Femme avec une bouche d'une truite

Thought for the Day:
Forgive many things in others; nothing in yourself.
Ausonius

The Day Ahead:
Today my loving wife is picking me up at 10:30. We have a dentist appointment together, which I scheduled. How queer is that, I have a date with my wife to go get our teeth cleaned.

Sadly with her schedule I booked it so we might spend a little time together and have lunch. Tonight she has some concert she has to go to but told me she plans on being home by 8:30. I won’t hold my breath, the last six times 8:30 as ended up being more like 8:30am.

Now I did get invited along, but I am old and haven’t followed music since my grunge days (yes, I was also one of those). Well, I was more grunge because I was poor but that’s a whole other story ending with me cutting my hair and starting to wear starched shirts. Some say I sold out; I like to think I bought in.

Anyway as a result, I don’t know what I will do with my leisure time this evening. Perhaps go to the bar, as is my normal routine when faced with a darkened home, or the concert, or just suck it up and go home and read. Hard to tell, much, much to early to make a accurate prediction.

At work today, other than the dentist appointment, I have a slow day scheduled, which is often the kiss of death. I have a thing I am writing up on two recent infant fatalities and a grant I would like to get out the door by the end of the week. Such is a day in the life of a humble servant of mankind.

On Dreams in the Opium Den of my mind:
Ok, since I have had this surgery I have been having a lot of very odd dreams. Last week it was that I was a Hispanic man at a family dinner, there I was talking to people I knew but didn’t know, eating food, drinking beer, all in Spanish… Now folks, I speak Spanish about as well as I do French. I think I am having the dreams of whoever had these body parts before me. Anyone else ever had someone else’s dreams?

…but back to last night. I had a dream that I was at a store and watched a little white mouse come in and buy a Big-Wheel (I hope your old enough to remember those). Yes, a mouse buying a Big-Wheel.

Now, the salesman was trying to talk him out of it, the mouse says “Nope, I want to be cool” so he went ahead and sold it to him (think Dobbs, the used car master and blogger of merit).

About an hour later the mouse comes back in with about 20 people pushing him and returns the Big-Wheel. The salesman asks him why and he says “Well, I learned a very valuable lesson, like all good ideas, once you get people behind it you can’t steer it”.

Now you tell me, odd dream or what? It would make sense if I would of just come up with some kick ass idea, but the well is dry.

Man, I would settle for some of those dreams boys have when they hit puberty (your know about breasts, oral sex, hairy French women or at least fishing), but this stuff? Perhaps it’s the pain pills, but wow…odd.

The Big Easy:
I won’t say a lot about it, since the world is focusing on the effects of the hurricane, other than to say both Mrs. JQP and I feel their pain. We have been through more than a few hurricanes when we were back on the beach and have had to rebuild what we did have as an effect. As always my heart goes out to the poor, those folks who couldn’t flee the storm and who didn’t have a lot to start with in the first place.

On a plus side, Mrs. JQP is organizing a relief effort. Which she asked my help with. It’s not that well known but at one time I worked disasters for an NGO, so besides living through a few hurricanes, I got to work them, along with fires, floods, tornados and a typhoon.

Yes, dear reader I have a checkered past. So, anyway I sent her to a friend who owns a trucking company, so she now has radio sponsorship and a semi with a driver lined up. That’s one thing I love about her, she is not a sit on your ass kind of girl.

Today’s Bill:
Lady you bereft me of all words,
Only my blood speaks to you in my veins,
And there is such confusion in my powers.
William Shakespeare Greatest English dramatist & poet (1564 - 1616)

Thought for the Day:
Cleanliness and order are not matters of instinct; they are matters of education, and like most great things, you must cultivate a taste for them.
Benjamin Disraeli
British politician (1804 - 1881)

I remain, much like an uncomfortable odor in the confined space of your soul:

JQP esq.

The Dry Desert of Introspection:

Thought for the Day:
A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.
Bertrand Russell British author, mathematician, & philosopher (1872 - 1970)

“…would you come to the chalk-board, please?”
I have little note worthy to say today, I find myself more than a bit depressed. I think its because I am trying to wean myself off the pain pills, I already have enough monkeys on my back, one more would make it a troop. It’s a little known fact that pain can and often does act as a depressant.

However I have noticed a return of my sex drive, which has been met with mixed reviews by my loving bride. I feel as though I have the hormones of a teenage boy coursing through my veins, which sadly benifits no one.

Your Recipe for the Week:
(Pull this little gem out when the in-laws come to visit, make sure you tell them its an old family recipe from your homeland, trust me, it will be a meal they remember.)

Kidneys au Vin Blanc recipe
ingredients
3 Tbsp (40 g) butter
1 small onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
6 sheep's kidneys, skinned and thickly sliced
3 tbls (25 g) 1 oz flour
salt and pepper
2 oz (50 g) mushrooms, sliced
1 teaspoon chopped fresh herbs
2/3 cup (150 ml) 1/4 pt white wine
2/3 cup (150 ml) 1/4 pt stock
3 large tomatoes, skinned, quartered and seeded
croutons to garnish

Directions:
1. Melt the butter in a frying pan and fry the onion and garlic until softened.
2. Add the kidneys and fry until lightly browned.
3. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the flour, salt, pepper, mushrooms, herbs, wine and stock.
4. Bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes.
5. Add the tomatoes and cook for a further 2 to 3 minutes.
6. Serve garnished with croutons.
serving amount
serves 4

Breaking News:

In this candid photo shot recently on Beaches of South Walton, Florida clearly shows what Santa does with his off time. Yes, Virginia, Santa is a swinger.

Today’s Bill:
For aught that I could ever read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth.
William Shakespeare, "A Midsummer Night's Dream", Act 1 scene 1
Greatest English dramatist & poet (1564 - 1616)

Quote of the Day:
One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe dramatist, novelist, poet, & scientist (1749 - 1832)

I remain, like full bladder of your existence:

JQP

Masturbatory Fantasies and Belly Button Lint:

Thought for the Day:
I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the Stern Fact, the Sad Self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, US essayist & poet (1803 - 1882)

The Weekend:
Has is getting to be my norm, it was a quiet weekend. Funny, how taking a break from the fast paced lifestyle of Social Butterfly & Leader of Fashion, can slow a person down. Friday my loving wife worked until late, I stayed in and listened to classical music and read Beowulf again. Wagner and Beowulf, it’s a wonder I didn’t saddle my steed and ride off to burn and pillage the border villages of Ohio.

Saturday, my loving wife only worked until 1:00 so at last we had some time to do a few things. As I said last week, we are thinking about moving out of the city, either to the lake area or out in the country. So, off we went to look at property on the lakes. And, what a trip it was.

I had read an ad earlier in the week, for a ½ acre lot with three cabins on a ski lake for 80.000 with deeded access and dock. Using the directions the nice old lady gave me, off we went. After about two hours of driving around, I am after all a man’s man, there was no way I was going to stop and ask for directions, we arrived at our destination.

Let me paint a visual picture for you the reader. Often when traveling the secondary roads of this great nation, the traveler might notice what in the 30’s known as motor-inns, refuge for the weary traveler in a day when air conditioning was yet unknown. These buildings (more often cabins) sit along the road, abandoned for decades.

After walking through over growth, we were able to make out the structures in question. Since it was a lake site the “cabins” (about the size of the common mini-van) had nautical themed names ie: the Lobster Cabin, the Shrimp Cabin and the Crawdad cabin. The dock, or best said, what remained of the dock was three posts sticking into the mud filled canal.

It truly looked as though my bride and I were the first people to enjoy the amenities of this vacation destination in over 40 years. It was truly a place that would be improved with a liberal application of gasoline and a box of Ohio Blue Tip matches. Yes, it did sound too good to be true. Dear reader it was.

Sunday, after Mass, the sweet and loving Mrs. JQP and I went into a house cleaning & yard work frenzy. I worked in the yard for the first time since my surgery in June. Funny, how quickly things can go to hell. After we had finished our tasks, on a whim we invited K-Man the Beat Drummer and his wife Lady Bird over for food and fellowship. It was the celebration of their anniversary and we were honored that they chose to spend it with us. I quickly made a thrown together meal that would meet everyone’s tastes.

