ANYONE FOR TENNIS?

I was driving with my friend Mark to go play some tennis today at around 1:00, and we were surprised to see a bunch of Middle Eastern men and women driving in their cars and SUVs, Middle Eastern music blaring and horns honking, people hanging out of the vehicles, waving banners and large flags of a country of what I assumed to be Iraq.

"What the hell is going on?" he asked.

I shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe their country just won the World Cup?"

"Soccer," he said. "What a gay sport."

"Well, the United States couldn't care less about it, sure," I said, "but the rest of the world really gets into it."

"Well the rest of the world is gay, then," he said.

We got to the park and played a few sets of tennis under the sweltering sun. I got my ass kicked, per usual, as I tried to go for the incredible shots and double-faulted more than I got my first serve in and, while we were playing, the Middle Easterners continued to pour into the parking lot, Arabian rap blaring and horns honking. It seemed, obviously, to be a celebration. But then, on the other hand, there was a definite police presence.

We started to wonder just exactly what had gone on. Was it an innocuous sports celebration? As my friend had mentioned, Beckham had just started playing for Los Angeles. Wouldn't he be over wherever they were playing the World Cup instead of kicking and heading in the United States? Had there been a terrorist attack? Had Bushie been popped? Were people celebrating the withdrawl of American troops in the Middle East? Was the "War on Terror" no more? (Right. We'll be fighting that "War on Terror" for the next 200 years.)

So I was definitely intrigued. I got home and turned on the news. There were no breaking stories. I went online and I found this. It had been soccer, after all. And it had been Iraq. And, instead of mayhem and terror, it had been a good story, a feel-good story. I say good on them. I say that Iraq needs more stories like this. I say that Iraq needs "beacons of hope." It is fantastic that the soccer team has done well after getting out from under Saddam's sons' sadistic thumbs.

It is unfortunate, though, that the Bush Adminstration will probably point to this feel-good story and somehow warp it into a pro-U.S.A. troops build-up. That they will look at this and say, "See? Give us more time. The "Surge" will work."

Politics aside, though, I'm quite happy for the Iraqi soccer team. And I'm glad that Iraqi-Americans have something over which to show their nationalistic pride. More sports, less war.

DO YOU THINK THEY'D MIND?

If I inserted myself into their joyous symmetry? I'd behave myself, I swear. I already have the black Speedo...and I'm working on the flotation device.

ALWAYS KEEP YOUR HEAD ON A SWIVEL...

You never know who might be watching.

I have an admission to make. I have watched pornography before. Sometimesp--gasp!--I watch it on my computer. I came to a realization about a week, week-and-a-half ago that my neighbors' window looks directly down upon my computer room. And their oft-used side door is, oh, about ten feet from the window. This is not good. I like to walk around semi-clothed (or nekkid) sometimes. It is more comfortable and it is in the privacy of my own home, and whatnot. The thing is? I have been getting some really weird looks from the People Who Live Next Door. Originally, when I moved in, it was an 89-year-old woman who lived there. And, yes, she still lives there. But now, unfortunately, her daughter or a full-care nurse (?) lives there. And the old woman's son (?) visits often.

A cold draft emenates from The House Next Door, now. Though I have tried to be amiable--in fact, smiled and waved--my genial parries have been met with a iciness that would make Frosty the Snowman blush. Once, when I was driving to work, the daughter/nurse (?) was sitting on the porch sucking down a cigarette. I waved as I passed. And she basically blanched. Her hand rose in a tentative wave and I shrugged it off and continued on to work. [I'm laughing as I type this, by the way.] It was almost as if my friendliness had offended her, in some way. What in the world..? Heaven's to Betsy! Leapin' lizards!

Maybe she (or he, or both) caught a glimpse through the thinly-curtained windows and saw something that she (or he, or both) should not have seen. If that be the case, I humbly offer my apologies--and then rip said apologies right back. I am far from sorry. In fact, truth be told, I'm a little pissed. If I want to introduce the Monkey Bishop to Miss Michigan--in the languid comfort of my own home--I'll be damned if I have to do whilst my head spins as if on a swivel! It kinda breaks the concentration, truth be told.

Shit. That's it. My auto-erotic digital voyeurism is forever ruined, besmirched, tainted, by The People Who Live Next Door. I think Wes Craven made a movie about that once. Who knows.

By the way, if God didn't want the hmm-haw to be hmm-hawwed by the hmm-hawwer...he'd have put hands on elbows.

