More Good Shepherds

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Repent!

That is the advice that I would give anyone who has the temerity to send money to television evangelists or religious charlatans who are whore mongers (like Jimmy Swaggart), unfaithful to their wives (Jim Bakker), hypocritical gay crackheads (Ted Haggard), dangerous pedophiles (Tony Leyva, Tony Alamo, and several platoons of Catholic priests), or just generally deranged (Wiley Drake).

If you support scum like that, repent!

Tony Alamo made the news today. He is a televangelist from Arkansas who has been accused of taking young girls across state lines for sex. Today one of his wives told about Alamo's graphic description of him raping an eight-year-old girl holding a stuffed animal. Fortunately for the world in general and little girls in particular, Alamo is under lock and key and currently on trial in a Federal Court in Texarkana, Arkansas.

Prosecutors are making the case that Alamo married the 8-year-old girl and repeatedly sexually assaulted her. He is also accused of raping or sexually assaulting (like there is a difference with victims that young!) at least four other girls.

The adult woman, a witness against Alamo in the trial, said that she has been involved in his ministry since the age of three. She said that the 74-year-old Alamo told her that she should not question "what the Lord told me to do."

Tony Alamo's defense: The U.S. Government and the Vatican are conspiring against him.

What a shame the Feds don't have the legal authority to impose a penalty involving a dull paring knife!

The Good Shepherd

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Reverend (sic) Wiley Drake is a Southern Baptist minister and radio knucklehead in southern California who lives for controversy. He has been an officer in the Southern Baptist Convention and was the Vice Presidential candidate of the American Independent Party in 2008.

Drake, a native of Magnolia, Arkansas, wrote a resolution for the Southern Baptist Convention in 1996 condemning the Walt Disney Corporation because of it's gay-friendly policies. When Dr. George Tiller, a women's health provider, was murdered earlier this year in church, the good Reverend Drake proclaimed loudly that he was glad that the physician was dead.

Now Reverend Drake has admitted to the press that he is praying for the death of President Obama. Seriously.

And we don't like Muslims because...?

"There are few people in this world more evil than a 'good' Christian." Pa Rock

Monday's Poetry: "The Studs of McDonald County"

by Pa Rock
Poetry Appreciator

Today’s poem recognizes and illustrates the talent of Joan Yeagley, a poet from my home, McDonald County, Missouri. While Joan and I lived for a time just a few miles apart, I have only met her once, and that was briefly.

The following selection, The Studs of McDonald County, is from her 1987 collection of poetry of the same name. Studs was published by BkMk Press at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. The volume contains many poetic vignettes of rural Ozark life. I particularly like The Studs of McDonald County because it succinctly captures the struggle of male youth as they leap from the nest in full glory, only to be tamed by their women and brought back to the sensible world of local and mundane expectations. It also gives a nostalgic view of summer afternoons in the beautiful creeks and rivers of McDonald County.

Our dreams are funny things. If one doesn’t pay attention every minute, they tend to slip away. Several years ago I visited with one of my former foster kids in the Vernon County (Missouri) jail. He was enroute to the Missouri penitentiary. As our emotional visit was coming to an end, the young man got up and hugged me. And then he said, “Rocky, I never intended for this to happen to me.” He was a McDonald County stud whose dreams had been dashed.

The Studs of McDonald County
by Joan Yeagley

Summer boys down from haying,
Wheeze red dust,
Spit the raw stink of mown grass
And take the beach,
Capsizing with obscenities
A gentle generation of grandmothers
Porked in their inner-tubes.
Unzipping with the cheek of young Zeus,
They peel marble white legs of its skin of jeans,
Stow boots in the crotch of a tree.
Male grace
In the bronze loop of neck, shoulder, arm;
Civil War in the thigh;
They plunge.
From their beachhead on the granite buttes,
They pepper the girls with propositions,
Woo them with breakneck leaps
Then strafe the beach with insults.
The girls are cooler,
Will marry them down
And live in Carthage or Joplin.

The Hand on David Brooks' Thigh

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

I'm not sure if New York Times' columnist David Brooks meant to make the news himself this week or not, but make it he did. In an interview with John Harwood and Norah O'Donnell on MSNBC Brooks was prattling on about how sad and needy many politicians are when he suddenly blurted out this gem:

"I sat next to a Republican senator once at dinner, and he had his hand on my inner thigh the whole time."

Harwood snapped awake with "What?" And when O'Donnell quit laughing and was finally able to focus on reporting, she asked "Which one?" But Mr. Brooks was not one to get groped and tell. Later O'Donnell, again laughing, managed to ask Brooks if he drank his lunch before the interview. He denied that, but his presentation shouted otherwise! Maybe after one more wet lunch he will begin to name names. One can only hope!

The affable Mr. Brooks did not indicate why he let the senator's hand remain on his inner thigh the entire evening, leaving one to assume that a.) he expected to get something in return - such as ready access to the senator - or, b.) he liked it.

The interview is all over the internets. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out. It's hysterical!

Andrew Sullivan, an openly gay writer, had this to say about the incident in his column, The Daily Dish: "Mercifully, I avoid dinners with Republican senators. It's usually far too gay a scene for me."

Would somebody please pass the Family Values - and some of that hypocrisy sauce?

Talking the Talk

by Pa Rock
Social Observer

I just returned from a trip to our community center (the Circle K Quick Stop) where I noticed a fellow wearing an interesting tee shirt. He was standing on the sidewalk at a machine renting movies with his back to me. The man was sporting a black tee with bright yellow lettering that said "Ashes to Ashes - Be Tobacco Free." Being an ardent non-smoker, I planned to say something positive about his shirt as I stepped past him and into the store. The plan changed, of course, when I got to where I could see his face - and the cigarette dangling from his lips!

That's Arizona logic, I suppose. These folks are so hard-headed that they won't even take their own advice. "Ain't no tee shirt gonna tell me what to do!"

Rest in Peace, Emmett Till

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

If there was ever a troubled soul who deserved to rest in peace, surely it would be that of Emmett Till. The strikingly handsome black youth was murdered in a brutal hate crime in 1955 near the small town of Money, Mississippi. His death is generally agreed to be the spark that lit the American Civil Rights movement.

The past:

Young Mr. Till and his cousin arrived in the Mississippi Delta country on August 21, 1955, to stay with his grand-uncle, Reverend Moses Wright. The Delta was a warren of small towns, white bigots, and colored folk who “knew their place.” Before leaving his hometown of Chicago, Till’s mother, Miss Mamie, cautioned her son to “mind his manners” around white people. Mamie Till had grown up in the Delta, and she knew well that racial attitudes there were much more pronounced and dangerous than they were in Chicago.

Three days after his arrival in Mississippi, Emmett and some other black youths entered Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market where they intended to buy sodas and perhaps some candy. Uncle Moses was out in front of the store playing checkers. What happened inside the store remains unclear to this day. It was being run by twenty-one-year-old Carolyn Bryant. Her husband, Roy Bryant, was on a road trip and was not due to return for a couple of days. Emmett Till seems to have momentarily forgotten his place around the young white woman and either wolf-whistled at her, spoke to her in an inappropriate manner, or touched her. It is possible he was egged on by his companions, or even given a dare.

Whatever happened in Bryant’s Grocery did not sit well with Carolyn Bryant, and she talked the incident up around town. When her husband returned a few days later, he felt honor bound to put the boy in his place and set things straight.

Sometime shortly after midnight on the morning of August 28, 1955, Roy and Carolyn Bryant, Roy’s step-brother, J.W. Milam, and an unidentified individual got into Roy’s car and drove to the home of Moses Wright. Roy beat on Reverend Wright’s door and finally succeeded in getting Emmett outside where Carolyn identified him as the boy who had disrespected her. The group took Emmett and left. The next day when he did not return, Reverend Wright reported the incident to local law enforcement. When Roy was questioned he said that they had pushed the young man around and scared him, and that he had run off and was probably heading back to Chicago.

The body of Emmett Till surfaced in the Tallahatchie River a couple of days later. He had been beaten, shot, tied to a seventy pound cotton gin fan with barbed wire, and dumped in the river. Suspicion fell on Bryant and Milam who denied killing Till. The badly disfigured body, they argued, was not even that of Till. He was identified, however, by a ring that he was wearing which had belonged to his father.

A local mortuary tried to get the body of Emmett Till safely in the ground where the brutality of what had happened to him would be forever buried, but Till’s mother would not have it. Miss Mamie insisted that his body be brought back to Chicago for burial.

A Mississippi mortician spent an entire evening trying to make the corpse presentable before it was shipped north. The state of Mississippi instructed the funeral home in Chicago to leave the casket closed. Again, Miss Mamie would have none of that. She insisted that the casket be opened so that she could tell her son good-bye. When she saw how horrifically disfigured Emmett was, she made the hard decision to have the casket open at the funeral. She wanted the world to see what the segregationist south had done to her son.

Fifty thousand people viewed the body of Emmett Till, and Jet Magazine published photos of his corpse for those who couldn’t make it to Chicago for the service. Much of America, even white America, was outraged. The fuse for the Civil Rights Movement had been lit.

Emmett Till was laid to rest in Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois - but there would be no peace for the youth, even in death.

Emmet’s father, Louis Till, had left his family shortly after Emmett was born in July of 1941. By 1943 he had joined the army and was fighting in Italy. It was during the Italian campaign that the family received official word that he had been killed. They assumed that was the end of his story.

As the world began to turn on Mississippi and the segregationist practices of the south, Mississippi’s Senator James Eastland released information about Louis Till to try and lessen the impact that Miss Mamie was having. He reported that Louis Till had been arrested for two rapes and one murder in Italy, and had been executed by the military. The implication was, of course, the son of a rapist animal could hardly be expected to be any better himself.

Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam were tried for the murder of Emmett Till in the state of Mississippi. It took the all male, all white jury just sixty-seven minutes to acquit them of the crime. One juror remarked, “If we hadn’t stopped to drink pop, it wouldn’t have taken us so long.” The following year both men sold their stories to Look Magazine for $4,000 each. Both men. protected by double jeopardy, admitted that they had killed Emmett Till. Milam said that they had intended to simply pistol whip him and threaten to throw him off of a cliff, but the spunky youth would not be cowed. Emmett’s bravery and pride cost him his life.

A new investigation into the death of Emmett Till was opened by the federal government in 2004. At that time his body was exhumed for a forensic autopsy. He was later reburied in the same plot, but in a new casket. The original casket was set aside and plans were for it to become part of an historical display.

The present:

Burr Oak Cemetery, the place where Emmett Till is buried, is today a crime scene. Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart has announced that hundreds of bodies have been dug up and dumped into an overgrown section of the cemetery – and the freed up plots have been resold to others. Some of the cemetery’s operators are facing criminal charges.

Supposedly the grave of Emmett Till was not disturbed during this disgusting episode of greed run amok, but authorities did make one startling discovery involving the Civil Rights martyr. Till’s original casket was found inside of an open storage shed where it had been abandoned. Some wildlife had adopted it for a home.

In time some of the remains will find their way back to their original burial spots – but others will probably undergo the indignity of being shoveled into a common grave. In time the shocked relatives will leave the cemetery and put this horror behind them. In time the police will be gone, the yellow tape will come down, and Burr Oak will resume a peaceful existence. One can only hope that this time Emmett Till will be left to rest in peace – eternally.

More on Snakes Fornicating

by Pa Rock
Defender of the Wall

On February 8th, 2009, I wrote a review (of sorts) in the Ramble of an amazing book that exposes the workings of a secretive Christian group that is methodically developing a political choke-hold on our nation and the world. The group, known among themselves as "The Family," provides guidance and support (emotional and financial) to politicians whom they see as having been preordained to lead our country, or any country for that matter, into the service of the Lord. They have supported totalitarian dictators whose aims complement those of The Family, and boast an admiration of the way Hitler organized his power. They jokingly refer to themselves as the "Christian Mafia." This is the group that originated the National Day of Prayer that Obama slighted.

The book is The Family by Jeff Sharlett, a young man who went undercover and lived in one of the houses owned by The Family in the Washington, DC, area. The clandestine religious group generally uses these houses to provide members of Congress with cheap (free?) places to live and to have Christian fellowship with other like-minded members.

One of the residences owned by The Family is a place known as "C Street." If the name sounds familiar, it may be because the residence called C Street has figured in the sex scandals surrounding Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina and Senator John Ensign of Nevada. Sanford has admitted that he had been working with C Street for months regarding his infidelity. Engsign actually lived at C Street. It was revealed today that his roommate, Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, and others of the seven Congressmen residing at that residence had attempted to take control of Engsign's love life and extricate him from the affair - even though he did not apparently want to be extricated.

One of the ways that The Family exerts its power and influence is through the direct exchange of cash between individuals - without any messy transaction records - things that might be audited or, God forbid, taxed. Their modus operandi of shuffling around cash seems to have at least provided a game plan for getting Ensign clear of his Mistress - if not some of the actual cash itself. Apparently the Republicans living at C Street knew that he had employed her son at the National Republican Senatorial Committee as a way of keeping his lover's family in cash.

C Street is officially listed as a church - undoubtedly for tax purposes.

As someone who read The Family and was appalled by the group's accumulation of wealth and power, I must admit to being somewhat amused as these stupid sex scandals are having a very real result of shining a light on this secretive and, to my way of thinking, sinister society.

The Family by Jeff Sharlett is now out in paperback. Buy it, read it, and pass it on. It is a startling and breath-taking look at the slow and systematic subversion of our government by a radical group whose sole purpose is to bend America and the world to its religious will.

Boone Macy's Summer Vacation

by Boone Macy
Young Explorer

When we went to the Bahamas we took a tour of a hotel called the Atlantis. They had all kinds of fish. Part of the hotel was seawater fed. There was an arch on the hotel that was $25,000 per night. The Bahamas had thousands of stray dogs. After Nassau in the Bahamas we went back to the ship. Then we played basketball. After that we went to the Pirates in the Caribbean party. Nassau had a very beautiful ocean. Then we went to the Disney island, Castaway Cay. I went kayaking with my dad. He went parasailing. We went to the ocean and played. We got a lot of shells. Now we are on the ship ready for dinner. Then we will be back in West Plains. I can’t wait. We are sailing away from Castaway Cay. We saw the new movie, Up. It was really funny. I just got back from dinner. We saw the Musical Dreams. When we were kayaking my dad’s hat blew off. Then a barracuda started poking at it. On our tour of Nassau we saw the Queen’s Staircase. It had a secret passageway to a fort built by slaves. The Queen's staircase as built in Queen Victoria’s honor. It had 64 steps for the years that she served as Queen. But they had to build 66 because 64 did not go all the way down. In Nassau they had a Hard Rock Café. They had a drum signed by Jim Morrison. They had shoes worn by Elton John. They had a guitar signed by Kiss. They had one of Ozzy Osbourne's suits. They had paintings of Steven Tyler. We had dinner at a restaurant called Tritons. In the Disney park we saw a squirrel eating a chocolate chip cookie. We also saw some older autographs of celebrities. They had autographs by Angus Young, Russel Crow, and a suit worn by Dick Van Dike in Mary Poppins. We saw Honey Darlin. We saw the Monsters Inc. studios. We rode the Star Wars ride flight simulator. We rode the Waski river ride. We rode the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. We had a fun time. Me and my dad saw a whole bunch of red and black fish. They were 7 to 8 feet. One had to be 13. I just got up. We saw Chip and Dale, Pluto, Goofy, Minny and Mickey Mouse, and Donald Duck. We saw Captain Hook, too. Now we are on the bus to the airport. Now a drawbridge is going up. Now we are at the airport. We are going to ride the monorail. It is bumpy. At Castaway Cay we saw a seagull behind us at lunch eating people's food. He even ate a hotdog! Our room had a balcony. We got lots of things. I had a great trip.

Queen of the Nitwits

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned an Arizona state legislator who was sponsoring legislation that would do away with need for people carrying concealed weapons to have a special permit to do so. This legislator, whom I diplomatically did not name, felt that carrying weapons was a "God-given right." Seriously. She also prattled on about it was a duty of the legislature to remove restrictions on the ownership and use of firearms.

That legislator was State Senator Sylvia Allen, a flake from Snowflake, Arizona. That piece of buffoonery did not bring her enough ridicule, so this week she upped the ante. Yesterday Senator Allen was all over the internets and the cable news shows with her taped testimony on a bill regarding the mining of uranium. This piece of silliness is the real reason that Arizonans wear big straw hats and shades - it isn't the sun, we are just so darned embarrassed by our political leaders!

Senator Allen had this to say about the importance of mining uranium:

"I can't say enough how it's time that we get beyond and start focusing on this technology we have and move forward into the future so that our grandchildren can have the same lifestyle we have.

"The Earth's been here 6,000 years - and I know I'm going on and on and I'll shut up - it's been here 6,000 years, long before anybody had environmental laws, and somehow it hasn't been done away with.

"We need to get the uranium here in Arizona so this state can get the money from it and the revenues from it. It can be done safely and you'll never even know the mine was there when they're done.

"So I am for this."

So, Senator Allen is neither a great orator nor very bright.

Praise Allah for term limits! Our legislators have to leave office after eight years, regardless of how stupid they have been. But not to worry, Sylvia's days in the legislature may be numbered, but all will be well because an equally incompetent yahoo is out there somewhere spinning on a bar stool and waiting to take her place.

The Ants Go Marching...

by Pa Rock
Nature Enabler

My work group recently moved to a different location on base, but I continue to park in my old spot which is quite a walk in the Arizona heat to the new office. There is plenty of parking at the new location, but I am tethered to the old spot by responsibilities that can’t be ignored.

One responsibility, of course, is Bob, the brazen old grackle who flies in every morning as I am parking and paces restlessly as I get my breakfast sandwich unwrapped. I have to throw Bob several bits of cheese, egg, sausage, or muffin before daring to take a bite of the sandwich myself. He knows that the sausage-egg McMuffin is intended for him, but he will tolerate me sneaking an occasional bite if his needs are being met.

Bob has more common sense than people, and will fly off when he gets full. A few sparrows and cactus wrens swoop in after his departure and pick up most of the scraps that he leaves, but even they do not get everything. The tiniest tidbits go to a colony of ants that are located just in front of my parking space.

The ants have burrowed through several layers of asphalt (or perhaps out of several layers of asphalt) and have formed a small mound of Arizona red dirt in the center of the hard, hot parking lot. Occasionally human klutzes or evildoers will come by and step on their hill, but the industrious little buggers clean up the mess and are quickly back on their never-ending march to survive. I like to think that the leftovers provided by Bob and me form an important component of the ants’ life cycle. The truth is, of course, that Bob (or his descendants) and the ants will be getting along just fine long after Pa Rock has moved on.

There was a scientific article in the news last week on ants. It seems that a particular breed of ant that is native to Argentina has now migrated (thanks to humans) to every continent in the world except Antarctica. These Argentine ants form large colonies and have proven to be a pest to plants and animals. They have created one giant colony that stretches for 3,700 miles along the Mediterranean coast, as well as huge colonies in Japan, California, and other scattered locations.

Most junior high “scientists” know that if you mix ants from various colonies that fights will ensue. Ants are very territorial and can apparently recognize interlopers by the chemical smells that emanate from their cuticles.

Scientists who have been studying the Argentine ants were surprised to learn that they recognize (by cuticle smell, apparently) their cousins from overseas colonies - and tolerate them. It would appear, in fact, that these expansion-minded insects are forming a global presence much on the order of humans. Could it be that these invaders from South America are destined to be the next masters of the Earth?

A couple of years ago I was in the jungles of Guatemala visiting a recently excavated Mayan site. One of my most vivid memories of that experience took place in a large sandy area that was deeply shaded by tall trees and climbing vegetation. A large troop of ants were marching across the sun-dappled expanse of sand. In fact, it was a major highway of ants heading in two directions with both destinations hidden in the neighboring jungle growth. They marched along completely focused on their communal mission and unperturbed by the gaggle of tourists snapping pictures of their progress. The tourists had time to waste – the ants did not!

Holy Oklahoma!

by Pa Rock
Social Observer

Certain of our fifty states are way too easy to ridicule, primarily because of the dolts that they seem to "religiously" elect to public office. Recent postings on this blog have taken Arizona to task over various absurdities (like the state’s rampant desire to have no restrictions on gun ownership, and the pervasive feeling that government should run quite well without any revenue, thank you very much!), and a nutty legislator from Missouri who thought that children who were hungry would be more motivated. (Yeah, more motivated to get out and steal food!) I have managed to ignore most of the silliness in the other forty-eight, but a barrage of recent news out of Oklahoma is forcing me to widen the loony net.

Overview: Oklahoma was the only state in the union to have all of its counties carried by McCain in the 2008 general election. And while many, though certainly not all, Oklahomans will declare emphatically that they are not racist, that is one important social component at play in the Sooner State. Southwest and south central Missouri, as well as rural western Arkansas voted for McCain en masse, as did Oklahoma. As a former resident of that three-state area, I can say without hesitation that the populace is focused on thumping the Bible and keeping the “coloreds” in their place. Many were salivating over the rumors that Obama was a secret Muslim because that provided them with a more socially acceptable reason for voting against him than the race issue would have been.

So jump to the present.

Last week Oklahoma’s senior U.S. Senator, James Mountain Inhofe, described the man who was about to become his new colleague in the Senate, Al Franken of Minnesota, as a clown. Yes, Al Franken was a nationally known comedian several years ago – and he made a very good living at it. Mr. Franken has also been a successful author, a radio personality, and, did I mention, a cum laude graduate of Harvard University. Clown, indeed!

Senator Inhofe, on the other hand, is a graduate of the University of Tulsa, without honors, and used to be president of Quaker Life Insurance Company – an organization that went into receivership on his watch. He is also one of the loudest skeptics of global warming - a position that some wags might be tempted to feel is connected to the over one million dollars that he has received in political contributions from the oil and gas industry. He also has a propensity for citing the Bible to back up his position on various pieces of legislation. Who’s the clown?

Former President George W. Bush (the dumb and dangerous Bush) gave a Fourth of July speech this week in the small Oklahoma town of Woodward. Bush, ever the patriot, reportedly spoke for a fee, though apparently no one is yet publicizing the size of the check that the good people of Woodward cut for the for the unemployed politician. Tickets for the event ranged from $25 to $500, and supposedly a highlight of the event was Bush’s retelling of some of his favorite poop jokes. One can only hope that everybody profited from the experience!

But the nuttiest thing out of Oklahoma last week by far was a resolution introduced in the state legislature by Republican (of course!) Representative Sally Kern. The overly pious Ms. Kern has submitted a proposal entitled Oklahoma Citizen’s Proclamation for Morality, a document that places blame for the economic crisis in America on the moral collapse of our nation. The mean-spirited Ms. Kern is clearly not a believer in the concept of the separation of church and state, and her contempt for President Obama borders on being savage - never mind that the economy went into the crapper under his successor, Republican George Bush. Sally Kern's wingnut manifesto follows:

We the People of Oklahoma, Invoking the guidance of Almighty God, in order to secure and perpetuate the blessing of Liberty; to secure just and rightful Government; to promote our mutual Welfare and Happiness, do establish this proclamation and call upon the people of the great State of Oklahoma, and our fellow Patriots in these United States of America who look to the Lord for guidance, to acknowledge the need for a national awakening of righteousness in our land.

