It’s time to set a few things straight. We have a big ol election coming up in a few days, and I want to do my part to get my good friends in the Tea Party elected to every office where they have a dog in the fightin’ pit.
Here’s a just a sample of why I believe it’s time for all those good, God-fearin’, Tea Partiers to get up from the card table in the den and join the grown-ups at the big table in the dining room.
Taxes
Why in all the heavens do we keep paying these gosh darned things? I, for one, think we have all the roads we need. Don’t you? Somebody’s got a pothole out front of their store, let ‘em grab a shovel and get to work! And emergency workers? C’mon, people! My grand pappy’s corral caught fire once, and did he wait around waitin’ for 911 to show up? Heck no! He put that fire out with hand-pumped well water and a quart of his own all-American urine! And I’ll tell you somethin’ else, friends and neighbors. I don’t know about the air you breath and the water you drink, but mine’s just A-OK. Didn’t y’all watch Fox and Friends? That story they did ‘about all them folks who overdosed at that oxygen bar in California? My Tea Party chums are the only ones who understand that it’s possible to have too much of a good thing.
Education
Can you even help your son do his homework anymore? If our kids aren’t learning about pagan demons, or all kinds of algebra an’ bunkum like that, they're getting’ force-fed a lotta bull-hockey about how rotten America is. Whine, whine, whine! That’s all these teachers teach our boys to do! Teachers: what they are is—and you’ll pardon my language—is tenure whores! My neighbor’s boy, as fine a young man as you’ll ever wanna meet, came home t’other day talking ‘bout how his teacher (a woman, I found out, who makes $26,000 a YEAR, if you can believe it) told him that the Middle Ages were a time of pain and poverty and superstition. Well, I thought I’d walked into an episode of The Midnight Zone! Superstition?! Is it superstition to root out practitioners of the Occult and give them a little American what-for? Is it superstition to gather up a bunch of your friends and ride to the Holy Land to defend your kin against the Arab Hordes? Is it superstition for the wealthiest members of the community to set the standards for that community? I say: no, No and NO! Get my dear friends elected to office. And you won’t have to listen to any more of that kind of Liberal brainwashing!
God
“In God We Trust.” It says so right there on the almighty American green-back. Too much more Liberal nonsense, and we’ll have to hide our Bibles under our floor-boards to keep ‘em from the clutches of Hussein Obama’s anti-Christian crusade! Him and his rag-head relatives will make reading the Koran mandatory! But not with my friends running things. No siree! Once the Tea Party is in charge the only religion we’re gonna need around here is the Christian religion. And when every American receives the word of the Christian God at compulsory Sunday services, why, you’re gonna see our streets improving pretty gosh darned quick! Say good-bye forever to drugs and pornography and prostitution. Not to mention all them homeless leaches and child-killing homos and evolutionists doing the Devil’s work.
I could go on and on listing reasons to elect Tea Party candidates. I am sure y’all could too. But why bother? We’re in terrible trouble, and that’s all there is to it.
It’s time to take America back, friends and neighbors! Vote Tea Party!
(Cuz if ya don’t, you’re no better than an Al Qaeda.)
God bless the United (Red) States of America!
Friday, October 29, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Adventures with Nature, Part 1
One interesting thing about living in a tiny town out in the middle of the Great Wide Open, as opposed to a big urban center, is you get to roll with so many more representatives of the Animal Kingdom. Sometimes these encounters are a Disney movie, sometimes they are Nature Red in Tooth and Claw. Mine? For some reason mine tend to be Dali Does Warner Bros.—surreal life, with sarcastic plants and smartass bunnies.
Rattlesnake Fencing
My favorite uncle has a ranch about an hour’s drive from my little town. There’s a small spring-fed lake on his land that he has been stocking with largemouth bass and channel cat for twenty years or more. Excellent fishing.
I’m over there late one afternoon, casting for bass with a silver spinner. It’s a bit too far in front of dusk for the bass to be very hungry, so I decide to wander down to the far end of the lake, where there’s more shade, and where the fish might be more peckish. The move entails my climbing up a slight incline, motoring several hundred yards along a sort of mesa, and then making my way back down to the water, by way of an even steeper incline, where deep run-off trenches scar the rock-hard, red Oklahoma dirt.
