Posts Tagged ‘ADD/ADHD’

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Re-edit, Relived, Relieved

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010

 

So. I’m doing another edit on my book and I am unsure if I can take any more. This edit, while I agree with most everything I was asked to do, is hitting me the hardest of any of my many edits.

Look, I’m not stupid. I’m dumb and inappropriate and, “A crazy redneck fuckwad,” to quote my publisher, but I am not stupid. OK, maybe I’m a little stupid, but not your garden variety brain dead stupid.

I’m not a Republican.

I don’t know why I’m taking this so hard except to say that I thought I was finished writing the book after the last edit. What I have to do to make everyone happy is to take out some pop culture references and “fourth wall” interplay. Pop culture, it seems, is fleeting and temporary. Like Willi Manilli or coonskin caps, you know, things that grow out of fashion and out of a reader’s mind.

My nature is to argue about this because when I wrote the book, it was a real-time dialog. Just like the stuff here to the bloggie. So, if I’m pissed at Rick Perry and I have a point to make, I tell you. But I’m told that in my book, and I’ll quote Pulled Pork Publishing, LLC, “You need, Mr. Johnson, to be pissed at the Republican Party as a universe, not the fleeting, caricature that is Governor Perry. And you can talk about Elvis or Liberace, because they are enduring entertainers whose legacy will stand the test of time. But leave out all that talk about the Beatles.”

I think they are full of shit, but they do have a point about topical issues with short expiration dates. But, I will talk about the Beatles anytime I think about them.

As for the fourth wall interplay business, that is a theatrical term for when the author takes the audience aside and tells a story, or provides insight, that is not a direct part of the story line. Again to quote Pulled Pork Publishing, LLC, “Fourth wall interplay is the lazy man’s prose, Mr. Johnson. Stop cheating your reader and be creative.”

Fuckball publishers.

That’s how my brain works for shit sakes. If I am talking to you and I need to go to the bathroom, I’m not always going to take you with me, so I would throw in a little story I had printed somewhere else to keep my readers entertained, and informed, while I was away.

Then they went on because fuckballs always feel compelled to go on. “You should also attempt to provide better tracking in your storyline. Your digressions are distracting.”

Well fucking duh!

Are you kidding me? My digressions are distracting? Did you not read the part about the ADHD? Give me a break because I’m not going to do anything about the digressions. If I change that, my entire real-time dialog concept is ruined, and all you will get from me is dumb chatter.

But I do want to give you the best product I can, so I am rewriting my book, again.

However, what I really want to talk about today is my friend Lloyd. Lloyd is the college buddy who is the man I most admire. (See bloggie posting of April 20, 2010) Lloyd has started blogging, and if you will go there, you will understand just what I mean. Lloyd makes me cry and feel crummy about myself every time I think about the kind of man he is.

Crummy in that good sort of way where you end up feeling good about yourself just because someone like Lloyd calls you, “Friend.”

Please go to his website at www.lifeslessonslearnedlate.com and read what he has written. It’s OK to cry and feel crummy if you want. Just understand that what you see is precisely what Lloyd is.

Next, let’s talk about my butt. It is getting back to normal and I have been cleared for sexual athletics. Except for for no stun gun foreplay. SAC Ellen is trying to hide it, but disappointment is written all over her face.

“How do we warm up without a dose of Direct Current Mooner?”

We have never had sex without a jump-start from a stun gun. That all began when she and I first met. SAC Ellen headed the multi-jurisdictional task force that was investigating me, and I have to stop talking about this since it’s in my book.

Anyway. Grab a cold Carta Blanca beer and go check out what Lloyd has to say. Me, as a fourth wall indiscretion, am going to take a sitz bath and get prepared for some serious sexolating.

Manana, y’all.

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Posted in A Life Lesson, ADHD, Carta Blanca Beer, Moon Shows, Rick Perry, Rush Limbaugh the pig | 3 Comments »

Tag My Keywords, Fuck Your Word Count, Drink Carta Blanca Beer

Monday, July 12th, 2010

So. Like I have been trying to tell you guys, the bloggie police are after me. I keep getting these warnings that I am making a complete mess of my webber and bloggie. The Blog Word Count Police have issued a warrant for my arrest and I think Go Daddy has hired a hit man to get me off their overloaded servers.

In my latest “Search Engine Visibility Notifications”, Go Daddy gave me failing marks on all ten of the top ten Search Engine Visibility check points. I think maybe that’s not a perfect score but I am having trouble determining why I want to fix my problems.

Let’s evaluate this report together, OK?

  1. They say, “All pages have title tag issues. Use the main keyword, less than 65 characters, only alpha-numeric, but no stop words like a, if, the, then, and, an, to, etc.” I say, “Hunh- WTF is that supposed to mean? The title is supposed to be an accurate description of what the title’s stuff is, so bite me.”
  2. They say, “Your pages have tag issues. Good tags have 25-35 words.” Again, I say, “Hunh- WTF? Speak English, por favor.”
  3. They say, “Your pages have keyword meta tag issues.” I say, “I went through all of that keyword shit when I thought they were keystones. I fixed this jobbie already.”
  4. They say, “You have heading tag issues. “ Again, “WTF, and who gives a shit?”
  5. They say, “You have content issues. Pages should have at least 200 words and never more than 700 words.” I say, “Who voted you king of word count? It takes me 300 words to determine my subject matter, and just so that you get things from my perspective- this writing right here just exceeded 300 words. If I start ending things at 700 words, I’ll never get anything said.”
  6. They say, “You have navigation issues. Spiders have difficulty getting around your site.” I say, “I think what Dustin has done should fix that.”
  7. They say, “You have a bad site map.” I say, “Please see response to number 6., above.”
  8. They say, “You have robot.txt file issues.” I say, “Fuck you and your right-wing Republican robots.”
  9. They say, “We want to repeat that you have significant word count and keyword density issues.” I say, “Leave me alone with the word count criticism for shitsakes. I have ADHD!”
  10. They say, “You are inappropriate, too inappropriate for the the vast majority of users.” I say, “Bite me. You must be Baptist or one of their puppets, a Republican. Please go away.”

Now, I don’t claim to be any kind of an expert on anything related to the I-net, so I likewise won’t claim to have any true idea of what to do with my latest evaluation. But it sounds like they want me to manipulate all of my stuff to attract their evil spiders and robots by performing misleading advertising. And also by selling you short on content.

Look, I’m a businessman and I want to be successful. I’m also a human being, so I want you to like what I’m doing here. But it sounds like they think that you guys are dumb shits and have no greater attention span than me. Hell, even I can pay attention for 300 words. And once I get started, I can read a 400-page book in about five hours.

Can’t tell you shit about what I read, but I can read every word.

Which is a major problem for me- the read-fast-can’t-remember-shit thingie, that is. See, I am all the time buying a book that I have already read. Usually the Publisher catches me by changing something on the book’s cover. I seem to be able to tell more about a book from its cover than reading the synopsis on the back, or even the first few chapters.

I mean, I’ll be down to the Barnes and Nobles looking for a few books and reading synopsises or synopsisissi or whateverthehell the plural of synopsis is (are?), and I pick up a book by a favorite author, like say JD Robb. The new book is an Eve Dallas story and I love Eve Dallas stories so I read the synopsis and maybe five chapters. I need to read quite a bit with JD Robb because her books are the ones I buy most.

“Nope,” I say to myself. “This one’s new.” And I buy it, take it home out to the ranch, and place it on one of the tables next to my several reading stations.

Then, a few weeks later, I sit with a cold Carta Blanca beer and open my new Evie Dallas book to the first page. I take a big swallow of beer and read the first three words and say to myself, I’ll say, “Shitballs, I’ve already read this one.”

Why is that? What is going on in my brain where I can’t remember I’ve read a book by reading 2,500 words, but three will hit my memory button after I buy the book a second time? Or even the fifth time.

Now, before you answer that, you need to realize that I’m at 895 words- felonious assault with overly-dense content. That could get me five-to-ten in the Internet slammer. So I say to you-

Manana.

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Posted in ADHD, Carta Blanca Beer, Humor | No Comments »

Is That Jury Hung, Or What (Part 4)

Monday, June 28th, 2010

When Oprah talks about ,“A-ha moments,” I am now required to wonder precisely what she means. When I told you in the last posting that I had one of those moments, I meant that I had an “A…HA!!!” moment, sort of a “Shazam!!!” jobbie. Or even more like, “A-ha, I caught you, you rotten bastard!” You know, like it’s a big deal. I thought those moments were really big mental awakenings with at least one stunning aspect.

Then last night when I got home to the ranch, and Streaker Jones and my Gram were watching a Tivo’d episode of the Oprah Show, the lady on the show was talking about her, “aaaaaa-haaaaa,” moment. This woman’s A-ha moment was more like a, “Hmmm maybe I’m starting to have an inkling of an idea of what’s what.” If I was to write down in English what she said and then I wanted to punctuate her emotions, the last thing I would choose to use is an explanation point, like this- !.

I wonder why the English language has no punctuation mark that equals the opposite of the explanation point. If I was to design one it would be like this- ~ , you know the little squiggle dealie that you put over a senor to make it a Spanish Seen-your.

My efforts to design this mark would be to mimic the sound that a deflated balloon makes as the last little bit of air escapes when you let one fly through the air. The first escaping air would be an ! , and that last little bit would be the ~ . The definition of my new mark would be: “Punctuation from Mooner Johnson, who stole it from the Spanish: 1. Indicating dullness, flatness or disappointment; 2. The most mild surprise possible; 3. The opposite of an exclamation point.”

What I think I’m actually trying to say is that this lady’s idea of an A-ha moment was something quite different from mine. Hers was akin to how it feels when one raindrop splatters on your windshield and you say, “A-ha, I think it might rain.”

My A-ha moment was more like that time Streaker Jones and I went skiing up to Colorado and I tripped and fell into the icy lake. An “Ah-fucking-ha!!!” moment. My God the water was cold and the A-ha part was knowing I would drown.

When I asked Gram what she thought about this A-ha situation she said to me, she says, “Who gives a shit Mooner. Eye-has is as Eye-has does. I cain’t see a differnce one.”

Efforts to correct my Gram’s grammar are always futile. But is she funny, or what?

Anyway, so here is what my A-ha moment was. I was in the courtroom for jury duty last week, admonished simply for being me, and sitting in the witness stand that served as my dunce’s chair so his Honor could keep a watchful eye on me. What with my ADHD getting all fritzy on me, my head was spinning with dozens of thoughts. I had talked my way out of getting jailed because everyone was so hungry. (Read the last several bloggie postings if you are lost.)

“Look everyone, just give me thirty more minutes and I’ll let you go home.” This was almost a plea from the Judge.

I was listening to the Prosecutor and defense attorney spin the truths of the process to suit their needs and I heard the prospective jurors answer questions, and question back. Now, it was 2:30 in the afternoon after an 8:30 am start, and we had been given only two each twenty-minute breaks. But no food time.

Some of the additional thoughts swirling through my brain at the moment were: several different two Sarah Palin questions and lines of thought; trying to memorize the sequence to replace the battery to my cell phone; how many freckles were on the cumulative faces in the room- I counted sixty-three on this one woman’s face before she stared me down and I lost count; who was the dead body in this murder trial; did Gram catch this one particular squirrel that has been terrorizing my tomato plants; if Rush Limbaugh and Rick Perry will ever come out of the closet; various and assorted other thoughts.

My brain was fighting with itself in vain effort to keep the activities in the courtroom to a sharper focus than all the other thoughts. I kept struggling with all of these thoughts but lost focus on the courtroom drama, and my brain started swirling.

Then everything came into sharp focus and my A-ha moment came.

“A-ha!!” I exclaimed. “I am innocent by reason of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, your Honor.” I thought another second and followed with, “IRADHD, Billy. I’m gonna be famous.”

Jeff, my attorney, had me bailed out of jail by 9:30 but he was so pissed that he made me take the bus back to my car. The bus schedule features far fewer buses late at night, so when I finally got to my last stop it was 11:15. I walked across the street to my car, which wasn’t there.

Towed it was, and mightily pissed was I.

Luckily it’s summer and I had my portable tomato kitchen with me. Since I wasn’t going to be driving, I popped the top on my chilly Carta Blanca beer and sat down on the concrete base of the big light to where my car had been parked. As a karmic reminder of my idiocy, when sitting I banged my head on the sharp edge of the metal sign attached to the light post.

Hard.

Blinking with banged-head pain I looked up to read the sign. “Towing Strictly Enforced- Illegally Parked Cars WILL BE TOWED!”

Fucking sign.

This is when I think to call home to get a ride, so I reach into my hemp cloth tote and retrieve my cell phone. When it won’t power-up I start getting pissed about that and then remember that the battery is out of it. So now I’m searching through all the stuff in my tote for the battery when I feel something warm and sticky run into my eyes.

I’ve got the cell phone in my one hand with the other buried deep in the bowels of my tote. I’m sitting directly under my big light source so I have to turn in a contorted kind of twist to keep the tote out of the deep shadows so I can see inside, and now I have blood running into my eyes and it’s starting to drip off my nose and onto the tote, my legs and even the ground.

You know how head wounds can bleed. Fucking sign.

I’m starting to get pissed because I can’t find the fucking battery and cars are driving through the parking lot and I don’t pay any attention to anything because I’m focused on getting my cell phone operative. Maybe a few frustrating minutes pass and I say to my self, I say, “What the fuck, I haven’t eaten since breakfast, I’m gonna have myself a tomato and finish my beer.”

So. I put the phone away and grab a big purple heirloom tomato, sea salt and pepper, and my big carving knife from my bag and prepare to chow down. I slice a fat slab the tasty homegrown heirloom, get it seasoned and pop it into my mouth. As I swallow the last bits of finely-chewed skin, I wipe the blood from my face with the back of my knife holding hand and then I raise the bottle for another long pull of Carta Blanca.

“Don’t move, Sir. Put down your weapon and stick your hands up.” Instructions from a bull-horned voice and now a spotlight in my eyes.

“Oh leave me the fuck alone, Deputy. I’m just having a little lunch and minding my own business.”

Have you ever noticed just how conflicting the instructions given by peace officers can be? “Don’t move,” are always the first words out of their mouth and they are always followed by some instruction that specifically requires motion.

“Besides,” I instructed. “You have given me impossible rules to follow, so I choose to not play your childish game.”

I slug some more beer and begin operating on my tomato for another slice of that tastiness.

“I said drop the weapon, Sir!”

“When I’m finished and not a second before,” I told him.

I’m starting to think to myself that maybe my bloody face might be a mitigating circumstance in this interchange, and that’s when I hear that electronic whirring sound, noise that is deeply imprinted on my very senses- the sound of a tazer checking its charge in preparation for a discharge.

