Archive for the ‘Environmental Issues’ Category

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DrLaura F-ball! MoonerJohnson F-ball?

Saturday, August 28th, 2010

 

So. I’m up early this morning and reading the Austin American Statesman, our local newspaper. I’m an old fart and I love the newspaper, as an actual pile of paper. I love the smell of it, the feel of the paper between my fingers and I adore my clumsy, fumbled attempts to fold its sections for my most comfortable reading.

I can read it sitting at the kitchen table, out on the porch, while sitting on the pot, driving the little farm tractor, on a plane or a bus or a train. I like to read it anywhere, Sam I Am.

Dr. Seuss’ Sam I Am, not mine.

I love washing the ink off of my fingers when I’m finished. I inspect my hands before each washing to see how much ink has stuck to me. Usually, the amount of deposited ink I wash down the drain confirms how much joy the paper gave me at that day’s reading.

Because President George W. Bush and his fuckball associates ruined our economy, my newspaper carries maybe half the weight that it had before. I enjoyed more pages of print, more stories, stronger smell and more ink down the drain before Bush crashed our economy with his silly war and blind eye to Wall Street.

I miss ignoring all of the ads stacked into a full newspaper, and I miss my investigations to determine precisely how an advertiser had managed to get me to read the few that caught my wary eye. With a four pound Sunday addition, a couple of ads would trip me up and make me read them. A two pounder can’t seem to manage an override of my efforts to ignore advertisements.

I love a newspaper printed on paper. I love everything about it. It is my source of news and information, and the place I gain insight about the world that I cannot obtain from my family and circle of friends. I don’t want to ever give it up.

This is a problem for me

I am an environmentalist. Not a saboteur-tied-to-a-tree-or-chained-to-a-rock environmentalist, but rather I consider myself as what I call a practical environmentalist. I understand that we can’t change ten thousand years worth of civilization’s bad habits overnight. I think we need a conscious, planned restructuring of wasteful and damaging habits.

However. My insisting that I read a paper newspaper that then requires me to waste water to wash ink into the drain- adding chemicals into our water system, is beginning to bother me. I have always justified this personal indulgence because of everything else I do that exemplifies my planet-saving mentality.

I became an environmentalist many years ago, when I first realized that we would run out of potable water with our wastefulness, and polluting, of every body of water and watershed on the planet. I’m somewhat of a water maniac if truth be told. Like my constant scoldings of automatic sprinkler system owners.

But I’m becoming torn by my justifications to break my own rules just because I keep so many more. Can I justify my newspaper habit because I recycle everything possible, and pee in the sink to save water? I think this is what Dr. Laura would call a, “Moral dilemma.”

I’m going to need some extra psycho therapy to work my way through this one.

And speaking of the good Dr. Laura….. Are you fucking kidding me? It’s 2010 you psycho right-wing religious shitwad. You preach your “always-take-the-moral-high-ground-and-do-the-right-thing” dribble day after day, and yet you feel free to pitch the N-word around like it’s your favorite new toy?

Shame on you.

Holy shit but my ADHD is fritzing my brain to distractions! I think I had a point when I started this bloggie dealie, and I better make it before I get off track again.

OK, let’s look at it this way. Is my justification for reading a paper newspaper the same thing as Dr. Laura’s justification for her idiotic usage of the N-word? Am I a fuckball- granted, a fuckball of a totally different nature from her, yet am I a fuckball like Dr. Laura just the same?

I think I want to puke. Is it too early for a Carta Blanca beer? I will be back when I finish mission incommunicado, y’all.

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Posted in A Life Lesson, ADHD, Carta Blanca Beer, Environmental Issues, Psychotherapy | 1 Comment »

The Cockroach Solution; First Amendment Yin Yang

Saturday, August 21st, 2010

 

So. I’m cruising over to the Sprouts there to the Arboretum, and I’m clicking through radio stations because Howard Stern is reruns on Friday and I heard all his shows this week. I punch AM 590 and get Rush Limbaugh’s voice saying, “And aren’t we glad we have the Internet so we can get the real news!”

Are you fucking kidding me?

Wasn’t it not so long ago when Old Hog Jowls was bitching about I-net news? He was complaining about how Internet reporters have no moral compass, nor are they accountable for the truth. Am I crazy?

OK, of course I’m crazy. Let me rephrase, “Am I imagining that Rushie has taken both sides of another fence?”

I find it repugnant that many of these so-called pundits consistently twist every story and circumstance to suit their ideologies for starters. But the real American Tragedy to me is that their followers seem ignorant of the ruse. And it isn’t just the right-wing religious fuckballs doing all the ruse’ing. We’ve got ourselves some rusers of the liberal bent as well, also fuckballs, and listed on the Mooner Johnson Fuckball Roll Call.

It isn’t what you believe that buggerates the ever-loving-shit out of me. It’s how you conduct yourself.

After I switched around some more, I heard some other numb-nuts talking about how our President is a Muslim and a foreign-born Muslim at that. Again, are you fucking kidding me? Get yourself a grip to reality for shitsakes.

Before the Presidential election, anti-Obama forces spent very significant economic and research assets to dig that dirt, and plant their seeds of anger. All of this, “He’s a Muslim and not American born nonsense,” is just that. Turns out to be sterile dirt and sterile seeds both.

But when do these guys ever let a little truth get in the way of their ruses? Maybe that should be rusi, or possibly russess.

Americans’ right to free speech, maybe our most important right, is a huge benefit that carries an opposite, and equally large negative. That balance is ignorance and blind faith. When the followers of a free speaker are too dumb to see lies, or so devoted as to ignore them, Rush Limbaugh is born.

Yin, and yang- a terrible thing to waste.

Which reminds me. I spotted a cockroach in a cardboard box when I went to my office this morning. We don’t have many bugs out to Mooners Compost Plant because of all the bats. Seeing the roach, thinking about the bats and thinking about this poker player named Jerry Yang reminded me that Colleen Lindsay is having trouble with palmetto bugs. You know- tree roaches, the big suckers. She needs to get some of our Mexican Free-tail bats from down to the Congress Avenue Bridge. Those guys will snatch the air clean of any insect. And they’re real cuties.

