The Chronicles of Pendragon Hold

Last Dance

2010-03-30T14:17:00.006-04:00

Dear readers, it's cliche' time here at Pendragon Hold. Allow me to apply the one most apt to this post…….."All good things must come to an end….."

No, not everything good HAS to come to an end, but everything DOES have a beginning and an end (except for the universe, which I personally believe has ALWAYS been here in one form or another and always will be) and this blog is no exception. It has served a purpose, one very personal to me, and time has come that I feel I can put it to rest, it's primary function having been served. I am beginning a new chapter in my life, and leaving a lot of baggage behind, and you can find some of that baggage deep in the annals of this blog if you dig deep enough. The final four chapters of this blog, not including this farewell spiel, pretty much provided the closure I needed, and I will not be sharing my journey from here on out in the same fashion. This venture began some years ago as "Madness, Musings, and Melancholy", and looking back on it, that title was probably the most appropriate to what this blog has meant to me. I later changed the titles to "Dances with Leaves", "These Thoughts Escape Me" and finally to "The Chronicles of Pendragon Hold" that I now leave to you on the servers of Blogger. I never honestly thought I could give this thing up, but now I know I can. I have to figure out now what I want most out of life and I can't do that here. I hope you understand.

I might create something to provide a creative outlet to which I might provide a link, but as far as my views, opinions, rants, raves, and ongoing biography, well, I have decided to move over to something we back in the day referred to as a "Diary". It will be private and will provide me with all the space I need to vent and explore my psychi, but it will not be accessible to anyone I know as not to offend anyone or cause me to censor my feelings for the sake of others. That's what private diaries do best and that's all I really need now, if at all.

Life will go on as always here at the Hold. The circle of life will continue. Loved ones will move on, some beyond the veil, others into their own lives. Life will be good. I am a very lucky man. People love me. They accept me. And I am at peace with who I was and who I will become as these years go by. Those of you who joined THE Wife and I way back in the beginning, I want to thank you for your fascination with this project, this open journal, and most of all, for your friendship, most of which has been unconditional and upon which I thrived on all these years. Each and every kind word of encouragement and support you lent to me meant everything, and I will not forget any of you. Those of you who have become close friends need not worry; we have each other's addresses. And yes, as long as YOU continue with your journeys here on Blogger, I will be there with you, just like you were with me.

Again, allow me to express my deepest gratitude for your friendships and support, and I hope that whenever you need a good laugh or want to rage against the machine, you feel welcome to delve back into the pages of this monster I created and find your inspiration there. I leave you with this………

May there always be someone who loves you
May there always be work for your hands
May you always be dealt with with kindness
As you travel throughout these lands
May there always be food on your table
and always a friend you can hold
May your body always be able
and your spirit always be bold

May the road rise up to meet you
May there always be a wind at your back
May your journey never be lonely
and I pray that you keep coming back

May your path be loving and gentle
with the children be wise and be kind
If your heart is heavy with sorrow
remember it's all in your mind

and we wait
for you to come back…….

David Pendragon - Irish Blessing for you

The Gathering of the Clan, Chapter Four (The Final Chapter) (No, really, this is it)

2010-03-29T10:13:00.009-04:00

I know all three of my loyal readership has been waiting with bated breath for this saga to be continued, but vacation was over and I had to return to my place of employment and try and remember what it is I do for a living. It was a rude shock. And they actually expect me to go back……….sigh, guess I will……I love those damn paychecks………

Check- out time for the cabin was 10 am, and since sleep was already elusive for me, I got easily into the flow of repacking the car for the return trip. Steve headed off with one family for a ride to the airport and Tammy headed off with her Sister Lisa to visit with her and some friends and other family before she would head back herself. We said our goodbyes, and for me personally…….it was hard. I had perhaps a dozen reasons for dreading our parting, including fears I might not see either of them again, etc, etc….. Yes, I have two brand new "Sisters" whom I keep in contact with fairly regularly, but there's always that dreaded "drift" factor…….time will tell.

We then headed over to the camping and RV sites to give some last minute hugs and goodbyes, and then it was off in the direction of home. My mind was racing a mile a minute with the experiences of the last three days, but I managed to navigate in the general direction of Florida without mishap. THE Wife, being a witch and all and generally interested in just about ANY flavor of folk magic, wanted to stop off at the French Quarter of NAWLINS and see if we could find any genuine Voudoun (Voo Doo) or Wiccan magic shops. Me, now, I am the nervous type when it comes to driving into strange urban territory (I HATE driving into what passes for a downtown here in Jacksonville) but I put on my "cool" face and managed to find a parking space without getting run over by a some street car named Desire or getting mugged by a friendly denizen of the Mardi Gras city. Never saw ONE cop the whole time we were there. Guess law enforcement is a luxury there these days. However, chaos didn't appear to be reigning, so we made our ways up and down a relatively short stretch of Bourbon Street and didn't find anything that seemed more genuine than a tourist trap. Plenty of GAY bars, yes, but real spirituality? Yea……….right………

We got back in the car and I phoned our friends in Mobile, and was reassured that YES, they would LOVE to put us up for one more night on this return trip! Especially since I bribed them with the offer of a serving of my cousin Julie's crawfish etoufee! We finally arrived back in Mobile, had no problem re-locating the house, and once again we shared a very pleasant night of gossip, camaraderie, and recipes. THIS time, however, they allowed us to remove the mattress from their bed-frame and substitute our air mattress and I finally got some measure of real sleep for the first time in four days. Amazing what a relatively warm room can do for zen and the art of air mattress filler physics!

Julie and Blan, I cannot tell you how much your friendship and the sharing of your home meant to me and THE Wife. And I sincerely hope that the authorities will never be able to trace our morbid activities to your doorstep! (Private joke, see "serial killers" in previous chapter). Whenever you desire to visit the Oldest City in the New World, or anything else in this general vicinity, you know where to rest your bones. Pendragon Hold awaits you!

Oh, sorry, allow me to backtrack and insert this between New Orleans and Mobile…….

We once again avoided the attentions of the Big White SUV's of the Mississippi Highway Patrol (explain to me how the poorest state in the union can afford the gas to run down speeders in THOSE gas hogs…….no wonder they can't afford anything else!) and I found the exit off Interstate TEN that led to my childhood…….that childhood I spoke of a few times in past episodes of the Chronicles that has haunted me even to this day. I now know that it is indeed true, you CANNOT go "home" again if for no other reason that "home" after thirty years can simply disappear. Yes, I had one hell of a time placing what was in my memory with what the landscape now revealed; so much change and homes and structures coming and going and nothing looking the same as it did, except for a couple of hard and fast landmarks, like a small bridge over a small creek (which seemed like a great span over a raging gorge to a small 7 year old) and the general shape of the roads that had not changed over the years. I did not see where anyone I might have known way back then might still be living who might remember me, and I was not really in a mood to go looking for that anyway. Closure did not need that and this was about closure. This is finally the end of that story. Life can now go on.

We now resume leaving Mobile, in progress……….

We said our goodbyes, not forever I sincerely hope, to Jules and Blan and finished off the final leg of our journey back to Pendragon Hold. Talk about anti-climactic! THE Wife had enjoyed an interesting vacation but for me it was cathartic. That night, in front of the television, I think it was ABC World News Tonight, they aired a story concerning a woman who ran a foundation which provided prom dresses to foster girls who otherwise would not be able to have them. Yes, it was a trigger, and manly man Michael broke down and let it all out. I remember one Christmas when my case worker, Mr Necaise if I remember correctly, brought me a box of games and toys and stuff from Carol Burnett's charity for foster children. And yes……"I had always depended upon the kindness of strangers…." Did the bastard write that line for people like me? Well, thank the Gods, I no longer need to feel that way. I now depend on the love of my family, a family I hope and "pray" I will never lose again. Thank you all so very much. I've finally come home.

Epilogue…….

These last six months or so my whole being has been all about this reunion; the planning, the saving, the arguing about it, the expectations, the communications with newly discovered relatives I barely knew, and all the angst and inner-child turmoil all this stirred up inside of me. So, where do I go from here? This, my friends, is an undiscovered country, and the landscape before me is fresh and new and yes, in some ways intimidating. My life is no longer "All about THE Michael" and believe me, it's about time. I now have special relationships with special people and aside from whatever happens with me personally here at Pendragon Hold, my life is now intertwined to some extent with people I may not even get a chance to see again but whom I know are there for me, in one fashion or another. I have even had to radically adjust my feelings about some of these people, for reasons that are personal to me if not to them. It's all good. And, one day, I hope that once again, as seems providence dictates, the oldest will share something profound with the youngest, and the circle of life will continue as it should, if not necessarily how we would like it to. I think most of us would call that "faith".

Blessed Be!

the Gathering of the Clan, Chapter Three (or 3 for short)

2010-03-26T19:48:00.010-04:00

I awoke in the wee hours of the morning, perhaps just before 6 AM. Or at least I THINK I woke up, since I don't exactly remember having slept period, but I assume I did, at least some. Of course, THE Wife could have slept through an earthquake and never noticed, and she and the rest of the cabin peacefully slept through the morning while I shuffled around, made some coffee, and eventually, as the clock neared 9 am, I decided to start some breakfast (eggs and bacon) and turned on some music (yea, old spoil sport thought maybe it was time to get things going). Eventually THE Wife and the other two clawed their ways to consciousness and we got ready to head out to commune with the rest of the family.

A lot of that day (Friday) consisted of us wondering around the tent and RV area where most of the family was concentrated. There were ALOT of pictures being taken, and my "niece" Brenna had her keyboard out and was playing with it, showing us she had some remarkable raw talent while at the same time denying she had any. She's a lot like her "Uncle" in that respect. I sing and people don't throw rotting vegetables at me, so it's all good. My Uncle AJ had this HUGE RV trailer that I think half the clan was sleeping in, while a couple of families had cabins like us.

Friday was mostly to get our bearings and begin the reconnection process for those of us who had been separated for so long. Before arriving at the park, my cousin Julie (the next to the youngest of the cousins) had promised to cook us (me, actually, it was all for ME!) all some crawfish etoufee, a purely cajun dish along with gumbo. All I had to do was provide the crawfish, so I managed to find some frozen packages of it at a Walmart on the way. There was no question about getting live ones, boiling and shelling those little suckers enough to feed sixty people would have taken all day! THE Wife and I had also taken a hike and found a delightful clearing on a bluff overlooking the lake that would be PERFECT for an Ostara celebration (Spring Equinox), so we decided to run BACK to that Walmart, a thirty minute trip each way mind you, and get some candles and such to perform an impromptu circle with. While we were there I picked up ANOTHER pack of crawfish for Cousin Norman who wanted us to try out HIS recipe for etoufee. You see, just because it's Cajun doesn't mean it's only cooked one way. But all that was for the next night.

The day wore on and we kept ourselves busy and then THE Wife and I and our cabin mates returned to our abode and started our own party after having a nice dinner of the remainder of the grilled chicken turned into a nice chicken salad. THEN we cranked up the karaoke and had a blast with that. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that my Cousin Tammy has a pretty nice voice, and could actually do quite well with songs I just never could handle well. We were joined by my youngest cousin Angie (the one I held in my arms on that day in 1981) and her husband, as well as my "Sister" cousin Lisa and her adorable teenaged daughter Brenna (who has adopted me as the "coolest cousin" and her "Uncle Michael". She sat up her keyboard and quickly found out that she didn't know any song I knew, but she did manage some freeform stuff that amazed me and everybody else who heard it. Have I mentioned yet that this girl is an amazing artist as well? Shades of my late Mother Michele shines on in this child…….you'd be so proud of her, Mom.

We rocked on till the wee hours until yet ANOTHER cousin and his kids showed up late to the reunion and needed a few beds to sleep on, which meant a pair of those bunk beds we weren't using. When I last saw Wally, he was us the cutest kid you ever saw, but now he was a comedian who needs to get a job……being a comedian. He was a HOOT, and kept us up really late with his tales. Now, THIS time we thought we had the air mattress problem figured out and decided to open up the fold-out couch and park the mattress on TOP of IT, figuring that would isolate it from the cold floor and keep it from freezing us.

Sigh.

Apparently, just raising the mattress off the floor does not solve the problem. The think little mattress already on the couch-bed apparently was not adequate insulation to prevent the mattress from picking up the surrounding coolness. And thus began my third night of less-than-optimal sleep. Do you detect a theme here, my dear readers? Believe me, it's not all about me and my lack of sleep, but I'm trying to be accurate here……here.

Now it's somewhere around 4 AM and THE Michael is one unhappy, sleep deprived, but still awake camper. But the Sun came up, and so did people, eventually, and another day began on the shores of South Toledo Bend Reservoir. I forgot to mention that I took a few pictures of the sunset which happens right on the water, and I think you'll agree it is simply a beautiful sight. This was the BIG day, for which the family had rented the visitor's center meeting hall for everybody to gather and share in some good cajun cooking and visiting. You saw the picture on episode one of all the cousins during that first major gathering in 1981, right? Get a load of THIS one………

I think it was providence that I was to bring my make-shift karaoke system to the reunion, not just for the entertainment value, but for the use it was put too when I set it up in the meeting hall. First off, the gang of teenagers commandeered the system immediately, having fun with it while the rest of us clans-people of advanced age commiserated. Then, (was it AFTER we all pigged out on ribs and crawfish etoufee, or before?) we gathered the individual families together and one after the other, brought each one to the front of the hall and introduced everyone to the rest of the family, using the microphone of my sound system. It then occurred to me that MY Mother was the only one of the elders who had already passed beyond the veil, and there was no one to introduce ME. However, I knew right off the bat who to ask. My Aunt June, the YOUNGEST of the elder aunts and uncles, who had come all the way from Alaska to be with my Mom, the OLDEST of them, when she passed away, was one who was there many times for me when I needed a hand up, and this time was no exception. She was BEAMING with the honor to stand in stead of my Mom, and she proudly introduced me to the clan, the only child of Michele, the gypsy artist who just like her baby, always lived life her own way. Thank you, Aunt June. I love you.

Then, as a nasty storm front blew in to soften the light, we all gathered outside beneath the canopy of the visitors' center to have our group pictures taken; family by family, the whole clan together, and of course, a reproduction of the original 1981 group photo. Not everybody is there, and none of us resemble ourselves, but hey, it was thirty long years gone by! We simply got better looking! hahaha

Eventually the clock approached 9, and we had to give up the hall, and I packed up the gear and hauled it out to the car with the help of Norman, who long ago, knee high to a grasshopper, had tied me to a chair with rope playing cowboys and indians or something. And I couldn't get out of it! So we made our hugs and stuff and broke back up into our separate parties. Back at the cabin, Tammy, Lisa, Steve, Gail and yours truly relearned the ancient art of canasta, and played a hand or two. Lisa decided that riding out the now stormy weather was not best done in a tent, so she and Brenna joined us to spend the night in the bunk room. Now, THIS time I just KNEW we had this bed thing figured out. We put blankets down beneath the fitted sheet hoping it would insulate us from the cold mattress. Well…..it did….sort of. THE Wife slept well enough. THE Michael? Night FOUR and I MIGHT have gotten maybe four hours. Thank the Gods for adrenaline and coffee!

The next morning I met with a certain amount of trepidation. I had waited for this reunion, making plans and saving money and getting so excited, and just like that……time to go home. Back to life. Back to life far, far away from ALL of these wonderful people I was blessed to be related to and spent three wonderful days with. But more than anything, I was so overwhelmed by how all my fears of not being accepted or rejected for who I was or who they were……..were baseless. More than 60 people of all ages and creeds and religions gathered together here and totally ignored all that silly shit and simply LOVED one another and saw to it that NOBODY felt different. It was, perhaps I said this already…..spiritual.

And Bonnie, I want you to know that I will never forget how you took me aside and asked me what had happened to me in my childhood. I didn't expect that, and you wanting to know, and caring about it, meant everything in the world to me. Thank you. I will love you forever for that.

Next chapter, the return……….as soon as I recover from writing this one.

P.S. It took me so long to write this I didn't have time to install all the pictures I wanted, but I promise to devote a whole post to a pile of pics sure to delight those who were there and maybe even those who weren't.

The Gathering of the Clan, Chapter Two (or II, whichever you prefer)

2010-03-25T19:02:00.008-04:00

Up until departure time, THE Wife was not entirely sure she would be able to accompany due to some family issues of her own, but came the day and she felt she could come. According to the weather reports I had glanced at, I had assumed we would be passing through a mild weather front that might shower us a few times, but it turned out to be one long gray journey through some nasty, cold rain that persisted all the way to Mobile, Alabama. Now, let me back track slightly and tell you about some trip planning considerations……..

The entire drive to South Toledo Bend State Park in Louisiana was Google Mapped to come in around 12-13 hours. That would have had us getting up at some ungodly hour and getting there fairly late if we left on the day the cabin was available. Oh, the cabin……before we left I finally arranged to share a cabin with my cousin Tammy and her husband Steve, who were flying in from California. Otherwise it would have been a tent site, and it's been years since these old bones have had to experience camping out in cold nights. We split the cost with them so it wasn't that expensive. So, as it turns out, a Blogger friend of mine who I have know for many years now, Jules, had informed me that her and her husband were dying to meet us and would be more than happy to put us up for the night if we decided to drop by while passing through. This was providence at it's best! Mobile Alabama is just about halfway between here and there and the overnight stop would afford me the leisure to stop off at my Grandfathers' old place long enough to see what shape it was in and take pictures for the other cousins to see. The property is in probate since my Grandmother passed away, and the proceeds of it being sold would be spit amongst the aunts and uncles, including me, who has survived my late mother. I had an idea I might want to try and acquire the place myself, being on a bayou and all, but I changed my mind about that once I saw the place. Mother nature had reclaimed the plot to such an extent that it would cost as much to rehabilitate it as it would be to purchase it.

So, we stopped off in Freeport, Florida, I did my reminiscing, and we continued on our way to Mobile, Alabama, following the directions Jules had given me over e-mail. We pulled up to this really cute house across the street from a little canal, and Jules and her husband Blan came out to usher us into the backyard to park. Thus began a very pleasant night in which we got to meet this "old friend" of mine for the first time, sharing a nice dinner with them and getting to know them better. All this time I had only known Jules through comments to my blog, but I knew instinctively that she was good people, and believe me, they are! We all had a wonderful time getting to know each other! Before we left Jacksonville, THE Wife had expressed misgivings about spending a night with "people we didn't know", but the really funny thing about it was that Jules confided in me that her husband had expressed the same feelings, and now we all have this running joke about the "serial killers" coming to spend the night.....lol! They even drove us down to the marina to show off the small sailboats they love to sail out in the bay with other members of their unpretentious "yacht club". I think I made yet another pair of friends for life, in no small measure due to my blog and having followers who have actually come to grow fond of "THE Michael" and the telling of his life on his blog.

The next morning, we got up bright and early so that we could continue our journey and they could get to work, but I hadn't gotten much sleep. I'm sure most of my readers can empathize with me when I state that a mattress can be a very personal thing, and this mattress was much to hard for me to sleep on. I do not fault my gracious hosts for this, but it did remind us why we brought along an inflatable queen sized air bed that we knew we could tolerate other than our own bed, which has lots of layers of foam to cushion our aging bodies. We would deploy that mattress on our return trip, as we did at the cabin.

We left Jules and Blan with the admonition to stop again on our return, and we parted feeling so good about our experience meeting these wonderful people. I thought I liked Jules from what she would write to me in comments and the occasional letter. Now I knew I liked her AND her husband a lot more than I ever thought I would. Thank you so much, you wonderful people, for trusting us and being there for us when we needed a place to rest our bones. These invitations go both ways. Sunny Florida awaits you when you head out OUR way!

IF YOU ARE UNDER 18, PLEASE STOP READING NOW AND HAVE AN ADULT EXPLAIN THIS SECTION TO YOU!

So, the weather had improved remarkably by this next morning and we continued on our way in sunshine. Let me tell you, if the speed limit on interstate highways was still at 55, I would have been one unhappy camper. I happen to be one of those who thinks 70 miles-per-%&@#&$-hour is damn fast enough, but the majority of Americans have gotten so used to instant- every-damn-thing that I usually end up being the slowest car on the road, these idiots blowing by me at 85 MPH or faster. And yes, America, the highway patrol is still busy out there ruining your insurance rates and adding points to your license, all because you all think you are so $#@&^%$ SPECIAL! (This rant was brought to you by the National Association of just how $%@&&%$ fast do you need to go?) I want to apologize to sensitive ears for my language, but sometimes I have this keen interest into getting my point across, and nothing does it better than those old American standbys, the four letter words. So sue me.

(While editing this, I simmered down, a cooler head prevailed, and I censored myself somewhat. Don't come back here expecting me to always be this considerate. Grin....)

So, finally, after a few fill-ups, a thrilling drive though the downtown traffics of New Orleans and Baton Rouge, in which crazy people tried to kill us, and thanks to google maps, we made our way into the South Toledo Bend State Park, located on the border of Louisiana and Texas. It was nice not having to venture into Texas, because, quite frankly, 8 plus years of Texas was plenty enough for me. Besides, being an American without a passport, I probably would have been considered illegal anyway and promptly arrested by some Ranger. Texas has been itching to succeed from the union and I will gladly wave bye bye if they are ever allowed to do so. Just don't think you're taking any nuclear weapons with you. If we're not letting Iran have any, we SURE as hell aren't letting YOU play with them….he he.

Hey, laugh, I joke a lot, OK? I love you guys, even the Texans.

We stopped off at the park office to pick up a cabin key, which of course they didn't have, but we did get a nice piece of stiff red paper to hang on our rear-view mirror. Then we drove straight to the camping area we expected the rest of the clan to be gathering at and boy, were there CLAN. All KINDS of clan. The cousins had reproduced and now we OWNED this place. It was such an emotional moment for me, leaping (OK, fine, I don't leap so well anymore but I got out of the car somewhat faster than usual) out of the car and embracing Aunts and Uncles and Cousins I had not seen in SO, SOOOOOO many years. And, of course, I shook hands and hugged the various spouses that accompanied the relations. They all welcomed Gail into their club with equal affection, and before too long she was not feeling so much the outsider.

Then, after awhile, we made our way to the cabin, and let me tell ya, these cabins are NICE! They come with two bedrooms, one with a queen sized bed, the other with two bunk beds. The living room has a fold-out couch. There's one bathroom (which is a minor annoyance when you have several families sharing) and a kitchen, completely stocked with dishes and utensils, and towels and linens were included. We brought the food and booze since Tammy and Steve had to fly in from California, and homeland security makes it hard to smuggle a rack of baby-back ribs onto a jet. Since WE were sharing the cabin with THEM, we got the bunk bed room, which of course wasn't working for us, being the pansy-ass-gotta have-the-perfect mattress couple that we were, so later that night we blew up the air mattress in the living room and slept there, once the initial day and night of getting aquatinted wound down. It had a wood burning stove, also, but we never got around to using it, instead depending on the central air to defend us against the frigid cold of the night. We did some visiting, then Steve and I got some wood and charcoal going on the outside grill and cooked us up some chicken breasts and ate some of them with baked beans and salad. OK, fine, we ended up having to NUCK them in the microwave to finish them off, they were so thick. Some cavemen WE turned out to be…sheesh!

And, of course, I had brought along my make-shift karaoke system and set that up in the living room and we had a blast singing the night away.

Then we wore ourselves out talking and comparing notes and eventually in the wee hours of the morning we said our goodnights. Of course, physics tends to screw with the best laid plans of mice and wives, so we blew up the air mattress (it has a built-in air pump so no, no lungs are required) and set it on the.........you guessed it.....cold tiled floor. OK, yes, an air mattress can be nice and cushy and comfortable, but it is filled with AIR, and air quickly picks up the ambient temperature of whatever it's in contact with, which in this case was this suck-the-heat-right-out-of-everything stone tile floor. So, in no time at all, we were trying to fall asleep on a slab of very cold mattress, and all the blankets in the world wasn't helping. We didn't get any sleep that night either, but hey, with this kind of excitement, who the hell needs sleep?

Hey, this was only day one, Thursday. Two more days to go! Stay tuned for another exciting episode in which THE Michael gets adopted by an adoring teenage cousin once removed.

The Gathering of the Clan

2010-03-24T12:41:00.003-04:00

Greetings, and welcome back to The Chronicles of Pendragon Hold, that acre of Florida sand where nothing ever happens…..until now. Yes, I, your intrepid host THE Michael, have been on an extended sabbatical, and believe me, I had my reasons. I used to believe that there would never be a time that I could ever consider not blogging, for I have always had this deep-seated need to express myself, and having discovered such a wonderful vehicle to do so in the form of Blogger, I figured I'd be doing it forever.

Then my melancholy set in. Call it my second childhood, my mid-life crisis, or just plain old running out of things to say, but it just wasn't working for me. As you all well know, I have certain beliefs and opinions concerning politics and religion and I have never been one to be shy about expressing them. However, there is a price to pay for actually caring about what's going on in the world; it can raise your blood pressure, make you see red, and inch you just that much closer to a chemical imbalance. Also, there's the fact that we all have issues, some more private than others, that we can't or shouldn't be airing in a blog. I have maintained a certain anonymity with this blog but a lot of people nonetheless know who I am so I still have to censor myself to some degree lest I piss off people I have no desire to piss off. And, quite frankly, aside from raging against the machine, there is sometimes, if not most times, absolutely anything worth blogging about concerning life here at the Hold. So there you have it. I want to get back to blogging, I really do. I enjoy the hell out of writing and some people even suggest I do it well. I love those people. Smile…….Whatever, I will try and resume my duties here as chief cook and Harper of Tall Tales at Pendragon Hold, but please don't expect me to produce the level of award winning content you were used to consuming in the past. I have standards to maintain. Stop laughing.

So, without further adea, I invite you to share in the most amazing week this man can remember having since mankind settled on just how many days a week should last. To hear the Christians tell it, God pooped out after seven days and we've been stuck with that odd number ever since. It could be worse. It could be metric.

CHAPTER ONE

The Rekindling……...

This all actually started way back in 1981 when the Patriarch of the (due to our policy here at the Hold of a smidgen of Privacy, we shall refer to the clan as "Smith") Smith Clan passed away and the family assembled for the funeral. It was the last time that yours truly experienced the full impact of this family numbers wise, and I met a few individuals who would impact me in remarkable ways. However, as families tend to do, we all went back to our separate lives and continued to live them each in their own fashion, to the point that many of us totally lost contact with the others, and it seemed we spread out to all points on the compass. I had A LOT of cousins, most of them teenagers or younger at that time, and these cousins all grew up to raise their own families, some quite large. They also engaged in their own faiths and creeds, ranging from hard core Catholics all the way to Pagans, each with their own closely held beliefs and opinions, temperaments, and lifestyles. Another words, your average American family. But we had many of us lost track of ourselves as a Clan.

Many years later and relatively recently, an Aunt I had maintained spotty contact with enabled me to make Facebook contact with two of my cousins, one in Texas and another In Taiwan, the "other" China. We became acquainted to some extent but it was hit or miss. I even had confused the one cousin, which previously I hadn't even known existed, with another cousin whom I did, for they both shared the same first names. It was confusing there for awhile to say the least. Anyway, let's fast forward to the present day.

Then my Uncle Norman died from injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident. Norman was my Aunt June's ex-husband but still the father of his children and the loss was tragic to everybody who knew him, including me. He and Aunt June were there for me many times in my life when I needed a hand up. I remembered the man quite fondly, even though it has been decades since I last saw him. However, what's really remarkable about this is what his death set off. Next thing you know, thanks to Face Book, all these cousins began to come together and discover each other thanks to this remarkable networking miracle. By spreading the word about Uncle Norm, we all began to reconnect, some having not seen each other since that day in 1981. I have very strong memories of the group as a whole but of certain individuals in particular which awoke in me a joy at the prospect of hearing from them once again. And, next thing you know………I discovered that a once bitter and neglected child buried deep inside of me, once a product of a foster home, had to be dealt with. And he was. Yes, my friends, after all these many, many years, he indeed was.

So, once the reconnections became hot and heavy between 20-something long-lost cousins, aunts and uncles, we of course started planning the big reunion. And those of us who for one reason or another were closer became even more so. Since I was an only child, I had not experienced the sensation of siblings, but several of my female cousins happily stepped in and adopted me thus. AND, as an added bonus, one of my new "Sister's" daughter has decided that I am "Uncle" Michael. I wish I could convey the emotions all of this has stirred in me. I really wish I could. I am still trying to soak it all in. So there has been many emails and chats online for months now, and I have gotten to know many of my cousins pretty well without actually having met them yet. But, still, the meeting had to happen, and that's where my voyage REALLY began……..

OK, This is going to take awhile, and both my fingers and my heart need a break. So I will spell check this and get it posted before starting on chapter two of what might encompass a whole bunch of them. This is emotional for me so bear with me. This is about love.

P.S. If you look closly at the photo, third guy from the left with the long hair holding a baby, that's me, the oldest of the cousins, holding Angie, the youngest of the cousins in my arms.

Allowances

2010-03-07T21:15:00.002-05:00

I'm rather rabid about protecting my "rights", while at the same time recognizing that none of us are truly born with any real right to anything. What we actually enjoy, at least in this country, are "allowances". We are allowed by those in power to presume that we can say what we want, do what we want, think what we want, all within a framework of manageable chaos which we call democracy. You need only observe the machinations of the Bush Administration or the Putin Regime to understand that this freedom we take so much for granted is a tenuous concept at best. The right people in the right place will dictate just how free any one of us are to live our lives as we see fit.

I also happened to notice, while I was growing up and learning all about rights and how few of us really understand what they are, that with rights come responsibilities which few of us are aware of or are too lazy to embrace. So, I think I have the right to think and say anything I damn well please, but I also have a responsibility to exercise that right in such a way as not to harm someone either deliberately or by negligence. I WILL fail in this endeavor, but I WILL cling to the defense that I am at least trying. Most people, of course, are not going to concern themselves to much by how "getting theirs'" is going to effect those around them, because a "free" society also tends to be a very self-centered society. You might argue this point, but while you are dragging out your big guns, let me give you THIS broadside. You would think that social evolution would deal with problems as they arise and solve them, rather than create them. Really? Then tell me why, before Ronald Reagan came along, no one used the word "homeless" very much? Tell me why, then, are the mentally ill gunning down people in wholesale numbers instead of being managed by a mental health system that SURELY should have a clue by now as to how to deal with these people, who, incidentally, are simply you and me just one emotional upheaval away? Tell me why, in the name of free enterprise, we seem to have forgotten the idea of national interest, such as keeping OUR citizens employed and off the streets rather than shipping their livelihoods overseas so that third world nations can aspire to be just like us? (Third world nations, I might point out, that hate our guts, and sadly, have every right to.)

We are afraid of each other. So damn intent are we to protect our "rights", we see to it that every citizen has the right to arm themselves, even if we end up arming the very people we are arming ourselves against. It seems we would much rather shoot someone needing our help then to simply help them, unless of course, they have the good grace to shoot themselves once their rampages are out of the way. Then we bath in the media circus that always follows, following the pointing fingers, then going back to our self-centered lives and trying not to think about the next massacre that will surely happen, because, after all, we are no longer our brother's keeper, are we?

I WILL practice my rights as I see fit, as long as the police state allows me to. My practice of rights does not happen to include owning a pristine, green lawn devoid of all life other than one genetically engineered species of grass. It does not include contaminating my water table with herbicides and pesticides and all those other poisons we can pour on a yard. It doesn't include seeing to it that my neighbors are worshipping the right God, or bringing the righteous weight of moral society down upon their sinful heads if they aren't. It doesn't include living my life as though my being at the top of the food chain really means I'm a superior species that needs no regard for his fellow creatures. It does mean that I will keep jacking my jaws, pointing out the obvious, and maybe not-so-obvious, until my turn comes up and I get to die just like everybody else.

