sorry. i was perfecting my vomiting technique again last night. i'm getting quite good at it. i find that if i eat something, then wait until i feel queezy,
then drink copious amounts of ice water... it prevents the unpleasant burning of the esophogus when the food comes back up. quite a pleasing sensation, actually...
i will try again tonight to put some more of the story here for you.
be well.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
had enough of excerpts from my diaries?
i know i've had.
i promise, tomorrow night, the next chapter of the thrilling Treasure of the Sierra Madre, East.
really.
no kidding.
i mean, shit, i've been depressing myself lately, i can't imagine what it's been like for you...
anyway, tomorrow i call a doctor to set up an appointment so i can find out why i keep throwing up everything i eat.
i can't wait to find out what this is all about...
maybe i just got a bad mojo happening...
i'll let you know.
have a good night.

Love is it’s own reward.

What is the matter with me?
I can’t see beyond my own misgivings.
Tell me the truth, if only once.

Who are you now?
Where did you go?
Should I follow, or should I seek my own path,
like some drunk seeking his redemption i
n the promise of no more, but not just yet?

What’s the deal?
What’s the catch?
What’s the price?

I think I need to be near running water.
I know that I need to listen to the emptiness
of the tender skin that used to be our souls.
I need to smell the air.

Like a leaf that curls from want of water,
my essence begs for the nourishment
that used to come from proximity.
There is a far thing that beckons.
There is a far thing that needs to be fed.

I need to till the earth.
I need to feel the warmth of the summer sun.
I need to see things grow.
I need to hear the words that hang in the air,
that have no substance other then themselves.

How shallow life has become.
Like water running over smooth stones,
it has become a gesture of movement,
with the hint of reality.

When I was young, there was always a sense
of how it would be, now there is the reality of how it is.
Who knew, then, that all of those fleeting moments
would never be fulfilled, that all of those promises
would never be brought to light,
except in these dark moments.

Time, it seems, has become the enemy,
rather than the solution of all things.
What I thought would be resolved has
become the bigger question.

There are no answers.

You with the face like rain.
You with the face like yesterday.
Where have I known you before?
When did we talk like the wind that
blows through the boughs of the dark pines
that surround our world?

In other times, our love was like the worn tires
of the old car that I used to drive, winding through
the streets of your town, always hoping that they would
last the journey, listening for the tell-tale sound that
love had gone flat, willing them that one last mile,
bringing me to you, not caring if I’d ever get home.

Funny, you said,
“I will always love you,” like some promise
that held onto one last bent note.
“I will always love you,” I would return,
looking past you, into the future uncertain,
wishing that there was some wall upon which
to hang that picture, but finding at hand no nail.

We have moved from the Spring, into the Summer
and then into the Winter of our love, a hard-scrabble
existence, clawing for reality, nibbling the last morsel
of passion that was once a feast.

I don’t regret it.
I don’t even feel slighted.
I don’t even feel like something has been missed,
there are so many other things to take its place.
Passion imagined, sounds to replace your voice,
sensations to replace your touch.
I am still whole.
I hope you are.
Whether or not you are is a concern,
but not an obsession.
We all make our own way.

When the flood comes,
I will still be your piece of wood,
you can still cling to me and survive.
When the fire comes, you will still be my water,
I will wait for you to quench the flames
with the mere certainty of your presence.
Of these things I’m sure, it’s just that
I don’t know what to do in the mean time,
except this.

The man with the dog face.

Oh, lovers.
It is my turn again.
The man with the dog face stands
outside my door.
His hands are clenched at his sides.
He yells,
“NO, DON’T DROP!”
“NO, DON’T DROP!”
“NO, DON’T DROP!”
“NO, DON’T DROP!”
I do not want to see him.
I creep back into the dark of my room
and close my eyes.
I know him too well.
I love him too much.

