WHY BOTHER WITH A TITLE?

Got damn! I am so fricking uninspired. To do a lick of anything. What the hell? What gives? Even keystrokes are an effort, my fat fingers fumbling an "F" instead of a "D," a "K" instead of an "L."

I look out the window and through the gray of my omni-fucking-present cigarette smoke, the day is gray. And gray. And, oh yes, gray. Snowflakes flitter slowly down, rendering the backyard a soft white carpet.

I swallow some more of the omni-fucking-present coffee. The inside of my stomach is a friggin Starbucks. But without all the hype and the pretentiousness.

My dogs are somewhere. Wait, I know where they are: one of them will be laying by the heating vent and the other will be curled, snout to tail, on the overstuffed armchair.

I look out the window again. Yup, still gray. And gray. And, oh yes, gray.

By some (man-made) cosmic accident, today is a day that only comes around once every four years. If you were born on a Leap Year, would you celebrate your birthday on February 28th or on March 1st? I think I would celebrate mine on March 1st--kind of like a rebirth thing. February is just so fucking dreary. March is a month with purpose; just look at the name, for God's sake! March to it. Whereas February is a month in which even the spelling is a pain in the ass. How many times did you spell it (or pronounce it) "Febuary," with the "R" nowhere to be found? Shit, I just looked at the kee-rect spelling of the word and it reminded me of "mortuary." Maybe it's just the kind of mood that I'm in.

In the adjoining room, Bob Marley says to me: "Open your eyes, and look within/ are you satisfied with the life you're living?"

Well, Bobby, for the most part, yes. Thanks for asking, sir.

Now Marley sings, "Ex-ee-dous! Movement of jah people."

Exodous, indeed, Bobby. Exodous out of this gray fucking world and into a green one, resplendent with the smell of freshly-mown grass and burgers on the grill and images of blue skies and white puffed clouds.

TEN SYLLABLES

Enough. Of. Winter. And. Snow.

I. Want. Spring.

HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS

out of the cold

stinging wind and harsh

skeletal reality

a warm bed,

nest here,

sleep here,

safe

let the world slide by

--greased skid--

let the world slide by and

cocoon yourself, here,

wrap me around you

together we will make sense

out of the senseless and

find Time

let the harsh shadow-world slide by

--greased skid--

nest with me

close your eyes and

sleep and know that

Tomorrow is a better day

THE CASE OF THE SHRINKING CANINE

Once upon a time, there was a cute brown dog. His fur was shiny and multi-colored: browns, yellows and blacks joined together on his coat to cull images of sun-dappled foliage in a viewer's eyes. The dog's name was Louis and he lived with a bald man named Adam. The two were inseperable and became fast friends. The bald man was a caring individual and he had a big heart, but he was often moody and distant. The dog tried his best to bring the man smiles, but he failed as often as he succeeded.

Then, one day, the bald man came to a decision to stop injesting toxic beverages at a manic pace and his moods began to even out a bit and the dog was happier. But the high that the man enjoyed from making his life-altering decision was transient and soon he reverted back to his self-absorbed ways.

The dog still had much love to offer, but the man was oftentimes unreceptive to the overtures and so the dog slipped into what seemed to be a depression. Day after day, the brindled bundle of benevolence bounded up at the sound of his master's alarm clock only to be subtly ignored for the flash of the computer, the squeaks and squirks of the video game system. Day after day, night after night, the dog lay on the couch, in the armchair, letting loose great sighs, his Boxer face more droopy than Nature had intended.

The bald man saw his depressed dog and tried to buoy his spirits, but the man's attention was sketchy at best...often the man would come home from work and go directly to bed for hour-long naps.

The man thought to himself, Hell, I live in a house, now. I have a backyard. Maybe Lou would benefit from having a partner-in-crime. Maybe another dog would help the situation.

And that thought of another dog stewed in the back of the man's mind.