Or is that a responsibility?

You tell me.

What We Leave Behind

2010-03-02T15:46:00.002-05:00

What will be YOUR legacy? Will it be the words carved into granite that loved ones think will define you? Will it be a short synopses in an obituary that could hardly come close to telling strangers who you were? Will it be the memories you left them that will slowly fade as the generations you left behind turn back to their own lives till they themselves pass beyond the veil?

There are precious few ways for the common man to leave behind a lasting legacy. The names we all know and recognize from the history books each in their own ways left behind them a reason to be remembered by the collective, some for good things, others for bad, but never for having lived an ordinary life. Such the pity. Sometimes, if you are lucky, someone will tell you the story of someone they once knew, who made an impact upon them, and that name, for that moment, will live a bit longer, but then, it will find it's way into the cosmic trash-can and be gone forever. That has always been the fate of the common man, a fate I believe challenges the fairness of this kind of fame. If immortality can be described as being remembered by the living for as long as children are born and told of what came before, then it seems one CAN live forever, if history in itself can be described as a path to immortality. And who can say that EVERY man is not as equally deserving of being remembered?

So, what will be MY legacy? Till recently, short of some epiphany striking me out of nowhere causing me to invent something as powerful as cold fusion, anti-gravity, or a bra strap that any man can unhook easily, I was convinced that my legacy would be as short lived and extinct as anyone's.

Then came Blogger.

Since I began to record my thoughts and my life in this medium, open to all, there are now countless more individuals aware that I exist. It is even possible that if I were to die tomorrow, my words and thoughts would live on, preserved, quite possibly forever, in this electronic mind that holds the thoughts of millions of people. Those that come across my blog would not read some artful snippet that said I died of whatever, lived on what street, and was survived by whom, but rather they would read what I had to say about my life and what I believed it amounted to. Is that not perhaps a new kind of legacy that levels the playing field of memories populated by the likes of Edison, Hitler, Roosevelt, and Einstein? No, I will never be mentioned in history books: my name will never end up as an answer to a test question, and there will not be a block of stone with my name on it listed as a "must-see" stop on some tourist map. But, I will remain. Here. And people will always be able to visit me, and even continue the conversation with comments, albeit ones that can not be replied to.

THAT could be MY legacy.

As well as YOURS.

Say your piece now. Say it loud, say it proud. Tell your grandchildren about your grandparents. Let your future widow's suitor know why she's so worth loving. Let all those people you tip-toed around all your life know what you REALLY felt about them. Trust in the truth to always set you free, and realize that your truth can't be everybody else's. Slip in some uncomfortable facts between the lines and hope no one notices before that time when judgment is moot. Accept how ordinary you are, despite the outside chance, to someone at least, you never were. If you happen to be superficially beautiful, or outstandingly ugly, set that aside now, because it won't matter where you are going. Be prepared to meet in heaven the people you condemned to hell, and vice versa, for vanity and ego are blind. And if you are one of those lucky individuals, who, perhaps, through cosmic malfunction, returns for another stab at life and remembers this one, then go back and log onto Blogger, just to refresh your memory, and perhaps come to terms with who you once were, and what you meant in the grand scheme of things.

All New Episodes? Not yet.........

2010-02-07T07:51:00.005-05:00

The world hasn't ended just yet so I can't report on it. Birds still fly and fish still swim so the worst of what's considered normal these days hasn't come to my attention. Good things, and bad things, continue to occur at a glacial pace here at Pendragon Hold. While yours truly is deeply submerged in his literary and journalistic funk, you CAN keep yourself entertained by perusing through the archives of the several blogs I inflicted upon the free world over the years. I hear somewhere in there a chuckle or even a groan has been illicited. I wouldn't know; I just wrote the stuff.

But, hey, do not despair. The oceans might turn acid, a big rock might smack the planet, or a troublesome percentage of humanity might just up and vanish one day. Stranger things have been known to happen then me finding the inspiration and freedom to resume this blog. Till then, if the networks can keep you happy with re-runs, so can I.

Blessed be!

Fail!

2010-01-13T09:28:00.002-05:00

I usually visit my favorite blogs by opening up The Chronicles and hitting the links to them. However, yesterday, much to my chagrin, I discovered that the template for The Chronicles had "gone south", leaving the blog without any of it's structure, just a dull orange/brown background, the template having either malfunctioned or disappeared altogether. I don't know if this is the result of some sort of outside hack or something I did on my computer, but the damage was done and I had to reconstruct the blog. What you see now is not exactly what I'm looking for, but it will do for now, especially since I'm not back into posting shape as of yet. Stay tuned, hopefully I can restore The Chronicles to it's former glory, albeit with a different template.

The Sabatical of The Harper of Pendragon Hold

2009-12-16T13:37:00.004-05:00

Yes, just like in every household, "something" happens here at Pendragon Hold every day. The main problem of late is the "quality" or rather "bloggability" of those "somethings" that do occur here. A blogger requires inspiration, whether that be the excitement of a looming foreclosure or his/her opinion on upcoming health care legislation, but mostly it's just the day to day madness that is the typical pagan American home life that gets copy. For me, your host, THE Michael, Lord Holder and Harper of Pendragon Hold, that typical pagan life has been comprised of either tripe too uninteresting to be put to pen or drama more fit for the gossip rags that get their fodder from the likes of Tiger Woods. So, lately, I either can't or simply don't WANT to spend an hour staring at this screen either censoring myself or trying to imagine what might have happened around here that is worth the monitor it's displayed upon. Plus, I am inflicted with a lack of desire to make shit up, which many a blogger has been accused of but will never find traction in regards to these Chronicles. Thus, I report to you this post that folks, there just isn't anything worth posting (with My name attached to it) to the Chronicles for now.

One of the reasons this could possibly happen is that I assigned my rants, raves, and concise reasoning to that OTHER blog you all know and love. Ok, fine; MOST of you know and a FEW of you love. But even in that case, as of late, I have suffered from a severe form of dontgiveashititis brought on by feeling like Don Quixote tilting at windmills. Once one has convinced themselves from THE RECORD that mankind is inherently a suicidal life form hell bent on killing itself, one loses the motivation to light his tiny little candle in an effort to hold forth against one big bad shadow which is overtaking everything good in this world. So, if my rage builds to the point I either post something or go postal, I will spare my wife and family the stigma by posting a venting scream rather than making a half-hearted dent in the population, which even N1H1 and Middle Eastern suicide bombers don't seem to be making much progress in whittling down.

Sometimes I feel that if anybody truly knew me, they would know that there is so much more light in my soul than the darkness I sometimes seem to drag around with me. I think I love to much while not loving nearly enough. I might simply be broken; I don't know. All I do know for now and for sure is that I need a break from thinking about anything, including writing on this blog, so bear with me, please have faith in me, and know that all you special human beings that have stuck with me and mine throughout these years; I love and care for you in the only real way I know that matters. I'll be back. Maybe sooner than later. I am, after all, obsessive/compulsive. I'll be visiting the portals into YOUR life as I always have. Just keep a candle lit in the window.

Merry Whatever Floats your Boat........

2009-12-04T13:51:00.003-05:00

There's a cold rain falling on the sands of Pendragon Hold today. And, according to reports from my family on Facebook, there is snow falling in Houston, a place, much like the Jacksonville area, that normally never sees it. The last time it "snowed" down here was the year I first came to Florida from Alaska. I guess I brought it with me. At any rate, there wasn't a lot of it, it mostly just iced up the roads, and the ensuing chaos was a sight to behold, especially from the viewpoint of one who was used to driving on ice as a matter of course. What Southerners don't know is that you don't apply the brakes AT the stop sign on ice……you start easing onto it half a block back, and studs on your tires help a lot. Slip sliding away………he he………

As far as anything else of note……well……lessee…….what CAN I say? THE Dotter is heroically slaving away at her new job, but isn't enjoying it, no more than THE Wife did when she was trapped in it for all those years. Folks, if you don't already know this, take this to heart; RETAIL SUCKS. However, there is the sweet smell of hope upon the breeze in regards to her getting a better job. Let me just stick with "hope" and leave it at that. There are other dramas I could report on but won't, as drama is a dish best served by it's own cook, and I tread in that kitchen at my own peril. Let's just say that life is not always perfect, but it IS life, and the alternative is…well……

We took advantage of a VERY narrow window of good weather last night to hold a Full Moon Rite here in our sacred circle. It had stormed the night before, and the weather really sucks today, but last night, the clouds moved off, the sky was clear, and Momma Moon graced us with the silver light of her full glory. We accepted some guests and made our wishes beneath the gaze of our Goddess, and all told it was a pleasant night to be Wiccan. If Christians can become one with their God the way we become one with our Earth Mother, then all power to them. It is indeed a powerful feeling.

Already the Christian/secular holiday of Christmas is going full-tilt boogie. The volume of holiday music was so loud over the overhead speakers at the hospital that even the doctors started getting annoyed and the calls to the front desk started getting hot and heavy. Of course, Walmart is already decked out in full holiday commercial "Buy THIS for your loved ones" displays. Considering just how bad our economy is right now, with SO many breadwinners out of work, it would be nice if the media and the commercial sector would get a clue and tone down this capitalist madness. We just can't afford this spending orgy that Christmas has become, and it's time for all of us to really re-examine what this holiday should really be about. I grew to hate the hypocrisy of this holiday even long before I converted to paganism, but even now I recognize that the essence of what this holiday is supposed to represent got hijacked by the commercial sector and made into something ugly, not necessarily the fault of those who think they follow the tenants of Christ, the "Son of God". Perhaps a healthy boycott of these spending frenzies could moderate this greed for once. I think Christmas should be about families loving each other enough to set aside petty differences and coming together to celebrate their love for one another. And to eat turkey. Lots of turkey. And gravy…..

However, we here at Pendragon Hold will be celebrating Yule, a true pagan sabbat, that was the original boilerplate holiday hijacked by the Christians to celebrate the birth of their savior. We here at the Hold don't believe that we needed to be saved from anything except perhaps our baser human nature. We have our Yule log from last year which we will burn on our fire, and we will make a new Yule Log to guide and protect us throughout the challenges we'll face in the next year. However you celebrate this December, we here at Pendragon Hold wish you and yours the very best that life can afford you, and will even wish you all, if it be your path, a very Merry Christmas, and a very happy New Year.

Thanks

2009-11-26T21:44:00.005-05:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, and I mean that most sincerely, what you are about to witness via the art of linguistics and interpretations of vague symbology and runes, is the Thanksgiving edition of The Chronicles of Pendragon Hold, the Blog known around the world as that "pompous pontification" no one ever heard of. I know that sounds oxymorish (did I invent yet ANOTHER word?) on a very profound level, but humor me here…..

Yours truly, THE Michael, spent the holiday in the company of a fine group of female super-heroes, the kind of women you want in your corner if you fucked with fate, and fate won. The sick, the injured, the suicidal and the demented, they all come to be cared for by a remarkable cadre of professionals who are willing to put up with some disgusting things in order to make a real difference in the lives of people truly needing someone to care about them. It's MY job to help these remarkable ladies take care of their patients, and I am so proud to be able to take care of "my girls", and get payed to do it.

There's a lot about the health care system in this country that needs some serious overhaul, the paramount consideration being this affront we call health "insurance", which truly IS an oxymoron, when you consider that the true priority of any for-profit corporation is to make money, mostly for it's greedy CEO and upper tier executives, while the patients, stockholders, and providers get bent over and screwed royally. I know that many of you think that a single payer system is some sort of communist conspiracy to "pull the plug on granny" and "take away your choice", but many more of us know this is nothing but bullshit propaganda force fed to those of us with little or no critical thinking skills who deep in their heart only care about themselves and would begrudge the lesser of us even the basic kindnesses, even affordable healthcare.

Caught in the middle of this epic battle between what I consider to be down-to-earth good and evil are the health care workers, the nurses, aids, medical technicians and others who help people recover from devastating medical conditions, and don't own yachts or private jets in exchange for their efforts. Yes, our doctors and physician assistants are in the forefront of this holy calling, but yes, they command pretty damn good compensation for their education and sacrifice, some somewhat in excess, some no where near what is deserved. But, I can tell you this, I would not wish what these people have to put up with for 12 hours straight each work day on ANYBODY who hasn't got the drive, the commitment, and the caring soul to take on these challenges and preserver to the great benefit of the sick and suffering. I know for a fact that most of you would faint or vomit when faced with some of the horrifying sights we deal with everyday and think nothing of.

So, for this Thanksgiving, aside from all the blessings you have been graced with, like still having a job, a roof over your head, food on your table, and good health, I would like you to set aside just a smidgen of thanks for all these nurses and health care workers who give so many people so many more years to sit at a table and give thanks for anything at all, or ease them as gently as possible into Summer-land, where every day is Thanksgiving Day.

2009-11-18T20:02:00.003-05:00

Welcome to another episode of the award-winning blog known around the world and on at least three alien planets as The Chronicles of Pendragon Hold, the first person observations of one man, concerning his wife, family, livestock, pets, and invertebrates. Join us as we allow you a glimpse into the hidden world of a family SO famous, no one can tell you who we are or what we are supposed to be famous for! Now THAT's famous! Take THAT, hotel hussy!

Unfortunately, there's not a hell of a lot to report on in the world of the Hold this week. We didn't go anywhere, we didn't do anything, no one lost their jobs, no one got hired into a better one, and all our animals are safe, sound, and well fed. Me, personally, am quite happy to be able to report on our rather mundane situation, which I consider much more preferable to having to report of some disaster, illness, accident, or silly drama. When I read the news feeds or watch World News Tonight, I seem to find yet one more thing to worry about, thus the rather boring living situation we happen to find ourselves in the grips of is rather refreshing.

Oh, wait......there WAS one incident.

THE GREAT KITCHEN FLOOD OF 2009!

Yep, the pump that evacuates the water in the dishwasher apparently got jammed or something, causing an overflow onto the floor of the kitchen. After cleaning up the gallons of water that really messed up my nice, shiny waxed no-wax linoleum, I did some creative knob turning, button pushing, and water bailing to finally get this labor saving device back to saving us some labor. So, no, we do not have to wash dishes by hand until we can afford to buy a new one. That would be tragic, considering that we are of the generation removed from the one that was forced to actually clean their dishes in a SINK, of all places! Having lost that sacred knowledge to the ages would have placed us in the precarious position of either having to buy paper plates and utensils or having to attend classes on how to operate a kitchen sink and manual dish drying device. I hear those green scrubby things are a real terror to handle.........

Nothing else broke down, but THE Wife's continued abuse of our ancient technology stove with it's steel drip pans and plug in circular heating elements has me thinking I really should replace it with one of those easy to clean and hard to mess up beauties with the smooth tops. Besides, the temperature readout on this one we have now has faded out so badly we have to turn off the kitchen lights in order to see it.

In our continuing report on nothing worth mentioning, the weather here has been rather nice of late, never going over 80, in the day, while getting perhaps a little chilly overnight. We are enjoying that rather narrow band between hot humid misery and cold, clammy overcast grey glum. This I like!

Well, I promised you, my loyal readers, SOMETHING in the way of content, and by Gods, I delivered, didn't I? Well, stick around, because in no time at all (hopefully not to exceed another week or two or three) you will be treated to yet ANOTHER award winning episode of the premier blog the blogging world has said "takes up valuable space that might otherwise be wasted in some other asinine fashion by someone who doesn't even write in English....."

No offense to our Pakistani audience, of course.........

The Truest Measure of HONOR

2009-11-11T11:34:00.005-05:00

Today is Veterans Day, a day out of a very long year set aside to honor those of us who served their country in one of the branches of the Armed Services. That is a fine thing, yet, as a veteran myself who has never allowed himself to be blinded by blind, shallow, and false patriotism, I consider all the parades and other window dressing to be horribly inadequate when it comes to paying back what we owe this amazing and sometimes tragic population of brave Americans, of all races, creeds, genders, and religious affiliations.

The most egregious (in my humble opinion) transgression we allow these men and women who go into harms way is the way we train them to be warriors. Yes, we are VERY good at creating fighting men and women who follow orders, do what must be done that can and often get them killed, and do it better than any other fighting force this planet has ever known. But what we do NOT do is teach them how to be ordinary citizens AFTER they have been trained to cause harm or kill others in defense of our country. What's really worse is the culture of killer macho we install in our fighting men that does not allow them to show weakness or admit to the psychological injury that their service can inflict upon them. In "this man's army" we equate seeking help, mental or otherwise, with "being a pussy", which is a perfectly pathetic way to demonstrate just how callous we as a society is capable of being. This is a society that acquires its strength from the RULE OF LAW, and untamed aggression, whether that be against a foreign civilian or a soldiers own spouse, is totally counter to that in a sane society. Yea, you might think you are a bad ass, because the Army taught you how to kill, but if you can't put that training into perspective, and return to us able to function in society as a calm, decent, non-aggressive citizen, then we have failed you, and this failure to take responsibility for our warriors is directly responsible for the terrible price our warriors are paying for stepping up and serving their country in times of war.

You MEN out there, or even women, who think that the measure of manhood or macho or adherence to some imagined "warrior code" need to get over your self-centered self and realize that we don't need you threatening your own people with your personality disorders. It's bad enough that we have a generation of "gang-bangers" whose respect for life is so deficient that even children are endangered from their reckless homicidal behaviors. Its even worse that we have soldiers committing suicide in record numbers because they imagine they are worthless as Men, providers, lovers, husbands, or macho-bad-ass soldiers who couldn't handle the violence they were faced with. You "Rambo wanna-be's" really piss me off, and the system that produces you needs to just fucking go away. I want my military to SERVE me, not come back and harm me and my loved ones or harm themselves.

I was lucky. Although I served in a way that I could never talk about, get any credit for, or equate with actually gunning down individual human beings, I had to live with constant danger with blinders on, never really knowing what me and my comrades were doing or what the consequences might be, I didn't have to witness horrific bloodshed such as those who see their buddies being taken out by an impersonal improvised explosive device. My service was not easy, but I was able to deal with it, and came away with a certain amount of pride for having served my country,

Not everybody in uniform these days returns to the bosom of their country, family, and friends without the stench of some insensible horror following them from the battlefield. They truly need effective mental health care, without some stigma being attached to this need. We as civilians would expect no less; why is this not taken for granted for our warriors is amazing.

So, this Veterans Day, please don't just wave little flags at our veterans and think you've payed them off for their sacrifices. You haven't. You might never. But, it would be nice if you would get real and TRY. Let us cry when we have to, allow us to admit to weakness in the face of overwhelming pressures, and for God's sake..........let us be HUMAN.

Blessed be our brave men and women of our Armed Services!

Ladies and Gentlemen.......POMPLAMOOSE!!!!!!

2009-11-06T12:49:00.001-05:00

OK, it's not all that often that I highlight a celebrity or musical group, since I've always been of the opinion that once someone/something has gotten my attention, they have already achieved some measure of fame/fortune/infamy and do not need my insignificant little endorsement, but, I really DO have to make an exception here. Not for THEIR benefit, mind you, but for EVERYBODY's! These two are THAT good!

The target of today's fawning post is a couple of very talented people who I am assuming are "partners" in some fashion, who have their own channel on U-tube, who create and produce their own music videos which are........amazing! He, this talented amazing guy who plays all sorts of musical instruments and probably is a video savant of sorts, SHE, this sweet/cute/detached sounding vocalist who mesmerizes you with her blank/"I'm having fun here but I'm not going to get all emotional about it" stare as she sings both lead and backup vocals in every song.

This couple is U-Tube PROOF positive that with the ability to play instruments, sing, and know your way around a computer and the net, you can become famous, albeit very slowly and in a well-earned manner that doesn't even include world tours and the ecologically unfriendly price that pays.

So, I present to you this video, hoping like hell these two don't mind me using it here on my blog to "sing" their praises and hope that whoever frequents my blog will give them the attention that I, THE Michael, think they so richly deserve. And no, they did not illicit this review, don't have any idea who THE Michael is, probably never will, and probably don't really care. Not that it matters. Talent is talent. Enjoy!

That "Other" blog......

2009-11-05T14:16:00.002-05:00

Maybe it's just me, but even though I posted a new "insightful and thought-provoking train wreck" on that "other blog", the new post is not being reflected on the blog list, at least on MY view of it. Aready one rabid fan HAS left a comment, so at least somebody is following my more "sensitive" blog, but just in case, I thought I'd, you know, "mention" that you "might" like to wonder over there and take a gander, unless of course you really don't want to deal with THAT aspect of my world, which is why I seperated it out in the first place, because I LOVE YOU ("YOU being, well, you know who you are....grin). And please, do not let this ornary little post get in the way of my last one here, so scroll down and make sure you caught it..........CHEERS!

A Perfectly Proper Post-Mortem, Pendragon Style

2009-11-02T09:38:00.006-05:00

Welcome to a slightly delayed edition of The Chronicles of Pendragon Hold! I'm your host, Gomez Ad…….I mean THE Michael, the Patriarch of this humble abode on the edge of redneck suburbia. Today I deliver the promised Halloween edition of this sage saga, if only because we only returned from Tampa yesterday and I was somewhat to tired to think much less do justice to this august blog.

THE Wife, this being the most special time of the year for her (and the entire clan), really put her heart and soul (and lungs and pancreas and….) into getting us both ready for the costume contest that is hosted every year (this being the 3rd annual Witchstock Festival, I believe) by the Witch's Brew, a really cool little metaphysical shop in Old Palm Harbor, Florida, as well as other merchants who front the main street. Simultaneously, the Non-Resident Twin and her husband, whom we affectionately refer to as "Rolling Thunder", prepared themselves with matching costumes, the theme being "The Addams Family", Gomez, Morticia, Wednesday, and Fester. Presented here is photographic evidence of the crime, certified authentic, genuine, and downright scary by the Tampa Bay Forensics Department, although they will deny having had anything to do with it, or even having seen it.

Of course, in any epic contest between contestants bent on winning at all costs, there is always controversy. The Controversy was that from the moment we rolled, strolled, and levitated onto the street, we were getting enthusiastically positive response from spectators, attendees, and zombies, who knew EXACTLY who we were supposed to be dressed up as, rather than having to guess (Like, uh, you're those guys from Day of the Dead, right?) like you sometimes have to do with badly conceived get-ups. Lots of people with cameras just HAD to get our pictures; this has to be like only the seventh time in my life I've been treated like paparazzi bait! OK, maybe the fifth. Would you believe maybe twice?

But of course, there were other worthy opponents in the ring that night. One lady (I'm assuming) had on this home-made robot costume that you KNEW had lots of love put into it's construction, and there were plenty of other folks who did wonderful jobs using their creativity rather than buying some expensive outfit off the rack. Here's, however, what went down by the time they announced the winners..….

The Robot lady won first place (and I begrudgingly admit that maybe she should have) but (Huh?) apparently had had enough of that band (I'll tell you about that band in a minute) and left early, so the award was passed down to the second place winners by default, and THIS is were the utter tragedy occurred. WE, The renowned Addams Family, beloved by the entire crowd all evening, DID NOT place at least SECOND!!!!!! THE HUMANITY! Wednesday, to say the least, was really frowning after hearing this news. Uncle Fester didn't smile. Morticia was MORTIFIED, and I, Gomez, spit out my cigar and would have lit a stick of dynamite had it been real and functional! Or I had a lighter on me, which I didn't because I quit smoking…….damn……..

Nope, folks, a couple who OBVIOUSLY had access to professional grade costumes who were supposed to be Alice (of Wonderland fame) and the Mad Hatter (oh, so THAT's what the hat was about) took second, which made them first by default, which means we won second place (while the crowd chanted "Off with their heads!"..….not OUR heads, mind you….) which earned us a cute purple trophy complete with flying witch and $50 cash money. Now, really, in a perfect world, we would have won first place hands down, but something tells me we had crossed the veil into a slightly altered reality that night……….spooooooky………..

But, it was fun, and we had a ball, DESPITE the band! These guys started off all right, apparently playing the songs they had performed the longest, but as the night wore on, it was quite apparent that they were getting into "haven't quite nailed that one down right" territory which strayed further and further into downright awful! Like that sound resembling nails on a chalkboard awful? Now, the lead singer was not that bad, all told, and each band member probably wasn't all that bad individually, but it just wasn't coming together as a group. Well, I can't play ANYTHING, so I suppose I shouldn't toss stones……….like hell I can't…….I coulda thrown BRICKS!!!!

The Witch's Brew was a really nice little shop, with other-worldly merchandise on one end and delicious treats and drinks on the other, and I wish them the best in this harsh economy. The proprietor was a very friendly woman who was brimming with positive energy. They even host drums circles, tarot readings, and other spooky things inside and out on their patio. I wish we had something like that around here.

As of late I've been having sleep issues, and Friday night I did not sleep one wink, so by Halloween night I was pretty wired but no less enthusiastic. I ensured myself at least SOME recovery by taking a sleeping pill last night and I did get some rest. Even Shiloh the Wonder dog seemed bushed by his adventure in the car and the strange new place with strange new dog butts to sniff.

So, here we are back at the redoubt, and no doubt this will be one Halloween to remember. It's a new year for us pagans, and we wish you and yours a truly happy new year as the wheel of the year turns through all the seasons.

BLESSED BE!

Please Stand By

2009-11-01T21:25:00.001-05:00

Little tired tonight, but stay tuned and tomorrow I shall deliver the goods......or bads.........

Pagan New Year Approaches.......

2009-10-27T17:08:00.001-04:00

Welcome to another edition of The Chronicles of Pendragon Hold, where we are preparing for our pilgrimage to Tampa, home of the Off-Site Twin and the Purple Witch, the establishment which will be hosting their annual Samhain street festival and costume party. We will be attending as The Addams family, Me Gomez, She Morticia, with Shiloh accompanying us as…..Shiloh The Wonder Dog! THE Wife is dying to dress him up in something demeaning and I absolutely refuse to allow for such a travesty! A Nordic canine is a proud canine not very tolerant of being dressed up like a wiener dog or poodle. There are some lines you just can't cross!

My long-lost collection of far-flung cousins have finally nailed down a meeting place and date to do it. Not everybody will be there but most of the ones I actually remember meeting will be. I have been in almost constant contact with several of my cousins and it's like finding old friends again, only with lots of love piled on.

Other than that, it's been rather cool, calm, AND collected here at Pendragon Hold, and hopefully it will remain so. May this pagan new year find you and yours in your homes, at your jobs, and with no demons of job loss or foreclosure haunting your hearth. Blessed Be!

My Clean Bill of Health

2009-10-21T12:55:00.005-04:00

Well, I've had my follow-up with my Shaman (genuine MD) and according to the test results and my response to the Protonics he prescribed, I was inflicted with nothing more than a bad case of GERD which is being successfully treated with the drug; i.e. I have had no more chest pain. DAMN I'm healthy! loll

However, the sinuses are acting up yet again and like the amnesiac idiot I am, I totally forgot to address THAT problem with him. But, THE Wife has an appointment with same said physician tomorrow and hopefully I can remember to ask him for some relief THEN. (Ties string around every finger).

The referendum over when and where my Clan is going to have their reunion is still ongoing and slowly gaining some consensus. We are wavering between a meeting in Texas, in Florida, or on a Cruise ship. AND we need to decide between roughly March of next year and June, depending on where we do this. Hopefully we'll get this nailed down before to long. I am so looking forward to seeing all my cousins again or for the first time.

I don't know if I mentioned this earlier, but our "big" goat, and self-styled leader of the herd, Billy, has been given over to a co-worker of mine who has a much larger piece of property for him to consume. And, believe me, GIVEN the time, that goat WILL consume anything and everything within reach….he he. The main reason I gave him over is that we have tried to bring in a fertile ram to knock up the twins with, only Billy was much to rough on him and he unfortunately may have suffered internal injuries that killed the poor little thing. With Billy out of the picture, perhaps we can bring in another little ram and have better success this time around. AND, I did exact a promise from his new owners that he will NEVER be killed as a meat animal. As of now, Billy has taken over the herd he was introduced to and is in King-of-the-Hill Goat Nirvana. We are so happy for him!

And that's what's happening at THE Hold, this nice warm Autumn day on the edge of suburbia. Blessed Be!

Comfort Zone

2009-10-18T17:54:00.003-04:00

When I gained a new audience that comprised members of my long-lost family, it immediately began to occur to me that many of them, based on their social/political/religious creeds, might not be all that comfortable visiting my blog only to be confronted with many of my views which might not meld very well with theirs, even to the point that they might feel judged or challenged for those closely-held beliefs. Now, I am NOT a person who feels that his own personal beliefs need be censored for ANYBODY's comfort, but then again, I never considered it necessary to get "in their face" with my personal take on reality either. I figure if having to chase evangelicals of all stripes off my porch is a personal irritant, then I can emphasize with any one of my cousins thinking the same about people of MY stripe (even tho you will rarely find a pagan who finds it necessary to proselytize). Thus, in order to show SOME measure of respect, at least, I have decided to move the Political/Spiritual aspect of my musings over to a new space, Full Moon Over Pendragon Hold, where those of like or tolerant mind can come to visit if they so choose, while those NOT in synch with my psychosis are spared from having to think they need to listen to my rants which might be offensive to them in one fashion or another when they visit us here at Pendragon Hold. Again, I am NOT giving into self-censorship out of any obligation, simply my desire to be more welcoming to those relations of mine who tread a different path then mine. And, all things considered, I do love these people. So, IF you are so inclined, wonder on over to the first edition of "Full Moon". I hope it never gets to hot for you.....hehe.

In Sickness and in Health, The Saga Continues........

2009-10-14T12:03:00.003-04:00

As our several loyal fans might have gathered from my last post, it has been a busy and emotional week here at Pendragon Hold, this acre of sand of the edge of conservative hysteria. My tummy hurt, which is being investigated with chalky milkshakes and X-rays, my sinus headaches have become excruciating of late with these latest changes in barometric pressure, and I have suddenly found myself swimming in a sea of long-lost cousins. Leave it to THE Michael to combine warm-and-fuzzies with the latest ailment-of-the-week!

I have had problems with the sinus passages right over and behind my eyes for awhile now, but I usually have dealt with the pain and pressure with a couple of sudefed/ibuprofen tablets, but this last week that treatment seems to have become painfully inadequate. Sleep is becoming harder and harder to come by, which is probably not doing my otherwise cast-iron immune system any good.

The good news so far is that the Protonics the Doc prescribed for me seems to be doing the trick, chest pain wise. That, combined with what might have been a negative barium-swallow study, seems to point to simple GERD as the source of my discomfort. The pills are already having an effect on that, so this trip into medical mayhem may not become the nightmare I feared it might. Knock on wood!

THE Wife has already planned ANOTHER wild adventure for us involving Halloween and a trip to Tampa to visit the non-resident twin and a pagan shop local to them which hosts a wild costume party every year. She is working on getting us dressed up as the Adams Family, me Gomez, her Morticia. She thinks of them as the most romantic, if not darkly humorous, couple that ever graced the boob tube. I have to admit that Gomez was a maniac after my own heart…he he.

On another positive front, the RESIDENT twin, AKA now as THE Dotter, starts her new job tomorrow, at the very place where THE Wife toiled for five long years of retail hell before she was able to escape to the much saner job she enjoys now. Hopefully, she'll be able to leap right back onto her more-than-capable feet and resume the life of independence she so craves AND deserves.

