So. The dogs and I have been landscaping and garden planting, and I must admit that I find myself both impressed with our results, and, likewise, satisfied with the efforts. The reasons I’m impressed with the results are obvious—good design, personal preferences considered all around, and strong team participation.

“No, no, shithead, get ones that already have tomatoes on them. I’m hungry.”

That was the Squirt when we were over to the Aqua Fria Nursery yesterday choosing garden plants. If you know anything about us Johnsons, you know that we are absolute freaks for homegrown foodstuffs and totally bonkers for tomatoes raised by our own hands. Squirtie and I were in the big greenhouse where the nursery keeps the dozens-of-varieties of heirloom and regionally-adaptive tomato plants that thrive here. We were arguing about “is it smarter to get healthy, barren plants or weak ones already fruited”, and I was pushing for strong starter plants. The diminutive brown-furred smart mouth wanted weak plants pre-adorned with snacks for the ride home.

“Sir,” a not all that friendly voice said from the open entry in the plastic-covered greenhouse. “There, you, sir, the big man in the dirty shirt with the noisy dog. Do you also own a white dog that looks like that Star Wars gremlin?”

“Why that would be my Yoda, sir. Isn’t he a cute little shitbird?”

“That ugly mutt of yours just ate our last three flats of Thai basil, five one-gallon spinach, and is now started on the Greek oregano. Will you be paying cash or credit, sir?”

When we finally had a tabulation on the damages, I told the Squirt as we were checking out, I said, “Well, at least his farts won’t smell so bad. Asshole’s been eating the stink weed growing behind the shed and he’s had the gag gas.”

My puppy giggled and said, “Yea, he’ll be farting Pad Thai and spanikopita gas. If he gets a-hold of the Italian parsley, he’ll be an international fart festival.”

Reality is often different than imaginations. I was awakened last night by bedsheets billowed with rancid dog gas and a pile of plant stems that had been puked half on the edge of my bedside rug and the other half on my socks. Which reminds me.

Am I the only one who has become more tolerant of stuff as I age? Ten years ago, just the thought of a mouthful of short dog hairs would stir my gag reflex. Now, I simply think of it as roughage. I don’t gak up fur balls like a cat, but I do often crap small patches of brown and white fabric. I clean up animal turds as a routine and don’t even bitch so long as it’s solid.

OK, stop. As I sit here bragging on my maturities, I realize that my growing tolerances are with animals and I’m becoming less tolerant of asswipe humans. The number of humans I want to thump on the nose grows daily. If I’m ever to meet that right-wing goat fucker, Texas Senator Ted “Cruzin’ for a Bruzin’” Crudz, I’mma wind-up a nose thwack like never before delivered.

Anyway, I was sitting here early this morning with my first cuppa Joe. It was a quite strong and bitter brew, my favorite. As I gazed at the small, just-planted vegetable garden through the open window of my office, the dogs were out back standing—tails wagging—with their snouts jammed through the small crack between the back gates here to La Casita Johnson de Santa Fe. Squirt left the gates and walked over to push her head through the rabbit fencing I placed around the tomato plants. She grabbed what appeared to be the largest Cherokee Purple that was a week from harvest and trotted back to the fence. She pushed the dark purple orb through the crack, wagged her tail and ran toward the house.

I watched as the goat dog started grazing in the dill and mint section and heard tiny puppy toe nails ticking on the wood floors. The Squirt skidded the corner from the hallway into the office, jumped into my lap, planted front paws on my chest, jammed her face into mine and said to me, she said, “Shit, shower and shave, asshole, and put on your tights and that new Humane Society tee shirt you got from the animal shelter last weekend. We’re going to go yoga.”

“Fuck yoga, little lady, we’re cleaning this house today. We’ve got company coming the next three weekends, including Mother.”

Squirt jumped off my lap and headed from the room. As she left, she flipped over her shoulder, she said to me, “Fine with me, shithead. But just so you know, Rooster the Dalmatian knows a Chow dog from Second Street who knows Ali McGraw’s dog, and Khan—the Chow dog—says that Ali does yoga most days at the place up the street.”

That was six hours, one shit-shower-and-shave, and four hour-long yoga classes ago, and who would name a Dalmatian “Roster”? I’m cramped from ears-to-knee caps and I can’t feel my pecker. Balls are swollen from the natural squishing that happens with some of those stupid yoga positions, but that’s not a happy ball swelling. Happy ball swellings occur differently, more naturally.

Anyway, I couldn’t last long enough to see if Ms. McGraw made it to an afternoon yoga class today and now I’m too sore to clean house. And that reminds me of that tantra yoga shit—you know, that yoga wherein you’re supposed to have six-hour sex.

I now believe it’s possible, and that reminds me to tell you something that I have already forgotten. Fucking ADD. I’m having a cold Carta Blanca while I decide about dinner. Manana, y’all.

So. I’m wondering what it is about America and Americans that makes us think we’re so fucking great. I know the words we use to tout ourselves, I’m just having trouble translating the conceptualizations contained in all this “America is wonderful” rhetoric into actual actualizations. After extensive research and memory searching, it appears to me that the most common “sell America in as few words as possible” sales pitch would be contained in the old tried and true axiom stating that America is:

“The Home of The Free, Land of The Brave.”

Really? Home of the Free? Free what? Free to love who we want? Free to make decisions about our own bodies? Free from economic suppression? Free from the autocratic edicts of another’s religion?

Land of the Brave? Really? Like brave enough to vote for simple, smart gun legislation?

Bullshit. It’s like the same thing as I see on the sides of police cars. “Protect and Serve,” might be written on the sides of more American automobiles than the word “Police”. Ask those three young women up to Cleveland in the O-hi-o about the quality of protective services rendered in their favors.

Which reminds me. Whatthefuck is up with the grammatical usages of the words “who”, and “whom”? Why does it even matter? Is there a single English-speaking non-moron on the face of the Earth who wouldn’t know what you meant if the two words were merged into one?

OK, maybe that should have been, “…non-moron whom wouldn’t know…” See what I mean? It’s the same thing with I/me. And answer me this. Why, in-the-dog-shit, do we capitalize I and not me? Hell, if I’m so important to deserve capitalization why aren’t me and mine? For Christsakes, I am me. And what about you and her and them? Why does my shit stink and I don’t?

Talk about your capitalization punishment. I say we string up all the grammar Nazis by their nipples until they fix some of this shit. I think it’s time for a little Grammatical Anarchy!

We need a slogan and a name for our cause. How about “Free Americans for Brave Grammatical Change!” as our name? Oh-oh, and our slogan could be, “It ain’t about whom, it all about Who?”

And speaking about stringing-up by one’s nipples, there was this one time when one of my ex-wives visited her buddy up to New York City. I’ll not tell you which of the ten exes I’m referencing herein, except to say that she’s the one with aureoles the size of porcelain saucers and nipples you can hang your old letter jacket from while role playing “Cheerleader meets football hero”.

Anyway, this lovely and buxom woman had this buddy living to the big city, and on this one trip to visit, the friend took my wife to one of those bondage clubs. Wife comes home with an extra suitcase of what she called, “This is a case full of sexual delights, Mooner my main man.”

After a short discussion as to why I was her “main man” and not simply her man, and, likewise, numerous slapping of my hands when I attempted to open the suitcase, I was instructed to, “Go take a shower and shave yourself from your belly button to your knees. Then put on the pink Speedo I bought you and meet me in the basement.”

And don’t even start with me about the pink Speedo. I never went swimming in it and you, likely, have never seen nipples the size of Little Smoky Sausages get hard enough to cut glass. So back off on the pink Speedo.

Me, I should have had the presence of mind to carefully examine my lovely spouse’s words. See, the “shave yourself from B-button to knees” part was a key phrase. Shaving my hairy ass alone is a two-hour process involving the dulling of three new razors, so the half-day it took me to get skinned and make it to the basement in a pink thong gave the wifey-poo plenty of time to adorn said basement with her newly-purchased sexual delights.

I slid the pink swimsuit up my legs, settled it into place, and took a look in the mirror. “Holy shit!” I said to the surprised look on my own face, “Half of my man package was fur!” I then spent a few minutes fluffing myself and then went to the basement, which was locked.

Me, I’m thinking that my finding the key and doing a “breaking-and-entering” scenario was part of the plans. After finding the key I decided to sneak in like a cat burglar. So I craftily opened the door and crept (creeped?) down the stairs where I fully expected to find a pair of giant, oiled breasts awaiting me.

“What about that? Is that one there fer you twatter er yer titties?” I heard from behind the big stone column that supports the floor above. It was my Gram’s voice, and “that one there” was a pair of car battery clamps with mink pads, fastened to a fancy bungy cord.

The wife’s voice answered her, “Here, let me show you.”

There was a yelp, and then, “Oh, baby, that’s what I’mma talkin’ ’bout!”

I turned the corner around the stone column and saw a sight that still gives me nightmares. Wife and grandmother—both naked—were standing at my work bench with the opened suitcase atop. I can only describe what I saw by saying, “Think battery boosting competition.”

Remember how the Bedouins used to make water bottles out of dried camel stomaches? Pin jumper cables on a pair of those nomadic water jugs and you have a perfect visage of Gram. Think “instant wood” and you’d gain understanding of the lovely ex-wife.

Have I ever told you that I have the dreaded ADHD and its little brother ADD? I have no fucking idea why I called this meeting other than to say, “Happy Mothers’ Day!” to all you mothers, and that reminds me that my very own mother is coming to visit in less than a month.

Ugh. Please send drugs. Manana, y’all.

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.

So. It’s a cut crystal sky awakening in the view from my office window, and the dogs are back asleep in the bed. I’m sitting here with soggy eyes and nose from the juniper pollen still filling the enchanted air of my new homeland, and I just realized that God paid me another visit last night.

“Why, Mooner,” you might ask, “does sitting at your desk with three pounds of crusty snot plastered on your face remind you that God made a house call to La Casita Johnson de Santa Fe?”

“Because, dear reader, I’m an ADHD-riddled fuckball who has absolutely zero controls on his thoughts.”

OK, stop. Do I lack controls ON my thoughts, or, rather, would it be more grammatically correct to lack controls OF my thoughts? I do know that I would ponder ON my thoughts should I be in a pondering mood—which I am—yet, and alas, I now realize that the aforementioned ADHD has taken control of the steering wheels of my brain and has every intention of driving us into a ditch.

To emphasize this notion, I got a call from Dr. Sam I. Am-Johnson Thursday afternoon for a scheduled psycho therapy session. While the original intent of that particular session was to, and here I’ll quote Sammy with some precision when she said to me, she said, “I’ve been meaning to speak with you about your blog posts, Mooner. I think it’s good for your audience that you are not posting so many of your whatever it is that you post on your blog. While it might be good for you to write your loony thoughts often, I think you should consider the fact that your kind of crazy might be contagious.”

Huh? Did my lovely first ex-wife, babies’ momma and psycho therapist just tell me that I’m making other folks nutso? “Are you saying that my writings make other people crazy? Really?”

“OK, maybe I didn’t say that just right when I said that your sort of lunacy MIGHT be contagious.”

I blew my snotty nose and wiped the hardened pellets of tears from my eyes while I thought of an appropriate response. After thirty seconds of careful debate I responded into the phone. “Fuck you.”

The good doctor did that “Tsk-tsk” noise that has always pissed me off. I added, “You sound just like Laticia Browningwell—the other bitch to ruin my life in a significant way.”

Mrs. Browningwell is the wife of my family’s Baptist preacher and was my school teacher in three different grades. And that thought re-reminds me that God stopped by for a chat last night.

I was maybe a little drunk and was certainly under the influence of my grandmother’s mushroom tincture, and the three of us were sitting out to the portal admiring the sliver of dusty light made by the moon as it dripped its way through the darked sky. The Squirt was in my lap almost purring as I scratched her back just above her tail, and the goat dog was in the far corner of the yard eating his fill of the newly-hatched weedy fodder Spring-sprung from the dusty soil.

