Sheiroushly of-f-fisher Goldberg, sorry about those Jew remarks, but tell me, that aside, how did you like my movie, The Passion of the Christ?

Okay Michael, Pee Wee, O.J., Kate, Mr. Wichita Lineman, can you folks all move down one seat please, and free up a chair for Mr. Gibson on the front row here?

It's not like we're going to need to ask Mel how he feels about the current crisis in the Middle east now is it? Somehow, I can't help but wonder how soon Kinky will have a page filled with one liners on this little incident.

What's up with the hometown waters these days? I have had a hankerin' to toss the lantern and gig in the pickup, grab the boys and do some flounder gigging lately. Last week I hear that there are "watch out for alligators" signs posted every hunner....uh, make that hundred (never know who might be reading this, Mrs. Hall, my english teacher, or one of her neighbors) feet or so. Next, I call home to warn them we are coming, and I find out that my brother-in-law is limping around with a week old hole in one foot after he stepped on a stingaree with the other foot. Buba's a big guy - had to be a big stingaree. Sounds like this old pirate, if he wants to flounder, oughta leave the gig at home and bring the musket, huh. And be prepared to carry the kids on my shoulders.........not.

Truth is, the gators have always been there, as have the sting rays. One popped me in the back of the hand as a teenager. The trick is, not to be in water that is too muddy to see the bottom, if not in a boat. When the gators start showing up in pairs or a nest or two is found close to home, then it might be time to rethink wading. If anyone reads this and has a flounder boat, please let me know. It's gonna be some tough wading with a kid on my back!

Comfortably seated and relaxed this morning, club music schedule for the weekend, and sports section in hand, I reached over for some more paper. You know the type - on the roll, just below the *** gasket dispenser. As luck would have it, being barely 6AM, I happened to be the first occupant of that particular porcelain throne today. Meaning two things. It was CLEAN. Also, on each of the rolls, placed there by the cleaning crew last night, was a little yellow smiley face(run Forrest, run!) stuck to the paper, that replaced the original glue that holds the paper together on NEW rolls. You know what I'm talking about don't you......that glue that when you try to start unrolling some tissue from a NEW roll, that causes you to end up with a hand full of rather useless shredded tissue? Only this time, the little "please conserve, use the other roll first" sticker, actually came loose with the sticky side clean! Being plastic I didn't want to flush it, so I stuck it instead on the fresh clean porcelain between the split in the seat,(do the seats in the ladies' room have that split seat? and if so, why?) Upon finishing my reading, I couldn't help but notice that little face between my knees smiling brightly, looking up at me.

As I made my way back to my desk, I couldn't help but think - probably, at least until the first cleaning crew arrives today, what a public service I had performed. A number of lucky guys who otherwise wouldn't have, will get to start the day with a smiling face peering up at them from between their knees.....

After following this for five years, and reading the Grey-Beard Loon's take, I would like to say that he echoes my sentiments, and add my own feelings on it. As tragic and repulsive a story as this is, this is the way it should have ended the after first trial, before our bloodthirsty prosecutors here in Houston, milked the public coffers for millions, paying "hired gun" psychologists to interpret this sick, tortured woman as one who should pay for this with her life. As you stated, she will pay as long as she lives, with the memory of what she did. If anything resembling good is to come from this, it will be that for once, good judgement prevailed and that it should benefit the mental health community in more ways than one. First and foremost, from an awareness standpoint, and secondly, in having the queen of the bull goose looney tunes brigade on a slide, under a microscope indefinitely, to attempt to understand why this happened and how better to prevent it or to treat others with the same illness as hers.

There are those who are 100% evil and 100% culpable for the violent crimes they perpetrate on our society. Save the cells and the gurney for them, unless they are willing to volunteer to be cut up, dissected and analyzed.

As an afterthought, there has been some speculation in the media here, that now the prosecutors may attempt to indict and try Ms. Yates for the deaths of the rest of her children. Should they do so, and fail again, I think they all should be locked up for fraud and misappropriation of public funds....

