I’m 70 years old this year. No one would ever have believed it. Most of those who predicted my early demise have predeceased me. Now that’s fuckin justice there. I don’t think I have any enemies. I have a few dear friends, and a few social friends. I am madly and passionately in love with the girl of my dreams, and she is really my girlfriend, not someone else’s girlfriend or some fantasy love object. I have my own teeth and hair. Everything works. Thanks to a wonderful neurosurgeon, Dr. Stewart Weil of Houston, who does necks and lower backs better than Aamco does transmissions, I am as strong as I ever was and can make love in any position. Sometimes I think about becoming priapic, which to me is a really exciting goal in life that I have approached but not quite achieved. In fact, I often ask myself whether those who warn that priapism is a dangerous condition may simply be priapically challenged and ought to be ignored. Amongst my friends, if someone had an erection that lasted for more than four hours, he would call the television news to come out and get an interview with pictures for the evening broadcast. He certainly wouldn’t call a doctor thinking he was in difficulty. Amongst us, not being able to maintain an erection for a very long time would be considered a problem. If you use men’s cologne, it isn’t likely that you will have frequent need of an erection anyway, being mostly involved with Mary Five Fingers.

          For me, this year started out with great and happy signs and portents. Mama Kitty gave birth to four beautiful kittens on my 69th birthday. In the Chinese calendar it is the year of the golden pig. As I am known to be a bloody pig meself, that augurs well, and I have been richly rewarded with good health, strength, love and a reasonable amount of honest work.

          I am very aware of all the many times that I acted badly and used poor judgment and worse manners throughout many years. I believe I have apologized to most of those I offended without just cause, and the demise of many of them has spared me a lot more apologizing. However, I do find that there yet remain upon this earth others whom I may also offend, which I do from time to time when I forget that requests for my opinions on this or that subject are not serious requests. They don’t want to know what I think. They only want to state what they think. If I were more socially adept, I would catch myself before stating my thoughts, especially on subjects of current news interest. Recently asked by an irate person of approximately my own age group what I thought about professional athlete performance enhancing drug use, I managed to make all and sundry who were present gasp and hiss. I pointed out that it is now part of our national culture – which it didn’t use to be - to receive adverts about and to purchase and use, all sorts of performance enhancing substances. Whether it is the power nutritional supplements we buy at the Whole Foods Store and elsewhere, the can of Red Bull some use to wash down those Viagra pills, the Governor Rockefeller model penile implants that one may simply reach down and pump up, and so on and so forth. The spokes person for Viagra is one of the most respected senior political leaders of our time, former senator Richard Dole. We use chemical preparations to conceal the fact that we don’t really smell like Ultimate Desire. We won’t make do with what we are. We have our faces tuned up surgically and with all sorts of injections and chemical treatments, just for the sake of appearance. In that culture, can one fairly insist that some baseball player not emulate the rest of us to further his professional goals? I guess my failing is that I didn’t recognize that I was not being asked about the failings of the rest of us, just about the failings of Barry Bonds. Gimme a fucking break, please!

          I have not been the best of men, and I wonder why it is that I have been so wonderfully gifted by our Lord, as I know that I am not deserving of all my good fortune. On the other hand, I am now mature enough to be aware of my blessings and to be grateful for them and to consciously try to be who I have the potential to be. Sometimes the only atonement is just to confess, repent and amend one’s life.

          I have Belinda. If you are fortunate enough to have met her, that simple statement says it all. I never in my wildest dreams believed that I would or could be so lucky. She is my absolute everything. One of our favorite country western musicians, Toby Keith, wrote the perfect lyrics to describe my situation – “I feel like a spoon in a cup of blonde sugar. Lord, I’m a lucky man.”

          That pretty much sums up what is going on in me head, heart and the rest of my body, in the house and in the yard. It’s once you get “off the property” as it were that things present drama, hilarious fun, perversity, diversity and all around generalized great political/geopolitical bullshit. If the bullshit didn’t cost so damn much money, and if the bullshit didn’t cost the lives of so many wonderful young people sent into harm’s way on wrong headed errands, it would be unendingly humorous. Since it does bear such ominous costs, it is less funny and more maddening. If you are just ignorant and can’t see through the fog into the essence of the problems and the maladjusted management decisions, maybe you don’t get so upset – unless, that is, you or your children are amongst those who will be sent out there to confront the enemy with inadequate resources and the most bozo leadership. But if you have the insight to appreciate what it is that has to be dealt with and how to deal with it, your frustration is really high. How can you love America and not be frustrated when you know what needs to be done; deal with being unable to access the right channels because they are simply wedded to their original programs and won’t admit any but those who agree with them?

          If you were not me, the year started horribly for folks in general. Expectations that we will turn the Middle East into some democratic political model with sectarian leadership are, to say the least, misplaced. The consequences of those misplaced expectations are extreme. This year, in order to influence the rising price of auto fuel, we decided that we ought to burn food. That, of course, drove the cost of basic food requirements for millions of poor people to the ceiling. It took a while before someone came around to appreciating that you could find bio fuel sources that are not what people actually need to eat.

