The New Reality: Blue Props Up Red

It has been over 3 months since the semi-believable results of the 2004 Presidential elections have been foisted on the American people and one question remains:

Where's General Sherman when you need him?

We are told by the media at large that the reason the Republicans won the majority of the votes in the 2004 election was because of something they keep calling "moral values". Let us set aside for a moment the fact that the American media seemed more concerned about fair elections in the Ukraine than in the United States in the last three months, despite overwhelming evidence that Diebold fixed this election for the Republicans in at least Florida and Ohio. Let's take a closer look at this "Moral Values" argument.

Let's start this analysis with these questions. Choose either Red States or Blue States as your answer:

1) Who has the higher rate of divorce and out-of-wedlock pregnancy?

2) Who ranks lower in education?

3) Which part of the country is the home to more predatory corporations (predatory corporations being defined as companies who routinely make it a practice of abusing their employees, either through reductions in basic benefits or not paying for overtime)?

4) Which part of the country has the higher percentage of depraved guests on "The Jerry Springer Show"?

If you selected Red States for all of the above answers, you obviously live in a Blue State. Unfortunately for you, you'd also be 100% correct. I say unfortunately because the latest studies of who gets more government benefits per tax dollars spent has Red States at the top and Blue States at the bottom. The undisputable conclusion drawn from this analysis is that those of us in the educated part of the country are propping up our so-called "moral superiors" in the Red States with our hard work, educated minds and - more than anything else - our tax dollars.

How is it that Red States, with their focus on Old Testament punishment and racist symbols such as the Confederate Flag, take the moral high ground from those of us who actually lead productive lives and have the nerve not to stand on street corners and proselytize?

Red States are afflicted by an inferiority complex. The North beat the South in the Civil War, The North had to come down and teach white Southerners how to be tolerant of people who weren't white Southerners, the biggest claim to fame of Dallas, Texas is the murder of an American President in broad daylight in 1963 (which has led in time to Dallas' women wearing more makeup per capita than women in any other city), and places like our vice-president's "home state" of Wyoming have shown what kind of tolerance they have for people of different sexual orientations . With a track record like that, you'd do anything to rally the ignorant masses at your disposal and try to recapture some kind of high ground. What better way than that tried and true anesthetic that we in the reasoning Blue States call Religion?

Our current president loves playing the Bible card, and having slept with half of the women in the South while he was drinking and snorting coke in the '70's gives him a unique window into the nature of the people who vote for him blindly. The most evil of manipulators know exactly which buttons to push. Our president-and mainly his handlers- know the buttons well. Those that use moral issues love to talk a big game in terms of superiority to those of us who choose not to prop up charlatans like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. The problem, as we see by the current moral, economic and environmental decay of the Red States, is in the follow-through of all of those well-stated -if not well-practiced- beliefs.

So for those of you in Red States, you'll have to excuse those of us in the Blue States for laughing at you when you claim moral high ground. Statistics don't lie, and when it comes to hearing you pat yourselves on the back for being "better" than we are, you would do well to learn that talk is cheap.

Fanatic

The crowd was only now beginning to build for the concert, but Jenna Quinn had been here all day, braving the biting January chill from just after Noon. She didn't seem to mind, as the severe cold took her mind off her left hand. Standing outside reminded her of the day she bought tickets to the show. She had arrived three days prior to tickets going on sale in order to be the first in line. On the first night she was in line, the police had actually shown up to ask what she was doing there,

"I'm waiting in line for concert tickets", she said, which was an odd statement given that she was the line at that point in time.

"Who's coming?", the cop asked, thinking it to be someone famous.

"Miles Roberts"

"Who?"

Rather than be frustrated with the cop not knowing who Miles Roberts was, it made her happy. That was one more person who wouldn't stand in the way of her someday forever being with her idol.

Jenna could still remember the first time that she heard Miles Roberts' voice singing just to her. She was up late one night. She had just finished studying for the night and a thunderstorm outside her dorm room window was not allowing for sleep. She grabbed her portable radio and looked for something to drown out the thunder. She was used to hearing the latest hits of the day, but she was looking for something a little quieter to help her sleep. She began to turn her radio dial to the left. It had almost run out of room when a voice pierced the darkness of her room. After hearing one line of Miles Roberts' song "Natural Love", a bolt of lightning lit up the walls of her room. She kept listening to his voice in front of a lovely , flowing piano accompaniment as if listening to the voice of God himself, her pupils and her heart dilating in unison as her head rested on her pillow. When the song ended, another song by someone else followed it, and then another, and yet another. She wondered if she would ever find out whose voice it was that had made her feel this way. At last she heard the DJ's voice deliver words that would change her life forever.

"...and before that we heard Miles Roberts from his debut album 'Night Songs', and that was 'Natural Love'.....".

She jumped out of bed and scrambled over to her desk. She fumbled in the darkness for the switch for the lamp on her desk, grabbed a pencil and paper and wrote down what she had just heard. She promised herself that she would find this album at all costs, which was strange for her, as she usually wasn't given to buying music on a regular basis. She somehow knew instinctively that this album would be something she needed to hear.

After classes the next day, she ran into her friend Tanya, who had a car, and convinced her to drive to the CD store in town. She asked the clerk if they had the Miles Roberts record.

"I'm not sure. It would be in 'ROCK' if we have it", the clerk said. Chain store CD clerks were always worthless when it came to information.

She went to the R's and frantically looked through the rack. She found it right in front of a reissue of Rockpile's "Seconds Of Pleasure". The cover had Miles Roberts' picture on it, with his name across the top, and the words "Night Songs" ethereally drawn at the bottom. She was immediately drawn to Miles Roberts' face on the cover. He had thick dark hair, somewhat tossled, with dark eyebrows to match. His face had a days's beard growth on his face, making him look rugged in a downtown poet-artist kind of way. He had the face of a musician. Miles Roberts did not have the face of someone you would trust with your tax return, but he'd be the first person you'd connect to the piano in the corner of the room.

Jenna turned the album cover over. The album contained 13 songs. There was another picture of Miles Roberts next to the song listings. He was leaning against a wall, a leather jacket in his left hand hanging over his left shoulder as he leaned, looking off to an imaginary point in the distance. Jenna was already happy that he didn't have a cigarette in his hand.

As she walked to the counter to purchase the CD, she held it with her left hand and gently stroked the CD case in a petting motion with her right hand, as if holding a recently-discovered buried amulet. She nearly tripped and fell over a discount cassette display because she wasn't paying attention. Tanya giggled at her as she stumbled, with Jenna soon joining her in spite of herself. They shared a capuccino at the coffee shop two doors down from the CD store and chatted after her purchase. She kept the small bag containing the CD on the table in front of her, never letting it out of her sight. As she sat at the table talking to Tanya about the upcoming end of the semester, she kept thinking to herself that she was being incredibly juvenile, but the excitement drowned out the self-reproach in her mind.

She had purchased the Miles Roberts CD on a Thursday. She went home that night, put the CD in her portable CD player, and began to listen. Every nimble piano note made her tremble inside. Every word that poured out of Miles Roberts' mouth seemed directed to her or related to her life situation. Unforced smiles beamed from her face at some moments, and at others she displayed a look of dreamy longing brought about by the feelings and moods of Miles Roberts. When the CD ended, she started it again, thankful that she had purchased an A/C adapter for her CD player. The same moods and expression enveloped Jenna again, this time going just a bit deeper. Five hours later, as Jenna listened to the record again, she did it staring at the pictures of Miles Roberts in the CD booklet. One photo of Miles Roberts showed him looking directly into the camera. Jenna pretended that Miles Roberts was looking her right in the eyes, telepathically singing and playing his songs to her. It was just the two of them, and they were completely in sync with one another. No one else in the world could disturb their moments together now. Between tracks five and six, Jenna made sure that no one would disrupt her moments with Miles Roberts by turning off her cell phone and unplugging her dorm room phone from the wall.

The weeks that followed moved like a blur. In no time at all, the posters in Jenna's dorm room had been converted from cute posters of animated unicorns and kittens with their paws playfully resting on a ball of yarn to different posters all showing the dark and mysterious visage of Miles Roberts. All of Jenna's spare time was spent researching the many wants, needs, desires and the other little wonderful ingredients that made up that one great mass of certifiable genius that was Miles Roberts. She joined internet discussion groups about Miles Roberts. She downloaded Miles Roberts wallpaper for her computer. Her computer design class web page became a tribute to the music, life and times of Miles Roberts. She learned that Miles Roberts was the son of Dale and Fred Roberts of Mission Viejo, California. She learned that Miles Roberts' favorite food was anything Italian, and that Miles Roberts' favorite restaurant was DeLucci's in his hometown of Mission Viejo. She learned that Miles Roberts' greatest influences were The Beatles, Carole King and jazz pianist Keith Jarrett. When she learned this, she decided to listen to music by these three artists, but she found that even after repeated listens, they simply didn't measure up to the groundbreaking sound that was Miles Roberts. She was a frequent visitor to Miles Roberts' official website, checking it almost hourly for any news or updates or announcements of new concerts added to Miles Roberts' already busy touring schedule.

