“I use’ta be indecisive, now I”m not sure.”

Durned if I didn’t go ‘n get m’self a summons to jury duty this last week of June...didn’t have to show up on Monday...didn’t have to show up on Tuesday...didn’t have to show up on Wednesday...tho’t for a moment that I wuz gonna escape the whole thing but to quote Al Pacino in Scarface (?) “Just when I think I’m out, they pull me right back in.”....leastwise, I think that’s the quote, or may be the quote, or sumthin like the quote....

Well, right off the bat, so to speak, we were all cautioned not to tweet or fb or blog or communicate anything to anybody about the darned trial...

Now, Gawd knows I’m a law-abiding citizen so I ain’t gonna say a thing about what this p’ticklar jury is gonna sit in judgement on...I ain’t even gonna remark on the fashion sense of some of the attorneys I saw parading the hallowed halls of Sacotomato Justice...'cause given the current state of my own fashion choices, quoting Dana Carvey or maybe George Herbert Walker Bush, it just wudn’t be prudent on my part...I had intended to show up for jury duty in my usual summer attire of shorts, tee shirt ‘n sandals but it seems they have a dress code forbidding shorts...at least for jurors cuz I saw several of what wuz prob’ly defendants in various stages of what c’n only be described as ‘dishabille’ (noun: the state of being only partly or scantily clothed)...

they also have a sign stating that one must remove hats ‘n sunglasses before entering a courtroom...’course, banks have that p’ticklar sign posted also these daze...

Anyway, as the day wore on ‘n they waded thru the group of jurors that I wuz in, I began to think that they wud shurely get their jury picked without me ‘n they’d be telling me to pack it in ‘n go back to Ol Fair Oaks...didn’t happen...it took ‘em all day but they got me in the end ‘n I gotta go back..

Well, Happy Fourth of July to ever’one anyway.....

“A question that sumtimes drives me hazy;

am I or are the others crazy?”

'N in July, some lemonade.....

"Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad."

Now we’re coming on to July ‘n that’s the season when magazines are full of summertime living articles......the perfect cool drink (mixed carefully, of course, with exotic flavors that most people will have never heard of)...the perfect barbeque with coals of rare and hard to find hardwoods from a distant mountain valley on the other side of the world (whichever side you happen t’be on, it’s sure t'be on the other)...’n garnishments gathered by hand by intrepid gastronomes from the distant ‘n dusty corners of the ancient world .....

I just read an article on the perfect ‘burger (sighh)...

I just want’a say right here that Dagwood Bumsteads perfect sandwich is the perfect gastronomic nightmare for anywhere normal people and the perfect burger is whatever satisfies your p’tick’lar palate...no more, no less and one man’s garnishment is apt t’be another man’s poison....

S’funny, when I was a boy we never had barbeques in our neck of the woods... what we had was ‘weenie roasts’... that’s where you put a weenie (weiner for absolutists) on a stick, hold it in the flames as long as you dare ‘til it’s charred black on the outside ‘n relatively untouched on the inside, put it in the cheapest hot dog buns that y’could buy, scrape on some yellow mustard (ketchup for the weak of heart) ‘n devour it while standing back from the bonfire.... ah well, golden youth flies whether you have fun or not ‘n in the end we always have bicarbonate of soda.....

The death of someone we know always reminds us that we’re still alive...but to what purpose...

People are awful funny when it comes to death ‘n dying...we all know we’re gonna die but we can’t ever know it after it happens...still, if you spend all your time worrying about dying, living ain’t gonna be near as much fun...I think Ashley Montagu had it right when he said, “The idea is to die young as late in life as possible.”

If all this talk about death ‘n dying seems a little morbid, I’m sorry...it never wuz my intention...it’s just that death is such a fact of life that most of the time people are 'way too busy to think about it ‘n then someone we know just goes ahead ‘n dies without consulting anybody about it...kind’a leaves ever’one feeling a little left out of the loop, y’know...like maybe they somehow went off to a party that you didn’t get an invite for...not that you actually wanted to go, of course...I mean, I ain’t quite ready to explore the unknown that waits for all of us....not yet anyhow.....down the road sometime but not yet...I’ve been to the top of the Empire State building ‘n I’ve seen the Grand Canyon...Heck! I even drove across Texas a couple times...(I know, once should have been enuff but I guess I’m a slow learner)...anyway, it ain’t given to any of us to know the exact moment that we’re gonna ‘shuffle off this mortal coil’ and make that quantum leap into the unknown ‘n I expect that’s a good thing....

I wuz just thinkin’....the older I get, the fewer things seem worth waiting in line for....

Hoo boy! It’s hot t’day...well, not outrageously hot, not for Sacramento anyways...but it’s hot...over 100o ‘n it’s been cool up until a couple daze ago.....I’ll tell’ya, a bodys just got to work into this kind’a weather....

Anyhow, some nooze for the San Francisco lovers (haters also, for all I care)...the City by the Bay is still there, still one of the prettiest cities I’ve ever seen...still crowded with old buildings ‘n narrow streets ‘n more damn hills than you c’n count....it other words, it ain’t no place for an old fart like me who ain’t really into much up ‘n down walking...I can’t recall the last time I wuz in SF...I really can’t...it has to’ve been years...we had a nice day for tho’....hotter’n hades here in Sactown ‘n nice ‘n cool in SF....cool ‘n sunny...lotz ‘n lotz of pedestrians...a lot of vehicles also but what the hell, it’s like thatev’rywhere...

