These are the continuing adventures of a typical resident 
 of the self-proclaimed center of the Pugetopolis universe - 
 Seattle. Most are true stories but some are made of whole-
 cloth. I ain't the Mayor, the Governor or a Big Shot. Just 
 another Working Stiff with a Bad Attitude.

    ------------------------------------------------
    WARNING: This is not a Child-Proof Neighborhood.
    If you're a kid - scram!, beat it! you little
    punk before your Old Lady catches you and calls
    the cops. They'll throw you in the Big House in
    Walla Walla and won't let you out until you're
    89 years old. There. Don't say I didn't warn you.
    -------------------------------------------------

 		              - 121 -

 Returning for the Grande Finale of their concert season - the
 Apple Cup - those zany Kidz from the Husky Strut'n and Stroll'n
 Marching Band (the Husky Marching Band minus their clothing)
 once more paraded through my neighborhood serenading the Greeks.

 Shaking their Boo-tays for all they were worth, they raised a 
 demented ruckus that registered 9.5 on the Richter Scale as it 
 set off car alarms and sent the cats and squirrels into hiding. 
 To the steady beat of "Stiffy" and "Silent Bob" on the big bass 
 drums (and their able assistants "F*ck Wazoo", "F*ck Wazoo" and 
 "F*ck Wazoo" - as noted on the backs of their shirts) they treated 
 the thousands and thousands of adoring fans who joined them to 
 an excusite evening program of stirring patriotic melodies like: 
 "Tequila", "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag", "Louie, Louie", and a 
 few of their own inspirational compositions. In a humoresque of 
 parody they also did a ludicrous and humiliating rendition of 
 Wazoo's "Fighting Future Farmers of Washington" school song. The 
 crowd, far happier than people normally are without the aid of 
 mind altering chemicals, ate it up and gleefully followed them
 like drunken lemmings over the cliff. Who says White Folks ain't 
 got no soul?  

 The cheerleaders also came along this time and, aside from their 
 usual uplifting routine guaranteed to raise many spirts (and
 other things), did a tasteful and highly artistic "flaming baton" 
 routine that drew admiring "ooohs" and "aaaahs" from the crowd 
 and sent the half-naked bandmembers into a frenzied spin around
 them as they attempted to warm themselves.

 And so...farewell Husky Strut'n and Stoll'n Marching Band for 
 yet another year. We'll miss your sentimental melodies and
 that funky, funky Thang the Clarinets and Tubas do so well.
 Study hard, make your parents proud, then disappear into the
 soul-crushing corporate world to find your Cubicle in life.
 Adieu and aurevoir. It's all downhill from here baby.

 BTW - The Dawgs walked off with all the apples. The Kountry 
 Kousins fumbled and bumbled around like Monday Morning dairy
 farmers.

.......................................................................

               ANYBODY HERE SEEN MY OLD FRIEND JOHN?

 I remember the day JFK was asassinated. It's one of those classic 
 'where were you' scenarios - everyone remembers. I was in high-school
 at the time. In the middle of class, our Vice-Princpal's unexpected 
 voice on the P.A. interupted the proceedings to announce that the 
 President had been shot while visiting Dallas. That being the age 
 of "Duck & Tuck" nuke commercials and after having recently gone 
 through the Cuban Missle Crisis, we were a little edgy about 
 unexpected public announcements. The fear in his voice, the unusual 
 timing and the ambiguity of the report ('shot' as in on death's door 
 or just injured?) immediately put the Pucker Factor through the roof. 
 A short while later, he interupted once again to announce, this time 
 in a sobbing voice, that the President had died. Men didn't cry in 
 public back then. Nothing funny about it. It scared the hell outta 
 us to hear this big, burly guy we knew so well, openly weeping. 