WHEREAS, "It is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon
which Freedom can securely stand" (John Adams); and

WHEREAS, "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with
human passions unbridled by Religion and Morality" (John Adams); and

WHEREAS, "Our Constitution was made only for a Moral and Religious people" (John
Adams); and

WHEREAS, "We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the
power of government...but upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God" (James Madison); and

WHEREAS, "Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that
belongs to us by the laws of God (Benjamin Franklin); and

WHEREAS, "God who gave us life gave us liberty and can the liberties of a nation be
thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of God" (Thomas Jefferson); and

WHEREAS, "Whether any free government can be permanent, where the public
worship of God, and the support of Religion, constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state" (Joseph Story); and

WHEREAS, "We hold sacred the rights of conscience, and promise to the people...the
free and undisturbed exercise of their religion" (Roger Sherman); and

WHEREAS, "This great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians"
(Patrick Henry); and

WHEREAS, "When you...exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be
impressed upon your mind that God commands you to choose just men who will rule in the fear of God" (Noah Webster); and

WHEREAS, "The principles of genuine Liberty and of wise laws and administrations
are to be drawn from the Bible" (Noah Webster); and

WHEREAS, the people of Oklahoma have a strong tradition of reliance upon the
Creator of the Universe; and thought secure when we have removed

WHEREAS, we believe our economic woes are consequences of our greater national
moral crisis; and

WHEREAS, this nation has become a world leader in promoting abortion,
pornography, same sex marriage, sex trafficking, divorce, illegitimate births, child abuse, and many other forms of debauchery; and
WHEREAS, alarmed that the Government of the United States of America is forsaking
the rich Christian heritage upon which this nation was built; and

WHEREAS, grieved that the Office of the president of these United States has refused
to uphold the long held tradition of past presidents in giving recognition to our National Day of Prayer; and

WHEREAS, deeply disturbed that the Office of the president of these United States
disregards the biblical admonitions to live clean and pure lives by proclaiming an entire month to an immoral behavior;

NOW THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that we the undersigned elected officials of the people of Oklahoma, religious leaders and citizens of the State of Oklahoma, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world, solemnly declare that the HOPE of the great State of Oklahoma and of these United States, rests upon the Principles of Religion and Morality as put forth in the HOLY BIBLE; and

BE IT RESOLVED that we, the undersigned, believers in the One True God and His
only Son, call upon all to join with us in recognizing that "Blessed is the Nation whose God is the Lord," and humbly implore all who love Truth and Virtue to live above reproach in the sight of God and man with a firm reliance on the leadership and protection of Almighty God; and

BE IT RESOLVED that we, the undersigned, humbly call upon Holy God, our
Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer, to have mercy on this nation, to stay His hand of judgment, and grant a national awakening of righteousness and Christian renewal as we repent of our great sin.

Signed on the second day of July in the year of our Lord Christ Two Thousand and Nine.

Where to begin? Ms. Kern’s disgust for President Obama is evident, first-off, by the way she consistently refuses to capitalize his title. She seems to be incensed by the fact that he did not stop the government to observe the National Day of Prayer, a highly political event that was thought up by a group of rabid anti-communists just after World War II. The original intent was to quietly slip God back into the operations of American government. President Truman told the group of fascist fundamentalists who were promoting the idea that they could basically to go to hell, but they were eventually able to foist the concept onto Eisenhower. Since the 1950’s every President has been coerced into doing the bidding of this right-wing religious cabal – at least on that one special day. If President Obama can resist the pressure to give in to these intolerant bastards, more power to him!

I noticed also that Ms. Kern likes to quote the crusty old Puritan, John Adams, a man who openly yearned for a hard-ass God to be feared by one and all. Perhaps she would benefit from spending time reading some of the thoughts on religion of his successor, Mr. Jefferson. Jefferson was so distressed over what he considered to be false teachings placed into the mouth of Christ, that he wrote his own version of the Bible.

Thomas Jefferson said, “Christianity has become the most perverted system that ever shone on man. Rogueries, absurdities and untruths were perpetrated upon the teachings of Jesus by a large band of dupes and importers led by Paul, the first great corrupter of the teaching of Jesus.” Did you catch that, Sally? The real Jesus may have been a lot more fun-loving and tolerant than the manufactured one that you worship. Maybe he was even a sexual being. Heaven forbid!

Sally, if you want to live in abject terror of a mean and wrathful God, do it in the privacy of your home, or in church – but keep your God and your religious intolerance out of government! This is America, Sally, and we have the right to believe or not to believe as we see fit. Our government is a compact designed to serve all of its citizens – white, black, brown, oriental, Christian, Muslim, Jew, straight, gay, healthy, sick, disabled, rich, poor, all of the citizens of Oklahoma, and even me!

Times are tough, Sally. Get over yourself and quit wasting Oklahoma’s money!

Monday's Poetry: "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"

by Pa Rock
Poetry Appreciator

This evening, and for the next several Monday evenings, I am going to talk poetry. In particular, I am going to present poems that have had some impact on my life, and attempt to explain how and why they touched me. The initial selection for Monday's Poetry is Robert Frost’s simple, yet beautiful, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, a poetic account of a traveler pausing briefly in the woods to contemplate the solitude and snowfall.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
(by Robert Frost, 1923)

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

I went to high school in the small town of Noel, Missouri. My senior year was the last year that high school was in operation, because it was being consolidated into a county school system the following fall. My twenty-one classmates and I literally shut the little school down in May of 1966.

One of the classes that I took my senior year was speech, and my teacher, Jennibel Paul (who was also my English and Latin teacher), came up with the idea of taping all of the speech students reading a poem early in the school year, with the intent of playing the tape back at the end of the year to have some sort of measure as to our level of public speaking progress. She borrowed a large reel-to-reel tape recorder for the project.

I have no idea what poem I chose to read, but my friend and classmate, Linda Merchant, selected Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. Sadly, I can still hear her reciting those stanzas over forty years later.

Linda and her younger sister, Susan, had moved to Noel that year from the neighboring small town of Sulphur Springs, Arkansas, a community five miles south and just across the state line. They lived in a large house on Sulphur Street, just off of Main and about three blocks from the school. Most mornings I would ride to town with my dad and then walk to school. Many mornings I would pass Linda and Susan’s house just as they were emerging, and we would all walk together.

It was a warm Saturday night early in the school year. I had just gotten off duty at the local movie theatre when the horrible news started making its way up and down Main Street. Linda and Susan, as well as two other sisters, Shirley and Thelma Todd of Sulphur Springs, had gotten into a car with a young man who was home on leave from the military, and they had just been in a bad accident south of town on a treacherous piece of highway prophetically referred to by the locals as “Dead Man’s Curve.”

We quickly learned that the car had been travelling downhill and had careened into the path of a semi-tractor trailer that was struggling uphill. Several of the kids in the car had, according to the flying rumors, been killed.

Linda and the Todd girls did die that night, as well as the driver of the car. Susan hung on for a few days longer before joining her sister in death. Several weeks later Mr. and Mrs. Merchant heard about the taped recording that their oldest daughter had made just days before her death. The class presented it to them in remembrance.

Linda Merchant and those other young people should have had many more miles to go before they slept, but that was not to be. We need to appreciate our snowfalls as they happen - and experience each as though it might be our last.

Happy Birthday, Sebastian!

by Pa Rock
Proud Grampa

My youngest grandson, Sebastian Phoenix Files, turned two-years-old today, and though it has been way too long since I have seen him, his mother sends me pictures and short movies over the Internet almost daily. He is walking, often running, and pulling things out of his cabinets, like most explorers his age tend to do. He is also learning to use the potty like a big boy! And he is always busy, busy, busy - but never too busy to stop and smell the flowers. Sebastian, like Pa Rock, loves to smell the flowers!

Little Sebastian called me this morning. I sang "Happy Birthday" to him, and when I finished, he said clearly, "I wuv you!"

Well, I wuv you, too, Sebastian! I weally, weally do! Have a wonderful birthday!

Arizona Gun Stupid

by Pa Rock
Sad Observer

A few days ago I "tweeted" (PaRock@twitter.com) about a couple of Arizona gun stories that had been in the local press that day. One was regarding a five-year-old boy who died as a result of firing a loaded gun that he came across in his home. The other involved a twenty-year-old male who found a pistol in a closet. He pointed the gun toward his head and pulled the trigger to prove to a friend that it wasn't loaded. He was wrong about that - but he did go a long way toward confirming Darwin's theory of evolution. Nature has a way of weeding out the inferior members of a species.

A friend of mine from back in the Ozarks who has a different view on the gun issue tweeted back and suggested that the story of the 5-year-old was an urban legend that occasionally surfaces to discredit gun enthusiasts. I will admit that the story sounded a bit contrived, but it did, in fact, actually occur in rural Maricopa County last Monday. The youth, described by a neighbor as a "sensible little boy," shot himself in the stomach and expired at a local medical center. Other neighbors described the family as "tight-knit and religious."

The doofus who shot himself in the head was in the Queen Creek suburb of Phoenix.

The sources for those stories are:

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/141106

http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/story/141116

Arizona, and particularly the Phoenix area, has an abundance of stories like the two mentioned above. Phoenix, by virtue of it size (the fourth largest urban area in America), is bound to experience a large chunk of personal tragedy. But the odds of gun mishaps are increased dramatically by the continuing efforts of our state legislature to remove any and all restrictions on gun ownership, as well as the local citizenry's determination to handle guns on their own terms. Many see government safety suggestions or regulations - trigger safety locks, for example - as an intrusion into their private lives. It's often a case of "the gummint ain't gonna tell me what I can and cain't do with my guns!"

Until that attitude changes, more parents are going to be finding themselves in the personal hell where the parents of that five-year-old are currently residing.

Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys - because evolution will eventually win out.

Am I Still Happy With Obama?

by Pa Rock
Rabble Rouser

There is a small Obama-Biden sticker on the trunk of my car, easily seen by all of the conservative blue-hairs that I zip around on the Arizona highways, as well as by all of the brass at the air force base where I work. As long as I am satisfied with the job that President Obama is doing, the bumper sticker will stay in place.

Today as I was ripping down Litchfield Road heading to the gym, a guy in a big-assed SUV (one of those penis-compensator models) pulled up next to me at a stop light and rolled down his window. "Hey," he snorted,"Let me ask you something. Are you still satisfied with Obama?"

"Yes, sir, I certainly am." I replied smiling broadly.

"Great." He responded flatly as he sped off.

The truth is that even a great President can do better. I would like to see him call the Joint Chiefs into the Oval Office and say, "Boys, 'Don't Ask - Don't Tell' ends today - and don't let the door hit your uniformed asses on the way out!" Simple and to the point!

I would also like to see him call all of the Blue Dog Democrats into the White House and inform them that he is backing a public option in the health care legislation that is so liberal it would make the ghost of FDR blush - "and if any of you SOB's vote against it, I will field a primary candidate to oppose you and bring some massive Obama rallies right into your neighborhoods!"

Modest proposals, but worth consideration.

Do Not Feed Cynthia Davis!

by Pa Rock
Unmotivated Hearty Eater

Stephen Colbert outed a Missouri nitwit on his Colbert Report last night. The sardonic comedian revealed that Missouri State Representative Cynthia Davis (R-19) opposed subsidizing school lunches for low income children. Her "logic" was her belief that "hunger can be a positive motivator."

Colbert said that one in five Missouri children live in hunger - and that number is way too conservative - take it from this former resident and state child protective worker. He also noted that Rep. Davis has never risen above the rank of state representative, and he suggested that was possibly because she had developed the unmovitating habit of eating. He recommended that Missourians band together in an effort to deny her food.

What an excellent suggestion!

Being basically a life-long resident of the show-me state, I felt an uncontrollable urge to write to Rep. Cynthia Davis and give her my two-cents worth. The following is a copy of the email that I sent to her this afternoon.

"Rep. Davis,

As a once and future Missourian (McDonald County), I was saddened to see the piece on you on the Colbert Report. Views like yours on the benefits of keeping children hungry make Missouri look a little wacko to the rest of the nation. You should apologize to Missouri's children and families - and then consider resigning.

Respectfully,

Rocky Macy
Litchfield Park, AZ"

If you have anything to share with Rep. Davis on the subject of children and hunger, her email address is: Cynthia.Davis@house.mo.gov

But try not to bother her during lunch!

Arizona Paranoia

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Last week I posted a piece entitled “The Lunatic Fringe” which was mildly critical of Arizona’s legislature, an elected body that seems to feel their only purpose for existing is to write legislation to make it easier for any miscreant to buy guns. (That was somewhat of an unfair characterization, because the legislature also expends energy trying to find ways to lower business taxes and taxes on the rich – and to find ways of harassing anyone who had the audacity to be born brown!) But providing the public with easy access to firearms remains the legislature’s top priority.

As mentioned in “The Lunatic Fringe,” our state legislature is in the process of passing a bill that would eliminate the requirement for people to have permits in order to carry concealed weapons. One legislator even referred to the ability to walk around armed as a “God-given right.” (The “lunatic” in the piece was a murderess and vigilante - and child killer - named Shawna Forde, but, for my money, the legislator who got her right to carry directly from God is also qualified to be in Shawna’s good company.)

The reason I dredge up this post from last week is that it generated an interesting response from an anonymous reader. The reader felt that the bill to eliminate the need for permits was some sort of plot. Basically it would result in increased crime, thereby giving the government an excuse to come kicking in doors and confiscating the guns of private citizens.

Can you say paranoid and delusional? The legislature hands the fringe a gift, and their first response is to shoot it!

The National Rifle Association, which boasts of zillions of citizen members but is primarily funded by gun manufacturers, profits by keeping the paranoids stirred up – and their public enemy number one is, of course, our federal government. Former President George H.W. Bush (the sensible Bush) angrily resigned from the NRA in 1994 because the organization had referred to federal agents in one of its mailings as “jackbooted government thugs.”

Now the unofficial NRA banter is that “Obama wants to take your guns away.” Never mind that there is absolutely nothing to back that statement up, it still stirs the rabble and sells guns and ammo – lots and lots of guns and ammo! Wayne La Pierre, the executive director of the NRA, undoubtedly fell to his knees and thanked the ghost of Charlton Heston when Obama was elected! Demonizing a black, liberal Democrat to an army of knuckle-draggers has been a piece of cake for his propaganda machine. NRA board member and rocker Ted Nugent is probably hitting notes that he only dreamed of before! Obama makes a much scarier boogey man than John McCain ever could have been.

Related Factoid: An article in this morning’s Drudge Report entitled “Federal Agents Hunt for Guns One House at a Time,” which discussed the flood of U.S. arms into Mexico, noted that “Mexican officials in 2008 asked federal agents to trace the origins of more than 7,500 firearms recovered at crime scenes in Mexico. Most of them were traced back to Texas, California, and Arizona.”

Gotta love the buffoons in the Arizona State Legislature - surely each and every one proudly carries an NRA membership card!

Family News Bulletin

by Pa Rock
Proud Grampa

My daughter, Molly Files, informed me by email and a telephone call today that her second child, due this Thanksgiving, will be a boy! I am so happy for her and Scott, and I know that Baby Files will lead his older brother, Sebastian, on a merry chase! Oh, the fun times they will have! I can't wait to take them to Disney World!

Baby Files will be my third grandson - with no granddaughters, and my sis, Gail, (my only sibling) will have her third granddaughter in July with no grandsons! Who dealt those cards? (Actually, Gail and I are both thrilled with our growing string of descendants!)

I think Molly and Scott are still struggling to come up with a boy's name. Serious suggestions may be submitted in the comments section of this post.

My New Cat

by Pa Rock
Fool

That's right. One of the world's greatest cat haters now apparently has his own cat. Last week I found this skinny orange and yellow Tom sleeping under one of the bushes in my front yard. Since then I have come upon him almost daily - sleeping under the back porch, lounging in any available shade, and even wrapped around the base of my bird feeder. (The birds have quit spending so much time at the feeder, so the cat is saving me some money!) His pawprints adorn my car hood.

My cat's name is Scroungy Bastard, but he also answers to Fleabag!

On nights when I have leftovers, I set them out for Scroungy, and they are gone in the morning. I suspect that he will be around for a very long time.

Take Those Stamps and Stick 'Em!

by Pa Rock
Social Critic

I went to the post office today to send a birthday gift to my grandson. I asked for one of those flat rate boxes that the U.S. Postal Service is shamefully promoting on television. That is the box system where you can ship anything that will fit for “one low rate.” Lying bastards! Oh, it’s one rate all right, whether the box is filled with feathers or lead bars, but that “low” rate is figured on the lead bars premise, not the feathers. The smallest flat rate box was a pricey ten dollars and thirty-five cents!

I walked out – and my gift is now on its way to Oregon via an alternative carrier.

The postal service used to be an important component of America’s social infrastructure, but its significance and necessity have diminished substantially over the past decade or so. Today the primary purpose of the postal system appears to be the distribution and delivery of junk mail like those ubiquitous Wal-Mart fliers, and serving as a variety store to sell ties and tie pins, ball caps, stationery, stamp art, and all types of assorted trinkets and doodads.

The Internet, of course, has brought the old postal dinosaur to its knees. Email, social networking, and making purchases and paying bills on-line have all slashed their way into what was, just a few short years ago, a monopolistic operation. Even advertisers are abandoning the old approach of covering the world in junk mail for the cheaper and more highly targeted approaches offered by placing their spiels on-line.

The dinosaur is thrashing about in its death throes, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the time is right to put it out of its misery. Here is what I am doing to avoid the necessity of using the United States Postal Service:

1. I shop on-line whenever I can. It saves on gas, and I don’t have to fight my way through malls or those awful big box stores. And, if an item can be ordered by mail, it can be ordered and received quicker via the Internet.

2. When shopping on-line, I look for merchants who pay shipping. Amazon sells virtually everything, and they have a free shipping option on orders of $25 or more.

3. I pay my bills on line, and use auto-pay (bank account or credit card) whenever possible. Paying by auto-pay saves my stamp as well as the merchant's stamp - and hopefully that will eventually help to lower costs.

4. If I have to mail a package, I pack it myself and then use an alternative carrier. Fed Ex and UPS have both become very accessible over the past few years.

5. Email, email, email! It’s lightning quick and essentially free!

If the United States Postal Service seriously wants to survive, and I doubt that it now has the option or maybe even the honest desire to do that - but if it does, it needs to get out of the variety store business and quit putting good money into deceptive television ads. The post office’s energy and resources need to be directed into the quick and efficient transportation of correspondence and packages. That’s why Congress created the agency, and if it can’t meet that basic objective, it’s time to bury the beast and move on.

I'm a Twit!

by Pa Rock
Twitterpated Journalist

After reading Senator McCaskill's tweet on Michael Jackson this morning, I decided to click on the link to the Twitter homepage and see what all of this tweeting fuss is about. I mean, if tweeting can place the repressive government of Iran in peril, it might benefit me to know more about it. I might want to foment my own revolution some day!

It took less than a minute to get registered as a tweeter and to find out which of my email contacts were also registered at Twitter. In the second minute I learned that my daughter had discovered a couple of drunks hosting a yard sale and had scored some really good bargains. News like that really warms a parent's heart!

So, if you happen through the Canarium and hear some bird tweeting off-key, it's probably me. My handle is PaRock.

Michael Jackson and the Rush to Sainthood

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

I was zipping around the Internets this morning when I came across a tweet by Missouri's best senator, Claire McCaskill, in which she said that all of the media attention being paid to the death of Michael Jackson made her uncomfortable. As a social worker who has exposed and investigated many crimes against children, I couldn't agree more with the Senator's concern. Yes, he was an exceptional showman, musician, and innovator, but he was also a pedophile. Michael Jackson got his rocks off sleeping with little boys, and that fact should not be glossed over or ignored. It was a big part of who he was.

That is my view as a social worker, someone who has a professional and ethical commitment to do what it takes to protect children. But, as a consummate lefty, I also know that no one is born a pedophile. Michael was a star at an age when most children were playing games and developing the social skills necessary to become well adjusted adults. He missed out on most of what should have been a normal childhood, and spent the next forty years trying to recapture something that he had been denied.

Michael Jackson was a hell of an entertainer - and a sad human being.

The Thirty Dollar Boot

by Pa Rock
Economic Stimulator

After a morning of still more unpacking and laundry, I headed off to the gym this afternoon where I did a little over two-and-a-half miles on the treadmill at a brisk clip, some pull-ups with the weights, and then sat in the wonderful, bubbling sauna for a shamefully long time. The iPod is adding years to my life. It currently has 3,220 songs, and is basically the soundtrack of my life. I slap on those headphones, cover the numbers on the treadmill with a towel, and rock-on for a minimum of ten songs - which puts me somewhere over thirty minutes. (If Alice's Restaurant or some anthem from Woodstock happens to shuffle to the top, I could be stepping along for forty-five minutes or more.) Time, as they say, truly does fly when you're having fun!

The gym was followed by a trip to Costco, usually an expensive venture, but this time I got away with just two books - both by Dr. Seuss, my favorite author. I also partook of their "hot dog deal" which completely negated any benefit from the treadmill!

My home is in Litchfield Park, the gym is in Goodyear, and Costco is in Avondale - all relatively close. I tried to get from Avondale to Surprise without using one of the major thruways, but my progress was repeatedly thwarted by closed roads and dead ends. Before I gave up and hit the 101, however, I did discover the little community of Maryvale, a grotto of relatively poor housing nestled within the tile-and-tan expensive sprawl that is modern Arizona.

Surprise, Arizona, might sound like a ghost town, but it is actually one of the more modern and progressive parts of the valley. It is about five miles due north of Luke Air Force Base on Litchfield. The city of Surprise has all of the national chain stores and restaurants, and new homes and apartments are springing up at a fierce and alarming rate.

My objective in going to Surprise was to visit Lowe's where I purchased, among other things, a gigantic wind chime, and a very large, cement, and weather-beaten boot that is painted several shades of brown. The boot is actually a planter, and tomorrow I will stuff it with a cactus. Tonight it is sitting empty by my front porch. (I'm not concerned about any of the neighbors making off with it, because the damned thing weighs a ton and none of their scooter chairs could handle the heist!)

And that was my day in one-hundred-and-ten degree Arizona!

Diarrhea of the Keyboard

by Pa Rock
More Typist than Thinker

You've all seen this guy at a family reunion, or the local coffee shop, or on a park bench. He is an old codger who can't control his drool and loves to tell stories. Some of his stories are better than awful, but just barely. The trouble is that if he ensnares you for too long, he begins to do reruns. He can't help it. As time passes and his brain begins to shrink, his memory is also contracting.

The old coot is me - or I am he - and some days I am Bob down the road. The further I rip along the universe, the shorter my tale gets.

My youngest informed me that the story of Fred Blue that I posted two nights ago sounded awfully familiar. I replied back that I could have written it before but did not think so. He did some digging and told me to check out the Ramble for July 7, 2008. I did - and there it was - my first ode to the wonderful Mr. Blue. Not only had I forgotten writing and posting the original, but a quick read showed me that I had done a much better job with it than with my later effort. So my memory is going, as are my writing skills.

And now I can't even find my bib!

BTW: Fred was the caliber of individual and friend who was worthy of two postings!

Dead Pool Heats Up

by Pa Rock
Pool Master

Pa Rock's Dead Pool has suddenly become very active!

The pool originated in this blog in 2008. It's first year was lackluster with only one entrant, yours truly, correctly picking only one celebrity who would die during that year - Eartha Kitt - and her death didn't transpire until the very last week of the year! This year things weren't looking any better, but suddenly it has become a horse race!

Camille (a friend of my son, Nick) jumped into the lead on Tuesday when Ed McMahon packed it in. She earned 14 points for the death of the 86-year-old McMahon. Early this morning she was bumped to second place by Eva Husted of Kansas City with the death of Farah Fawcett. The 62-year-old former Charlie's Angel gave Eva 38 points. But Eva's lead was to be very short-lived. Michael Jackson's death this afternoon gave 50 points each to the following six individuals: Bobby, Iva, Mary (Sister Phillipia), Molly, Pat, and Ron. I can only hope that something happens to break that six-way tie for first place, or poor old Pa Rock is going to be shelling out some serious prize money!

