Day late and a dollar short? More like: I missed a couple of hours, please forgive me. I decided to go to sleep early and get up early and write the ol’ essay as it is far too hot to write in my tiny apartment once I get home from work.

Sweat, sweat; Pant, pant.

Drops of heat cascade into my glasses all day long requiring numerous forehead pat downs and many spec squeegees. The radio blares the increasing Middle East temperature.

Hot, hot, hot! Can you feel it? Hot, hot, hot.  {ENTER  Carnival dancers}

Islam vs. Jews.

I am beginning to view the entire novel of activity in the Middle East as one big boring sport like Baseball. There is one big endless set of seasons sewn together by countless games and never ending innings watching a little ball get lobbed and smacked around while grown men run in circles. Real slow. Real boring. On it’s best day nausea presents itself as a meek sign of interest.

Pretty soon someone is going to market this concept and make a lot of money. Think of the conflict merchandise you could be selling. “Tell Mohammed to go back to His Cave” in bold letters across t-shirt fronts. “Hate a Jew Today” printed on hoodie sweatshirts. Black, mesh back ball caps with three big white letters across the top, “I.E.D.” A whole industry waiting to spawn. Soon we can have “Endless Conflict” themed birthday parties for our kiddos. There will be a trading card game, like Magic or Poki-man, dedicated to the historical volley of the land formerly known as Canaan. I wonder if the players will be able to concentrate on machine gun firing and missile launching with so many new found fans that are going to show up to gaze at the action from the galley, up close and personal. Think of the vacation packages that we could sell. Don’t-miss-the-boat leisure time villas with no return flight included.

Sunday at the big block party barbeque, cracking open a cold beer, the mesquite smoke dancing around the nose hairs hiding up high, “How about that Hezbollah, huh? They’re having a great season. It’s going to be tough this season when they meet the Jews for the big Canaanite Series in Beirut this summer!” The rabid fandom will spread and hot passionate debate will ensue far more than it even does today. It already has the nostalgia at eye level and engaged, “Remember when the Jews moved from Europe to Palestine and were renamed the Israelis?” Kind of frightening.

The Israelis think of themselves as a big Dynasty team that time and time again gets to the “Big Game”. The Islamic teams tend to always be in the underdog role moving from town to town in order to boost bleacher and box seat sales. Support is essential to any successful organization.

You could even flip this around and look at it on the stage of the Global theater, respecting War. We are quite familiar with the good guys vs. the bad guys, axis vs. allies, axis of evil vs. allies of freedom. How about National League vs. American League? All of the National League guys fight, argue, bitch, moan and pitch their ideas and then one is allowed into the “Big Game”. Al Queda had a great season a couple years back but because of free agency and some persistent injuries they really haven’t achieved greatness since. This is definitely an Iran/Hezbollah race this year and in the American League it is neck and neck between America and Israel. It is a very competitive year.

Random acts of injustice and violence in the name of one cause or the other are like autograph sessions in between games. Little encounters with a souvenir of remembrance to remind us to keep coming out to the games and to continue purchasing fan man gear with the team’s logo on it. Flag sales are up all around the World. If support crumbles, Team profits are down and the CEO’s don’t like that.

There are little All-Star games that get played in places like Serbia and Boznia which high light some of the more well known players along with some work horses without whom none of the truly stellar games would be possible. Darfur and Somalia are kind of like Olympic versions of the game.

I am not trying to belittle what is going on over there, not at all, but quite the opposite. More people in this country care about sports than they do anything else, including War - or “Conflict” as it is so trendily called today. If we all knew our history and participated on some civic level, beyond the duty of voting which is hard enough to get people to do, then we might be able to actually resolve the issues without being hindsight drivers. We might become insightful. Jeesh, what would the Country or the World be like then?

Our lack of insight and intelligence can more easily be summed up by some of our fellow Americans who have become bleacher seat by-standers to a behemoth bar brawl, the thousands of Americans who were in need of evacuation from Lebanon.

First point: Are people traveling to places like Beirut, Tel-Aviv, Baghdad, or any other dangerous, unstable city or country, and expecting to be 100% safe the entire time really serious? Are they that ignorant or unengaged with reality? To expect that, even remotely, I think is foolish. It is comparable to having a “safe” expectation of walking through North Korea speaking your mind with no repercussions. Again, not going to happen!