WE'RE GOIN' TO THE ZOO, ZOO, ZOO

How about you, you, you? That lyric sticks with me from my second-grade (or so) music recital. We did it every year at the Catholic school. I'm quite sure that we sucked. In fact, now that I think about it, I wonder why they had us do the recitals at all. Anyway, that is neither here nor there. I went to the Detroit Zoo today for the first time in about ten or fifteen years. I went with Ginny and her two nephews, a four- and five-year-old. They're great kids. Right away, they called me "Adam" and reached for my hand. I felt like a dork at first, holding the kids' hands, but, by the end of the three or four hours at the zoo, they had each ridden me piggy-back countless times.

We had a good time at the zoo. Among some of the things that I pondered:

I love seeing the animals that I don't see but for on TV or in the movies, but I view them with a twinge of pain and a twinge of guilt. They're (obviously) not in their natural habitat and, though the zoo does all it can to make their prison a comfortable one, it remains just that: a prison.

There was a huge--and I mean HUUUUUUUUGE--silverback gorilla in the great ape environment. At first I hadn't noticed him because he had sort of blended in to the "boulder" upon which he was leaning. This dude was huge. And when I say "huge" I mean fat as a motherscratcher. It made me kind of sad. He was all docile and leaning against the boulder and, had he been wearing pants, they would have been the kind that Jarod from Subway squeezed into before gorging on submarine sandwiches and walking everywhere he went. Dude was fat and huge and lethargic and I was glad that I had gotten the chance to see him. See the Kellerman, there?

We also had the good luck to see a tiger. In my opinion, the tiger is the true king of the jungle. The way he moved was a joy to watch: sleek, rippling muscles...he just seemed to glide wherever he went. While we were watching, he took a dip in his pool, stayed in there for a spell and then--whoosh!--expelled himself from the water, the moisture like a transient sheath behind him. Nothin' but power.

We saw a bear. I think it was a brown bear; it wasn't as big as a grizzly. He wasn't doing much but circling his boulder...around and around and around and around again, his huge spade-like claws clipping against the rock.

Camels and peacocks were there, too. And lizards and anteaters. Anteaters, by the way, are some of the funkiest creatures I have ever had the pleasure to look upon. Their head? It's nothing but a nose. Shh. Don't tell anyone.

One pretty cool thing the zoo offered was something called the "Australian Outback." 'Twas an open area, where the zoo-goers stuck to the path and the kangeroos stuck to their fields. There was no interaction betwixt the two factions, fo' shizzle, but the guides did tell us not to feed the 'roos nor make loud noises as one of the female kangeroos had a fresh joey, ostensibly snuggled up in her pouch. Pretty cool, nonetheless. I got some snappers, but my zoom ain't all that great on my camera so they didn't really turn out too well.

And now...I'm worn out. It was a lot of walking. Made more difficult by always keeping an eye on the yo'wins. But, it was fun. To all of you scoring at home, my favourite animal was the tiger. And that, my dear friends, is why he glosses the top of this page.

Peace.

I'M OUTRAGED...CAN YOU TELL?

So...Michael Vick, the NFL's version of the Human Highlight Film, has been indicted by the Feds for his part in a dogfighting ring. He and three other associates are due to appear in federal court next week in Virginia to face felony charges of 1) competetive dogfighting, 2) procuring and training pit bulls for fighting, and, 3) operating the enterprise across state lines.

"Bad Newz Kennels" is located on a property owned by Vick in Surry County, Virginia.

I don't know where to start. Okay. Here:

I have always enjoyed watching Michael Vick play football. His natural talent is amazing and he seemingly pulls moves out of his ass on the gridiron, making defenders look either incompetent or old or just plain stupid. Jockstraps are littered all across the fields of the NFL. Though he is, as a throwing quarterback, merely average, his legs more than make up for his mediocrity.

That being said, these allegations sicken me. Dogfighting, in general, sickens me, but this shit is just fucked up beyond all recognition. Listening to sports radio and reading the newspaper and the Internet has revealed that, allegedly, Mike Vick and his cohorts are particularly nasty to the dogs. Dogfighting is brutal, inhumane and a degeneration of humanity, but the way that they allegedly "disposed" of the animals that couldn't or wouldn't fight the way that their owners wanted them to fight? It literally disgusts me. Electrocution, drowning, hanging, shots in the head? Are you fucking kidding me?! Here's the worst way, though: Apparently, allegedly, one or more dogs was dispatched by its handler by slamming it repeatedly against the concrete until it was dead. I'm just fucking flabbergasted. How the hell can people be so damned...monstrous?

