three-ring circus that is Gnewbt Gangreenich just keeps on giving a laugh a minute. That silly fuckball announced yesterday that he is “suspending” his Presidential campaign. Uh-huh, it’s suspended alright. Suspended, as used in this case, is like when they used to hang convicted murderers, and in that millisecond after the floor dropped from under the prisoner’s feet, he seemed to float in the air.

The former Speaker of the House is a weak, sniveling little weenie. You lost, shithead, and you lost to Herr Schmidt Rommel. What does that tell you, asshole. You lost to a two-faced, flip-flopping pseudo-christian who wears magic undies. Go back and hide under your rock—wait for Mz. Callista to get sick so you can shop for another woman.

You are way better at snagging women than you are at political endorsements.

Manana, y’all.

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Gnewbt Quits Race, Keeps Horse; How Do You Plan A Gay Wedding?

Thursday, April 26th, 2012

 

So. After yesterday’s Republican primaries, Gnewbt Gangreenich has decided that he can no longer stay the course and will be quitting the race for President. Old Gnewbt rides a dead political horse way longer than he sticks in the saddle of marriage. His ex-wife was still breathing and had a prognosis for a reasonable recovery yet he left her for dead in her hospital room for his next, younger filly.

But he kept riding his dead Presidential campaign after its cancer killed it in Iowa and it’s bones lay picked clean by Herr Schmidt Rommel. Maybe his conversion to catholicism will improve the imitation Pillsbury dough boy’s stamina with his wives as well. Then again, Mz. Callista might be certain to do as much preventative medicating as she can get under her hubby’s free-for-life best-in-America health care coverage.

Isn’t it interesting that when, as available choices, the republican party had Michelle “My husband is NOT Homosexual” Bachmann, Prick Perry, the other prick, Rick Santorum, Herman “Fucking a white woman ain’t extra-marital sex” Cain, and the Gnewbt as candidates, they chose Herr Rommel. Five solid, all the fucking way-to-the- right actual christians to pick from, and the republicans have chosen the pseudo christian, left-to-right-and-back-again flippy-flopper who started the universal health care program while Governor of Mash-yer-choo-coos.

That’s what Gram calls the Pilgrim State, Mashyerchoochoos. At least I can spell Gram’s version. I’m college educated and I can’t spell the actual name. Don’t give a shit that I can’t, but I can’t.

BTW, thanks for asking, but Gram managed to pass the dozen extra-large glass balls she got stuck up her ass when the cord broke on her anal beads. Assuming the word “pass” is appropriate for having said glass bullets shoot out like metal ball bearings from a surgical rubber slingshot. Broke her toilet bowl—the bottom only—shattered her dressing mirror, and one of the missiles hit Mr. Dave a glancing blow after it ricocheted off the Saltillo tile in Gram’s bathroom.

When we were kids, Streaker Jones figured out how to use surgical rubber, like what they use to tie you off for blood pressure, to make slingshots. We used to make surgical rubber slingshots and sell them to other kids—not our first business together but one of the more profitable of our childhood. His daddy was dating a nurse up to the big hospital and she would bring the rubber tubes to us as a way to his daddy’s heart. If you want to learn about Streaker Jones’ daddy—a Peyote Indian Medicine Man—buy my stupid fucking book. Click over there =====}}}}} to one of the linksters for Full Rising Mooner and check it out.

Which reminds me. Sometime in the last month I misnamed the title of my book inside one of the wordy writings here to Loonyland. Be the first to catch and comment with its location and win a prize. If you don’t have a book, I’ll send you one with a personalized inscription. If you have a book already, first allow me to say ”Thanks” and second let me state for the record that I’ll figure something out to send you.

Anyway, this one time Streaker Jones and I were in town with a bag of slingshots that we were selling at the middle school. We had a bunch of glass marbles as demonstration projectiles and we were shooting them at a watermelon at the sports field. Actually, this was long ago enough that it was a football field because football was all that played there. Nobody had ever heard of soccer.

We had the melon at about the fifty yard line and we were standing at the ten, plucking away. As I recall, the watermelon was from a farm down to Gonzales and taken in trade from a migrant worker who wanted one of our slingshots to hunt food. I don’t remember what we were charging, but if a kid could hit the melon with one shot we’d give him a discount and, obviously, the value approached that of a ripe, 12-pound watermelon. Streaker Jones is a brilliant marketing man and most of our smart marketing moves are his. To this day, our smart moves are usually his ideas.