Down I go, carrying two poles in one hand, a collapsible camp chair in the other, and my tackle box slung over one shoulder. My eyes worked busily, scouting for a good spot to throw a lure. Which is all well and good, but they really ought to have been engaging in a larger mission: making sure I got one foot in front of the other without mishap. Couldn’t tell you what I tripped over, but trip I did. (Maybe the several beers I’d consumed played a part?) And the fall was a doozy, too. I flailed for a second with my over-full arms, but alas, I still went ass-over-tea-kettle down the hill, and all of its jagged little ravines. Stuff literally flew all over the place—an indecorous cloud of fishing tackle, fiberglass rods, folding furniture, and one fat white guy.
After bouncing, skidding and rolling about twenty feet, I finally came to an abrupt stop against a fallen cottonwood log, and simply sprawled there panting like a stranded beluga whale.
So many parts of my body hurt that I had, for a few minutes, trouble concentrating on any one particular pain, while entertaining the entertaining notion that I had simply broken my entire body. Soon, though, the myriad agonies settled into three fire centers: the right side of my head, my left rib cage, and the better part of my lower right leg. Some finger-tip explorations yielded a small amount of blood on my head, an inflamed blotch on my side, but probably no broken ribs, and a whole chum bucket of blood on my leg, where a four-inch by eight-inch swatch of my skin had been flayed off, like something out of Hannibal Lecter’s notions box.
After a few minutes, I lurched to my feet and set about collecting my scattered gear, stopping for a moment to wipe blood off my leg (it was filling my shoe) with a handful of leaves. Stuff reassembled (and the urge for further fishing now gone the way of the mastodon) I started back up the rutted incline. It hurt like shit, and I was reduced to a sort of inept crawl. But I made it, by God, my head cresting the top very near my trusty Toyota—
—and even nearer to a rattlesnake.
The scaly bastard was tightly coiled, with its head up high in that super-snarky, get-the-fuck-away-from-me-with-that-stick-Steve-Irwin, pose. Don’t know what I did to piss the fucker off, but pissed he was.
So, I’m in pain, my shoe is full of blood, and I’m eye-ball to slit-pupiled eye-ball with a cantankerous reptile. And I did what so many of us out-doorsey types do in such perilous situations:
I said, “Shoo.”
And I meant it.
The snake didn’t care. He just rattled at me. His rattle had around six segments on it, making him approximately three feet long. Not exactly an anaconda, sure, but easily long enough to puncture me if he got up the urge to do some puncturin'. I needed him out of my way and not just in retreat under the car, but since my heartfelt “shoo” hadn’t exactly sent him into slithers of apoplexy, I was forced to roll with Plan B.
Moving slowly, I let go of the tackle box and folding chair, and got a grip on my fishing pole. I turned around, aiming the tip at the snake, and gave him a poke. He raised his head even higher and really got to working his rattle, but he didn’t launch an attack. So, I poked him again. And again. And a fourth time. And still he refused to either bite me or fuck off. He just kept rattling, in a way that was fast becoming wearisome.
“C’mon,” I said, stabbing at him now. “Move your narrow ass or it’s wallet time.”
Rattle, rattle, rattle…
“Jesus Christ!” I hollered. “Move!” I hauled off and gave him a really solid thwack with the fishing pole. And finally! He flung himself sideways and took off through the grass like he had a herd of Pentecostals on his tail.
Quick as possible, I hauled myself and my cumbersome stuff up onto flat ground, loaded my car, and got inside, cranking the AC all the way to HIGH. Cooling off, I blotted at my leg with some old newspaper, and fumed about my decision making skills.
See, that very morning, while cleaning out my tackle box, I had, after almost no humming and hawing at all, removed my little .22 revolver and hidden it away in the garage. Not that I wish death upon all serpents, or anything, but a pistol is simply a better deterrent than a fishing pole. Right?
Cheers.
Rattlesnake Fencing
My favorite uncle has a ranch about an hour’s drive from my little town. There’s a small spring-fed lake on his land that he has been stocking with largemouth bass and channel cat for twenty years or more. Excellent fishing.