Second point: We find that school buses for the exodus would have worked just fine. Either the Dutch or the Danes evacuated their citizens on buses headed to Syria. The people on the luxury cruise ship being evacuated to Cypress were disgusted enough at those conditions can you imagine what the ingrates would have said about the bus? Paging the ACLU, ACLU you have a telephone call.

Third point: I heard a Lebanese woman call into a radio program yesterday exclaiming that the World, specifically the U.S.A., should be disgusted at itself for not rescuing Lebanese Christians along with their respective citizens who were there vacationing, working, or on general hiatus. This woman is the reason I scream back at the radio when I listen.

Fourth point: The media should be suicidal and unsupervised at a razor blade factory for comparing this to Katrina. Regardless of how any of us feel about Katrina and the aid, or lack there of, that followed; we all should be smart enough to recognize that the two are ENTIRELY different. I can only hope and pray that we are all smart enough. If you need help to understand beyond the very obvious I suggest making a parallel graph or a flow chart highlighting the major events, instances, and locations and compare. This should help a lot to any of you who are on the fence when wanting to make the connection or not.

I don’t like sports but I like peanuts and hot dogs. I like the nostalgia of the stadiums and fields. I like the catchy go-get-’em unity chants and songs that are screamed and acted out. I like the anthems. I like the mascots. I hate sports.

The new sport anthems will be available on the benefit record that will save everyone from everything, due out in time for Christmas.

Ring tones available by New Year.

I'm sure that MTV will want a bite. One of the captured Israeli soldiers will be released and will be hosting Total Request Live sometime around Labor Day.

Syd Barrett died this past week. Maybe that is why this is all happening. Screw baseball and holy lands, I’m blaming it on Pink Floyd.

That explanation works just fine within the boundaries of my reality construct, it works just fine indeed.

Like a good Republican, when all else fails blame Rock and Roll.

Saddle shoes and argyle sweaters do not make you retarded, just ask Long.

Stick out my tongue and spit the blood.

I’m worth a Deuce …

I am quite busy building my bomb shelter and conjuring up images of Brendan Frazier and Grease 2.

Construction is almost complete and the supplies are almost enitrely horded away.

I am sure that I will have time come Wednesday to keep writing but, as of now, all of the cement mixing and laying has left me plum tuckered out.

Promising that Wednesday will be for real and be about the news ...

Life’s little post-it notes and tree rings reminding us of where we have been and where we might be going. What choices were good and what choices were bad enough to encourage better ones next time around. The scars of breathing and trying to exist to the best of our abilities, the abilities that are different from tadpole on up to bullfrog.

I have not been writing my regular essays as of late. The regular readers looking for politics and honest commentary with flare are probably scratching their heads at my recent “bonus only” Saturday night schedule. I am better than that and have made a commitment to be here three times a week to give a poly-sci update. This is what I will be getting back to as of Monday, July 17^th.

I will still be throwing down the bones of colorful and sometimes cryptic “bonus” pieces so if that is what you like please do not fret.

New readers are probably confused as to why this is even a political blog. Come next week the newbies will recognize why if they have not archived back in order to solve the mystery.

With everything that is going on globally I have made a commitment to myself to return to my very vague remembrances of the Old Testament. I do this not from the vantage of some lunatic Armageddon disciple but rather a need to comprehend the history of it all beyond textbooks and novel rantings of pundits with agendas. Some of you will laugh at that. If you are laughing at what you think is my ignorance or brainwashing then you do not know me or have not read where I am coming from. All the answers are within my previous diatribes. Look and you shall see.

I do not think musicals from fifty years ago are documentaries of American life.

I have been reading quite a bit lately. I have not been writing. I recently was flim flam scammed by a poetry contest. Funny how we put our guards down when we want something bad enough.

Sometimes I want to rip out my teeth so they can not follow me or know what I am up to. Thank you Terry.

Time to sleep more. Time to smoke less. Time to just let them all do what they want to do because the inevitably will do what they want regardless of my input. Cogs and sprockets. Dance.

Wait a minute. Wait one damned moment! Lay down and die? Be tarred over for the interstate interests of commerce like a road everyone forgot about? No, hell no!

