Category: random

We call her Lucy, the bossy little girl of Charlie Brown fame, but not today. She works better today than I’ve seen in many previous weeks, without complaints or demands other than paper and ink.

She is our printing press. And today, she thrums with literary agility.

Around me flits and buzzes my only other companion, Kafka. He makes it like he is busy, feeling the need to replace Lucy in the realm of bossiness.

“Bizz, bizz, bizz,” he says. Write, write, write.

Kafka touches my shoulder, my right elbow, and the fingernail of my left hand. I threaten him with a rolled-up newspaper from the week previous, though he knows I am not serious with each waving.

“Write, write, write,” he buzzes in my right ear.

“I’m trying,” I say, knowing he doesn’t understand.

He pesters my right earlobe, “Bizz, bizz, bizz.”

I offer him the top of my pen, “Come sit with me and help guide my hand as I complete my notes.”

Kafka pauses, lighting gently, inspects my work, and with no small amount of criticism, adding, “Bizz, bizz, bizz,” my friend, the fly, slips out the open door into the afternoon heat to return no more this day. I write, write, write to the general thrumming of Lucy as she spits out page after page of Friday’s upcoming edition, her literary agility notwithstanding.

Lo! I watch high above and far in the distance as the Vultures float above Sugar Loaf — three, wings spread in an updraft. Half an hour and I see two more join the ariel play and now seven.

They rise gently and sweep swiftly downward, only to ascend to height once more. Play for these ungainly creatures, a joy, happiness only they can know.

None have once beaten a wing to the air, instead enjoying the heated thermals, as behind them, and even further in the distance, billowing white thunderheads build. I take note of these ominous clouds, but I return my eyes to the redheaded flock, and I find them no longer present.

It is then that I know what is to come. No sooner does the thought process than a flash illuminates my shadow, and a peal of thunder races multiplicity, echoing from behind where I stand. I turn and look up, find where the cell lives, high atop Sun Mountain, with its abandoned tailings and shallow, open pits.

Saint Elmo dances a jig between the high tension wires and the rooftop of the building across from me on F Street. Fascinating and frightening all at once.

No sooner do I step in under the porch covering the Hale-Norcross miner’s hovel is an odd Washoe Zephyr shooting its way from the north towards the south, pushing before its chilled breath a warm rain that pounds the corrugated tin foot overhead. Three, four, five roars of thunder, as many bolts of lightning, the storm races on from Virginia City to the south and the east, taking with it the wind, the rain, and the danger.

The skies above are clear again, but the Vultures fail to return. I am awed by these carrion-eaters instincts.

My Cousin Elmo says, “Looks like Liz Cheney won’t be back for season two of the TV series ‘The J6 Investigation’”

My Cousin Elmo says, “You don’t actually wash your hands. They wash each other and you jus’ stand there watching them like some sort of creep.”

The Department of Justice is becoming more cannibalistic as it attempts to defend itself from the Mar-A-Lago raid and the J6 Committee.

The Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association is warning members of the U.S. Secret Service that their private phone numbers are in the hands of the Jan. 6 Capitol Riot Committee and that they “will likely be used” in a criminal probe. The warning comes after the committee received copies of Secret Service text messages from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, thought to have been deleted.

And it gets worse as the DOJ, through the FBI, is investigating measures Secret Service members took to secure Presidential documents at Mar-A-Lago. As an aside, the FBI asked the Secret Service to add an extra padlock to the storage facility last June during their visit to collect papers for the National Archive.

Lastly, boxes labeled A-14, A-26, A-43, A-13, A-33, and a set of documents in a file folder, all seen on the final page of the FBI’s property receipt released on Fri., Aug. 12, contain attorney-client privileged information. Waiting to see who gets the blame and in whose lap the confiscated materials fall.

Remember, there are no coincidences.

My Cousin Elmo says, “As I’ve grown older my eyesight has gotten weaker, but my sixth-sense about people and their bullshit has become stronger.”

