I Just Can't Help Myself. Again.

It happened again at the Kids Awards over the weekend. I saw a clip this morning of a hot young second-generation singer giving the old "I'm Blessed" speech. I just heard her, I don't know if anybody else did it too, but I've gotta repost this piece from the last music awards show I watched. I won't make a habit out of doing this, but it's this or do like Elvis and shoot my TV. My apologies to you who've read this on another site.



Those Music Award Winners are certainly inspirational.

"First, of course, I want to thank God for this award." (He chose ME to give this talent to, over all those other wanna-be singers and musicians out there.) "And I'd like to thank Him, also, for touching the hearts of the academy members who voted for me and for inspiring the fans to buy my music, taking His precious time away from . . . well, whatever else He does besides pick music awards winners." (He doesn't seem to get personally involved with wars, mass starvation, disease, the total destruction of the planet for profit, millions of people locked up in prisons, the lopsided distribution of wealth and such, but He sure is into music careers.) "I'm just SO thankful He has blessed ME here tonight. Thank you again, God!!!!
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"And my manager."
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**Postscript: Several folks who've read the above have reminded me that besides singers and musicians, sports people are big for claiming that God is rooting for them personally, too. I have to agree, though I was inspired to write on this subject after watching yet another God-thanking marathon on a music-awards show, not a sports contest. [I do always think it's presumptuous, pointing to the sky after hitting a home run, kneeling in prayer in the end zone after a touchdown, making the sign of the cross before attempting a foul shot--though I fully understand when those bull riders give thanks after living though their event each time.] I've heard a number of times after a fire or tornado passes through a neighborhood leaving only one house untouched, the home owner saying on the TV news, "Now I KNOW there's a God." I guess that's true, all the gods ever created by man have been personal: me, our family, this group, etc. I myself, after thirty-two years as a marijuana fugitive, would like to thank God for keeping me out of the misguided clutches of the law all those years. Amen.
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So, in review, though God may not be concerned with ending pain and suffering, He does appear to enjoy music, sports, and weed.
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Cool.

Rehab Is For Quitters

The Young And The Restless soap opera has been on television for thirty-five years. It's been the #1 daytime show for a thousand weeks. I first got into watching it while visiting an older woman friend up in Portland back in 2000. I get frustrated with the show sometimes because most of the big hassles the characters run into are their own darn fault. Like real life, sure, but on the show they never seem to learn. Sometimes real people get a clue. I've heard it said that the only way for the human brain to contemplate infinity is to think how stupid we people can be. (What were they [was I] thinking?) So maybe that's part of the appeal of Y&R. But that aside, I'd still like to see somebody on that show, young or old, who doesn't think like a prude when it comes to sex. When Nick was still married to Sharon and started having the affair with Phyllis, when it came out, not one person said, "Hey, Nick, way to go! That Phyllis is hot." And if I'd been Nick, I'd sure have given moving Phyllis in with me and Sharon a shot. At least considered it or talked about it with one or both of them. But even the young folks on the show are totally shocked by unmarried sex. Despite the show's edgy name, it sure seems pretty 1950s to me. They were off to a good start with Bobby and Britney, could have done a lot with that situation, but that happening storyline just came to a screeching halt and it looks like the strip-club owner and his young dancer have been written out of the Genoa City population forever and ever amen. Pity.

There's always a lot of talk about "cheating" and "affairs" on TV cuz of the ongoing high-profile sex controversies of politicians and religious leaders, the two main vocations that still for some reason feel required to adhere to rules of conduct established back when people lived their whole lives in a small village and died at thirty or thirty-five. It's hysterical when they get discovered and squirm, I agree, but it's really just sad when you think about it. Why do they apologize? "Oh, I'm sorry for having had such a great time. It was so good, I'll never let it happen again." Break out the scarlet letters. Jeesh. Join the hookers' union in San Francisco: COYOTE. "Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics". You're big time politicos and God's guilt pushers, show some gumption. That new gov of NY freely admits to having lived a life. Hats off to him and the Mrs. both. Very refreshing.

"Hey, Johnny. What's 'B.R.M.C.' stand for?"
"Black Rebel Motorcycle Club."
"What are you rebelling against?"
"What've ya got?"