I will concede here, that life has pounced on me with all four feet this summer. I'd like to say that I am recharged, and ready to hit the keys and surge ahead with tons of wit and hopefully, some meaningful contributions and insight on things that matter. Truth is, I do see a light at the end of the tunnel(it's called school starting, thank God). I will also admit to some stale entries into my blog, born more from a sense of a perceived need to produce something - anything, than of true inspiration.

Someone, untitled or unidentified, a while back, took exception to something I said in this space, and they alluded to this forum being a two bit, small time newspaper. Maybe this isn't the New york times, but it is home to us. It is OUR soapbox - and apparently that of the disgruntled reader, as well, Maybe that's his problem - he resents being in a smaller market. Maybe he's a salesman who hit the ceiling, and found out how low it was. I'm sure there a lot of people enduring the rat race in the city daily, who would trade environments with him in a minute, if they could.

While our ranks may not reach or communicate to a world wide base of readers, I think from the comments I have read on ALL of our blog group's stories, opinions, and ideas, that more readers than we would imagine, at the very least, are aware that we are here, and read what we write, whether they comment or participate or not. We are relevant!

I know from Jeannie, that there is now a drive in theater running first rate, first run films, that even my discerning boys would sit through, and only a fifteen minute drive away. I know from my esteemed colleague, The Grey-Beard Loon, that life in my home village is holding it's own and that it it is still a sanctuary from the rigors of the city for one who doesn't bolt at the first sign of mosquitoes or the ripe scent of dried seaweed.

I know from reading Chelsey's increasingly rare entries, that free and clear thoughts and opinions are alive and well among our young adults, and that I don't have to worry about a generation of Bush-Bots getting in the head of my own boys, who, on their own merit, are showing an uncanny ability to question status quo and suggest their own uniquely logical solutions to a number of our grown up concerns. (for you baseball/softball hardcore, you will recognize this as "bottom rolls the top"). Maybe they should have a vote in D.C. How much worse could they make it, except maybe for those politicians on the take?

As usual, I am drifting. I was attempting to explain my absence from this forum. I am in an employment transitional state - moving from a relatively slow pace in a large company, to a daily series of 100 yard dashes in an old, smaller firm where I have worked on more than one occasion. I am among friends, and I am working where I worked when both of my sons were born. I am working for a company who shipped my family and I off to Colorado for the better part of a year, and paid our rent so we would stay there and help them. They rewarded me for choosing to return to the fold. For that I am grateful, because as a family man, that is where my priorities should be focused. That said, while adapting to the new pace, and daily tasks, I find myself busier than a one armed sheetrocker with poison ivy.

I'll be back! Right after I finish my down to the wire, required to dismiss a ticket, defensive driver's course. Right after school starts and it get's quiet in here after 8:00PM. Right after I redeem the voucher for an hour long massage I got for Father's Day. I rode my bicycle twenty miles, give or take a mile or so, today. Did wonders for the soul. I highly recommend it for those who are able and so inclined.

I'm really not AWOL. Welcome to the new bloggers. Has anyone seen D.?

I was reminded today, that I can become simply a memory, in a flash. Though I have had a few very close calls, and near death experiences over my stay here to date, this was a brand new, but recurring experience that seems to have made more of an impression on an older me. I have sat through hurricanes when I should have run. I have had accidents where I laid unable to move, broken and bleeding and unsure if I had just punched my last timecard.

Today was nothing like that, but rather a well timed reminder of the force of nature. Simply a "seabreeze front", or the inverse of a norther. I started ny ten mile bike ride, aware there were some showers to my south, but not aware that they were on the verge of blossoming into a Ben Franklin electrical experiment scenario, along with a deluge. As luck would have it, when the rain started, I was within sight of shelter - or so I thought. I found a dry pavillion in a park, and pulled over and waited until the rain passed. Then the fireworks started. Surreal as it was with the hot pavement steaming like a grill in a greasy spoon, when the first lightning strike hit about a hundred feet away and the air crackled and my hair did a frizz effect, I realized that I might be wise to lay low, and avoid the trees and metal structural columns holding up the roof over my head.