We’re doing a brisk slingshot business and this big kid walks up to our group—high school age punk with a tall greaser haircut and pointy shoes with toe and heel taps. Had a wire clothes hanger-and-rubber band slingshot hanging out his back pocket.

“Hey punks, what’s that?” the hoodlum asked. Back then we called those guys hoodlums.

I told him and started my sales pitch while Streaker Jones took off his jacket and rolled up his shirt sleeves. Streaker Jones has had a nose for trouble as long as I’ve known him. The kid yanked one of the slingshots from my hand and looked it over, stretching and aiming it at the other kids, trying to pop them with the empty leather basket. We used leather patches to hold the marbles.

When I offered a marble to shoot at the watermelon, he pushed my hand aside and said to me, he said, “Marbles are for queers. I got this,” at which time he fished a rusty ball bearing from his pocket, showed it to us all, and set it in the basket of the slingshot.

He stretched the bands and aimed and relaxed the taught surgical rubber bands several times. Then, he turned from the melon and aimed at the school and let her go. I didn’t see the projectile in the air, but I was looking at the big glass window at the main entry of the gymnasium when it shattered.

The hoodlum laughed like a hyena, big barks of, “Ha-ha-ha-ha!” He caught his breath and poked a finger in my chest and said, “Looks like you queers are in biiiiig trouble.”

Streaker Jones stepped to the big kid. “Nope. Yer gonna confess.”

The bully stripped his jacket off and rolled up his sleeves, and all the other kids gathered in a circle around the three of us. Me, I’d been to more than one of these rodeos and knew what was next.

“Uh, listen fella,” I told the kid. “You better do what he says. People always end up doing what Streaker Jones tells them to do.”

“Who’s gonna make me?” the bigger kid snarled at Streaker Jones.

“Me,” the response.

One Streaker Jones word, full of meaning.

“Let’s go,” the hoodlum said, and he bounced at Streaker Jones to kick a steel-capped pointy shoe at his nuts.

In the three seconds following the attempted goober kick, the big kid suffered a broken nose, dislocated thumb, a kidney bruised enough to make him piss blood, and an inch circle of hair and scalp missing above his eyes—a chunk of hairy flesh that was formerly the widow’s peak in his duck-tailed greaser haircut.

The big kid was on his side, whimpering in the fetal position, while clutching his broken nose with the broken hand, holding his good hand on his forehead to stop the bleeding. Scalp wounds bleed almost as bad as cut peckers.

My best friend stood over the bully and said, “Yul be tellin’ yer momma ya broke that window, an ya won’t be back over here no more.”

I’ve always hated the word “queer” when used in the context of bullies. My sister is lesbian, knew it from birth and has been proudly so her entire life. Streaker Jones took those kinds of things personally and he defended Sister’s gayness more times than did I.

Which reminds me. How many attendants are appropriate for a gay wedding? Are gay weddings different from heterosexual ceremonies? Sister and Anna eloped because Mother was such a shit about their nuptials, and I gave them both away to each other when we eloped out to Vegas. Gram was the Old Bat of Honor and the P-cubed was the ladies’ Flower Girl. Since Daddy had died and Anna the Amazon’s divorce from me was still wet with the Judge’s ink, it was appropriate for me to be stand-in Father of the Brides. Or was I Fathers of the Bride?

This whole wedding thing with Rick Perry and Rush Limbaugh is bum fuddling me. The ostrich wants a dozen Bridesmaids and shit but the big pig doesn’t want anyone to stand up for him. I’ve designated Yoda to be his Best Man and after that I’m lost. Nobody actually likes Rush Limbaugh enough to stand at his side, and everyone wants to stand with the bird.

I’ve never actually planned an entire wedding, as many as I’ve attended and participated in. Somebody needs to help me with this shit. Need Carta Blanca beer.

Manana, y’all.

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Hurt Feelings; Let’s Go Fishing

Thursday, April 19th, 2012

 

So. My feelings are hurt. If you have been wondering why I haven’t posted since last Friday, it’s because my feelings got hurt. For the first ever time since I started this silly fucking website, I have plastered a posting that has gone without a single comment. I got all pissy and decided I wouldn’t post anything again until after I got at least one comment on the last posting. I’ve waited six days and still no comment.

