Sad and awful, yes, you liberals. Who the fudge do you think you are?

Shouldn’t be a big mystery. Except to everybody in charge. He doesn’t care who you are. Equal opportunity offender. The bad uncle. We are all secretly hoping for the bad uncle. He doesn’t care if you’re black or white, male or female, Hispanic or Chinese or Russian. He’ll do a deal with you. And it will always be his goal to win. So he can bluster over the turkey at Thanksgiving. In Triump.

Why is Rush so gleeful? Because the dead headed ones inside the beltway still don’t get just how furious the rank and file Republican majority, which delivered both houses of Congress to their party, are the dupes of those who are shellacked and otherwise shiny sellouts to the cause of Democrat-Lite.

Stop. Nobody has yet discovered that a Hillary presidency would lead to fighting in the streets. A lot of us are just done with this shit.

The eternal companion of St. Nuke.

Want him, want him, want him. Not small animal safe? Our undefeated tabby Elliott would kill him.

He doesn’t have paws but clubs. He always always beats the shit out of them.

Why my wife says no. But I did steal his picture. Are you going to sue me? I think he could be the famousest greyhound ever.

Woke up the other night hearing a cat scream. Deerhound heard it too and woke up. Got up, turned on lights, explored the house, turned on the outside lights, called his name. No Elliott. Next morning, there he was. Untouched. He’s kicked every ass in the neighborhood, which I happen to know includes raccoons, groundhogs, red-winged Hawks, and roaming dogs. Every morning, there he is.

He’s taken over the sighthound bed upstairs. He has time on top of me every evening, much to the jealous consternation of the deerhound. They get along. The other night I watched him make a decision about following his mommy down the stairs. First thought he’d steer wide around the Rock of Gibraltar ass, then changed his mind and just jumped the first cousin of a dog I saw swallow a sparrow out of the air.

It’s all in how you play the game. His foster mama told us he was an alpha. Our first cat alpha, Mickey, put him in his place. Now there’s nothing to stop him.

He accepts that Raebert is the Alpha of the pack. But Elliott is the self-appointed gladiator. And he still chooses to spend his evenings with me. Go figure.

Not safe around small animals has everything to do with who the small animals are.

Something like a long defunct skinned crawfish beset by wriggling worms.

Probably, you think of fish and chips as a prehistoric British attempt at fast food, unspeakable fried junkfish and limp fried potatoes wrapped up in discarded sheets of tabloid newspapers. With some vile vinegar concoction as a condiment. No wonder gin is still the most popular beverage in the U.K. Its anesthetic effect on taste buds is its chief selling point in this context.

But things are changing. Since Americans no longer have any taste buds either, settling instead for the ravishing weed induced hunger known as the Munchies, the American art of packaging is creating a huge new market opportunity for purveyors of fish and chips in this country.

Behold the beauteous wrapping. It’s better than eating, right, especially in the swankiest restaurants in New York and lesser parts of the USA.

A new kind of arms race is on. Started, perhaps, by the Wall Street Journal.

Who wouldn’t pay $39.99 for this?

Game over? Hardly. In what could be a major campaign scandal this year, Donald Trump has put together a consortium of U.S. fish and chips sellers to purchase the complete newspaper output of the Boston Globe, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the L.A. Times, the Washington Post, and the New York Times as premium wrappers for the F&C entrees of Arthur Treachers, Applebee’s, and up-and-coming east coast titan Pat’s Pizza.

“This could well represent the kind of corrupt high-dollar bailout Trump supporters will not be able to stomach. This is by far the lowest election season exhibition of dirty politics I’ve ever been willing to look at,” said NYT columnist David Brooks, who was let go earlier today.

The deal may eventually expand to include the Chicago Sun-Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Miami Tribune. Feelers from the Des Moines Register and the Providence Journal have already been rebuffed.