Anyway, I need to prepare for going incommunicado again, so this will be my last posting for a few days.

Manana de la manana de la manana de la manana and so forth until next weekend, y’all.

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Posted in Environmental Issues, Poker Players Alliance, Religion, Rush Limbaugh the pig, Sprouts Farmers Market | No Comments »

Leonard Pitts, Ruben Navarrette Confirm Mooner’s Positions

Friday, August 6th, 2010

 

So. I want to first invite you to go to the Opinion Page of the August 5th Austin American Statesman and read the article by Leonard Pitts, Jr., page A11. If I was a professional writer with years of experience, I might have made such eloquent arguments as Leonard.

After reading that one, go immediately below and read Ruben Navarrette, Jr., and he will provide you with a full-scale example of the lunacies that Leonard expressed.

If you like what you read, tell them. Leonard is at: lpitts@miamihearald.com and Ruben can be contacted at : www.rubennavarrette.com .

I was reading these articles while in my first sitz bath of the day, as I soaked my healing bottom in tepid water. I was running the water for this bath, maybe the hundredth such bath I have run for a sitz, when something hit me. What I do is this- I start filling the tub, then grab reading materials, check my e-mail, get something to drink, grab my cell phone, and then I undress.

For the first sitz of the day, I had the paper to read, checked the computer and had three e-mails, topped-off my coffee cup for beverage, and slipped out of my tee shirt, undies and shorts. My preparations took maybe four minutes as the water ran at full-blast for my bath.

When I stepped into the tub and sat down, there was still not enough water to rise to the level needed to soak, so I sat as water continued to fill. When I finally turned off the tap and set my timer for twenty minutes, I surveyed how much water I was using for a single, twenty-minute ass soaking.

“Holy shit!” I barked at myself. “I could irrigate a football field with this tub of water.”

I started calculating how much water I had used for all of my sitz baths, and blushed in my embarrassment.

“Holy shit!” I said again, and this time loud enough to draw a crowd.

“What tha hell issa matter in here?” were Gram’s first words as she raced into the bathroom from wherever it was she had lurked. “You need a rescue-tation Mooner? I jist got my Red Crossie card rejuvenated over to the Church last week.”

She surveyed me as I lay contorted in the tub to keep water on my hurt part without putting pressure on my ass.

Then she yelled, “Git in here Mother an help me git Mooner outta tha tub. I need ta give him tha kiss a death.”

Don’t you just hate it when people jump to conclusions?

Mother has arrived by now and said, “It’s the Kiss of Life, Gram, not the Kiss of Death.”

Gram looked me dead in the eye and said to me, she says, “Who gives a shit Mother. I got it right, cause iffn he scares the shit outta me one more time- it’s curfews fer Mooner!”

I started laughing about then, so she punched me in the shoulder.

“Yer a disrupto-latin little shit Mooner. Always was an I reckin that’s the way of it.”

Then she started sniffing the air and said, “Do I smell ostrich sweat?”

Oopsie!

“No, Gram, that’s just the lingering aroma coming off my butt problem.”

She sniffed some more. “An I’m a catchin a wiffer a pig snot too. It’s makin my eyes twitch.”

Sensing the pending doom from Gram’s thoughts, Mother stepped in. “Mooner’s still not right yet, Gram. Dr. Ashworth said that it could be a few more weeks before everything heals over.”

Thank you Mother.

Gram gave me the dirty eyeball one more time, then said, “Awright. You finish yer shits bath an come find me. I got a potion I brewed up back ta when yer Grandpa got popped by them skunks. Maybe iffn we both dose up I won’t smell ya.”

Dear God. Thank you for the blessing me with the mess I call Gram. Amen.

Anyway, so what I have decided to do is take the remainder of my sitz baths in a mop bucket. I’ll just squat my irritated cut bottom in that. I can’t stand to waste water. Even though we recycle every drop of wastewater from our daily lives here to the ranch, we still pump too much from the ground to be wasting it on my sore ass like that.

After my bath, I beelined it to my closet for a talk with Rush Limbaugh and Rick Perry.

I threw the door open and started on them. “All right you two. Did I tell you to clean yourselves before bedding down at night, or didn’t I? How can I protect you from Gram when you smell like a barnyard?”

All I got in response from the ball of pig fat and black feathers cowering in the corner of the closet was whimpers. The two of them looked like Jack and Mrs. Spratt having sweaty, athletic sex.

“Oh for shitsakes you two. Stop crying like babies and get out of my closet. I’m sick of this.”

This threat only made the whimpering more urgent.

“Just stop, you two, stop it now. Go take a shower and get some exercise. As soon as you hear Gram’s Ferrari leaving, you get out of this closet and get some fresh air.”

Anyway, I’m taking SAC Ellen back to Vivo’s over to RR 620 for dinner. She really likes the place. I keep pushing them to get Carta Blanca beer, but I have not managed to sell them on the concept. So, I’ll just have an Eastside Margarita while there, and catch my frosty cold CB’s to the ranch.

Manana, y’all.

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Posted in Carta Blanca Beer, Environmental Issues, Rick Perry, Rush Limbaugh the pig | No Comments »

Squirt Kicks Environmental Butt, Polluter Might Live

Friday, July 16th, 2010

 

So. I think I’m tired of talking about the many things I do wrong here to my webber and bloggie, so we’ll just drop that subject. Like my Gram said to the dinner table last night, she said, “Who gives a shit Mooner. Us Johnsons make tha rules, we don’t foller ‘em.”

While Gram’s logic is faulty at best, even a blind boar hits on an accurate thought every now and then. When I signed-up with Word Press and Go Daddy to do this nonsense, they didn’t have me sign any promise to obey rules about word count or any of that other nonsense. I’m really starting to wonder if those guys are all Republican.

Republicans are a pain in the ass, by definition.

Anyway, I was late to my dinner last night because I was over to Dr. Sam I. Am’s house to mow her lawn for her. She’s at some big brain doctor conference and I’m watching the Squirt while she’s away. I’m also doing chores like mowing the grass, cleaning the swimming pool and watering her plants.

