Nudie Bar and Beer?

Savant will turn 21 tomorrow.
I suggested that he and his Dad celebrate it "Bundy Style", as in "Married With Children", with a trip to the nudie bar and Savant's first legal beer. My husband looked at me like I had sprouted another head; his mother would never say something like that! I was only joking, so I doubt they will do it. Besides, I think Savant's meds don't mix well with alcohol, and I don't want my husband to notice that I no longer have the Best Body On The Planet.

What Do Crayons, Tabasco, Poop and an Ear Have in Common?

What do crayons, Tabasco, poop and an ear have in common?

I took this first bit from the comments section of Midwest Rock Lobster(Chixulub). Lemme know if I should give it back.

.·:*¨¨*:·.

Fancy Dirt said...
For some reason your entries jog long buried memories to the surface. One is the multicolored-crayon-poop-log I found in my yard a few decades ago, when we had a dog who ate some of my son's crayons. The rain had washed away everything but the fused bits of crayon. I knew I should have saved it, but who could have forseen the creation of eBay?

Chixulub said...
Well, don't overestimate the eBay potential. Before "_ _" toilet trained, I changed many diapers containing turds that appeared to be entirely composed of 64 colors of wax.

The eBay market is not, in my experience, good for Crayola Turds. I did wonder if I mightn't get a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to display some of the better catches...

30 October, 2005

unaccountable said...
"I did wonder if I mightn't get a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to display some of the better catches..."

And or turn your home into a museum (charge admission, of course) and display the Miraculous Crayon-PooPoo that looks uncannily like [insert your favourite fictional "deity" here]!!

31 October, 2005

.·:*¨¨*:·.

My sister had a dog that would "sample" dog poop on their daily walks. She got the idea to take a bottle of Tabasco Sauce with her and pretreat the piles before her dog could get to them. Didn't slow him down a bit. I could picture him thinking, "Mmmmmm Mexican!"

OK, now the ear part. We were keeping the above dog at our house while my sister and her husband were visiting his family for Christmas. My first son, who was little at the time, tried petting the dog while he was eating, and the dog attacked him, badly ripping his ear before we could stop him. My mother was outraged and had the dog "put down" before my sister and her husband got back into town. I don't think they were too happy with my mother's decision, though they felt awful about the attack.
Our home is now a dog-free zone.

Your Gash

The following is part of yesterday's email exchange with my youngest sister who lives in California.
.·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·.

From my sister to me:
This will make you laugh. This week I had an appointment at the jeweler to have my engagement ring and ring guards cut off so I can have some prongs fixed. The rings have been stuck on me for years but it didn't matter till now with the broken prongs....
OK - Wednesday morning I go in and the guy starts doing his thing with the little saw. 10 seconds later it feels like someone is cutting my hand off. The idiot has slipped or was drunk or staring at my tits or whatever and is sawing a gash into the palm of my hand right at the base of my finger. Blood goes everywhere. It's about 3/4 of an inch long and DEEP, blood blood blood. No one does shit. No eye contact. I have a McDonalds' napkin in my purse so I start applying pressure. I ask a salesman for ice. I sit there for 10 minutes trying to stop the bleeding and finally I tell the guy - "I'm going to have to go get this taken care of. I think I need stitches". He says he thinks I should also get a tetanus shot. No one apologizes, no one offers to drive me, no one even asks me for my name. I had made the appointment directly with the jeweler and he said just come in and never asked my name. They buzzed me out the security door and I went to the ER and got it fixed up. ??????????

I'm trading phone messages now with the store owner.

love, K.

.·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·.

From me to my sister:
OH JEEZUS! Law suit!!!!! You should have gone screaming through the show room flinging blood everywhere instead of going out the back way; but I never think of that kind of thing at the time either! Take pictures! Did you take your rings with you? I hope you did. They may have CZ's in them when you come to pick them up!
Hay! It just occurred to me that in 6 months you will have to be tested for HIV, and hepatitus before that. Who knows how many other people have been hit with that same blade? Yikes, and I thought a nail salon was crawling with potential danger!

Love, Me

[*I then decided to call her, because I had titled my return email, "Your Gash" and it occurred to me after I had hit the send button that it could be taken another way, and her smut-filter might kick it into Spamland. She was out so I talked with her husband for a while. She did get the email.]

