A long illness

That's what these Bush years have seemed like to me; a long illness. Now the matter is, will the patient recover or and spread the truth regarding his symptoms and how we might avoid the disease or will he die, leaving us in the dark to start over? Sure I stretch an analogy, but wouldn't it be cool if GW could just get with Obama and say, "Bud, this is where I really started to fuck up, you don't want to go there." Sort of like warning a guy not to eat something made with Sauce Mayonnaise that's been in the sun for a while, or not to take the brown acid. You know what I mean? I tell you something else.
Now I don't know about you, but I am pretty sensitive to the vibe. Like I was at that concert out in Altamont, CA where they had the troubles, and when things went bad, that vibe almost knocked me down. I certainly was not the only one, so it's probably fairly common. So I'm thinking, suppose you are GW Bush? You got to wonder if he can feel the vibe of the thousands who just don't like him. You just do. So this whole long illness riff really has to do with feelings. I know because I've hurt some good people's feelings and it makes me sick. The thing with me is, I don't think I'll be able to fix it and I fear that the outcome is destined to be bones in the road warning me to keep my distance and not try to go to that well again. Feeling bad is one thing but bad with a thirst is bad all the way.

Today we would like to send birthday props out to Sir. Winston Churchill who is 135 and also literary rascal Mark Twain (Sam Clemmons) who's a spry 173. Remember, as long as a name is mentioned a person never dies and those guys are mentioned a lot.

Well that's the way I think. You certainly don't have to think like me, just don't forget to keep in touch with what's going on and try not to get too hepped on that Jazz Music. OK? Fine.

Oh Hell, it's White Thursday!

Yá'át'ééh it's the old Indian. While most of you are enjoying the holiday of family togetherness, I am feeling mean spirited and loathsome. Sometimes people ask, "Hey Texino, why are you so mean spirited and loathsome?" I tell them the war did it. They accept that because I actually am a veteran, and a lot of us from the Vietnam era are crazy. Being loathsome is a by product of madness you see. It is getting hard to pull that veteran stuff lately because we now have a whole new mess of vets from the Iraq thing and they are not particularly loathsome at all. In fact, I would think long and hard about calling one of those guys or girls and "baby murderer" regardless of how many children he or she might have snuffed. Point being your modern GI is a professional soldier and not some confused high school kid who was snatched up like an alien abductee, given as little as two months training and then beamed down into a country full chittering little people who dress alike, talk alike, act alike-man, you could loose your mind. It really is a different situation now. Here is an example. Yesterday I actually opened an email newsletter from some vet site, and there was a piece of news about a former cook in the 82nd Airborne who, after being convicted of multiple rapes and murders and attempted murders, was going to be executed pretty soon. There was a picture of the Trooper obviously being led from the court martial which had taken place sometime before. The soldier was wearing his class A uniform, which is what you wear when you face any kind of military proceeding. OK? Fine. Well there was a space to leave a comment about the story and many had been left. What surprised , or maybe didn't really surprise, me was every person who had replied referred to the guy as something loathsome i.e. "This piece of dung" "Maggot" "slime" "human garbage" "sleaze ball" "P.O.S." "dirt bag"-well you get the picture. There were over 50 replies and every one used a dehumanizing modifier when referring to the suspect, not to mention what they thought should be done to him. If nothing else this article showed me that the mind set of the modern armed service has been molded into one where a human life can easily be relieved of it's value and I came away with little doubt that these soldiers would gladly kill anyone so long as someone classified that group as "dirt bags." It may or may not be of interest to you that this training modality is very popular at today's law enforcement academies. From personal experience during my time as an instructor at a technical college, I can attest that these schools are not focusing on prudent reasoning, but instead are taking the tack that the police must be an insular group because "everyone hates them" ergo, they should only hang out with other cops. This is not making for any "Sheriff Andy's" now, is it? So there you have it. It's Happy Thanksgiving and I truly hope you have one. I'll be hanging out in the studio traveling through some new loathsome identities like "Terminal Loser" "Bad Dog Breath" "Mid level Roach" and "Flea Circus Sideshow Freak" Such promise! Makes me want to live all over again.

Where were you?