And then, one day, the man's co-worker mentioned that she knew of a Beagle that was looking for a new home. The man, after some consideration, decided, sure, that could very well be a damned good thing. So he adopted the Beagle. With Dickensian sugar plums cavorting in his head, he named the dog Oliver, after the orphan from Oliver Twist. (Plus? The dog just looked like an Oliver.)

At first, things were gravy. Louie had never seemed happier and Oliver, after an extremely brief transitional period of uncertainty, soon became comfortable with the living situations.

Overly comfortable, it turned out.

The man noticed, after a time, that, when Oliver ate, Louie sat a respectful distance away, eating only after Oliver had finished. The problem became quickly clear, though, that Oliver was never finished. The little sausage-bodied dog did not eat to live. Rather, he lived to eat. And he rapidly attained Alpha status when food was concerned.

Thus, Oliver began to resemble a black-and-tan-and-white bowling ball with legs. And Louie, after putting on a quick layer of intial muscle from increased playtime, began to shrink. Still a muscular canine, his spine and ribs became more appreciable and his fur seemed to lose some of its luster. Meanwhile, the bowling ball glowed.

The bald man began to get a little worried. He wondered just how the hell he could fatten Louie up while gently nudging Oliver towards a healthier lifestyle.

He came up with this idea: who the hell said that they had to eat together all the time? That was what the doggy gate was for, he reckoned. Segregation (no pun intended) was the key. To isolate the sons-of-bitches seemed to be the order of the day.

So that was what the man decided to do. And he had heard (or read) somewhere that raw eggs mixed with the dry dog food were good for dogs. And that he--not the dogs--controlled the quantity of food that was delivered to the furry bodies, one rotund, the other stretched like a rubber band.

And so the experiment began in earnest....

{To be continued}

GANGSTA RAP

I stopped at the local music resale store today. I was intent on finding some Anthrax and/or some Megadeath. Just in one of those moods, I reckon. Headbangers, unite.

Anyway, I found neither. I ended up getting some other CDs, one of which was N.W.A.'s 1988 release Straight Outta Compton. Blast from the past, eh? An acronym for Niggaz With Attitudes, N.W.A. was basically a rap super-group which counted as its members such icons of gangsta rap as Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Eazy-E, MC Ren and DJ Yella.

The second song on the disc is "Fuck Tha Police." The chorus sounded for the first time, and I found myself vehemently barking, "Fuck the police!" I paused and started laughing to myself. There I was, a somewhat mild-mannered, mid-30s white guy, driving the speed limit, safely seatbelted in a silver Ford Focus hatchback in an affluent suburb of Detroit. I was about as far from Dr Dre and the other fellas of N.W.A. as I could be.

Yet, I felt an affinity towards them. They m'boyz.

I, too, have had run-ins with the boys in blue. More than a couple of times, actually. Of course, every time I had a problem with the law, I was a million sheets to the wind and I can't really blame them for doing their jobs, ridding Suburbia of sodden belligerence. But, still, the animosity remains. Fucking pompous do-gooders. Strapped egos sauntering about like Hands of God.

Fuck tha Police, indeed.

One of these days, my childish, churlish attuitude towards our beloved protectors will change. Until then, I am,

Signed,

Gangsta Adam

[Now excuse me. Heavens to Betsy, but the dishes are piling up!]

WE'RE NUMBER ONE! WE'RE NUMBER ONE!

But I demand a retabulation of the numbers. This is bullshit. I think that Detroit was the fattest city in the United States, too.

Well, you gotta be good at something, right?

(And, trust me, it isn't shocking that Flint, MI, came in third in the "Misery Ranking.")

IT'S THE LITTLE THINGS

Life comes at you fast. 21st Century technology ramps up the velocity. Cell phones, instant messaging, digital televisions, gaming systems, GPS technologies: they're all great and they all serve their purpose. But, God damn, life often seems like a whirlwind of activity--technology, bills, relationships, responsibilities--and sometimes you lose your bearings and you don't know whether you're coming or going.

So it's the little things in life that can help you regain your equalibrium.