For some stupid reason, this has hurt my feelings.

I’ve been really busy as well, but that has never stopped me from writing to you at any time before. And my feelings are incredibly difficult to hurt. If you have ADHD, you live with Gram and my mother, and you screw up as often as I do, having sensitive feelings would lead to serious contemplations of the afterlife. I’m told that long-suffering individuals have delicate sensibilities, and there is nothing delicate or sensible about me.

Since starting MoonerJohnson.com almost two years ago, I have pasted well over 500 entries herein, and every single one of them received at least one comment, until this last one. Some of the comments I didn’t post due to the nastiness contained therein, but all prior postings had comments. I’m trying to determine where these dumb, hurt feelings came from.

I’ve never felt that getting comments was important to me. I’ve never needed an “Atta boy” or even a “Good job, son” to be happy with myself. Pats on the back are wasted on me because I always look for the flattery behind them. Daddy was of the Old School and he taught me to keep a fine ear alerted to flattery. “You need to learn the difference between a square compliment and when someone’s blowing hot air up your skirt, son,” my father would often advise me. “Most times you can’t tell the difference, and most times it’s your hairy ass getting a windy kiss.”

Daddy always gave me good advice, and I have tried to take it. Then again, I did inherit my ADHD from him same as he had from Granddaddy. Sometimes the life lessons he taught me got mangled in the tangled and jumbled confusion between two ADHD-addled male brains.

There was this one time we were driving up to Amarillo to visit family when the muffler gasket broke on the car. The noise was deafening for the hundred miles we were required to drive before finding a mechanic shop to make a repair. When we stopped and were overcharged for the simple repair, Daddy said to me, he said, “I should’a checked that before we left—I knew it was ready to make trouble.” Then he said what I now think was meant to be, “Oh, well, like they always say, a stitch in time saves nine.” You know that old saying about preventative maintenance, right? Who knows whatinthefuck he actually said, because by the time I put the lesson to practice, I managed to destroy its intent.

When we got back home a week or so later and working the cattle, I had a chance to repeat the old saying back at my father. We had a heifer, a longhorn cow, that we were getting ready to breed to a longhorn bull. Back then the big-horned bovine were an oddity and somewhat rare. Having a quality fertile cow was of considerable value, and our cow had quality and was quite fertile. When we found her in the pasture, our old Hereford bull was on her back and deep into the short hairs.

“Goddammit!” Daddy yelled at the top of his voice. “I knew we should have put her in a pen by herself before we left for Amarillo.”

I watched the old bull enjoy himself for a few seconds and thought of Daddy’s advice about the muffler. I told him, I said, “Well you know what they always say, Daddy. A stick in the hiney takes the dime.”

My father looked at me like I’d lost my mind. He said, “You’re a damned strange kid, Mooner,” shook his head in bewilderment, and walked off to leave me with my thoughts.

I miss my father.

Anyway, I’m starting to think that my hurt feelings are coming from two places. First, once I started getting comments I got used to them—even started to read them and enjoy them. Once I got involved with the comments, I made friends with some of the commentators. So, I guess that my feelings are hurt because my friends have abandoned me—tossed me away like a snot-filled tissue.

Then again, maybe they are as busy as I am and are simply too preoccupied to fuck with my nonsense. Either way, I’m taking a break from all these wedding plans to take all the kids fishing. I’ve got the worms dug, a dozen pulled pork sandwiches in the p-nick basket and the Carta Blanca beer on ice. I’m hitching the wagon loaded with the basket and cooler onto Rick Perry. He needs to practice walking with a heavy dress and long train, so I thought having the ostrich pull the wagon down to the dock would work for that. Maybe I’ll let the dogs and the fucking cat ride to add extra ballast to the wagon.

Maybe someone will comment here, on this posting. Maybe somebody gives a shit and will get back to me. Either way, fuck it. I’ll still be back manana, y’all.

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Why I don’t Own A Handgun; I Am, However, Shopping For A Nuke

Monday, March 5th, 2012

 

So. I don’t know if you guys have been keeping up with events over to Iran. If you have, you know that the conservative religious factions puppeted by the one, the only—the O-fucking-riginal—Ayatollah Khomeini—have gained control of government. The conservatives lost much of their power over the last decade and a more moderate have emerged, assuming you can say that any Muslim extremist is more “moderate” than another, and their current President has shown to be the most moderate of them all.