I prepared; JQP’s Secret Recipe BBQ’ed chicken wings, three kinds of cheese with imported tea crackers, Greek Olives, spicy cucumbers and both water melon and musk melon, although I was informed by my Sweet Flower that in mixed company cantaloupe is the proper name for this treat of the fields. We washed it all down with Mimosas. For desert we enjoyed vanilla pound cake with Death By Chocolate ice cream And coffee. It was a nice long afternoon meal filled with dialog worthy of a Woody Allen film. Around 7, our guests left, and my flower and I retreated into the martial chamber.

The Day Ahead:
I have a meeting with the judges today, so it will be a fun day to gossip and “get the scoop” as to what going on. Such is the benefit of being on the inside. After that, its back to the office for a day filled with paperwork and grants. It’s a bad pain day, so I am trying to figure out a way to “work from home” later this afternoon. After watching the news this morning, I find myself glad I didn’t take that job in the “Big Easy”. I am in no mood for a hurricane.

In The News:
From today’s Washington Post, a administration whistle blower gets the ax.
WASHINGTON – A high-level contracting official who has been a vocal critic of the Pentagon’s decision to give Halliburton Co. a multibillion-dollar, no-bid contract for work in Iraq was removed from her job by the Army Corps of Engineers, effective Saturday.

Greenhouse came to prominence last year when she went public with her concerns over the volume of Iraq-related work given to Halliburton by the Corps without competition. The Houston-based oil services giant already had a competitively awarded contract to provide logistics support for the military in the Mid-east and was awarded a no-bid contract to repair Iraq oil fields on the eve of the war there in 2003.
“I can unequivocally state that the abuse related to contracts awarded to KBR represents the most blatant and improper abuse I have witnessed” in 20 years working on government contracts.

Greenhouse’s attorney, Michael Kohn, appealed the decision Friday in a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, saying it broke an earlier commitment to suspend the demotion until a “sufficient record” was available to address her allegations.
The Army said last October that it would refer her complaints to the Defense Department’s inspector general. The failure to abide by the agreement and the circumstances of the removal “are the hallmark of illegal retaliation,” Kohn wrote to Rumsfeld. He said the review Strock cited to justify his action “was conducted by the very subjects” of Greenhouse’s allegations, including the general.

Your song for the Day:
Wilco from Watch: I Am Trying To Break Your Heart
from the CD Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, hit the NPR site: http://www.npr.org/programs/asc/archives/asc14/index.html#wilco

Your Bill for the Day:
SONNET 150
O, from what power hast thou this powerful might
With insufficiency my heart to sway?
To make me give the lie to my true sight,
And swear that brightness doth not grace the day?
Whence hast thou this becoming of things ill,
That in the very refuse of thy deeds
There is such strength and warrantize of skill
That, in my mind, thy worst all best exceeds?
Who taught thee how to make me love thee more
The more I hear and see just cause of hate?
O, though I love what others do abhor,
With others thou shouldst not abhor my state:
If thy unworthiness raised love in me,
More worthy I to be beloved of thee.
(as always my thoughts go to you)

Quote of the Day:
An alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinks as much as you do.
Dylan Thomas, in Constantine Fitzgibbon, Welsh poet (1914 - 1953)

I remain the bon vivant worker bee in the hive of your mind:

JQP esq.

Fun with Crime and other Hobbies for the well to do:

Thought for the Day:
Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
Groucho Marx US comedian with Marx Brothers (1890 - 1977)

A brief Re-Cap of No-Love-Thursday:
This weeks meeting was once again held in the sacred chambers of our lodge and bar. In attendance were: Our Distinguished Head Leader and Wearer of the Horns, M. Chamber land (Newspaperman), Pastor Bob (Our Chapter Chaplin), The Dudgeons and Dragons Player of the Week, Johnny Vanilla, Colorado Joe and of course yours truly JQP esq.

The meeting was a brief one, given as those of us with significant others were in a hurry to avoid their wrath. However, reckless banter and fellowship did ensure a good time was had by those present. I enjoyed several Miller High Life’s (a good Union beer) a slab of ribs covered in South Carolina style BBQ sauce (I gave them my recipe) and folks it was tasty. I was home in the arms of my kind and loving wife by 6:15, as I said it was an early night.

Law and Order Indiana:
Seeing how I am on a detective kick in my reading and a fan of the durable, gritty, crime drama Law and Order, I decided to give today’s post a theme.

This photo was taken in Perth, can you spot the evil-doer?


Tasteless Pulp Fiction or How-to-Guide?

(Ed. Note: This copy was taken from Mrs. JQP’s bedside stand)

The Line Up:
Most likely to help over throw the values this Nation was built upon.






Why is owning a canoe a crime in the middle-east?


Will he make it? And should he?


Pat Roberson Bastard son of Fatty Arbuckle?




Meatloaf Bastard son of Pat Roberson?


And just for Shits and Giggles:
http://www.indianasheriffs.org/default.asp

Todays Bill:
I follow him to serve my turn upon him." --From Othello (I, i, 42)

Quote of the Day:
I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.
Abraham Lincoln, speech in Washington D.C., 1865
16th president of US (1809 - 1865)

I remain, the cavity search of introspection:

JQP esq.

From my Mail Box:

Words for the Weekend:

The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. Here are this year's 2005 winners:

1. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

2. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

3. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer,unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

4. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

5. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.

6. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

7. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

8. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

9. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.

10. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

11. Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.

12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

13. Glibido: All talk and no action.

14. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

15. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

17. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating. And the pick of the literature:

18. Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an a-hole.

Health Tip for the Week:

(This as been a Public Service Announcement)

Rubber bands, Turtle Soup and Saltine Crackers

Thought for the Day:
Life engenders life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.
Sarah Bernhardt French actress (1844 - 1923)

Today is No Love-Thursday:
And true to its name I have no love to give at this point. Perhaps its because for the first time in a few weeks I am once again trying to go without my pain pills. As a result I don’t have that joyful glazed over look in my eyes. I have once again noticed that when you’re in a bad mood you can’t tell it until you’re around others. At least I find this to be the case.

My loving and sexually deviant wife left the manor house early, allowing me a morning that moved at my own pace, after breakfasting on smoked cod, capers and hard boiled eggs, I enjoyed several cups of coffee and read my four daily newspapers.

However after arriving at the Salt Mines to start my shift I noticed even a simple “hello” uttered to me in passing by a colleague brought up a response that would be better suited to a Cossack attack on an undefended village. As a result I have hidden myself away in my office with a note on the door that says “went to the restroom be back in 5 mins”. For their sake I hope it works.

Last night:
I was once again deep in the trenches of marital relationships as they relate to the science of reproduction. For hours I engaged in hand to hand combat the likes of which have not been seen since the last Jacky Chan movie or perhaps one of those Gladiator movies from the 50’s. I blame the communists in their effort to poison our precious bodily fluids through the evils of Chlorination. Needless to say it was not a restful night at the Public compound.

More Pat Roberson quotes:
"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'"

And…
"I do believe, as a theologian, based upon many Scriptures and particularly Proverbs 14:23, which says 'living by God's principles promotes a nation to greatness, violating those principles brings a nation to shame,'" he said.
(Funny, I happen to believe in Proverbs 14:23 KJV, I just wish he (and the rest to the new Hitler Youth) could see the hypocrisy in their actions)

Quote of the Day:
Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.
Mahatma Gandhi Indian ascetic & nationalist leader (1869 - 1948)

I remain, like an embarrassing wet spot on the chinos of reality:

JQP esq.

Your Hot Redhead of the Week:

(Life its the pits)

Recipe for the Week:

JQP’s World Famous (except for Canada) Meat Loaf:



With over 2 requests for my secret recipe for the best meat loaf ever, I decided that I should no longer hide my candle under a bushel and that I should share it with the masses. So, for your dinning pleasure, behold my Meat Loaf recipe. I should note that one thing I like about this is it includes just about one of every animal in the barn yard, damn it’s tasty. Bon Appetite’

1 small onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves minced
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon salt
1 table spoon of Allspice
8 each Green and Black Olives
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
4 teaspoons Dijon mustard
4 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon Tabasco sauce
1/2 cup milk
1 lb ground chuck
1/2 lb ground pork
1/2 lb ground veal
2/3 cup well crushed potato chips
1/3 cup minced parsley
1 pound thick bacon

For the meatloaf, heat oven to 350 degrees.