“You wouldn’t know a fact from your ass,” she responded to my latest post. I ignored her.

Here are some facts: What happened at Mar-A-Lago isn’t a one-off. It has been an ongoing pattern since 1913 when the FBI went by another name.

No one seems to recall the 1993 “peaceful” issuance of a search warrant on the Branch Davidians in Waco. Nor do they seem to remember the sniper death of a mother and her newborn at a place called Ruby Ridge.

Nor do they recall the 2016 federal shooting death of a Utah man on an Oregon highway outside of Burns, as he ran from his truck to save the people inside it from being killed, only to die himself with his hands up in surrender.

It is not limited to one side of the political aisle but both as they work to keep us from knowing the truth. Nothing more than lying, offuscating assholes.

Let us visit other alphabet agencies of our federal bureaucracy, like the Internal Revenue Service. They recently cleaned up their official webpage, scrubbing their advertising the need for their 87,000 potential hirelings to be able to use a weapon and have the willingness to take a life.

In 2015, a couple’s dress-making business in Garland, Tex., was closed down by the IRS after being accused but never charged or convicted of evading “federal bank reporting requirements by making cash deposits just under the $10,000 limit.” The Dallas police assisted the IRS during the raid, which led to an auction to recover a supposed $31,400 debt, netting the IRS about $17,000.

Then there is the Environment Protection Agency, which in 2011 sued a Priest Lake, Ida., couple for unplugging a drainage ditch that was flooding their home. The EPA claimed that the flooding, though caused by a faulty culvert system, was part of a “marshland,” costing the couple $32,500 per day until they complied.

Closer to home, in Bunkerville, Nev., in 2014, the Bureau of Land Management claimed the Bundy family owed over a million bucks in grazing fees because the ranch was using federally owned land to feed their livestock. In 2018, the dispute became an armed standoff between U.S. citizens and federal agents as the agency attempted to remove Bundy’s cattle from the site.

Once forced to retreat, BLM officers began destroying the livestock and burying the carcasses. Though pictures and videos surfaced online, they no longer exist.

Quit sucking the teet of pablum being offered by the politicos, the media, and entertainment and start gathering facts, dammit!

My Cousin Elmo says, “The real reason the FBI raided Melania Trump’s robeward was to update Jill’s.”

Since Lion’s Gate, I’ve done my best to hold my tongue. My anger is such that I could alienate everyone I know in person and online.

And this goes for writing what I know, what I think, and how I feel. We are in a world of betrayal, and less than half of us realize it.

Many of us live in a ‘polite society,’ having learned ‘to turn the other cheek.’ Being victimized and not retaliating is ineffective and exhausting.

When will the time come that we shall push back? Where is the breaking point — when it is too late? Death?

We are a failed society, broken by those who do not fear being violent, who do not think twice when it comes to destruction, animated by propaganda, and those who willingly propagate it. Are you not flagged by the dishonesty, the rhetoric, the partisanship?

I am, and I feel alone in this.

Wilford Green had three things that caused him to stand out, and one of those things he only recently acquired.

Better known as Willy, he was born with a tuft of bright red hair. And as he grew into adulthood, he became known for his love of practical jokes and being a smart ass.

Half a year ago, Willy began wearing a charcoal gray-fedora style hat he’d found one afternoon. The beaten and battered cover called closer attention to his bushy red mop-top.

Three weeks ago, he mouthed off to Mrs. Pembroke. She was in her yard, on her knees, working in her flower garden.

“While down there…” Willy laughed.

Mrs. Pembroke, a widow of twenty years, did not find humor in his innuendo and made sure Willy knew it.

“Yeah, what ever lady,” he replied.

“I’ll bury you, Wilford Green,” she yelled as he walked away, laughing.

Yesterday, Mr. and Mrs. Breckley were walking their black lab, Tippy, in the park when the dog darted off. Quick to follow, the couple raced after him only to find Tippy sniffing at a gray hat on the ground.

Tippy took it in his teeth, exposing a shock of red hair that jutted from the hard-packed earth.