Returning to the subject of cousins, already there is talk of a reunion, which due to the fact that we are scattered ALL about this great nation of ours might logically be hosted in Texas, which presents me with a dilemma. Aside from getting the time off and affording the gas money, the one car we are driving now, the now famous Ford Focus, is really too old to be trusted to drive that far without risking a breakdown. We have been planning for awhile now to try and save up a down payment on a new (although probably slightly used) small pickup, which we sorely need to haul materials with for use around the property. But, a small pickup is not exactly the kind of vehicle you want to drive across the US and back again. So, instead, we might investigate the availability of a train route to our desired (and as of yet not nailed down) destination. A little more time-consuming, yes, but much more relaxing and probably more economical overall. We'll see.

OK, this is the next day, and I am attempting to finish off this post in a drug (over-the-counter-so-chill!) induced fog brought on by over-the-top sinus pain and no sleep whatsoever. This is getting old. I was supposed to work today, but I am so zombied out I truly would have been more suitable as a patient rather than a care-giver. Besides, calling out sick is something I rarely ever do, because I really can get all the time off I need with my generous PTO (Paid Time Off) my job gives me, and I happen to believe in Karma, as in, calling out for no good reason will seek balance in this universe and come back to bite me in the ass sooner or later.

So, this is your sleepy, weary host Alex Pendragon, AKA "THE" Michael, wishing you a fun-filled, productive, enriching, and healthy day. And if you DO have one, never take it for granted……..

A Rediscovered Country (Or how I learned to love Facebook)

2009-10-12T13:38:00.004-04:00

Through a connection with one cousin and Facebook, unfortunately triggered by a tragic death in the family, I have suddenly made numerous connections with cousins and other relatives I have not seen for more than two decades. Some even longer than that. The last time I connected with the bulk of my rather sizable family was not at a family reunion, but at the funeral of my Grandfather. From the loins of my maternal grandparents sprang a family of brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, and cousins galore so large and widespread that if joined together we could populate a small country.

In past posts I might have alluded to some of my less-than-stellar experiences as a child, a product of divorce, deception, loss, and yes, betrayal. Yet, I cherish the fact that before she died, I was lucky enough to have been reunited with my Mother, and for an all-to-brief period of a few years, came to know her and discover some harsh truths about how my childhood turned out the way it did.

Memories such as these are NOT water under the bridge, spilled milk, or any of the many metaphors that people use to excuse situations that needn't have occurred the way they did. However, despite the wounds I carry deep inside from those experiences, I have been able to persevere, to grow and mature into the kind of man that I think my Mother was very proud to call her son. Could she have been more responsible as a young woman? Perhaps. Can I judge her for some of the choices she might have been forced to make in her life? I once did, based on bullshit information that almost prevented me from ever having a relationship with the one person who loved me more than anything in her life. But then I met her, and my heart melted, and I had a real mother at last, and I never stopped loving her.

Yet, even to this very day when perhaps I should have moved on with my life and told my inner child to just shut the fuck up and get over it………I still bear a malice for my sperm donor that equals the damage he inflicted on me by his betrayal and abandonment. This had such an impact on me psychologically that I deliberately choose never to have children of my own, for fear I could inflict on them in some fashion the fear, anger, disappointment and worthlessness my Father had burdened ME with. So, despite the likelihood that he went on to bear more children, I have always had the sad satisfaction that with any luck, his progeny ended with me. No reproductive rewards for the wicked, I've imagined.

Thus I have experienced parenthood second hand, never knowing the experience of diapers, boo-boos, monsters under the bed, and the pride of a report card with more grades over average than beneath it. Would I have made a good Father? I'll never really know, but hopefully, despite all those things any man might have done that he desires/needs redemption for, I hope I have at least become a good man. THAT his legacy can NEVER take away from me. Those that have at times called me Dad, well, they know full well how imperfect I am, and most of the time at least, have forgiven me. A man can never have too much of that.

Aside form reclaiming a relationship with my Mother, I was also lucky enough to have experienced, however briefly, experiences with many of my Aunts and Uncles, and numerous cousins spread across the South. Now, I have to be honest here; there was a time I held an equal disdain for many of those Aunts and Uncles that I felt had left me to my own devices when my Father abandoned me and I became a ward of the state, a "welfare" child, left in the "care" of people not related to me and lacking in the kind of love a child needs to feel he belongs……somewhere……to SOME one. However, I cannot know to what extent any of these relatives could have known they might have HAD to be there for me, and I must admit that there WERE many times that they took me in temporarily in helping my Grandparents burdened with a loose grand child. Thus, after many long years of introspection, I feel I have learned to lend forgiveness where it might be needed, but more importantly, to quit laying blame where it didn't belong. The day I could possibly have walked in their shoes, only THEN could I have the right to judge. Now, you might turn this around on me and ask me where my forgiveness is for my Father. It's a fair question. However, the ONLY answer I can give in that regard is that short of some extraordinary circumstance that FORCED my Father to abandon me while keeping me away from my own Mother or even any of my blood relatives, then there is no responsibility on MY part to grant him any sort of absolution and I am not, even after all these years, even CAPABLE of forgiving him for what he did. I cannot apologize for this and I have no desire whatsoever to do so. Yes, I know full well that this can be construed to be a hypocritical character flaw, and I accept that. Thus my faults betray me.

Yes, please let's not entertain the idea that I myself can lay claim to any sort of pristine character, short of perhaps the fact that I somehow managed to rise above those circumstances and never became prison material. The worst offense I have ever been CAUGHT at was speeding, but I suppose if you delved deeply enough into my soul you would find a darkness that itself could never know forgiveness. Nor would I dare seek out any sort of redemption for things within me that yes, horrify me to this very day. The religious amongst us want to lay the blame for the evil we do at the feet of a devil, a demon, or even some lack of grace, but I know that our animal natures are more than capable of conjuring up our own evil, thank you, without any supernatural assistance. And THAT is why our sentience is so precious, because it is this ability to think, to reason, to know sadness and joy, to at least LEARN right from wrong, that pulls steadily at us whenever we totter on the brink of our worst inclinations, and keeps most of us at least from going all the way over that cliff, plummeting into a hell of our own creation. To each and every person, related or not, hated or loved, passed by only briefly on my journey or spent in close proximity for any extended period of time, I thirst for forgiveness for any hurt, any pain, any slight, any angst of any degree that I might have inflicted upon you. That forgiveness I believe will serve YOU much better than it ever will me personally, for the wounds my own actions opened up will forever remain out of reach in the pit of my soul, deservedly so, deservedly so. Perhaps this perpetual pain is the only thing that can save me in the end. I am responsible for everything ME, no one else, and especially no devil or god. I am the one to be held accountable, and only by those who believe they have a call to account. Please know, I AM sorrow, and every smile I ever render, every joy I will ever perceive, till the day I die, is some pitiful payment on my debt.

But, getting back on track, I want to relate these emotions which have flooded me since I began to reestablish contact with cousin after cousin, and the joy and warmth I have been feeling at the loving embrace I feel from them, even from afar, so scattered across this country are we all. These young girls and boys I once knew so many years ago are all grown up, each contributing a seemingly endless number of fresh branches to our family tree. By the time I had experienced perhaps the fourth enthusiastic re-introduction to yet another relative, I had to retire to the shade garden, and try so very hard not to cry in the quiet solitude of our sheltering garden sanctuary. You see, it has all boiled down to the same response from all of them, even those who barely knew me.

Welcome home, Michael. We missed you!

Dear Mr. President

2009-10-08T22:28:00.002-04:00

Dear President Obama,

I doubt you'll personally read this letter because I know that it has to run a phalanx of staff members before it has any chance of getting anywhere near your desk, but hell, I'll take a stab at it anyway. If this does get read by ANYBODY in the White House, all I ask is that I do not get a form letter with your signature stamped on it in return saying something like "The president shares your concerns; yada yada." I would consider that an insult even worse than no reply at all.

When George Bush was "elected" the first time, I subscribed the event to fraud, plain and simple. The next four years bore out my belief that an idiot had made his way into the White House and that there would be grave consequences for our country, and there were. The SECOND four years of the Bush Administration simply infuriated me, as I could not believe that the American people could actually want to endure four more years of such madness, yet, I could not claim with any certainty that Senator Kerry had lost the election to yet another case of outright vote rigging. After that, I gave up on this country; the majority, having had their brains removed it seems, had chosen our fate, and the America I grew up in, and even swore to "preserve and protect", ceased to exist.

Then, out of the blue, it seems, came an invigorating breath of fresh air, a brash, intelligent, bold young man who promised to return us to sanity, to clean up the mess that Karl Rove and his merry band of right wing fanaticists had left behind, and reclaim our good name on the world stage once again. I was only a child when President Kennedy was assassinated, but despite the fact I did not personally understand the history he made during my youth, my study of his legacy made him the one President I would hold all those who followed up against. President Clinton came in a very close second, in my opinion, despite a few of his personal flaws which I personally feel had no impact on his legacy as far as his service to our country was concerned. Then came our first real non-caucasion presidential candidate, whose promise was equal even to that of JFK. Once again, I cast my vote enthusiastically, hoping against hope that this country had had enough, and was ready for a change, even if it would have to finally grow up and elect a black man for the first time in our history.

Mr. President, what in the hell happened?

I admire your attempt to take the high road and hold out the olive branch of co-operation with that political party across the aisle, and I fully understand the complexities of trying to deal with the damage and bankrupt treasury left over from those disastrous last eight years of the Bush debacle, but c'mon! They don't WANT to work with you; the never INTENDED to work with you, and they NEVER WILL work with you. The republican party has become no less an negative (and might I dare suggest evil) influence on this country than were the Southern States right before the start of the war of succession. I was raised in this South, Sir, and I can tell you that these people have been victims of a long legacy of ignorance, "religious" intolerance, and manipulation by the corporate good-old-boys that seek nothing less than the domination of the average working man for the enrichment of the very few. I used to think that good old American capitalism was far superior to any other form of governance that any other country had come up with, until finally, having lived with it for fifty years now, I have seen the truth of how it operates in the real world.

Health care is NOT a right? Failure to pull ourselves up by our OWN bootstraps is a moral defect on OUR part? It is totally acceptable that our minimum wage couldn't take care of a dog while Corporate CEO's make over 500 percent of the average American wage, and for doing WHAT? What in the hell has happened to our country, Mr. Obama, and why are you even NEGOTIATING with the very forces who have put us in this mess to begin with?

We elected you overwhelmingly with the mandate of your promises; to ensure that no American would ever go bankrupt again because of medical bills; that corporations would no longer be allowed to "fee" us to death and continue to prey upon us with outrageous interest rates and policy cancellations. You promised you would get us out of that travesty called Iraq and put our full force and treasure into killing Osama Bin Laden and dismantling Al-quida (AND the Taliban) once and for all. So how is THAT working for us?

Mr. President, right is right, and any sane and ethical person knows it when he sees it. The noise that these "tea parties" have been making are nothing but that; NOISE, that has nothing to do with what the American people elected you to do, and it is about time you stepped up to the podium and acknowledge it; putting these brain-dead protesters in their place and admitting that what WE, the average, intelligent, patriotic, and hard working Americans, deserve to have what we elected you to do get DONE. You HAVE the votes in congress, Mr. President, so PLEASE quite playing Mr. Nice Guy and GET DONE WHAT WE SENT YOU TO DO!

We are TIRED of hearing what that propaganda machine laughingly called FOX "News" says about anything anymore. Please just do the job we elected you to do and let US have OUR country back. If you sign a health care reform package that does not include a genuine public option, then nothing will really have been accomplished, and you will have failed us. A half-assed shadow of what you promised us is NOT better than no reform at all. It's WORSE, and I know you know that. Is a two thirds approval for the public option not enough?

I can't say this any plainer than that, Mr. President, and I won't say it again. I'm tired and I want to go home. Please, let me.

(The guy who wrote this letter)*
Citizen of the once, and hopefully
future, United States of America

P.S. I am printing this in my blog. No more than eight people will probably read it, but, you never know………..

*I'm not ready to reveal my true identity to my fans lest I be beseiged with masses of pilgrims thirsting for my secret knowledge of life, the universe, and nothing in particular. I'm sure you understand.

"I've just checked in, to see what condition my condition was in…."

2009-10-07T22:13:00.004-04:00

OK, I went to my family physician today, a white-haired gentleman I assume is older than me who harkens back to the olden days when you were ushered into an exam room at 10:30 for a 10:30 appointment and he spent as much time with you as was actually called for. I am truly thinking of making an offering to each and every God that mankind has ever worshiped or shot a game of pool with in thanks for the millions of years of evolution that resulted in this man being here, and for me and my wife, of all people. I dread the day he retires.

After discussing my pain and agony (OK, fine, my disconcerting discomfort bordering on pain) in great detail, and running a twelve-lead EKG (which looked just fine), we both agreed that the symptoms so far seem to point at either a hiatal hernia and/or an ulcer, either one perhaps associated with an increasingly evident case of GERD. So, on the 13th I get to go to the hospital and endure a barium swallow/abdominal X-ray, and tomorrow I get lab work (including a LONG overdue check on my cholesterol) done. It stands to reason with a perfectly normal EKG and the fact that I would have had a nasty heart attack by now with this duration of pain, I probably don't have a cardiac condition, which hopefully the x-ray will show. I know it sounds silly to be rooting for a defect in my diaphragm, but it sure beats the alternative. He also prescribed protonics (a sort of generic Nexium) to treat and rule out the GERD which might have also caused this pain. If my pain goes away entirely by the time I see him again AND the x-ray comes back negative, then BINGO on the GERD.

So no, I am not dead OR dying. Not yet. But, damn, my chest HURTS sometimes………sigh..……..

Having dropped off THE Wife at her job, I had time to burn before my appointment with my Shaman, so I sat in the car listening to the radio and playing games on my iPod Touch. So, of course, I go to start the car and……….clickclickclick……..NADA! Damn battery was almost drained! Had to get a jump from a nice lady. So, enough of this crap, time to replace this battery which is only just over two years old, only this time I keep the receipt! Also I bought one of those emergency jump batteries just in case.

Tomorrow after the vampires have their way with my delicate veins, the dog gets it……..a B A T H that is. I can't just SAY B A T H because he hates the idea and I don't want to upset him. I also need to clean the aftermath of our party off these wood floors, but I think I'll save that for Friday. It's hard being a househusband, I tell ya……he he.

There's Got to be a Morning After...........

2009-10-04T10:32:00.009-04:00

Imagine you had designed the world's first party zeppelin, capable of carrying more than a dozen people easily, worked diligently to make it operate smoothly, even painted it in the wildest and most attention-getting colors, and on the day of it's maiden voyage, FIVE people TOTAL show up to experience this wonder of alternative aviation?

Thus was our Hindenburg, The Rocky Horror Picture Party.

You should see this Good Lady Partner of mine when she gets her teeth into an idea. It becomes an obsession and her entire life revolves around it. You would be hard pressed to meet anyone so creative and energetic when it comes to plainning something like this on a shoestring budget, determined to make it an experience for all involved. Don't even include the stress I allowed myself to experience trying to aid her in this quixotic quest for "par-tay" nirvana. (We are, after all, baby boomers, that strange new generation that INVENTED all-hell-breaking-loose.)

Her and the Dotter (that's my new name for the ex-evil/once and again resident twin) lovingly put so much attention into my costume as the biker/bad boy Eddy that it was entirely believable if you have an good imagination. THE Wife posed as Columbia in her pajama scene while THE Dotter made an excellent Maid Magenta. Trust me, if you knew anything about Rocky Horror you'd understand what I just said.

Despite my best efforts I was not able to procure a video projector and had to scale back to our old 26 inch analogue television set, which I hooked up to an old but very capable stereo receiver made obsolete by the 5.1 surround sound era, our DVD player, and a pair of medium sized speakers I picked up real cheap at Radio Shack on sale. Truth be told, this setup served it's purpose quite admirably.

So, in the back yard, with torches and lanterns blazing, white plastic lawnchairs aplenty, and lots of props to go around, we watched AND performed (THE Wife most learnedly and enthusiastically) the musical/movie/mayhem which is The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Hot dogs, toast, bird seed (instead of rice) went flying and streams of water from water pistols wet our newspapers, and a very few hearty souls made bold attempts to do the Time-Warp (an insane dance for you uninitiated). I would not be surprised if neighbors fertively watched this THING going on from behind curtained windows with one finger on the 911 button.

TWO of my co-workers attended while THE Wife managed three total. This was out of a much larger total that was promised. I do make allowances for a couple of my no-shows due to scheduling conflicts that could not be overcome, but it was somewhat disappointing nonetheless. Thus, I want to present THE Michael's Most Sincere Appreciation Award to my two brave and noble angels of mercy who came, after having just finished a twelve-hour shift, no less, to attend our event. I hope you two had as much fun as you indeed appeared to be having, even as drunk as we were all becoming! Also, both I and THE Wife want to thank her co-worker/crazy girlfriend for her participation and aid in making this thing work as well as it did. We hope your hang-over is brief and memorable!

So, no, our hapless diregible did NOT crash and burn, and those that chose to ride it had an experience they will remember for more than a week, we hope! We DO have some photographic evidence of the crime, but we have decided that no one we lured to our lurid event is worth quite enough to blackmail. So, we will both have to return to work and continue to earn our living the old-fashioned way.

As for now, well, it's Sunday morning, the back yard looks like Normandy Beach a week after D-day, and there is a TON of un-eaten party food to deal with. Perhaps I should ship it off to those starving children in China our parents told us about…….

The Heart of the Matter

2009-09-28T12:29:00.005-04:00

As I steadily head down the "Long and Winding Road" (called life), I have become accustomed to the frequent aches and pains I associate with aging. Getting up in the morning sometimes feels like I've been beaten up in my sleep, and I dare not stretch my body, particularly my legs, to far lest I set off these terrible muscle spasms in my calves which can almost make me cry. But this latest ache, which I fervently hope is noting BUT an ache, had me more perturbed than usual. CHEST pain.

For several days I have experienced this mild but quite noticeable pain right in the middle of my chest, which got bad enough a few days ago to actually wake me in the middle of the night. It's not indigestion, which is a sensation I am quite familiar with. Yesterday at work, I took advantage of working were I do and hooked myself up to a portable cardiac monitor to see what my heart rhythm looked like. With the exception of a few PVC's (premature ventricular contractions), which can be triggered by caffeine (I HAD drank coffee earlier), the monitor revealed that I had what one could consider a rather unremarkable normal heart rhythm. Now, this does NOT rule out entirely that one could be suffering from an increasingly restricted artery due to plague buildup, but it was reassuring nonetheless. As this pain has not gotten any worse and might even be receding, I am going to write this pain off to the possibility that it was nothing more than a taxed chest wall muscle, since I do some serious pulling when helping to move patients around in bed, some of them very heavy people.

My mom died of emphysema, but her heart was strong. I am not aware of any major tendencies towards heart disease in the maternal side of my family, but I am clueless as to what kind of genetic time bombs my Father could have lent me (the bastard!), since he abandoned me at the age of seven and I have not seen him since. I have eaten fairly healthy, including a diet that excludes almost all red meat (we eat mostly chicken, turkey, and fish) and I quit smoking almost two years ago.

Still, it's been proven that although you can moderate your health through diet, exercise, and exposure to environmental toxins, your genetic code is still the premiere dictate as to how long you will live and the quality of your overall health. My mom always looked half her age, till the smoking overwhelmed her good genes, and even now I can pass for someone a few years younger, even with the grey hair and beard. So, I have advantages. I know I cost myself some years by smoking, but they claim that I will overcome some of the potential damage by quitting. I can only hope so, although I have resigned myself to having given up something like 20 years of my potential at least. Still, I want to at least collect ONE of my Social Security checks before I kick. If there's anything left to collect on, that is.

Still……..it was disconcerting. I'm not QUITE ready to check out Summerland……..not yet……….

Stakes are High

2009-09-25T08:48:00.003-04:00

It's been busy here at Pendragon Hold since my last post. THE Wife has been devoting every waking moment to this upcoming Rocky Horror Picture Party she's hosting on the 3rd of October (be there or be rectangular). I have been doing what I can, passing out flyers at work, attempting to explain what a Rocky Horror is to Rocky Horror virgins, while watching with some bemusement the utter joy some of my co-workers have been expressing at the mere thought of attending anything having to do with Rocky Horror. I might even garner the attendance of highly placed Corporate Executives at this shindig, because, after all, this IS the Rocky Horror Picture Show we are talking about here………..

But don't ask me to explain this cult phenomenom, because I can't. I would have much better success explaining why thousands of Americans with mental handicaps show up to protest health care reform, non-existent gun control legislation, and anything else they can dream up as happening to them courtesy of us "communists" who are out to destroy our country. Why would we want to "destroy" our country? Your guess is as good as mine………

A new job has not miraculously turned up in time, thus the offspring has been forced to load up her belongings and move them all back here to the nest. I really feel for her, having such a blow to her self-esteem such as it is, but I also have experienced such turmoil myself, so I can fully understand the angst this generates in a person. Since our whole identities are so tied up in how we make our livings, losing our jobs effects so much of what makes us who we are. There has to be a better way, honestly.

Now that a relatively small segment of the population, recruited by the insurance industry and big pharma and the extreme right wing of the Rush Limbaugh party has totally screwed up the crafting of a sane health care reform package, thanks to the spineless backbones of our democratic party leadership, it seems that what we will end up with is something bearing no resemblance whatsoever to what Obama promised us in his election campaign, so hell bent is this man on trying to gain bipartisan consensus. Watch this so that you can laugh instead of cry.

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

On the "good news" front, I have gotten the new computer, a Mac Mini/22 inch widescreen monitor combo up and running, and after an occasional glitch or two, eventually remedied, I am now technologically current, CPU-wise, and am enjoying better wireless performance and speedier application performance, whatever that means.

As a born-again Pagan, I have noticed with alarming frequency these witch-hunts that have been happening all over the world. Of course, this is not a new thing, since witches and practitioners of magick have historically been the scapegoats of every populace who ever needed something to distract themselves from self-inflicted problems. We Pagans are probably second only to the Jews in this particular persecution category. When you have peoples who adopt an angry white dude living in a cloud city paved with gold as their Major God, well, this is the kind of shit that goes down. Jealous Gods tend to get jiggy when someone DARES to suggest they don't even exist, or at least the people who BELIEVE they exist get all bent out of shape for them. So, any opportunity a shyster preacher or other sort of purveyor of the "truth" gets to associate some usually defenseless, elderly, and of course female with "the devil", he will jump right on that and "save" the community from that hapless victim of religious hysteria. It is now getting so pervasive that even our politicians are getting in on the act, such as our very own Sarah Palin (you remember Sarah, doncha, the one who keeps an eye on Russia from her front porch and might keep having "gifts from God", aka babies, well into her seventies if she can keep Todd on her leash? One of these African charismatic evangelical preachers brought the "gotta clean out these witches" concept to Alaska and recruited Sarah into the ranks of his "Christian warriors" army, which she in turn is doing her damnedest to insinuate into the very fabric of our government.

I have one thing to say to you, Sarah, and ALL you fucking nutcases with your fear of those who don't buy your God.

THIS pagan doesn't turn his cheek.

The Eclectic Pleasures of Rocky Horror, Mac Mini's and the Down to Earth Agony of Unemployment Examined in Black Light

2009-09-19T20:19:00.004-04:00

I know it's been awhile since my last post; it seems that your humble editor has been lax to the tune of maybe one post a week lately. It's just that a sort of malaise has come over me lately, attributable perhaps to this sense of doom that has it's grip on my inner core. This 2012 bullshit is hard to get out of my system, so hard to discount entirely, no matter how logical I think myself to be. Well, whatever, I'm sure I will get over it eventually and get back to living life as if life goes on forever, much the same attitude that teenagers seem to have. I miss being a teenager, only NOW is the time I should have been one, considering all the things teenagers seem to get away with these days that teens in MY day never even dreamt of getting away with..........sigh.........

The whole purpose of life here at Pendragon Hold of late has been the planning of the Rocky Horror Picture Party that the wife dreamt up. The whole success of this endeavor will hinge on several things, one being that SOMEONE comes through with our need of a video projector to play the movie on the back of the house with. I scouted out all the local rental stores around here in hicksville and it seems that video projectors are NOT a hot item in the rental market. I sure as hell can't afford to simply buy one, not at an average of $600 a pop, especially considering that this might be the only time I'd EVER need to use one. Yes, I know, the other alternatives are big screen televisions, which of course we would risk destroying with all the things you throw at at screening of Rocky Horror. What could they do to a white sheet taped to the wall of a house? ANYTHING THEY WANT TO!

I also am hoping that all the nurses and other folks of the medical persuasion will attend the party as promised. Very few of them even know what Rocky Horror is, but many of the virgins DO seem intrigued............I might even get my boss, bless her brave heart, to come and provide all of us with blackmail fodder!

Just kidding, boss!

On to other news, which is not all good, unfortunately. THE Daughter, the ex-evil twin who got screwed by her last week-long employer, is still searching frantically for a job; ANY job that would at least pay the rent. I think it really sucks what they did to her, and if I had my druthers, I'd take any excuse I could find to sue their sorry asses for hanging her out to dry like that. This girl excels at just about anything she takes on, and she is one of those few women who truly understand what a work ethic is. So, I am asking all my pagan fans (and even those of you who think there's an angry white man in charge up there on cloud nine) to craft some good spells or utter some late night prayers in favor of our little girl getting back on her feet real quick. Yes, we are fully prepared to take her back into our loving embrace until she can recoup, but DAMN, she was SO happy to be making it well on her own! I don't blame her for being so upset in that regard at all; I fully understand the feeling of having to depend on others when you shouldn't have to.

AND, I have finally saved up enough green backs to get a replacement for this venerable old iMac G-5 of mine which has served me so well for all these many years. I would be happy to stick with her till the mother board finally bit the dust if it wasn't for Apple moving on to Intel chips for their computers. With this release of Snow Leopard (OSX 10.6), Apple no longer supports the old motorola architecture, so I can't run many of the new applications which are Intel-only. Yes, she still surfs the web fast enough, but there are plenty of things I want to do that I just can't do with this now somewhat obsolete old beauty. Anyway, she is going to be replaced by a refurbished Mac Mini, a nice little 2 ghrz Intel Core Two Duo which I will have to perform some surgery on to upgrade the slow, small hard drive and increase the memory, which will end up giving me a machine which will run circles around this old G-5. I'll be pairing this compact little machine with a nice, reasonably priced 22 inch wide screen monitor which is an improvement size-wise over the 17 inch screen built into my iMac. All for several hundred clams less than even a new refurbished iMac would have run me, which would take me close to forever to afford. Here's to another five years of virus-free computing!

Yesterday I got a flu shot; just the regularly scheduled flu preventative, NOT the vaccination needed to prevent that nasty new bug, the SWINE flu. Being so adverse to needles that I am, I am happy to report that I didn't even feel this shot, so talented was the lady who nailed me! Hopefully, the staff will be up for the Swine flu shot the first week of October, being on the front line as we are in Critical Care. Funny thing is, I might even have a natural immunity to the Swine flu, considering that I was one of those hapless military members who got shot up for it the first time the Swine Flu raised it's ugly head, back in the early seventies. Can't be sure, tho, so I'll be happy to get the new shot.

Right now we're watching something about Pink Floyd on VH1. Did I mention I love satellite TV?

As for politics, well, let me sum it up with this: There are now two Americas; the one we grew up with and the one that a whole white-trash, right-wing, racist and IQ-challenged segment of our population would want to see happen, something like an Iran with a chewing tobacco mentality. A place the Taliban would think of as being over the top. A place that corporate America masturbates itself to sleep every night just thinking about.

The most obvious and logical solution to our present day dilemma is too go ahead and complete the job that the Confederacy tried to perform back in the 18 hundreds; split the nation in two and give them what they want, and preserve the union with those who actually understand what the union has always been meant to be from day one. Just let all the ultra-libertarian/Republican/Conservative pasty white people move South of the Mason-Dixon Line, and the rest of us honest, educated, caring, intelligent, forward-thinking genuine Americans will stay North, always ready to accept the escaping slaves, the newly enlightened, and the persecuted free thinkers that discover the hard way what living in "Dixie" really amounts to. Of course, we will require them to once again raise their hands and swear to protect and defend the REAL constitution of the United Free States of America, from ALL enemies, both foreign AND domestic, or just go back and wallow in some more white power and corporate butt-fucking. And NO, we will NEVER send one penny of "foreign aid" to them no matter how thick the smoke of hatred and intolerance becomes as their new "nation" becomes a new fascist regime that rivals the old reich and the fires begin again.

And we'll keep the nucs, thank you.

Until I get off my lazy ass and post again, this is Alex Pendragon, "THE Michael" signing off.........

Blessed be!

P.S. My favorite "Kind Lady" is back at her blog, thinking that maybe it would be nice to return to blogging...........so, if you are as much a fan of "Kindness" as I am, get your ass over to her blog and comment, and comment often. Our world is MUCH better with her in it.

Oh, and let Anne Johnson know that she has more than ten loyal readers. She's that amazing creator of "The Gods are Bored", as IF you didn't know that.........

2012

2009-09-12T22:58:00.001-04:00

When I was younger I was a connoisseur of fine conspiracy theories and predictions of the end of the world. Having had to get on with my life and just forget about all the bad things that could befall a world, my concentration eventually wondered off those rosy subjects and resumed the fine art of living.

Then I discovered, when I had the time to even notice, that the world had gotten totally fucked up environmentally while I was busy getting married and advancing my myriad "careers" and attempting to garner all those material things that living in a democracy demanded you garner if you were a true capitalist worth his salt. Not much time had passed after I left my adopted home of Alaska for the final time when I discovered that one truly cannot ever go home again, because global warming has pretty much fucked that far-northern wonderland I loved so much. I now live much further south in a hot, humid pile of sand over run with human beings whom for the most part I detest being involved with, if only due to their apparent inability to see the doom they so happily are participating in bringing down on all of us.

And, as if it could not possibly get any worse (knowing the world is going to end badly enough, thank you very much), I have been noticing these programs on our new satellite television which examine in excruciating detail all the prophesies that portend our ultimate doom, as foretold by Nastrodamas and the Mayans and their damned calender which ends on December 31st, 2012. According to all these fine folks of yesteryear with their unique inside track to the future, this is indeed the final day of mankind, even without the return of one pissed-off Jesus, ala' Armageddon.

So if anyone might wonder why my mood is a bit off these days.............

Yes, as a young Catholic, I did indeed lose some sleep over the promise, as told to me by the evil nuns, that the world would be destroyed by fire, perhaps even within my own lifetime. Then the U.S. and Soviet Union decided to threaten each other with very big bombs for decades (the very young and impressionable years I spent growing up) and THAT robbed me of even more sleep. Later, I came across the convoluted predictions of Nostrodamas, who if you interpret his quatrains according to what history has revealed, could very well have predicted every bad thing that ever happened from his time to well past this one. I was still very much a victim of indoctrination into dogmas of just about any sort that made the slightest bit of sense to a yet-to-be-well-rounded mind, thus all this conspired to make me believe that our days were numbered, one way or another.

So many decades and events have come and gone, and the end of civilization has not transpired as predicted so many times by psychics, prophets, scientists, and con-man evangelicals thirsting for the end times. Yet, that ONE very important date remains to haunt me, despite my logic screaming at me to just IGNORE it like I should have all the other scare stories of our times..........2012.