Oh, lovers.
Long ago, he and I were friends.
Long ago, we would walk the streets
of our town in light and in dark.
Hands in pockets, shoulders hunched against
the rain and the wind, we would wander.
Sometimes we would sit on the curb
under the streetlight and talk.
We would share a cigarette and, if fortune
allowed, a bottle of wine.
We would wonder about many things.
We once wondered what it would be like to live
in a world where the rain would fall from the sky
until the clouds were dry and the earth was full
to soaking and then the rain would fall up from
the earth to fill the clouds again.
Sometimes we would wonder silently,
our breathing the only sound passing between us.
Sometimes we would rant
like excited children about nothing.
Then we would laugh.
Then we would part.
This went on for the long time I knew him.
And then, he met her.

Oh, lovers.
I don’t know where he met her, or when.
I saw him less and less, I alone continued
the wanderings and wonderings.
I alone would sit by the side of the road
and smoke and drink.
I alone would peer into the depth of the night,
my wonderings reduced by half.
I would see him now and then, on his way to her.
He would tell me about her.
He would tell me about them.
I would listen and nod and he would walk on.
He would walk on until he became a phantom
in the night.
He would walk on until he came to her door.

Oh, lovers.
He would sit with her at night on her back porch,
his head in her lap, and tell her about the stars.
She would stroke his head and tell him nothing.
He would sit before the fire and read to her.
She would sit before the fire and pretend to listen.
They would sit cross legged on the floor, facing each other,
holding hands and he would tell her of the world in her eyes.
She would pretend she was blind.
He would bare his soul to her.
She would take it and not let him have it back.
She drove him mad.

Oh, lovers.
Sometimes, in his madness,
he would walk to her door and she would not
let him in.
He would stand there for hours,
until his legs would ache
and he could stand no more.
Then he would sit, his back against her door,
his knees to his chin, arms wrapped around his legs
and bury his head.
He would sit there until his clothes
and the ground beneath him were soaked
with his tears and his piss.
Then he would walk home.
He would not be seen for days.
Then, he would emerge, showered, shaven,
clean clothes, but carrying the air of cigarettes
and whiskey.
He would walk, head high, through town,
stop to buy her flowers and walk to her door.
Sometimes, she would let him in.

Oh, lovers.
Sometimes, she would let him in.
Sometimes, she would let him make love with her.
He would rage and roil and battle the world
between her glass thighs.
She would lay, almost motionless, her hands
locked behind his neck.
She would whisper to him.
“I will never love you,” she whispered.
“I love myself more than you could ever love me,” she whispered.
“Faster… harder,” she whispered.
He would say nothing.
He would make her come.
Sometimes, he would come.
Sometimes, he would cry.
Sometimes, he would pass out and awake
in the night alone, shivering,
wrapped in the sheet soaked
with their sweat and his tears.
He would leave her bed and find her sitting
naked in the unlit kitchen, drinking coffee
and smoking cigarettes, looking at the night
through the window.
She would say nothing.
He would leave.

Oh, lovers.
How long this did go on.
How many trips to her door.
How he did suffer.
Then one night he went to her door
and she was gone.
One night, he went to her door
and she was not there.
One night, he went to her door and the door stood open
to an empty house.
One night, the husk that was his soul
was taken by the wind that blew through her empty place.
One night, the world around him disappeared
and out beyond him, there was nothing.

Oh, lovers.
He did not know who to be.
He became no one.
He did not know what to be.
He became nothing.
He had to be something.
He became a tree, and would stand in the town,
arms outstretched, face to the sky.
He could not be a tree.
He became the wind, and would blow
around corners and in the alleys.
He could not be the wind.
He became the moon,
blank white face staring at the town, unyielding.
He could not be the moon.
He put on the face of a dog
and became the man with the dog face.
He became the man with the dog face
who would wander the town.
He would wander the town, from door to door, and stand,
hands clenched at his sides and yell,
“NO, DON’T DROP!”
“NO, DON’T DROP!”
“NO, DON’T DROP!”
“NO, DON’T DROP!”

