Making Widows Wince

Peter Thiel and the Sirens of Craptopoly   I finished my shower using the new soap Mary had bought, possible from witches. I did not see the original packaging for this particular bar of soap, but am used to strange soaps—Kimchi, cantaloupe thyme and burnt lime a few-- clean but strange seemingly the house moto. I’m comfortable saying that this soap was made of rutabaga and lye. My skin has peeled back from its underlying muscle and I now look like a cinnamon tree barking slab stick. I smell like late winter root vegetables. On the TV, Peter Thiel is making sense, which surprises me. I think Peter is an alien, but he seems to be articulating exactly my feelings about this election. I turned off the TV, I’m tired of this election, I’m tired of white people talking in general -- I’m backwater Mike now, I’ve drifted out of the swift water into the unsensational eddy. Everything has always seemed st...

The ride to work after vacation   While driving the great road home, the way I usually do, I saw a cluster of buildings. At one time they were various banks and edge companies, now they were all painted dark gray and just there, inert, not drawing any attention to the change in shade or really, moving much information at all. Why are they gray? Where are the names, the brandings? Why are they hiding their tattoos from me? Is this new ‘lack of’ just a youthful form of communication left to confuse? As large empty broken down boxes bounced off my car like long dead summer cats, or Frisbee dung, I swerved over to a fast line, passing the crippled and slow, and got rebalanced on the roads edge. It was the end of vacation when everything burns, and you think, what about hope?  It seems like it’s always been a land of, “it could be worse” - a land of fixed asphalt ambitions canned in an open area of get used to it. It’s like one big lesson on bondage – of binding things ...

I picked  my daughter and grandson up early on a Wednesday morning. Over days we drove to Oklahoma for a family reunion. At the end of the family thing -- the next Sunday, I drove them to the Tulsa airport for their flight home. I said goodbye, took a picture of them standing in the dark, and drove off to make my way home alone.   Making a long road trip just the one way works best for everyone -- a thing that all loving families know to be true. That said, I felt stomach sad leaving them just standing at the airport entrance– those two had been my great companions for five straight days. We had visited the places of my youth, well, all the places along the route 66 of my youth– the Boron museums, Oatman with its donkeys, Seligman and the Grand Cavern caves, the meteor crater near Winslow and other, less formal, spots. I got to share my well-worn stories – many that my daughter finished for me after hearing the first sentence. It was a well-traveled road. ...

This is what I think about the coup attempt in Turkey yesterday. It will be a nice read in a couple of years to see if it's prophetic or stupid... or some weird combination of the two. It's from Ralph Peters - info at bottom. "Friday night’s failed coup was Turkey’s last hope to stop the Islamization of its government and the degradation of its society.  Reflexively, Western leaders rushed to condemn a coup attempt they refused to understand. Their reward will be a toxic Islamist regime at the gates of Europe. Our leaders no longer do their basic homework.The media relies on experts-by-Wikipedia. Except for PC platitudes, our schools ignore the world beyond our shores. Deluged with unreliable information, citizens succumb to the new superstitions of the digital age. So a great country is destroyed by Islamist hardliners before our eyes—and our president praises its “democracy.” That tragically failed coup was a forlorn hope, not an attempt to take over a country...

Obama State of the Union   Mary wants to watch the President give his final state of the nation speech. It begins, I walk away - unable to listen, and angry at the thought of it all. More pretty words chopped and lined up nice - things I agree with -- well said stuff -all pearls of wisdom, all the direct truth outlining and describing our aspirations as Americans. Pearls before swine, I think, and not even real pearls, what I see doesn't need real --but the pigs are clearly lining half the houses, shitting frowns and farts -- raising and responding to what they are told in the way they are told. Chalk death outlines I think, markers of ideology -- settings in place for the thieves looting the store, while all of us others watch the whatever it is we're told to. Mary says the man behind Obama looked sarcastic and bored, she said he was giving the President the back of his head eyeball. He doesn't need to listen, I say, "He is a Republican and already of a min...

Ca lling ISIS militants Islamic fundamentalists is like calling snake handling meth lab owners Christian fundamentalists.

Bleeding warmth to savage winds I lean against the coastlines bend… Against the sea, the farthest pale, I push against the winters swell. I pull myself into the wind until the lee is lost again and that which may be there Is left for me to find it. No whale or shoal upon this sea Will stop to bind or hinder me Unless the craven crawl returns me safely to the leeward shore. Michael S Brady