So. I was at breakfast this morning with the entire family and we were discussing several articles from today’s newspaper.

OK, stop. I have already laid a foundation of half truths and deceptions. For starters, the breakfast table was set for six actual Johnson—the entire blood family—five place settings for Johnson family pets were organized, and an additional six sets of silver and coffee mugs were laid out for extended family members having no Johnson blood in their veins.

Actually, the Johnson family blood isn’t really Johnson blood. It’s Smith blood turned Johnson. You can buy my book, Full Rising Mooner, by clicking over there ===}}}, if you want the story on that dealio.

Of course, now that I think about it, Sister’s wife Anna the Amazon has no Johnson blood in her veins even though she was married to me before falling in love with my sister. At least I think she actually loved me first and didn’t use me to get to Sister.

I remember how I felt when Anna first told me, she said, “Mooner, Honey—she called me Honey—we need to talk.”

As I recall it, she did all the talking and I did a bunch of gulping and “Huh?’ing” and “Hmm’ing” and, I must admit, boo-fucking-hooing. I didn’t take it well at first as I saw it as a failing on my part, a theory that was reinforced by others.

“If you would have taken that girl to church, Mooner Einstein Johnson, she wouldn’t have turned on you,” was Mother’s initial assessment. “You can blame yourself for turning her into a homo-sex-u-al. You better thank the good lord that he didn’t let you go astray yourself, son. I know I pray every night that you don’t move to California to live in sin with that homo-sex-u-al friend of yours.”

Mother always says it like that, homo-sex-u-al, and usually with a look on her face that says, “I think the cob up my ass just pinched my liver.”

Me, I think every heterosexual spouse or mate of a person who comes out of the closet, subsequent to the relationship, goes through a season of self doubt and reflection. I did blame myself for awhile, but not for long. I’m lucky, I have lived with a gay woman her entire life, my sister, and Sister came out of the womb a card-carrying lesbian.

Sister was born lesbian, a fact. My guess is that most, if not every fucking time, homosexuals are born that way. I do think it’s possible to choose to be gay. I think this is possible because there was a time when I wished to be gay. For awhile I thought it was his gay-ness that makes my buddy Lloyd such a good man. As I’ve told you before, Lloyd is the best man I have ever met, and I was feeling like I wasn’t such a good man this one time, so I thought to myself, I was thinking, “Hey, maybe I’ll be a better man if I’m gay.”

I actually think I could be gay if it wasn’t for the part about having sex with men. I wouldn’t stick my own pecker in my mouth much less yours. Of course, I also have terrible taste in clothes and hair and while I like Judy Garland, Barbara Streisand, Diana Ross, Lizzy Taylor, and Lady Gaga, I don’t adore and worship them.

OK, now that I think this through, I’d make a terrible gay man. I’d dress badly, choose UT football over a Celine Dion concert, and I wouldn’t suck dicks. I’d be ostracized by my peers and called heretical. Sort of like how things are now, except without all the multiple pecker play.

Before I regress from this digression, please allow me to say this. Does anybody really think that a heterosexual man wakes up one day and thinks to himself, “You know what? I think I’d like to suck Bobby’s dick, maybe get him to take me doggy-style, tug my hair, slap my ass and give my balls razor burn and shit.”

Don’t kid yourself, Senator Santorum, you were born with those desires.

Anyway, as I was saying before I interrupted myself and you as well, we had a full table at breakfast, and Gram had the front section of the paper. As Johnson Family matriarch, she is granted first choice with the newspaper and today she chose the front.

“Looka here, Mooner. It sez that them quinny nonna piggy farmers down to Bulova been fightin’ over land with rocks and dynermite.” Gram put the paper down and looked me in the eyes. “Says here they was fightin’ over land a cause tha price a them special piggies done tripled.”

For those of you not skilled at translating my Gram’s fractured English, quinoa farmers in Bolivia have been fighting over some of the limited land suitable for growing the unique grain. Seems it’s one of the trendy “super foods” and prices are straining the fabric of Bolivian quinoa farming society.

My own thoughts were, “Rocks, and dynamite. Rocks… and dynamite.”