When I finished with the grass, Squirt asked me to take her on a walk around the usual route she walks with Sammy. She wanted to see if her nemesis was around and available to be chased.

“Maybe Herr Squirrel es in los arboles up by la golf course. Yo es dying to estrangle der squirrelenbastard mit mine own deux hands.”

Squirt thinks that there is only one squirrel in the world and said one squirrel lives in her neighborhood. The tree-climbing rat moves around the neighborhood as Squirt walks her route- popping in and out from different locations to posture. And making the Squirt maniacally nuts. I keep telling her that it’s more than one ratlike varmint that tortures her, but she won’t buy it.

“Same uno, Mooner,” she tells me.

“Not the same one, sweetie,” I try. “It’s just that all squirrels look alike. That’s how you know they’re a squirrel.”

Too bad all Republican right-wing religious shitballs don’t carry the same genetic features. That way you could see them for what they are before they open their big yaps. Give you time to escape.

Anyway, I cleaned the rechargeable electric mower I gave Sammy for her last birthday, and placed it back in its spot in the garage, and off we go. Maybe three doors down from the house, and after Squirt has pulled me to the grass so she can dribble one drop like maybe a dozen times- Mister Squirrel shows for the first time. He runs a few feet into the street ahead of us, stops and turns to look right at us, and does that tail twitch thingie that squirrels do just to piss you off.

“Arf, arf, grrrrrrrr, you varmint die uber pain en la ass!” And then, “Grrrrrrrr, matako volmas!”

Now me, I know exactly what the Squirt just said, she called him an asswipe. Matako is Swahili for ass, and volmas is Lithuanian for wipe. This I know because it is one of Squirt’s favorite expletives. The squirrel obviously misses the threat in Squirt’s outburst and lazily runs and bounds up a tree.

The miniature dog and I have the same, “It’s more than one squirrel,” talk we always do on these walks, and I don’t make any more progress with her than the hundred before this. So, we’re walking along and we can hear the buzz of a landscape crew working a few houses ahead of us. We walk past four houses, and while the noise is louder, we still don’t spot the crew. We get to the corner and turn left, and two houses down is this beehive of activity, an almost deafening level of gas powered lawn equipment noise. And smoke.

Giant billowing clouds of dense, gray two-and-four cylinder lawn equipment smoke.

“Que en la inferno est dies?” Squirt started that full-body vibrating things she does when scared or angry. Trust me, it pays to know which, and the Squirt wasn’t scared.

“Assholes, baby. That hell is assholes,” I told her. “Small minded, air polluting fuckballs.”

OK, let me stop here to provide you with some background information that just might help you to understand what happened next. See, I am a firm believer that our delicate planet is under attack from many directions. Other than if religious terrorists were to get a hold on some nuclear weapons, I believe that the most serious of those threats comes from our consumption of fossil fuels as we burn them for energy.

I’m not stupid enough to think that we can just pull the plug this afternoon and never burn another barrel of oil or ton of coal. But I know with absolute certainty that we can pull the plug on certain fossil fueled devices.

Like lawn equipment.

I am what I guess you would call a madman on this issue. Battery powered lawn equipment is already a proven alternative to old fashioned gasoline varieties and if you still use gas-powered devices at your house, you are an uninformed moron. You are uninformed or you’re Republican, which makes you a moron, once more by definition.

Rechargeable battery technology surpasses the requirements for lawn care, and did so years ago. If you are using gas powered lawn stuff, I think you should be warned once, and then handcuffed to a bed that sits in the jail cell occupied by only you, and my Gram.

Gram is a big role player when, as she puts it, “I’m all randy an sexilated.”

I share my feelings about environmental issues with anybody who will listen. Since Squirt has been with me for a few days straight, she has had a pretty thorough indoctrination. When I start going off about the smoggy, noisy demonstration from this lawn crew, Squirt springs into action.

She yanked free the leash I held loosely in my left hand, and took off. She’s yapping and flashing her mouthful of tiny razor sharp teeth at the workers, actions seen as harmless by the men polluting our world. I’m not at all unhappy by her rants so I just watch to see what happens.

Why do I seem to get into as much trouble for what it is that I don’t do, as for what I do do?

After a minute of them ignoring her, the Squirt has figured a new tactic and she starts getting in front of the workers, putting herself between the men and their work. Me, I’m thinking to myself, I thought, “Mooner, this might require a little personal intervention.”

But, by the time that particular thought fought its way through my ADHD-addled brain- it was too late. This one worker got this pissed-off look on his face and decided to take a kick at the Squirt. I know he didn’t mean it to be a cause-harm kick, but Squirt is still young and misses many of the nuances of body language.

I have told you before that Streaker Jones is a martial arts and self defense guru and that he trains all of our family, blood and extended family both, how to fight.

And kill.

The gas-powered, environmental asshole takes this exaggerated kick at Squirt, and just as his boot reached its apex- she leaped and attached those tiny razor-sharp teeth to his crotch.

Let me say something before I end this already 1,200-word bloggie posting. I now know how to encourage a man to stop polluting. Clamp a rat trap to his nuts.

So, that’s why I was late to dinner. What with the incident report, and the proof of rabies vaccination and trip downtown for booking. Maybe I can get a copy of Squirt’s mug shot and post it to the bloggie. She’s a cute little shit for sure.

Anyway, it’s Friday and all of my full-size tomatoes have burned out in the summer heat. We’ve got an entire pantry crammed full of canned red goodness, but they just don’t cut it at Carta Blanca beer time. It’ll be a few weeks before my system adjusts.

I always get kind of weepy with the last big tomatoes of the season, morose even. I’ll need to call Doctor Sam I. Am for a psycho therapy session tonight.

Manana, ya’ll.

