So. I’ve fathered three human kids and raised a dozen animals as if they were my own, but I’ve never had to deal with anything like this. As you all know, we have a big wedding scheduled and the planning activities have been a crazed string of events. Right away I had to get Rick Perry’s wedding dress ordered—a not unremarkable get. Before this month’s wedding date, I had to locate, alter and obtain timely delivery on a dress appropriate for a 350-pound ostrich in dress size eighteen but with its bodice a size 56-FFFFF.

As a large man who has gained a few pounds with middle age, I’m used to shopping for oversize garments and the slim pickings offered to those of us who don’t fit Life’s standard deviations. My big bird would have been difficult enough to fit before the installation of his giant rubber titties. Post breast augmentation surgery his fitting was a bitch.

Speaking of bitch, did any of you visit the Saucy babe ex patriot linkster I postered yesterday? If you check out the string of comments involving me, you can get a microcosmic view of just how deep the divide is between those of us left of center types, and those to the right. The rigid right are acting like medium-sized rattlesnakes, who having been driven from beneath their rocks have slithered frantically for cover in the corner to the barn. Rather than chance that a person who approaches with a snake noose and a gunny sack might seek to return them to their homestead habitat, they lash out with venomous strikes.

I tried to engage Lisa in a dialect but she only wanted to spit the poisoned words of the right-wing talking heads she follows. Too bad for all of us. The little drama between she and I (her and me?) is much akin to the chasm of divide in our US Congress. Failure to compromise leads to change by only two choices. Abandonment or force. Either one side gives up or one side attacks with superior strength. Like 1930′s Europe. and no way to run a railroad.

Ricky’s bridal dress is a combination of compromise and brute force. He agreed to do without extra rhinestone adornments and I agreed to buy two separate dresses and alter them into one that fits. Even still, the bodice seams had to be reinforced with heavy nylon fishing line to keep my son’s huge bosom harnessed. And it is that bosom that has brought the joy and pain of a Russian novel to the Johnson family ranch.

The rubber titties are my wedding gift to Rick Perry and Rush Limbaugh—something they both wanted in the worst way. The big hog was so enthralled at first viewing of the surgery’s results that he dry sexed Ricky at the breakfast table in front of the entire family. He was so engaged with his lover’s new breasts that he wouldn’t leave him alone. So I banished him over to the neighbor’s place where he could stay in Smitty’s pig pens with a gaggle of other hogs. His absence has allowed me to get things done with minimal interruptions.

Have you ever wondered why we say of people who are gluttonous that they are piggish? Have you ever wondered why we call a person who takes too much of something a hog? Or why a slob is called a pig? The answers lie (lay?) in the natural habits of the porcine. Pigs are hogs, and hogs are piggish. Spend a few hours at a pig pen and you will see every possible pig/hog cliché played out in real life.

And therein lies today’s rub.

I took Rick Perry over to Smitty’s place to visit his future groom. The bride-to-be was lonesome and whiny in his lover’s absence and I relented to the visit. Ricky got all duded up with bright painted talons, a sharp trimmed beak and one of his Madonna bullet bra dealies. He’d sat at my vanity and preened and picked at his feathers for hours, and he wouldn’t let me have the rear-view mirror on the drive over as he checked hims look the whole way. He was like a soldier’s wife headed to the airport to see her returning hero come home from far away Afghanistan. Full of hope and excitement and anticipation.

I pulled down the gravel drive at Smitty’s and parked my farm truck by the barn and maybe twenty yards from the hog-wire-and-metal-stake pen where Rush Limbaugh has been temporarily housed. Rick didn’t wait for me to come around to open his door. He somehow squeezed his fat bosom through the open passenger window and bolted to Rush’s pen. I followed and met the ostrich as he stood on his tippy-toes to find his lover.

There was roiling action inside the pen and I thought it must be feeding time. I pay Smitty a pretty penny to room and board Rush Limbaugh and it looked as if my money was at work when we arrived. As I looked closer I realized that the pigs weren’t eating, they were embroiled in a cluster fuck. Half of the hogs were mounted on the the backs of the other half of the hogs.

“Your goddamn pig has turned all my boars gay, Mooner. I’m having trouble getting them to mate with my sows.”

It was Smitty and he was pissed.

“Aw, Smitty,” I told him, “you know pigs are born swinging from both sides of the plate, and old Rushie there is a manly sort of man. You can’t turn what’s already gone to seed.” Why is this whole sexual orientation dealie such a difficult concept? Even a man like Smitty—a pig farmer who knows better—chooses the position that you can’t simply be gay. They think it takes either choice or coercion to be homosexual.

“I know you’re right in concept, Mooner. I’ve been around pigs my entire life and they’ll mount anything that’ll stand still for. But shit, Mooner…” Here Smitty removed his straw cowboy hat and mopped his head with faded red hankie. It’s been hot and humid this week and hog farming is hard work.

Which reminds me. Why isn’t it hog ranching?

Smitty added, “Ever since you dropped him off your pig has been terrorizing the place.”

And then the wailing started. Rick Perry isn’t very smart and he’s slow on the uptake so it took him some time to assimilate, then react. Have you ever heard a mature adult ostrich cry? It’s one of the most unsettling things I’ve ever heard. It conjures thoughts of what the Greek mythological Sirens must have sounded like. Rush Limbaugh caught ear of Rick’s crying jag and stopped humping the spotted hog he was attached to long enough to look over his shoulder at the big bird.

He got a surprised look on his face that said, “Uh-oh!” but he didn’t dismount.

That was early this morning. When I got Rick Perry back home he raced to hide in his bed in the closet of the master bedroom. He hasn’t come out or stopped sniveling since. I brought him some hot tea and a bucket of locusts and mealy worms but he won’t eat or drink. The Squirt sat and talked with him for several hours and she told me all the big bird will say is, “I’ll kill the bastard,” and “The wedding’s off.”

I wonder if that woman Morganna—you know, the kissing bandit of baseball—will be getting married any time soon. I need to see if I can recoup some of my investment in the wedding dress.

Manana, y’all.

So. I’m feeling pretty frisky today as I have reached the conclusion that my mother is who I thought she was and I’m not who she wants me to be. I took the time to reread my last several months of postings and discovered that I have been pissing and moaning about Mother more than is healthy for me. It seems as if I didn’t bitch about my mother I had nothing much to say.

I have finally and completely realized that my mother is not going to be persuaded to be, in actuality, the fine christian woman she claims to be. Instead, she’ll be the kind of right-wing christian, bigoted intolerant follower she has been trained to be. Mother is no more likely to become loving and accepting of the rest of us any more than the fucking catholic church is likely to accept full accountability for the sexual perversions they have fostered and protected for centuries.

I just saw where this head priest for one of the catholic’s most respected religious orders, a giant flaming asshole who has been been known to be a child rapist for fucking decades—what polite society calls a pedophile—has now been announced by the church to have fathered at least one child. Yeppers, the right reverend Thomas Williams, chief pedophile of the legion of christ order, has been admitted to be the holder of the catholic priest trifecta—rapist, child molester and noted TV personality. Sadly, it’s way easier to find a catholic priest who holds that trifecta ticket than it is to win a trifecta at the track.

This fucking guy was actually one of the holy roman catholic church’s most respected lecturers on ethics and morality. This guy traveled all over to represent the catholic church on moral issues for decades and all the while he’s fucking everything he can find that’s old enough to fuck. Oh, and many not old enough as well.

And self righteous christians call me cynical.

Before breakfast this morning, I decided that Mother wasn’t to be the first to have control of the morning newspaper. As I walked the long length of gravel driveway from the house up to the Ranch Road to gather said paper, I thought of accepting my mother for who she is—a right-wing conservative baptist bigot. Having opened that line of thought I then decided to take more control of what happens in my house… Ah, let me say that one more once, my fucking house, as in owned by me in it’s locks, stocks and barrels.

Every other occupant of this place is here at my will and my sense of family, honor. It is only by my approval does anyone not named me get to reside here. “Fuck it,” I said aloud to myself as I walked back with the paper, “I’m reading the paper first today, and I’ll be the one to make comments thereupon.”

So I rolled the paper into a log and stuffed it into the back of my shorts and under the waistband of my undies. Our paper is now delivered in a plastic sack every day, a waste of resources that pisses me off. By the time I walked back to the house after a way trip to check on the garden, the plastic wrapper was coated with ass sweat and stuck to my right butt cheek.

Which reminds me. I was over to Squattie’s place the other day, and through a comment posted there I somehow managed to stumble my way to a tea bagger bloggie site. Her name is Lisa, her place is called Saucy American In NZ and she says she is an American ex patriot living down to New Zealand. She posted a story about how the tea party, she says T.E.A. Party, and in my typical way I made a comment that maybe she could lure the rest of the tea baggers down there to the bottom of the world and, as is also my way, I had a typo and what I felt was a smart quip about tea bags.

In response, Lisa went directly to the “Call-all-liberals-homosexual-and-stupid” tactic too often employed by her contemporaries. If you go over there you need to look at her Bloggie Roller and check out that Hit Parade. Then you’ll also notice that Lisa seems to be devoid of free thought and can only regurgitate the right-wing homeboys she follows.

Anyway, when I finally got back into the kitchen, I pulled the paper from my pants and walked by the table towards the counter. I took maybe three steps before Mother said to me, she said, “What took you so long to bring in my paper? Please hand it to me.”

Her paper?

“Your paper?” I asked back as I stopped one chair from hers. “Last time this subscription was renewed I do believe it was paid from my account.”

I held the plastic-wrapped log in front of her and unrolled it. It was slippery from ass sweat and I almost dropped it. Through the wrapper I could read a storyline, “Looka here, Mommy dearest, it says that that shithead who owns the Chicago Cubs is going to pay for a hate campaign against the President using the church he used to attend. I can’t wait to read it to everybody.”

I poked the paper towards Mother’s face in a tease. “Give me my newspaper!” Mother said and she grabbed the paper with both hands to yank it from my grasp. I tugged back, and then it slipped from my fingers. The paper recoiled, predictably, and slapped Mother right in the face—chin-to-nose-to-forehead.

“Splat!” went the word of excellent description of the wet kiss to my mother’s face.

She had this wild-eyed look of surprise to her face that quickly turned to a sneer of distaste. She licked her lip—what I personally find to be an auto response when something wet hits my face—spit like she’d tasted a rat’s ass, and then she grabbed her napkin and attempted a derm-abrasion. Her lips and cheeks were quickly chaffed and reddened and her eyes started to water.

“What was that, Mooner? Did you let that nasty dog of yours pee on the paper again?”

Yoda is a male dog, and as male dogs around the globe enjoy to do, he takes a piss on just about anything. OK, everything. He and I are not unalike in that matter.

“Nope, that’s just a little good old fashioned butt sweat,” Mother.

She spit and “I can’t believe’d” for a few minutes and then I just couldn’t help myself. I knew it was wrong then, wrong now, and I’m still debating with myself whether or not I want to take it back. I waited for just the right instant and I said to her, “How’s that ass taste, Mother?”

I got the ass-sweat sticked plastic-covered newspaper thrown sruare in my chest in answer, and a table full of laughing Johnson clan as a review. Gram cackled like a hen and said, “Tha boy finally give ya a chunk a his mind, Mother Johnson. That was some funny shit.”

I unwrapped the paper without wiping it off and sat to read it to the table. It was a strange feeling to reverse roles with Mother at this most important starting sequence of our day. Instead of her editing every story with a bias to the right, I provided a liberal, almost way-far left slant to each story. It was also fun. When I finished I said to the table, I said, “That concludes today’s mainstream media look at the news. If you desire alternative viewpoints, Mother will meet you out to the back porch to attempt to poison your minds.”

In psycho therapy later today my topical question will be, “Should I feel bad about slapping my mother with butt sweat?”

Manana, y’all.