I was working in the guidance counselor's office in high school, something I did during 5th period, and I felt this intense ill vibration run through the whole area. Then everyone sort of zombied up to the Principal's office where a radio was playing out the news. I slipped out and went to tell the librarian about it, because it seemed something she should know. I just eased up and asked her if she had heard the president had been shot. She said that it wasn't a funny joke and I was taken aback because it wasn't a joke and I had not set it up like one either. By the time my next class,US History, convened, everyone seemed to have gotten the word one way or another. Some kid kept saying "it was a grassy knoll" and someone else said there had been a big shoot out at a movie theater, while others said Johnson had died of a heat attack. I had nothing to add. Then, because the class was in a temporary building out by the student parking lot and the teacher had fled to the Office for more information, I decided to go on to the house, so I did. I watched and listened. Then on a cold clear day I stood on Memorial Bridge with thousands of others and watched as the cortege made it's way to Arlington Cemetery. I saw Emperor Hialie Selassie and Charles De Gaul and many other famous heads ride by in silent limousines. I keep thinking I saw Winston Churchill, but I don't believe he was there. Then I drove home and got there in time to hear the bugler bust a note playing Taps. Couldn't blame the guy. It was a very cold day for everyone.

Casey at the Bat

I used to enjoy Thanksgiving because either I would be throwing a dinner or friends would invite me over. Well that was another time. I can't afford to make a feast and I'm short on friends who set a heavy table. This can only lead to that incredible hole created by Earnest Thayer; Mudville. That's right the home of mighty Casey a person so overly certain of his gifts that what is really just a simple action, striking out in a baseball game, causes all the joy to slink out of town causing it's name, at onetime a silly aside, to swell up to the epitome of where nobody wants to be. What a piece of writing! Were I not in Mudville myself, I would review it for you further. I can't do that right now because it is so obvious that in so many somewheres things are really OK. There is just no joy in Mudville.

Closing Alice's Restaurant

Way back in the day, back when I was raising pigs in South Vietnam, a woman who I scarcely knew sent me a letter of news from back in the states. She said, "There is a real cool song called Alice's Restaurant out and you would like it."
Well, I thought it was a good title and I tied to create an idea how a song like that might go, since she didn't mention that it was a 23 min talking blues. Oh well, I wrote back to her off and on. She kept the letters. I know this because her husband called me up a couple of years ago and after determining that I was not some sort of maniac (Ha!) he allowed his wife to speak to me. I'd forgotten her name, but she wanted permission to publish my writing in some Vietnam thing where she taught school. I said sure. She said her husband told her I probably had a "trophy wife". I told her no, just a regular long term partner and no, I was not a successful writer or musician, just a guy who drove an ambulance. I gave her my email, but she didn't write. I had only met her once and taken her for a motorcycle ride. I think she fell for me at the time, but I don't think she loved me anymore. At's OK. I was just thinking about Alice's restaurant.

Dear Death, I hope you cut your fucking foot off

So there is a man I know, not well but better than I would, due to the sorrow of some mutual friends. Friends whose grief rose higher this week as this man came closer to solving the hideous mystery which lurks close by a person's final breath. A person dying from the injuries of brain lesions, a rather dressed up name for Cancer, will often take on a characteristic breathing pattern called Chayne-Stokes where the comatose patient will start breathing in a ragged rhythm which builds to a crescendo and stops cold, long enough to cause a few tired eyes to raise and then it starts again. Why is it we think on the subject of death for most of our life yet at the end so few want to pass? Indeed there is no line jumping in that final waiting room and I in my role as a medical handy man have seen no end of persons rise from varying periods of clinical death and try for another few hours; sometimes weeks or even a year or so. I've laid the electric on a stone dead man at a square dance only to have him try and rejoin the line, just like a car with a slightly low battery, he just needed a little jump. I've laid the car analogy on plenty of docs down the years and everyone has gotten all snooty on the subject. All the more reason you should stay away from most doctors, I'd say. Nope, people are so happy staying alive, the body has to make up some solid gold 50 caliber machine gun diseases that will not only take you out but make you wish you were already gone. And that brings me back around to my sort of friend Ed the banjo guy. He had had cancer for four years or more and finally the disease just bashed him with a big hammer to the brain. So Ed's on the other side now and if there is anything there worthwhile he knows it and we don't.
And as far as spooky skeleton in the picture is concerned, if he were to lose a foot due to misstep with that big cradle scythe we all might gain some good time. I'm all for a good time and I meant that pun about the scythe too. Now get out of here before someone else gets killed. OK? Fine