Seemingly overnight, her grades and her focus on her studies began to slip. Suddenly it seemed that everything around her began to become less and less important. Papers were left incomplete, if commenced at all. She missed more than a few classes. She had less and less contact with friends, the better to spend her spare time listening to the increasingly-familiar sounds of Miles Roberts. Had it not been for the invention of headphones, the other people on her dorm floor would surely have gone slowly mad along with her.

She wrote home and told her parents that she wouldn't be coming home for the semester which ended a month from now. From recent visits to Miles Roberts' website, she discovered that he would soon be touring. It would be a short ten-city tour of the East Coast, but Jenna was determined to follow Miles Roberts to all of his concert dates. Her parents were distressed that she wasn't planning to come home for Christmas and the New Year. They hadn't heard from her since she left for Thanksgiving. She seemed out of it during that weekend to everyone who came across her, spending most of her time in her room with her headphones on, barely noticing the relatives around her who had come to town for the holiday. Jenna was too busy. There had been plans to make, and she wasn't going to let something as unimportant as turkey bog her down.

Jenna thought about all of this as she continued to wait outside the concert hall in Washington, D. C. It was the last stop on the tour. The tour had been through Burlington, Boston, Hartford, Providence, Albany, two spots in New York City, Trenton and Philadelphia. Miles Roberts was scheduled to take four months off after this show to work on his follow-up to the now-Grammy-nominated "Night Songs". As Jenna waited in a stiff Potomac wind for the doors to open, she smiled to herself. Tonight was the night. She had lurked in the shadows for nine shows, but tonight, in the nation's capital, this would be the place that she would finally introduce herself to Miles Roberts. She had been sending him letters for about a month now. At first, they were the usual fan letters. After her first two, she received the same autographed photograph from Miles Roberts' publicity department. Not content with that, she continued to write letters to him. She would only sign it "Love, Jenna", so as not to attract undue attention from anyone who might be reading her letters to Miles Roberts. That was not to say that anyone other than Miles Roberts was reading her letters. Of course Miles Roberts was reading her letters. And only her letters.

At the first nine concert stops, she just knew that Miles Roberts looked right at her as he sang his songs. She knew all of his songs by heart, and sang them along with Miles Roberts with her whole heart and soul. Something inside her told her that that simply wasn't enough. Miles Roberts, being generally shy by nature, never stayed after the show to sign autographs, prefering the relative safety of his tour bus and his bandmates to the group of twenty or so people who waited at the back door of his concert venues desperately wanting an autograph. Miles Roberts liked to relax and sleep after shows. Jenna knew this by reading it on his website, but she always held out hope that she would meet him after the show. After nine venues, nine misses. Her need turned slowly to desperation. Her desperation morphed almost overnight into anger. It had been three days since the show in Philadelphia. Another long wait by the stage door by Jenna had turned into yet another meaningless sighting of the back of Miles Roberts' head as he jumped onto his tour bus. She knew that there would be a brief pause beetween the last two shows, so she decided to lag behind Miles Roberts' bus by an extra day.

After the Philly show, she drove south and stopped at a hotel in Northern Maryland to rest for the night. Her anger and sadness melded into one, Why hadn't Miles Roberts acknowledged her as she followed him around on tour? He just had to know that Jenna Quinn was his biggest fan, and yet he showed no sign of even knowing of her existence after each show ended. Desperate times now called for desperate measures, as Jenna saw it.

One night before the show, she treated herself to an early dinner alone at the local steak house. She asked for a table for one in the non-smoking section as far away from the bar in the middle of the floor as possible, which at this time of the day was easier to get than at the peak of dinner hour, when the line was out the door. She ordered buffalo wings for an appetizer, and a 12-ounce sirloin for her entree. She knew that she had all night, so she asked Dave the Waiter to take his time bringing the entree. Carefully, she ate her way through her appetizer and then the rest of her dinner. She took her time with the entree, stalling as much as she could. She enjoyed watching the blood run from the medium rare steak as she carefully sawed every small bite with her steak knife. After some time, Dave the waiter brought the check and she gave him her credit card while still eating her entree. Dave the waiter brought the check and credit card back, thanked her for letting him serve her and stepped away from the table. Jenna told him that she wanted some time to finish her entree in the restaurant, as she had no place to store leftovers while traveling on the road. That much was true. She signed the credit card slip after adding a generous gratuity for Dave. Then, while no one was looking, she carefully took the bulky steak knife, placed it in her handbag and nonchalantly left the steak house. No one followed her to her car as she got in and drove back to her hotel. Desperation made theft look easy.

She saw a drug store that was still open on her way back to her hotel and stopped in to buy some isopropyl alcohol, sterile gauze, medical tape and an 8X10 padded mailing envelope. The clerk didn't bat an eye at the purchase as she paid for the items and left. She now had everything that she needed as she got back into her car.

She walked through the lobby with everything she needed. The desk clerk barely noticed her passing through to the elevators up to her room on the third floor. She reached her room, unlocked her door and threw all of her things onto the bed. She reached into her handbag for the steak knife she had taken from the restaurant. She took it into the bathroom and washed it off. As the hot water ran over it, taking with it microscopic bits of sirloin down the drain, she went across the room to the desk, where she had placed her notebooks upon checking in. She grabbed her favorite pen and wrote another letter to Miles Roberts.

Dear Miles,

Tonight is the big night. Your final stop on the tour. I've followed you all the way from Vermont to our nation's capital. It has taken me a long time to realize that you are everything I've been looking for in my life. It doesn't make any sense for us to be apart for another moment.

I have been looking into places where we can get married. We can settle on a date when I see you when I see you after your final show, but I've been thinking that Dale and Fred would want to be there, along with my parents, so I was thinking about someplace special to you in Mission Viejo. We could just go back to your place for the honeymoon. You could play your songs to me after I bring you breakfast in bed.

I only have one problem. Since I've never worn jewelry, I have no idea what my ring size is. As tradition dictates that it is the groom who chooses the ring for his wife-to-be, I have enclosed by ring finger for you to size. If I had my choice, I think white gold would be my choice, but I trust your judgment.

I'll see you after the show, my love. Our future lies ahead of us like the vast open road in your song "Sunset Desert". Someday we'll see those mountains in the distance, so beautiful. Like our love, dear Miles.

All My Love,

Jenna

She took the piece of paper, folded it in half and placed it in the mailing envelope. With a magic marker she carried among her possessions, she wrote "ATTENTION: FOR MILES ROBERTS URGENT!!!!". She underlined the word "URGENT" with three thick lines.

Taking the steak knife, she returned to the bathroom. She unscrewed the cap to the rubbing alcohol, and began to tear 3-inch strips from the small metal roll of medical tape. She stuck them to the edge of the sink in a short line, numbering ten in all. She unpacked the gauze and placed it next to the tape. She washed her hands in the sink with the hotel soap and dried her hands with a white hand towel. She placed a washcloth next to the sink and placed her left hand on top of it. she poured some alcohol onto the base of her left ring finger, and followed that by sawing off her ring finger with the steak knife. In her mania, she felt no pain as blood poured from the wound. She placed her left elbow at the edge of the sink and knelt down, putting her now-altered hand above her head. She poured more alcohol into the wound and quickly covered it with as much gauze as could fit over the wound. she then proceeded to tape it all in place.

Feeling slightly dizzy, she took her severed finger and placed it in the envelope and sealed it. It wouldn't be long now before Miles Roberts would be with her forever.

The January wind continued to blow as people waited for the doors to open. Jenna was the ninth person in line. She waited to savor every vocal note and every piano arpeggio from the great Miles Roberts. In short order, the doors opened. Her ticket was in her right pocket. Her left hand was covered with a glove and hanging at her side. Inside the glove, the gauze was completely soaked with blood from her still-bleeding hand. She stepped inside the theatre and handed the ticket to the box office attendant. They searched her and found nothing.

One minute after she arrived, an announcement was heard over the loud speaker.

"Attention please.....attention please....will Jenna Quinn...Jenna Quinn...please report to the box office.....Jenna Quinn, please report to the box office. Thank you."

Her heart and head raced as she made her way back to the box office. Maybe this would be the night that she got a front row seat. Maybe she would be escorted back stage to meet Miles Roberts after the show. All of these thoughts raced through her head as she approached the box office. She hadn't noticed the two police officers waiting by the box office.