So. Here we all are at the end of another Mothers Day Sunday, and as per usual—I’m lost. I’ve often felt as if I’m the stranger in a strange land—occurrences that have become almost expected routine for this ADHD-addled fuckbrain. The human race loves “typical” and “normal” and “average” in its populace and has little affection for “different” or “weird” or “unusual”[.]

Or “strange” and most especially, strange.

When we think of acceptability indexes, the statistical bell curve analysis is standard procedure for we humans. When it comes to brain power, the average IQ is set to the bias of 100 Quotient Points. For each age group, the median IQ will be 100 when any statistically accurate number of people take the same test. If I was computer literate I’d draw you a picture of a bell curve and show you the spot at which the 100 Quotient Points median average lay. Or where it lie. Maybe the median average would lie.

Actually, I think most statistics lie because politicians and other marketing assholes use statistics to twist both the results and truth. How often have you heard the same set of facts used to support opposite sides of the same argument by politicians? Too fucking many.

When someone commits a crime and police have an eye witness to interview, the resultant BOLO says, “Be on the lookout for a man of average height and weight and no visible scars or tattoos. Man is armed and dangerous—do not approach.” The reason for that is simple: The average man is average in weight and height and has no scars or tattoos to be seen when fully dressed, he committed his latest crime with a weapon and he likely isn’t interested in anything you might have to say to him.

When discussing their children, the only parents who find an “Average” evaluation of health, growth, maturity or other measurable attributes to be unacceptable, are parents considered as obsessive or demanding of their kids. As a species, we tend to seek accomplishments that are anywhere above the average. As long as we are “above average”, as long as our IQ is at least 101, we’re fine at school or work, and in our interpersonal relationships.

Trust me on this. If you are considered to be an above average lover you’ll be getting you some loving.

OK, stop. I’m starting to allow that self-same ADHD mentioned above to Engineer the train rather than play our Conductor. What I’m trying to say is that today is Mothers Day and I’m feeling like a motherless child. I feel like Valentine Michael Smith, Robert Heinlein’s orphaned human from Mars who returns to Earth and finds that he is different—unusual, weird and unusual; strange.

I’m feeling much akin to VMS in A Stranger in a Strange Land. He was an inventor, like me. Of course his inventions included a method for interplanetary space travel and my best is in organic erosion controls. While I consider my efforts to protect Mother Earth to be important, I feel that we have already fucked things up so badly around here that Mr. Smith’s method will be much desired in the not-too-distant future. We’ll all be wanting to escape to Mars where the air will be safer to breathe and there might still be some potable water left unfouled.

He was also innovative, like me. He had 100% full control over his mind, a wonderful innovation. Me, I have singlehandedly developed a way to save our world’s precious water supplies by a most simplistic method. I pee in sinks to save water. Everywhere I go I pee in sinks—at home, the office, your home and office, restaurants, the dentist’s office, the homes of my Bloggie buddies in other states. I’m a sink-peeing machine.

Smith and his Martian surrogate parents knew the value of water. They had a special bonding ceremony that centered around sharing a glass of water. Becoming “water brothers” on water-starved Mars was religious.

Of course if humans could fully control their minds, and we all understood the value of H2O, we wouldn’t be spoiling our environment and wasting our water. The rest of you would be peeing in sinks just as I do.

And if we could control our minds I wouldn’t be an ADHD-addled redneck fuckbrain and you’d be far less confused at this stage of the story.

Anyway, sitting here this Mothers Day afternoon I feel like a stranger in my own land. I feel like Valentine Michael Smith except in reverse. Valentine came to earth to find himself the stranger and I find myself strange in my own home. The root cause for my feeling out of place lies in my attempt to be an average son today—a son performing Mothers Day rituals with love.

There have been high levels of tension between my mother and me for quite some time. OK, there has always been tension between Mother and me. In Mother’s eyes, I exited her womb with my first conscious act one of defiance to her and I’ve not stopped defying and embarrassing her since. Within minutes of birth, while not peeing in the sink, I did pee all over the operating room and its inhabitants. That story is available in my book, Full Rising Mooner, which is available over there =====}}}}} to the Bloggie Roller. The book has been well reviewed and a few non professional readers have actually had nice things to say about it. Then again, I’ve been told that I’m no Hemingway and should be embarrassed for myself.

The normal levels of tension between Mother and me have been exacerbated by today’s Modern American christianity and the asinine political environment created by those christians. The “little c” christians are ruining the social fabric of my country with their bigoted interpretations of their bible (a small b word to me), and the resultant political issues that have arisen therefrom have served to heighten the discord between mother and son.

Today I wanted to make my best effort to repair some of the torn fabric of our relationship. Today I wished to find some common ground with Mother. I used Mothers Day as a canvas to paint an improved landscape of harmonious family relations.

It started several weeks ago when I had an artist buddy make us some Mothers Day cards to be given the mothers by the entire brood. I had giant cards made for each mother in attendance at today’s big MD brunch I prepared here to the ranch. Each 8.5 X 11-inch card was specialized to the individual mother, and each was signed with a personalized message from the rest of us. I had cards made for Mother, Gram, the P-cubed (whose only son was killed in Viet Nam), Aunt Hilda (not an actual birth giver, yet as mother to her shrunken head in a box a mother in my eyes) and the Squirt. Squirt got a card because she serves as mother hen to the menagerie of animals I call my kids.

I had everyone sign every card for the ladies of the Johnson family ranch. Everyone not a mother was required to say the nicest things they could about each mother and then sign their name, or make their mark. Some of the sentiments were sappy, some were funny and some were strained. The most visibly strained was Rush Limbaugh’s note to Gram on her card. It said, “Happy Mothers Day, Gram. I love you even though you want to kill me and slow-smoke my carcass over apple wood.” He signed his card by rubbing his snout on the ink pad and then pressing it to the paper.

It was the sentiments of my gay pig and his ostrich lover that managed to mangle the mood at brunch and put me in my funk. I handed out cards one at a time and saved Mother’s for last. Each lady read her card and the messages and we laughed and teared with each mother in turn. Gram actually hugged Rush and then threatened him with untimely death if he messes with her potion pantry.

I found an old photo of P-cubed’s son and included it with her card. It was from a time when all of us boys were in a garage band called The Stoners. He was the only one with real talent and he could sing like a canary. Penelope Paxon-Parades thanked me with a snotty kiss after she saw the photo, and poked fun at Rick Perry. The big ostrich had used his new titties to make his mark and the big smudges on her card looked like a Van Gogh painting.

When I got to my mother’s card, I handed it to her with a flourish, kissed the top of her head and said, “Happy Mothers Day, Mother. I love you and I hope you like your card.”

“Thank you, son,” she said, and she leaned the big envelope against her chair on the floor and started picking at the remnants of smoked quail on her plate. Mother’s favorite thing I cook is smoked quail.

Mother just sat, staring at the quail bones as she pushed them back-and-forth on the plate. We were all staring at her staring at quail bones. After what seemed like an hour of tense quiet, in her martyred-most voice Mother said, “I don’t know what I did to deserve this.”

Huh?

“Is something wrong?” I asked, “are you OK?”

I thought my mom was overcome with emotions at the outpouring of loving sentiments at the family table, so I said, “It’s OK, Mother, you can read it later.”

Without looking at me, my mother asked, “Did everyone sign my card who signed the others?”

“Of course,” I happily said, “everyone here wanted to tell you what you mean to them. Especially Sister and Anna. And me.”

My sister and her wife have been subjected to as much of Mother’s nastiness as have I. The three of us talked at length about making a big effort to mend our fences with her. Each of us had made apologies and special pleas for peace and written them on the card.

“I’ll have nothing to do with this sacrilege. I’ll not endorse the desecration of holy matrimony by my very own children. How could you have homo-sex-u-als sign my Mothers Day card when you know how I feel?”

With that outburst, Mother almost jumped to her feet and threw her napkin at the table. The pretty red-and-white checked thin linen landed in the BBQ sauce like a butterfly and then sank in slow motion. When it had settled, Mother turned to point a finger at me, and said, she screamed at me, “You have ruined another special occasion, Mooner. This was MY Mothers Day. You ruined MY DAY!”

She bent and picked the card off the floor and threw it at me like a Frisbee. My reflexes were as stunned as my mind and I wasn’t quick enough to get out of its way. The corner of the envelope hit my cheek just under my eye and tore a small jagged cut that started to bleed as faces tend to do. I didn’t feel the cut until a drop of blood hit the tablecloth next to my Carta Blanca beer bottle. The table cloth matched the linen napkins and my blood made a nice contrast on the red and white linen.

Like I said, I’m feeling like a stranger in my own land. But at least I’m not an average BOLO notification. “Be on the lookout for an abnormal male, 6′ 4” tall, 240 pounds, an above-average lover with a small crescent-shaped scar near his left eye. Suspect is unarmed, but dangerous, and wanted for conduct unbecoming a son. Right-wing religious republican assholes should approach with extreme caution.”

Manana, y’all.”

So. We got another drenching rain last night—another 2.7 inches at the ranch—but this one came without the high winds that damaged the garden earlier. We need the rain so badly that I guess I need to be willing to sacrifice my prized veggie patch for the greater good of my fellow man.

When thinking about this sacrifice, the evaluation is difficult. I love my garden, a fact I’ve over-discussed herein, but an important fact none-the-less. I love my garden more than I do Carta Blanca beer and only slightly less than I love sex. I do love me some icy-cold Carta Blanca beer but that quenching Mexican bebida is trumped by the taste and satisfactions of gardening.

Hell, if I was getting sex on any kind of routine basis I might place the garden ahead of that. But SAC Ellen is traveling so much that most of my sexing involves my lifelong love affair with Ivory soap—that 99-and-44-100ths-percent pure wonder of animal fat.

Speaking of SAC Ellen, I hinted earlier this week that I have a Governor Rick Perry story, a story you simply will not believe. I’ve been shitting my pants to tell you about it but I need the SACster’s permission to print the details, and she is withholding that OK with the same tenacity as her sexual favors.

OK, stop, as that was misleading. My lover doesn’t withhold sexing by choice as she seems to enjoy it as much as do I. She travels and is gone most of the time so, and therefore, Ivory soap.

Anyway, I was over to Dr. Sam I. Am-Johnson’s place yesterday afternoon to mow her lawn before the rains hit. I mitigate some of the not small psycho therapy bills I manage to run up by performing maintenance on her lawn and pool. I took the puppies and the fucking cat with me, all loaded into the old GTO with me and ready to help.

They remind me of those old “Shake-N-Bake” commercials. You know the ones, right? “Daddy cooked fried chicken and we hepped!”

Squirt acts as supervisor directing Yoda and Honor with authority. She has a wicked sense of humor that I must admit cracks my ass right on up. Like I said, it’s been raining, and the deck around the pool was covered with earthworms and many of the live fish bait had made it all the way to the pool and drowned on the bottom.

“Yoda, come here boy and listen carefully,” Squirt barked. “I need you to pick all those worms up and put them in the compost pile. Pick them up with your lips so you don’t squish them into the cool deck.”

Yoda, dim wit that he is, barked his agreement and panted and jumped to the task. Squirt reminded the little salvage program from a Sooner State puppy mill, “And don’t eat the worms, dumb ass, you know they make you sick. You puke in Mooner’s car and he’ll send you back to Oklahoma!”

With that she looked my way and said, “I did all I could, Bwana. If he pukes on your leather it’s not on me.” Then she turned to the fucking cat. “Honor, I need you to jump in and snag those worms off the bottom of the pool. Try and not drown yourself.”

I spent a few minutes watching Yoda collect worms and Honor think about her swim. The little half Chihuahua/half Whippet had his lips curled into a silly snarl as he tried to get a grip on the slippery worms. As for the fucking cat, she’d stare at the worms gathered at the pool drain—eyes big as saucers—then look at me with that “won’t you do something, you’re the adult” look all over her face. Then she’d give the Squirt a nasty cat look and hiss.