“Yoda’s gonna be puking all night long, Squirty girl. I bet he’s eaten five pounds of green weeds,” I mostly mumbled as I scratched the little dog’s back.

“He can’t help it, Mooner, he still has fears of going to bed without any supper,” Squirt informed me. “I guess when you consider that he was caged and beaten and sent to bed hungry as a routine…”

She was referring to the fact that the little white dog spent the first years of his life incarcerated in a puppy mill over to Oklahoma, where they beat and otherwise abused him. Rotten pig fuckers even cut most of his vocal chords to quiet his plaintive pleas. To hear him bark is to want to slit the throats of animal abusers.

OK, maybe slitting their throats is a tad bit harsh. Perhaps a better thought would be to crush their nuts with a ball peen hammer.

Anyway, I had dinner Friday night with two new friends I met through my Realtor. Georgia and Mary Michelle are a lovely pair of ladies who have been in a committed relationship for decades. They are smart and funny and thoughtful people for whom I hold much admiration. To me, any same-sex couple who has stayed together for the last few decades are admirable in so many ways.

As we sat on the portal last night watching the moonlight move through the big Ponderosa pine tree, I heard the rustling and scraping sound of a metal chair moving on flagstone. “Ah, now this is what life is all about.”

I knew the voice. It was Jeffery Holder’s rich basso-profundo from one of those Seven-Up commercials back in the day. I didn’t bother to look His way when God spoke to me, and in response I said to Him, I said, “Hey, Big Guy, how’s it hanging, Sir? Are you in the form of a tall black man or did you come as Ali McGraw again?”

“Too many questions, Mooner my man. And just so you know, Ali McGraw is out of your league.”

I turned to give God a piece of my mind only to discover that He had appeared in the visage of Montana Wildhack from Slaughterhouse Five—my favorite movie of all time. I was somewhat stunned and mildly aroused. “Holy shit, Sir. Are you telling me that I’m in Valerie Perrine’s league?”

God laughed—a huge and hearty sound that vibrated dead needles from the big pine tree. Needles floated like heavy feathers and covered the four of us. “Your little white dog will be OK, son, I’ll see to it. So stop worrying about him. And you need to also leave Yoda’s puppy mill torturers to me as well,” and God laughed again.

“Alright,” I answered. “Is that why you’re here tonight?”

“Nope, I’m here to give you some advice. Ask yourself a question, OK? Ask yourself why it is that whenever you first meet homosexuals you feel obligated to demonstrate your support by telling them every single fucking incident in your entire life where you were supportive of a gay person?”

“Huh?” I responded, “I don’t do that… Do I?”

“Yeppers, you certainly do.” Now God both looked and sounded like my good buddy Lloyd. Lloyd and his husband are two of my most-admired human beings. “Look, Mooner, gay people realize that you understand their plight and support their causes by intuition. But you act silly and try to impress-just like you used to act around black people. Remember?”

Oh, yea, I remembered. Anytime I was in the company of a black person I would conjure up every instance of my support and interaction with black people for my entire life. I even married two black women, but not just because they were black. I married them because I had sex with them and until recently, that would have been my modus operandi. Until recently, I had had sex with ten women and, therefore and to wit, I have ten ex-wives.

“I think you might have something here, Sir. But could you cover your breasts so I can concentrate?”

Valerie Perrine had the most adorable breasts I had ever seen, and many was the night they filled my passions. OK, many the night, morning and afternoon did my Ivory soap and me visit memories of Montana Wildhack in the scene wherein she first lands in Billy Pilgrim’s domed world.

“You think I should call Georgia and Mary Michelle to apologize? I really like them and don’t want to have driven them off.”

“No, shithead, that would make matters worse. Just treat them like any other friends you have and let sexual orientations be their topic of conversation.”

And with that, God gave me a chaste kiss with Valerie Perrine’s lips (or were they Lloyd’s?) and disappeared in a puff of smoke, leaving me to ponder why it is that I’m such an dumbass sometimes. Why is it that I sometimes feel that I have to demonstrate that I’m not an asshole to people who have been oppressed and abused by Society’s assholes?

Is it guilt? Do I feel responsible for all the ignorant and prejudicial old white men of the world just because I’m an old white man?

Is it a desire in me to be accepted? Do I admire people who have stayed stable and true to themselves in the face of extreme prejudice, and feel a need to be accepted by them? Do I want them to like me? Am I an insecure shitbrain? Am I the only one?

Ugh. Is it too early for a Carta Blanca beer? Manana, y’all.

Anyway, I said, “Fuck you, you batty old bitch,” but I said it sweetly in spite of what she had said to me, and I finished the call with, “I love you anyway, Mother.” I rang her number:

Mother: “Who is this?”

Me: “It’s me, Mother, it’s your loving sonny boy making his usual Sunday afternoon call to his mother. How was church?”

Mother: “Sonny who? Sonny Hicks or that other Sonny?”

Me: “Oh, for shitsakes, Mother, look at the Caller ID—it’s me, Mooner.”

Mother: “Well why didn’t you say so in the first place? How come you never call me? And where are you?”

Me: Deep breath, small sigh, “I’m still in Santa Fe—home of the homosexuals—Mother. Where are you?”

Mother: “I’m where I’ve always been—in the special Hell the good Lord placed me for raising such horrible children. I just wish He’d take me now, put me out of my misery. You never call me anymore. Now tell me where you are before I hang up on you!”

Me: Sound of telephone receiver thwacking on skull, low, anguished groan, “I’m still in Santa Fe, Mother. Just as I have been for the last two-hundred thirty-seven times you’ve asked.”

Mother: “If you don’t tell me which Sonny you are I’m hanging up and calling Sheriff Wozniak. How dare you scare an old woman.”

Me: Sounds of me wondering why sweet Jesus won’t take me instead, sound of an idea light bulb going off, “I’m sorry, Mother Johnson, it’s me, Sonny Hicks. How are you doing down there to San Antonio? Do you like your apartment?”

Mother: “Oh, Mr. Hicks, I live in such a fine place. My son loves me so much he’ll only have me living in the best apartment in all of Texas.”

Me: Imagine the sound of question marks and total confusion, “Huh? What the fu… Er, that is to say, you’re son must love you very much. Have you spoken to him lately?”

Mother: “Oh, my yes, he calls me almost every single day. Sometimes we pray together—Mooner is a fine Christian man. His sister is a fine Christian as well.”

Me: Sound of a man sharpening a wooden stake, “That’s nice Mother Johnson. I hear Mooner moved to Santa Fe. Aren’t you afraid of all those homosexuals turning Mooner into one of their kind?”

Mother: “Mooner’s a good boy, Mr. Hicks. Where did you say you are?”

Me: “I’m still in Santa Fe, Mother. How was church?”

Mother: “We studied all about Sodom and Gomorrah, Mooner. Every day I get out of bed and look to see if there’s a story on the news about how you’ve been turned into a stone pillar. You never were smart enough to stay out of trouble, Mooner. You’ll soon be a homo-sex-u-al, and then you’ll see.”

Me: “I think you might be right, Mother. Just today I was driving down the street and I thought to myself, I thought, ‘I sure would like to suck on a big, fat and juicy dick right about now.’ You think that might be a sign?”

Mother: “I’ll pray for you, son. Now put that nice Mr. Hicks back on the line.”

Me: “OK. Love you and talk to you soon. Click.”

I do wish I was a gay man, or at least a bisexual man. If I could stomach the idea of sticking another man’s pecker in my mouth, I’d fucking be gay. No attachments or long term promises of fidelity and all that shit. Then again, it appears that same-sex marriage is going to become a reality, and that will totally spoil the benefits of same-sex sex for me.

Me, I’m wondering if this entire same-sex marriage dealio is going to end up as one of those “Be careful what you wish for” thingies.

Anyway, the second woman in my life who shares familial blood and messed with me by phone was Sister—the aforementioned good Christian woman. Sister is married to my third ex-wife and was excommunicated from the Baptist church about the same time as me—the year, I think, was 1968. Sister has been a lesbian from her first breath and a proud one at that.

Sister seems to feel the same way about sucking on a pecker as do I. And don’t start on my ass about how the fucking Baptists don’t excommunicate their wayward flocksters. Anytime a scolding ends with the words, “…and don’t you ever darken our door again,” you, dear friend, have been excommunicated.

My phone rang:

Me: “Hello, and thanks for calling La Casita Johnson de Santa Fe. How might I direct your rude disturbance into my ever so enchanted life?”

Sister: “It’s me, asshole. Call your mother and do it right now! You haven’t called her in more than two weeks? I can’t believe you, Mooner.”

Me: “Huh? What time is it?”

Sister: “It’s a quarter after three here in Texas. Did you lose your watch?”

Me: Sounds of irritation, “I stopped wearing a watch because everyfuckingthing I own has a clock on it, and, well, that makes it two-fifteen here and I hung up from speaking with Mother approximately twenty-one minutes ago.”

Sister: “Mother says you haven’t called her in weeks. Oh, and before I forget, she told me to tell you that Sonny Hicks called her this afternoon. Wasn’t Sonny Hicks the guy who took a crap in the pocket of Mrs. Browningwell’s raincoat?”

Me: “No, I think that was the other Sonny. How’s Anna? I keep hoping she’ll get tired of you and want to switch Johnsons again. It’s been months since I’ve had me any sexing, and…”

Sister: “Not even funny, fuckbreath. You blew that one and it’s my good fortune you did. I’ll tell her you still love her. Sorry I doubted you.”

Me: “It’s OK, Sis. I love you a bunch. Come see me, OK?”

Why is it that some of my favorite people are gay? Sister and her lovely bride, my buddy Lloyd, and George Tokay. Ellen DeG? I was contemplating that question when my phone rang again.

Me: “Hello, and isn’t it a lovely day at Mooner Johnson’s House of Contemplations. Is it better to have loved and lost or to count your chickens before they hatch?”

Aunt Hilda: “Well, Dearie, you seem to have another perplexing situation on your hands. I’ll go with the chickens. Are you getting enough bulk in your diet.”

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

Aunt Hilda: “High and tight, kiddo, high… And mighty tight! Why haven’t you called your mother, Mooner? She’s calling the entire family and boo-hooing all over the place.”

Me: “Oh, for shitsakes, Aunt Hilda. I just got off the phone with her a half-hour ago.”

Aunt Hilda: “Well, call her again. You know she’s a touch forgetful.”

Me: “OK, alright, I’ll call her again. Bye-bye baby. I love you.”

Aunt Hilda: “Me too. Why don’t you try one of those granola cereals with dates and raisins—move your stools right on along. Say “Hi” to Sonny Hicks for me, and go call your mother!”

I wondered if maybe it would be less stressful for me to move back to Texas. For like maybe ten seconds I wondered. Fuck Texas. I’ve never been happier than since I moved to New Mexico. I was counting my many Enchantedland blessings when my phone rang again.

Me: “Thanks for calling the Fuck Texas Hotline, Mooner speaking. Today’s special is your basic crew neck tee shirt emblazoned with our copyrighted slogan, “Fuck Prick Perry and Walmart Too!!!” Available in white, black or tittie pink, these high thread-count cotton tees are….”

Gram: “I’mma kick yer Texas-bred butt from here ta Waco, shithead. Git offn yer ass an’ call yer crazy fuckin’ mother and do it on the pinto!”

Me: “Didn’t you mean call Mother pronto, Gram?”

Gram: “Oh who gives a shit, Mooner, you ain’t got tha brains of a fuckin’ bean. Now quit yer talk-backin’ an’ call yer mother afore I come down there to New Mexico an’ kick yer skinny ass!”

Me: “God, it’s good to talk to you too, Gram. Are you getting any?”

Gram: “Hell to tha yessiree-Bobby! Me an’ tha P-cubed got a couple Aggie boys tied up over ta her place right as we’re a speakin’. Now call yer Mother.”