A Trump spokesman said, “It’s just business. It’s not about politics but dollars and cents. Nobody reads these rags anymore. They just want to be seen carrying them around tucked against their Burberries and Fendi briefcases. Why not have something tasty inside? The ones who won’t make it aren’t about political leanings. They’re about no elitist glamor. Some kinds of fish wrap people will pay a premium for. Others they won’t.

“We’ve been calling and calling the Manchester Union Leader, for example. But nobody’s picking up on their one land line. And National Reciew isn’t big enough to wrap a fish in. Get over it. And did we mention Barney is a Communist? Good. You never heard it from me.”

In a final comment, the spokesman noted that certain newspapers may experience staff and editorial reduction. And certain franchises may undergo a name change.

Just imagine the power of the slogan “Trump Yourself.”

Brain Injury

Every day. Every goddam day. All my life I think. And think. And now I just want to be dumb. My wife still thinks I’m smart. Or so she says. She’s so kind.

The burn comes when you least expect it. Who wants a me who can’t think? Certainly not me.

It seems easy, I know.

Nothing happens in a vacuum. There was the XK-150.

It’s called evolution. Because there was the C-Type after that.

And then the D-Type. My favorite slot car.

And now we’re supposed to love the F-type.

Not sure I do. Keep remembering this.

1962.

Straight six engine. Best, most gorgeous sounding engine since the XKE.

Can’t have it. What I WILL get.

It’s all good. We live and we die. In that order.

It’s hell getting up mad in the middle of the night.

So I got up in the middle of the night, mad as hell. Sick to death of women claiming privilege when they haven’t actually done anything in the whole history of human history.

Mad, you know. No Blake. No Shakespeare. No Michelangelo. No da Vinci. No Mozart. No Lord Nelson. No Einstein. Just a bunch of whining bitches who once cobbled together a play called the Vagina Monologues. So I did a search for “hundreds of vaginas.” Guess what? I found it. Created by women. (You can make it bigger by clicking, guys. Same with what follows.)

Egad.

And it’s October now, so the NFL is all in shocking pink because of breast cancer. So I did a search for hundreds of breasts. I mean, it is what you want isn’t it? For all of us to see you as nothing more than so many vaginas and breasts? Found that too. Also created by women.

Who’s more obsessed? Men or women? I’m thinking women.

It was late. I was trying to particularize. Came up with the idea of searches for “one breast” and “one vagina.” You know. A distillation. Because women are individuals too, right? Unless they aren’t. The ones who aren’t know who I mean. Right?

So I got the idea one breast, one vagina.

One breast.

Don’t you like her smile?

One vagina.

Life is beautiful. In the particular, not the mass of masses. Don’t you like her smile?

The downside of being quick on the trigger is that you run the risk of being completely wrong. Which I was on the subject of Blue Bloods. For five years or so.

Sometimes a quip can become a trap. In college I heard a smart guy dismiss the entire career of Leonard Bernstein as a master of “slow conducting.” I’d made a similar quip in recent years about Tom Selleck, master of “slow acting.” (See? Not even being original.) My wife has been a huge fan of the series of Jesse Stone murder mysteries. I’m a fan of the golden retriever who keeps staring incredulously at Jesse Stone while he slooowly drinks scotch.

Then came all the promos for Blue Bloods. Selleck looked like he was on downers. So I never watched. I mean, is it credible that shrimpy plug-ugly Donnie Wahlberg could be the son of Magnum P.I.? What would mom have looked like? Janeane Garofalo? No wonder he slowly drinks scotch in this series too.

But the desperate need to avoid the news and the homosexual onslaught of contemporary TV series has thrust us into the embrace of Blue Bloods. Which is in many ways a typical police procedural/soap opera product. But it has one redeeming feature I find entrancing and beautiful.

Sunday Dinner

This is a show about Irish cops. Selleck is the commissioner of the NYPD. His dad is the retired commissioner. Selleck’s two surviving sons are cops. His daughter is an assistant district attorney. And the grandkids are as outspoken as the Irish always are. They all sit down to dinner together every Sunday. Four generations. They argue, they joke, they eat (what I’ve never been able to determine), and the abiding impression you get is just how lucky are these grandkids to have this ritual in their lives.