I chuckled and went off to mow the front. When I had gotten the first few long runs cut up against the street and concrete flat work, one of Sammie’s neighbors walked over to interrupt my work. This is the racist neighbor—the one who asked me to only sell the house to white people. My ex-wife/therapist had considered moving awhile back and this asshole asked me to not sell to anyone not Caucasian. I thumped the asshole’s nose—hard—and called him a Nazi fuck.

He stopped about ten feet from me and said, “Uh, Mooner, that’s an electric mower, right?”

I nodded as I removed my right glove. My right-handed finger flicker packs a more powerful punch than the left. When I did a couple practice flicks the neighbor man flinched. “Well, I need a new mower and I wanted to ask you how you like this one.”

“Only thing to buy. Quiet, strong and dependable,” I told him as I relaxed my right hand. “Just don’t get one with a cord required. That dealie will drive you nuts.”

We then chatted about lawnmower shit like neighbors do and I pointed out some of the features of that particular mower. I put my glove on to go back to work. “Hey,” he said to my shoulder as I turned to get back to the grass, “can you believe Obama is supporting the queers and using Social Security to bankrupt the nation?”

He shook his head, eyes to the ground, so he missed me removing my right glove again. “These communist programs are ruining America. It’s disgusting!” and he spat, thick spittle sticking to his lip and landing on his chin. He didn’t seem to notice as his heat was rising to the topics.

“Leonard,” I told him, “ you get a pass on the queer comment so long as you drop it. As for Social Security bankrupting America, that’s a total fucking lie, and you know it. The entire SS system is paid for by the people who use its benefits after they retire, AND, the latest independent study shows it to have a $3.4 Trillion positive balance—enough to fund the next twenty years of benefits to every fucking pensioner. SS pays for itself, shithead, it’s just that your tea bag buddies want to use that money for big tax cuts in favor of their own self interests.”

“You are wrong, sir,” Leonard told me. “It’s just like the Postal Service—a loser.” Then he sang the word loser for thirty seconds.

Now I shook my head and thought that this asshole is what’s wrong with America. He’s so brainwashed by the masters of big business and faux news that he can’t see reality. “Look, Leonard, if you can’t stomach the truth, then try this on for size. Look at social services for the poor and elderly and infirm as a gift you give to your fellow man for being a part of this great country. For example, make a small sacrifice for our fallen American warriors so that they can get good health care for injuries they got while making a huge sacrifice for you.”

Leonard is always grousing about how we need a bigger military so I thought that might strike a chord with him.

“You sound like that Ed Schultz. You’re just another fag loving commie.”

Before I could think, I’d flicked his nose and his ear. Hard. Leonard had tears in his eyes and an expression of pure hatred mauling his face. “I’m filing charges. You’ll go to jail for this.”

“Be glad I don’t carry a gun, Leonard,” and I returned to my lawn mowing.

I’m proud of my President for taking the stand for gay rights, and guess what. I don’t give a shit if he is using it as political capital. He’s a fucking politician, for shitsakes, he has to use every word he says as political capital. It’s his goddamn job.

And how about Mitt Romney, folks. During the worst of the economic crisis Herr Schmidt Rommel wanted to bankrupt American auto companies, an event that would have cost over a million American jobs and $Trillions in lost business enterprise to overseas manufacturers. He actually wanted to ruin our country’s rich automotive history instead of providing the needed loans as were made by President Obama.

Now Herr Schmidt is taking credit for saving our auto industry. Lying, two-faced rat fucking right-wing christian asshole. I wish I could thump his nose. I also wish that I had enough resources to adequately fund our nation’s social services, but I don’t.

What I do have is a voice and a vote.

Which reminds me. Did you guys know that cats can swim? Manana, y’all.

So. This is just a quickie bitch about yesterday. Two news items from yesterday caught my ADHD-addled brain and stuck like a sharp-barbed treble hook. I’ve tried to shake them out of my head but can’t, and I’m hoping that writing them here will allow me to free my brain for more important thoughts.

Thoughts like the sex dreams I used to have about Bella Abzug. I heard her speak when I was young and was impressed her words and her face. Katy, from over to Lesbians In My Soup, did a story about what makes a beautiful face and her words struck the flimsy chords that serve as my memory. I thought of Mz. Bella and those dreams. You need to go to Katy’s place and check her out—she’s a mighty good read.

I could also be thinking about the wedding planning for the pending nuptials here to the Johnson family ranch or I could worry and obsess more about my weather-torn garden. But alas, the state of North Carolina has grabbed brain cells and won’t shake loose. For, you see, the fine people of North Carolina passed a strong anti-gay man/woman marriage dealie yesterday and when I read that in my newspaper I thought to myself, I thought, “What kind of person would favor that sort of stupid legislation?”

I was reading the paper early and while on the crapper so I had only myself to ask, and was spared the pain of having Mother read the story to us all at the breakfast table while she’d gloat. My mother is a gloater.

I’m looking at the other stories and unable to focus because the question is stuck in my head—who would favor that legislation? What kind of people populate North Carolina in the majority who have that kind of idiocy?

I finished my business and was lowering the newspaper to exchange it for rolled, perforated paper when the second article caught my eyes. “North Carolina man straps children to hood of car for ride home from liquor store” was the headline.

Now me, if there is actually a capital-G God, this was that God speaking directly to me. I might have actually heard his booming basso profundo, its rich tones sonorous and commanding. God said, “Mooner Johnson, my child, you seeketh knowledge and I have laid it unto your eyes. Behold the Truth, my son, as I am want to admit my plan got all fucked up over to North Carolina. Can you believe that many assholes can congregate within the borders of one tiny state?”

“Well, God,” I’d answer, “it isn’t your fault. But doesn’t it piss you off that they blame you for their immoral and ignorant acts?”

“Truly it does, Mooner, and they shall pay. Heaven and Hell are interchangeable destinations, dude, and have I got a program for assholes.”

I doubt God would disclose His plans for assholes but that just gives me something to think about. And hey—God called me dude. Manana, y’all.

So. We had a freakish storm roll through last night, one of those way more significant than expected events. Here to the ranch we got almost 2 inches of rain, a lightening show and heavy winds with 60-MPH-plus gusts. As soon as it’s dry enough to walk out there, I’ll give the garden a close-up inspection.

From the looks of things from the back porch, most of my tomatoes and peppers were slammed to the ground and much of my herb plantings are twisted and broken. It looked as though a war had been fought and my plants were the sad casualties of vicious hand-to-hand combat. I came back inside after reviewing the battlefield from afar, and I sat to breakfast with the family. I had taken a big mug of coffee with me when I walked outside at first light. The storm was a noisy bastard and the rain pelted the metal roof of the ranch house without mercy and a mug of Joe was a needed accessory.

I’d fortified my coffee with a slug of Kahlua and a second dosing of dark rum in anticipation of expected findings. I sat at the big table, then stood again to refill coffee, Kahlua and rum, all three.

“Sonofabitch,” I said to the coffee press, “son… of… a… bitch!”

When the French coffee-making wonder failed to respond, I turned back to the table and walked to my seat, sat. They were quiet. Everyone knows how I feel about our garden. For whatever reason, the over-sized vegetable patch I tend represents many things to me. My past—planting and weeding and watching and de-bugging and harvesting at my elders’ sides—sweating in the sweltering Texas summer while I learned the lessons of my family’s experience. I was reminded at that moment that Mother never worked the garden—Daddy and Granddaddy wouldn’t have it.

The garden has always felt like the future as well. It was in that garden that I first discovered that compost and mulch will control soil erosion better than any man made erosion control device. It was upon that discovery that I developed commercial methods to use compost and mulch as accepted methods by the Texas Department of Transportation and received an Environmental Excellence Award for my efforts. I think that sometime in the future we’ll use Mother Nature’s best ideas of planet protection to protect our planet.

Mother Nature is one smart bitch.

Food production from that patch of dirt also represents my most important charitable donations. I give money just as most caring humans do, but it is the gifts of produce that give the most back to me. Food Bank gifts are typically canned or packaged foods that taste of cardboard and modern food processing—the shit I want to spit out now that I eat mostly fresh foods. My gifts are home grown and produced with the highest organic standards anywhere. Knowing that at least a small bit of a needy family’s rations are of the highest quality available is a comfort to me.

But most of all, that garden represents Austin to me. As silly as it sounds, I have always seen the ebb and flow of that garden as the not-so metaphorical representation of my beloved Texas capitol. The better the garden does the more I love my city. When times are tough in the garden—my city and I are in conflict.

“Sonofabitch,” I now said to the seated Johnsons and Johnson family supporting cast. “First the drought, then the grasshoppers, then the hail storm, drought then heat then drought, and now this. Last night’s winds have torn the garden to shreds. Son… of… a… bitch.” The last was said as if they were the last four words of a dying man. I felt deflated, defeated.

Mother lowered the newspaper and said to me, she said, “You brought it on yourself, Mooner Johnson, the Seven Years of Pestilence are on your soul. Pastor Browningwell and I both have warned you about your wicked ways,” and here she chuckled, “and God has sent the message,” she chuckled some more and smiled this shit-eating grin that makes me want to stick a serrated blade between her ribs.

“Sooner or later you’re going to repent, son, or God is going to strike you down. You should listen to your readers. Some of your readers have keen insight.” Having had her say, Mother hid her face back behind the paper and I started steaming—the slow-burn of an overfilled pressure cooker.

I remembered why Mother never worked the garden. My granddaddy had banned her before I was old enough to remember. He couldn’t take my mother’s constant bitchy banter. I hissed what I hoped to be a cleansing breath then gulped a lungful of air, released that slowly as well.

“Mother,” I started, “I would be most grateful if you wouldn’t get all up in my ass this morning. You know how important the garden is to me.”

I hissed out another breath over the rim of my coffee mug to cool the surface. I inhaled the coffee and its sweet alcohol fragrance filled my head. I was reminded of my third honeymoon—the first one to Mexico. Anna the Amazon, who was seated on my left and next to Sister, was my then new bride. If you buy my silly fucking book you can hear all about that honeymoon and how Anna and Sister kept me out of a Mexican jail. Kept me from serious physical harm as well.

I think it was when we were on our honeymoon that Anna concluded that she is a lesbian woman and unfit for marriage to the male Johnson offspring. At this morning’s breakfast, she was seated between her ex-husband and her current wife, a circumstance most people are incapable of experiencing. Anna said, “Isn’t that what we drank sitting in bed on our honeymoon, Mooner,” and she took my mug from my grasp.

She sniffed, sighed and sipped. “Yes-siree-Bob, that’s it! I love that smell and taste. Will you make me one, please?”

“Me too,” was a chorus from all at the table save Mother.

I busied myself with the French presses and mugs and boiling water, and the alcoholic additives, and forgot about my damaged garden. I made the coffees as we talked about our marriage and Anna’s transformation into Sister’s wife. I started thinking back on my few weeks of marriage to Anna and her telling me she had something to tell me. I have always known that my sister is a lesbian. She knew from her first breath and was proud to be so. But Anna was closeted until we married, and she came out to me. I’ll never forget how tortured she was to admit her homosexuality and how she cried and apologized to me for ending our marriage.

I loved Anna more in her confessions than in our life together. I am constantly amazed at the courage gay people display when they come out. Fuck it, gay people astound me just in their gayness. The courage I see in today’s gay America is a wonderful thing to see.

I was standing in my role as barrista and thinking of just how proud I am of her and my little sister when I heard the newspaper slap into Mother’s lap. “This is disgusting, you talking about spoiling the sanctity of marriage and then all of this homo-sex-ual talk. God has spoken, Mooner, and He’ll speak again if you don’t change your ways.”

I felt my eyes bulge and my ears pop from the spike in blood pressure at Mother’s words. I was processing the thousand different thoughts and actions I was ready to use when Gram slammed her hand on the table. The plates and silver jumped with the force of her blow and made a rattle. “Goddammit, Mother, I’ve got a total full belly a yer shit. Put some shoes on an meet me in tha barn.”

