Searching for Comfortably Numb

The shadows start before noon, and the chill wind creeps around the corners and through every crack and strain in the fenstrations. I huddle in the products of my craft, hands pulling the fabrics tight about me as I struggle to find warm.

This year you left me forever, I will never hear your voice again, never feel your hand rub my shoulder, never see your smile again. I miss you so much, even though our lives took different paths, through distant lands. You were the adhesive that kept the family from disintegration, and now there is no family.

The child is gone. My work is finished there. I will never again see her, it seems, never see the results of my broken and inadequate attempt at parentage. There is no forgiveness, there is no love, there is but lonliness and emptiness. But then, I've always been broken, inadequate, empty. Why would this day become any different? What is the meaning when all you strive for turns to dust? The preachers lied. The television lied. The teachers lied. This is not Leave it to Beaver. There is no Ward Cleaver. All is dust, and ash. Tasteless remnants of a promised feast that never materialized.

To what end the cycle of sticking and reading, recording and gulping yet another pill, yet another drug, yet another attempt to change what is broken and inadequate? Why the focus on all the things that only continue to fail?

When can this end, please?

And now here's something we hope you'll really like!

Hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit outta my hat!

Again?

Oops, wrong hat.

Ok, this one is for BBC and his Beer Church

The Beer Song

I apologize for the need to click "Watch this movie" and all - It's the only place I've found it, and while the movie sucks, the song will get stuck in your head worse than the George of the Jungle theme song...

Bang! Bang! You're Dead!!

Couple of days ago, Croila posted about her son being given a toy gun. It seems there are an appreciable number of parents who are concerned about their offspring running about with plastic gun-shaped toys. I remember quite clearly my little brother and his cronies with cap-guns and plastic rifles &etc.

The comments she got pretty much summed up what a lot of parents find out - you just can NOT keep the gun away from the boy. If you won't get them a waterpistol, or a cap gun, or a battery-powered noisy machinegun, they will turn a stick, or a cardboard tube - or even just their FINGERS into a gun.

I suspect this is some kind of testosterone-based thing, probably ingrained into genetic memory. What did kids do before there were guns? Pieces of wood as swords, no doubt. Before that? Probably tree limbs as clubs. Since we come from a common "hunter/gatherer" past, I suspect that this "survival skill" of learning how to kill things is something males are genetically programmed to do.

I do know that my little brother and his friends were fiends for guns when they were small. They were also fiends for Tonka Trucks. They also loved the 3 Stooges, and once all gathered underneath one of my Dad's big old wool army-surplus blankets and marched around the neighborhood chanting "Hey, Hey, get out of our way, we just got back from the USA".

I have no idea why.

I do know that of the 6 boys next door (Gah, Mrs. Murphy was ALWAYS pregnant...) and the 2 from down the street that I have some knowledge of, none of his friends became either a truck driver or a mass-murderer. In fact, the little bro is St. Paul the Lutheran Minister. The only person to whom he has indicated he wishes to do bodily harm is, in fact, Senator Clinton from NY - but I suspect that he's just yapping out his ass on that.

So... My advice to parents with concerns about their kids and toy guns is "take a deep breath, count to 10, try to teach them about the REALITY of gun safety and use if appropriate, then let it go - this too shall pass."

BANG!!

Gotcha.
;o)

Faith Without Works is Dead

So said my religion teachers when I was a child.

I saw in the news today an item where Slick Willy Clinton was in India receiving a bouquet of flowers from a very short little kid who has AIDS. Seems the Clinton Foundation (or something like that...) has been working to find ways to help stop the proliferation of AIDS in the world.

It seems to me that I remember Jimmy Carter lugging around a hammer and doing an awful lot of work on Habitats for Humanity.

Then I tried to think of what works I'd seen from the Party of Family Values. Ronnie Raygun and Wife did do some lip-service toward getting kids not to use drugs, although "Just say No" is about as effective as using a teacup to empty the ocean, but... it was SOMETHING.

I don't recall ANYTHING from Bush Sr. - except for posing for photo-ops with Mr. Clinton during the Katrina disaster.
I certainly don't remember anything from Nixon
Nor do I remember anything other than bad golf from Gerald Ford.

So where are all these "faith based initiatives" that Shrubbie is hollering about?

*crickets*

Yep. Thought so.

Fear Friday Nite

So I'm driving home Friday nite. The roads are fairly clear - they're a little slippery still, however.

I keep a long distance, and try to stay moving as much as possible. Until I'm about a mile from my house.

Got to a stoplight. Thank the Goddess, I got to a stoplight. Some obvious mental retard runs the light and spins out in the lane next to me, about 100 yards downfield.

Flying all over the road, back and forth like a fucking windshieldwiper - and then spins and smashes into 3 cars in the lane going the opposite direction, flys back across the road and FINALLY stops in a snowdrift.

THIS is why I want to deport everyone who was born south of the Mason-Dixon.

So, I crawl up to where they are, roll down the window and ask if anyone is hurt. The mexican with the baby who is getting out of the van and heading to the Wendys gives me a "no comprende" look. THIS is why we need to deport all the wetbacks.

I've stayed in the house doing house stuff so far this weekend. I'll check the roads today and see if it's safe to go grocery shopping later this morning.

I hate winter.