"I'm Jenna Quinn", she said with excitement.

"Why don't you come with us tonight, Jenna. We need to take you to get some help".

Before she knew what was happening, and despite her protestations, the police had removed the glove from her left hand. They delicately handcuffed her with her hands in front of her, taking all of their might to restrain her. She began to kick and scream as they led her outside to a waiting squad car. The other concert patrons watched wide-eyed, never learning exactly what happened in front of them.

"We better get her to a hospital for her hand, Dan", one cop said to another, as they placed her in the back of the squad car with force equal to her kicking and screaming. The siren wailed as they took Jenna away from Miles Roberts for the last time.

I really have to get back to this.

Thus far this week, work has been going rather smoothly. My unit is losing one person tomorrow, but I think we'll adjust nicely. We're in great shape on my side of the building.
Tomorrow night, I take part in the mid-winter talent contest. I hope I do well. I have no idea what I'll do for my first of two songs. I've chosen a song called "Undefeated" for the second song. I love playing the chords in that song. It feels right.
Leslie's wedding ring arrived by mail today. All we need now is something to wear and we're completely and totally ready to get married. I have a hard time expressing just how right this feels. I'm reaching a point of peace in my life at long last. My time is upon me. Enter The Spencer!!!
http://www.buyblue.org

It's been a few weeks since I last posted, so let me bring everyone up to date with what has been happening in my life (before I take another crack at FINALLY finishing "Fanatic").
On Sunday January 9, Leslie and I went to The Coffee House, a localmusic and activism venue to experience their once-monthly "Living Activism Night" Leslie wanted to go to hear the musical act of the evening, Dorothy Scott, whom she had seen before. As a bonus, we met an extraordinary gentleman by the name of Ralph Bronner, who through the sale of soap and a touch of social responsibility is trying to make this world a better place (visit his website at http://www.drbronner.com for more information). Dorothy is a quirky singer who you can't help but like. She gives it her all on every song, which is a refreshing change from the type of product that's out there currently.
Next came January 13th, which was the big Project I Am show at Roshambo Coffee & Tea House. There were seven acts in all, and thanks to the help of a few close friends of the Project, not only were all of our sets recorded, but we were also filmed onto a DVD which should be posted shortly to the Project website. Perhaps next time, we can actually get paid.
I did my taxes, which should result in nearly paying off one of my three remaining cr4edit cards. Nice bonus.
The wedding plans have been solidified. We will spend a week in Las Vegas from March 7th to March 14th, with the big date being March 13th. Thank you God for my second wife. Hopefully I get to say that a few million more times before I die.
Today America gave a barely-reformed substance abuser the keys to the country's proverbial liquor cabinet. From all of us that didn't choose this "man" to be our leader, I ask the world to exhibit patience and a healthy dose of obstruction for the next four years until this nightmare is expunged from his seat in power.
Buy Sirius satellite radio...PLEASE! Our stock is getting killed.

I'm taking time out from a not-so-busy lunch hour at my desk at work. I didn't go home for lunch today. We're expecting roughly 7 inches of snow here in the next 24 hours. I decided that I only wanted to make the trip home once today. Poor Rocky. He probably has his legs crossed right about now.
We had a really good Project I Am meeting last night. I furiously played bongos after the meeting, reducing everyone to laughter. I've now been told that I will not be able to sit in front of Jennifer next Thursday when we play the Rochambo gig. Seems she doesn't want to laugh in the middle of her songs.
I had a jalapeno and black olive pizza for lunch. I'll pay for that later. I'm very thirsty right now. I didn't have a beverage to go with my lunch and this office has tap water that is so bad it would probably result in the growth of a third eye if consumed.
For now, I must return to working. There's monitoring to be done, people to lead and virgins to sacrifice.

I'd like to interrupt my usual creative posts with a vent about the credit card industry.
It seems that if you have an account with MBNA, when you pay your bill in full, you haven't REALLY paid your bill in full. Last month, I paid off the entire balance of my account (or so I thought) before the next billing period. Because I did it over two payments, they decided to charge me for every single day that I had a balance on the account. I got a bill in the mail for $8.20. Instead of help from their call center, I got condescending attitudes and two loads of crap from a call center employee and her manager. In response to this shoddy treatment, I would like to share with all of you a letter I just wrote them which will accompany my last payment to MBNA.

January 3, 2005

MBNA "America"
PO Box 15289
Wilmington, DE 19886-5289

To Whom It May Concern:

Enclosed is my last payment of $8.20 for the account referenced on the bill.
I would like to take this opportunity to tell you that MBNA is by far the absolute worst credit card company I have ever had to deal with. When I called your call center, I received, instead of help, an overly patronizing explanation and attitude from your call center employee and your account manager regarding this balance.
In the future, you should communicate clearly to your customers that even if the balance is paid in full in the span of your monthly statement, you’re still going to fuck them in the ass for every blood-red cent of interest you can squeeze out of them. I shall tell all of my friends and acquaintances, as well as the world at large with the help of a blog posting, that MBNA is nothing but a den of thieves cleverly disguised as a bank. I hope all of your jobs are outsourced to India and you all collectively end up in a welfare line in oh-so-exciting Wilmington, Delaware, whose motto should read “Speed Bump To Someplace Better”. Take your $8.20 check and stick it up your collective asses.

No Thanks,
John Paul Spencer

I feel better...........you?

Another late night of typing and musical appreciation. I am challenged in my typing not only by the darkness that surrounds me, but the bandaid on my right mddle finger.My hands tend to dry out in the cold of winter.
I must apologize to the readers out there who've been waiting patiently for an ending to "Fanatic". It really is developing, but my mind is lazy and undisciplined lately.
I've reached the letter "G" in my CD collection listening project. I've hit my mini-collection of albums featuring Steve Goodman. His music makes me reflective and happy all at the same time. I'm lifting a Guinness to my mouth and taking it all in.
Leslie and I had a great Christmas. We went to her sister Cindi's house in Elgin, Illinois for what always seems like too brief a stop. On Christmas Day, we spent the day at Leslie's sister Kim's place in Woodstock, Illinois. I got a lot of music this year for Christmas, as well as two shirts, a few gift cards that I turned into music, a book on astronomy, some dark chocolate and a book light for reading. I have another day off next Monday, then nothing until March. Herein lies the intrigue....
After tearing our hair out about going to Hawaii for a wedding, we decided to go to Las Vegas instead, based more on the airline reservations than on any other factor. The magic date is Sunday, March 13th, 2005, which is the fifth anniversary of the two of us meeting online. An aura of calm fills me and everything around me just thinking about it all. We finally get to seal the deal. I'm not quite the person I want to be yet, but just having Leslie in my life makes the journey to that place quite a bit shorter. We'll spend about a week out there with assorted friends and family until the big day. It should be quite a week.
Tomorrow night (later today by now) is a meeting/practice at Studio 305 for the big Project I Am gig on January 13th. I'm looking forward to that. I must keep playing and singing to survive. For now, A Guinness and Steve Goodman will send me to bed to lay next to Leslie with every happiness. I wish the readers the same.

I'd like to take this opportunity to let everyone in BlogreadingLand know that I have NOT abandoned this space. It bears noting that "Fanatic" has left me drained and a bit flummoxed. I promise to finish this story, plus another one which is in the bullpen, in short order very soon. All IS right with the world. I'm just a little mind-congested. This too will pass.
Oh yeah.......and Bush sucks balls!!! You knew that.

It was right about now....
1980. I was 14 and living in Philadelphia. My mother was falling asleep in front of the CBS Late Movie. Back then they didn't have a talk show in that time slot. They would just show old reruns of old TV shows like "The Saint" and "Harry-O". I could here the television from my bedroom. I was reading or laying in bed trying to fall asleep.
A news bulletin came across the television. It was the familiar voice of Larry Kane, a long time Philly news anchor. He came on and said John Lennon had been shot outside his New York apartment building and was reportedly fighting for his life at a New York area hospital. He repeated himself and sent us back to the CBS Late Movie.
I turned on the light in my room. I looked to my wall. On it were the posters I pulled out of my copy of the White Album. I looked at the picture of John; stringy hair, the famous round-rimmed glasses, the dungaree jacket and blank expression. I pictured him months later giving his first television interview with Yoko by his side, saying that it had been a long recovery, but that he was getting better. Yoko would say that the get-well wishes keep coming. John would say that the whole experience had strengthened his resolve to fight for a better world.
About five minutes later, Larry Kane came on again. John Lennon was dead. A suspect was in custody.
In my experience, kids tend to discover The Beatles between the ages of 12 and 14. I was in full-on Beatle mode at the time. I was, and still am, devastated by the loss of one of my heroes. It happened in December. For the rest of that month, the main Christmas song that was played on all the radio stations in Philly was "Happy Xmas(War Is Over)". That song still makes me cry. Every time I hear it, all those memories come flooding back to me. My brothers and sister, not understanding my sense of hero worship, made fun of me for being so sad for so long. I don't think I ever truly forgave them for that.
John would have been 64 this year. If only the world could recapture just a little bit of the love he left behind for all of us. It's a dark time in the world right now. There's no love out there. There's no peace being given a chance. For all of you who read this out there in the world, and for all of you who create rather than destroy, I pray that we all band together as one and shine the light of truth into the hearts of the seemingly heartless. Throw down your guns, live a little, laugh a little and be tolerant of one another. Go out of your way to make this a better place.