          The economy is now thriving, but showing signs of a very large downward “adjustment”. The La Nina summer didn’t happen. The politics of destruction is again cranking up for the next year’s campaign for president that started a few months ago. Everyone smiles and says “good” things while their surrogates go about trying to trash everyone else over everything that can be portrayed in a negative light. I try to stay out of all that, but sometimes I just have to rant. I rant and then go on about my business.

          Our national trashy girl died in February and the fight over her contingent inheritance lasted for many months under the guise of caring about where she was to be buried and who would get custody of her latest bastard. No one gives a tinker’s damn about the baby, but the thing may come into a ton of money. Many men claim to be the baby’s father, and the line up of people wanting to be tested for paternity stretches around the block. It would be much easier to sort out those who did not have sex with her, as they are very few. I personally think that she had a card reader chip implanted in her vaginal labia so that you could just swipe your credit or debit card in her vagina and then have as much of her as you could stand. On the day of Anna Nicole’s funeral I wore a pig shirt to commemorate her life. Truth to tell, she was just a poor country girl trying her best to use what God gave her to provide a comfortable life for herself. Looking in the mirror, it is clear that I am doing the exact same thing as she. My card reader chip just happens to be embedded elsewhere on my anatomy.

          One wonderful thing that deserves mention is that the religious right appears to be getting their comeuppance. People are just sick of their dirigiste bullshit. When disease prevention is thwarted because their view is that disease ought to be a very real risk of human intimacy in order to dissuade folks from FORNICATING – their favourite word in the English language – they are pretty universally seen as needing to get the hell off the stage of American society, law and politics. Anyone who values fear over enlightenment is evil per se. However, they have made everyone so sick and tired of their bullshit that we seem to be about to bring the white trash Clintons back to Washington. To give you some point of departure about just how disgusting the religious conservatives have been, who would ever have predicted eight years ago that so many Americans would want the Clintons back?

          By actual count, there are more closet homosexuals amongst the leaders of the conservative Christian political “leadership”, if you include the evangelical leadership, the house and the senate, than there are amongst the democrats. It seems like every week some asshole who built up his conservative credentials attacking gays and lesbians is found cop fondling, airport mens room bare baiting, and being outed by someone whom they betrayed in some endeavor or another. The only perversion I can find is their own perverse course of conduct, including the arrogant denial that enthuses others who have had homosexual affairs with them to come forward and speak out. Their attempts to insist upon their rectitude because they occupy positions of authority, and to threaten anyone who might be about to disclose their hidden delights with official retribution, are disgusting but laughably entertaining. I just love it when their self loathing bursts forth in all its pathological splendor. God, how they deserve to be humiliated!

          The Bush administration is now caught out firing federal prosecutors who refused to follow the Republican political agenda in their management of federal prosecutions to achieve election advantages in the recent Congressional elections of 2006, and a big stink is coming out of that also. In one instance, the US Attorney was let go so that a pal of Carl Rove could be given his job, but the fired attorney got his reputation smeared so that the firing could be made to look correct. Gonzales – the shyster attorney general – got in front of Congress and denied involvement as well as having incredible memory failures when confronted with evidence of his dissembling. Obviously there is no difference between Democrat regimes and Republican regimes. They are both disgustingly corrupt and all you can do it catch the very worst of the offenses.

          It seems that this Republican administration is doing everything that any awful Democrat administration ever did/does. These next twelve months will be the dirtiest, sleaziest in history, I am certain. The Clintons are busy trashing Barack Obama, and Barack has just enough dirt on him in his investment portfolio – taking campaign cash from company officers and buying stock in their company and then supporting Congressional measures to approve programs where those companies will make a lot of money. That’s in the papers this mid-March also. The Clintons are doing their work well. They even publicized that Obama still has unpaid parking tickets from his school days many years ago. And so the one certainty upon which we may all count is that the vipers of this administration will be followed by the vipers of the next administration, and party/platform differences will have nothing to do with the utter trashiness of them all.

          Obama was not long ago dubbed the Whole Foods candidate – having excellent qualities but not enough customers to be the leader. The Republicans have a corral of bozos who couldn’t possibly be elected, especially considering how upset everyone is with the state of things now. Happily the religious right seems to be in line for being resoundingly rejected. The present question is whether America can hold our nose and swallow the Clintons without puking. With the results of the Iowa and New Hampshire caucus/primary we now know that America really does not like that Clinton smell, and that given a reasonable alternative, we would accept a young, energetic and obviously outstanding black candidate for President. If that were to happen, I am satisfied that he could assemble competent advisors and do as well as what we are accustomed to. Our acceptance of a black man as President would definitely signal an advance in our appreciation of diversity, something the religious right of the Republican party fights against every hour of every day. I will support Barack Obama if that would muck out the fundamentalist garbage and send them packing. How great it would be to get rid of the Huckabee fascists without having to swallow the white trash Clintons.