.·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·.

From my sister to me:
Ha ha ha. Sorry I missed your call! What makes it worse is that he had just started the sawing, so the rings are still stuck on my hand and the prongs are still broken, so I have a bandaid over the diamond and the rings have saw marks in them. I have to go through the procedure again! The ER folks said I could come back and they would do it or I could go to my doctor. $$$$$$$
?????????
K.

A. Beauty is in Rome Now

A. Beauty is now in Rome. Her new family picked her up at the Villa in Macerata today. It was not a good fit there, as far as what she had been led to expect. So, in true A. Beauty fashion, she found a new family. The wife is Thai, the husband is Italian. They live in a gated community of new villas on the outskirts of Rome. She has her own furnished apartment with a kitchen and a separate entrance. They said she is not expected to cook her own meals, she will dine with the family. They lived in the U.S. for a while and speak English. They have 2 school aged children whom they hope she will teach to speak English, the kids speak Thai and Italian.

So for today things are looking much better for her. That is all we know so far, but it can't be as bad as twins under the age of 1 yr and a mother who spoke no English; and no way to get to town by herself, and no free time to go anyway. And a husband that treated them all as chattel and who chose to have no contact at all, with the babies. Hopefully, now she can get that student Visa she needs to stay in Italy for a while.

Still Stupid In The 1970's

One of my friends, who was a couple of years older than me, Bill, found a job managing a large farm. The job came with a little old house, on the side of a hill, where many of my friends would gather when they were in the area. It is in an area just west of Nashville that is very hilly, Kingston Springs, and it was a wonderful place to explore. On one wooded hill top there were stones set vertically in the ground, like headstones. Some looked like someone had tried and failed to chip some words or symbols on them sometime in the past. We called this farm Bill's Farm.

While I was decomposing in Indiana, the object of my obsession, came up to Bloomington to keep me company. Fuck school, I couldn't handle the stress. We decided, instead, to head for Bill's farm. Three other people and a baby had already moved in with him. Two were brothers; one was helping Bill with farm duties, the other one saw himself as an aspiring musician and song writer and let his wife wait tables to help pay bills. I assumed I would join her in waiting tables to help pay for my lodging there.

The guy I came with was to become husband #1, later. He was a vegetarian and informed me that, hands that served meat, and a mouth that ate it, would not be touching him. Without even a blip on my idiot screen, I dismissed the waitressing plan and became a vegetarian mooch like him. He was from a family that was wealthy, by local standards, and was spoiled rotten (his words) and proud of it. I soon learned that wealthy parents do not make a wealthy son. (Our son is finding that out in a most painful way, now that his father is reputed to be worth $mucho via inheritance. I have no way of, or desire to confirm or refute this information. But I've jumped ahead in the story.)
The house was not modern enough to have any source of heat other than a wood stove or plug-in heaters. I'll call hus#1 J.P.. He was a guitarist. He and the other male musician would not do manual labor because it might mess-up their "picking nails".
So, that left Bill and the other brother to chop the wood, etc. (I was just as useless and also deserve your scorn). Bill, I owe you some money and an apology!

Some time that winter J.P. and I ended up in M'boro at the college one night and I was using their intaglio printing press, to make prints from a copper plate engraving that I had done during semester #1 at a College in Memphis. This was an electric press. I had always used a hand run press. The batts, over the plate and paper, were wrinkling. I began to smooth them out, when the press roller grabbed onto the fingers on my left hand. In that split second, I didn't think of turning off the press or hitting reverse. All I could see in my imagination, was my hand, arm, and the rest of me being flattened as it all went under the rollers, like in a cartoon, so I yelped and yanked as hard as I could, leaving the tips of two of my fingers in the machine. I now know that you should take those to the hospital with you, but we didn't know that then. God, I feel sorry for the person that found them. It was flesh and finger nails, no bones were lost.