P-cubed is Penelope Paxon-Parades, Gram’s best friend and the woman whom Gram calls her “Poontanger huntin’ buddy”. Those two old broads are a horny young boy’s worst nightmares, and I got to thinking that I need to try to be more patient and caring for my mother. Dementia is a terrible affliction and I don’t need to inflict my wounded child bullshit on the woman who bore and wounded me.

Which reminds me. Why is it necessary for every single consumer product to now have a clock in it? What makes Time so fucking important that we now need it available in every instant of our lives?

Anyway, with my fancy new ball point pen with a flashlight, compass and clock in its top, I was writing one of those “Ben Franklin” evaluations—you know, wherein you draw a line down the center of a page of paper and write a plus sign on one side and a minus on the other? You put the goods on the plus side and the bads on the minus side. An old fashioned decision-making device that I have used all my life.

I was a good fifteen minutes into my decision-making process, one wherein I had sixty-seven good things about living in Santa Fe, and but one bad one—my new-found allergies—when my phone rang once again. Ring:

Me: “Hello, Mother, and thanks for calling Mooner Johnson’s House of Ben Franklin Decisions and Predictions. Pick your poison and talk to one of our experts. How might we assist you today?”

Mother: “Learned your lesson?”

Me: “Huh?”

Mother: “I did not mumble. Don’t ever mess with me again, Butcher Einstein Johnson. I am your MOTHER!!! Click.”

Me, into the dead phone line: “Sonofabitch. Mother, you’ve been playing me.”

Son… of… a …. Bitch! I guess my mother is going to screw with me until one of us dies. On a brighter note, Cynthianne sent me the linkster for the petition I couldn’t find the other day. Please take the time to sign it.

http://signon.org/sign/sign-me-up-as-a-citizen?source=c.url&r_by=2435700

Manana, y’all.

So. As a well-traveled man of reasonable reasoning, I have long known there must exist a yang for the incredible enchantments that are New Mexico’s yin. There is no “perfect” anyfuckingthing, and each of the Universe’s ups has a down. My New Mexican yang was discovered Wednesday morning.

I was standing rooftop on a two-story house in Eldorado, New Mexico. Not an actual Zip Code, and not an actual town, Eldorado is a sprawling sketchbook of high desert beauty that is dotted with homes built in a somewhat thoughtful coexistence with Mother Nature’s beauty. The main roads meander for miles, homes are situated on quite large lots, and un-buildable common areas occupy large swatches many times more land area than does the infrastructure and habitats.

Whenever I reach a perch here to New Mexico, I stop and take a moment to look around. With over seventy different, specifically-named mountain ranges, our state has more varying vistas than the cut glass chards in a kaleidoscope—a complex word that I just spelled correctly with my first effort. When I wrote my stupid fucking book, I had trouble rememberating the word, much less its spelling.

Which reminds me. I’ve had but one applicant for my open position for an Editing Assistant. And that one applicant—the lovely and charming former editor, Cynthianne from the ABQ—has agreed to take the position just so long as she isn’t required to perform her job. To misquote myself when I posted the ad for this new position, basically what I said was, “I’m looking for a nice lady to rub my feet while I self-edit this shit before publication.”

What with the ADHD and ADD and all, my original drafts are daffy documents full of drivel. And misspellings and tense changes and wait. See right there? See where I should have said, “Changes of tense?” That sort of shitty grammatical crap litters my verbal landscape like so much fresh dog shit on the little rug everyone has beside their bed. You know, that little rug set perfectly so you can place your tootsies in comfort as you sit on the side of the bed—rubbing your eyes upon first awakenment from deep slumber—to contemplate your first conscious acts of a new day.

Fucking dogs. They wanted to take a long walk yesterday and I didn’t. They felt like cruising the walking trail that runs alongside the Rail Runner tracks, and me… I felt like I was getting water-boarded by my ownself.

“Quit sniffling like a baby, shithead, and take us for a walk,” The Squirt told me after several hours of bargaining. She and the goat dog had offered me everything from their promises to behave to threats of making my life miserable in efforts to barter a walk.

“I’d love to, little Missy, but I just can’t risk going outside right now,” I told her. “And that’s that.”

“Alright, fuckhead, you’ve been warned. On a brighter note, is it still whole fish Friday?”

Once a week I buy a whole fish from Whole Foods, cook it in an interesting way, and then place the head, carcass and whatever else remains after the dogs and I dine, out back for the fucking cat. Honor—said fucking cat—returns from wherever it is she habitates on those days not whole fish Fridays to visit and dine with the family. She purrs and rubs Spring sheddings from her long coat all over the fucking place, pukes fur balls of bones and feathers woven with the hair she’s swallowed hair into little sausage links, eats her fill from the fish offering, and then disappears.

Early this morning, I awoke with a head full of congestion and reached for a handful of Kleenex with which to blow my nose. I got my head cleared just enough to take an actual full breath through my nostrils, and took said full breath.

“Holy shit! It smells like rotten fish in here.” The stench of old fish and camel ass was strong enough to burn my half-cleared nostrils.

I turned and put my feet on that small, aforementioned carpet carefully-placed by most of us at our bedside, and squished both feet into piles of dog crap.

OK, stop. My ADHD has dislodged the train and headed us off into the wilderness. What I was saying is that I was on this roof out to Eldorado Wednesday morning. It was cool, crisp and windless as I surveyed the views of the Sange de Christo mountains and the golden hues of the rolling landscape between them and my house roof perch.

“The golden hues are beautiful, Jerry,” I told the homeowner upon whose roof I perched.

“I call it the Beauty and the Beast, Mooner. That gold you see is the Spring pollination of the Mountain Juniper. Some people are allergic to it,” Jerry told me.

We surveyed his roof for a good half-hour and stopped to look at the mountains a last time before taking the ladder down. “Look over there, Mooner. See where the wind is coming over the mountains and stirring the juniper trees?”

It took me a couple seconds to see what he saw. When I caught the sight, I could see the wind starting and puffs of golden smoke bursting from the trees. As the wind thickened and moved downhill towards us, the air quickly filled as if by a dust storm. It was actually quite interesting to see the sky grow golden as the wind pushed—harder now—towards us. The first wind hit my face as I held the ladder for Jerry, and by the time I said “Goodbye” and got to my truck, its white finish was already covered with gold dust.

It wasn’t until ten minutes later as I reentered the Santa Fe City limits that I first sneezed. Ten minutes after that that my eyes itched enough to want them scratched out. And within an hour of first exposure to juniper pollen, I became a test dummy for self water-boarding.

“We’re going to rename you Snot Bucket, asshole,” were Squirt’s words to me last night. “You’re hacking and spitting and blowing constantly.”

Anyway, I’m miserable in a major way and maybe the pollen will go away soon. Which brings me to this instant—the one wherein I’m first drafting today’s missive. I just flipped the page of my wall calendar to take a peek at April, and was greeted by a photo of one of Salvador Dali’s’ melting, exploding clocks. It’s a photo of the same Dali’ exploding clock I have tattooed on my left arm. The calendar has a different Dali’ painting on each month, and this painting was inked on my arm when I first learned that my father was dying from cancer.

Now, I can’t tell if the tears spilling from my eyes and the snot bubbles billowing from my nose are from the allergy to juniper pollen or my allergies to the loss of Daddy. But as my Gram always says, “Oh, who gives a shit, Mooner. Yer a fuckin’ mess. Now go put a bag on yer head an’ walk them two dogs a yers. Maybe you’ll run inta that alligater crawfish lady an’ git ya some poontanger.”

Huh? Alligator crawfish lady? “Oh, you mean Allie McGraw, don’t you, Gram?

“Lik’ I told ya, Mooner, I don’t really give a shit who ya choose so long as ya git yersef laid.”

After all these years my father’s death still leaves a huge hole in me. I loved him when he was here and realize that I took him for granted. The tattoo was a manifestation of my commitment to not fall victim to the slippery explosions of Time’s realities melting away. I think S. Dali’ was fantastically brilliant, and his insights into Time sublime. Take a minute to find some of his clock paintings and linger with them… See if you agree.

Me, I’m putting a wet gunny sack over my head and taking a walk with the dogs. Maybe Allie McGraw will be out with her puppy charge, and maybe the wet gunny sack fabric can filter enough pollen to prevent my death.

Manana, y’all.

So. I was driving I-25 between Albuquerque and Santa Fe on my way home last night and a thought hit me. Ed Schultz was on the radio and he was discussing the asshole Republican from Ohio, Senator Portman, who recently found out that his son is homosexual. This man, upon learning from his own child that the son was “born homosexual” and didn’t choose “the life” and that this young man has “always been” homosexual, has gone from sponsoring the Defense of Marriage Act to supporting the freedom to marry whoever you choose.

Whomever you choose?

This man’s son having had this particular conversation with his parents is hardly remarkable in today’s World. I’ll bet this very instant there are thousands of young people girding their loins to have the same talk with their parents—sweating and fretting and frittering brain cells away in the angst all children experience when we worry that we will disappoint our families in some major way.

Nothing remarkable about these closet cleanings happening across the globe with an increased regularity. Me, I find this heartening in every imaginable way. Our world becomes more enlightened every day. If only so many of us wouldn’t close our eyes to the light that makes us uncomfortable or those rays of truth that challenge our dogma.

But what is remarkable about this particular closet evacuation is that this Republican congressman from Ohio has been a staunch opponent of same sex marriage his entire career. Every chance to attack the issue, this shithead managed to find face time to condemn gays from having this most basic human rights. He fucking sponsored the Defense of Marriage Act!

Until it hit home. His home. Now, he’s “rethinking the issue”.

Ed Schultz brought up the issue that these right-wing Christian fuckballs are against each and every human right and social issue until it hits them there square to their house. Then, they decide they need to “rethink” the issue. They choose to be absolutely against something because of their “core beliefs” until it helps them to rethink the issue.

This made me think about “Someone Shrunk My Teddy” Cruz—the unimaginably dense US Senator from Texas. This boy’s momma dried his undies in a way-too fucking hot dryer when he was a kid and pinched his brains up tight against his asshole. Cruz talked-down to Senator Feinstein on the Constitution and Bill of Rights like she was a first grader. Using the stupid logic and lies so often employed by people with no facts at their disposal, “All-shrunked-up” Teddy chose to defend, with absolution, certain sections of our Nation’s Charter while pretending other sections and the grammatical modifiers don’t exist. He, in effect, rewrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights to say what he wished they said.

And that made me think of the arch conservative Christians—the ones who choose to believe that the Bible is the literal words of God, except for when they don’t.

So. Like I said, I was driving between the ABQ and Santa Fe. I was at that spot whereat you crest this one hill and suddenly see the valley where Santa Fe starts its meandering that ends in the Sangre de Christo Mountains. Each time I see this sight I almost cry with its beauty. Last night as it came into my view, I had an “Ah-Ha!” moment.

“Sonofabitch!”

I yelled it and slammed my hand on the thick, padded steering wheel of my work truck. “Son, of a fucking, bitch! Now I get it.”

What I got was the answer to a question that has pestered me for decades. The question? “How can you easily identify an asshole?”

The answer? “When they practice Selective Absolutism.”

Anytime a person has absolute convictions to a small part of a policy or issue or doctrine yet denies validity of other parts—that, dear friends—is the asshole marker. Like the Christian shithead who will condemn homosexuality because he believes that the Bible is the literal word of God. If the words in the Bible are God’s literal words, then why aren’t these same charismatic Christians killing all their current Prophets?

In Deuteronomy 18:20-22, God said, “…A false Prophet is one whose words don’t come true, and they must be put to death…” Then in Ezekiel 14:9, God tells us that, “…A Prophet who is deceived is deceived by God and, again, must be put to death…”

Therefore, and ipso-fucking facto, anytime Pat Robertson made a boo-boo in his predictions… He was to have been sacrificed in the name of God for his sins. The actual act of making a prediction that doesn’t come true is God taking action against the impure—some shithead who uses God’s name under false pretenses.