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It had been another one of those nights at the house. He and his wife had argued again. Money. It was always about money. For some reason, people who are good with money always pair off with people with no fiscal discipline. In this particular marriage, he was the one with the money sense.

This fight had been particularly bad. Jimmy was on schedule to get paid the next day, which was a good thing, as the rent was due three days from now. Doreen was between jobs, which was the way people politely tapdanced around the fact that she was unemployed. To add to the fact that Doreen was now suddenly not generating revenue into the house, any money within her reach disappeared as if scattered into the ocean like an urn full of ashes. As much as Jimmy tried to make ends meet, Doreen was foiling his every good thought with one of her own. Today, Jimmy had walked through the front door of their modest rented house and was greeted with a new television set. Doreen, unbeknownst to Jimmy, had decided to rent to own without telling him. He blew up like he had so many times before. How were they going to afford the payments on this, in addition to the payments on his truck, the rents, the utilities, the phone?

Doreen countered by telling Jimmy that as long as she was out of work, she might as well have something nice to watch. Jimmy vainly tried to explain that her energies should be focused on finding a job. Doreen began to nearly cry, following her tradition of not fighting fair to the utmost. Jimmy yelled that the television was going to be returned tomorrow. Doreen yelled twice as loud that it was staying. Jimmy stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind him, the vibration on the paper-thin walls knocking one of Doreen's collecible plates off of the living room wall.

Seven hours had passed. Jimmy now found himself in front of a drive-up automatic teller machine. It was almost 1:30 in the morning. He had been here for fifteen minutes without completing a transaction. The screen welcomed him to the bank with the entreaty "PLEASE INSERT CARD" in big, green computerized letters. His wallet was in his lap, beaten and fat with business cards, photos he never looked at, his ATM card and assorted five- and one-dollar bills, which were stuffed into it in no particular order.

He sat with his truck in park, staring straight ahead, tapping his wallet on his right leg. He had been here before after midnight. He had trouble finding a place to think after he and Doreen quarreled. He had a recurring dream when he came here. He told himself that he was going to put his ATM card into the machine, take all the money out of the checking account and leave. He and Doreen had no children yet, so he would just leave and not look back. He would teach Doreen a valuable lesson about what is was like to really not have money. By the time her credit was irreparably damaged and she was living out in the street, she would beg him to come back, and he would say no. That would show her.

The plan only had one small obstacle to overcome. For her many faults and through her appalingly poor judgment, Jimmy loved Doreen. It wasn't a poetic love made of a young man and woman, full of life and happiness, running across flowery fields into each other's arms. I was a love of habit and comfort. They had been together so long that they would hardly know what to do with themselves if the other suddenly wasn't there. As much as Jimmy yearned for peace, far away from Doreen's impulsiveness and fiduciary recklessness, he knew that they were meant to be together. They had been together since they were 16, never leaving the town they grew up in, knowing each other as familiarly as their surroundings. Jimmy;s heart was out beyond the town and back in the living room with Doreen at the same time. Left to his own devices, he could never leave. Anyone who knew him would have a hard time believing that Jimmy would be in any other place.

Jimmy saw headlights in his rearview mirror. Another car would soon want to use the ATM. If he were ever to put his well-practiced fantasy into action, now was the time. He put his card into the ATM. It asked him for his PIN number. As always, he punched in 1-1-0-9. November 9th was his wedding anniversary. The gravity of entering those numbers struck him for a moment.

He pushed the button next to "RECEIVE CASH" and paused as the account choices appeared on the screen. His face turned sad and full of regret. Tonight, like so many nights before it, wouldn't be the night. He hit the button marked "CANCEL" and took back his ATM card. He rolled up his window and began the three-mile drive home. Doreen would be up and waiting when he got home. They'd both apologize, with Jimmy deferring his dreams in silence for another day.

Hey everyone!!
I haven't received a word lately (AHEM! you know who you are....), but the songwriting germs are beginning to flow. I'd like to share with you a song I just finished about five minutes ago. I was inspired tonight by the story of Les Harvey, a singer with an old band called Stone The Crows. One night, he went out in front of the audience and touched a live mike, electrocuting himself. The trouble was, the audience thought it was part of the act for a minute until they realized that he wasn't getting up. For songwriting purposes, I changed the venue from concert hall to circus tent, played with the plot line a little and before you know it, I had the following magnum opus.

Burn Clown Burn


The spotlight shines down on the entrance stage left

As the happy clowns take to the floor

Some faces have smiles; some faces have frowns

And their shoes are all size twenty-four

Then Buggles the Clown runs away from them all

To a little red car in the center ring

And then a flash of light, an explosion of flame

And the crowd begins to sing


CHORUS:

“The elephants smell, and the acrobats fell

Burn Clown Burn

We paid 20 bucks, and the ringmaster sucks

Burn Clown Burn

Who’d think that a car with such little tires

Could turn all at once to a funeral pyre

And there’s nothing so funny like make-up on fire

Burn Clown Burn”


Coming to Buggles’ aid, from entrance stage right

More clowns come to do the right thing

A fireman’s truck about the size of a deer

Rushes straight out into the main ring

They spray him with seltzer until the flames die

But Buggles just lay in a heap on the floor

But the crowd doesn’t see that poor Buggles is toast

They just start to sing like before

(Chorus)


I need to write more songs like this. I definitely see improvement. I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving.

Related

Sun and Moon

And all things in the heavens

And all things that circle another

Like a stalker, like a groupie

Like the halo of a saint

Or the fire of the sinner

Like your mother or your father

Or your ancestors

Or your progeny

Or a brother or a sister

Whether in immediate family

Or the group called humanity

Like the senses of Man

Seeing the horrors of War

With the stench of carrion

Hearing a blood-curdling scream

Tasting powder and Death

Touching survival of the fittest

Like the wood

And creatures living life within

And the predators hiding in the shadows

And the snapping brush beneath it

Shielding insects below

Surviving deep within the Earth

Like the sweet taste of Wind

Drawing aromas of salt from the Sea

And chilling the homeless vagabond

Tearing tall oaks from their roots

Giving power to the powerless

Taking pain afar with a gust

And like myself

Existing from moment to moment

Feet planted on the ground

Mind and soul dancing in the clouds

Floating, elated

I stand with the universe related

Pardon this brief interruption from Storytime, whilst I tell of a brief sojourn into a Red state.
I spent a fun and strange weekend with Lovely Lady Leslie in Freeman, Missouri at the new and spacious home of Leslie's aunt and uncle. It is roughly a 9 1/2 hour drive to their front door. With Rocky in tow, we drove towards our destination. Needing fuel on the way down this past Friday night, we stopped in Lamoni, Iowa, home of Graceland University. I should have known that even the slightest reference to Elvis would lead to something weird, but I truly had no idea as to the extent of it.
As I'm filling the tank with cheap ethanol fuel (thanks to a federal subsidy), two pickup trucks sat in front of me. The driver of the truck on the right, which had arrived second, got out of his truck and addressed the driver of the other truck.
"I've got somethin' fer ya", the man said to the other man. He reached into the back of his truck and grabbed a large dead raccoon by the arm. He handed it to the other man, who then threw it into the back of his own truck. I looked at Leslie, who was sitting in the front seat of the car, and it was all I could do not to explode in laughter. When I got back into the car after closing the gas cap, we decided that we would avoid the local Subway sandwich shop, which was the reason why we had chosen this exit.
Saturday started off on rather unfriendly terms. Leslie's cousin's two dogs, her aunt's two dogs and Rocky were running around the property. Suddenly, Tucker, Leslie's aunt's Sharpei-Husky mix, made a beeline for the new neighbor's property. A short time later, the neightbor called to say that she had shot Tucker. After a long morning for Leslie's Uncle Mike, riding with the neighbor to the local veterinarian, Tucker was ok, his wrinkled Sharpei skin around his neck deflecting the buckshot into his leg. Leslie and I couldn't help but feel like the harbingers of bad tidings until we knew Tucker made it through his ordeal a little scathed but for the most part healthy.
For the remainder of the weekend. I just relaxed while Leslie and her cousins and aunt went shopping. Her cousins, aunt and uncle are quality people. Continued good fortune to them all.
We returned yesterday (Monday) uneventfully. I'm now listening to "Nashville Skyline" by Bob Dylan and relaxing. Sleep well, World. I have a long way yet to go tonight.

