Going to California

Larry and Dave
were really bummed out with February.
It was cold and cloudy
and there was that miserable kind of wet
that just seems to be waiting for you everywhere.

So they decided to go to California.

It wasn't like either of the them
had any reason to stay anyway.
After all, Larry was waitin' tables
down at Pizza Inn,
and Dave's unemployment checks were just about to run out.

So they piled all their stuff
in the back of Larry's '76 Dodge,
and late one after they just took off.

"Wow! I can't believe we're goin' to California!"
Larry said as he reached out the window
to bang the ice off the only wiper that worked.

"In California there's all these babes
just walkin' around in string bikinis.
Just waitin' for dudes like us,"
said Dave.

"Wow," Larry replied.
And they drove on.

"And there's all these places to work at --
right on the beach.
Like surf shops and head shops
and places where you just hang out
and get paid to do it,"
said Dave.

"Righteous!" Larry replied.
And they drove on.

"And when you cross the border
they stop every car,
and there's this guy there
whose only job is to say,
'Wow, Dude, welcome to California.
Here's your Frisbee.'
And then he gives you a real Frisbee."

"Coolness," Larry replied.
And they drove on.

They drove on all night long
and never noticed Kansas,
the darkness and their enthusiasm
hiding the fact
that there really is nothing there at all.

In the morning they were in Colorado,
but Colorado looked just like Kansas,
only worse,
because neither of them had really slept,
even though they were supposed to be taking turns driving,
and the tappans started knocking so loudly
that you could still hear them
even with the radio turned all the way up,
not like there was anything worth listening to anyway
way out in the middle of no where,
which is exactly where the car overheated.

"Wow, man," said Larry,
"I didn't think a car could overheat
in the middle of the winter."

And Dave wanted to yell,
"Of course it will, you idiot!"
But he hadn't known that either.
But he was furious just the same,
especially since he lost the coin toss
and had to walk four miles back to the last town they'd seen
just to get some water for the radiator.

And when Dave returned three-and-a-half-hours later
dragging this half-frozen can
full of rusty water
that he'd actually had to pay a deposit on
(the can, not the water),
he found that some farmer
had helped Larry get the car going
over two hours ago.
And Larry had just sat there
eating all of Dave's Twinkies
and drinking the last Dr Pepper
instead of thinking that maybe,
just maybe,
he ought to go back
and give Dave a hand with the water.

This time Dave really did call Larry an idiot

And he continued to call Larry an idiot
all the way to Denver,
sounding all the more hateful
the more the smoke plumed out of the back of the car,
until Larry mercifully turned the car off
across the street from this discount pizza place,
where Dave went into
and got a job.

"Wow, man, I thought we were goin' to California,"
said Larry.

"Screw you," said Dave
as he tied on his apron.

"But what about the babes?
What about the Frisbees?"
asked Larry.

"Get real!" said Dave,
putting his hair net on.

"What about those places on the beach
where they pay you just to hang out?
asked Larry.

"Man, I got a job!"
Dave said with a snarl.
And with that he grabbed his bus tub
and went out into the dining room
to pick garbage up off the tables.

So Larry tightened down the tappans with an old pair of pliers
and poured in this really thick, nasty stuff
that was supposed to work better than oil,
and after he'd given Dave back all his stuff,
Larry headed for California.
Without Dave.

And it did take Larry longer than he'd planned;
his car died just inside of Utah
and he had to thumb the rest of the way,
but he got there just the same.

Larry would've written Dave from California,
but he didn't have his address.
I mean, you can't very well send a letter simply addressed:
"Some Pizza Place
Denver, Colorado"
and really think that it would get there.
Now could you?

But just the same,
Larry kept this Polaroid picture
tacked up on the wall
of this place that he worked at
right down on the beach,
and he really intended to send it to Dave.

It was a picture of Larry
standing down on the beach
with his arm around this really hot babe in a string bikini,
and in his other hand was a Frisbee.

Moobert

Moobert was having a hard time keeping focused.
Moobert was a cow.
Well, he wasn't really a cow, but he wasn't exactly a bull, either.
That was one of those things that Moobert was supposed to accept.
That was one of those things that Moobert had been assured that he could accept
if he could only stay in focus.
Staying in focus supposedly would have helped Moobert accept all sorts of things,
like standing outside in the cold rain all night long trying to ignore coyotes,
or having silly tags stuck to his ears and his skin seared with red hot pokers,
or being fed all sorts of weird chemicals,
only so some day he could be taken away and chopped to bits.

Lord knows,
Moobert had tried.
He had chanted the sacred mantra for hours on end,
both forwards and backwards,
and he had listened to the words of the Old Wise One,
telling him the futility of even trying to be anything more than what he had been destined to be,
and that was a cow.
But one thought kept coming back to Moobert.
One thought would not go away.
One thought kept Moobert out of focus,
and that one thought was:
"This life is insane!"