Gram pushed her chair back and stood up, pointed a bony finger across the table at my mother. “Git yer ass outta that chair, goddamit, I’mma whup it an stuff yer carcass inna trunk.”

Spittle was flying from Gram’s mouth as she spat out the words. Her face was crimson with rage. “You ain’t no Christian, Mother, yer a asshole just like tha fucking Governor. I’mma kick yer ass like Rick Perry’s daddy should done his.”

How much do I love my grandmother? There wasn’t a fistfight but only because Mr. Dave brokered a thin peace. This wasn’t the first time the giant-peckered old geezer had negotiated calm at my table and likely it won’t be the last. I’m starting to think that having an elephant-sized penis might be a source of insight. Then again, Mr. Dave is an elegant, eloquent man. A gentleman.

But I learned a valuable lesson with all of this, actually two lessons. I learned that I’m losing interest in anything my mother has to say—her integrity of thought is seriously flawed and her logic is twisted. I think I can fight with her far less because I get it that she will never change. She’ll always be a bigoted, sanctimonious right-wing religious fuckball.

Also learned is that Austin isn’t what it used to be. People like my mother were in the minority and were silent as such. They now seem to be everywhere and Austin seems like baby Dallas—a smaller, more hip but less sophisticated version of Texas’ dumbest city. I don’t like Austin like I used to.

Ugh. I need beer. Manana, y’all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Too fucking bad.

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

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

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

Dear Mr. Johnson,

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

In GODS NAME,

A child of JESUS

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

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

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

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

Manana, y’all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ugh, but this is unpleasant shit.

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

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

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

Manana, y’all.

So. It’s been an interesting several days. First we got word that a Federal District Judge has ruled that the State of Texas cannot de-fund Planned Parenthood. As fits Planned P’s purpose, the Judge ruled that there are no reasonable alternative choices to Texas women for the affordable reproductive services offered by PP. Of course our Attorney General, Herr Field Marshall Greg Abbott, has already declared that he will appeal this ruling.

“How dare the Federal Government try to protect women from our right-wing christian idiocy,” Herr FM Abbott said from his wheelchair on the steps of the Federal Courthouse.

“I went to war for America and lost the use of my legs so that I can help Governor Perry enforce christian law sharia. Making our women bow to the teachings of the bible is my primary function.”

Actually, Abbott didn’t say that, rather I have provided a decoded translation for you. The “I went to war for America” part is also a lie as told by many of his supporters. I think many Texas right-wingers are a bit embarrassed that Abbott isn’t a war hero. Herr FM Abbott was actually injured in a freakish jogging accident when he was hit by a tree.

He’s said to be a fine man, but he’s just another asshole who thinks he has the right to enforce his religious beliefs on the rest of us. Me, I think the boy might be a touch bitter about that entire “rabid tree attacks 26-year old runner confining him to a wheelchair for life” dealie. I have a heart full of sympathy and empathy for his malady.

Unless he did something to piss off the tree.

Then, Squatlo posted part of a speech Dan Savage made to young journalists yesterday. It was Squattie’s second-from-the-top post last time I looked. Savage made the most sense you will ever hear as to the debate about homosexuality and the bible. Please go over to Squatlo Rant and watch the couple minutes of video. I have been baiting christians to supply the specific bible scriptures they use to condemn homosexuality so that I can lambaste them with the truth. There are actually none—not a single fucking biblical passage says “don’t be gay” or in any way says that sucking a man’s dick is wrong. Or that muff diving is biblically illegal.

There’s something about gay prostitution, but that’s it.

However, Dan Savage spotted the christians a twisted interpretation and granted that the bible says homosexuality is against said good book. He then pointed out that the bible allows, endorses and even encourages human slavery. Hell, it even tells you when you can have sex with your slaves and tells the slaves how to behave. It even gives slave owners the right to hold hostage the wife and kids of a to-be-freed slave. That slave must choose freedom alone or agree to a lifetime as slave to his master to remain married and with his family.

The bible, dear christians, also mandates that you stone to death new brides who are not virgins. Your precious bible demands that the offending not-a-virgin bride be dragged to her father’s front stoop where the entire neighborhood must stone her to death. This isn’t optional equipment, folks, it’s a fucking mandate. I’ve always thought this a silly biblical rule for modern times and I’ve been quite fearful that today’s republican assholes would start making laws to enforce it. Stupid asshole republican lawmakers have already started turning us into slaves.

How far down the road from jamming a 2-foot electronic dildo up a woman’s vagina is stoning your slaves?

In the video, you get to watch a few pissy, pious and pompous teeny bopper assholes walk out of the speech. Survey says that more than half of them have already had sex, so maybe they are headed to their daddy’s front stoops. I doubt, however, that these young christians interpret their bible any more fairly than their leaders.

Classic speech from a classy man. To quote Squatlo, “Dan Savage is my hero!”

Oh, Rick Perry’s wedding dress came in and it is beautiful. I swear to god he looks like Liberace. Remember when Liberace did that special for TV and he’s dressed all in white splendor? Put a beak and giant silicone titties on the flamboyant pianist and you’ve got my big bird bride in his wedding dress. Same bedroom eyes as well.

The whole family was at breakfast this morning and I had him come to the kitchen to show everyone how he looks all dressed up for the alter. I had him wear everything except the head dress or crown, or whateverthefuck it is you call that silly hat thingie. The big ostrich strutted into the room like a peacock, kicking the long train of the dress left, then right, as he sashayed around the breakfast table.

We were having International Flat Food Day this morning and breakfast featured Belgian waffles, crepes, blintzes, mid-Eastern stuff with filo (philo?) dough and flat Polish pirogi. Maybe the pirogi are Russian, but who really gives a shit anyway? I mean except the Russians. Have you ever noticed how sensitive Russian people can be about silly shit?

You’d think a person would develop really thick skin living in the harsh conditions over there. But Russians are the most easily offended on earth except for right-wing christian assholes.

Anyway, Ricky is strutting around the table and Mother is ignoring the parade. She has her head hidden with the morning paper when she gets to the Herr Field Marshall Abbott story and slaps the paper to her lap. “Oh why must those liberal Federal Judges ruin everything. They have no right to tell us what to do.”

I swallowed a bite of berry-filled crepe and told her, “Oh yea, baby, that’s turned into the single most important job Federal Judges have anymore—protecting us from you assholes. Go Federal Justice system!”

“Don’t you dare call your mother an asshooo…” Mother started, then, “what… is that? You cannot allow that dumb bird to wear white, Mooner. I’ll not allow it!”

My mother eyed the table seeking support for her silly proclamation. Finding none, Mother said to Gram, she said, “Gram, tell Mooner this isn’t right. You have to be a virgin to marry in white. And after the horrid, tawdry display at this very breakfast table last week… Well, I never!”

I’ll remind you that when we unveiled Rick Perry’s new set of surgically altered titties, Rush Limbaugh lost control of himself and dry mated the ostrich right at Mother’s feet.

Gram swallowed whatever it was she’d most recently stuffed in her mouth, placed her fork carefully onto the tabletop and said, “Is that so? Seems I ‘member that you was wearin’ white at yer weddin’, er am I wrong about that?”

Mother’s face flushed with what I recognized as embarrassment, but she sat silent and hid again behind the paper.

“We all knowed ya banged Junior Spellman, Mother, an’ more ‘an once. Only reason Chigger started ta datin’ ya was acuze Junior braggerated ’bout yer handie jobbers. So shut yer yapper an pass me tha butter.” With that, Gram held an expectant hand Mother’s way for butter dish. I always put three full sticks of butter on the table when we have a Flat Food Day. I can never get enough butter on a waffle.

I waited for things to calm—just a half-minute I’d say—and I struck.

“Oh, my god! Are you telling me that my mother wasn’t a virgin when she married Daddy? Am I a bastard as well as a crazy redneck fuckbrain?”

I winked at Gram and stared at Mother, face still hidden by newsprint. “Mo-ther, you got some splainin to doooooo. How can I ever face my friends and family ever again? My mother was a harlot and I’m a bastard—oh woe is me.”

The table of Johnsons and Johnson family honorees all tittered and giggled save Mother, who continued to hide behind the Metro Section.

When the tittering subdued, Mr. Dave, a gentleman and giant-peckered Lothario who has never before shown a sense of humor, cleared his throat to get our attentions and said in his robust baritone, “Is it too late to have her stoned on the front stoop?”

“Indeed,” I provided the second to a quite sensible motion.

Manana, y’all.

So. Every time I think I have my life together to the point where I can relax with said life, somebody shits in my mess kit. It seems this has been a staple of my existence since that moment in time between my exit from my mother’s womb, and my first breath. If you’ll click over there ====}}}} to the Bloggie Roller and check out the many options for my book, Full Rising Mooner, you can see how to buy the silly fucking book wherein you’ll find the story as to what happened in those first few seconds of life that set the stage.

Buy the book and flip to Chapter Five for the story. From there you can see how life manages to stay interesting here to Loony Land. There are many other chapters and each is full of interesting things. In fact, when asked what they think after reading my book, most readers report, “Hmmm. Interesting.”

By way of background, many pestering things have been resolved over the last few years, things that put considerable tension into my life. The major issues were: I had the lower-peritoneal ass infection that turned into a systemic malady that nearly put me down, resolved with three ass operations; Dixie asked for early retirement as my translator and we found the Squirt to replace her; I was required to find a cat who would adopt me and Honor the fucking cat filled that bill; and I had a little legal issue not related to jail that is complete, no facts of which shall appear herein.

Oh yea, then there was that entire thingie where I was arrested for murder and jailed in the Loony Bin over to Shoal Creek Mental. That story is the backbone of Full Rising Mooner and I’ll say nothing more except to say that since I’m talking to you now, I obviously wasn’t fried in the electric chair.

Current problems on my plate include: The pending nuptials of Rick Perry and Rush Limbaugh; the lack of sexing caused by the continued absence of SAC Ellen; and the simple fact that my mother is a right-wing christian religious republican shitball living under my roof and spouting her bullshit with regularity.

I’m dealing with these current items with integrity, pure thought and aplomb. The wedding is scheduled and on schedule thanks to Dixie—our newly-hired wedding planner—and in no large part because I’ve banished Rush Limbaugh to the neighbor’s pig farm. Ever since I brought Rick Perry home with his new titties, the giant hog won’t stay off him long enough to size the ostrich’s wedding dress. So I sent him next door for most of a month until the rehearsal dinner. The neighbor owes me a huge favor, an almost even trade.

Dixie is a pissy old bitch, but her organizational skills are a marvel, and she loves my lame brained ostrich. “Stay out of this, Mooner, and let me do my job,” my adorable Golden Retriever told me. “If you start fucking with it I’ll leave you at the alter.” Then she laughed, a sound not a distant cousin to a whinny.

As for my sexual needs, please allow me to say two words: Ivory Soap.

My Mother being an asshole is a thorny issue, but thorny issues are my middle name. I’ve been getting extra therapy to learn better ways to deal with my maternal unit and it seems to be helping. Instead of the usual thirty times per day, I only want to choke the life from her maybe twenty-two or three times. That’s real progress by any measure.

However, it was in a psycho therapy session that the most recent serving of shit hit my plate. I was laying on the leather couch in Dr. Sam I. Am-Johnson’s office spilling my guts about how much pleasure I think would be derived with the actual choking of Mother with my bare hands. The couch is a big grape-colored jobbie with that soft tanning that isn’t suede but is just as soft. I think they call it “butter” tanning. I’ll check the receipt from when I bought it and let you know exactly what it’s called. I like to get comfy on my back with one foot hanging on the floor and the other draped over the back cushion. The leather makes a different sound than regular, stiff leather when you fidget around. Instead of “creaking” like typical stiff leather does, this couch almost moans.