Embellish

When he had gotten on the plane to come to Chicago, he had been sweating profusely until the plane took off. As soon as the plane's front wheels began to leave the ground, he let his body be absorbed by his first class airline seat. New York City, much like Paris, London, Barcelona and Toronto before it, would now be a memory.

Had he remained in New York for just a few more hours, and there's no telling what might have happened. His intelligence and his senses, sharpened by years of confidence work on two continents, told him that the walls were beginning to close in again. As much as he had enjoyed the previous eight months in New York City, it was most definitely time for him to leave. The contacts he had cultivated, both charmed and fleeced, were on to him. Armed with a credit card from his final victim from the Big Apple and a masterfully faked driver's license bearing the same name that was on the credit card, Willie Cooper, now temporarily known as Jason McCormick, boarded an early morning flight to Chicago.

The martini he now began to consume had never tasted sweeter. He twisted the vent above him to let in some cool air to help him relax. The flight attendant was currently making his entree for the morning. He had ordered Eggs Benedict. He had never quite shaken his taste for breakfast cereal, but he simply couldn't be spotted eating something so plain in public. When he was working a con, he tried to shy away from such a middle-of-the-road dish, the better to impress those who surrounded him. To this day, it was the hardest part of maintaining the many fronts he had created. It was sometimes difficult to pretend he had eaten a lifetime of upscale foods which weren't really his taste, but he persevered.

He hadn't shaved since he left New York, and he had no plans to for the immediate future. He had always been amazed by how easily it was to transform his facial features by either shaving, growing a beard or purchasing a new set of eyeglass frames. The beard was coming back on. Or maybe this time, he would just try a nice thick mustache to blend in with some of the men in Chicago. He had about a week to decide between the two.

He decided that he would put on some weight to go with it. When he circulated within the young cliques of New York, he had to be careful to maintain his thin waistline, A little weight gain would be noted by his marks, making his job that much easier.

He was still trying to figure out what went wrong in his final days in New York to blow his cover. He prided himself on being meticulous in detail when working his cons. He had learned at a very early age that a systematic lie was nothing more than a collection of interwoven truths and half-truths, melded together to produce one large legend. It wasn't enough to speak Spanish; he would have to describe, in minute detail, an Andalusian village that tourists usually missed, from the size and shape of the buildings to the names and faces of people. He had to know the location of every crack in the sidewalk in New York City. A British accent was nothing without the sardonic wit of a lord and an encyclopedic knowledge of the royal family. His French accent could not be Quebecois in Paris, and vice versa. Somewhere in New York, his lastest story, and all its accompanying embellishments, fell apart, and it annoyed him. What really bothered him is that he had to leave New York so quickly. He was just beginning to enjoy the place.

As his plane floated over Lake Michigan towards its final descent into O'Hare, he began to formulate whose identity he would link himself to next. In New York, he had linked himself to the Carnegie family. "Like the Hall?" was always the first question. He had spun a tale of his journey to New York via the suburbs of Pittsburgh, where he had said he grew up. In truth, Willie had grown up in Aberdeen, Maryland, the son of a school teacher. In that environment, he couldn't help but learn a few things about the world and its people. He used his humble roots to his advantage, living the good life at other people's expense, as one person after another was relieved of their money, thinking that making a small loan to a millionaire- or even to a millionaire's distant cousin- would reap greater rewards later on. He left silence in his wake, his marks too embarassed to admit that they had been conned. New York was his first close call. People actually found out that he wasn't who he said he was.

He planned out the next two weeks in his head. He would get a cab to a less-traveled part of town and rent a room in a hotel. He usually started his research by reading the society pages of several newspapers. He had a copy of The New York Times in his carry-on luggage. His next identity would be gleaned by reading the section carefully. The next step would be research in a local free library, finding a place for himself in the well-healed family of his choice. He was never a direct descendent or relative. He was always a cousin or a nephew. It was always more believable than way, and much less easy to be discovered. The people who believed him would be skeptical at first, until his litany of facts from his week full of research convinced them. He would add his own touches later, inventing moments he had shared with more famous members of his newly selected families. First came the set-up, then came the embellishments.

He was always careful to make the family he belonged to not be a native of the place where he was going. In Paris, he was a Kennedy. In Barcelona, he was a Rothschild. In London, he was a nephew of the Spanish royal family. In Toronto, he was the cousin of a Scottish lord. In Chicago, the possibilities lay before him. Willie's next opportunity lay on the newspaper like a shiny bead buried on the beach discovered by a metal detector. Virtually everyone knew that something was there, but it took one patient person to dig it up to make it valuable.

The plane touched down in Chicago, and Willie was barely off the plane when he ehaded for a newspaper stand. He could invest in several local and national papers with which to read, learn and expand. He could even buy a Spanish language newspaper or, if one was available, a French language paper. This was probably not going to be found in Chicago, but he could at least give it a thought with a trilingual brain. His mother always wanted him to learn another language. Never being one to displease his mother, he learned two. It was shortly after he had entered his first year of college that his parents were killed by a member of a prominent Maryland family who was driving drunk. The killer got a few months in jail, while Willie got a grave stone to visit. Without his mother's prodding, college didn't interest him anymore. It was then that he took his knowledge, his wits and a small stipend from a trust fund that would come due when he turned thirty to fly to Paris. He was having fun at other people's expense. He didn't see it as ripping off the people who believed his stories. He saw it as ripping off the rich and powerful, his small taste of revenge on the wealthy for taking the lives of his parents. He would do this for two more years until his trust fund came due. Then he would retire from the vagabond life and point his life toward a more noble purpose. Until then, his world was an open book, or more appropriately, an open newspaper.

He stopped by a pay phone in the airport that had a telephone attached and wrote down the address of a cheap motel. He grabbed his bag, walked across the terminal and stepped through the automatic doors into a sunny April day. As a stiff Chicago wind tossled his hair, he hailed a cab and headed into another new morning.

Last

The first day of school was always so exciting. And why wouldn't it be? Summer was nearly over and the beaches were all closing. All of the friends he didn't get a chance to see over the summer would be at school. It was indeed an exciting time to be a ten-year-old.

There was only one problem for Danny Zembrowski. All day today, he would be last.

This was the one day of the year that he wished his last name were Adams, or Burns, or maybe, just maybe, he would let it go as far as Logan, but that was the absolute limit.

And yet, no. His name was Zembrowski, with a Z. In every class today, he would be called last, would have to take his seat last, invariably sitting in the far left hand corner of the room, behind the Watsons and the Youngs. He dreaded the time it took to get to his name.

7:15 in the morning, and homeroom was about to begin. His teacher, a lady in her early 40's, went to the front of the room to organize the children.

"OK, everyone. Settle down....settle down. My name is Mrs. Pitney and I'll be your homeroom teacher this year. When I call your name, come to the first row of chairs here and sit in the first available chair from front to back. OK? OK....Carly Adams......."

With that, Carly Adams, a freckle-face girl with curly red hair, sat in the first chair on the right side of the room. The long journey to the last chair on the left had begun.

"Marissa Block...."

He looked out the window and began to daydream. He thought about how satisfying the first kickball game would be at recess.

"Mary Bunning...."

He didn't care where in the kicking order he ended up, He just couldn't wait for that sweet moment when his foot first met the bright red rubber playground ball and sent it flying, and with it the last person in the outfield scrambling backward to try to get it. He was great at kickball.

"James Coughlin..."

"It's Jimmy..."

"OK, Jimmy...."

He didn't spare a thought for actual schoolwork. Why would he do that? He was so happy about seeing everyone again he could barely contain himself. So many desks yet to fill.

" Brian Daniels....."

Maybe a good game of freeze tag would be the thing to do today at recess instead of kickball. Hopefully, he thought to himself, he wouldn't have too much learning today. It was the first day, after all.

"Jennifer Durkin....."

Maybe today, just today they would play games in class just to waste the day. There's no telling where this day would lead. The waiting continued.

"Jane Evans...."

Hopefully he wouldn't see his brother David on the playground at recess. David often bullied him. He often wished that David had never been born.

"Miranda Fisher...."

Lunch would be fun too. He had a new lunchbox to show off in the cafeteria. His thermos was full of fruit juice. His mother would never let him have soda. She said it was bad for his teeth and his stomach. He liked fruit juice better than milk. He would drink it out of his thermos cup like his dad drinks coffee out of his mug in the morning.

"Christopher Foster...."

"Just Chris...."

"OK, Chris. Have a seat."