I love it. I wish every kid in this country could have the same blessing.

Daughter of the Champ. She punches.

But Ali has oh so many putative daughters as well. They’re all over television. They’re all good looking, usually not big, but always determined, articulate, and handsome as he is. Don’t believe me?

There’s Nicole Behari from Sleepy Hollow.

Loves her Brit-born American patriot.

And her sister, who from some angles is even hotter.

I’ve got her name somewhere. I just forgot it. Oh. It’s Lyndie Greenwood.

Then there’s Detective Carter (Teraji P. Henson) from Person of Interest.

She was upset about the guy in the suit.

And the equally short, nicely assed, tough tough smart woman in Z-Nation.

Kellita Smith

Holly Robinson from The Wire. Life is a bitch, especially if you’re a…

And this. Too bad to watch.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1GWR6xDPkmE

And HER.

Yes. We love them all. Conservative racists we. Cause we’re so completely awful.

She was hot hot hot. She was black. Oh yes she was. Amen.

Oh yes, it’s a dance they do, every day, these cats and dogs who live together. They are a pack, which is to say a family, and they love one another. Raebert is the leader somehow, which makes no sense but packs don’t have to make sense. What is he? The odd young’un who holds sway over all the oldsters, mostly twice his age. He cares the most. Odd is hardly the right word. I told my wife he understands everything I say. She took that with a grain of salt until last night or so when he was licking his leg and I said, that’s enough, stop licking and put your head down. Which he did. She stared at me and then at him.

Where were we? Raebert is upset at the loss of Cassie. He’s great at moaning and groaning on a good day. Now he’s almost lugubrious.

So young with so much on his shoulders.

So is Elliott. He’s the only surviving cat in the pack. Clinging wouldn’t be too strong a word for what he’s doing with me right now.

Last cat in the pack.

Rikki knows about death. We don’t want to vigil him. He’s a racehorse in the twilight. He keeps going because he’s a deer in the headlights and makes the headlights blink.

Rikki. Tikki. Tavi.

Muffy pretends she doesn’t care. She does.

Scotties are awful. Cute.

Eloise really doesn’t care. She’s the only one.

She can get out of that crate.

Death is the Omega. Life is the Pack.

Right. My guy. You have no idea. We were at the PetSmart. The women were doing their talking talking talking thing. All about Elliott. I looked at him. He looked at me. I said I’m outa here, dude. And he said I’m trusting your lady to get me outa here too. We winked at each other. One long look between us, then I split. All it took.

Do cats love you? For real? Do they? They love me.

Even the toughest, meanest one.

My secret? No baby talk. Whatsoever. All man to man stuff.

Have you seen the club pix? I swear, he comes home every night with new notches on his belt.

P.S. Except for all the female stuff. Cause I’m thinking about Cassie, Penny, and Izzie too tonight. Sweet sweet girls.

We be sad about the girls. Tonight and every night.

So, yeah. Went to a doctor once or twice. Still got the scaaaar.

Okay. Let’s see. I was about to go on a business trip halfway round the world. Got an upper respiratory thing. My significant other at the time insisted I see a “Doctor.” I did. A lordly little fat boy who asked if I smoked and told me to stop before I got on a 747 to Hong Kong. Told him I would. He dismissed me with a wave of his hand.

Second time. Benjamin Reeve House in Greenwich, NJ. Tallest house around in colonial Jersey. Because he was a clockmaker. Grandfather clocks.

Where I was born. Where I’ll die most likely too. Greenwich NJ.

Hot day. I was trying to open windows. One got stuck. Got forceful. Put my hand through the glass.

