Posts: 10

1. Views From The Parking Lot

   10.Jul.08, 14:06 EDT
   
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   My grandfather wasn't much of a talker, but he could come up with some good sayings . . . if you knew how to get him to talk.  A politician came to his front porch one time, and grandpa shook hands with the guy and promised faithfully to vote for him.  When the politician left, grandpa admitted that he hadn't decided who to vote for.  He held most politicians in low regard, but this particular man was a boiled shirt - a town man with slick manners and shined shoes.  That sort of thing would've been a big turn-off for my grandpa. 
   
   But . . . the old man wasn't your typical country farmer.  He knew people, how they were and how they acted, and he likewise knew that manners and dress had little to do with good society.  What we needed then (and still do) are people who have good sense . . . you know, somebody with a vision . . . and you don't find that in ignorant people.  "You know," he once said,"if ignorance was like peanut butter and could be spread with a knife, there's enough of it right here in this county to ignorance the whole state . . . and parts of others states, too."
   
   I'm 67 years old now, should have toughened up to my social environment by now, but I'm still shocked at all the stupidity and ignorance around me.  Here in Texas, we're eaten up with it.  A good 40 percent of the people living around me (that's four out of ten) are functionally illiterate . . . and it shows.  At the store yesterday, in a big parking lot, a fancy SUV zipped into a parking space beside me.  Two fat women popped out of it, with cigarettes hanging out of their mouths, and headed for the store entrance.  They left a guy sitting in the back seat.  He got out, moved to the driver's side front door long enough to use the cigarette lighter.  His skin was the color of paste, and he was bone thin . . . another of our local meth addicts.
   
   Not far away, at my wife's business, she's calling police to have them come get a car moved out of her parking place.  She'd gone to the neighboring house, where a bunch of young folks live, and asked them to move the car.  Nobody responded.  In fact, only one of them was awake . . . at 2:00 PM.  The cops didn't respond either, but someone removed the vehicle later that afternoon.  More drugs at work . . . and officials who can't handle it.  Here in this small town, we're essentially without law enforcement. 
   
   A rash of break-ins prompted a local newspaper column lately, but the headlines were about our Congressman (republican) coming to town to tell us how wonderful things were in Washington (and the U.S.) . . . and how we needed to work hard to make sure Republicans stayed in control of things.  I lock my cars now, even in my own driveway.  And just this week, I loaded my pistols for the first time in many years.  I'd like to live in a town or state or nation where that's not necessary.
   
   . . . but I don't.
   
   
   D. Paz, 7/10/08
   
   

2. The Coolest Day of Your Life

   27.Jun.08, 11:13 EDT
   
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   Caution: This blog is not for whimpy drinkers - the folks who think they're cool when they drink.  In fact, if you're one of those party set drinkers, you're probably not tough enough to read this.  This is for the tough guys and gals, the one who think they're past just cool - they're ice.  Yeah, this is for you guys.
   
   
   He shifted his weight uneasily, looked at the floor for a few seconds, then gave up his place and moved away.  The weight of my stare got too great for him, I guess - either that or he decided the bar was where he needed to be rather than standing in line at the food service window.  He looked like hammered shit.  I knew the look well because I've worn it a lot in my lifetime - that awful day after the big night look.  He needed to eat, but food woundn't stop his shaking, and it wouldn't stop his cravings.  No pill known to man can take away that feeling, so he did the next best thing - he drank again.  I saw him again thirty minutes later, looking much better and even smiling at the woman with him.  She had on a sleeveless t-shirt inscribed, "Rehab is for quitters."

    

   Yeah, you two are sure a couple of winners, I couldn't help thinking to myself.  Life in the fast lane, the party crowd, young and looking good . . . and so cool you're damn near a human air conditioner.  Cool, baby, and living the high life because that's the best way to enjoy it, you see.  It's party time, fuck everything else.  You're young and full of yourself, and the road is wide and smooth right now.  Oh, you've found a few hills and curves and bumps lately, but it's still a helluva good road where your can go as fast as your will and body can carry you.  But the thing is . . . you don't know jack shit about cool yet, but you're going to know before too long. You think you're bullet proof, or that maybe you'll duck when the time comes.  You're wrong.
   
   Let me tell you what cool isn't.  It's not puking your guts up on somebody, that's for sure.  It's not getting the shit beat out of you, and it's not running off your drug and alcohol induced mouth, saying things that make you look like the world's biggest dumbass.  It's not pissing the bed because you're too drunk or drugged up to get to a bathroom.  It's not crapping your pants due to the bad diarrhea you've got from all the partying.  It's not slobbering when you talk or try to eat, or even when you try to kiss . . . and it sure as hell isn't cool trying to fuck with a half hard dick or (if you're a gal) when you didn't even have the presence of mind to take off your panty hose.  It's not losing you car, or worse yet, wrecking it.  And finally, it's not having to pull the pillow away from your head in the morning because you nose bled during the night.
   