(This is kind of what it should look like when your done)

Mix eggs with salt, pepper, allspice, thyme, mustard, Tabasco, Worcestershire sauce, and milk. Add onion and garlic then the meat in large bowl along with potato chips, olives, parsley and cooked onion and garlic. Mix with fork until evenly blended and mixture doesn’t stick to the bowl. If it sticks add milk.

With wet hands, pat mixture into 9x5-inch loaf shape. Place in foil lined baking pan for easy clean up. Rap the loaf with bacon, tucking the ends under the loaf, with the side just barely overlapping. Bake until crisp, about 1 hour. Cool at least 20 minutes and serve with the remaining glaze. You can broil for about the last five mins. to give the bacon a darker finish. If you don’t want the veal or pork just add more hamburger. I also sometimes add a handful of diced red and green bell peppers.

A long day in plastic chairs:

Thought for the Day:
Promises that you make to yourself are often like the Japanese plum tree - they bear no fruit.
Francis Marion US army officer in American Revolution (1732 - 1795)

Spanking of the Week:

Goes to that man o’ God, the Reverend Pat Poberson:

I realize that this weeks spanking is a bit early, but after having about 50 conversations about the dumb-ass in the past 48 hours, I decided to break tradition.

From the August 22 broadcast of The 700 Club: “There was a popular coup that overthrew him [Chavez]. And what did the United States State Department do about it? Virtually nothing. And as a result, within about 48 hours that coup was broken; Chavez was back in power, but we had a chance to move in. He has destroyed the Venezuelan economy, and he's going to make that a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent.

You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don't think any oil shipments will stop. But this man is a terrific danger and the United ... This is in our sphere of influence, so we can't let this happen. We have the Monroe Doctrine; we have other doctrines that we have announced. And without question, this is a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil that could hurt us very badly. We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.

When asked for a comment this morning, Sec. of Defense Donny-Boy Rumsfeld was quoted as saying “Our department doesn't do that kind of thing. It's against the law.” Also U.S. Senators Norm Coleman, Republican of Minnesota and Mel Martinez, Republican of Florida, said a call by U.S. televangelist Pat Robertson for the U.S. government to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was "irresponsible" and "incredibly stupid."

The senators, visiting Brazil to meet with government and business leaders, spoke with reporters today in Rio de Janeiro.

"It was an incredibly stupid statement and has no reflection on reality," said Coleman, the chairman of the Senate's Foreign Relations subcommittee on the western hemisphere. "I met with President Chavez on my last visit a couple of months ago and he related that concern to me, about how the U.S. was out to assassinate him. I told him not to lose any sleep about it."

The day is upon us:
There nothing note worthy going out, just a normal hump-day in the life of a man how is charged with defending the things you hold dear. Today I have meetings and meeting and then a few meetings. These are the kind of meetings that you have to be at but that in advance you know that A) you know everything they will talk about and B) you nothing will come out of the meeting(s). Funny, how I am not looking forward to it.

IQ drop among the Elite:
One thing I have noticed is that this time of year people get stupid. I don’t know if it’s the weather changing or what. It has dropped about 15 to 20 degrees in the past week making for much better sleeping weather, perhaps that’s it, for once this summer this somewhat its comfortable.

I have a staff that I supervise, a bunch in independent self-starters who are very good at their jobs, (hey, I hired them & trained them so I know they are good, think the Special Forces a-team of the Human Services field) and so far each one of them as managed to step on their dicks. It’s like all of a sudden they didn’t know any better. Silly stuff, but enough that it is causing a few minor problems. Now I know that they can’t all be like me and give 110% everyday with a zero margin of error, but a man can dream can he not? On a plus side I know this is temporary, come fall they will be back into shape.

The Homefront:
In other news the petty and loving Mrs. JQP is being very sweet to me here lately. It is making me nervous. She started that damn Atkins diet again, last year she took off 20 pounds and has gained 10 of it back so of course she is fat or as she puts it “I am a big fat Heifer Cow”, now matter what I say, as a guy it’s a no win situation, also that makes me pretty much on the Akins diet to, which is ok because I like red-meat.

We have also been talking about moving, either to the lakes or out in the country. So, it’s the look at houses times, which is kind of, fun. Before we bought this house we looked at about 78 others (no kidding) and its cheaper than getting drunk at a bar. I don’t know I think it’s our gypsy roots showing, we have been here for 5 years and its time to make a change. We are also starting the “make-a-baby” thing again, so no restful evenings for me.

Today’s Bill:
SONNET 95
How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame
Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose,
Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!
O, in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!
That tongue that tells the story of thy days,
Making lascivious comments on thy sport,
Cannot dispraise but in a kind of praise;
Naming thy name blesses an ill report.
O, what a mansion have those vices got
Which for their habitation chose out thee,
Where beauty's veil doth cover every blot,
And all things turn to fair that eyes can see!
Take heed, dear heart, of this large privilege;
The hardest knife ill-used doth lose his edge.

Quote of the Day:
An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't.
Anatole France French novelist (1844 - 1924)

I remain, like a canker in the fragrant rose:

JQP esq.

It was a quiet week in Lake Woebegone:

Thought for the Day:
You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.
Malcolm X

The Weekend:
Well, the weekend was pretty easy. Nothing happened. Nope nada. I was going to go spend some time at my brothers lake cabin, perhaps do a little fishing (damn, little, as I hate to fish), but alas no one wanted to go up. So I read a few books and ate some watermelons from a patch up in Mongo, Indiana. Now I mention these melons because they were so damn good, what is unique about them is that they are yellow inside (which is a common trait for watermelons of this isolated rural river community). They taste like honey. Folks, that was good eaten. No bar fights, no drunken roman orgies, just a quiet Hoosier weekend.

I went and had Sunday dinner with my family after Mass at a little Mexican joint, later my loving bride and I traveled around the countryside looking at old farms for sale. It’s my latest get rich scheme, heirloom livestock. Breeds of animals that were common that are now almost extinct.

“When heritage breeds become extinct, their unique genes are lost forever. When this occurs, these genes can't be used to breed new traits into existing livestock breeds (such as the ability to withstand climate changes or resist new diseases).” That and people pay top dollar for this stuff. Turkeys and hogs are the big one right now.

It’s better than my last two ideas which involved aquaponics and bat milking.

Song for the Day:
Today’s song is by that hit pop sensation “The Bellrays” give “Revolution Get Down” a spin all you hep’ cats and hip chicks.

Customer Service:
Last night, after a long day at the states capital, I found myself in need of respite, I hungered for a meal that would both fortify the body and comfort the soul. Since my loving wife was enjoying an evening with media consultants at a martini and cigar bar after which she was to be transported to an eatery via limo for a dinner that cost more than my first car, I was on my own for supper and dear reader, I knew a can of Campbell’s Tomato soup wouldn’t cut it.

So, I went to my favorite bar had a beer and ordered their famous meatloaf to go. It was after all “Meatloaf Monday”. I even went so far as to order a dbl. order of mashed potatoes, has I find them most tasty. However upon my return to the manor house, I found that my meal was sans meatloaf! How could this be?

I promptly called my favorite bar and asked how could I be with out my meatloaf? A double order of potatoes yes, fine, but no meatloaf? The barman explained that he misunderstood my order and that he was truly sorry. I sadly hung-up and ate my mashed potatoes in silence.

However about half and hour later my door bell rung, it was the hot & sexy waitress from the bar, standing there (wet and shivering, with round full pouty lips and bedroom eyes) on my doorstep, she explained that “…they felt so bad about me not getting my meatloaf they wanted to make it up for me”, I found myself hoping she was there to offer her body for my enjoyment in an effort to make amends, but dear reader that was not to be so, she produced a to-go-box that contained about 6 pounds of meatloaf, for which I was thankful even if oral sex wasn’t involved. Dear friends, this is a good example of costumer service, hats of to you in the food and beverage trade and hats off to you thoughtful, kind employees of my favorite bar.