Death Trivia: All three of this week's dead celebrities bit the dust in California, and Ed McMahon and Michael Jackson expired at the same hospital - UCLA Research. How weird is that?

Stay tuned for updates - the race is on!

Fred Blue

by Pa Rock
Old Friend

Fred Blue was a crusty, crabby, cantankerous, and lovable old cuss. To generations of children who made their way through the Noel Elementary School in Noel, Missouri, he was known simply as Mr. Blue. And though he could often be heard fussing and even cussing as he pushed his broom or mop up and down the school’s hallways, everyone in that old stone building knew that Fred loved them and the school itself.

Fred was the school’s custodian and one of its bus drivers. He held those positions for more than two decades. He told me once that he had been at home working in his yard when the wife of one of the school board members drove by and stopped her truck in the road to talk – a very Ozark thing! She told him that they needed a custodian down at the school. He applied, quickly got the job, and the rest, as they say, is history.

I was the principal of the Noel School for six years and was technically Fred’s boss. I say “technically” because Fred didn’t take to well to being bossed. Dealing with the irascible Mr. Blue was usually best accomplished through finesse or negotiation – and even then the project would invariably be done the way that he wanted to do it. I remember calling him into my office one day and saying that I needed my own bulletin board. It was the Thanksgiving season and the elementary teachers had covered every bulletin board in the building with pilgrims and turkeys. I told him that I was sick of all the damned turkeys, and needed a place where I could post school announcements. The next day he had a nice, new board hanging outside of my office with my name on it. But in true Fred style, he had covered the entire thing in turkeys!

The line between Fred Blue’s private life and his work at school quickly became blurred. After his wife passed away, it was commonplace to see Fred’s old pickup at the school before daylight, after dark, and on weekends. He was the first one there on winter mornings to get the furnace fired up, check the radiators, and shovel the snow off of the walks if need be. He was there on ballgame nights to watch the kids play basketball or to kibitz with teachers and parents at the concession stand. After the games he would stay late and get the gym cleaned for the next day’s physical education classes.

Fred’s life literally extended from his home to the school and nowhere else. I took him to Neosho one evening to pick out some ceiling fans that our PTA had agreed to purchase for the classrooms. Fred was like the proverbial kid in the candy store as he stumbled through the Wal-Mart looking at what the store had to offer. He told me that it had been over ten years since he had been to Neosho – a trip of twenty miles!

Fred was a guy who got things done, and the bureaucracy be damned! One winter he decided that he could do a better job of keeping snow off of the walks if he had a blade for the school’s lawnmower – so he went to town and bought one out of his own pocket. It took me two monthly school board meetings to get him reimbursed, even though he didn’t care whether he got his money back or not.

Political correctness wasn’t his strong suit either. One female teacher got on his nerves by asking him to move her large, wooden teacher’s desk on multiple occasions when she took the notion to rearrange her classroom. Fred decided that his back was suffering due to her menstrual cycle, and when the teacher showed up at work one Monday morning she found that a sturdy set of wheels had been attached to the legs of her mammoth desk!

Fred wasn’t having a good day unless he got the school cooks cranked up over something and then left me to handle the mess. He had lots of opinions on what to cook and how to cook. I can still hear him going off about the bland green beans - and why didn’t they at least throw in some bacon or something for flavoring!

He and the school secretary, Billie Allman, were dear friends and had been for years, yet it was common for them to fuss at one another like an old married couple. Fortunately, they shared enough mutual respect to keep the situation amicable – and often funny. I remember well the age jokes that circulated around the office as each became eligible to join AARP. There were also times, however, when I felt like I was their incompetent son charged with keeping the family together.

Fred saw each of his two daughters, Becky and Debbie, graduate from college and go on to become teachers in our local school district – though at different schools. He was proud of his girls, but probably didn’t tell them that often enough. Cussing and stomping were his primary means of communication, both infinitely easier than expressing pride and affection. But the pride was there – they knew it and so did I.

But Fred Blue was far more than cussing and stomping. He was a concerned human being and a very good friend. I was aware of several times when he came to the office and paid the arrears on some kid’s lunch or milk bill. If the parents were good people who were suffering hard times, Fred, who wasn’t rich but also wasn’t wanting for anything, would step in and pick up the slack. One day when I was upset about something, he pushed me into my office and asked me very quietly if I needed some money. I can’t remember now what my malfunction was, but it wasn’t money. But God love Fred for being ready to bail me out!

Fred moved in with his neighbor, a widow named Leatha, while I was still with the Noel School. She was a good woman who followed him to school and took a job as his assistant custodian. Leatha probably wasn’t any better at keeping him in check than the rest of us, but we all felt good knowing that Fred had someone in his life who loved him and was around to help take care of him.

I left the Noel School in the fall of 1989. It was just a few months later that Fred was diagnosed with a terminal illness and given six months to live. One of the first things that he did on receiving that news was to marry Leatha so that she would be eligible to draw on his social security. I made several trips to their home in Noel to visit with him during that time, and regardless of how he felt, he always seemed happy that I was there, and enjoyed telling and listening to old tales about life at the Noel School. He wasn’t happy about the end of his life drawing near, but he and I both knew that he had lived it on his terms without any major regrets.

Leatha phoned me late one evening and told me that Fred had passed away in the ambulance enroute to the hospital. His funeral was well attended and very emotional. Many of the school staff and other old friends of Fred’s stood on the funeral home lawn after the service telling Fred stories. We all knew that an important person in our lives had gone on.

That funeral was nearly twenty years ago, and there is seldom a week that goes by when my thoughts aren’t drawn to Fred Blue for some reason or another. He was a very good friend.

The Deadly Lunatic Fringe

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

There is an awful story out of Arizona that has made its way into the national news. A forty-one-year-old barfly named Shawna Forde and two male accomplices dressed up as federal agents a couple of weeks ago and forced their way into the home of an immigrant family whom they suspected were involved in illegal drug trafficking. They weren't out to to make a citizen's arrest and clean up the drug trade, rather, they were looking for the male resident's purported stash of drug money to help Ms. Forde fund her vigilante group, the Minutemen American Defense. When the male resident (father) questioned why one of the "federal agent's" gun had tape on the handle, he was shot and killed. Before the smoke cleared, the man's nine-year-old daughter was also dead, her mother seriously wounded, and one of Forde's gang wounded.

Shawna Forde, a recent transplant to Arizona from the state of Washington, had been a member of the better known (and larger) Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, but that organization had booted her because of her bizarre behavior. She then formed her own group, and appears to have been funding it through robberies. Forde liked to proclaim that groups like hers were necessary because the government wasn't doing its job of protecting our border with Mexico.

A nine-year-old girl and her father were killed so that Shawna Forde and her drinking buddies could go out and help the government enforce the law.

Granted, every state in the union has some lunatics, many of whom have a strong racist of nativist bent, but poor, parched Arizona seems to get far more than its share. That phenomenon is due in part to the long border that Arizona shares with Mexico, and most certainly is also a product of the state's obsession with firearms.

A bill quickly making its way through the Arizona legislature would do away with the need for permits to carry a concealed weapon. That would also kill the need for special firearms training that had been required before a person could get a permit. One state senator referred to the "God-given right" to carry weapons without having to get any type of special permission from the government. Not only will this bill result in more unstable people being armed, it will also impact the state's spiraling budget crisis because training fees and permit fees for carrying concealed weapons will be lost. The bill is a loser on every level - and it is certain to pass with ease.

There is a second bill in the legislature that also seems destined for passage. The one will prevent property owners, tenants, employers, and businesses from prohibiting the storage or transport of lawfully possessed firearms in locked and privately-owned vehicles parked in a parking lot, parking garage, or other designated parking area. The concept of private property be damned - the "God-given: right to be armed trumps everything! (Actually, this bill may help to conserve energy. Now when a disgruntled employee wants to get even with the boss or his co-workers, he won't have to drive all the way home to get his guns!)

In fact, the primary purpose of the current Arizona legislature is to craft bills eliminating all manner of restrictions and controls on gun ownership. Arizona is well on its way to becoming a haven for every Shawna Forde in America.

There was a poll at CNN.com this morning on the question: Should people on US terrorist watch list be allowed to buy guns? Unbelievably, 11% of respondents (36,004) stated that they should!

Is America nuts, or is it just me?

What's the Point?

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

It's hard for me to keep a straight face as I navigate the aisles of modern grocery stores. I had some free time on my hands yesterday and headed up the road to get some canned chili and other bachelor foodstuffs. This time, because I was in no rush, I decided to explore each of the thirty or so aisles. One of the things that amazed me most was the small amount space actually used to shelve groceries. The place was a veritable warehouse of furniture, plants and planters, cleaning supplies, paper products, health and beauty aids, light bulbs, magazines, books, toys, clothing, liquor, and tobacco. Groceries seemed to almost be a merchandising afterthought.

But it is the shopping habits of others - those not focusing on canned chili - that really amuse me. The lady who was in front of me checking out last night had a few standard food staples, but her order also included a two packages of vanilla Oreos.

What is the point of vanilla Oreos? Do you dunk them in chocolate milk? Or perhaps wash them down with caffeine-free diet soda - another pointless product!

Inquiring minds want to know!

Tom Horne Blows

by Pa Rock
Educator

Tom Horne should be smart. The Canadian-born Arizona politician received his under graduate education at Harvard where, according to his Internet bio, he graduated magna cum laude. He then proceeded on to Harvard Law School where he snagged his juris doctorate "with honors." So, at the very least, Mr. Horne should be one smart lawyer.

But something happened along the way that dimmed the fierce intellect of that young Harvard graduate. My guess is that it occurred when he moved to Arizona. (I fear there is a strong argument for something sinister being in the water!)

As a young transplant to Arizona, Mr. Horne, who is not an educator, managed to get himself elected to the Paradise Valley School Board, the third largest school district in the state. He maintained his seat on that board over two decades, serving as its President many of those years. It was apparently during those years that he honed his conservative view of what is and is not acceptable education.

Horne likes to brag that he "single-handedly" killed the Women's Studies program at Paradise Valley. Clearly the last remnants of his Harvard education had faded into the mists by the time he fought that battle.

In 1996 Tom Horne decided it was time to share his unique educational insights with the entire state of Arizona. He got himself elected to the state legislature (as a Republican, of course) where he served two terms. During the four years that he was in the legislature he chaired the Academic Accountability Committee and was vice chair of the Education Committee. He obviously positioned himself to have maximum impact on the schools and children of Arizona.

Tom Horne moved up the educational power ladder in 2002 when he was elected to a four-year term as the state's superintendent of schools. He was re-elected in 2006 and currently continues to serve in that position. He has drawn on his political experience in the field of education to publish several articles highlighting his beliefs in how things should be.

There is currently a battle being waged in the Arizona over the future of ethnic education. At the center of this political storm is an ethnic studies program that is being offered in the Tucson Unified School District called La Raza. And although the program is designed to assist Hispanic students in understanding and appreciating their cultural heritage, it is open to non-Hispanic students as well.

State Superintendent Horne has worked himself into a snit over La Raza because of his long-held belief that everything should be geared toward the norm (white and male norm), and that anything different detracts from accepted values (such as his). In particular he is upset because a group of students in Tucson, whom he suspects are enrolled in La Raza, got up and walked out on his deputy as she was expounding on the proposition that Republicans are not anti-Latino. He is also twisted because one of his political allies, an Hispanic English teacher at Chollo, feels that he was unfairly castigated as an "Uncle Tom" for supporting his school's Anglo administration.

Sadly, neither of Mr. Horne's expressed reasons for being against the La Raza program have squat to do with education. He wants to cleanse the curriculum of anything that he sees as detracting from American values - his American values.

There is, of course, another side to this story. The La Raza program isn't fostering divisiveness, rather, it is instilling some ethnic pride in a population where pride has been sorely lacking. And what has been the educational impact of teaching students to understand and appreciate their cultural heritage? The students who enroll in La Raza are scoring higher on the state AIMS tests than those who do not.

That bears repeating. Students enrolled in La Raza are doing better on their state-mandated achievement tests than those who are not in the program!

Enter the assorted fruits and vegetables taking up space in the Arizona Legislature. Normally these geniuses spend their few working hours drafting legislation that would encourage more people to carry guns - or cutting social programs, but now they have turned their attention to ethnic studies. At the urging of Tom Horne, the legislature is now hellbent on ending the La Raza program - and the positive impact that it apparently has on student academic performance be damned!

Tom Horne is in-sync with the older white citizens of Arizona, but he is woefully out-of-sync with the future. He continues to blow his political smoke across the knowledge-starved sands of Arizona in a vainglorious attempt to preserve education as it was when he was in high school - the 1950's. He wants Arizona's children to have the opportunity to become just as smart as he is - and therein lies the rub!

How sad for the future of Arizona, and how sad for the students of Tucson.

Humanitarian Aid is Never a Crime

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Several months ago I told the story of a Daniel Millis, a science teacher who risked his life and his freedom to leave full water jugs in the desert to keep illegal immigrants from dying of thirst as they made their way into the United States by traversing the Sonora Desert. For his trouble he was arrested, charged with littering, and hauled before a federal judge where he was found guilty and given an inconsequential fine.

Millis was a member of a group called No More Deaths, and he was distributing the water jugs in the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge. By committing his "crime" on a national refuge, the case became the property of the Feds. If he had left them on property belonging to the state of Arizona, the young science teacher would have probably been hung by the drunken vigilantes who gun-up and patrol the border looking for anyone who is brown and happens to be on foot.

Last December another humanitarian working with No More Deaths was arrested in the Buenos Aires Refuge for the same "crime." The evil-doer this time was 27-year-old Walter E. Staton, a resident of Tucson. Staton recently appeared before a Federal jury and was found guilty of littering.

The area where Millis and Staton distributed their containers of life-saving water has seen over twenty deaths of immigrants who were overpowered by the sun and heat as they tried to make their way to a better life. The slogan of No More Deaths is "Humanitarian Aid is Never a Crime." Good words, those.

The twisted logic used by prosecutors to come up with a littering charge is that once the jugs have been emptied, they are discarded and thus become litter. As a counterbalance to that argument, No More Deaths is quick to point out that their volunteers actually pick up large quantities of litter as they go about their important work, and they produce a net positive impact on the local environment. Members of the organization and other humanitarians have suggested a compromise of placing permanent watering stations within the Buenos Aires Refuge, but that hasn't met with the approval of the Feds or the good Christian citizens of Arizona.

What would Jesus do?

Bachmann in Overdrive

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

To be sure, there is no shortage of nuts in the United States Congress. But one Congressional nut in particular is so much goofier than her colleagues that she deserves special recognition.

Michelle Bachmann, a Republican from Minnesota, is serving her second term in Congress. With any luck at all it will be her last.

Congressman Bachmann, a Christian fundamentalist who rose to political heights by terrorizing local school boards and promoting the teaching of creationism in private and public schools, is either dumber than a stump, too dense to be embarrassed by her strange pronouncements, or she has no shame - or, more likely, a combination of all three.

She made a splash in the national news last year when she told Chris Matthews on Hardball that certain politicians, including Presidential candidate Obama, did not appear to be good Americans. That Palinesque remark helped her opponent to raise a pile of money at the last moment, and almost cost her the election.

A few weeks ago Ms. Bachmann displayed her ignorance of history when she compared the current economic mess to the Great Depression of the 1930's. She talked about how the "roaring 20's" were great years presided over by Republicans (Coolidge and Hoover), and the economy went into the crapper in the 1930's due to Franklin Roosevelt and his support for the Hoot-Smalley (sic) Tariff.

It was actually the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, named after the two Republicans who drafted it, and it came into effect under the Hoover administration. Herbert Hoover was President of the United States when the economy tanked. It was the Democrat, Franklin Roosevelt, who was able to roll up his sleeves and get to work fixing things. He proposed a strong economic program that included a national jobs effort (WPA), retirement insurance for older Americans (Social Security), and insurance for money kept in public banks (FDIC).

Nice try, Michelle.

Then a few days ago she started rattling nonsense about swine flu, saying that the last time there was an outbreak was in the 1970's when Jimmy Carter, also a Democrat, was President. She thought, for some strange reason, that the virus was related to the U.S. Presidency and the particular party that happened to be in power. That's silly enough on its face, but to make it worse, she was wrong about who was President during the last swine flu outbreak. It was Gerald Ford, a Republican!

Michelle, I suggest that you call your good friend and fundraiser, George Bush, and ask him how to use the Google.

Now, Congressman Bachmann, has gone on the record saying that the upcoming census is too invasive, and that her family will only provide the number of people in the family - nothing more. She said that by law that's all that has to be provided.

Wrong. The fine for not answering all census questions is $5,000.

Michelle, if you are going to break the law anyway and answer only the questions of which you approve, why not double down and not even fill out your census form at all? In fact, if enough of your constituents would do the same - your seat could be eliminated and reassigned to someplace like California or Vermont where where the voters would be much more likely to select someone with at least a hint of a brain.

But if your seat is not eliminated and you file for a third term, you can count on me to send in a campaign contribution - to your opponent! To do less would be clearly unpatriotic.

Memories of Germany Inspired by Lili Marlene

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

A couple of weeks ago National Public Radio did a short segment on Lili Marlene, the most popular song of World War II, and it served to remind me of the few short weeks that I spent in Germany in the fall of 1971. I was there as a part of Operation Reforger III, the third in a series of annual military (NATO) field exercises that went on for many years. We left an airfield in Topeka, Kansas, in military cargo planes, flew to Ft. McGuire, New Jersey, for refueling (of the planes and the soldiers), and then over the Arctic Circle to Frankfurt, Germany.

Our military vehicles accompanied us on the cargo planes. Thousands of army jeeps and trucks were organized in immense staging areas prior to our convoy and war games across southern Germany. The convoy was actually organized at Grafenwoehr near the Czechoslovakian border - which at that time was a dangerous, communist country. Being that close to the actual Iron Curtain added an element of excitement to the whole venture - as if just being in Europe wasn't exciting enough to a twenty-three-year-old from the Ozarks! The installation at Grafenwoehr is still in operation - I know that because an Air Force civilian friend of mine just transferred there to work in the Army's sexual assault program.

From Grafenwoehr we convoyed through the beautifully cold German countryside, bivouacking near little postcard communities. The days in the jeep were bitterly cold. I had to make observations (of what I don't remember) from a moving jeep, and did most of that task peering out of a sleeping bag. My driver, a kid from Utah named Calvin, was not so fortunate because he had to have his feet and hands free to handle the jeep.

We would camp in the early afternoons and set up large GP medium tents that would each accommodate twenty or so men on cots. As soon as we arrived at the campsite, young German kids would descend on us on their bicycles and take orders for beer. They would then peddle into town and return dragging their wares in wagons behind their bikes. We had the Army C-Rations for meals, but a traveling food coach would normally follow us to camp. I remember the wonderful German mustard that came with our hard roll sandwiches. I have never been able to find the same product again, although I am certain that I will recognize it if I do. Perhaps another trip to Germany is in order!

As another much appreciated treat, the Army would often arrange for small German bands to come to the camp sites and entertain us in the evenings - Oompa bands composed of guys playing tubas and accordions and wearing lederhosen.

Our convoying took us to Munich were my buddies and I spent a night riding the trolleys and visiting several bars, including the famous Hofbrau House. We had at least a weekend off there, and my friends and I caught a train at the Munchen Banhoff (Munich train station) and rode down to the picturesque town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen.

Some of my memories of those long convoys include seeing the massive Christian crosses on top of impossibly high German Alps, and the cleanliness of the roads and towns. There were no billboards, mobile homes, old cars, or even litter along the roads. Everything was clean and modern. I also remember coming upon one wreck on the Autobahn, Germany's major highway system that is best known for having no speed limit. The car that crashed had been going so fast that wreckage and blood stains on the pavement stretched for the better part of a mile.

One of the things that I remember best about Germany was the wonderful music. The Hofbrau House had its own song, which became easier to sing with the more beer that was consumed. But it was Lili Marlene that I found to be the most memorable and pleasing. Not speaking much German ("Ein bier, Rosa" was the first and longest-lasting phrase that I learned!), I found the instrumental version of Lili Marlene to be quite beautiful and hard to get out of my head. Some of the old timers told me that it was the most famous of German songs.

It was years later before I took the time to learn more about Lili Marlene, and it was, in fact, the NPR piece a few weeks ago that really filled in the gaps in my knowledge about the song's unique history and place in the Second World War.

Lili Marlene was written as a poem by a German soldier in 1915, a tale of a girl that he left behind when he went off to war. It was put to music in the late 1930's, and was popular on Nazi radio stations during WWII. American soldiers heard it being played on German radio, and even though the song was in German, they developed a fondness for the haunting tune. Radio Belgrade played it at the same time every night, and many American soldiers would tune in to listen to the increasingly familiar musical piece. The Nazi government at one time tried to pull the popular song from the airwaves because of the large influence that it was having on the troops, but German soldiers complained in such high numbers that the government reversed its position. After the war the song jumped the Atlantic and became popular in America where it was recorded by several artists.

Here, for the record, are the lyrics to Lili Marlene:

Underneath the lantern,
By the barrack gate
Darling I remember
The way you used to wait
T'was there that you whispered tenderly,
That you loved me,
You'd always be,
My Lili of the Lamplight,
My own Lili Marlene

Time would come for roll call,
Time for us to part,
Darling I'd caress you
And press you to my heart,
And there 'neath that far-off lantern light,
I'd hold you tight ,
We'd kiss good night,
My Lili of the Lamplight,
My own Lili Marlene

Orders came for sailing,
Somewhere over there
All confined to barracks
was more than I could bear
I knew you were waiting in the street
I heard your feet,
But could not meet,
My Lili of the Lamplight,
my own Lili Marlene

Resting in our billets,
Just behind the lines
Even tho' we're parted,
Your lips are close to mine
You wait where that lantern softly gleams,
Your sweet face seems
To haunt my dreams
My Lili of the Lamplight,
My own Lili Marlene.

Today lonely hearts still wait in the lamplight for war to end. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The Tale of the Florida Cat Killer

by Pa Rock
True Crime Reporter

Eighteen-year-old Tyler Hayes Weinman was arrested last week for the killing and mutilation of a couple of dozen cats in and around the tonier neighborhoods of Dade County, Florida. Mr. Weinman, who had graduated from Palmetto Bay High School just a few scant weeks before his arrest, has spent the last several days being psychologically dissected and vilified in the press. Today he was released on bail.

This story bothers me on two levels. Basically the story made it into the national headlines because of class. It happened in two nice, white neighborhoods. The owners of the victim cats were horrified, which is understandable. They lit fires under the local police and the press - and they got action! But if those cats had belonged to families in East St. Louis, Illinois, or South Central Los Angeles, people residing more than five miles beyond the crime scenes would have never heard about this sadistic animal abuse - and the crimes would not have merited any police time for investigations. It is a variation of the Nancy Grace Syndrome in which terrible things that happen to white children are matters of the gravest public concern, while equally horrendous things that befall children of color are routinely ignored.

But, regardless of the class aspects, this story is important because it serves to warn us about the long-term dangers posed to society by people who torture animals. It is a sad story about a bunch of dead cats, but, more than that, it is a reminder of how cruelty can evolve from animal victims to humans.

Tyler Weinman was given a psychological evaluation prior to his release from jail. The judge wanted to have as much information as possible on his mental state before releasing this lad back into society.

Why?

The Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and Northeastern University recently published research indicating that animal abusers are five times more likely to commit violent crimes and four times more likely to commit property crimes than individuals without a history of animal abuse. Another study profiled 354 serial killers and found that 21% of them were known to have committed animal cruelty - and that percentage is almost certainly on the low side.

Animal abusers find power and fulfillment in torturing a victim that is incapable of defending itself. That same motivation is also at play for child and spouse abusers, rapists, and serial killers.

Jeffrey Dahmer, as a youth, impaled dogs' heads, frogs, and cats on stakes. Albert DeSalvo, the Boston Strangler, trapped dogs and cats in fruit crates and then shot arrows through the boxes. Ted Bundy and David Berkowitz (the Son of Sam) were also animal abusers in their youth. Steven Green, the U.S. Army private who raped a girl in Iraq and murdered her and her family, bragged about setting a puppy of fire and throwing it off of a roof when he was a child. (He also burned the body of his rape victim.)

Many of the school shooters practiced cruelty to animals. Kip Kinkel of Oregon, Luke Woodham of Mississippi, and Columbine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold of Colorado all had a history of abusing animals.

So, if a child abuses animals, does it necessarily follow that he or she will become a deranged killer of humans? No, it does not. It is however, a nearly perfect indicator that something bad has happened in that child's life - physical or sexual abuse, or serious neglect. It is also a warning sign that this little person could become a big problem to society in the years to come.

If Tyler Hayes Weinman did kill all of those classy Florida cats, that's a legitimate news story - though not one that merits a national obsession. The real story, however, may come about a few years down the road.

The blog posts that I have read are decidedly vindictive, suggesting that he should be locked up for many years. (Unbelievably, Mr. Weinman faces a possible 158 years in prison for the cat murders!) But prison would be counterproductive. While Mr. Weinman was imprisoned and rubbing shoulders with other convicts, his urges toward cruelty and anti-social behaviors would be strengthened - and when he was ultimately released, society would face significantly more dangers than if he had been directed into a comprehensive treatment program at the outset.

Prisons are warehouses that reinforce anti-social behaviors and make bad people worse - but that is a whole other post.

Coming Attractions

by Pa Rock
Entertainment Writer

Though I can't reveal my sources, it is my understanding the some amazing films are scheduled to be released by Hollywood prior to next spring's various film awards. What follows is a sampler of what to expect at your local multiplex:

Gee Wee’s Big Adventure:

Yes, the news has already leaked – former president George Bush has been signed to make a movie for MTV. The worst President in the history of the United States couldn’t score a book deal, and there were few offers for lucrative speaking engagements, but not to worry – he’s going Hollywood!

The ex-Pres will be taking on the goof-ball character created by world-class fisherman and master baiter, Pee Wee Herman, in a spoof of life in the White House. The plot focuses on Gee Wee having a few too many Harvey Wallbangers at the bar at the Watergate one evening, and deciding to revisit the White House. He gains entry through the same steam tunnels that Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver used to exit the place in Dave. Gee Wee stumbles around the halls of the White House and tells the various night porters and cleaners that he is a guest staying in the Lincoln bedroom. The fun starts when he enters the War Room and discovers that the Obama administration has inexplicably forgotten to change the nuclear codes. Well…so much for France!

If you’re looking for some good, old-fashioned entertainment, Jug Ears the Nitwit will capture your heart!

Daughters of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane:

Glenn Close and Meryl Streep give it their best as the aging daughters of the macabre Hudson sisters in this bush league sequel of the cult classic from the 1960’s. Unfortunately, they start off as too old and crotchety, and only get worse as the movie drags on. Rumor has it that Betty White was too busy to rescue this film, and Bea Arthur was too dead. Director Sean Penn might have saved his bacon and his celluloid if he had given those juicy roles to Goldie Hawn and his ex-wife, Madonna.

Die Hard with a Pacemaker:

Bruce Willis is back as the tough-as-nails John McClane, a former police officer who has a penchant for getting involved in daring rescues. This time McClane is out to save his two good buddies, Clint Eastwood and Tommy Chong, from the evil machinations of the staff at the Hasta La Vista Nursing Home. The job won’t be easy, however, because the hospital’s chief administrator, Arnold Schwartzeneggar, isn’t about to let them go without a fight – a good fight! If you are a fan of flying bedpans, runaway wheelchairs, and geriatric food fights, this movie won’t disappoint!

Rumor has it that television personality Ann Coulter is being considered as the lead in a female version of this same film concept. Ms. Coulter, ever the corporate lackey, will reportedly launch a venomous attack on a group of liberal biddies who are protesting the forced consumption of Metamucil at Shady Pines. Tentative title: Die Hard with a Vibrator.

Silence of the Clams:

Disney’s new underwater extravaganza shows the kid in all of us how Mother Nature really works. The clever mixture of schools of shimmering fish doing choreographed swimming in their own excrement, dancing squid and octopi, swirling streams of poisonous pollution, and a little lighthearted cannibalism – all artfully synchronized to the music of Queen – is a sure-fire winner! Look for a special guest appearance by Sponge Bob Square Pants.

Rocky 15:

Everything sags in this sad ending to the Rocky series. Sly Stallone crawls out of the ring for the last time, packs his bags, and hitchhikes to Arizona where he rents a trailer on the hot edge of nowhere and spends his golden years breeding scorpions and punching his pointless views into a daily blog. He may be permanently punchy, but he keeps right on typing!

See you at the movies!

The Roots of Domestic Terrorism

by Pa Rock
Social Crusader

While our country seems to be all about finding and fighting foreign terrorism, particularly if it can be tied to Muslims or Mexicans, as often as not we completely ignore, or try to ignore, a far more brutal and insidious variant of extremism: domestic terrorism.

America is awash in hate groups. They burn clinics, kill doctors, protest at funerals, terrorize immigrants, disparage non-Christian religions, and vilify racial and ethnic minorities, gays, and independent women. These people often believe that their government is corrupt, voting is inconsequential, and the possession of guns is the only sure way of maintaining their freedom.

The past two weeks have witnessed two classic examples of hate crimes, both carried out by “lone wolf” extremists – people who participate in the fiery hate rhetoric but commit acts of violence on their own.

Scott Roeder, an anti-abortion activist, killed Dr. George Tiller in church on Sunday morning two weeks ago. This past week James Von Brunn, described by an ex-wife as being a “racist alcoholic,” killed Stephen Tyrone Johns, a black security guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. Both were senseless acts committed by people whose minds had long ago succumbed to the deleterious effects of prolonged and bitter hatred.

People don’t arrive in this world imbued with hatred, they acquire it through a learning process – the same way that others learn how to become accepting and to love. The haters are patiently and painstakingly trained by social critics and master haters who fan the flames of ignorance and then run for cover whenever one of their creatures explode.

Bill O’Reilly, a socially irresponsible entertainer on Fox News, referred to Dr. Tiller dozens of times on the air as “Tiller the Baby Killer,” yet when Scott Roeder went over the edge and murdered the physician, O’Reilly proclaimed sanctimoniously that he hadn’t pulled the trigger. He didn’t murder Dr. Tiller.

Perhaps not, but he was most certainly an accessory. O’Reilly's hateful sputum was sprayed on the masses for a reason, and Scott Roeder was the stupid and willing pawn who finally acted on it.

The very day that 88-year-old James Von Brunn stormed into the Holocaust Museum and killed a black security guard, Rush Limbaugh had been on the radio saying that all Barack Obama and God had in common was that neither had a birth certificate. In addition to being a loud and proud racist, Mr. Von Brunn was also a “birther,” one of the many who subscribe to the fiction that Barack Obama was born outside of the United States and therefore ineligible to be President. (Factoid: One of the 2008 Presidential candidates actually was born outside of the United States – John McCain was born in Panama.)

Rush Limbaugh didn’t kill Stephen Tyrone Johns, but his malarkey certainly helped to keep a mental deficient like James Von Brunn stirred up.

Last July (2008) a fellow named Jim David Adkisson entered the Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, and opened fire with a shotgun killing two people and wounding others. He chose his target for the indiscriminate attack because of its association with liberalism, noting that he hated liberals, gays, and democrats. When police searched his home they found the following three books: Liberalism is a Mental Disorder by radio talk show host Michael Savage, Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty Over Liberalism by Sean Hannity, and The O’Reilly Factor: The Good, the Bad, and the Completely Ridiculous in American Life by Bill O’Reilly.

Savage (whose real name is “Weiner”), Hannity, and O’Reilly didn’t carry a weapon into a church in Knoxville and open fire, but the bile flowing from their pens helped to motivate Adkisson to commit his horrid crime.

America is armed and dangerous. It is a house on fire with a basement full of powder kegs. Hate speech fans the flames, and when one of the kegs explodes – as it is bound to do – the bigoted bastard who lit the fuse rushes out to face the cameras and deny any responsibility.

Domestic terrorists are our worst enemies, a far greater threat to the survival of this nation than any danger from abroad. It is well past time that the "good" and "Christian" Americans who commit these atrocities are recognized for what they truly are: terrorist scum. It is also well past time that their cheerleaders and enablers accept a fair share of responsibility for the part that they play in these crimes against America.

And it is certainly well past time that all of these criminal bastards get the treatment they so richly deserve.

Waterboarding, anyone?

Who let the dogs out?

by Pa Rock
Trivia Master

I neglected to memorialize some Bahamas' trivia in earlier posts. We encountered many stray dogs in Nassau, and our taxi driver/guide explained that there are some 15,000 in the Nassau community alone. He said that was the impetus behind the song, Who Let the Dogs Out? by the Baha Men - who were, of course, Bahamian.

Our taxi driver inundated us with quite a bit of islands' trivia during the tour. There were two families in the mini-van. Each time somebody guessed a correct answer, they received a coin from the Bahamas. Boone and I each earned a square 15-cent piece, supposedly the only the only 15-cent coin denomination in the world. The fifteen-center was discontinued a couple of years ago. Boone also got a local dime which is round but has a wavy edge. Money from the Bahamas exchanges exactly with United States currency - dollar for dollar. In fact, most of the businesses around the port operate with American dollars. I purchased $10 of Bahama coins from one of the pursers on the ship - pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters - no fifteen-cent pieces - good thing we had won those. The coins will function as souvenirs for all of the people that I neglected to buy for!

(The trivia question that I got right on the tour: The driver pointed to a beautiful large tree and asked who could name it. No one knew. He gave a clue that it began with a B. I took a SWAG - sophisticated, wild-ass guess - and said "Banyan." That's what comes from being a reader!)

Sunday Morning Coming Down

by Pa Rock
Deflating Traveler

Sunday morning finds me at the airport in Orlando waiting on my flight - a mere five hours from now! I have said my good-byes to Nick and Boone, and they are someplace else in the airport waiting on their flight - which is earlier than mine. It will be almost 10 p.m. in Arizona before I set foot in my hovel tonight, and I will be at my office before 7:30 a.m. tomorrow. The real world is rushing in!

I have parked myself in a large food court at the airport. I know that it is Sunday because the Chick-fil-A is closed. No holy roller chicken sandwiches today!

Correction from yesterday: I said that no one actually lives on Castaway Cay. Wrong! Apparently fifty or so Disney employees call that little island home. They maintain the Cay and ensure that it is always clean, in good repair, and tourist-ready.

Nick and Boone had a close encounter of the fish kind yesterday at Castaway Cay. They were riding in a paddle boat when Nick's hat flew off and landed in the water next to their boat. A large fish, 6 feet in length, swam up under the hat and began nudging it with its nose - probably checking for edibility. Nick snatched the hat up and they resumed their boat ride. Back on shore he described the fish to one of the Disney workers who told him that it was probably a barracuda!

Last night we attended Disney Dreams, a very impressive musical that was staged in the ship's theatre. The show was reputed to have won the "Emerald Award" for best cruise ship musical. It featured characters from many of the Disney movies, Peter Pan flying on wires, and even snow falling over the audience!

After the show, Boone and I went to the top deck where we walked a couple of laps and had a good visit. Boone is writing about the trip. I told him that if he would email his account to me I would post it on The Ramble. Don't let me down, Boone!

When we got back to our room, Nick called us out to the veranda to see what he had discovered. We were passing through a large population of some large creatures that were jumping out of the water. It was dark, so we couldn't tell for certain what we were looking at. This morning I asked my good bud, Captain Henry, and he said that it was probably a school of dolphins. He said that we had encountered a school of them in approximately that location as we were heading to Nassau.

Boone said that the best part of our week-long adventure was the cruise. The best part for me was getting to spend time with my son and grandson. I know that I am repeating myself, but Nick is such a wonderful parent to Boone! And Boone is growing up so fast! I feel very fortunate that I was able to spend this time with him and his Dad!

The Flying Dutchman and Castaway Cay

by Pa Rock
Buccaneer Wannabe

We attended the Pirates of the Caribbean Party on the upper two decks of the ship last night. Our seats were along the railing of deck ten looking down on a pit of people who were gathered in front of a stage dancing. Although the event was designed to cater to the kids, most of the ship’s passengers were on hand and watching or participating. The dancing was led by several young Disney crew members who were ably assisted by Minnie Mouse, Chip and Dale, Goofy, Stitch, Captain Hook, and others. Mickey Mouse slid in on a wire high above the crowd at the end of the event to get everyone focused on the fireworks display. It was really quite a production!

After the party Nick and Boone went down to the main theatre where they viewed the 3-D version of the new Disney flick, Up. I stayed on the top deck and watched Pirates of the Caribbean on the enormous television monitor that had been used for the basketball game the night before.

We learned yesterday that there are around 700 islands in the Bahamas, but most are sparsely inhabited and have few services. Only 21 are capable of supporting people in the style that Americans demand. Land is very cheap if one goes to the more remote islands, but it costs more to bring in materials and build there. Some of the islands have as few as one family living on them - which sounds like heaven to this old recluse!

Castaway Cay is one of the 700 Bahamian Islands. Although no one lives on Castaway Cay, it is owned by Disney as serves as a port of call for their cruise ships. Castaway is quite a busy place. It is also home to the Flying Dutchman, the ghost ship from Pirates of the Caribbean, which is anchored just off shore. We were on Castaway all day. Nick and Boone swam and rode a paddle boat, while I sat under a palm tree and did some relaxing reading. The ship’s crew served a huge buffet on the island for lunch, and this afternoon Nick went para-sailing – that from a guy who used to be afraid of heights! Boone and I watched him fly by from the top of our ship.

We will be heading down to the dining room shortly. Tonight we are talking about taking in a live musical on the ship. Tomorrow we head home.

Days One and Two at Sea

by Pa Rock
Sailor Man

Day One: Thursday, June 11th, 2009

We boarded the Disney Wonder around 3 p.m., Florida time, whereupon we had a fine lunch and spent a couple of hours exploring our floating community. Not long after boarding we had to take part in a lifeboat drill where every passenger donned a life vest and went to the lifeboats on the 4th floor to be counted. Boone and his Dad shot hoops with some of our fellow travelers. We were supposed to set sail at 5 p.m., but storms in Dallas kept a plane loaded with Disney passengers on the ground in Texas longer than expected, and our ship waited for those anxious Texas tourists to be rushed aboard.

We were enjoying our evening meal when the Wonder finally left port. Our table included another family of three – from San Antonio. Nick used to live in San Antonio and I have been there for numerous military – social work trainings, so that gave us plenty to visit about with our table partners. After dinner we were all to full to move, but we managed to make it up to the top of the ship where Nick ran on the treadmill and Boone and I did a mile-and-a-half walking around the ship. That was a big digestive aid!

The Wonder is ten stories high, and our stateroom is on seven. It is very nice, complete with a veranda that seats two comfortably with a third standing. The ocean is so serene. I sat out on the veranda after our walk and became so at peace with the world that it was nearly impossible to get up and come back inside.

Tonight Nick and Boone are up on nine watching the Lakers – Magic game on an outdoor, really big television. I sat with them for awhile and read my book. Boone is learning to play basketball, and his Dad was very carefully explaining the finer points of the game, and some of the plays of that game in particular. It was a great father – son bonding activity. I have said this many times, but it bears repeating: Nick is a wonderful dad!

Second Day Out:

It was on this date, June 12, 2009, that Boone Macy set foot in his first foreign country, The Bahamas, and also visited his first Hard Rock Café. He wasn’t overly eager to stop in the Nassau Hard rock, but once inside it took a concentrated effort to get him to leave. He liked all of the memorabilia on the walls and was familiar with many of the artists.

This morning we took a taxi tour of the island with several stops along the way. The Disney Shore Excursion equivalent was $300 per person, but our locally procured tour guide and his air-conditioned mini-van did over two hours for just $20 each. Our trip included a trip to a local conch restaurant where we were treated to an exhibition of a conch being slaughtered in preparation for soup or a sandwich, a trip past the island’s old fort, and an hour or so at the famous Atlantis resort. The aquarium at the Atlantis is amazing, and it is home to the world’s only manta rays living in captivity. The lobby alone at the Atlantis cost $65 million to construct, and the bridge suite (a unit that spans the hotel’s two towers, rents for an amazing $25,000 per night – but that comes with breakfast! Well-heeled riffraff can rent a room there starting at $300 per night in the summer and $500 per night in the winter.

Our taxi driver also made conversation by quoting home prices in the various parts of the island that we drove through. A three-bedroom, two-bath in a nice part of town would be in the $200,000-$250,000 range. There are no income taxes on the island. A doctor’s visit is $10 and a night at the hospital (the one where Anna Nicole Smith’s baby was born and where her son died) is $35 per night. Apparently a one-day stay at the hospital includes three meals. Our driver said that if we found ourselves in the Bahamas on a budget, to claim sickness and stay at the hospital for $35 a night!

One interesting Bahama’s factoid that I acquired today was that the island achieved independence from Great Britain on 10 July 1973 – two weeks to the day before Nick was born!

The waiter responsible for maintaining our table at lunch today was a young man from Chile by the name of Christian. I now know a total of three individuals from Chile – all are male and all are named Christian! This one said that he is from a small village seven hours from Santiago, which he referred to as “the end of the world.”

This afternoon we took a taxi to Cabbage Beach where Nick and Boone played in the ocean while I sat in the shade at the beach bar. The beach was so h-o-t! It was on the way back to the ship that we stopped by the Hark Rock for soft drinks. Nice day in an island sort of way!

Bus Blogging

by Pa Rock
Consummate Traveler

We are riding a Disney Bus enroute to Port Canaveral and our big cruise. One of the many instructions was to plan on turning our cell phones off during the voyage to avoid international roaming fees. That means The Ramble will probably be shut down until Sunday as well - not that anyone but Tim and Phillipia will probably notice!

Disney World was fun, and Boone was old enough to enjoy it. His dad also seemed to have a very good time. The people who did not seem to be having fun were the very young - ages seven and below - and their bedraggled parents. Most of that group were fussy, angry, and tired (kids and parents!). It would probably work better for little kids to come in the winter when it isn't so sultry and all of the screaming and stampeding older kids were safely back home and in school or institutions.

I did see lots of grandparents on this trip, and most seemed to be having a grand time showing Disney's world to their progeny. I know that taking my grandson to Disney World has been a special adventure for me. I hope that someday he will bring his children and grandchildren here and tell them about his first visit at Disney World with his dad and Pa Rock.

Scratch the Alligator

by Pa Rock
One Tired Hombre

Apparently Nick's alligator story from yesterday was just that - a story - something that he made up to try and pry Boone out of bed that morning. I'm really disappointed. Last night I had pitched half a cheeseburger into the flower bed in front of our room in an effort to entice the critter back. I guess I will just stick to feeding the birds!

We were at Disney's Hollywood Studios again today and found plenty to observe and do that we didn't get to yesterday. The highlight was the Indiana Jones Stunt Show. It included massive sets that were pulled around by tractors and large trucks, and plenty of dramatic and amazing action. One of Harrison Ford's stunt doubles held the stage with with some of the best stunts from the several Indiana Jones movies, and used his whip with careless abandon. A truck flipped over and burned on stage, a Nazi airplane taxied onto the stage and served as the centerpiece of a wild fight, and explosions and fires punctuated the entire production. This was my favorite show of all that I have seen at Disney World.

We took a ride through some of America's most loved movie scenes. That was informative and very relaxing. And this afternoon we happened upon a street performance by three guys driving an old car with a sign on the door that read "Hollywood Public Works." They told jokes and bantered with the crowd as they took a "break" from their street jobs. Their jokes were so lame that they were funny!

Tonight Nick and Boone are swimming and doing laundry. I am going to head down to the cafeteria and join them for supper.

More later...

Another Day at the House of Mouse

by Pa Rock
Fun Grampa

Three parks today - two new ones and a rerun.

We began the day with breakfast at our hotel. Boone enjoyed a Mickey Mouse waffle. (If I could find one of those waffle irons, my Christmas shopping for Scott and Molly would be over! I'm still looking!) Nick went down to breakfast ahead of us and said that an alligator had crawled out of the river and was sunning on the sidewalk - but it was gone by the time Boone and I went down later. Maybe we'll get lucky in the morning and get out there before the hotel staff chases him back into the river!

Our first stop of the day was Disney's Hollywood Studios theme park. We watched some very talented street performers dressed like Hollywood starlets of the 1940's. We were also treated to a High School Musical 3 parade and outdoor music review at Hollywood Studios.

I found something else that I felt that Sebastian needed. As I paid for my purchase, the old codger working the cash register told me that I had been at Animal Kingdom yesterday. Amazed, I asked him how he knew that. His reply: "Your money is still wet!"

We spent some time in a Hollywood memorabilia shop. One of the signature items was a striped jacket worn by Dick Van Dyke in the movie Mary Poppins. It was sale priced at just $65,000! Unfortunately, it was a tad too small for me!

The second stop was Epcot Center which is well worth the trip to Florida by itself. We began by riding through the highlights of world history inside of the signature Epcot sphere. It is something that all school kids should experience, as well as their teachers and parents. After that we had lunch in the British section, we listened to a Beatles Tribute Band playing in a gazebo, and then walked around the lake and visited many of the national exhibits. I was drawn to the Moroccan exhibit and it seemed to grab Boone's attention as well. We saw the Islamic designs of the tile work, displays of Moroccan clothing, oriental rugs, and other items of Muslim culture. Boone said Morocco was "awesome!"

At Japan we watched three amazing drummers entertaining the crowd on in front of the five-story pagoda. There was also a "Tori Gate" next to the lake that let me share some of Nick's Okinawan heritage with him. We were in Africa heading to Mexico when the draw bridge connecting the two began to raise. Boone seemed to find that process interesting. Well, we all did! One of our final stops at Epcot was a Viking exhibit from Sweden. (I had visited a Viking archaeological sight on an island called Birka while in Sweden several years ago, and was interested to see what was in this exhibit. I wasn't disappointed!)

After exiting the Epcot Center, we boarded a large boat and cruised across the lake to the Magic Kingdom. While there we rode a Jungle River Ride in Adventure Land, and did the Buzz Lightyear Laser Ride in Tomorrow Land. Both were a lot of fun.

I visited with an older lady who was an official Disney photographer. She said that she and her husband moved to Orlando from Michigan after they retired to work at Disney World. She liked being a photographer because it paid better than some of the other park positions that she had held. She said that her husband, who is eighty, drives a bus for Disney! (I started checking out the drivers before boarding!) The photographer told me that there are some nice benefits that come with working at Disney - like free park passes for friends! That may be my next great adventure as a foot soldier in the American labor force.

Disney Humor:
Speaking of Africa, what is the capital of Africa?
Answer: A

Why is Tigger always jumping?
So he doesn't step on Pooh.

Disney Ripoffs:
The hotels sell refillable mugs for $14.95 that can be filled free in perpetuity at any of the parks. But, you take the mugs to the parks and they tell you that they don't know what you're talking about.