His mom had packed him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. they were always so good when she made them, because she would always take the crust off the bread.

"Stacy Gardner..."

There was an apple in there too. Danny liked candy bars much better than apples, but his mother always scolded him when he ate too much chocolate. The apple was a healthier snack. Danny didn't like being healthier.

"Ian Godfrey..."

Danny knew Ian. Ian had a really cool skateboard. Danny's mom and dad wouldn't let him have a skateboard. They said they were too dangerous. To compensate, they bought him a video game featuring skateboarders. Danny was only partially satisfied with that compromise.

"Susan Harrison...."

The number of kids in the back of the room was quickly thinning. Soon he would be the only one standing behind the row of desks waiting to sit down. Danny was beginning to shuffle from foot to foot, clearly wanting to be anywhere else but standing and waiting.

"Timothy Hawley...."

"Tim...."

"OK Tim...."

At least his teacher seemed nice enough. She was treating his fellow students gently, trying to get everyone's name right in her head. He thought that Mrs. Pitney was someone he could get to like.

"Linda Horvath...."

Linda rode the bus with Danny. She usually sat up near the front of the bus, never talking to anyone. She seemed smart, and shy.

"Michael Jameson...."

One thing Danny could always count on was a seat by the window. He suddenly felt sorry for Mary Bunning, who was stuck right near the sliding door to the room's supply closet. The one bad thing that Danny could see about his seat was that he would probably not be able to ever be the first one to leave the room.

"Elizabeth King...."

"It's Betsy...."

"OK Betsy. Have a seat...."

The heater was right underneath the window. That would probably come in handy in the wintertime. The windows at the school were a little drafty, so the heat near the windows would cancel that out. Danny didn't give this any thought at all. Ten-year-olds very rarely think about the weather unless either rain or snow is falling from the sky.

"Robert Marcus...."

"Bobby...."

"OK Bobby...."

Bobby Marcus was the biggest boy in the classroom. Everyone was a little afraid of Bobby, but he was really not much trouble. He was just big for his age.

"Alpa Patel...."

Alpa was easy to spot. She was the only Indian girl in the classroom. She always had her head in a book. She very rarely spoke to anyone either inside or outside of class. She always had fantastic grades.

"Greg Perkins..."

That first run at recess was always the best. It would turn out to be a race with all the other boys in his grade. Danny wasn't as fast as some of the other kids, but he held his own. He was better at longer distances, like when the kids have those fitness tests in the middle of the year. Danny liked doing the run with the blocks.

"Veronica Ralston...."

Veronica was the cute one. Danny only noticed or thought about that a little bit. He rarely talked to the girls. Veronica had long straight blonde hair. She had a nice smile for a new fifth grader. Only one row of chairs remained.

"Tyler Smith...."

Tyler always dressed impeccably. His parents drove him to school in a Land Rover. At parent-teacher conferences, his parents would always smile too much and dominate the conversation. Tyler took Ritalin and constantly had a worried look on his face.

"Michele Turley...."

Danny was getting nervous. The long wait was almost over. His brief shining moment in the spotlight of the classroom was about to happen.

"Henry Walters...."

"I go by Jimmy...."

"OK....Jimmy....Have a seat"

Henry went by his middle name. He realized at a very early age that he didn't like Henry.

"Shari Williams......"

This was the third year in a row that Danny would have to spend the rest of the year staring at the back of the head of Shari Williams. When Shari talked to Danny, it was usually some variant of "Shut UP! JERK!". Shari's voice got really loud when she got mad.

"And finally, Daniel Zembrowski...."

"Danny...."

"OK Danny, have a seat...."

The long-anticipated moment had come and gone, like so many other moments in the life of a ten-year-old boy. Danny would find himself in middle school a year from now. Would they still call the roll the same way? Would he still be last? He couldn't figure out exactly whether being last alphabetically was a good thing or a bad thing. The wait seemed like forever, but he always knew where he belonged when it came to his last name. A new school year was starting now. It only took a moment for the end to become another beginning.

I must have jumped ahead...I have no words in my inbox tonight, so I think I'll just go to bed.
Or maybe I'll continue listening to Nick Drake and wish I had another beer.
The weekend approaches quickly. I'm setting myself up for an early dismissal on Friday, allowing Lovely Lady Leslie and I a chance to travel to the Kansas-Missouri border to visit a few of Leslie's relatives. Beats my relatives any day of the week.
How about a song? Here's another entry from the Writ of Common Wisdom. There's a bit of a long story behind this one.
When I was younger, I lived in Philadelphia in the Overbrook Park section. It was still a primarily Jewish neighborhoodthen. We had a Jewish couple who lived a few doors down named Mary and Sam. Mary was, by all standards, a shrew. Sam was mostly in Mary's shadow. One day, Mary Died, and Sam began to come out of his shell and revealed himself to be a really nice guy. By that time, he was so old that any good he could have brought to the world had been pulverized under Mary's heels. One wonders how happy he might have been with someone not quite so domineering as a wife. This song is for all the Sams of the world. Rise up, Sams! The world needs you!!

Good Neighbor Sam


Good neighbor Sam doesn’t drive anymore

It’s been three years or four since they took his license away

And good neighbor Sam wears Coke-bottle glasses

The smile that he flashes tells you, “Have a good day”


Good neighbor Sam will tell you “Good morning”

And he’s not even yawning; he’s barely sleeping at all

And good neighbor Sam holds a rake in his hands

In this way he will stand ‘til the end of the Fall


And when the kids come out to play, you can here them say,

“Hey Sam! Sam hey! (HEY!)

And if their football should come his way

He’ll throw it to them underhand

He’ll throw it to them underhand

He’ll throw it to them underhand

And send them on their way


Good neighbor Sam bids the postman hello

He’s just lonely, you know, since Eleanor passed last year

But good neighbor Sam is far beyond pity

He’s got friends in the city, and a ton of good cheer


And at the end of a busy day, you can hear the people say,

“Hey Sam! Sam Hey! (HEY!)

And as the sun sets and fades away

He goes inside to watch TV

He goes inside to watch TV

He goes inside to watch TV

Then maybe hits the hay


Good neighbor Sam died Saturday morning

It came without warning; his funeral was today

But good neighbor Sam filled the whole church with laughter

Then seven days after, they took his TV away

This song is kind of dumb and requires a large Beatlesque arrangement to be palatable, but my heart was in the right place when I wrote it, so you'll not receive an apology from me. And with that I bid you good night.

Combust

Tom sat with his face in his hands at the end of his driveway, an almost-empty gas can next to his left knee. His eyes were wide with disbelief, as his garage lay in ruins in front of him. The neighbors had begun to gather around his property, slack-jawed at the spectacle of Tom's new truck buried under dripping, blackened lumber and roof shingles. The garage door had exploded outward, sending four panes of glass and twelve door squares in all directions. The only positive thing to take away from this was that no one had been home, either at Tom and Renee's place or at the Ferguson's house next door. The local volunteer fire department had responded very quickly and put out the fire with what could only be termed amazing speed.

A propane tank, unhooked from their gas grill and carelessly placed in front of a window in the August heat was to blame. Heat plus accelerants equals combustion, as Tom learned all too acutely today.

"She just had to have a gas grill", was all Tom said to the approaching neighbors, his face still wearing a shocked yet expressionless facade. He would end up repeating this sentence to every neighbor who came up to him in the next twenty minutes to ask him what happened, still unable to accept the fact that his garage was now so much kindling.

Since no one was hurt, the black humor began to flow in waves around Tom.

"Ah, nothing beats Ford F-150 Kabobs in summertime", came from Gil Stratten, who lived across the street.

"What the matter, Tom? Out of Match Light?", said Dan Landis, the neighbor four doors down to the left, letting out a grin that quickly lead to a nearly-soundless belly chuckle.

"Joan of Arc called. She'd like to push her martyrdom back to Thursday.", added Bob Ferguson, throwing his left arm around Tom's shoulders and letting out a loud laugh. He had a front yard full of glass and wood, but luckily no property damage from the explosion.

Through all of the jokes, Tom still shook his head in disbelief, trying to laugh, but stuck in a stunned catatonia brought on by property damage which bordered on the massive. The crowd kept growing, this being the biggest thing that happened on Great Pine Way since the development was finished six years ago. Everyone's thoughts first turned to Tom and Renee's homeowner's insurance policy. Were they covered? Tom didn't know. Renee handled those things. He didn't have the patience for it at home. Renee was due home any minute from work. She would be parking her two-year-old Volkswagen Jetta on the street for the foreseeable future.

"I love the smell of propane before dinner", chimed in Jim Bennett, the neighbor two doors down to the right. He was so deadpan most of the time that it was very hard at this moment to know whether he was kidding or not.