“Oh for shit sakes don’t tazer me,” was all I got out.

ZZZZAAAAAPPPPP!

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Posted in ADHD, Carta Blanca Beer, Home Grown Tomatoes, Humor, Oprah Winfrey, Rick Perry, Rush Limbaugh the pig, Sarah Palin | 3 Comments »

Are Two Sarah Palins Too Many?- Jury Still Out (Part 2)

Friday, June 25th, 2010

OK, let’s continue our discussion of my jury duty experiences. When we left off, I had avoided potential conflict at the X-ray stand, the numbered paddle problem had been exposed and I had already been admonished by the Judge simply for being there.

And that would be when my phone started ringing. “Oh for crap sakes Mooner, turn your phone off.”

“Sorry, your honor,” I muttered. “It’s a new one and I can’t quite figure it out.”

“I told him at least twice your Honor.” This fussily said by the jury rustling fuss budget.

I fumbled with the off button and put the offending electronics back into my pocket. This phone distraction got me off the hook and the Judge says, “Next.”

Number 26 stands with his raised number 25 paddle and says, “I’m number 26, your honor and my name is…”

“Oh for shit sakes Mooner, will you trade paddles with that man so I can get on with this?”

“Objection your Honor,” this from the Prosecutor. “This man, number 25, has intentionally disrupted the record. He held a number 26 paddle while representing himself to be number 25. I move to strike his testimony and arrest Mister Johnson for mal intent.”

I’m thinking to myself, I thought, “Mal intent. What the fuck is mal intent?”

Maybe I should try to stop thinking to myself because the judge says, “Mooner, stop cursing in my courtroom and let me handle this or I’ll pitch your rosy red ass into my jail. I have experience with that, don’t I Mister Johnson.” That last part was statement not question.

Then he said, “Objection overruled Mister Prosecutor- irrelevant. He means well but trouble sticks to Mooner like ticks on a deer’s belly.” He added, “Now let’s move on.”

We traded paddles and the judge went all the way through the rest of the numbers without incident. The judge starts back in on his speech about how jury duty requires you to be honest and answer questions under oath and that he can pitch your rosy red ass into his jail if you tell lies. I know that this threat lacks any actual teeth because so many people tell so many obvious lies and their rosy red asses do not go to jail.

Me, it’s not my lies that get me locked up. It’s always the circumstance. And circumstantial evidence.

Anyway, the Judge is about five minutes into his speech again when my fucking phone goes off. Again. “I am so sorry Billy- I mean your Honor. It’s a new phone and I can’t figure it out yet.”

“Bailiff, would you please remove the battery from Mooner’s phone for him?”

He did, but under my watchful eye to insure I could figure how to put it back later. And we get back to the silliness that the judge has to go through as part of the voir dire jury selection process. Those silly words basically mean “truth telling” in French, and it is used to see if potential jurors might be prejudiced either for, or against, a particular party in a legal action.

Why are most French words so silly sounding? I think if I was French I would feel compelled to wear frilly dresses and speak my French with a snotty nose and phlegm-clogged throat.

Again, prejudice has no place in a courtroom. Except, of course, for the attorneys on both sides of the isle- prosecution and defense alike. With the exception of my guy Jeff, I think I might hate all lawyers. I say might only because I haven’t met all the lawyers.

I bring the bias part up now because bias raised its ugly head right at this point. “Your Honor, I wish to approach the bench.” That would be the Prosecutor.

“OK,” from the Judge.

A snippy announcement, “I would like to call number 25 to the bench for a conference.”

The judge says to me, he says, “It’s show time Mooner but I am warning you. If you drop your pants and wave your ass in my courtroom I’m authorizing the Sheriff Deputies to shoot it.” He then turned to the two armed men watching over things and told them, “If this man waves his bare ass at me, I want you to shoot to kill.”

Everyone laughed but me as I walked to the podium known as the bench. The prosecutor starts in on me right away, “Allow me to cut to the chase Mister Johnson. You have been arrested and charged with murder more than once, right?”

What the fuck is this all about?

“What the fuck is this all about?” I waited a beat and he replied, “Just answer the question.”

Now me, I have already been sworn in and promised to tell the truth, which does not require a promise from me, but I know I need to be careful what I say and sometimes the truth can hurt.

“I plead the Fifth.” Take that asswipe.

“Your Honor, will you instruct him to answer.”

“Answer him Mooner.”

From me, “The Fifth.”

“Did you know that this is a murder case?” The Prosecutor.

From me, “I do now- hell everybody knows now. Did he kill anybody I know?”

“Lower your voice, sir. Now, can you tell me why you should be allowed to participate in a murder trial when you hold the District Attorney, my boss, in such low regards?” He says this and folds his arms in that “got you” posture small-minded men use.

“Just because your boss is a brain dead Republican right wing religious fuckwad doesn’t mean I can’t render fair judgment for another man who is assumed to be innocent.”

He was looking at me with this stupid look on his weaselly face so I added, “Maybe I mean presumed innocent.”

Then my ADHD started this fritz dealie it does when I get angry and I had dozens of thoughts spinning in my head all at once. “Hold on just a minute and let me sort out my thoughts,” I told them.

After some short period of time the snotty Prosecutor blinked and said, “Come on Mister Johnson you are giving the wheels of justice a flat tire.” And then he turned and snickered for the audience.

“I have an idea Mister Assistant District Attorney,” I said.

“And that would be?” he inquired.

“You go fuck yourself because I plead the Fifth.”

Normally, this is where I would lower my pants to half mast and display my tastefully-coiffed butt hair, currently plucked and dyed to say, “Happy Birthday USA,” in red, white and blue. Like I told you the other week, SAC Ellen and I are taking the dogs, Dixie and Squirt, and meeting some folks out to Marfa for July Fourth. I’m going to march in their parade and the dogs are going to pull me in a wagon. This particular parade route is too long for me to waddle backwards with my head between my knees, so I’ll be pulled in the wagon this time.

I love parades.

I left SAC Ellen in charge of our accommodations for this trip and you would think we were planing a trip around the world. I have never heard so much conversation and cogitation required to book three rooms for three nights in west Texas.

“It’s Marfa and Fort Davis for shit sakes,” I said this one time after she had spent several hours on the phone with various hospitality people. “You grill those poor people like you think they smuggled a weapon of mass destruction into your territory.”

I think maybe my attitude cost me a sexless night but I always stand up for the little guy.

And I am digressing. Basically, the Prosecutor did not want me on this jury but the defense did. So this Assistant District Attorney is trying to grill my ass in front a courtroom full of nice people and the defense attorney is doing nothing to stop him. The Judge, of course, takes a neutral stand because that is his job and he harbors at least a slight bias towards me hisownself.

I won’t bore you with all the details of the discussion, but the Prosecutor’s argument was basically this. “How can you, Mister Johnson, provide an unbiased ruling in this case when you have been accused and acquitted of so many crimes, including murder?”

My answer, “I can do that by setting my bias aside and factoring your case against the accused tempered with the defense presented by this other lawyer. And since I have a very clear understanding of what, ‘beyond a reasonable doubt means,’ I will, thereunder, render fair and impartial judgment.”

“But you are biased by your experience, Sir,” was all he managed to get out.

“Well fucking duh. Of course I am,” my clever response. “Is it not that lifelong experience coupled with my promise to be fair and just that qualifies me to be a juror?”

Now the Judge is paying attention. “Stop preaching and go sit down Mooner. The Prosecution deserves you for poking his stick in your cage.”

When I took a deep breath to continue my sermon, the Judge stopped me cold. “I said sit!”

I sat. I got several pats on the back and “Atta boys” from my fellow prospective jurors- rewards for a job well done. I started thinking about things not courtroom related and the next thing I know, I’m debating that, if I absolutely had to choose, whether I would rather have sex with the Sarah Palin lookalike from down to the security station or would I choose the actual Sarah Palin.

Would I prefer a 300 pound-plus local girl with a cartoon of the Alamo and my autograph on her ass and who looks like the politician, or would I instead be more desirous of the actual lunatic right-wing religious fuckball with nice skin and who seems to maybe have a dirty side?

See this is a debate because I would have sex with either of them if I liked them because I do not judge books by their covers. Which reminds me that I need to get the cover designed for my book. I have been letting that slip and need to get it on schedule.

Anyway, it seems that my not paying attention to the live action and thinking about having sex with the two Sarah Palins had turned into a dream in which the two Sarahs were fighting over who got to have sex with me. I was at the point in my dream where I say to the girls, “You don’t need to fight over me girls, there’s plenty of Mooner to go around.”

I hear a voice that says, “What did you just say?” to which I repeated the part about not fighting over me.

That’s when everything unraveled on me. But I better stop right here before I offend the blog word count police again.

Let’s all have a cold Carta Blanca beer and a slab of homegrown tomato. More later.

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Posted in A Life Lesson, ADHD, Carta Blanca Beer, Home Grown Tomatoes, Humor, Moon Shows, Sarah Palin | 1 Comment »

Mooner Signs Sarah Palin’s Ass; Lookalike’s Husband Angry (Part 1)

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

Sometimes I think my life is this fictional story whose author is this lunatic fuckball who’s got no boundaries, has multiple personalities and a deep-fried brain. I called Dr. Sam I. Am for a little phone psycho therapy last night and when I told her this theory she said to me, she says, “That is remarkable insight for a lunatic fuckball whose deep-fried brain knows no limits and is void of appropriate thought from any of his aspects. You are showing progress and I am a psychotherapy miracle worker.”

Bitch.

She also went on to say, “Look Mooner. You are crazy and that’s OK in my book. Just be grateful that you remain, for the most part, functional.” And then she started laughing.

When I asked her what was so funny she says, “The functional part.”

See what I mean- bitch.

If you keep up here to bloggie central you know I was scheduled to jury duty starting yesterday morning. You also know that I am the most unlikely candidate for the title “Juror” as you are likely to find. Think about it.

Ten ex-wives will keep me out of any domestic dispute; I have never been convicted of a single felony yet I have been arrested and incarcerated more than a few times. Wait, yet is a bad choice of words in my case and I don’t mean I have yet to be convicted, like they just haven’t been able to pin a murder on me that I was guilty of committing. I was using yet to mean however.

As for civil cases, I have been involved in so many of those nasty things and involving so many issues, it is nearly impossible to find a civil issue that I have not had as part of a lawsuit of my own. You can’t chose a civil issue that is outside my courtroom experience. In fact, my attorney Jeff has won the “Texas Most Diversified Lawyer Award” nineteen years straight.

Streaker Jones, my family and I are Jeff’s only clients.

Now look, I would love to serve on a jury because I think that I reason better and clearer than 99% of the total pool of prospective jurors who want to serve on a jury, plus I have seen what can happen when all the decent folks opt out. The litigants, the criminally accused and we the People all deserve the best minds you can find and the least biased as well. Jury bias can cause terrible trial outcomes.

Think OJ Simpson, and I rest my case your Honor.

Many, if not most, qualified prospects simply do not feel that jury service is important enough to endure the time and effort to serve. And anybody with an IQ of like 67 or higher can get out of jury duty if they choose. In fact, most of those brighter people seem to do just that.

To each of those people I say this. Imagine yourself on trial for murdering a man that you accidentally killed in self defense. Imagine that this dead guy was a Deacon to his Baptist Church and a State Delegate to the Republican Convention.

Now, imagine that the only people from your jury pool pull who can’t weasel out from serving are Baptist conservative Republicans with an average IQ of maybe 58 quotient points.

Oopsie!

Then if you think about the simple fact that you have spent maybe forty years of your wasted life bitching about the Baptists and their hand puppets the Republicans, maybe you can start to formulate my argument that you should embrace jury duty and try to get others to do the same.

Like yesterday, for example. I got up at 4:30 am to get dressed and ready and I drove over to the shopping center there to US 183 and Anderson Mill. That’s the one the Capitol Metro website told me to go to if I wanted to start from my place way out to the boonies and arrive to the courthouse in time. Ignoring the “We Enforce Towing” sign because the bus stop is located on the grounds of the center, I parked and got out. My bus arrived within a minute of its scheduled time and got me to my transfer stop just in front of my express bus to downtown. I want to state here that the buses were clean, the drivers helpful and the timing good.

After a short walk from where I debarked the bus, I got to the courthouse in time to have a party at the security checkpoint. Because I have several metal objects embedded in my skin, I am the party at the x-ray booth. Many people recognized me and I even gave an autograph to this woman who looked just like Sarah Palin except maybe for the extra 200 pounds she was packing.

This is going to be a two-part story, I can tell right now. And remember that I rode the bus because they have no available parking spaces for potential jurors, only actual chosen jurors, and the City tows overdrawn parking meters.

When I signed the nice woman’s Lilly-white left butt cheek I noticed that there was no evidence of underwear and of course, I commented. Her little toothless redneck husband, who had been quite supportive of me having my hands all over her giant ass to draw a picture of the Alamo and sign my name with a Sharpie, became a surly little toothless redneck shitwad when I asked about was I just not seeing the underwear, or was there no underwear to see. Since this woman’s ass was big enough to conceal a meth lab, I thought my question appropriate.

Actually, it was her answer maybe that sparked the Mister’s surliness. In answer to my question the nice lady said to me, she says, “Here Mr. Johnson, take a peeky-poo fur yer-sef.” And she sprightly yanked her jeans to her knees.

Now me, I’m thinking to myself that it has taken some jean lowering practice for this nice lady to get the 12 yards of tightly-packed denim that skins her ass to her knees before I can blink. Her husband, and again this is just what I think, is not blaming me for this particular jeans lowering event. Instead, I think he is blaming me for her already acquired expertise at lowering said jeans.

“So yer tha one ain’t cha Mooner,” he said with tobacco stained spittle spritzing from the gaps between his remaining teeth. “Don’t know iffn I want ta shoot ya er kiss ya.”

Luckily we were scheduled on different floors or I maybe would have had a problem there. Then I get to my floor and endure the seventh grade spring dance that is getting 70 prospective jurors identified and into their appropriately numbered seats. We were all getting identified and assigned numbers by the fussy man in charge.

“Single file Indian Style,” said this guy in charge of jury rustling. “And make sure your phones are turned off.” And then, “O-f-f,” he spelled for us.

Now me, as a quarter American Indian blood owner, I turned my new phone off and took no offense to the Indian style dealie because I think political correctness is oppressive. Never understood why that phrase has such common usage anyway, but I’m not offended. However, the man with the tomahawk nose and long braids two doors down from me held a differing view.

“I’m not moving until you take that back,” he said. It was taken back, with political correctness, so we moved into the courtroom to take our places.