   But you say you haven't done those things yet?  Well, maybe a few of them, but it's not a big deal because it doesn't happen often.  It will get worse, believe me, it will.  But that's a long way off, right?  You've still got time to get in some heavy duty partying before that happens.  And don't worry, I'm not about to try and talk you out of it.  You've already bought the ticket, so you might as well go ahead and ride the train until it stops.  Maybe by then you'll still be alive and willing to realize how stupid that t-shirt is.  Rehab is for quitters?  Maybe, but it's also for people who want to live . . . and to live life without being a fool.  And the day you finally wise up and decide to straighten up will be the coldest day of you life.  Then, and only then, will you know what cool really is.
   
   I was in my early twenties the first time I woke up with a pillow stuck to my head.  That's because a couple of guys batted me around pretty good the night before, not because of a nose bleed.  That wouldn't come for another fifteen years.  I got up, stumbled to a bathroom, and pried open my swollen eyes with my fingers.  My lips were puffed up and when I blinked my eyes, blood squirted from cuts I couldn't see.  My back was cut up from where some guy had taken at beer opener to me.  My clothes were ripped to shreds.  The gal I had spent the night with woke up just long enough to say, "I hope you fucking die."  I never saw her again, but I relived that scene a number of time before I lived my coldest day.
   
   Yeah, I was a tough guy . . . the one who could outdrink anybody, who was always ready for whatever adventure or trouble came up.  I lasted until I was forty years old that way . . . then crashed and burned.  And my coldest day?  I woke up in a silent house, my wife and kids gone.  A note on the kitchen table said I could drink myself to death if I wanted to, but "they" were leaving.  I knew I was in deep shit because I didn't care.  And I was cold to the bone, shaking and wishing like hell I could die and be done with it all.  A week later I was in rehab.  And I never drank again, not to this day.
   
   There wasn't a damn thing cool about me, and I sure as hell wasn't tough.  I was just another drunk, regardless of my social standing in life.  I was a jerk and a chickenshit, and I deserved everything a shitty life gave me.  The only thing good I can say about myself back then is that I did not whimper when it came time to pay the fiddler.  And I paid plenty . . . broken marriage, damaged lives (and not only my own), and a lifetime of regrets.  And yes, I'm a crusader who does what he can now to reach people with problems with booze and other drugs.  I don't talk about it much, and I might not even mention drinking or using . . . but it's in everything I write, one way or another.
   
   And sometimes I just come right out and say it.  Drink if you must, but never lose sight of the risks involved with it.  Party hardy, but try to think about the days you can't do that.  Get over the cool image thing.  No drunk or druggie is cool . . . even if it's just for a little while.  If you abuse, you lose . . . it's just that simple, and your coolest day will be the one you realize all that.
   
   

3. Spams, Scams, and Uncle Sams

   03.Jun.08, 16:48 EDT
   
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   I'm loving it, all the jabber about scams and spams on moli . . . and I read the remarks thinking, "Hey, just what did you expect?  It's a social network, for Christ's sake!  It's internet!  AND, IT'S THE WAY OF THE WORLD!" 
   
   I haven't posted a blog in a month.  I'm swearing off blogs, for the most part, have decided they're a waste of time - fun, but a waste of time.  But I just had to stick my two cents into this talk about spams and scams.  I get lots of them, and I always turn them in, and they almost always end up being taken off moli.  I figure that's the least I can do for the network that's been so good to/for me.  Heck, I've had one of the network's biggest and most visited sites, and that's always good for a blogger's ego.  Nothing is forever, though.  Anything that's good always gets invaded by the creeps, the crazies, the whores, the nitwits, and the scam artists.  That's just the way it is in modern world, and that's too bad.
   
   But I've been thinking that maybe the best way to handle it all is by taking a different approach to dealing with the scumballs and grifters.  If you can't stop it, then have some fun with it.  And I'm not talking now about those pesky out of the shadows adds you get, those come-ons from the whores.  I'm talking about all the sites that pop up that are just as objectionable . . . and obviously unavoidable.  The spams from gals from foreign countries sure aren't the only ones on moli who are peddling ass, if you get my drift.  In fact, almost everybody is peddling something, right? 
   
   I for one don't like having my site appear among members right beside a bare ass.  I work hard at creating nice logos for my sites, you know, good graphics . . . but nothing I come up with can compete with a well proportioned set of boobs or a nice ass.  So . . . if moli can't stop the bare ass pics that keep popping up, then maybe we all should post bare asses on our sites for a while.  That would sure bring things into perspective.  I know for a fact that a shot of my ass on moli would underscore the importance of putting a lid on such displays.  Since my wife and I both have sites on moli, I'm trying to talk her into posting her ass first . . . but she's not going for it.
   