 The whole world came to a stop: classes were canceled, all events 
 were cancelled, all the stores closed. I'd never experienced anything 
 like it before in my young life. It was still the time when, if you 
 wanted Real News, you had to get it out of a newspaper. Radio was good 
 for short up-to-date quickies but there was nothing yet like a portable
 AM/FM Walkman. TV's images brought the drama home visually sometime 
 later but it was long before sat feeds and instant live cams. But for 
 hard data you could carry around, you needed a paper. Unlike now, 
 hysterical News Nazi rumor-mongering was still considered to be in 
 bad taste. Unless they had something definite to say, they generally 
 kept their mouths shut.

 Perhaps because things moved more slowly and deliberately back 
 then, I don't remember any wild screaming for revenge on whoever 
 might have done this thing. Not even after the usual parties 
 connected Fidel Castrol's name to events. With the Rooskies around, 
 we couldn't engage in self-indulgent temper tantrums. We had to 
 be careful. So we took it one step at a time: we buried our dead 
 then set up a commission to investigate this murder. Like all 
 government commissions in times like those, its primary purpose 
 was to comfort us in our moment of grief and discretely sweep
 any embarassments under the carpet. To come up with a plausible 
 explanation, or lie if necessary, so we could make sense of even 
 a brutally senseless act like this. To demonstrate that The System
 would calmly and deliberately look after things in a responsible 
 manner, despite the situation. Let the historians argue over the 
 accuracy of the facts later.

 I was in Catholic school during JFK and Trick Ricky's election
 campaign. Too young to understand much of what was going on but
 old enough to get impressions. The nuns made it clear that Jack
 was Our Boy. And they were concerned enough about the anti-Catholic
 rhetoric that was common at the time, to stress that the notion of
 'elect a Catholic, elect the Pope' was pure nonsense. It made
 sense to us. The Pope's opinion didn't mean anything to us; why 
 would it mean anything to the President? Today no one would give
 the matter a second-thought, but back then it was the Great 
 Unmentionable Issue of the campaign.

 I watched the TV debates, the first of their kind, along with 
 everyone else. The issues didn't mean anything to me. But seeing
 shifty-eyed Tricky Ricky up there sweating up a storm and looking
 like he might go into cardiac arrest at any moment while Jack
 stood on the opposite side of the stage looking relaxed, bemused
 and loaded for bear, told me all I needed to know. Nolo contendre.
 Nixon was strictly Squaresville, daddy-o.

 People took those debates VERY seriously back then. Like a nation
 of shipping clerks recently promoted to Boss, we took our Post-WWII
 affluence as a great responsibility to be executed conscienciously. 
 Despite being Babes in the Woods, newcomers to the World Stage,
 totally naieve and utterly clueless, we were determined to do this 
 thing up right. We wanted to make something special of it and really
 believed we could. Our focus was entirely international and somehow, 
 we remained utterly blind to the many domestic disparities that 
 existed right under our noses. But we were trying. Rome wasn't built
 in a day and surely American Optomism would eventually win out.

 It was a totally different situation from today. Debates like that 
 have degenerated into ugly Spin-Fests in which canidates attempt to 
 cleverly out-lie one another. It doesn't matter what they promise, 
 they won't keep them anyways and nobody can make them do so. Our 
 innocent, earnest optomism has given way to a cynical, arrogant, 
 self-absorbed "Screw The World" attitude. We've discovered that 
 it's far easier and cheaper to just PRETEND to be the Good Guys 
 than it is to go to the expense and bother of actually BEING the 
 Good Guys. A notion our News Nazis are more than willing to massage 
 our egos with. We're now paying the price for that fantasy. While 
 the world's leaders happily kiss our butt for undisclosed financial 
 rewards, we are rapidly assuming Most Hated Nation status with their 
 populations. We try not to think about the many people around the 
 world who cheered watching those airliners auger into the WTC. We 
 ain't fool'n anybody but ourselves. 