I was number 25, and my day started going to shit as I reached my assigned middle isle seat, expecting to find my plastic paddle marked with a number 25. “This has number 26 on it and I’m number 25. This is out of order.” I’m quick to point out problems because I think the earlier you identify a problem- the easier the solution.

“If you are number 25, sit where the plastic paddle number 25 is located, it is not that difficult.” Not quite a scold from the rustler.

“Fine,” I said as I sat on the opposite isle seat number 26 with plastic paddle number 25.

“I thought I said for you to sit at your number Mister 25. Are you going to be a problem here Mister 25?” A few seconds of agitated jury rustler foot tapping and then, “Move it Mister 25 or you’ll be in contempt of court. I asked are you going to be a problem, now answer me.”

Calmly I answered. “Not so long as you pull your head out of your ass and decide where you want me to sit.”

That’s when I get this “Harumph” noise that my first grade teacher used to get her students all in our seats for an assembly to the auditorium. He grabs me by my arm, gently but firmly, and says as he points to each seat, “22, 23, 24, and then 25, Mister 25. It doesn’t go 22, 23, 24,” now he swings his hand dramatically to point across the isle, “and then 26, now does it?”

And I said, “Not when I count sir. I usually get to eleven and need to start over.”

I am a funny guy.

So he glares and places me in my correct seat next to number 24 but my little plastic paddle still says 26. Now, after this three minute distraction Mister 26 takes his seat, the one that is his correct seat, and he raises the number 25 paddle in the air in front of his face. I decided I liked him right away because he says nothing- he just sits with this big grin on his face.

Now, the Judge starts his speech and part of his introduction to the jury process is to introduce yourselves starting with number one. “Stand up, hold up your paddle for the Court Reporter to see,” starts Judgie Poo, “And say your number and state your name.”

Of course all goes well from numbers one through 24 when I stand with my paddle held high and say, “I’m number 25 your honor, and as you know, I’m Butcher Einstein, known as Mooner, Johnson.”

“Oh for Christ sakes Mooner,” his honor almost swears. “Whose campfire did I piss in to deserve having you in my courtroom?”

OK, let’s stop here and have a cold Carta Blanca beer. This jury thingie is a long story.

Manana.

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Rick Perry Joins Rush Limbaugh In Closet; Republican Party In Turmoil

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

I want to move. Oregon or New Mexico or maybe Finland, you know someplace with summer temperatures the other side of hellish. I’ve already got sweat on my face, sweat running down my back and sweaty balls and I’m taking a shower for shit sakes. June 15th and its already 95 degrees and 95% humidity.

Just so you know, I have a Summons to Jury Duty next week and for a period from June 21through July 2. Are you fucking kidding me? What attorney or prosecutor will want to be looking at my ass sitting in a jury box? But, you never know.

And get this- the letter with the Summons says, “Since there is no parking for the Courthouse, we suggest you make arrangements with Capitol Metro to get to the Courthouse by the 8 am starting time. Again, are you fucking kidding me?

From my place way out here to the far northwest part of the County I would need to leave yesterday at 8 am to get downtown by 8 am today if I use Capitol Metro. Then, once I got there I would need to turn right around and head back so I could get showered and shaved to be back to the courthouse by 8 am tomorrow morning. Assuming they want me to stay for a visit once I’m there, I’ll be needing to make other arrangements for transportation.

The point I digressed about this jury duty business is that I might not be posting anything much next week. But I’ll make it up to you in some fashion or another.

As for Rush Limbaugh the pig, the carpenters just finished installing a private entrance from the side of the house into my closet. It’s like a weather-safe doggie door except bigger. Rush is just too frightened to come out of the closet all the way. He’ll come out and play and stuff but he’s back in the closet every night. And any time he hears the nerve-grating screech that is my Gram’s voice he burns the ground racing to his new door.

He’s like Liberace or Rock Hudson or maybe that lady from the view who got her stomach stapled and lied about it. Everybody knew about their secrets, nobody really cared about them, and each one brought a world of shit down on their own heads while they hid from their truths.

Rush Limbaugh is the most ridiculous of them all if you ask me. Except for Gram, he has a loving and supportive family who both know of, and enjoy, his differences. He is funny and smart and provides me with endless hours of entertainment when he rams his snout up Gram’s ass and furts her.

Gram is the best furt victim I have ever seen in my decades of furting. Jumps out of her socks every time. And since she’s always in everybody else’s business, there’s ample opportunity to catch her bent at the waist with her butt exposed.

But now I have a new problem with Rush Limbaugh’s refusal to come clean and leave the closet. Rick Perry the ostrich has done that thing that baby birds do when they bond with the first living thing they see. Except Ricky has bonded with my Gram, in whom the term living thing has perverse meaning, and that big ass bird is no baby.

Lucky that Dixie speaks Strothio Camelus, that’s the African black ostrich language. There’s a small problem in that Rick Perry was separated from all other birds as a newborn and was raised in a pen with a bunch of pigs. That information should lead you to the conclusion as to the particulars of my current, new problem.

Living with pigs will cause a person to develop pig-like habits. I know that sounds trite as all get out, but it is truer than fictionalized. Pigs jam their snouts up everyone’s ass and squeal and oink and shit all over the place, and so does Rick Perry. Two hundred pound flightless bird thinks he’s a piggie.

Brings new perspective to that whole, “If pigs could fly,” dealie.

Dixie is having a terrible time translating for me because Rick Perry speaks ostrich through his nose, again like a pig. Apparently that messes with the syntax of the vowel sounds in ostrich talk making it difficult to decipher.

When I told Dixie to tell the bird to stop furting Gram or I’d be grilling his skinned carcass on the spit to my big smoker out back, Dixie translated his response. “Well Mooner, he either said that he will be most gracious to accommodate your every wish, or he asked me to tell you to go fuck yourself.”

Sounds like he’s gonna fit in with this family either way.

Star Jones. The lady from The View, her name is Star Jones. Had her stomach stapled and wouldn’t come clean and married this guy that many called gay. I don’t see why any of that should make a difference. Lots of gay people are happily married to the opposite sex. They just can’t marry within their desired sexual parameters, happily or not.

Fucking right-wing Christian Republican shitballs pushing their belief systems up our ass again.

I did a little investigation to learn more about ostriches and discovered several interesting things. First, he’s got 46 feet of intestines and that explains the fact that his farts can melt the glass out of a window frame.

Second is that they run in circles when they try to run away from danger and third, and most interesting is this. An adult ostrich will have two eyeballs, each the size of a billiard ball, crammed into a dense, thick skull. Each eyeball is far larger than his brain.

This set of facts are why my Gram gets so much credit for her senses. Mother thought it was a political statement when Gram sensed the bird’s name was Rick Perry. But once again, science bears Gram’s vision as dead on target.

The running in circles with a very small brain seems visionary fodder for my Gram.

Anyway, Rick Perry has bonded with Gram and keeps furting her by poking his snotty beak up her ass and making this noise that less resembles the sound of a, “Furt!” and is closer to the sound a flat tire makes just as it blows and shreds against the fender at 70 miles per hour.

So now Gram has Rick Perry on the same list as Rush Limbaugh, that’s the “Execute on Sight” list, and that means I’ve got the both of them hiding in my closet. Twenty-four hours a day except for excursions to potty and make mayhem. It’s a good thing the bird is flexible and can get out of Rushie’s door.

And speaking of mayhem, I’m sitting to the dinner table with the family last night and Gram says to me, she says, “Mooner, call yer young a-dult buddies Johnny and Sammy an ask em iffn they lik fancy red Fer-Raries.”

I almost choked on my Carta Blanca and sprayed a mouthful over my plate of enchiladas. “No way Gram. These guys are my buddies and I will not have you ruining their lives.” This I said with resolute firmness.

“Oh stop yer whining Mooner. I’m gittin a touch randy an need some fresh boys ta meet.”

Sweet mother of God, I pray for the young men’s souls.

“No way. And don’t ask me again.”

Then she takes a slug of her own beer and says, “Aw who gives a shit Mooner. I was jist fuckin with ya.” And she added, “Tha P-cubed an me is headin down ta tha Drag ta see what we can shake outa tha cracks.”

That means that Gram and her best buddy, Penelope Paxton-Parades, are taking Gram’s 550-horsepower Ferrari down to UT to troll for young adult males. More frightening imagery.

Sam Barnes and John Egloff, the aforementioned adult young men, have agreed to be my age appropriate consultants for their age group and advise me for all this webber and bloggie nonsense.

If things don’t get any better you can blame them.

But my ADHD is fritzing like crazy and I need to head over to Sprouts.

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Rush Limbaugh Hides In Mooner’s Closet; Santiago and Katelyn Serve Sprouts Proudly

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

You can stop writing me and e-mailing me and calling me about the entire Barnes and Nobles Bookstore dealie because I promise I’m going to finish it right here, and now. I mean shitsicles folks, don’t you understand how complicated my life is even if I didn’t have ADHD?

I mean really. How can I stay true to my promise to write everything in real time as it happens in my head and only tell you stories from the past tense after they become past tense?

That has got to make sense.

Anyway, the exceptional layer of additional bullshit on this bowl of seven-layer dip is from when I went to that bloggie class from the Writer’s League a few months ago. They said that the absolute, written-in-stone, take-it-to-the-bank, bottom line maximum number of words in any blogger posting is 400 words. Anything more than 400 words is a blogging disaster.

400 words? I can’t blow my nose with 400 words. Take yesterday’s posting as an example. That puppy clocked-in at 1,900 words and I never got around to telling you about who I saw over to Sprouts and neither did I finish with the bookstore stuff. Like Gram says, she’ll say, “Who gives a shit Mooner. It still fuck-strates the crap outta me.”

It is frustrating.

But really, who does give a shit? I mean really. Who wrote the silly 400-word rule? And what about this- if I write “400”- one word count, wherein the speller checkie job to Microsoft Word calls “four-hundred” two words, so I’d be breaking the blogger rules if I had 401 words writing it four-hundred, but I’d break Roberts Rules for English if I wrote it 400.

Are you getting a sense of my problems?

Therefore, since I have found it impossible to live by all of the different and differing rules set by others, I simply choose to live by my own, carefully-planned and well thought-out rulers.

Which reminds me. Do you think I use too many hyphens- that would be these things (-), the little dash thingie I placed between the parenthesis- those are these things- (( ))? And why don’t we spell it paranthisisses. That makes more sense and would make a great Spelling Bee word. I’d write a song like the one for spelling Mississippi.

Anyway, fuck the rules and let me get back to my story. So, this morning I went to my usual Sprouts store to get some kale and a bag of those edamame beans because Mother had a hankering for greens and beans. Dr. Sam I. Am-Johnson got Mother hooked on that particular Sicilian dish way back to when we were still married. Gram, however, has never acquired a taste.

“Git that damned Eddies momma’s beans outta my face Mooner. Them damn things taste like sweetened laundry starch.” Then she’ll say, “Ruins a good batch a farm greens iffn ya ask me.”

Anyway, I was actually looking for Lima beans but Sprouts was out so I substituted the Chinese variety. Or maybe they’re Japanese. I got some other stuff to make the trip worth making and went to check out. Santiago was my register man and Katelyn was my smiler and bagger woman. Santiago was smiling as well because that’s just what the people at Sprouts do. It’s just that I’m more susceptible to the smile on an attractive lady’s face than an attractive man’s toothy grin.

OK, look. That doesn’t mean I want all you men to stop smiling at me. I just mean that a woman’s smile melts a little deeper.

Anyway, they were telling me that they were afraid to talk to me because they are concerned that I might embarrass them here to the bloggie. I was careful to not promise anything except that I would entertain and inform. They also were afraid that I was saying bad things about the store.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I said, startled by the question. “I love Sprouts Farmers Market.”

I love Sprouts. Which brings us back to the bookstore dealie. Let me summarize thusly:

  1. Dixie is writing a kids book, and asked me to research formats of kids books.
  2. I went on Friday morning awhile back, early and in shabby shorts and UT tee shirt, a greasy ball cap and without shaving.
  3. I looked for a poker book and didn’t find it, went to the info stand and waited in line behind this Baptist shitbird who was difficult to help.
  4. I had, as always in season, my portable tomato kitchen and shared a slab of red wonderment with my fellow line standers, but not the Baptist.
  5. When I cracked and shared the required cold bottle of Carta Blanca beer, I was chastised for drinking in the bookstore. So, I guzzled the bottle and put the empty back into my tote.
  6. When I finally got to the head of the line….

I asked the information lady about which children’s books are most popular and she asks me, “What age children,” and I say, “I’m not certain,” and then she says, “I know who you are Mr. Johnson and you are just as difficult as I have been told.”

I’m thinking to myself, I thought, “What the fuck is this all about?” So, I asked her.

“What the fuck is this all about?”

And she says, “Mr. Johnson, I am in your Gram’s prayer group at the church and your rotten soul is number two on our standard agenda. It was number three but then we seemed to lose interest in Tiger Woods soul. Pastor Browningwell says he’s not sure Buddhists have one.”

I’m thinking that maybe I’m proud to be moving my way to the top of this list so I ask, “Who sits at number one?” You’d want to know who sits at one if you were two, right?

She looked me square in the eye and said, “That’s easy, Mr. Johnson. Your sweet grandmother and mother, God bless their souls and give them strength.” Then she added, “Now go look at whatever you want but don’t bother anybody.”

“Fine,” I said. “But if you knew how things really are you’d put me to number one.”

Now, this Barnes and Nobles is the one there to the Arboretum and the kids section is pretty cool. Located deep to the back of the store, it’s kind of like a little store of its own. With short benches, chairs and tables spread about and these little play areas, it’s what I’d design my kids section to be if I had a bookstore.

So. It’s pretty crowded with moms and their kids or maybe nanny’s with other folks kids, but many women and children whichever. I start perusing the stacks looking for what look like popular books and after maybe an hour I have at least glanced at every title in the entire section. And I’m totally lost.

I get a brain storm and figure, “Who best knows what a kid likes better than the puller of the purse strings that hold the cash that buys the books?” So, I gather maybe an armload of what looks good to me, and I’m stopping at each group and asking the kids opinions.

“Do you like this book, little girl?” and, “What do you think about puppy books Willy?” I knew he was Willy because his name was on his shirt pocket.

By the way, remember that I told you I guzzled the beer so I wouldn’t waste it? I did and I had been belching the yeasty beer gas during my perusals.

I was finally getting a feel for things and was stooped to talk to these adorable twin girls about The Little Engine That Could, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I figured it to be one of the kids with a small ball bat but was wrong. As I stood to address my tapper I came to realize that the entire Arboretum Security staff was there to back up the head of Security, Bert Massey, the tapper and using his night stick.

“Hey, Mooner, can you come quietly with us?”