And Selective Absolutism doesn’t apply just to right-wing conservatives. The same logic can be used with liberals as well. Like Jessee “The Crazy Made Me Do It” Jackson, Jr. Jessee—dude—when you stake a claim to defend the downtrodden and then steal their money… You are an asshole. You’re a liberal asshole, but an asshole none-the-less.

Holy shit but does this ever make life easier for me. I spend so much time in my attempts to specifically distinguish precisely what it is that makes a person an asshole, that it wears on me. Now it’s easy. Now I have more time to pursue Allie McGraw. Now I’m taking the puppies on a walk over to the railroad tracks walking path for a chance encounter with Mz. Love Story.

Manana, y’all.

So. Black came billowing from the Pope Alert Smokestack rather than white yesterday, marking a day of freedom for the world’s Catholics. Me—if I were Catholic—would rejoice. If I were Catholic I’d be glad that my chosen religion had managed to survive a full day without one of the string of God’s second-hand men. For those of you wondering why I didn’t say “God’s right-hand men”, to me, there is nothing right about the hierarchy of the Holy Roman Catholic Church.

OK, please allow me to stop right here because if I were Catholic I’d have slit my own throat years ago and none of this would matter. That said, would somebody please answer me this question. Where in the Bible did Jesus say that He wished to be honored and worshiped in giant fucking cathedrals? Wasn’t Jesus the guy (Guy?) who told the money-grubbing currency exchangers to get the fuck off sacred religious soil? Didn’t our boy (Boy?) Jesus encourage us to gather and hunt for our salvations in small groups rather than in mega churches?

In all of those childhood Vacation Bible Schools I attended as a kid, did I miss the part where Jesus said, “OK, boys, here’s what you do to honor My spirit (Spirit?). Find the fussiest old prune-faced male pedophiles among you and dress them up in silly red gowns. Have those assholes elect a Queen from among themselves to serve as front man, and let me reinforce that I said men. Oh, and how about we have all these shitheads wear really ornate headgear. You know how I love the headgear. Once you’ve got yourself a Queen, figure the best way to raise cash in My name. I’m OK with you raping and murdering and pillaging and spreading disease and poverty, just so long as you do it in my name. Oh-oh-oh… Do it this a way. Be all humble and shit and mimic forming a cross over your heart, and say, ‘In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.’ And somebody will need to figure out just what the Holy Spirit is. In a few thousand years there will be this guy who has real trouble with that one.”?

And I do. That entire Holy Spirit shit has perplexed me from the beginning of my religious indoctrinations. I get the concept of God just fine. Anytime we aren’t smart enough to figure something out as a species, we can use God as the originator (Originator?). Anytime something good happens we can thank God. And anytime something goes terribly wrong we can blame God.

But wait once more, as we’ve just hit upon another instance whereupon I don’t get the Christian shit. If I’m to place all my faith in God, and He fucks me over… I’m finding fault. If the big boy (Big Boy?) wants me to credit Him with every little thing that I do or that goes right in my entire pitiful life—if He is so needy and insecure as to require credit for making every good thing happen—the the Big He needs to suck it to and to take some fucking responsibility.

Be a man (Man?), God. Teach us how to bear responsibility for our own shit with Your example. I think this little screw up of yours is where the entire religion-as-a-life-format has gone so terribly wrong. As long as we can use You for justification, we’ll misuse Your name (Name?).

Which reminds me that I’m not at all pleased with the capitalization rules for God’s grammar shit. We either need to capitalize all references to God and His stuff, or none of it. Like that last word in the previous paragraph wherein I questioned the capitalization of God’s Name (name?).”

Anyway, I was awakened by the dogs in their obvious confusion as to the recent time change—another of Mankind’s misconceptions as to how to better live life. Just like with that “Holy Spirit” bullshit, I’ve been waiting fifty years for someone to tell me just one logical reason to ruin my life twice every year by rearranging the time. I’ve got one dog springing forward for an early breakfast and a second shitting in my shoes because she doesn’t like my explanations as to “Why it’s not breakfast time” any better than I like my explanations.

“Makes no fucking sense, Mooner,” the Squirt told me at the new 4:00 am MDST. “Now get your ass up and feed me before I take a dump in your new shoes.”

So I’m up and bothering you guys. Manana, y’all.

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.

So. It all started about a month ago. This unlikely chain of events that has created a wonderful mass of conflicting emotions never before experienced by me. It started, as many of my New Mexico unlikely chains of events do, with a conversation with the Squirt.

“Looka here, asshole,” the adorable bundle of brown fur and unfettered opinions told me this one Wednesday afternoon. She and the goat dog were playing in the back yard here to La Casita Johnson de Santa Fe, and I was sitting on the red stone wall—drinking Carta Blanca beer and sucking on a doobie fat as a frankfurter—while commenting on the state of my love life.

Squirt had walked over to where I sat, jumped into my lap and stuck her nose in my face. “Listen to me, shithead. You need to find something to occupy your time before Yoda and I take out a contract on you. You’re driving us batshit crazy with your moping around, and Honor the cat knows a guy who knows a guy.”

Huh? Was she telling me they were tired of all my parenting and animal husbandry? “What the fuck are you talking about, little lady? I rededicated my life to being a better parent to all my pets, and since Rush Limbaugh and Rick Perry are stuck in Austin and the fucking cat only visits on whole fish dinner days, you two puppies are the beneficiaries of all my love and affection.”

“You’re loving us to death, Bwana Mooner. Find something to do away from the house or I swear, we’ll have you snuffed out. We’ve saved all our allowances and we can cover the five-grand price tag.”

Maybe it was a bad idea to raise their allowances. Which brings up a point. How much allowance should parents give their kids? What should they do for that weekly stipend?

“Contracts for a hit are two-way streets, shitbird, but I guess I get your point. Maybe something will come up,” I told her.

And that reminds me. I was at the computer playing a game of Spider Solitaire. I had but one stack of cards to play and I hadn’t turned a single five card. Seriously, eight decks of cards in play and I’ve seen at least sixty cards and can’t turn a single fucking five. “Where are all the fucking fives?” I almost yelled at my computer screen as I jabbed the button to turn my last ten cards. And there, big as life, were eight fucking fives. Swear to God. All present and accounted for, and all with no place to go.

After first cussing and then staring in wonderment at the eight fives and attempting to calculate the odds of the event, I started surfing around somewhere on the great I-net. I came across a video on Antimatter—you know, that stuff that is the other dimensional mirror image of actual real-life matter shit that famous physicist, Paul Diroc, discovered back to the 1920′s sometime. Story goes that the Big Bang should have produced antimatter in equal amounts to actual matter, but there’s this huge shortage of antimatter. One theory says that there’s this entire second antimatter universe that suffers a shortage of matter, but I have a second theory that holds as much water as that one.

See me, I am firmly convinced that science hasn’t quantified all the antimatter assimilated into the hearts and minds of America’s right-wing Christian conservative fuckballs. Physicists say that one milligram of antimatter is enough to to match that of the Hiroshima Fat Boy bomb. I say that the antimatter in our right-wingers is enough to destroy the world.

Anyway, the day after the Squirt threatened to have me eliminated, I had lunch with some friends from Albuquerque who own the largest and finest business of its kind in all of New Mexico. Smart, fine people I’ve known for decades. They asked how I was doing and when I told them of my dog’s plans, the man said to me, he said, “Well, maybe this is a coincidence of good fate, but we’re doing so much business in Santa Fe that we want to open an office here. How about you run it for us?”

After three-seconds of serious and detailed consideration, I said, “OK, when do I start?”

I’ll do anything to stay alive, including work for someone else. I love my life even without sex. Maybe if I was getting sex I wouldn’t be able to stand it. Maybe there is something as being too happy. Maybe a person’s heart would explode if their life was filled with too much joy.

Bottom line—and the conflictions mentioned way up there in the beginning, herein—is that I’ve been working my ass off and having a ball while at it. I haven’t worked as an employee since I was a kid, and I have never in my life been involved in any business enterprise wherein I had no financial risk to the business’ success and profitability. My new boss and friend says that my fiscal responsibility and management experience make me especially well suited for his needs. I say that the constant worry that it isn’t my money at risk is a burden. I’ve never worried about costing another person money if I make a bad business decision. All my boo-boos, blunders and basically hard-headed mistakes have only cost myself. Now I carry the additional burden that if I fuck something up it hurts another human whom I care for. OK, stop. My mistakes only hurt the finances of people for whom I care.

Ugh! Being an employee is tough.

But I love what I’m doing and having a blast doing it, and that reminds me of something else. The Holy Roman Catholic Church is electing a new Pope. Do you think he’ll be vetted to first determine if he’s a pedophile, and second, determine if he’ll move the Catholic position on rapist priests into at least the Nineteenth Century?

Me, I’m thinking not. I think that as long as The Church won’t allow women to become leaders and they prey upon the purses of the World’s poor and uneducated, that institution will still be run by fucking Nazis.

Maybe if they make the black guy Pope I’ll feel differently. Until then, fuck the Pope and fuck Walmart too!

Manana, y’all. OK, maybe manana de la manana or thereabouts.

So. I awakened this crisp Santa Fe morning with a slight tequila hangover—dry mouth, niggling headache, and breath noxious enough to gag the dogs.

“Wake up, shithead, and go gargle with mouthwash.”

It was the Squirt, it was 4:17 am, and she had tears in her eyes. As for me, I’d been asleep on my side with my right arm wrapped around my head to where I was breathing my hot, aged tequila breath in-and-out between my smelly armpit and a bunched-up down-comforter tunnel.

The adorable little bundle of piss and vinegar was dragging the covers off my body and touching her snotty nose to my exposed skin. “I said wake up, Mooner! What did you eat for dinner last night, marinated donkey ass?”

“Maybe I should get up and brush my teeth and take a bath as well, sweetie. The tequila breath in my mouth and the odor of flop sweat in my nostrils is somewhat disconcerting,” I told her. “Matter of fact, the two of you could use a bath as well. Wake the goat dog and meet me in the bathroom.”

Since we moved to Enchanted Land, I’ve not made the dogs bathe quite as often as when we lived in Sweatboxville. Austin’s heat and humidity would get their coats smelling like the vinyl seats in a McDonald’s booth about once each week. The cool, dry mountain air here to our new hometown has a different effect. It actually seems to help keep their coats smelling clean—same way as when you hang stuff outside on a clothesline, which reminds me that I want to put up a clothesline out back.

I’m thinking something artsy-fartsy in combination with my planned landscaping and perimeter wall paintings. My best-to-date idea is to paint a mural on the adobe wall that depicts the epic grandeur of the Sangre de Christo mountains, and then build the clothesline to look like telegraph poles and wires that serve to frame the mural. I’ve already got these great rocks that some previous owner brought to the house that would help provide depth to the installation.

I also bought a canvas bag full of those old timey wooden peg clothes pins—you know, the ones that look sort of like a glass milk bottle with legs? When I was a kid we painted faces and clothes on the little wooden pegs gave them as gifts to our womenfolk.

I wonder about using the word womenfolk. Is that another commonplace, useful and heartened word from our past that is now seen to be off-putting?

The bag was made to hold the brightly painted clothes pins—thirty-six of them before Yoda ate three. It has a thick wire hanger sewn into its top and the wire has a hook bent in the end to hang it on the line. There’s a way faded picture of a woman hanging laundry in the sun on one side, and a barely visible Coca-Cola logo on the other. When I saw it at the flea market, the guy said to me, he said, “That Coke logo makes it pretty collectible, sir.”

“Fuck Coca-Cola,” was my instant reply. “You can cut the patch of canvas off the back and keep your Coke logo. Then I’ll give you $7.50 for what’s left.”

Ended with the bag of wooden pins and the Coke logo for $16.00, and now I’m searching for an Acme clothesline reel—you know, those red metal drums that your grandmother had on her clothesline. Maybe your great-grandmother. Gram still has hers, still uses it, and those facts are likely why I always want my sheets, towels and underwear dried outside in the clean air.