I woke up yesterday morning and turned on the radio and just caught the news on the hour. It was mostly stories about the little-kids-in-a-sandbox mentality of world leaders in action. Then I turned on the computer to check my e-mails. On Yahoo! News, I see an 11-year-old girl died because her parents only prayed over her instead of taking her to a doctor. Politicians and religious folks, the same people who seem to have all the guilt and shame when it comes to sex. Coincidence? Why is it that the ones with the most hang-ups always want to tell everybody else how to live? People who party and enjoy life don't give a dang what other people are up to, it's the miserable joyless citizens who are afraid somebody next door or even across town might be having sex or smoking a joint. And because the morally superior are so dangerous, the happy people gotta lie and sneak for fear of losing their jobs or getting arrested. And just look at where it's gotten us.

Rolling blackouts are happening tonight to help point out the need to conserve energy around the world. It's certainly more civilized than torching SUV dealerships, as much as I do understand the fear and urgency that would lead some folks to such action. We'll certainly never become a planet of monks, but we can sure learn ways to have a good life while using lots less. I used to hitchhike on the freeway way up north here in California, overlooking a lumber mill that was the main employer of two small towns and the surrounding area. It was a fourth-generation operation, actually had more timber growing than they harvested each year, and could have gone on indefinitely. But then some Wall Street type looked on their computer and realized that this company owned all this standing timber and initiated a hostile take-over, moved in and clear-cut everything the law would allow, and then moved on, leaving the area to get by on Food Stamps and growing pot. But boy were the stock holders happy that quarter! More zeros to look at. That's our enemy, our downfall I'm afraid. People who need more zeros.

Thought Pong

Okay, here's what you'll do if you're smart. Work your whole life and give us the money. Then when you get old and really need it, we'll give it back to you. We're here to help. Now get busy.

Wow, how'd you like to be the top public-relations rep for the Chinese Olympics? Those damn cell phones and the Internet! Since Rodney King, censorship and propaganda just haven't been the same. I know I've seen events with my own eyes, then heard the sanitized reports about them on the news. And I've watched initial TV news stories, then been amazed as the facts evolve to the official version, with anything that contradicts the desired truth having been edited out. But, ah-ha!, that's not gonna be so easy anymore. It'll be fun to watch as our Corporate Rulers and Law Enforcement have to scramble as employees and witnesses can record AND INSTANTLY BROADCAST uncensored versions of nefarious business practices, crowd control tactics, arrests, and other events. Those sick cows in the slaughterhouse and the "crackdown" on protesters in Tibet are just the beginning. Reality TV with no commercials. Break out the popcorn!

With crime leveling off across the country, prison guard and police unions are considering new avenues for expansion. Hey, caffeine can be harmful. How about a prohibition on coffee? It would be better for business than marijuana and prostitution combined, and talk about job security! Get a few preachers and media moguls fired up, and there'll be promotions for everybody! And we can start spraying South America again! It's all good!

The beauty of distance is gone these days. You can fly to Africa for lunch and be home in time for dinner. Or work your way up the Amazon for two weeks, yet your mother can still call to check on you whenever she wants. Local customs have been reduced to dressing up for the tourists. Even just a couple hundred years ago, anywhere you happened to be on the planet, you were THERE. And if you went elsewhere, you knew it. It had its pros and cons, but it must've been nice to travel when you didn't know what to expect when you got there, and the new place was totally different than where you'd been. Life wasn't as long perhaps, but it could be so much wider. I know, I know, there's nothing we can do about it, but it's still a trip to imagine those times. Set out to sea, cross the mountains, see what's down that mysterious road. It would be cool. Nowadays for adventure we can watch Survivor, risk driving alone in the car pool lane, or drink a bottle of cough medicine. Too bad other planets are so darn far away, don't ya think?

Hey, one of those cop shows has returned after the writers' strike. Every week they hire a bunch of hot half-naked folks to be having a lot of fun that the regular cast can work around acting superior. What a concept. Skin without the sin. There're quite a few writers who do that with their novels, too, I've noticed. Have much of the action take place in strip clubs and around prostitutes and people getting high, then the good guy can be disgusted all the way through the investigation. Cashing in on the sensual pleasures without condoning them. (Isn't there a word for that?)

Last week I caught something on the news I didn't really zoom in on, but I haven't been able to get it out of my head since. Seems it's some annual religious rite here in L.A. A gaudily dressed spiritual leader dips like a toilet brush into a bucket and flings water on people and their pets as they walk by on the street. The blessing of the animals or something. This productive practice brought to us by the folks who oppose sex education, stem cell research, and birth control. We're doomed.