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Posted in ADHD, Carta Blanca Beer, Environmental Issues, Home Grown Tomatoes, Humor, Psychotherapy, Squirt | 1 Comment »

Rainforest Partnership Might Be OK; Matt Damon Is Not Corporate

Sunday, May 30th, 2010

OK. Now that I’ve got you guys helping me with my logo design contest over to 99designs, we can start to deal with my other problems. I know that you know that Dixie is writing a children’s book and asked me to do her research on what layout would be best for her book. I don’t know why she won’t do it herself and just go talk to some kids, but she’s like most all of the women in my life. Pushy, ornery, stubborn and ultimately- lovable.

Women and me (I?) are an interesting puzzle that neither has seemed to solve. And don’t try to tell me that the me/I question I just asked has a simple answer.

Anyway, I told you about going to the B&N bookstore that’s near my favorite Sprouts store and spending some time doing research yesterday. On my visit to Sprouts early this morning, I picked-up some lamb ribs and beef liver that I’m going to serve at tonight’s Johnson Family BBQ. I got my food and packed it on ice because I had an appointment down to the Moonshine Grill- you know there to Red River near the Convention Center.

I was meeting Maia for lunch to talk about her new internship at the Rainforest Partnership. I was also meeting Maia to meet Maia since I had never met her before. Maia is the daughter of my buddy up to Dallas and I’m glad that I’m firmly settled into my relationship with SAC Ellen, because Maia has all of the charms I hold sacred in a woman.

She’s smart, cares about the environment, is a hard worker, she’s interested and interesting, knows how to laugh and she has the extra benefit of being cute as a button. The reason I’m glad that I’m with SAC Ellen is that I have already ruined enough friendships with my passes at somebody’s daughter. Daughters. There was this one time with my auto mechanic who has twin daughters, and he is now my ex auto mechanic.

Then there’s the other whole thing about me being quite happy with the SACster and unwilling to do anything to screw that up. On purpose.

But I’m already digressing. The ADHD is on the fritz so I might wander a touch. On my way to meet Maia for lunch I started thinking about how to cook the liver. The lamb ribs are easy- rub with olive oil, season with chunky-ground salt and pepper and grill. But the liver is another whole dealie- should I braise it first and then grill it for a little smoke and char, or should I just marinate it and then fire it up. I missed my turn and was halfway to Dripping Springs before my brain latched to the hinges of here and now.

Have you ever thought of how many different marinades you can use on fresh liver?

Anyway, Maia is a student at Texas State University down to San Marcos, the same place where one of my boys graduated. She wants to be involved in environmental issues as a life career, as well as her life choices, and that makes her OK in my book. She called me for some strange reason to see if I could help her with some ideas.

I agreed to meet her because her daddy asked me to and because she is an environmentalist and interning at an organization about which I am clueless. And also because I am still looking for a good cause who is not too embarrassed by me to want to link-up together with me for a share of my profits.

Wait, that’s not entirely true. I know much about rain forests but little about Rainforest Partnership. And what about this- am I looking for a cause who wants to link with me, a cause that wants to link, or a cause which wants to link? I can run that train over each of the three grammatical rules tracks and find my destination.

When you have ADHD like the variety that infects my brain, you can find reasons to apply any and all rules.

So. Maia is going to be doing corporate sponsorship stuff for the RP and she thought that maybe I could help. I told her that most of my experiences with the corporate types usually end in a lawsuit or a visit to jail. Or a stay to the loonie bin. But I am a good poker player so I thought I might have some good corporate guy tells for her.

“Look,” I told her. “Your corporate sponsor types will only get involved on two conditions. The first would be if one of the high muck-d-mucks in a company favors your cause as a human person in his/her personal life. You know, like Matt Damon and the clean water issue, except that Matt Damon isn’t corporate in any way.” I then went on to tell her that since many corporate types are Baptist Republican shitballs and not real humans, she might want to concentrate on the second condition.

Now that’s not to say that America is not populated with some corporate types who managed to climb the ladder with their souls intact. It’s just that the ones of that breed who have made it to the top have likely been previously snatched away by already established causes. Like Matt Damon.

Going strictly on my personal experience, many of those other guys sold their souls to climb the ladder to the top. That or they didn’t use the ladder, and instead made their way to the top by building the tallest pile of co-worker corpses so they could stand on top and grab the brass ring.

I don’t like companies that build their success on the burned-out bodies of their current, and former, employees. Back to the seventies that was the very definition of a Fast Track Homebuilder.

Again, I’m certain that many of those corporate guys have good hearts and an unsold soul that still remains mostly outside the Devil’s reach.

Please tell me that all made sense.

So, assuming condition one goes unmet, condition number two is that you need to find a way to make your charity and/or cause interesting to the corporate types. When I asked Maia how you can make your cause interesting to a corporate type she said, “Find a way to show them a benefit they can gain if they work with us.”

Told you she was smart.

Then we brainstormed some ideas, an endeavor my ADHD-addled mind can handle with ease. When I can get each of my many thoughts focused upon one central theme, I’m a one-man stormed brain. My only problems with brainstorming are getting my hundreds of ideas verbalized and giving the other stormers a chance to speak in a 15-minute session.

Oh yea, and there would be the problem of my digressions.

When I asked Maia if the Rainforest Partnership would be interested in cross-pollinating with my webber and bloggie by linking-up, she got this weird look on her face that I am most familiar with.

I hate that look. It means, “Mooner Johnson is crazy and I am unsure how to tell him No.”

My only hope to get cross-linking from the Rainforest Partnership guys is if Maia gets desperate for sponsorship options and I get what I want as someone’s last option. That doesn’t bother me at all. I mean I don’t wish her to be frustrated but I will rush in to fill the gap.

It’s like my Gram always says. She’ll say, “Who gives a shit, Mooner, long as ya git what-cha was wantin.”

Anyway, I had quite the experience over to the Barnes and Noble store. I’ll tell you later after I review and comment on the 20 new design submittals I have for my logo contest over to 99designs. Please log on to 99designs and help me judge this contest.

Pretty please.

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Home Grown Tomato Hints; Unique Sea Salts of the World

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

Summer has officially arrived to Austin, Texas. I just plucked the first fully-ripened tomatoes from our garden out to the ranch! Four heirloom purple jobbies, a bucket of grape size and another bucket of Sweet 100 cherries.

Hoo-yaa!!!