   When it gets right down to it, I don't object to most bare butts.  In fact, I like the whores on moli.  Peddling nookie is the world's oldest profession (some might argue that begging is, since somebody had to ask first), so if any business belongs there, I guess whores can claim a right to be there.  Some of their adds are actually tasteful.  I do object to the ugly asses, though.  Jeez!  Why would somebody want to post a pic of an ass big enough to park a bus under?  Then again, if you're going to allow butts, you can't discriminate against the large ones, right? Or the ugly ones.
   
   And who are these dipshits with profile pics of the uplifted finger, the bird?  What's with that shit?  Is that your IQ, or what?  I'd rather have the scams and spams than that crap . . . but again, if you're going to have big asses, then a finger is a little thing.  I want to see more moms and their babies pics, more grandpas and grandkids, and more wholesome stuff like that . . . but that's just not the way of the day.  Nope, we're into tattoos, tits, asses, fingers, sex, punk rock, funky hair, shitty music, and all the stuff that drives old farts like me nuts.
   
   I've pretty much dismantled my sites on moli - campo madrone and D&E Ranch.  I have in mind a total remodeling.  If I decide to hang around a while longer, I'm going to go with the flow . . . and that means I've got to change my approach to social networking.  Since the blogging aspect of The Community has been pretty much replaced by commercials, not real blogs, I'll go with that and do the same.  In fact, this blog is a commercial.  It's a commercial against commercials.  My new sites just might open to the sounds of the Stones singing "Get Off Of My Cloud."
   
   I'm also thinking maybe I need more sexy stuff . . . you know, maybe some T&A for the elderly.  That suggestion alone ought to make you shudder.  Maybe I'll make a patriotic thing of it . . . trot out Uncle Sam, pointing a stern finger at you, and saying, "Now you guys play nice."  By that, he's telling us that some of you commercial folks out there, the ones selling something on moli, need to shut up about the spams and scams.  Some of you guys don't play nice either.
   
   And it is just play . . . isn't it?
   
   D. Paz Dalton, 6/3/08
   
   

4. The Rise of Rural America in National Politics

   25.Apr.08, 12:30 EDT
   
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   Cityslicker arrogance has always pissed me off, but from the looks of things right now, they might be about to get their comeuppance . . . at least as far as the Democratic nomination for President is concerned.  Here in Texas the Obama people were sure they'd win the presidential primary, but they didn't.  All the indicators pointed toward him.  Big, enthusiastic crowds of young folks at city held affairs made Obama look like a shoe-in . . . but they forgot about us country folks.  When the votes were counted, Obama took the urban centers, didn't hardly win a single rural county.  A few days ago in Pennsylvania, the same scenario developed.  But since the press folks are all cityslickers, they don't seem to be reporting that.  They talk a lot about older folks not liking Obama, about how the blue collar set isn't thrilled with him . . . but they don't point out where those folks live.
   
   Yeah, cities are full of blue collar types and lots of old folks.  The flight to the cities has left most smaller towns stocked mostly with older people . . . and they like Hillary better than they do Obama.  Maybe the big question is:  Do they like McCain better than either Hillary or Obama?  My guess is that they just might, when it's all said and done.  I'm old.  I'm a Democrat.  And I'm damn well pissed off at my own party right now.
   
   Time magazine just reported that the stalemate with the Democrats could end in three ways: 1) Hillary looses Indiana and North Carolina and quits the race, 2) the party bigwigs step in and settle the mess before the convention, or 3) it goes all the way to Denver still unresolved.  I like solution number one best.  I don't know about the power brokers in the party stepping in.  Seems to me they've been gutlessly quiet up to now, so why expect anything from them?  If it goes to Denver unresolved, however, my guess is the Democrats will lose the election.  Too much bloodshed within their own party will ensure that.
   
   But there's one nice thing about all this - us hicks are back in play.  Yep, you city folks can be as arrogant as you want, but it just might be us who decides who's the next president of the U.S.  That'll learn ya, dern ya.
   
   D. Paz, 4/24/08

5. Letting Go

   09.Apr.08, 10:59 EDT
   
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   One of the things old age deals to you is a lesson in letting go.  It's not on the surface a good lesson because letting go isn't easy, but it's good in that we all need to learn how to turn loose of what's no longer practical . . . or needed.  And sometimes we have to let go just because we can't maintain the effort it takes to keep things.  I'm starting to understand that one of the hardest things to turn loose of is responsibility, and a lot of that responsibility revolves around things we no longer need or can afford.  Lately, I'm trying to make myself get used to the idea of turning loose of Campo Madrone.
   
   Earlier this morning when it was still misting rain, I went over to Campo Madrone (the guitar shop and home to all my stuff) and piddled around.  I even turned on my old keyboard and played with it a while.  Then I looked over some of the instruments hanging on the walls and stuck away in cases, thinking I need to let go of them too.  There are some repairs that need doing, little jobs here and there.  The fruit trees are blooming, and the grass needs mowing already.  The old lawnmower finally died, so I'll have to run out to Wal-Mart and get another one tomorrow.  But it's raining today.  That little chore will wait a while.
   