Woodrow. Ya Gotta Start Havin' More Fun. Gus.

"Let's get some cough medicine after school, okay?"

"Grandma, may I use your bathroom?"

"Let's look in the garage and see what we can find."

"Hey, mister, will you buy us some beer?"

Ah, spring.




Along the Russian River, up above Cloverdale, there's a wide spot between the river and Highway 101 where folks hang out and party. I spent the night there many times over the years when I was on the road. I thumbed up there one time to kill a couple days swimming and partyin' with whoever happened to be there until the next week when I had a painting gig in San Francisco. I had a few bucks, a little weed, a box of granola bars, and a couple tall Budweisers. When I got let off, I was strolling down toward some trees to get out of the sun and kick back with a beer and my book I was reading when I spotted an old twenty amongst the smooth rocks. Heh. Suddenly I could use a couple more beers. I left my stuff and took off upstream. A couple guys were cooking up near the highway with a van and camper and a motorcycle. No, they didn't have any beer. Up three more campsites, nobody had any cold brew for sale or trade. Oh well, I'd get a few more tomorrow when I went a few miles one way or the other for breakfast. I'm in sight of my stuff when the first folks I'd talked to gave a holler, said they'd found a beer I could have. When I walked into their campsite, the older of the two guys opened a cooler and there were about twenty cans of Bud on ice. I grinned, "Wanna smoke a joint?"

So that fall, several months later, I'd thumbed down to San Francisco after spending a few days at Wilbur Hot Springs deciding if I wanted to work there for the winter. (No. Nice refurbished pool table brought in by mule-back in 1910--possibly the best table I ever shot on--but the place was way too isolated for my taste.) I checked my mail service downtown by Union Square, then took a bus out to the Haight. I stepped off the bus and ran right into the guys I'd met on the river last summer. An invitation to spend a couple days at their apartment while I looked around for something to do turned into seven months after they'd had a sample of my cooking. I would take occasional three-day hitchhiking trips 200 miles north to Garberville and back for my road fix as needed, but the rest of the time I lived in a room behind the garage in their Ashbury Street building, less than a block off Haight Street. I'd go up to Happy Donuts on Haight for coffee in the morning, then about nine or ten, let myself into the apartment and fix breakfast, take some cash out of a drawer to buy dinner later, then head out for the day. About four or five o'clock, depending on what I was making, I'd pick up what I needed at Cala, walk back and cook. On only two occasions in that seven months were there not two or three street people joining us for dinner. Those guys would meet people in their daily travels, and at the very least invite them to eat, take a shower, and give them a couple packs of cigarettes if they smoked. Beside their pensions, they dealt nickel bags of weed to finance their philanthropy. I was never asked to present a receipt for the groceries or account for the change. The older guy had like thirty feet of surgery scars on his upper torso and an oxygen tank next to his bed. He said he'd been a POW in Korea at a place so flat that , "You could escape at the crack of dawn with a bicycle, and just before dark they could look out and say, 'There he goes there'." He told me that if he should collapse any time while his friend was out of town, that I should call the fire department, not an ambulance. "Like security guards are frustrated cops, ambulance drivers are frustrated doctors, and they'll want to practice on me." And if he just dropped dead, he said to just grab the cash and walk away. "They'll find me when the rent's due." (His ashes were spread over the headlands overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge.)


One of my several jobs on the road was hitchhiking with girls to where they were going if they wanted. I was thumbing from Los Angeles to Portland with Cotati, my Ridgeback dog. It was January. In Santa Rosa, we got a ride with a bunch of folks in the back of an old pickup truck. It had been raining and was still threatening, but the ride was dry. When we hit Hopland, they stopped to let us off on 101 before turning east on 127 through the wine vines. Of all the folks in the back, the only other two to get out were two teenage girls. Going to Eugene they said. I asked if they wanted to thumb together, I was going to Portland. "With a dog?" "It's up to you." We got to Eureka in Northern California just as it was getting dark. They started back and forth, "You tell him." "No, you tell him." I figured I was gonna hear I was slowing them down and they wanted to get going. But they said, "We sure are glad you're with us." Then it started to rain. A teenage boy picked us up, only going a ways. Up past civilization he was going to turn into a cabin on the beach owned by his parents. He was really nervous, but he just couldn't bring himself to let us out there in the middle of nowhere. He said we could stay at the cabin, but all the way in the bumpy driveway he kept saying, "I can't believe I'm doing this. I can't believe I'm doing this." The girls and I unrolled our sleeping bags in the living room, smiling when we heard the boy sliding a heavy dresser it sounded like against the bedroom door. In the morning, watching the ocean breakers maybe fifty foggy yards away through the cabin windows, the dude emerged, a bit sheepishly, and drove us back to 101 and up to a coffee shop where we could all eat, and then the girls and I continued on our way.