You see, one thing that comes with soaking in all the wonders of the universe is the realization that this planet and everything that lives upon it exists entirely thanks to a very narrow set of accidents that places it in the right orbit around the right star at the right time with just the right tilt and with a nice little moon in orbit around it that is not to close and not to far, along with a whole mess of other happy happenstances which allows life to exist and evolve and result in me sitting here at a computer typing this post. However, it will only take one out of a whole host of natural occurrences to totally erase this wonderful existence of ours, such as a meteor strike, a really energetic solar flare, or something beautiful yet very deadly shooting out of the galactic center and sterilizing this whole solar system. The fact that this planet has lasted in it's present life-friendly state this long is a testament to the idea that some sort of divinity actually DOES exist and likes us, at least for now.

Yet, according to the Mayan calender, all these fun and games and puppies and kittens and blue whales and purple mountains majesty ends in the year 2012, just three years from now. Exactly HOW it all ends and even what "ENDS" means exactly is not revealed, but there are no days to scratch through after that year, period. Perhaps the Mayans actually thought that they would exist as a society up to that point in history, and knew somehow that there would be nothing beyond that point to record on anybody's calender, and thus they ended it there.

There are two things I have to look forward to from this day forward, and neither one gives me much pleasure. The obvious future I see is the disaster that mankind has visited upon his one and only home, and I have my doubts as to our ability to pull ourselves back from the brink. The other, much more final fate I sense and dread so much, is this arbitrary date set for our demise, which is so similar to the dates that spelled the end of the dinosaurs and other epochs that almost resulted in the total extinction of life on this planet. 2012.

Perhaps this will only be another upset of the order, and renewal of the entire ecosystem that this planet has been subjected to throughout it's history. You have to admit, the extinction of the dinosaurs was bad news for them, but paved the way for mammals to get to work and evolve into creatures that could play the blues and paint the Mono Lisa. Perhaps we have had our time and just didn't make the grade, and thus it is time to make room for another organism to take it's shot at sentience. Maybe those tube worms around those hot vents on the bottom of the ocean will find life on this planet much more pleasant once WE get bitch-slapped and taken out of the equation, and get to evolve into another stab at higher intelligence, only this time actually a HIGHER intelligence that doesn't resemble or act like Rush Limbaugh.

If I have to die, perhaps horribly, it's the least I can hope for..............come 2012.

Chaos Theory

2009-09-01T20:19:00.005-04:00

Welcome to the Chronicles of Pendragon Hold, where triumph and tragedy goes hand in hand; ying and yang, light and dark, joy and sorrow, it's all residing on the same coin we call life. Today the coin flipped tails for our little girl (at least OUR little girl, who would insist she's damn well a woman many times over by now). After having accepted an offer for a job that would have been one hell of a promotion over her customer service job with AT&T, she was summarily let go after one week at her new job, just like that, without any explanation.

This is one of those "right-to-work" states where workers HAVE no rights, so what in the hell does she do? She left a perfectly good job that was paying the bills for another that promised more pay and better working conditions and was totally FUCKED for it. That's what happens in America, where your fortunes can change in the blink of an eye and there's no recourse for it. This is the world of the Republican party, those God-fearing people who make it possible for people to piss on each other, as if this kind of behavior is something Christ was all about, unless of course, it happens to THEM, and then all of a sudden they become strangely liberal. Well, friends, let me tell you......in this country that claims to be "free", you had better have friends or family willing to lend you a hand in tough times, or you are SCREWED. Yep, the gutter is free of charge, my friends.

However, so far, so good here on the home front. Our jobs so far are intact and feeding us and our bills well enough, although we are constantly reminded by events all around us that this can change at the drop of a hat. We hold our hats with clinched fists these days. We take nothing for granted here at Pendragon Hold, and are thankful for every day that goes by without major drama of some sort or another.

The tree I sacrificed to the Gods of video is slowly being put to right. So far I have two humongous piles of brush, one large trunk slowly growing shorter as I take logs off, and dozens of small to medium limbs being reduced to fire logs. I will have to build a custom log rack to accommodate all this fresh wood, to keep off the ground to properly dry out and season. It's good to have physical labor. It keeps the joints lubed and calories burnt. There will be many a fire in the sacred circle for many years to come thanks to this tree. Thank you, tree.

THE Wife is working diligently on the Rocky Horror Picture Party. When this chick gets the rag on for a project, then project better watch out, cause project is gettin' done, and done right. I just hope I can rope enough of my co-workers into coming out and participating in this madness. Tim Curry would be SO pleased, I'm sure.....

Tonight, courtesy of our satellite and VH1 Classics, I am getting to watch "The Band...The Last Waltz" for the first time in years. Levon Helm, Robbie Robertson, Vann Morrison, Neil Young, Joani Mitchell, Neil Diamond, Muddy Waters, Eric fucking GOD Clapton, etc......... Right now, I love my satellite.

Having just gotten over a major electrical issue, which thankfully was resolved quite accidentally (you wiggle, bang, or otherwise smack something upside the head diagnostically under the hood of a car and you can fix just about anything), the car is now having air conditioning problems, which I hope I can fix by adding some freon, which in order to do so I have to remove a wheel AND the inner wheel well skirt to get to the charging port. Whoever designed this system was one evil bastard, and I hope he goes to his grave haunted by his sick idea of "accessibility". Wish me luck.

I'm watching on Animal Planet a story about one of these people who undergo extreme plastic surgery in order to resemble an animal, in this case a guy who thinks he's really a tiger. On the heels of this health care debate we are having in this country, I really question the ethics of the surgeons who cater to this man's self-centered issues, when there are kids out there with birth defects who might never get the help they need due to their socioeconomic situation. Yes, it's a free country, and this is just one more example of how "freedom" is abused, when there are people in this country enjoying the "freedom" of being out of work, being evicted from their homes, and living on the street. Oh, I'm sorry.....am I sounding "socialist"? Let me apologize..........

This is a wonderful world, and it's a fucking evil place if ever there was one. It's a verdant planet occupied by millions of species of ants and ant eaters and lions and tigers and bears all going about their business trying to get out of our way and not succeeding very well. It's a world with blue skies and muddy waters, beautiful sunsets and mass graves. The grass always grows greener on the other side of whatever divides us. And life goes on, or whatever passes for life, here, there, everywhere.

However, since last night, when I started this post, I am happy to report that I can end this episode of The Chronicles on a somewhat happier note. Baby girl has a job interview tomorrow.

Blessed be!

2009-08-28T22:30:00.004-04:00

THE Wife, ever the creative witch I was lucky enough to marry, is planning a Rocky Horror Picture Show party. Please, please tell me you have either attended one of these late night madcaps dressed as a character in this kinky camp-fest, or at least know about it. If you have no idea what Rocky Horror is, you might as well skip this part of the post.......I haven't got the time to explain it to you.

Anyway, we are planning to host this insane thing on October third, so if you are a fan, a relative, an acquaintance, or a snitch for the FBI, please plan on joining us, appropriately dressed for the occasion as your favorite character, ready to scream obscenities at the screen while throwing foodstuffs and bird seed (instead of rice).

Meanwhile, back at the ranch......I mean, HOLD, the satellite has been installed and we can now get over two hundred channels of of digital drivel, about half of which is not infomercials, the other half maybe worth watching. Thanks to the built-in DVR, I can record what I can't be here to watch, and watch it when I want. I've decided to spend about two weeks experiencing this thing before I decide to cancel our NETFLIX subscription. I might have to keep it.

There was a tree, a rather ratty sort of oak that has been shielding the Western end of our castle (bullshit-speak for doublewide) from the setting sun. The operative word here is WAS. I have already planted a nice little sycamore tree to take over for it, because it honestly was too close to the house and had that "sickly" look some trees can display with half their limbs nude of leaves, looking basically unhealthy. Since a satellite dish needs a clear view of the SouthWestern sky, and this tree stood right in that way of that line of sight, it was deemed time to sacrifice this tree to fuel the future sacred fires of our sacred circle. Yesterday and today I have been busy with the electric chain saw reducing this rather large tree into it's constituent logs and burnable brush, along with bonus leaves for the goats to consume. Billy LOVES oak leaves and is probably sick of them by now.

I'm so close I can almost taste it. I have already purchased a mac mini for THE Wife so that she can have her harmless (as well as brainless) fun with Farm Town and Hatchlings, but now I have decided that instead of hoping I could come up with the $1300 a nice iMac would command, I can get by easily with a refurbished Mac Mini of my own, with some self-installed upgrades of the hard drive and memory, for half the price of the Imac. I will have to provide my own monitor, of course, which I can make as large as I can afford, bigger than the 20 inch I would get with the iMac if I so desire. The trick is finding one on the Apple store at about the same time I have a paycheck not devoted to a mortgage payment or car repair bill or some other financial disaster. MY day will surely come, and soon, I hope. This old G-5 of mine is getting more and more obsolete as I type.

I guess I could rant and rave about something stupid the conservatives did or said these past few days, but I haven't the time or the inclination tonight. There's always tomorrow, and I can guarantee you they will provide more fodder for my ire each and every day we allow stupid people to say stupid things.

Till next time........

Blessed be!

Did You?

2009-08-27T21:47:00.007-04:00

KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken) has announced a "sandwich", distinctive in that the bread is replaced by two slabs of fried chicken. Between these two hunks of fried meat is a lot of cheese, bacon (cholesterol, anyone?), and "special sauce".

It's like America is being presented with an IQ test it can't possibly pass.

But hey, it's a free country, right? Here, we are free to load up on the calories, the fat, and everything else we can clog our arteries with and expand our spare tires with. Here, we are free to go somewhere else for our wireless service if we don't like all the fees and surcharges they love to spring on us, all made legal with two year contracts, of course, and since ALL the wireless providers screw us in the same fashion, there really ISN'T somewhere else to go, but hey, we're still free to "go there", right? Then, there's the freedom to pay cash for our medical bills when our "health" insurance companies catch wind of our health perhaps failing us, prompting them to cancel our policies before we can actually use them, even if we'd been paying premiums for decades and never even had a sniffle. And THEN we have the audacity to present ourselves to the emergency room with problems brought on by obesity and poor diet! Shame on us for doing what all those advertisements on television urged us to do!

I love the fact that I put my ass on the line for this country, only to discover many years later when I grew mature enough to take my attention off pop culture and high performance cars to notice that most of us hate each other with a passion. I mean, we MUST hate each other if we honestly think that half of this country is out to GET the other half, like forcing them to do things like have affordable health insurance, decent wages, worker protections, legal representation, and decent housing and nutrition. We obviously don't think that "other half" of our country worships the right god in the right way, and thus believe that "we", the ones "right with god", should be able to teach EVERYBODY'S children the word of god in the public class room and avoid exposing them to atheist propaganda like evolution and climate change.

During World War Two, it was obvious who the bad guys were, and NOT because we as the "good guys" actually had a morally superior culture. No, we might not have sent our Jews to the ovens, but we certainly tried to keep our negroes on the plantations for the longest time, and had a conniption fit when those damn liberals made it possible for the Tuskeegee airmen to protect all those bombers from german fighter planes. We didn't chop off the heads of our enemies with swords like the Japanese did; we simply fried two whole cities worth of those yellow bastards with the atomic bomb. We as the world's leading democracy were only slightly ahead of the curve when it came to human and civil rights, and it took a very, very long time for us to actually come to grips with the part of our own constitution that said "ALL men are created equal".

Seventeen percent of Americans believe the Sun revolves around the Earth. A third of Americans can't name all three branches of our government. I would venture to say that many of these same people are the ones shouting at their elected representatives during these town hall meetings. We call this a representative government, only I wonder sometimes who is being represented and why, much less how. Some of these people, like Michelle Bachman, amaze me in that not only were they elected to public office, but that they display many of the symptoms of brain death. For all the millions of dollars being spent on "higher education", I honestly wonder if anybody is really getting their moneys' worth.

So, in retrospect, I didn't actually "serve" my country, I simply kept the Soviets at bay long enough for them to crash and burn. I promised to serve and protect the constitution of the United States of America, from ALL enemies, both foreign and domestic, and when all was said and done, I and all those others who took that oath with me failed utterly. Many of us voted for people who had no real idea what our constitution stood for, and we allowed elected representatives to walk roughshod over a concept that took centuries to evolve into what our constitution and way of life has come to stand for. I would like to think that we got our act together when we elected Barack Obama to the highest office of our land, and yet half of us continue to act as if we never got past the sixth grade, and bend over to willingly service those who wish to, putting it bluntly, screw us in the ass in any way they think they can get away with by playing on our basest fears and insecurities, as well as our insane ignorance and lack of critical thinking skills. Now, let me be honest; I like sex, even the kinkier flavors of it, but I never signed up for rape.

Did you?

Three Days

2009-08-26T22:08:00.005-04:00

How many of you remember 1969? I remember I was fourteen years old and having my ass wiped by a very mean lady by the name of Camille. She came ashore on the Mississippi Gulf coast and rearranged things. She parked tugboats in peoples front yards, bent whole pine forests over in one direction and tore huge oak trees right out of the ground, and removed peoples' houses altogether. No, Camille wasn't a particularly hormonal bitch, she was the strongest hurricane ever to hit the North American mainland up to that point (that we know of). At the time I was a "welfare kid" living with some salt-of-the-Earth foster parents in the back woods and bayous of the MIssissippi Gulf coast area, just east of Bay St Louis. That I am even lucky to be alive is what I remember most about 1969.

However, two even more remarkable events happened that year, one being the Apollo moon landing, and WOODSTOCK. Apollo was just hurling three men into orbit around the moon and setting them down on it without killing them, even getting them back here alive, but Woodstock, now THAT was something downright amazing! For three days, over HALF A MILLION people, mostly young people that worried the old people to death, crammed into a large pasture together to groove to some pretty good music, smoke some pot, make some love, play in the mud, and as far as I know, not one of them tried to kill someone. Even the cops thought it best NOT to wade into THAT crowd and hassle anybody. Imagine that.......

They only charged you $6.00 a day, $8.00 at the gate to attend. You can't even see a movie at the theatre these days for that, especially if you want popcorn. Of course, a lot more people came without tickets OR money than did, but by that time it was too late to worry about it. It didn't matter because something like this hadn't ever happened before (this many people coming together and NOT overthrowing a government or something) and the whole thing just wasn't about money when all was said and done. Subsequent efforts to repeat the experience never really measured up, and they cost a lot more money than the original. Yea, you can BUY a war, but you can't BUY peace, now can you?

We were a different breed of human back then, full of alternative ideas, and hope for a much brighter future than our parents had prepared us for. They fought a terrible war and raised the standard of living for all of their offspring, and we threw it back in their faces, preferring instead to try and get around this idea of money and killing and hating each other for stupid reasons. Only we all grew up. We got jobs. We couldn't stop war just because we wanted to, and many of us became our parents, carrying on this insane need for money and status and petty power politics, poisoning the planet and insulting Mother Nature instead of protecting her. So here we are, heading nilly-willy for an extinction event, forty years after proving to each other that we COULD play nice together, if only we wanted to.

We apparently don't want to, at least not badly enough.

But for three days in August of 1969, we did. I wonder why...........

Pissing on Fire Hydrants

2009-08-14T08:07:00.002-04:00

National Rifle Association, I want to thank you, by your implied support, for making me realize that I need to arm myself, not just at home, but at work, at the supermarket, in church, and at political rallies. Yep, it is my GOD-GIVEN right, as you constantly assert, to pack heat whenever I find myself in situations when my life and liberty is being threatened, again, at work, at the supermarket, in church, or going to protest those nazi's at town hall meetings who want to murder anybody collecting social security. It's nice to know that if my boss starts yelling at me for sleeping on the job, just showing him my gun might tone down his demeanor. It's nice to know that seeing that I'm packing heat, the ass wipe behind me in the less-than-10-items lane won't make a scene about me having 19 items. And, it's nice to know that I can praise the Lord fully armed, in case some atheist sneaks in and wants to desecrate the church in the middle of services.

Also, I want to be prepared whenever I find myself in a position to "water the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants". This can be one of those situations that requires snap decisions, and one cannot react quickly to such opportunities if he has to run home and break his AK-47 out of a gun safe. No, we defenders of liberty know full well that you have to wonder into these situations with a full thirty-round clip of persuasion. We have two amendments to the constitution which allow us to speak our minds, with all the firepower necessary to make ourselves heard.

I love freedom, don't you? Well, punk.........don't you?

Mirror, Mirror......

2009-08-13T13:45:00.004-04:00

I have been a rabid fan of the updated series "Battlestar Galactica", one of the best written examinations of the human condition I have had the pleasure/pain to experience. There are so many things within this opera that resembles the evolution of my own identity as a man, as a human, it's spooky. Let me explain.

From the get-go, when these intelligent apes began to form tribes, nature and pure chance have conspired to put this creature down, not as a recognized threat to all OTHER forms of life on this planet, although that would come to be realized eventually, but because that's just how life is; it fights to live, and things conspire to kill it. The dinosaurs can tell you all ABOUT that. A rock from space, a sudden shift in climate, runaway volcanic activity; there are ALL kinds of phenomenon that can put a damper on biology. Yet, against all these odds, even against it's own built-in tendency to commit species suicide, mankind persists and now covers this planet like a bacterial slime mold. On top of that, if we can survive just perhaps a dozen more decades, we might even spread this contagion to other habitable planets. We are, after all, infectious little muther fuckers.........

It is only natural for a species that is self aware, to be self-centered, to think of itself as the center of the universe, to transcend all criticisms, to hold itself above all other considerations. Yet, it is only logical to expect that advanced intelligence would temper such selfishness with an understanding of how invested we are in ALL that life we share our planet, and perhaps the universe, with. And, it seems, that as far as that goes, logic is in very short supply upon this planet. Basic animal urges have always prevailed, it seems, and nothing so far proves that anything will change in that regard. Yes, we do have a relative handful amongst us that is capable of taking the long view, yet a pathetically small percentage of these remarkable individuals are involved in positions of power, of being there to steer this species on a sane and safe path into a very dangerous future.

Yes, given my preferences, I'm glad I was born human and not kangaroo. It's been a good life, relative to the kind of life a human can end up living. Yes, there are scores of humans I love, am very fond of, and/or respect. However, the fact remains that just like a German in 1942 having to make a conscious decision to BE a Nazi, and to think that was a correct decision, or to be a Cambodian forcing his own parents on a death march to the countryside during that genocide, we ALL have decisions to make all during our lives that have an effect on ALL life on this planet, and chances are, we will most often make the WRONG choice. Small, innocent choices, indeed, which in reality will all add up to the ultimate wrong when the chickens come home to roost. Knowing this, painfully, as I do, I am now more than capable of having precious little sympathy for my species as a whole. Within us dwell monsters, as evil and terrifying as the picture we painted in our nightmares of that shark in the movie "Jaws". Despite all the wonder, the joy, the love we are capable of, look at the horrors we balance all that with. Is it REALLY worth it? Is it TRULY a balance?

And am I above all this? HELL NO. Every DAY I make decisions that upon reflection would cause me shame, if I were to dwell upon the contributions these minor altercations are going to have, however minute, in the end. Even the lifestyle I enjoy, even as seemingly lower-class as it appears to be, requires that others on this planet, human AND animal, suffers to some degree. This applies equally to ALL of you, and you can disagree all you want, or protest your good intentions, but in the end the truth of our impacts remains what it is.......the truth.

Thus, like the heroism's and tragedies, outrages and petty victories that are played out in the Battlestar Galactica series, what we witness in this saga is our reflection, a sad and ugly reflection of who we are deep inside, stripped of excuse, intention, Godliness, or lack of any redeemable value. I see my species, I know my species, I cannot make any more excuses for my species ; do not make up a God or a Devil to blame for all my species failures, and I do not ask for the commutation of the sentence we so aptly deserve, which I know, thanks to our nature, will be visited upon us, if not in OUR lifetime, then in our children's. Next time you see that proverbial crazy man carrying around the "END IS NEAR" sign, give him the respect a prophet with clear vision deserves. His is perhaps the only truth we will witness in these, our all-to-short and tragic lifetimes.

There's Naive, Then There's STUPID.......

2009-08-12T13:31:00.003-04:00

With the death of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, there has been examinations on NPR radio of her contributions, the most famous being the establishment of the Special Olympics, and her efforts on behalf of the "intellectually disabled".

Now THAT got me to thinking.

Like most Americans I am well aware of the mentally disabled amongst us, most often which are those born with Down's Syndrome, who although can learn life skills and can function fairly well, still cannot be left to their own devices, and are forever dependent upon their families or the government to support them and keep them safe. But "Intellectually" disabled?

No, no, no, no NO!

This is a really off-the-mark mislabeling of a real and quite pervasive deficit that more and more Americans are suffering from. In order to be "intellectually" disabled, you have to have the CAPACITY to be INTELLIGENT in the first place. Now, in most cases this is an affliction suffered by those who drop out of high school in pursuit of the glories of Foot ball, Basket ball, drug dealing, or flipping burgers at McDonalds. These people otherwise have the brainpower required to learn, to succeed in non-criminal enterprises, and to develop critical thinking skills given the motivation and desire to do so.

There are other means in which otherwise normal and capable people can appear to suffer from some mental deformity, usually having to do with political or religious affiliation. As we witness now on the news everyday, crowds of people claiming to be alarmed at terrible things our government wants to do to us are being deployed by the Republican Party and special (and threatened) interests to disrupt and overwhelm with hysteria those town hall meetings that congressmen are trying to use to communicate the facts of health care reform to their constituents. Any THINKING person with a shred of common sense and yes, INTELLIGENCE, can see right thru this charade, yet the hysteria seems to be spreading. Yes, the people getting worked up by all these lies and propaganda are quite CAPABLE of grasping the facts, except that they are "INTELLECTUALLY DISABLED", and thus can't participate in reasonable discourse without getting violent.

No, NPR, please do not insult these unfortunate citizens who through no fault of their own entered this world with genuine mental deficits that prevent them from fully functioning in the wider world without guidance. Most often these are genuinely sweet, gentle persons who despite their shortcomings still manage to bring joy to their families. If you want to harness this term "INTELLECTUALLY DISABLED", please apply it in a more accurate manner, to those bozo's with brains who refuse to use them.

P.S. Yes, I have researched this term on the web and it is meant to refer to those who we usually refer to as mentally handicapped, but I personally think the phrase is used in error.

We Actually Visit a BEACH!

2009-08-09T22:37:00.002-04:00

Hello, sports fans; welcome to an exciting Sunday edition of "The Chronicles of Pendragon Hold", that award winning blog that tells it like it is! Well, actually, we haven't actually won any awards, but darn it, doncha think we OUGHT to?

This weekend we actually escaped the confines of home and made it to the beach. You might not suspect it, but Pendragon Hold is actually fairly close to the Atlantic Ocean, yet we actually see it maybe once every 7 years if we're lucky. It's just far enough away to take some time to get to, but these days, as far as I'm concerned, I am not much motivated to get sun burned, sand in everything, all just to get wet with saltwater. If I had easier access to the deep, with all the scuba gear needed, I might want to get out there more often, but hey, I can see ALL I want of aquatic wonderment from the comfort of my couch via the boob tube. However, THE Wife is not so easily mislead by PBS, and loves to get into the sand and surf and sun and........

So we met THE Wife's pack of lady co-workers and drove to St Augustine Beach, where you can drive your car onto the beach between the surf and the protected sand dunes (where endangered sea turtles drag themselves to reproduce). We bought a kite to fly, a real cool facsimile of an owl, and after putting it together and releasing it to the fairly strong ocean breeze, I lost it after maybe 5 minutes, all due to having forgotten to make sure that the end of the string was secured to the handle! The string let loose, and I could not run fast enough to catch it before the kite settled down into the protected and off-limits area of the sand dunes! Oh well, for a scant and all-so-brief moment, I was almost a kid again........

To the best of my knowledge, our royal canine, Shiloh, had never experienced the beach, and I was really looking forward to seeing how he would react to it. I was actually amazed that I was able to not-quite-have-to drag his ass into the surf, but when the water got to dog-paddle depth for him, he lost all interest, and was happy to get back on dry land. Nope, Shiloh is definitely NOT a dog in love with water. His distaste for getting a bath could have told us that much. I do, however, think he would LOVE playing in snow.......he is, after all, a NORWEGIAN elkhound.

Later in the day they put up a volleyball net and several strangers wondered over to join us for an impromptu game. I ended up with this young asian lass on my side, her many companions with six-pack abs on the opposing side. Other players would wonder into and out of the game as it went along. Let me tell you, though, this girl punked all of us, making perfect serves it seemed nobody could return, and able to dive and save a play time and time again. I surprised myself with much of my game, although I payed dearly for all this activity with a groin muscle pull. It is still somewhat tight and sore today......getting old sucks, guys, don't let anybody tell you different! Of course, THE Wife is not the slightest bit sorry for me, convinced as she is that I was trying to impress the asian chick.......yea, like that could possibly happen in THIS universe.....

It was almost seven in the evening before we made it back to the Hold, and there was a lot of sand to be shaken out of everything we'd brought back with us. Imagine that, transferring sand from the Ocean to mix with sand of the Hold.........ironic. The sand this kingdom rest upon today was once the bottom of that same ocean many, many thousands of years ago. And, thanks to global warming, this spot may once again become a beach to that same body of water, perhaps even in my lifetime.

Due to our negligence during last weeks trip to Itchnetucknee, the camera got wet and quit working, so I had to get another one. The new one has ten megapixels versus the eight the old one had, but the old one was rather nice and I hated losing it. Oh well, toys come and go.........

Well, folks, that pretty much brings all of you up to date on the recent history of Pendragon Hold and it's hardy denizens. I now turn you over to our intrepid political commentator, who is always more than ready to rant, rave and otherwise pontificate on the hilarious happenings and onerous goings-on that is our broke-back political system. Take it away, Alex!

Remember "No Child Left Behind"?

Well, it seems that every child got left behind. Have you noticed lately just how morbidly idiotic a large portion of the American public has gotten? No, actually, this didn't happen overnight; this is the result of years of what the Republicans have done to our educational system. It seems that Americans know less about America these days than those who are clamoring to get in, legally or not. I think it's rather ironic that while foreigners are flocking to our shores to flee the the horrors of their homelands (rather than fixing their problems in their OWN countries like our fore fathers did), we are busy exporting places for them to work back to where they are fleeing from. Well, I hate to let them in on our dirty little secret, but our streets are paved with stimulus money, not gold, and these roads are going nowhere fast. Many of the mega-fortressed suburbs these roads lead to are emptying out fast, their former and very temporary occupants losing their jobs and their sub-prime mortgages thanks to the out-of-control financial speculative markets that the Bush years made possible. Ronald Reagan introduced us to homelessness; Dubya made it an industry.

I am not the product of higher education; most of my "wisdom" was garnered by a life of simply paying attention to my surroundings and noticing that something wasn't quite right. What wasn't quite right was all the rules I had been raised to believe in, and the results that following these rules would produce, which was supposed to be all those things that made up the American dream. Two car garages, sports cars and SUV's with more horsepower and curb weight than could ever make any sense, a house with more square footage than whole villages in Africa could muster, crammed onto tiny lots subdivided on former wetlands now buried and subtracted forever from the ecosystem, all the electronic gadgets and toys I could ever hope to engage in my limited time, and as many kids as artificial fertility treatments could enable my good Christian wife to produce. Ah, yes, a dream indeed.

Dream my ass; these last forty years have been a nightmare! The American capitalist system seems to operate on a cyclical system of prosperity followed by recession, with a permanent poverty class, a constantly fluctuating middle class, and a small but powerful, self-perpetuating upper class. Also, it appears that this particular class of American capitalism thrives on selfishness, this need to pit every citizen against each other, by differences in their social status, their income, their religiousness, and even their preferred brand of computer. Here in these "right to work" states, the mantra has always been that you NEVER discuss how much you make with your co-workers, because how else does a system of favoritism, sex and age discrimination, and nepotism thrive so well? How can men and women make the same wage for the same work if they are not allowed to "show me yours and I'll show you mine"? Our capitalist overlords WANT us to divide ourselves into opposing camps, Democrats versus Republicans, rich against poor, Apple versus Microsoft, because it diverts our attention from the true source of our woes; those who enrich themselves at our expense, usually in any outrageously unfair and/or illegal way they can think of. Look at what finally results from the Obama health care reform effort and you will see the influence of people who want their piece of OUR pie. What really make me sick about my fellow citizens is that as long as they BELIEVE they got THEIRS, they are more than willing to see me without MINE. Social Justice in THIS country is called socialism, keeping your mouth shut and doing your job until such time as your job can be shipped off to India is called PATRIOTISM.

The only people who can ever get anywhere close to seat in the hallowed halls of congress these days are RICH people, or slimy friends of rich people. Apparently, there are just enough well-to-do idiots in this country to fill all of our representative positions; but imagine; what if you had to pass an I.Q. test in order to run for office in this country?

Imagine, having to know full well that Medicare IS a government-run program! Imagine, having to know full well what the bill of rights are! Imagine, knowing how stupid it would be to tell a Navajo to go back where he came from! Imagine, having to know where Iraq is on a map BEFORE you are sent there! Imagine being required to have critical thinking skills!

John, I try to imagine, I really do........it just isn't working anymore...........

A Retraction

2009-08-04T19:44:00.001-04:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, or whatever your inner child decrees you to be, I, THE Michael, Lord Holder and Chief spaghetti maker here at Pendragon Hold, have a retraction to make. It seems that during my last post, I used the word "maggots" in a less-than-positive reference towards Republicans. This was brought to my attention by one of my loyal subscribers, who remarked, and I quote, "ignorant, God-fearing maggots"??? Michael! Michael! What have you got against maggots? Maggots have a stinky but necessary job and should not be used as a metaphor. We'd be over our heads in decay without them. Get politically correct and publish an apology and retraction."

Sigh.........My faithful readers, he is right, I should apologize to these poor creatures who we owe so much to, whom without our world would certainly stink so bad we could not exist without gallons of French perfume or High Karate after-shave to cover the stench of rotting garbage and road kill that we humans leave scattered across this great country of ours.

I am sorry.

But as far as you piss-ants showing up at your congressional representatives question and answer sessions on health care, simply to insult them, disrupting the forums so that ordinary citizens can't ask a serious question, in a sad attempt to derail health care reform...........well, let's just say "maggot" is much to kind a word.

2009-08-01T13:19:00.007-04:00

It's a hot, muggy Saturday here at Pendragon Hold, that soggy, sandy patch of pagan sensibility located on the outskirts of Bible-belt lunacy. We are making preparations for our trip, along with most of THE Wife's co-workers, to Ichetucknee Springs tomorrow, where we will all hop on inner tubes and air mattresses and float down the peaceful, refreshingly cold river for several miles. This spring-fed river located in the middle of Northern Florida is so popular that they have had to limit the numbers of people using it, due to the stresses all these floating bodies have had on the environment of the river. I can imagine all those poor minnows and snakes having to dodge that calvacade of overweight rednecks that blot out the sun above and bump into the banks on both sides. Our natural resources aren't so natural anymore once we start tramping all over them.

Our conservative citizens,, mostly of the Republican variety, are out in force spreading falsehoods and distorting the facts, doing anything they can to spread alarm amongst the easily mislead and our senior citizens, making them think that Obama's health plan (which by the time the politicians finish with it won't resemble anything he campaigned for) will cut costs by killing off old people and forcing poor people into a government policy which will "take away their doctors" and other such nonsense. This is not "spin", my friends; what these despicable people are doing is outright dishonest and hateful, and I for one would love to bitch-slap the whole lot of them upside their evil faces. Imagine the horror of making it illegal for insurance companies to deny you care because (gasp) you once got sick, or dropping your policy because you dared come down with something! Imagine not having to pour almost half of your earned income down the black hole of insurance premiums that go up and up and up! Imagine not having to stay at a horrid job for fear of losing health coverage for your family if you go to another job! Those damn SOCIALISTS!

