Occupied Territory, Athens, Georgia.

It rained all day Monday October 10th, the temperature dropped slightly and was showing signs of fall. No walking, no cycling and the day perfect for staying inside. At 11:00 P.M. the scarce light surrounding the UGA Arch was dim and fuzzy, it being influenced by the still, misty evening. They were there, just as reported. If someone believes strongly enough to be out in it, then someone should be paying enough attention to report on it. “Who do I speak to for an interview?” The question asked. “Anyone, we are all leaders, there are no leaders.” The answer given. The group, as a whole was migrating to the Holmes/Hunter Academic Building. It seemed to be a good place to interview or take a little footage. It is interesting to note, this footage was shot on the very steps that in 1961, Charlayne Hunter-Gualt and Hamilton Holmes, were escorted up, to become Georgia’s first Afro American students. Mrs. Gualt went on to be the first Black graduate from the school. No definable leader was making it hard to tape the lack of light was also a problem. “Just turn on the camera, it’ll be fine.” I did. It was clear as soon as the camera started that this movement has no proclaimed leader, but is rich in leadership. A group of forty, possibly more members, all young, recited their mission statement simultaneously and then each added their own personal contribution. None ridiculous, extreme or ignorant and none rooted in the general political stupidity the country seems to be suffering. The only concern about being leaderless, if there is a vacuum someone will fill it and that someone might not be a good someone. While the media has been trying to mostly ignore the movement, the rest of the nation and world are paying attention, via the internet. The unions seem to be embracing it, no surprise; they need a new movement, to keep them busy. Again not necessarily a good thing, but politics or freedom makes strange bedfellows. Any country with strong hatred for our country is all over it, they want to cause us as many problems as possible, no surprise, but that cannot stop our system from working. Where is Jesse Jackson in all this, I’m just asking and wishing I hadn’t The general concept as I see it, they are trying to wake up the ninety-nine percent of Americans adversely affected by the manipulation of our government by the one percent with enough money to influence it. They believe the American Government is wearing a leash and the people who control Wall Street are firmly holding that leash. In effect they believe we are dead horses and Wall Street continues to beat us as we bleed in the streets. Is it possible that our burden as tax payers, has strangled the life from us as we slept? Will we eventually find puppet masters hiding somewhere in the stage curtains? We may, but at this moment the movement seems to have diverse supporters and detractors. It seems the world holds an interest in the outcome and indeed it does. Pay attention there may be a test, as people and organizations scramble to associate or disassociate themselves with this cause. When our enemy’s are this excited about a thing, it might change our minds. When people so completely support or condemn something, it might change the country. When 780 people will be arrested for a thing, in a matter of days, it might change the world.

