"When testing the depth of ignorance, most people never get out of the shallow end of the pool."

I’m pretty durn sure that if it’ud been left up to men, we’d still be hunters ‘n gatherers moving from cave to cave ever’ time our garbage got too deep for us to feel comfortable with...”Time to move” we’d say ‘n we’d pick up our weapon of the day ‘n leave it to the little woman to pack up whatever she wanted cuz y’know, all those things that she wanted wudn’t none of our doings at all...All y’got to do is look around to realize that mankind, when it refers to men, ain’t really evolved at all...Men are the best examples of evidentiary Creationism that ever existed...women, on the other hand, may well be proof positive of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution...that’s prob’ly why we never seem to understand each other...’course, as men, we all got to thank God for the fact that opposites attract...

What it is that got me thinkin’ about all this was watching the Stormchasers

careening after the tornadoes....I know, when they did a movie about them, they had some female stormchasers but the truth of the matter is that almost all the idiots that chase around trying to put themselves in the middle of a tornado for the sake of whooping ‘n yelling ‘n taking a few pictures to prove that they really did do this super manly thing are almost excusively men...’n not just men but testosterone-fueled adrenaline junkies....’cuz you know, there ain’t no woman alive who’s really dumb enuff to do such a thing....

"You're never too old to learn sumthin' stupid!"

Wild turkey’s are smart...ev’rybody sez so...They’re smart ‘n wily ‘n very good at hiding when they spot someone with a gun...Heck! I s’pect they’re maybe almost as smart as crows...maybe.

Years ago I knew this old boy had a turkey ranch...he raised them big old double-breasted birds that are so popular at holiday dinners...he told me that turkeys were so dumb that when it rained, he had to herd them inside otherwise they’d stand looking up at the rain with their beaks open ‘n they’d drown...I got to thinking that men, young men especially, are a lot like those turkeys...it’s a good thing that God made women so’s we’d have someone to tell us when to come in out of the rain....

"Sum people cause happiness wherever they go; others, when they go!"

The Buck stops here....

"One of the many things no one tells you about aging is that it is such a nice change fro being young."

O dem luv’ly streets of Ol Fair Oaks...

me ‘n da boyz went walking several times t’day...it’s a quiet day, pretty much, well, except for Doug ‘n his lawnmower but since he was all the way t’the end of the street, he wudn’t really bothering anyone...I really should be working in the yard but I’m terribly lazy...ain’t a whole lot wrong with being lazy s’long as you ain’t shiftless...shiftless is bad! Shiftless c’d get a poor boy in trouble quicker’n most anything else where I grew up...

Nosirreebob! My mama just wudn’t stand for shiftless....

Which don’t have a lot t’do with anything t’day...I just didn’t want’a work in the yard so I didn’t...what I did was to transplant a hugely overgrown plant that Millyrose sed she wanted in a larger pot....so I did it... or tried t’do it...I had to get Millyrose to help ‘n I’m gonna have to buy some more potting soil t’morra....but that’s another story....

we were watching the nooze about the tornadoes when Willie ‘n Rusty set up such a racket that I tho’t that at the least, we were being attacked by Martians or some other illegal aliens...

‘course, we wudn’t....what it wuz, wuz a deer standing in our front yard...nice sized buck too with a nice rack of antlers still in velvet....my dogs were coming unglued ‘n the dogs ‘crost the street were doing the same ‘n he just stood there looking somewhat bemused...Millyrose ran for her camera ‘n snapped a half-dozen or so pics...

The deer normally come ‘n visit our south forty ever’ summer but gen’elly speaking, they come a little later in the year...I don’t think this fellow’ll stay very long...he’s by himself ‘n we got some construction going on in the house next door ‘n they’d prob’ly disturb his afternoon naps...

But who's counting....

“If at first you don’t succeed, then maybe you shouldn’t take up sky-diving.”

Zest in quest.......

Way back when I was struggling to come to grips with the fact that I was going to have to actually work for a living since I had embarked upon a life-journey with Millyrose and rather cavalierly leapt into parenthood thereby leaving forever behind those careless joys of childhood, I stumbled into a job as a ‘route salesman’...

Looking back, it was interesting enough, I suppose, in that it allowed me to, in essence, wander along a prescribed route and meet with a number of people, most of whom were engaged in the process of earning their own daily bread by selling alcoholic beverages....twas there that I learned the aphorism, “Work is the curse of the drinking class.”.....

Anyways, the one really important lesson about work that I learned in this job was that you began with a book containing the names and locations of your customers...You started with the first one, put one foot in front of the other until you got to the last name in the book and then you went home....That is the true essence of most jobs and basically, that is what differentiates a job from a career. Y’see, a career is a life-consuming enterprise, an obsession in many cases that takes roots in childhood and never lets go...and it just wouldn’t do for a lazy man.....although, I suppose a case could be made that obsessive advoidance of work could possibly be classified as a ‘career’.....not that I’m making any judgments, of course....far be it from me to sit in judgment of writers who don’t write, artists who only talk about past or future projects without actually doing anything at all, or even (GASP) politicians who have elevated the art of doing nothing into an art form....the original ‘performance artists’ y’might say....anyways, Millyrose ‘n I started this journey 52 years ago t’day ‘n it all sort’a reminds me of the guy who jumped from the top of the Empire State bldg...on the way down he passed a window cleaner who inquired about his health. His reply was, ‘ n I quote...”So far, so good!”

