Homo Sapiens Non Urinat In Ventum: Bring'em All Home

Sunday, December 2, 2007

Bring'em All Home

If you can watch this and still believe that we what are doing in the Middle East is the best way to waste American and Iraqi lives, g'wan and enlist, or take your kids down and sign them up.

If you can watch this without crying, more power to you. We need stoics in this country. Too many equivocators, hampered by morality and ethics.

But the 90% of you who break into tears like me when you watch this; we gotta get our fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles and friends, and friends of friends the hell out of Iraq, the sooner the better. Honor the sacrifices made by our armed forces by ensuring we've learned the lessons of Viet Nam.

Daddy's Home!

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Untangling the Web

At some point, if you are actually reading this blog, you will find that the ages of my children jump around a lot. In one post, they'll be two and five, in another they'll be five and eight.

Some of the postings to this page come from a series of journal pieces I wrote, some previously published, some not. As I come across them, I will occasionally post them.

So trust your lying eyes. As of this moment, Sam is hurtling towards eight, and Lily, soon after, will be eleven.

Time flies when they're having fun.

THE CLAIMER AND THE DISCLAIMER

The contents contained on the website are the true and exclusive intellectual property of the author and blogmeister of this particular outpost in cyberspace, and as such should be considered copyrighted material. From time to time, materials from another source may be used; these will be identified and accredited. Permission to use the original material produced by this author may be granted to another party, but you have to say pretty please. Money always works.

This blog and it's operator assume no responsibility for ascertaining the veracity of advertisers who may from time to time advertise here. Once you click through you are on your own. Especially if it is one of those companies promising to increase the size of your you-know-what. I don't even want to know.

As a matter of fact the owner of this blog won't even make claims about the veracity of his own material posted herein.

Nor will he accept responsibility for any altered state of reality that might occur once you've read these words; and certainly not for any altered state you might have been in while reading these words. More to the point, it is the contention of the author that he resides in an alternative universe, where people don't lie, glaciers aren't melting, and decisions are made by consensus. Any attempt to convince the author that his reality is untrue will be met with blank stares, and the possible transmutation of the questioner into a Senator Joseph McCarthy bobblehead doll, complete with an empty sealed envelope that he waves in front of him.

To put it bluntly, the thrust of this disclaimer is "Caveat Emptor," which is Latin for "Watch where you step."

And don't let the door hit you on the way out.

The Really Straight Dope about the Really Straight Dope

Try as I might, I was unable to find anyone who could fabricate my own biography as well as I could, so I've taken on the task.

I was born in the Bronx, NYC, in 1955. Although my resemblance to Ike was uncanny, blood tests proved inconclusive, and my parents had no option other than to bring me home.

As a child prodigy on pots and pans, I was in great demand in the apartment houses we moved to and from; most landlords demanded I stop or they would evict us.

That wanderlust, inhaled so deeply at such a young age, became a consuming passion for most of my adolescence. I took a leave of absence from the Ph.D. Writing program at Columbia when I was fourteen, and found myself deeply immersed in studying and tasting most of the flora and fauna along the Amazon River. There, I first encountered a blond nymph rising from the weedy shallows of a tropical lagoon, Ann Coulter. When I asked her what she was doing so far from civilization, she told me she was practicing perfection and celibacy. I gave her my phone number in case she decided the celibacy gig wasn't working out, and continued on.

On to Europe, where I wrote several very bad novels in French while living in an attic overlooking another attic, overlooking a garret which overlooked a Chinese take-out place. It wasn't that the novels themselves were bad; they were linear, they had brilliant characterization, nuance, passion. My problem, I realized many years later, is that I couldn't speak a word of French, except "Here in Pawtucket we park the cars side-by-each when we have a party." Actually I knew another French phrase, which eludes me now, but the literal translation is "Pardon me ma'am, but your shih tzu is peeing on my leg." I was naive; I can see now that two phrases do not a novel make.

After Europe, it was back to the United States, terra firma, at a time when there was no place in the world where terra had a firma grip. I was recruited by the Department of Homeland Maturity to try to help cull the Social Security rolls of seniors who were double-dipping. There was little satisfaction to this work, but hey, it was a living.

After twice joining cults, only to sneak out the back door before they took their predestined journey to the stars (pills and alcohol always make me throw up), I realized I had to mend my ways.

I moved to New York City, and took up residence on a bench in Central Park with a roommate who had several personalities. This had some advantage, as he actually paid three-quarters of the rent, and I only paid one quarter. And two of his personalities were jovial, decent folks; the other a pathological liar with a taste for pigeon.

Perhaps this could have been considered the lowest point of my life, but there was one more level I had yet to descend before I could push the lobby button on the elevator of life.

While stalking a duck in the shallows of a pond in the park, a wraith-like figure appeared out of the darkness of some rhododendron bushes, scaring both the duck and myself.

I watched dinner skip across the pond before finally taking wing, and turned my attention to the interloper.

Her appearance was disconcerting. She had long, stringy, blond hair, a disheveled dress, her hose was sagging; one of her high heel shoes was missing a heel. Her neckline had taken such a precipitous plunge that I could see she had pierced her navel.

"Ann," I said, trying to keep my tone as neutral as possible as I looked around for an escape route, or any one of my roommates.

"Yeah," she said. "This celibacy thing isn't working for me."

Homo Sapiens Non Urinat In Ventum

Sunday, December 2, 2007

Bring'em All Home

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Advice From Greg Brown, a damn fine songwriter

Untangling the Web

Talk to Me

THE CLAIMER AND THE DISCLAIMER

The Really Straight Dope about the Really Straight Dope

Other Places You Could Be If You Had To Leave Here

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