Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge

I have never owned a Ford. Never wanted a Ford. I am, and always have been, a GM man. Last night I went to Brandon Ford and bought a Mustang for the wife and a Lincoln MkZ for myself. I guess I am now a Ford man. A Ford man with car payments again.

Ever walked into a public restroom and been confronted with an odor so foul, so bodacious, so heavy hanging that you just know something in there is decomposing? Yeah, me too. But what I am going to tell you next even applies to less odiferious restroom situations. I'm no germphobe, but I am afraid to carry my coffee cup with me into a smelly restroom. I just start to imagining the big stink germs floating about and landing on my cup lip. Then I imagine my lips on the cup lip. I shudder, I really do. If the odor of those germs is so foul and so heavy thick, how can they not be huge and unhealthy. I mean big enough to get stuck in your teeth. Anyhoo, my sitting on the throne, enjoying what brung me here...a nice, hot cup a' joe.. days are few and far between thanks to the Klingon stink germs and my somewhat vivid imagination.

Ever had a stalk of sugar cane? I have. First couple of times I was in a market in Asia somewhere. Most recently, we bought some and brought it home for using when we make Mojitos. We have the strong mint growing and the good mojito mix, so we thought to get some cane stalks also.So what's the deal, anyway. Like I said, I have tried it several times, in several different nations, and no matter what, it still comes across as gnawing on a stick. Not even a particularly sweet stick. You're just sitting in your lawn chair,relaxing with a minty rum drink, more or less grazing on a cane stalk. Or am I doing it wrong?

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it. - Henry David Thoreau

The blind guy got kicked off of American Idol. Finally. He looked promising in the auditions, but once you had to deliver the goods, he began to show an incredible mediocrity. He knew it, too, as evidenced by his statement when they told him to put away the guitar and go back to the piano. He said, "I just wanted to show my versitility before I go." So Paula and/or Kara give this piss warming spiel about "yo're good...blah blah blah....you have incredible talent...blah blah blah...." and, to my dismay, "you've been such an inspiration to so many." OK, wait. The world is full of great blind singers, and you're saying it's the crappy one who is an inspiration? Just making sure I have that right. I don't think having a disability and then doing something anyway makes you an automatic inspiration. A blind person singing is no more inherently inspirational than a deaf person belching or a fat person sweating. To me anyway. Let him motorcycle race despite being blind, then I'm all hallelujah right there with you. I guess my point is; I am fat and sarcastic. How inspirational is that!?

I took the London boys out to eat Thai food and Cajun food. They loved both. I am their culinary hero. But that, of course, started the first day I took them out. I introduced them to a little place called Hooters. Something they don't have back home in the UK. They returned the favor by taking me and Merrill, and our families out to The Cheesecake Factory for dinner. Never knew that place had such upscale dining. Anyway, they loved my wife, especially after she surprised them all by not only showing them the stun gun that she carries, but by firing off a shot, or more correctly, I suppose, a zap, right there at the table. They were right impressed. Right drunk...but right impressed none the less.

New poem, followed by old, old anti-war one. Most of you can stop reading now.

Life is painful, suffering is optional, out Ramblin' Ed

Better Now, Maybe 7 April, 2009

I watched as you drove off I thought for the summer

You smiled as you kissed me and I didn't wonder

What that really meant 'cause I wasn't the curious kind

The dust settled slow, you know Florida evenings

tell so many lies and you shouldn't believe them

But somehow you do. Yeah, you fall for them every time

I wanted to ask you, are you still a dancer?

Still believe questions don't always need answers?

And do colors remind you of stories you never have told?

Have you been knocked around some, and slowly grown harder?

Had to let go of too much that you really wanted?

Some dance. And some dream. Some mellow. And some lose control.

All the songs of our youth were so slow and so urgent

Writ in the boredom of summer lust burning

Drifting along any aimless old wind that it found.

You used to remind me that time's not for wasting

I'd give you that smile, both impure and impatient

Where would that get me? You knew back then, I know it now.

I wanted to know girl, are you still a dreamer?

Your endings still bending to half in-betweener?

I wanted to know if your smile comes as easily still?

Did you walk to the edge of the darkness and see them?

It's alright, you know that we've all got those demons.

Some shimmer. Some fade. Some whisper. And some never will.

So you're better now, maybe, through time faded glasses

They smooth down the edges that started so jagged.

Those raggedy lines that used to connect you to me.

I watched you just drive off, I thought nothing of it.

The fireflies were firing. The streetlights were humming.

And that was the moment you turned into fine memories.

I wanted to know now if you're still a dreamer?

Your endings still bending to half in-betweener?

I wanted to know, does your smile comes so easily still?

Ed

St. Petersburg / Brandon

A Layman Looks at War 1983

I have died as I watched

My friend suffer and fall

Groping blindly for words

That he might tell me all

And I prayed as I watched

My friend laid in his grave

In a land far from home

He fought bravely to save

I laughed at the puppets

Til I saw they were real

Flesh and bone on a string

But unable to feel

I sneered at the pirates

And the holy crusades

Bowed my head with the children

But was always amazed

In the castles of sand

By a now restless sea

I have sat on my hands

I have bent on my knees

I have followed our sons,

To the hard mountian lands

They played as if children

Then died just like men

Now I praise those who knew

At twilight's last gleaming

Death's an illusion

And everyone's dreaming

A fast fading light

Aids safe passage to port

But I'm just a layman

I know nothing of war

Ed

On a warship somewhere at sea