I love tomatoes, homegrown tomatoes, in a way I have difficulty explaining. Homegrown tomatoes are a different species from nearly all commercial choices and my homegrown jobs are unusually good even compared to other home growners.

“Why is that, Mooner,” you might inquire.

Well, I will tell you. The why answer that is the root cause for me growing great tomatoes is my unnatural love and desires for the best that tomatoes can be. Since I love good tomatoes so much, I have endeavored to grow the finest.

The how answer to the why question is simple. We grow all possible varieties in copious quantities; we use organic methods only; I make special compost and compost teas designed for tomato plant needs; I have vast experience; I am water conscious and use mulch; I monitor constantly and I care.

Oh yea. And Streaker Jones is my best buddy and Streaker Jones can grow the best of anything. Streaker Jones has a doctorate of plant sciences from Texas A&M and from The University of Texas he has doctorates in chemistry and botany. Streaker Jones knows all there is to know about plants and how to best grow the best plant specimens.

With his faithful sidekick, Dixie, they make a plant growing machine. Dixie can talk many plant languages so she interprets for Streaker Jones.

Actually, if you ask Streaker Jones why I grow such great tomatoes out to the ranch he will say, “Cuz I don’t allow Mooner to fuck with um.”

That is true at the micro level so I won’t try to argue about it. But at the macro level, it’s all about me. Like when I was doing this interview with Rolling Stone Magazine after Dixie was nominated for a European Grammy Award last year.

The little interview guy asked me, he said, “Mr. Johnson, to what does Dixie owe her great success?” and I told him, I said, “Well, I guess since I paid for her vocal lessons and never got her spayed, I can take most of the credit.”

I was going to spay her but her voice coach felt it might ruin her upper register and maybe kill-off some of her emotional range. I had to agree with him because when Dixie is in heat, she sings in this screachie high voice and sounds like what I imagine the Sirens must have sounded like back to mythology days. You can hear her wailing for a man in the neighboring counties as evidenced by the collection of horn-dogs that accumulates to the ranch when she freshens.

Freshens is the same thing as having her period except it sounds a little more sociable. And is animal talk.

Every year when I harvest the first fully ripened orbs from the garden I prepare my portable tomato prep kitchen. That is: a special hemp tote bag with tomato scenes stitched into the cover; a seven-inch Japanese chef’s knife with those crenelated indentions in the sides that keep the slices from sticking to the blade; knife stones, oil and chamois for sharpening; small cherry wood cutting board; two china plates for serving; three pepper mills with different pepper varieties; six dropper bottles of my favorite olive oils; my special cooler holding one Carta Blanca beer; and my antique silver snuff box filled with sea salt.

The only thing that might change from one season to the next would be the kind of sea salt I carry. Everything else is set in stone unless it breaks or wears out. But the salt is an evolving pursuit to find the perfect salt for tomatoes.

The last twenty years has seen my trips to salt mines and factories around the world. France and Italy and Korea and Africa and so on. This year is special because I got a chunk of that pink, so pink it’s almost ruby red hued, Himalayan salt. You see it on the cooking shows in big slabs that they use to both salt and serve the food like it was a plate.

It has a great flavor and I think it is showing great promise as a tomato salt. As always, my first pluckings from the vines are less acidic and not as sweet as they will be and the salt overpowered their flavors. But I am almost certain that when things hit full summer heat I might create me some magic.

Wine snobs say, “Mooner, beer is a remote second choice to a fine wine to support the sweet acidity of a perfect slice of tomato.”

To which I say, “Fuck you, shitball. Try this.” At which time the wine snob discovers the joy that is a thin slice of late summer Celebrity with Indonesian black pepper, gray French sea salt and two drops of Tuscan olive oil- which is folded in half and placed on the tongue for the thirty seconds it takes the salt to bring the juices out.

After thirty seconds chew slowly and then swallow. Wait ten seconds and then drink two-to-three ounces of icy cold Carta Blanca beer.

Call my name, Gabriel, cause I’m ready to go!

And don’t try to sell me another brand of beer because I already know better through personal experimentations.

I think my ADHD is almost under control and I am not even digressing at all. You guys think I can back off my psycho therapy to one session a day? Normally by this late in the day my ADHD would be digressing my socks off me.

Like yesterday when I got so discombobulated when I discovered that Luigi Fulks gave me an erroneous e-mail address.

Don’t you just love that word? And why don’t you spell it discomboobulated?

Would anybody buy my portable tomato prep kitchen if I put them for sale here to the bloggie?

ZJ4SUEVVJCBA

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Am I Bleu?; Cheese Talk with Mooner Johnson (Part 10)

Friday, May 14th, 2010

Does anybody know how to get stains out of your skin? I have now been hosed down with a power washer, soaked in bleach, abraded with a wire brush, had maybe 36 showers, enjoyed an even dozen full body scrubs with that gritty oozie goop I got from Dana at Arbonne, and.

Wait, wait wait. Let me start all over.

First, if you don’t know, I felt disrespected and unappreciated so I went on a protest to get some. Respect and appreciation that is. I did not wash myself or brush my teeth and I ate a diet that consisted of garlic and onions exclusively. After the first day I had a slight ripeness to me, like maybe what you would get from sniffing through the tight plastic wrapping on a little chunk of bleu cheese down to the Sprouts store.

You know what I mean. A person knows what blue cheese smells like so even though it is tightly-wrapped in clear plastic, you can smell it. Maybe you aren’t actually smelling the cheese, like one of those psycho thematic dealies, but your nose catches just a whiff of that incredible, rich smell of my favorite cheese even if it only comes from memory.

I truly do love bleu cheese. I love blue cheese as well- any kind of bleu cheese made anywhere and by anyone. I am non-discriminatory as to a cheese’s country of origin, religious affiliations of the cheese maker and I don’t even care if the cheese maker or animal producing the raw milk product are Republicans.

In my opinion, the only thing that matters is that the cheese was produced without chemicals and that it has good flavor. I mean it.

Wait. Psycho semantics- that memory dealie is psycho semantics. It’s all just a matter of words, right?