When the three of us were in the shower enjoying the “Rain Forest Spring shower spray” of my fancy new shower head, I brought the subject into discussion. “What do you think about my clothesline idea, guys?”

The dogs looked at each other like I’d just asked them to go on a diet. Yoda raised his back leg and peed on the side of the shower stall in a spot where no water hit. “I guess that means you don’t especially like my idea.”

To reinforce my understanding that they were lukewarm on the installation, the Squirt squatted and yellowed the water at my feet. Which started me laughing. So, I peed on the wall where Yoda had and that started the dogs giggling. The Squirt made a joke about my Junior High School humor and I rinsed the pee off the wall with the shower head.

I really like that shower head. It mimics an afternoon shower in a rain forest with the sounds to go with the cascading water. It does have a downside as it encourages me to spend too much time in the shower and, therefore, makes me waste water.

OK, it doesn’t make me waste water, I simply waste water when I tarry too long in my new shower’s therapeutic sprays, and maybe my ADHD took too many showers in those last few paragraphs.

“Tell us about last night’s dinner while you scrub my back, Mooner. From the looks and smell of you when you got home, you had a ball. Spend some extra time on my sweet spot.”

For those of you wondering, Squirt’s sweet spot isn’t quite what you might think. It’s the top of her back where it meets the base of her tail. She says it’s too much effort to bend around to chew at the root of her tail when I’m more than willing to do the work for her.

I lathered the dogs’ washrag with ivory soap and then slathered the Squirt. Using their bath brush, I scratched and washed her coat. “It was quite an interesting night, guys. Linda is everything you thought and Mitch is a good mate for her. Turns out they are each, and both, deeper thinkers than we knew.”

I met Linda while purchasing building products for the remodel of La Casita Johnson de Santa Fe, and we hit it off in a friendly way. She’s frank and open in business and one of those people whose word you take with her first words spoken. That “look-you-in-the-eyes honesty” is an important character trait in business contacts and personal relationships both, and Linda has it. She and Mitch invited me to have dinner to meet Mitch and view the 1930′s casita they had remodeled.

“Dinner had been well thought-out and the conversation was great. The margaritas were good and strong, and my glass seemed to magically refill. I think I got a tad bit drunk.”

I applied the washrag to the goat dog and he whimpered with pleasure. “OK,” I admitted, “maybe I was a tad bit more than a tad bit drunk.”

I continued with the merits of the homemade salsa that I slathered on the perfectly-cooked beef flank tacos and the incredible dessert Linda and Mitch served as I rinsed the dogs. When finished, I placed my hands on the wall of the shower with my feet at shoulder’s width apart, and I stood with my the shower beating on my head and back. “Man, I need to stick to Carta Blanca beer, guys. I was having some wild tequila dreams before you woke me up.”

“Yes, we noticed. Tell us about the Ayahuasca, Mooner?” Squirt had a serious look on her face.

Huh? I didn’t remember anything about any Ayahuasca. “I didn’t say anything about that when I got home. I drank a gallon of water, peed and passed out.”

“You were talking in your sleep, asshole. ‘What was that guy’s name with the Ayahuasca?’ was what you kept saying,” she told me. “Sounded like this guy had an exotic disease that you had caught on one of your honeymoons.”

I often dream about the many hallucinogenic compounds in Nature’s bounty that I have ingested over my lifetime. I’ve tried to ingest them all in my personal research, and some more than others. “Oh, that. Ayahuasca is a South American mystic’s brew and native to the Amazon’s indigenous peoples. The only time I tried it was so long ago I can’t remember the name of the guy who had it. OK, or said he had it. I never did trust any potions from unknown sources back in the day. Didn’t stop me from ingesting them, but I was always leery of the promises made as to their efficacies. The guy who had it claimed it would ‘enlighten’ me and ‘change my life’.”

I can only remember that it looked like month-old V-8 Juice that had turned brown, and that my dosing didn’t produce any memorable enlightenments, and the only noticeable change I felt was in my queasy stomach. Then again, when you’ve been dosed with Gram’s potions all your life—starting at birth—enlightenments are no virgin territory when you hit your twenties.

If you’d like to read more about my first dosing of Gram’s magic mushroom potions, buy my silly fucking book by clicking over there ===}}}} on the blogie roller. Amazon has likely got them on sale for less than the cost of the paper pages inside the cover. OK, fuck it. Send me a proof of purchase and I’ll refund you a dollar. I only make about thirty-five cents on each sale, so take my offer seriously.

Which reminds me. How do you feel about tattoos on your skull? Would you date a woman with a tattoo of a snake eating an apple that covers the lady’s head beneath her hair? Would you have sex with her if the snake’s tail was inked down the crack of her ass?

Would you heartily debate these issues before dating and sexing her?

Manana, y’all.

So. Let me begin today’s Sunday morning services with a disclaimer. What you are about to read is not a complaint, neither is it a case of a shithead writer whining about his life. My life is a good one in spite of its many travails, and I’m your basic happy clam when viewing my life from a global perspective.

Which reminds me. Travails—according to the dictionary—are excessively difficult trips or work efforts, or, childbirth experiences. Me, I think it’s unfair that I can compare my life’s tough times to that of when a woman births a baby. I’ve bore witness to three childbirths, and I will tell you that nothing in my life would compare to that.

OK, except for maybe getting raped by my Boy Scout Leader as a kid. Or maybe that one time when I fell into a prickly pear cactus. Or there was the time I went skinny dipping and sat on a hidden fire ant mound.

Or, sweet Jesus, that time my mother zipped-up my preschool pecker into the rusty steel jaws of the zipper in an old pair of Daddy’s work-worn overalls. Terrible stories one and all, but true. And available for reading should you lose your mind and choose to click over there =====>>> to my bloggie roller and buy my stupid fucking book, Full Rising Mooner.

Isn’t it interesting as to how perspectives effect a person’s viewing of any event? OK, and let’s take another anecdotal break to evaluate whether perspectives can also affect a person’s viewing of an event. Since entering psycho therapy sessions routinely some thirty-some years ago, I have been keenly aware that effects and affects are somewhat dichotomous nouns that are almost joined-at-the-hip. I’m way too fucking busy with my life to present the treatise I’ve entitled “Stop Effecting My Affects- Can’t You See I’m Crazy?”.

And don’t even start to correct me by saying to me, “Mooner, dumbass, you don’t ‘entitle’ a scholarly paper, you ‘title’ it.”

Fuck you. I carefully choose my words even when I’m forced to invent them, and that reminds me of the dream I had night-before-last, and that reminds me to say, “Fuck you,” to those grammar snarks writing to bitch about my use of hyphens. Eat-shit-and-die.

I loved saying that when I was a kid. Get into an argument and run out of pithy or cogent output? Just say, “Eat shit and die!”

Anyway, Friday night I took the dogs with me for dinner. It was still in the forties with no wind, and the Squirt had been craving tater tots from the Sonic. We piled unto the GTO for the three-block drive to our neighborhood Sonic, and piddled our way to our parking spot located in front of the door where the roller skating wait staff exit with the food.

We drive and eat in the car instead of walk and sit at the picnic tables because the goat dog will eat anything off the ground that is food, resembles food, or has been within 100-feet of actual food. We park where we can see each tray of food delivered so that Yoda can at least eyeball all the foodstuffs he’s missing.

“Order six totties and tell them extra crunchy, shithead,” the Squirt impressed on me. She calls them “totties” and she likes them fried to make the same crunch as her dry kibbles.

She was standing in my lap while reading the lighted menu, and the goat dog was on the dashboard, nose pushed against the windscreen. His eyes followed each tray of food as it left the door, and his wet snozzola left snotty contrails on the glass. The sticky lines closely resembled the criss-crossing Etch-A-Sketch flip-flops of Mitt Romney’s policy positions, and me—I love the way the British say “windscreen” for a windshield.

“And tell them I want a hot dog, cut the onions, cut the mustard, extra chili, double-extra cheese, and one teaspoon of sweet relish—not one bit more. And tell them I want them to boil the wiener first and then grill it black.”

The little bundle of brown fur and wonderment surveyed the menu with fervor. “And get me an extra-large cherry lime with extra cherries.”

Yoda’s menu selections are more difficult to translate. He “phoopfs” and “pharphs” at everything from the kitchen, so I only order things that he tries to jump through the windscreen after.

When he knocked himself silly in his attempt to get at a tray loaded with Frito Pie and onion rings, Squirt said to me, she said, “Looks like we need to get the Beano out, Bwana Mooner. Shithead is eating some gassy dinner tonight.”

I, of course, forgot to dose the goat dog with the anti-gas medicine, and that reminds me to tell you about the fucking cat. Honor has taken to Santa Fe living as if our new hometown were the Garden of Eden. I buy a whole fish for dinner at least once each week, and leave the carcass with head still attached out back for her. She’ll return home, come inside to shed some fur, sharpen her claws on the quilt hanging on the back of the couch, knead pinpricks on my chest as she nuzzles my face in thanks for the fish carcass, usually puke a fur ball filled with feathers and mouse bones, and head outside to eat the fish.

I’ve never before had a cat, but I don’t know what all the fuss is about.

Which brings me to my original thought. The dry weather here somehow manufactures dust balls. I can mop and vacuum one minute and next minute my clean floors are littered with dust balls again. Fascinating.

And the dust balls and Yoda’s gas somehow stimulated a camel toe dream about which I no longer have time to describe to you. As a tease, I’ll tell you that in the dream I decided to give the dogs up for adoption and this couple wearing tight Lycra bicycle shorts wanted to adopt them.

Now I have to go. I promised Sister that I would try to find a friend of hers who lives here but has no phone. I love adventures, so, manana, y’all.

So. It’s a beautiful Friday here to the Land of Enchantment and all I can think to do for entertainment is walk and play daddy to the dogs. All of my friends are busy, I haven’t met anybody new to drive crazy, and the dogs are already on my nerves. The dog problem started at precisely 2:26 am, when the goat dog had a bad dream and started barking and growling as he tried to trench his way through my pillow, the bed and anything else between here and fucking Beijing.

“Phooph, pharph, phooph… Phooph, pharpf, phooph… Errrrrrrh!” would be my best efforts to spell the cut-vocal cord mania erupting from Yoda’s yapper as he shredded my pillowcase with maniacal, frantic front paw digging.

I made a reach for him but was cut short by the Squirt. “Don’t wake him up asshole. Don’t you know it’s dangerous to awaken a sleep walker?”

“He’s not sleep walking, little lady, he’s shredding the last remnant of my marriage to Dr. Sam I. Am. That pillowcase is all I have left of our stuff. Aunt Hilda gave us a set of embroidered bed linen for our wedding, and I stole Sammie’s pillowcase as she was moving out. I love that ratty old thing, sweetie, so get him off it.”

I do love that tattered old 600-count Egyptian cotton rag. Sometimes I still think I can conjure my first wife back into my bed by breathing through the tattered fabric.

“Wake his ass up and ask him what’s got him trying to dig to China.”

I didn’t hear the answer because my house phone rang and I got up to answer it. It was then 2:29 am, a factoid known to be fact as I looked at the big wall clock in my office as I said, “Hello, Mother, are you OK?”

“Where are you, Mooner?”

“Not in my bed dreaming of sexing it up with Allie McGraw, Mother. I’m sitting at my desk wondering why you called at 2:30 am.”

“Don’t you dare smart mouth me, Butcher Einstein Johnson. I can still bend you over the table and whip your ass with a belt.”

That was my family’s measure for corporate punishment for my sister and me. Fuck up, and you’d be bent over the end of the kitchen table where all the family members could take a crack at you. There was this one time when Streaker Jones—or was it Tony Butts—dared me to give Mrs. Browningwell a Wet Willie. It was right after lunch and I’d bought a Valomilk Cup that I ate walking back to class. It seems that my right index finger had some thick Vallomilk marshmallow residue left from my dessert and the Wet Willie delivered to Mrs. Browningwell’s right ear should have been renamed a “Wet and Sticky Willy”.