The Bread of death

The air holds crispness, the temperature just right and peace rises on the planet as the sun dispels the night. My wife emerges to this lovely scene, as birds dance around her as an aura in a dream. How cold one be unaffected by such a wondrous sight, as little winged beauties encircle her in flight.
With her pinky turned out, her nose turned up and a smile upon her face, she pulls off little bits of bread and tosses them into space. The meal welcomed, the love received, the little wisps, dive toward the meal with speed, and grabbing hurriedly they take back to flight, for the meal must wait, until they alight. Alight they do and feed they try, but that whole wheat bread is just too dry.
Okay sorry that kind of snuck in there. I swear I saw her try to feed whole wheat bread to some birds the other day; they won’t or possibly can’t, eat it. Have you ever had a whole wheat biscuit, I’d rather eat goat eyeballs and grits? My wife and most of her friends only eat whole wheat; I’m not talking about honey wheat, raisin bread or one of the other crossbreeds which can actually be swallowed, but the stuff used during the Spanish inquisition to torture people. The stuff that little Dutch boy poked into the damn with his pudgy little finger. The stuff several tire companies experimented with, as tire recap material, but gave up on as it was too dangerous to be used on the highways. The highway department has its limits, imagine a piece of it, the size of a semi truck tire, flipping through the air toward your windshield. Bread used around the world by religious zealots who practice self flagellation. Chant, slap yourself on the back with a whip, embedded with little shards of glass and eat a bite of whole wheat bread, whew, that’s a tough life. Maybe it’s the only bread approved by cults around the world, this bread is approved by the international association of whacko’s, its right on the label. You may not dance, drink, let your hair down, show your ankles or face, but you can eat bread as long as you don’t enjoy it.
After a minute or two the birds figure out, what remotely looks like bread, is actually a primitive weapon resembling a boomerang which won’t come back. If some unlucky little fella gets hit in the head with a piece, about the size of a quarter, he’s done, death by whole wheat bread. Was this stuff invented to punish unruly children or to feed to wives to keep them in line during medieval times?
Many theories exist, but my thoughts are, it was invented during prehistoric times as a weapon. The cavemen had clubs, then spears and fire, but they didn’t really get kicked off until they invented whole wheat. This discovery marked the beginning of the dinosaur’s decline. A whack upside the head of a forty foot pterodactyl, with a loaf of unsliced wheat bread and you had dinner for a month. A single slice thrown like a Frisbee and you could attain the kind of accuracy, rifling added to the gun. It was eventually replaced by the boomerang as at least they would come back. What chance did poor old dinosaurs have against men with such advanced weaponry? Talk about weapons of mass destruction. What do they call petrified 64 million year old bread, whole wheat?
Alright you get the point, I don’t like brown bread, I keep hearing that it’s better for us, but I’ve already given up smoking, cursing and drinking, that should be enough. I can only hope it’s not a requirement to eat a piece of wheat bread without a two liter Coke, to enter the pearly gates, if it is, that would explain why people in Hades want ice water, they’re doomed to eternity trying to swallow a piece of bread.
Now let’s try to get serous for a moment. I was at the Fall Line Festival yesterday and as usual had a great time. I was told by a large number of people that the fireworks display from Friday night was the best ever and that the Gordon Better Home Town will have a hard time topping it next year. The music seems to get better each year, great job by all concerned. I was visited by many friends, family and readers, I don’t know if I’ll make it next year, as I have plans to travel outside the country, if I don’t, I’ll miss it. As to the implication I’m living under a bridge in Milledgeville writing these stories, instead of traveling, that was the funniest thing I’ve heard in a long time, thanks I needed the laugh.

Grandma Has a Video Camera

(The story of an Average American Girl)

In recognition of Hispanic Heritage Month 2011, the Museum of Art at UGA, screened this movie last night. I attended, as I’m trying to document some of the activities associated with this celebration. I was not prepared for the emotional experience this simple film, had in store for me.
The film directed by Tânia Cypriano, is the story of the director who came here in the early seventies from Brazil, to study English, she knew upon arrival at the San Francisco Airport, this was the place she could be free, could live any dream, she dared to dream. Accompanying her was her aunt, who held little interest in living here, long term. Her ideas changed when an unplanned pregnancy gave her a precious little reason to stay. For the sake of her soon to be born daughter, who would be an American citizen she decided to forfeit her own happiness and plant her feet firmly in a foreign land. It is a story about an average American girl who just happens to be of Brazilin decent.
Life in the U.S. is good, but it’s bad. Life in Brazil is bad, but it’s good. A quote from the movie sums up the general feeling of the film. We as Americans take many things for granted, we also claim many words as our own, thinking we invented them and it is somewhat true, we may not have invented them, we defined them and galvanized them in the eyes of the world. Freedom, liberty, justice and for the most part equality are truly American concepts. The American Dream is a statement used throughout the world and throughout our existence to describe a thing sought after by much of the world’s population. I have traveled this world and am not blind, I see the problems we face here, but know, that we are the light by which most of the world steers.
Soon after her cousin was born, the directors grandma arrived too help raise this new American. The first thing she did was buy a video camera to record her granddaughter’s life. This movie is a collage of twenty years of footage, shot buy a woman who came here at the age of seventy and had never touched a video camera in her life, a woman who never learned the English language, but who exemplifies all that is great about the American spirit. It chronicles the lives of three generations of Brazilian women and their family members who followed them. It tell the stories of their struggle to assimilate to American culture, to get their educations and to workto provide for their families.
Ultimately this is the story of living in one country with your heart residing in another, for just as surely as you breathe, you can never dislodge what you are born to be. “I am an American and I am a Brazilian,” Tânia Cypriano. The American Dream is beautiful like the rose, but like the rose it has barbs. Many immigrants and average Americans for that matter, will never be able to afford the American Dream, it’s a hard lesson to learn. A lesson that prevails throughout the movie, as the family continues to live a revolving life moving from one county to the other, always following their divided hearts.
I wept many times during this movie as I recognized people I know in the people on the screen. I gained a deeper understanding of my wife, a Peruvian, her mother, and her children. I gained a more complex respect for the untold numbers of people who are from South and Central America, but who are none the less Americans.
I felt the hopelessness of educated people who come here, only to have their education cheapened to the point of waiting tables seventy hours a week, simply to provide for their families. Doctors serving you pizza, being treated like farm workers by the masses. American dreamers, being vilified by our government, simply for having the audacity to live the dream that we as Americans fought to establish and promised the world, so long ago.
"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" Emma Lazarus
I still believe these words; I fought for them, these American words with more meaning than any others.

