Yawning Yawing Awning Awes

Elisabeth, Ashley, MattressFirm. Josh, Crystal, Shoe Carnival. Good Friday Lenten service, Rev. Rose, Rev. Willis, Area Church Council Benevolent Ministries. Boat Yard Methodist Episcopal cemetery. Johnson Hilliard, Eastman Chemical Company, Cemex. Tuesday Morning, Georgia. Crossroads Methodist Church children delivering Easter cards and plastic eggs to nursing home residents.

Without access to email, what are the piles of readers’ comments not saying to me?

As part of the antiterrorist task force constantly testing defensive positions by setting two sides against each other offensively, I am.

Am I allowed to reveal more of what you will not comprehend when I first tell you?

Follow two children, understand their sub/cultural vocabularies, their network of states of energy, then observe them entering puberty and later having children.

Follow and observe those children’s children into adulthood, knowing and anticipating their sub/cultural responses and response rates (i.e., their bodies’ natural rhythms).

As the adults become involved in secretive activities, see if you can guess what their secrets are by the change in their “public” response rates.

The holes and gaps tell you all you need to know.

The silence of the universe is deafening.

Watch the hard-to-break habits of retirees.

Opportunists bound and abound.

Echoes contain messages hidden in electronic spaces that create numerical sequences for diverting scrambling cramming students of offroad mudders.

Plant musical decoding phrasing in plane eggdropping bomb sightseeing.

Should only baritone personalities sing baritone voice parts?

Has your sub/culture trapped you in your postsecondary debt, planting your feet in rooting compound when you want to fly away?

Seashells and eggshells. Mobile phones that look like calculators. Calculus books that look like flat files. Beds that look like sofas. Irrigating ear canals and irritating filmy hand sanitisers.

Cougars and panthers and fight songs.

Unofficial cannonball road rallies.

Labels.

Bingo.

Disconnected from whatever reality is supposed to be in another context.

Ending in loose, lazy word combinations and sentence structure.

Talking to alien energy frameworks using global networks of street light lumen variations.

Ossiferous and Tangential Man

I received a report from the Womyn Who’ll Rule Them All (W2RTA) subcommittee last night.

According to female covert operatives embedded in northen Africa and the Middle East, the centuries-long struggle to overthrow the male-dominated religiososociopolitical structure is nearing completion.

They move forward toward electing themselves a leader who will convert the old polygamists to slaves serving the New Motherland.

“For millennia, our foresisters led worship of the female earth mother goddess,” Nesa’abkeldelah said in the soft, confident tone of a well-trained member of the High Sisterhood. “We allowed the men the opportunity to rule, just to prove to them their short-term leadership mentality, like their habit behind bedroom doors, was not good for our species. It is time we took our rightful place again and restored the true balance of nature.”

Male leaders in Syria, Iran, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Libya deny their current domestic population disturbances are gender-related.

U.S. and EU advisors in Libya would not comment for this story, although several of them were seen reading Mother Earth News and wearing distinctive female goddess figurines on necklaces.

Local rumours imply all the advisors have hidden tattoos and hot-iron brands of the High Sisterhood trademarked symbol.

When reached for comment, Hillary Clinton would not address the 1990s-era magazine profile that stated she was the man in her relationship with Bill or a recent newspaper article that said she is the man in her relationship with Obama.

Libyan leader-until-death-do-us-part Moammar Qaddafi and Syrian president Basha Assad said they were willing to show more of their feminine side but refused to wear Western-style women’s clothing, insisting that desert robes were not excuses for men to wear dresses.

Through his soothsayer spokesperson in a seance, Yassar Arafat said that he often wore women’s undergarments beneath his PLO clothing, giving him a better understanding of his people’s struggles for respect and legitimacy. In fact, he wore a scarf atop his clothes to honour his mother.

Menachim Begin and J. Edgar Hoover were not available before this post-post-deadline story was finally posted on the worldwide news wire after Amazon fixed its decades-old data center problems.