I answered, “Sure Bert. You need my help with another snake escape?” Bert and I are well acquainted from several previous incidents here to the mall. Well, it isn’t really a mall but I think of it the same way. The last time I saw him was when this stripper from Las Vegas left the car window rolled down too far and her python escaped.

“Na,” he said. “Different problem today.” Then he shuffled his feet around and said, “Look Mooner. I’m sorry to do this to you, but will you mind stepping outside with us?”

“Sure,” I told him. “Just let me get a final opinion on the Little Engine and Little Lucy Songbook.” I turned back to the twins.

“Mooner!” It was almost a shout. “Now. Please, now.”

“OK, Bert, keep your knickers on. What’s the big rush?”

That would be about the time the first little kid started crying and then Willy took the plastic hammer away from this other kid and whacked him on the nose and then things got a little chaotic. Now, everybody in the store has gathered to see what was up, and this one lady came over to me and said, “I know you. You’re that child molester from Florida. The one that was stealing little kids from the bookstore.” Then she added, “Look- same ratty shorts and greasy cap as from the picture.”

She held up this three-ring binder with a bunch of mug shots that were in those plastic sleeves. When she held this one photo up to my face she said, “See?”

“Let me see that,” and I grabbed the book from her. “Look here Bert. This is a picture of some asshole named Clovis Williams. Says here he’s 5 feet 7 inches and has a Popeye tattoo on his forearm.”

I rolled my sleeve up for inspection and said, “See here- only thing I’ve got inked on me is my Salvador Dali droopy clock tattoo. Not a Popeye in sight!”

OK, now stop the presses. My little tool bar word counter daealie says I already hit 1,682 words at the end of that last paragraph. And I think it’s time for me to have a little tomato snack and a cold Carta Blanca beer. This morning I plucked the first of the little miniature plum variety, the one that looks like little tear drops. These get a deep ruby red, almost purple color when they ripen.

These little guys are the bird’s favorites right now. And the acid is way up in everything after the great rains we had the last several days. By this time next week we’ll be harvesting everything we planted this year excepting for the okra. We salvaged as many okra plants as we could and replanted them back in rows after Rush Limbaugh the pig tore them all to hell and back.

I’ve been hiding him in my master suite to keep him out of Gram’s sights.

Fuckballs. Now I’m at 1,840 words.

Manana ya’ll.

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Will Rush Limbaugh the Pig Break His Addiction to Hallucinogenic Drugs?

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

So. Yesterday when we left off I was attempting to tell you the story of when I went to the Barnes and Nobles Bookstore to do research for Dixie’s children’s book. I was deep into it when Dr. Sam I. Am killed the time on me.

My own time was killed because my watch quit, and since Scott the watch guy is in Colorado fishing, time continues to stand still for me. I like to know precisely what time it is and that need has no specific origins. I know it’s kind of silly, but knowing the time to-the-second is important to me.

Anyway, by the time I got back to Dr. Mean Britches’ office for my afternoon therapy session, I had bigger problems than hashing over events that are now ten days old. It seems that Rush Limbaugh the pig had figured how to open the combination lock on Grams potion pantry out to the ranch and overdosed himself on Gram’s hallucinogenic concoctions.

The pantry is in the barn and sits over the top of Gram’s main mushroom cellar. She grows the mushrooms that serve as the foundation of all her potions down below and then she brews the finished products in the pantry. It seems that Rush Limbaugh has developed quite a sweet tooth for sour cherry juice, one of the many carriers and flavorings Gram uses in her blends.

Dixie tells me that Rush told her he blacked out standing at the back door to the kitchen while he waited for Beetle Bob to throw him some scraps from breakfast. Next thing he knew Gram was firing at him with her double-barreled twelve gage as he ran from the big garden. Beetle Bob is one of Mother’s charges and a paranoid schizophrenic of serious proportions.

“Iffn I ever catch him I’m gonna shoot yur fuckin hog Mooner Einstein Johnson. I walk inta my pantry ta git some bottles a my new church lady potion ta take over ta tha sociable an yur pig has gone an tore tha whole place to hell an back,” this from an irate Gram.

And then, “Einstein my rosy red ass. Only a mormon ud be dumb enuff ta let a pig run loose to a working ranch.”

“That would be moron Gram,” I told her. “Mormons are religious folks like the Baptists.”

“Who gives a shit Mooner. Morons is as Mormons does.”

Maybe I could have said that better but I’m unsure.

“Lemme say it this way Mooner. Don’t mind yur snot nosed hog havin a little cherry water. He just needs ta ask,” she instructed me.” And then, “But he got all halli-juicinated and rooted up my en-tire okree patch.”

“You got tha name a that pig right onna furst try Mooner. Ignorant fat pig what’s addictolated ta high quality medications and cain’t keep is snotty fuckin nose outta a lady’s bidness has gotta be named Rush Limbaugh.”

Then she finished with, “An if he furts my ass agin, I’m shootin you!”

“Look Gram,” I tried to say, “For starters I tried to tell you not to even start dosing that hog. Every time he gets a snoot full he gets to be a hand full of trouble. And he only sticks his nose up your ass because he likes you.”

To maybe end the conversation I said, “If he didn’t like you he’d eat your clothes hanging off the line like he was doing when he first got here.” My Gram still hangs her clothes on a line to dry in the sun.

Wait a minute, my ADHD is fritzing the bejesus right out of me. I was meaning to tell you what happened over to the Barnes and Nobles and I keep getting side tracked. But have you ever seen a 650 pound pig when he’s got a couple gallons of magic mushroom tea under his belt?

I wonder what his hallucinations are about. Does he envision pens full of pretty little piggies in frilly dresses that melt into pink puddles with frilly dresses or does he maybe hallucinate to the meaner side of things.

I don’t think I actually hallucinate any more since I’ve been on my Gram’s potions since my first breath. But even if I did, how could I differentiate my imaginations from my drug-fueled imaginings? Think about it.

I’ve been married and divorced ten times; my grandmother drives a 550-horse power Ferrari around town like she owns the roads; I have been arrested at least a hundred times for everything from jay-walking out to California to murder here to home. I have been incarcerated against my will at least a dozen times over to the Shoal Creek Loonie Bin and have by now spent almost two years time over there. My dog talks to and back-at me and now she is teaching the Squirt to do the same, and I have a significant case of the ADHD. The ADHD puts multiple thoughts in my head at the same time- some real and some imagined, and that is very confusing.

OK, wait again. All of my thoughts are real but some of the thoughts are of imaginary things rather than real ones. What I’m talking about is sort of like how some of your dreams are about things that happen in your real, awake life and some are not.

Which reminds me. I had this dream last night and it was from the celebrity camel toe series of dreams I was having with some regularity. The stimulus for this dream must have been having watched the Kathy Griffin special there to Bravo TV. Kathy talks about this Oprah TV show where Oprah is wearing these real tight jeans that give her a camel toe that, as Kathy put it, “You could saddle-up and ride.”

She was also saying, “Shitballs and fuckballs,” often, and Gram wanted to put a hit out on her for stealing from me. “I lik Kathy Mooner, but she shouldn’t be stealin yur words thatta way. Maybe I should call tha man up ta Dallas and send him a tainer.”

Maybe I should interpolate for you. Gram thinks Kathy, or Kathy’s people, have been reading my blogger dealie and using some of my stuff in her act and that would be a terrible enough offense to call the hit man up to Dallas and give him a retainer in case Kathy doesn’t stop. That would be the same hit man who is holding a $250,000 retainer to insure that I don’t marry Gnat. The whole family likes Gnat too much for her to fall prey to my matrimonial machinations.

Me, I’d be happy just to meet Miss Griffin. Ive seen her numerous times when she comes to town for her shows and I like her. Watch her reality TV show and specials as well. Which is what led to me having this new dream.

So. In this dream I’m stranded at the border between Mexico and Arizona. I’m stranded because I don’t have my passport and I’m stuck straddling the big new fence they built- one leg dangling over each country with my shorts stuck in the bob wire that caps the fence.

On the Mexican side below me stands Oprah and Kathy Griffin and on the other side stands Sarah Palin and Renee Zellweger. Each woman is enticing me to jump to her side of the fence by wagging her camel toe at me. They somehow seem to know that I am both a major admirer of and an experienced judge of, camel toes. Especially those of the celebrity varieties.

Now look, I am not proud of the bulk of this dream but I feel compelled to tell you, so here goes. On the Mexican side, Oprah shows me the camel toe that Kathy mentioned in her TV special and I am mightily impressed. Kathy is impressed as well because she tells me, she says, “Look Mooner, I withdraw from this competition because Miss Winfrey’s far out classes mine.

This is when I realize that Chelsea Handler is straddling the fence with me and she is attempting to distract me from my task. She’s in this leotard and tights and she’s tugging the fabric to emphasize her toe and I must admit, it is massively impressive. I reached out and ran my index finger along the raised fabric edges and Chelsea squirmed and giggled.

But I am a man of honor and I run a fair contest so I removed my finger from Chelsea’s ridges and began my inspection of the American crotch meats on the Arizona side of the border. I examined Renee first and I swear to you I couldn’t see a thing. That poor girl was so skinny she couldn’t have mustered a visible camel toe with a vice and a pair of needle nosed pliers.

“I’m sorry Renee,” I told her. “You need to go eat something before I can even rate you.”

Renee starts crying and snuffle-snotting like women with hurt feelings do, and Chelsea is laughing. “Don’t worry Mooner, I’m not laughing at her,” she informed me. “I’m laughing at the look of disappointment on your face.”

Then she said, “Just like a man. You get four Class A camel toes to choose and it’s the fifth one that gets away with your heart.”

“Not true, Chelse,” I replied. I call her Chelse in my dreams. “I’m just feeling sorry for her.”

And that’s when Sarah pipes up and says, “I haven’t got all day Mooner so look at what I made for you. I call it “You can see Russia from the porch on my coochie.” With that Sarah Palin whipped her cute little skirt from her waist with a flourish.

I woke up this morning with the taste of down feathers in my mouth and was craving borscht soup. I had chewed a hole in my pillow, which explains the feathers, and Sarah let me rock in the chair on her porch- speaking to the cold beet soup.

I’m not apologizing to you for my sexual dreams about Mrs. Palin anymore. They’re dreams for shit sakes.

But, as I sit here writing about this to you I am thinking the following things all at the same time:

  1. Will Rush Limbaugh the pig kick his drug habit?
  2. Have I convinced Gram to leave Kathy Griffin alone?
  3. Will I ever be allowed back into a Barnes and Nobles Bookstore?
  4. Is Chelsea Handler as tender in person as in my dream?
  5. Am I communicating with my audience?
  6. Does anybody give a shit if not?
  7. Will the Carta Blanca Beer folks ever send me a case of beer for my being their biggest fan?
  8. Did I remember to take the bag of groceries with the whole Sockeye salmon I got on sale from Sprouts out of the trunk of my car?
  9. Would I have actual sex with Sarah Palin and would it be as good as in my dreams?
  10. Other stuff and things.

See what I mean about the whole hallucinations dealie? Which one of those thoughts is not normal to you?

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Posted in Carta Blanca Beer, Chelsea Handler, Humor, Kathy Griffin, Oprah Winfrey, Rush Limbaugh the pig, Sarah Palin, Sprouts Farmers Market | 3 Comments »

Juli, I’m Sorry; Don’t Drink Beer At Barnes and Nobles; Psycho Therapy Is Frustrating

Monday, June 7th, 2010

I just got finished with my morning psycho therapy session and the topic of discussion reminded me that I still haven’t told you guys about what happened when I went to the Barnes and Nobles Bookstore over to the Arboretum.

I was doing some research for Dixie because she wants to write a children’s book and needs formatting advice. I guess she wants me to do it for her because I’m already a successful author and I have kids.

Anyway, I was in therapy this morning and Dr. Sam I. Am asks me, she says, “OK, Mooner, let’s talk about your latest fuck-up. It’s been more than a week and you haven’t spoken a word about it.”

I just sort of stared at her like she was the moron because I truly didn’t know what she was talking about. Then I remembered and I said, “Oh yea. I was up to the Sprouts yesterday to get some organic lettuce. It’s been so hot that all the lettuce burned out and the big ranch garden has only summer crops. Sprouts has the best price on a three-pack of organic romaine anywhere to town.”

The good doctor is just staring at me so I continued. “I got my lettuce, some apple cider vinegar for salad dressing, and a big bag of turbinado sugar. Then I saw that they were selling berries for $.99 per half pint and I loaded up on those. When I checked out, Juli, one of my favorites, was my register person and she was sort of pissed at me.
Doctor pain in the ass is still just staring at me so I say, “OK, look Sammy. I know I told Juli I wouldn’t name her by her real name to the bloggie in that posting last week but I forgot. She was hurt that I mentioned her name and was obviously embarrassed by what I had written.”

Now the bitch doctor’s steely gaze is getting under my skin. “Oh for shit sakes Sammy, I told her I was sorry and would never do it again.”

I decided to return the cold shoulder and not talk to her so I started looking around the office with my lips zipped tightly shut. I grew tired of counting the little holes in the ceiling tiles when I got to 13,188 and glanced at my watch to see how much more silence I had to endure until my time expired.

“Fuckballs!” I said. “My watch has stopped.”

And after I spoke, “Oh fuckballs twice. I was gonna make you talk first.”

“You will never learn Mooner.” said Dr. Am-Johnson. “I am strong of heart and will and you Mooner are, simply put, still you.”

I keep telling you guys she’s a bitch.

“I need to call Scotty and get him scheduled to fix my watch,” I said with manly concern.

“Stop whining about your watch Mooner. You’ve got bigger problems than knowing the time to the exact second. Now, tell me about the incident at the bookstore.”

Have I told you guys about my buddy Scott? He retired from the TCEQ awhile back and now he does a little consulting but mostly he does retiring and watch/clock repairs. He is one of the few good men I know from my entanglements with government officialdom and he has become a friend. Maybe he does retirementing.

Anyway, he is a watch and clock collector/seller and a terrific repairer of timepieces. He can fix anything and he is honest and trustworthy. He has a large collection of military watches and he is quite active in that market, I understand. If you need a repair or you want to buy an interesting timepiece, contact him at smccoy26@austin.rr.com . He might not get right back to you because he is after all, retired. But you will be glad you waited.

Have I ever told you guys that I like my watch to provide me with the exact time? I don’t know why and I can’t place a single event in my life that was crucial in a to-the-second sort of way. Except for a few fireworks dealies and maybe the one time Streaker Jones and I decided to see who could hold his breath the longest.

But I should have known that Streaker Jones could beat me in a breath-holding contest. He beats me at everything except wifing and the whole ex-wifing thing. Maybe that might need to be wivesing and ex-wivesing thing. And it would be things, plural.