Long story short, I called home, and asked my wife to come to my rescue. When she arrived, I turned down the offer of a ride back to the trailhead, but rather gave her my electronics (cellphone, tunes, headphones, and bicycle computer, and opted to ride back in the storm to my truck. Seemed like a good idea at the time...... I didn't realize the worst was yet to come, lightning wise, until a tree was struck, not fifty feet away as I rode by. I made it back, drenched and covered with spiders and webs in pretty short order, but I guess I got one more valuable lesson, kinda like I did from Claudette - do not underestimate the power of mother nature.

I love storms. Always have, probably always will. This time though, a few times, I honestly found myself wondering if I would if I would get home to see my boys, or if the next flash would be in my lap and what it would feel like when I took that bolt.

Will I be out there again tomorrow? You bet. Will I take a look at the NWS radar site a bit closer before I load up my bike and water and tunes for the trip? Count on it!

Stopped off at the corner Shell station today. It wasn't the first time I'd taken notice of this, but after my trip by the Mega Supermarket(plug in your chosen name here - HEB, Dick's, Randalls, Kroger, etc.), and a trip by the pharmacy, I couldn't help but make an observation how things have changed since I was a young man.

At the Shell store, prominently displayed, were four different options for cigarette rolling papers. I guess that most who buy them, just ask for them, but when someone runs into a gas pump or the ice machine, Mustafa just tosses them out on the counter when they float in to pay.

Now, when I was young, I was told, by a friend, that he would buy cans of Prince Albert, just for the papers (oksy, the cans came in handy too), and give the tobacco to old Gene, who wandered the streets of Seadrift, mumbling to himself, smoking hand rolled cigs. Interestingly, when I worked at Griffee's, old Gene would come in and buy LLF cigarette papers (no glue, mind you, have to look out for your lungs). Now, there was obviously a reason for these clandestine transactions. You see, if I, I mean if my friend, had just bought the papers outright, old Jerk Dempsey would have been tipped off that some rope smokin' was about to transpire, and well, if you've ever had to have your '61 Buick dismantled and subsequently had to reassemble it on Swan Point Rd. or worse yet, the Port O'Connor highway, in the dark, and with a bitchin' case of the munchies, you'd understand the ordeal I'm attempting to describe here.

Now for the supermarket/pharmacy experience. The PG rating here goes from drugs, to sex, for anyone who is reading this with their kids...........

While bent over the counter submitting to my "co-pay" experience, out of the corner of my eye - no, right there in front of me, next to the bend over rail, between the reading glasses and the sunblock display, was this amazingly large display case, divided vertically into two parts, and with all of it's contents at just about eye level for your typical curious child. I'll not directly indicate what they were selling there. I'll describe the packaging, and let you all figure it out. (a hint here: when I was a teenager, the joke was - "was the bathroom clean"? "yeah, but the chewing gum tastes like rubber".)

Now for the packaging and their advertised types/styles(along with my interpretation):

"Her Pleasure" - Ribs or little knobs (love's speed bumps) on the outside.....

"Shared Pleasure" - ditto, except with the bumps on both inside and outside (or reversible)

"Magnum XL" - Official NBA endorsed product

"Warming Pleasure" - Vick's Vaporub coated rather than KY

"Climax Control" - Slicker'n an oiled eel in a tub of hot butter(recommended for the younger, first time users)

"Twisted Pleasure" - I can only imagine, but likely a ceiling fan or rope would be required for using this one (and a pair of pliers to put it on).

"Mint Tingle" - Individually packaged with a stick of Spearmint gum inside.

"Variety Pak" - Ever see the movie "Sybil"?

Ironically, the starboard side of the rack, was stocked with various pregnancy test kits (obviously for those who missed the port side of the display the week before).

Now, as a rule, my boys don't go to the pharmacy with me when I'm picking up the chemicals to keep my blood flowing and that course through my veins like a little Pac Man, gobbling up bad cholestrol, but in the event that they choose to tag along once, and ask, "dad, what's a Freaky Frenchy"?, they are going home with a $12.95 pack of four big funky looking balloons .........and mom will lay an egg!

Come to think of it, I'd like to hear some of the explanations offered up by moms and dads when their seven year old grabs a box of those twizzler models and asks in front of everyone in line, "mom, what is this for"?