On the entertainment front, the Baldwin brothers are often proudly seen shopping for this season’s stiletto pumps they wear on moose-hunting exhibitions with Merkel and Jillard.

This is Jose de la Hessler-Chan-Wolezski, the ever-vigilant journalist/correspondent spy, reporting on Earth Day for Sky & Telescope magazine.

Tune in next week to read about fashion tips to consider on your holiday trip to the International Space Station, featuring Hu Jintao and Richard Branson showing off the latest Vera Wang tresses.

Remember, you don’t tell me what I want to hear and my network will make sure you fail the newspaper test with flying colours.

Keep looking skyward!!!

Danger: Explosion Hazard. Do not use in the presence of flammable anesthetics!

Riverfront Seafood Company.

Sitting by the Holston, upriver of I-26 bridge and Netherland Inn, first dinner with mon ami, my spouse, after two weeks of my mother in-law telling me the (her) end is near and baring her soul to someone before she dies.

In my final year of secondary school, a career aptitude test said I should be either a priest or a chemical engineer.

The latter career choice didn’t work out as planned.

And now I find myself receiving confession, unable to repeat the deepest spoken thoughts of my spouse’s mother because the living should be able to keep their innocent views of their beloved friend/family member while they’re alive, even after she’s gone.

A request to hunters:

If you pursue beings that mate for life, kill the pair and spare the one from a remaining life of loneliness.

In the small world department, our server, Leif, from Detroit, met his wife who was a bartender at Rush Street restaurant (where I worked 30 years ago while dating my wife) who served Leif a pint “shot” of Jagermeister the first time they met.

Although now separated, remaining friends, they share the love of their eight-year old who can read at the eighth-grade level.

Thanks to Heather at the Colonial Heights Dollar Tree and friendly folks at the automatic/express car wash next-door; Rebecca, Cindy, Martha, Melissa, Sharon Huff, Dr. (not Gate City mayor) Mark Jenkins and beauty shop hair stylists; Kingsport Fire Dept.; City of Bristol Rescue Squad; Betty Denny and her granddaughter Ashley (hope your dog’s inner ear infection clears up); Betty’s pastor at Marvin’s Chapel Methodist Church on Boone’s Creek Road; Spotless Car Cleaners; Rev. Robert White; Joerns Easy Care 2002 bed; LG LCD TV; Prevail adult care large washcloths; Jolene at MeadowView Eye, Ear, Nose & Throat Specialists for rushing the hearing aid repair; Rogersville BP petrol and full service shop; and whomever else I forgot.

Question to self: is it really the end for her, as physically healthy as she is?

Do I take her confessions to me with me to my grave?

When my wife is gone, I hope I won’t have long to live because I trust no one else alive with the totality of my spoken/written thoughts, not even you, dear blog, spread across the anonymous multilanguage word trails of the worldwide web.

Humour will go with me to my last breath, one final sarcastic sigh escaping my lips.

I like the line, “Journalism is not a profession but an art because anyone can do it,” but not everyone can do it well.

How many species understand loneliness?

I meant craft or craftiness, not art, in the quote above, didn’t I?

I did? [rofl]

If you sacrificed your dreams to have kids and you hoped your offspring fulfilled your dreams but didn’t, what else is there to look forward to but the afterlife you’ve been promised?

Judge not lest you begrudge.

Every journalist is a spy.

Every spy lies.

Therefore, does every journalist lie?

I retired in 2007 for this? I’m tired. Time to stop rambling.

Go Cart On Steroids

A list of people/organisations to thank floats on silken spider threads in the wind, seeking a spot to make web connections.

The web of thoughts in this aging brain looks to clear the dust, lint and dead skin cells that slow the route to a spider’s hold on life.

A tabby cat takes a scent inventory of a truck that pulled up into a neighbour’s graveled backyard.

A steady heart, 60-70 bpm, indicates a life without 30-60 minutes of aerobic exercise a day.

Naptime, while people do whatever they do to define their hold on life.