I'll tell you what happened. I wrote a piece to post here--An Old Guy On MySpace--but then at the last minute I just went ahead and posted it on MySpace. (I'm 'Grinnin' Sinner'.) I figured it was fair. I've been working hard at not going off on a religious tangent because of the holiday today, so I wrote what I did. I don't want to be insensitive to folks clinging to ancient superstitions for comfort, but they do worry me a lot. 'Thou shalt not . . .' and 'Sin' and 'Hell' and 'The Only Way' and all that. Not very friendly. Anyway, I'll write something more pertinent next time. Take care.

I'd Rather Be Hungry Than Bored

Hats and head scarves seem to be very important to God. I don't know, but I think of the big ol' universe out there, the hundreds of millions of years that passed before the first potential worshiper walked the Earth--no matter how we first got here--and I picture an all-powerful creator of black holes and billions of stars and hurricanes and jungles and redheaded cheerleaders, and I can't quite see this Super Being getting upset over whether some tiny individual on a virtual speck of dust floating through the vastness of space, is or isn't wearing a head covering. Yet people kill and die over this. Ya gotta love it.

I was hoofing it back from the liquor store over the Shelby Street Bridge in downtown Nashville. Two well-dressed late-twenties black men were coming toward me on the walkway. As we grew near, just as one spit in my path, the other one said howdy to me. Then they both looked at each other, shocked by the others action, as they went on past. "How could you?" We're all individuals.

The Hell's Angels are going to be celebrating the founding San Berdoo chapter's sixtieth anniversary this weekend in Yucaipa, California. Some folks thought this was rather insensitive of them, it being Easter weekend. Reminds me of the time a woman on a bus told off a guy across the aisle from her for reading a girlie magazine, " . . . and on a Sunday, too!" Would be nice if nobody died or got cancer on Sundays or religious holidays, don't you think? But it seems to be only no pleasure allowed on holy days. Pain and suffering is cool all week.

Can anybody think of a hot topic that might one day be resolved to everyones satisfaction? Abortion, armed conflict, immigration, gun control, religion, pornography, the war on drugs, sex education, how we got here. The thing is, it's not hard to see the point and understand the thinking on both sides. So how then can these differences ever be resolved? I don't think they can be. So now, with that in mind, what might we do about them?

You can't buy happiness. (Though you can rent it.) Happiness isn't a destination, it's a mode of travel. I'm sixty-two-years-old right now. I lived through the scandalous dawning of rock and roll in the 1950s, from doo-wop and slow dancing through Elvis, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers, and the Coasters. The Beatles and Dylan hit when I was in high school. Then the British Invasion and Vietnam started getting in the news. In 1966, I rode my Norton motorcycle (with those sassy ape-hanger handlebars) from New Jersey to Los Angeles, where I ran into that big party just starting up. Marijuana, LSD, psychedelic music, war protests, free speech, the sexual revolution, (I became an officer), hitchhiking the West Coast and Canada. Truly the sex, drugs, and rock and roll lifestyle during the prime of my life. (Now it hurts me to get out of bed.) Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, I ain't concerned so much on my own account, but I know how little it takes to get by and have a great life, yet just look around. The billionaires list and the homeless and starving of the world both grow. And now that the ice has melted above Canada, ships for the first time ever can pass that way between Europe and Asia, and it's now free for oil drilling. That's either making lemonade when life gives you lemons, or fiddling while Rome burns. We'll sure see. I think the unrestricted contact between people on the Internet is the last best shot we have at saving this here planet, but it's gonna have to pick up the pace a bit pretty darn soon. ("Cutting plastic grocery bag use by 30% by 2020," just ain't gonna make it.) "I just made my first million and paid off my school loans, I put money down on the house of my dreams, my parents are proud, I've got two lovers who get along really well together, and all life on the planet just ended. Not fair."