This couch has induced numerous boners during therapeutic sessions.

“I don’t even know a way to tell you how good it is in my imagination to be squeezing Mother’s neck and watching her beady eyes start to pop out,” I was saying in that last session. “I was envisioning a giant zit that needed to be popped. It’s like I can feel her neck bones and tendons and shit oozing between my fingers as I apply more pressure.”

“Uh, Mooner, I’ve got something to tell you,” was the good doctor’s response to my confession. “Sit up and look at me because you won’t like this.”

I scrambled to my feet and jumped across the room to loom over her at her desk. I have never liked anything said to me that starts with, “Uh, Mooner, I’ve got something to tell you.” Never, no way has anything resembling good news followed those words.

I pointed my finger her direction and said to her, I said, “I will not go back to that fucking Loony Bin. I’m not planning Mother’s murder, just thinking how I’d do it. Planning would require me to write a date on the calendar, not just decide on a season. ‘Sometime this winter’ is not a plan.”

“Oh, sit down, dumbass, this is something different.” When I didn’t sit on command, she said, “If you don’t sit I will send you to Shoal Creek. Now sit!”

I sat, thinking again what a comfortable piece of furniture it was. “I remember when I had to buy this couch for you,” I told her. “It was that time when I left the cooler of fish for you in your office and didn’t know you’d left town for a week.”

“No, Mooner, it was the time you brought Rush Limbaugh in for a session and he freaked out when I asked about his childhood. Your pig destroyed the furniture you bought after the fish incident and you bought the leather after that. Now shut up and listen to me.”

Here Dr. Sam fussed with her hair and adjusted the bracelet our children gave her. Anytime I see her mess with the thick gold rope she wears on her left wrist I know it’s something about her and not about me.

“Are you OK? Oh, god, you have cancer.” I try to not jump my conclusions but sometimes…

“Oh, I’m fine. It’s just that… I ah, well… Unh… Oh for shitsakes, Mooner, I’ve started dating a man and I wanted you to hear it from me and not on the street.”

“Huh?” my best response.

“Yes, and I need you to stay totally and completely out of it.”

I picked my chin off the floor and said, “Who is he? I’ll get Streaker Jones and Dixie to vet him. Is he a local boy or imported? You know Dixie has friends at INTERPOL.”

“Dammit, Mooner, listen!” Sammie almost yelled. “I want you to leave this alone. It’s been ten years since I even wanted to date a man and you remember what happened the last time, don’t you?”

When I didn’t answer, she asked again, “Well, don’t you?”

“Yea,” from me like I was a kid made by his mother to tell his father how he broke the house while daddy was at work. “I did some digging around and thought I found out that he was a serial killer and then you had me locked up over to the Loony Bin.”

“Yes, I locked you up at Shoal Creek to prevent him from pressing charges. And I can’t have you kidnapping any more men I might date. I need you to let this alone, Mooner. Com-pletely.”

That was this morning, that therapy session. I’ve already got my private investigator following her so I’ll have a name soon. Once I know who he is I can get to work.

I really don’t have time for this now but it’s my job to keep Sammie safe, and my first ex-wife needs my assistance. I just wish she’d wait until after the wedding to do this to me. My responsibility plate is already got shit falling off the sides.

Which reminds me. I’ve heard much of the stuff from the Presidential Roast, and I’m proud of my President. No corncob up his ass.

Manana, y’all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Me,” the response.

One Streaker Jones word, full of meaning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Manana, y’all.

So. We’re all sitting at the big breakfast table this morning having the first meal of the day. We’re all there and feeling fit and trim save for Gram, who is fidgeting like a school kid who needs to pee. She’s rolling from one butt cheek to the other and grimacing with each switch. Mother, as is her habit, has the newspaper in her possession and is reading us the highlights—as only she interprets which stories need highlighting.

“Oh, this story just disgusts me the way they’re treating that nice boy,” Mother said disgustedly. “He didn’t do anything wrong.”

Now me, I know better than to assume my mother’s heart-felt compassion is ever directed at the truly deserving but Mr. Dave hasn’t been around long enough to see things clearly.

“Oh, I know, Mother Johnson, that poor child just went to the store for a bottle of sweet tea and that Zimmerman maniac killed him because he was wearing a sweatshirt.” Obviously Mr. Dave spoke to the Trevon Martin murder—most of the rest of the table knew his reckoning was dead wrong.

My mother harrumphed and lowered the paper enough to peer across the table at Mr. Dave. She wears those silly half-lens glasses to read, said silliness enhanced with the knowledge that she has another pair of half-lens glasses to use for distance. Her dark eyes stared a hole in Mr. Dave through the half-lenses for about five seconds—the anger behind smoldering in visible expression around those eyes. I could hear the rusty cogs of her brain grind as she thought, Think before you speak, Mother, Mr. Dave makes you happy. Let him live to fuck another day.

She smiled, a placating, mirthless thing and a smile I’m quite accustomed to view. “I’m not addressing poor Mr. Zimmerman’s situation, dear Mr. Dave, I’m reading how the Obama administration is persecuting poor Ted Nugent up in Alaska. They’re using an unfortunate hunting accident to get back at Teddy for telling Obama the truth.”

OK, first, in case you don’t know, the sawed-off shit for brains Nazi runt named Ted Nugent lives on a Central Texas compound up to near Waco—a two-hour drive north of Austin. Second, the “unfortunate hunting accident” Mother mentions is Mr. Nugent’s admitted violation of the laws of the State of Alaska regarding the murder of bears. For some idiotic reason it is lawful to kill one bear per year up to Alaska, a legal tenet I find appalling.

But our fine and upstanding Teddy wasn’t happy to kill just the one bear, he needed to slay a second to fill his blood lust. You would think that a man who is so “into guns and hunting”, as Nugent says about himself, that he would know how many bears he could legally kill in one state in one fucking year. He had to buy an out of state hunting license and get bear tags, right? I know that he knew he was breaking the law.

Gram twisted and grimaced in her chair, let out an airy fart, flipped cheeks and grimaced again before saying, “Ought ta pluck his nuts with a banjo string an’ make ‘im whistle Dixie fer killing a bear what don’t need it.” Gram twisted cheek-to-cheek a good half dozen times and said to me, she said, “Mooner, you got any a them repositories they give ya fer that ass detection ya had last year? I got a little sumthin’ stuck an I need some help.”

“Oh, sweet jesus, please don’t talk about that at the breakfast table, Gram, I can hardly keep my eggs down as it is with how they’re treating Ted.” Mother harrumphed once more and hid her face with the paper.

“I’m all out of those morphine suppositories, Gram, but I’ve got some little glycerin bullets that’ll clean you out in fifteen minutes.” When I had my lower peritoneal cavity infection last year, one of the medications I got was what I think was called “phenagrin” suppositories. Better than Quaaludes, but not what my grandmother needed even if I had them.

“Do I need to redo the week’s menu, Gram? Have I been fixing too many carbs?” I asked.

“Naw, I ain’t impacterated with no celery, grandson, I was fuckin’ round with them assholie beadies ya give me, anna string broke. Got most of a dozen a them glass balls stuck up my ass,” Gram informed the table. “Still feels kinda good, but I missed my mornin’ reconstitution an I’m gittin cranky.”

I had to ask, and I had to give her the anal beads for Christmas. “Those beads had a heavy nylon cord, Gram. How did you manage to break it?”

The words were still an echo in my mouth when regret filled my brain. I had to fucking ask.

“Well, heh-heh-heh, ya see Mr. Dave was doin’ that vibrator inna ass dealie he does, an I got ta thinking a how it might feel iffn we could git them glass balls clinking and jabberin’ all up in there an…”

“STOP!!!” Mother shouted. “Dear god in heaven, Gram Johnson, not one more word of it!”

My mother whirled from Gram to face me and said, “And you, Mooner Einstein Johnson, have you lost your mind? I raised you better than to give your grandmother sex tools.” Then she added, she said to the entire table, “Einstein my ass. He doesn’t have the brains god gave a grape,” deep, martyred breath, flustered rustle of newspaper, another deep breath, then, “A stupid grape.”

Reckmonster is back in town and she makes beaded jewelry and is quite good at it. She just returned from Trinket Maker Fest where she won an award for something she made. When things settle down for her, we’re going to discuss a new business to sell sex jewelry at in-home parties. My first ideas for our product line is matching anal beads and jeweled cock rings. Oh, and maybe we could connect a set of beads to a ring with a studded chain.

We could do custom fitting and charge for that as well. Hell, I might pay just to get sized if the saleslady had a light touch.

Anyway, I gave Gram a suppository and now I’m headed to town to buy a replacement bowl for the toilet in her bathroom. Anal beads should come with a warning that says, “Do not use after any meal containing pinto beans. Wear safety goggles to avoid eye injury.”

Manana, y’all.

So. TGIF and all that shit. I took Rick Perry to the cosmetic surgeon to get his new rubber titties this morning and I just delivered him back to his bed in the master closet out here to the ranch. Moving a fully-stoned and groggy 350-pound ostrich when you can’t touch his chest is, if you will allow me just a touch of exaggeration, a gigantic pain in the ass.

Rick Perry shares said closeted bed with his gay lover and fiancée, Rush Limbaugh, and we had to rent a major appliance dolly to move Ricky from the surgery ward back here to the ranch. I gathered all our down comforters and pillows for padding, and loaded them, Rick Perry, the dogs and the fucking cat, and a cooler of Carta Blanca into the farm truck for the ride into town. Streaker Jones and Dixie met us at the doctor’s office to assist me. Streaker Jones to help me manhandle the big bird, and Dixie to play cowboy on the rest of the herd.

Those of you new to these parts need to know that Dixie is my now-retired Golden Retriever and original translator. Dixie chose the Squirt for adoption and tutored her to communicate with me and speak many other languages as well. I love Dixie—enough to set her free when she asked. She found a late-life interest in spores and all things fungi, so my former best dog and translator is now head assistant over to the lab at Streaker Jones Spores And More.

Now that I think on it, if you’d go buy my silly fucking book you could read all about my beloved Dixie. So click over there ====}}}} to the Bloggie Roller and check out all the Full Mooner Rising listings. There’s a book trailer, a third party review, and ways to buy it in paper and on Kindle.

Anyway, I locked Rush Limbaugh up in a hog pen over to the neighbor’s place to keep him off of the bird until his new breasts are healed. The way he acted the other day when we were trying out new boob sizes for Ricky, I decided the big pig needed to be kept at bay. And why don’t we say, “Kept away from bay?” Is “keep at bay” a nautical term or does it have to do with fox hunting?

I also think that some separation before the wedding will act as a pre-marital aid for my pet hog and ostrich. Then again, the way Rush attacked Rick in the kitchen the other morning left no room for extra ardor. I was getting the family’s thoughts on size for the new titties, and when we held a halved watermelon up to Rick’s chest, Rush Limbaugh lost it—threw Ricky to the floor and dry screwed him without any preamble.

We had a little party this morning while we waited for Ricky to be ready, and one of the Doctor’s receptionists fell in love with Streaker Jones. She’s one of the doctor’s “living show-and-tell mannequins” that he uses to demonstrate both before-and-after comparisons and also “see, these new titties feel just like original equipment breasts”[.] I had met her on Rick Perry’s first consultation visit with the doctor and I must say that the 36 Double-D’s are a remarkable difference from the little half-apples she had originally.

But I had to tell him, I told the doc, “Well, doc, I think these are some mighty fine titties—they have a firm but giving feel, a great shape, and I really like how you got the nipples pointing just a few degrees up to the North. However, since I’ve never felt a bosom this large that wasn’t artificial, I can’t give you a good result on that part of this comparison.”