Oh, lovers.
It is my turn again.
The man with the dog face stands
outside my door.
His hands are clenched at his sides.
He yells,
“NO, DON’T DROP!”
“NO, DON’T DROP!”
“NO, DON’T DROP!”
“NO, DON’T DROP!”
I do not want to see him.
I creep back into the dark of my room
and close my eyes.
I know him too well.
I love him too much.

well, that actually generated some email...
to answer your questions; no, i don't go home at night, slouch in a divan next to the fire with a glass of absinthe and brood; and yes, i do occasionally keep company with vampires.
thanks for playing.

welcome, children of the night...
i feel like living up to my name tonight, so many people ask me what the hell this "goth" thing is all about, so, a little taste of what really blows my flame... not too much, though, i don't want you to learn too much at once... it could be fatal... or at least give you a worse opinion of me than you might already have. so here are a few things to look at tonight while you wait with baited breath for the next thrilling chapter of Treasure fo the Sierra Madre, East, which, I might say, is giving me a fit. I may just foist the next chapter on you as it was written so long ago, before i actually gave a shit about what i wrote. anyway, here are some things to explore...
one of my favorite photographers...
another one of my favorite photographers...
one of my favorite painters... hmmmm, i'm detecting a trend here...
see, it's not all dark and death and gloom... only the fun parts. it's also about beauty and the arts and friendship. (sorry, no satanic rituals or bloodletting here, and definitly no street goth crap, that's for the niners).
now, if you behave yourself, next time i'll take you a little deeper... and darker. maybe i'll introduce you to some of my friends...
but for now, fare thee well... and carpe noctum.

i'm tired... from shoveling snow... and worrying about snow... and looking at snow...
i shoveled so much snow over the course of sunday and monday that when i finally sat down on monday night and closed my eyes, the latent image of snow was imprinted in my mind and i could see it behind my eyelids. very strange.
so, sorry for the lack of interesting reading. one would think that all of that physical labor would refresh the mind, but, nope.
i've tried to edit the next few chapters of Treasure of the Sierra Madre, East and all i keep doing is fucking them up, so guess what?
you get a little break until my editing abilities return. anyway, after doing all that shoveling, the last thing i really, really want to do is edit a story about shoveling... get my drift? (sorry...)
so... there you go. something to look forward to.
i'm going to go make something to eat now, and maybe, unless the food calms me down a bit, i'll be back soon with a little rant for you all...
later

i'm waiting for the night to edit and post more of the story. in the mean time, here's something funny to look at.

Happy Valentine's Day.
sorry for the gap in the story. i've been recovering from some sort of gastro-intestinal malady. very unpleasant. the only solid food i've eaten in the last 48 hours have been a handful of wheat crackers and a baked potato. it started at 3:38 wednesday morning when i woke up feeling, well, queesy. i got as far as swinging my feet over the side of the bed when the contents of my stomach made for the closest exit with a velocity not unlike that of, say, George W. Bush suddenly waking up in the front row of a Barbara Streisand concert. (sorry Bab's... great pipes, lousy politics. every wonder why the great spirit made you such a looker???)
anyway, it looks like this weekend will be perfect for editing and posting the next few chapters of the story. i hope you can hold out that long. i know it's been uncomfortable balanced on the edge of your seat like that...
stay warm, enjoy the snow.
later.

oh, yeah, i almost forgot...