Maybe that sort of ear jelly should be called a “Sticky Wicket”.

I had trouble sitting for several days after. Never will forget my Daddy—laughing in my ear before taking his shots. “That might be the funniest thing you’ll ever do son. You remember this day.”

And then he slapped the thin, black leather belt across the tops of my thighs.

“Mother,” I told her, “you just come on up to Santa Fe anytime you want and take a crack at my ass. I dare you.” I figured telling her to come to Santa Fe to spank me would clue her to the simple fact that I’m in Santa Fe.

“Stop back-talking me, Mooner, and tell me where you are.”

OK, maybe not. “I’m in Santa Fe, Mother. I haven’t left Santa Fe since I got back after Christmas and I certainly haven’t left since four hours ago when we last spoke and you asked me ten times where I am.”

“Why are you in Santa Fe? Don’t you know that Santa Fe is run by the homo-sex-u-als? You’re not smart enough to evade one of those crafty homo-sex-u-als, Mooner. You never were all that bright, if you ask me.”

Bitch. Right-wing Christian asshole Republican demented old bitch.

“I think you might be right, Mother. I was just having this dream where I was trying to find Liberace so I could suck his dick. I was getting dream frustrated from not finding him, so I was about ready to suck any old dick that happened by. I guess I need to thank you for waking me up and saving my dream self from burning in Hell.”

Mother believes that all gay folks will burn in Hell. Me, I think gays are all due for a Heaven’s stay, as we straights manage to make their lives here a living Hell.

“Liberace wasn’t a homo-sex-u-al, Mooner. That’s just one more cog in the homo-sex-u-al propaganda machine. Liberace was a man’s man, and a great entertainer.”

I’ve always wondered about when Liberace helped turn Elvis from a singer into an entertainer back in the day. I’ve always wondered if old “I’ll Be Seeing You In All The Old Familiar Places” didn’t likewise turn Mr. swivel hips in other ways as well.

“Mooner, you stop talking like that and tell me where you are RIGHT NOW!!!” My mother seemed annoyed that I would impugn the sexual integrities of her beloved Liberace.

“Jesus, Mother, I’m still in fucking Santa Fe.”

“Well, you watch out for all of those homosexuals…” and the next think I heard was her fumble the buttons of her phone and then the disconnect.

The Squirt jumped into my lap and put her front feet on my chest and her face right up into mine. “OK, first of all, you need to stop antagonizing your mother. She’s old and fragile and she can’t remember shit. Let her go off on you and then just say good bye. Second, you need to spend some quality time with Yoda and me. Silly goat dog is having trust issues again and he’s been dreaming he gets locked up back at the puppy mill. All that digging is him trying escape.”

Then she slurped my face with a rough tongue covered with day-old fish slime. “I love you too, Squirty-Poo,” I told her. “Grab your leashes and let’s take a walk under the stars.”

It’s now noon and we’re on our way down to Albuquerque to take a ride on the Sandia Peak tram and then dinner at the top. Another day in paradise with me at the helm. Manana, y’all.

So. Another wonderful day in paradise and the politics of the world grind on. And on, and on. The President’s State of the Union Address last night was full of hope and plans to create better options for middle class America. Many of his proposals were specific and many require the consent of our dysfunctional Congress.

Of course, the Republicans had their airtime to rebuke the President, this year in the face of Senator Marco “I’m So Nervous My Kidneys Have Bonded to My Sphincter” Rubio—a man who seems to have gone to the Mitt Romney School For Two-Faced Political Gibberish. Marco actually blamed Obama for the recession and accused him of not giving specific plans, and told various of the Republicans’ great lies.

It was while watching the red-faced, dry-mouthed Rubio speak that it dawned on me that all of this bullshit was orchestrated by someone, somewhere. Somebody is pulling the strings for the Repubbies and keeping them on the straight and stupid. There is a man, or men, somewhere who is managing the talking points for these guys and guiding the public face of the right-wing Christian conservatives.

Who? I want to know who it is. Who is so powerful as to take the /-300 conservative US legislators who were stepping all over their dicks and clitorissi a month ago to demonstrate that they “finally got it” about American voters, and turn the entire bunch back into the brain dead shitballs of November 1, 2012?

OK, stop. Maybe that should have been “clitorises”. Clitoratti, maybe. For a man so in love with them, you’d think I’d be better informed.

Then there is this entire Pope dealio. As the only high-ranking church official to ever attempt to arrest and defrock even one rapist priest out of the Catholic church, I see this guy—regrettably—as one of their best. This is a sad, sad statement to say that one of the best men in the Catholic Church is among the best because he wanted to do the right thing once out of a thousand cases. This Pope is a prick, his predecessor was a prick, and his likely successor will likewise be a prick. Until they put a Pope in place who provides local prosecutors worldwide with the Church’s files on pedophile Priests collected by Pope Bennie the Rat Turd, all Popes will continue to be pricks.

We now know that the Church has known unquestionably that the rapes and the cover-ups have been committed by Church officials from the lowliest Parish Priest all the way to the fucking Popes. Multiple Popes have continued the cover-ups. In truth, almost every Catholic Parish worldwide has harbored these criminal abusers. The evidence is so voluminous that it would topple many free governments.

Yet with all of that knowledge, the Catholic Church chugs on, filling its pews with loyal Catholic asses and it’s coffers with the coin of its blindly faithful.

Anybody out there a Catholic? Care to justify to us precisely why you are still a Catholic. Anybody care to tell us how you can pray and worship through the hierarchy of an organization that, basically, aids and abets the mass raping of your faith’s children? Can any Catholic out there provide an understandable rationalization for remaining faithful to your Pope and his silly edicts?

Other than that old tried and true lie about how you take the good with the bad, how do you fucking stand yourself as a Catholic. How can you sleep at night knowing that your monetary tithes, Catholic School tuitions and bake sale proceeds have often gone to feed, cloth and shelter men who raped your faith’s kids. How do you live with the knowing that you—Mr. And Mz. Ordinary Catholic—are funding people who ruin children’s lives in the name of your God?

For many years I have held only the Priests and Cardinals and the fucking Popes to blame for this crime against humanity. No longer. With all of the proof that your church has actually hidden and protected the perpetrators of child abuse—fuck that. The Holy Roman Fucking Catholic Church has encouraged pedophiles to enter and stay in the Priesthood and the everyday members are now fully aware. You have the proof that it is still happening.

Knowing this, I, Butcher Einstein “Mooner” Johnson, do hereby make the public pronouncement that I hold all practicing Catholics responsible for the centuries of rapes and abuses committed on your children by church officials.

Fuck all Catholics!!! Every one of you. How dare you call yourselves Christians and men of God when you support and fund these crimes.

Has to be clitorissi. Clitoris, the dictionary claims, is believed to be from the Greek word meaning, “To shut.” Therefore, I’m convinced it’s clitorissi, and it seems somehow appropriate as I’ve been shut out from them for quite some time. And why is it only “believed” to be from the Greek. Eve had one for shitsakes, it isn’t a newly-evolved appendage. We should know more about them.

Which reminds me. Has anyone heard from the Reckmonster?

Manana, y’all.

So. I find myself in an interesting quandary this beautiful winter morning in the Land of Enchantment. After an absence from these pages for +/- two weeks with no outlet for my ADHD-swirling thoughts, I’ve much to say and little motivation for saying it. And having said that (“it”), why is it that I was required to use the word “it” when describing what it is about which I lack motivations?

What makes the word “it” so fucking wonderful that it can encompass any quantity from negative infinity to positive infinity? How can it be possible for me to use that simple two-letter word to be so precise as to describe a single sub-atomic particle, such as a quirk, and, yet, likewise say “it” when speaking of the entire fucking universe?

It, as a word, has always had me flummoxed. Who gave it so much power and scope? Where did its notions spring from?

OK, from where did its magnitudes spring?

Me, I was one of the very few who felt that Wild Bill Clinton spoke his answer with great precision when he said, “It depends upon what your definition of the word ‘is’ is.” I understood precisely what the President meant when he said it. It was clear to me that he might have done it, but its limits and scopes were what made it one thing under one definition, yet—upon application of one of the many different definitions of is—might mean something completely disconnected and discomforting when it (“is”) is viewed from divergent perspectives.

It and is. Words of power and confusion. Powerfully confusing words that seem to be inexplicably joined at the hip.

Ugh. Do this as an exercise to better understand what it is I’m attempting to say. Write a 200-word third party essay describing any complete event as it happens in real time. Take a few minutes to attempt to do so without using the words “it” or “is” in said 200 words without committing any grammatical fouls as you go.

Write a 200-word third party descriptive something that lacks it or is—the reading of which doesn’t make me want to slit my own throat—and I’ll send you an autographed copy of my fucking book.

Which reminds me. I was at the bookstore when I was back to Austin just to pop in and see if my book was selling there. I went to the Local Authors section where it was located, and found instead a Mexican food cookbook by the chef at one of my least favorite Austin eateries. When I managed to get the manager’s attention, I asked her, I said, “What the fuck is this? You gave my shelf space to this hack? Have you ever tried to eat this asshole’s enchiladas without getting a case of the fire squirts?”

“Lower your voice, Mr. Johnson. This is a bookstore, for Pete’s sake.” The nice lady was looking at me with a Second Grade teacher’s expression.

I grabbed the cookbook and fanned through the pages to find a recipe for guacamole and cabrito enchiladas with mole’ sauce. “Look here at this,” I demanded of the nice lady manager—Mary, I think was her name. “Even the kids at Taco Bell’s drive-in windows are smart enough to tell you that you never fucking pair avocado with mole’ sauce. It tastes like shit and it’ll give you the burny-ass fire squirts!”

“I said settle down, Mooner. I moved you to the Humorous Political Fiction section when you vacated Austin for Santa Fe. Coincidentally, you’re on the shelf right next to Governor Perry’s latest.”

I was too busy ripping the guacamole and goat enchiladas with mole’ sauce pages from the shelved cookbooks for my brain to register Mary’s words. I picked up the paper sheets I’d removed and placed them in the recycling bin and marched to my car with the firm knowledge that I, Butcher Einstein “Mooner” Johnson, had struck a blow for Mexican food lovers worldwide.

“Chicken shit asshole fancy-pants right-wing Mexican food subversive fuckballs!” I announced to the crowd that gathered at the door as I left. “Mexican food is traditional!” I said. “Tra-fucking-di-tion-al!”

It was in the GTO leaving the bookstore when I decided to cook a goat and serve it with guacamole. It was from there whence I decided to head over to the Sprouts to take advantage of their special on avocados.

Anyway, I really don’t feel like writing, I feel like walking the dogs. Maybe Allie McGraw is out this morning.

So, write me your essays and I’ll see y’all manana.

PS-  For those of you expecting mention of a camel toe…  Stay tuned!

So. Have you missed me as much as I’ve missed you? I had to take an unplanned travel sabbatical back to Texas for awhile to settle some business issues and I haven’t had the time to write to you.

OK, I just lied. I likely could have found the time to write, I simply chose to do other shit. Like sleep.

Unplanned sabbaticals are difficult times for me, what with the ADHD and all, because planning and organization are the keys to my abilities to control my mental facilities, and faculties as well. Said another way, should I think of my brain as my computer facility and my thoughts as my program faculties, unplanned events are like that Trojan Horse Virus that invaded my Word Press bloggie control systems awhile back.

One minute I’m standing at the checkout counter at the Sprouts over to the Arboretum in Austin, Texas, with a basket full of ripe avocados, onions, jalapeños and cilantro, and the next minute I’m sitting in the back seat of Deputy Sheriff Delroy Armstrong’s black-and-white 2009 Ford police cruiser.

Have you ever been held for further actions in the back of a four-year-old police car? Imagine the ambiance of the mens’ room at Chuck’s Chug-A-Lug—located three blocks off Bourbon Street down to New Orleans—the early Wednesday morning after Fat Tuesday. Take that sensory fodder and pack it into an institutional vinyl bag, toast the bag in hot Texas sun for two weeks, then open the bag. Let the opened bag sun-bake for another week and then clean it with institutional bathroom scrub, re-bake sunnyside up, and then use the vinyl to upholster the back seat of a Travis County Sheriff’s car.