Larry Riegelmann from the end of the street didn't say anything for a moment, then broke into a mocking air guitar version of "Fire" by Jimi Hendrix, which quickly descended into laughter that left him doubled over.

Tom was lucky to have known virtually all of the people who now surrounded him since he moved into the neighborhood. This street was different from other suburban communities like it. Most of these neighborhoods that popped up out of nowhere contained rootless early thirtysomethings in search of something to temporarily call their own. These people had bonded almost immediately, defended each other staunchly, keeping a wary eye on each other not so much in a nosy way, but more of a protective fashion. As Tom was sitting by his driveway, those men of the neighborhood who were free that weekend made plans to help Tom and Bob clean up from the explosion. The women of the neighborhood were already offering their assorted spare bedrooms for Tom and Renee to stay. They had no children.

At the end of the street, Tom spotted Renee's black Jetta coming closer to Ground Zero. He watched as her face slowly morphed into horror as she looked for a place to park along the street. She got out of her car so fast that she didn't give a thought to her briefcase or her handbag.

"WHAT THE HELL, TOM!", was all she could say.

"I came up with a postmodern design for that deck that you wanted", Tom said, joining in the frivolity that up until now Renee had missed.

"WHAT THE HELL,TOM!!", she repeated for all within earshot to hear.

"The tank for the grill exploded."

"HOW?"

"It got hot. You're asking ME?"

An animated fact-finding mission by Renee soon gave way to a discussion of homeowner's insurance contacts and contingiency plans for the meantime between now and the reopening of the house. Renee went into the house to retrieve the insurance file from the metal filing cabinet at the back of their bedroom closet. The next hour would be spent with Renee on the cell phone and Tom packing their bags for a hotel, which would be paid by the insurance company's dime. Tom loaded their suitcases into the back of the Jetta and walked up to Renee, who was finishing up her last cell phone call.

"Comfort Inn on Claridge?", Tom asked.

"Sounds good", replied Renee, "The Adjuster will be out tomorrow between eight and ten in the morning."

They said their temporary goodbyes to the neighbors, letting them know where they would be for the night. Everybody wished them luck.

"Hey Tom?", yelled Dan Landis, as Tom was about to get in his car.

"Yea Dan?"

"Cigarette?"

Fifty-two minutes ago (yes I'm counting), I returned from a really comfortable night at Studio 305 here in the Bay View area of Wisconsin. It was the first of what I hope will be many Open Stage events at the Studio. All the Project I Am cognoscenti were in attendance; Eric Kulwicki, the fearless leader of our revolutionary outfit; Jennifer Lee, who borrowed my guitar and played a song called "Thank You" (she just had to say it; I didn't need a song, but the song was great anyway); Craig Stoneman was there with a new introspective song, refusing to take center stage, preferring the comfort of the left-hand wall. Also in attendance was the banjo-playing satellite of us all, Martin Grinwald, playing flawlessly after a few drinks (how does he do that?). I'd like to take this opportunity to thank, VOCIFEROUSLY, Dominic and Linda, Keepers of the Studio, for a marvelous night, with a special thank you for the "aperitif" I was handed by Linda earlier in the night. Good times!!
Lovely Lady Leslie sleeps, attempting to kill off a developing cold. I type. I type some more. I have gastric accidents in my chair while no one's around. I sip water from my water bottle. I plot the revolution......

Kismet

"I'm sorry. We only have one muffin left and it's banana walnut", the waitress said with enough contrition to make even the hardest of hearts not affect her gratuity.

"That's the one I wanted. Perfect!", Ann said, smiling brightly, her grin spreading to her mother who was seated on the other side of the table. They had arrived for breakfast in the nick of time, as a line was now forming in front of the hostess' station at the front of the restaurant.

Ann and her mother were out for breakfast on a Saturday, just the two of them. It had been awhile since Ann had been home. She had some vacation time to take and found herself not wanting to visit anywhere else but home. She had thought about exotic destinations. She had also thought about staying at home and cleaning her condo. Visiting her parents and her home town seemed like a nice way of balancing her need to get away with her internal drive for personal responsibility.

Her dad had declined to join them for breakfast. He liked to tackle his weekend chores early on a Saturday, leaving the rest of the weekend for what he called "Gary-Time". The results were usually a clean house and an aging man asleep in a chair while a college football game played itself out on the television. The family now referred to everyone's similar fits of drowsiness as "Gary-Time" in his honor.

Since Gary was having Gary Time, Ann was having her Meg Time, as she and her mother shared a breakfast. Meg always liked being with her daughter. It was strange how easy Ann's adolescense had been. Ann was that rare daughter that never did anything wrong. It wasn't for lack of prodding. Gary was always dropping hints about how she needed to get out of the house more often when she was in high school, but Ann rarely relented. In those rare times when she took the car and ventured out of the house, it was usually just to go get something to eat, then she invariably returned to her studies. The strangest thing about her behavior was that Ann wasn't homely by any definition of the word. When she went to her proms, it wasn't with an actual date, but with one of her friends from her history class who wasn't doing anything that night. Her friends in high school always wondered why she never dated, why she never seemed to wear enough makeup, why she never seemed to be interested in all the mini-dramas that make up the life of a teenage girl. Her reply was always the same; what guy around them was worth it? "And no, I'm not a lesbian", was always her coda of choice, which was true.

"What made you take your vacation here?", Meg asked Ann, as they waited for Ann's banana walnut muffin.

"I'm checking up on you and Dad", she said, adding with her trademark sense of humor "more to the point yours and Dad's money".

"We closed the Swiss bank account and wasted it all on high-risk tech stocks", Meg retorted, showing which side of the family gave Ann her humor, "Did I mention you're paying for breakfast?".

They both smiled.
"I'm glad you're home. It gives me a chance to use some of my vacation time, I have about two months saved up", Meg said. Meg worked for a law firm as a legal secretary. She had been there for 17 years. She was going to put 20 years in and that would be it. The quality of her work was impeccable, and because she was a little older, everyone trusted her and nobody dared cross her, lest they be put in their place, which was a cruel punishment for any lawyer.

"I just needed a dose of something familiar", Ann said, "Medford is running out of new discoveries".

Ann had lived in Medford for four years since her graduation from college. It was your typical suburb, not far from the downtown of the big city that was Medford's neighbor. She was accomplishing good things in her job as a corporate trainer, but the personal time was beginning to add up, making for a lot of down time with nothing interesting to do or see. She'd run the gamut of halfway intriguing co-workers and they now bored the hell out of her. She was ready for a change, but didn't have an answer. All of this was in her mind over breakfast with her mother.

The waitress brought Ann her muffin.

"Any men out there for you?", Meg asked, never truly giving up on the idea of grandchildren just yet.

"Nowhere close, Mom"

"Women then?". It was a mother's priviledge to ask.

"NO! MOM!..."

"Well, if I can't ask, then who can?"

"It's nothing like that. Most men I meet..."
"Let me guess; married, gay or damaged by the last woman?..."

"And BORING! I refuse to act interested in sports just to get a date."

"You're not going to the right places. Go to the places that interest YOU for a change."

"In Medford?"

"Oh, you're fine in Medford. There's someone out there for you."

Meg was right. There was someone out there for Ann. There was a time when Ann thought she knew who that person was, but it ended up being nothing but an adolescent dream that Ann never shared with anyone. His name was Rick Sampson. He ran the long distance races for the track team in high school. She didn't care that he was an athlete. She did care that she was once in a geometry class with him and that he actually understood the course. Athletes weren't supposed to comprehend things like geometry. They were supposed to be easily confused by pictures of intersecting triangles. While they were in high school, Rick had dated another girl in their class. They lasted all the way through high school. It was everyone's assumption that they would someday marry. A year later, when they broke up out of the view of everyone they went to school with, it barely registered the way it might have had it happened while everyone was still in school. Up until this moment, Ann had gone a long time between thoughts of Rick Sampson. Where was he now? What had fate dealt him? Was he still running? Had he gone mad trying to intersect every triangle he saw in fits of geometric madness? Was it worth all of this idle speculation?

She thought about her much-anticipated Southwestern omelette. "It's just good to see familiar faces", Ann added almost unnecessarily.

The waitress came with their breakfasts, to which Ann's muffin had been a prelude. The table fell silent briefly as they consumed their meals. They talked about how they would spend the rest of their Saturday. There were fabrics to be bought, clothes to try on, knick-knacks to add to their homes. It was going to be a really good day. The Rick Sampsons of the world would have to wait another day. Fate belonged to Ann and Meg, and was going to be very generous with the Gary Time.

Morality

He knelt down to pray for the second time today, the words contained in his prayers, which were familiar from an entire lifetime of repetition, increased in intensity as he continued. His hands, still smelling of gunpowder and gasoline, were intertwined save for his thumbs, the knuckles of which providing a resting place for his forehead as he chanted to himself under his breath.