I will be back as appalled and disgusted as ever. Things are not right in this flimsy little world that offers up the rhetoric of heretics and hypocrites.

I can’t find the lyrics to a song that I remember hearing growing up. A hippie song of drug addled disappointment. Maybe some of you will know the Shangri-La song. “We’re on the road to Shangri-la”. I wanted to change up the lyrics to say, “We’ll go to war with Hezbollah”. I have been away so long that my research skills suck. The poignancy of the changed lyrics does not meet par with an explanation so lengthy and without the accompanied verse. At least I had an idea.

Korea says, “Go Fuck Yourself” to the U.N.

Putin criticizes Israel regarding the conflict with the New Age Philistines.

We can still set the flag on fire.

The North American Highway to promote the trade of Meximercanda is in the works.

Protesters are disgusted by volunteers picking up feces and rubbish on skid row in L.A. I am disgusted by doody.

Hazleton, PA says, “Na na na na, hey hey hey, Goodbye” to ILLEGAL immigrants.

Day laborers in Agora Hills, CA have a “town meeting” to assure that none of them work for less than 15 bucks an hour.

California wants to ban driving and cell phone talking as it is more dangerous than drunk driving.

Big Dig boondoggle is soon to be busted and that impregnated balloon of corruption will rain spum down upon Beantown.

Pink panties for Arizona convicts in 140 degree tent detention.

Oh and the World Cup is over - I still don’t know, or care, who won.

Headlines drift by faster than fast could ever be.

Maybe I need Rush’s Viagra to keep up.

Three of the more ridiculous things that I heard this past week were:

The 911 call made by the woman who just wanted to hook up with the cop who came to her house earlier in the night due to a noise complaint.

Paul W. Smith (whom I despise) filled in for Limbaugh on Friday and declared ear lobe stretching a very dangerous and unhealthy endeavor.

I am not sure where I heard or read number three but I know I did. Someone declared that they were under the impression that the Headline news channel was “new”. Such a sad individual. It has been around since the early-mid eighties. How short are people’s memories these days?

The world keeps on spinning and it makes me wish I was as well.

On days like today, I am happy that I am not.

Head down and written in ink.

I wait for Monday and the attacks on the ridiculous that I will pursue …

Holster’s empty and the Sun is still out. Never once would the night think of any of us if we did not fly through it under the cover of reckless abandon or survival's shrill call. When will the dusks of velour stop?

Thick and bellowed out the happiness is only something she can give. Wrapped in the second hand’s grasp and never once thought of when the next year could or would be there. Tangled and wrangled up in silver and non sense. Never once a glance back, except on those days that don’t shine into dreams and hypnotic distraction as well as others that blind.

Don’t look Zek, keep your eyes closed.

The daylight looking forward to the sleepys being knocked from eye corners clenched in denial. Fall and crumble in the dissent. Never once even thought to survive. Trouble overflowing in those shut eyes.

Bad man with a horse singing what he hopes is a song to the ears that hear it. Holster’s still empty. Swagger in and to and fro. Humpty frolic romping from the saucy ass saunter of the tired steed. Do that ass ballet. The kind that shuts eyes in alleys where the heat is too hot to bear. Bare it all from soul to stockings. Wet and net are the most pleasant of senses. As windows slam shut and lights glare the night into a false day that screams for reckoning.

Stare me down and the Huckleberry is called. Look out Zek, you never, ever know. Ever.

Politics swamp footed in my peripheral muck. Get a rake. Waiting with the anticipation of Monday as the thoughts will explode like adolescent mirror poking, pinching, pricking, and popping. Music could never be loud enough. It can never be too cold. Butter the bread for yourself. Use the right knife. More tea is acceptable. Look both ways and back again before you cross. Everyone always forgets “back again”.

I need five hundred, all with fans a’ swayin’, to cool down now. Look out for the singular horseman. More tragedy than four is one with a vendetta. The only gift we all hate to receive is revenge. Look out for horseshoe crabs when adorned to one’s skull and not the wharf.

That caveman is calling Zek for steak. The BBQ burns brightly. Enough to melt honey.