I did like the way Melissa cooed at me and how her breath fluttered when I examined her breasts. This morning, and it had to be before seven am because we got checked in before six, I notice Melissa sitting over to her desk and giving Streaker Jones the moon-eyed look of a doe in heat—big brown eyes with a lustful look. Next thing I know, she’s sitting in Streaker Jones’ lap with him holding one big bazooma in each hand, and she’s saying, “… and I love it when you pinch this nipple and suck on that one at the same time.”

I wonder why I have to work so hard for love and my best buddy has it fall into his lap?

Anyway, my ostrich is goofy as all hell to start with, and redefines the word with a bill full of knockout meds. All my life we’ve had birds on the ranch—chickens and ducks and Guinea hens and doves and quail. Until now, I’ve never seen the first bird do anything I would call a smile. But Rick Perry has this giant, goofy shit-eating grin plastered to his mush, and his big bugged eyes are spinning around under half-mast eyelids the size of tea saucers. Reminds me of the old joke that goes, “Do you think Minnie Mouse is crazy?” two, three four, “I’m not certain of that, but she’s fucking Goofy for sure.”

We’ve got him on his side in the water bed and he’s so stoned that he can’t control his head. It’s difficult to control the thirty-pound bowling ball at the end of his long neck without drugs, but when he’s stoned it’s an impossible task. He keeps trying to lift it and you can see the muscles in his thick neck quiver with the effort and only get it a few inches off the pillow before it plops back down with a “plufft”[.]

The Squirt and Honor the fucking cat are in there now playing nurse and keeping him in bed. As big an ass pain as Squirt can be, she can always be counted on to do the right thing. When I left them a few minutes ago, the adorable puppy was singing to him in Swahili while the cat purred and rubbed against Rick Perry’s beak.

Have you ever heard “Stairway To Heaven” in Swahili?

Me, I’m roasting a goat for dinner with a big pot of ranchero-style pinto beans. I did a mole rub on the goat and the beans are in an open pot in the smoker with onions, jalapeño peppers and some pork belly. Mr. Dave wanted to try his hand at making some corn tortillas, so all the women are in the kitchen with him giving direction and support.

Maybe I have to work so hard for my loving because I don’t have a twelve-inch pecker in my pants like Mr. Dave. Then again, maybe it’s because I’m an ADHD-addled fuckbrain.

But who really gives a shit, right? I’ve got family and good friends for dinner, and a cooler full of icy-cold Carta Blanca. Manana, y’all.

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

For some stupid reason, this has hurt my feelings.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I miss my father.

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

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

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

So. We are all way excited here to Austin, Texas. Wedding bells will soon be ringing for Rick Perry and Rush Limbaugh, and we didn’t get the predicted nasty-assed weather I was worried would wreck my garden. Last year’s garden burned all the way out in early June because of the drought and very hot Winter and Spring seasons. Last year, it was so hot and dry that you could hear the plants crack and split.

Literally. I would be walking through my veggie plants and there would be “pops” and “snaps” all up and down the rows. It sounded like a tragic Rice Crispies commercial. It was a terrible sound that I never want to experience again. Last year’s crop was pounds as compared to our usual tons of harvested tomatoes, corn, peppers, egg plant, cukers and squash and beans and such. We usually have so much that we give basketfuls away to needy folks every week. But a year ago we were buying fresh produce at the store and what was available at farmer’s markets, and we didn’t put anything back, either canned or frozen.

This year I got a jump on things. I started seeds in the greenhouse in November and began planting the garden the first week in February. Normally that early plant date would mean everything would freeze a half-dozen times by mid-March, but times are no longer normal. The sad effects of global warming are everywhere and saddest to me are with food production.

Which reminds me. Click on the following linkster and go over to watch this short video at Squattie’s place. It is totally hilarious. The linkster is:

http://squatlo-rant.blogspot.com/2012/04/so-mr-santorum-you-want-to-abort-your.html

I wish they had included an anal probe reference in that vid for more complete accuracies, but it is a real gem as-is.

I have a guest bloggie running over to http://www.thankq4commonsense.blogspot.com/ wherein I’m seeking advice about Rick Perry’s request for fake boobies. I’m not smart enough to link you directly to my guest post so you might as well read Lady Estrogen’s guest post while you’re there. Unlike me, Lady E can say things simply and directly so it’s a quick read compared to my trash.

Anyway, early results over to Q’s place indicate that I should buy fake titties as a wedding present for the boys, and that creates an entirely new problem. The wedding dress Ricky chose is form-fitting and has to be ordered a month in advance. That means I need to get him measured this week or no dress in time for the nuptials.

I am taking him to the tittie doctor in the morning to pick the size for his new melons but I’m not taking Rush. That pig is totally disgusting. We decided to get an idea of what size would look best on the big bird’s chest, so at breakfast we tried things out to get the family’s opinions. I had a cantaloupe halved, grapefruit, one of those small water melons and some large balloons.

As soon as I told the table of Johnsons and attending friends of my need, Mother pipes up with, “I will not participate in this heretical display of  heathenism. It’s bad enough that you allow those two pagans to live as homo-sex-u-als under our roof. But I will…NOT… be a part of this fiasco.”

Gram, who had a mouthful of Irish oatmeal sweetened with maple brown sugar, snapped her spoon on the table and caught Mother’s eyes. “Whuf hu footh uh dho tathi bafoufh?”

“Indeed, Mommy Dearest, please tell us what in the fuck you are talking about.” Translating for my wiry old grandmother is one of my favorite jobs.

Gram managed to swallow her oats to continue, “Jesus shit onna shingle, Mother Johnson, you ain’t never happy with not a goddamn thing in life. Book yersef tha afternoon with Mr. Dave an git a clock winding. Have him do that dealie he does with the vibrator in yer ass. Ya kin have my time slit.”

“Oh my,” Mother blushed, but said not another word.

Me, I wanted to tell Gram it’s a time slot and also to ask the giant-peckered Mr. Dave what his vibrator-in-the-ass trick is, but we were, after all, eating breakfast.

Anyway, Squirt was telling me what Rick told her were his opinions as I held the fruit to his chest. I started with the grapefruit and worked my way from smallest to larger. Ricky was standing next to me as I was seated at the big kitchen table with the fruit on the table to my right. Rush Limbaugh was standing to the side, on my right, eyeballing every move. I placed the grapefruit on Rick’s chest—adjusted them high-to-low, and with different spacings—while the pig stared and grunted at every move.

When I got the grapefruit into the most favorable position, Rick turned to face his lover for approval. “Snoink, snoogle.” The domesticated porcine language is unnerving to most people when they first encounter it. I’m used to it and usually unfazed.

“OK, Rush, I think you’re right, “ I said, “the grapefruit are just too small on this big boy’s chest.”

The pig smiled at me and gave his lover boy a soulful look. Love comes in all shapes and sizes in this life, folks, and a male 350-pound African ostrich in love with 550 pounds of domesticated hog fits them all.

Next we did the same with the cantaloupe. When Ricky turned to Rush, the big hog’s eyes sparkled, but again he said to us, he said, “Snoink, snoogle.”

“All right, Rushie, but we’re starting to get out of hand. More than a bucketful is wasted. Let’s try the watermelon.” I try to be a good father and provide solid advice for all my charges.

I worked with the big melon, a difficult job as each half weighed seven pounds. By the time I had them situated in just the right spot, my hands were slippery with the juice that was now running all down the front of the ostrich. I didn’t get Rick Perry turned even half way to face Rush Limbaugh when the pig made his alpha male sex announcement and mounted Rick Perry. He had Rick on the floor and was attacking the watermelons like a madman.

“Why that is terribly disgusting, Mr. Johnson. Doesn’t your hog know about foreplay?” Mr. Dave is a true gentleman, and this randy display unsettled him.

“Rush Limbaugh isn’t one to let anything stand in the way of his piggish appetites, Mr. Dave,” I told him. Then I added, “And it looks like the watermelon wins the prize.”

I may never eat watermelon again.

Manana, y’all.

So. Today’s posting subject is a secret that I’ve been attempting to hold tight to my chest for an entire fucking month. See, Quincy over to the Common Sense bloggie asked me to do a guest visit at his place, and after I wrote and submitted the posting to Sir Q, I realized that it disclosed to his readers things not herein predisclosed to you guys. Since I got Q’s dealie written early to meet deadlines, I didn’t want to say anything here to spoil the surprise over there.

It isn’t that I don’t like Quincy’s readers and buddies, it’s that I like you all better. Not that I won’t like Q’s readers any less in the future, it’s just that I don’t know most of them and some might be assholes—which isn’t my way to say that my buddy Q attracts assholes. Now I’m sounding like Political Correctness is my party line, an ill-fitting costume formel, as the French like to say. I don’t wear political correctness well.

OK, look. The guest posting by me is playing over to the Q’s place very soon—as in right now—and some of his readers should make their way over here to Loonyland. If some of them are assholes, I want to insure that I strictly enforce my personal code to insure I fully-disclose to those assholes that I think they are—in fucking fact—assholes.

What I’m trying to say is that I spend some amount of time with every one of my postings to drive the assholes away from my pages. I work hard to hurt your feelings if you are someone I consider to be an asshole. If you think that government SHOULD regulate every American woman’s choices for her own body yet you think that government SHOULD NOT insure that every American child gets the chance to have a free public education of the highest possible quality, then I know that you are an asshole.

If you think that my sister and her wife are sinners living in sin simply because they are lesbian—you, dear friend, are a fucking asshole. If you think that giant flaming asshole Zimmerman was justified when he committed murder down to Floriduh, then you too are a giant flaming asshole.

Asshole is a big word and has many meanings, so please allow me to narrowly refine said meanings to my personal use of the word asshole in this context. An asshole is a bigot. And, basically, a bigot is, “Any person who is intolerantly devoted to his own prejudices or beliefs, or/and one who treats the members of a group with intolerance and/or prejudice.”

And holy shit is my ADHD running at full throttle. My already disparate thoughts have become distracted. At this very instant: I’m talking to the people and bots who read over to Q’s place; I’m writing about a secret that I wanted to disclose herein a month ago but couldn’t because of the story I wrote for Q; I’m bitching about assholes; other things and such; and I am, for certain, thinking about sex.

Of the fifteen independent lines of thought currently running through my ADHD-addled brain, nine are centered on sex as the subject line. My main, and only, squeeze is somewhere in America teaching local law enforcement officers how to combat terroristic threats. As a Special Agent in Charge, US Department of Homeland Security, SAC Ellen has been spending way too little time in Austin to properly service me. Not getting sexed on a routine basis seems to cause my already frittered mind to become even more fritzed.

In my guest appearance at Quincy’s, I mention the fact that Rick Perry wants to get a boob job. Normally I would call getting a new set of fake titties “breast augmentation” surgery, but Rick Perry is so dumb I think boob job is a better fit. My big ostrich wants giant boobies because Rush Limbaugh, Ricky’s gay lover, is a breast man, and, OK, lets stop again. Maybe you should go over to Quincy’s place and read what I wrote there first, and then come back here. You can find Quincy at ThankQforCommonSense . The referenced story is running. At least I think it is.

Now that you are up to date it’s time to tell you the big secret. I want to announce here to the entire world that I, Mooner Johnson—father of both grooms—wish to announce that Rick Perry and Rush Limbaugh will be wedded into holy matrimony in a ceremony to be held at the Johnson Family Ranch at five pm on Saturday the 26^th of May.

Since the pig and ostrich have lived in the closet in an effort to keep the world blind to their homosexual affair for over a year now, a Coming-Out Party will be held on Saturday the 5^th of May. This party will be in lieu of a bridal shower. I’m very excited about the wedding because the closet where these two lumpheads have been hiding is located in my bedroom.

Now that the cat is out of the handbag at Quincy’s place, I can start telling you guys all about wedding plans and all of that shit. As for Rick Perry’s boob job, I am going to attempt to trust the readers of Q’s bloggie to give me guidance.