If you know someone who actually believes any of this propaganda, ask them where they got their lobotomies, and if their insurance covered it.........

Oh, and here's a shout out to our friends in the Pacific northwest, a place I always longed to move to, whose weather patterns are getting so totally screwed up that their once green, mild, and wet climate may go the way of the numerous species that are going extinct almost daily now. And Texas, with its record setting drought, well, you guys just might run out of water altogether, and then where will being BIG get you? But of course, being the home of many of our dumber citizens, you will be the first to cry to Uncle Sam to send you lots of federal aid to pay for your drinking water, all your farms having been abandoned, with nothing left to brag about except the dried out remains of the Alamo. I think you should succeed from the Union now and save the rest of us the money. Or maybe we can sell you back to Mexico........

The day I am REALLY looking forward to is when the climate REALLY goes to hell, all the crops start failing, and all of you ignorant, God-fearing maggots finally realize where the corporations, the banks, the insurance companies, and all those good friends of the Republican Party have led you, and you start dragging these bastards out into the streets and start lynching them. Then, when you have finished being the humans you played so well, I would like you to turn the guns on yourselves, and maybe, just maybe, without you to continue torturing her, what's left of Gaia can perhaps one day heal herself.

I kinda envy the cockroaches....NUTHIN is ever going to kill THEM.........

2009-07-28T17:02:00.000-04:00

Welcome to yet ANOTHER episode of The Chronicles of Pendragon Hold, that stay-cation getaway hidden on the outskirts of redneck "civilization". Here it is hot, humid, and drying out as thunderstorms pound the dickens out of everywhere except, you guessed it, Pendragon Hold. I'm not panicking yet, because the gardens are mostly retired for the season, and nothing appears to be all that stressed...yet. Besides, ONE of these soakers should be scoring a direct hit any day now.....the odds dictate it. Unless the odds decide to take a month off, that is.

(Even as I prepare to post this, the sky is darkening and it seems the odds might be heading right for us.....)

I happen to be enjoying my almost two week "stay-cation" here at the Hold, doing nothing much except laundry, meals, sweeping, laundry, feeding animals (inside and out), laundry, repairing fences, moving plants, and the dishes; none of these activities in any particular order. However, we DO have planned a minor getaway to the wondrous Ichnetucknee river, a rather cold, spring fed stream that people pay to float down in inner-tubes and canoes that enterprising people rent to them. The Wife and I visited this pleasant little river shortly after we met, and both of us actually have to carefully consider what we are going to wear. Waistlines are not necessarily static concepts. It's not to far away and shouldn't cost an arm and a leg, so hopefully there will be enough bribery left to enjoy it.

As far as the car is concerned, I think I've narrowed the noise down to the two older tires which appear to have been scalloped, a condition arising from bad suspension parts, which I have just replaced. I really made a good effort to check the wheels for bad wheel bearings, and they do not display any of the classic symptoms other than the noise, which isn't necessarily a bad wheel bearing noise, but more like a bad tire noise. It's hard to type this post with all my fingers crossed, but they are.

Back on the political front, I have included this video of Bill Mayer discussing capitalism and health care and everything else that greedy people like to harness in order to enrich themselves. He truly says it all.

Being a rabid consumer of NPR and PBS, it seems that the news regarding our environment and what we're doing to it only gets worse and worse, and then it gets even worse than the pessimists insisted it was going to get back when things started looking bad. I used to be a glass-half-empty sort of guy. Half of something is better than nothing at all, right? Well, the hell with that. The glass is broke. After the last G-8 summit, it is obvious that the nations of the world will not take global warming seriously enough to do what must be done to stop the slide. So, I have decided to quit worrying about it. Join me if you wish at the Restaurant at the End of the World, where we will feast on the last of the ocean's bounty, the last of the produce to be pollinated by the soon-to-be-extinct honey bee, and whatever else we might get our greedy mouths on before it all goes away and the great hunger begins. Oh, and we'll crank up the air conditioners with the last of the coal-fired electricity and hold out against the heat as long as we can. Can't promise ice cream.......doubt the cows will be around much longer either........

The sunsets should be gorgeous, though...........

Why Ira Flatow got the job at Science Friday, and I didn't.

2009-07-17T19:25:00.005-04:00

Hello, and welcome to the Friday edition of The Chronicles of Pendragon Hold. Now, just because we had an edition posted this Friday is no real reason to expect it to happen again NEXT Friday, so don't get used to it.

Today's episode involves tires, wheel bearings, plastic ear ring post liners, dead dogs and the buzzards who love them, and of course, goats, and not necessarily in that order. If you actually believe there's rhyme to this reason, you are most charitable.

Driving down the road on my way to somewhere other than The Hold, I had the opportunity to ease my car thru a crowd of carrion lovers, who had happened upon, (as only scavengers can) an unlucky mammal on the side of the road. Now, I know what you are thinking, and I can assure you that this animal was NOT the victim of my still simmering rage against that pair of murdering mutts who killed my friend Lola. No, although I am fairly sure that these remains were canine in character, I have no idea what animal it was and who might have run it over. Whatever, this pack of hungry road-kill cleaners did there job well, and there remains nothing to tell the tale of a dog's life, or rather, sudden lack of it.

Anne, I was tempted to take pictures for you. Only a select few of us know why.

The front end of our car, a Ford Focus, has an appetite for tires, and finally had worn down the front pair to the point that I had to intervene and retire them before a belt departed that passenger side tire, it was so worn down; all the wear bars showing on the driver's side. Before that I purchased a hydraulic jack and jack stands and got beneath the beast for some serious exploration in search of the nasty noise that was coming from down under. It turns out that a sway bar link had parted on the bottom end and had to be replaced, which, thankfully, with a little research, I figured out how to do myself. Then, yesterday, I visited the tire store and had the two front tires replaced. Now, a troubling rhythmic sound is very evident that the tire guy suggested might be a worn out wheel bearing. I got on the net and researched THAT topic and so far, as best I can discern, there is no CLEAR evidence that the bearing is at fault. SO, I am going to replace the OTHER sway bar link, which probably is about to fail as well anyway, and THEN I will see if that sound is still there, although I have entertained the idea that the sound COULD be coming from one of the old tires in the rear of the car. You see, car sounds seem to always come from someplace OTHER than where they are actually emanating from, making it so easy for auto mechanics to get return business when the obvious remedies turn out to not remedy anything. Hopefully, I will be able to nail down the culprit before something bursts into flames.

Goats.....hmmmm.......why did I mention the goats? Everybody knows I have goats....the goats didn't do anything terrible (today at least).........all three are healthy and hungry as usual.........

Never mind.

I might have reported previously that THE Wife got an extra hole punched in one of her ears. Anyway, she happens to be rather sensitive to nickel, a common contaminant in jewelry, so we had to get her some plastic liners to cover the posts of her ear rings as to keep her ears from swelling up. Hopefully I will be able to get her some pure sterling silver ear rings, perhaps for her birthday, that she isn't allergic to. MAYBE......grin.

The tomato garden has pretty much wound down and there are only a few fruits left to mature. The cucumbers never did produce one decent cuce, and the beans were all buried in an excess of marigolds. The strawberries did just AWFUL this year, and neither the blueberry bush OR the fig tree produced any fruit. Sigh. Next year I'm getting serious and will build some raised beds, which have a proven track record of producing real results in the past. The terrace garden will be restricted to herbs, which it hosts very well.

Just recently I suppose all of you may have heard about the sudden appearance of aggressive squid in the waters off San Diego. These rather nasty creatures normally inhabit waters much deeper and further South, but have now appeared in much shallower waters, in the great numbers they are known to appear in, and have taken to buffet around and man-handle divers. Most divers are leaving these areas to the squid, while others are getting into the thick of it, putting their lives in danger, since these inquisitive and predatory creatures have a habit of trying to rip the masks and hoses off of you. There are plenty of theories as to why this is happening, and none of them are good. But of course, we all know there's no such thing as climate change, now is there?

We are getting regular doses of almost daily rain now, and between that and the stifling heat and humidity, we haven't done much out in the back forty. Once it cools down and dries out a bit, I might try and get that chicken coop built, and have it ready for habitation come next spring.

Well, that's all that's happening here at Pendragon Hold, that acre of sand on the edge of suburbia, where real life trumps fantasy on a regular basis. Be well; I have to put the dragon back in it's cave. If it lets me, that is.

The Momentary Return of BOB, and all THAT entails.....

2009-07-14T20:53:00.002-04:00

Long time readers of this thing laughingly called a blog might recall the entity "BOB" who on occasion has popped into my life and challenged my grasp on reality. You see, I know that BOB can't be real, yet BOB takes up a definite chunk of my brain's awareness, to the extent that it is very possible that BOB is not only very real, but has actually spoken to me in the manner in which I have recorded in my blog. Having read about the occurrences of false memories in humans, I tend to question those pictures in my mind that might have been figuratively photoshopped rather than recorded verbatim as they seemed to have occurred. Thus it remains to be seen if BOB is nothing more than a figment of my rather colorful imagination, or something all of us needs to get jiggy with if we ever hope to attain nirvana. No, not the band, silly..........

Anyway, I was sitting at my trusty iMac surfing the Apple store in search of the illusive refurbished Mac Mini (the EXACT Mac Mini model that I want to replace this old G-5 with before smoke starts issuing out the back) when all of a sudden the screen goes black, then is replaced by BOB's smiling face. Now, the thing you have to realize when I say "BOB's smiling face" is that no two witnesses out of a pack of 37 would agree as to what Bob's smiling face actually looks like. One moment you think BOB looks something like Bing Crosby, while in the very next breath you'd insist He/She/It is the spitting image of Salma Hyack. BOB simply can't be pigeonholed into being described as looking like anybody in particular, but strangely, you'd know Him/Her/it the second you saw Him/Her/It. I have to assume that's just how deities present themselves to us mortals.

So here I am staring at my computer screen, the one that's been hijacked by good old BOB, and that strange and comforting sense of peace descends over me, a phenomenon I attribute to being in the presence of divinity, and I smile and say, "Well hello there, stranger; long time no see!"

"Stranger?" He says, looking somewhat alarmed, "Stranger than WHO, might I ask?"

"Oh, Bob, you funny, as always.....what can I do for you, sport?"

"You know, Michael....oh wait, excuse me; it's THE Michael nowadays, right? Well, anyway, I simply love how disrespectful you get in the presence of the most utterly powerful THING in all of existence, even tho I could turn your head into a giant turnip if I wanted to. How are YOU doing these days, my wayward child?"

I glance sideways at this appirition/halucination/visitation/whateverthefuckitis, never knowing exactly when to take he/she/it seriously, or when to quake in my boots, which I'm not inclined to do anyway, hellfire or no. I just don't deal with authority figures very well.

"I'm doing as well as can be expected, considering fate and fortune. I'd ask how YOU are doing, but we all know how YOU are doing, don't we? Splendidly comes to mind......."

"Now, now, Michael, let's not make assumptions here. I CAN have a bad day, believe it or not. Why, just last week, a WONDERFUL planet full of the best sentient beings you could ever hope to meet got fried by it's own sun. I hate it when that happens......"

"And you did NOTHING to stop it? Gods, you are one cold muther fu........"

He raised one finger to his lips and I instinctively knew to shut up. "Michael, I created a chaotic universe that creates and destroys amazing things every second of every day and on balance, it's all good. I made up a set of rules that are so complicated, so balanced, so nuanced that that there's no way I could intervene on the side of sweetness and light and not throw the entire thing out of whack. Believe you me, it did NOT take six days to create this universe, and no, one day is not enough rest after a feat like that, believe you me!

"OK then Bob, explain to me if you can how all told, a whole planet of nice people getting cooked is "all good"? Would you be so nonchalant if WE got blow-torched tomorrow? Or do you care?

He shook his head and seemed sorrowful. "I'm gonna let you in on a secret, Michael, not because you deserve to know before your time, but because I like you. There is actually something BETTER than any heaven any human could imagine awaiting all of you, even your dogs, cats, guppies, and hamsters. No matter how or when you die, or how you lived your life, you bring something back to the grand scheme of things; lessons learned, experiences both good and bad, and each very special thing that makes any and all of you so special, so unique. You think all this energy generated by the wellspring of life doesn't amount to anything? Let me tell you, bub, all the suns and quasars and black holes in this universe can't hold a candle to the power all those heartbeats produce! All that emotion, all that love, hate, fury, jealousy, empathy; all that music, all that art, it's one amazing dynamo that powers a realm that all of you sense somehow but can never describe. So, no, although I hate to witness pain and death, especially of innocents, I know that in the end it is not a waste. If feeds something I can only describe as wonderful, and even that comes no where near close enough to doing it justice. Imagine something so fucking far out that you can't even imagine it....that's as close to understanding it as you will ever get, so long as you inhabit that mangy body of yours."

"Well, thanks for the pep talk, BOB, but honestly, did you expect that to make me feel better, especially about all the shit that happens to good people every day, for no good reason? And why can't you just come out and PROVE to these fundamentalist ass-holes that there's no God like they imagine and let us all live in peace for a change? It's all this uncertainty that has us at each other's throats like we are...you could go a long way towards putting an end to THAT excuse for killing each other.

"Michael, you've never been sure that I'm not a figment of YOUR imagination; what's to convince all of mankind? No, I don't do miracles; like I said, I wrote a delicate set of laws that I tinker with at my own peril. Just shooting the shit with you is as harmless an interaction as I can afford; sucking up enough energy from everything needed to actually PROVE to ALL mankind that I am what I am would cost dearly in ways you don't even want to know about....so it's out of the question. Believe me, it's a lot more fun this way.

"You and your fucking "mysterious ways". It's getting pretty old, ya know?"

"I know, Michael.....it's as old as eternity."

"just one question, though, if you can. Does it really matter if I try and live a good life, or does it really make a difference in the end? Will I get ANY cosmic brownie points for the effort?

"What does you gut tell you, my friend? I designed that too, you know."

Sigh.........

The image faded to black and I was left sitting in front of my computer, thinking that perhaps once again I had nodded off into some sort of weird day dream, and that once again I should treat this as just another episode of mild mental illness. Thankfully, I never take these "things" seriously, because life is not kind to prophets, and deep inside I know that BOB has never intended for me to run around the streets making a fool of myself in yet another failed attempt to spread the word. No, Bob has never had anything to do with your typical street corner prophet. Maybe some other off-the-wall deity, but not BOB. But, it makes great blog material, so I guess we both get what we want, without the mess.

Blessed be.

The Day After

2009-07-07T19:07:00.001-04:00

It was a day like any other day, the sixth of July, 2009, except for the untimely deaths of Michael Jackson, my cat Lola, and any sense of ease I might have entered this 9th annual forty-fifth birthday with. Yes, nine years ago I decided that forty-five was a fine age to be, and so forty-five I remain, year after year. Why get older? Nothing good comes of it. AARP constantly harassing you, Social Security keeps sending you these notices concerning how much you'd have gotten if the Government didn't overhaul the entire program the year before you become eligible for it....why worry? I take care of seventy year plus patients every day I work and it's not pretty....being seventy plus, that is. Things start breaking down, your mind wonders off on tangents, and our society devalues you, charges you more for living, and takes every opportunity to rip you off, counting on an outdated sense of honor that this society lost a long time ago. Yep, forty-five suits me just fine, tyvm!

I have this sad fascination with the news, that phenomenon that promises to INFORM us while simply spinning whatever happened according to the political whims of those reporting it. A whole lot of people are sending Michael off in a grand fashion, overwhelmingly devastated by the sudden death of a pop icon, while conservative "good-old-boys" lament the attention that "perverts" get so much of by the media. The press is also milking the Palin melt-down for all it's worth, as if the very survival of the human race impinges on what this ditzy dame does. Riots in China, blatantly rigged "elections" in Iran, the list of human foibles goes on and on and none of it surprises me or amazes me; human kind is capable of incredibly wonderful and stupid things. Then, along comes a meteor, and what does it matter?

The Pope doesn't like pagans. He thinks we "subjugate" ourselves to "occult influences". Boy, is THIS guy ironic! People kiss this guys ring, and good Catholic women find that their proper place is in submission to men in THIS, the only straight ticket to heaven. Does anybody really think there are any major differences between Christianity in all it's insane variations and Islam, in all IT'S insane variations? I consider myself a priest of my path, and you will never catch ME wearing a pointy hat. Yea, I wear a robe, but there's not once ounce of gold woven into it's fabric. Yea, OK, fine, Pope, my religion is not as valid as yours, thus I don't get to join your heavenly club, which, incidentally, I don't even believe exists to join even if I bought the bullshit it took to join it. I don't believe in your devil, and I don't "subjugate" myself to ANY divine entity, for I AM divine, and thus have no need to. No, I do not consider nature to be more important than human life, because human life is merely one thread woven into the fabric of Gaia, thus I do not need to elevate my species above any other. I might be superior in my ability to manipulate my environment, but thanks to the brain that evolution built for me, I do not need to destroy that environment in order to make myself feel better, unlike most of my unenlightened breathren.

Goodbye, Michael. You have departed one fucked-up world, and I think overall you left it better than you found it. Goodbye, Lola; I don't know why you choose US to be your guardians, but I thank you for the trust, and I beg your forgiveness for failing you in the end. And Goodbye, innocence, it was good while it lasted. There's a price to pay for growing up. Sometimes a deadly one.

Murder Most Foul on the Fourth of July

2009-07-06T07:49:00.004-04:00

Today's post was meant to be published ON the Fourth of July, but I did work this holiday weekend, and I wanted to spend a bit more time polishing up this post, as it includes news which is painfully personal. It is several days late and in two parts.

Part One; Patriotic Pablum........

Today is the day that we, the citizens of these United States, celebrate the most precious thing we possess.....our freedom. Yes, in many ways, we are not free, and never will be, in the strictest sense of the word, for THAT kind of freedom requires that each and every person possess common sense and a kind, loving heart. Many, if not most of us, do not possess these things, although, again, many of us think we do. However, thanks to the remarkable foresight and critical thinking skills of a select group of 18th century insurgents, we have a document that has provided us with a blueprint from which to build the freest and most powerful nation this Earth has ever known. This document is figuratively stained in the blood of selfless men and women who answered the call, again and again, to risk the greatest sacrifice, and again and again, paid that most dear price for our freedom.

Every four or eight years, one political party or another will attempt to tamper with this document, usually in the name of morality or safety, and in doing so threaten the very foundation of all our freedoms, for the sake of knee-jerk righteousness. These are the enemies within, which we who take our oaths swear to defend ourselves against. They usually rally us around some perceived threat from without, and in the fog of our fear profit mightily at the expense of our sons and daughters, until such a time that even our friends wonder what we've become.

And so on this day, I ask all of you who deem yourselves the guardians, as well as the beneficiaries of this great republic, to remain ever vigilant against those who would use fear, intolerance, and greed to undo what generations of Americans have endured to build a more perfect union, for all these two centuries and more.

Tell them to move to Russia, where the press keeps it's mouth shut, or else. Or Iran, where the state tells you who and how to worship. Or Somalia, where no one pays taxes except passing ships.

Part Two; Murder Most Foul........

This July Fourth has not been very festive here at Pendragon Hold, for yet another tragedy has befallen us. Our dearly confused yet loving and loyal outside cat, the not so male feline we named LOLA, has been..........for lack of any better description......

Murdered.

THE Wife called me at work to inform me that she had just gotten sick having watched two neighborhood stray dogs attack and kill our cat, cornering her near our neighbors house across the lane. They then took her body with them and wondered on back down the road towards their own homes. Of course THE Wife was to afraid to follow them or try to intervene, as vicious as these two somewhat large dogs had proven they could be.

While I had to remain at work, fuming, THE local daughter came over and together they managed to backtrack and hunt down Lola's remains with the help of a lady living near where the dogs apparently lived.

While fireworks painted the skies all around the Hold, we placed our friend on a huge mound of brush and limbs we had already collected for a bonfire and sent her /him on his/her way to Summerland, where nobody expects you to catch mice or explain your gender or share your litter box with other cats. Of course, we played the song "Lola", by the Kinks, her namesake song.

Monday I will call animal control, and I will either get satisfaction through them, or I will get satisfaction, period. These creatures will NOT kill again if I can help it. I've heard to many horror stories of young children being attacked by dogs this way, and it won't happen on MY watch.

One morning, over twelve years ago, when THE Wife and I were living in another of a long succession of apartments (as rents would go up, we would be forced "on down the road" into cheaper and less desirable digs), I opened the front door and in walked a black and white long haired cat, pretty as you please, as if to announce, " hello, I'm living here now, you can feed me if you like..". This cat had a definitive feminine air about it, and it wasn't until we took it to the vet that we discovered that it had an open wound on it's belly, a broken tail, and yes, balls. So, we had her sewn up, vaccinated, and we named him/her LOLA, after the star of the Kinks greatest hit.

LOLA reigned as queen of our households, including the Hold, until the fateful day that we adopted Shiloh and LOLA rebelled, refusing to share HER/HIS domain with a CANINE of all creatures and peeing all over the house. Out she went, and LOLA, former prima-donna of the Pendragon Clan, became our outside cat. We fed her and she remained close, perhaps wondering across the lane to the neighbors yard on occasion, but she never lost the sense that this was home. As she/he grew older, LOLA became something of a ragamuffin, thin, scruffy, and lazy as all get out, lazing stretched out on the sand without a care in the world, ready to react on a moment's notice to pounce on any squirrel my deadly pellet gun might dispatch, yet was never the kind of cat to expend that much energy hunting on her own. In so many ways, LOLA was a rather worthless cat, but she was OUR worthless cat, or rather we were HER loving people, to the very tragic end of his/her life. We will miss him/her/whatever.

Blessed be you all.

P.S. For those of you that are new to The Chronicles, and those who forgot, LOLA was the cat with the starring role in the header of "Dances with Leaves", which you can visit and view via the link at the top of this blog.

Strange Days Indeed........

2009-06-28T18:22:00.008-04:00

It seems it's not safe around here (here being planet Earth) for celebrities fifty or over these days. I'm kinda hoping it's the fame that's killing them, seeing that I'm fifty-something myself, but no where near as famous. Last year I unilaterally declared my fame to all within eyesight of my blog, but apparently not a lot of people lay eyes on this blog, and those that do kinda went, "Yea, right!", so I guess I can rest easy if the reaper is THAT selective this year.

Having sort of grown up with Michael Jackson (yours truly remains THE Michael), I was somewhat indifferent to him, especially since he decided he didn't want to be black anymore, shortly after the Billie Jean era, when his "skin condition" got the best of him and he acquired a Kirk Douglas chin and a pert little nose that almost ended up falling off his face altogether. Whatever you think of Michael, it remains that he was an extremely talented freak, not that it was entirely his fault. With an upbringing like his it's no wonder he had issues. I pretty much expected him to follow in the steps of the first "King", Elvis, at least making it to Vegas in a last attempt to get his finances in order before he overdosed on pills that physicians who swear an oath to do no harm are more than happy to prescribe. Instead, he drops dead ala' James Dean, a tad bit before his time. Shame.

Then there's the OxyClean dude. Famous for his loud and enthusiastic sales pitches, here's another fifty year old gentleman who managed to nail down an iconic place in media history before HE drops dead, again, in his tracks.

So, what, is this some weird kinda rapture going on? If it is, I pity all those fundamentalist whack jobs who have being praying and cheering on this biblical event, which wouldn't be playing out exactly the way they had bargained on. And I pity US, who have to keep putting up with them. If there was a God, he'd be ROTFL right now.

Thank the Gods there isn't.........

Meanwhile, back here at the Hold, fifty-something Me is waiting for this guy who damn near killed my goats to show back up wanting to know if my insurance company is going to pay for the dings in his mother's car. Well, unfortunately, I have one of those bare-bones policies that only covers the house itself and what's inside, with no liability for what goes on around it. In retrospect, THE Wife insisted that the guy shared a big chunk of the blame for this accident, since he HAD to have been going a lot faster than our posted 25 mph speed limit to not see the twins in time. Besides, these critters have been all around this acre for years now and plenty of people have yielded to the goats on many an occasion. We have animals all up and down this road. You'd expect people to take the appropriate care. That could have been CHILDREN in that road.

So, the best I am prepared to offer him, when he DOES come back around, is to perhaps pay his deductible, if that happens to be reasonable. Other than that, we don't have the deep pockets he might be looking for. So, he can either accept my offer of SHARED responsibility or he can PROVE that what happened occurred how he claims it did, if it did at all. I'm a reasonable man, but I'm not a sucker.

THE Wife's new computer, a refurbished Mac Mini, is up and running, and she's tickled purple! On top of that, a friend of hers will be giving her a nice little computer desk to put it on, for free. I'm so impressed with the performance of this itty-bitty Mac, I might just replace this getting-long-in-the-tooth iMac with one, although I'll want to perform some surgery and install more RAM and a bigger, faster hard drive. RAM on the open market is a lot cheaper than what Apple charges for it, and the stock hard drive is only a 5400 rpm model, which slows the system down considerably. Many people pry the thing open and install their own 7200 rpm drive, again, cheaper. Actually, I might just plug in a Firewire 800 external drive, which is actually faster than the stock internal. NAH.........that would be TOO easy! Now THE Wife can farm her virtual spread (Farm Town) all day and night if she wants. But, I will NOT feed her. I gotta draw the line SOMEwhere........

I might have shown you the ex-resident twin's wood burning work before, but let me tell you, today I scored an Andy Warhol, a Piccaso, a Leonardo Da........well, ok, maybe not THAT highfalutin' artistic, but I L O V E I T !!!!!!!!! Take a gander at this box she burned for me and tell me YOU wouldn't love to have one of your very own! Well, it's MINE, you hear me, MINE MINE MINE!!!!!!!

It's a Green Man, in case you don't recognize the pattern.........

AND, as if I wasn't having enough trouble with these goats, I come home a few days ago to notice, much to my dismay, that Billy, big, horned, GREEDY Billy, was in my neighbors front yard, their dogs barking up a storm and him bleating like "I don't LIKE it here, I wanna come HOME!!!" For some reason, thank the Gods of hooved beasts, he stuck near the fence he had managed to jump over, wanting to get back into familiar territory. I ran around, grabbed him by the horns, and dragged his aggravating ass back to his pen. My neighbor lady was rather bemused and nonchalant by the whole episode, and informed me that she had brought Billy back home the PREVIOUS day when he jumped the back fence of the goat pen into her back yard. So THAT explains how Billy had gotten into the mound area outside the pen! And here I was thinking I'd had an Alzheimer's moment leaving him out the evening before!

So this weekend I spent stretching more fence across the BACK of the pen, over the neighbor's chain link fence which wasn't keeping Billy out. On top of that I restrung the ELECTRIC fence as a double precaution. I have a great neighbor, but I really don't want to push my luck!

At work, our performance reviews are coming up, and my Boss, who by the way won the position she had been filling as INTERIM director of CCU (CONGRATULATIONS!!!!) and she's hinted that mine is going to be positive, AGAIN........smile. It's nice to know we get to keep a director I have a lot of respect for, and won't have to go thru the trauma of breaking in and outlasting yet ANOTHER one. Life DOES have it's bright spots, even during somewhat stormy times........and while we are on the subject of storms, the hospital called a code BROWN, which is, no, not a shit storm, but for dangerous weather, due to the water spout that was spotted heading up the St Johns River. We had one just like it a couple of years ago. Fascinating thing to watch, and no, it didn't cause any real damage anywhere, sticking mainly off shore. No harm done.

Meanwhile, overseas, the Iranians are turning out to be their own worst enemies. THEY had to go and have themselves an ISLAMIC revolution, and now all of a sudden, they actually want to have elections that mean something. I mean, c'mon guys, haven't you learned by now that only DEMOCRACIES have DEMOCRATIC elections where the candidates are actually ELECTED, and not really appointed by the true powers that be? We here in the bastion of true democracy learned the hard way that you can't take democratic institutions for granted, because if someone thinks they can pull as fast one, they WILL. The Shi'ite Popes all want you to be good little muslims and go home and shut up about it. They didn't want your candidate to win and so of course he didn't, no matter HOW many of you guys actually voted him into office. So, you want a REAL democracy? Get rid of this theocratic bullshit. Politics and religion make piss-poor bedfellows. If you want the REAL deal, it's gonna cost you blood. A LOT of blood. The kind of blood that generations of Americans bled to preserve OUR democracy. Just wanting it doesn't work. Just ask the Russians. They had it for a few years and lost it again. They don't want it bad enough. So, they don't get it. What they get is this sham of a "democracy" called Putin, and YOU get the ayatollahs. So TAKE back your country or go home and weep for your lost friends, and wait for the bosses to come talk to you. We here in the West are rooting for you but you have to do it yourselves. And another thing.....enough already with the "Death to America!" Talk about disrespect........well, fuck you too!

Well, imagine that, another HUGE episode of The Chronicles of Pendragon Hold. I hope you enjoyed your visit and come back to see us again. I'm sure there's plenty of drama right over the horizon............

Blessed Be!

P.S. Donn, you feeling ok, dude? You ARE fifty, ya know....AND famous......wink.......

THE Incident

2009-06-24T22:32:00.002-04:00

One of the great burdens in life is that sooner or later, something less than desirable WILL happen to you, and at the moment it happens, we rarely have a crystal ball on hand to discern exactly how this misfortune will play out. They say whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. What happened today probably isn't going to kill anyone, but I have my doubts as to how it's going to strengthen anything, except perhaps my future judgement.

As my readers all know, I have these four-legged lawn mowers which I employ around the Hold to keep the weeds and sorry excuse for a lawn under control. Most of the time I have to keep them on a leash and/or tie-out cable in strategic places as to have them eat this but not eat that. Today, I had the twins (no, not the Daughters, but my pair of pygmy goats) tied out on the corner front of the property near the dirt road we live on. The unfortunate and not fully realized danger of this is that they might ignore the more-than-plenty amount of delicious grass IN the yard and alongside the road next to the fence in favor of whatever must be REALLY good on the OTHER side of the road. The second ingredient to this scenario is that someone might be driving down this dirt road faster than the posted 25 MPH which would make it harder for them to see the goats in or beside the road and thus avoid some sort of accident.

Well, of course, you know by now what has happened.

Now, I was inside the Hold and did not witness this as it occurred, so what I am reporting here is that which is given by the neighbor who drove up in his Honda civic (which he later said was his Mother's, not his own) and showed me the damage that occurred when he hit the tie-out cable the twins were leashed to. He says he didn't see the goats until it was too late. So, apparently, the cable was pulled violently and tore loose from the leash while breaking the collar of one of the goats. Both goats didn't appear to have been injured in the accident, but now the goat whose collar was torn off his neck is acting strangely, perhaps having suffered some sort of whiplash injury. Looking at his car, there was damage that COULD have been sustained the way he described. I don't know because I didn't witness it. So, seeing to the goats and putting them back in their pen, I told him that I would take it up with my insurance company, and took his information.

THEN he comes back, in a truck with a friend, claiming that the cable somehow damaged his radiator, and that he would have to have the car towed to a repair shop. Now, the damage he described about the radiator, including the report that "the water was just pouring out", seemed suspect as I had not seen any water leaking from this car while it was sitting in my drive. Again, I cannot say this has or hasn't happened, but one does have to worry about such things. People HAVE been known to take advantage of what could be a monetarily rewarding moment. At any rate, I repeated to him that I would pass this information on to my insurance adjuster, who would be getting in contact with him or his own insurance representative.