It's all "Us" riding on this ball. We can no longer afford the luxury of a "Them".

It All Started When He Hit Me Back

I'm hearing on the radio today that there's a big sting operation in progress "all over Southern California". Under-age people are asking passersby to please buy them a beer. Then police jump out and bust them for it. Making drinking be a crime below a certain age and not allowing any sex training between different ages are both working so well, how about we use the same strategy with driving? Any driver training (or "education") to a juvenile by an adult before a given age is illegal. ("Contributing To The Delinquency of a Minor.") Then at that set age, at midnight, every person is given a drivers license and a car, and any time they mess up, we can come down on them hard.

The economy is big on the news. I remember Bernard Mickey Wrangle saying something like: "If they make it a thousand dollars to get into a movie, we'll figure out how to get the money. And if we can't, then we'll sneak in." Like it or not, there's not really much else we can do. Might as well make it have been the plan all along, our own idea. But I'm afraid the game is gonna change levels real soon. (" . . . and it's happening a lot faster than scientists had predicted . . . ") We all need some air and a place to stand, no matter what else.

It's now Sunday, and I've been hearing more about that hey-mister-can-ya-buy-a-beer-for-me sting operation yesterday. It was a four-county coordinated effort. I reckon with manual labor becoming scarce, hey, it's springtime, the local governments had to harvest some community-service sentences to get some work done. I'm sure none of those decoys ever had a beer from any other source before in their lives.

"The troubled pop star."

Two young gangsters, ages twelve and fourteen, walked up to the receptionist and said it's a robbery and that they had a gun. She was the receptionist at a police station. This was on the news this morning. Now I am looking forward to reading their book when it comes out. Like which one did the planning.

I was hitchhiking north and got a ride with an eclectic group of nine followers of Abbie Hoffman in various degrees of hats, boots, scarves, guitars, hair, leather, feathers, belt knives, shades, and reading material, (as was I), riding in a pretty new regular yellow school bus with a great sound system not being wasted by these guys. From scenic Highway 101 in Northern California, up Route 199 from Crescent City, California, to Grants Pass, Oregon, up through the redwoods along the twisting Smith River, the drive always enhanced by close calls on hairpin turns with log trucks, RVs, bicycles, cop Jeeps, and tourists stopped in unlikely places. Soon after passing the fruit inspection station for folks heading south, the state border, the road straightens and the first little town you'd hit back then was O'Brian, Oregon. After a stop for refreshments in O'Brian, we traveled on. Up to Grants Pass, then the 5-Freeway north. At a stop at an official Rest Area for the night, I took my sleeping bag to one of the picnic tables and unrolled it. In the morning after another hundred miles or so, the anarchists were going to pull into a picture-book western town and wait for more money to be wired to them from the owner of the bus back in New York City. I got off at the off-ramp as they left the freeway. (A few months later I ran into one of the guys from the bus in the park down in Santa Cruz. Yes, they'd gotten the bus all the way to Seattle as planned. And yes, as a matter of fact, they had spent the night in the jail in that town, I had been lucky to get off when I did.) Anyway, back in O'Brian, there wasn't really much of a town in those days. I haven't been through that way lately, and things have a way of changing. There had been a store with a covered wooden sidewalk across the front and an old post office inside. Across the hot dusty street, ol' 199, stood a small restaurant on the far side of a large unpaved parking lot, and two or three houses. A road cut off to the east, going the few miles to world famous Takilma. When a guy climbed back aboard, one of the others who'd seen him checking out the bulletin board on the outside wall of the store asked, "What's on the board?" "Oh, just like a tractor for sale, and somebody looking for firewood." "Wasn't there anti-anything?"

Tibet.

So now it's Monday. Groundhog Day. Not really, it just gets to feeling like it some mornings. But actually it's Saint Patrick's Day. I don't do holidays, but I am aware when they strike. I know virtually nothing of my heritage, so I don't feel a connection to any place like that, but like when the nurse in San Francisco asked my religious preference while filling out a pre-surgery form, I said, "All." She glanced up to get my meaning, then went on to the next question. On the old TV western show, Maverick, he came riding up to a saloon out in the middle of nowhere just as two guys were flinging a patron out the swinging doors and into the street. Maverick asked, "What'd he do?" One of the two bouncers turned back and answered, "Today's Saint Patrick's Day, and he ain't Irish." He gave Bret a sudden hard look. "And what be your name, stranger?" Big smile. "Hi. I'm Bret O'Maverick."