   We own too much, my wife and I, and some of it needs to go.  It's dragging us down, financially and physically and mentally.  Campo Madrone will go up for sale before long, but it might take six months to a year for me to get enough for it to make it worth selling.  And I'll sell some stuff on ebay, get the collections down to something I can keep around the house here.  My sister and her husband have been wanting to buy my half of a little farm we own down in Mississippi.  Maybe I'll give in and sell it to them . . . one more thing not to have to deal with anymore.
   
   And that's what it all comes down to, you know, the dealing with accumulated things we need to let go of.  We could always save it and let the kids fight over it, but that's stupid.  Heirs don't have the same feeling for things that the former owners did.  If they did, I wouldn't have so much stuff . . . yeah, things I need to let go of.   And I'm old now, and I understand that.  I don't have anything that's really worth leaving to anyone, other than the properties, and that needs to go.  My letting go of these things just means less to worry about, for the most part, but nostalgia is a bitch to deal with.
   
   Maybe it's fitting that today is a rainy day.  This is the day I woke up enough worn down with responsibility and obligation that I'm finally willing to let go.  And you know what?  It hurts like a sumbitch!
   
   D. Paz, 4/9/08 

6. Rhythms of the Rio Grande

   01.Apr.08, 11:48 EDT
   
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   She's an old river, the Rio Grande, or perhaps you prefer to call her the Rio Bravo like the Mexicans do.  Two countries and three states lay claim to her, but she really belongs to no one - at least not as a continuous river that flows from Colorado to the Gulf of Mexico.  That river, the river that was here before people came in abundant numbers to live along her banks, does not exist anymore.  What we have now are several Rio Grande's, and this is because it becomes nothing more than a trickle in places, perhaps even dries up completely.  Maybe that river never comes alive again, but another one starts in it's place, in the same river bed the ancient river cut so long ago.  See it any way you like, call it what you will, but the river flows again. 
   
   I've visited this river in all three states she flows through.  I've fished the river, hiked along her banks even, in New Mexico.  I've even crawled down the side of the Grand Canyon of the Rio Grande just north of Taos to fish it.  I've hiked along the banks near Albuquerque, and I've visited it south of Elephant Butte Lake near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico where she's hardly a river at all.  At El Paso, she's not much of a river, but she picks up some water southwest of there.  I hiked along her banks in Big Bend National Park, saw her again southwest of there near Del Rio, and then again at Eagle Pass.  By the time she gets there, when she's finished the run through the canyons, she's looking fairly good.
   
   In recent month I've become acquainted with the Rio Grande from Laredo down to the area just south of Westlaco.  I stopped off at a federal bird preserve along the river not far from Progresso, took some pictures, walked along her banks a ways.  And I stopped long enough to notice how her rhythm has changed this far southwest.  No, she's not the same river I've visited in Colorado, or in New Mexico, or even at Ojinaga.  She still moves slow, but she's fairly deep and wide there in the park near Progresso.  In fact, she's beautiful in that setting of trees hanging over her banks, many of them dripping with Spanish moss.  Along the banks I find clothing of Mexicans who forded the river, then stripped off their wet clothes and headed inland in dry clothes.  It's a harsh country there around the river, not at all hospitable.  It's not rugged like in the canyons, but it's brushy and hard to navigate through.  Still, it apparently stops few from coming over.
   
   I sat on a park bench in the beautiful square at San Ygnacio.  High winds made the trees sway back and forth.  I've lived in windy country most of my life, but this is a different rhythm than on the windswept plains of the Oklahoma panhandle.  The wind there hammers you, has a driving rhythm that makes you irritable after a while.  It was hot in San Ygnacio the day I stopped to take pictures . . . but the rhythm was soothing.  Two days later I was again enjoying the rhythm in the valley, on the river near Progresso.  It's different because the rhythm here has a hum to it . . . or maybe it's more like a buzz.  Maybe that's due to the large number of people moving about there.   And they move a lot.
   
   I don't take notes these days, but I don't need to.  I remember things like that - the rhythms, the pulse of a place . . . and everything has a pulse it seems.  I had to get old before I could pick it up.  And on that day last week when I sat on the park bench in San Ygnacio, with the wind giving voice to the trees above me, being old didn't seem like such a bad thing.
   
   PHM, 4/1/08 
   
   

7. The Charge of the Lightwhores Brigade

   23.Mar.08, 11:00 EDT
   
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   Apologies are in order right up front to the famous Australian Lighthorse Brigade that distinguished itself in WWI, but I just couldn't fight off the temptation to parody the famous phrase into something far less heroic.  What I'm talking about here is the band of bamboozlers at the White House who worked so hard at selling the war to the American public when they attacked Iraq.  And they did find a lot of people willing to swallow the swill they threw out at that time . . . bullshit, mostly.  Actually, what they dumped on the public in terms of propaganda went past being just bullshit because it was actually just a load of lies.  This blog is about the liars, the propagandists, who did the job on all you dumbasses who supported the war.  
   