It was a good thing that I allowed for some extra ripening time for the avocados. Deputy Delroy “Can I Take the First Whack at ‘Em” Armstrong is a badged member of law enforcement with whom I’ve numerously encountered previously. At our first meeting, Delroy wanted to, and here I’ll give you my best quoted memory of Delroy’s actual words, “Let me cuff this here Hippy an’ take ‘im out back, Sheriff Wozniak. Beat a little sense inta his thick skull.”

Anyway, I’m back to La Casita Johnson de Santa Fe with no obvious damage other than the thick, black bruises on my wrists and the knot on my head just above the hairline where my skull “accidentally” banged the door frame of a 2009 Ford Crown Vicky.

When finally eaten by the crew ranch side there to Austin, it was a rich and creamy guacamole, and a perfect condiment for the slow-grilled goat I cooked while visiting. Gram patted-out fresh corn tortillas and Aunt Hilda made the beans and salad. The Squirt made me keep my window cracked on the drive home as Aunt Hilda’s tasty frijoles give me the gas.

Eye-watering, gag reflex farts. Farts I love to loosen into the tight, sealed confines of an old GTO doing 75 MPH between Abilene and Lubbock, Texas, at 10 am the morning after.

For those minds inquiring, I didn’t visit Mother while there, and nobody is sick—unless, of course you count the assholes who broke in and stole all of Sister and Anna the Amazon’s stuff. That’s the reason for my unplanned visit. The girls were on an anniversary trip down to Mexico when the robbery occurred, and they called to ask me to look into things for them.

If you’d buy my stupid fucking book, you might find the hidden reasons why these two lovebirds would choose Mexico for an anniversary trip, and I’d earn a couple bucks I could donate to the Food Bank. Then again, you can be a tightwad asshole and remain in the dark.

Maybe you’re a right-wing Christian Republican Tea Party shithead, in which case you can kiss my rosey-red ass and then go fuck yourself.

Anyway, I’m still too busy to write, but I am back to Santa Fe. I’m re-pissed at the Holy Roman Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts, and Wal-Fucking-Mart.

OK, stop. Can you be re-pissed at something whereat your being pissed was a preexisting condition having been exacerbated upon receiving new pissing-off inputs?

Fuck Walmart, fuck the Pope, fuck the BSA, and I’ll be back manana, y’all.

So. Never let it be said that your shit doesn’t come around to kick you in your own butt. I asked Cynthianne to do a guest posting and she did. Here it is in its unaltered and uncensored states. OK, except that I changed the font size to 13 and double spacelated the entire dealio.

I will, however, precondition readers to several modifying facts: First, if I can’t drink Carta Blanca I don’t drink beer; Second, Dr. Sam I. Am-Johnson did attend the after and aforementioned meeting. As I’ve been in serious needs of sexing, I flew her in on the contexts of needing emergency therapies and mental adjustments. While those contexts are accurate in their essences, they were but smokescreens used, by me, in another feeble attempt (attempts) to bed my lovely ex-wife.

Anyway, and without further ado, I give you Cynthianne from Albuquerque:

“Mooner Afflicted with More Unsuitable Relatives

Guest post from “Cousin” Cynthianne

The Roe v. Wade celebration at the capitol was fun, with birthday cake and speeches and signs and even an impromptu little parade down Old Santa Fe Trail. Sadly, Mooner didn’t make the rally, to his loss. It was probably the highest concentration of liberal cougars ever seen in Santa Fe, if not the whole state, and he missed them one and all. You snooze, you lose, Mooner.

We met, as Mooner stated, at a somewhat loud biker/cowboy bar in downtown Santa Fe. I brought Gloria as my bodyguard, and Mooner brought his psycho-therapist, who was convinced that the only hits on his blog were Ukrainian spammers, to check me out. A body can’t be too careful these days.

I was wondering at first if Mooner had sent a ringer; not only was this person drinking Margaritas instead of Carta Blanca, he was suspiciously coherent and articulate. I was feeling like the hookah-smoking caterpillar in Alice- “WHOOO are YOU?” But then he had a massive giggling fit at something his long-suffering therapist said, and nearly fell out of his seat. Yep, it was Mooner all right.

It was possibly at this point that Gloria decided she was oh so tired and we should leave.

Although Gloria might not agree, I thoroughly enjoyed the visit. I was also mildly intrigued by the superficial resemblance of our features, but laughed it off until I found out about Myrtle. OMG! Great Aunt Myrt who ran off to Texas with the itinerant peddler almost a century ago! Could it be?

After exhaustive investigations (“All signs point to yes,” sez the Magic 8-Ball), it appears that I may be a cousin from the long-lost Louisiana hillbilly branch of the Mooner clan. As if Mooner didn’t already have enough family problems.

Exciting no? Although for some reason, Mooner keeps muttering something about DNA testing…

Finis”

OK, I lied about the “unaltered states” part as I added the word “finis” and also the quotation marks to delineate Cynthianne’s prose from that of my own. As for that whole “we might be family” dealio, I’m uncertain as to what I might say. So I’ll say nothing. Except to say that Cynthianne would be a quite welcome addition to the manic menagerie I call The Family Johnson. Why she might wish that inclusionary addition to her heritage is a mystery.

“Nuff said. Manana, y’all.

So. After a swift yet satisfying visit with Cynthianne from Albuquerque Friday evening, I enjoyed a mostly satisfying weekend. C’Anne came to Santa Fe for a rally supporting the 40^th Anniversary of Roe V. Wade and arrived at Del Charro with Gloria in tow. I would very much like to tell you more about Gloria, but I can’t. Not because I know nothing of Gloria—I do—and not because I’m censored in any fashion.

I’ll remain mute re: Gloria because I don’t quite know what to think. Del Charro is bustling and quite noisy Friday afternoons, Gloria doesn’t drink but she’s a smoker requiring frequent trips outdoors for fixes, and to be brutally honest—I, Mooner Johnson, have the ADHD.

Gloria might also be afflicted, but Cynthianne is not, no sir-ee, Cynthianne has the laser focus of a clear mind and peaked interest. She’s exactly who we all thought she would be and I’m better off that she’s inside my circled wagons. She has much to say and I’m trying to get her to say some of it here in a guest posting.

Gloria was too busy circling for me to get a firm grasp on her stuff. She always spoke quietly, almost conspiratorially, in the 90-decibel Del Charro air, and I missed most of her words. I did get that she has been involved with a group who persuaded the US Department of Justice to do an investigation into the Albuquerque Police Department. This much I got because Cynthianne told me when Gloria stepped out for a ciggie break.

Our visit was far too short as Gloria wanted to start the hour-long drive home before dark. I’ll let Cynthianne tell you more whenever she decides to say something.

Which brings up another subject… Sex. OK, stop. Sex, and God, which, of course, would be two subjects. OK, stop once more, as in my eyes this particular conversation regards the single-subject introspections of sex and God as conjoined twin subjects sharing all vital organs. Maybe it doesn’t matter how many subjects there are to you, but the distinction is quite important to me.

Which brings up another subject. In an effort to bring better prose to these pages, I have been reading this silly shit to the dogs before I hit the “Publish” button in my Word Press Admin section. I’m not looking for content editing from the Squirt and goat dog, but rather I’m seeking to find if this silly shit is somewhat understandable. I’m actually watching to see if their eyes glaze over as I read to them.

“What’s with all the modifiers, shithead?” Squirt asked me when I read them my last posting. “All the “quites” and “mostlys” and “particulars” are distracting,” she told me. “Why don’t you just say, ‘the sex was good’, and leave out the mostly part?”

I must admit that I needed to think on that for quite some time before I could accurately answer her. “Well, little darling, if I’m going to hold myself accountable to full disclosure in these pages, I’m required to make modifications wherein I see them as necessary statements, usually.”

“Huh?” the diminutive puppy said. She looked at Yoda to get some telepathic information from his small brain—a brain damaged with abuse at the puppy mill over to Okla-fucking-homa and further damaged from his diet of pine cones and the pretty crushed granite gravel Adrian and I spread over some of the yard here to La Casita Johnson de Santa Fe.

“The goat dog thinks that you’re way too fucking wordy, Bwana, he says to tell you that less is more.”

I hate that “less-is-more” bullshit, don’t you guys? I mean I get that sometimes the less you say the better, but when you’re providing the written details of shit that happens you’re required to say what it is with however many words it takes to say it. Right?

“That’s bullshit, sweetie pie, we’re talking about explaining things—we’re not salesmen.”

Squirt looked at me as if I had lost my mind. “What, in the Hell, are you talking about we’re not salesmen?”

“Oh, you know, when a salesman asks for the order he’s supposed to shut the fuck up. The better sales guys will ask you to buy their silly shit and then not speak until you say something in response. That way they can learn what your objections might be so that they can work on you from better perspectives. Unless, of course, they get the order, in which case they take your money.”

I love the part of parenting where you teach your charges advanced insights and stuff. I’m always looking for the right opportunities to give the dogs information to work their ways through this quite crazy world of ours.

“Jesus, Mooner, you really are a nut bag and a confusing nut bag at that. And stop saying ‘of course’ so much. Makes my skin crawl when you say that.”

I know she’s quite right about that. Then again, we’re brought right back to where we started this discourse and that, of course, brings up the meaning of the word “discourse”, which is, “A serious piece of writing or speech.”

How can that be, because dis means “…apart, asunder, away… or having a private negative force…”, and course, of course, means in this case “… a series of actions…”

And that, dear friends, brings me back to the main topic in mind when I started this. Sex and God. Why is sex and God so much on my mind? Because, by God, I need me some sex!!! My hands are so chaffed and rough from spending so much time lathered with Ivory soap that I didn’t need to buy sandpaper when I refinished a night stand this weekend.

I do need some psycho therapy though. OK, and help me with this one. How can you be a smoker without drinking? Only way I could ever stand my own fucking mouth after smoking cigarettes was to drink or commit oral sex.

Maybe I should stop for now and simply say, “Manana, y’all.”

So. What a typical day. The newspaper has stories about how the Holy Roman Catholic Church protected child rapist priests in Los Angeles, the NRA wants no changes in gun laws except to pass legislation requiring every American to own at least three assault rifles, the Republicans in the House of Misrepresentation say the Prezzie’s Inaugural message was a bunch of bunk, and the 15-year old boy here to New Mexico who slaughtered his own family had plans to head over to the fucking Walmart to shoot some more people. All that and my ADHD is operating at high speed.

Bo-ring. I’m ready for some new news. I long for the good old days—whateverthefuck the good old days are.

Which reminds me. Let’s do some talking about the attack on our CIA listening station’s support installation in Benghazi, Libya, and get on with things. If you’ve watched or read any of the coverage, you have noticed that whenever top figures of the Obama administration address the Republicans’ accusations of a cover up, they each, and every one, mention, “If you’ll review the Classified reports, Senator, you’ll better understand…”

OK, look, guys. The Benghazi outpost was not an Embassy, it was an outpost organized to support a CIA “listening station”. My research into just what a CIA listening station might be has lead me to the conclusion that it is just what its name implies—it’s a secret place wherein (whereat?) CIA operatives listen to what local folks have to say on the airwaves, on their bugged telephones and Internet services, and in person. Most, if not all, of these CIA gathered listening activities are Classified, Classified meaning here “not for your eyes, unless of course, you’re a US Senator on this committee, shithead”.

Sooooooo, when the Secretary of State says, “Well, if you’ve read the Classified documents you’d know…” then you, Mr. Fuckball US Republican Senator, would know just how stupid your assertion/question is. Or, Mr. Senator Johnson from Wisconsin, when our new SOS, John Kerry, says to you, he says, “Those of us who attended the briefing and viewed the tapes…” you would realize that you are not simply a fool but, rather, you are a foolish asshole caught in his own traps.