Treasure of the Sierra Madre, East

Chapter five


Henry had taken the time to outline the edges of the previous pit with a ring of lime, sprinkled on the hard brown grass. Next to the outline was a huge canvas tarp, covered with sprays and spots of paints of all colors. Sitting in the middle of the tarp was the sifter, an odd looking affair, at best. It was a wooden frame, three feet square, with half inch wire screening stapled to the bottom. Attached to each corner, on the sides, were two by four legs, bolted to the frame, but not too tightly, allowing it to stand, but also to be rocked to and fro to sift the dirt.
As we stood there sizing up the situation, Henry turned toward the house. He said, over his shoulder,
“Why don’t you fellows start in while I go put on some coffee? I’ll be right back.”
He disappeared through the back door and Jack turned to me.
“Let’s start by spading the outline and peeling up the sod. We can stack it over by the barn and put it back when we’re done.”
“Sounds good to me,” I answered, pushing back my cap a bit on my head, “why don’t you start on the other side?”
“Right”.
And so it began.
It took us about half an hour to carefully remove the sod and stack it and as we took a break, Henry finally showed up with three mugs of coffee.
“Must have been hell picking those beans”, Jack said, chiding him for his inordinately long absence.
“Yep”.
I couldn’t think of anything witty to say myself, so I just said, “thanks”, and took the cup.
“Nothing like a cup of steaming joe on a hot afternoon while digging a hole”, said Jack, looking at me over the upturned rim of his mug.
“Yep,” was all Henry replied again.
I took off my hat, wiped the sweat and dirt off my forehead with the back of my hand and said to them, “Let’s get going. I think this is going to take longer than we thought.”
The sun was still well over the horizon and the heat of the day was still at hand. We began to dig in earnest now. We jammed the shovels into the rock hard dirt with our feet, wiggled them to loosen it up a bit and threw shovel full upon shovel full onto the tarp. From there, Henry would spade some onto the screen, give it a shake and look for anything too big or hard to pass through it. Jack had the forethought to stand with the tarp to his right, which made for a natural throwing motion for a right-handed person. I’m a righty, too, but my vantage point meant I had to throw to my left. After the second half hour, I knew that I was going to be nursing some sore shoulders during the upcoming week. Although, at the rate we were going, we might be here all week, as the going was slow. An hour into it and we were only down about two feet. I suggested another break.
“How about some water, Henry?” I asked.
“Sure”, he answered and headed for the house again.
“Might as well have a smoke”, said Jack. “He might be a while digging that well”.
Laughing, I sat down on the edge of the divot and, taking a long drag on my butt, tilted my head back and blew smoke into the sky.

what the fuck...???
if i don't make some really, really big change in my life real soon, i think i'm going to pop like one of those engorged ticks you find on your dog's belly in the summer. i suggest that, if you are a regular visitor to this lamest of all blogs, you might wear a nor'easter to protect yourself from the impending explosion and/or expulsion of viscera, vile oaths and blatant rants and raves... grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
sorry. and, no, i don't feel much better now. ninty-nine percent of my life sucks right now and i'm tired of pretending everything is all rosey and fine. it's not. i'm facing the total withdrawal that undoubtedly come, probably sooner than later and that makes it worse. so, if you think i'm moping around more than usual, and there is a lack of idle chit chat, don't take it personally. it's me, not you.

I wish I could say something witty about the fact it is snowing once again, but no luck, I'm fresh out. It sure is pretty outside, though. For those of you less inclined to go out and take a winter's eve walk in the newly fallen snow, here is something to read with a nice cup of hot chocolate.
Once again, thanks for taking the time to visit, I really appreciate it.