Like breathing out ‘n breathing in....

Just got a phone call from Francisca who is on a little cross-country jaunt...

she followed Old Route 66 from it’s western nadir to Chicago (the reverse of the song)...well, she followed it as much as she was able as it’s been chopped into little pieces of mid-20th century Americana by the Interstates..

‘n now she’s returning, only across the top of the country where she’s been plagued by storms, road closings, etcetera ad infinitum....but it’s evening now where she is somewhere in the mountains of Wyoming ‘n losing daylight while she is keeping herself busy herding a calf that has separated itself from it’s mother ‘n is attempting to cross the freeway....now as you might suppose, freeways ‘n cows go t’gether somewhat like oil ‘n water ‘n Francisca has been on the phone to the local authority ‘n is now driving the wrong way (on the grassy berm, of course) keeping her little Honda Fit between the calf ‘n the freeway....

“Lettin’ the cat out’a the bag is a ‘hull lot easier than puttin’ it back in.”

."I keep wondering how I managed to get over the hill without ever getting to the top."

I ‘uz thinkin’ that I prob’ly spend ‘way too much time thinkin’ but then I’ve also been told that’s what an old fool does best ‘n I’ve often heard it said that a body should stick with what a body knows best..

anyways, that’s the kind’a tho’ts that run thru my mind in the wee hours of the mornin’...

It don’t take a lot of that to decide that it’s time to wake up ‘n smell the coffee as Ann Landers wuz so fond of saying back in the day...Dear Ann ‘n Dear Abby were twins ‘n competitors ‘n I don’t know who does their columns now...prob’ly their daughters or maybe granddaughters...it don’t matter cuz I’d bet money that in one of their columns somewhere along the way they’re gonna rerun that ‘wake up ‘n smell the coffee’ thing ....

‘course, to smell the coffee requires that I actually get m’self out’a bed ‘n grind the beans ‘n put the pot on the boil....that’s old-timey talk for pouring water in the coffeemaker ‘n pressing the on switch...in the long, long ago time, you had to build a fire, grind the coffee, put the ground coffee in a pot, fill the pot with water from the well, put the whole mess on the stovetop ‘n wait for it to boil...

after it boiled, you waited for the grounds to settle, sumtimes dropped an egg in the pot to help that process along....oh, life was complicated back in the good old days...Heck! If y’wanted to fry up some eggs to go with that coffee, y’had to go out to the hen-house, gather the eggs (basically, steal ‘em from the hard-working hens that you kept fed for that very purpose) trek back to the house, put some lard in a big, ol’ iron skillet ‘n fry the eggs...’n if you wanted toast, you sliced some bread, put it on the toaster which was basically a wire clamp with a long handle ‘n hold it over an open flame ‘til it was charred on both sides....then you scraped the black off ‘n spread some butter on it (‘n I ain’t even goin’ into how you got your butter back then) ‘n it’s way too early in the day to discuss where your bacon came from.....ah, there’s a lot t’be said for the ‘good old days’ but the only thing that made ‘em good wuz life wuz young ‘n oh, so mellow......

Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.

If you have a dog, you learn to watch your step...

“There are many definitions of stupidity; one is in believing that what you already know is enough!”

I just gotta say it...don’t want t’be a hypocrite about it cuz a cold beer tastes pretty good once't in a while....Once upon a time, a long, long time ago (a very long, long time ago) a cold beer made for a relatively satisfying breakfast.... but, that was once upon a time, etcetera ‘n such....as I grew older ‘n wiser (‘n fatter) I switched to coffee ‘n cigarettes ‘n the SF Chronicle ‘n such, but then (sighhh) I grew even older ‘n wiser (plus fatter) ‘n I gave up the cigarettes ‘n the Chronicle (wot the hell, Caen, McCabe ‘n even Delaplane were gone)....Life is a brief moment ‘n the immortality of youth is even briefer....As I continued to grow older ‘n fatter ‘n maybe just wise enuff to know how awfully dumb we mortals c’n be, I refused to give up my coffee.. I argued with the dieticians over coffee ‘n butter ‘n chock’lit-covered p-nutz, (okay, I might’a got the chock’lit-covered p-nuts a little wrong) but not the coffee ‘n butter.....(it’s the quantities that’ll do you in, not the substance itself).....Back in the day, I used to think that anything worth doing was worth doing to excess but I was wrong...It’s the excesses that are dangerous....too many cigarettes, too much booze, too much butter or coffee or chocolate cake or spaghetti ‘n meatballs...it don’t matter....too much of a ‘good’ thing turns it into a bad thing.....same with religion ‘n politics.....if you get unbalanced with durn near anything, you’re probably gonna take a fall ‘n the older you get, the more falling hurts....remember when you were a kid ‘n your dad urged you to try harder, climb higher ‘n your mom wrung her hands ‘n said, “Don’t fall. Don’t fall.”....Well, your mom knew whereof she spoke....... So my recipe for a long (comparatively speaking, that is) life is to avoid falling down....