 Being a young feller frivolously preoccupied with my recent discovery
 of girls, I didn't pay a lot of attention to what went on with Jack 
 after he got elected. I do recall that he wasn't nearly as wildly 
 popular as he later became in death. A second term seemed like only 
 a 50/50 proposition at best. It surprises a lot of people that that 
 should be so. But when you think of it, it was a major risk electing 
 someone that young and inexperienced at such a crucial time. If it 
 weren't for the perversity known as Tricky Ricky, it likely wouldn't 
 have happened. Jack seemed aware of that and generally took things 
 very slowly. He didn't go spinning wildly off on his own partisan 
 aggenda ignoring the half of the electorate that hadn't voted for 
 him. He knew he still had to prove himself.

 Whenever I saw him on the news he always gave the impression of being 
 a genuinely intelligent, well-dressed, articulate, frank and often 
 warmly funny man. Which is to say: he looked Bitch'n. He seemed to 
 enjoy being President. He was the embodiment of The New Post-WW2 
 American Man. I think he appealed to the new and rapidly growing 
 group of young professionals spawned by the GI-Bill who were just 
 working their way up the newly-expanded corporate ladder. They saw 
 in him what they would like to become: smart, witty, sophisticated,
 confident, sexy; but down-to-earth enough for a game of touch-football 
 or a romp with the kids. Sure, as a Son of Privilege, he came up the 
 easy way, but he did his time in the Navy up on the firing line where 
 he served with distinction. He didn't safely hide in the rear eschelons
 like the Ronny Reagan's did or weasel his way out like the John Wayne's
 did. He could very easily have done so. He was a Man's Man with a 
 Trophy Wife and rumors of secret liasons with the likes of Marilyn 
 Monroe. They could empathize, if not fantasize, with a guy like that. 
 Beat the hell outta Nixon and his stupid dog "Checkers".

 No President since has come even close. LBJ was just a hick, Nixon 
 looked and acted like Mutant Spawn, Carter was too naievely homespun, 
 Ford was a brain-dead moron, Reagan had the vocabulary of an 8-year
 old, Bush hardly knew how to speak English, Bubba had his teeny-bopper
 White House interns and Yellowbelly's afraid to say anything off-script 
 for fear we'll discover he's really a retard. While Jack is remembered 
 for "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for 
 your country.", Nixon is remembered for "I am not a crook" and Bubba 
 will always be remembered for his finger-jabbing lie "I did not have 
 sexsul [sic] relations with that woman [sic].". Jack was unique. While 
 my opinion of him now is far less flattering than it was at the time, 
 I just can't shake that residual affection he generated. He struck a 
 deep, almost primitive chord with people. With his trade-mark rocking-
 chair, that Boston Mandarin accent and his Harvard culture, he was a 
 real class act.

 Many years later while staying far up in the Canadian north, literally
 hundreds of miles from anything like a city, I had a friend. She was
 an old lady who lived in a tiny shack off in the woods. She was poor 
 as a church mouse but generous to a fault - she'd share her last bag
 of tea before she'd let a guest go without. No neighbors or anything, 
 though her family often dropped in and kept a close eye on her. I used 
 to drop by occasionally for tea and bannock. The first time I did so 
 I remember well seeing two prominently placed, yellowed old 'icons' 
 she had taped to the wall next to her kitchen table. They looked like 
 she had cut them out of a newspaper ages ago. One was of Queen 
 Elizabeth II, the other was of a smiling Jack Kennedy. 

 With Jack's death, overnight we traded the hopes and dreams of Camelot
 for an ugly Cracker from Texas with his ugly wife and ugly daughters.
 An era ended and America descended into a darkness of riots, war and 
 asassinations that permanently warped our national character. A spiritual 
 sickness descended on the land. One I don't think we'll ever recover
 from. I consider myself fortunate to have had a little glimpse of what
 we could have been.
 
......................................................................

 "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth
 itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle."

                        - Thomas Jefferson -
                           June 11, 1807
.......................................................................