I Don’t Like Worms

The early bird gets the worm. I don’t even like worms, so why do I continue to get up at four AM, I must have lost my mind. My grandfather convinced me as a child that I would be ahead of the pack if I got up early, I believed him. If I’m ahead of the pack, my finish line, Central State Hospital has closed, I got up early all those years for nothing. The only people you can talk to on the computer at four Am, Forrest Gump, Jessie Jackson, Sarah Palin, Slingblade and that guy from the Stand, m o o n that spells idiot.
Even criminals have enough sense to stay in bed. That’s what I tell people who are afraid of the dark. No one is out there, you’d have to be a pretty motivated criminal to get up that early. After all that’s why they chose their profession, they get to sleep in. I could understand if someone was paying me big bucks to get up this early, but to continue to do it for free is insane.
I envy people who can sleep until noon, it must be nice to have a mind that can relax that long. Mine starts at three sometimes earlier. It nudges me and tells me it has something important to say. I argue with it until around four and then just get up. I’ve gone back and read my columns, who does it think it’s kidding, I’m not going to win any Noble peace prize. Still it’s the time of the day when my mind is the clearest and there is no one out there to bother me.
Even my dogs, well when I had dogs, would wake up, roll their eyes at me and go back to sleep. I think that’s why they loved me so much. They felt sorry for my being so thick. I’ve only worked third shift a few times and guess what I’ve found. The people who work it regularly are some strange puppies. I don’t know if they were put together that way or if third shift did it to them.
All right it has its advantages. You meet people you’d never meet otherwise. I’ve met Santa Clause several times. Hey, we’ve become quite close. He likes coffee, the cookies and milk cause him to be overweight, have diabetes and high blood pressure. His career choice makes him spend a fortune on Jenny Craig every year. Mrs. Clause is a misnomer because he’s been married several times over the years. Imagine being married to a guy that big who only works one day a year and hangs around with all those Elves who surely have little big man complexes and probably don’t get much sleep either. The price of reindeer food, his gas, if you can grasp that, has skyrocketed. He asked me to tell you to leave anything a self-respecting reindeer will eat. Just no lettuce please, it gives them the poops and the last place you want to be is behind a bunch of flying reindeer with the poops.
I’ve met the Tooth Fairy. He’s interesting, but not as nice as Santa. He drinks way too much coffee, gets very little sleep and is quite ill about it. He wears clothing and shoes that you’d expect someone with Fairy as their last name to wear. Yet he has an attitude because people get the wrong idea about him. “What were my parents thinking?” he asked me. I don’t know, maybe they were people who got up too early, we do have twisted minds. He says he’s been married twelve times, can you imagine being Hilda Fairy, Carrie Fairy, Terry Fairy or Mary Fairy?
I think he’s getting a bum rap, but the pink, lacey tutu and the ballerina shoes just don’t help. His car is a plaid Mini Cooper and he has strong famine traits. I hate to break it to you dude, but even in the daylight you might better stay away from redneck bars and the Republican party headquarters. Isn’t that ironic, he’s discriminated against by some of his best customers.
So I’ll keep getting up to produce stories like this one, twisted thoughts from a twisted mind. One day Forrest, Santa, good old Tooth, here’s the one that scares me, possibly Pee Wee Herman and I will be sitting on the beach in Boca Raton, retired. Hey it ain’t bad, they got good war stories to tell.