Oh for shit sakes. They would be things.

“Mooner!” Dr. Sam I. Am yelled at me. “De-glaze your eyes and look at me.”

I snapped out of my watch thoughts and looked at her. “What, Sammy? What, what, what?

“Lower your voice buster, and tell me about your problem at the bookstore. Tell me now or I’m calling for the ambulance to haul you to Shoal Creek Mental Hospital where I’ll book you a three-week engagement.”

And then she added, “Maybe that will improve your focus.”

“OK, fine. First of all, it wasn’t my fault. I just want to get that straight from the start,” I began. “Well you know that Dixie wanted me to do some research for her and it was Friday a week ago. Not last Friday three days past, but the one before that. It was the Friday before Memorial Day, whatever day that was, maybe the 28th of May, I think.

“So, since I was going to Sprouts anyway I decided to stop at the B&N books to look around since it’s so close and they have a big kids section.” Now I took a big breath and continued, “It was early and I didn’t shave and I had dressed myself so my outfit wasn’t fully coordinated, and I was wearing a greasy auto parts cap because I forgot to take it off.”

Maybe I was providing too much detail because Sammy says to me, she said, “Mooner, get to the point.

“OK, the point was this. I walk into the store and spy the kiddies section straight to the back of the store. I was headed back and remembered that Jeff Hwang has a new book out on Pot Limit Omaha and I’m trying to learn to play that game better to broaden my poker horizons. I walk over and they don’t have it on the shelf. There’s this guy standing beside me at the Poker Section and he’s holding the last copy.

He says to me, he says, “Look here,” and he shows me the inside of the book. “You can order right from Jeff at www.jeffhwang.com .”

“Thanks, man,” I told him. “But I wanted to get started right away. I’ll just see if another store has one.”

“So. I go to the information desk and have to wait in line behind this shitwad who’s asking about do they have the new inspirational book by that TV evangelist Tupac Shamir or whateverthefuck his name is. You know, the Indian guy from India except that he sounds like a Harvard law graduate and dresses like a TV talk show host.”

Maybe that guy’s name is Shupok Darfur.

I took another big breath and continued to Sam. “I had my portable tomato kitchen with me and since this was looking like an endurance kinda conversation ahead of me, I sliced off a couple slabs of Early Girl and passed them to the folks now crowded in line behind me. I didn’t give one to the guy in front so’s to not disturb his already trackless train of thought.”

Now I’m getting into my story when Sam interrupts me. “Get to the point before I kill myself, Mooner. You are driving me to distraction!”

“The point is, you can’t drink alcoholic beverages at the bookstore. When I popped the lid off the frosty Carta Blanca beer from my little kitchen and passed that around, the information lady working with the brain dead questioner ahead of me got snippy.”

“ ‘Put that beer away, sir.’ This was loud whispered like a teacher telling you to stop pulling on Susie Ashburn’s pigtails back to first grade. The teacher is whispering because you are supposed to be taking the spelling test that all the other students seem to be managing without distraction.”

“Anyway,” I continued, “I just downed the rest of the beer myself, stashed the bottle back in my hemp tote bag, and headed to the children’s section to begin my research. When I got back there…”

“Oops, sorry Mooner,” Dr. Sam I. Am-Johnson interrupted again. “Your time’s up. We’ll continue in this afternoon’s session.”

I really think psycho therapy helps. I really think psycho therapy helps. I really think psycho therapy helps.

Gram says that if you can say something three times in a row real fast it will become true.

I love my life. I love my life. I love my life.

Fuckballs.

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Posted in A Life Lesson, Carta Blanca Beer, Home Grown Tomatoes, Humor, Poker Players Alliance, Psychotherapy, Sprouts Farmers Market | No Comments »

Suicide Prevention Technique; Mooner Saves Jumpers

Saturday, June 5th, 2010

Hoo-Yaa!!! I just met with my web expert, Dustin Sparks, and I am major league pumped. He is going to fix my many I-net problems and help me get things designed and pretty as well.

He’s the man who told me about 99designs to do the logo contest. If you have been to the contest site the winner is Number 211 and the designer is SteveO. The contest drew logos from almost 40 designers and I looked at like 250 different designs.

Several friends in advertising have chewed my ass out for going to 99designs because it bastardizes the process and you can’t get the highest quality. “All you will get are amateurs and stoners giving you designs,” was how one put it.

But after the success of my 99designs logo adventure, I agree with Gram on this one. As she would say, “Who gives a shit Mooner. They’re all locos ta me!” And then she added, “Crazy artists ever one of em.”

Every time I’m ready to choke the life out of that old bat she saves herself by lighting up my life with the same mouth that has brought me most of my miseries.

I am very excited about the logo decision as well as all of the stuff that Dustin is doing here to the webber and bloggie. He’s doing layouts and sliders and clickies and all of that technical shit that would drive me to drink if I was responsible for them. Fact is the thinking about it has caused me to crack open the first icy Carta Blanca of the day.

If I was one of those suicide intervention officers for the police, I would always carry a cooler filled with Carta Blanca beer on ice along with some fresh homegrown tomatoes. If the tomatoes are out of season, I’d substitute a bowl of fresh smashed guacamole, fiery-hot salsa and a bag of good corn chips- like the store branded ones from Sprouts.

Then when I perched myself on the window ledge with the potential leaper, I’d give him a thin slice of vine-ripened heirloom with just a touch too much salt and pepper. Let him sit with that for maybe two minutes and get his salivary glands into action. Then I would pull a Carta Blanca from the cooler and make a big deal out of stripping the ice and icy water from the bottle, and I’d wipe the moisture from my hand on my shorts.

Of course the police would require me to wear a uniform or slacks, but they will work as a coaster as well as shorts. Then I’d say to the guy, I’d say, “Man this is thirsty work.” I’d make another big production out of opening the bottle.

Grampa, that would be my Gram’s long suffering and glad to be dead husband, gave me my first bottle key when I turned eighteen. Made of thick stainless steel, it bears the deep, obviously hand-stamped logo and catch phrase of my Grampa’s second favorite beer.

“Hamms- From The Land Of Sky Blue Waters, Hamms The Beer Refreshes!” are the words and the picture logo is of a happy, dancing bear. The sharp end used for punching the nifty triangular-shaped hole to the top of a metal beer can has long since seen use for its original purpose, but the flip top cap popper end is still going strong after thousands of uses.

The etchings show the polished and worn evidence of my many uses, and all of my pants have small worn spots or even holes to prove that I carry this treasure with me at all times.

So, after letting my charge sit with a mouth-full of over-salted tomato slobber, I would fumble with the antique church key and miss opening the bottle on the first few tries. Then, when I do get the cap pried off, I’ll let it flip off and over the side of the building.

“Holy shit,” I’d tell my jumper. “That’s a long way down!”

Then, I’d raise the bottle to my lips, but stop just short of my mouth and say, “Oh man, have I got terrible manners. Would you like to have this one?”

Of course he would and he reaches for the frosty bottle. I’d let him enjoy that first amazing swallow and when he shuts his eyes in pleasure, I’d zap him with the stun gun I have hidden in the waist band of my shorts and pull him backward into the building to safety. I’d sit on his chest and finish his beer while waiting for backup.

Maybe I should trademark this move and sell it to the police. I would do training seminars and get the police to volunteer to play the part of the jumper. I’d get to taze their shaggy asses and get them to pay me to do it. Major win/win kinda dealie.

As for my I-net improvements, Dustin hopes to have some stuff to look at soon. And I need to give him a plug because anyone who can work with me and my ADHD and still provide quality output needs to be plugged. You can get Dustin at www.dustin.net

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Posted in Carta Blanca Beer, Home Grown Tomatoes, Humor, Sprouts Farmers Market | No Comments »

Rainforest Partnership Might Be OK; Matt Damon Is Not Corporate

Sunday, May 30th, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please tell me that all made sense.

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

Told you she was smart.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pretty please.

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Posted in A Life Lesson, Environmental Issues, Humor, Rainforest Partnership, Sprouts Farmers Market | 1 Comment »

Rush Limbaugh is a Pig Who Likes Mooner’s Homegrown Tomatoes

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

Remember me telling you guys that Dixie wants to write a children’s book, and I told you that I was going to visit some bookstores to research a book format for her? Yesterday it was, I think. She does and I did agree so I spent the morning at the Barnes and Noble over to the Arboretum. I chose that book store because they seem to have a large children’s section and also because it is close to my favorite Sprouts store.

They had a special on sea scallops and organic lettuce and celery. I only buy organic celery and lettuce because the inorganic selections have unconscionable levels of chemical residues left from bad farming practices. I would like to tell you that I only buy organic everything but that would be a lie. Certain things must always be organic, like celery, and my others choices are subject to my pride and prejudices.

Like, I’m proud to pay extra costs to local farmers for their organic produce and meats. The price almost can’t get too high if those guys need it to flourish. But I will not pay six dollars for one organic artichoke grown down to Florida. I mean first of all, where in Florida do they have weather cool enough to grow my beloved chokies?

Remember Fire Sign Theater- “I’m Artie Choke and we’re just a joke?”

First time I heard that album I had never seen an artichoke and though it was maybe a cool martial arts move. Now, of course, I am a fan of and an expert cooker with chokies. Gram named them chokies after my first attempt at cooking them. Didn’t have any directions so I failed to make the connections between the name of the veggie and the effect that requires the Heimlich Maneuver.

Of course it had to be Mother to eat the damned choke part and almost die choking. She turned all blue and fell from her chair to the floor. We were all sitting there to the dinner table and enjoying most of the first plate of artichokes I cooked. Everyone but Mother seemed to know how to avoid the choke part and was either pulling it off or discretely spitting it into their napkins.

Well except for Gram. She was storing the chokes from hers in her cheek like a chipmunk. When she finished with her servings she left the table and went to the kitchen. I heard her drag the garbage can from the pantry and then, “Pfluggsht!” and then a spit, a cough and Gram yells, “Fer cripes sakes, Mooner. Take tha gills outta yer chokies next time.”

It seems like Mother is always the one with a fish bone or a mouthful of choke stuck in her throat. Drowning them in garlic and tarragon seasoned lemon butter won’t help the choke go down as our entire family can testify.

But if you want something really tasty, try this:

  1. Cut the stickers from the leaf tips and a half-inch end off the stem from the artichokes. Then cut them into quarters lengthwise. That will mean that each cut piece has top, middle and bottom to the stem. I actually cut each of mine into six parts- halve it and then thirds, but some people have trouble with that entire square root of Pi thingie. Leave the choke in for now but don’t forget it later. The choke will help hold the cut parts together while cooking.
  2. Place the parts in a lidded pan that is large enough to fit all parts in one layer. Make more batches if need be, but don’t stack them in your pot. Once placed, salt with sea salt, black pepper and cayenne to suit you. Then put water to a half-inch depth and then a quarter-inch of dry white wine. Cook over medium heat until almost tender- still firm. Remove from the pan to cool and drain.
  3. Make the butter dipping sauce in a very small saucepan. I place my small one-cup Revere Ware pot on the lid of my artichoke pot to cook. Use enough butter for how ever many chokies you have and then peel, crush and coarse chop a big garlic clove for each choke and place both in your little pan. You want to slow-cook the garlic to release its wonderment and sweeten it up. Like I say, I put mine over direct heat a few times to get it up to heat, and while the chokies cook the little pot sits atop the lid of the bigger pot the rest of the time. Don’t burn the garlic.
  4. Grill the chokies on a hot grill for just long enough to heat and grill-mark each of the three sides. I sometimes pre-cook big batches that I freeze for later grilling. Make sure that whatever you grill has come to room temperature before grilling.
  5. Just before serving, add sea salt, black and cayenne pepper to the butter to taste. Add fresh fine-chopped tarragon to suit your taste, if you like the taste, and then just a squeeze of lemon. Start with a quarter teaspoon and add more if you wish. You can’t de-lemon butter any better than you can re-virgin a pregnant woman.
  6. Remove the choke from each piece, get out the cold Carta Blanca beer and some homegrown tomatoes, and serve those puppies.

Hoo-yaa! Goes with steaks or chicken or goat- anything else you grill.

Rush Limbaugh, our pet pig, eats all the cooked parts we leave including the chokes. He’s a pretty picky eater for a pig but that’s maybe because we eat so well ourselves and don’t feed him many table scraps. For some reason he won’t eat raw fish, and I find that peculiar.

Rushie’s favorite food is my homegrown tomatoes so I grow a half-acre patch just for him. His second favorite food is greens- any kind of greens. We plant greens as row filler around the tomato plants. Dixie taught him how to discern the differences between weeds and his feed plants so he roots around and does his own cultivations.

He does get a tad short of patience waiting for his tomatoes to ripen.

Holy shit, my ADHD and I have digressed my shorts off. I’ll tell you about my bookstore adventure later.

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Posted in Carta Blanca Beer, Home Grown Tomatoes, Humor, Rush Limbaugh the pig, Sprouts Farmers Market | 44 Comments »

A Confession- Can I Get Respect Now? (Part 8)

Saturday, May 8th, 2010

OK, I’ve got a joke for you. Ready? What do you call a 240-pound skunk?

Mooner Johnson.

After ten full days of no bath no tooth brushing and eating a garlic and onions diet, skunks think I stink. I took some scrapings from my armpits and between my toes and sent them to the research lab that Streaker Jones and I have over to New Mexico. That’s where we do all of our secret testing on potential new products.

I think I might have invented a 100% organic, sustainable chemical weapon to use against terrorists.

But I need a bath, my teeth have gone all rainbow colored on me, and I just tried to eat Rush Limbaugh. Rush the 500 pound pig here to the ranch, not the brain dead radio shitball. I got the pig out to the Travis County Livestock Show and Rodeo one year when Streaker Jones and I tried to outbid the Aggies on some of the prize livestock.

He’s one of my favorite animals because he furts Gram with stunning regularity. If you remember, furting is when you sneak up on a person, gently poke your finger to their taint and say, “Furt!”

Excepting that Rushie uses his snout and says, “Snorft!”

Sends Gram halfway to the moon every time.

“I’m gonna plug yer fuckin pig with tha 12-gage iffn he furts my ass agin, Mooner.” That’s Gram’s pat response.

I never get tired of hearing that. I had Dixie teach the pig how to sneak up on folks. It’s hilarious to see this 500-pound tusked hog all up on his tippy-toes to get a good angle on Gram’s ass. Have you ever seen a pig smile?

Anyway, when we last left off, I think I was telling you about that one time when Woozie, Streaker Jones and I went down to Mexico in the late summer and how Streaker Jones was waking me up so’s we could get the hell out of Dodge. It wasn’t Dodge but rather a small town down to central Mexico with a Mexican name I don’t recall, but I meant that we were skedaddling our butts post haste.

