Micky Maos

I know I'm a running dog lackey of the imperialist overlords. 

That's why I posted this picture.

Editing

I found a real editor for my novel WHITE POWDER in New York. 

How cool is that? I'm prepping the manuscript to be sent off to be red lined, X'd out, crossed off, and generally shot to pieces! Unfortunately it's part of the process of getting published. A brutal, painful component of the process of being turned from a writer to an author -- not unlike offering up your first born onto a stone altar for bloody sacrifice.

I have been staying up nights working on the next book, Penitent Man. It's slowly coming together. Building a credible plot and characters is clearly a process.

And welcome JENZARINA to this blog that is devoted only partially to writing. JENZARINA is a talented writer in England, struggling to emerge as a novelist of some stature. As soon as her book comes, out I shall buy several copies not only to read, but to boost her sales in the US of A.

What a Joke

The American

Messiah?

The Democrats didn't even work hard to disguise what was passed into law today. $800 billion in borrowed funds that went to buddies and pet projects. I mean, nobody read what they voted on, anyway. They voted in the blind for something they could pocket. I don't know if it's ever been so blatant in the history of what once was a Republic.

Wall Street saw through it and the marked dropped 300 points. I'm afraid we have a rocky road ahead.

Kick

Yesterday I received a phone call advising me that a friend passed away. I knew him in the Navy as we went through training together many years ago. He was one of very few Jewish people in the Naval Special Warfare Program. Guys started calling him "Kike" but after a few fights where I weighed in on his side, the nickname was changed to "Kick" which was more to his liking. That nickname stuck and everybody called him Kick. I knew his first wife, a nice Jewish girl who couldn't handle life as a navy wife and moved home to New York. I knew his second wife, a lady who owned a bar in San Diego. I think I missed wife #3, who he married when he was stationed at NAB - Little Creek, Virginia and divorced when he was transferred to NAS - Oceana, Virginia. 

The fourth wife called me from Guam, distraught. He wanted his ashes spread on a reef he liked to spear fish at. She didn't like (was afraid of) the water and being a good Catholic, felt it wasn't a dignified way to send him off. I don't know how a Guamanian woman who lived her life on a small island and married a SEAL could be afraid of the water, but I'm sure she has her reasons.

Kick died while bench pressing something like 350 lbs at a gym where he liked to hang out in the morning with his buddies, a bunch of old has-beens like Kick and me. Heart attack, massive, here one minute gone the next. 

His wife feared for his memory if his ashes were unceremoniously dumped in the ocean over a small reef that bordered deep water (where Kick speared some really large fish). I shared a private thought I had at my ending - bronzing my butt, burying me upside down and using my ass as bicycle rack - therefore making me more useful in death than I've been in life. She took me seriously and said that perhaps dropping the ashes at the reef would be ok. 

I called the police chief on Guam (who WoFat knows, I think) and he's arranged for a police boat to take the widow out along with the buddies, who are planning a small wake on the police boat.

We live, we die,  and the best we can hope for is that our memory serves as an appropriate benediction for what we did while we laughed, cried and played on the third rock from the sun.

RIP - KICK

Welcome Natalie

My blog welcomes Natalie Kokareva, from Ishim, Tyumen Region, Russian Federation and her daughter Lisa to the list of readers. In the entry below it indicates that I have four daughters and that's true. Natalie is sort of a fifth daughter, except that she lives a bit far to come for Sunday dinner. Lisa is a bit young to read, but Natalie, who teaches English in the school system, will have her reading this blog before I know it.

Lisa (pictured left) is a budding ballerina and I have it on good authority that she was dressed as a fairy princess for the New Year's celebration in Russia.

The photo (above) of Natalie and Emilie (also pictured in a contemporary photo in the previous blog entry) was taken some years ago.

17y x 4g = ?

My fourth seventeen year-old-girl, Emilie, will turn eighteen in May. Fathers who have navigated the rocks and shoals with four girls up to and including the age of seventeen should be issued hash marks for their sleeves.

Oh, our faces show it, our empty wallets are manifest, and the vacant look in our eyes tells the story of raising daughters.

I still think hash marks are in order - or a large medal, like a gong x 4 showing that four campaigns were fought and won (as much as a father 

can ever win when pitted against superior odds.) 

Yes, my sanity fled some time ago. My ego will never be the same, and one of the four (Kelly Lambert-Howard) is expecting a daughter of her own in May. The circle of life.

One day, Kelly will wait up late into the evening as her daughter is out on a date, tapping her foot, pacing the floor, watching the clock. The revenge (a dish best served cold) will be complete... !

Rainy Monday

Sometimes I sit and think. Other times I simply sit. It's raining and it's Monday. I put the two concepts together and came up with "rainy days and mondays". How odd, haven't the two concepts been merged before? Ah, a memory from the dim and distant past, like a candle light seen from 20 miles away. Lyrics, sung by the hard core anorexic and now dead Karen Carpenter. I can here her melodic words in my head now:

"Talking to myself and feeling old,

Sometimes I'd like to quit,

Nothing ever seems to fit,

Hanging around, nothing to do but frown,

Rainy days and Mondays always get me down."

So that's my problem!