I do, however, have preferences as to which variety of bleu cheese to use in particular situations. As an example, in a salad or salad dressing I prefer a cheese that is on either extreme of the flavor spectrum. Either the most mild, like a Maytag, or a really mean French triple-cream aged-in-a dead-goat’s-carcass and costs $50.00 a pound- a real Gram gagger.

Gram hates bleu cheese and I love to pester her with it.

“Iffn you gag me puttin that bleuie cheese shit in my face one more time Mooner, I’m gonna stake ya to a anthill,” my Gram told me this one time. I had a chunk of Limburger, it wasn’t an actual bleu, but my Gram lacks any culinary sophistication. Like she always says, Gram will say, “Who gives a shit Mooner. Iffn it smells lik shit, it’s shit!”

Have you ever been staked to an anthill?

Anyway, to continue the description of my ripening as the days progressed in true allegorical fashion, I began to unwrap the plastic covering as my blue cheese sat in the trunk of the car on 100-degree Texas afternoons.

By the fourth day, as you have unwrapped enough plastic to make a small opened crease that exposes some of the cheese to the air, my body odor would make your eyes water from the next room. By day seven, with the fully unwrapped lump of cheese fermenting in the sweltering trunk getting new infestations of bacteria and fungi, the now blackend bleu cheese has stripped the paint from the entire car and melted the soft rubber gaskets used to seal the trunk lid, windows and doors.

By day eleven- that’s when I had my epiphany and got respect, it is far safer to burn the car than to even consider looking inside the trunk. OK, that would be a bad example because the toxic smoke from the fire would likely defoliate much of Central Texas like Agent Orange. But you get my meaning.

Do you guys know about how the oils and acids and shit in garlic and onions can worm their way through your system and make an oil slick on your skin? All of the odor and flavor of garlic and onions will start layering your skin in this oil slick after you eat enough.

So, after my pressure washing to blast the rest of my clothes off me- that was shirt, undershirt, socks and bandanna, and then all the scrubbing with wire brushes to get the tar off me, I was left with a heavy coating of this oil.

And just so you know, Streaker Jones brought the Haz-Mat team out to the ranch from our research labs to do phases one and two. They bagged and jarred everything they pried loose of me and took it back to the lab for full military testing.

The Army is sending both chemical and biological inspection teams to observe our testing. They know everything that was removed from me is organic but they still can’t figure out what it is.

So. I’m all stripped down to the oil coating and that’s where Dana comes in. Dana, and you don’t say it like Dana Andrews, you say it like Princess Diana except without the “i”.

Jesus, Mooner that was lame. Try this: it isn’t day-nuh, you say her name dan-nah, like it’s got more “n’s” in it than it does.

She’s my beauty expert, so I called Dana to see if she could help me get the oil off my skin and she said to me, she says, “Do I even want to ask why you need such a product Mooner?”

After an hour of my explanation, she interrupted me to say, “Got it Mooner. You need Awaken Sea Salt Scrub from Arbonne.

“Fine,” I said. “Send me a few cases.”

This stuff is so great that as soon as SAC Ellen is talking to me again I’m going to have her pop me with her stun gun and then scrub me down with Awaken. I love this stuff. If you want some, get with Dana at www.danafrank.myarbonne.com. Be sure to tell her that Mooner sent you.

She won’t give me anything if you do, but you don’t want her to think you’re a stalker or some silly religious shitball wanting to get inside her guard.

And I also want to send out a special Thanks to the makers and importers of Carta Blanca beer. I would be dead if it wasn’t for Carta Blanca beer. Carta Blanca beer provided me with all of the essential vitamins and minerals I needed to supplement my restricted diet these last many days. I love Carta Blanca.

And Texas Governor Rick Perry, you small minded little imbecile, you managed to keep me in stitches with your snakes and guns and hollow-point bullet stories. We all know that humor is the best medicine, so Ricky- please keep sharing your innermost thoughts with me. You know, the ones that come from your hollow, pointed head.

OK, the ADHD has digressed me to near hallucinationing.

I’m back, I’m strong and I’m focused.

But if you are the first who can tell me how to remove the stains from my skin, I’ll send you a free copy of my book when it comes out. Bleach, acid washing, and lasers have already been tried.

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Respect Thine Ownself (Part 9)

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

So, I’m having my therapy session this morning with Dr. Sam I. Am-Johnson and as usual, I’m catching a full load of crap because I am, as Sam put it,“…an inappropriate, childish, crazy old coot.”

And then she added, “And you stink!”

I really hate it when women say something mean to you and then feel that the initial insult left some vital aspect of the insult left unsaid, and then they add-on that specific extra layer. Like when I was a kid and I’d be doing something my Gram thought was foolish and scraped my knee in the dirt and was then actually foolish enough to seek her out for first aid and mothering.

“Sit still while I wipe tha grit outta this cut. I told you not ta be messin with that young bull.” This would be said with each word spit from those leathery old lips in perfect unison with a hard wipe of a dishrag over already abrasioned knee skin.

“Ow, Gram. Ow, ow ow.” I always took my Gram’s ministrations like a man.

“Stop cryin lik a baby, Mooner.” And then she added, “An lemme tell ya this little man. Nex time I ain’t cuttin ya loose.”

Have you ever accidentally strapped yourself to the back of a 1,500 pound bull?

Anyway, so I say back to Sammy, “Bite me you brain killer. You can’t even tell me what color my shirt is.” Now it’s my turn to fuck with her.

We’re doing all of my therapy sessions by Skype these days on a count of the fact that I smell so bad. Last time we did a live-to-the-office session, Dr. Sam had to burn the sofa and chair that I sat on in reception and her office and I had to pay for her to have a special air filter installed on her air conditioner unit.

“I know what color your shirt is supposed to be Mooner because you aren’t wearing one. If you were clean I’d report to SAC Ellen that you have been flashing me. But you’re so filthy you look like you’re wearing a grease covered mechanic’s uniform.”

I told her, “For your information little missy, I’m wearing the same hemp tee shirt and socks I had on when I started my protest.”