I wasn’t fully finished with those thoughts when she said, “Holy fuckin’ shit! Them silly mermaids done been Baptizin’ dead jewelers.”

Gram lowers the paper again, and claimed my eyes with her own. “What tha fuck, Mooner? Tha whole entire world’s done gone off the deep pockets.”

Gram’s right. I think that the Mormons Baptizing dead Jews might just be the sign for that end of days dealie. I’m thinking that I need to tidy up my business before the shit hits the fan. I just don’t know where to start. I need to make a trip to the country’s best burger joints, BBQ houses and purveyors of crème brulee, and that will take a good year of daily efforts.

Visits to all my friends needs to be packaged therein, and visits to places I want to see.

Ugh. The thoughts of it are overwhelming.

But who really gives a shit? Here’s my take on the end of the world. To me, the end of the world is no different than the end of my own life. It’s exactly the same fucking thing, only bigger and slightly more complicated.

I know that I will die at some point in time and I know there’s no way to prevent it. Fine, I can live with that. I’m not going to make myself bonkers and ruin what time I have left living with worries of dying. I’ll do my best to enjoy every fucking minute of conscious breathing I have left and I’m working hard to leave without too many regrets.

Same thing with this earth. We know that every planet is going to suffer some kind of catastrophic calamity of some sort at some time. It might be billions of years from now or, it might be this Christmastime, but good old Mother Earth has numbered days.

You know what? Fuck this. I’m taking SAC Ellen and the pets fishing.

Manana, y’all.

So. It’s Friday and rainy and gloomy here to Austin, Texas, and I love it. We need rain and I need an excuse to stay inside, and I love rain anyway. Ever had sex in the rain?

One of my ex-wives, a woman of robust sexual proclivities who shall go herein unnamed, would get all hot and bothered with just the mention of rain in a weather forecast. We’d be watching the late news on TV and the weather guy would say, “… and there’s a ten-percent chance of light showers Saturday afternoon…” and the next thing I know I’m in the big shower stall with my eyes crossed.

Woman didn’t care about the temperature outside, wind velocities or any other inclemency attached to the rain. If it’s raining, she’s getting wet and laid. OK, wait. She’s getting laid wet. Actually, she used to say, “Just the thought of getting laid in the rain makes me wet,” so, maybe I should have said that, “If it’s raining, she’s getting wet and getting laid wetly.”

There was this one time we were out to the barn when a big Springtime thunderstorm rolled through. The barn had—still has—a full-metal jacket of corrugated roof and sides. She heard the pitty-pats of the first raindrops hit the side of the barn and she was all lathered up. “Come on, Mooner, let’s go the the pasture and screw in the grass.”

This was said with her hot breath on my neck and her hand jammed up and beneath the leg of my loose cotton shorts. I wear loose cotton shorts whenever I can. If I remember correctly, her hand was up the left leg of my shorts, and my initial reaction to those first pitter-pats of rain was a pecker expansion. We’d been married long enough at that moment for me to know how she got with inclement weather. In the time it took for her to squeeze me, me to issue a resultant moan and her to re squeeze, lightening flashed and lit up the dim barn and the thunder clapped and shook the metal covering almost simultaneously.

Now most of you are thinking the lightening would have been a discouragement, but you are wrong. “Oh, my God, Baby, let’s hurry outside,” she stammered with shaky breath. “You know how I love light shows.”

See, I told you. I dropped the pitchfork I was holding and grabbed her by the waist and kissed her hard. In that instant it started to hail. At first it was the small rock salt-sized pellets that I knew would make the pasture sex especially rewarding. But quickly the hail grew in size and was suddenly a waterfall of ice balls from golf-to-softball in size. The metal skin of the barn was like a thousand kettle drums as the hails pelted and hammered away.

“Hurry, Mooner,” she gasped and pulled me to the west wall where the wind was pushing the rain and hail in torrents. She quickly stripped and pulled me against her as she leaned against the metal.

“Holy shit,” she said when both the hail and her passion had passed. “That was better than using two vibrators.” When she said this her voice had a quiver like when you put a vibrator on your Adam’s apple. Of course she doesn’t have an Adam’s apple, I was using metaphor, but she did have a splendid neck. Creamy skin, and her big arteries would bulge and pulse when she was in heat.