President Watch:
I am sure many of you are watching the presidential vacation as closely as I am. So, it should come as no surprise to you that this morning the White House press secretary announced that the leader of the Free World would be taking a vacation day in Idaho to mountain bike and then have dinner with some lucky service member’s families. Poor man, I would hate for him to get too stressed out over the economy tanking, Jimmy Cater style gas prices and a war he and his merry band have been as effective in leading as an elephant tap dancing in quick sand. W is in week three of his 5 week vacation and he decided he needs a he needs a vacation from his vacation.

Getting Banged:

Hunter S. Thompson, my role model & mentor was sent off last week by his close family and friends in a rather large explosion. This also makes the end of my official period of mourning.

HST wanted to go out with a bang and he did, both with the self inflicted gunshot wound and with having his ashes shot out of a cannon. There were some things with this little event that would have pissed the great man off, in my opinion. Let’s go over them; first I wasn’t on the guest list, for God’s sake the man stole a bottle of whisky from me in 1989, second the people on the guest list were politicians and movie stars and third they had SWAT teams providing security. Where was the low-life drug crazed poet-bikers and transgendered hit men? Where were the exotic dancers? …and where was the sacrificial goat? Anyway, rest in pieces great sage.

Something that made stop:
…and think. Yesterday while driving back from Indy I heard an expert on oil and the economy say something to the effect that the stone age didn’t end from lack of stones and that the oil age will not end from lack of oil.

Todays Bill:
SONNET 139
O, call not me to justify the wrong
That thy unkindness lays upon my heart;
Wound me not with thine eye but with thy tongue;
Use power with power and slay me not by art.
Tell me thou lovest elsewhere, but in my sight,
Dear heart, forbear to glance thine eye aside:
What need'st thou wound with cunning when thy might
Is more than my o'er-press'd defense can bide?
Let me excuse thee: ah! my love well knows
Her pretty looks have been mine enemies,
And therefore from my face she turns my foes,
That they elsewhere might dart their injuries:
Yet do not so; but since I am near slain,
Kill me outright with looks and rid my pain.

Quote of the Day:
He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare,
And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.
Ali ibn-Abi-Talib, (602 AD - 661 AD)

I remain, like sand in your swim suit:

JQP esq.

In Indy for the Day:

So here is your poem for the week:

HOWL
by Allen Ginsberg
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy &
publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear,
burning their money in wastebaskets and listening
to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through
Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in
Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their
torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares,
alcohol and cock and endless balls,
incomparable blind; streets of shuddering cloud and
lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson,
illuminating all the motionless world of Time between,
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery
dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops,
storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon
blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree
vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn,
ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,
who chained themselves to subways for the endless
ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine
until the noise of wheels and children brought
them down shuddering mouth-wracked and
battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance
in the drear light of Zoo,
who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's
floated out and sat through the stale beer after
noon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack
of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,
who talked continuously seventy hours from park to
pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge,
lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping
down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills
off Empire State out of the moon,
yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts
and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks
and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,
whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days
and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the
Synagogue cast on the pavement,
who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a
trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall,
suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grind-ings and
migraines of China under junk-with-drawal in Newark's bleak furnished room,
who wandered around and around at midnight in the
railroad yard wondering where to go, and went,
leaving no broken hearts,
who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing
through snow toward lonesome farms in grand-father night,
who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy
and bop kabbalah because the cosmos instinctively
vibrated at their feet in Kansas,
who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary
indian angels who were visionary indian angels,
who thought they were only mad when Baltimore
gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,
who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight street
light smalltown rain,
who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston
seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the
brilliant Spaniard to converse about America
and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa,
who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving
behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees
and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fireplace Chicago,
who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the
F.B.I. in beards and shorts with big pacifist
eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets,
who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting
the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism,
who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union
Square weeping and undressing while the sirens
of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed
down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed,
who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked
and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons,
who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight
in policecars for committing no crime but their
own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication,
who howled on their knees in the subway and were
dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts,
who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly
motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,
who blew and were blown by those human seraphim,
the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love,
who balled in the morning in the evenings in rose
gardens and the grass of public parks and
cemeteries scattering their semen freely to
whomever come who may,
who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up
with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath
when the blond & naked angel came to pierce
them with a sword,
who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate
the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar
the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb
and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but
sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden
threads of the craftsman's loom,
who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of
beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along
the floor and down the hall and ended fainting
on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and
come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,
who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling
in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning
but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sun
rise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake,
who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad
stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these
poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver-joy
to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls
in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses'
rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with
gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station
solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too,
who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in
dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and
picked themselves up out of basements hung
over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third
Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices,
who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on
the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the
East River to open to a room full of steamheat and opium,
who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment
cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime
blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall
be crowned with laurel in oblivion,
who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested
the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of Bowery,
who wept at the romance of the streets with their
pushcarts full of onions and bad music,
who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the
bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts,
who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned
with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded
by orange crates of theology,
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty
incantations which in the yellow morning were
stanzas of gibberish,
who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht
& tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom,
who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg,
who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot
for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks
fell on their heads every day for the next decade,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique
stores where they thought they were growing
old and cried,
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits
on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse
& the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments
of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the
fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the
drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,
who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten
into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alley
ways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,
who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of
the subway window, jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes,
cried all over the street,
danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed
phonograph records of nostalgic European
1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and
threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans
in their ears and the blast of colossal steam whistles,
who barreled down the highways of the past journeying
to each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude
watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation,
who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out
if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had
a vision to find out Eternity,
who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who
came back to Denver & waited in vain, who
watched over Denver & brooded & loned in
Denver and finally went away to find out the
Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,
who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying
for each other's salvation and light and breasts,
until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,
who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for
impossible criminals with golden heads and the
charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet
blues to Alcatraz,
who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky
Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys
or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or
Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the
daisychain or grave,
who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hyp
notism & were left with their insanity & their
hands & a hung jury,
who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism
and subsequently presented themselves on the
granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads
and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy,
and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin
Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational
therapy pingpong & amnesia,
who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic
pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia,
returning years later truly bald except for a wig of
blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible mad
man doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East,
Pilgrim State's Rockland's and Greystone's foetid
halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul,
rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench
dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare,
bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon,
with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book
flung out of the tenement window, and the last
door closed at 4. A.M. and the last telephone
slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room
emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture,
a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet,
and even that imaginary,
nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination
ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and
now you're really in the total animal soup of time
and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed
with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use
of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrating plane,
who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space
through images juxtaposed, and trapped the
archangel of the soul between 2 visual images
and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun
and dash of consciousness together jumping
with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus
to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human
prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent
and shaking with shame,
rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm
of thought in his naked and endless head,
the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown,
yet putting down here what might be left to say
in time come after death,
and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in
the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the
suffering of America's naked mind for love into
an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone
cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio
with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered
out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.
What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open
their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?
Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unob
tainable dollars! Children screaming under the
stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men
weeping in the parks!
Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the
loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy
judger of men!
Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the
crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of
sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment!
Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose
blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers
are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo!
Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!
Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows!
Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long
streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories
dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose
smokestacks and antennae crown the cities!
Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch
whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch
whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch
whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen!
Moloch whose name is the Mind!
Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream
Angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in
Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!
Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom
I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch
who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy!
Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch!
Light streaming out of the sky!
Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs!
skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic
industries! spectral nations! invincible mad
houses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!
They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pave-
ments, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to
Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!
Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies!
gone down the American river!
Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole
boatload of sensitive bullshit!
Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions!
gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs!
Ten years' animal screams and suicides!
Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on
the rocks of Time!
Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the
wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell!
They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving!
carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street!
Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland
where you're madder than I am
I'm with you in Rockland
where you must feel very strange
I'm with you in Rockland
where you imitate the shade of my mother
I'm with you in Rockland
where you've murdered your twelve secretaries
I'm with you in Rockland
where you laugh at this invisible humor
I'm with you in Rockland
where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter
I'm with you in Rockland
where your condition has become serious and
is reported on the radio
I'm with you in Rockland
where the faculties of the skull no longer admit
the worms of the senses
I'm with you in Rockland
where you drink the tea of the breasts of the
spinsters of Utica
I'm with you in Rockland
where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the
harpies of the Bronx
I'm with you in Rockland
where you scream in a straightjacket that you're
losing the game of the actual pingpong of the abyss
I'm with you in Rockland
where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul
is innocent and immortal it should never die
ungodly in an armed madhouse
I'm with you in Rockland
where fifty more shocks will never return your
soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a
cross in the void
I'm with you in Rockland
where you accuse your doctors of insanity and
plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the
fascist national Golgotha
I'm with you in Rockland
where you will split the heavens of Long Island
and resurrect your living human Jesus from the
superhuman tomb
I'm with you in Rockland
where there are twenty-five-thousand mad com-
rades all together singing the final stanzas of
the Internationale
I'm with you in Rockland
where we hug and kiss the United States under
our bedsheets the United States that coughs all
night and won't let us sleep
I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse
O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