So I ended up in a bedroom at J.P.'s parent's house, in some of the worst pain of my life. What ever I had been given for pain killers were useless. A day or two later the doctor saw me again and gave me a prescription for new pain killers, and a shot of thorazine to give me a break from my suffering. We headed to the pharmacy and while they were filling the prescription, the Thorazine started to take affect. I remember trying to slide onto the bottom shelf on an aisle nearby, so I wouldn't be on the floor when I lost consciousness. I could hear an employee saying, "What's she on?" Then I was in the car. Then I was in bed sleeping. Thank God, no more pain! At least for a while.
I don't remember if I was there for a few days or a couple of weeks. I do remember that, after a while, the doctor wanted me to soak the bandaged fingers in hydrogen peroxide for a couple of days, to loosen the dried blood, so he could get the bandages off. When I got to his office, the bandages still refused to leave my wounds, so he just yanked them off! Then, without any anesthetic, he proceeded to cut off chunks of ragged flesh from around the stitches. I felt like I might pass out as the room began to swirl.
I was too young and polite to tell him he was a Sadistic Asshole.

My brother drove me to our parent's house in Indiana to recover and for the holidays.

There Is No Such Thing As Satan

Question from person #1: Does anyone hear Satan talking to them?

Me: There is no such thing as Satan. Ignore that voice and take your medicine on schedule.

Question from person #2: You wrote, "There is no such thing as Satan." How did you reach THAT conclusion?

Me: All that exists now, has always existed from the moment of the creation of the universe, the star-dust just keeps rearranging itself, and will continue to do so long after human kind is gone. Whatever that force is that creates, sustains, and rearranges all, and is the force within every cell of the universe, is what I call God.

Satan is a construct of the human mind. So is a god that would whisper in your ear and punish, blame and shame you, for believing in the wrong rule book or story book. That sounds more like a manipulative human than a God.

People will hate each other based on petty, superficial differences, such as the location of another person's place of birth, or the ancestral physical traits that comprise the various races, or which religious philosophy they were raised to believe. Sometimes that philosophy will be the one that resonates with your way of seeing life and death. Sometimes it won't. See it however you want.
You are only human, you deserve love. This life is hard work, and it is possible to cry and feel horrible emotionally, and at the same time, still be aware of that part of your mind observing that beauty and good still exist, and it will be waiting for you when your unbearable emotions have passed. Hanging in there until they have passed, as you know, can require the help of others.

If a person finds it difficult or impossible to see the soul that wants only to love and be loved, within all of us, this can cause great pain. I experience pain and joy, but I don't blame Satan for the pain and God for the joy. I don't claim to understand the mind of God, and anyone who says they do is a liar. I am just a little creature on a little planet, who knows that it doesn't matter whether I understand or not. Existence is such an awesome phenomenon, and this is a realm of suffering as well as joy.

Any voice that tells you to harm yourself or any other creature, to satisfy the voices' demands, is neither Satan or God, it is a brain malfunction. More evil has been done on this earth in the game of, "My God is better than your God." How stupid and unevolved that way of thinking is. All that exists is God covered with the veil of the Ordinary.

Every person who has ever lived has felt both pain and joy. This life is complex, but we all got here without knowing the way here. If there is a different form of existence after we die from this life, we will get there without having to orchestrate the trip. And if our time here is the only taste of life we get, that is just the way it is supposed to be. Life goes on within you and without you, not because of you.

See it differently if you like.

I'm not the bossy type.

Kanbihachi (Another of my noms-de-plume, it means, sweet: kanbi, bee: hachi, in Japanese)
-----
Comment from person #3: I just needed to say that I think this post was absolutely wonderful. I have never had someone explain things so well that I felt I actually understood. Thank you sooo very much.

My 1960's Continued and My Early 1970's

In the late 1960's the political scene was just so painful. The nightly news was also the nightly nightmare. My father had been in Vietnam in the early 1960's, and misunderstood the angry concern, that my brother and I felt about the war and what was happening to our country, and the Vietnamese country, person by person. We were, and are, proud of our father's commitment to defend this country we loved and the people of other countries, that are in need of our help. But the evening horror show of napalmed children and innocents, and the sight of perfectly wonderful young soldiers being killed and maimed, was too much for me.

I remember shouting matches erupting between my brother and my father. These were times when my brother's superior knowledge and eloquence made it rarely necessary for me to join in. I was just so sickened, disgusted and depressed by what I was seeing, and the war was going on and on, and for what? My father firmly believed in the domino theory of the spread of Communism and felt every disagreement was a personal attack on him and against our country. Calm discussions with him were (are) impossible. I realize his generation had been stunned by World War II, and he naturally had a strong dislike for Commies, Dictators, and little pups who thought they had a right to protest what they saw as a travesty, a tragedy, and an unwinable war.