Savage Truth

Terry and I got married on Friday the 13th, March of 1964. Today as I type this would be our 44th Anniversary, if we'd been two completely different people who'd gotten hitched that day. WE didn't stand a chance.

Scientists have discovered the gene that determines the shape of tomatoes. I'm not making this up. Is nothing sacred?

Jeesh, now they're saying that one in four American teenage girls has a sexually transmitted disease. As many exciting illicit images as that statistic might conjure in the carnal mind--not yours or mine of course--there is a down side. (A biggie: any one of those diseases might get back to ME! Help!) Total abstinence with teens stands about as much chance as with priests. Monogamous relationships only work if neither partner GETS CAUGHT getting some elsewhere. Condoms are a drag. I guess legal, sanctioned, everybody-gets-tested-first group marriage is the only answer. Certainly it would be easier to remain faithful to the sexual and intellectual variety of a group, a group that could even grow as needed. End of STD problem. (Maybe not. But it would sure be fun giving it a shot.)

In my twenty-two years on the road hitchhiking, I don't think I ever met a normal person, nobody is really the way everybody is expected to pretend they are. Most people feel they have to play a role around their family to protect feelings, at work to save the job, and in their public lives so they're not burned at the stake. But when somebody is heading home from Seattle and pick up a hitchhiker to talk to on the long drive, a person who doesn't know anybody they know, who they'll never see again, it's a rare chance for them to be totally honest. I've heard thousands of confessions and desires and regrets from folks. I'd blown my own cover early on--my parents said I was beyond shocking them, and I took that as a challenge--so I've always been pretty-much free to tell the whole story. It magically nullifies the fear of being discovered. I do understand why so many folks are reluctant to be out front with everything in their lives, but it sure feels better when you just be real. Young people are being warned about posting their true feelings and lives on the Internet, but I figure it'll just free them from a life of bullshit and fear. (Guilt sucks.)

I put in a friend request for Ms. Ashley Alexandra Dupre on MySpace this morning, but I'll bet she's got a million or two ahead of me already. I was so pleased to see that she not only hadn't abandoned her page, but had added pics of The Gov (#9)! Good for her. Instead of a typical lame excuse for what she was doing, she's gonna make lemonade. Reminds me of an actor I heard about. After getting suddenly famous, some people tried to blackmail him with a porn movie he'd been in years before. Instead of paying them off or making excuses, he said, "Hell, give me ten grand and I'll make another one!" Like the picture on the T-shirt: about to be snatched by a swooping eagle, the prairie dog is standing there giving it the finger. My hero.

Duh.

I'm not a computer guy, I simply know how to type. I just learned last night from a MySpace friend that she'd attempted to leave a comment here but had been rejected. I think it's set now where anyone may add their thoughts. Looking forward to feedback. I'm shooting for two or three posts a week for starters, depending on events. Take care.

Spring Forward

I guess I shoulda bought a lottery ticket, but instead I went to the library and checked out two old classic mysteries. When I got back to my room and looked over the first few pages of each to figure out which one to read first, both had early-on action taking place on my birthday, three days before Christmas. What are the odds? ("And Four To Go", a Nero Wolfe mystery by Rex Stout, and "The Long Goodbye" by Raymond Chandler.) A cheap thrill, perhaps, but I'm a big fan of thrills.

And talking about thrills, of course by now you know about the new Brigitte Bardot five-film box set that's out. I first heard about this upcoming event on the news last year, that movies she's in that have never been available in the U.S. before will be here on DVD. I've been waiting to check them out at the library, but they've been "being processed" for several months now. (I take that to mean being watched by library employees before they hit the shelves.) I've had a babe jones of biblical proportions since my uncle played high-school football and I saw my first cheerleader, but I give a lot of credit to Brigitte Bardot and her exploits back in the Eisenhower years for giving me a clue that sex is fun and okay; I certainly wasn't getting that message anywhere else. I of course was too young to see any of her movies back then, and my mother used a razor blade to attack some pictures of her I had innocently taped to my bedroom wall, but what little I saw and heard of her I'm sure helped me to a healthier outlook on sex than the rest of the world was conspiring to allow. She was way beyond being just a hot movie star, she was a "sex kitten". She walked the walk.