What I didn’t tell her was that I had dreampt that my jockey shorts attacked me and I ripped them off and set them on fire. But she could only see me from the waist up.

“Look Mooner,” she starts in on me. “No self respecting adult human would put himself through what you are doing to the rest of us. One of your neighbors has petitioned Governor Perry to designate your ranch as a disaster area. He’s worried that when somebody gets desperate and hoses you down, the runoff will contaminate his water wells.”

That could be a problem. The Governor and I don’t get along all that well. Did you hear that little shitball is so afraid of snakes that he carries a big pistol when he goes jogging? Give me a fucking break. No snake alive would bite Rick Perry, professional courtesy being what it is.

Then he says he’s out with his son’s dog for a run and feels the need to kill a poor coyote that looks them over. What a pussy.

Maybe I ought to try to mend fences with Governor Perry, you know, find some sort of common ground and make peace with him. I could have Gram formulate some special potions for him. She could do one to restart the left and right sides of his brain functions, one that makes him care for other people and maybe one that makes him stop lying and cheating the people of the fine state of Texas.

Likely it would help if I stopped calling him a brain-dead Baptist Republican shitball and latent Nazi asswipe. I really don’t think he’s a Nazi but I like to say so. I don’t think he could pass the Nazi’s intelligence exam.

But I could try to be nice.

Or I could take a bath and brush my teeth.

Wait a minute. What did Dr. Sam I. Am just say? “Sammie, what did you just say?”

“I said that if you had any dignity or self respect you’d take a bath you crazy fucking redneck. I’m going to lock you up at Shoal Creek if you don’t get your act together Mooner. And pronto!”

That’s when I stood up and showed her my ass play I called Guess What Came To Dinner?

“Oh sweet Jesus Mooner. Have you been sitting in a tar pit?”

“Take that,” I said back. “It’s not tar, it’s a new weapon for the Department of Defense.”

She bitched and called me names for another twenty minutes but I hardly heard a word. Instead, I formulated how I was getting myself out of this mess.

Think through my logic with me. So, I have been on a no bath, no tooth brushing while on a garlic and onion diet to get some respect, right? What if I show some respect to myself, would that count? And it takes a big man to stick by his guns for eleven days and never flinch, right?

Therefore, it will show self respect if I brush my teeth, take a bath and eat a buffalo. Ipso, facto smackto!

Respect administered from the one person who most respects me.

Hell, now that I think about it I deserve some kind of award or something.

So- fuck Rick Perry.

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Arizona Arrests Chinese Sarah Palin Impersonator; Still No Respect (Part 3)

Sunday, May 2nd, 2010

Well it’s Friday and the end of the wonderful month of April 2010. I think it is time to do some more housekeeping- you know clear up any dangling modifiers and participles and confusions, all of which are my modus operandi. Why isn’t that “operandisses” or “operandum” since it’s plurals?

First, I’m four days into my don’t-bathe-or-teeth-brush garlic and onion diet program, the program I have instituted to insure that I get some respect and appreciation. This is the point where I gave in back when I was on an ice cream only diet. After four days of eating only Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla, I was having milk fat delusions and things ended badly.

I went nuts and ate an entire roasted goat. That particular dietary break would have been OK excepting for the fact that it wasn’t my roasted goat.

With this diet my worst problem is that I stink so bad I keep going catatonic from the smell of my ownself. I need to call the research guys over to our lab and see if maybe that would have a military use. New product development is one of my strong suits.

With all of the time I’m spending alone on this current diet, I have had the chance to catch up on many personal needs that went untended when I had been spending so much time helping others. That’s why I’m on this pungent diet and personal habits kick- nobody appreciates my good deeds. I fixed the gates on the stock pens and got some other chores done and then I caught up on my reading. Ugh!

Arizona, Gulf oil spill, Chinese crazy man, and Sarah Fucking Palin with her side kicked-in-head-as-a-baby asshole buddy, Little Ricky Perry.

Ugh, ugh, and ugh plus a giant Ick!!!

Arizona first. Let me get this straight- the police are now required to investigate any person who “looks” like they might possibly be an illegal alien and then arrest that person if they can’t show proof of citizenship. What brain dead moron dreamed-up this stellar bit of thoughtful legislation?

Oops, that would be the same religious backed right-wing Republican shitbirds who attended Mrs. Palin’s anti-abortion clinic here to Austin last night. The same guys except for they live to Arizona and last night’s audience live in our area.

And have you guys seen Arizona’s lady Republican Governor? Add ten years heavy aging in the desert and kill-off maybe 13 of Palin’s 41 active brain cells and you’ve got yourself an Arizona Governor.

The two of them make the California Republican Governor look like an intellectual giant with good communication skills.

I find it incredible that the same assballs whose ancestors stole Arizona from the Indians have passed a law that will have an Indian arrested if he carries no proof of citizenship.

The Gulf oil spill is just the latest wake-up call from Mother Nature. These giant oil production platforms out to the Gulf are monstrous rigs designed to extract huge quantities of oil and gas from beneath the seas. Any screw-up on one of these rigs is a major league problem. We need tighter regulations on the rigs and more importantly, better choices than oil to fuel our economy.

Looks like China doesn’t provide any better mental health facilities for their crazies than we do for ours. When you force antisocial people to live on the streets you’re going to have a little blow-back. This is one of those amazing dichotomies I see in politicians. My Grandmother, the nice one that isn’t Gram, was murdered- stabbed dozens of times by a crazy man maybe ten years ago.

The man had been recently released, again, from a mental facility. He got off his medications, lost his already perilous grip on Reality, and killed an old woman in her front parlor. He attacked her and slashed her dozens of times with a knife.

Where do I place the blame? On those dumbass Republicans who slashed the budget to care for crazy people in the fine state of Virginia a dozen years ago.

Of course, the Republicans blame the crazy man for acting crazy. Like the same as me getting angry at the Republicans for being shitballs excepting that I know that I’m crazy to expect anything else.