My present husband's father was captured by the Nazis after they shot down the bomber he was on when he was 19 years old and spent the rest of the war in a P.O.W. Camp. It really doesn't matter which generation's war it is; it is that some wars seem so much more just than others.

Vietnam War protesters didn't hate the soldiers, we didn't want any more of them to die! There were no "outside agitators"! I was not known to join in public protests. I had no desire to get my head cracked open. When some of my friends went to the March On Washington D.C., I didn't go. After the Kent State murders, I stayed away from such rallies, and developed a temporary crowd phobia. (It's a good thing I didn't get it until after I had seen the Beatles three times. But that story is off topic for now.)

My trust in the truthfulness of our government was so damaged, that I was one of the ones that "tuned in, turned on, and dropped out". I've paid a dear price for some of the decisions I made back then. They were attempts to try to deal with my depression, and included dropping out of school and marrying husband #1. I finished my first dismal semester at one school, and did not go back due to severe depression. My parents had moved to Indiana, so I tried again there. If you just walk away mid-semester and don't formally drop out, you end up with some really pissed off parents and a transcript covered with F's. I knew I was never going back to school. But surprise, surprise, about six years later I did, as a single mother, waiting tables to support us and finished, at The University of Texas in Austin, with a major in Architecture.

I heard Richard Alpert (Baba Ram Dass) speak on the Indiana University campus, before I left. For those of you don't know who he is, he was a Harvard professor and close colleague of Timothy Leary. They were the ones conducting the LSD experiments, perfectly legal then, that ended with them both getting fired by Harvard. Alpert went to India and met a holy-man there, and realized that what he had learned about the inner universe, by going in through the LSD door, was very similar to what the holy-man knew by going in through the meditation door. I'm condensing that story. Anyway, Alpert came back to the US and was known as Ram Dass after that. Being a teacher and a brilliant man, he began advocating for entering through the meditation door.

He spoke on campus, out doors, all day and into the night, with a constant stream of students coming and going, to listen. That was probably 1970, I wrote off to the Lama Foundation he was involved with then and they sent me a box that had homemade books in it, and a Tibetan prayer cloth; at least that's where I think I got the prayer cloth, don't hold me to it. I still have them. The biggest book was the first publishing of the book "Be Here Now", but it was called "From Bindu To Ojas" at that time. It looked like it was block printed on brown paper bag stock. It was bound together by brown hemp string pulled through a couple of holes punched through the pages. The cover picture was a beautiful colored mandala that was pasted on the book. Years later I got Ram Dass to autograph it for me. I still treasure it. I like hand made books.

To be continued....

Wild Strawberries and Drooling Snouts

from Friday, April 15, 2005

When I was little we lived in Japan, at Chitose AFB, on the island of Hokkaido. We lived in one half of a quonset hut, a prefabricated dwelling of corrugated iron having a semicircular cross section. It was next door to the Motor Pool, so it took a while to learn to sleep with the sounds of trucks and whatnot going by all night.

Beside the Motor Pool was a patch of strawberries on the edge of some woods. Whenever I hear about Manna from Heaven, I'm sure it is really wild strawberries, all you want, for free.

If you walked through the woods, you would come to a concrete canal on the edge of our school yard. I was little, between 4 and 6 years old, so the canal may really have just been a drainage ditch. In our school yard were underground bomb shelters, where we would be taken if there was an air raid drill. Sorry, no real air raids to spice up this story. In the woods was a water tower that I was afraid of, it just looked like it could walk around and do a Godzilla thing, if it wanted. Luckily, it stayed put.

The first movies I remember seeing were in the Base theater. We had "Mickey Mouse" money on base. No coins, just paper 5 & 10 cent bills. I think it was 10 cents to get into the movie. We, my older brother by 2 1/2 years (who's birthday happens to be 9-11) and my little sister, a bit more than one year younger than me, would walk across a dumping ground for klinkers, some still hot, to get to the movie.