With southeastern Michigan's wacky (Michigan-like) weather lately, my backyard has been transformed from a dog-dug, brown "lawn" to a shimmering ice rink. It's completely covered in two-inch-thick ice, save for a few spots in which the sunshine did its melting job.

The dogs were overjoyed to see me today when I got home for work and, when I let them outside, they scampered across the brown area near the side door and then took off across the icy yard. Slippin' and slidin' and playfighting, they brought a smile to my face, reminding me of hockey players sliding around on the ice as they tried to level a punch at their opponent.

I busted a thick layer of ice off of the fold-out canvas chair and sat my Carhartt-layered ass down to enjoy the festivities. Moments of serenity are little things, too, but we gotta cling to them, sometimes. They are increasingly--in this modern world--few and far between. This was one of those moments, and I clung to it. The sun was shining down on me, I was nice and toasty inside my outerwear and the only sounds I heard were the chirps of birds and the hypnotic shurrrr sound of distant traffic and my boys' breaths of playful exertion.

Slippin' and slidin'. Slidin' and slippin'. No cell phones ringing, no TVs blaring, no obnoxious commercials imploring me to buy a new dinette set...just dogs' breaths, puffed cloudy by the frigid air. I felt the tension of work begin to slip out of my shoulders and neck. I breathed deeply and closed my eyes in the sun. So what if it was 20 degrees? I was warm and I was right where I wanted to be. I slowly opened my eyes to the bright winter day.

I watched m'boys tussle for about ten minutes and then I watched as they amicably broke and went about marking their territory, voiding their breakfasts. And I watched as they scrabbled over to me in the chair and offered their heads for petting and then I watched as they discovered the ice that I'd knocked loose from the chair and mouthed a couple of big chunks over to the brown areas on the hockey rink, where they lay down. And I heard them crunch.

And I listened. And I watched. And I breathed. And that was good enough.

ROOT CANAL: *PARTE DOS*

In about seven hours, I will be slouching in the dentist's chair, proffering my gaping maw, cringing 'gainst the high-pitched whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnne of the little drill. Or maybe the big, slow, plodding drill that vibrates my whole head, making me feel as though I were caught in a mini, only-Adam's-melon earthquake.

Before either drill, however, my dentist, Dr. Mills, and his sidekick Cindy will bounce a bit of impromptu standup comedy against the white-tiled walls, against my noggin.

[One classic Mills joke is: "If the novocaine doesn't work, we'll just have to conk you over the head with a rubber mallet." Dr. Mills? I only laughed that one time because I was hung over as drunken turkey and my seratonin and dopamine levels were all fucked up, so please if you could can it, sir?]

After the joke session, a fifteen-inch needle will magically appear in Dr. Mills's right hand and with his left he will pinch the inside of my cheek and slide his ever-so-sharp untensil into my Clockwork Orange-propped mouth.

It only hurts for a moment, kids; trust me on that one.

Then.... Then, the fun begins! Whee! Drilling and scraping and Cindy's thigh pressed against my shoulder and Dr. Mills's nasally monologue and white ceiling tiles. My mouth will be jammed open and twisted and pinched and contorted and jagger-slashed and rinsed and spit out and on and on and on.

And then I'll get to pay for it! Whee! In all seriousness, though, thank God for insurance. Instead of 1700 doll hairs, I'll only have to pay, like, three-and-a-half hundred doll hairs. So, that's something good, eh?

Depending upon how smoothly the undertaking goes, I could walk out of there the owner of a new crown, carefully matched in color to my surrounding, yellowed choppers. In all likelihood, though, I'll walk out of there with a temporary crown and I'll get to go back again! Excuse me if I refrain from the "whee!" blast. This dentist shit gets old.

The only good thing about this debacle is that I'll be able to twist his arm into prescribing me some Tylenol 3s...or maybe even some Vicodin! Probably not the V--and I don't think I'd really want the V--but I know that I'll get some Threes out of the deal. Hell, it's the least they could do, what with puttin' me through all that pain and abject sufferin'.