Giving the Dog a Bone and other Bed Time Stories:

Thought for the Day:
Don't look back: Something may be gaining on you.
Satchel Paige US baseball player (1906 - 1982)

Your spanking of the Week Goes to:

The right wing pundits who have set out to tear down a mother who lost her child in a war that in her opinion (and a growing number of other Americans) didn’t need to be fought.

There was a time when a person had a right to freedom of speech in this country, its seems those folks from the country club set seem to have forgotten that. I do have to give it to her. It was a brilliant strategy, setting up out side W’s ranch while he takes his much needed 5 week vacation, what else was the worlds press going to cover of in the middle of no-where TX?

Today:
I find myself a bit moody. More so since my loving bride told me that today she will once again be hitting the road and that I should expect her back at the manor house on Sunday. Yet, another weekend with limited opportunity to fulfill my “man-needs”.

Last Night:
I did cross the street to my favorite bar for an hour. During which time I bemoaned my up coming class reunion (more on that later) and slammed shots of Rumplemizt, which to my benefit made my leg quit hurting. My loving bride got home and cooked me one of her standard meals: Kraft Macaroni and Cheese with Hamburger Stakes, a filling meal that I found to be most satisfying.

After dinner, I took it upon myself to teach the hounds some new tricks, using something I had seen in passing on the Animal Planet as my guide. I threw my bride’s words of caution to the wind and started my instruction. Sadly, this also involved a quick trip to see my old friends at the ER.

It seems in the excitement of learning one of the hounds bit me. Yes, she bit me in the face, the nose to be more precise, which resulted in only 6 stitches and half a dozen “I told you so’s” from my loving wife. Needless to say the old adage about teaching old dogs new tricks does in this case hold very true.

When we returned from the hospital she & I spent the rest of the evening in the blissful embrace that only deep loving thoughts can convey, enjoying the poetry of our mature love.

Your Drinks for the Weekend:



Twenty Thousand Leagues Drink Recipe
(I love this one A) three of them will put you under and B) because, I have a bottle of Pernod and can never come up with a drink to put it in)

Drink Ingredients:
1 oz. Dry Vermouth
2 dashes Orange Bitters
Crushed Ice
2 shots of. Pernod
1 1/2 oz. Gin

Instruction:
In a mixing glass half-filled with crushed ice, combine all of the ingredients. Stir well. Strain into a cocktail glass.

G-Cubed Drink Recipe

Drink Ingredients:
6 Ounces Ginger Ale
2 1/2 shots Galliano
6 Ounces of Grapefruit juice (Gatorade can be a white-trash substitute)

Instruction:
Pour the Galliano liqueur over ice. Fill the remainder of the glass with ginger ale and thats all there is to it. You now have a your very own GG.

Your Recipe for the Weekend:
(This is one of JQP’s favorite things in the whole wide world, I eat it for breakfast.)

Shrimp and Grits

Ingredients
6 cups water
6 cups cream (milk, if you have to use it)
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground white pepper
4 tablespoons butter
1 1/2 cups white grits (NOT instant or Quick Cooking, I use stone ground)
16 Oz. finely grated white cheddar cheese (optional)
1 pound fresh shrimp, shelled and de-veined
Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions
In a large saucepan, over medium heat, combine the water, cream, salt, pepper and 2 tablespoons of the butter. Bring the liquid to a gentle boil. Stir in the grits. Cook for 1 hour and 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. (**The grits will stick to the bottom of the pan, so make sure not to scrape the bottom of the pan. If the grits absorbed all of the water, add some hot water to thin out the grits.) Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the remaining 2 tablespoons butter and cheese if desired.

In a separate pot add shrimp to boiling water. Cook for 3 minutes. Add shrimp to grits and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Words for the Day:
jaggy bunnet:
Scottish slang. Another name for the oral sex proformed on a male.

Example:
"Wee Ally McCoist scored a great goal wi the jaggy bunnet"
"Am gonnae stick the jaggy bunnet in you fur yer cheek"

Bermuda Triangle:
a) Also Known as The Devils Triangle, located off the coast of Fla, Cuba and the Bahamas. where many planes and boats have vanished.

b)A sexual position often known as 69, in which both people involved, lick the anus of their partner.

c) Slang for well used female sex organs, (see also: alcove, bat cave, bear trap, bearded clam, bearded taco, beaver, box, bucket seat, cake, chuff box, cockpit, cooch, coochie, coochie-pop, coose, cooter, cooze, crack, crawl space, cum depository, cum dumpster, cuntcake, cunt, cunny, donut, dripping delta, felted mound, fillet-o-fish, finger hut, fish, fish taco, front bum, fly catcher, fuckhole, garage, gash, gates of Heaven, golden doorway, Grand Canyon, growler, hatchet wound, heaven's door, hole, honey cave, honey pot, hot box, jaws of Hell, lobster pot, loins, loose meat sandwich, lotus, love box, love canal, lower lips, meat wallet, muff, nooch, nook, nookie, peach, pearly panty gates, pocket, poon, poontang, purse, pussy, quiff, quim, rat trap, scratch, sheath, slash, slit, snapper, snatch, space, split, stench trench, tampon socket, temple, thingy, tool shed, tuna, tunnel, twat, undercut, vagina, vertical smile, wishing well, whisker box, womb, x, yoni)

Example:
"Before we had anal sex her ass, we visited the Bermuda Triangle."
"Man, in high school Suzi was known as the Bermuda Triangle."

Your Bill for the Day:
SONNET 50
How heavy do I journey on the way,
When what I seek, my weary travel's end,
Doth teach that ease and that repose to say
'Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend!'
The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,
As if by some instinct the wretch did know
His rider loved not speed, being made from thee:
The bloody spur cannot provoke him on
That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide;
Which heavily he answers with a groan,
More sharp to me than spurring to his side;
For that same groan doth put this in my mind;
My grief lies onward and my joy behind.

Quote of the Day:
Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger; and as, in the latter state, even the individuals are prompted, by the uncertainty of their condition, to submit to a government which may protect the weak as well as themselves; so, in the former state, will the more powerful factions or parties be gradually induced, by a like motive to wish for a government which will protect all parties, the weaker as well as the more powerful.
Alexander Hamilton US lawyer & politician (1755 - 1804)

I remain, like an ingrown hair on the ass of your life:

JQP esq.

I watched a snail crawl across a straight razor:

Thought for the Day:
Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.
Barry LePatner

I find Myself:

Being homesick for the ocean, I talked to some friends last night from back on the beach; they had gone surfing after work. On a normal day, I would be having a breakfast of shrimp and grits down by the harbor. Shit…

Today is No-Love Thursday:
…and I don’t plan on going to the meeting tonight. I know you’re surprised, but I would rather go home. I have the sinking suspicion that my loving bride will be home tonight and I have been wanting to make some meatloaf (how mid-western is that), and have a “normal” night together. It is my wish, it is my goal, JQP needs some connect time.

