Mad Alex and my right arm

Poor Alex! He has gone mad because his owner Big Fat Del (my neighbor) never lets him out of his cage any more. I took care of Alex last week when Big Fat Del the drunk was out of town. Alex strikes as soon as anyone gets near his cage. I could barely get his bowls out to clean and refill them. He did manage to draw blood once when I, sentimental fool, hand feed him some peanuts. I thought he would instinctively understand that I am his friend. He understands all right. For all the mushy love ya's, Alex knows which side of the bars I'm on, Big Fat Del's and no smiles or peanuts change that.

These days, besides being in a boiling rage, Alex is now also bulimic. He eats then makes himself vomit. I keep telling Big Fat Drunk Del's wife that Alex should go to a sanctuary. She nods and says pathetic things like, "Well, Del used to let Alex out". I say send Alex to a sanctuary and put Big Fat Del in the cage with no booze. Fair is fair.

Oh well. The world will have to take care of itself for a few days. I'm off to Reno to talk to the doctor who will be doing the surgery on my neck and elbow this Thursday. He is going to remove the bone spurs on the worst of the 3 ruptured disks in my neck and re-route the nerve in my elbow as the pressure on it is beginning to cause some permanent damage. I am, after all, rather fond of my right arm.

Reality gap messes with Texas

1862
Shooter Larry Mattlage's truck

Larry Mattlage doesn't want Cindy Sheehan and her supporters protesting the war on Iraq in his neighborhood so he menaced them with his shotgun. When a reported asked him why he did it he said, "figure it out for yourself". He told police that he was "just gettin' ready fer dove season, officer".

Then Larry Northern attached a steel bar to the back of his pickup truck and plowed over the flags and roadside crosses, crushing the names of American soldiers killed in Iraq into the dirt. What do you want to bet he's one of those guys who rattles off "ga bless 'merica"at the drop of a cowboy hat?


I doubt many of these glib "patriots" have kids in Iraq. Bush certainly doesn't but he has no problem recommending other parents encourage their children to join the military. He should insist that his drunken daughters to do a stint in Iraq. They could use a taste of reality.





Too bad Dubya doesn't have time to meet with Cindy but he says he needs to ride his bike. After all, he is on vacation, again. Even Lance Armstrong dropped by the estate. And besides... you know how Republicans are. They can't take much reality.

Mission accomplished?

Pool Party

I held a pool party at the bird park the other day. Everyone had a great time...

and keep coming back for more!

Another revolting development

1853

Village Voice
"Last week, however, Comey announced he was leaving the Justice Department to become the general counsel of the defense contractor Lockheed Martin. In his absence, Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum is the most likely choice to be named as the acting deputy attorney general, and thus the man overseeing special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald's work. But McCallum has been a close personal friend of President Bush. Justice Department officials are once more grappling as to how to best assure independence for investigators. And Democrats on Capitol Hill are unlikely not to question any role in the leak probe by McCallum."

If you're at all conscious, you have at least heard of Plamegate. You get extra credit for knowing that Fitzgerald is the prosecutor in the case. He's investigating the administration's outing of CIA undercover agent Valerie Plame. Now with McCallum's appointment, Rove has direct control over the prosecutor investigating him. Too bad for truth and justice. No surprise though. These days it's either "truth and justice" or the "American way". Can't have both. With the radical right, they are mutually exclusive. McCallum will do whatever Karl tells him to do, which is exonerate him and the rest of the administration's treasonist nazi bastards. Revolting.

Road's end

At first I rode aimlessly around town, then at last came upon the intriguing and lovely Gasoline Alley. Naturally I took it, enjoying its 10 foot hollyhocks and weathered shacks. It was a wonderful distraction but unfortunately, very short. However, in another few blocks and I found myself near the cemetery, a place I'd been meaning to visit ever since we moved here four years ago. I generally feel peaceful in graveyards. It's one of the few places outside the fray. So in I went.

I recognized some of the names. Stodick has a park named after them, the Ruthenstroths a particular part of the valley but I was drawn to a lonely looking white picketed grave in the back corner. It turned out to be the resting place of a boy who died when he was fifty days old. I'm guessing that his parents have since left the valley because the paint was curled, pealing and half gone. I sat nearby and watched the clouds turn from dark gray to pale lavender and finally got centered. After a while I took out my notebook and finished a poem I've been working on for months called "Presence of Mind". It's part of a longer piece that's really perplexing me so making progress was a huge relief.

By this time, the Pine Nut mountains in the east were ghost white beneath a purple sky. Before I left, I strolled around a bit and read some of the tombstones. The saddest was a tiny little grave from the beginning of last century. It was piled with rocks the size of small fruits and measured from the tips of my fingers to the curve of my elbow. It had a cheap aluminum marker the size of a postcard; a pauper's grave. The individual letters were slotted in rather than engraved. The first two, U and n, had fallen out. I looked among the rocks but couldn't find them. The marker simply said "_ _ known Baby Boy".

This evening the clouds were an astounding shade of tangerine. Even the dirt reflected their glow.