Night had fallen. He had been driving for five hours straight since the shooting, with the imprint of the steering wheel on his reddened hands. He had a tape of Christian music in the tape player that flipped itself over and replayed five times. He had stopped only once for gas, making sure to look down at the ground as he went about pumping gas, as to not appear clearly on any security cameras that may have been filming his every action. He forced himself not to think about the food that tempted him from inside the mini-mart at the gas station. His mission today was too important in his eyes to forfeit it all for physical sustenance.

As he closed in on his destination for the evening, he passed a one-car accident. An ambulance was being loaded, the car they were driving overturned. He drove through the scene slowly, taking it all in. When the scene had disappeared into his rearview mirror, he said a prayer to himself for the person involved in the accident.

He came upon a small roadside motel in the middle of nowhere that he had passed on his many travels as a door-to-door proselytizer. This was the type of place that was unaccustomed to seeing anything other than couples registering under a phony name. The desk clerk eyed him carefully, figuring he would soon be joined by a woman in waiting. When you're off the beaten path and renting out rooms for the night, adultery and prostitution come as part of the decor, like the aging wallpaper and the cheap paintings on the wall of seascapes.

And so he found himself praying, kneeling on the floor, elbows resting on the bed, the aging lamps extinguished. Every prayer in his head taking on urgency. He prayed for guidance in a troubled world. He prayed for every member of his family both living and dead, paying special attention to his sister, who was expecting her fourth child within the next 6 weeks. He also prayed for the man he had murdered earlier in the day.

With the exception of the clock reading 4:05 AM, his day had started like most others in his life of late. He started his day by kneeling down beside the bed and thanking God for seeing another day, promising that this day would bring glory to him. He showered, shaved, dressed and ate a bowl of cereal after thanking God for his meal. He lived alone now, his wife and children having now relocated to another state. He had no visitation rights, with restraining orders in two states making the very thought nothing more than a pipe dream. He always made it a point to pray for his children's souls, as well as for the soul of his ex-wife, telling himself all the while that that was what God wanted him to do.

This morning had a special purpose to it however. He was sure to make some extra time to make sure his hunting rifle was cleaned until it shined, all its parts in perfect working order. He repeated a prayer to himself as he cleaned the outside of the barrel, moving up and down until there were no fingerprints on it. After placing the rifle into a soft shoulder bag, he took out two unspent shotgun shells and wiped those down as well. He silently prayed that they would strike their target and take his life, so others could be saved. He placed the shells in a small zip-up pouch in the shoulder bag. He grabbed a suitcase he had packed the night before in his right hand and threw the rifle over his left shoulder, and walked deliberately passed his kitchen table, which had a stack of letters from the local Domestic Relations office on them. He paused before he went through the garage door and took one last silent look around the inside of the house. He asked God to protect his home and all who would later enter through its doors, knowing that he would not be included in that group.

He loaded the rifle bag and suitcase into the back seat of his car. This was to be the last trip he took in this car. He was driving to a rental car agency to rent a car for his journey. Because of his limited budget, he was going to rent the smallest car the agency had available, making sure everything would fit. He couldn't make his rifle public knowledge, however. He parked his own car a few blocks away in an inconspicuous location and grabbed only his suitcase for the short walk to the rental car agency. He would double back for the rifle after the other car was rented. Despite the fact that it was now 5:30, he knew someone would be behind the counter. He would have to be quick, as he needed to be at his destination by 6:15.

"Welcome, how can I help you today?", the rental agent said

"I believe I have a reservation. The name's Smith; Jonah Smith", he replied, trying not to look like he was in a hurry.

The agent confirmed the reservation, went over the rental agreement, to which he nodded his head in understanding, despite the fact that he was barely listening to the rental agent. He gave her his last remaining credit card that still had enough of a balance to rent the car, which was approved by a whisker, signed off on the rental contract and grabbed the keys to a Ford Focus. Such a fitting name for a car today, he thought to himself, for he felt that, at this small point in time, he had never been more single-minded on his reasons for walking the Earth. He loaded his suitcase into the trunk and began his journey.

He drove to his own car and looked around carefully as he loaded the rifle into the back seat. He then began his final journey to the other side of town. Only 10 minutes away, he thought to himself. He could be there by 6 AM, leaving fifteen minutes to set up shop.

He arrived in proximity to his destination, a women's health clinic just outside the city limits from where he lived. For the last two years of his life, this place had been his home away from home. He had been arrested several times in the past outside its doors, one of a dozen or so rotating faces who carried graphic signs and bellowed Bible verses to all who entered their doors. Of all the protesters, he had proven himself to be the worst of the bunch. He was jailed for ten days for throwing fake blood made of flour, red food coloring and water on one of the nurses who worked inside the clinic. That was 14 days ago. He had decided while he was sitting in that jail cell that if the courts and society wouldn't take the action to stop abortion, then he would have to do it. He would be protected by God for all that happened to him afterwards. He was right and the world was wrong, and it was certainly not up for discussion anymore.

His wife had left him shortly after he had begun to protest at the clinic. He refused to find a job, saying that God had given him this most high of callings to protect the lives of the unborn. They had argued. His ex-wife accused him of shirking his duties as a father to his children, calling him a headcase. He responded by slapping her across the face as the children watched. She and the children were gone the next day. The first restraining order arrived at his door two days after that.

He parked around the block from the clinic and set up shop behind a row of hedges behind the clinic. It was still dark at this time of the day in early December, which provided adequate cover for him to carry his gun from the car to the hedges. He found his line of sight to the clinic's back parking lot and began to assemble his rifle. From watching the movements of the clinic for such a long period of time, he knew the comings and goings of the doctor who worked at the clinic. While the doctor had varied his start times for the better part of a year becuase of the death threats he had received to the best of his ability, The clinic started seeing patients at 7 AM, and he would be there for the first patient of the day.

The rifle was now assembled. He loaded in the two shells, then checked the view through the infrared sight on the top of his gun. It was perfect. He was ready.

At 6:23, the doctor pulled up in an old beat-up Toyota Corolla. The doctor had abandoned his luxury car after the death threats began to come. He was told to simplify his appearance as to not stand out from the rest of the staff. The threats first came in the mail and on the phone at the clinic. One package that arrived required the intervention of the local bomb squad, which ended up being nothing more that copper wire and tiissue paper, wadded into a box to appear as if to be a bomb. He began to receive similar mail and similar phone calls at his home, to the point where he now only had a cell phone, the number of which was known only by the staff and his immediate family. He later found out that his home phone number had been posted on a domestic terrorist website devoted to abortion doctors. He sued the website and won, making him more of a target than ever before.

He readied his rifle in his hands as the doctor stepped out of his car. The doctor was locking his car with his briefcase in his hand when he fired the first shot, a direct hit to the wrist. The second shot ripped through the back of the doctor's head, his lifeless body crumpling to the ground. His assassin began to run to his car, his rifle case over his left shoulder, his rifle in his right hand as he ran. As he jumped into his car, he noticed a few people had come out of their house, not fully dressed for the morning and attempted to get his license number. He turned on his headlights only when he was far enough away that they wouldn't be able to make out any number or letters on his plate. They now knew the model of his rental car however, and this would more than likely be a problem, but he didn't care. God's will had been served. He was sure to enter the gates of Heaven now as God's avenging angel.

He continued to say his prayers now, on his knees, in the motel room many miles away from the sight of what he saw as his greatest deed. He smiled as he prayed, his belief in his own deliverance now absolute. Morality has finally won out, he thought. A thought was not saved for the doctor, his friends, his family, his patients. The doctor was merely an instrument of salvation, a key to the kingdom. He knew that lives would be saved, justifying any ends he himself had gone to to save them. He was prepared to martyr himself to the legions of devils around him who would think of him as a murderer. It was not their opinion or what he saw as their shallow ideals that he followed.

He brought himself up from the floor at the conclusion of his prayers. He reached for the lamp and turned it on. He now had a chance to get his rifle back into the case. When he left this hotel tomorrow, he would throw the rifle into a nearby lake, hoping it would never be found, but not really caring one way or the other, for he was now protected by God. He would return the rental car to an agency in the next big town along the interstate. After that, he had not had a plan. He would try to be invisible to earthly law for as long as possible until he was either caught or met some other and unpredicted end. He considered it his forty days in the desert, just as Jesus had done, fighting temptation and the evils of the world until he would someday sacrifice himself. His mother had always told him as a child, as she took him to church, that God would reveal great things to him. As he finished packing up his rifle and laying out his clothes for the morning from his briefcase, he turned off the light and put himself to bed, knowing in his heart and mind that his mother had been right, his mission on earth accomplished.