Which reminds me. My tomato plants are already waist high and some chest high, and all are covered with tomatoes. The lovely little gems are as big as golf balls and the weird warm and wet winter weather has plastered a bumper crop of them to every fat plant. Today and Sunday we are scheduled for high winds, heavy rains and dense, large hailstorms. The Weather Service issued only its second way-in-advanced warning in history because these storms are going to be a bitch.

Mo-ther fuck-er.

Which reminds me of one last thing for today. If you think that Global Warming doesn’t exist or you think it is one of the more curious aspects of “god’s will”…

Then you, dear friend, are a right-wing republican goat-fucking braindead religious—and likely bigoted—asshole.

OK, I lied, as I have one more thing. America was founded by groups of people who held wildly differing political and religious viewpoints—all of whom, and each of whom as well—were persecuted for holding said viewpoints. All of those differing beliefs were merged into a basic document—the Constitution, with its attending Bill of Rights—that carefully explained that all men were created equal and that religion had no place in the government of those people. It stated that America was founded under god, not under YOUR god’s thumb.

These folks were mostly descendants of the Inquisition and all had lived under the tyrannical rules of Monarchy governments. They were told where to work, how to pray, where to live and they were not allowed to make decisions for themselves. Only the wealthiest or those of the ruling classes were even allowed to obtain educations. The greater common populations of the entire fucking world lived under those oppressions.

Our Forefathers fought a bloody war to separate America from those oppressions so that our people, We—those people—would never be faced with those oppressions again. Yet here we are in the year 2012 fighting for our freedoms once more. I have one simple question about this:

Why?

And one simple answer:

ASSHOLES!

Manana, y’all.

So. I’m flummoxed, and dear god how I love that word. Since I’m more than bewildered, way passed confused, and said simply, as I’m dumbfounded and baffled to the max, I am, therefore, flummoxed. Since I have a limited vocabulary of words whose meanings I truly understand, there are few words I can use that are as fully descriptive as the word flummoxed.

I mean, OK, I’ve got the words shit and fucked and asshole and republican down pat as far as knowing precisely all their meanings and literations. And don’t even start on me that literation isn’t a word. A literation is, “The iteration of a word when you don’t mean the simple repetition of said word but, rather, you are speaking to that word’s unique combination of meanings that allow it to be used repeatedly in the same sentence without being repetitive, and boring.” [Id.- Mooner's Dictionary of New American Words]

Perfect example: “The ignorant shit, Rick Santorum, shit all over women yesterday when he made a shitty comment regarding a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body and shit.”

To belabor my point, try this: “The ignorant fuck, Rick Santorum, fucked all over women yesterday when he made a fuckheaded comment regarding a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body, and other fucked up stuff.”

See—literations.

I could go on and on and on with other examples but I’m too flummoxed to give a shit. If you haven’t gotten my point on that one, you’re a right-wing conservative christian fuckball and, as I said, I don’t really give a shit. And speaking of the pompous asshole, Rick Santorum, he is why I’m flummoxed. Specifically, his not winning the GOP Presidential bid to become their next candidate has me flummoxed.

And holy shit is my ADHD on fire this morning. Have you guys ever been around a female cat in heat? Hey-sus-fucking-christimino but that is an annoying trick Mother Nature pulled on us. I was awakened last nigh at 2:31 in the am by my fucking cat, Honor. I’m all asleep and dreaming about having three-way sex with Joan Rivers and the Queen of England. Under normal circumstances, I would find both of those ladies somewhat out of my price range.

But with SAC Ellen out of town twenty-eight of every thirty days, my dreamscapes have become more widely populated. Now I’m getting the message that dreamscapes isn’t a word. Bite my ass Microsoft Word.

In this dream last night I was in a field of fresh mowed hay. It was sweet alfalfa and it smelled of chlorophyll and retsin as I lay on my back in a soft pillow of grass. I had Joanie at my right side and Her Highness on my right. Each was snuggled up and both were naked as Jaybirds. I want to say that if my dream is accurate, the Queen has got herself quite a rack. And Joan’s skin is remarkable.

Anyway, the three of us were deciding how they were going to divvy-up their individual slices of Mooner when the rank odor of spoiled fish ass invaded. The terrible stink was followed by the Queen screeching like a banshee and Joanie trying to rub her ass in my face.

I awoke with a start and was startled to find the fucking cat was standing on my chest, and rubbing her swollen little kitty poontanger in my face. The sound she was making reminded me of what the lamenting of those Sirens of ancient Greece must have sounded like.

I’ve washed and scrubbed and shaved my face six times and I’ve still got the smell in my nose. At breakfast this morning, I asked the table what I can do to stop that cat madness. Other than, “Drown her,” the best ideas were to simply wait it out. This freshening event must have been what spurred Honor’s desire for a mate. I likely should have seen this coming.

I did see Rick Santoria’s dropping out of the race coming, but I’m flummoxed none the less. My flummoxing comes at Ricky’s hands. While I have always felt the Herr Schmidt Rommel would be the republican nominee, I have always wondered if the republicans were really that stupid.

He is, they are, and I’m flummoxed. Do enough Americans hate our President so much that they would vote for a two-faced, lying, job killing chickenshit asshole instead? Are there that many people who will ignore the fact that Obama has done a remarkable job in getting America’s ship righted, and focus on the stupid, fake issues? Are there enough women in America to vote this particular republican into office?

I keep asking myself these questions. I keep hoping the answers to all are, “No fucking way!”

Then I see a 350-pound woman wearing a leotard and belly shirt over to the hardware store. There are rolls of fat pinched above her waste by the tight fabric of the pants, and her camel toe has double chins. The belly shirt—a tight, white cotton tee-style shirt with a deep V neckline—says, “Nobama in 2012—No Mo Monkey Business.”

I was with Streaker Jones or I might have done something stupid myself.

“Let ‘er be, Mooner. She won’t unnerstand.”

Streaker Jones is right. And the answers to my questions is, “Oh, man, I hope not.”

Anyway, I’m headed to the cheese store to get some Limburger. I’m going to wipe a little smudge on my upper lip and hope it cancels out the smell of horny cat’s ass. Manana, y’all.

So. I’ve had time to think about all things easter 2012, and I’m ready to share with you guys. I must admit that my attitude towards all christians has been negatively influenced by the public displays of assholeness of some christians, and not all christians are assholes. If assholeness isn’t a word, it should be. The fact of being an asshole means that a person has a well of assholeness stored up in their rotten little soul. Acting from said well of assholeness is, likewise, putting said assholeness on display.

OK, stop. The actual displaying of assholeness by an asshole would be “showing his assholenesses”[.] I think English should be more akin to German in the grammatical sense of things. I think German is an easy language to understand because they go ahead an place all the modification words into the root word instead of making up new words to express the thought. Like the German word Donaudampfshiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitan. Or my personal favorite, Rindfleischetikettierungsuberwachungsaufgabenubertrangsgesetz. That second one is the word for “beef labeling regulation and delegation of supervision law” and it’s my favorite because…

“Rindfleischerosaschleimentikettierungsuberwachungsaufgabenubertrangsgesetz” is German for pink slime beef labeling regulation and delegation of supervision law. I’ve got your supercalifragilisticexpialidocious right here. And your fucking pink slime as well.

When attending easter services at Mother and Gram’s baptist church Sunday, I was reacquainted with the knowledge that not all christians—and even not all baptist christians—are assholes. The entire family and extended family from the Johnson ranch went to services yesterday. I rented a party bus and had Streaker Jones drive and then babysit the animals while the rest of us went inside the church. Streaker Jones will not enter a church of any kind and the animals were turned away at the door.

I wanted to be pissy about leaving the pets outside but they were nice in the rejection. They asked me why I thought it was a good idea to bring two dogs, a fucking cat, a 550-pound pig and his boyfriend—the 350-pounds of gay ostrich we call Rick Perry—into an easter church service.

“Well, I started, “the way I see it, if humans have a soul that needs saving, so do my pets. Except for Rush Limbaugh, each of these animals has a bigger heart than most of the people I know who attend this church, and since we baptists think that heart and soul are connected, and…”

The nice lady stopped me. “Oh, I see, Mr. Johnson. Well, how about I promise to put the salvation of your animals’ mortal souls on next week’s prayer list?”

“OK.” I was satisfied.

The nice lady was staring at my chest, turning her head sideways in an attempt to read my tee shirt. The hoodie I wore over the tee was covering the starts and finishes of the five lines of print.

“Sus wa sexu use shop feet?” she said. “I’ve never heard of that store before. Is it in the Domain?”

The Domain is the new high-end shopping area up to north Austin. It’s not a mall, it’s more like an imitation Rodeo Drive with anchor tenants. Her thinking my clothes came from there bespoke of the very high quality of the hemp cloth products made by our little company. I grabbed the sides of my hoodie, did an “open sessamee” and revealed the scarlet letters of my special easter message.

The nice lady stared at my chest, again, and was inclined to once more turn her head sideways in the viewing. “Does that say that je-sus was a homo-sex-u-al, Mr. Johnson?”

I guess they teach you to say homosexual like that at this baptist church. Mother says it that way every time, drawing it out like it’s a complete sentence with verb and noun and subject and modifiers and shit. I looked down at my own chest, cocking my head to the side as well. With my left index finger, I underlined the words as I read them upside down.

“Jesus was homosexual because he washed mens’ feet,” I read to her. “I should have said he was a bisexual because he washed the ladies feet as well.”

“Oh, dear. Your poor mother must be so proud of you, Mooner.” She clasped her hand to her heart just as my martyred mother does, and added, she said to me, “Yes, I can imagine your mother is glad you came today.”

We Johnsons and Johnson affiliates were given a wide berth to enter and take our seats. I led us to the third pew from the front, turned and invited our procession to sit. Mother entered first and moved the full length of the bench to take her place on the far aisle, followed by Mr. Dave, Gram and Aunt Hilda carrying Dubbie-J (Hilda’s shrunken-head-in-a-box), then the P-cubed looking mighty fine in a frilly pink sun dress, then Gnat and her beau, Sister’s wife Anna the Amazon, then Sister herownself, and then me.

After we sat, it dawned on me that I needed to tell the nice lady to add Dubbie-J to her prayer list. When I turned to look for her, an older gentleman behind me caught my attention, and said, “Mooner, who is that man seated with your mother? My wife thinks she knows him.”

“Well, sir, that is the famous Mr. Dave, famous for the Japanese eggplant-sized pecker he uses to service the genteel older ladies of Austin. Perhaps your wife has made his acquaintance at tea.” I looked at the wife and she had that classic “holy fucking shit, now I remember him” look, and it was literally plastered on her face.

I winked at the lady and said, “I think he has an opening Wednesday’s at three o’clock.”

When I turned back to face the front, the harsh noises of a whisper-fight were almost concussive on the back of my hoodie. The service started with the organist playing a stylized version of “I Walked Through the Garden Alone” and it was hushed and quiet—almost eerie. I liked it and was feeling calm. I wasn’t expecting to feel calmed.

Then the children’s choir walked to the stage and started singing “jesus Loves Me”[.]

My sister—my sweet, strong, kind and big hearted lesbian sister—started crying. Quietly and with fat tears rolling down her cheeks. She was holding Anna’s hand and reached for mine. She has the grip of a steel worker and I thought my knuckles would break from her grasp, and she cried through all four verses of the children’s song.

It dawned on me then that my sister still believes in the full-blown accept-jesus-as-your-savior-and-gain-everlasting-life stuff. When we were kids “jesus Loves Me” was always her favorite song. She sang it to herself whenever people called her queer or fag or lezzie, and that happened often. She told me that she found solace in the song’s words.

I was moved. I stood from my seat and turned to the sea of faces behind me. I opened my hoodie and displayed my tee shirt, turning once each to left, then right. I sat down.

There were no boos or angry words or even gasps at my shirt. I managed to take some air from the big chapel, but I didn’t disrupt it. The rest of the service went as Pastor Browningwell planned, but he made a concerted effort to avoid looking my way.