Treasure of the Sierra Madre, East

Chapter four

Nothing of note happened during the ensuing week, but when Saturday rolled around I started to dwell on the prospect of prospecting. I guess there were worse ways to spend a late summer evening then digging a hole, but I was hard pressed to come up with anything that didn’t involve severe pain and dull dental instruments. About a quarter to four I heard Jack’s Chevy pull into the driveway and the door close. The hour of reckoning was at hand. I met him at the back door and we went into my garage to get my old pickaxe and Jack said,
“Thanks for doing this. Henry might be a crazy old guy, but he’s a good friend and what the hell, this might be fun.”
“Sure, you might be right.”
I laid the tool in the trunk of the car, closed the lid and got in the front seat. Jack started her up and we backed out the driveway and headed the mile or so to Henry’s place. We smoked as we rode, but said nothing. We pulled into his driveway, which was behind his house, facing his barn, which also was his workshop. Henry was, by trade, a carpenter. His father was a carpenter, as was his grandfather and his father as well. His great grandfather survived the Civil War and came back to New Jersey to resettle his life. He built the house that Henry’s grandfather, father and Henry himself was born in and lived in, all his life. It was a modest size house of two stories, and over the years had been adorned with various corbels, moldings and such and it had a quaint Victorian air about it, despite showing it’s age. I guess it’s the old shoemaker’s tale – he spends so much time fixing everyone else’s shoes, he never has time to fix his own. Henry built the house I lived in, as well as Jack’s and a dozen others that made up our sparse neighborhood. They were built on dirt roads carved through an overgrown orchard, that some ancestor of Henry’s worked in Colonial days. He inherited the land when his father passed away and built houses for the families of men returning from the Second World War. He made enough money to put away and live on, doing various odds and ends of the carpentry sort for pin money.
We walked around front and there was Henry, sitting in a rocking chair, slowly wheedling away the time, waiting for his labor force to show up. As he rocked, the chair lightly creaked. He waved a “hello” as we started up the steps, which creaked under our weight. The boards of the porch creaked as we crossed and Henry creaked as he got out of the chair. He led us through the front door, whose hinges creaked and we trailed him through the house over the creaking floorboards and out the back door, which, mysteriously, opened and closed with odd silence. We followed him to the barn in which, just out of sight of the open doors, were piles and piles of newspapers, neatly tied and stacked. There must have been ten years of newspapers in there. They made the place smell like the basement of a library in damp time.
“Here’s where it all happened. I remember setting the thing on a stack of newspapers, just like these here,” Henry related. “Must have just carted it out with them to the pit.”
He grabbed two trowel pointed shovels and a recently sharpened spade and thrust them at us.
“Let’s go. I have a sifter out back and a canvas tarp to throw the dirt on.”
We took up the tools and walked out of the barn, around the side and headed toward our task.
“Thirty six,” said Jack.
“What?” I replied.
“Thirty six. Fifteen strides from the newspapers to the corner of the barn and twenty one to the pit.”
All I could do was laugh to myself.

so... it's early Sunday morning. I've been eating, drinking and smoking stuff that I shouldn't have been...
the last thing I will probably feel like doing tomorrow is staring into a monitor, so here is another chapter of the latest story.
More to come on Monday.
oh, yeah, remember...
it's a thin line between love and hate...



Treasure of the Sierra Madre, East.

Chapter three

“So… what’s the plan then?” I asked after a minute of silence.
Jack remained mute, leaning back in his seat with his arms folded across his chest. It was obvious he had heard all this previously. His sole interest in this adventure was to make sure he wasn’t the only one having all the fun. Henry looked up over his folded hands and went on,
“I thought maybe you two could come over next Saturday, maybe around four o’clock, so it’s not too hot and we can do it then. I know exactly where the old pit is. It’s exactly twenty-one paces from the back corner of the barn, half way between the barn and the property line. I remember it was about eight feet around and about three or four feet deep. You can actually see where the ground is still sunk in a bit, even after all these years. Shouldn’t take too long with all of us at it. What do you think?”
I could feel myself biting my lip and realized I was staring off into space, letting all this sink in. I topped off my coffee with what was left in the pot and lit my last cigarette.
“I guess I’m in,” I heard myself say before I could stop myself from saying it. I looked at Henry, he responded with a smile. Jack remained silent, but his little grin and slightly widened eyes told me I had taken his cast and the hook was set. I guess I was a treasure hunter now, like it or not. I turned the talk to other matters.
“Now that that’s settled, do you guys want some more coffee? I’ve got some pound cake left if you want some”
“No thanks,” said Henry, “I’ve gotta go do some stuff in the shop. You ready to go, Jack?”
“Yeah, sure, let’s go,” Jack answered. He turned to me. “We’ll see you later. I’ll stop by next Saturday and pick you up. Let’s go Henry,”
I walked them to the front door and watched them as they strolled down the walk and slowly faded into the edge of the halo from the porch light and into the night they disappeared.

Here are some pictures I took this morning. Sheba was more interested in sleeping in front of the stove than in joining me, so no pictures of her this time...

A winter's walk in February...