Last Night:
My loving wife had yet another concert. This one however she said she would be home from by 7:30. So, I waited supper, thinking that it would be nice to eat a meal together this week. Sadly, 7:30 came and went, has did 8:30 and even 9:30. However I did get several calls during the event assuring me that she was on her way.

I offered to come and pick her up since she had her Drunk-Party-Girl voice going, but she politely refused (One thing we are good about is coming and picking each other up from bars when we have had to much to drink, why risk it).

Around ten she rolled in, needless to say, suppertime had long since passed, and I didn’t even bring it up. This morning she has spent a great deal of time in the bath, throwing up, to the point she isn’t going into work today. Good, for her, she needs a day off; so far she has worked the past 10 days in a row, sad that she has to get herself sick in order to do it. Such is married life with someone who has both feet in the rock and roll lifestyle.

Student Loans and those of us who are not paying them:
Man, I would like to take a moment and applaud the efficacy of the folks they put on your trail when your student loans come past due. Never mind that them calling was the first I had heard about my loans being in repayment, or that in the past year I have filed for student loan repayment and disability from the government.

These folks call every two hours all day long from 8am until 8pm, even if they talk to you someone else will call. What’s funny, no matter how much you ask them they will not send you anything in the mail. I guess I am kind of old fashioned, I like getting bills in the mail, not phone calls or e-mails. Folks, its not like I am not going to pay them, the bloodsuckers. I just wish they would have let me know it was coming due.

Roberts, a man to judge:
Now I don’t trust Roberts, just because W & company sure slipped him in there ASAP, I can’t help but wonder if he does have an agenda etc… Now that I have my declarative statement out of the way, this morning I was listening to how they are looking into his childhood here in the great state of Indiana. And the scandal they found was that the rich neighborhood he grew-up in didn’t allow Jews or Blacks to own homes there. This was where he lived until he graduated high school and went off the Harvard.

Now, I don’t know about your childhood, but I do know that in mine, my wishes on where we lived as a family were not very well listened to. Man, if that’s all they got the guy is in.

Your Bill for the Day:
I come to wive it wealthily in Padua;
If wealthily, then happily in Padua"
--From The Taming of the Shrew (I, ii, 75-76)

Quote of the Day:
To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
Gustave Flaubert French realist novelist (1821 - 1880)

I remain, dropping the soap in the shower of reality:

JQP

The World is my Oyster:

Thought for the Day:
Haste is good only in catching fleas.
Alla Yaroshinskaya

Social Order and Internal Strife:

I have been a bit down these past few days; call it the late summer blues. As a result, my normal witty repartee has been hitting a bit of a drought on the river of life. Perhaps its that I am broke, I never should of let the sweet and loving Mrs. JQP try to pay off our student loans using her skills with online poker. Or perhaps, it’s that I am in varying degrees of physical pain daily not just the normal psychic pain. Or better still, maybe it’s that I am still stuck in Indiana, I guess there are worst places to be, like anywhere in the state of Ohio.

Anyway, I, John Q. Public am sitting on the spiritual pity pot today and have been since the weekend. Lucky for me I have a short attention span, and am now bored with being depressed, so it will soon be time to move on the next adventure.

In Honor of the Pull Out of the Settlers from the West Bank:
I would like to salute Israeli chic’s who are well armed.

(The M-16 A1 with 30 round magazine, makes the perfect fashion statement for any teen when enjoying a movie with your “home-girls” in the Old City)

The Weekend (a late up-date):
Well, it rained, so I told the Cub Scouts to go piss on themselves, I am not in the Army anymore, dry and comfortable is a lifestyle I embrace. However, while my loving and pretty wife was away on tour of southern Illinois county fairs with her “Boy Band” I did manage to take in some of the fine cultural events available to a person of my social stature and standing.

I went to the St. Joe Pickle Festival. Dear reader, I enjoyed more pickled farm produce than one man should be allowed to have. …and in truth I enjoyed myself whole heartedly, which could lead one to understand my depression at being interned here in northern Indiana.

Sunday, my bride was in town and as she put was in the mood to blow of some steam, which sadly did not include having wild kinky sexual acts with yours truly.

She wanted to go the Rugby Bar, for their famous Sunday East Indian “All you Can eat Buffet”, and of course Gin and Tonics. I made a few calls and mustered the troops, and spend a enjoyable evening in the company of like minded individuals, my only sadness being that I had to depart early from the festivities, has I had volunteered to drive the church bus for Pastor Bobs flock.

You can read a brief account of the evening in the online journal of a distinguished member of the local medical community and world renown dare devil pilot. http://lifegoesdark.blogspot.com/


The week so Far:
Monday and Tues was spent knee deep in the Big Muddy of the judicial system the human service system, the medical system and of course the erotic female dancers systems. You could say that I have taken on the week with a systems approach. However my output as been at a minimum, I think my mascot for the day will be the slug, a noble creature if there ever was one.

Your Bill for the Day:
SONNET 122
Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain
Full character'd with lasting memory,
Which shall above that idle rank remain
Beyond all date, even to eternity;
Or at the least, so long as brain and heart
Have faculty by nature to subsist;
Till each to razed oblivion yield his part
Of thee, thy record never can be miss'd.
That poor retention could not so much hold,
Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;
Therefore to give them from me was I bold,
To trust those tables that receive thee more:
To keep an adjunct to remember thee
Were to import forgetfulness in me.

Quote of the Day:
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
Sir Winston Churchill British politician (1874 - 1965)

I remain, the stranger who stares at you though the widow of your soul:

JQP DVM

My cyber-soul-brother sent this to me:

Jqp,

it's hard to feel inspired to do anything -- much less blog -- when> the temperature is 95°, the heat index is 110 and the sun is curling back the shingles on the roof and turning the driveway into a strip of> burning black goo.

Call it global climate change on overdrive or just an unusually strong> Bermuda high that's decided to park itself semi-permanently over the eastern seaboard. Either way, the heat has been squeezing the> motivation out of me for the better part of the past week.

These are the dog days -- a name which, according to this trivia page, dates back to the ancient Mediterranean, when the hottest part of the> summer was marked by counting the 20 days to and the 20 days after the conjunction of the sun and Sirius, the dog star.

No, Siriusly. It's as good an explanation as any, I guess, although to me the expression "dog days" has always called up images of rabid canines, their muzzles dripping with foam and blood from their own self-inflicted bites, writhing in crazed torment under the blazing sun while their virus-riddled brains gradually turn to mush inside their narrow, wolfish skulls. Which, more-or-less by coincidence, appears to be the effect that Cindy Sheehan is currently having on conservatives.

Except for the gradual part. At another time of the year -- or another time in my life -- watching> a senile old pervert like Bill O'Reilly or a brainless fraud like Michelle Malkin trading insults about a Gold Star mother standing in a ditch outside Shrub's dude ranch might have been enough to drive me> into either a blind, homicidal rage or a stark, dying-of-the-light depression. Or maybe both -- thus validating my post-Columbine decision to get rid of all my firearms. But it's way too hot to get angry and the whole mise-en-scene is way too absurd for despair. I mean, what could be more preposterous than the sight of the mighty GOP propaganda war machine -- built up with> such effort and at such great cost -- aiming all its guns at one bereaved, 48-year-old mother camped by the side of the road in Crawford, Texas?

The same massive tank that once crushed Senators and presidential candidates with such effortless ease is now practically> busting a tread trying to turn this face into an enemy of the people: There's a kind of comical desperation about it -- like watching> cartoon elephants dance in hysterical fear at the sight of a cartoon> mouse. I said recently that the Rovians attack what they fear most.> And when your greatest fear is the mother of a combat soldier who wants to ask the president why her son had to die in Iraq, you know> you've got some serious PR problems. Dumbo, on the other hand, still doesn't understand what all the fuss is about: Bush's Saturday schedule included an evening Little League Baseball playoff game, a lunch meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a nap, some fishing and some reading. "I think the people want the president to be in a position to make good, crisp decisions and to stay healthy," he said when asked about bike riding while a grieving mom wanted to speak with him. "And part of my being is to be outside exercising."