          Has it ever seemed to you that old people smell different? I remember a snip from a movie in which a little girl declines to kiss Grandma because “Grandma smells funny.” I suspect that it was probably Grandma being encased in a generous dusting of scented powder, which is what Grandmas and certain other younger ladies were accustomed to do in the old days. But, aside from Grandma’s dusting powder, I think that there are chemical changes that occur as we age that make us smell “ripe”; that we “mature” somewhat like fruit. In my case it seems that the household cats find my “essence” to be particularly appealing lately.

          The very last picture in the cat story “Night Sounds” is of Booger a/k/a Boogsey in his favorite chair in the kitchen. A few months back a visitor sat in that chair, and he has avoided it ever since – wouldn’t go near it. One evening when Cowboy was curled up in my favorite kitchen chair I sat in Boogsey’s chair rather than disturb Cowboy. When I got up to go cook dinner, Boogsey immediately went and jumped into his chair and curled up in pure enjoyment. Belinda and I looked at each other and started laughing. I have always made “Old people smell funny” remarks about everything that old folks do, and here was a perfect dramatization of those off scent remarks. Belinda said, now I know what he has been looking for – that Papa scent. Boogsey has now taken to curling up in my office chair when I’m not in it. The joke, of course, is that Papa farts a lot and every chair he sits in is redolent of Papa gas.

          It’s June. We’re half way there. Six months till I’m 70. I can feel the hot breath on my neck. Is that God or is it Belinda in a state of passionate agitation?

          Tonight we watched the last episode of our very favorite TV show, The Sopranos. That terrible sonofabitch Phil Leotardo got whacked at a gas station. His car rolled over his fuckin head as he lay there whacked out. It was wonderful. We absolutely love Tony Soprano, and are convinced that the show’s durability is the product of the fact that Tony can whack anyone who gets on his case, while his audience consists of people who wish they could whack the bastards they have to answer to every day, but don’t. Belinda and I actually can whack any sonofabitch who we think needs whacking. Have you any idea what a stress reliever it is to know that anyone who gets in your face can simply be made to disappear? Either of us would whack someone without giving it a second thought and completely without remorse or regret. I am certain that is an important reason why we are so happy.

          Mid June brought a revelatory television show about the last days of Communism in eastern Europe. It was an amazing revelation, because it focused upon how to dramatize the failures, the inadequacies of a flawed doctrine through humor. And it was done in Russian humor too, which is my favorite. I love Russian humor because it makes the worst circumstances appear as awful as they truly are through irony and sarcasm. One story in particular dramatized it. People were standing in the Hermitage Art Museum in Leningrad/Petrograd, before a picture of Adam and Eve in the Garden. They were eating an apple. The Russian government guide was telling the people with him that Adam and Eve were Russian. As these were tourists, the issue was disputed, and the guide said that he could prove it. He pointed out that it had to be obvious that they were Russian just by looking at the picture. Adam and Eve were naked – had nothing to wear – and had only an apple to eat, and they were being told that they live in paradise. Now that’s fucking funny there. I don’t care who you are.

          This show on exposing the fraud of Communism through humor touched me deeply, as it dramatized the stupidity, arrogance and insistence upon regimentation of act and thought that were the hallmarks of the Communist tyranny. It caused me to think about the parallels I see in our own society in which the far right insists upon regimentation of thought and policy, seeking to control how people live, what they can be taught in school – right or wrong; the ridiculously stupid foreign and military policies we now espouse; and the arrogance associated with the government insisting upon the reliability of pronouncements that any imbecile can see through as complete fabrication. That, my friends, is a terrifying comparison. Two years ago I wrote a very sarcastic analysis of what I perceived as the animus and direction of the federal government. What I just wrote caused me to go back and look through some of the things I had written to see how close to the mark I had been. Unfortunately, I hit it extremely close to dead center. See it all at
http://www.seamusmuldoon.com/anit_fucking_act.htm  . I was intending to overstate the case just to be outrageous, and it scares me how understated the essay is in retrospect.

          To illustrate the proposition that our country is influenced by imbeciles, three of the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination today announced that they do not believe in evolution. These three fools, senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckaby, and Colorado representative Tom Tancredo, hearing that a Gallup poll reveals that Republicans disbelieve the theory of evolution by more than 2 to 1, announced that they are also disbelievers. Before you laugh yourself breathless, consider that this does seem to prove that the conservative wing of the Republican party probably has not evolved. I personally thank God that there are events that reveal these imbeciles for what they really are, in hopes that the Republicans are soundly renounced by a more intelligent electorate in the next election. The lesson – Never interrupt your adversaries when they are making mistakes.

          I’m gonna get prepared to be a grandfather in April.

          OK. It’s New Years Eve 2007. They are getting ready for the “Ball Drop”. YUK! I am seventy years old. Nobody my age thinks that balls dropping is funny.

          It’s now mid January and I have to let this go and quit writing.