Many of the poorer tourists (like us) buy meal tickets in advance. They cover each person in the group with one snack, one quick service meal, and one sit-down meal per day. It is a very smart way to handle food expenses. The sit-down meal can be lunch or dinner. Yesterday we had lunch at a nice Chinese restaurant - Nick has shrimp and steak, and I had salmon - total bill was eighty some dollars. It was covered by the meal plan. The ripoff: Today we stopped at the Brown Derby at Hollywood Studios. Their meals were in the same price range as what we had yesterday. The staff there said that a meal would cost us each two meals on the meal plan! Scum! Later we stopped the Canadian restaurant at Epcot. They operated only on reservations made 90 days in advance. That ought to keep out the riffraff! Fortunately, the food at the British restaurant was superb, and served without any gimmicks.

Miracle at the House of Mouse: Remember my new digital camera that reacted badly to being washed yesterday? Last night Nick suggested that I take out the battery and photo card, leave the camera open over night, and see if it would dry out. Well, it did - and it works! Nick is so smart! He definitely takes after his dad!

One of our minor adventures today had Boone feeding popcorn to a mama duck and her three ducklings. He was quite popular!

We are still having a great time. We have one more day of touring the parks, and Thursday we will board the cruise ship and head toward the Bahamas. We are due return to the real world on Sunday - unless we get lucky and pirates hijack our ship!

More to follow...

A Long Day at Two Parks

by Pa Rock
Footsore and Fancy Free

The day started out crappy. My only bag couldn't be found last night, so I missed my evening insulin and some other meds. This morning they tracked it down to the hotel that we would have been at - if I hadn't changed the reservation at the last minute so that we could buy the meal card. I was able to take my morning shot and put on clean clothes, but was still meaner than a bear until around noon when all of the drugs started to kick in.

The afternoon was delightful. I didn't even get disturbed when I realized that my new digital camera got murdered on the water ride. (We were on some sort of spinning raft ride with eight people to a raft - and I was the lucky cuss who got the wettest spot! The camera looks to be a hopeless case.) We had a very nice afternoon meal in an air-conditioned, oriental restaurant at the Animal Kingdom, and I was still soaked from the ride. I have been sneezing all evening and expect to contract full-blown pneumonia. Could there be a classier exit than dying at Disney World?

The other park that we hit today was the Magic Kingdom, which is much like the old Disney Land that I visited in California in 1958 - back when Uncle Walt was still alive. I liked the Magic Kingdom a lot. We rode the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Adventure Land, saw a computer-generated Monsters Inc show in Tomorrow Land, rode through the Snow White story, and walked through the Old West and Cinderella's Castle.

All of the rides and things were great fun, but the absolute highlight of the day was a squirrel eating a chocolate chip cookie that someone had tossed into one of the flower beds. People could get right up next to him and take his picture while he munched away. His name was Bob, and I am betting that he is really wired tonight after eating all of those chocolate chips!

We only had one celebrity sighting today. Pluto was posing with tourists out in front of the Magic Kingdom.

I found a "Goofy" tee-shirt for myself and something special for Sebastian.

We are staying at the Port Orleans French Quarter. Lots of iron grill work, and Spanish moss hanging from all of the trees. The Spanish moss is dangling so neatly that one would suspect that it was hung there by Disney's minimum wage slaves - like foil icicles on Christmas trees.

Most of the people working here are either college age or my age, with not many in between, a clue that people supporting families probably can't afford to be employed by Disney. But, with one sourpuss exception, all have been very courteous and fun to banter with. I am seriously thinking that I might want to come here and be Goofy when I retire from the rat race. I've also given some thought to being Pluto, but I really don't get Pluto.

More to follow...

The Magical Express

by Pa Rock
Weary Traveler

Holy Moley it's muggy in Orlando!

It was a very long night and a very early morning. I flew from Phoenix to Atlanta and then on to Orlando. Now I am on-board the Magical Express heading toward Disney World. Nick and Boone checked in a couple of hours ago and are undoubtedly oriented to the park's offerings by now.

The part of Orlando that I am seeing from the bus windows doesn't look too far removed from the swamp that Uncle Walt probably found here in the 1960's. There are lots of tall pines and new, cheap looking housing that is probably in the six figures.

A loop is playing on the bus televisions featuring Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and Daisy showing us how to navigate through the Disney maze. Uncle Walt is also featured. It looks like we will be in for a very busy week! Now Goofy is on - he's my favorite!

More later....

A Disney Adventure!

by Pa Rock
World Traveler

I'm off on another trip tomorrow, a fun adventure to Disney World in Florida followed by a cruise to the Bahamas on one of Disney's big boats (probably the S.S. Goofy!). My oldest son, Nick, and his only son, Boone, will be waiting for me at the Port Orleans Resort at Disney World.

This will be my third summer of going somewhere with Boone. Two years ago he and Nick and I rode Amtrak from Topeka to Flagstaff and then drove south in a rented car to Phoenix where we met his new cousin, Sebastian. We also took in Sedona and the Grand Canyon on that trip. Last summer he and his Dad flew to Phoenix and we drove to San Diego where Boone was able to see the ocean for the first time. You only get to see the ocean for the first time once, and Pa Rock was thrilled to be there when his oldest grandson had that experience!

Boone is ten-years-old now and should really enjoy his time in the theme park and at sea. (I once told a friend that a Disney Cruise was my definition of hell, but he assured me that the kids are kept very busy and the old fogies are free to enjoy more leisurely pursuits.) I'm sure that we will all have a blast!

And,yes, I'm going to be on the lookout for pirates. It would be like just like that devious (yet charmingly flamboyant) Captain Jack Sparrow to try something on the high seas!

More to follow...

Glory Be to the Second Amendment!

by Pa Rock
Amused Spectator

The news was saturated with gun stories yesterday, really great gun stories!

Pastor Ken Pagano of the New Bethel Church (part of the Assemblies of God Congregation) in Louisville, KY, announced that his church will hold an "Open Carry Church Service" on Saturday afternoon, June 27th, in which church members will be invited to come to church with their holstered weapons. Pastor Pagano said that this event will tie in with Fourth of July celebrations and is intended to help the church grow its flock.

One of the on-line posters promoting this church event uses a red font resembling bloodstains with the words "Open Carry Church Service." Highlights of the event will include a drawing for a free handgun and sermons by gun store owners and operators of firing ranges. Win Underwood, owner of a local indoor firing range, said that New Bethel members regularly have outings at his range.

Pastor Pagano said that he was trying to think outside of the box for ways to increase membership at his church. He added proudly, "Not every branch of Christianity is pacifistic."

No word yet on whether the Prince of Peace will put in an appearance or personally endorse the event!

Mark Sanford, the cracker governor of South Carolina who has spent the last couple of months trying to turn down federal stimulus money that would benefit his state's schools, yesterday signed into law a bill that makes it legal to have guns in vehicles on school property. The new law does not provide for any additional oversight or enforcement. Proponents of the bill said that it would save parents time if they were called to school because they would not have to rush home to ditch their guns. It should also help end contentious arguments at PTA meetings, settle disagreements over grades, and assist football officials to see the errors in their calls!

The third gun story strikes a little closer to home - for me. A young man wanted to take his semi-automatic pistol with him on a U.S. Airways flight from Philadelphia to Phoenix. His roommate worked security for U.S. Airways. The two men conspired to switch bags as the air traveler stepped through security, allowing him to pick up the one that actually held the gun. He got on the plane with it and stored it in the overhead. Fortunately, an alert passenger observed the switch and alerted authorities; The FBI now has both of these geniuses in custody.

Here's what I think: Guns in church are a great idea! When the Holy Spirit enters the House of God and rocks the congregants, they need some way to show their joy. Not everyone can sing in the choir! And guns in school? You betcha! Every teacher needs to have the self-confidence that can only come with packing heat - and playground supervision would be a breeze! Principals might not have to spend so much time swinging the paddle if those juvenile delinquents - and teachers - knew that the principal's authority was backed up by Smith and Wesson! Cooks and bus drivers could stop disrespect in its tracks with a ready snarl and big-assed pistol! The benefits seem endless!

And here's what pisses me off: If we can take our guns to church and to school, what the hell's wrong with taking them on planes? Doesn't the Second Amendment apply in the sky. Do we lose our Constitutional rights when the landing gear goes up? Why do they call it the "wild blue yonder" if we're all strapped into cramped seats seven miles up and totally defenseless?

Free the Philadelphia Two!

Go in Peace, Grasshopper!

by Pa Rock
Obituariest

David Carradine died yesterday in Bangkok, Thailand. He was found hanging by the neck in his hotel room closet. His death was probably a suicide. Carradine was a highly successful actor, with over two hundred acting credits listed on his page at the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com). And while Mr. Carradine played a wide variety of characters on television and in films, he will forever be Grasshopper to my generation.

I'm not a lover of westerns, at least not to the extent that my father is, but there was one television western that was so much better than the rest that I couldn't keep from being a fan. Kung Fu ran from 1972 to 1975, roughly the same years as the United States was succumbing to the peace movement and extricating itself from Vietnam, and the years that democracy was repairing itself by removing Richard Nixon from the White House.

It was a time that America was sorely in need of some peace and tranquility, and that need was met by the television character of Kwai Chang Caine (aka Grasshopper), the son of a Chinese mother and an American father. Caine was forced to flee his homeland of China as a young man after he killed the Emperor's nephew - an evil cur who had murdered Caine's teacher. Caine traveled to the American old west where he walked from town to town righting wrongs with marshal arts and his peaceful philosophy. He was also looking for his mysterious American half-brother during his travels.

David Carradine, an actor, athlete, and dancer, brought Caine to life as a peaceful warrior. The great Bruce Lee wanted to play Caine, but he was passed over for the non-Asian, yet more serene, Carradine - a move that was instrumental in making both of their careers. Carradine's Caine became an unforgettable inhabitant of television history, and Lee went to Hong Kong where made some great marshal arts films. Today both men are legend.

David Carradine was 72-years-old at the time of his death. He had his demons, but his calm and reassuring presence in the starring role of Kung Fu did much to quell the demons that many of the rest of us had thirty years ago. I hope and trust that his demons are gone now and he has rejoined the peaceful and karmic flow of the universe.

Peaceful trails, Grasshopper!

Don't believe in God? You are not alone.

by Pa Rock
Pernicious Provocateur

The National Rifle Association has barely had time to mop up after its week of licentious behavior and public urination and vomiting in downtown Phoenix when the Valley of Hell has to begin preparing for another big-time conclave. This time it's the humanists who are headed into town - well actually humanists, atheists, and agnostics. The American Humanist Association will be having its 68th Annual Conference in Tempe on June 5-8.

The Phoenix area is a hotbed of racism and snarling Christianity - and proud of it! The arrival of all of these godless perverts and intellectuals is guaranteed to drive our hate-mongering, gun-toting, white Christians even more nuts than they already are. (It's probably fortunate that the humanist convention did not overlap with the NRA's hooker fest!)

And just to spit in the eyes of our local pious populace, the humanists will be unveiling a large billboard at a yet-to-be-disclosed busy location. The message: "Don't believe in God? You are not alone."

Stay tuned for updates. This is going to be more fun than a ringside seat at the cage fights!

August Rush

by Pa Rock
Film Critic

I discovered August Rush quite by accident as I was channel surfing a couple of nights ago. It took me just a few moments to be swept up into the tale of the eleven-year-old orphan who could hear music and knew that it was his parents calling out to him.

The parents were Keri Russell - a concert cellist, and Jonathan Rhys Meyers - a bass guitarist and singer in a rock band. Their music magically combines one warm summer night in New York City and draws them to each other. They meet for the first time that night at a party, after their respective concerts, and wind up spending a night of passion on an outdoor bench. The next day they are separated by the girl's evil father (William Sadler), who wants his daughter to reach musical greatness without the unnecessary distraction of a rocker boyfriend.

The girl becomes pregnant (of course) as a result of her one night stand. She gives birth to a son, but is told by her father that the boy died. Grampa then spirits the baby off to a group home where he grows up hearing music and waiting on his parents to find him.

And the world moves on. The two lovers pine for each other but each assumes that the other has moved on. Neither realize that they have a son waiting to be found.

Evan (Freddie Highmore) flees the group home and goes in search of a social worker (Terrence Howard) who has befriended him. (Gotta love those social workers!) Instead of finding the social worker, he winds up in the clutches of Robin Williams, a Fagan character who places street urchins around the city playing music for tips. The money, of course, goes to Williams. When Evan picks up a guitar and immediately begins making wonderful music, Williams knows that he has a gold mine. It is Williams who changes Evan's name to August Rush, after a brand name that he saw painted on the side of a truck.

That's enough about the story. Suffice it to say that this is a happy movie for the child in all of us, but it has enough sinister elements to keep up a decent level of suspense. The villainy aside, you know in your heart that things will work out for this young musical prodigy and his star-crossed parents. The music is superb, making August Rush a treat for the ears as well as for the heart.

The music was so good that I bought the sound track. The movie was so good that I will make a point of seeing it again. I recommend August Rush enthusiastically!

Worse Than al-Qaeda

by Pa Rock
Outraged Citizen

It's easy to be mad at al-Qaeda. Those crazy bastards go around killing people in the name of Muhammad or Allah. Crazy people with a crazy prophet and a crazy God. Killing in the name of their God - what an outrage!

Fortunately, here in America we are better than that. Religion is ... well, religious. It's about love and peace - not hate.

And if you believe that horseshit, let me sell you a prime piece of the Sonoran Desert.

Yesterday a "good" Christian shot and killed a physician in a church in Kansas in the name and spirit of his God. You know the story by now. Dr. George Tiller, a women's reproductive health provider, was gunned down while he was handing out programs at his Lutheran Church in Wichita. The shooter, Scott Roeder, belonged to the "Freemen," a group of whackos who believe that our government is out to get us. He was once arrested for having bomb-making materials in his car. I don't believe that he has had to opportunity to speak to the press, but be assured that he shot the doctor secure in the knowledge that he was doing the Lord's work.

God Bless Dr. Tiller for even attempting to practice medicine in Kansas. The Sunflower State is, after all, the home of homophobic lunatic Fred Phelps and his equally insane daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper. Kansas has been in a long struggle as the state board of education attempted to pass "creationism" off as science education. And then there is Bob Dole. Kansas is a very strange place!

A few years ago Dr. Tiller was wounded in each arm by a deranged "Christian" woman. His clinic has been burned, and recently suffered serious and expensive vandalism. At least one statewide elected official is thought to have been feeding confidential information about the doctor to members of the state's hate groups.

Conservative clown Bill O'Reilly has been hammering Dr. Tiller as "Tiller the Baby Killer" on his Fox News (sic) Show for several years, and provocateur Ann Coulter has also singled him out for at least one of her abusive tirades. Christian charity at its finest!

Here is another side of Dr. George Tiller. It was posted at The Daily Kos today by someone who actually knew him (www.dailykos.com):

The George Tiller I Knew

by loree920

Sun May 31, 2009 at 06:45:47 PM PDT

Like many in this community, my heart is heavy today. There have been many great diaries that talk about Dr. Tiller's years of service to women, and the threats he has endured throughout the last years of his life. My story is a bit more personal and I want to share it with all of you to give you more insight into the man.

In 1975 my Mom noticed an indention in her left breast. She called and made an appointment with her OB/GYN, Dr. George Tiller. After his initial examination, he ordered a biopsy. While performing the biopsy he immediately knew that the lump was cancerous. Instead of just closing and scheduling surgery, he “grabbed a handful”, his words not mine. Her cancer Dr. credited this quick thinking by Dr. Tiller with saving her life, and due to this she didn’t even have to undergo chemotherapy.

Several years later my Mother and I were driving by his clinic in Wichita. Mom started complaining of chest pains, so I drove into his parking lot and ran in to get help. Dr. Tiller was by Mom’s side immediately, and stabilized her, before the heart attack could cause severe damage.

In 1980 I was pregnant with my first child. I had no insurance and couldn't afford a doctors appointment until I was approved for a medical card.. Mom told Dr. Tiller and he brought me into his office where he examined me, free of charge. I can credit him with the very first picture taken of my son.

The last story I have to share is about my friends who could not have children. Dr. Tiller’s office worked with several attorneys in the Wichita area to provide adoption services for his patients who wanted this option. My friends have a 10 yr. old boy now, who is loved and adored.

I’m not a great writer, so I apologize that this isn’t nearly as eloquent as some of the diaries on Daily Kos. I just wanted to get this story out to you, so you could hear how this man wasn’t just a tremendous fighter for women's rights. He was a brilliant physician, and a kind and compassionate human being. RIP Dr. Tiller and thank you for all you did for my friends and my family.

So the evil "Tiller the Baby Killer" was really a human being - and now he's a dead human being, executed by a "good" Christian who was just doing the Lord's work.

Is anyone surprised that good God-fearing Christian Americans would kill? Certainly not me. Several members of the conservative noise machine are relentless in their castigation of anything that seems directed at alleviating suffering or poverty. Their Jesus was just babbling when he talked caring for the poorest among us - and the meek inheriting the earth - yeah, right! Their God is a very old white man who doesn't like Mexicans or gays, and isn't overly fond of independent women - and those silly stories in the Bible should not be taken literally - except when they meet the greedy interests of well-heeled "Christians."

Yes, but our terrorists don't blow up buildings and kill indiscriminately. Of course they do - remember Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols taking down the Federal Building in Oklahoma City? Or Eric Robert Rudolph, the sick fuck who set off the bomb at the Atlanta Olympics? Mr. Rudolph also earned fame as a bomber of women's clinics before he became a twisted version of a folk hero as he roamed the mountains of North Carolina hiding from the FBI.

If our government was truly invested in rooting out terrorism, it wouldn't have dropped the ball in Afghanistan and rushed off to Iraq to massage George Bush's daddy issues. And if our government was truly, truly invested in stamping out terrorism, our troops would be heading off to places like Idaho and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and blasting those in-bred, gun-toting militia idiots out of their trees. Let the Middle East take responsibility for their own terrorists - we have plenty of our own to deal with here at home.

And our terrorists are just as awful as theirs - maybe even worse.

"There are few things in this world as evil as a 'good' Christian." -- Pa Rock

The Lumley Vampire

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

A few days ago I wrote a post about the people of Hardin, Montana, who own a brand new prison, a state-of-the-art prison that has never held a convict. The community passed a $20 million bond issue to build the facility with what they felt was a tacit agreement from the state of Montana that if the prison was built, the state would use it. The intent was to spur local job growth (at least 100 new jobs) and ignite the local economy. It should have worked because incarceration is a huge business in America. But when the prison was completed, the convicts never came. The town's citizens began to lobby to have the prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, brought to the prison at Hardin, but the Montana Congressional delegation quickly scuttled that plan declaring that captured al-Qaeda terrorists would never be brought to Big Sky country.

In the piece I suggested that private prisons, while not ideal, seemed to work well in Arizona, so perhaps Montana should lighten up on the entrepreneurs of Hardin. That was a dumb statement, and I knew that as I typed it. Anytime government turns some public function over to a private company (like the evil Blackwater running the war in Iraq), the pooch inevitably gets screwed.

The next morning Anonymous had replied to the post with a stinging rebuke:

Private prisons aren't "working" in Arizona or anywhere else unless you count frequent escapes and murders as "working." They have all sorts of problems. In Eloy's CCA-owned La Palma, there's hardly a day goes by without an assault on staff.

Hardin Montana has a vastly overpriced minimum security facility that should never have been built. Texas hucksters made off with millions in investor money.

Anonymous appears to be somebody who works with the Arizona Department of Corrections and has intimate knowledge of what is happening in the prison system. (Eloy is a community outside of Phoenix that is home to a giant private prison. CCA is Corrections Corporation of America, a monster company that owns numerous private prisons.)

Having been righteously chastised, I determined to expend some effort in learning more about the penal system of Arizona. And although I haven't found much regarding escapes, there is enough in the press to strongly indicate that the prisons in Arizona are festering pits of abuse, abuse directed at prisoners as well as staff.

An example of prisoner abuse occurred this past week at the Perryville Women's Prison in Goodyear, AZ. Arizona is bitchin' hot in the summer - and two-thirds of the days this month have been over 100 degrees. Last Wednesday, 48-year-old Marcia Powell, who was serving a 27-month sentence for the victimless crime of prostitution, was placed in an outdoor holding cell and essentially forgotten. When guards got around to checking on her four hours later, she was unconscious from the heat. Ten or so hours after that when it became apparent that she was in a vegetative state and would not survive, Department of Corrections Director, Charles Ryan, ordered Ms. Powell removed from life support.

It was over 100 degrees last Wednesday. Outdoor holding cells at Perryville have no water or shade, and prison policy calls for prisoner's to be held in those cells no longer than two hours. Changes are being made to ensure that this tragedy is not repeated, but Marcia Powell is still dead.

The abuse of staff appears to also be quite too common in Arizona prisons. Private prisons are notorious for low pay and under-staffing. It was under-staffing that led to the death of of Correctional Officer Brent Lumley at the Perryville facility in 1997. Lumley was overpowered by prisoners and killed as he struggled to open the door to a control room.

Officer Lumley was memorialized by his co-workers in a most unique manner. Shortly after his death, a newsletter entitled The Lumley Vampire began circulating among prison staff and showing up on the windshields of employees. (The name "Vampire" comes from the fact that it originated with the prison's graveyard shift.) Prison officials, not being overtly enamored of the First Amendment, quickly got the ink-on-paper effort shut down - but the Vampire went underground and surfaced in cyberspace where it flourishes to this day.

The Lumley Vampire is the source for hard news on what is occurring in the prisons of Arizona as well as those nationwide. The site may be accessed at: http://thelumleyvampire.homestead.com/

Officer Brent Lumley was killed because there was not sufficient staff on duty to come to his defense. Under-staffing puts money in the pockets of the prison owners, and so does low pay for employees and deliberate over-crowding of prisoners. Capitalism works fine some places, but prisons run for profit are scary propositions.

It's past time for the states to take back their responsibility to society and to prisoners. Prisons should be run by people who can be held accountable to the voters. Wars should, too.

Suicides Temporarily Shut Down Ft. Campbell

by Rocky G. Macy
Licensed Clinical Social Worker

As a former mental health provider at Ft. Campbell, KY, I was saddened, though not necessarily surprised, to learn about the rash of suicides that has plagued the post over recent months. According to news reports this week, the 101st Airborne Division (basically all of Ft. Campbell) has suffered eleven confirmed or suspected suicides recently, including two in the past week.

This week, in an effort to take a breather and examine the problem, and hopefully stem the tide of this horrific dynamic, the base commander, Brigadier General Stephen Townsend, announced a three-day stand-down to focus on the problem and look for solutions. Regarding the rash in suicides, Townsend told his troops, "It's bad for soldiers, it's bad for families, bad for your units, bad for this division - and our army - and our country - and it's got to stop now. Suicides at Ft. Campbell have to stop now!"

Yup. Brigadier General Stephen Townsend has ordered the suicides to stop. That ought to get the job done - after all, the man has a star on each shoulder.

One hundred and fifteen U.S. soldiers took their own lives in 2007. That number rose to 128 in 2008, and this year it is already at 64 and on track to beat last year's total. Sadly, of all the army units, Ft. Campbell is in the lead.

I worked as a mental health provider at Ft. Campbell from 2005 to 2007, so I have some understanding of what is happening. First. like most military units, Ft. Campbell has a shortage of mental health professionals. And even if every slot for social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists was filled, it would still be an uphill struggle to evaluate and monitor every soldier who has gone through the trauma of one, two, three, four, or even five long tours of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan.