It's sadistic; they're sadists. They get off on their feeling of power, their feeling of machismo.

That's the only explanation of which I can conceive. Let us keep in mind, lest we forget, that many of these dogs were virtual puppies, killed after they were either too torn up to continue or killed before they even started their unasked-for "career" because they hadn't shown the "killer instinct" in the whelping pen. Puppies.

Puppies.

How? How can a person have such little regard for life? Life of any kind?

There was one guy on the radio that called in to a popular national talk show that asked the host why he was busting on Vick? Was it because he was a black athlete with a shipload of money? Um. The caller also opined that it wasn't like Vick had killed people, that they were just talking about dogfighting. Just. Okay, jackass. Nothing wrong with that. There's absolutely nothing wrong with raising a thinking being--in this case a highly intelligent and loyal and yes, fierce, breed of dog--from birth, to fight to the death against another of its species for monetary gain. Nothing at all. Unbelievable how cold and damned demonic some people can be. So fucking uncaring.

I keep coming back to the mental image of a young dog, perhaps badly injured, being picked up bodily and flung against the pavement, bones breaking, blood pooling, eyes going hazy, respirations becoming shallower...flung repeatedly against the pavement by an outraged "owner" until it was, mercifully, dead. Because it lost. Or wouldn't fight. Or lost him some money. Didn't hold up its end of the bargin to which it had never agreed. Macho men, huh? "My dog is fierce, yo." Fuck you. Motherfuckerz. I really hope that, if the allegations stand to be true [and, seriously, if the Feds create an 18-page report, there's got to be fire with all that smoke, right?] they get their just rewards. Throw the book at them. Show no leniancy.

If these allegations are true: Mr. Vick? Mr. Human Highlight Film? It was good watching you play. Have fun in the clink. Later, cock.

EXISTENTIAL; BOREDOM; B.B. KING

B.B. King sums it up: The thrill is gone.

I'm sick and tired of drifting, goddamnit. I have drifted along in life for the last 14 fucking years. What the hell is the meaning of life? Where in tarnation is my passion for life? I like to say that I have a passion for writing and for creativity, but oftentimes I find myself peering blankly at the monitor of the computer and thinking to myself, Yeah, nothing's coming. If I'm such a fucking "writer," I would think that I would have stories bubbling up constantly. I'm like a goddamned blank slate. No. Scratch that. I'm like a slate that had writing on it but was erased: There's remnants of something up there...but I can't read it.

Also, why is it that I am a veritable mute, sometimes? How the hell does one pick up the art of conversation? I'm fucking boring, sometimes, and I'm goddamned sick of it.

In the past--now over seven months ago--I would have dealt with the fucking boredom with swift justice: Hammered the Beast o' Boredom with a beer or twelve. That's...not an option any longer. Is there a store out there that sells Passion?

Motherfucking malaise. Motherfucking morass. More ass? I wish. ;-)

On an unrelated note, I have a question for you Cyberites, many of whom are women: What's a good thing to do for a date? I had a date planned for Saturday--Tiger game--but it's sold out, and now I'm at a complete loss of something to suggest instead. We've met for coffee, gone bowling and had dinner. You would think that it would be relatively easy to come up with something to do. Dinner and a movie? Maybe. Anyone have any suggestions out there?

Signed,

Abner Arbuckle

THE GRASS IS GREEN DEPARTMENT

From that department, there is other news: Paris is hot, Paris is burning, Paris makes my kneecaps itch. I know, I know.... I know that she sure as hell seems to be a megalomaniacal, sheltered bee-yotch who...fuck it. She's hot.

And I'm sure that if she offered me her business idea like she's offering in the snapshot? I'm sure that it would be an idea that I could get behind.

:-O

TELL ME ABOUT YOUR CHILDHOOD, LOU

My dog has an aversion to eating, sometimes. I was in the living room playing Tiger Woods Golf Oh-Seven and there was quietness coming from the other room. Thinking that he might have been at the back door, needing to go Outside, I got up and, perhaps a little too quickly, walked into the kitchen where Lou was dining quietly in the dark. My hand bumped against the stove as I passed through the doorway and Louie jumped as if goosed and backed away from his food bowl as though it were molten lava. His eyes were wide like a spooked horsie. I felt that I had to walk--ever-so-slowly--to his side and pet him and tell him that all was well, that he was well within his right to eat his kibble. That, in fact, I welcomed it. I wonder if a Freudian doggy psychologist would, after conferring with my canine, tell me that his look of :-O stems from when he was a puppy and I, always late for work and trying to expediate the process of eat and go-Outside-and-poop, would sometimes forcibly guide him to his little puppy bowl of food and growl, "Eatcher foo', Lou! I gotta get goin', damn it!"