Anyway, Rick “The Pompous Prick” Perry spoke to the right-wing Republicans gathering yesterday and promised to fight for the Tenth Amendment until his last breath. The Tenth is, of course, the “State’s Rights” amendment on the Bill of Rights, and what these silly fuckballs in state legislatures use to take away our rights in the name of family values.

His “last breath” comment caused me to cogitate a moment, and I ordered a sleeve of dry cleaners bags. I had the bags printed to say, “Executive Privilege Dry Cleaners- these bags are safe to put over your head.”

I’ll try to get someone to place them in Ricky’s closet.

Sister and Anna were over to dinner last night and we were discussing Lloyd’s coming visit and then the subject of gay rights. We all think that maybe it’s a good thing how the Christian right is pushing so hard and cruelly against gays and that the vitriolic nature of their attacks is awakening quiet America’s eyes. We’re starting to think that things are turning to the good on that front.

OK, stop. Somehow I have managed to kill the messenger and forgot to tell you what I intended to in this posting. If you check the prior posting to this one, you’ll notice that I managed to hang a photo of Yoda eating dandelions but not one of his acrobatic crappings. The weather is dismal and I can’t risk ruining the camera. So that pic will have to wait for the rain to pass—an event the weatherman says is likely a week away.

But, again, that’s good news since we need rain.

But here’s the deal. Brandini wrote about how smart it is to have/do guest bloggies at other guys’ webbers. I think that’s a great idea. Therefore, and herein requested, I am offering an open forum for anyfuckingbody to be a guest blogger. I’ll not censure, save for legalities and maybe dumb meannesses, and I’ll print every one of them.

That way we can cross-pollinate our readerships and gain critical masses. Come on, guys, step up to the plate! Maybe it’ll be you manana.

So. I’m trying to make an evaluation of my success as a writer and I’m completely lost with it. I was Googlelating around for some sort of criteria that would help me compare my results, and it was nothing if not frustrating.

In the publishing world, the standard for success is the New York Times Bestseller List. Getting on that list is the benchmark for authorating achievements. Ever the practical and self-honest man that I am, I know I’m not ever going to see my name on that particular list.

Unless, of course, they start counting the thousands of books I’ve given away as “sales”[.]

But I don’t think that’s how they mean you get sales. Maybe I could charge a penny for each book rather than give them away. Then again, that might not work either. I can’t tell you how many people have told me I couldn’t pay them to read my trashy book.

Then there would be success as a writer that comes from helping people. Like if I invented a cure for dumbass and I wrote a book for proctologists. There aren’t enough total asshole specialists to buy that book and put it on the bestseller list if all of them paid full price. But you could say the book was successful if some docs read it and saved lives resultantly.

My book won’t cure anything but insomnia so the helpful method of success doesn’t apply here. Which reminds me. I was talking with a guy on the phone about doing some roofing work out to the compost plant and he got all up in my ass about what I said about Jerry Jones a few days ago. “You got no right talking about Jer-Jones like that. He’s a true Texan and I think he looks just fine.”

Now me, I appreciate a man’s dedication to his football team in the face of a full-frontal attack, but I always make sure of my facts before shooting off my mouth. I make way aplenty fool of myself when I know about what I’m saying. I don’t need to be foolish on purpose. I responded to him, I said, “Well first thing, Roscoe, your boy was born in California—somewhere near to Los Angeles if my memory is clear—and he was raised up in Arkansas. That part was near Little Rock, again assuming my memory is un-muddled. He’s not a Texan by birth or raising.”

I gave that a few beats to sink in. “Then he went to the U of Hoggies and played football against my Texas Longhorns and for Coach Broyles, on a team that had many players and assistant coaches who have gone on to become outstanding head coaches. Those guys would include our very own Jimmy Johnson, Johnny Majors of Vol fame, Batty Barry Switzer, Ken Hatfield and Hayden Fry.”

Again I gave him a minute to digest before I continued with, “Your boy Jerry likely got his idiotic desire to be a head coach from his jealousy at having so many of those other guys become successful coaches. Since he was born with a silver shoe up his ass, he likely thinks anything he wants he can have. I’m not saying he hasn’t taken what his daddy gave him and done well with it in the business world, I’m just saying it wouldn’t be his concussions keeping him out of the White House.”