This all makes me nervous in that I don't know if this accident occurred due to my possible lack of due diligence, my neighbors, a combination of both, or if this is some attempt to take advantage of an observed situation. All I can do for now is hope that the burden of proof for all this rests with him and that his own failure to pay attention attributes an equal amount of responsibility to the situation. Yes, I know, it is only natural for someone to attempt to avoid their share of the blame for something like this, but I certainly do not wish to suffer any more of it than is deserved. If it DID happen exactly as he described, then, well................

And I hope like hell that my own insurance company is willing to step up to the plate rather than try to avoid the claim, which insurance companies have been known to do. This would be the first instance in 9 years of home ownership that I have attempted to make a claim, so I hope that also falls in my favor. Lord knows I don't see how we could afford to pay for the damage this guy says that cable did to his car.

I am not looking forward to THE Wife getting home and having to hear about this. Perhaps this is one of those opportunities for her to put her magic where her mouth is and cast us a spell to soften the blow of this unfortunate incident.

I just hope my goat is alright.

And yes, I am glad my neighbor didn't suffer any injuries, regardless of fault.

This is going to be an interesting week.

Stay tuned. You wanted Drama? You got it!

2009-06-23T22:15:00.004-04:00

Now that I've stepped up the frequency of posts to THE Chronicles, it seems I've suffered an equal decline in comments. What a paradox! Perhaps my readers are in shock from info overload and haven't recovered sufficiently to respond to this new phenomenon. Or, most likely, I'm simply more often less interesting than I usually am. I understand this last sentence I just typed, I think. I hope you did to.

THE Wife and the Ex-Resident Daughter made a surprise pilgrimage down South to visit the OTHER Daughter in St Petersburg. Well, actually, the surprise was that THE Daughter was bringing THE Wife along without telling her Sister. They made a point of me not reporting this in my blog lest the cat be let out of the bag. THE formerly Good Twin was pleasantly surprised. I had to work the weekend, so I had to remain behind. This is, I think, perhaps the third time in our 15 year marriage that me and the slightly better half have been parted for any length of time. It's a strange feeling, especially at night when one has a sudden increase in square footage to sleep in. They had a pleasant visit, going to check out a nightclub/store/restaurant place called the Witches' Brew. We discovered the existence of this establishment by a rather circuitous route involving checking out Gothic/Pagan singer/songwriter Wendy Rule's concert schedule, which placed her performing at the Witches' Brew, which of course, we missed. On top of that, THE visited Twin talked THE Wife into another piercing. No, you pervs, it wasn't THERE! It was her EAR! Sheesh..........sigh............

Other than perhaps the garden overflowing with rich, ripe, red organic tomatoes and good progress towards cucumbers and squash, there isn't much else to report on. That being said, Merry Meet............

Merry Part........

Till Merry Met Again!

Honest to Blog!

2009-06-22T13:04:00.001-04:00

I read today in the news that the FTC is considering regulations to bring a little more honesty to the blogosphere. What, you say, regulations forcing bloggers not to lie? How ludicrous is THAT? hehe.......no, not quite. What concerns them is this trend involving bloggers giving glowing accounts about this new toaster they acquired, while neglecting to mention the fact that the toaster was given to them for free in return for a positive review. Or bloggers being sent off on a fun-filled weekend at some resort, which they dutifully report on in their blogs (having been wonderful, of course) without mentioning that they were sent there free of charge by the resort, again, with the understanding that their "word-of-mouth" report would be favorable. So, if you had known that this post was rather less-than-forthcoming concerning the compensation involved, would you have accepted everything you read with perhaps at least a grain of salt? I sure as hell know I would, and that's what the FTC would like to drag kicking and screaming into the light.

So, my wonderful readers, if you are of the opinion that this is just one more example of Big Brother sticking it's intrusive nose into our business, please feel free to send a synopsis of your reasoning etched on the back of a 2009 model 24 inch Apple iMac with 3.06 gigahertz Core Two Duo processor, 8 megs of RAM, and a one terabyte, 7200 RPM hard drive to THE Michael, care of The Chronicles of Pendragon Hold.

Because I can't get Steve Jobs to send me one, after all the bragging I've done for Apple, the creep.............

Class Dismissed

2009-06-19T18:45:00.005-04:00

It has been my observation, which i will make no attempt to certify as being wholly accurate, that there is a class structure even within Paganism. Yes, Paganism, that one-size-fits-just-about-everybody spiritual vehicle that more and more modern day humans are gravitating towards, having exhausted their attempts at trying to make sense of the Dogmas of most mainstream religions. I think we can agree that more of the planet's sentient beings are educated to some degree than at any time in history, and along with that enlightenment comes some measure of an appreciation for logic. Now logic, as your right-wing-fundamentalist redneck can aptly demonstrate, does not come naturally to a healthy chuck of the demographic, but for those non-inbred free thinkers who make at least a half-hearted attempt at grasping the concept, observing life around oneself with a open yet skeptical mind can do wonders for one's I.Q., enabling one to slam the door in the face of those pesky young men on bicycles without some deep seated fear of eternal damnation. So, since most Pagans seem to be ahead of the curve in regards to critical thinking skills, we can divide most of us into two classes right here; Intellectuals, and those who WOULD be given the time and ability to remember very big, obscure words. You'd be amazed how many very, very big words I've managed to use in my writings of which I have no clue as to their real meaning. All I know is they look good in a sentence. Just think of it as intellectual camouflage........

While still on the subject of intelligence, or lack of it, I remember coming out of high school thinking that college was the last thing I'd have a rat's chance at surviving. Not that I was all that bad in high school, but having such a devastating deficit in math was all it took to convince me I was no where near as smart as I sometimes thought I was. So, I joined the navy, breezed through every class they threw at me, and later excelled in whatever training program I undertook to nail down decent employment, still blue collar, but employed. It wasn't until I was offered the chance to go to nursing school, and entered community college to take care of my "fundamentals" did I realize that, hey, this stuff wasn't nearly as hard as I had thought it would be. Yes, math was still a sonofabitch, but I seemed to pretty much already know the rest of it, having been such a book and media hog all my life, being much more interested in shows such as PBS's Nature than the Wide World of Sports. Matter of fact, I felt rather dismayed that the obscure facts these people were grinding into us was something we had to pay for to be able to call ourselves educated. Now, you want to call someone educated, you send him to engineering school, or computer science, but c'mon, all this advanced English and literature and specialized history does not make for a very productive or bright citizen. No, I don't know what species of acorn the Mona Lisa was sitting on when Leonardo was painting her mug, and I don't care. A person will eventually find out who Leonardo was on the discovery channel if his high school failed him whilst trying to keep him from being "left behind".

Back to the class thing; you have intellect, and you have economics. I would venture to guess that most Pagans will fall into the middle to lower middle class, with a few scatterings amongst the rich and piss-poor. The piss-poor are far to busy trying to keep their heads above water to worry about which God is going to burn them in some hell once they kick the bucket. The very rich are to busy being very rich to bother themselves with spiritual matters, which is usually why they are rich to begin with. If they had taken Christ's advice from the get-go, there's no way they could have accumulated all that wealth at the expense of society in general and not feel the breath of Satan on their necks.

So why is Madonna and some other rich celebrities getting all jiggy with new age religions? BOREDOM. Let's face it, once you have attained as much fame as you can and bought every material possession you can imagine, what else IS there to do with your time? Besides, it just might have occurred to them in reflecting on their wealth that maybe they have to atone for it in some way. Who knows, but you have to wonder why it took them so long to getting around to getting serious about something, which with most celebrities is just a fad anyway. Harry Chapin, the singer-song writer, was one of those few remarkable celebrities who actually could see past his own selfish wants and actually care about the hungry in this country and abroad. And of course, he died young. But he died with no burden on HIS soul.

So why do we minions down here in the mid to lower middle class bother with alternative spirituality when we still haven't achieved our own pots of gold? Well, for the most part, we have never been in a position to attain these goals, and frankly, have come to appreciate that we never will and don't really care. We are the ones with half-way decent roofs over our heads, too much food for our own good, televisions, our computers, and no more bullies and popular people making our lives miserable. We are all grown up, we have jobs that although suck a good portion of the time, pay the bills with something left over for things we don't absolutely need. We are the ones who do not feel driven to compete with our neighbors and do not make our livings trying to rip off our fellow citizens, and we have an intact, if somewhat flexible, sense of right and wrong. We dress in outlandish outfits when in the company of like peoples, having long ago given up on the idea that fashion was for real people and real shapes and sizes. Too many of us are fat and out of shape and are happy to live with the consequences. Yet many of us attempt to divorce ourselves from the mainstream feeling it is necessary to remain true to our Pagan philosophies and the love of our Earth. We are the first ones, at least those of us in the UPPER middle class, and yes, we populate that strata also, that buy the new hybrid cars and put solar cells on our roofs. We populate the herbal and natural food stores, and we most often have the gardens in our backyards upon which we refuse to use pesticides, herbicides, or artificial fertilizers. We are the ones that keep the few new-age shops in business, if just barely, and we keep the few and far between Pagan festivals alive in the country side. And yes, when we are pricked, we bleed just like everybody else.

You will see the occasional lower class foray into the pagan community, but not usually with good results. Even within Paganism there exists those religions which can be co-opted just as easily as Christianity and Islam by groups bent on intolerance and hatred, racial bigotry and a thirst for violence. Those who might have joined the Nazi's or the Klan might instead be attracted to the off-beat appeal of an old Nordic religion such as Asutra, which many skin-heads and neo-nazi's gravitate towards due to it's apparent appeal to a very narrow racial grouping. OK, fine, there were no Zulu warriors being invited to share a place in the halls of Vahalla, but then again, the Vikings were doing most of their hell-raising no where near the continent of Africa, so...DUH! The world has gotten a whole lot bigger since, my fair-haried, blue-eyed friends. Zeus might very well have been impressed with their bad-ass warrior ethos and shared with them the respect of inclusion as well. And there are the Satanists.....oh yes.....those petulant children who not having gotten their share of candy will poison the whole bag of it for everybody just to get even. Yes, I know, many of you who consider yourselves satanists will argue that Satan is misunderstood and that you are not evil people, that you just know what you want and go for it, anybody else be damned. Well, it's that don't-give-a-shit-what-you-think attitude at the core of this "religion" that turns most of us off. Hey, we want what we want to, but we are not going to use a religion or the backing of some deity to steamroller our way to attaining what we want, either. If what we want requires someone gets hurt, then fuck that, and fuck you too!

I'm sorry, did low-brow little me use a curse word? Yes, I do have a habit of using such invectives when my ire is awoken, and I have a bad habit of getting worked up over things I consider to be totally unnecessary bullshit. Like coats and ties, fine trimmed lawns that poison our environment, and Southern Baptists who can't keep their damn noses on their own faces. I am NOT going to your hell. you are NOT the favored of the almighty, so fucking get over it.

Slow, deep breaths....there.....OK.......think calm thoughts........Stevie Nicks in black lace....yea.......ommmmmm..........

I'm not saying that class structure within Paganism should in any way divide us, but we DO live in slightly different worlds and arrive here for slightly different reasons. Some Americans use their intellect to pursue the almighty dollar, while others use it as necessary while recognizing the peril our pursuit of that dollar has put our entire planet in. Some of us became Pagans simply because the pretty people didn't want us, and we discovered that that was actually a good thing. Too many of us are only passing through, until the next cool thing happens along, or we devolve totally into atheism altogether. There is much in this world that argues against faith of any kind, especially the behaviors of the so-called faithful of the mainstream belief systems. To believe in something despite there being no penalty for not doing so; well, I can't think of a more pristine reason for being Pagan. At least I know that should I win the lottery, or I lose my job and end up in a tent city, my love of Gaia and the Goddess and God remains, for they do not need me to exist, but I will be much, much poorer without THEM.

So sayeth this poor white trash with a filthy rich vocabulary.

Macs, Mania, and Tropical Depression

2009-06-14T22:49:00.005-04:00

Forgive me Lords and Ladies, for I have sinned. It's been a week since my last confession. Not that I need forgiveness, but I can imagine what it's like to be patiently waiting for a new post at your favorite all-time blog and nothing shows up for what seems forever. Well, hopefully, the content of this edition of The Chronicles will make up for our lackadaisical posting.

It's been a fairly wet week here at the Hold, but nothing like the 40 days and nights all crammed into a month of monsoon we were swimming around in a few weeks ago. At least we get a breather between downpours now. One big benefit of all this fresh H2O is that I haven't had to lug rainwater out to the garden. There's nothing that a garden loves more than pure, organic cloud sweat straight from the bosom of Mother Nature herself. We CAN water our gardens from our well all we need to, but the plants never seem to respond very well to the sulfur content our well water is laden with. We got used to the awful stink of this stuff years ago, but it was dicey there for awhile, what with that rotten egg smell and all. Amazing what humans can adapt to, doncha think?

And so we have already begun to harvest ripe, red tomatoes and even a few yellow squashes. The cucumbers are taking their time, and the loofahs are just now forming their pods. There should be a nice crop of lima beans ready to pick about now, but I have to dig down into the marigolds we planted with them to pick them. We also received a shipment of ladybugs which I have been releasing a few hundred at a time in the evenings, and at least a few of them seem to be sticking around. At least the plants aren't showing any more damage from pests than they have already sustained. So far, so good.

One reason I haven't been posting very often is that now I have to vie for control of the iMac with THE Wife, who has discovered that diabolical face book game called FARM TOWN. She spends something like five hours at a stretch planting virtual crops and harvesting them, and all I can do is shake my head wondering how this activity can be so addictive, at least to women. At least it's free. If she ever discovers one of those online subscription games like WarCraft..........I shudder at the thought!

Image via Wikipedia

This has required me to put aside my own desire to acquire a replacement for my G-5 iMac, which is slowly but surely succumbing to obsolescence, for now I have to budget that money towards getting THE Wife her own computer. I'm waiting for a nice refurbished Mac Mini to show up on the Apple Store, which is the only thing I can afford to get her that's not possessed by the demon Bill Gates. Yes, I know, there are a few of you "fans" out there who think that Windows is not the evil piece of zombie code I think it is, but I get to experience both operating systems here and at work and I'm very comfortable keeping MY world comfortably Mac. The Formerly Resident Twin left her hunking huge tube monitor here, and I have spare keyboards, so all we need is the Mini itself and she'll be all set to farm herself silly all night long if she wants. Funny, but she'll actually end up having a much faster and up-to-date system than I have now. However, MY time will come......hehehehehehe..........

It seems that THE Wife's Botox has done the job! No more shoulder pain, and after awhile, the arm pain and weakness eased off as well. However, as is usually the case with my darling partner, some almost always rears it's ugly head in place of the latest thing, and this time she was having a hard time balancing her Paxil (which she's taking for mild depression) with her Ambien, which she's needed to sleep. THE doctor thought maybe another sleep med might work better for her, only this med which was supposed to knock her out ended up revving her up; she ended up harvesting her farm into the wee hours of the morning!

Turns out she reacted to the med exactly the way a person suffering from mild manic/depression would. I always suspected my darling dearest one was a tad bit too happy somedays while turning into (censored) the next. This little episode pretty much proved it. So, her neuro-shaman prescribed her that all-purpose mood stabilizer Lithium. Guess what? Two nights now she's slept like a baby. And I have my normal, ordinary, and very sweet and loving Wife back. It remains to be seem if this holds true after a week or two of being on the drug, since there are side effects that have a bad habit of showing up once therapeutic levels are achieved. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

So far, our hospital's patient load, if anything, is increasing, rather than being affected by this struggling economy, which is fine by me, since losing this job would be devastating to this family, what with my age and skill-sets. So, if you happen to live in the Jacksonville area, feel free to eat lots of Hardy's Thick-burgers, and super-size those fries while your at it; it increases my job security!

One aspect of Pagan spirituality is our respect and veneration of our ancestors, whom without we would never have arrived on this wonderful ark in space. However, I think we also need to consider that not all those who contributed to our genetic structure were necessarily forebears to be proud of. For instance, my great grandfather to the umpteenth power could very well have been a party to the extinction of the Neanderthal man. I would not be surprised if many of my great great grandparents owned slaves. Or, perhaps, I am descended from one of Ghenghis Khan's dungeon masters. See, there are all kinds of possibilities to disown those very people whose existence were necessary for my own. That, however, does not negate the overall gratitude I owe those who went before, for if the concept of reincarnation, with it's attendant growth and spiritual learning curve is valid, then every one of these people simply had to learn through the art of living and learning and doing it all over again, and again, and again, till one day, maybe, they get it right and earn the right to merge with the cosmic collective, and I myself am in the very same boat, given the opportunity to live my life removed from the taint of the dark side. So, ancestors, thanks for the chromosomes, and I hope that you made the grade. Salute!

Thus ends another long-awaited yet oh-so brief episode of The Chronicles of Pendragon Hold. Remember, it's best not to allow your spouse to wrangle your goats, lest you behold her riding a big, hungry Billy across the yard, hanging on those horns for dear life, while he heads straight for the forbidden bushes, and all she can do is scream for help.............life is comedy, life is sweet.

To Wit......

2009-06-07T22:39:00.001-04:00

I truly believe that I am a man born far after my time. Indeed, with all the hardships imagined of occupying some era rife with deprivation; no supermarkets, no malls, no FedEx or cell phones, prepaid or otherwise. No planned obsolescence, no mass marketing, no mass hysteria, no Holy Roman Mass performed at a drive-in theatre. No Islamic fundamentalism, no baptist angst, no Catholic guilt, no same-sex marriage. No, it would indeed have been a different time, with different matters to be attended, no time wasted upon one's butt in front of a monitor, rather precious time spent in crafting letters with quill and parchment, attending to the gardens and livestock of the homestead if one presumed to eat....ah.......and to ponder what wonders might await man in a glorious future now that science would surely lead our way towards a certain purity of existence rather than a daily struggle which aged men beyond their possible years.

It is the terror, which I cannot allow myself a full measure to experience, that I live in the end times, which makes me think and speak in a slower and richer fashion, a method once considered polite and common, if only amongst the upper crust, or the educated if not particularly fed with silver cutlery. I would wish to speak in this manner in all times, save that it would allow one to think of what he might wish to say, and to add some pleasantry to it's delivery, if nothing else. But alas, I do not, nor does anyone within my acquaintance, expend the energy in such fashion when the tongue is thus wagged, and all the more a shame for it, I must impart. However, perhaps for this brief time, as I write this post which is an exercise strictly of the fruit of my ponderings, and no report of anything of import, you might think to enjoy this mannerism and not think it a chore to understand, for if you, my dear reader, could only feel the joy with which my fingers perform this hapless exercise, then this would indeed be the post you might visit again some time if only to share in that joy, shared with all who might gather a wit as to what is so pleasant about it to begin with.

As you can see by now this whole exercise is a big ado about nothing, a venture into what perhaps might have been a tinge of culture in a simpler time, now simply silly in an era of web logs and inter-nets, world-wide-webs and URL's. Men and Ladies in those days were no less prone to the folly of politics that brought about warfare between men for various reasons never fully justified, and even now, Men of ill will carry on tradition, a tradition of evil embedded in our genes from which we many never free ourselves save our own extinction.

However, Gentlemen, and gentler Ladies, I bow to you this night in proper courtesy, and wish upon you most well, that even as our world falters at our own hands, we still can speak a few words to each other in a much gentler, kinder, and loving way, if ever we were capable of such a thing, we animals who think, yet cannot seem to think most proper to suit our own best interests.

I now return you to the 21st century. Be well.

The Frailty of Wooden Trees and Iron Men

2009-06-04T11:49:00.011-04:00

Welcome to The Chronicles of Pendragon Hold. I'm your host, THE Michael, AKA Alex Pendragon, the Lord Holder, grounds keeper and dishwasher of this fine sandy estate located on the outskirts of cookie-cutter suburbia, where the car is king and sidewalks lead to nowhere. Pull up a chair and sit a spell.........I got some fine yarns to spin for ya............

Just when it seemed that this impromptu monsoon season had finally ended, it seems that the regularly scheduled thunderstorm season has taken it's place. At least we are getting some fine glimpses of Sun in between downpours, and the yard only floods maybe once a day instead of a week at a time. Now that the rain barrels are full to the brim of fine organic H2O, we continue to be soaked in it. At least our water table thanks you, oh great and mighty Thor. NOW CUT IT OUT!

A few days ago we adopted a new tree. Yes, a tree. A sycamore tree, to be exact. Pendragon Hold came with a whole mess of oak trees, of various species, some deciduous, some not. Of course, Mother Nature being the joker she loves to be, the varieties of oaks that do not drop their leaves in winter are all the ones planted on the Southern side of the house where frankly we could have used the kind that DO drop their leaves, letting the Southern sun warm up the house in winter while providing shade in summer. The only other trees we have that are NOT oaks are a skinny little pine and an equally skinny magnolia of some sort back in the goat pen area. SO, in the interest of diversity, as well as providing a little DECIDUOUS flavor to the Hold, we have begun a program of culling out those nasty oaks which, having grown fast and are now dying young, need replacing with nice trees with healthy canopies which they drop come fall. Sycamores are renowned for their speed of growth, their huge potential size, and their really large leaves, perhaps the bane of fine-trimmed lawns, but a bonanza for our compost piles and mulch supplies. See, we do not reject out of hand that "refuse" that Gaia graces us with; we find uses for the gifts she gives us, such as leaves for compost and mulch, dead wood for our fires, and shade for our castle (a "manufactured" castle, but our castle nonetheless). Next we will be looking for some nice red maples to add a little autumn color to our otherwise greengreengreen color scheme. The scraggly pin oaks that we end up taking down will provide us with a bounty of firewood for years to come, so their lives and contributions to our own will not go without our gratitude and due note.

The garden thrives with all this rain, although the pests have now lay siege, and everyday we go over every plant attempting to remove and kill whatever worm or aphid we can discover. I just ordered some ladybugs and hope to press them into service very soon. In the meantime I am happy to report that we have the potential of a bumper crop ripening on the vines as we speak, and even have one tomato turning red. Several of the plants that we tried again in the terrace garden however have fallen victim to the wilt which appears to be ensconced in that soil, although several plants have resisted the disease and might bear a crop after all. All the other herbs and beans are growing very well.

The clover I sowed on the mound has greened up and spread nicely to the point that I was finally able to allow the goats a crack at it. This is all due to the incredible amount of rain we have had this month, and due to the all-too-easily-drained nature of Florida sand, it requires almost daily watering to keep the clover sustained, but it's worth it in terms of what this planting is doing for the soil and the forage it is providing for the goats. Hopefully in the future I will have this back forty rehabilitated with sustainable growth of beneficial clovers and legumes that can bring the soil up to par again.

Oh, and I think I have finally gotten photographic evidence of our domination by that alien species, the feline. What...... you actually think you OWN these creatures? HA! I now know what lies deep in the intentions of these foul creatures by the seemingly innocent yet twisted habit that MY undercover overlord has been observed partaking in. My fellow humans, here is an actual picture of a cat partaking of HUMAN TEA. Yes, that's right! She sits patiently waiting while the tub is filled with hot water, waits for me to lower myself into this water and seep awhile, and THEN..........then....shudder...how do I describe this..........DRINKS THE WATER NOW INFUSED WITH THE ESSENCE OF HUMAN! Oh, the humanity! Soilent bath water is PEOPLE!!!!!!

Having listened FAR to long to my darling Wife's laments over having lost her most precious purple iPod Nano, I broke down and bought her a refurbished iPod Touch, a newer and even more capable version of my own. She is thrilled at the applications she can download to it and play with, including the books she can download to the Kindle book reader application. But, that's ok. They are coming out with a new model with even MORE bells and whistles here shortly, and all I have to do is wait for a refurb to show up in the Apple Store........hehe.......

If you have wooden floors, then you are all most probably aware of the infamous dust bunnies that go scurrying across the floor, driving you mad as you attempt to corral them with a broom. Well, let me tell you, those things are NOTHING compared to these damn animal-hair HEDGEHOGS I have to contend with around here. Seems like every day, thanks to the prodigious shedding of both our dog and cat, we can collect enough animal hair tumbleweeds to construct a whole new yorkie with. Then there's the fine sand which Shiloh, the wonder dog, loves to bathe in and bring into the house with him. Arrrrrgggggghhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

I just read on MSNBC that the actor David Caradine of "Kung-Fu" fame was found hanging by his neck in a Bangkok hotel room, suicide being suggested. Bullshit. He was there filming a movie. So he just up and decides to hang himself, in his luxury hotel room. Yea, right. He was murdered, and I wonder if anybody is going to seriously investigate his death. Think about it.....David Caradine committing SUICIDE? I don't think so.

Does anybody reading this blog still seriously think that President Obama is NOT doing an excellent job? If not, I want to congratulate you on the excellent lobotomy you underwent. You got your moneys worth, my friend.

Enough politics; if I continue down that path this post will be three times longer and packed to the brim with angst. We're all headed for extinction shortly so what does it matter..........

In the MEANTIME.........I want to send out my best wishes to our blogger friend who suffered a stroke. As a healthcare worker I see the effects of this kind of affliction all to often and I can testify that it is the most frustrating of almost all things that can befall a human being. With proper care and diligent rehabilitation, great progress and recovery CAN be made against all but the very worst stroke injuries, so pliable and plastic is the human brain, but in the meantime the serious damage to one's ability to ambulate and communicate is truly challenging. I truly believe that as long as one does not waste energy blaming these things on divine will or lack of it, and focus on what reality and hard choices now demand of you, you CAN overcome and return to a good life with a reinforced sense of what is truly most important in one's life, which is the quality of life itself and the love one can find while living it as best one can. Blessed be, dear friend, and do not hesitate to accept all the help and love you have available to you, for many of us lack some if not all of both, which is the only reason despair can exist at all.

Till next time.............be well, and please; harm none.

Salem's PLOT

2009-06-01T22:28:00.003-04:00

It's diabolical. It has insinuated itself into my marriage and even now threatens to take my wife from me. It enslaves everyone it touches, especially females. It is insidious and you must believe me when I tell you that we are ALL in danger. Is it a cult? Is it a religion? Is it a FAD? NO!

It is................

shudder..............

Perhaps your wife (or even worse, your HUSBAND) has already fallen victim to this engaging, mindless game which sucks time down it's maw like a black hole. Perhaps you can't get near your computer to pay the bills, read the latest news on MSNBC, or post to your blog. You might have already heard suggestions concerning the purchase of a laptop, from the very person that previously made light of you even needing your desktop for any reason other than STUPID FRIVOLITY!

Well, our time has come, my friend. No, you need not put out an ad in craigslist at the local library computer for a deprogrammer, or call your local priest who in passing humor mentioned his prowess in exorcisms......no.....for now OUR time has FINALLY come!

For NOW we can get that graphics card upgrade, that larger or faster hard drive, the extra gig of RAM, or that faster internet connection that costs perhaps $20 more. NOW is the time to explain to her that the obsolete processor in your one and only computer is why it's taking so long for her to harvest her latest crop of grapes, and that one of the new dual core models might rock her FARM TOWN world and make her an agricultural rock star to contend with. NOW is the time for you to switch to Apple, while the iron is hot and you don't have to explain in maddening detail why a cheap, crappy PC just won't cut the mustard (literally) anymore, even at half the price. Suddenly, she (or he) WANTS you to get that 24 inch 3 gig core duo iMac with the terabyte of hard drive glory and 4 gigs of kick-ass RAM, with a graphics card that could run an IMAX theatre without even breaking a sweat. For now, speed is everything, what with all those crops to plant and harvest and plant and harvest and plant and.............

DO NOT FALTER! DO NOT WASTE A MOMENT! GRASP GLORY BY IT'S HORNS AND GO FOR IT!

Before it's to late.............

Those servers are gonna start melting down any day now.

WET

2009-05-23T20:47:00.004-04:00

Greetings and welcome to a very wet episode of The Chronicles of Pendragon Hold. It seems it's now monsoon season here in the relatively unknown NorthEast section of sunny Florida, having rained steadily for an entire week, and more forecast to drench us for days to come. Today the sun has put in a brief appearance, as if to assure us that he's only taken a brief sabbatical. And all this comes after yours truly was expressing fears of another drought coming on.......one must be very, very careful what one wishes for....you just might get it! In SPADES!

The gardens are holding up, a bit battered and overwatered but not yet showing signs of flat-out drowning. AND, during our close examination of the tomato plants, sure enough, we discovered the first wave of tomato horn worm invaders, whom we picked off and disposed of, having gotten to them before they could really chow down on the plants. Other various plants are showing signs of having been munched on, but the munchers remain a mystery as they are not being caught in the act. Hopefully we can deploy some natural defenses before the word gets out that there's a smorgasbord laying about at Pendragon Hold.

We already have some tomatoes, though, and the beans look promising. The squash rarely does well around here and they don't seem to want to improve on their record this year so far. The strawberries are aggravating in that they put out one or two ripe berries at a time, instead of a basketful all at once. Maybe I have the wrong kind of plants or not enough of them.......this is all a learning experience.

We had hoped to drive down to Casadega, that spiritualist camp we like to frequent occasionally, but the constant rain is putting a botch on that idea. So, instead, THE Wife is inviting her friends over for small party, including karaoke. I still have my old discs and a mish-mash of equipment cobbled together to play them with. I don't know if I ever mentioned it, but I was once a karaoke GOD! Well, maybe in my own head.......Gods know none of us except those who really CAN sing actually sound anything like we think we do. All I know is people would clap rather than throw rotten fruit at me. Hopefully everybody will be too drunk to care one way or another......hehe.

I just watched the remake of an old pagan classic, "The Wicker Man", this time starring Nicholas Cage. This version, originally cast on an island off the British Isles, has been Americanized, this time centered in the Pacific Northwest, and other minor liberties have been taken with the story line, but overall, I guess it's not bad if you aren't a pagan and don't know any better. By that I mean I didn't like the tone of the movie and how it portrayed pagans. It didn't paint a very pretty picture, overall. Please, if you do see it, remember it's only fiction that takes some real liberties with reality. No pagan I know thinks the Gods require sacrifice of that sort, nor is Wicca so rabidly anti-male. At least not most versions of it.......

Meanwhile, out here in the real world, I would like to send out a shout to my rabid republican man, the ex-vice-presidential dude of that last FUBAR some people have the nerve to call an AD- MEN- IN- STRATION. Yea, they were in menstruation all right. On the rag, every one of them. Anyway, my dog "Cha-Ching Cheney" is doing something we Democrats never figured out how to do......actually shrink the Republican Party! Yep, the more this idiot talks, the smaller the party gets. There is only so much outlandish crap you can feed your posse before they get wise to your shit. Seems Americans, even conservatives, are getting wiser by the day. And we have Mr "sell the country to Haliburton" himself, and yes, to his leg-humping friend, Dope-Fiend extraordinaire, Hush Puppy Limbaugh, to thank for that.

Keep yapping, dogs. It's music to our ears.

Ch-Cha-Cha-Changessssssss

2009-05-22T10:19:00.007-04:00

"But I've been afraid of changing 'cause I built my life around you........"

Ah......fear of change......the hallmark of the aging American human. Which is amazing when you consider that we "baby-boomers" have participated in more change in our lifetimes than any other generation before us. From the DC3 to the Space Shuttle, from the mechanical wind-up alarm clock to the digital thing on our wrists that, yes, can also tell time, we have seen technological advances that are leaps and bounds beyond the slow crawl of progress that occurred before WWII. Then there is our social progress, if you can really call it that. We are doing things in public and even at home that we NEVER would have allowed ourselves, by law, to do. On the purely technical side, we demonstrated the evils of scientific progress by exploding a whole passel of nuclear bombs, two of them in the midsts of people, mostly civilians, albeit enemy civilians. As for social "progress"; well, kids are walking around with their pants around their knees, four letter words adorning their "hoody" shirts, having "non-sex" oral sex with each other as soon as their parent's backs are turned. When I was fifteen I was afraid of adults. I am now VERY afraid of fifteen year olds. My how the world turns..........