At this point, to call the Commander in Chief detached from reality would be an insult to paranoid schizophrenics everywhere. Not just from the reality of failure in Iraq -- that's a given -- but from the political reality that public support for the war, and more> particularly, for his handling of it, is in something close to free fall. The fact that Bush appears more fixated on his heart rate than on the constitutional negotiations under way in Baghdad -- supposedly the key to a face-saving exit from the Iraq fiasco -- is, of course, substantively irrelevant. If Zalmay Khalilzad can't break the deadlock, there's certainly nothing Shrub can do that wouldn't make things worse. But symbolically, the president's French-style, five-week vacation is starting to look like a rather spectacular PR blunder, thanks in large part to Sheehan, who's doing a great job of> playing the albatross to Shrub's ancient mariner: Ah! well-a-day! what evil looks. Had I from old and young! Instead of the cross, the Albatross About my neck was hung.

In fact, if Cindy really is a front woman for the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy, as the wing nuts now claim, then you'd almost have to> conclude that Bush was in on the planning, too. Hauling the entire White House press corps down to Bumfuck, Texas, so they can spend the better part of August playing cowchip bingo, was a move that seems, in hindsight, almost custom-designed to generate massive media coverage of Cindy's protest. In Washington, she'd be just another face in> Lafayette Square (the designated "free speech zone" in front of the> White House.) In Crawford, she's the only thing making news within a 500-mile radius.

That seems like an awfully high political price to pay to move Bush and his imperial retinue from one volcanic pit of> heat and humidity to another for five weeks. There's more going on here, though, than just the usual seasonal news drought and a bunch of bored-out-their-skulls reporters marooned in> the Texas outback. Cindy Sheehan has touched a raw nerve (both with the media and with the GOP propaganda machine) less because of who she is than because of who she isn't -- Jane Fonda.

The wing nuts have been salivating for weeks over the news that Jane> plans to hit the anti-war trail again -- this time in a vegetable-oil powered bus. (You really think I could make something like that up?)> For pro-war conservatives, this is roughly the same as hearing that the Democrats have decided to put Zippy the Pinhead and Timothy Leary's corpse on the ticket in 2008.

From the right's point of view, you couldn't invent a better caricature of a New Age Hollywood zillionaire to be the public face of the anti-war movement. Which is why my own personal reaction to Fonda's plan was: "Why the hell can't she be on their side for a change?" But, instead of feasting on Hanoi Jane, the wing nuts are driving> themselves nuts trying to figure out how to take down Vacaville Cindy: a woman who looks and sounds like she spends her free time organizing church socials and helping her husband clean out the garage -- that is, when she isn't busy searing George W. Bush's butt with a white hot poker for dragging the country into an unnecessary and failed war in Iraq, and getting her son killed in the process.

Don't forget Dick Cheney, Cindy. But you may want to stoke the coals first: It's an awfully big butt. Some see Sheehan's turn in the spotlight as a demonstration of the> weakness and impotence of the anti-war movement. Take, for example, this politically confused columnist for the Seattle Post> Intelligencer, who says he's against the war and against Cindy: If the anemic antiwar movement needs a mourning mom to lead the charge against this unjust war, then the movement is in dire straits.

Now calling the anti-war movement "anemic" is obviously wrong, since it implies that it actually has a pulse. The truth is that there is nothing that can be plausibly defined as an anti-war "movement" in this country -- just a couple of web sites, some bloggers, a few Democratic congressmen, and an angry Air Force colonel with can of spray paint. That, plus about 50-60% of the American people, give or take -- at least according to the most recent polls. There's probably a connection, in other words, between the precipitous decline in popular support for the war and the absence of a highly visible anti-war protest movement that counts people like Jane Fonda> among its mascots.

As Harold Myerson put it a couple of months ago: However perverse this may sound, the absence of an antiwar movement is proving to be a huge political problem for the Bush administration . . . The administration has no one to demonize. With nobody blocking the> troop trains, military recruitment is collapsing of its own accord. With nobody in the streets, the occupation is being judged on its own merits.

Without hordes of angry yippies to distract it, the silent majority -- or at least, the non-GOP majority -- has managed to conclude,> correctly, that the war cannot be won. Even worse, it seems to have> picked up on the fact that the Cheney administration is no longer even trying to win it, but is simply looking frantically for a face-saving way to get out of the swamp. (Or, in Journalish: "lowering its expectations.") When it becomes clear on Monday that our squabbling Iraqi clients have missed yet another critical deadline in the political process that's> magically supposed to bail us out of the mess Cheneybush has made, the silent majority will have a better idea of just how much lower those expectations could go. And if they see this story, they'll get a hint> of what the consequences of failure on such a grand scale could be: US troops raiding a warehouse in the northern city of Mosul uncovered a suspected chemical weapons factory containing 1,500 gallons of chemicals believed destined for attacks on US and Iraqi forces and> civilians, military officials said yesterday . . .

Boylan said the suspected lab was new, dating from sometime after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Whatever her current political leanings (or her choice of blogging partners) Cindy Sheehan can stake a powerful claim to being a dues-paying member of that same silent majority -- but in her case,>without the silence. Which is precisely why she's being swift boated> so ferociously by the professional liars on Fox News and their amateur auxiliaries in Right Blogostan. One angry mom is dangerous enough, especially when the President of the United States insists on being her unofficial publicist. But now there are 300 of them standing in the dirt and the heat down in Crawford -- and millions more watching on TV, silently asking themselves the same questions Sheehan wants to ask Bush: How did we get into this mess?

How do we get out? Have our sons and daughters>been sent to die in vain? The machine can try to demonize Cindy Sheehan. But it can't demonize> those questions -- not any more, not when so many others are asking them. Here in the dog days of August, it appears the rabid curs of the> authoritarian right have finally met their match, in the form of a middle-aged woman in a sunhat, holding in her hand the metaphorical equivalent of a rolled-up newspaper for wacking bad little GOP doggies (and presidents) on the nose.

If that's not enough to shake off the dog day blues, I don't know what is.

RD

(Thanks to he who is King, Dobbs)

Tempt neither Fate nor the Gods:

Thought for the Day:
In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary US author & satirist (1842 - 1914)

Plans for the Weekend:
I was recently asked to take a group of inter-city Cub Scouts on a camping expedition. Since my leg is fucked up and I am not into sweating my ass off in this heat, or having to shit in a hole I myself had to dig, while on crutches. I decided to give these young scouts a more practical experience.

I am taking them on an inter-city camping trip. Yes, dear reader something they can use, skills that will last a lifetime. I rounded up several instructors from our local homeless shelters to lend their years of experience in urban survival and foraging skills. All I had to do to get them to volunteer was buy them a few bottles of Thunderbird.

These children will learn the arts of pan-handling, dumpster diving, cardboard box shelter building, and of course living under bridges and underpasses. Best, of all, I borrowed an RV, so that I can stay in comfort.

(Parents: One of the many skills your child will learn during this weekends exciting inter-city camping and jamboree will be the fine art of shopping cart cooking and road kill grilling. Cat is good if cooked right and your hungry enough)

When these children become men and lose their jobs during corporate cut-backs, their home and car, their wives and children leave them and/or they become mentally ill-alcoholics, they will have me to thank for the training that will allow them to survive on the angry streets of America. You know me, just doing my part.

On another note:
When I was a child, my parents wouldn’t let me join the Cub/Boy Scouts. I remember being so mad when I was seven when all the other kids got to wear those spiffy uniforms,
on Wednesdays.
My mother and father said that the Scouts were a fascist organization and that they were going to be damned if they let their child; wear uniforms, recite oaths, and practice paramilitary skills, under the auspices of group think encouraging, middle aged men. So, I guess my volunteer work this weekend is also an effort to recapture my lost youth, with out having to break a sweat or shit in the woods.

A Brief Re-Cap of the Fun and Festivities for No-Love Thursday Past:
Promptly at 4:00pm I was joined at my favorite bar by another founding member of the Secret Order of No-Love Thursday Mutual Aid Society, Pastor Bob. Which was good because I needed his advice on a few things. Now, one thing I do have to give old Pastor Bob is he does know the good book.