This got me a, “You’re a real asshole, Mooner Johnson. You need to take back what you said about his titties twitchin’ when he talks.”

“Well, Roscoe, I didn’t say that, I said his nipples twitch when he smiles, and I meant it. Be glad I didn’t tell you what his plastic surgeon asked him in the middle of the operation,” two, three, four.

“OK, smart guy, what did his plastic surgeon ask him in the middle of the operation?” Some people can’t feel the prick of the hook through the meat of the bait.

“Now Roscoe, you understand that they put you all the way out for facial surgeries, so they had to wake old Jer-Jones up to ask the question. Once he was awake enough that the doc felt he could get an intelligent answer, he said to Jerry, he asked, ‘Mr. Jones, after pulling your skin tight enough to get all the wrinkles out of your face, your belly button is in the middle of your chin. I can either cut it off and graft it onto the end of you pecker—we call that foreskin retatchment—or I can just leave it as a big dimple.’”

Two, three and four, “Me, and here I’m just guessing when I say that since old Jerry’s not sporting a big chin cleft, he’s got himself a nice, soft new pecker hood.”

Then my silly brain started fritzing around and I thought, out loud, “Hey, that’s funny. A new pecker head hood for the head pecker wood.”

It took a couple more calls to find a roofer and I got wondering about pecker hoods. I was violated with a hood removal as a newborn like most the rest of us white boys back in the day. I have always wondered what it would be like to have one. Daddy and granddaddy both had them and bitched about their care. “Gotta keep it real clean, Mooner, or your Gram won’t sleep in the same bed with me.”

I loved my grandfather with deep respect. He was the first Johnson in my direct lineage with the dreaded ADHD and ADD. Granddaddy died in a farming accident with a 1940′s era combine. The story is in the stupid fucking book I’m discussing, said book available over there ====}}}} on the Bloggie Roller. Those of you with knowledge of a 1940′s combine know how terrible his death must have been.

Which reminds me to tell you about the dogs. I had to cut back a touch on their food to keep them healthy, so they have started supplementing their diets with roughage from everywhere. These two fucking dogs are now eating anything that resembles salad components.

It first started when Yoda was outside taking a dump. He gets all hunched up like a dog except to the extreme when he shits. Remember that yoga stance where you put your hands on the ground and then rest your knees on your elbows and lift your feet off the ground? That’s what he does and sometimes he’s got that look on his face like that little Russian gymnast, Olga Carmichael or whateverthefuck her name was. You know that time when she’s all balled-up on the balance beam in some silly position and she’s shaking and sweating and grimacing?

That’s our Yoda when he does the number two, and it was Olga Korbut. The Russian girl was Olga Korbut, and Yoda was dumping a few weeks ago and his lost his balance and fell nose first into a pile of dandelions. The weather has been so mild that the dandies have come out early, and often. I had pulled a dozen or so and piled them up to collect later for composting.

Yoda’s nose was buried in the pile of weeds while he finished his business and he came out of the pile with a big leaf stuck to his nose. He sniffed it where it lay, liked what he smelled and decided to take a nibble.

I haven’t had to weed the patch of grass where the dogs shit since. Once they ate all the dandelions, they went on to eat the winter grass, small milk thistles—the babies before the sticker gets hard—and this little vine that grows close to the ground.

“How in the hell am I supposed to control your diets if the two of you eat every weed that grows on 3,000 acres?” I thought this a thoughtful question of the Squirt and Yoda.

“Fuck you, asshole,” Squirt responded. “Who the hell you think you are, anyway?”

“I’m the asshole who can stuff your fat ass in a gunny sack and take you for a swim. That’s who the fuck I am, you ungrateful little bitch.”

Squirt gave me a smile and turned to go eat some more weeds.

Which reminds me. I just got an email from my buddy Lloyd. Lloyd is the man I most admire in the entire world. He and his husband are coming to Austin in March and I’m way too fucking excited. I need a Carta Blanca beer. Manana, y’all.