Pry my ankle from the trap and move on forward. Eyes shut. Wide, tall, and crimped. Sockets of denial. What is left after the questions are answered? What will they shop for then? The Mall’s plastic and chromium melting into toxic play dough. Smell the can. Before you leave the farm, put down the dog and gunny sack the cat. Leave not even one smothering coal.

Ranches dusty and dirty with the mire of what we wish to forget but it happens day in and day out. Sweat makes mud and the beer is warm. Can you taste the skin? Warm. To think of nothing better would be the days result. Simple. Like plain biscuits with tea.

Swallow hard because you don’t know. You don’t even see a smidgen. I can taste the disconnect. Slappin’ around in semi solid hops. Burnt bean breakfast makes the gag come hard and the heat of full Sun sweat is hours down the throat of day as it gags with elicit evasion. No sweat is worse than the cleansing sweat. Get a mop, the beans weren’t good.

Custodial sawdust and the fog on the glass makes the bar come back like bitters as a hang over cure. Ice. Tall glass. We need more sawdust.

Happy to pack those bags on haunch of trot and move on through the prairie cosine by night’s chin tickle. Better than the dust. Nicer than the paid arms of never again. Easier. Sweeter. Softer. Giggle at the plunder. Cards were never sharper.

I know Monday will come and rescue me. Take me in a blanket and make the politics sing. Not now. It’s too much fun to be away. Away from the words, the headlines, the heated exchange. Turn down the burner, the pot’s boiling over.

Just a hiatus. Just a break. Better get back up in that saddle and ride ‘em high and wide.

Never like before but better beyond the being …

I needed that break. To gulp the air in and hold it tightly in your breast. With the iridescent pear flakes of snow falling into the mind of a child’s teardrop; frightening and disconnected as it crawls into the doom of distant days that made dour this day meek and mild.

To wrap my self in asbestos blue and white and red all in the name of days that never could be now. Cast the dirty shadows on your knee patch haze falling to the ground in exploding clods of dust. Bleached night. Colors run to day and the daydreams we once wished we lived in.

Like candy wrappers mirroring your gluttony from the inside out with their reflective glaze of kept fresh confection. Swirl across your tongue with the sugary seeds of tomorrow’s needs. Pretty women fog the windows bright in frosted shades on distraction. A music man plays loud enough to dig deep the cerebral cavern to bury the rest of the scene into. Such a treasure trove of delight, pure and simple delight.

Vanished into calls to the ice cream man as he drives a hair too quick. Reaching through that C to touch that A for just one second. To return to the heartbeats of times when Mother’s smiled and offered guidance out of lack of experience’s judgments. Can you skip that stone through the wind into the crests of waves that never were on the silence of the water’s skin? Throw long, hard, and flat. Make it move the air. Level it out and watch it walk.

Walk away tall and proud. Easy. Slipping into what could be slinky and soft. Caress it all like a lover that will never happen again. There is an end. Walk through it and move on over to the side that sides with you. Make it make sense as you work it into a furious dress swirling saunter of sainthood. Step tall and large, bigger than a hotel window could ever wish it was. Glass like the square of where not to be but you can just begin to see through the condensate pane. Strange.

Could you ever find your way back after all of what they have begun to say? Can you travel, with a polka dotted neckerchief licking pole’s end as the stick bobs to and fro through the head lamp's inconsistancies. Mist and fog run thick up your alley as you think of the warmth of the window hardly able to allow the gaze through of Hale-Bop stature. Lace up the footwear, the trek is long and hard. A tumultuous stare of stale bread. Water with a bit too much dirt but the dawn’s early light, as the sand swirls up in squalls of it own particular manner, makes it look like liquid gold. Cups of what dreams are made of. Nights that no longer become days except when the tradition is broken by nay-sayers and rabble rousers more crooked than a boxer’s wet dream nightmare of what some day would happen if it weren’t his brain first.

Bagpipes break the spirit of a Dawn long before the Sun is allowed to think. Bring it down and allow the passage of confetti caves; of sanctimonious salvations and sanitations of serendipitous soft shoe strewn aside so swift sans sully sense. Grab it before it pops and makes the rest of the world like shoe bottom pink gum holding tight in the tar of Summer’s halitosis.