I now have every reason to fear change. Change more often that not brings about some new adaptation to the society I live in, be it having to find a new job or trying to figure out how to get by without health insurance. The idea of having anything to retire on, even Social Security, is a joke at best. There is one store left to shop at, Walmart, and this is as much the average American consumer's fault as it is Sam Walton's. We want everything, but don't want to pay for it. So, we DON'T get everything, like affordable health care, and fewer and fewer people can pay for anything, thanks to massive unemployment. I used to think it ludicrous that people would ever pay a buck for a bottle of water, even when the same identical stuff is being piped right into their own homes. Now I am beginning to wonder if all this pollution is simply to create a market for bottled air. Yea, clean bottled air that has a federally mandated percentage of actual oxygen in it by volume, since less and less of that will be available to us within the atmosphere. Oh, what, you thought oxygen grew on trees? Well, yea, it does, and how many trees are there now?

Here in the good old U. S. of A., even our very psyche, that intangible thing that made Americans who they were has gone through a troubling overhaul these past ten years. For many years, the bad guy was identified as that barbarian communist or nazi who would DARE torture our heroic fighting men in order to extract valuable intelligence, like when the allies were planning to bomb Dresden or something like that. That was considered an outrage that international "rules of war" would simply NOT allow, not if we CIVILIZED peoples had anything to say about it. Now we have a Machiavellian ex-president.....oh, I'm sorry.......ex-VICE-president going around the country lecturing the current administration on what a bunch of sissies we've become for wanting to "coddle" terrorists. That's right, one of the men who by all rights should even now be under investigation for violations of domestic and international laws, including torture, is somehow able to run around openly touting how no nazi regime had anything on THEM! I want to puke. I want to puke on a bunch of cowboys and I want them to wallow in it before I force them to eat it. See? I can think like them when I really want to.

If I did not already have more or less unbreakable ties with other human beings already, namely my wife and family and those I work with, I pretty much would adopt the life of a hermit, if only I could find some remote wilderness to hide in. Alas, I doubt there IS anything that remote left save for the windy, desolate plains of the Dakotas. People for the most part just piss my off, not because there are no decent, kind, thinking individuals out there......somewhere.......but because as a collective, we are running ourselves willy-nilly over the cliff and nobody wants to risk mentioning it, for fear of being called names, like tree-hugger, liberal, atheist, communist, rapper, Miss USA, or Walmart shopper. We watch the degradation of our ecosystem in high definition on PBS and the Discovery Channel and the best you can expect of us is to want to send somebody money, knowing they will fix it and make it all better, after which you will go outside and dump more chemicals and fertilizers on your fine-trimmed lawn, drive your SUV (by yourself) two blocks down to the convenience store, and buy some corn and petroleum based product all gussied up in non-recyclable packaging, then come back to sit on your butt and watch some obscenely overpaid "college graduates" kick around a football and try and kill each other. Ah, isn't this the LIFE, though?

It may be the life but it's going to be a short, AND expensive one, my friend. You are busy clogging your arteries with those Hardy's thick-burgers that REAL men eat and then you are going to end up in my Critical Care Unit, and if you're lucky, you will have insurance to pay for the bypasses which might keep you alive for another ten years IF you stopping eating crap and start exercising. OR, the bill will bankrupt you and you'll go into a deep depression after you lose your house and SUV, the wife and kids, and the stress brings on an even worse cardiac infarct. You see, people don't really GET what life is really all about until LIFE smacks them upside the head and suddenly the clouds part and you wonder why you were wasting all those years chasing after that American DREAM which in reality has been nothing but a chrome-plated nightmare waiting to eat you alive. You heard it over and over again, didn't you, that money cannot buy you happiness, but I guess it wasn't the RIGHT people saying it to you, so you couldn't hear it. Now do you hear it? CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

No, you can't stop the merry-go-round and no, you can't get off, save shooting yourself, if you consider that an option, but it isn't a solution. The only solution is realizing that it's NOT all about you, or your family, or even your country. It's the whole ball of wax, my friend, that is imperiled, and you have to actually start CARING about shit going on past those four suburban walls of yours. You have to come to the realization that Tricky Dick Cheney, Rush "pill-popper" Limbaugh and those fine "journalists" at FOX "news" are the closest thing to an anti-christ you are ever going to know, and that there really IS a hell to go to if you keep listening to these sirens from the far right wing of the neanderthal party. Use your brain. You HAVE one, you know.........it's that thing behind your eyes. Brain, meet man...man, meet your possible salvation.

There MIGHT be time left to save ourselves, IF you can remember how to use that thing.........

Needles and Dearly Departed

2009-05-16T21:55:00.002-04:00

Welcome to another lazy weekend here at Pendragon Hold, that little redoubt of pagan peace out on the edge of suburbia. No neighborhood association here, my friends, we'll sport a fine-trimmed lawn when hell freezes over.

THE Wife has finally received her botox injections, a procedure involving very long needles and a toxin once responsible for millions of deaths during the middle ages. Imagine harnessing the grim reaper himself in order to look young forever! Only in this case, it truly is a treatment of last resort for my poor darling lady, who suffers from a chronic injury to her Brachial Plexus, a gang of nerves in her shoulder that in all probability was over-stretched and injured in an auto accident/ whiplash injury a few years before we met and married. The botox deadens the area in question for months and sometimes even years in duration, allowing the muscles to perform normally without the confusing signals it receives from the brain along the damaged nerve pathways, trying to tell muscles to pull or push with no rhyme or reason, resulting in aggravation and inflammation and chronic, ever increasing pain and misery. She received her injections Thursday, and already the pain is starting to ease off, with the full effects beginning to tell in about a week. One side effect, however, is that the entire shoulder area tends to droop dramatically, putting a strain on muscles and joints, forcing her to wear an arm brace until the proper tone returns to the area. Hey, everything comes at some price; at least it doesn't make her bark like a dog or contract a weird sort of cancer.

"Houston, we have TOMATOES!" Yep, folks, save some new plague or hailstorm or invasion by bugs, we should have a bumper crop of 'maters this year, along with a nice variety of other veggies. The clover has covered the septic mound in a nice carpet of green, and there is even a whole spread of clover growing all on it's own in the tomato garden area, I believe from dormant seed brought back to the surface when the area was tilled. I'd forgotten that I must have planted a crop of clover in that area years ago when preparing the first gardens. There are even rouge squash or cucumber plants sprouting up here and there, again from previous gardens. Reminds me of Jeff Goldblume in Jurassic Park......"Life will find a way...."

I hear thunder in the distance, and THE Dog is cowering at my feet as I type this post. Yea, him, my brave and loyal companion, Shiloh. Hey, we all have our terrors; some otherwise bad-ass guys are afraid of clowns; Shiloh is afraid of thunder storms. The garden, however, is going to LOVE this storm and the pure H2O it will deliver.

We just watched the Bill Maher movie, "Religulous". It was OK, but it didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, that organized religion is the pox of mankind, the one reason we will NEVER achieve peace on Earth or Justice for all people. Yes, I know, many of you will protest that you are good people and I shouldn't judge, but, c'mon people, when was the last time you saw a horde of atheists banding together in efforts to deny people something or spew hatred? And when was the last time that decent, kind, actually-Christ-like peoples picketing against a fundamentalist group that was displaying egregiously unchristian behaviors? Yea, I thought so. No, I do not personally lay claim to any sainthood due to my personal spiritual beliefs, because I am either a decent person or I just flat am not, and no religious affiliation is going to make me any better than I choose to be. Apparently, the threat of hellfire hasn't changed the bitter, hateful attitudes of a large segment of the Christian, Jewish, or Islamic population, or the myriad flavors thereof. Judge me by my actions, or shut up about it. God ISN'T on my side OR yours.

I would like to send some good thoughts out to two blogger friends who have decided to retreat from their blogs for awhile if not for good. My friend Buffalo, a brother-in-arms in many ways, has put "Buffalo's Ruminations" to pasture, and my good Lady friend Kindness has taken a sabbatical. Both of these people have been a part of my life for years now in their own special ways, and I am already missing them terribly. However, they cannot escape the place in my heart within which they will always reside. I can only hope that when I put MY keyboard out of it's misery, that I will be missed half as much, for then I will have earned some measure of validation for all the keystrokes I contributed to this grand cacophony we call the web. This is truly what I call the "web of life".

THE Local Daughter (formerly the Resident Daughter) has come to wash her laundry and dine with us, bringing with her a jug of Pina' Colada mix and her knack for cooking great salmon patties. Summer rains outside, good company within, we are indeed rich people. Filthy rich, if you ask me.

Cheap Plastic Knobs, Wet Dogs, and Miracle-Grown Tomatoes

2009-05-07T17:12:00.011-04:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, and I mean that most sincerely (except where such designations do NOT apply), in what might have seemed to be eons in passing, this blog has produced ho-hum posts which could have easily competed with staring at dirt for the boring post of the year award. So, as a reward for all your months (please, let's not snicker and mutter "more like YEARS, Bozo...." of forbearance with this blog, I hereby bring you a truly exciting post in which all kinds of things happen, avoid happening, nearly happen, and challenge the very concept of happening to begin with. Please do not be puzzled and wish that I had been more succinct, because I do not have any idea whatsoever what succinct actually means, or if it applies to this post to begin with.

Today, in the kitchen of Pendragon Hold......no, wait, that was last night...well...anyway....in the kitchen of Pendragon Hold, the knob on the Hamilton Beach electric grilling machine broke, which is something that CHEAP PLASTIC knobs have a habit of doing, which apparently did not deter Hamilton Beach from using said cheap material in it's timer knobs. Thanks to the enormous savings that resulted from not using a more robust material for it's knobs, SOMEBODY at Hamilton Beach, the CEO I am suspecting, made himself a nice little chuck of change and I have a less than stellar experience with their product, thus, in the end, YOU JUST COST YOUR FUCKING COMPANY MY FUTURE BUSINESS, YOU DICK WEED! I hope said individual, be he/she/it the CEO, the designer, or whoever, understand exactly what results when quality control is simply a concept best left to people who give a damn.

So, I went out and bought a George Foreman Grill sans any knobs; not by choice, but because it was the only brand PERIOD available at either Target OR Walmart. Perhaps Hamilton Beach did not have a presence on those selves due to their lack of quality control. Who knows. Thus, the reputation of George Foreman as a spokesman now rests in the experience I will have with this grill, which I will have to use in conjunction with a separate timer, which WILL color my experience with the appliance, which avoided the problem of timer knob material altogether by omitting it. This is the year 2009 and this is the best we can do. We are doomed.

Meantime........

I finally finished the fence and gate which subdivides the back forty of Pendragon Hold. This fence, aside from it's original intent, is serving a bonus effect, which is to keep Shiloh the wonder dog and fat-ass Norwegian canine from digging holes in our septic mound, messing up the clover I sowed trying to stabilize the soft sand of said mound and providing a future graze for the goats.

Next comes the chicken coop. Stay tuned and I promise you will be amazed as I describe the step by step process involved in building something on-the-fly for the very first time with no regard whatsoever to plans or blueprints or other mundane directions. I'm a build-it-as-seen-in-my-mind's-eye kinda guy, so this whole process is bound to be somewhat hilarious.

After much hemming and hawing (does anybody really KNOW what a hem OR a haw is, exactly?), the prescription arm of the insurance company has approved THE Wife's botox and is shipping it to her Neurologist so he can inject the nasty stuff into her neck and shoulders where it will perform it's strange magic. Just like before, of course it's approved for her condition, and the co-pay is only $25, but of course it took almost a week to arrive at that conclusion, as if THE Wife were the only person out of the thousands insured by this company who ever needs it. I'm much to happy that she's going to get it and that it will work again as well for her as it did before to complain about the rigamarole involved in making it happen. There's a reason fate made me her man.....I get things done.

Now we move onto the tomato patch, where every plant but one was planted in a bag of ORDINARY potting soil, while one lone plant was planted in a pricey bag of Scott's potting soil with Miracle Grow plant food mixed in. Sure enough, the plant in the Scott's bag is at least a third-again as large and robust as all the others, although I can arguably state that this is only due to the ARTIFICIAL fertilizer enrichment of this soil and that this is NOT organic. I have been using fish fertilizer for the other plants, which hasn't produced the same results, but IS organic. So, what does this teach us? Hmmmmmm. Perhaps the proof will be in the flavor of the finished products, I don't know for sure. Stay tuned as the growing season progresses.

We have been getting teased with minor sprinkles of rain, but no real soakers for awhile now, and I am hoping that this is not a portent of the upcoming summer season. We have experienced drought conditions before, and yes, we do have a well, but it costs electricity to pump that water and the plants always seem to much prefer the rain water over this sulfurous stuff we pull out of the ground. Perhaps we'll have to get THE Resident Witch working on some rain spells. If it's up there to bring down, she can giter done!

It turns out that this N1H1 wonder-bug that's come out of Mexico is no more virulent than the regular flu, which is quite capable of killing thousands of unlucky and otherwise compromised individuals anyway. However, it is also quite possible that when THIS bug returns for the normal flu season, it could mutate into something quite a bit more problematic, or it might not. No one knows for sure. So, let's just keep our fingers crossed and sanitized, shall we? I still think Stephen King was a prophet........

Also, Shiloh the amazing mutt finally got a B A T H today, something he hates having to endure with a passion. I swear, this dog has the thickest, most waterproof coat an animal could possibly sport, and is not the easiest thing in the world to wash. Being the "dirt-dog" that he is, he is usually five or ten pounds lighter once you wash out all the sand he picks up from his habit of digging holes and laying in them. Now he's a clean machine.........and happy it's all over.

By now you are beginning to wonder just when the awesome part of this post is going to show up, the part I promised you would be so phenomenal it would make you want to change your religion, your sex, or your bank account pass word.

Wonder no more. You were dreaming. I never promised any such thing. But have a nice day and come back again. You never know when something phenomenal might happen..........hehe........

A Post about Posts, Post Holes, and Damn Good Customer Service

2009-05-02T21:13:00.006-04:00

It's been Hold Improvement here at Pendragon Hold. For most of the day, yours truly has been digging post holes, hauling around heavy sacks of concrete, and running back and forth getting fence posts and fencing. In one fell swoop (which is actually probably going to take a few swoops at least, work-day wise) I am finishing off the back of the goat pen bordering my neighbors yard, which Houdini goat continues to penetrate when I forget to plug in the electric fence, extending out past our septic mound and across to where the picket fence surrounds the terrace garden. This will give the goats a grazing area to romp around in while keeping them away from the main garden area and the rest of the yard which I haven't re-fenced with new woven-wire fence yet. The idea is also to allow them to ravage one sector of the back forty while the other sector recovers from their ravaging.

This lousy economy has really brought customer service back to the forefront, and I for one welcome it. I purchased a huge, hunking 330 foot role of 48 inch goat fence from Tractor Supply for around $300, and discovering that I couldn't get it into our little Focus, the guy who brought out the fencing for me volunteered to haul it out to my house in the back of his personal pick-up. No charge. THAT was pleasant enough, but when I went back and purchased a metal gate for another $50 the next day, ANOTHER guy there brought it home for me in HIS truck, once we discovered it was just slightly too large to get into my car. I offered as to how much I appreciated the deliveries, and he returned as to how much they appreciated my business. Imagine that. Home Depot would have offered to rent me a truck. So, please, if you notice small businesses such as these in YOUR locality going the extra mile without being asked, then spend the extra dollar or two it might take to patronize them rather than the big chain stores, because the little guy has always struggled against the Chain monsters, even when times were relatively good, and deserve our loyalty now more than ever.

Last night we had a pleasant Beltane ceremony and a dinner for a guest and THE now-non-resident Daughter. The temperatures are climbing and it hasn't rained in more than a week now, so it was a pleasant night, dry, not too cool, with a stray drop of rain falling on occasion.

THE Wife has been in quite a bit of pain these past several weeks, with pain and numbness descending down her arm. This is after a neurosurgeon declined to attempt to treat her surgically. Her neurologist is ready to treat her with another round of Botox, which is the only treatment which has worked for her, so of course all of a sudden the insurance company wants to "pre-approve" the treatment, so I have no idea when we're going to be receiving the drug. I hope like hell it's soon.

I wish I had more to report concerning the goings on here at the sandy edge of civilizations, but things have been fairly quiet and uneventful, all told, which is good, actually, since I would not really care to be reporting on the local death toll from H1N1, attacks by displaced Somali pirates, or why black helicopters are circling our home in the night. That would be more atmosphere than I care to handle right now. But, hey, you never know..........that dragon egg I dug up in the back yard; I swear that crack in it is new...........

THE Brink

2009-04-29T14:04:00.004-04:00

Here we are again. You want to reach out and touch, just barely, that thin, shadowy boundary, that membrane between our rational, everyday reality, the demons we know and deal with daily, and that utter madness, the inconceivable horror that lies just on the other side. Yes, you know what I speak of. Right now we call it PANDEMIC. Russians and Somalis misbehaving, that we could ignore, till some of it bit into our own, and even then three short, sharp shocks killed three would-be buccaneers and the deal was negotiated. Most of us are mere paychecks away from tent cities, but we face away from that too, too tired of worrying about it to keep us from asking all those questions we SHOULD be asking ourselves, like why in the hell are we sitting in bumper to bumper hell in vehicles that cost more than our parent's houses?

This thing I speak of goes by many other names, under many under circumstances, and is played out in myriad scenarios, but we all know it as THE BRINK. We stood there in 1812 as friends, family, and loved ones fell around us like autumn leaves, a death that our own murder in the shape of WWI could not match. We stood there as Kennedy and Kruschav stood toe to toe and played "who blinks first" with an arsenal of nuclear weapons. And, we've been edging up to it for decades now, ignoring the flocks of canaries warning us of impending environmental collapse, not a problem you can send to committee for recommendations. However, there have been two really "neat" scenarios we have been warned of that could very well save this planet by putting a serious dent in our own human population, which has become the pox upon this land. The one is the big chunk of space rock that slams into us and educates us on how every damn dinosaur died on this planet all at once. The other is the superbug, the super-flu, Captain Trips, the biological ass-kicking to end all ass-kicking. SARS was the first really bad scare of this era, but that was only a precursor of the easily transmitted flu bug that enjoys taking out healthy young folks with strong immune systems rather than the very young or very old. That one seems to have arrived. So what will we do about it?

Well, first, as humans are prone to do, we will not stop international travel to help stop the spread of the bug, because that would be inconvenient. We have never been known to take stern measures until OVERKILL is the only remaining measure we CAN take. We always take the path of least resistance first, and THAT is what is going to kill us. So, hunker down my friends, because even now, people are traveling with a bug that loves to share, to mutate, and do what it was designed to do.......KILL it's hosts.

This is THE Michael, standing by on the brink, hoping all of you, my friends, are the lucky ones, the new citizens of a brave new world much less populated than it used to be............

Resurrection and other Miscellaneous Miracles

2009-04-24T10:59:00.009-04:00

Hello and welcome to the Friday edition of the Chronicles of Pendragon Hold. This post was created with the assistance of a computer resurrected from the dead, thus it is Christlike and everything posted here from now on is gospel.

It all started with a very brief power surge which caused many of our electronic gizmos and whiz-bangs to reset, turn off, or otherwise wonder what happened. The IMac, which is the center of our electronic presence in the universe, popped off and the screen turned that deathly shade of black. Oh well, I think, guess I have to hit that button on the backside and start her back up again. Only THIS time nothing happened.....nothing at ALL. It just sat there acting rather inanimate. Like, sorry dude, but I've moved on to that G-5 afterlife. You know how you keep pushing an elevator button after the first time thinking doing it again is going to make things happen any quicker? That was me, desperate..........

THE Wife was heading out the door to work when this happened, suggesting that I might want to take her to work to have the car to.....what? Like we have the money to replace whatever got fried inside the computer? This baby is LONG out of warranty. I couldn't understand this; she IS plugged into a surge protector, so what's the deal?

So, being a man, genetically unable AND unwilling to just let this go without a fight, I unplugged her power cord and plugged it back in. Nothing. I started pulling USB and Firewire and all manner of cables from her backside until I got to the last one, the Ethernet cable, and BING!

Just as I pulled that cord, she restarted, just like THAT!

WTF?

And here I am, blogging on a perfectly fine Apple IMac, as though nothing happened. Well, these things might have their quirks, but in the end, an Apple always comes bouncing back, under circumstances that make most PC's spaz out and walk themselves to the landfill. Which is good because it's going to be awhile before I can afford a replacement. And NO, I will NOT settle for a $299 excuse for a computer just to get back online quicker. If need be, I'd shell out for a Mac Mini just to hold me over till I COULD afford to acquire another IMac, the best desktop made for any amount of money. Hell, this G-5 is so old now that a new Mac Mini would probably run circles around her. That's progress.

In OTHER news...........The terrace (herbs and assorted beans and other veggies) is looking beautiful as is the "bag garden" of tomatoes in the back forty. Yesterday I put in some posts and a stretch of fence reused from the old goat pen fence to support the loofah we'll be planting out by the tomatoes. In case you can't place the word, loofah is a zucchini or cucumber-like fruit that allowed to mature and dry out makes those cool and durable bath sponges they sell in stores, all natural and better than an plastic substitute. Harvested while young, the spaghetti-like insides can also be eaten. See, you leave it to Mother Nature and you can find a natural substitute for just about anything we make these days. We've just developed this arrogant attitude that we can make superior products out of petroleum and/or plastics when truth be told we only end up making things that break anyway and end up in landfills poisoning the environment. Hell, I bet we could make computer cases out of bamboo that would last just about as long as the plastic we use now. I do know one thing, if we don't start getting back to renewable resources, the crap we rely on now will be the death of us all.

What am I saying......the crap we've been using IS killing us........

Well, THE Wife's neck and shoulder problem is back full blown and it's back to BOTOX injections to treat it with again. Her neurologist had referred her to a neurosurgeon thinking a surgical approach to the problem might be possible, but it was deemed not bad enough. At least compared to the risk of surgery. Sigh.....

The septic mound is now a nice shade of green as the clover seed has all sprouted and is growing. My hope is that it stabilizes the sand and provides some nice graze for the goats. I also hope that this summer is nice and wet and not to hot, but this spring was so nice I can't help thinking it is simply a harbinger of a very hot summer. Already there have been wildfires in South Carolina which wiped out some neighborhoods. This country wasn't always catching fire every summer, but we may end up referring to summer as "the burning times". hehe..........what goes around........

Meanwhile, over in Pakistan, a very backwards country full of angry muslims and nuclear weapons, the Taliban have boldly gone forth and begun to occupy more and more territory while the Pakistani army seems hell-bent on acting like nothing is happening. Personally, I think the army would rather the country be taken over by the crazies than to allow a democracy to flourish. I imagine the military would rather not have to deal with uppity wives. Thus, I think we have a situation where we had BETTER suggest to Pakistan that they either deal with the militants aggressively, or we will back India and give them a free hand in dealing with the situation as they see fit, which I imagine would be going in and taking out those nuclear facilities before the Islamists get their hands on them. Gods know that India has taken enough shit from these rag heads.

Oh, and our fresh water is running out, and what we do have left is chock full of hormones, pharmaceuticals, PCB's. and various other chemicals doing strange things to us and the wildlife. So, it stands to reason to assume that those who are responsible for this mess despise their children and want them all to die of strange ailments or suffer from chronic diseases or deformities. Yep, think about it....what CEO of one of these myriad poison factories would continue to rake in the cash knowing his own children and grandchildren were going to pay the price right along with the rest of us? What, you think they don't KNOW? Really? Yea, right. Can you spell MONSTER? I spell it FUCKINGBASTARD myself.

Thus we come to the end of another exciting episode of The Chronicles of Pendragon Hold, that little acre of sand on the outskirts of civilization, waiting nervously for the next wildfire, hurricane, or monster meteor, and loving every minute of it........like........what else you gonna do?

Rant #3753-B

2009-04-19T14:39:00.004-04:00

I am an avid listener of NPR, one of the very few places where intellect is respected more than blind emotion. I know that most people believe fervently that news is reported with a slant dependant upon who delivers that news, and every time I watch FOX cable news for any length of time I want to believe that. FOX does not report "news" so much as manufactures it. The "tea parties" they have been "covering" is a case in point. These are people who are supposedly protesting the "tax increases" that the Obama administration is imposing, or is going to impose, upon them, supposedly your average joe.

Huh?

The very people who for the first time in at least eight years are actually going to experience a tax BREAK, are outraged that these godless liberals are going to raise their taxes, take away their guns, force their daughters to have abortions, and all manner of bullshit propaganda that is the hall mark of the Karl Rove politics of desperation. Then you watch the continuing meltdown of the Palin dynasty, as the young, brash (I'll kick your ass) redneck who knocked up Bristol comes clean with the media in an effort cleanse himself of the stain the whole sordid affair has put upon him, as though he was some sort of innocent bystander in the Republican cluster fuck of the century. All the while our president keeps his cool and tends to business as best he can with these conservative pit bull puppies latched onto his ankle, not sure whether to hump his leg or chew on it.

Meanwhile the climate continues to warm.

Yes, first NPR reports the news in a simple and straightforward manner, in a responsible journalistic manner, and THEN you will hear some analysis of said news, and that's where the "liberal" slant is said to come in. When fox reports on something, it is usually reported as "those damn liberals did this awful thing or that awful thing", while NRP will simply report what occurred, then usually allow commentary on what happened by "experts" from both sides of the aisle. Problem here is that if what happened was clearly something that made a conservative look bad, then it's the "liberal media" slanting the news again. The "conservative" media either flat avoids reporting the embarrassing event to begin with or tries to spin it around to somehow deflect the blame of the occurrence back on liberals. THAT is not journalism. It's something more akin to the Bath party news at it's best. So, please, if it quacks like a duck, quite trying to make it sound like an opera singer. It's nauseating.

I can tell you, I am damn grateful now to have not wasted more years than I did pursuing higher education if the result is the like of those who practice "journalism" and pursue politics the way these morons in the conservative movement do. I do not have an advanced degree in physics or biology, yet the logic and simple truth of evolution is quite clear to me. I have no problem separating the bullshit from the evidence piling up concerning global warming; perhaps not having my wealth dependent on planetary rape and pillage lends me a certain clarity of vision and thought. Perhaps my immunity from the outlandish dogma of organized religion has freed me from the fear of their "God", allowing me to approach the questions of life by seeking honest answers.

And no, my liberal friends have not earned a "get out of jail free" card. Sometimes the word asinine best describes the lack of pragmatism demonstrated by those who want to sing Kumbaya, hold hands, and hold no one responsible for the evils we are awash in. New age mumbo-jumbo does not replace Catholic guilt nor does it do a better job of making people pay more attention to their planet and less to some heaven above. Rapture will not solve our problems; recognizing our problems and fucking DOING something about them.........works a damn sight better than denial and putting it off until the afterlife.

Look, it appears that the rapture isn't going to happen anytime soon, so could all of you waiting on it please just shoot your fucking selves and get off our planet? You're really stinking the place up.....really........

P.S. PLEASE go here and listen.

Thwarted!

2009-04-17T17:09:00.004-04:00

The sun settles into a golden evening here at Pendragon Hold. I watch the rednecks racing their pickups down the dirt road still muddy and rutted from last night's rainstorms, wondering why humans can't seem to get from point A to point B without all the juvenile drama. All over the landscape is littered with fresh green leaves blown off the trees by today's high winds, joining the dead branches liberated from same said tall giants. This is fresh, clean smelling day in the life of two pagans living on the outskirts of Americana.

I, your run-of-the-mill homo sapiens, have been laid low by a mere pygmy goat. Having replaced the entire perimeter of the goat pen with high-quality woven fencing, I thought that I had put an end to her little amazing escapes........only to turn around while working in the yard to see a very happy-go-lucky goat on the mound where she shouldn't....hell....COULDN'T be! I put her back. I examined the pen all along the wire. Nothing. No breaks, no space beneath, no sign of an escape route. I go back to work. She does it AGAIN! I put her back. I examine the gate more closely. Maybe somehow she could have gotten up and over the open top of the gate or maybe even thru the bottom held shut with a bungee cord. I find myself a bent stick and shove it between the gate bottom and a board I have across the bottom. I go out to the shade garden and sit and I watch.

Sure enough, little Ms Houdini strolls up to the gate, puts her head down, and proceeds to (attempt to) bulldoze her way through that gate bottom, a very tight squeeze indeed but I have come to accept that these guys can cram alot through some very small spaces. MYSTERY SOLVED! The stick kept the bottom of the metal gate from bending outward, putting an end to her magic act! Give a human long enough, and he can outsmart even the smartest ungulate!

The newly replanted tomato and pepper garden is off to a good start, and the the terrace garden is doing us proud. But, my real pride and joy right now is the clover seed I spread on the mound last week which is now sprouting. Hopefully, this cover crop will thicken up real good and provide a good forage for the goats as well as improving the condition of the sand with it's nitrogen-fixing talents. The clover on the mound is New Zealand White, but I also have some Mammoth Red I plan to sow in the garden area come fall to improve that area for future crops.

I have two major projects left for this summer; replacing the property fence, and building the chicken coop. The fence HAS to be replaced due to the damage from drunk redneck neighbors and goats who constantly push the envelope. AND, in our quest to be as self-sufficient as possible, raising chickens will help in so many ways, including healthy, organic free-range eggs, meat, and garden pest control, not to mention the rich manure for the garden. I have no need whatsoever for the unnatural poisons offered by the chemical companies, relying instead on nature's way of doing things. Even now, farmers in India are finding out that the increased production made possible by super-seeds, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides have come at a now unsustainable cost. All this stuff is expensive, and the water table is dropping due to the insatiable thirst of these crops for water which is being used at ever increasing and unsustainable rates, not to mention the poisoning of the earth with all these chemicals. Science is not the real problem here; it's the WRONG kind of science, and the evil influence of the profit motive.

OK, as usual, this is days later after starting this post and I still haven't gotten it posted, but it's a lazy Friday afternoon and I have plenty of time to finish this up and get it online.

Have any of you heard this remarkable lady who showed up on "England's Got Talent" (Remember our OWN "America's got talent"?) and blew the socks off everybody who heard her sing? Simon Cowle of "American Idol" fame is also on this panel of judges and even HE was effected. If you haven't seen the video already, you MUST. This "not-so-beautiful", rather salt-of-the-earth Scottish woman of 46 years walks out on stage and everybody is rolling their eyes, wondering what horrible sounds she's going to inflict them with, only from the first note, she astonishes everybody with the most beautiful voice most anybody has heard in a long time. The audience was on their feet, applauding her through the entire performance. It was indeed a humbling experience. AND, on top of all that, it turns out that way back in 1999, this same woman recorded a version of a song called "Cry me a River" that is equally, amazingly good, only nobody really noticed it, as it was included on a CD recorded for charity. You can hear both of these songs on YouTube. So go there, already!

The weather today is just fantastic! THE Wife has had another bout of shoulder and neck pain that required a visit to the doctor for shots and a day off from work, so she's been here with me today relaxing and trying to recover. It's a very pleasant 74 degrees with steady breezes that make the trees dance and the wind chimes play a symphony, and the birds are lending their calls to the music of nature.