And lucky me, I turned fifteen the year the birth-control pill hit the scene. (1960.) So I witnessed the dawn of the sexual revolution when I'd be paying the most attention, and before I'd had a chance to get too messed up by the standard-issue shame and guilt over my natural urges. Between Ms. Bardot, the early-Elvis/rock 'n' roll uproar, The Playboy Philosophy, and school dances, wasteful sexual abstinence or embarrassed hang-ups never stood a chance during those fabulous years ahead. I'm a sinner, and like so many others, a damn happy, satisfied one.

So it really seems so unnecessary when I hear every day of all the sexually abused little kids, the raped women, the thousands of "isolated instances" of clergy abuse, the legions of "registered sex offenders", most all caused by a failure of the righteous to allow a healthful channeling of a strong natural desire. Then the good folks blame their victims for the predictable results of their Puritanical restrictions. I know, I know, if everybody was sexually satisfied, then all the "buy this and you'll get laid" commercials wouldn't work, and horny people wouldn't be flocking to churches for forgiveness of their imaginary sin, but there would likely be a lot fewer little kids raped and murdered by folks who were taught that their natural need is shameful and bad, so don't know how to express it in an open, harmless way. I do realize that the economy and the offering plate must come first, I just wish the guilt-ridden didn't have to kill the women and kids so often. But I understand that a moral society can't just allow joyful, unrestricted sex to happen. What would God think?

Living In A Phone Booth

Well, it's over. Ron Paul's hidden campaign didn't get off the ground. Whumping up wild enthusiasm on YouTube and MySpace, while playing the timid mouse during the Republican Debates, and on other nationally televised appearances like This Week With George Stephanopoulos and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, failed to get him the nomination. He sure could have used a loud, outrageous campaign manager to get some media attention to his plan to end the war on drugs and the rest of his platform. (Too bad Abbie Hoffman wasn't around for the job.) Instead of the campaign's outlaw, Mr. Paul became its punch line.

Defense contractors and career military types learned the hard way with Viet Nam that if you want to have a free hand at making war, having a military draft creates too much public opposition to unlimited financial success and personal advancement. If it's all volunteers doing the fighting, and citizens aren't being dragged off against their will to participate, who back home can object without easily being labeled "unpatriotic". Okay, I have no problem with that. I just think about the poor Soldiers and Marines these days. Viet Nam was a party for a lot of the troops back then. I've had veterans tell me, "Bob, I wish you coulda been there with us. It was great. The day you arrived, they'd set you in this special chair and stick a pipe in your mouth with a bowl so big they'd light it with a blowtorch! Then . . . " But now in treeless countries, it doesn't seem like there's any place to get out of sight to kick back and unwind. The basics for down time, women, music, and beer, are also scarce in these places. So now that things are heating up again in South America, I think it will be a far better environment for serving than Afghanistan and Iraq. (Though Afghani hash[ish] was always my favorite, that distinctive flat hard black sheet with the slightly lighter, softer center. Mmmmm.....mmmmmm. Unlike the crumbly baby-poop yellow Pakistani product--but which was okay in a pinch.) Now in South America, besides the trees and rivers and warm weather, there's those other God-sent pleasures that made Columbia famous and I'm not talking coffee. (Sign me up when the shooting starts.)

Oh, and other big news today. The California Supreme Court is hearing arguments for and against same-sex marriage. A tough choice for political types: God or Voters. Though I've never heard of anyone He's told personally, there seems to be a long list of actions The Lord doesn't like. He has no problem with fatal diseases and natural disasters, but He's really down on any form of hanky-panky! (Sorry, Big Guy. I'll take a roll in the hay over a kidney stone any day.) It's legal in this country to have sex if you meet the strict criteria of the various state legislatures, and buy a license, but anybody else who dares be horny is subject to wearing an ankle bracelet for the duration. (I think after being spoiled by the freedom of the sexual revolution, the years between The Pill and HIV/AIDS, it's time to legalize group marriage). "The six of us love each other and we want all the rights and privileges of everybody else." Why not?

Hang up and drive!