Let this be a lesson to you, kids: when you eat sugar by the spoonful, be sure--damned sure!--to floss afterwards!

That is all. PSA complete.

Happy Card-and-Flower Day to you all...and to all a good (wink wink) night.

DOG-EAT-DOG WORLD

"May I have the...Beagle, please?" Thus spoke Dr. Something-or-other Something-or-other, the final judge at the 2008 Westminster Kennel Dog Show. Uno, the fifteen-incher had just ended a quarter-century Best In Show drought for Beagles.

I felt good for the Beagle. Having been blessed with Oliver, here, for the last seven or eight months, I have come to love the Beagles' stubborn ways and intense hunger for both attention and food. I have come to respect the Beagles' world-class noses; I have come to love their melty butter-pat eyes. Their character is dynamic; they own the room.

Uno was a good choice: a perfect specimen and he had that it quality. The commentators referred to him as a "rock star" and, while that may be stretching it a bit, the dog definitely carried himself with some pizzaz. To attribute some human qualities to the bastard, he looked like he felt he was above all the superfluous pomp and circumstance. He knew he was the best dog: Yawn. Just gimme the trophy and be done widdit, okay?

However, if I'd been one of the judges, I would have made sure that this guy was in the final group. And i would have judged him Best In Show. The Neopolitan Mastiff. All wrinkles, jiggles and lope.

CRACKER LOVE

"If there be no roses, then lay 'em down in crackers."

There was a massive rose shortage, seventy-five years ago. No one really knew just why the roses had ceased--for the most part--to grow, but all men who, on Valentine's Day, feigned cliched romanticism felt that they were up the creek without a paddle.

The wealthy men could afford the rarity of roses, but the poor and middle-class lovermen were jammed somewhere between a rock and a hard place.

In New Jersey--New Brunswick to be exact--a man named Abe Rittlefrop figured he had found the answer. A deli man by day, Abe fancied himself a peerless Lothorio and so, on February 12th, a couple of days before the big day, Abe ran his wife of nine years, Gertie, through a dry run.

"Close your eyes, sweetie," he'd said, leading her down the tight hall to the bedroom. "I have a wonderful surprise for you."

Docile as a lamb, Gertie Rittlefrop followed. She had learned over time to acquiesce to Abe. He was nothing special in the Bed o' Love, but she'd found that, if she voiced her opinion (or wants or desires) like her women liberation friends, Abe would invariably become churlish and belligerent.

Tenderly Abe led her by the hand to the bedroom and opened the door to the soft warm smell of vanilla candles.

"Can I open my eyes now, Abe?" Gertie asked.

"Not yet, lover," he whispered at her ear. "Just a little further." He led her a few feet farther and then released her hand and slowly and softly ran his hands up her sides and cupped her breasts. She drew in a quick shuddering breath. "I have a lovely surprise for you," he whispered. "I am sure you're going to love it. You're going to think that it's the bees' knees, indeed."

She smiled, her eyes still squeezed tightly shut. "I'm sure I will, too, Abe, honey. You, um, never fail to impress." In her mind she pictured his three-inch erection, curved at the base, as thin as a pretzel rod. "You make me feel like a school-girl, fresh to the thought of love." In her mind, she pictured little boys and girls, standing at the blackboard, chalking out multiplication tables.

Abe smiled grandly. "Now," he said, and lay her gently onto the bed.

Along with the familiar creaking of the ancient box springs, Gertie first heard and then felt the foreign (to the bedroom, at least) cracking and crumbling of thousands of brittle crackers. She grimaced and pawed Saltines from the small of her back. Some multi-grain crackers had found their way into her panties and so she hooked them out and deposited them on her stomach. Her eyes slid open.

Abe stood at the foot of the bed, grinning fiercely. She could tell that he'd put a lot of thought and effort into this "surprise" and she knew how babyish he could become when someone didn't fall into line exactly as his mind had surmised, but...crackers? This would be a tough one to negotiate.

He raised and lowered his eyebrows in a lame Groucho Marx impersonation. "You like, honey?" he asked.