Bad, nasty, open, gushing cut. Wrapped it in cloth. Girl coming home. Have to be there, you know. She said we have to call mommy. I said it’s no big deal. Then mommy got home and we raced to the emergency room because everybody but me thought it was a very big deal indeed. Hours later, I had my second encounter with doctors in 40 years. He did a nice job.

Satisfied? Still have the scar. It still hurts. What else do you want to know?

The Brownie Investiture

I would probably be worried about the Brownie thing, because Planned Parenthood has its hooks as deep into the Brownie thing as it does the Girl Scout thing. I would be worried if Anna weren’t so much like Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener, who refused finally to play the game. Anna has been refusing to play the game for quite a while now.

What is she, six, seven? I’ve been watching her not playing the game for years. We used to trek up north to see her sing in a children’s church choir. But she, alone of all her compatriots, refused to sing. She’d just stand there, silent as a stone.

Then there was ballet. She just stood there, unwilling to participate.

And we have a picture my wife is trying valiantly to find of Anna standing obdurately in front of a soccer ball she is refusing to kick.

My wife, with grandmotherly pride, posted the picture up top of Anna joining the Brownies. Over my objections. Not a good message to send, I said. What with Planned Parenthood and all.

“Don’t be silly,” she told me. “Anna will quit in two weeks, tops. It’s all good.”

I’ll post the soccer pic unless my better half up and quits looking for it. But take it from me, it’s a hoot.

He’s a monster named Elliott. He doesn’t have paws. He has clubs. He can hammer any cat in the neighborhood. He shows up in the morning looking very happy with himself. Then he comes to sleep on top of me.

Because he fights to the death and loves his daddy. Purrrr.

Am I the only one who knows we absolutely MUST impeach this little America-hating, muslim motherf***er before another day goes by?

Warren Zevon is dead. He’s not the only one.

Maybe he’s better off. Maybe all us old white guys would be better off. But we have a way of keeping on keeping on. Why? When everyone else wants us to be so miserable. Because we just do. With all our mixed emotions.

If I’m not the only one, you’re not the only one either. Try to smile.

God’s own needle of love.

Three songs to make it clear.

Sweet Emotion.

Sweet Dreams.

Sweet Home Alabama.

God’s needle pokes you however it will. What you cannot deny. It is long, it strikes the heart, and we’re all waiting to receive it. Amen.

No good for anything. Not cutting steak or cheese or bread. Just for killing.

The way life is. Or death is. My granddad pulled it out of his trunk. I think he used it. I would have. In 1918.

What I absolutely do NOT have is my grandfather’s 1911 .45 caliber sidearm.

I have his old registration. Just not the gun.

I did have his uniform as a captain of infantry. I had his gas mask from 1918. The eye goggles were blurry. Maybe they were back then too. The leather was rotted. It smelled like mould. But for a moment I could imagine needing it. And imagine knowing it was a cheesy fake of a preventive.

From the same trunk, I got a French carbine which had a single bolt action and which a once good friend borrowed for a week forever (the way he borrowed my civil war rifle and other things good friends borrow in perpetuity), and I had two bayonets, one German, one French, and one of them nearly as nasty as the trench knife. And to top it off there was a WWI German helmet with a point on top. Ever seen one of those or tried one on?

It was too small on me. I was twelve. WTF.

There was a whole war in that trunk. Made me bleed inside.

Right now I just wish I had a fast draw holster and a 12-shot clip with hollow point bullets. I feel like I need them somehow.

But I don’t.

However. Do you know what happens when a trench knife intersects your abdomen? Good. You don’t want to know.

I don’t have a hat because I was once a wannabe rockstar, but…

Serious post, actually. No, I’m not the guy in the picture. But I was once a high speed maniac on the roads of Southern New Jersey. Bad? Maybe. I had reflexes then I still have. Old as I am, I can catch a glass skidding off a counter before it hits the floor. Fact. Ask my wife. Excuse? No. But I always knew better than to speed through residential districts. It was only when I got on the open road and the country curves that I went to the limit, sometimes to 120 mph.