For me in this moment, a little drool and heavy eyelids define my life exceedingly well.

Centering My Thoughts

In/on a world of inter/inner fighting/competing species/states of energy sits a creature looking for a buffet of insects readily available in trimmed lawns interconnected in a suburban landscape.

Kelli smiles.

She serves a few customers in Pizza Hut on a sunny Thursday morning at the edge of town.

A Sysco food delivery truck passes by.

The old National Guard armory and recruiting center sits empty.

Land cleared for a shopping centre when times were good and plans for moneymaking schemes flowed like fool’s good out of city fathers’ minds grows weeds without profit in mind for insects, birds and wildflower watchers.

The local university extension campus attracts those who hunger for knowledge and better job prospects.

A mansion holds its aristocratic head high.

Kelli perspires while the billionaire Olsen twins appear on TV as time-rewound youngsters “acting” in a studio to resemble life in a full house.

Government authorised murder takes place around the world, the leaders denying and in denial.

Hyphenated hyena housesitters host herbal henna hen hosemakers happily hopping hats hissing hissy fits, fittingly fxed.

Suddenly, the Bob Newhart Show comes to mind, reminding one that two generations of sitcoms and one generation of Internet/web sensation videos have slipped under the bridge since this writer attended the UT/ETSU Kingsport extension center.

Time to wish Kelli well and pick up a repaired Siemens hearing aid with one-year warranty for 200 buckeroos.

What?

Asked Medicare inspector to write down my comments about treatment of mother in-law.

She told me to have a nice day.

What else did she not write down today?

Who inspects the inspectors?, I wonder introspectively…

What are their credentials and do they follow their own procedures?

Where’s a good whistleblower when you need one?

Horatio, sound the horns! We’re off to Sri Lanka to bait some Chinese junks.

My father’s chair at the dinner table

Adverts we’d like to see:

“One euro of this sale goes toward saving the environment; the other 48.99 euros go toward destructing it.”

I sit in the captain’s chair from which my father ruled family mealtimes when I was a child.

I have the good fortune to continue to see my father in this chair at least once a year, usually around Christmastime, looking at his kids and grandkids eating food prepared by my mother.

Today, my childhood next-door neighbour, David Salley, and I returned to our parents’ houses for silent prayers/meditation concerning our wives’ mothers.

David’s parents have passed on to the other realm, as they say.

He and I are our fathers’ age, or older than, when we lived next door to each other.

David is a Christian minister, quite a good one, I hear, a man his father and mother would gladly call their son.

David moved out of his parents’ house in 1976 or ’77. I moved out of this house in 1980, with a short stint or two in the early ’80s.

Thirty plus years later, here we are, seeking…

What have we found?

What do we hear when we listen to the seemingly infinite, eternal voice of the universe as we know it, no matter how we see and define/anthropomorphise it?

Mr. Salley was not only a great father but also a jack-of-all-household tasks.

In addition to his open-to-use workshop/tool shed of a basement, he made elderberry and other local berry-based wines that he shared, as well as belonged to one or more civic organisations like the Masonic Lodge.

Mrs. Salley was the perfect mother next-door.

She always had a snack to share and a warm kitchen that naturally invited us starving kids playing out on the street or shooting hoops in the backyard.

I understand the attraction David has to the house.

Right now, I look at the tree on which Mr. Salley hung goldfinch seed bags.

I fully expect to see him in the yard discussing something with my dad, or my mother and Mrs. Salley talking in one or the other’s carport.

Forty year-old memories, some of them.

Time does not exist, huh?

We are just states of energy?

Churches want spiritual nuts, not religious nuts, where a person is ready to live when that person has prepared to die.

A bluejay and a grackle argue over the birdbath in the Salleys’ backyard.

My niece has a wallet a friend made out of camo duct tape.

If we’re in the habit of laying our problems and emotional issues at the feet of our parents when they are alive, what do we do when they’re gone?

The universe/deities we call our own speak to us through our family, friends and neighbours.