If that be the case, Lou, I offer my most sincere and humble apologies.

THRIFT STORE: TO GENERALIZE

I embraced my femininity today. I went shopping for shirts. I may have done it with a man's expediency, though. I was driving home from work and I passed the thrift store on Lincoln. I have always meant to stop in and see what they might have to offer. Today, I stopped.

I walked in the door. I did not need a dress. I did not need a pearl necklace. Nor did I need a swimming suit top. So I kept on walking, missing the sign above the doorway to the back room that read "Watch Your Step!" I had not been watching my step and so I missed a step--misstepped--and nearly stumbled against the doorjamb. To save face, I walked back through the doorway and made a point of looking up. And there, in bubbly green pastel letters, I saw the sign. I made a show of shaking my head--who the hell puts a sign to watch one's step above an average human being's sightline? and, if the person had been walking with his or her head held high, majestically, would they not have stumbled over the four-inch drop, anyway?--and I walked back into the Men's-slash-Toys section. I did not need a caterpillar on wheels, nor did I need Lincoln Logs. I wanted a shirt or three.

So I ambled to the button-up shirt rack and thumbed through the prospects. I was joined in the room by a woman in her early-50s. She thumbed through a tie rack. I don't know if she found what she was looking for. Frankly, I didn't care. I was on a mission. There were some god-awful manifestations of clothing but, then again, there were a few decent shirts, too. I grabbed three plaid button-up short-sleeved shirts and a gray polo-type shirt, and held them against my chest to approximate the likelihood of their fitting me. They all seemed like winners, so I stuffed them under an arm and grabbed a pair of shoes off the rack before heading to the check-out. Cost of four shirts and a pair of box-like shoes? Twenty-five dollars and some change. Total time in the store? About ten minutes. Correct fits? All. And? Yes, priceless.

Shopping is easy! And now I know where to go if I ever need a polyester shirt with a screaming floral pattern.

ZASH

i unzip my ribs and offer my heart

streaming and steaming

a plump tomato in my palm

the sky behind is black and gray and

gray and gray and yellow

zashes her black with purple cumulus

the coyotes croon and the

ache of of the ice cube river flows

through the plush green evers

my heart streams and steams

gossamer wisps

wisps cling, sheen my forearm

tongue-tied, tied, my tongue

stammer and sploosh
"addles and gender crowns, i'm here all week"

i grin, then, all gnashy incisors and

cuspids

cupid-ing in an enamel bow

"take it," i say and

i squeeze my heart into

her waiting hand

let us begin

GOOD SIGNS...GREAT NIGHT

So, last night I went on a date with a young lady in whom I am quite interested and we met at a bowling alley mid-way between our two towns. She's petite and cute and athletic and college-educated and a teacher and a Buddhist and we bowled six or seven games and played four or five games of darts. I bowled my best game ever (202) and I started off one of the games of darts with three straight bullseyes (I usually suck at bullseyes; she must have inspired me) and we watched the Tigers beat the American League-leading Red Sox in the 13th inning on Ivan "Pudge" Rodriguez's two-out double (scoring Gary Sheffield who swiped at home plate with his right foot as an exclamation point) and we talked about life in general and spirituality in particular. I drank Diet Coke at the bar near the dart board and she drank water with a lemon. Nearby, people were playing poker and getting louder and drunker and curse-ier by the moment...but it didn't cause me any grief, at all. I was having a great time.

We left the bowling alley and I kissed her good night (and she returned the delicacy) and I told her to call me when she got home safely. I got home and, five minutes later, the phone rang. She said that she would have gotten home earlier but she just had to stop and get a doughnut on the way home. So, basically, we had arrived at our respective homes at the exact same time, give or take a sliver of a metronome. And what exactly had delayed us? Tim Horton's. She had stopped to get a doughnut and I had stopped to get a large cafe mocha. Who knows? We might have even been in the respective drive-throughs at the same time.

I take this as a very good sign. =o)

RICE

Ned Beatty stepped off the bus and started down 8th Street, striding purposefully. In his head, he heard the strains of the second movement of Beethoven's Ninth. The shur of the oboes, the bass of the massive drums. Violinic mesmerization. The music swelled into a horse-gallop and so he did, too. Down the sidewalk he went, and Others made way, seperating as the Red Sea did for Moses.