Bulldogs V Bulldawgs

That’ll teach em to be named the same thing we are, we were bulldawgs before they were Bulldogs. Nanny, nanny, boo, boo. I had a book release and didn’t get to watch the game Saturday, got to have a word with my manager, who I think is me, about having book releases during Georgia games. I missed a crucial game a few years ago against Tenn because of a wedding. I was upset and couldn’t believe someone would have something so mundane, as a wedding, in Georgia, during a Georgia game.
Tenn. handed our backside to us that year and it was halfway through the wedding, when all the men in the room moaned in unison, that I noticed the earpieces in the ears of every man present, except me. I was the only fool in the room, including the groom that wasn’t listening to the game. The marriage didn’t last, go figure. I’m not sure if the female not caring enough to have the wedding during the game or the male having the audacity to listen to it, was the cause of its demise. Besides what future can anything have if it starts during a game that ends Tenn. a gazillion, Georgia 0?
So by most of the accounts I’ve read, it was a game of misadventures, luckily more misadventures for them than us. We may pull this season out yet. I want to jump on Miss. State and do a bunch of trash talking; it’s hard to do against a team named the Bulldogs, but I’ll give it a shot. Okay they are Bulldogs, just slightly less good looking, less talented, less intelligent and certainly less suave and debonair than our boys and girls, can’t forget those cheerleaders. So we got Uga, they got an M, that’s imagination, you’d think after a hundred years or so they could afford a dog. Maybe they been interviewing dogs all this time and none will take the job, wait, mustn’t forget them cheerleaders, that was too ugly, I need to stop. Speaking of Uga, what’s up with that? Is the next Uga about ready to join the team? I’m just sayin.
So what is that coaches name, Millet, Mullet or Muffin sorry it just won’t come to me? I’d love to make my ole redneck butt care, but just can’t. His wiki page is shorter than the list of people who showed for that wedding during that Georgia game. His biggest claim to fame, he’s now 2-0 against the Ole Miss Rebels, hell the cast of The Beverley Hillbillies can claim that and Grannies’ their quarterback. “When you play in the SEC and play great teams like Georgia, you got to play great football.” Dan (Mullet) Mullin, 2011.
So now the Bulldogs will go on to another town this week to only slightly annoy another team, not unlike a mosquito or a love bug. Our Bulldawgs move on to those Volunteers and will spank them. How do you get to Tennessee? Go east until you smell it, then north until you step in it.

Bicycle Parts

I was at the store the other day looking at bicycle parts. Have you seen the price of seats? I remember when you would break a seat and spend a year without one, standing up while riding. Eventually you would be at a relative’s house or at the dump, spot an old cycle lying in a pile of something and low and behold there would be your new seat. You or no one you knew was going out and buying one. Parents would have merely looked at you quizzically and said, “you must a bumped yo head.”
Now the average seat costs about twenty buck, but can go as high as fifty. You can have one custom made that costs hundreds. They take an imprint of your rear and make a seat that conforms to it. What the world needs is an imprint of my rear, how did we ever get by without one? I don’t want to see it and neither does anyone else. Only an idiot or average government worker would pay two hundred bucks for a bicycle or toilet seat, parents of our generation weren’t about to.
Before I cross this line, I’m about to cross and believe me I’ve crossed a few, let me say that I also had long hair at this time. I remember many times when me and a few other red blooded American males would be out cruising. Up ahead in the distance we would spot exactly what we were out cruising around to spot. The long hair was the first indication, the shapely fitted jeans another. We would all talk a little trash as we approached, we were harmless and never yelled at the pretty girls we passed, but our eyeballs were screaming. As we slowly eased by we would come to realize it was another boy. It made your skin crawl, gave you the Willies, as it was called in our day, gave you good reasons to pick and punch on each other and then call each other fag or something equally as bad.
It was a hard thing to come to terms with, when later in life one of those same red blooded American boys turned out to be Gay. I still loved him like a brother and never treated him differently. I still took up for him in any fight he needed me in, something I’d always done. I was never worried in his company; we were best friends and would be still if he were alive. After he died and he died young, I felt sorry for all the times we joked about stuff like that, it must have been tough on him.
Now let’s get to that line, I’ve approached it, it’s time to get on over it. There is nothing more beautiful, on a woman, than those bicycle shorts, can they make them anymore revealing? On the same hand there is nothing more revolting that passing a particularly fine example of a pair and finding out they are painted on the rear of a guy. I’m not wearing any of em, it would look like ten pounds of s@%!t in a five pound bag as my grandpaw would have said. What he also said, as he saw the southern end of a northern bound woman passing by, “that looks like two cats fighting in a croaker sack.” What is probably said about me, that looks like four armadillos fighting in a pair of bicycle shorts. Ugghhhhh, who wants to see that?
So ladies if you think no one notices that paint you’ve got on while you’re out riding, well you must a bumped yo head. Men buy some big boy shorts, those little things are made to make you go faster and Atlanta highway is not an Olympic venue.