   I bring this up mostly because of some recent talk about McCain possibly choosing Colin Powell as a running mate.   Whoopie!  That's just what the country needs - a couple of former military men in the White House . . . and more war in Iraq.  But wait?  Hasn't Powell changed his mind about all that?  Hasn't he publically stated that he thinks his support of the war was a mistake and a blot on his record of public service?  Nope, not really.  Mostly what Powell has done is clam up, retreat into retirement . . . or running around giving motivational speeches for outrageous sums of money.  In other words, he's still a whore, still sucking the tit of public service and all the while looking more pathetic.  Powell, you see, was a major officer in the Lightwhores Brigade at the White House.  You remember, right?  The dude who got up before the Security Council of the U.N. and lied his ass off . . . yeah, the one who went around the country making speeches about what a danger Iraq was to the free world.
   
   Last fall there was lots of chatter about Charles Ferguson's No End in Sight documentary about the war and what all went on.  Word had it that advisors at the White House were in a stew about it.  Big hitters, former members of the Lightwhores Brigade, like Lawrence Wilkerson, Powell's chief of staff, and Richard Armitage, deputy secretary of state, and ambassador Barbara Bodine have all turned critics of the war . . . and of the strategy that set it in motion.  Powell has been absentee in all this criticism.  Oh, he's made a few little remarks, like his prediction the surge wouldn't work.  Looks like Wilkerson, Armitage, and Bodine got tired of being whores for the Bush Bandits and are trying to reform, or at least rid themselves of the smell of a war gone rotten.
   
   And then there's Condoleezza Rice, the gal who replaced Powell and continues to be a lap dog for the Bush war machine.  Lap dog, yeah, but she's worse than a lacky . . . she's still dangling her feet in the air for the vested interest, the greedy sonsabitches who so badly wanted this war.  I don't get it.  Even Time magazine excuses Rice for all she's done to aid this war.  So she's smart - so what?  She's still an architect of a war that's killed four thousand young men and women, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens.  I don't give a shit what's she's been in the past; she's corrupt to the core now.
   
   A few years back I ran into a fellow left winger, and he was telling me about this dream he'd had.  He said that in the dream he suddenly found himself in a dark wooded area, but in the distance he could see city lights.  He's suddenly aware that the city is Washington, that he's in the woods somewhere along the Potomac River - and there's all sorts of movement around him.  There's this enormous caldron, so large that it's probably ten feet high and a good ten feet in diameter.  Condoleezza Rice is standing on a step ladder stirring the boiling mess with a large boat paddle.  Donald Rumsfeld takes care of the fire, piling on more wood and simpering like a wicked gnome.  At about this point in the story, I start laughing, but it gets better, or worse, depending on how you see it.
   
   Swift boats, manned by men wearing t-shirts inscribed "Kerry: Unfit for Command" are pulling bodies from their boats and hauling them to the caldron, where they dump them in.  Rice cackles like a witch each time a body is dumped into the war stew she's brewing.  The Prez, Bush himself, is nearby, pacing back and forth and looking . . . well, looking stupid like he always looks.  Over by a tree, half concealed, is Cheney, whacking off while looking at pictures of destruction in Iraq.  And on the other side of the tree, Powell has a noose around his neck and is trying to throw the other end of the rope over a limb so he can hang himself.  At that point in the story, I'm on the ground, rolling around and almost too spent to laugh out loud.
   
   But . . . I suddenly realize that my friend is not laughing, that he is actually weeping.  I sit up and look around.  I'm in the parking lot near a food market, and people are starting to stare at us.  So, I get up and start to console my distraught friend, telling him that it's just a dream.  Forget it, I tell him - it's not real.  That night when I went to bed, dog tired and needing a good night's rest, the story about the dream came back to me . . . and I had to get up and watch re-runs on television until I fell asleep in my recliner.  And wouldn't you know, I dreamed of snakes.
   
   I hate it when that happens.
   
   D. Paz, 3/23/08

8. The Real Border Ain't No River

   19.Feb.08, 16:33 EST
   
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   I posted this blog some months ago, but considering all the talk about the border these days, I thought it deserved a second time around.
   
   
   The border between Mexico and the U.S. is easy to find because it's the Rio Grande River.  In New Mexico, Arizona, and California, the situation changes, and different situations require different management techniques.  Some folks seem to think the U.S. does little or nothing to stop the flow of illegal immigrants into this country, but that's not true.  We work hard at keeping them out . . . but we just don't work hard enough at it.  And sometimes we don't go about it the right way either.  I blame it on politicians, but that's nothing new with me because I blame most things that go wrong in our society on them.  And why shouldn't I?  Aren't they the ones who're supposed to be running things?
   