We don’t always listen.

I thank David for being here today to share the kind of quiet neighbourly moment in which we middle-aged men can share the emotional pain of seeing our wives and mothers in-law suffer while we’re supposed to be rocks of support without our parents to readily lean upon.

God may be in control but, without a crystal ball, it’s not always easy to wait to find out what’s going to happen next.

Compra Aqui, Paga Aqui

Cryptic sign du jour: SI-VN11.

What about Janet, who couldn’t sit for a moment waiting for a hairdo change ahead of me at Smart Cuts?

Her loss was my gain.

I sat with a cheerful young woman who scissored my follicle output down to a summer trim, serenading me about her future attempt at making a SpongeBob sheet cake for her four-year old daughter’s birthday (“I’ll use a melonball cutter to carve out the sponge holes. What colour should the holes be – darker or lighter than his body?”) and something about a dinosaur train show on the tellie.

Her ex-husband is still a good friend.

She wants to take an f…lobotomy…no, a phlebottomoose…well, a class on needles and blood in order to become an EMT. Her stylist coworker wants to finish her academic studies in nursing.

Later, observing drivers, passengers and automotive transport machines parade past while scribbling notes in a carpark between Riverside Avenue and Fairview Lane, I contemplated titling this “Road Closed to Thru Traffic- Bump Ahead” to honour road construction crews dealing with unruly, roadsign-ignoring drivers.

A nod to Sullivan County EMS – Paramedic Unit, Country Tyme Primitives, and the tie-wearing friendly employees of La Carreta #3 who will have Bohemia beer in the future for those who want what they want and don’t have to ask twice.

Thanks to Holly and Robert at Walmart, Linda H at Walgreens.

On a side note, interesting to watch my dyslexic typing, an indication that I can’t easily resubstitute family matters for central nervous system locations (including external clues) I normally use to feel the rhythm of the universe around me.

Dadgum, these here emotion-like neurochemical states of energy are a mess to deal with, sometimes.

On the Front Porch Across the Fence

While maple helicopters fly through the air, I listen to pledge pleaders with ducks and geese sunning in the hot spring heat at the river park in front of Netherland Inn.

Meanwhile, a double cheeseburger and fries churn in my belly after a Dairy Hart fuel’d conversation with Teresa Carpenter, a Kingsport Times-News correspondent who writes the Tuesday column “Across The Fence” in the voice of a neighbour who chats with passing neighbours.

She and her hubby, former CTs (crypto techs) for the U.S. military, speaking Spanish (more Panamanian than Cuban) and German/Russian, have lived around the world, including Japan, Vietnam, Germany (two tours for total of seven years), U.S. and almost Italy.

At Church Hill H.S., he dealt with a principal who ruled like a former Marine that he was. In high school, she attended a speech class which operated a mock model government that debated snack food and drink, an excuse to eat and drink in class.

He left Church Hill and joined the military to get out from under the Carter’s Valley shadow of his father, who knew everyone and everyone knew him. She remembers when she was a kid hearing sonic booms in Aberdeen and stopping in Kingsport at a diner with pretty peonies when her family was heading north up Hwy 11W and I-81 to visit family in New England.

They wish for high-speed Internet access in Stanley Valley not depending on bouncing signals off orbiting satellites because ADSL does not reach them and dialup is inefficiently sufficient.

Two kids – one married and one in school.

Thanks to Church Hill EMS, Jackson Lawn Service, Hawkins Co. Gas Utility, Crown Vending, Bullseye Guns and Supply, radio replay of the 1920s Bristol music sessions, Hawkins Co. Courthouse bee movers and Michelle Hensley of Dairy Hart.

Teresa interviewed me -let’s see if she columnises me or mentions me on her blog, http://southernfriedtravel.com.

This is Rick, not Nina Totin’ Burgers, reporting from the streets where you live, as opposed to the rare and fried air of supersized supreme benchsitting judges. Thanks to river game warden patrols.