Yes, I had a spiritual question. Sadly, Pastor Bob did not give me the answer I was looking for (protestants, they can be a bit of a downer). However in his defense his advise was right on the money, which in a nut shell was tempt not fate nor the Gods, both things I seem to have made a life style out of. Pastor Bob, left at 5 in a effort to appease Mrs. Pastor Bob, who was less the pleased that he was attending a Lodge Meeting.

Soon after his departure, I was joined by M. Chamberlain (Newspaper man) who in his ceremonial role as Lodge leader, called the meeting to order. After voting on the minutes and conducting new business, the meeting was ended, and the drinking began in earnest. This all transpired in 7 minutes. It was about this time the Monsieur joined out merry band, after a bit I posed the same question to him that I had asked Pastor Bob. Its moments like that that makes me glad I am a Catholic; the Monsieur’s reply to my question of existential personal strife was “life is not an all or nothing game”. That’s it.

Well, anyway, I ended up on a tour of working men’s bars after falling in with a group of trade unionist who needed a ride. Mush to my surprise, I drove home (sober) and was in bed by 10:30, later I was joined by my loving bride who insisted on showing me where Dave Mustang had signed her breasts, such is the price of glory. We all have our crosses to bare.

Your Drinks for the Weekend:

Cranberry West-Hausomatic Recipe
Drink Ingredients:
1 Part Sour Mix
1 Splash Lemon Lime soda
2 Parts Black Haus Blackberry Schnappps
1 Part Capt. Morgan’s spiced Rum
1 Part Cranberry juice
Instruction:
Pour over ice shake and serve.

Stinking-Sweaty Goat's Ass Recipe
Drink Ingredients:
12 drops Tabasco sauce
2 shots Tequila
Dash of Rose’s Lime Juice
1/4 shot Cream or milk
Instruction:
Pour in tequila first and top off with milk or cream. Then, add 12 drops Tabasco.

Your Phrase(s) for the Weekend:
“People Juice”:
1) The sticky slimy residue left on hand rails, poles and windows in public places. Often found on public transportation such as buses subways, or summertime amusement parks.
Example: I lost my balance on the subway and when I grabbed the pole, it was covered in people juice.

“beat the breaks off”:
1) East St Louis slang phrase for “whooping somebody’s ass”.
2)To have sexual intercourse in an aggressive and hard manner.
Example:
1) JQP beat the breaks off that weak mother-fucker.
2) Baby-Girl, you know I will be the breaks off your fine tight ass.

(To get your extra-credit points you must use both of these 4 times in conversation with friends and family this weekend)

Your French Phrase for the Weekend:
"Long live Algeria"
"Vive l'Algerie" (vee - ve lal - zhe - ree)
This is best used by yelling it on crowded trains. You are sure to get noticed.

Today’s Bill:
"Is this a dagger which I see before me..."
--From Macbeth (II, i, 33)

Quote of the Day:
I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me.
Dave Barry US columnist & humorist (1947 - )

I remain, much like the inch worm the measures your existence:

JQP esq.

Unleaded, "Play it Again Sam" & Mydol:

Thought for the Day:
He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.
Cicero Roman author, orator, & politician (106 BC - 43 BC)

The Early Bird:
Well, they changed my pain medicine again so of course I spent from 4:00am until around 6:00 throwing-up. Which is not anyone’s (well, unless you’re a teenage girl with poor body image) idea of a great way to greet the day.

Now, if you add to that fact the announcement my loving bride made which was to the effect of “I have a bad case of PMS, just stay the fuck out of my way until further notice” you get a feel for how my day is progressing.

On Free Time:
Recently something unusual happened. Both my loving and pretty bride and I had free time together. This happens about once a quarter, so it is often looked forward to. We had about 4 hours to kill, so we did what the leader of this great land suggested all Americans do at the out-break of this “War on Terror” we find ourselves in, we went shopping. Now being a guy, shopping is not high on my to-do list unless it involves; classic cars, bass boats, firearms and/or escort services.

So we did what all healthy couples do when faced with a decision about where to go shopping; we played paper, scissors, stone, and after a few heated moments we were able to reach a compromise. We went antique shopping.

Now neither of us are big antique people, we both grew-up using most of the items on display at antique shops and museums. Her growing up in an un-heated cabin in the UP and my up-bringing with an enlightened Amish sect. In four hours we managed to hit seven shops. However it should be noted: we spent 3 of those hours in one shop that specialized in vintage woman’s clothing.

If you think normal clothes shopping with your wife sucks, you should give this special treat from hell a go. I find it to be somewhat repulsive to try on numerous out of style clothes that smell of dust and moth balls that were owned by people who are now most likely dead. Its creepy, plane and simple. And here is the kicker, after playing dress-up that long; she didn’t buy anything, nope not one thing.

I being a man, made an impulse/revenge purchase at the very next store. One of those must have kind of things, that when you drag home your like “what the hell was I thinking?” However, now I think I like it. I bought 253 pieces of sheet music from the 20’s and 30’s for $20.00. Now I know you’re asking yourself; “Is JQP a fan of popular music from the jazz age?” or perhaps “Is he a musician as well as a scholar?” Well, I like jazz, but dear reader I can’t carry a tune in a bucket. Ask anyone who is around when I get my bagpipes out.

I bought them because I am a man of vision and an artist. The cover art on a lot of this stuff is kick ass. I love stuff from the Art Deco period. So I am going to frame the best pieces and give them as gifts etc. That’s why I got them. Because some of it is way cool, and shit how can you go wrong for 20 bucks?

No-Love Thursday:
I find myself double booked tonight. I have dinner plans (which is code-word for drinking and bitching about our lives/relationships/jobs) with my spiritual guide the Monsignor. However, you the avid reader know that today is the weekly meeting of the “No-Love Thursday Mutual Aid Society & Support Group for Lost Boys of all Ages”. On the plus side “dinner” starts at 5:30 and the meeting starts at 4:00 and they are both located at the same place (need I say it, at my favorite bar).

However, since life is subject to change at a moments notice, who knows where I will end up. In all truth going home and reading a good book sounds just as rewarding. The sweet and sour Mrs. JQP, will not be available for some time this evening, she has a concert with six heavy metal bands which will keep her busy hanging with her peer group well into the wee’ hours.

Texas Tea:
While attending a luncheon with Pastor Bob yesterday, he made a good point. Both of us being able to recall the Oil Crisis of the 70’s, he brought up the subject of speed limits. If you who are old enough remember the big reason for the double nickel (55 miles per hour) speed limit was for fuel efficacy. He thought is odd that many states have continued to increase the speed limits in some states as high as 75 mph, while in the midst of the highest reported costs per barrel of oil. I guess the 80’s with its ethos of Greed, Consumption, and Entitlement, also changed how we in the US drive.

We manage our natural resources just about as well as we manage our personal debit. Case in point, my wife’s Hummer (yes, she has one, and yes, it is a company car) gets gallons to the mile vs. miles to the gallon. SUV’s are as big as RVs of a generation ago (and why is it, the biggest SUVs on the road always seem to be driven by 98 pound blond soccer moms, who on a good day couldn’t park straight in a Hyundai?). The 70's, remember having to turn off lights and all that fun stuff that goes along with conversation of energy.

Well, who benefits? Odd, it seems the same “ruling class” who share a love of oil and home addresses located in Texas or the Arabian Peninsula. It makes me wish I would have thrown more of my 401k into oil companies, record profits for the 6th quarter in a row, and I mean profits in the sum of billions.

The moral angle must be that nothing wrong with “Fighting to bring Freedom to Iraq”, as long as there is a sizeable profit to be made. I bet those folks in Chad or the Sudan, wish they would hit oil when digging mass graves for victims of genocide.

Look what we did for Kuwait, that bastion of liberty, in which 70% of the population can not vote in the one party, one candidate “elections”.

Your Bill for the Day:
"Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em." --From Twelfth Night (II, v, 156-159)
(One everyone knows)

Quote of the Day:
Beware of dissipating your powers; strive constantly to concentrate them. Genius thinks it can do whatever it sees others doing, but is sure to repent of every ill-judged outlay.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, dramatist, novelist, poet, & scientist (1749 - 1832)

I remain, riding the Roller Coaster that is Life:

JQP esq.