   Like most Americans, I have little faith in Congress when it comes to taking care of problems like the border crisis.  We've got close to fifty million Latinos in the U.S., many of the illegals, and what are we getting from Congress as a solution to the problem?  Nada, zilch, zero, that's what.  Oh, they're working on it, spending lots of our tax dollars and precious time . . . and getting nowhere.  And I've been worried about that until recently when it dawned on me that even if they do something, it will more than likely be wrong.  I'm no longer pushing for a Congressional solution to the border crisis.  What I'd like to see is the enforcement of laws we already have.
   
   Of all the problems facing us at the moment, the border crisis is the most troubling.  Congress can't find a solution because of politics, which means that too many people have too many agendas concerning what's best for America.  And it is a difficult problem because there's lots of confusion about what's right . . . not just for us but for immigrants wanting to come here.  We have an abundance of work here in the U.S. and not enough people willing to do it . . . and that's a fact.  Even our poor people think they're too good to do certain kinds of work, and these jobs are often the ones the Mexican migrant workers fill . . . and with gratitide in most cases.  Doesn't it make you wonder about the sanity of a country that wants to reject willing workers, especially when their own people are too lazy to do the work?
   
   I just took a look at population figures in the U.S. and see that we're running close to 300,000,000 people now.  Of that number, about 80 percent are classified as white.  Remember, latinos are counted in that number, but even if over forty million of the whites are latinos, we've still got a comfortable majority of gringos here in America.  What we're talking about is a figure somewhere around 200,000,000 lilly white Americans.  Blacks still make up less than 13 percent of the population, and Asians are far beneath that at about 4 percent.  What that means is that the only real threat to white America in terms of population is coming from the latinos.  Maybe that's what sets some of them off, demanding things as ridiculous as building a wall between the Mexico and the U.S.
   
   In case you're in that group, the let's shut the border bunch, here's something for you to think about.  The real border between Mexico and the U.S. ain't no river, and it ain't no line drawn in the desert sand either.  GOT IT?  ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION?  What I'm saying to some of you slow learners out there is that there's no border to guard . . . at least one that's material enough to protect.  We can increase the Border Patrol ten fold, build walls, poison the water in the Rio Grande (more than pollution already has), and even send the entire army down there . . . and we still won't stop the Mexicans from coming.  They will find ways to get over, under, and around your iron curtain or whatever you construct there to keep them out.  The real border is in how we deal with the problem of illegal immigration, and that's something that's in the hands of Congress and other government groups, and that's like giving a handful of shit to a chimp.  All that's going to happen is that more shit gets smeared around . . . and the place is ugly enough already.
   
   I go to the Texas/Mexico border a lot because I live close enough to get there with ease.  In just a few hours, I can be there, and I go with my eyes open.  I watch what's happening there, and some of it is disheartening.  There's lots of crime along the border, lots of pushing and shoving on both sides to get a better toe hold in the sand, and there's lots of corruption on both sides.  But in some places I see progress and even signs of great wealth, like you'll find in McAllen or other towns down in the valley, the Texas tropics.  It's bleak along most of the border, though, and not just a little inhospitable to anyone wanting to cross the border.  But they still come, and sometimes I talk to them about the ordeal they go through to get here.  And again, I wonder:  Is it wise to keep out people who want to come so badly?  I'm not quite sure, but I think not.  We need to find ways to make them welcome and at the same time keep ourselves safe from an invasion of people who in some ways threaten our way of life.  That's the border, the real border, because that's what really separates us.
   
   But how can we do that?  That's a tough one for sure, so it's not a mystery why Congress, the President, or anyone else has not found a solution.  I do know this much - that the solution is not something that will come overnight.  We'll be facing this problem for a long, long time.  What we need is some real dialogue where the sure enough experts are put to work trying to solve it . . . and that means people from both sides of the border who know the border.  We need people working on the problem who know what's good for the economics of both nations involved.  And the solutions they come up with will not please everyone.  In fact, the real solutions won't please anyone a hundred percent.   You might as well accept the fact right now that to solve this problem, we'll all have to give up something.  When we face up to that, we'll starting finding a border we can actually secure.
   
   D. Paz,  11/29/07

9. The Best Damn Wet Dream Ever

   14.Feb.08, 12:53 EST
   
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   You'd think that with well over 30 years of college teaching experience behind me I'd have some precious memories stored away, but I don't.  You'd think I'd remember the students, the fellowships with other professors, or maybe the special high points of a long career in higher education.  Nope, don't remember that either, unless you consider a shouting match with an administrator a special event.  I do have this one special moment to share with you.  I was sitting in the dean's office one morning, listening to him chide me about the use of improper language in my classes, and I had this epiphany as to who or what higher education administrators really are.
   
