Lord & Lady Voldemitt Horse Around....

Lord, Lord, Lord...the London headlines in papers like "The Daily Prophet" read, "Mitt the Twit." Lord Voldemitt was perplexed by the reaction he'd received. And usually they would say "You know who the Twit," leaving him unnamed. But not this time! How could they rain on his foreign policy coming out party? To insure his immortality, he decided he needed to plant another Horcrux...to add to those in Switzerland, the Cayman Islands, and Panama. He would stop by Gringotts soon and set it up. He could hide a piece of his soul in his vault far beneath the London streets. His wife, Lady Ann seemed to be faring no better after her "You People" blunder last week. And, in London for the Olympics, for her horse Rafalca's Dressage competition, she could join Voldemitt upon his return from Poland. They would hope for no more gaffes and Rafalca's perfection.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-07-27/romneys-have-tax-deduction-with-olympic-hopes-on-rafalca

The Changing Conversation.

I talk to my wife more than anyone else. And I listen selectively to most of what she says. Otherwise, though, conversations have somehow become sound bites...pieces, parts...like McNuggets. And I find myself thinking in those terms: "What's the perfect Nugget for that discussion?" And most conversations, now, take place while we are alone and diddling in cyberspace. We communicate, but human contact has almost disappeared. It's like the ultimate evolution (devolution?) of the cocktail party...where we interacted but preferably were anesthetized appropriately first. Is this a bad thing? We do save on deodorant. And it is our choice. And we all force ourselves to interact with others from time to time...it's a necessity. This changing conversation does allow us to think before we speak...write. But...everyday...we see that's not someones choice, as they still figure out how to stick their foot in their post.

Small is Beautiful

Willard and Ann know what they want. Small government. You see...they don't need government. The less of it in their lives the better. Less regulation for any business Willard has a stake in. Less to consider when he practices his faith. Less to declare when he files his taxes. Less to pay when he gets his way. Small is beautiful they say. About government...that's all...that they want small. Most other things in their lives are not small. There once was a Willard that friended rats....

"You will find that the State is the kind of organization which, though it does big things badly, does small things badly, too," - John Kenneth Galbraith (1908 - 2006).

Doing the Right Thing....

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Our President may have done himself in, politically, yesterday, with his declaration in support of gay marriage. What a courageous and honorable thing to do. I can't remember another President putting himself in that position in my lifetime. I support and respect his personal belief, but have a sick feeling in my gut that it just may cost him his job and give us an Etch A Sketch President. The opposition has tried to return us all to the "Good Old Days" of illegal abortions and restricted personal liberties all year long and there are "True Believers" out there that scare the hell out of me. How can doing the right thing make me feel this way? It should make me happy...why am I sad?

Inventory....

There are parts of my body I have not seen in years. I am flexible...kind of like an over-starched white dress shirt that maintains my upper torso erection. Bend but not break is an ideal. I've lost a lot of those over time.  But that's okay. Change comes with age...and I refuse to be a whiner. My dad spoke of a fellow he drank with from time to time...a man a little bit older...who would suck the joy from the room as soon as he opened his mouth. They were not friends. Just bar stool neighbors. Dad explained that this man would begin to complain about every pain in every body part as soon as he sat down. And my dad was not there to relive this man's pain...he was there to forget his own. One day, finally, after weeks of trying to seem like a good listener, and neighbor, weeks of complaints, he asked the man, bluntly, "How old are you?" "Seventy-five," he said. "So, what the hell do you expect??" He never sat next to my dad again.

Death at the Box.

The Box is in a corner of our kitchen, farthest from food and nearest a window. That morning, the long legged spider, out for adventure, squeezed through a small space under a window screen and into our lives forever. Leg by leg, claw by claw, each of its eight legs felt their way down that mountainside that is the wall below the window. Each step it took down that mountain had to make the Box grow in size, and, one can only imagine, the spider had been holding its breath during the descent until, just an inch above the Box, it breathed in all the magnificence within and collapsed to the hard vinyl surface upon which the Box sat. By the time we awoke and journeyed upon the crime scene, there were eight legs straight up into the air and what only can be described as a surprised look on the spider's face. That image can never be erased...and the cat was, as cats are, totally unaffected.  

Nuclear Dreams 1950-2001

At night, when young,
We knew the bomb...
I died in dreams so often:
Ending as a flash of white fire.
Decades pass...
I stay alive. I don't Die
In dreams. I won't.
I died again last night...
I felt the bomb, nearby,
A clock set to ring,
In my mind, In my dream,
The trigger clicked, the dream ended.
I died again last night.

Michael James Lawless