The big blowhard

This fellow whom I know fairly well, has abruptly lost his weekly radio show. It was an hour which he paid for by providing advertising and web service to the station. Easy for him, as he owns a successful Internet design and hosting business. I understand that he prefaced each broadcast by saying the content was his opinion and in no way represented the views of the station or it's advertisers. Pretty standard free speech fare. Along with the show the man also did some sports related thing with a local HS football team where he was a big booster. Well, he wants to know why he was chucked off the air. The station in question is a tiny AM that you can barely get in some parts of the county, however; with atmospheric skip it is often picked up in Norway and other points in the great Atlantic Ocean Sea.
After digging around a bit, I have come to the conclusion that the broadcaster in question was dumped for trying to emulate blowhard talk radio. You know that Rush Limbaugh thing. Now I would like to be 100% certain about this, but I have to admit to never tuning in his show. Here's why. When I was doing some much needed work for his company, he began to needle me a bit about being a "liberal musician" well I fired back that I was a damn war vet, and I could run down an impressive list of fire arms. The guy was a gun nut. I also took my brother in law, Cabbage, to see him and Cabbage knows more about guns than anyone, so there. Well that was before the elections got in gear, but once the did, everyone on the general employee list, and don't forget this is a design company with and African American male as head designer, everyone started getting the most egregious anti Clinton and Obanma "stuff". I mean all the time and the real crap, plus once the nomination went to Obama it was a constant stream of Obama's the leader of Arab terror and all that other scare crap that was prevalent here in the south. And this is going out to customers and friends and employees. More than a few did not care for it.

Now I said in a recent post that I though people were pretty much over that. Well my buddy Mr. X just didn't see it and while that two bit little station will broadcast other right wing stuff, they are doing it for green money, while the tangible dollar worth of Internet presence is definitely undergoing a reevaluation in these troubled times.

I guess it all comes down to the fact that if you want to push the limit of free speech in the name of the mean spirit, you are just going to have to blow a little less BS if you want to get on the air. Oh, I'm a free speech guy alright, but my ears are just tuned to a frequency of polite discussion at the moment. It's good to be an officer in the realm of reason.

The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down ( a new track)

Hi, I feel like ringing a bell and singing la la... You know how that song goes.
Well, it's a sad song and one written ease the blood up in a southerner until he or she gets julep-eyed and falls into that particular state of mind which exists in all white people born below The Line. "The Southern Thing" I admit to falling victim to The Southern Thing or "TST" many times. People down south make quite an issue about it; in fact there is even a tag line that goes; It's a Southern thing; "You wouldn't understand." that gets put on various things like coffee cups and T-shirts. They sell them right next to the logo of the rebel soldier with his flag and long beard who proclaims, "Forget? Hell!" This is convenient because that whole "Forget? Hell!" business is "A Southern thing,..." Get the picture?

OK? Fine. Now I am a Southerner, born a few blocks from where the very first shot of The War between The States was fired and around the corner from the doctor's house where they took the fellow to die. Shortly after this, my neighbors would have day tripped to Manassas to watch the US Army route the rebels and when that didn't happen, they soon found that living in that particular slice of The Commonwealth would separate them forever from the true antebellum south. Never the less, after living in NC and FL for many years, you may be certain "I understand." If fact I understand so much that when I figured out that Senators Clinton and Obama were to run for the Democratic nomination. I said, "God dammit , the party has a chance to sweep into office and they come up with a woman whom most people in the south can't stand and a colored guy." That's right; a "colored guy". And for the first time in my life, I thought I might just have to vote Republican and John McCain seemed like a presidential fellow. Well, that was a couple of years ago and I listened and realized that both Clinton and Obama were on the ball and I started liking Obama's message and the fact that he seemed cosmopolitan in a world that had to be getting tired of The US telling everyone how it was going to go. I became a supporter.

Last night, as I saw the results start to come in and the pundits with their complex math were saying Obama could win, all I saw was a whole line of the old south going for McCain, AL, MS, KY, AR, TN and Texas, and I felt the old racial thing stir in my gut. But wait! The Commonwealth of Virginia, a state who had not voted Democrat in 40 years went blue and then FL, the place where I live and have had to put up with all manner of racial crap, is blue too.
NC, still undecided but deadlocked with Obama showing the slight lead. Important, battleground, states coming through and driving old Dixie not necessarily "down" but in a different direction.

Now what. I am happy with the results, but at the same time a bit nervous due to a penchant this country has for letting good guys take a bullet. I would really like to have seen Texas and Alabama go blue because down there and here in FL as well, there live very rich reclusive old men who are the direct descendants of families who owned large numbers of slaves from Africa. These guys are quite serious on the subject of race and keeping the black person from breaking out. That the black person broke out a long time ago does not register in the within the bourbon colored paneled walls where old southern power seethes. I believe that these men killed the Kennedy's and Dr. King, and they did it simply because it embarrassed them and their political power base to have federal troops walking little children to school where grown men and women shouted the worst obscenities at a little girl with ribbons in her braids, and, it was on TV, in Black and White-like a war.
(well it's a southern thing, you wouldn't understand; Forget? Hell!) I bet you get it now.