Me, I think these shitheads have known the truth from the start and have used the fact that the facts have been Classified to cover the stink of their shit. I think they are using the fact that administration officials cannot mention classified information to beat them over the head with what info is unclassified.

You don’t need to be a security expert to know that during the initial weeks after the attack, we didn’t want the bad guys to know what we knew. Why risk additional human assets who may be working undercover just to help John McCain seem relevant? Why provide public information that could give clues to an informant’s identity?

Which reminds me. Today is the 40^th anniversary of Roe V. Wade. Hip-fucking-hooray for women!!! One of my favorite commenters—Cynthianne from Albuquerque, New Mexico—will be in town to march the State House here to Santa Fe in support of that monumental Supreme Court decision. I’m trying to free my schedule to stand with her and will in any case meet her and her marcher buddies for a drink after.

I salute the strong women nationwide who will be in the streets today to celebrate Roe V. Wade—I give you a hearty “Hoo-Yaaa!”

As for the women and men who will be out against womens’ freedoms today, I have a quite different salute:

“Fuck you, assholes, and your horses too!!!”

And that sentiment brings on another thought. How can you be AGAINST womens’ reproductive rights and be AGAINST gun control as well? I have heard every single argument in support of denying a woman her right to make decisions about her own body, and each argument can be applied to the stand FOR gun control.

Anyway, right-wing Christian arch conservatism has, finally, jumped the shark. My God predicted this in one of Her visits last year. OK, maybe God was a Him during that particular visit or maybe an It. I say God sometimes visits as an It, but can a multi-hued ball of colorful gas have gender? If so, then my God is always either a Her or a Him.

At one time, whenever I would mention God’s visits I would say, “He/She/It.” Stopped that practice when I was in a counseling session with Dr. Sam I. Am-Johnson this one time and she asked me to read a posting I’d written about one of God’s visits. I think it was the time when God visited me out to the fishing dock there to the Austin ranch. When I finished reading the passage, Sammie asked me, she asked, “What did He shit, Mooner? I didn’t hear anything about God defecating in your story.”

OK, stop. Further reflections lead me to think it was when God and I were discussing the Boy Scouts of America. Or was it one of the many visits to talk about Mother? Whatevertheshit, God is such a tricky subject. There are so many Gods and They’re so often misinterpreted—either by mistake or with purpose, both. Me, I really like mine. I can speak freely and ask questions and basically be myself with my God. All God asks in return is that I treat the rest of the Universe the way I wish the Universe to treat me.

Not such a bad deal, and that reminds me that I keep forgetting to ask God about Heaven. I wonder if I’ve earned my gate key yet? Hell, I wonder if my God even has a Heaven. And what about Hell? And why do black men have bigger peckers? And I really want to know is it chicken, or eggie? Oh, and what about that whole meaning of life scenario? Sounds like I’ve got some serious questions to ask my God.

Ugh. Maybe next visit.

Manana, y’all.

So. As if there didn’t already exist enough evidence that we have too many of the wrong guns in America, a child of fifteen years murdered his entire family over the weekend in another gruesome assault rifle massacre. As this kid’s father was a dedicated Christian chaplain, my first thoughts upon hearing a few details were, “This is a child abuse scenario.”

Upon sleeping on it and with additional information, my thoughts this early am are that, “This is a child abuse scenario, and maybe this incident will help stimulate actions to better control gun violence in America.”

Then again, I can just hear the Fox fucking News commentators:

“Well, Bill, if only those little girls had had their own AK-47′s locked and loaded in their bedrooms, the dead headcount would have been reduced.”

Asswipe right-wing conservative gun-promoting goat fucking shitheads.

Which reminds me of the dream I had last night. The Squirt has had loose bowels since her visit to the vet Saturday morning. This visit was to check for a bladder infection and they gave her an enema to clear the obstructions for a clean pic of her innards, but her system didn’t take well to the glycerin they pumped up her ass. The little puppy’s constant need to go outside last night somehow disturbated my normal sleep patterns, causing me to have one of those in-and-out dreams—you know, the ones wherein you pick up where you left off each time you get back to sleep.

This dream was a real corker. It was a sex dream, nekid dream, and God dream all balled-up into one convoluted pot of peasant stew. In this dream, God showed Himself in several formats: As one of my former fathers-in-laws, an alligator, the hood ornament on a Mini Cooper, and at last as Allie McGraw.

OK, stop. Is it “fathers-in-laws” or “father-in-laws” or “fathers-in-laws” when you have ten of them? OK, and what if one of them is a retired cop and one an attorney? This particular father of an ex-wife was a fine man and the Chairman of the Austin Public School Board when I graduated High School. My diploma was signed by this quite good man. I might have learned something from him if I’d paid attention. Then again, paying attention is not one of my attributes.

I’m a good watcher but I can’t pay attention for shit.

Anyway, this dream started with me as an employee of this giant company filled with coworkers from my actual life. My boss was God in the form of the ex-father-in-law, I was still married to first wife Dr. Sam I. Am-Johnson, and in my section of the interesting dream business office were numerous assholes I’ve known over the years, the most pivotal, dream wise, was Pastor, the Dishonorable Dr. Browningwell.

Dr. Shithead Browningwell is Mother’s Baptist preacher back to Austin, or at least he was her asswipe pastor before she enrolled and entered the retirement home there to San Antonio. I think Mother only watches him on TV and speaks to him on the phone these days, yet that limited contact seems to keep my mother’s venom sacks filled with angry poisons.

God Boss wanted me to move to Vicksburg, Mississippi, to work with a branch of the company that made movies and did event coordinating. “Look, Mooner,” God told me, “I need somebody I can trust to go over there and run things. The guy I have there now is a liar.”

“Look, God” I answered, “I love singing the Mississippi song and living there would provide me many opportunities to do just that, but I don’t know shit about movies or event planning, plus you know that I can’t follow instructions.”

God morphed into an alligator—one of those alligators from the old movie Fantasia. Man do I love that movie. There was this time way back in the early 1970′s when they showed Fantasia at the Alabama Theater in the Montrose section of Houston, Texas. It was their Saturday Night Matinée dealio and a bunch of us dropped some acid and went to watch it. Fucking alligators scared the shit out of Patrick and he almost peed his pants.

“Dumbass is way far better than liar as Branch Manager, Mooner. At least I can turn my back on you.”

God was right up in my face as He said this and His breath was something awful. “Your alligator breath smells like rotten potatoes and iguana shit, Sir. Can’t you back off just a touch?”

“No problemo, son, now get dressed and go pack your bags,” God said, and He disappeared.

OK, wait. I have forgotten to tell you the other times when the Squirt awakened me during this dream. The next time was just after I realized that I was dreaming life as an actual employee of a company. See, except for when I was a kid throwing papers or doing dishes over to the Wishbone Fried Chicken Restaurant, I’ve always been my own boss.

First time I fell in love with a black woman was when I washed dishes there to the Wishbone. I was twelve and working the 3:00-to-11:00 pm shift that summer, and the head cook was a woman named Ruby. Ruby was an onyx black woman who always wore a black-and-white checkered apron over her dress, and she tied the apron in back with a perfect bow. The apron’s bow ends always dangled over the curve of her round butt, and often one, or both, of the strings would nestle into the dress’ light crease at her butt crack.

As I was twelve and Ruby was a woman, and I’d never been up close and personal to a black woman’s quite tight and rounded ass—what with the neatly-tied apron strings marking targets for my eyes—Ruby’s ass was a major source of excitement for me. Before my second day of work, I rummaged through the cupboard at home to find our last bar of Ivory soap to take to work with me. Since I had already learned the dangers of unexpectedly stiff peckers this one time at school, I wanted to do what I could to work-off my teen angst while on breaks from the steamy dish machine and Ruby’s steaminess.

“What c’hall doin’ in there, Mooner boy? They’re runnin’ outta spoons in the dinin’ room,” Ruby said to me that day as she banged on the kitchen’s bathroom door .

I hurried my business with the Ivory soap, rinsed myself and went back to washing spoons. Ruby made the world’s best banana pudding and we were always running out of spoons. I guess my face was flushed and I likewise had some stiff pecker residue bulging the front of my shorts, and I also guess that Ruby both saw and analyzed the situation accurately.

“Well looka there, Mildred, looks like Mr. Mooner Johnson has got him a thing for the dark meat.” Mildred and Ruby looked at me askance and started laughing.

“Mmm-mm-mmm,” Mildred said. “I’ve never crossed the fence myself, but if that one wasn’t so skinny… We need ta get him filled-out—put some meat on his bones. Fix that boy a plate a chicken, Ruby.”

OK, wait just a second. This was early 1960′s Texas, where racism was still the prevalent weather, so these women’s words need to be read in that temperament. The fact that they would banter with a white boy was a sign that they were strong women and comfortable bantering with me. For my part, I thought they were making fun of my pecker size until I got home and told the story at dinner.

After listening to me recount the event, Gram said to me, she said, “Ah, Hells-bells, Mooner, they wasn’t talkin’ ’bout yer little pecker, son. They want ya to get some muscle on yer skinny ass. They don’t wanna hurt ya.”

Then the entire table laughed at humor I failed to see. It wasn’t until years later that I understood what Gram meant and, luckily, I’d filled-out.

So, I was getting dressed in my dream and wearing a clown outfit that was way too small for me. Dr. Sam was acting as my valet and trying to get the funny pants buttoned. She was pushing at my pecker through the flimsy clown material in attempts to move it away from the buttons. This is another time when the Squirt awoke me to go take a crapper. “Wake up, shithead, time to head out.”

After washing her adorable furry, brown backsides, I went fast asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. The dream started once more and I found myself standing at the rear of one of those 4-door Mini Cooper cars where Sammie was attempting to stow my giant clown suitcase. The case was brown leather with fat leather straps to hold its bulging sides shut, and the leather was blackened with hundreds of shuttings and stowings before.

There were tattered stickers and stamps from many ports of call plastered all over it, one of which stood out to me. I peered at it around the fat, bulbous and red clown nose glued to my face. “Catch-22 and then Catch Some More,” it read. It was written in Russian Cyrillic script, but I somehow knew its meanings.

“But looka here, Sammie,” I told my ex-wife and psycho therapist valet, “God knows that Slaughterhouse Five is my favorite movie. Catch-22 is several slots down the totem pole.”

“Not about your favorite movie, Mooner, it’s about my favorite movie.” It was God, again, and His voice was coming from the front of the car. I quickly realized He spoke from the hood of the little car in the form of a Jaguar hood ornament—a visage misplaced on the Mini.

“Jaguar’s the wrong image here, sir. You might try for something more fitting,” I said. “Oh, wait. Maybe I should have said you should look for something fitting more.”

I guess that even in my dreams I make marked attempts to be grammatically accurate.

“OK, big boy, how do you like this look instead?” And with that, God transformed into Allie McGraw draped upside down—feet on the roof, long legs draping the windscreen, and torso lying sideways on the hood. Allie-God’s head was resting on Her hand and Her nails were painted red talons at the end of slender fingers. She wore a filmy gauze gown that provided us a view of her spectacular stuff.

“Holy shit, God,” Dr, Sam I. Am-Johnson exclaimed in my dream. “I think I might be a dream lesbian.”

That remark would mark the moment I was reawakened by the lump of brown fur and loose bowels I call Squirt. She was on my chest and in my face, pressing her nose into mine. “Wake up asshole, I think I’m gonna explode!”

“And I might spend too much time in contemplation of sex and my pecker.”

As I took too long to get dressed and take her outside, the poor little puppy had to stop in the hallway to cut loose. “My fault, little lady, don’t worry,” I told her, “let me clean the carpet and then I’ll get to you.”

“Forget your silly rug, asshole. My bottom is on fire. Hose me off and do it now!”

I met some new people Saturday night and one of them asked me what it’s like to have the ADHD. Maybe this helps.

Manana, y’all.