So, Streaker Jones has the comatose Woosie draped over his shoulder like a serape and I’m digging in my pockets looking for the keys to my 1963 Impala Super Sport and thinking about marriage and wondering why I felt different this morning from yesterday at this time- and I don’t mean feeling hung over but rather a feeling I’d never had before, and all of this as we hurried to where the car was parked.

As I’m unlocking the door, Blanquita, who must have awakened, is yelling at us from across the town square, she’s yelling, “I suppose so, I suppose so, I suppose so,” like that except she’s crying and stumbling around like she’s been shot of something.

She keeps yelling, “I suppose so,” and I tell Streaker Jones I want to go say goodbye and he give me this look that means, “No. Do exactly what I say,” and then he says, “Mooner, get in, start tha Paller and git us gone.”

Streaker Jones called the car the Paller so I started the car and took off. Lucky we had left our stuff in the car so we had a cooler with some Cokes and tequila for breakfast and to tide us over until we got most of the way back to the border.

As I’m driving I keep going back over my thoughts and wondering about my dream about getting married. I told Streaker Jones, I said to him, “Streaker Jones, I had this dream where I was getting married and the Sheriff was holding a gun to my head and we were eating roasted goats and pigs and rabbits. The food was good and the Carta Blanca beer was cold but that agave juice wasn’t something I want to do again.”

“Twernt no dream, Mooner. You’s a mairt man. Now git us to tha border an quick!”

Then he added, “An she twernt sayin I suppose so, Mooner. She was sayin ‘mi esposo,’ which is Spanish for ‘my husband.’”

So.

This is the moral part to my story started a few days back about how the distinctions between dreams, hallucinations, reality and a person’s various separate realities are important. Stay with me on this, OK?

When I say that I have been divorced ten times I hope you have noticed that I have never said that I only married ten times. I won’t say how many times I have married because I am uncertain how to count my nuptials.

I can say with absolute certainty that I have been married ten times, each ending in an amicable divorce with significant divorce dowries. I know the ex-wives names, birthdays, favorite colors, favorite sex position, sex position wherein I think they best perform and I have their addresses and phone numbers and all of that shit.

These ten marriages I know happened in the real reality for sure even though most happened while I hallucinated and lived in several of the separate realities that inhabit my ADHD-addled brain. I have photos, newspaper mentions, receipts for tuxedos and all of that stuff to remind and verify the reality of the events.

That wedding (maybe) to Blanquita (I think her name was) under threat of bodily harm (according to Streaker Jones) was not a certainty. I even spent the summer after my first divorce, the one from Dr. Sam I. Am-Johnson, down to central Mexico looking for the town and possible wife and in-laws. Found nothing.

I did get arrested and Gram, Streaker Jones and Dixie springed me in a daring prison escape, but that is a whole nother enchilada. Maybe they sprung me. And why did I have to say enchilada?

Did I tell you that I tried to eat Rush the pig alive. I am a sick man and need help.

Will somebody please show me some respect?

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Posted in A Life Lesson, Carta Blanca Beer, Humor, Rush Limbaugh the pig | No Comments »

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

Sunday, May 2nd, 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And now, Texas Governor Rick Perry:

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

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

Please listen.

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

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

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

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

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Posted in A Life Lesson, Environmental Issues, Humor, Religion | 14 Comments »

A Fossil Fuel Alternitive; Psycho Therapy Sucks (Part 1)

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

What does a man have to do to be appreciated? Sometimes I feel like all I do is give, give and give some more and all I get in return is a load of crap. I give up my valuable time to walk Dr. Sam I. Am-Johnson’s little shitbird dog, Squirt, every day rain-or-shine, busy or not and what do I get in return? Arrested.

Arrested and scolded by the fine doctor.

I follow my therapy homework assignment to a “T”, with one little exception, and agree to donate profits from my sales here to the bloggie to Health Alliance for Austin Musicians. And because I only scored a 90 on that homework (I see my attempt to get HAAM to market my products as a mere ten-point deduction from a perfect score), I get scolded again by Sammie like I’m a ten-year-old school boy who just mooned his appreciation for America’s Veterans at the big parade down to Congress Avenue.

Born on the Fourth of July is one of my best ass shows and likely the most performed of them all. The Veterans’ Day Parade was a big deal when I was growing up and I wanted to show my elders that I could be grateful. We’d been studying about the Vets to school in fifth grade Social Studies Class, plus Grampa was yakking about “the Big War” so much, until I wanted to do my part.

I had planned the first of my July 4th celebration moon shows for the big parade. Red, white and blue-painted butt cheeks were adorned with the American flag and banners from all of the Armed Services. I even included the Coast Guard banner because Pastor Browningwell had been in the Coast Guard and his wife, Leticia, was a teacher to my school and she made sure we got that, “The Coast Guard is a Veterans group, children.”

The moon show went great until I set a lit punk to the 1,000-pack string of Black Cat Firecrackers serving as the finale to my show. The firecrackers set my underwear ablaze at my ankles and started quite a stir. I don’t make that mistake anymore as all of my pyrotechnics occur off-site from the main attraction.

Since I’m visiting Dr. Pain-in-the-Ass ten times a week these days, I told her at this morning’s session that I am not taking this lack of appreciation any more. She’s scolding me to beat the band and Squirt, that little shitball, is sitting there grinning and dissing me under her breath. Which brings to the surface another entire situation to which I am not appreciated.

In all of the years since I first realized that Dixie could talk, she has only spoken human-speak to me. When she was a puppy I couldn’t distinguish her mewling from the battalion of other noises that rattle inside my skull. Once I understood that this one childish voice I was hearing was my sweet puppy talking to me, and not my own early childhood memories come back to taunt, I was elated. I felt special.

I felt special for having a doggie who could talk and we could share our problems and solve life’s mysteries together. That specialness lasted like maybe a month before I realized that Dixie would only speak to me and that Dixie is female. For whatever reason, I stupidly assumed that my dog would be grateful to me and that somehow she would express her gratitude in un-womanlike ways. Maybe that should be not womanlike ways.

Nope. Dixie is no different from all the other women in my life- she takes advantage of my kind heart, spends my money like it is her own, and she talks back. Now, she is teaching Squirt to talk to and back at me, and only me, and Squirt is abusing me like I’m her owner. I can’t even get respect from man’s best friends.

After like something close to the full fifty minutes alloted to this morning’s therapy session spent with Sammie six feet up my ass and her goofy dog smirking at my discomfort, I said, “I got it. I’m not gonna take a bath until I get a little respect.”

“No problem, Mooner,” responded the psycho therapy queen bitchball. “You don’t smell so great to start with.”

You don’t smell so great to start with.

Then Squirt added, under her breath of course, “Mooner got in trouble, Mooner got in trouble!”

“Nanny-nanny-boo-boo to you too you little shitball.” A clever retort from a clever man.

“We’ll see who’s zooming who in a couple of days,” I told the two of them. “I’m going on an onion and garlic diet. And I’m not gonna take a bath or brush my teeth.”

I’m now discovering that an all onion and garlic diet is something akin to an all ice cream diet except without the ice cream. I once made it four days eating nothing but ice cream before I caved in and ate an entire roasted goat. But I’m having difficulty making it through my second pungent meal without something not colored white to eat as a filler.

My hope is that cold Carta Blanca beer will help me keep the wheels on the bus during this road trip to appreciation. Actually, this might be one of those rare instances wherein my ADHD/ADD might be an attraction rather than a distraction. Maybe I’ll get all brain fritzed and forget how miserable I am on this limited diet.

Did you ever light farts as a kid? We all did and it was great fun. The first scientific research project Streaker Jones and I ever did was this one where we determined which foods produced the best gas. It was a simple testing model with simple criteria since it was our first attempt. We were looking for the largest fireball.

Basically, each of us kids- Streaker Jones, Sister, Woozie, Walley, Tony and the rest of the gang, each of us would eat only one food for an entire day. Then that evening we’d all meet up to the Baptist Church and gather in the Sunday School Classroom that brought me so much mental anguish growing up.

It was summer so we could all stay out late, and our parents were all so very proud of us for spending so much time in church.

Being boys, and Sister a lesbian in-training, we were only interested to discover which foods sparked the biggest flames when lit. Since Sister was naturally the most gassy of us all, we used her as the baseline tester. Whenever one of us boys hit on a good food, we’d have Sister eat it the next day for Beta testing. We didn’t call it Beta testing and I’m not disparaging my sister.

When I say Sister is naturally the gassy-est, I only mean that she farts when she drinks water. I was not knocking lesbians.

The church classroom was this long, skinny rectangular thing with three small windows on one wall and two parallel rows of light fixtures with exposed incandescent bulbs running end-to-end. I got my first hand job in this same room a couple years after our ass-gas experiments were interrupted. Wait, my first hand job that wasn’t administered by a Baptist Boy Scout Adult Leader as I lay petrified in my sleeping bag to Aquatics Summer Camp.

Fucking asswipe Baptist shitwad.

So, we would pull the drapes tight to the windows and turn off the lights. Part of the fun was the metal chairs with molded seats. The molded shape was like two big hands cupped and held close together, like if some giant was using his cupped hands to get water from a bucket. You guys know those chairs. They added an extra dimension of sounds as we farted and fidgeted our butts around to release and ignite our gases.

In the darkened room, I was the starter because I had a Zippo lighter, and Streaker Jones was the scientific observer because he was the smartest. Streaker Jones is still the smartest and I carry that Zippo to this day. We set the drapes on fire when we decided to see if the seven of us could produce one big fireball.

We could.

Anyway, my point to all of this is that onions and garlic were top five on the Streaker Jones Fart-Flash-O-Meter rating system. I remember that broccoli was number one, a fact I still don’t understand, and of course pinto beans was two. I forget what came after garlic and onions but who gives a shit.

Maybe for nostalgia’s sake I’ll torch a few when I get home tonight.

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Posted in Carta Blanca Beer, Humor, Moon Shows, Psychotherapy | 4 Comments »

Health Alliance for Austin Musicians Needs Our Help

Friday, April 23rd, 2010

Sometimes psycho therapy is just too much for me. The last thirty years of my therapy have been one of those, “Take one step forward, get back on the horse and tell me how you feel,” kinds of dealies. I know I’m getting better I just hope I don’t die before I feel better.

Actually, I sometimes want to kill myself because of the therapy.

So. I’m in session this morning and Dr. Sam I. Am-Johnson- that’s my psycho therapist, first ex-wife and third biggest pain in my ass. Of course Gram is first-in-line on the ass-pain list followed closely by Dixie, and then Sammie. I’m doing twice-daily sessions five days weekly right now because I keep getting arrested so often.

Usually my arrests are not my fault but sometimes they are, and this I know with absolute certainty. OK, this I certainly know until I’m in the first therapy session after an arrest. Usually these sessions occur to the jail or the Loonie Bin where I typically spend my arrested times. I’m certain that not all of my arrests are my fault until my therapist convinces me otherwise.

Like this morning.

Today’s therapy business was after Pat the plumber from Pat’s Plumbing Company came over to change the leaky kitchen faucet out to the ranch. Pat had told me I shouldn’t have gotten the Moen fixture when he installed it just a few month’s ago. Something about a vacuum valve that leaks after a short time. What Pat actually said was, “Thanks for the work Mooner. I’ll be seeing you again soon when the vacuum valve goes out on this thing and it floods your kitchen.”

I like Pat because he does good work, has fair pricing and he doesn’t say, “I told you so.” I hate when somebody does that nanny-nanny-boo-boo crap. You can get Pat at www.pattheplumber.netfor just about any plumbing need. Tell him Mooner said to call. He won’t give either of us anything if you mention me, but at least he’ll know I appreciate him.

“Mooner, would you look at me when I’m speaking to you?” starts ex-wife-therapist-ass pain Dr. Sam I. Am. ”What part of, ‘I had to race home from my European vacation early because you were arrested for sexually abusing my dog,’ sounds like this is somebody else’s fault to you?”

If you are a regular reader, you know that I was accidentally arrested the other day but is was not my fault. Check out Wednesday’s bloggie post and you can read all about my innocence.

“Oh shitcicles, Sammy. I never touched the Squirt’s goodies. I was just doing a scientific observation. It was the ‘close-in first-person observational technique’ I was using, so my guess is that old lady just has bad eyesight.”

“That ‘old lady’ you are talking about is one of my patients, Mooner, you nut-case. She and Squirt are good friends. You scared her to death.”

Dr. Sam I. Am sometimes uses Squirt like a sort of prop when she has especially frail-brained patients. For some reason having that little shitbird in the room for psycho therapy helps some people relax. As far as I’m concerned, if you need a trouble-making mutt in your therapy sessions to make improvement- you should can the psycho therapy and get drunk instead. You’d get better bang for your buck.

It doesn’t really work for me to get drunk instead of therapy because I am not frail-brained. Nope, in fact my diagnosis reads, “Subject Mooner Einstein Johnson is….. fat brained, thick skulled, inappropriate and blah, blah, blah.” However, a dozen cold Carta Blanca beers do help me to assimilate what information the brain doctoring provides.

“But I still don’t get why this is all my fault,” I whined. “Why is everything always my fault?”

I feared I said that like a petulant child.

“Oh stop acting like a 4-year old you crazy old fart. Act your age and take responsibility for your actions. I have a homework assignment for you and if you screw it up- I’m locking you up at Shoal Creek.”

Then Sammy added, “Mooner, are you paying attention to me?”

“Who me?” I asked. “I was just wondering if Dixie taught Squirt how to dribble one little pee drop like she does. That would be just like Dixie.”

My damned talking dog is a pain in the ass.

“Look, here’s what you are going to do. I want you to choose another charity to sponsor on your website and blog. Just decide which one it will be and do it. Do something for someone else and you will feel better about yourself, which might help you stay out of trouble.”

And then she added, “And don’t you dare call the charity to see if they will help you do any marketing of your silly books and products. You need to make a true and charitable deed for others if you want this to work. Don’t try to link with their website or ask them to have a book signing for you.”

Why do women always have to “add something” when they lecture?

“Bite me and bill me. I’m tired of you and I am outta here.” Sometimes I am truly clever.

“And keep your nose out of my dog’s ass, Mooner. I mean it.”

So when I got out to the compost plant I got to thinking about what charity I like enough to put on an even keel with the Food Bank. I was cogitating around and remembered telling you guys about my friend Sally. You know Sally, right? I think I told you about her back on like March 16th, or so.

Sally is the musician who was attacked by her ungrateful heart and almost put down for the count. Sally has a big heart and it nearly got the best of her. And I think I was talking about Sally because I was talking about the health care debate and how lucky Sally is to be covered by the Health Alliance for Austin Musicians, or HAAM.