Okay, conspiracy theory time, kids. I'm going with the assumption, pending DNA analysis, that Ken Lay in fact purchased a very fresh body on eBay, who likely was a hunting buddy of Dick Cheney, and remarkably similar in appearance to Kenny Boy.

As the world speculates on his death and whether he had it coming or was in fact a really good guy who hired the wrong shysters to mind the store, he sits on a creek in the backwoods of Colorado, fishing for rainbow trout and panning for gold, just biding his time and trying to figure out how, like a daytime soap character who was "killed", to orchestrate a believable ressurection at a later date.

Or maybe he had a heart attack.

Or maybe not.......
Update: Just heard on Ch.13, Kenny Boy's remains will not be coming back to Houston, but rather he'll be cremated and "his" ashes will remain in Aspen. A memorial service will be held here, and quite likely it will coincide with many other memorial services for folks' retirement funds.

I predict that this swift end to the mortal remains of this man will bring legions of conspiracy theorists out of the woodwork.

Where's Art Bell when you need him?

I know, from time to time, I shamelessly promote my favorite radio station(KPFT, 90.1FM, available at KPFT.org, as a worldwide streaming broadcast to anyone with a taste for world and Texas music, planetary peace, and human rights and equality).

KPFT is a Pacifica station. This is in no way, a reference to the ocean, or Cali or anything like that. It is about peace, and pacifism, and has been since 1970. I was listening in the early '70s when it was bombed off the air, literally, by rednecks who did not agree with their anti-war position. That happened more than once. I do implore those of you who lean that direction, to check the station out. I'd ask those of you reading this who are in doubt of what I'm talking about, and especially, those of you in total disagreement with my views, to at least give it a listen. You might be surprised.

So much for the enlongated plug for my cause. Today, on my bicycle ride, I was listening, I think, to Amy Goodman on "Democracy Now", and she was featuring a very unique group called "StoryCorps". It is a group dedicated to preserving individual legacies, be it for families, friends or whoever. It's a a New York, Grand Central Station based organization, but with two travelling booths. They are dedicated to preserving the thoughts, dreams and ideas, of any and all of us who care to put them down for our posterity.

Seems like a big task, but the concept is one that might surprise you. Give them a look http://www.storycorps.net/l... target='_blank'>here . click on some of the stories.

Had my 10 year old angel, Terrie Lynn, had this outlet, or her amazing grandfather, Frank Dean, or my best friend Jackie, or my own grandpa Austin, I would give anything to have heard their stories, with them knowing that their time among us was waning fast. Maybe, later in life, I knew that it was important what the people close to me had to say, at least some of them. I wish now I had listened more, to others. I'm glad though, that I went to see Cindy and share pictures and stories of my boys with her. I'm so happy I was able to know Ruth, Mary Ellen, and big Tommy, and hear their stories.

There are many interviews at the StoryCorps site, but just a scratch on the surface, of what they have planned for us. It's an idea whose time has come!

Listen to some of what folks choose to share. I think this is just the beginning for StoryCorps. Tell me what you think....

Kinda like our Commander-in-Chimp. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Once upon a time, big noises and bright flashes were intimidating, particularly when they left big craters where people once were.

It's really no longer about that, guys. It really needs to be about tolerance, understanding and compromise, and less about dominance, profit and who has the biggest tool.

This is actually, quite a small biosphere. Way too small for us to use our technology to pollute and destroy our very existence in a vain campaign to determine, come hell or high water, who or what decided when or how we even arrived here.

It's time we recognized that there are human years and geological years. The duration of the former ultimately will be determined by the length of the latter. The quality of the former is up to us. We can wage war, govern, regulate and squabble over our own creation until the "big one" comes, possibly of our own making.

Then again, we could get our **** together, and we could acknowledge that by some higher force than us, we were placed here and figure out a way to spread the wealth, technology, medicine and knowledge in such a way that nobody had to suffer.

But then, that would realy jack with the Dow Jones and the price of oil, wouldn't it? Plus, the guys with the little tools, big guns and fireworks would be relegated to just sitting around playing with them, with nobody watching or caring.