We didn't have television in Japan, but I remembered Gene Autry, the Little Rascals, Betty Boop, Howdy Doody, etc. from before we went. Howdy Doody gave me the creeps! I still have puppet phobia. I remember asking my brother if the people in the TV could see us, because they kept talking to us like they could see us, he said No. Thank God! But I wanted to be Betty Boop, or at least dress like her. And I wanted a horse like all the cowboys.

The fakey fifties dinosaur movies scared the hell out of me. My big brother assured me that they were not behind the curtain; but I just knew, that they knew where I lived and I was just the tasty snack they were looking for. I was always sure I would see a drooling snout pressed up against the windows of our hut. They gave me nightmares. When I compare those hokey special effects of the fifties with today's amazingly real ones, my heart goes out to all the little children of today, looking for drooling snouts at the windows. What got me through it? This sage statement, "Trust me, you're not that important."

Think Happy Thoughts and You Will Be All Better

I started participating in a web-group geared to Schizophrenics and their care givers. Usually it is very interesting and touching. But I just read a post by some Little Mary Sunshine type who recommended happy thoughts or meditation to the schizophrenics in the group, because she thinks pills are a bit extreme, and if we would stop stigmatizing them they could get all better.
I think she meant well, but it pushed my Mother Lion Button and since you're not supposed to rip someone a new one in a support group, I controlled myself and posted this reply:

*Perhaps you have never witnessed a person in the midst of a SEVERE psychotic break.
None of us, who deal with some one who gets that way, if they go off their medicine, get off on making this person feel stigmatized. Life is traumaticly difficult at these times for all involved.

We're talking about a whole 'nother level. My son has no idea he is insane when he is insane, and is not in touch with reality enough to know or care what stigma is. More than once, he has broken bones when he is like this and not known what the cast is for and why he can't get this thing off his hand. He has torn bloody holes in his skin to let creatures out. He has been x-rayed to help reduce his panic when he thinks there is "something" inside his body that should not be there. The list is so long, I'll stop here.

He does come back to reality, but not clearly, like before the illness. Would you want him driving on the highway next to you when he is psychotic? It is not stigmatizing to keep him from driving for three years to protect the innocent public, and him, from death by car. A mentally ill friend of his killed herself by walking into traffic. My sister's boy friend killed himself and he almost took one of my sisters with him! Sometimes a positive attitude and force of will are not enough.

Of course I know you have the best of intentions, and truly care about the mentally ill. Thank God we do not have to drop our loved ones off at mad-houses for the rest of their lives or cull them from the tribe anymore. Families and care givers are not trying to inflict anything stigmatizing on their loved ones, unless you are very unlucky and have an ignorant family.

I'd like nothing better than to "let go", but I don't want him starving under a bridge or getting raped again, because we are "letting him take responsibility for his life". He is still a magnet for predatory freaks; they can pick him out of a crowd with chilling ease.

From Dildos to Dillionaire

Savant got his first pay check and did what workers have done for forever, he rewarded himself by ingesting a "recreational" substance. He is Schizophrenic and this knocks him into a delusional state.
He became convinced that his old girlfriend ( who really did, at 16, begin to sell dildos and body modification jewelry on eBay. We still don't get her.) is well on her way to becoming the next Google, and a mogul, because she has a "server" in her apartment. He said she has websites on the internet that are made to look like they are someone else's, but they are all her, making up alter-egos. Before I realized that he was messed up, he drove to the bookstore and bought her first published book.

No amount of reasoning, or a visit to Barnes & Noble's web site, the authors biography, photo, etc., would convince him that he was just making schizo connections with unrelated things. He said there were just too many hidden clues she had left for him and besides, she had shown him part of the book while she was writing it.

Granted, Myla Goldberg does look like she could be his old girlfriend's sister, except Myla is missing X-gf's White-Girl-Funkadelic-Hair Goth Pierce or Stretch Every Possible Body Part Dominatrix Boot Fetish fashion sense. But, Idiot Like A Savant is convinced that Myla is just a stand in for pictures and the whole biography is made up. I showed him that Ms Goldberg has written other books, lives in New York with her family, and that his x-girlfriend could not be a puppet master that toyed with publishers, etc.. I asked him why she would go to all the trouble to create such a web of subterfuge, when, if she was such a gifted author, she could be getting her due recognition with her own name? He said writers use pseudonyms all the time. I pointed out that women writers of the past, used to use male pseudonyms because women were shut out when it came to getting their work published, and that it is no longer necessary to do that.