Take the charming Mrs. Palin and her silly speech here to Austin last night. She’s here to speak out against abortion, and the centerpiece of her speech is her Down Syndrome son, Trig. Now, if everyone will remember back to during the big election, when she was known as Republican Vice Presidential candidate Palin, her honorship was mightily pissed that the Press and the Democrats and the rest of us godless liberal heathens made any reference to her brood of kids.

Last night at the big pow-wow, Little Missy Self Righteousness is using those same children to cash $100,000.00 checks for personal appearances. In-fucking-credible!

Trig is the result of her pregnancy at age 43. To quote Sarah about Trig, she said, “God won’t give you what you can’t handle,” and, “God gave us only eyes to see Trig’s perfection.” Then she told us how she’s comfortable here in Texas because, “You’re not afraid to cling to your guns or your religion.”

God please help me because I don’t even know where to start.

OK, first, you were the Governor of a state and you are 43-years old and you got pregnant. Was that because you still haven’t figured out how you get with child, or was it that you felt you could outwit time and have a healthy child at that age. But given her high levels of understanding science and geography, go figure.

And as far as God only giving you something to handle and only seeing Trig’s perfection, who the fuck do you think you are fooling?

You don’t spend two days a week with the poor kid. I don’t think God would have meant that you would have somebody else “handle” Trig and that you would miss his imperfections because you never see anything of him. I think you are both ignorant and cruel.

You don’t have the good sense to practice birth control for yourself yet you want to control the choices for other women. You don’t seem to be able to provide adequate parenting for the kids you have yet you have another child as you did.

I keep waiting for you to have a cogent thought that you can verbalize. I look forward to that day.

And now, Texas Governor Rick Perry:

WARNING!!!WARNING!!!WARNING!!!

Pay attention to me America. Rick Perry wants to be the President of the United States and I am not shitting you. I have been trying to tell people this for years but nobody listens.

Please listen.

Rick Perry is George W. Bush except not as smart and more mean spirited. George’s daddy got him his lobotomy as a fourteenth birthday present. Rick’s lobotomy was self administered and routinely updated. I think how it works is that Governor Perry has a medical advisor, one with a few ounces of common sense, and this advisor travels in the entourage.

If little Ricky sames something intelligent, they whisk him back to Austin where they re-insert the silver spike into his pre-frontal lobe. Word here is that Perry has this permanent access plate there to the middle of his widow’s peak, kind of like when a person gets a stint installed for needles except this is bigger.

I think that’s why he always has that pretty boy haircut- it hides his access plate dealie.

And now I realize that I’ve just spaced-out two full days while writing this. Folks, I smell so bad the cockroaches have left the building. If I don’t some respect or appreciation soon-

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South By Southwest, Stewart Udall, Oprah Winfrey

Sunday, March 21st, 2010

Hello everyone. I bring you glad tidings from the frozen tundra that is Austin, Texas. I’m still up from the all-nighter we pulled down to the South By Southwest Music Festival. Streaker Jones, Dixie, Gram, Aunt Hilda, Sister and Anna the Amazon, P-cubed and I made the trek and, of course I was the designated driver.

I’m always the designated driver. I have the CDL Driver’s License so I drive the bus.

It was a great time this year- really good bands, really cold beer (well, duh, its twenty degrees outside) and I only got into one altercation. The bands and cold beer were welcome and the fight was not my fault.

See, there’s this man from Gram’s Baptist church who lost his job with one of the big chemical companies. I hate big chemical companies and write stuff about how you should stop using chemicals on your lawns and gardens. Therefore, ibso proto mento, I caused him to lose his job.

So, were walking around at the SXSW drinking beer and having a grand time of things and we needed to make a pee stop. Making a pee stop at a festival is always an experience in and of its ownself, so we all made our way to the closest row of porta potties. Now look, I do not approve of porta potties because of all the chemicals, but there were too many ladies in my party to just use a cup and carry it with me. Gram’s OK with it and she’s the one that taught me how, but I was talking about “ladies”.

As we get there to the temp johns and take our place to the lines, I hear this drunken voice yelling at me, “Mooner Johnson, you disruptive shit!”

I turned and it was this guy, Maynard Miller, the Baptist former chemical worker. He’d gotten a temp job manning the porta cans, his allotted row of cans next door to one of the music venues. Being as cold as it was, the proprietors of the music venue were keeping their beer kegs out back to save energy and kitchen space. Maynard was abusing their inattention to the stored beer barrels, and he was wearing a cheaply-acquired shitface.

Wasn’t much of a fight. Gram poked him in the eye and Dixie had him solidly by the crotch of his shorts before he ever got to me. He started crying about how I ruined his life.

Man had a point.

We got to talking and I told him he could have a job out to the compost plant if he would quit smoking cigarettes. I don’t allow smoking employees. He said, “OK, I’ll try.” Good enough for now.

Anyway, Stewart Udall died, and I am totally bummed. You guys remember who he is? He is the granddaddy of the entire environmental movement as a mainstream issue. He was the US Secretary of the Interior back to the sixties and he raised six kinds of Hell to save US Park lands and promoted sanity with the Environment.

Before Secretary Udall took his stands, the Environmental Movement was known by another name- “Hippies, Communists and Subversives.” This brave man was the first “corporate type” to speak up for the protection of the Planet. Of course, since he was early in the movement he was chastised and often lumped in with us Hippies and Communists and Subversives. Without him I don’t think the Environmental Movement would have made it out of the sixties yet.

Bless you Stewie.

OK, let’s do some business. I would like everybody who reads this crap of mine to post a comment. Tell me what you like, or don’t, and how you found me. Don’t be shy, tell me exactly what you think. I have thick skin plus my psycho therapist tells me I’m too stupid to catch most digs.

But here’s the business part. I’ll have Dixie judge a contest for the “most interesting comment”. The criteria will be: the keyword you used to find me; your likes/dislikes; and Dixie’s arbitrary nature. That dog can be a real bitch sometimes.

The winner will receive an autographed copy of my new book, I’m Not That Crazy, or How Oprah Winfrey Almost Ruined My Life. I reserve the right to disagree with Dixie and to end the contest at any time and also the right to award more than one winner at my whim.

I do, however, promise to be fair. Mooner

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