One tour can ruin a marriage and destroy a family. Loneliness and infidelity take their toll both at home and in the combat theatre. One tour can take a happy, well-adjusted young person and return him (or her) with emotional and psychological issues that will impact the veteran for years - or longer. And that's just one tour.

Multiple tours take all of the risks and dangers of one tour and increase them exponentially. If one tour doesn't wreck a family, two very well may. Fathers and mothers return from the desert to discover that their children have grown up and away from them. The parent who had remained at home has become the decision-maker, the go-to person when something needs to be approved or accomplished. It takes months for the family to re-group as it was prior to the deployment, and by the time it does, the next deployment has rolled around.

I've harped on this before, but it needs to be explained again - so bear with me. Numerous deployments are a product of the dishonest way this war has been waged. Bush, Cheney, and Rummy didn't want to institute a draft - because each of the three had clear memories of the social upheaval that resulted from the draft for Vietnam and did not want to see the country get that fired up over their oil war. (They also undoubtedly remembered all of their own artful dodging to keep from going to Vietnam, and did not want to put today's children of privilege in that same predicament.)

So having a draft was out of the question. Bush, Cheney, and Rummy did not want to do anything to create and stoke public resentment to their Middle East misadventure. Where, then, were the troops going to come from to fight their war?

One way was to recruit soldiers from the general population. Recruiting quotas were increased and recruiters were forced to scrape the bottom of society's barrel in order to meet those quotas. The minimum enlistment age was raised to forty-two, and recruiters routinely told marginal applicants how to pass drug exams and falsify other entrance requirements. Steven Green, also a member of the 101st Airborne Division at Ft. Campbell, was brought into the army with no difficulties, even though the young man had obvious psychological issues - issues that led to the slaughter of an Iraqi family.

The other method was to not let soldiers out of the army when their terms of enlistment expired (a back door draft called "Operation Stop Loss"), and to keep pumping them into the combat zones over and over.

In a line obviously stolen from a social worker, Brigadier General Townsend said, "Suicide is a permanent solution to what is only a temporary problem."

It's not a temporary problem, General, it's a recurring problem. Something has to be done to get these young people off the combat merry-go-round.

General Townsend, you and your brother generals need to step up to the plate and let the Defense Department and the President know that the mental health of your troops is being worn away. The casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan are not limited to the battlefields. Many of those brave men and women appear to be fine when they march into the hangars at your base for reunions with their families, but they are often ticking time bombs (or land mines, or IED's) that will suddenly go off weeks, months, or even years after the welcoming bands have played their last happy notes.

Good mental health is not something that can be "ordered" to occur. For our troops to have even a semblance of a chance for a future of good mental health, multiple deployments must come to an end. If these are wars that have to be fought, bring back the draft and share the burden with those who couldn't be bothered to volunteer to serve. And maybe thirty or forty years from now when we are on the verge of some other major military operation, our country will have the leadership of people who actually went to war and understand its reality.

The men and women at Ft. Campbell are in my thoughts and prayers.

In Bruges

by Pa Rock
Film Critic

I caught this much ballyhooed independent film on cable last night and was quickly captivated. In Bruges is the story of two hit men on the lam due to a very botched crime, and the numerous intersecting lives and stories that wash through their exile. It is apparent from early on that this story will end tragically, yet there are many laughs en route to the bloody ending.

The hit men of In Bruges are Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan Gleeson). They are in the employ of the mysterious Harry (Ralph Fiennes). As the story begins, Ray is in a church confessional telling the priest that he murdered someone for money. "You murdered a man for money?" the priest asks. "Who, Ray?" The reply: "You, Father." Ray begins shooting the priest through the confessional wall, but the stout Catholic cleric doesn't die easily. He gets up and walks away. Ray comes up behind him shooting some more, eventually bringing the priest down. When the priest falls and dies, a young boy is revealed lying in a pool of blood on the floor. He has also been killed by Ray.

That was Ray's first hit, and it went badly awry. Harry sends Ray and Ken, the experienced hit man, to the medieval city of Bruges, Belgium, to hide out. From there is gets funny, and complicated, and more deadly.

Fifteen or twenty minutes into this film I began to have a sense of deja vu. In Bruges has a very similar feel to the 1996 classic, 2 Days in the Valley, which was also a tale about a botched murder with several intersecting lives swirling through the resultant mayhem. Both were delightful on one level and absorbing on another.

I recommend In Bruges highly. And if it leaves you wanting more, rent a copy of 2 Days in the Valley. It will be an evening well spent!

The Apology

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Steven Green, the former U.S. Army private who led the brutal attack on an Iraqi family in order that he and his friends could rape the pretty fourteen-year-old daughter, was convicted last week of the raping and killing the girl. He was also found guilty of murdering her parents and her younger sister. The jury could not come to a unanimous decision to impose the death penalty on Green, probably due in large measure to their knowledge of some of the abuse that he suffered as a child. Some jurors may have also factored in the devaluation of human life that accompanies war - who knows for sure? Because the jury could not act in unanimity, the judge was obligated to sentence young Mr. Green to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

And I am much like those jurors. Where is the line that serves as a boundary between an abusive childhood and an evil adulthood? At what point did that pathetic child finally become an irredeemable monster? Would killing him right any wrongs? Will permitting him to live decades in a cage and finally die in a cage accomplish anything either?

Today Mr. Green apologized to the relatives of the family that he murdered. He didn't have to, because his verdict had already been determined. But he chose to express his shame to those family members gathered the courthouse in Paducah, KY. While his words were simple, they rang with sincerity. Mr. Green said:

"I helped to destroy a family and end the lives of four of my fellow human beings, and I wish that I could take it back, but I cannot. And, as inadequate as this apology is, it is all I can give you...I know you wish I was dead, and I do not hold that against you. If I was in your place, I am convinced beyond any doubt that I would feel the same way...I know that I have done evil, and I fear that the wrath of the Lord will come upon me on that day. But, I hope that you and your family at least can find some comfort in God's justice."

Steven Green said that he now sees the Iraq War as "intrinsically evil because killing is intrinsically evil." He added that he was sorry that he had anything to do with either.

Amen.

Hard Luck, Montana

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

The 3,600 residents of Hardin, Montana, thought they had come up with a sure-fire way to stimulate the local economy a couple of years ago when they floated a $27 million bond issue to build a state-of-the-art prison that would hold 464 inmates. The facility would be leased to a private prison company, and up to one hundred locals would be hired to work there. Those technical or licensed positions that could not be filled by Hardin residents would attract high-salaried individuals from the outside who would, of course, purchase local goods and services - and homes. Although the good people of Hardin had no contracts to fill the prison with inmates, their politicians felt that the state was implicitly implying that it would support the facility.

Wrong.

Hardin sued the state for the political equivalent of breach-of-promise, and won the case. But still the prisoners did not come. Montana has a law on the books that prohibits the importation of prisoners from other states, and there was apparently no pressing need for more prison space. (Although the closest county jail has to turn away minor offenders because their prisoners are already stacked too high.) The $27 millions dollars in bonds went into default last year.

So, there is a new prison - a high quality prison - sitting vacant on forty acres near Hardin, Montana. When President Obama announced that Gitmo would be closed and its prisoners moved, the folks in Hardin sensed that Christmas might be about to happen. Their city council voted unanimously to offer up the empty prison for any or all of Gitmo's 240 "detainees." Yup, the people that nobody wanted had a safe lock-up waiting in Hardin, Montana. Bring 'em on!

But once again Hardin was foiled by its state politicians. Senator Max Baucus, who can be semi-intelligent if it suits him, said that he feels for the poor folks of Hardin, but..."we're not going to bring al-Qaeda to Big Sky Country - no way, not on my watch!" So much for being supportive of community development.

It can hardly be a safety issue, because if there is any state in the union that is better armed than Arizona, it has to be Montana. Any prisoner who managed to escape this maximum security facility would step into a frenzy of flying lead. It would be a bigger deal than elk season!

And water-boarding could be retired for good. One bitch of a Montana winter would have those terrorists spilling their guts about everything!

Hardin is missing the economic gravy train due to the political cowardice of its entire (3-person) Congressional delegation. The good folks of Hardin can kiss their $27 million good-bye thanks to the NIMBY (not in my back yard) attitude of a pack of dumbass political yahoos.

I am not a fan of privately run prisons, feeling they could easily become breeding grounds for all manner of abuse. But, they seem to be working in Arizona. So, if the people of Hardin have a prison waiting, and want the Gitmo prisoners - let's get it going!

And if that doesn't work out - McDonald County, Missouri, is still available. I will personally buy some of those bonds!

The Arizona State Motto

by Pa Rock
Proud Arizonan

Arizona has an unofficial state motto: "The Grand Canyon State." It adorns most of our license plates and assorted postcards and souvenirs. Surprisingly, that little gem of a motto apparently was never officially adopted by the state legislature, and a move is now on to correct that oversight.

The story unfolded this way: A fifth grader in California sent an email to one of our prize state legislators asking if the state had an official motto. Upon researching the question, the legislator (or more likely his intern) discovered that our motto had never been officially made official. The amazing aspect of this story is, of course, the fact that the fifth grader happened to pick a legislator who could read - but, again, it was probably handled by his intern.

So, the legislator, who was between between gun bills, decided that this might be a non-controversial bill to sponsor. And now, if nobody bitches, "The Grand Canyon State" will soon become the official state motto of Arizona.

If nobody bitches...

Enter Pa Rock. "The Grand Canyon State" has got to be one of the lamest state mottoes ever - probably second only to "Ski Kansas!" So, in an effort to spare the great state of Arizona more than its normal share of embarrassment, I am hereby submitting the following ideas for the new (official) Arizona state motto. If you see one that you particularly like - or if you have a better one - please forward it on to any member of our state legislature - or, better yet, to one of their interns. (These are in no special or preferential order.)

Arizona:

America's Sandbox!
It's a Dry Heat!
Death Valley East!
Hellizona!
Rain! Rain! We Don't Need No Stinking Rain!
America's Rest Home!
Armed and Stupid!
Welcome to Hell on Earth!
Our Politicians are Dumber than Yours!
The Scorpion State!

And, should the city of Phoenix ever get the itch to have it's own official motto, I humbly propose the following:

Phoenix: Arizona's Other Big Hole!

Extended Workout

by Pa Rock
Heavy Breather

I used to date a beautiful young lady (Hi, Susan!) who would drive her little sports car around the Wal-Mart parking lot for thirty minutes looking for the absolute closest-to-the-door parking spot that she could find. Never mind that she could have been in the store and out in the time it took her to find that exceptional spot, and don't even begin to tally up the wasted gas! It was a convenience thing.

So maybe after a hard day at work, people have some sort of innate right to try avoiding a long march across the hot asphalt. But what about the lunkheads who go to my gym here in sunny Arizona? There are some shady spots at the back of the lot, which is where I always head, but some of the more fit specimens of humanity like to sit in their tricked-out trucks and big-assed SUV's with the air conditioning running while waiting on something closer to the doors to open up. And then when they finally find a spot that suits them, they amble up to the front doors toting nothing more than a gym bag - and hit the button that automatically opens the doors!

It's a gym, genius! You're not there to primp and model athletic gear - you're there to sweat! Consider that trek across the length of the parking lot to be your warm-up for the treadmill, and pulling those big doors open will limber up your arms! Anything less would be as dumb as playing golf for the exercise and then renting a cart!

I think that I may have worked for the military too long!

The Secret of a Successful Weekend

by Pa Rock
Procrastinator

As every working person knows, weekends are too short. Saturdays are set aside for relaxing and licking the wounds of the previous week, while Sundays are for summoning the strength to face five more days on the chain gang. One day of winding down, followed by a day of winding up. That's why it's damned hard to get anything done on a weekend.

I have been unpacking for a month now. Weekends are when it should be happening, but the pull of Saturdays followed by the push Sundays have contrived to keep my momentum firmly stuck in neutral.

But this Sunday was different. Today I didn't have to plan my activities around getting ready to go back to work - because tomorrow is a holiday. I will fret and panic tomorrow. Today I moved furniture, unloaded boxes, shopped for a mop, and had a very productive time of it. Today was a good day!

I also talked to my son, Nick, and his son, Boone. They were at my dad's house in Noel this weekend where Nick mowed the yard at my little farm on Old Pine Trail, and helped his granddad trim up his yard. Nick seemed to have had a very good time showing Boone the world that was his youth. They went fishing at the dam - the place Nick literally grew up - cooked out, played ball, and discovered a swimming hole. Nick is a wonderful dad!

Nick and Boone were able to get to Noel because they had a three-day weekend. And yes, having that third day is the secret of a successful weekend. All of the pressures fade away with that extra day stuffed into the weekend.

Barack, if you're reading this - and who am I to think that you aren't? - four ten-hour workdays each week would boost national productivity and be a wonderful way to live. Make it happen!

Pa Rock at Rhyme

by Pa Rock
Limerickster

While unpacking I ran across a copy of the January-February 1993 issue of Reminisce Magazine. I had saved that copy because it contained a a page of limericks submitted by their readers, and one of those selected for publication was crafted by me. It was an untitled little ditty on the subject of marriage:

A maiden had sights set on wedlock
to a beau who shied from such deadlock.
When she failed at discourse,
she took him by force,
and he walked down the aisle in a headlock!

If you desire to reply to this post, please do so in the form of a limerick. (Free verse 'tis but the curse of a willful pen, and haiku will never do!)

Ain't No Liberty at this "University"

by Pa Rock
Educator

Not every university is the same. Some are private and very good - like many of the Ivy League schools of the northeast, and some are public and also very good - like many schools in the state university systems. A true university is a refuge for those wanting to explore and increase the accumulated knowledge of the world. Real universities tolerate divergent points of view. Unfortunately, there are also some truly bad schools also posing as universities, schools with no tolerance of divergent points of view and whose sole function is to push religious dogma and fight the acquisition of knowledge at every turn.

Liberty University (sic) of Virginia is a grand example of the latter. It is a private school founded by the late televangelist and hate-monger, Jerry Falwell. Liberty prides itself on not encumbering its students with genuine knowledge about the real world, and produces graduates who don't believe in evolution, or apparently, even the two-party system.

The school is little more than a pit of religious fundamentalism. It is the place where John McCain actually lost the 2008 Presidential race when he showed up there a couple of years earlier to lick Falwell's boots as he tried to worm his way back into the good graces of his party's reprobate wing. Many of the kinder and gentler Republicans were aghast at his hypocrisy, and went on to vote for Obama.

Liberty University (sic) allowed a crack in its know-nothing shell last October, one month before the election, when it inexplicably granted a small group of students the right to start a Democratic Club. Apparently that was a move that their fat cat fascist funders could not abide, because last week the university (sic) pulled the plug on its fledgling attempt to accommodate some bipartisanship on campus.

Last Friday Mark Hine, the Vice President of Student Affairs at the pseudo hole of higher learning, sent an email to the Democratic Club president, Brian Diaz. The email, which young Diaz said came "out of the blue" decreed that the club must stop using the university's (sic) name, holding meetings on campus, or advertising events. Violations of that edict could lead to expulsion.

The university (sic) official said yesterday that it could not sanction an official club that supported Democratic candidates - apparently on moral grounds. But, he added for clarification, "We are in no way attempting to stifle free speech."

So far there is no confirmation to the rumors that students who refuse to recant their Democratic tendencies will be burned at the stake - but this story is still evolving!

Fried Spammers!

by Pa Rock
The Retaliator

I like using Google for my email, primarily because it sorts the spam, at least most of it, out of my way and into a special folder. But spammers get smarter every day, and now some have started getting around my spam sniffer by putting the word "Google" in their title.

I received an interesting response to a blog posting that I wrote on April 16, 2009, entitled My Favorite Republican. It was from Anonymous and went on-and-on-and-on - pages and pages of disjointed crap that ended with a threat about not trying to identify the author because he had a right to remain anonymous.

I don't really give a rat's ass who wrote the screed, but I copied it to a word document figuring that it might be useful. This week I began pasting in in replies to spammers. I figured that might have one of two results: a. it would confirm that my email address was a working one and spam would increase, or b. my name would be struck from the spam lists as someone who slows down the system and is not worth the bother. So far - after just a couple of days - I've noticed no difference what-so-ever.

If this turns into a war, the next phase will be for me to copy my most recent 500 blog posts and reply to spam with them. Phase three will be attaching the entire Bible or Koran (or both) to spam replies. (If someone has a copy of one of those - or War and Peace, Gone with the Wind, or the Complete Works of William Shakespeare in word, please consider sharing!)

Can you tell that I have too much time on my hands? Anything to keep from unpacking and getting things put away!

John and Mary: Wherefore Art Thou?

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

There was an interesting piece on baby names in USA Today this morning. The newspaper cited census information in its listing of the fifty most popular baby names for boys and girls from 1890 through the present.

The popularity of first names seems to be partially cyclical, with classy old names occasionally coming back into fashion, and partially experimental with new names constantly surfacing based on unique sounds, things found in nature, bodily functions, political leaders, or even rock stars - often spelled in a stupid manner with an eye toward originality! I have a personal theory that if one was to study the first names of soap opera characters over the years, they would correlate strongly with actual names given to babies during those same periods.

John and Mary were the most popular baby names in 1890. Those two names continued to head the list in 1900, 1910, and 1920. In 1930 John slipped to number three (behind Robert and James), while Mary remained at number one. (I guess that naming your daughter after the mother of Jesus was always seen as a safe bet.) Mary continued to be the most popular girl’s name in 1940, and John hung in there at number three (with the top two being reversed to James and Robert).

Mary was finally knocked from the top spot in 1950, when that name placed second behind Linda. John continued to cling to third behind James and Robert. Mary regained the top spot in 1960, but John slipped to number four – behind David, Michael, and James. (Poor Robert was at an ignominious fifth!) John was still number four in 1970 behind Michael, James, and David, and Mary had plummeted to number nine.

John was down to number eight in 1980 and Mary had dropped to number twenty-six. Mary’s Hispanic cousin, Maria, entered the list that year at number thirty-six. John was at twelve in 1990, with Mary at number thirty-five and Maria at number forty-seven. John was down to fourteen in 2000, and his Hispanic cousin, Juan, came in at forty-eight. Maria was at forty-one in 2000, and Mary placed at forty-seven.

By 2008 John, Juan, Mary, and Maria had been completely eliminated from the listing of most popular names. One variant, Jonathan, did place at number twenty-six on the boys’ list.

The current top ten names for boys in America are: Jacob, Michael, Ethan, Joshua, Daniel, Alexander, Anthony, William, Christopher, and Matthew. The most popular names for girls are: Emma, Isabella, Emily, Madison, Ava, Olivia, Sophia, Abigail, Elizabeth, and Chloe.

To see the complete lists for any of the years listed above, check out today’s on-line edition of USA Today.

Television Roundup

by Pa Rock
Recovering Couch Potato

As I have aged, my interest in the boob tube has declined markedly. I still watch television, but now I view with the aim of seeing something of substance and not just vegging out.

BBC America has its moments of quality, though much of it is beginning to resemble mindless American reality crap. Several years ago that network ran the first season of Shameless, a thoughtful and very funny series about a family of seven children being raised by a worthless and drunken father in public housing in Manchester, England. I liked it so well that I purchased the first season for my son (the playwright) and myself. Shameless is now on its sixth season in Great Britain, but so far BBC America has not seen fit to bring seasons two through six to this side of the Atlantic. That needs to change!

Torchwood is another exceptional British program. It is about a group of researchers who work in Cardiff, Wales, at the site of a time rift where strange creatures occasionally drop in from other times and other worlds. BBC ran the first season and is now sporadically re-running it, but if new episodes are being filmed, they haven't made it to America. Either way, its a shame that new episodes aren't available.

Another new favorite of mine is the HBO series, The Number One Ladies Detective Agency. This show is based on a series of books by Alexander McCall Smith whose main character is a lady in Botswana who has some money saved and decides that she will open an office as a detective. I read the first two books in the series and found them to be unusual and very clever. The HBO series is true to the author's work, and presents the characters and settings very much as I imagined them.

My favorite television program, however, is decidedly American. I discovered Jericho quite by accident last year. The program had been on two seasons and canceled when the CW Network bought the existing episodes and began airing them. It was a Sunday evening and I was doing a bit of channel surfing when I happened upon the first episode of Jericho just as it was beginning. I watched the program, not knowing what to expect. It was passably interesting until the wayward son, Jake, was leaving his hometown of Jericho, KS, after a poor attempt at reconnecting with his family. Suddenly, in the distance, was a mushroom cloud. That got my attention, and I have been a fan of this survivalist tale ever since. It is so disappointing to know that the series ended before I even had the chance to get hooked!

That's my list. Every now and then I catch a good movie - I have HBO free for three months. Less television equals more time for things that are really important - like pounding out this damned blog night after night! But it's my life, and I make the rules. When things get dull or overpowering, I will change the rules!

Milking Scorpions

by Pa Rock
Desert Rat

It was a warm and toasty 107 degrees in the Valley of Hell both yesterday and today. If the current trend continues, it could really get hot by August! Isn't fire also a dry heat?

I read a piece in one of the local rags about a guy who makes a living "milking" scorpions and selected varieties of spiders. The product is used in manufacturing "anti-venoms" and other scientific endeavors. (Colonel Mustard in the library with scorpion venom, anyone?)

Apparently there are two methods for collecting the venom. One involves placing cellophane over a receptacle and the letting the scorpion (or whatever) sting the film. The second method involves strapping the little bugger into some type of restraint, connecting suction tubes, and then stimulating him with an electric shock. Apparently method number two is much more reliable and really gets the old juices flowing!

I have no interest in becoming a scorpion milker, but I know for a fact that I could catch them. Been there, done that. I also milked one, just not in a way that preserved the venom! There are scorpions under most rocks in this cruel desert. Just flip them over and scoop the little bastards up in a paper cup and deposit them in a minnow bucket or some ventilated container. Nothing to it - until you get to the rock that is keeping Brother Rattler cool! That's when it gets interesting!

But the desert is not all hell-on-earth and venom - the sunsets are amazing!

Angels and Demons

by Pa Rock
Movie Critic

This wasn't a great weekend for really devout Catholics. President Obama gave a kick-ass commencement address at the University of Notre Dame to numerous standing ovations - and Angels and Demons opened in theatres across the nation. The President didn't hide from the issue of abortion, but addressed it head-on in his speech, while three dozen pitiful protesters were arrested outside of the venue. Dan Brown, the author of Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code, sees the Catholic Church as being two millennia of shadowy conspiracies. All in all, it was probably a good weekend for most Catholics to hit the beach!

I first read Angels and Demons several years ago, just a few months prior to the death of Pope John Paul II, and well before the election of his successor, the decrepit and intellectually dishonest Benedict XVI. That is significant, because this story centers around the election of a new Pope. Dan Brown, in the novel, goes into intricate detail about how the new Pontiff is chosen, and that portion translates well to the screen.

Angels and Demons was written before The Da Vinci Code, and it is the better of the two books. I read them in the order that they were written, not a must, but there are references to things in the latter that occurred in the former. Ron Howard, the director, brought them to the screen in reverse order, due undoubtedly to the fact that The Da Vinci Code sold like gangbusters and had the whole world talking. (According to Amazon.com, it is the number one selling adult hardback of all time.) People were so taken with Brown's book and his clever take on history, that they then went back and "discovered" Angels and Demons.