So, we went to the Portuguese Embassy where I testified that Millyrose’s Mama wuz who she said she wuz... bureaucracies are the same the world over....

The streets of San Francisco are great for people watching ‘n it also made me realize that in just a few more years there are going to be thousands of old men ‘n women running around with faded tattoos......I wonder if in that coming future, elevator music will all be rap?

Fathers Day......

"Help a man when he's in trouble 'n he'll remember you when he's in trouble again."

Ah, it's a quiet old Fathers Day here in Ol Fair Oaks village...me 'n da boyz already took one stroll 'round 'n about but Willie is following me all 'round the house now cuz he's ready to go again...I think he got a little frustrated when I wuz watching the U.S. Open...

Kind'a hard to believe that I spend a whole afternoon watching golf...beats watching paint dry but only 'cuz the scenery is better...it was a runaway for Rory MacElroy, the young Irishman who blew the lead at Augusta....not this time, however 'cuz he led from the beginning...the only other time that I've ever watched the U.S.Open was in the movie 'Tin Cup' where Costner played a golfer named Roy MacAvoy...same scenery!

Before watching the grass grow at the U.S.Open, I watched Jon Stewart being interviewed by Chris Wallace...Wallace accused him of being a partisan shill for the liberal left...Stewart reminded him that he was a comedian 'n then quoted Will Rogers 'n said, "It's a sad state of affairs when people take comedians seriously 'n believe that their politicians are jokes." The stuff that politicians do has really serious effects on regular people but only the seriously naive believe that what comes out of any political mouth bears any resemblance to the truth...

Fired up the motorcoach t'day 'n cleaned on it a little bit...lots more t'do before taking a trip...gonna have to put some fuel in also....hope I c'n do that without taking out a home loan...I try to stay from lenders...I figger they're in the same order as skunks 'n it's always a good idea to keep skunks 'n bankers at a distance....

“Goodness gracious me” said Henny Penny, “the sky is going to fall. I must go ‘n tell the King.”

On this coming Fathers Day...’n the previous blog...

Joran Van der Sloot (remember him) is back in the nooze...last time we heard about him, he was spozed to be locked up in a Hell on earth prison in Peru...

my guess is Hell is somewhat different that what imagination may have created since it seems that even tho’ Joran is locked away, he still managed to knock up a girlfriend ‘n never even had to kill her....

Some of the more current events of which I’ve tired.....

The stomach-turning Anthony trial in Florida still dominates the nooze... fortunately, it’s mostly paired with the Wiener debacle which provides comic relief...it ain’t just the late-nite comedians that can’t seem to resist wiener jokes...the ladies of The View with the notable exception of Baba Wawa who is stubbornly sticking with her defense of The Wiener...

Obama sed he’d quit if it hadda been him...makes you wonder what of jokes he ‘n his posse are making in private...

The weather has been a really prime subject on the nooze for so long now that I’m almost scared whenever the weather man gets his turn to talk... ‘n y’just know that it’s gonna be bad nooze again.. what with hurricanes ‘n tornadoes ‘n earthquakes ‘n tsunami mountains of water crashing into...well, durn near everywhere....’n there’s drought again in Texas ‘n fires in Arizona ‘n floods damn near anyplace that has a river ‘n in some cases where there ain’t never been a river...like

everybody downriver from all the water up in the northern states...

We can build a pipeline for oil from Alaska to Oklahoma or Texas...it’s too bad we can’t build one to transport water from Montana to Texas...’course, our politicians got more important things on mind...

we got so many natural disasters going on right now that it’s no wonder so many people believed that idiot preacher that prophesied the end of the world...

"Ya ought to forgive your enemy as the Bible sez but you ought not forget his name!"

Oobla-dee, oobla-dah, life goes on.....

A couple years ago, I wrote a blog on Father’s Day...I used it to play catch-up with all the idiot stuff that I tho’t deserved a snide comment but no more than that....y’know, one of those ‘honorable mention’ things that get footnoted....

Back then, the State of Utah had just executed Ronnie Lee Gardner...by firing squad...’n it was effective if not p’litically correct....now, States are having trouble executing bad guys cuz they can’t seem to get the right mix of lethal poisons to satisfy the ACLU....ah well...

Also back then, the Obama administration was filing a lawsuit against the State of Arizona over immigration law....now, the State of Alabama has just passed the most restrictive immigration law in the nation ‘n there’s nary a peep from Obama ‘n his posse...guess maybe they think that any illegal immigrant dumb enuff to sneak into Alabama just might be too dumb to vote Democratic...

There wuz a lot of talk about Sarah Palin back then...there’s a lot of talk about Sarah Palin t’day...

Joran Van der Sloot was in the news then cuz he got caught in Peru....guess he’s still there....karma is still a bitch....

BP, aka British Petroleum wuz taking their lumps then ‘n they’re still getting jumped on by all the politicians that loved them before the Gulf disaster...’course, they still deserve those lumpsd..

‘n back then, Flagstaff, Arizona had an out of control wildfire...t’day, the eastern side of Arizona has an out of control wildfire that’s even larger....I tellya, what with wildfires, drug cartels and Obama’s posse guarding the borders, prob’ly nobody from California’ll be able to vacation there anyway....

Ah well, Fathers Day, calloo, callay,

he chortled in his glee....

Thank Gawd the Dems haven’t passed a law against chortling here in Ol Fair Oaks....