And that thought kept at Moobert,
until one day,
right in the middle of a moo,
right when Moobert should have been focusing on his eternal oneness with all
instead of even noticing that the steadily falling sleet had no intentions of ever turning to snow,
Moobert said,
"The hell with this!"
And Moobert walked out the gate and across the grate that hadn't fooled anybody,
and he headed down the road into town.

It was there that Moobert got a job working in a factory
that made implosion devices for nuclear bombs.
Well, yeah, of course they knew he was a cow,
but they didn't care as long as he was willing to work twelve hours a day for minimum wage,
which was hardly enough to pay the rent.
Well, it was enough when he added in his evening job down at Bob's Burger World,
which also gave him enough extra to afford basic cable.
He wasn't home enough to have gotten his money's worth
out of any of the premium channels, anyway.

Day in, day out,
pretty much seven days a week;
that's what Moobert did for the rest of his life,
right up to the day he died.

Sure, Moobert could've retired
if he'd only made it another fifteen years,
and maybe then he could've spent the rest of his life off in some field somewhere,
but cows don't live nearly that long.

Stuff

I was driving home yesterday listening to NPR, and the president's secretary (McClellen?) said that instead of focusing on whether or not the president's domestic spying is legal, we should be trying to find who leaked it to the press. That's the same thing we used to try back in grade school. You know, back when it was more important to find out who ratted you out than the fact that you actually set the teacher's desk on fire.

OK, that didn't go very far.

Remember, folks, if you're in the coal mine and the canary dies, blame the canary.

And one final thought for this 80 degree day on the first of March:

Global Warming -- Enjoy it while you can.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

...and if we don't win we're the Royals!

Wow. KC's ace pitcher, Grenke, led the AL (maybe even the majors) in losses last year. He's our ace. Our number one. And now he's gone off the Florida end. More than likely he won't even be in the rotation on opening day, if ever.

I had this vision last night of being a very old man -- the one they interview. "Yeah, I remember when the Royal's won their last World Series..."

My prediction: We will only lose 95 games this year. However, we will still win our division because of a freak plane crash, where the plane carrying the Detroit Tigers has a mid-air collision with the plane carrying the Cleveland Indians, and they both crash in flames into the the Hubert H. Humphrey tupperware dome where the Chicago White Sox and the Minnesota Twins are playing each other at the time. Of course, this all assumes that Kansas City would then be capable of beating whatever teams those other clubs could piece together out of their farm clubs...

Houn' Dawg News

After several month's sabbatical, the Houn' Dawg News is back. This is Aurora High School's Newspaper. Check us out at www.houndawg.blogspot.com , but keep in mind they're learning.

And this time I got the address right.

The Little Red Hen...sort of

See, there was this chicken
who found some grain,
so she wanted to plant it.
You know the story.
She asked the pig and the cat and the dog,
but they didn't want to help her.
Not at all.
Plantin', growin', cuttin', grindin'.
Nothin'.
She even gave them one last chance
when she got ready to bake it,
but still nothin'.
Well, instead of keeping her mouth shut
and just eatin' the bread,
she had to make some big point.
So she goes out and says,
"Now who will help me eat the bread?"
And of course, they all want to.
Like that comes as some surprise.
Well, she says, "Ha! You can't!"
or somethin' like that.
And they all said,
"Like hell!"
And the next thing you know,
they're all eatin' chicken sandwiches.
Unfortunately...
well, depending on your perspective, of course,
the cat and the dog and the pig
were all too lazy to cook that chicken
before they ate it,
and they all got salmonella and died.

I suppose there's some kinda justice involved here,
but it seems to me somethin' could've been done
to have avoided the whole thing,
but I'll be darned if I know what.

Ozarks Angel

I found a nice local site out there: Ozarks Angel. It's published by an old buddy of mine, who goes under the alias of Goodman. Of course, if I were publishing those Islamic comics, I'd go by an alias, too. You can find him at www.ozarksangel.blogspot.com . I hope to link Mr. Goodman to my site, along with Chatter. In fact, they should already by linked. Never a dull moment.

What If...

There is life on Venus.
Always has been.
They learned to persevere
despite the smog.

And what if
they’ve always known the Earth was another planet,
but more than just a planet,
that there was something special about the Earth.

Maybe it was the unique blue green colour,
or maybe there was something about the way it twinkled.
Who knows.

And what if,
over the millennia,
the Venusians concluded that God lived on earth,
and that there was nothing more that God wanted
than for the Venusians to come visit her.

So the Venusians,
all working together in harmony,
devoted every resource on their planet
to coming to the Earth
(so much so that that is why Venus’ environment was so messed up,
because they knew,
once they reached God,
she would make everything all right,
for so it is written
in the most sacred texts known to the Venusians
given to them directly from God herself).

And instead of sending astronauts,
or whatever they’re called on Venus,
they sent an envoy of their top clerics --
pastors and preachers, priests and imams, rabbis and shamans,
and a few others only they have names for --
those most venerated leaders of the one true religion.

And after a year or so in space,
of singing hymns and praising God,
they finally made it to Earth
and landed on the planet -- it doesn’t much matter where.

Wow.
Talk about the major let downs in life.