Seems like there ought to be a reason

I had to laugh yesterday at two things that happened. I was watching tv when an advertisement for Walmart told me I had to hurry order my copy of Madacascar before supplies ran out. Then I turned to LA Times and read that California schools face a crisis in 2006 because 100,000 students still haven't passed the proficiency test.

It's been awhile since I donned this guise

Once in great while, I just have to take a break. Though in reality that isn't what happens. I still read the papers, LA and NY Times, and of course, I'm in book stores all the time so I can't miss the new books. So when I say take a break, I just mean I'm not going to go public with my thoughts for a bit. But now I'm back and the first thing I want to write about is the big deal over Paris Hilton and the gay rights parade. Ironic isn't it? Paris apparently isn't moral enough for the gay community. Hmmm? Don't the neocon and christian right think of gays as immoral? What's going on? Is there another level of morality that we're just learning about, some astral plane of morality that maybe was best explained in that thrilling little short story by T. Sturgeon, If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let Your Sister Marry One? Or is this just more PR like the Katie Holmes kidnapping?

Huffington Posts . . .

Whatever the Republicans and the critics are saying to trivialize the blog isn't justified by what I've experienced so far. There's something truly interesting seeing in print the ideas of people who might in fact be listened too. And it is refreshing to realize that a sense of humor is very important when speaking about serious topics. If nothing else this is why I enjoy blogging, to be able to have intelligent conversation with people who aren't threatened by a discussion.

What can I say?

The days roll past, the stats pile up, the ugly turns beautiful just because it outlasts.

More and more I hear the words "You know I have to give Bush credit." The New York Times, Bill Maher, my earnest neighbor at the coffee shop.

And I want to shout yes, give him credit for using your fear, and your willing lack of thought, your incredible laziness and sloth.

But what difference would one more shouting voice make?

You know I have to give him credit.

More about war than ...

Living on the farm in summer was a way to find family. I learned that I didn't have to be any more than I was though my Uncle George sure seemed worried about my Mom's Catholic background. And my Aunt Mabel always wanted to know what that paper backed book was I seemed to always carry in my back pocket. I learned to drive from my cousin's husband, June, for Junior, Biggers.

One day about a week after I'd told my Uncle that I could drive and then proceeded to take out about 30 feet of fence when I popped the clutch on the pickup, June stopped by the house right after dinner, said he was on his way to plow up a field and did I want to ride along. You bet, I said and jumped up beside him on the tractor. When we got out to the field, he showed me how to hook up the double disc plow and then we started plowing a circuit around the field working counter clockwise from the inside out. After a few circuits, he motioned me to stand beside him and watch how he shifted and worked the clutch and to see where the brake was. Once more around and then he said he had another field he had to look to and would I mind finishing up what we'd started while he went and took care of it? So there I was, the tractor engine idling, the steering wheel in my hands and a field to plow. Which I did.

Later, my Aunt and Uncle were both kind of mad that I hadn't told them where I was going but that didn't seem to matter because there I was a thirteen year old boy who now knew how to drive.

That summer down toward the end of it, my cousin's husband went off to Korea and when he came back he had lost the hearing in his right ear from a bomb explosion on the air field he and his seabee buddies were building. Until then I thought war was some game me and my friends played after school. Of course, there was some benefit to the whole deal. Whenever June didn't want to listen to my endless questions anymore he'd just turn his head. http://antiwar.blogspot.com/

Once upon a time . . .

I used to go down to live on my Uncle's farm in the summer when we lived in Memphis. I think I thought of him, my uncle, as a father. I was 13 when I used to do this, but when my Dad was overseas in WWII we lived on the farm, my Mom, my sister and I. I was 4 then and he became quite important in my life, what with starting the day at breakfast with his sonorous bass voice intoning the daily Bible reading. And then me following him around most of the day as he fed the cows, plowed the fields, and worked the rest of the farm while fending off my constant questions about why this and how come that.

If it looks like a Christian. . .

I once worked on a roofing crew one summer and within two days of starting our first job the crew was decided about one thing. The Christian kid had to go. It was unanimous amongst us. The kid had to go. It wasn't that he couldn't do the work, or that he had sloppy work habits. No, it was clearly his need to proselytize us and anyone else who happened by that sealed his doom.

Another time, I was auditing a psychology of sports class at SD State and we were having a guest lecturer. No less than 15 seconds after he had begun his pitch, God and his place in our sport's lives, at least ten class members, myself included, spontaneously got up and left the room.

Sometimes you just have to say by act or word, I don't want to hear the sermon. Which is why my stomach turned and my gut reaction was to turn off the tv. Boston Legal, sunday night, the subject of one case: creationism to be taught in a science class. And by dint of the we're all Christians here, the founding fathers intended us to be one nation under god, sort of reasoning that passes for liberals trying to eat their cake and be elected too, the goddam case was decided in favor of the defendant, a god-fearing superintedant that just wanted to have all sides fairly represented. Ha! See www.angryoldman.us for more on this.