                       'OL YELLER GOES TO WAR

 Bearing in mind that...
 (1) We still don't know for sure who pulled off the NYC/DC attacks -
     all the perpetrators presumedly died in the act and no credible 
     group has yet claimed responsibility;
 (2) Despite a flood of conflicting 'facts', there still hasn't 
     been a single Congressional or Presidential investigation of 
     the attacks to at least ascertain the basic data;
 (3) We still haven't been given the slightest shred of evidence
     that Osama bin Ladin is directly responsible for any of it,
     including that BS Tony Blair's trying to peddle.

 "Look at me Mama! I'm the King of Kabul!", said Ol Yeller as he 
 laughingly strutted in grand fashion around the Oval Office with 
 a towel wrapped around his head and carrying a fly swatter. "Weeel 
 Doggies! If that don't beat all! Isn't that the towel you swiped 
 out of the Nebraska White House during our recent stay Duhbya?", 
 asked the Queen of Kabul. "Quiet about that, dang it! You try'n to 
 get me into trouble with the General Accounting Office or something? 
 You know how sensitive they are about stuff like that. Even after 
 the girls left a few cases of empties behind instead of cashing 
 them in for the deposit. I thought it was a sweet little gesture 
 on their part, dang it.", said President Yellowbelly. 

 "For heaven sakes Duhbya, you're the President of the Gol Dang 
 United States. The Leader of the Free World. You can do any dang
 thing you take a mind to doing. You could have the entire GAO 
 declared a Terrorist Operation and have them folks all shot at 
 dawn if you wanted to.", boasted the Executive Ball 'n Chain. 
 "Oh yeah. That's right. I plumb near fergot. Thanks for the 
 reminder Sugar Plum. Get that Mule feller at the FBI on the horn 
 and ask him to find out if they got any folks with A-rab sound'n 
 names at the GAO.  Wouldn't hurt to put a little of the Fear of 
 Allah in 'em, now would it?", conjectured President Yellowbelly 
 with a chuckle as he playfully snapped his towel at the First 
 Darl'n. 

 Right about then a White House Aide stuck her head in the door
 announcing General Powell's arrival. Shoving the Aide aside 
 with his arm and nearly planting her in the wall, the Chairman 
 of the Joint Chiefs of State strolled briskly through the door 
 wearing a big smile and a real flashy looking Hawaiian shirt. 
 "General Powell!", gushed Ol Yeller, "I am not worthy! I am not 
 worthy!". "I know that you blubbering idiot!", matter-of-factly 
 responded the General, "None the less you are the President, even 
 if I was far more deserving, and protocol dictates that I have 
 to occasionally waste my precious time talking to you in person. 
 However distasteful I may find the experience." 

 "Oh thank you, thank you, thank you General. Yo! Yo! Yo! So...
 whas' hap'n'in in the Hood Bro? You still be hang'n with the Jew 
 Boys or you and Judge Thomas be troll'n for White Womens to sex 
 up?", said a grinning Yellowbelly as he tried to smoothly 
 transition into Ebonics Mode. "Oh for Heavens Sakes knock off 
 that stupid Negro Jive Mr. President. I hate Negroes. You know 
 that.", snappily responded General Powell. "I'm here simply to 
 get your authorization to withdraw more gold bullion from Fort 
 Knox for my upcoming negotiations with the Israelis. Now that 
 we've taken Kabul, General Sharon wants to quickly move in and 
 buy up all the property in sight. You know how Jews are about 
 land. I'll slip it to him through the 'usual' channels set up 
 during my time at the Pentagon, that is to say - under the table." 
 grinned the General.