Time Off For Bad Behavior

There's no way around it. The only way to end identity theft is to totally give in. Eyeball scan, DNA, at least a thumb print, something so people are positive it's you they're dealing with for all transactions in your name, or there's no stopping the rip-offs. Privacy is gone now anyway, so folks are free to use that fact to protect themselves. Unless Planet Earth does like they did on Janet E. Morris's planet Silistra and outlaw all computers and machines, I can't think of a better way to protect savings and credit ratings. It could be voluntary, but I'd sure do it. If one has a drivers license, Social Security number, credit rating, job, phone, vehicle(s), children, cable, Internet access, what the heck information is left to protect? (They can steal your password with a computer, but not your eyeball.) Just a thought.

So the Pew Report just came out with the incarceration statistics for the Land of the Free. (2,319,258 Americans behind bars as of 01/01/08.) And the where-to-house-the-registered-sex-offenders debate continues to rage. Public massacres and drive-by shootings are a hot fad. Everybody and their kids are getting fat. The planet is dying around us. But by golly, our government is out there protecting us from prostitutes and marijuana. Whew. Let's set up a few more sting operations and get those filthy pleasure-seekers off our streets. (We'll all be dead, but God will be happy.)

No, really, did you hear about that report? There's one person in jail or prison for every 99.1 Americans. (We're #1!) One out of every 36 Hispanics in this country is locked up. And one of every 15 African-American adults is behind bars. In Kentucky, the crime rate is up 3% over the last 30 years, but their prison population has increased 600%. ("What? He had a BEER after work! Violate him! He's going back in for another year!")

It's not working. And it's getting worse. There's just no way to make the entire country like downtown Disneyland. Sorry. I've long looked at society as an elk herd. The wolves that follow the herd around are like people's bad habits. So the wolves get killed off, so everything is hunky-dory with the herd, right? No, the herd suffers. Turns out the wolves, though scary, keep the herd strong and healthy. They cull the sick and old and slow. They keep the herd moving so it doesn't stay in one place and over-graze an area. Society needs some bad habits, just like the elk need the wolves. (Did we learn nothing from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest? Trying to be normal drives ya crazy!) I remember a quote from a snooty private-school teacher on The Beverly Hillbillies. "We don't prepare our students for life. We prepare them for Princeton."

From the first week of June 1969, to the first week of November 1970, I was locked in a county jail cell. (Right across from Timothy Leary for a while, also in there for being a fun-loving hippie.) Nothing to read except the Bible. No books, newspapers, magazines. I just sat there, for seventeen months, with nothing to do but miss music and read the mad hallucinations of guys who didn't even know the world is round or what the stars are. Totally wiped out all the national pride instilled in me after having grown up in Revolutionary War country, and my years in the Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, the school band, Sunday school, the gun club, and watching John Wayne movies. But to the law's chagrin, other than despising the futility of the whole concept, I had a pretty good time. (And now I know way more about The Word than most of the people who tell me, "God loves you. He's going to send you to Hell for the way you live, but He loves you." "Yeah, okay. What's a Corinthian?" "Huh?" "You know, like First Corinthians, Second Corinthians . . . " "Wasn't that one of the disciples?") There are a few dangerous folks who need to be isolated to protect civilized people, but at the rate we're going, it might just save time and money to extend that border fence they're building right around the whole country and we can all be in custody.

I've heard a bunch of times how Americans don't get near as much time off work as folks do in most other countries. They're even often afraid to take what little vacation time is due them. And I'd add to that, that when many folks DO take some time off, they really don't know how to relax and play. I, like the proverbial grasshopper, spent most of the summers of my life out on the road traveling around, swimming in rivers, playing volleyball and softball, enjoying Bud and bud while listening to live music, meeting pretty girls on that last fling before they go back to school or head home to settle down. But I would always get the heck out of the way for the three big summer weekends: Memorial Day, 4th of July, and Labor Day. There would be all those inexperienced people out there trying to have some fun, but not having a clue how. Being loud and obnoxious at public camp grounds, fighting, throwing beer bottles at bicycle riders from their passing cars, swerving their SUVs pulling boats to make hitchhikers standing on the shoulder of the road scramble out of the way. Whoopie!! (But at least by golly they're not smoking pot, dancing, and having sex! Their mothers, God, and the President can be proud.)

If more Ants don't start finding their Inner Grasshopper and getting a bit more pleasure out of life than adding to their credit card debt and watching reality TV--take some time off for bad behavior, let a few wolves run loose--then I reckon I'll just buy some stock in a one of those for-profit, privately owned prisons, and maybe even a pepper-spray company. Business will continue to boom.

(The title of this is from the insightful song by Confederate Railroad. Thanks, guys.)