If jesus truly was the actual savior as christians think, then he loves all the children in the world. He loves the gay ones and the dumb ones and the different ones. If he doesn’t, he is an asshole.

Which reminds me. Why is ham a favored meat on easter tables? Me, I love me some ham and all things of the pork persuasion. But why ham on easter? Think about this one with me, OK? Since he was an oldie-times Jew, then jesus didn’t eat ham, right? Hogs eat slop just like crabs eat ocean slop, and bottom feeders are verboten in a Kosher diet.

So, again I ask you—why ham? Why not goat or rabbit, or maybe one of those big lizards that roam the sand dunes back to the Middle East? Do rabbits live back there? Maybe Jackrabbits could take the harsh conditions.

Isn’t ADHD fun?

I smoked our ham this year, and it was actually a whole smoked hog leggie. Yum-my! I drank too many beers and told too many stories and ate way too fucking much smoked pig. From the moment we walked out of church and until I went to bed easter night, I was waiting for the eruption from Mother. I expected her to go all ballistic on my ass about my tee shirt display. But not a single word.

Then again, she had Mr. Dave for the day and he likes everyone to stay chilled. Which reminds me. Little Timmy Tebow spoke to an area church easter to tell people to make more and bigger public displays of their faith. I’m too mellow to rant on that now, but know that the turnout was less than half of what they expected, so they sold less than half of the Tebow gear expected. I hope the church that sponsored the visit took it in the shorts on Tebow’s speaking fee.

Manana, yall.

So. Just when I thought I could move on to happy subjects and away from the hypocrisies and redundant bigotry of modern christian dogma, the flouncy old queen of all things catholic gives two speeches in a row that manage to refocus my attentions.

Please note: Until the bulk of christiandom stops persecuting gays, lesbians and transgenders too, and as long as they attempt to enforce legislation that takes away a woman’s right to make her own choices about all things her body—I choose to minimize all things christian by using the diminutive version of grammar when discussing them. Said another way, I will not acknowledge their names with capital letters. Won’t use capitols either.

That having been said, her royal highness, herr pope bentdick the sixteenth—chief fuhrer of the holy roman nazi church—spoke on Thursday to warn progressive catholic priests of the dangers of pushing modernized ideology. These progressives would like to see women as priests and allow women to make decisions about their own bodies without incurring the wrath of the church.

Why, during this holiest week of all holy weeks, the old Nazi fuckball decides to dress-down his church’s free thinkers and attack womens’ rights is way beyond my ability to reckon. (E)easter, I would think, is a time to take a happy swim in the pool of everlasting life. This should be when the pope’ster jumps in that pool and splashes its holy water on all who would listen. I was raised baptist, of the southern persuasion, and not catholic. But I know that baptists and catholics share the resurrection of jesus as the central theme and center post upon which their entire religions were born.

Holy shit but that was awkward. Let me try again. It is upon the rebirth and resurrection of jesus that all christian religious dogma are founded. Awkward once more, but accurate. To get to heaven, a christian must be a true believer that jesus died a most horrible death on the cross and was then reborn to go home to see his daddy, god. I remain unsure as to the specificities of mormon ideologies on this issue, but hold steadfast in my thought that mormons remain one little ‘m’ from the truth.

If it were true in the literal sense, that all we need to do to have everlasting life in heaven is believe in jesus as our saviour, then shouldn’t the pope be a little more focused on that? Rather than chastise some of the boys for thinking for themselves, might he have gotten more into the spirit of easter? Spanking the catholic bad boys could have waited until next week. I mean really, easter comes but once a year and bad boys are bad the whole year around.

However, the pope is an angry old shitball who reminds me of Mrs. Leticia Browningwell—wife of pastor Browningwell at Mother’s baptist church, and my teacher for several classes as a kid. Leticia was forced to teach Darwin’s theories in Junior High science class and she did everything possible to not do so. Her first attempt was to skip those chapters in the book, but Streaker Jones undid that effort. He produced a copy of the lesson plan, previously filed with Austin independent School District supervisors, that clearly showed a week’s worth of schooling on Darwin.

This happened the semester after Streaker Jones and I were expelled from Leticia’s Spanish class and sent to the AISD central offices for “evaluations”[.] That story is in my silly book, a handsome addition to any library and available over there ===}}}} to my Bloggie Roller. You can also see the book trailer and a flattering review.

OK, wait. the review flatters the book and not you. But me, I think you are the cat’s pajamas.

Actually, anybody who can read their way through 600 words of this crap is the pussy cat’s PJs to me. Which reminds me. Honor, my fucking cat, told the Squirt that she wants to be a mommy. Told the little puppy to tell me that she wants me to help her find a suitable suitor and arrange a tryst. It seems that listening to Rush Limbaugh and Rick Perry have sex in the closet has stirred her maternal instincts.

The noises made by my gay pig and his likewise homosexual ostrich lover as they grunt and shriek don’t stir anything in me besides an occasional, “Ick! Was that what I thought it was?” But it seems that the fucking cat gets turned on.

I will say this about Rush Limbaugh and Rick Perry as lovers. Those two boys are incredibly unabashed and unreserved with their lovemaking. Maybe uninhibited is a better word than unreserved. Compared to those two, the Marquis De Sade was unreserved and my ADHD is on fire. I’ve so many disparate thoughts spinning inside my thick skull I can hardly think.

I didn’t want one fucking cat in the first place, and I for certain don’t want a houseful of cats. I only have the one kitty because I wanted to avoid another stay at Shoal Creek Mental Hospital. You can read about the Loony Bin named Shoal Creek Mental Hospital in the book after you buy it. Now that I think about it, my book should be required reading for this bloggie. That way I wouldn’t need to take time to reference it as often as I do, and I’d not need to pimp it so much.

Which reminds me to tell you about my plans for easter. I’m actually going to church with Mother and Gram in the morning. That’s right, for the first time in decades I’m willingly—and willfully as well—attending a service at the baptist church. I’m wearing designer jeans with artfully pre- torn knees, a University of Texas burnt orange hoodie and sandals—all made of recycled hemp fabrics and other byproducts—and a tasteful knit polo shirt made of hemp as well.

The shirt is white to match the base color of my mother’s pretty sun dress, and the blood red printing matches the roses printed on Mother’s dress as well. The printing says, “Jesus was homosexual because he washed peoples’ feet.” My lesbian sister and her wife both have foot fetishes, so my baptist Mother thinks all people who share the same interest in feet are likewise, gay.

Maybe I should go barefoot to honor jesus for choosing to follow his heart and show his love for all men. Now that I think about it, the shirt might should have said jesus was bisexual. He washed womens’ feet as well.

The hoodie is in honor of Trevon Martin and in defiance of any right-wing shithead who thinks that child’s murder was justified by a clothing choice. And by the way—Fuck You, Geraldo Rivera, you chickenshit asswipe goat-fucking turd ball.

As for the pope’s second stupid speech, screw it. I’m going fishing. Manana, y’all.

So. The air at the Johnson family ranch has gotten so thick with estrogen that you could hack it with a Weed Eater. One of those big commercial jobbies with two strands of extra heavy plastic line. Like the lead-lined safety vest X-ray technicians wear to protect themselves from the deadly radiation, I’ve taken to wearing a thick hemp hooded sweatshirt, big sunglasses and an I-Pod while I’m inside the house.

I don’t know if it’s the Spring weather already turned into Summer’s high temperatures in early April, or if it’s just a bunch of crabby old gasbags fighting over Mr. Dave’s giant pecker. Things here to my place are what I think I can safely call “tense”[.]

I’ve tried to isolate myself from all this tension by wearing the protective gear. They kept trying to get me in the middle of things as a referee or a judge and I’m totally done with that shit. I work hard to play King Solomon and always cut the baby in half to keep everybody happy, and I always end up in the middle with everybody pissed at me.

But it’s too fucking hot for me to be all bundled up so I’m thinking about leaving the country. Then this morning I walked into the kitchen to start breakfast, and the entire fucking clutch of Johnson women were already there—sniping and shitting on each others’ feet. It seems Mr. Dave rose early to get ready for his annual physical this morning and the girls were fighting over who was fixing his breakfast.

Mr. Dave—a soft-spoken gentleman, and the very definition thereof—was trying to say something, but couldn’t get a word in edgewise. I pulled the I-Pod buds out of my ears to see if I could help him. I was listening to Led Zeppelin, and quite loud at that. I love LZ. “Wo-maaaaannnnnn!!! Na-nah na-na nah!”

“Hey, Dave my good man, how’s it hanging this morning?” I asked him.

“Heavy and low, Mr. Johnson, heavy and low.”

Those of you who read here routinely might suspect that the giant-peckered old geezer was speaking to the condition of said giant pecker. But Mr. Dave is a true gentleman and would never be so crude. It was obvious to me that he was addressing the blue mood and estrogen laden air I mentioned previously. “Let me see if I can help you,” I told him.

“Hey… Hey, ladies… You too, Gram, y’all listen up.” It was then I noticed that Gram had her Navy SEAL killing knife out of her pocket. “And put your knife away, Gram. I’ll not have you gutting my mother in the kitchen. Take her outside and then be sure to clean up after.”

The knife was once mine and the source for one of my arrests. But you have to buy my silly fucking book to hear anything else about that shit. Click over there =====}}}} to my Bloggie Roller and look at the book stuff. Otherwise, just know that when I got the knife back from the Sheriff’s Department, I gave it to Gram.

The gutting comment got me a look from Mother that said, “Dear god, why me?” Shortly after I got the look, she said the words. “Dear god, why me? It isn’t enough that I’m burdened with a homo-sex-u-al for a daughter, you had to give me this,” and here she flops both of her hands in my direction with the palms up. It was one of those “Ta-da!” motions but without any enthusiasm.

“I take it back, Gram. You can gut her where she stands.” I might have actually meant it.

“Ah, she ain’t wurth tha effert to stick a knife in her belly. Assides, Mr. Davie here is all mine when he gits back from tha doctor.”

“Well,” I addressed the entire kitchen, “Mr. Dave has his physical today, and that means he can’t have any breakfast save a glass of plain tea or some water. So you crazy old bat brains need to stop your bickering.”

“Thank you, Mr. Johnson, I’ve been trying to tell them that for the last hour.”

“Then I’ll have lunch waiting on you,” shouted by three of the women at the same time. Now they started in on a lunch menu. I looked at Mr. Dave and could only shrug my shoulders. “That, dear friend, is why I’m paying you the big bucks, sir.”

He looked at me with this deadpan look and said to me, he said, “We need to talk about a raise, Mr. Johnson. And combat pay.”

“You come back from your exam with a clean bill of health, and you got it.” Hell, I’d pay that old man double for the services he provides around here. Maybe I should sign him up to a long-term contract. His servicing all these old women has made my mostly unbearable hen house almost bearable.

That’s when Mother said something that really set me off. “Why are you wearing that gangster hood, Mooner. You’ll get yourself shot.”

At first it didn’t register with me. “What are you talking about, Mother. I’m wearing my UT hoodie.”

Then I got it and asked Gram if I could borrow her gutting knife. “You are so fucking clueless, Mother. That would be like me shooting you just because you’re a bigoted old Baptist shitbag wearing your pretty new Easter dress.”

Which reminded me. “I had the guys over to the hemp clothing factory make me a special Easter shirt to wear to church with you. It says “Jesus was homosexual because he washed peoples’ feet.”

Mother thinks that since Sister and Anna both have foot fetishes that all gay people have a thing for feet. I remember when I was married to Anna the Amazon—that was before she and Sister fell in love—she couldn’t get off unless I spent at least a little time sucking on her toes. She had big feet too, almost as big as my own.

Anyway, Mother thinks I’m joking about the shirt and attending church, both. She would be terribly wrong on both counts. I’m thinking I’ll wear the shirt with a hoodie. Manana, y’all.