These are really great people doing good things to help support our city’s artists in a very meaningful way.

So, I called over to HAAM and spoke with Carolyn- she’s the main poobah over to the Alliance, to see what kind of arrangements we might make for some joint marketing. You know, the cross-pollinating that occurs when two groups promote each other. I already knew that HAAM would be more than reluctant to do this but I had to ask.

Of course Carolyn explained that HAAM protects its “Brand” like a mother lion protects her cubs, and that linking to my webbie or to hold a book signing for me would be problematic, of course. But I had to ask. I’m a businessman for shitsakes, so I had to ask.

So I tell Carolyn- just as I told the nice folks over to the Capital Area Food Bank, that I’m going to contribute 5% of the gross sales from anything sold here to my webber and bloggie to HAAM even if they won’t tie themselves to my stuff. That’s just the kind of guy I am.

I understand why people don’t want to be too closely tied to me. This one time, when she and I were still married, Ingrid and I were role playing in the conjugal bed. Actually we were role playing in the conjugal kitchen, where I was doing an ass show I titled, “Julia Childs cooked my Christmas goose.” Ingrid had dyed and shaved my butt hairs to look like a Christmas goose’s cooked carcass, and we had adorned my pecker to be its neck, and head. Had a pretty bow draped around the goose’s neck, and the eyes and beak were made from plastic containers we melted down and molded to fit.

I made a handsome Christmas goose, all plucked and browned and dressed, and Ingrid looked mighty fine in her apron.

Part of the scenario was to have Ingrid, in the role of Julia Childs, truss my goose for the cooking. Ingrid was trussing herself to me with handcuffs and those plastic retainer jobbies the police use instead of handcuffs. We were trying the plastic restraints for the first time because we kept misplacing the keys to the cuffs and getting into embarrassing situations.

Anyway, just about the time we’re fully invested into our role-playing scenario- you know, the spot where Ingrid says, “Bon Apatit,” Sheriff Wozniac breaks down the door and barges in to arrest me, again. Seems it was reported that a man matching my description had mooned the Governor’s motorcade down to Congress Avenue earlier that day and the little shitbrain politico had sworn out a warrant.

Fucking Republicans do not have any sense as to what humor truly is.

Wait. Ingrid is another of my ex-wives and owner of Ingrid’s Hot Wax Emporium. She plucks, and waxes, polishes and dyes my butt and pubic hair for my moon shows.

But look here because my ADD is digressing me to distractions. Click here to www.healthallianceforaustinmusicians.org and give Carolyn or Jennifer a shout.

And a check.

Maybe if you guys donate enough money I can get a mention over to HAAM.

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Posted in A Life Lesson, Carta Blanca Beer, Humor | 6 Comments »

City of Austin Employee Does Kind Act

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

I saw something this morning that gave me a renewed appreciation for people. I want to give a special “Thank You” acknowledgment to the man driving City of Austin solid waste truck number 10G758. This was at about 8:45 am this morning and it was in the area in the Northwest off Anderson Mill near to US 183.

Now I know you are dying to know what I was doing over to Anderson Mill at that time of day so I’ll tell you. Dr. Sam I. Am is on vacation and I drew the short straw to walk her little rat dog every day. So Dixie and Streaker Jones and I are doing the almost hour-long up-and-down-the-fucking hills walk with this little shitbird.

Sam doesn’t allow me to use the actual names of her “children” in any of my writings, so let’s just call the little runt “Squirt”. Squirt is this half wiener dog and half Mexican Chihuahua ball of smarts and energy. A long and muscled body with short legs support a head that is more Latin than Teutonic. She’s way smarter than Dixie, has more spunk than a nine-year-old gymnast and has somehow learned to pee one drop at a time.

Squirt and Sammie live in this nifty neighborhood that’s all hills, so this morning’s walk is real exercise. I’m in pretty good shape for an old fart, but this little shitbird drags me breathless the entire route. She wants to run the whole way at full clip, all the time making these immediate, jolting stops to drip one drop of puppy pee in spots which seem to be predetermined by Squirt.

We make maybe 137 of these stops on each walk. OK, we make exactly 137 of these stops on each walk. I have counted them. I’ve counted them each of the six days I have been walked.

Yesterday I got pissed at getting jerked around by the ten pound brute, and at stop number 126, I lost my temper and yelled at her.

“Nobody needs to pee this much you little shitbird. Your dry-peeing is worse than your dry-humping.”

Squirt loves to dry hump folks.

Anyway, Dixie is teaching Squirt how to talk, so Squirt says back to me, she says, “Flockinsieg your glickenstiner und tu cerveza Carta Blanca.”

Dixie is using an ultra-intensive language teaching method where you teach multiple languages at the same time, so I usually need a translator at this early stage of Squirt’s lessons. I say, “Dixie, what the hell did she just try to say?”

“Well, asshole,” my loving dog started, “Squirt just told you she wants to piss in your beer.”

“Crapsicles Dixie. Could you at least get her to where I can understand her insults before you teach her how to talk back.”

Why does every woman in my life talk back at me?

So today, at pee stop 88, when Squirt pulled us over to the curb to pee, I squatted quickly to the ground with my face to Squirt’s butt so I could see if she was actually doing anything. She squats her little tushie to the grass and looks over her shoulder at me with a grin on her face. We stare for maybe three minutes. Squirt stares at me with that grin, and I’m glaring at her little wedge of girl dog plumbing.

Then Squirt says to me, she says, “Waaaaait…. waaait… wait… Now!”

And on “Now!” the muscles around her rear-end do a little dance and this one, pathetic drop drips out.

Holy shit guys, I am ADD digressing this compliment of a City worker to death.

The point to all of this is that as I was squatted down at pee stop number 88 watching Sam’s ungrateful poochie drip a drop, the driver of truck number 10G758 was performing a remarkable act of kindness.

The driver was emptying trash containers on his route, which I assume is his job. Should be a safe assumption since Wednesday is Sammie’s trash day and this is a City truck picking up the trash. According to the brochure Sam left for me to read so I would be certain to get her trash properly picked up- the driver’s job is to: …”drive, stop at the can, and push the button that starts the mechanical process of container dumping, finish said process and drive away.”

The driver does nothing else. Cans must be placed, just so, at the curb in just the right spot and by the right time. I believe all of that because I have seen homeowners in other parts of town racing down the street behind sanitation trucks, pulling their big containers.

But the driver of number 10G758 must dance to a different drummer. He was at this one house with a very steep drive where an older lady lives. Maybe she has a man living with her, but I have only seen the lady. The big truck stopped, the driver got out, and he walked maybe thirty paces up the steep drive and brought the lady’s container to the curb. I notice that he did properly place the container at the curb so I know he read that part of the memo.

He dumped and drove to the next house. And as he passed our group, me on hands-and-knees with my nose stuck up a dog’s ass, he gave us a huge toothy smile and a wave.

Of course, after we left Squirt with her “sitter” I got pulled over by a Sheriff Deputy. To quote the officer, “Step out of the car, sir- hands where I can see them.”

“What now?” my stock and standard reply to these situations.

“I said show me your hands sir. You don’t want me to Taser you, do you sir?”

I replied, again my stock and standard, “Not today, officer. My girlfriend works the late shift on Wednesdays so I don’t need the Taser jolt or the resulting stiffy. But please, pray tell, what did I do now?”

“Sir, a nice lady over on the next street was dumping her trash and saw a man molesting a little dog. You fit the description of the man. Now tell me what you did with the dog.”

Anyway, I’ve got a court appearance next week to clear all of this up. But I need a favor from you guys.

ZJ4SUEVVJCBA

Please tell the City what a good guy drives truck number 10G758- click on www.cityofaustin.org/connect/email311.htm. You have to click to get to the City site and then click “Contact Us” to wiggle through their web trickery.

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Posted in A Life Lesson, Carta Blanca Beer, Humor | No Comments »

Psycho therapy is seriously screwed up; Religional too

Monday, April 19th, 2010

First let me say I am starting to worry about Delores. You guys know who I’m talking about right? Dr. Saint Johnswort, the psycho therapist with all the early comments here to my blog. She wrote these very interesting comments in story form and each was filled with interesting stuff. I’m getting concerned that maybe I hurt her feelings or pissed her off.

That’s what I typically do. Since she seems to agree with my political positions, I likely hurt her feelings.

It might be all of the talk about Chelsea Handler’s camel toe. The entire camel toe dealie has gotten out of hand. Now these other sites are calling me to be a celebrity judge and asking me to “grade” the pocket poochies in photographs they send me. Go to www.guidespot.com/guides/celebrity_camel_toes and you can see what I mean.

I have agreed to do the grading but not judging. I think I have the skill set to grade but lack good judgment. When I was discussing this issue with Dr. Sam I. Am in my therapy session this morning and I told her about my thoughts as to the grading/judging stuff, she says to me, she said, “Well Mooner, looks like maybe therapy is doing you some good after all.”

“Whatthefuck does that mean?” I questioned.

Her only reply, with that shit-eating psycho therapist grin on her face was, “Think about it Mooner. You will figure it out.”

As much money as I pay for therapy, why do I have to figure everything out for myself? Seriously, what is up with that?

We don’t put up with that shit from anyone else. When I go to the auto mechanic because I can’t figure out what is wrong with my engine, and after an hour he says, “Well Mr. Johnson, I got this figured out and that will be $175.00.”

And then you say, “Well, Otis, what’s wrong with my car?”

And Otis replies, “Well, Mr. Johnson, what do you think is wrong?”

Then you say, “Are you fucking kidding me Otis?”

And then Otis says back to you, he says, “No, I am not kidding Mr. Johnson, the only way your car will ever get fixed is if you figure out what’s broken and how to fix it.”

After I finished bashing Otis in the head with his own 9/16ths open-end wrench- this one a Craftsman from Sears, I tell him, “After you figure out why I smashed your nose you can decide where to get it fixed.”

I don’t go to Otis’s shop anymore.

Anyway, maybe it is my ADHD/ADD or maybe I’ve sucked down too many Carta Blanca beers, but Sammy’s logic escapes me.

And look, I know it is “Dos Equis” beer and not “Dos XX”. But really, who gives a shit?

And did you guys know that Buddha is having his birthday? Like maybe he would be 9,485 years old today if he was still alive. And I have been spending quite a lot of time thinking about religion lately. Have you noticed that all religions are regional? What I mean to say is that all of these different Gods visit only small geographic areas when they visit.

Lends serious credit to my “One God” theory.

Theorem?

And since the two words, religion and regional, have just the one letter’s difference, do you think that just maybe this entire religion thing is just a typographical error?

I mean think about it. Back to when the only writing paper man had was a rock and his pencil was a chunk of sharp iron ore, we didn’t have any erasers. A scribe had to be mighty careful what he wrote down.

So maybe all of the ancient talk about “religion” was all started by some lazy scribe who misspelled “regional”.

Is that too deep for a bloggie post?

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Posted in Carta Blanca Beer, Chelsea Handler, Humor, Psychotherapy, Religion | 6 Comments »

A Last Warning; Right-Wing Militia Shitballs and Jesus

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

Why is it that people are so polarized these days? When I started this bloggie my intentions were to talk about what things are buggerating me to distractions, tell you to make donations to the Capital Area Food Bank, and then to sell some stuff to make a little cash.

I did not start blogging to attract any unwanted attention to myself, and for sure for any attentions I do attract, I intended to have those attractions be attended to here to the bloggie.

Wait, even I don’t understand what I just said. Let me try that again.

Please respond to me by making your sentiments known to me by posting a comment here to the blog. No phone calls, no letters and for sure no personal visits. This is my last warning that Streaker Jones handles my personal protection.

Look, I am sorry if you think that erudite discussions about camel toes are inappropriate. I am sorry if you think my left-leaning bias is offensive and I am sorry if you don’t like divorced men. I am sorry that you consider me to be, and here I will quote the Right Reverend Browningwell from over to Gram’s Baptist Church, “… that Godless heathen fornicator, Mooner Einstein Johnson.”

I am sorry for anything and everything it is about me that you don’t like that seems to anger you so very much. I am sorry.

However, I am not sorry to you, but rather my sorrow is for you.

It is one thing for us to harbor differing ideas on sex, war, drugs, marriage, sexuality and sexual orientation, Chelsea Handler’s camel toe, charities, or anyfuckingthingelse. I mean really, even the Apostles had differing religious beliefs and they were all taking the same walks with Jesus and heard the actual words coming from the actual mouth of the Son of God. Right? Yet even with all of that first-hand exposure, those guys managed to get things screwed-up.

Why can’t we just agree to disagree?

And, “Mooner,” you might say. “What the hell happened to get you off on this rant?”

A good question.

Streaker Jones was out to Mooners Compost Plant and we were inspecting the newest batch of compost we made for his mushroom farms. We decided to tweak the recipe just a touch by adding some expired-date Carta Blanca beer to the mix. The beer was from this warehouse the two of us bought recently. It was stacked floor-to-ceiling in old-fashioned wooden cases. Only reason the beer was there was the owner died without any heirs. Carta Blanca doesn’t expire under normal circumstances. But this was a terrible waste unless we can use it for special compost successfully.

Since beer is full of microbes and yeasties and a full matrix of spoor-supporting nutrition, we decided to use it for Streaker Jones special mix.

We’re out to the compost pad checking temperatures and checking quality and smell and such when a pick-up full of armed men came racing through the plant, dusting-up the air, and came to a screeching halt where we stood.

Streaker Jones spotted them first, and after just a quick assessment of the situation he said to me, he says, “Mooner, u git b-hind me an zip yur lip.”

So, I zipped it and stood in his shadow as the men arrived and the six of them scrambled out of the cab. The truck was one of the big Ford Extended Cab F350 “King Ranch Edition”- a monster. It was black and had all the rims and flags and bumper stickers a person would expect from the crew the truck shit-out its doors. It even had the snarling, slobbering pit bull in the back.

“We’re lookin for Mooner Fuckface Godless Johnson, mutherfucker. Whur is e?” This from the leader, a man of maybe fifty years- pot bellied, chaw-juice stained lips and teeth (maybe nine teeth), and holding some variety of assault rifle. These first words spoken as the six men fanned-out in a semi circle facing the sun. Each man carried a nasty looking gun.

Streaker Jones replied, “Mooners not taking company boys. Pack up and head out before you get hurt.” I noticed that the pit bull silenced and started shaking like a chihuahua as soon as Streaker Jones started talking.

Of course these dumb right-wing religious fuckballs aren’t as smart as their dog and don’t think clearly enough to think at all. So the speaker says, “OK boys. Rough em up fer me.”

I didn’t see everything that happened in the next three seconds because I had my eyes closed. I sometimes lack enough stomach to watch the killing machine that is my best friend.