"Crackers, dear?" she said. "Why...crackers?" She shifted her weight up to the headboard; the bed of crackers crumbled in her wake. An itchy medley of Saltines and wheat thins and goldfish crackers found their way between her buttocks.

His face fell. "Why not crackers? I know how much you love crackers and there was a whole extra delivery of 'em at the deli. I figured two birds with one stone. If you don't like it, why then I'l--"

"Oh no, no!" she said, holding her hands out. "I love the idea. It's so...unique, dear. You're so thoughtful and caring. And...innovative, honey. You're like my own little Edison."

"'Little Edison?'" he grumbled.

She amended herself. "You're like my own huge, gargantuan Edison, baby. Come here. Come to Mommy." She opened her arms to him and he clambered aboard. They made sweet love in the bed of crackers. In the end they were covered in dust and spent.

And so, in the Year Without Roses, love was still professed, love was still made and love, sweet love, still reigned supreme.

But clean-up was a bitch.

DINNER

It is February 5th. It is 12:31 in the aye-em. I am in Michigan. It is the anniversary of the Constitution.

I heard thunder a few minutes ago. And now the patter of rain soothes my soul. Thunderstorms in February? Oh, sure. It's like we say in Michigan: "You don't like the weather, wait five minutes." LOL! LOLz! HahaHA! ROFLMAO!1!

For dinner tonight, I had a bag of microwave popcorn with parmesean Goldfish Crackers and a bowl of Bear Claw ice cream, complete with whipped cream and Hershey's chocolate syrup.

I must be 12. Okay, maybe 13. For dinner tomorrow, I'll be having Geno's Pizza Rolls. And a Zagnut candy bar.

Post-coital bliss is a good thing. It should be bottled. And sold to dictators, despots and jingoistic American presidents under the brand name of Mell-Ohhh. Maybe it would calm people down, make them shinier happier people. Hell, it's a thought.

My sleep schedule got all ducked (mucked, clucked, pucked, shucked, fucked) up this weekend. I was on-call at work and I got called out at 11:00 on Saturday night. We got out to the job and, after heading back to the shop to bring back another backhoe (the frost-line was a motherfucker) we dug down to the curb box and found it to be blowing through. So...that was a bit of a job. We ended up getting done with that job at around nine the next morning. I went home after that, tired as a one-legged dog in an ass-sniffing contest, and I lay my head on the pillow and promptly fell asleep. Fell asleep for an hour and a half, that is, until work called again. The second job went for about five or six hours. So, all in all, though on-call can be a pain in the pooper, sometimes, it is tough to sneeze at 15 hours of double-time and three meal tickets.

But now my body and brain think that it is Wednesday...or Thursday. They are sadly mistaken.

I have to mention the Superbowl. What. The. Fuck? I mean, seriously: what the fuck?! How does a team that went 18-0 and set all types of scoring records and basically made the competition look like so many Pop Warner teams lose to a team that had to claw and scratch to even make the playoffs? It is simply unfathomable.

As Al Pacino would bark, "On any given Sunday!"

This is the biggest upset ever in the history of the National Football League. Tom Brady, uber-quarterback, finally didn't come through in the clutch. I reckon this just proves that he's human. (Although he does have movie star-good looks and he is insanely rich and he does fuck a supermodel whenever the mood strikes him.) In the Superbowl, however, he looked as mortal as Abe Begoda. And that's saying something.

I still have Christmas lights up in my front room. They are there to stay for a time indeterminate. I like the rosy red glow that they cast. I like how it makes me feel--perhaps--like I'm back in the womb, warm and safe...and bored out of gourd.

That's all for now. Have a happy Tuesday.

Post-script: That picture is of me at my friend Pablo's 40th birthday party. His finacee held it at a bowling alley. I bowled like shit, as did everyone else. That cake is a torso of a buxom woman dressed in a pale blue negligee. Two of the candles were placed strategically in the frosting where the nipples would have been. Mmm...frosty nipples....