It has been this moderate President from among all of those conservative right-wing religious zealots who has given the rest of us a thin shred of hope that things will approach stability in that region. When combined with the Arab Spring movements, the moderation of the extreme conservative pogrom-based inclinations in Iran have been heartening for those of us seeking some limited vision of world peace.

But, and alas, the arch conservatives have won a contentious dogfight for control of Iran’s central government, an action that has, effectively, granted the Ayatollah total fucking control. That batshit crazy shitball will now be making decisions about Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear bomb, pursuits to infiltrate America’s borders to reign terror, and put Iranian women back into conservative garb and stuff their semi-Westernized asses back into the rear seats on society’s bus.

As the extreme tenants of conservative Muslim control eased over the last ten years, Iran could have been almost looked at as a model for how to change an autocratic, religious-based oppressive society into a more civilized one. By lessening the conservatives Koran-based ideologies and letting people enjoy increasing freedoms of choice, Iran’s economy improved and the standard of living enjoyed a remarkable up-tick.

Iran’s increasing moderation away from conservative religious fundamentalism had an interesting, and to me amazing, side benefit. A never-before-seen middle class began to form and emerge from the abject poverty. Abject poverty was the norm for typical Iranian citizens under the Shaw, as he and his family and a few chosen buddies controlled the huge share of Iran’s wealth and privilege. Iranian society was controlled by extremes—mega wealth and abject poverty.

When the Shaw was ousted, the only thing that really changed at first was that the Shaw and friends were replaced by the conservative religious clerics. Those assholes took control of the power and wealth and the common citizens remained the poor masses.

But things were getting better for everyone in Iran until now, with this recent conservative party win.

Is this shit funny yet? Has anybody reading this mess gotten a glimpse at where I’m going here?

Let me say it this way. Change the word “Iran” and replace it with America. Change Muslim for Christian and trade your Bible for the Koran.

But you don’t need to change the words “conservative” or “right-wing” or “autocratic” or “fuckwad” or “middle class” to get my drifts. And you don’t need to be a genius to see that America’s right-wing religious conservatives are trying to do the same thing here as what happened in Iran. Hell, Prick Santoria and Mitt The Schmidt Romney look at Iran with stars twinkling in their eyes.

Wake… The Fuck Up, America. There isn’t one degree of separation between the Ayatollah and his henchmen and America’s conservative Christians. They each want absolute power to rule lives based upon their personal religion. They want women put back in their proper place and they want to take America back to times where it was “Great”.

Mitt Romney is a fucking Robber Baron, folks, and Rick Santorum thinks Senator Joe McCarthy was a liberal. Mitt wants to return to the times when the foundations of America’s wealth were built on the skeletons of its burned-out workers. Rick Santorum actually said that he wants religion to rule government.

He actually said it. Are you not pissed and angry and really fucking scared that a major contender for President has publicly stated that he wants to overrule the Constitution? He said he wants gay people in their place. Do you know what he’s actually saying there?

Ugh. It turns my stomach to think that one of those two asswipes could be my President.

Fuck it. I’m going fishing. Manana, y’all.

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Almost Drilled At Top Notch Drive-In; Hannah Still Has It!

Wednesday, February 29th, 2012

 

So. I was over to visit an ex-brother in law yesterday before lunch. His office is in the general vicinity of the Top Notch Drive-In, so I had lunch at the nifty little burger and fried chicken joint. They cook their burgers on an actual charcoal grill and their chicken is among the best in town. I had a burger and crispy tots, my usual.

Why this is remarkable isn’t the high quality of the food as it is remarkably consistent in its high qualities. I like to sit in my car and eat—Top Notch has it’s original car hop speaker system and tin-covered car port—while I listen to my radio. I have Sirius Satellite in the GTO and I had Left Radio, Channel 127 on your radio dial, and Ed Schultz was on. My food had just been dropped off and I’d unwrapped my burger for the first bite.

Is it even proper to say “on your radio dial” anymore? The only radio I even have with a dial is Granddaddy’s old Philco, and it’s in storage out to the barn. Everything else is digitized.

Before I take a first bite of any Top Notch burger, I always take a sniff first. There’s something intoxicating about that first whiff of charcoaled beef, pickles and onion that makes the burger more enjoyable. I guess it’s the same dealie as with wine.