Even thought the sun is shining, it is really cold outside. It is so pretty, though. Time for a walk in the woods with Sheba.
While I'm doing that, you can stay inside where it's warm and cozy and read on.
Thanks for stopping by. Maybe some winter pictures later today.

Treasure of the Sierra Madre, East.

Chapter Two

Jack leaned back in his chair and looked sideways at Henry.
"Henry," he said, "This is your idea, so go ahead."
Henry took a heavy pull on his smoke, looked up at the smoke curling up to the ceiling and began.
"Well... I took out a stack of newspapers to the barn the other night and looking at the pile of them out there reminded me of something that happened years ago and I had this idea..."
"Wait a minute," I interrupted, "let me get the coffee, I think I'm in for the long haul here."
I grabbed three mugs and the percolator and brought them to the table. As I was filling up them up, I caught Jack giving me "the look". I'd seen that look before. An over the glasses, eyes rolling back in the head sort of thing usually reserved for the most incredulous of situations, or, more often, when he was about to sucker some unsuspecting chump in a game of shoes.
Settling back into my seat I awaited the prelude to the latest adventure.
Henry took up his tale:
"Ok. About fifteen years ago, Biscuit's kid Leroy and I cleaned out the barn. I had a couple of year's worth of newspapers in there and I needed to get rid of them, so we dug a pit out back and burned them. While we were cleaning up, I found a gold nugget that my father gave me when I was a kid. It was about the size of a peach pit. I had the damned thing for all those years and it found it's way from the house to the barn somehow. It was sitting on a shelf behind some jars of nails. I remember looking at it with him before we took some junk to the dump out in Port Monmouth, but that's all I remembered until weeks later. I looked all over for the damn thing for days, but I figured we must have mixed it in with the junk we got rid of and threw it away. I gave it up for lost."
He paused to take a sip of coffee and light another smoke. I shot a look at Jack and all he did was look back and raise his eyebrows. Henry continued:
"When I was taking out the papers out to the barn the other night something struck me; I remembered setting it down on one of the piles of papers. I think we threw it into the pit with the papers and burned it with them. I'll bet it's been down there in the ground all these years. I was thinking that maybe you guys would help me dig the pit up and look for it."
He stopped at that, put his elbows on the table and folded his hands. It almost looked like he was praying.
I shot another look at Jack. All he did was smile and look back. It looked like we were going to be digging for gold in Henry's back yard.

Acquainted with the Night

by Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
O luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

It's still snowing...
go get yourself a cup of coffee, sit back and read the first chapter of another Jack saga...
I hope you enjoy it. A new chapter to follow each day until it's done.
thanks for taking the time to visit...

Treasure of the Sierra Madre, East.

Chapter One


I was cleaning up from dinner on a Friday evening in August, washing a few dishes and bending my ear to a ballgame on the radio, when someone rapped on my front door. I threw the dishtowel over my shoulder and walked through the living room, to catch the silhouette of two lean and tall people shadowed on the front door linen curtain.
"One of them is Jack," I said to myself, "and I bet the other one is Henry."
I opened the inside door and, sure enough, there they were, hands in pockets, cigarettes hanging from their mouths.
I greeted them with the usual, "Hey boys, come on in."
Jack, being a married man, paused to shuffle his feet on the doormat, but Henry, Bachelor Carpenter at Large, just trucked on in, like he would at his own door, or anyone else's, for that matter.
I held the door for them and as they made their way into the kitchen, I thought that someone watching from the street might think it was a meeting of some secret society. We were garbed in our usual after work and weekend uniform.
"Look dear, it's those Green Pants, Brown Shoes and White T-shirt rabble again!"
As they were seating themselves at the kitchen table, I walked past to start a pot of coffee and get the big ashtray. If it was just one or the other of them, this would be a casual visit, but both of them, well this was serious business afoot and called for copious amounts of hot and black, with the two-pack butt kit on hand.
As the pot started to perk, I spun my chair around with the back to the table so I could lean on it and take it all in. They had already stubbed out their smokes and were lighting up anew. I sat down, lit one of my own and asked,
"Well, I'm all ears, fellows, what's the story?"