   Yeah, I'm sitting there looking at this little dweeb - pale skin, sunken eyes, tight drawn mouth, big ears, and dull eyes - building a mental image of me standing on his desk pissing on his bald head, and I suddenly realize that this little twit is a clone.  I knew that for sure because I'd never even consider pissing on a real person's head, at least not while he was sitting behind his desk in a fancy padded leather chair.  The chair in my office was oak, no pad, just a hard chunk of wood.  But the dweeb had a padded leather chair . . . and he was just a clone and nothing more.  It's not improper to piss on a clone, is it?
   
   He must've caught the slight smirk on my face because he said something about how I should take the matter at hand more seriously, but I really didn't hear much of what he said.  I never listened to administrators, and now I knew why.  They aren't real people, just clones, and nobody in their right mind would take anything a clone says seriously.  But still, this clone kept talking, looking angry now, and tempting me even more to whip out my pistol and start firing at him.  Again, I saw myself standing over him, taking a whiz on his head.  I fought off the impulse to do just that and had to look down to conceal my smile.  He was talking louder now, trying to make it hard for me to ignore him.
   
   I'm thinking, I wonder where they clone these jerks?  That thought seized me, and I started imagining a place somewhere down around the state capitol where they did it . . . like maybe in the basement of University Hospital.  Yeah, that must be where they did it using parts from the recently deceased street people nobody would claim.  But where did they find brains for these clones?  Then it hit me - they came from dead child molestors, rapists, and various other assorted sexual perverts.  It had to be that way.  That would explain why they were always wanting to fuck somebody around.
   
   He was talking louder now, even stood up and started pacing.  My only thought at that point was that the pacing would make it more difficult to take a whiz on him, if I indeed lost my fight to control the urge to do exactly that.  Then I remember that this little shitheal was responsible for me not getting a raise the previous year.  My contract had been renewed but with only a slight cost of living increase . . . and he was the cause of that . . . and now he was chewing my ass out for using four letter words in my lectures.  I looked up at him just in time to see him approaching me, clearly angered at my lack of concern for his protests. 
   
   And then it happened.  I suddenly found myself standing on his desk . . . pissing on his plush leather chair.  I was amazed at my own bravado, but there I was, urinating on his chair and laughing my ass off.  He was flying around the room like a goose, flapping his arms and squawking like crazy, shouting at the top of his lungs.  I kept laughing, and finally his secretary came to his office door and looked in, saw what I was doing, then ran out screaming at the top of her lungs.  It seemed that I'd really saved back for this one because the stream kept coming until the chair was thoroughly drenched . . . and since it appeared that I had some reserve left, I decided to pee on all the papers on top of his desk.  I did that and was in the process of filling up his briefcase when campus security came in and restrained me.  I didn't fight them.  I knew it was over for me.  The incident would force me into immediate retirement, with full retirement pay and even special treatment for my emotional disorder. 
   
   And then . . . I wake up.  SHIT!  Was it just a dream?  No, no, no, it can't be just a dream.  I can't have another full year to go before retirement, not two whole semesters before this misery ends.  But as I stand up and look around, and I see the familiar surroundings of my office, even the hard oak chair I had dozed off in, I know it was just a dream.  At first, I felt a little sad that it wasn't really true, but then the humor, the craziness of it all struck me.  I had just pissed on the dean's precious leather chair, and on his papers, and in his briefcase . . . and it was the best damn wet dream I'd ever had.
   
   I'm retired now and long gone from that job.  I dream good dreams these days, not about pesky deans and shitty jobs.  But I still remember my last wet dream, and like they say in Texas, pard - that ain't no shit!
   
   D. Paz, 2/14/08 

10. Big Is Worth Saving

    14.Feb.08, 12:33 EST
    
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    We live in a nation that holds bigness in high regard.  Big is good in America, and I give partial credit (or blame) for that on our capitalist system.  There's this idea around that anything worth having is worth marketing, but some big things ought never come up for sale.  I offer two examples - trees and whales.
    
    I made up my mind shortly after seeing my first standing redwood tree that they should never be cut down. I'd never seen anything in nature that big before, and then the park guide showing us around said that some of those trees were standing when Christ walked the earth 2,000 years before.  Excuse the pun . . . but Holy Shit!  That's a long time for something to be growing.  I couldn't help but think what a tragedy is was to let lumbermen cut one down . . .  yeah, a guy who's only going to live about seventy years on average, who is nothing more that a insignificant pimple on the ass of humanity, and who might've graduated high school is going to chop one of these magnificent monsters down.
    
    Yeah, I know, everybody's got to have work, and some people chose to work in the lumber industry.  Forests need management like everything else, and we need the wood to build houses, and so forth and so on.  Well, shit on that!  I don't care how bad some jerk needs a job, he can surely find something to do that's less harmful to the environment, less destructive to the earth, and not such an impediment to the preservation of those wonderful redwood trees.  I admit to being a rabid treehugger.  If left to me, I'd stop the cutting of virgin forests . . . period.  If the lumber industry wants trees, let them cut their own, the ones they've planted in managed tree farms.  Leave all others alone. 
    