It is as real to him as my reality is to me. Reasoning with him when he is like that is futile and can lead him to suffer severe distress, so other than taking the car keys away from him, there was not much we could do but remain calm and be kind to him. Poor guy, he looked so confused that anyone would question his conclusions, because he knows they are fitting into place so perfectly in his mind. It breaks my heart to see him like that.
I hope he is back together when he wakes up today and takes his medicine.

*Nope. Sunday was just as bad. We were up 'till about 3:30 or 4:00 AM with our beloved crazy man, it was ugly. Monday morning, after only a few hours of sleep, I wake up with a raging migraine. His Father scraped him out of bed, made sure he took his medicine and made him go to work. (He's on the day shift now.)
I hope I don't get a call that will require me to go to the jail or the hospital to hear how his day went.

My 1960's

My first born. So wonderful to have this little person to love with all my heart. I had him for only thirteen years. He was born to me and my first husband. My first husband is also a chimera. Handsome, funny, troubled. I had done the thing that so many girls do; I dressed him up in a personality that was not his. I idealized this personality to fit my one true love. Why did I pick this person? He had no temper, he was carefree, mellow, witty, always up for an adventure and fun. I was looking for someone who's temperment was the opposite of my father's.
The reality of my mistake was draped in red flags, but I waved them aside, because I had made him into the drug that took all my pain away.

It was the 1960's. I had a boyfriend all through high school whom I still consider a good friend to this day, even though we have no contact anymore, except for the occasional funeral. He was and probably still is a good friend of my first husband. I regret that I left him in such a heartless way to be with husband #1. After a while the three of us were all best friends again. I'm such a sucker for a laugh, and the two of them were so funny. I've always found it easier to be close to men than women for some unknown reason. (I was even one of the three girls, that each of the two Frats chose to be their Sweethearts, each year, in High School. I think that may have been more of a Southern thing to have Fraternities and Sororities in High School, back then.)

My high school boyfriend's family lived in a log cabin in the woods that was a magnet for interesting people. It has a beautiful Craftsman style interior. There was always a Pauley's Island Hammock, and a table and chairs on the huge front porch. His brothers and sisters were all wonderfully unique people, southern, charming and seductive; but the gem was his mother. She was so wonderful and I loved her old-fashioned southern accent. She took everything in stride. For instance, she knew that her sons and son-in-law had a marijuana crop that they tended in the fields somewhere on the property, but really didn't care. If one of their kids' friends got picked up for DUI or whatever, they would bail them out and let them sleep it off at their house. Her son-in-law had converted part of a milking barn into a sauna and our huge group of friends piled in naked and laughing at being such little kids for a while. Later my boyfriend used it as his pottery studio. His younger brother told me that it was my brother who inspired him to become a musician, after he heard him play the piano out at "Cabinwood".

They had a close relative who had gained fame as one of the Agrarian Writers. Artists, musicians, and writers were drawn there, were born there, and rented out the little house out back when it was not occupied by a family member. We all loved his mother. She always made her own mayonnaise, and it was spectacular. Her meals were not to be missed. She always had tiny biscuits with dinner that melted in your mouth. She grew her own vegetables with the help of the boys when she could get it. She inspired us to learn to bake our own bread, sew, plant gardens, and be open minded. When I first met them they even had a huge Polar Bear rug, complete with head and claws, that some grandfather or uncle had brought them. I told someone years later that she was doing Ralph Lauren before he was. Her home was so cozy and worn in the way a child's favorite soft toy is. I thought I might become part of this family at one time.

It was the end of the 60's, the War in Vietnam, Dope (marijuana), Bill's Farm, LSD, hippies: the peace and love kind, Yoga, Acharya Yatishvarananda Avadhuta, clothes from India, India Print bed spreads on walls as well as beds, Michael Shoemaker the kundalini guy in Bloomington who goes by the name Swami Chetanananda now, vegetarian food, the "simple life", swimming and walking naked in mountain streams across the country - our bodies were beautiful - no shame in what nature made us. Meditation, Stephen Gaskin and The Farm in Summertown, TN, loving the gentle people I met in those days, and always Janeese, always Janeese.