Tomorrow we will be having company over for dinner and wine and whatever might come of sitting around a fire in the shade garden.

I'm sorry these episodes have been so few and far between, but since I stopped ranting about all the horrible things we do to each other, I haven't had alot to write about, since life around the Hold has been peaceful and relatively uneventful. Actually, I am rather appreciative of the fact that I haven't had to report much in the way of hardship, and I am NOT going to complain about that! I fully realize that misfortune can come out of nowhere and bite us in the ass, so I am going to fully enjoy and appreciate the relatively good times we now enjoy, knowing full well that our fellow citizens all over this country are not doing so well, wether it be foreclosure of their homes or loss of their jobs. I ask of all of you to support our talented new President and give him the support he needs to get us out of the mess that last cluster fuck of an administration left him to straighten out.

That's what's happening at the Hold! Blessed Be!

Fencing, Anyone?

2009-04-05T19:50:00.006-04:00

It's been a busy and interesting week here at Pendragon Hold, our little acre of sand on the edge of suburbia. Having seen my new garden all but wiped out by our little four-legged Houdini, and finally having seen a paycheck clear and sufficient to purchase the necessary materials, and thanks to a weekend of clear weather, I have finally strung up the new woven wire fence around the goat pen and put an end to the escapades of Sorcha, the low-riding four-legged escape artist. It took me both days to set the posts and stretch the wire, but the deed is done, and we also purchased new veggies for the garden to replace the casualties. THE Wife made a special little veggie "CCU" at one end of the terrace garden to give the eaten and severely damaged plants a place to rest and possibly continue to grow, so that they might yet fulfill their destiny and not go quietly into that dark night without having produced the fruits of their purpose. They deserve that second chance, doncha think?

This also marks the occasion of THE Resident Twin finally striking back out on her own, having saved up enough money to land herself a new apartment.. We, of course, have mixed feelings about this. We lose the rent, yet we gain the ability to romp around naked in our abode when ever it strikes our fancy. Not having had our fancy struck for awhile, this being by ourselves seems strange, but we have to remember that this is actually what NORMAL is supposed to be like. We wish her all the best, and hope that she can rely on lessons learned, like all of us do throughout our lives. She remains close enough and she knows we are always here for her.

Remember that tree I was trying to bring down? It's still there. Only a storm brought down the massive limb I had sawed halfway thru but couldn't pull down on my own. This piece of the tree was SO big, matter of fact, that I received a frantic call at work by THE Wife informing me that THE Resident Daughter had called HER and said that a tree (not a big limb, but a whole tree) had come down in the road and was blocking it. Under the impression that the tree had actually been uprooted and brought down on the road, my fence, and possibly the power lines, I told my supervisors I had a dire emergency at home that required my immediate attention. I rushed home to discover that this "tree" was in fact only that limb I'd been trying to fell myself, and the damage wasn't quite as bad as reported. It HAD put a sizable dent in the fence, but it was not blocking the road or affected the power lines. So, within maybe 15 minutes with the help of my trusty electric chain saw, I had the wood chopped up and taken out of the way, no really bad harm done. Then, I was back at work within the hour and finished out my shift for the day. It COULD have been worse but thank the Gods, it wasn't.

On our way to "THE Depot" for one of many supply runs, THE Wife happened to notice that someone had placed several concrete and/or plaster garden statues out by the road for whoever to take. She got me to stop on the way back and she asked the man working around the property if they were indeed being rid of, and he said they were, so now THE Wife has in her possession a nice gnome (the one in the blue hat) and an old fisherman, who she has given a new pole. This is the essence of recycling, and no good Wiccan worth their salt are going to allow a perfectly good gnome to suffer the fate of the landfill. Having "rescued" him, she feels this creature owes her. Still, I have this thing about gnomes, so, one false move, and the gnome gets it!

Does anybody remember the fairy house out in the shade garden? THE Wife has given it an extreme makeover and now the resident fairy has new digs. Dig?

She also got ME a new hummingbird feeder. Yea, that's what I always wanted, a new hummingbird feeder. I wonder if a certain someone wanted a new hummingbird feeder even more than I did? Hmmmmm?

Well, Spring has certainly sprung like crazy here at the Hold; the weather has been wonderful, and all these green growing things are off to a great start. I have more than enough projects to keep me busy this summer, the only restraints being money and weather, but I don't think I'll be idle all that often.

And I'm feeling to good about life right now to ruin it with a rant, so hang in there and perhaps I'll start one during some future episode of The Chronicles of Pendragon Hold, where all the women are handsome, the men good looking, and gnomes that behave themselves find sanctuary. Blessed Be!

Me, That Damn Tree, and the Missing Purple iPod

2009-03-27T22:47:00.006-04:00

I arrived back at work after my week-long Spring vacation and was promptly greeted with "Michael, you are definitely in the WRONG profession!" by one of my nurse managers. I swallowed hard, since that kinda phrase is usually followed by something I definitely didn't want to hear........only this time she followed up with, "You really ought to be a writer!". I let my breathe out, kinda surprised.

"Where are you getting all this from?". I asked her. She responded that she had been reading my blog that one of the other nurses had directed her towards, and complimented me further by insisting I'd be a great fiction writer (which in turn made me wonder if "The Chronicles" really were sounding to good to be true, thus perfect fiction material...). Then, after mentioning to the Big Boss later that I'd been complimented, she also commented that she's overheard a lot of nurses discussing my blog. I had truly mixed feelings about that, hoping like hell that I had not written anything in my blog that could get me fired, as has happened with plenty of folk, but it still made me smile inside to be thought of as talented.

I have real problems with compliments. I crave them while simultaneously rejecting them, somehow feeling unworthy of the very praise I seek. I don't imagine I am the first person to have such feelings, but it's annoying when I think about it. Being complimented on my writing many times brings to mind that Harry Chapin song "Mr. Tanner, about a baker who sang all the time while working, who was urged by his friends and customers to seek out a career in singing, only to be raked over the coals by the critics once he worked up the courage to try it. He went back to singing in private and never singing in public again. I would certainly hate to suffer the same fate by submitting a manuscript and getting viciously rejected for it. I have been to Books-a-Million and would not care to have to compete with the other 37000 other authors wanting you to buy their book. I love writing. I don't know how good I really am at it but I love doing it. Sure, I'd love to get paid to do it, but hey, if I had to pay for every blog post I read, I'd be broke in no time. I follow many a blogger who in many ways are far superior to me. Not every thing in this world of ours has to have a price on it.

While we were all at work, one of the twins, the four-legged variety, decided to slip under the wire and sample the new garden I had just planted. She did this three times in a row, making it out of her secret escape space beneath the fence of the pen and taking off the tops of another tomato plant, before I managed to get all the weak points shored back up. DAMN! The wife seems to think the damaged plants will still grow, and I hope she's right.

We have this row of trees along the Western perimeter of the Hold, and one of them has been squeezed in between two other bigger trees, the result being that it has been somewhat stunted and leaning far to much out towards the road (and the power lines that run along it). I have decided now is the time to cull it out, but unlike most of the other trees I've had to cut down, this one I can't anchor with cable in the proper direction for cutting down without falling over my fence, onto the road, taking the power lines with it. So.......the only alternative is to climb this sucker and hack it to pieces from the top down. Well, I'm a few years older since the last tree, and not quite the monkey I used to be. These limbs of mine don't seem to bend as well as they once did, so climbing this tree hasn't been the breeze it might have been ten years ago. Still, I have half of it down already and plan to go after that top section tomorrow. Only hesitation I suffer from is that my wife won't be here to watch me fall and bring me my gun if I survive the plunge. The shape I would be in if I DID survive a fall from that height would preclude me wanting to allow rescue to haul me in to the hospital so they can make a good little quadriplegic out of me to suck the life out of my wife and the system for years to come. So, I plan not to fall.

A terrible thing has happened to THE Wife since yesterday. She has lost her new purple iPod, and is absolutely distraught over it. So am I. I'm hoping she can somehow come across it again, but if not, well, that's another $150 if I want to get her another one, which being the loving husband that I am, I would.

It's been a few days since I started this post, and THE Wife has not been able to find her lost iPod, so I've given her mine. It's the previous generation, the square one, and it's not purple, but she's on the couch right now having just as much fun on it.

I made it almost to the top of that tree where the height and strong breezes conspired to activate my usually controlled fear of heights. I did manage to saw halfway through one of the upper trunks but the possibility of it falling in a manner which would bring me down with it put pause to cutting all the way through, and I tied a cable to it in hopes of pulling it the rest of the way off from the safety of the ground. Ah, the best laid plans of mice and Michael's.........damn thing would NOT budge. So, I spent all day staring at that mess of tree top wondering just how in the hell am I going to detach those upper sections in a manner which precludes my accompanying them (screaming) to the ground. This is going to take some study, or rather, truth be told, working up the courage to just get the hell up there and do it. Without a very large vehicle with a winch to pull it in the direction opposite from which it's leaning, there's no way I can safely topple it from the base. I wonder if controlled detonations...........hmmmmmm............naw, better not............

We finally got some rain today, which I am sure all the newly sprouting plants and veggies are much happier with than the sulfurous well water we normally have to water them with. There's something about rain water that just brings out the best in everything......even people.

Well, it's back to work tomorrow, so I'll finish this post up and upload it into the World Wide Web where I hope it will be enjoyed before some nasty virus comes along and gobbles it all up. Yes, it's a dangerous world out there amongst the copper wires, silicon chips, and humming servers of the Virtual Universe. But you're safe with me.............

Purple iPods and Gardens-in-a-Bag

2009-03-22T19:53:00.005-04:00

OK, this is Sunday, the last day of my Ostara/Wife's Birthday vacation. What do I do now? Post? Sure, why not? Got anything to post? Sure, we ALWAYS have SOMETHING to post here at Pendragon Hold! The caveat is having something to post that people want to READ. Well, here goes..........

THE Wife was awarded her prize for surviving another year, a purple iPod Nano, as well as various cards that sarcastically made fun of her station in life. The Non-Resident Daughter sent her a homemade electronic music card that was hilarious, having to do with Twisted Sister. Please try and remember the generation from which we spring. We ROCKED! Anyway, the very woman who always found fault with my love for gadgetry (as in iPods) has now fallen under the spell of the personal music player and is having a ball with her new toy. She even asked for and received a music video of Michael Jackson's "Thriller" downloaded and installed on her new play-toy, which has been stuck in her ear for most of this last week. Guys, I think you can appreciate the small victory I have scored in this regard......

We had a pleasant circle last night for Ostara (yes, it was a day late but we WE'RE trying to accommodate guests who work weekdays) and managed to keep MOST of our candles and lanterns lit despite a very windy evening. THE wife, also the High Priestess of Pendragon Hold, performed magic which involved hard-boiled eggs and wishes of health, prosperity, and other such desires. She worked hard on this ceremony and I think it worked out well.

The garden, both terrace and veggie, is now established, and I have photographic proof of the crime. I am sitting here wondering why now, of all times all year long, one of the twins (goats) found an escape route out of the pen and ate the tops off three of my new tomato plants. I will probably have to replace each one, and I hope that the reinforcement of the fence containing these creatures has solved the problem. If she had made it into the terrace garden and munched out on THE Wife's herbs, we would probably be having roast goat tonight.

We have neighbors down the lane here who have been noisily zipping up and down our dirt road on those four wheeled conveyances prized by rednecks and hunters known as the ATV (All Terrain Vehicle) This would not bother me, even the noise, if it were not for the TODDLERS that this family has been hauling around on these deathtraps-waiting-to-happen at speeds up to 60 MPH, with, of course, no helmets or anything other than their tiny little arms holding on for dear life, keeping them from being flung off to their to very possible deaths. I am so tempted to call the Sheriff's Department (which I think has been done once already, apparently having only a temporary effect) for no other reason than protecting these very young kids from a blatantly unsafe and illegal practice, but then I think of how this is the kind of thing that natural selection depends on to limit the propagation of those genes which lends itself to species suicide-by-stupidity. Yes, I know it sounds cruel, but maybe if we allowed these people to pursue their self-limiting behaviors, instead of protecting them from their own deadly behaviors, we could once and for all weed out these genes which make people expose their own offspring to such hazards. We've already screwed the gene pool by allowing survival of the least fit amongst us, compassion aside.

As far as national politics is concerned; it appears we have a president who is fully capable of legislating, governing, AND dashing about the country, communicating with US, the people, the ones who elected him, to share his thoughts about what he's doing AND getting OUR feedback about what he's doing, and the Republicans just CANNOT FUCKING STAND IT! The best that THEY had to offer that last eight years couldn't even TALK and THINK at the same time, much less multi-task the way that Barack Obamma has been doing. I think that what is going on now is proof-positive that our ability to have a non-partisan approach to governance is beyond us now and we might as well change our system to a winner-take-all system where you elect one person, and those who lose just shut the fuck up for the next four years, because it is plain as day that the Republican Party is totally incapable of co-operative thinking that strays outside their very narrow outlook concerning politics. For more than three hundred years we have survived as a nation by the art of compromise and the love of our constitution, but now we have a conservative party that knows it's time has long past and can't accept it, and is now intent on bringing the country down rather than allow a philosophy of caring for one's fellow man. So sad, so sad, so very, very sad.

OK, that's the outlook from the Hold. May you all somehow survive the storm, and be able to laugh about it one day in the future when laughing is once again in vogue. Blessed Be!

These Are the Voyages.......

2009-03-19T15:55:00.004-04:00

I stumbled across a YouTube video of the last episode of "Star Trek - Enterprise", and it ended with all three of the Captains of the successive ships of that name reciting "These are the voyages......"

Ever have that heavy hand grasp your heart and squeeze? Like those times remembering when you lost someone, or you tried to stem the tide of tears some sad scene in a movie had unleashed?

It was such a beautiful scene, such a wonderful imagining, and to know that it is extremely unlikely we will ever, ever "reach up and touch the hand of God....."

No, we will never "boldly go where no man has ever.........."

We will all die here of our own hands.

For that, suppressed deep within me, I cry.

Happy Birthday Baby............

2009-03-17T08:50:00.013-04:00

Well, it's official, at least according to Mother Nature (Otherwise known within Wiccan circles as The Goddess, or sometimes Gaia). That fresh, bright, alive shade of green is popping up everywhere with that assurance that we will not see another freeze, an assumption I'm sure the Holly King will mess with first chance. This last week has seen daytime temperatures as high as the 90's., and Pendragon Hold is already drawing juice from the grid to feed the cooling monsters. Another sign of Spring is the sunburn the wife suffered for working outside in this gorgeous weather in a brief top and no hat. Me, I'm now a literal redneck (no hat either).

While she was out raking leaves while I shredded them, the wife seems to have pulled or otherwise hurt a muscle in her shoulder/back and had to call in sick in order to see the doctor, who happily shot her up with steroid/painkillers/magic potions, which are helping for now, but she's back to work tomorrow, and it's my weekend to work as well. I personally have had a very stiff and sore neck for at least two weeks and it's taking forever for it to get over whatever I did to it. Damn body parts, always crying out for attention. Never USED to be that way....sheesh!

We moseyed over to the Ace Hardware that has an extensive nursery and picked up the first of this years herbs to plant in the terrace garden. Next week I will get the veggies to plant out in the main garden, and I am sorely tempted to try out a novel new way to grow tomatoes.......get this.........UPSIDE DOWN! Yep, you hang a bucket from something at least five feet up and grow a tomato plant out of a hole in the bottom, watering and fertilizing the plant from the top of the bucket. There are some real advantages to this approach, the best one I can think of being that you are really posing a challenge to those damn bugs getting onto the plant. You don't have to stake the plant, and it is otherwise pretty similar to growing your tomatoes in pots, cause, well, you are. I think I'll try maybe two to start with and see how they do, and plant the rest in the bags of soil I'll be laying out this year.

It just occurred to me that the Republican party did a somewhat hilarious thing in response to the first other-than-white person being elected president. They made Michael Steele, a BLACK guy, the "leader" of the Republican party. Only thing is, that title seems to already have been assigned to Rush Limbaugh, who hasn't even been elected to any office. And THEN, to add insult to irony, Steele keeps saying things surprisingly democratic, but of course, in able to keep his job, he reverses himself as soon as Limbaugh complains. "Man of Steele", indeed! If Michael Steele honestly thinks that his position is anything other than token window dressing, he really needs a clue. I think even Colin Powell eventually caught on to the fact that he had joined a club that would not have tolerated him if it didn't have to.

It's several days later since I started this post and nothing has changed to increase the entertainment or informational value of this edition of the Chronicles. What a pity. Isn't it sad that you come here expecting something epic and end up with something septic? That was supposed to be funny. My bad. Today was the first day of my week off from work. Why did I take an entire week off? Well, the 18th is THE Wife's birthday, and the 20th is Ostara, otherwise known to you barbarians out there as the Spring Equinox. That's a fancy word for one of two days in the year when the day is divided equally between daylight and dark. Having two such epic events to deal with, I honestly HAD to remove myself from the workaday world in order to deal with them, that, and the possibility that a very good Blogger friend of mine might pay us a visit during this most August of weeks. In March, that is. Never mind.

One of the symptoms of my ever increasingly aged body is this damn neck pain I have been having lately. Usually with a pulled muscle, some muscle relaxers, some massage therapy, some heat and cold, and I'm over it in no time. Yea, the time increases each time, but that's another story. Yea, I'm doing everything I can sans the physical therapy, which costs money and involves large men with german accents, but you'd think there would be SOME improvement by now. No dice. My regular doc seems to think it's only going to take some time. I hate this time thing, especially when it takes so much of it. Where's the Devil when you are damn happy to sign that contract of his? Whatever, I don't believe the bastard exists anyway...........

I just saw the commercial for the new Honda INSIGHT, their answer to Toyota's Prius. I didn't see the mileage specifications, but it sure looks sharp! It kinda looks like an F-22 Raptor versus the old F-15 Eagle........if you can wrap your head around THAT comparison.....guys, help me out here..........

Oh, and today, while THE Wife was toiling away at work, I was toiling away on the second tier of the terrace garden, double spading it in preparation to plant the herbs we bought this weekend. It took all day and I feel like it took a week! Thankfully, the weather was just perfect, with cool breezes that cooled me down as I worked up a sweat with my iPod in my ears and a shovel in my hands. I love ibuprofen.

THE Resident Daughter treated THE wife to a new hairdo, including highlights that turned out beautifully golden. Said Daughter also treated herself to a new tattoo. It seems the females in my life have become canvasses for an age-old form of artistic expression, one that has had an upsurge in societal acceptance. You may have noticed the increasing incidence of the so-called "tramp-stamp" across the backsides of young (and even older) women that is shown off in concert with bikinis and low-rider jeans. I have only one warning to issue to the younger ladies.....tattoos do not age well. Me, personally, I might try out a handsome Green Man on my upper arm, that is, when they invent the pain-free tattoo. Did I mention I'm extremely allergic to pain?

Well, there's plenty enough to bitch about in the news, such as the bonus scandal with AIG, but I have to get this long-overdue edition posted. I know that some of you, my fellow bloggers, are starting to feel real impacts from this economic meltdown. I share your fears and have my fingers crossed, for I am no more immune to this lurking monster than any of you. Be assured that all of you, your health and welfare, are on my mind and at every circle we cast I ask the Gods and Goddesses to be kind to you. You all have been kind to me with your attention to this cry in the wilderness, The Chronicles. Blessed be you all.

The Great Outdoors

2009-03-08T20:26:00.004-04:00

Welcome to another edition of The Chronicles of Pendragon Hold, in which I, THE Michael, AKA Alex Pendragon, will enthrall you with tales of rural/suburban angst, joy, boredom, and transcendental pontification. No poets or Republicans shall be harmed in the elucidation of this episode.

There are certain landmarks on the ever-evolving continuum of time that we eagerly await, yet most often lament, for wondering what all the fuss was about once it's all over. This, hopefully, will not be the case of two events which will be occurring very close together, sort of like an alignment of the planets, which are THE Wife's birthday, which one I am not at liberty to disclose, and the Spring Equinox, or as we Wiccans refer to as Ostara. Personally, I am also looking forward to the days off of work I am taking in celebration of these two happenings. Don't be hatin' me now....

This weekend we tackled the shade garden (tidying it up for the upcoming circle) and the terrace garden, in which we have started preparing now that perhaps there won't be any more freezes. THE Wife dug up the upper tier and planted various beans, herbs, and sunflowers. I watered same said tier. We'll plant the other veggies out at the main garden, which will consist of bags of garden soil split open. I think I shredded enough leaves this weekend to bury Canada an inch deep in leaf liter. We use it to mulch the shade garden.

Ever since I constructed the arbor which welcomes all to our shade garden/sacred circle, I have been trying to come up with the perfect welcome to put on the cross member. I found it at the hospital gift shop where I work. You tell me, is this NOT the perfect welcome to our circle? (click on the pic to get an enlarged view and see what the plaque in the middle says.)

As I continue to watch the continuing meltdown of our economy, it's only natural that my personal anxiety level has steadily risen, because I do not consider myself immune to the horrors of job loss and all that entails. However, the Big Boss of our particular facility came out with a statement that not only did not mention any staff cutbacks, but assured us that nurses (and ancillary personnel such as Moi'" would be getting at least a minimal wage increase. Upper management, however, will NOT be getting any raises. Wow. Maybe I can breathe now.

Today we had to "spring forward" thanks to that biyearly aggravation we call "daylight savings time". I never figured out how losing an hour of sleep is supposed to save anyone any time, but I'm sure that somewhere around the dawn of civilization when 90% of us lived on farms, saving daylight must have meant something. I wonder how many blue collar workers these days need their daylight saved? Could we PLEASE just put the clock somewhere and LEAVE it there?!

Oh, and there was a price to pay for the two days THE Wife and I worked outside, after a Winter's long hiatus from physical labor. First off, our bodies are sore in places we didn't even know we had. Second, we have acquired this really odd RED color on our necks, face, and shoulders. We got BURNT, folks, I ain't kidding you!

Anyway, I want any of my fans who stumble across this post to be sure and visit Anne, of "The Gods are Bored" fame. Believe me, you WILL enjoy her latest post!

This is THE Michael, signing out...........may your treasure remain buried where you put it, and may the pirates of capitalism run amok pass you by. Blessed be!

We Love You To, Rush Limbaugh!

2009-03-03T08:47:00.002-05:00

That's right, folks, he said it; Conservatives (including Rush, apparently) LOVE people, which I assume includes us, those "other" Americans. They want us to SUCCEED, at ALL costs, and want to remove any and all impediments from doing so. That includes those onerous regulations they oppress businesses with, like health and safety laws that protect workers, or the right to organize for better benefits and pay, or requirements that the goods and/or services your company produce don't kill people or the people producing/providing them. Yep, they love us all so much they don't want you to pay any taxes, especially if you attain the American Dream of making ALOT more than that $250,000 that President Obama is using as a measure of exceptional economic success. They want you to fly your own personal jets to and from work, or to grillings by congressmen who only want to embarrass you for making so damn much money you need to beg the government for even more of it (because apparently it costs money to lay people off). Yep, if Rush had his way, we would all be able to do anything we wanted, because, God bless us all, we are AMERICANS, and we are damn well ENTITLED to as much excess of everything we can get our greedy little hands on, no matter WHAT the cost to the environment or people without the type A personalities it takes to screw ordinary, hard working people of everything they worked for. So, don't be hatin', turn your retirement income over to the stock market, INCLUDING your Social Security retirement funds, so they can spread that love around to all those bankers and investors who know exactly what to do with it. Oh, and rush, I wonder what Ronald Reagan would think about our landscape now littered by an ever increasing number of homeless children? I know that the man who helped coin the phrase "Homeless" never meant for it to refer to ordinary families and children, just bums. Yes, indeed, Rush, you LOVE people; you just love them to death.........

Rush, you are God, and any party other than your own is evil, hellbent on destroying America, because we all know that liberals sacrifice their babies to the devil, and want criminals to run rampant in the streets raping our grandmothers. Based on the last eight years, we know how much you and your kind love this country, and it must have been some sort of communist conspiracy that made everything turn out the way it did. It is so refreshing to know that you are diligently working to return this country to the days when Haliburton and Dick Cheney was looking out for us, by torturing those terrorists, and telling the rest of the world to go to hell.

God bless you, Rush Limbaugh. I love you too...........

Purple

2009-02-28T22:35:00.005-05:00

Welcome to The Chronicles of Pendragon Hold, that special place on the net that reassures you that yes, the new normal is anything but. I'm your host, Alex Pendragon, AKA THE Michael, and I will carefully guide you through the blind alleys and dangerous s-curves that lie ahead. Are YOU in good hands?

Things warm up around here, right before the mercury takes yet another plunge into the freeze zone. I blame this all on Canada, who INSISTS on smuggling frigid arctic air into our tropical paradise where we are happy just to not have to run our air conditioners. I bet if Mexico was smuggling hot, humid air smelling of tostadas into our country, the Feds would be all over it.

If I should just happen to lose my job, I've decided to use the CITIBANK approach to financial disaster. Knowing I'm probably going to lose my home, I'll sell it for whatever I can get for it, you know, a best offer sort of deal, or maybe even auction it off on E-bay. Yes, I know, since I have a mortgage on it, it's not really mine, but what the hell, Wall Street can do it, then so can I.

THE Wife is working hard on preparations for our OSTARA celebration, otherwise known as the Spring Equinox. We're hoping to have some friends from far and near join us as we welcome in a new season of re-growth and renewal, sort of like our nation coming out of the darkness of a Republican led meltdown into a new era of hope and responsibility. Interesting how I always manage to segway politics into a spiritual moment, huh? Well, isn't it ALL politics, in a fashion?

Apple has just updated their Safari web browser, and man does this baby ROCK! It has some fascinating new features, such as Coverflow, a feature you find in Apple's music program iTunes, AND, it is as of now, far and away, the fastest web browser the universe has ever seen. Well, OK, maybe that thought-browser the Paraphlaxians over on Trestoid Three in the Alpha Centauri system use is a TAD bit faster, but not by much. And you use Windows WHAT?

Today, or tonight rather, happens to be Saturday, and tonight I type alone, as THE Wife and Resident Daughter are out somewhere with "The Girls" having a "Purple Night", whatever that means. THE Wife mentioned something about purple Jello shooters and feminine empowerment, whatever that's supposed to entail. So, it's french bread pizza, finishing this post, and off to bed for me, for I have to work tomorrow. (They don't........sheesh)

While at work I happened to overhear over one of the patient room televisions some of Rush Limbaugh's crap presented to some Conservative Something or another Committee, in which they loved on each other for being so conservative and loving America and needing to save us all from the commie President who is spending so much money and not cutting rich people's taxes some more. Get this: Rush says that they LOVE people! Yes, that's EXACTLY what the whiney, can't stand liberal, love it or leave it Mr so-full-of-shit-you-can't-even-breath-around-him said, and the good-old-boy-WE-are-the-REAL-American crowd just ate it up!

I honestly think we have to give serious consideration to partitioning this country into the America we all know and love North of the Mason-Dixon line, and give the country South of that border to these people who will JUST NEVER FUCKING GET IT! There, they can bring back slavery and take away women's shoes and just love their narrow minded little lives, and we can get back to being the America the world has always admired. I, frankly, am just getting fed up with these people always screwing the entire pooch and needing the sane people to come back Republican administration after Republican administration and repair the damage, only it's getting harder and harder to do as we go along. SO, let them have THEIR part of what they think America is or should be and let them run it into the ground so that one day we can perhaps ENTERTAIN the idea of letting them, if they FUCKING BEG US, rejoin the union. Only we need to put an end to this dishonest "loyal opposition" once and for all. If the Conservatives want to participate in DEMOCRACY, then let them form a new party with a new philosophy that really DOES include loving people, and then maybe I wouldn't have to laugh at the very idea of Republicans loving ANYTHING they can't make a buck on.

That's my post for tonight and I'm sticking to it. Blessed Be!

The Return of Mr Clean

2009-02-22T22:02:00.003-05:00

It's been a quiet, pleasant weekend here at Pendragon Hold, our little acre of sand on the outskirts of civilization, Florida style. This is not the Florida most people envision, such as sandy beaches, Mickey Mouse and Cinderella, Manatees, and space shuttles blasting off from the Cape. Nope, you'd never even know it WAS Florida if it wasn't for the sand beneath your feet and the hot, humid air that only air conditioning can save you and your possessions from. At a cost. Unless it's winter. In which everything is miserable cold and damp......unless it's sunny and wonderfully mild.......wait two days, it's quite a variety.

The Resident Daughter has gone down South to visit the non-resident Daughter, leaving us to our own devices. About the most exciting thing to happen these last tow days was the return of THE "BALD" Michael. I gave up on growing out the hair to a length eligible to donate, as after having reached a length just long enough to be totally unruly, it seems to have slowed it's growth dramatically, and I was just getting tired of it. Having discovered last year that I do bald quite well, I had THE Wife go ahead and shear me down to the pate. That's when I discovered that a skin condition I seem to be having a problem with migrated under my scalp as well and it's not that pretty, so it looks like I'm wearing a "do-rag" for awhile at least, till I can turn the full force and fury of medical technology on this "condition".

I really wish I could go into great detail about some structure I single-handedly constructed, some garden I planted, a new animal adopted, or having won the lottery, but unfortunately nothing of such monumental import has occurred these last few days, so you, my loyal readers, all three of you who might grant me a visit this post, will have to settle for a rant, an observation, a pontification, and elucidation of some condition which is decidedly human, yet effects the world we tread upon. So brace yourself. Here goes...........

The economic stimulus package that was finally approved by Congress has now been released to the wild and it remains to be seen how well and how rapidly it will help to ease us out of this mess brought about by the worst of our natures, all in a fit of unregulated capitalism. Of course, there's always a pack of spoilers, this time a few Republican governors, who want to reject their portion of the aid to states included in the package. We all know how hard it's been on many states these past few years, their budgets being squeezed by unfunded mandates and out of control health care costs related to unpaid emergency room visits and a growing population of uninsured. Some states have been hit repeatedly by natural disasters, which thanks to global warming (which really isn't happening) are anything BUT natural, but have caused massive damages to homes and businesses. Anyway, they HATE anything related to democrats (those slimy commie socialists), and are quite willing to have their citizens suffer rather than have to accept help from the Feds to avoid a complete financial meltdown, which, I might add, was made possible by REPUBLICANS! You know, a good many Republican Congressmen were voted out of office by a pissed off and fed-up constituency, and there's NOTHING to say that the rest of you ass-wipes can't join your friends the next round of elections. A loyal opposition is one thing, but childish obstructionism is another. I know that many of you think that we are simply building up a deficit that we can never pay off, but I want to remind you that a DEMOCRAT paid OFF that last deficit, gave us a SURPLUS, which a dip-shit REPUBLICAN pissed away, giving us the biggest debt we have EVER had. Hey, do you think that MAYBE you could pay attention to history and give THIS guy a chance to actually GOVERN, instead of bitching and moaning and thinking that doing it the same way you guys were doing it for YEARS is going to actually FIX this mess that YOU made? Give me a fucking BREAK! It's fucking HILARIOUS to me that we get a president who wants to give the WORKING stiff a tax break for once, and all we hear is that the stimulus doesn't include enough..........what.........tax breaks? Oh, I see, you mean those horrible taxes you RICH people have to pay......awwwwwww.......yes, you are right, we shouldn't be giving people like the CEO's of Exxon/Mobile and Citibank higher taxes to have to pay......that would be so....so.......MEAN!

Sorry........I have to go puke........give me a minute..........

Have you noticed that Mr. Obama is doing his job with a straight face?