Dateline New Jersey...
It's snowing like, well, like that probverbial female dog out there... It took me two and a half hours to drive fifty six miles to work...
If I make it home in one piece, I may have tales of daring-do to tell you... or maybe I'll just bitch about all of the people who get in their car on days like this and hit the idiot switch... I, of course, am not one of those... ahem.
Talk to you later.

it's sad old goth's Toad Elevating Moment of the Day:
sometimes, they smile back...

I have, yet again, another killer headache. I think it's from not eating all day and not sleeping well the past few nights.
Nightmares. Can you believe it? I have had horrid dreams the past few nights that have stirred me from my sleep.
On Sunday night I dreamt that I was trying to go to sleep and dead people kept coming into my house and standing around. They didn't speak or move, they were just standing around. Nothing horrible, but disturbing, none the less. Then last night I had one about a guy putting a sign up on the top of my house(!?) and he got electrocuted and all burned up and fell into my driveway. It has to be all the horror stories about finding what's left of the crew of the Columbia scattered all over Texas. I have, like so many other people, become somewhat desensitized to death due to media overexposure, but this really bothered me. I hate to say it, but it feels good to be upset about something like this now and then. Makes me feel a bit more human then usual. And makes me appreciate how dangerous traveling into space is. All astronauts are heroes in my book and they deserve to be treated as such, whether living or dead.
I'm going to go eat dinner now. I might be back.

Here is something to, I hope, take your mind off the terrible event of yesterday and the prospect of six more weeks of winter. It's the second of a bunch of stories that I will share with you over time. I don't know if they are any good or not, but I really enjoy writing them. So, without further fanfare....

Jack and The God Damned Wasps

Over the course of a year or so, Jack had added an addition to the driveway side of his house. It was about twelve feet wide and ran the length of the house, from front to back. It became his kitchen and dining area, with large windows that ran along the driveway, affording a commanding view of the privet hedge that separated Jack’s domain from “the neighbors”. The new room had a shed style roof that pitched down to the driveway, on which Jack had hung a rain gutter to keep the driveway from becoming a quagmire of wet cinders and dirt. (I’ll tell you about the cinder driveway some other time when I can summon the strength…). All was well over the course of the next winter, but when the warm weather came around again, there appeared some unwelcome tenants living up under the gutters… wasps. Every night when he came home from work, Jack would park his car in the shade of the new room, and when he got out of the car the wasps would hover out from under the gutters to have a look, and decided Jack was some sort of threat, so they would dive bomb his head while he ran, swatting, to the safety of the back door. This went on for a while, till he finally had enough of this daily swatting and sprinting business and he decided to do something about it.