I think not of the now or the then or the soon to be. I kung fu’d the table of Zen and thought on through the air balloon of the “now” of being. Chewed and spat. Hit the spittoon with dinner bell accuracy. In and out like cab surfers across the island wishing that up were down and the bridges held tighter than dream visions of Bronte. Ahh the black tea spread of the bounce. Easier to fall flat and buoyant begets bouncy. Up and back and in the fierce stances of back in town. Back and tall. Stand proud of dark suits and men who know when to smile. Something a laugh can say in the worst dreams of dreams while the children, miles off in foreign lands, scream so loud the crystal next-room-over vase blitzkrieg’ed back into its fractured state of oven heat and crystalline sign posts shards. The tumble weed tuxedo junction of it all, bows deep with hat in hand as the horns blow the notes of freedom’s have and have-not’s. Such a silly saunter.

Much more succinct to just stop where the train does. Know the Station’s name. Know the stop before. Don’t take the ride up to then for granted. There are only few shames worse, most of which are criminal. Be sane. Hold truth close like a road map in a road less desert that hopes the dust will fall and the roads will match the maps.

Catch me in a fire fly net in the sweet breath burlesque of dusk’s decent. The cool, sweet breeze of catch me if you can. Caught up, bound and busted. Take down the roof, the rain is coming to fill the cups of dowries gone and torn up in the night of lightning’s lick and the tossing rattle of thunder not long forgotten in it’s torment. Funny how the net seemed so much nicer with the frosted glass of fog from sweet deep breathes of music as the ladies danced? Roll me up into the sac and send me home.

I can taste Boston in my sleep as the grey white snow flake impregnated balls and gobs of fluff getting ready to shed their sacrament down upon Boylston St. as the public garden lays covered in shroud from fear of old man winter’s cascade of furious asphyxiation. Fenway casts it’s shadow on and across the glum hung high even down Lansdown St. Watch them boogie woogie cascade out and down through the grim cold splash hand of chilly ice smelt water hugging curb with salt and sand. Keep ‘em clear. Keep ‘em clean? Chief, where is the pillow and the tom-toms?

Questions of snow flake globes that are never shook and left to hide in the box of corrugated separation and division disorder. Stuck on a dusty shelf of where you won’t even go on the loosest of nights or most plasticine dreams. A mold of "never was" or "ever going" to happen. Learn Braille. Ride the bus for free. Hope that the group backs you up and remembers the melody but make sure while you worry that you watch your own pitch. Sing to the key. Hear the fork.

As purple comes to terms with where it could have been as orange aside it but never relinquished the innocence that is undeniable. Know not of why and when and then judge to judged by no one knowing how. Not even in the most crime free parkways and driveways, of where the bread sliced white with all of it’s squishiness and consumptive satisfaction, are there dreams bigger than or aspirations greater than the one's in your own mind.

Lay me down to sleep in a soft bed. I need no roses or guns or tears. Never once a tear shed that has not hurt a Mother somewhere. And where do you think they are. Left. Right. Two of those three are and will be. The other is just incognito as to secure the lack of landslide impression. We still need freedoms as the Sun goes up and down.

Can you roll the dice fast enough to recognize the speed of a highway or freeway that you won’t drive in the worst of worst because your map is now sand and so are the days of knowing they’d check your oil. Dip stick stays still but if you get out you can at least wash your own window. New Jersey, it’s ok. But the egg thing won’t stick.

Is your decoder ring broken? Will you not see through the non sense, the drivel. The succinct selection of the keys to all that is carbonized in mountain sides. Jets fly on even when your Mother says to cool them. Did you stop necking yet? Put down the tea and walk away from the sugar bowl. More cream please, my glass seems a bit too dark like alleys that won’t even claim our worst.

Did I yell it loud enough as I saluted the silk that hangs so proud? Will the worst of me catch up with the best of me and let the rest of me sleep? Thumbs still out as the night snuggles into your bosom once again.

Someone tell me that it doesn’t pass the test, that it indeed is out of code. Can you get in the que and gaze down the barrel of one mo’ ‘gain.

Let your pillow kiss you with Angel lips as the harps gently caress the drums to silence. May it be as cool as your sheath desires as the blankets offer you what they may.

Wrap a Saturday soul into what once could be by ignoring the news for a day.

Let it sink deeper than lockers owned by men named David.

On or off the hook?

Aaaaarrrrrrrggggghhhhhhh …