 "Gooolllly! Them Jew folks sure are quick on the draw when it comes
 to money, ain't they!?", replied Ol Yeller, "Of course. Of course.
 Take all the gold you want. Anything to keep them happy. Just make
 sure I get my usual percentage of the Kick Back." "Certainly Mr.
 President. I'd also like your authorization to purchase a couple
 of luridly erotic and thoroughly ugly statues that caught Mr. 
 Arafat's eye on his last trip to Camp David. A little Goodwill 
 gesture to the Palestinians on our part so we can keep stringing
 them along about that Palestinian Homeland malarchy. Ho! Ho! Ho!"
 laughed the General. "Why sure", said Ol Yeller adding, "If them
 statues are real nasty, pick me up a couple too while you're at
 it, will ya?" "I already did Mr. President. Now I must be off. 
 A salam aleichem!" said the General as he saluted and quickly 
 disappeared out the door. "Real nice feller for a Negro, ain't he 
 Mama?", said Yellowbelly. "Hung like a ballpeen hammer too from 
 I hear", responded the First Lady with that far-away look in her 
 eyes. "Ohmagosh! I can't believe I just said that."

 Continuing his relentless attack on America from his secret bunker
 deep in the heart of Afghanistan, Osama bin Ladin this week took
 personal responsibility for hypnotising an Atlanta football fan
 into breaching security at an airport, causing an 8-inch rainfall 
 in Texas, planting cocaine in the purse of "Bay Watch" star Jasmine 
 Bleeth, forcing the Sonics to lose yet another game, causing a woman
 in Wisconsin to involuntarily force-feed hot peppers to her 3-year
 old son, hacking the Ohio Attorney General's webpage linking it to
 beastiality pictures and planting a dead mouse in a can of Campbell's 
 Tomato Juice. On an international satellite TV feed he tauntingly
 declared, "You ain't seen nuth'n yet baby. I'm just get'n warmed up."
 
 Does the fall of Kabul, as our News Nazis would have us believe, 
 spell the end of the Taliban or is it merely a strategic withdrawal?
 Aside from a few square miles around the Dirt Holes they call cities 
 over there, do we actually control anything else in Afghanistan? And 
 what of Al-Qaida's untouched international network? When will they 
 strike again to goad The Great Satan into a suicidal frenzy of over-
 reaction? Today? Tomorrow? Next week? How long can our Paycheck 
 Patriots have Bin Laden 'cornered' before somebody tells them to put 
 or shut up? Why isn't the anthrax attacker impressed by our War on 
 Terrorism? Is the sky really falling as Veep Cheney says or is he 
 just stoned from all those heart medications he's taking? And when 
 will we tire of this futile spinning like a bug in a bowl?

..................................................................
 
 A British naval officer is out rowing on a lake one fine summer's
 day when he accidently loses both his oars. Nearby, he notices a
 young sailor rowing around with two lovely young ladies.
 "I say young man, could I borrow one of your oars!", he yelled.
 To which the young Bluejacket replied,
 "Beg'n your pardon sir, but them's not 'ores, thems me sisters."

......................................................................