I was mooching around the vacant lot across the street from Jack’s house early one Saturday morning, kicking around in the waist high weeds looking for box turtles. I looked up from the hunt and saw him standing in the driveway. He had on heavy wool pants, which were tucked into a pair of winter boots, the black rubber kind with the snap clasps on them. You know the kind of boots I’m talking about, don’t you? We all had them as kids, for trucking around in the snow, the clasps getting full of snow and freezing shut so you had to pry them open to get them off… anyway, over the boots and pants he was wearing a heavy red and black plaid hunting jacket, heavy leather gloves with gauntlets going half way up his forearms, and, to top it off, one of those Yukon hats, with the built in ear muffs, which were down and tied fast under his chin. Not a bad outfit for exploring the frozen wastes in winter, but it was late June and this was tempting heat stroke, at the least. I decided to stop worrying the box turtles for a while and mosey over to see what this was all about.
“Jack, what are you all done up for?” I asked as I met up with him. He was setting a ladder up against the side of the house and he turned to me and said,
“I’ve had it with those God damned wasps. They chase me into the house every night and I’m fed up with it. One of these days one of the God damned things is going to sting me.”
“What are you going to do, Jack, smoke them out” I asked.
“Nope”, he said, reaching into the right pocket of his coat and extracting a tall white aerosol can. “I got a can of God damned wasp killer. I’m going to squirt the God damned things and to hell with them.”
“Well, that sounds like it should work. Have you ever used that stuff before?”
“No, but the guy at the hardware store said it will kill them in one shot, so I’m going to give them a squirt and that’s that.”
“Ok… but you know, I think I’ll watch this from across the street.”
I turned to walk back out of his driveway as he started to climb the ladder. What happened next, I can only imagine, because all I heard was,
“JESUS CHRIST!!!”
followed by a loud thud. By the time I turned around, all I got to see was Jack sprawled on his back in the driveway, his wooden ladder laying on top of him and the can of God damned wasp killer spinning in the cinders a few feet away, sending up a little dust devil in the late morning heat. I ran back to him and helped him crawl out from under the ladder. It was then I got a good look at his face. One of the wasps must have decided to fend off the lethal squirt with a preemptive strike and had flown up under his glasses and stung him under his left eye. It was already swollen up like a bright red walnut.
“Are you ok, Jack?” I asked.
All he did was get to his feet, kick the ladder out of his way and start walking to his back door. He paused a minute to look at the can of God damned wasp killer lying at his feet. His whole body shivered like he had a chill and he just walked by and went inside. I didn’t see anymore of him that day.
I picked up the ladder and put it in his garage and then picked up the can of God damned wasp killer and set it on his back porch. I went back across the street to see if any box turtles were to be had and that was pretty much that.

Jack decided that the wasps were better left alone and I think the wasps decided that Jack was to be avoided, too. They wouldn’t make any more personal appearances when he got out of his car, they just made a loud buzzing under the gutters to remind him they were still there and they should leave each other alone.
He did pick up a strange habit, though, that lasted as long as I knew him… whenever he got out of his car he automatically looked up to his left to sure some God damned wasp wasn’t making a sneak attack. It didn’t matter where he was or if there were any wasps or not, he still made that left and up turn of the head. Better safe than sorry, I guess.

Oh, yeah… the wasps eventually left their haven under the gutters… I think it was because of the bats. But that’s another story.

(if you click here, you can see Jack... but no wasps...)

Well, for what it's worth, Happy Groundhog Day.

check out these very cool pictures of a waterspout in Russia.

What is it with people who can't resist using a public forum to thrust their political views on a captive audience?
When I'm out trying to have a good time, I really don't want to have you shoving your personal politics down my throat.
I was out at a coffee house Friday night with my friends and one of the performers felt it was necessary to comment on her opinions of the Iraq situation and President Bush's State of the Union address. In answer to her question, yes, I've heard of Dresden. I've also heard of New York. Civilians are civilians. It's one thing for civilians to be harmed during military action. It's quite another to harm civilians intentionally in terrorists attacks. Collateral deaths as the result of proximity to precision bombing are worse than intentionally murdering unsuspecting civilians by ramming airplanes into office buildings or blowing them up in cafes or bus stops? I don't fucking think so. Keep your bleeding heart bullshit opinions to yourself. That way I can keep mine to myself and you won't have to read stuff like this in here.
Saddam is an outright murderer of his own people. He has practiced chemical warfare on his own people. Over 200,000 Iraqi citizens have been murdered in his name. He has strove to "cleanse" his country of the Kurdish section in northern Iraq by using nerve gas on them. He has drained the marshes of northern Iraq by diverting the natural water flow into Lake Saddam, a huge artificial basin created for that sole purpose, causing an entire culture of marsh dwelling Arabs, dependant on those marshes for their life, to move into refuge camps and starve. He sought to take over the oil fields of Kuwait for his own gain. He has set up training camps for various terrorist organizations within his borders. I could go on, but you get the picture.
I don't want a war. I have my own personal reservations about it. That's all you need to know. That's all I derserve to tell you.
If you want to know more, just ask me... or, I guess I could pick up a guitar and that would give me license to spout off in your face... but that's not my style.

My condolences to the family and friends of the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia, STS-107.