Both tales paint the Church in a bad light, undoubtedly the reason that the Vatican refused to provide any assistance to this current movie. The villains in The Da Vinci Code were members of Opus Dei, a secret order within the Church that Brown implied has enormous influence over the Church's operation. Brown put forth a tale of how the pregnant wife of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, was smuggled out of the Holy Land and to the safety of France, and that descendants of Christ were possibly still alive. The Knight's Templar became aware of this unknown royal line during the Crusades and hustled to protect the secret and the descendants. The Church rounded up the Knights Templar and murdered them for their wealth, but, according to Brown's version, a few survived. His Opus Dei, of course, was hellbent on finding these threats to the Church and snuffing them out.

The villains in the other tale, Angels and Demons, were the Illuminati, a secret order that were driven underground a couple of hundred years ago by the Catholic Church because they were too open to the notions of science. In this story, the Illuminati have returned and managed to infiltrate the Vatican where they are killing off the Cardinals most likely to become Pope and threatening to level Vatican City and much of Rome with a small vial of "anti-matter."

The hero of both stories is Harvard symbologist, Robert Langdon, who was adequately portrayed by Tom Hanks. He had a quest in each movie that was accompanied by breath-taking action, pulsating music, and the obligatory pretty girl. Both movies are well worth the seven or eight dollars that it costs to see them, if for no other reason than the tours of Rome and (in The Da Vinci Code) London. But, sadly, neither movie captures the full magic of Dan Brown's work.

There is a scene toward the end of Angels and Demons (the book) where an evil priest, who happens to have a parachute, bails out of a helicopter a mile or so above Vatican City, leaving Robert Langdon and the chopper pilot to deal with the anti-matter bomb that is aboard the helicopter. In the book Langdon jumps from the helicopter, sans parachute, and uses his jacket like a parachute to guide his fall into the Tiber River. Apparently there were no stunt men in the stable willing to tackle that one, and the movie kept Professor Langdon safely on the ground.

Another thing that I found disappointing was that Langdon was flown to Rome in the book via a new experimental aircraft, one that I suspect exists, but Ron Howard left that alone and flew him to Rome in a Vatican jet.

I like Ron Howard, and have since he was running the streets of Mayberry, but I kept wondering what Steven Spielberg would have done with this material. Howard translated the basic stories to film, and he did so in a way that will sell tickets and popcorn, but he definitely did not push any boundaries or break any new ground.

And as for the Vatican's continuing displeasure with Ron Howard and Dan Brown - suck it up, boys. Brown's follow-up to these two fine tales, The Lost Symbol, another Robert Langdon thriller, will be in bookstores on September 15th - and the movie won't be far behind. (Maybe this one will explore the Nazi influence over the Church - that would certainly be timely!)

Mea Culpa

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

A couple of nights ago I spit some venom at the National Rifle Association - always an easy target. In the middle of that rant I also took a sideswipe at funeral directors, suggesting that those in Arizona might have lobbied for an especially heinous piece of gun legislation that permits employees to keep their guns in their cars, on company property, even if the company owner objects. The next morning there was a response, a very nice comment from a Mr. James Showers who identified himself as a funeral director. He was supportive of what I had written about the NRA and did not take me to task over my remark about his profession.

The point that I was trying to make was that this stupid law will increase deaths by guns - and of that there can be no doubt. But after Mr. Showers supportive reply to the post, I regret taking the cheap shot at funeral directors.

James Showers left no way to contact him, and I hope that he reads this and sends me an email (pa.rock.macy@gmail.com). A Google search revealed that he is most likely from Great Britain. I have written about the funeral industry before, especially with regard to green funerals, and I would like to hear how that concept is faring in Britain.

So, Mr. Showers, please accept my apology for disparaging funeral directors. I have known probably a dozen men (they always seem to be men) in this country who serve in that profession, and the ones with whom I have been acquainted have all been very nice. Of course, being pleasant-to-a-fault is practically a job requirement for those charged with dealing with grieving families. Unfortunately, the funeral directors whom I have known have also all been somewhat predatory. They were charming and wealthy, and they were always quick to show their top of the line boxes. It seems like it is just too easy to pick the pockets of those struggling with the loss of a loved one.

The old joke goes that the undertaker shook my hand, and while he was at it, he checked my pulse. (The American undertaker doesn't necessarily wish anyone ill, but if the worst happens he will be quick to roll out his high-end wares!)

Lawrence, Kansas, one of the hippest small cities in America, just set aside part of one of their city-owned cemeteries for green funerals. I'm thinking that I might just make Lawrence my final address.

I may not cheat the devil, but I certainly intend to cheat the staff at the local funeral home!

"No man is completely worthless - he can always serve as plant food!" - Pa Rock

The Hell That Was Steven Green's Childhood

by Pa Rock
Social Worker

Last Saturday in a post entitled The Worst Person in the World I discussed the awful crimes committed by Private Steven Green and some of his fellow soldiers while they were stationed in Iraq in 2006. Green led his buddies in a late evening raid on an Iraqi home with the sole goal of raping the teenage girl who lived there. He began the evening by murdering her little sister and their parents, then he and one of the others raped their selected victim, and they rounded out the night by killing the pretty fourteen-year-old and burning her body. In that article I made the following educated guess / prediction:

Though it has not been reported in the press, be assured that Steven Green was seriously abused as a child, physically without doubt - and probably sexually as well. Children aren't born bad - ever. They are often taught to behave badly by those who are entrusted with their care. A brutalized child learns to cower in weakness or to lash out against anything that gets in his way. A child who is repeatedly raped learns to fear sex, or use it to survive, or to use it as a weapon. Every child, and each of us, is a product of our life experiences.

Well, sadly I was right.

Green was found guilty of rape and murder last week in Federal Court in Paducah, Kentucky. This week the sentencing phase of his trial began. That is the part where others are allowed to put in their two-cents worth on what should be the fate of the evil Mr. Green. The defense was busy calling witnesses who could conceivably help convince the Court not to sentence their client to death.

Yesterday witnesses were called who testified to the circumstances of Steven Green's youth. He was described as being the middle child in a very dysfunctional family. His mother hadn't wanted him and often disparaged him in public. Father left when Steven was four, and at age 9 he was diagnosed ADD and placed on medications. The social worker who interviewed family members for the Court said that she doubted the mother, a barmaid who had little interest in parenting, administered his medications properly. The parenting was primarily left to the older brother who often beat Steven to the point of injury - one time causing his head to swell "like a pumpkin."

Steven Green was physically abused as a child. He was beaten by an older brother, and who knows what he suffered at the hands of mother's visiting male friends as well as an eventual step-father. But I also predicted that he had been sexually abused. That may not come out, but I hope that it does because the sexual abuse is an important component into the animal that this child eventually became. The reason the sexual abuse may not surface is that Steven, while currently locked in a cage and facing the likelihood of execution, is still a macho creature, and it is very difficult for someone struggling so hard to be a real man to come to terms with the reality of rape - not the rape of some nameless Iraqi girl, but the rape of himself. "Real" men don't let things like that happen to them, regardless of their age, and if it does happen to them the results, without good treatment, can stretch across a lifetime. One result can be the objectification of women, and another can be a penchant for violence and cruelty. Sound familiar?

Steven Green could have suffered sexual abuse at the hands of any man who was a part of his mother's life - a boyfriend or a trusted relative. It is even possible that his abuser was a woman. And then there's the older brother. Incest among brothers happens far more often that is commonly thought, especially when there is a power differential and one is literally in control of the other. A guy who routinely beats his little brother to the point of injury probably wouldn't hesitate to screw him.

There are more facets to Steven Green's sad tale than we have yet been given. Frankenstein's monster wasn't born evil - he was made that way by the hands of man.

I'm not seeking mercy for Steven. The nature of his crimes make it unlikely that he could ever be rehabilitated. But maybe, from afar at least, we can have a small bit of compassion for this child that was shaped into an adult by awful circumstances - because there, but for the grace of God, go each of us.

The Invasion of Phoenix

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Fifty-five thousand out-of-towners are going to converge on Phoenix this week to celebrate and support their interpretation of the Second Amendment. Yup, the good ole boys (and girls) of the National Rifle Association will be convening here to peruse armaments and swap paranoid fantasies with wild abandon. Oh, the tales they will tell and the guns they will fondle!

This is a very big deal locally, supposedly the largest gathering ever at the Phoenix Convention Center. One Chamber of Commerce flack estimated that the visitors will consume more that 10,000 room nights in the Valley of Hell, and the spending effect will pump about $70 million into the local economy. Spend away, suckers, we'll take your money!

A billboard out by the Air Force Base proclaims that the event will have acres and acres of guns and gear for sale. I'm sure thousands of the baddest guns will be loaded into those black SUV's and quickly transported to Nogales, Mexico, and points south. This should be a real boon for the drug dealers - not having to traipse all over the country looking for massive quantities of deadly bargains! Phoenix ought to have one of these gun-shows-on-steroids every year, or even twice a year!

The NRA convention comes at an especially good time for Arizona in a political sense. Our new governor, Jan Brewer, and John McCain will both be there flapping their right wings and squawking like Rush Limbaugh on a full tank of speed.

Last night the state legislature passed an absurd piece of legislation making it illegal for property owners to prohibit their employees from keeping guns in their cars (on company property) while they are at work. A spokeswoman for the NRA said that her organization supports property rights, but the God-given Second Amendment protections trump property rights every time. (It's true! You can't make this crap up!) This probably would not be a great time to be working in one of the local post offices!

Arizona ranks 5th nationally in states with the highest percentages of gun deaths. Nearly 7,000 people died by gunfire in this crazy state between 1999 and 2006. The new armed workplace law should help to propel us to number one in short order! (I'll bet the state's funeral directors had some lobbyists working to pass that jewel!)

Our local National Public Radio affiliate, KJZZ, ran a story on this commercial madness. They interviewed an old couple who are strong NRA supporters. The man carried a card in his wallet that listed "ten ways Barack Obama threatens the Second Amendment." His wife barked about how Obama (she couldn't bring herself to refer to him as "President") was going to be the "ruination" of America. The husband chimed in that it wasn't about his color (which meant that it assuredly was!), but that he and his wife were against Obama's political policies.

So, for the next few nights, downtown Phoenix will be in full Halloween mode. The streets will be pulsing with hillbillies, hookers, soldiers-of-fortune, arms dealers, drug dealers, fascists, racists, and countless other types of miscreants and miscreant wannabes. It ought to be a real hoot. Hell, I may even punch a couple of holes in one of my good sheets and go join the party!

Phoenix - gotta love it - or leave it!

Survey Says...

by Pa Rock
Struggling Linguist

There was a survey at Daily Kos today that was more interesting for the responses than it was for the question. This was the question:

AIG's CEO says he wants people to stop critiquing the company's activities, even though we the people own 80 percent of it. Your reaction as a majority stockholder?

There were seven possible responses.

Response #1: WTF?
At the end of the day it had received 1,194 votes or 13% of the vote. WTF is fairly obvious - I get it.

Response #2: STFU!
This answer garnered 4,246 votes. It was the most popular, drawing 46% of the total vote. I get this one also. The ST is "Shut The" and the FU is a no-brainer - with the exclamation mark making it an imperative command.

Response #3: LOL
Laughing Out Loud collected 542 votes or 5% of the total. LOL is somewhat like me - a real no-brainer!

Response #4: FU!
Another colorful imperative command that was good for 1,715 votes or 18% of the total. Being a simple soul, I was sorely tempted to vote for good old FU!

Response #5: MEH!
That collected 121 votes or 1% of the total. Help me out here...WTF is MEH?

Response #6: SYFPH!
This snappy little piece of colorful language collected 1,032 votes - including my own - which was good for 11% of the total. If I'm translating correctly, the PH part of the response stands for "Pie Hole."

Response #7: (.)
308 people agreed with that selection, comprising 3% of the total vote. This one stumped me also. Who can clue me in to what (.) means?

As soon as I can become proficient in communicating in this abbreviated format, I plan to take up texting. A year from now I'll be TMAO - count on it!

An Old Boy with a New Toy

by Pa Rock
Happy Camper

It's been a few days since I have written about the new love of my life, a slight that needs to be addressed. I am speaking, of course, about my iPod, made even more accessible and friendlier by the addition of a docking station. I am listening to it now, as I type, without the encumbrance of headphones. In the last fifteen minutes I have been treated to Michael Buble, Meatloaf, Simon and Garfunkel, Harry James, and now Elton John.

My entire CD collection now resides in the iPod - 257 albums, or 3,040 songs, or 7.3 days of different selections. The little silver wonder is about the size of a pack of cigarettes, but only about one-third as thick - and it is just 20% full!

Listening to the music coming from the docking station is like having my radio tuned to the best station anywhere, with no static or interference, no commercials, and no music that does not rise to my high standards!

The Doobie Brothers have finished serenading me, and now Waylon Jennings is banging out a country tune.

I just learned something else - the iPod is charging while the music plays! How cool is that!

Gotta run. The Beatles are here singing about A Hard Day's Night - and the Moody Blues are on deck!

The Bush Legacy

by Pa Rock
Angry Citizen Journalist

I don't want to write about Army Sergeant John M. Russell, the soldier accused of killing five American troops at a mental health clinic at Camp Liberty in Baghdad. There hasn't been much hard news released on the sad event, just a lot of surmising and second guessing. So I really don't want to write about it until I have a clearer understanding of what actually happened out in that mean desert. I don't want to write about it...but I can't help myself!

You see, for the past five years I have worked in military mental health clinics - so this shit is personal - very effing personal!

Every man or woman who does a tour in a combat zone is negatively impacted - every single one, no exceptions! No, they don't all go on a killing rampage, but they suffer physical hurts - and psychological injuries that may not manifest themselves for months after the troop returns home. And their relationships with loved ones suffer also. It's damned hard to keep a marriage together after one partner has spent twelve or more months living in close proximity with a group of strangers - people who tend to become more like family than the actual families as the stress of war takes it toll.

That's after one long tour. Sgt. John M. Russell, 43, of Sherman, TX, was on his third tour in Iraq. Why, one would wonder, would anyone have to serve three tours? (I know some Special Forces troops who have been to the desert five times!) Vietnam required one tour, and a person could volunteer for a second tour if they wanted an opportunity to get out early.

Why three or more tours? Our troops were forced to do multiple tours because chicken hawks like George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Don Rumsfield (who all declined to take part in Vietnam, but were not too proud to send your kids off to the Middle East) wanted in the worst way to avoid a draft. They were spared Vietnam tours due to family privilege, but all were in college during the draft protests of the sixties - and none wanted to see those types of events soaking up valuable newsprint or television air time. That was not the story they wanted told. "Stop Loss," the practice of not allowing soldiers to exit the service when their enlistments were up, was another form of this back door draft.

Sgt. Russell's unit apparently did everything right. According to some news sources, his superiors recognized signs that he was losing it. They took his weapon and had him escorted to the mental health clinic. Once inside, the angry sergeant got into a loud disagreement and was told to leave. Somewhere outside of the clinic he acquired another weapon, reentered the clinic, and opened fire. Where did he get another weapon? Hey, it's Iraq, a country where guns are as ubiquitous as grains of sand.

Two of the casualties were supposedly doctors, one Navy and the other Army. I've known several Army doctors (psychiatrists) who served in Iraq, as well as countless combat soldiers from Ft. Campbell, and I am, quite obviously, hoping that none of my friends or acquaintances were among the victims - but whoever died, they were friends, and relatives, and loved ones of many, many people.

I can't bring this to a close without folding in the case of Steven Green, a former Army private who was convicted last week of masterminding the murder of an Iraqi family and the rape of their young daughter. Green was only on his first tour of Iraq, but he obviously did not have the psychological strength to deal with it - a fact that should have been caught as he was trying to enlist. But we had quotas to meet - and an honest draft to avoid.

And I have to take one swipe at Texas, the home of record of Sgt. John M. Russell and Pvt. Steven Green. Texas is pure testosterone - a place where any seven-year-old boy who isn't a sissy is expected to be learning how to play football, and every ten-year-old male has at least two guns and an NRA membership card. Football and killing things. If there are any better indicators of emerging manhood, I'd like to know what they are. (Somehow George Bush missed the macho boat, though. He went to college and became a cheerleader, and then graduated and hid from the war.)

The killings at Camp Liberty this week marked the fifth incident of the Oil War in which one of our own has gunned down his comrades. The gun advocates will quickly point out that guns don't really kill people (and other assorted horse shit), and the fuzzy headed liberals will argue with equal fervor that those young people are not responsible because the war is so damned loud and wrong and stoked with machismo that no one could hear their cries for help.

So, if they guns can't be held responsible, and the shooters were themselves victims, who then is to blame?

My vote goes to the chicken hawks: Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfield! Boys, you broke it, and damn you all - now you own it!

Peace, brothers and sisters. It's the only real answer!

Me and Hank Sr. Do Best Buy

by Pa Rock
Shameless Consumer

Sunday afternoon I was at the gym marching to Pretoria on the evil treadmill when my iPod up and quit. After playing with it most of yesterday, I finally gave up and decided to find a twelve-year-old to help me get it up and running. So today I took the little silver monster to Best Buy where a lovely girl named Jennifer showed me how to reset it.

Easy, peasey! That's one more thing that I now know how to do with an iPod. I am getting to be such a techie!

So after the free lesson, I told Jennifer that I would buy a base from her. It turns out that what I wanted was a docking station - a "base" goes back about forty years to my days of selling CB radios! She took my little iPod, hit the shuffle function, and popped it into a docking station. Poor Jennifer's eyes got as big as silver dollar pancakes when Hank Williams, Sr, started belting out some country hit from the 1950's.

"What's the matter?" I asked. "Don't you like hillbilly music?"

"Oh, yes." She stammered. "I like all kinds of music."

Nice recovery, Jen!

Archbishop Raymond Burke Is Not Worthy of the Name Catholic

by Pa Rock
Hypocrisy Hound

There are two institutions that never let me down on a slow news day. If I feel the need to rant, I have to look no further than to the Republican Party or the Catholic Church. Indeed, as often as not, those two groups verge on being indistinguishable.

The Catholic Church has been in the news a couple of times this week, and, as usual, its leaders have been going out of their way to embarrass themselves.

Last Friday Archbishop Raymond Burke, the head of the Vatican's Supreme Court and the former Archbishop of St. Louis, took the University of Notre Dame to task for inviting the President of the United States to speak at its spring commencement. Burke said that the invitation was "scandalous," and he went on to accuse President Obama of pushing an anti-life and anti-family agenda.

This isn't the first time that this clown (Burke) has stuffed both feet in his mouth. In 2004 he stated that he would not give communion to presidential candidate (and Catholic) John Kerry due to Kerry's support of abortion as a public policy. In 2007 he made a similar threat to Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani for the same reason. He also ran his pious mouth after the confirmation of Catholic Kathleen Sebelius as Secretary of Health and Human Services because she, too, supports the choice of abortion in public policy. He said the Sebelius confirmation was "the source of deepest embarrassment for Catholics."

Archbishop Raymond Burke said that if Catholics are not willing to stand up for the church's teachings, "we are not worthy of the name Catholic."

You know what, Ray? It's a shame you were born in the twentieth century and had to miss the Catholic glory days of the Spanish Inquisition! You're a real sweetheart - spewing all of that venom at exceptional public servants! Where was your outrage over the pedophile priests? Obama isn't one one-hundredth as scandalous as your pervert priests who took sexual advantage of little boys and girls! (And don't think for a minute that the sexual abuse has stopped. Child molesters never change!) Sebelius is not half the embarrassment that you are? You are shameless for not turning your wrath on your robed brothers who were routinely destroying the lives of little children.

But Burke is not the only prominent Catholic to be out of sync with his Church and the world in general.

Today Pope Benedict XVI was in the Holy Land visiting Israel and the Palestinians, and he managed to offend most of his hosts. The Pope went to the site of a holocaust museum in Jerusalem but didn't go inside. The problem: he is promoting Pope Pius XII for sainthood. Pius was the Pope during World War II and a Nazi appeaser who turned a blind eye to the holocaust. If the Pope had ventured into the museum he would have encountered a plaque pointing out the treachery of Pius XII.

Pope Benedict is a sad religious leader who is too damned old to be running a used car lot, much less a worldwide religion . He, too, would have been much happier burning heretics in the Spanish Inquisition. Oh, for the good old days - back when people really got religion - or suffered the consequences!

Arrest Cheney and Haul His Sorry Carcass to The Hague!

by Pa Rock
Public Citizen

Dick Cheney needs to crawl off into a hole and pull the hole in after him. One would assume that after eight years of systematically dismantling the Constitution of the United States and shaming his country as no other Vice-President has since the days of Aaron Burr, The Dick would have the decency to just shut up and go away. But one would be wrong.

This morning as I was getting ready to go paint, I had the CBS news program, Face the Nation, playing for background noise. Cheney was the guest, and he was in full attack mode.

The former Vice-President is very pissed that President Obama released the torture memos and shined a light on the crimes of the previous administration. Cheney is going at it hammer-and-tong trying to rewrite, or at least justify, the history of his glory days. He has very good reason to be in attack mode: he doesn't want to be the subject of civil suits that could put a dent in all of those Halliburton millions that he piled up while he was supposed to be serving America - and he doesn't want to go to prison - even one of the country club prisons frequented by Republicans and the business classes.

I used to agree with President Obama that nothing would be accomplished by dredging up the past and trying to punish the Bush administration officials for their stupid, dangerous, and treasonous acts. But that was then and his is now. If The Dick is insistent on flaunting himself in front of every available camera and microphone and bloviating about how much safer he made America, then I say let Congress, and the Courts, and the Spanish judges, and The Hague have him - and let the cow chips fall where they may!

America doesn't owe Dick Cheney squat, but he owes us for destroying our national pride and our reputation for fairness and honesty. Cheney and his minions managed to decrease our national integrity to a level comparable to that of North Korea in just eight short years. The Dick owes us for the deaths of over four thousand of our finest young people (and the senseless mangling of countless thousands of others) in a futile and needless war - while letting our true enemy, Osama bin Laden, a relative of Bush and Cheney's Saudi oil buddies, get away. He owes us every corrupt dollar that was funneled to Halliburton, Blackwater, and Kellogg, Brown, and Root for those scurrilous no-bid contracts. And lest we forget the thousands of dead and mutilated Iraqi children, their blood is on his hands as well. All of those bills need to be paid.

But, the former Vice President did not really come up with anything new or newsworthy until near the end of the interview when Bob Schieffer asked him about the leadership of the Republican Party, and, in particular, should the party be looking for leadership from a moderate like Colin Powell or a firebrand like Rush Limbaugh. Cheney took the bait and ran with it.

Cheney said, "If I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I'd go with Rush Limbaugh." He then went off on a mean little tirade about the renegade Powell supporting Barack Obama over McCain in the November election.

Translation: Colin Powell was a good nigra back when he was steppin' and fetchin' and carrying water for the Bush team - telling their lies to the United Nations with a straight face, but now that he has developed a spine - well...the Republican party doesn't need any nigras that have the ability to stand tall. Rush Limbaugh is a more representative face of the Grand Old Party.

How sad is that?

The Worst Person in the World

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Keith Olbermann has a regular segment on Countdown where he identifies the three worst people in the world. Each day three new individuals are selected for this honor based on their crimes, outrages, or dumb comments. Usually Bill O'Reilly of Fox News (whom Keith refers to as "Bill-O the Clown") makes the daily top three, accompanied by a couple of other buffoons like Rush Limbaugh ("Comedian Rush Limbaugh" or, more recently, "Boss Limbaugh"), Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, or any other easy mark.

And while it would be nice if those Neanderthal jugheads were the worst people in the world, clearly they aren't - well, with the possible exception of Cheney.

My nominee for Worst Person in the World is Steven Dale Green. The twenty-two-year-old Green was serving with the United States Army in Iraq when he and three of his buddies decided that breaking into an Iraqi home and raping a young girl would be an entertaining way to spend an evening.