 		        MONDO VATICANO

 Remember the three Congressional Catholics named by right-wing 
 wacko Catholic anti-abortionists as traitors. The same ones they 
 petitioned Rome to have excommunicated: Tom Daschle, Patrick 
 Lehey and Ted Kennedy? Two of the three were recipients of the 
 Congressional anthrax letters. Just a cooincidence? How about
 those 170 abortion clinics that received anthrax threats? Instead 
 of looking for Muslim extremists, maybe the FBI should be looking 
 for Catholic extremists. Nah. Might cost Ol Yeller the Catholic
 Vote. It's better to just let them keep killing people.
			+	+	+
 Gazing out from the 1000-room complex in the heart of Roma whose
 walls are covered with priceless art treasures and whose halls 
 are lined with priceless statues. With the help of his large 
 domestic staff, hundreds of administrative assistants and many 
 personal chaplains (though without going to his luxurious 
 vacation castle in the Italian countryside), Future-Super-Saint 
 JP-2, all around Rich Guy and close personal friend of God, a 
 man whose paycheck is a blank-check, finally took a few moments 
 out of his busy schedule to make an urgent plea to the world to 
 help the poor Infidels of Afghanistan. Just don't be slipping any 
 birth-control stuff in there or it'd be better to let the Heathen 
 bastards starve. The appeal itself was JP-2's contribution. He 
 didn't mention any Vatican contribution to the effort. They're 
 strictly a "Do As I Say, Not As I Do" operation.
			+	+	+
 Vatican Warlord and Grand Inquisitor, Cardinal "Ratso" Ratzinger,
 gave a rare Defence Briefing in the Sistine Chapel's War Room this 
 week. Flanked by members of the Swiss Guard's elite Special Forces
 Unit armed with high-tech battle axes, wearing his old Wehrmacht 
 jacket with the cute little skulls on the lapels, Ratso declared 
 war a deeply spiritual and morally edifying activity for all Catholics 
 to engage in. In fact, he declared, it just might be a mortal sin 
 NOT to engage in warfare. He finished his speech by meerily goose-
 steeping around the stage as members of the Sacred Congregation 
 for Spiritual and Racial Purity belted out a rousing chorus of 
 that old Catholic Beer Hall war hymn "Curia Uber Alles". 

 Not long afterwards, the American Bishops joined Ratso's goose-
 stepping parade declaring war to be a wonderful thing. Just showing 
 their appreciation for all the free taxpayer money President 
 Yellowbelly sent their way with his restructured social programs. 
 Wouldn't it be a mortal sin to follow the teachings of Church 
 Fathers who sell their souls to the highest bidder? You bet your
 sweet ass it would be. A clean conscience is worth more to God
 than a whole train-load of Bishops decrees.
			+	+	+ 
 One man's horrible death in a 100-story skyscrapper is another
 man's golden opportunity. At least that's the way new American
 Cardinal Dulles sees it. Sure thousands of innocent people got 
 instantly transformed into round-ground and burnt-weenies in the 
 WTC, but look at the wonderful opportunity it created for Holy 
 Mother Church to ingratiate Herself to everyone, and get a foot 
 in the door She otherwise might not have been able to manage. 
 Some guys are just born optomists eh. Others are just born to 
 be cheap exploiters of other people's pain and misery. Not hard 
 to see which side Cardinal Dulles is on.
 			+	+	+
 Sholem Asch was an unusual guy. He was a famous Jewish writer 
 who wrote only in Yiddish. But his best-known novels were about 
 Christ and those around Him. This got him into a lot of trouble 
 with everybody. Even today many Jews spit on his name and call 
 him a traitor - a Jew for Jesus. On the other hand, what few 
 Christians are aware of him, consider him a Jew who was trying 
 to turn Jesus into merely a Great Jewish Teacher. In fact, I 
 think he was just a Jew who was fascinated with this best known 
 of all Jewish Rebbes. Many have been over the centuries. He 
 tried to understand Christ and His message in terms of Jewish 
 traditions and 'bring Him alive' in those terms. A perspective 
 either completely lacking or only clumsily attempted in Christian 
 literature about Christ. Few Christians are even vaguely aware
 of Judaism's vast and rich bounty of spirtual treasures. And 
 there's no denying, he felt some sort of strong bond with this 
 Rabbi, though it's a bit of a stretch to call him a Jew For 
 Jesus. He remained a practicing Jew his entire life. He also 
 wrote about Mary, St. Paul and Moses, among others. He enjoyed 
 tremendous literary popularity in the 30's and 40's but his 
 novels are now out-of-print and a little hard to find outside 
 of libraries. The occasional one pops up in used-book stores.

-------------------------------------------------- 
 The above is copyright material. You want to use it, 
 ask. You want to make money off it, gimme some first. 
 I'll let you know if it's enough. You want to steal it, 
 I'll sic my lawyer Yoshi 'The Proctologist' Rasmussen 
 on you baby. He'll teriyaki your sorry butt and turn 
 it into Lutefisk.
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