So there. I want some peace and common sense to play over the land. I don't want to lose the possibility of a rebirth of the Good America in the cloudy conspiracy theory that would enfold us were President Obama to vanish by an assassins trick shot. We just can't allow that, for not only is Obama the person who might help our country rise to a level of a grand society, he is possibly the last president I will vote into office. When I came to be, this country was humming right along. There was a lot of hope. Unfortunately,
big issues of race and gender had to be hammered out and that took time. You were there, I'm sure. Then last night, one of the greatest obsticles between us and our ability to claim status as a truly great nation, just fell right over. No big thing as it turned out. It was just a matter of drawing a few lines with a felt tip pen and running it through a grade scanner like at school and enough people did that in hope that Mr. Obama can deliver the goods.

Hard times are ahead maybe the Republicans know this and that's why they did not field the very best horse (or moose) From where I sit, I can see the "GOP" doing just that. OK, but whatever they did, last night the people took the ball and seem ready to run, sing and ring those bells. Like I said, I'm on that wagon and I'm ready to make some noise.

Surprise her with a...

Britain's "Bonny" Prince Charley
appears stunned after Jappanese Fertility Priest, Akira "Kendo" Saki causes his penis to achieve "Royal" proportions during an impromptu demonstration of his power. The Prince and his companion, Mrs. Parker-Bowles, were visiting the site of a famous fertility festival held during the final week of October, when Saki, their offical host, grew irritated at a comment made by Charles condemming a procession of rice farmers carrying various fertitlity symbols as "The sort of backward rubbish that keeps the yellow man from acheiving parity with his betters." Saki (shown in the photo after slipping an ornimental bamboo cover over The Princes erection) scolded Charles for his rudeness and told him the "change" would last though the week after which the organ would return to normal proportion. While The Princedremained speechless, Mrs. Parker-Bowles, shown at right, seemed extremely interested in the whole incident.

Scoop Texino

OK, I guess you could call me a member of the press. I mean I have been reporting the news for quite some time and when I'm getting paid for it or writing under a by-line, I always give it my best shot. What I mean is, I do my level best to be sure
my readers are getting the straight dope in a clear, unclouded format. I've been doing this for a number of years, plus I know plenty of other
journalists, diarists and just plain note takers on the the general 411 and I'd like to say that not a single solitary one of them is guilty of non reportage. That's right, all that stuff you hear about writers not writing important stuff like that thing about the space people who encircle the earth holding the answers to all of our problems but can't make "First Contact" until the USAF promises not to shoot their shuttles down. Well we don't report that because it's not true. Simple as that. You see we writers really do have an important job and it is easy for anyone to do so long as he or she tells the truth.
What is the truth? I'm happy you asked. The truth is simply what you know to be factual or what your common sense of values suggest is the right path.
Here is an example of putting your mind to work in this manner. OK, story #1 is that the CIA is using secret locations to interrogate terror suspects and they might not be being very nice about it. Now story #2 has to do with the FBI supplying young children to certain members of Congress as well as the so-called "Illuminati" for the purpose of satanic rituals involving sex and cannibalism. Now while neither of these stories are the sort of thing I follow, it's pretty obvious that item #1 is verifiable to some extent while if you try to verify #2 you will find yourself being led down pathways of conspiracy that just become less believable at every turn. So while you have these tips of bizarre stories sticking up through the sea of information, a quick look will usually disqualify them while your articles of some worth tend to float around offering different angles of view making them much easier to capture and develop. Still, no matter what you do to explain your reasoning, someone will be trumpeting that the clear evidence of his or her matter is being over looked by the people who write the news. Well it's not. Why? Because of the millions of would be reporters like me with and electronic platform to lay out decent copy and a eye peeled for something, anything, to write . When you look at it that way, you can feel pretty safe that the skies are clear of saucers and Sen. Obama is just a man who wants to be president for the same reason anyone else might. Now sometimes I write strange stuff that is hard to believe. That's not reporting, it's just made up stories used to ease my mind during times of trouble. Just look at it like some kind of poetry and it will make more sense. I hope you will see the difference and keep reading what I have to say. Who knows? One day I might do something important.