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The Secret Life of Shoes

Men and women have very different outlooks on shoes. I survived quite well with only one pair, most of my life. For a brief time after buying a new pair I will be the owner of two pair. I can’t seem to get rid of the old ones. They will have holes, stains and rips in them, but deserve to be used until the end. It has something to do with those 10,000 screaming, hungry Chinamen my mother talked about when I was a boy. Whatever happened to them, does anyone know? I heard the number was around 457,000 now, but opted to not saddle my kids with that information. A lot of good it did, Sally Struthers did it regularly on our television. I feel for them, but they never justified eating broccoli and still don’t.
In the first month of my new marriage I have become the proud, but slightly concerned owner of five pairs of shoes, I only have two feet. I have never understood why a man wants more than one wife; you can scarcely keep up with one. It’s the same with shoes, every time I leave the house I fear that the other four pairs are lonely, dejected, or depressed. I fear we need a shoe counselor. My wife has about 200 shoes, what can two cute little feet do with 200 shoes? What do the shoes talk about when the door is closed? I’ve tried to calculate the investment; it boggles the mind. The bright side of the shoe thing, she had them when we met. A house full of furniture is one thing, 200 shoes; well I’d never have gone for that.
Now to that closet where the shoes are living in dejection and where the counselor we hired has all but taken up residence. It is a big walk in closet, if you look real hard and I’m convinced the counselor has, you will find the shoe box in the left rear corner where my stuff is stored. She has a closet full of clothes, but somehow comes up with a reason to borrow mine. Okay she’s cute in my stuff so I’m going to let this one go. Still if she can wear mine I should be able to wear hers. I’ve had my eye on a cute little pink number, but just can’t wiggle fifty years of biscuits into it. I just wanted to wear it while I cooked!
I found myself in need of a couple pairs of workpants this week. I mentioned it to her and she insisted we stop by the Goodwill store; it’s a good place to buy work clothes. After buying groceries we stopped in. I never stop anywhere after buying groceries, as the investment is so high I want them comfortably in the refrigerator as soon as possible. “It will only take a moment.” She said. It was eighty degrees outside and probably one hundred and forty in the car as we shopped for two pairs of pants. How long could it take? Two pairs of pants turned into two work, two dress and two pair of jeans. The she started on shirts, we ended up with about twenty then she added a winter jacket to the cart. It appears she likes to shop, who she is shopping for matters little.
I should have arranged the chops and veggies in a casserole dish as they were cooking in the van while we shopped. Once we had enough clothes to cloth the original 10,000 Chinamen, we headed for the one spot where men just do not go, in a store, the dressing room. We know our sizes, we can read and we look at our shirts to size them. We’re almost never wrong. Okay, okay we are often wrong; still you just don’t go in dressing rooms in front of others. I went in taking only the four items allowed. About the time I was undressed she opened the door and entered with the remaining fifty others. Yes I’m spending time in the closet with the counselor after this. Others keep a lawyer on retainer, I need a counselor. Signs and rules on dressing room doors mean little to South Americans, it appears. We had a great time and laughed out loud for a few minutes as I tried things on. Finally and older woman broke out laughing in the next stall. After laughing for a few minutes she apologized and said she had held it as long as she could. We had a twenty minute conversation with her, never seeing her at all. We got home and found out most of the clothes we’d bought would not fit in my shoe box and after washing and folding them neatly placed them in the pile intended to go to the Goodwill store. Life is good.