When Streaker Jones says to me, “OK Mooner, you kin open yur eyes,” I did.

“Did you kill them all?” I whimpered. All six were in one big body pile. I saw no blood but no movement either.

“Nope. They’s jus gonna be wishin theys dead’s all.” Then he added, “You know who these shitballs are, right Mooner?”

I told him, “Well Streaker Jones, they look just like I imagined they would when their leader called me with the threats after he logged-on to my bloggie yesterday. I recolated his voice.”

“Tell Javier to bring tha loader over. We’ll put em in the bucket and dump em in tha pond. That’ll wake em up.” Sometimes my best friend has a mean streak. That pond holds the runoff water from our operations. It is nasty water.

“You’re right about that Streaker Jones. Wake them up and inoculate them with a few million possibly undesirable strains of bacteria. Sounds like a plan.”

Now I know you thought I was digressing on you with my ADHD or the ADD that infects my soul, but I am not. See, these assholes were from one of those new religious militias that want to eliminate Jews because the Jews crucified Christ.

I did this presentation to one of Sister and Anna the Amazon’s lesbian groups meeting where I discussed prejudices. I happen to have some very strong ideas about prejudice and I am told that my perspectives are interesting and somehow, this bunch of militia asswipes heard about my views.

Anyway, I was invited to speak about prejudice, and specifically the prejudice Christians seem to have against homosexuals. After a few minutes of discussion on that specific subject, my mind wandered to the militia groups that hate Jews for, “Killing our Lord and Saviour.”

In a nutshell, in my opinion, the Christians should be grateful to the Jews for killing Christ, if that was even the way things went down. Personally, I think you could blame the Romans if you wanted, but in reality the killers were greedy, fearful individuals. You know, men who were afraid that Jesus was going to take something from them.

But look here. The prophets said that Jesus was going to be put here to full-fill a prophecy, that He would be killed for being different, and that He would rise from the dead to clear the path for the rest of us to have Salvation. My Baptist church preaches to me that this sequence of events was God’s plan. God’s Master Plan in fact. Fail to perform any of the key parts and the entire plan fails. Right?

Then why are these brain-dead Bozos mad at the Jews for doing what it was that God programmed them to do? If God wanted the Jews to kill Jesus shouldn’t we Christians be grateful? Are we not asked to be grateful for the blessings bestowed upon us by others?

Hell, if I was in charge of holidays I’d have a holiday called, “Thank God for the Jews Otherwise I’d Have a Bitch of a Time Getting to Heaven Day.” Maybe I’d need to shorten it to “TGJOHBTGH-Day.”

That’s still not catchy enough but you get my point.

These militia types are angry because they are not Jews. That’s all. Their minds lack enough functionality to understand that no two people are really alike in any way. But because they don’t think well, or thoughtfully, they are afraid of anything some shitwad preacher or talk radio host or celebrity tells them to be frightened of. Or about.

When I asked Streaker Jones how he managed to incapacitate the six armed men without spilling any blood, he said to me, “Careful plannin, Mooner.”

Now that is a man who knows how to think.

OK, two items to clear up. First, I am not paid by Carta Blanca. I would love for them to sponsor me, but no, at this time they do not. They know how to reach me if they do. I love Carta Blanca beer- plain and simply.

Second. Well, second I have forgotten what else it was that was second. Maybe I’ll remember later. Isn’t ADHD/ADD fun?

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Posted in A Life Lesson, Carta Blanca Beer, Chelsea Handler, Humor, Religion | 4 Comments »

A Story From When Dr. Sam I. Am and I Were Still Married (an excerpt from the book written years ago.)

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

(Reprinted with the expressed written permission of Shit Happens, Nettie House, Editor, the monthly newsletter for the Central Texas Association of Composters)

To Spell Idiot, You Start With I (or Me)

By Mooner Einstein Johnson, President, Mooner’s Compost Plant

Let me start by saying that all of you already know that I have ADHD and that you think I am an idiot, already. And you know that I attend three-times-a-week sessions with my famous psycho therapist wife, Dr. Sam I. Am-Johnson. But don’t read this with any silly preconceived notions that I am digressing your asses to distraction.

Instead, feel my pain and empathize. Or, if you’re a Republican, you can maybe sympathize.

If you ask me, the true idiots of the world are people who think that they can dictate how you should live your life based upon their religious beliefs. Like the Republicans and their puppeteers, the Baptists. You can substitute the Taliban and the fundamentalist fuckball Islamics or any other political/religious pairings you choose.

But if you want my definition of idiocy, it’s, “Anytime religious shitwads determine public policy.”

Like Governor Perry telling me I can’t play poker because he thinks it’s “wrong.” Republican idiot Baptist.

Vote Kinky. He’ll save our Republic!

Sorry, I digressed.

Whenever a holiday rolls around, I’m talking any holiday, whether religious or not, I do an evaluation of my closet space allocations. I perform these periodic evaluations not because my home out to the ranch has small closets, as I have many and they are large. Nope, I’m required to reevaluate so often because my allotted space in those many closets is a paltry sum and allocated from only one of them.

In fact, the master bedroom closet my wife and I use was the original ranch house built by the first of my family to populate our ranch-land.

Since I have so little space, I periodically need to evaluate everything I have to see what might be purged to make room for new purchases. So, what I am looking for is something I haven’t worn in more than a year, like my Nero suit from 1967. It’s army green with big brass buttons and epaulets, and the pants have huge bell-bottoms. With my pink ruffled shirt with the French cuffs and my turquoise paisley cravat, I look just like the actor Peter Sellers in that movie The Party. I like Peter Sellers.

He’s a good actor, and handsome, like me.

I first wore my Nero suit in 1968 to a date with a girl who broke my heart. She said I dressed too conservative for her tastes. I last wore the suit the end of March 1986 when I evaluated it during my Easter closet perusal. See, the Nero suit is exempt from my periodic purging of cloth, leather, and plastic as I feel it has at least one more wearing in it before I die.

Or maybe at my funeral. I can change my will and be burned in a funeral pyre instead of getting cremated, and I’ll need something spiffy to wear.

I always think of Indian funerals when I think about a pyre. Like from that movie Lord Jim, except without the floating candles and added fire. And not on the Ganges River in India, and not with Sitting Bull Indians. I don’t know. I’ll worry that over later.

When I am doing this cleaning, I’m looking for stuff I don’t wear or use. I give everything I outgrow or don’t use to the Paralyzed Veterans here to Austin, and I want them to get some real wear from my offerings. That thought helps motivate me to purge better. And sooner. Or is it to better purge? Sooner, better purging, maybe. Like closet bulimia.

OK, try this: Sooner, better purging through closet bulimia.

Anyway, so, I’m going through my meager closet space because it’s a holiday, Memorial Day, and I’m bitching at my wife while I do because she is the cause of my cramped allocation. Look, we have a very large master bedroom closet. Not Liberace the Piano Player large, but my first college apartment would spin like a top in this thing.

Sam I. Am did the partitions of “His and Her” allocations. I let her do that because I thought it would make her happy to feel like she has the power role in our relationship. See, she’s a psycho therapist, and she constantly examines me about everything. But I’ve been secretly reading her brain doctor periodicals behind her back to fight back. The week before we moved into the new master suite I’m sitting in the waiting room before a therapy session, and I read an article in Sam’s O Magazine that said women needed to feel that they had some control in their lives.

Mistakenly, I thought I was giving nothing away by giving her the power of closet allocation. I now also think the article was wrong to advise giving a woman any power at all. My particular woman took that little bit of power and expanded it to the point where she gained control of my entire life. She’s like a Nazi dictator, what with all the “Mooner this and Mooner that.”

Anyway, Dr. Sam I. Am allocated me 11 inches of closet rod, 11 inches of shoe storage above, and the same amount of floor space below. When I asked her how she calculated the dimensions of my space, Sam I. Am said, “Well, Mooner, my plan was to place all of my stuff in appropriate spots and then just let you have all the rest. But all my stuff wouldn’t fit. So I decided to put more of my things into the cedar closet.

“I made room for you by removing some of my mauve-colored hand-stitched buffalo leather jackets. I wear those jackets often, so I moved only the ones with mink lining. That leaves you plenty of room.”

Then she added, “And don’t you put that moth-eaten Nero suit in my closet.”

Anyway, I decided this was a good chance to give something back to the vets and weeded out my stuff from the allotted 11 inches each of shoes (three pairs stacked left shoe upon the right), cloth clothes (three pants, three shirts, one Nero suit), and accessories. The accessories shelf feels almost extravagant, as it starts at eye level and reaches to the ceiling above.

The rest of my stuff is in the trunk of my car.

But I am digressing from the story. Every time I perform my closet evaluation, I look for ways to de-allocate some of Sam’s space and make it mine. I have tried every space-stealing tactic I can think of, but she always catches me. I swear that woman’s got extra closet sensory reception, or whatever. And I almost always think I’m catching her at taking my space but am always proven wrong.

It doesn’t matter what I do to attempt a theft of her closet space, and it doesn’t matter how small the theft might be. One time I hid five one-hundred-dollar bills in the lining of an off-season ball gown that was zipped tight in one of the 37 plastic clothes storage bag thingies that hang in the back corner of the closet. I only thought my C notes were safe. I mean, how could she notice something so compact and lightweight?

I went back for my cash a short time later, and she caught me fumbling through the garment bag, cursing and sputtering, looking for my stash.

“I was dressing the other day,” she said matter-of-factly, “and when I walked into the closet, I noticed that the gap between a black garment bag and the blue one beside it had shrunk by one 32nd of an inch, and things looked fishy. You know, it is very important to keep the plastic from touching so the bags can breathe.

“When I examined the bags, I saw your thumb print in the plastic where you pinched the top of the zipper to close it back. I used the money at Petite Professionals to buy a blouse and the rest to take my mom to lunch. Mom said to tell you ‘Thanks.’”

One of these days I’m going to build my own closet if I don’t slit my wrists first. But until then, I’ll try to make the maximum use of the 11 inches of hanger space, one shoe-box width of shelf, and a tie rack mounted from the ceiling.

It was when I was checking my shelf space for unworn shirts this holiday that I just knew I had caught her red-handed. Sam was using my pitiful space allocation! I discovered a canvas bag emblazoned with the logo from Petite Professionals, her favorite clothing store. I started screaming, storming through the house looking for her.

“Now I’ve got you!” I yelled while waving the offending bag in the air. “You’ve finally gone too far—you’re way past reason on this one. Get your ass in here right this instant and look at what I’ve caught you doing!” I had her this time, and she was going to pay.

After about an hour she came sauntering into the bedroom and woke me from my nap to take her punishment. I never take naps, but when she didn’t come right away I thought I’d act cool for when she did arrive. I’d put the bag back on the shelf where I found it and then stretched out on the bed with my hand under my chin to affect the cool part. And promptly fell sound asleep. And if I hadn’t been groggy from the stupid nap, I’d have never fallen into her trap.

She awakened me from my slumber and sweetly asked, “How may I be of service?”

I stumbled out of bed and dragged her into the closet, pointed at the bag, and said, “Aha, look at that bag, you closet allocation obfuscater!” I thought obfuscater was most appropriate.

I should have known something was wrong by the angelic smile on my wife’s face, but I barged on like a Billy goat in a pansy patch. “Just for that, I’m taking that whole wall of your closet for my stuff. I’m gonna go unload my car right now.”

“Mooner Einstein Johnson, are you talking about that bag?” she asked as she waved at the shelf. “Is that bag what this little tantrum is all about? Don’t you remember what that is?” she asked calmly. And then she said, “Are you sure you want to make an issue of this?”

“Yes, darling, this is that important, and it’s about time I hold you accountable for your indiscretions,” this said with the pious authority of a righteous man standing up for his rights.

Then, in a voice that was almost still because it was so quiet, she told me, “Look inside that bag, Mooner, and then you find me if you have anything else to say to me.”

And when she spun from the closet, leaving it ten degrees colder, she added, “Einstein, my ass!”

“You got it,” I sniped at her back. “And don’t go far.”

I climbed my ladder and grabbed the bag from the shelf and jumped down. I jammed my hand down into the bag and gripped its contents like a hammer to whack-out my point to Sam I. Am, and off I stormed. I was halfway out of the bedroom before I realized what I was holding, and it stopped me dead in my tracks.

There, in my hand, was the carefully folded American flag that had draped my father’s casket at his funeral. Sam I. Am had packed it lovingly and placed it on my shelf for safekeeping. I now remember telling her how grateful I was that she had handled that for me.

The last time I had seen the flag was when Mother had given it to me at Daddy’s graveside, her telling me he wished me to have it, me honored at his wish. In the fresh spring breeze, the draped flag had fluttered like the mainsail of a ghost ship in a desperate effort to steer my father’s casket free from the grave hole beneath. I felt my connection to Daddy fluttering as well, as if it were to be forever lost at the landing of that wooden vessel and the laying of sod.

When I was feeling a misery as deep as I can ever imagine, the pair of WWII vets who had stood at attention for the graveside service began their duty. As best as their eighty-year-old bodies could, in their fresh-pressed, faded uniforms, these brave men carried out the final goodbye to one of their own.

The preacher preached his last words on my father’s grave, and a bugler started playing Taps. When that terrible, sweet music started, the men performed the ritual and prepared the flag with a precision at which I marveled. As their gnarled and shaky arthritic hands creased each three-cornered fold, I could only know that their grief was just as strong as mine.

Two old soldiers struggling to stand straight and not cry as they buried yet another of their fallen brethren. One mostly ungrateful son missing past and future.

I have touched this flag only two times, and each time it has left me stunned. In the first instant I was stunned by the power of a symbolism so simple as a flag as it left my father’s casket. I wondered just how many sons like me were clutching flags as the end of our fathers’ generation approaches.

But at this second touching of the flag, it was my own idiocy that numbed me.

My flag faux pas occurred during the holiday honoring the men and women like my dad, people who made important sacrifices so that I can be free. And stupid. I screwed this up a week before Mother’s birthday, June 6th, the anniversary of the D-Day Invasion, the action that marked the beginning of the end of WWII. In one fitful moment of asinine dumbness, I had managed to underline and highlight my tendency to do dumb things.

Sam I. Am has yet to speak to me, but that’s OK. I’m very busy trying to shake off the effects from this latest stupid stunt of mine. To take my mind off my idiocy, I’ve been inventing stuff, like my reusable in-home sewer sludge composting kit. I got the idea when a neighbor showed me her colostomy bag.

But every time I take a break from inventing, I get blue. I need to make an appointment with my psycho therapist.

I’m such an idiot.

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Posted in A Life Lesson, Humor, Psychotherapy, Uncategorized | No Comments »

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