    Look, it's just this simple.  We're a race of supposedly smart people, and if that's really the case, then we should be able to find ways of building things with materials other than wood.  We already have the technology, so stop cutting the trees, you greedy bastards.  I could offer all sorts of scientific reasons, but none of it would in any way change the minds of people intent on ridding the planet of trees.  They're too stupid to understand science, too greedy to care about what's good for the earth.  All they know is what little they know . . . and partner, that ain't much.
    
    Here's just a little info on trees.  They are the larges living organisms on earth, and they live longer.  They are a complex chemical factory that takes water and salts from the earth and lifts them to leaves as high as 400 feet in the air.  By mixing this water and salt with carbon dioxide, food that feeds the tree, they are also creating valuable chemicals, seeds, and fruits critical to man's needs.  They remove carbon dioxide  (the main greenhouse gas).  More than half the biological species on the planet live in tropical rain forests (only 6 percent of the earth's surface).  And trees provide emotional power since they represent something spiritually uplifting.  And we are allowing these wonderful trees to be killed at an alarming rate.
    
    And why should the rest of us care?  Simple.  Because these the tree killers are killing all of us.  They're doing away with the most proficient filtration system in the universe because trees and other forms of vegetation clean the air we breath.  Without them, we're goners, and that's how serious the issue of tree conservation really is.  And it's not just the lumber industry that killing us, it's all the lame ass laws that allow the continued pollution of the atmosphere that's snuffing out trees.  We're lousy landlords when it comes to taking care of the earth we walk around on.
    

    
    Here we are, supposedly the most literate society on earth, and most of us don't know that.  And any dumbass can look it up on the internet.  I'm not just picking on the U.S. here.  Our record is lousy, but we're light years ahead of some nations of the world when it comes to saving trees.  Take Brazil, for instance, where the rain forests are being chopped down at a record pace.  And Brazil is a poor country and needs the money . . . yeah, yeah, yeah . . . just more bullshit excuses.  We can't do much to pressure these people to stop it for a number of reasons, paramount among them being that much of that lumber is coming here.  We have lumbermen scattered all over the world, mowing down trees as fast as they can to get the almight buck. 
    
    I'd like to see a rabid environmentalist in the White House.  And I'd like for a scenario to develop somewhat like in the movie Dr. Strangelove, but with a different twist.  Let's say this prez went nuts for awhile, decided the destruction of trees was killing us, and then put his military on alert.  He informed his commanders of his plan, then picked up the phone and called some heads of states, like maybe in Brazil, and said the following:  "Hello, this is Bruce Brainwarp, President of the U.S.   I'm giving you 30 days to cease the cutting of trees, or we're going to nuke your asses.  Got it?"  Then, he hangs up, waits a few minutes, and calls another such head of state.
    
    Well, that's all too farfetched to consider, but it's fun to think about.  And maybe the first few countries didn't take the threat to heart, and we had to nuke 'em a little to get their attention . . . you know, nothing big, just a little bomb or rocket to show them what we could do if we wanted to.  We'd have to nuke a few of our own people too, to make sure they understood how serious we were.  And what about all the lumbermen we put out of work?  Whatcha want to bet they'd find something else to do that caused less wear and tear on them, huh?
    
    And I felt the same way when I saw my first whale in its natural habitat.  What a magnificent animal, and we allow people to kill them.  I don't give a rat's ass what they are used for, what their oil or flesh provides to various industries.  Just like with the lumbermen, the whalers can find something else to do.  A blue whale is so large that its tongue is larger than an elephant, the largest of land mammals.  It is the largest animal the earth has ever seen, including the the age of dinosaurs.  And we let people kill it?  Are we crazy?
    
    Again, this is where we need a nutso, radical environmentalist prez.  We've got lots of submarines in the Navy.  Maybe President Brainwarp could send them out hunting for whaling vessels.  We'd have to warn the companies they are employed out of, including our own, and then torpedo the shit out of them.  Yeah, sink the jerks to the bottom, and after a while, whalers would start looking for a new line of work.  Maybe they could go home and clean toilets or something.
    
    As crazy as this President Brainwarp would be, and as inhumane as his actions might seem to be, he would be the first president of the United States who actually did something to save all our asses from eminent destruction.  We are the wolves of the world, the worst predators ever to grace the planet, and if judged by our actions in regard to the management of our enviroment, the dumbest sonsabitches ever to draw a breath of air.  Monkeys do better.  And those blue whales I love some much?  They eat 8,000 lbs. of krill and fish a day, and they are nowhere near being the predator we are.
    
    Listen up, dumbasses!  Pull your heads out of your asses and pay attention to what's happening to you.  Open your eyes and look around.  Trees and whales are big, you can't miss 'em.  And if you don't do something about their demise now, you'll sure be missing 'em a lot later on.
    
    Lizzard (for D. Paz), 2/14/08