OK, let’s back up a second. This might be my ADHD talking, but why do we say “ex-in laws” if we only have divorces from the wife or husband? I have only divorced one brother in law yet have been divorced to ten women. That one guy, a Baptist Deacon lawyer who works for the State of Texas to fight death sentence appeals, is a special case. Actually, I didn’t accept him as my in-law when I married his sister, so maybe he’s a bad example. I never did like that asshole.

When I asked him the question “What about the innocent man who is convicted wrongly and sentenced to death? How do you rectify, justify that in your mind putting him to death?”[,] he answered, he said to me, “Who cares? The death penalty is all about punishment of the guilty and we’re all guilty of something.”

I also heard the other day that he and his wife are big Santorum supporters. They don’t think Rick Perry is a big enough prick, they want an asshole like Santoria to be President. Asswipe dickwad Baptist right-wing Republican shitballs is what they are.

Anyway, so I sniffed a deep drag off my burger. My eyes were closed and Ed was talking to a man on the ground up to Michigan about the Repub primary. They were discussing the light voter turn-out and what it might mean. I exhaled my burger hit in a whoosh, and slowly opened my eyes. My focus settled on the door to the Top Notch dining room where an old fart was exiting with two little kids who appeared to be his grandkids.

One of them, the boy, was holding the man’s left hand at the wrist and hanging with his feet off the ground like kids love to do. The boy was laughing and swinging as he tugged the man’s shoulder out the joint. I was reminded of my youngest son who felt that my arm was the neatest carnival ride on the midway until he was three.

The other child, the girl, was a step behind and had her eyes plastered to the man’s right hip. They were walking towards me—I was in the last parking slot at the end of the carport so that my satellite radio would work—and the little girl’s fascination fascinated me. Their truck was parked right beside the GTO outside the cover of the carport. I was thinking how nice it was that the man didn’t park at a car hop speaker spot and then eat inside. I get pissed when the speaker spots are filled with empty cars.

The trio walked to the aisle between our rides, and that was when I saw the object of the girl’s attentions. Riding low on the man’s hip was a six shooter sitting in a leather holster with, I think, a DPS star pinned to it. I figured DPS because they have a big office near and I see their officers here often. Here in Texas we have concealed handgun laws but, thankfully, not yet an open carry rule. Thank god you have to be a lawman to carry a gun on your hip, and I wish to god we had smarter lawmen.

The little girl waited until the man’s attentions were focused on removing the boy from his arm, and struck. She grabbed the pistol with both hands and yanked it free of the leather. I don’t know if it wasn’t properly latched in the holster or if the tyke had great strength, but either way a four-year-old girl now had a loaded revolver.

I ducked—my natural response in these situations—and dumped my tots on the floor and started cussing about that. I heard the discussion about the retaking of the gun, scolding and placing the kids in the truck, but I didn’t register much of it because I was cussing. Then I realized as I was leaning over to pick tots off the floor, I dragged my shirt through catchup I had carefully placed on the console.

“Mo-ther fuck-er,” I said aloud but mostly to myself when I saw the front of my shirt.

“Hey, buddy,” a man’s voice said from outside my window. “You need to watch your mouth. This here’s a family restaurant.”

Huh?

I took a deep breath and exhaled onion and grilled beef before even looking at him. When I did look his way, his eyes widened and he stepped back with his hands in that “Oops, sorry” position. “You’re right… I’ll just be going now,” and he did.

Am I a shitbag magnet? Do I bring this sort of thing on myself? This asshole almost gets someone shot and he’s pissed at my language? I don’t usually cuss around kids but they don’t usually point a fucking revolver at me. Does a revolver even have a safety?

Good thing for him I promised the Squirt I’d not loose my shit with assholes this week.

Anyway, I got home from that bullshit to find the Squirt and Honor the fucking cat waiting for me in the driveway. I could tell we had a problem as soon as I saw them sitting there without Yoda at their side. When I got out of the car I asked them, “Hey, guys, where’s the third shitbird?”

“You need to do something about Yoda, and right fucking now!” Squirt stamped her foot on the “now” and finished with a prissy pout. “He’s locked in Gram’s potion cellar so we don’t kill him.”

Speaking of revolvers, I need to find my Revolver CD and spend some time with it. I need to hear Tomorrow Never Knows. Manana, y’all.

 

Oh, yea, and PS- Hannah from Whole Foods- check out February 17th.

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