Snatches of conversations flitted through his consciousness and insults were hurled but failed to adhere. Truth be told, Ned Beatty couldn't care less what the Others thought of him. His was a blessed pursuit, his was a mission appointed by the Big Man With the Beard in the Sky Reclining on Puffy White Cumulus and so he deigned not to reply to the Others' hurtful comments, he deigned instead to be free of the stink and filth and morassic pull of humanity.

Beethoven crashed through Ned Beatty's head. And Ned Beatty galloped. His feet, he felt, were barely touching terra firma, if at all. Up ahead, he saw--felt--his destination: a right angle off the sidewalk into the alleyway behind Hung's Chinese Takeout. He galloped on the swells of the violins and the flutes and signalled a left turn with his arm, knocking the homburg off the head of a shrunken octogenarian. The elder Other asked why Ned didn't watch where the sam-hill he was goin', and Ned replied with a subdued glash of rotting teeth, said that he didn't have to watch where he was going, that he was special, that he was Mosesed-chosen. Immediately after opening his mouth, Ned felt sullied, besmirched. To acknowledge one of the Others might have been a mistake. It left him feeling less-than and it really, truth be told, cut the wixom out of his mojo. Frowning, he turned left. Into the alleyway behind Hung's Chinese takeout. And then he smiled. His teeth cut with tepid yellow the darkness of the slash between the buildings.

Beethoven's stacatto. Beethoven's rush of Feel. His heart swelled and his feet pittered. Without regard to the slime on the pavement, Ned Beatty dropped onto his back and busted out a mack breakdance move, a move that would have made his dear old mother proud. Spinning to a stop, his legs curled above his head, Ned saw one of the smaller-eyed Others peering quizzically at him through the open screen door of the establishment.

"Rice," said Ned, and nodded sagely. The door slammed shut and, from behind the closed portal, he heard the excited gibbers of a foreign language. He pursed his lips and let his eyes droop shut. After much consideration, he dubbed the language Vietnamese-y. Maybe South African.

"Rice is nice," he muttered and stood, absently wiping some wilted bok choy from his ass. The galloping was gone; his mood had shifted as quickly as a waterbug's movements. In his head, Beethoven had mellowed, as well. The melodic rises and falls painted velvet in his mind. He waltzed slowly down the slash between the buildings. To his left was a one-eyed cat with a ragged ear. To his right was a pile of black straining garbage bags, stuffed with the slow decay of meals forgotten. Yes! Yes.

He fumbled in his cargo pants and brought out his snap-and-giggle. This was it. He jacked the shoot mode into Kids & Pets--for shutter speed, don'tcha know--and he captured five or ten pictures of the piles of stoic garbage. A nearby stoop beckoned to him so he moonwalked over and sat. He flipped the switch on his snap-and-giggle so that he could admire his handiwork. Picture after picture after picture after picture of garbage. Beautiful garbage. He noted the shine of the intrepid sunlight on the folds and creases of the ink-black plastic and he smiled softly. He wanted to reach through the viewfinder and caress the beauty.

The Other from behind the screen door appeared at his side and Ned smiled beatifically up at him. The Other from behind the screen door had another Other with him; this Other was larger than the first and he held in his right hand--knuckles white--a meat-cutting implement. He thwacked the non-business side of the utensil against his left palm. The first--with nary a twitch of mirth--looked down at smiling Ned and blasted a non-negotiable index finger toward the opening of the sunlit street where cars and large buses slid by. Ned stood, still smiling. He powered off his snap-and-giggle, deposited it in his cargo pants. "Nice doing business with you, Ghengis," he offered and walked towards the light, not looking back, not caring a whit.

From the street, he heard the click-clock click-clock of a woman's high-heeled shoes. He smiled. His face split with a grin. He couldn't wait to show Samantha his...work.

Ode to joy, indeed.

WHAT A SURPRISE...

That is sarcasm. This was to be expected. Rules just don't apply with this administration. The article mentions that the two years' probation and the $250,000 fine will be upheld. Excuse me if I believe that that means absolutely nothing. I've been on probation before. It ain't shit. As to the large fine: I'm sure that Scoot will be able to find it somewhere. He's got friends in high places, you know.

This presidency reeks. It's unjust, manipulative, cruel, disingenuous, phony as a three-dollar bill. Other than that, we Americans should be proud.

So treason, which used be dealt with with beheadings or decades-long prison terms, is now, apparently, not that big of a deal. Whatever.