Contrary to what the media in the twenty first century may lead you to believe, most people our age were very straight laced. My friends were only a small group that was experimenting with the feast those times were offering. My boyfriend and one of his friends opened the first "Head Shop" in Murfreesboro, TN, "The Stone Groove". Laugh, we thought it was funny too! No one in town knew what a head shop was. There were psychedelic posters, pipes, rolling papers, black lights, cool hippie stuff before anyone mass produced it. I made little leather purses and wine bottles covered in collage to be used for dried flowers or a candle.

Luckily, none of my friends had to go to Vietnam. Either they got lucky in the draft lottery and ended up with a number that was so high there was no chance they would be called up, or they stayed in school, or they got 4F designations. Which I think means you are unfit for duty, ie: suffered from depression, or had flat feet or something like that. Only one friend went through the Conscientious Objector system.
My brother might have ended up in Nam; he had been gifted a military scholarship to attend Vanderbilt, and it came with strings. He did end up in the military long enough to buy a hot little TR something and develop blood pressure high enough for him to exit the military gracefully and in one piece. Then went on to get two Masters Degrees and a PHD; spent more or less a decade living in Hong Kong with his family. Now he's "Back in the US, back in the US, back in the USSA".

Damn, I was glad I was a girl!
Even so, it was a very frightening time for the young people of the U.S..
"Country Joe and the Fish" said it best: "Well it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for? Don't tell me, I don't give a damn. Next stop is Vietnam......"

To be Continued...

I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag:

Yeah, come on all of you, big strong men,
Uncle Sam needs your help again.
He's got himself in a terrible jam
Way down yonder in Vietnam
So put down your books and pick up a gun,
We're gonna have a whole lotta fun.

And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.

Well, come on generals, let's move fast;
Your big chance has come at last.
Gotta go out and get those reds —
The only good commie is the one who's dead
And you know that peace can only be won
When we've blown 'em all to kingdom come.

And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
Huh!
Well, come on Wall Street, don't move slow,
Why man, this is war au-go-go.
There's plenty good money to be made
By supplying the Army with the tools of the trade,
Just hope and pray that if they drop the bomb,
They drop it on the Viet Cong.

And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam.And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.

Well, come on mothers throughout the land,
Pack your boys off to Vietnam.
Come on fathers, don't hesitate,
Send 'em off before it's too late.
Be the first one on your block
To have your boy come home in a box.

And it's one, two, three
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam.
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.

Check Granny's Blog Archives For That Story

from Saturday, April 16, 2005

I never can remembered who I've inflicted my stories on. Now I don't have to, that is what my blog is for. (I know that is not proper English, it should be "upon whom I have inflicted", but that is not how I speak.) This is one of those disclaimers I'm trying to stop using. So I frequently preface a story with "If you've heard this already, just say, "Heard it." I won't be at all offended."

Someone recently pointed out that hearing the disclaimer so many times is worse than hearing a story more than once.

I'm picturing a future where, as we become older, we say things like, "Check Granny's blog archives for that story, it may have "drooling snouts" in the title." I picture myself at the old folks home, with my own drooling snout, wearing a t-shirt with my blog address on it. They better have computers in old folks homes by then. Famous last words may become replaced by famous last entries.

Where's A Genius When You Need One?

Savant got hired by a cleaning company yesterday. Job requirements were: two hands and still breathing! His ability to fulfill the requirements, lands him the cherry job of cleaning out bio-hazard boxes on the grave-yard shift at a couple of local medical centers. He's so happy to be part of the American work force, even if he is doing the dirty work. He has been so sick of being bored and moneyless. He has been driving for a few weeks now. So we're really happy for him and the progress he is making.

Last night was his first night and he forgot to take his P.M. meds with him. I was up at midnight when he got home and he was slipping into the mental danger zone. He took his meds then, but he was just going to have to ride it out until they kicked in.

God, please stop chewing the fat with Bush, and end all suffering.
Please?

Bush Confesses: God Made Him Do It

I knew , when I read the article about Bush getting his orders from God, that the next thing I should do was check The Mandarin's blog to see if he had heard the good news! Wow, what a relief, I thought everything Bush was doing was due to his being a dangerous moron. Now I find out that it is really the result of God working in mysterious ways. And they couldn't be more mysterious! How could I have been so wrong? My head hurts.