I’m over there late one afternoon, casting for bass with a silver spinner. It’s a bit too far in front of dusk for the bass to be very hungry, so I decide to wander down to the far end of the lake, where there’s more shade, and where the fish might be more peckish. The move entails my climbing up a slight incline, motoring several hundred yards along a sort of mesa, and then making my way back down to the water, by way of an even steeper incline, where deep run-off trenches scar the rock-hard, red Oklahoma dirt.
Down I go, carrying two poles in one hand, a collapsible camp chair in the other, and my tackle box slung over one shoulder. My eyes worked busily, scouting for a good spot to throw a lure. Which is all well and good, but they really ought to have been engaging in a larger mission: making sure I got one foot in front of the other without mishap. Couldn’t tell you what I tripped over, but trip I did. (Maybe the several beers I’d consumed played a part?) And the fall was a doozy, too. I flailed for a second with my over-full arms, but alas, I still went ass-over-tea-kettle down the hill, and all of its jagged little ravines. Stuff literally flew all over the place—an indecorous cloud of fishing tackle, fiberglass rods, folding furniture, and one fat white guy.
After bouncing, skidding and rolling about twenty feet, I finally came to an abrupt stop against a fallen cottonwood log, and simply sprawled there panting like a stranded beluga whale.
So many parts of my body hurt that I had, for a few minutes, trouble concentrating on any one particular pain, while entertaining the entertaining notion that I had simply broken my entire body. Soon, though, the myriad agonies settled into three fire centers: the right side of my head, my left rib cage, and the better part of my lower right leg. Some finger-tip explorations yielded a small amount of blood on my head, an inflamed blotch on my side, but probably no broken ribs, and a whole chum bucket of blood on my leg, where a four-inch by eight-inch swatch of my skin had been flayed off, like something out of Hannibal Lecter’s notions box.
After a few minutes, I lurched to my feet and set about collecting my scattered gear, stopping for a moment to wipe blood off my leg (it was filling my shoe) with a handful of leaves. Stuff reassembled (and the urge for further fishing now gone the way of the mastodon) I started back up the rutted incline. It hurt like shit, and I was reduced to a sort of inept crawl. But I made it, by God, my head cresting the top very near my trusty Toyota—
—and even nearer to a rattlesnake.
The scaly bastard was tightly coiled, with its head up high in that super-snarky, get-the-fuck-away-from-me-with-that-stick-Steve-Irwin, pose. Don’t know what I did to piss the fucker off, but pissed he was.
So, I’m in pain, my shoe is full of blood, and I’m eye-ball to slit-pupiled eye-ball with a cantankerous reptile. And I did what so many of us out-doorsey types do in such perilous situations:
I said, “Shoo.”
And I meant it.
The snake didn’t care. He just rattled at me. His rattle had around six segments on it, making him approximately three feet long. Not exactly an anaconda, sure, but easily long enough to puncture me if he got up the urge to do some puncturin'. I needed him out of my way and not just in retreat under the car, but since my heartfelt “shoo” hadn’t exactly sent him into slithers of apoplexy, I was forced to roll with Plan B.
Moving slowly, I let go of the tackle box and folding chair, and got a grip on my fishing pole. I turned around, aiming the tip at the snake, and gave him a poke. He raised his head even higher and really got to working his rattle, but he didn’t launch an attack. So, I poked him again. And again. And a fourth time. And still he refused to either bite me or fuck off. He just kept rattling, in a way that was fast becoming wearisome.
“C’mon,” I said, stabbing at him now. “Move your narrow ass or it’s wallet time.”
Rattle, rattle, rattle…
“Jesus Christ!” I hollered. “Move!” I hauled off and gave him a really solid thwack with the fishing pole. And finally! He flung himself sideways and took off through the grass like he had a herd of Pentecostals on his tail.
Quick as possible, I hauled myself and my cumbersome stuff up onto flat ground, loaded my car, and got inside, cranking the AC all the way to HIGH. Cooling off, I blotted at my leg with some old newspaper, and fumed about my decision making skills.
See, that very morning, while cleaning out my tackle box, I had, after almost no humming and hawing at all, removed my little .22 revolver and hidden it away in the garage. Not that I wish death upon all serpents, or anything, but a pistol is simply a better deterrent than a fishing pole. Right?
Cheers.
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