According to at least one of the attackers, the four had spotted the fourteen-year-old girl while working at a checkpoint. They found out that she lived close by. The girl's mother, fearing that he daughter had attracted the interest of some unsavory U.S. soldiers arranged for the daughter to sleep at a neighbor's house. The problem didn't come that night, though, it happened late the next afternoon.

Private Green and his friends had spent that afternoon playing cards, drinking whiskey, and hitting golf balls. At some point after they began to get their drunk on, Green brought up the idea of breaking into the Iraqi home and raping the girl. One of the gang later described Green as being persistent about wanting to rape the young girl. At some point the group gave in to Private Green. They put on dark clothing, painted their faces, and proceeded to the girl's house.

One of the men related that after pushing their way into the home, Green took the parents and the five-year-old little sister into a bedroom and gunfire was heard. When Green emerged alone from the bedroom he said simply, "I just killed them. All are dead." Green and one of the others then got what they had come for. They raped the fifteen-year-old. After they were done, Green reportedly shot her in the head two or three times. They finished off the evening by burning the girl's body.

When the murders were discovered, the Army was quick to blame it on insurgents, even though the locals suspected that it had been committed by American soldiers. The FBI was brought in to assist with the investigation. A few months later two soldiers were abducted from Green's platoon by Iraqi insurgents. When their mutilated bodies were discovered, some felt that they had been murdered in response to some outrage committed by the Americans. One of the men who had been with Green that day was overcome with guilt for his dead comrades, and blurted out the story of the killings of the Iraqi family.

By the time the story of that awful evening in Iraq came to light, Private Steven Green had been honorably discharged from the Army after being diagnosed with a "personality disorder." The three who were still in the Army were tried for murder and rape in a military courts-martial and received sentences ranging from 27 months to 100 years in prison.

Steven Green, by virtue of no longer being in the military, was tried in a Federal Court in Paducah, KY. This past Thursday he was found guilty of murder, rape, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice. The penalty phase of his trial will begin on Monday, and it is likely that he will be sentenced to death.

The four young men who committed this awful crime were part of the Army's 101st Airborne Division out of Ft. Campbell, KY. I didn't know Mr. Green or any of his gang, but I was at Ft. Campbell during the time they were there. And while I never met, and probably never even saw, Steven Green, I feel like I do know quite a bit about him.

Though it has not been reported in the press, be assured that Steven Green was seriously abused as a child, physically without doubt - and probably sexually as well. Children aren't born bad - ever. They are often taught to behave badly by those who are entrusted with their care. A brutalized child learns to cower in weakness or to lash out against anything that gets in his way. A child who is repeatedly raped learns to fear sex, or use it to survive, or to use it as a weapon. Every child, and each of us, is a product of our life experiences.

Steven Green grew up flawed - and then he joined the Army. He became part of a large enterprise that valued violence, an organization that saw Iraqis as something less than good Christian humans. His deeply flawed character became immersed in the military and the occupation of a foreign country, and the result was almost inevitable. He was an open can of gasoline sitting in a room full of burning candles.

Society failed Steven Dale Green, and society suffered his rage for that failure. How many more Steven Greens can we bear before society completely breaks down? We need to be watching our children and listening to what they tell us. We need to be respecting our children and celebrating the fact that they are our future. When it comes to children, we truly do reap what we sow.

And we need to be highly selective about who we allow to serve in our military. Psychological tests are available that would have weeded out Steven Green - but some recruiter was hard pressed to make his quota. By the time he was weeded out with a "personality disorder," two innocent children and their parents had lost their lives.

So is it fair for the government to take the life of Steven Dale Green if he is indeed the product of forces beyond his control. Of course it isn't. If he is sentenced to prison for the rest of his life, can he be rehabilitated and be of any use to society? Probably not. Green who grew up in Midland, TX, the same affluent community that produced President George W. Bush, will either be killed for his crimes or warehoused.

Death or warehousing? Two bad choices, but what other choice is there?

How Hot Is It?

by Pa Rock
Weatherman

It's hot in Arizona, so damned hot that the asphalt radiates its scorching heat through shoes, and socks, and flesh. It's so hot that the little birds totally ignore me when I scatter tater tots for them at lunch. Just a few short weeks ago they were coming in so close that I feared for the safety of my lunch - and now they're gone, hiding in some dark hot place waiting on the sun to go down. And when the evening finally does arrive, those tater tots will be burned beyond edibility.

Arizona heat is unrelenting, and it's a bitch. The past three days have been over one hundred degrees each, and it's only early May. There are no clouds to give hope for rain, only the occasional hot breeze made brown with the worthless dust of the desert. Everything hides under rocks, or beneath buildings, or in air-conditioned cubicles until the sun sets and the temperature eases down into the 90's. If there is any living to be done in this hellhole, it will be in the evening, or late at night, in dark places.

An appropriate summer greeting in this part of Arizona is "Go to Hell!" While Hades might not be the ideal vacation spot, it has to be cooler than Phoenix!

Another Desert Menace

by Pa Rock
Macho Muchacho

The local news media reported that four people in the Phoenix area were bitten by rattlesnakes last weekend. One was a child who didn't know enough to back away. Another was a fellow who stepped off of his porch and was bitten on the heel by a rattler who was snoozing in the shade and awoke just as he was about to be stepped on. A local hospital reported that one man was bitten on the hand after he tried to pet a rattlesnake. It was discovered, to the surprise of no one, that he had been drinking prior to the incident. (Doctors at that same hospital stated that they had previously encountered people who were bitten as they had tried to kiss a rattlesnake. I wonder what drugs they were taking?)

Local doctors gave the press some pointers about snake bites to share with the public. They said not to use a tourniquet to impede the blood flow, not to cut into the bite and try to suction out the poison, and definitely not to catch the snake and bring it to the hospital. Treating the snake bite does not require the presence of the snake.

Some of my co-workers feel that snakes pose no serious threat to those of us residing within the city limits, but I know better. It's all desert. It's their home, and we are the intruders. This week I saw a roadrunner speed across the intersection of Litchfield and McDowell - a very busy place. (The roadrunner made it safely across the intersection, but the coyote who was chasing him was hit by five cars, a fat kid on a skateboard, and an anvil falling from the sky!) I know for certain that the scorpions don't turn around at the city limits sign, and I'm doubtful that the rattlers do either.

I think that being stung by a scorpion (3 times!) has hardened me as a desert dweller. That hurt more than anything I have ever encountered in life - and I lived to tell the tale. The guy who survives a scorpion probably has little to fear from a rattler. If some of those bad boys slither over my way, I may just wind up with a new pair of boots!

The Savage Weiner

by Pa Rock
Amused American

Yesterday the United Kingdom's Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, made news by announcing the names of sixteen individuals who have been banned from entering the United Kingdom. The ban went into effect last October when, supposedly, the selected individuals were informed that they were not welcome to enter the British Isles. Ms. Smith, in making the list public yesterday said, "I think it's important that people understand the sorts of values and sorts of standards that we have here. It's a privilege to come to this country. There are certain behaviors that mean you forfeit that privilege."

Apparently those behaviors include terrorism, racism, gay-bashing, and stupidity.

The majority of those named were political extremists from the Middle East, but a few notable Americans also made the list. Stephen Donald Black, a former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard was on the list of banned individuals, as was neo-Nazi Erich Gliebe. Topeka's favorite homophobe and all-around idiot, Fred Phelps, can no longer enter the United Kingdom, and neither can his daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper. (The Phelps' Klan makes the news on a fairly regular basis with their protests at funerals of American service men and women. Their contention is that our government supports a gay agenda, and hence our service members are somehow helping to promote a gay lifestyle. - You can't get much stupider than that!)

But the highlight of the list of people now banned from entering the United Kingdom was American right-wing radio personality Michael Savage. Savage is known for his bizarre racist rants, and has spent a lot of air time hollering about the need to keep Mexicans out of the United States. Now he is in a major snit because somebody wants to keep him out of their country. I was listening to Savage yesterday being interviewed by NPR over the phone. He became angry over a question that another caller asked, and threatened to hang up. The host calmly replied, "Go ahead, then." And he did!

Michael Savage was born Michael Weiner. Apparently "Weiner" did not fit the image of a seriously rabid shock jock, so he changed it to the much more macho "Savage." I wonder if he ever thought about splitting the difference between Weiner and Savage and going with "Sausage?"

Probably not.

Ray's Hell Burger

by Pa Rock
Cultural Commentator

Ray's Hell Burger, a small food establishment at a strip mall in Arlington, VA, hit the big time today. As the lunch crowd was lining up for one of Ray's signature burgers what should come driving up but a motorcade with the President and Vice President of the United States, a contingent of Secret Service agents, and most of the White House press corps. It was a big deal, a very big deal indeed, for a small burger joint trying to eek out a profit in a rotten economy. This morning a struggling business - tonight a landmark!

There was some conflict among the reporters over what the Prez ordered, with some reporters saying that he had a "basic cheeseburger, medium well" and others insisting that that his request was for a "Swiss mushroom burger." There was no confusion over the sauce, however, with all parties hearing "spicy mustard, if you have it." The Veep had a Swiss cheeseburger with jalapeno peppers. After paying for his meal, the President was seen placing a five dollar bill in the tip jar.

The President also treated the reporters to lunch. Most of the members of the fourth estate were quick to say that they would contribute an amount equal to the value of their meal to charity. They apparently did not want it to be said that they could be bought for the price of a burger and fries!

I like the Obamas. A couple of nights ago Barack took Michelle out to a restaurant in Washington for a date night. It's beginning to look like the White House has suddenly been inhabited by real people! I hope that they are able to maintain that free and easy attitude and lifestyle while living in the world's most closely watched fish bowl.

2666

by Pa Rock
Book Reviewer

I am becoming an ardent fan of the late writer, Roberto Bolano. Last fall I completed his Savage Detectives, a long and complicated tale about a group of young poets in Mexico who spend a good portion of the literary work driving around the Sonoran Desert of northern Mexico looking for a poet who disappeared several decades earlier. And while that plot may sound as though it is less than gripping, it was a surprisingly good read.

Bolano died a few years ago just as he was finishing up 2666, a long tale (900 pages) about the very real murders of hundreds of females in Ciudad Juarez (las muertas de Juarez), and how those murders figured in Bolano's fictional tale of a reclusive German author who was being pursued by three fans - professors of German literature. And where does this pursuit take place? Why across the Sonoran Desert, of course.

It is the setting, I suppose, that draws me to Bolano - that and his very unique writing voice. I have been to many of the small Arizona towns that are discussed in this work, and the starkness of the Sonoran confronts me every day. But I am also a fan of Bolano's expansive pallet as he pursues his characters and story line across two continents and eight decades. Reading a work by Roberto Bolano is very much like tackling Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky - definitely not a task for sissies.

When this swine flu thing finally dries up and the drug cartels start behaving like gentlemen, I may make an extended literary tour into northern Mexico and visit Bolano's haunts on that side of the border. It would be a unique experience to let his work guide me through the ragged desert communities that populate his tales.

I look forward to the day when I can make that trip. I look forward to the day when we as a country can open or hearts and our borders to the good people of Mexico.

The Dead Horse Lament

by Pa Rock
Wordsmith

My friend Bruce sent out email invitations to his big birthday bash that will be held somewhere on a creek bank in the Ozarks. It will be a drunken affair with booze supplied by the host and supplemented by BYOB. Gifts are discouraged because Bruce figures that with all of the drinking and debauchery they will probably wind up being thrown in the river anyway.

Bruce is a fan (as am I) of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe series of books by the late Douglas Adams. Adams had an interest in bad poetry and at times cited the alien Vogons whom he credited as being the third worst poets in the universe. Bruce included some of his own Vogon poetry in the email invitation, and identified a page on the Internet that is home to a Vogon poetry generator.

The following is my own sample of Vogon poetry which was created by myself and the Vogon Poem Generator.

The Dead Horse Lament

See, see the feisty sky
Marvel at its big burnt persimmon depths.
Tell me, Salvador do you
Wonder why the mangy dog ignores you?
Why its foobly stare
makes you feel cranky.
I can tell you, it is
Worried by your phallotragic facial growth
That looks like
A defeated mushroom.
What's more, it knows
Your horehound potting shed
Smells of scallions.
Everything under the big feisty sky
Asks why, why do you even bother?
You only charm dead horses.

Perhaps now you can understand why Vogon poetry is the third worst in the universe! The generator may be accessed at www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/vogonpoetry/lettergen.shtml

The Weekend Happens

by Pa Rock
Daily Scribe

I took this past Wednesday off from work and used the time to finish moving out of my old apartment. It was time very well spent and I accomplished the mission of finishing the move - all except for the unpacking, of course. By Friday I realized that I was getting further and further behind in my work at the office. Today, despite my very loud vocal vow not to, I spent quite a bit of time at the office trying to get caught up. No more time off for me!

When I finished at the office, close to being caught up, I headed off to the gym for my first visit there since before the never-ending move began. It felt good to be getting back into the gym routine, but I used so many muscles during the move that I didn't seem to have lost any ground during my hiatus from Lifetime Fitness.

The day was capped off with some unpacking and the potting of six large cacti. Anyone who tries to stroll casually across my lot after dark could easily wind up perforated!

Tomorrow, if the desert wind begins to die down, I will paint some wooden tables that function as furniture in my simple lifestyle. The excitement just rolls on and on!

Water-Boarding for Jesus

by Pa Rock
Heretic

A new survey reveals something surprising about the thought processes of the highly self-righteous. (Well, it isn't really a surprise - just more of an illumination of hypocrisy.) Survey says: The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists.

Religion has a long history of justifying war - and bigotry - and hate, and devout Christians in particular go through all kinds of mental contortions as they try to find ways to overlook, ignore, or misinterpret the humanist themes in the Bible and the teachings of Jesus. Surely the man from Galilee didn't really mean to suggest that there is something wrong in the accumulation of wealth. (After all, is it not true that he with the gold, rules?) And of course we should all love our neighbors, unless, of course, some of our neighbors happen to be Muslim, or gay, or Mexican, or Black, or Jews, or feminists, or Democrats. Jesus wasn't really speaking about being nice to those folks, was he?

If God didn't want us to be vigilant and protect our homes, our way of life, and our racial purity, why did he bless us with guns? Our God, love him and fear him, is every bit as small-minded and hateful as we are - so it makes perfect sense that he supports the torture of lesser human beings who may be out to get us.

Jesus was about love, and so is war. It is our Christian imperative to make others see the benefits of a life in Christ whether they are open to the idea or not. Besides, it's not really torture, it's just enhanced interrogation techniques - just as water-boarding is nothing more than an enhanced baptism.

God bless America. Let us prey.

A Home at the End of the Trailer Park

by Pa Rock
Desert Rat

I am now officially and completely out of Palm Valley Luxury Rentals and safely ensconced, bag and baggage, in Unit 77 at Litchfield Village. I was able to make the break yesterday by taking the day off from work and moving the last five carloads of my life on up the road to the trailer park. Now I have boxes piled inside and outside of my dwelling. It will take weeks to get it all unpacked and put away.

I have gotten into the habit of sitting on the front porch every evening and reading. Many of the neighbors walk past my place as the sun is going down, and they all stop and exchange pleasantries. It is very much like residing in a small town, something of which I am very familiar.

I have set up two small bird feeders and a birdbath in the back yard (actually, the back gravel patch). The little birds discovered them the first day. They go through about a pound of birdseed a day. When I pull in after work, they are marching around the empty feeders and making a fuss. They get fed before I even make it into the house.

I have also come up with some big planters and a few new cacti - the kind that will get very large - as well as some of those wonderfully fragrant dark purple petunias. This weekend I will be busy getting the landscaping up to my standards. Litchfield Village is a beautiful trailer court, with blooming flowers everywhere, and many giant cacti. Some are so large that they actually appear to be covered with tree bark near their base.

If you come to see me, I will probably be outside scratching in the dirt, trying my best to tame a little piece of the desert. Frozen margaritas will be served at sunset!

H1N1, Swine, or Mexican?

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

I received a shot for Swine Flu back in 1976 when Jerry Ford was President, and it must have worked because I never caught the dreaded and deadly malady. It was a huge deal then. Poor Ford was trying so hard to be relevant while Chevy Chase did skits pretending to be the bumbling President tripping and falling over everything in sight. Simpler days, those.

Actually the Swine Flue never materialized and the national drill of everyone rushing out to get shots in school houses and armories all over America served as yet one more reminder of just what a goof poor President Ford really was. Lyndon Johnson had commented once when Jerry Ford was a member of Congress, that he had played too much football without a helmet.

So now, thirty-three years later, the Swine Flue finally arrives. Arizona had its first reported case today, It is somewhat remarkable that it took so long to get here considering the long border that Arizona shares with Mexico - the country where the current outbreak originated. As of this evening ninety-some cases had been reported in a total of ten U.S. states, and there had been one death in this country - a toddler in Texas who had just arrived from Mexico.

There are also about a dozen countries where the Swine Flu has made a beachhead, most tracing its origins back to people who had been in Mexico. There are a few cases in Israel, and the Jews, who don't eat pork, are somewhat reluctant to call it Swine Flu. One Israeli politician suggested that it be referred to as Mexican Flu. Needless to say, that recommendation did not endear the state of Israel to Mexico.

American officials, to include President Obama, have today started referring to the flu by its scientific shorthand: the H1N1 Virus. I noticed that most of the newscasters have begun to use that label as well. I guess that I can understand that. After all, who would want to succumb to a flu named for a pig?

Good friend Xobekim forwarded a description of the symptoms. They involve a sudden urge to eat raw corn and roll in the mud!

'Nuff said.

Republicans Goosestep Toward Party Purity

by Pa Rock
Amused Spectator

Arlen Specter, the moderate Republican Senator from Pennsylvania today became the moderate Democratic Senator from Pennsylvania. Specter said that he no longer felt at home with the Republicans who seem hellbent on letting hard right wing ideology define their party for the foreseeable future. Democrats are happy because they are now just one vote short of a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and Al Franken is going to be seated as the new Democratic Senator from Minnesota sooner or later. President Obama said that he was "thrilled" at Specter's change of parties.

Specter's big switch had more to do with political realities than it did with ideology. Republicans were planning to unseat him through a tough fight in the Pennsylvania Republican primary. The seventy-nine year old Specter, who isn't ready to retire, did the math and decided he had a better chance of political survival by running as a Democrat.

And the Republican ignoramus comitatus was quick to bid Arlen Specter a hale and hearty farewell, with remarks similar to Roy Clark's classic line (gender bent): "Thank God and Greyhound he's gone!" Most were on the air all day braying about how much better off the party was without him. There were a few exceptions to that idiot-ology, though. Maine's Senator Olympia Snowe said the loss of Arlen Specter from the Republican ranks was "devasting." Senator Snowe, one of only a handful of moderate Republicans in America, may one day be forced from the ranks of the "real" Republicans herself.

America's premier gasbag and the de facto head of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh, bid good riddance to Senator Specter today, and suggested that he take John McCain and his daughter, Meghan, with him. (Take another bottle of pills, Rush. It will all be better in the morning!)

The Republican purists are glad to see Arlen Specter fly his true colors and join the opposition. Keep on purifying the party, folks, and your next Minneapolis convention will fit into the Larry Craig memorial restroom at the airport!

Trivia: As a young man, Arlen Specter was a lawyer working for the Warren Commission on the assassination of President Kennedy. He was the person who came up with the "magic bullet" theory to explain how one shooter could have done so much damage.

Subtlety: Arizona Style

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

This morning, while circling through McDonald’s for breakfast, I pulled up behind the bravest and/or dumbest person in the whole God-forsaken and scorpion-infested state of Arizona. I couldn’t see the driver of the dark red Ford Focus, but I didn’t have to see him (or her) to know that I was on the tail of someone who wasn’t bashful about sharing his (or her) opinions, regardless of their likelihood of inciting a fistfight or a bloody hate crime.

No, it wasn’t a bumper sticker promoting gay marriage, taxing the church, or the confiscation of handguns - it was something at least equally as controversial as the aforementioned, but it was on a specialized and personalized license plate.

Arizona has a couple of dozen types of specialized plates covering everything from honoring war veterans, to recognizing membership in any of several Indian tribes, to proclaiming the importance of following the Golden Rule. Each of these plates cost an extra $25 per year, of which $17 goes to whatever cause the particular plate supports. It’s a nice way to show support for something via the license plate and the donation.

In addition to the subjects highlighted by the special license plates, for another fee the plate can be personalized with a message of up to seven letters. The state supposedly screens the messages to weed out those that might be obscene or objectionable. I say “supposedly,” because someone certainly missed the boat on the one I saw this morning.

The style of license plate on the red Ford Focus was “Child Abuse Prevention.” The plate is decorated with children’s handprints along with a statement, “It shouldn’t hurt to be a child.” So far, so good – right? The plate brings awareness to the serious issue of child abuse, and the sale of the plates helps to fund child abuse prevention programs. It is a sentiment that should not offend any sane and caring person.

The problem arose with the personalized message that the individual had imprinted on their child abuse prevention license plate. It was only five letters, but that small word certainly packed a wallop.

The message: ABORT!

The Dying Western Scores a Huge Win at the Ivy Film Festival

by Pa Rock
Shameless Braggart

I received word from my good friend Bob Cronk (whom I have never actually met in person) that The Dying Western won the Grand Jury award for Best Film at the Ivy Film Festival at Brown University in Providence, RI. This particular film festival always snags big names from the film industry, and one was this year's speakers was Jack Nicholson!

The Dying Western was based on a short story written by my son, Tim, and he also co-wrote the screenplay. It was put together by students from the Film Department at the University of Ohio. Bob Cronk's son, Wes Cronk, was the film's editor - and he did an outstanding job - as did all of the crew and cast!

I had the wonderful opportunity to be with Tim and his siblings in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago when this film won Best Student Film at the Las Vegas Film Festival. It was a great weekend, one of those rare times when all of the kids can get together.

Tim knows that when he finally gets to the Academy Awards (a year or two down the road - at most!) that I plan on tagging along - and I want to be seated next to Cher! I hope that my heart can stand it!

Home at Last!

by Pa Rock
Mover and Shaker

The 25th day of April, 2009, finds me in my new home. We moved all day long, and I am beet red and bone tired. My main helper today was a seventeen-year-old young man named D.J. (which is short for a beautiful African name, the spelling of which I did not master). D.J.'s grandmother, Jessica Whitaker, is one of my social work co-workers at Luke.

Jessica told me that D.J. was a good worker, and she certainly was right. We must have made ten trips up and down Litchfield Road in my little convertible that thinks it's a truck. Our loads were often stacked high and wide, and had that Beverly Hillbillies look about them! Two other friends came over with a truck and helped get the biggest items on up the road. I still have two or three small loads at the old place, and quite a bit of cleaning to do.

Tomorrow Dish Network will be here (hopefully) to get my satellite service set up. I will probably move a few more things over, and I am going to jazz up some of my furniture with a new coat of paint. A co-worker will be bringing over an evening meal to help me recover from the trauma of all of this physical exertion! (Thank you, Patty Marks!)

My new place is so quiet. Gone is the loud thumping music from my downstairs neighbors, along with the occasional whiffs of fragrant marijuana wafting upward from their patio to my balcony. Gone are the all-night sirens screaming along Litchfield and McDowell. (Although this beautiful trailer court - Litchfield Village - fronts on Litchfield Road, my abode is near the back, about a half mile from the gate.

The birds have discovered the birdbath that I put out for them, and tomorrow there will be a feeder also. Late this afternoon I saw a small jackrabbit scamper across the park by the trailer court office, and I have heard that there are several more playing in the neighborhood.

Life can't get much better than this!