What was that all about? Discovery. Research. Finding the limits of machines and me. Forty maybe thirty years ago. Had a friend who was the same way. We chased each other everywhere at incredible speeds. Faster, faster, faster was our mantra. All gone. We got older.

He’s like me now. A little old lady on the highways. He prefers to let his wife drive him everywhere. And he yells at her when she even reaches the speed limit in residential areas.

I no longer exceed the speed limit. Ever. Not even on the Turnpike. My peripheral vision is still what it was when I was a maniac. But now it’s looking constantly for children darting unexpectedly off sidewalks, stranded cars, stupid people erupting from side streets, old guys and millennials on bicycles, every single lunkheaded woman and her children in a parking lot, and all the bad things that can happen with tractor trailers and overloaded pickup trucks on two lane thorofares.

The bad old me learned how to look, to see, to anticipate, to be prepared to crash myself if I made a bad decision. Now I don’t want to make a bad decision.

Women don’t ever seem to learn this rabid kind of caution. They speed on the turnpike, tailgate, run yellow lights, and hustle just a bit too much on residential streets because their intentions are good and mean no harm. They never learned just how quickly and bad a driving decision can go. Until it happens.

Women drivers make bad old lady drivers. For some reason they’re also always in a hurry. Real men are something else. They stopped being in a hurry a long time ago. Unless a woman is involved.

No. I’m not Lauda. But old as I am, if the need arose, I could still scald the highway the way I did in my twenties. Like riding a bicycle. I can still catch a glass falling off a table. and I can still chase a rat up his own ass on the open road. Just don’t do it unless there’s some need.

I’m your huckleberry.

You don’t start out looking for a duel to the death. You want to make peace, coexist, discuss, live. But the longer you go knowing you’re not going to survive the maelstrom, the less patience you have. You start to get reckless. Where I am.

I’ve been taking shots on the Internet for a dozen years. Not a problem. Usually easily handled by tactics like those shown above. Doesn’t matter if you’re sick, failing, sweating with the fever of disgust and misanthropy.

Now and again it gets serious. Still doesn’t matter if you’re sick, failing, sweating with the fever of disgust and misanthropy. Or even if you’re unexpectedly old. I’m still your Huckleberry.

“Poor soul, you were just too high strung… I’m afraid the strain was more than he could bear.”

Ten months of paradise.

We knew what was happening for several days. There’s been a vigil. Cassie was eating four cans of cat food a day and it wasn’t adding an ounce to her frame. Then she stopped eating altogether. No matter how many cans and flavors we gave her. Raebert went into a funk this morning.

Raebert’s been in a funk. He knows. He always knows everything.

Okay. She was fifteen. No big whoop, right? But in a way she was also one. A few years hiding under beds. Then the move here. Feral. She spent ten years in the rafters of the garage. Then she came down to my lap. Which she suddenly decided was her home. And where she died. This afternoon. Just about sunset.

She was in my lap, you see. My wife and I were squabbling about Mozart. I wanted Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A, 2nd movement. My wife wanted to know if I needed to suffer about Cassie more. I said, the way husbands sometimes do, “Do it!” She started the YouTube video and Cassie died immediately upon hearing the first chord. Won’t make any attempt to explain or justify. She just died.

Spare you her sad little face and wasted body. She was fifteen after all. And her brother was my best friend. Why did she glom onto me? Do brothers tell sisters what’s going on in human world? Stop it. Cassie loved me, and I loved her. Now she’s dead, a small wild cat who never knew where she belonged.

Never domesticated. Just like her brother and sister. She was a wild wild thing who just happened to like me.

You know. Seven pounds of dirt and nasty and I’ll scratch your eyes out if you ever lay a hand on me. But this is what she was listening to when she died in my arms.

And when he heard it playing just now, Raebert came running up to join me on the couch. What do all the animals seem to know about Mozart so many humans don’t?

God bless you, Cassie, my dear. I will miss you till the rainbow bridge greyhound folks talk about.