Get Down Mr. President

         
           There's a game called Get Down Mr. President. Here are the rules:
           It's played in a group. You have to pay attention. And if someone cups their ear and pretends to be listening to an ear piece, like a secret service agent, you need to cup your ear and do the same. The last person to figure it out and cup their ear gets tackled to the ground while the others yell, "get down Mr. President!"

Camarillo

         
           My friend Dora was a volunteer at Camarillo State Mental Hospital when she was a teenager. It was a summer job she and a friend signed up for. 
           Dora is the youngest of six children. She has five sisters and one brother. Her sisters never invited her to any of the parties they went to, and were seldom nice to her. Until one day they invited her to see a band play at the local bowling alley. Dora was excited to finally be included.
            Things were going well. Dora dressed up for the occasion and for the first time in her life she felt like a grown up. She was talking to boys and making friends when a bus pulled into the parking lot. A group of kids got out and marched into the bowling alley. The kids were making a racket. It was a grand entrance that you couldn't help but notice.
           Hiiiii Dorrra! one of the kids said.
           Hiiiii Dorrra! said another.
           They were the special needs kids from Camarillo that Dora had been working with. At first Dora pretended not to know them. She was trying to be cool around her new friends. But one after another they came up to her and said hello. Hiiiii Dorrra!
         
           

Cats And The Good Life

           
            I wonder how you get reincarnated into a house cat with a good owner? Do you have to volunteer at the Salvation Army, or work for Greenpeace? Feral cats, in my opinion, are more than likely ex-CEOs of Fortune Five-Hundred companies. As cats go, they drew a bad straw. They have to hunt for their food, duke it out with other cats, watch out for coyotes. It's a lot like being a CEO, but without the food service.
            House cats on the other hand get food service, maid service, daily massages, playtime when they want it, and plenty of naps with comfortable bedding. They can also walk into their masters' bedroom while they're having sex and pretend not to know what's going on. Dogs can do that too, but dogs are more obvious, you know they're up to something when they do it. Cats look like they made a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in the bedroom by mistake.
            Well hopefully there's no such thing as reincarnation and I go straight to heaven when I die, but man ...
           
           
            

How Are You Doing?

           
            It never fails. Whenever I'm asked "how are you doing, or, how've you been?" My brain finds a way to seize up on me. I don't think I've ever answered that question to my satisfaction. I rarely think about how I've been, so when I'm asked, I'm caught off guard. And how you answer a question like that can have an effect on a relationship.
            If I played golf it would be easy. "I've been playing a lot of golf." But I don't play golf, and to condense my life into a few words is not realistic. But I try. "Ah, I've been pretty good, I'm writing songs and working on my book."
            But this answer leaves me feeling empty inside. I leave out the juicy parts, the details of my life. I don't tell anybody that I've rewritten my book hundreds of times, or that sometimes writing a song can take months. They don't always take months, but sometimes they do. And when I'm finished writing a song, I may or may not even use it.
            A part of me wants to carry a scroll with the particulars of my life. When somebody asks me what have I been up to, I could reach for my scroll and read it top to bottom without having to think about it. But that will never happen. I'm not going to carry a scroll. That's just plain silly.
            So instead, I'm going to try to be more honest about it when I'm asked how I'm doing.
           "I wish I could explain it to you, but it's not easy."

The Rebuild

            
            My car conked out on me. I had it towed to a mechanic that I'd never used before. I'd talked to him once prior and I had a good feeling about him, but when he told me how much it was going to cost to fix I had a immediate reaction to it.
            "That sounds high." I said.
            "I know," was his response. 
            I have an older car, and the parts are hard to find. In this case I needed a distributor. I asked the mechanic if I could find the part myself. He agreed to it.
            I found the part for less money on the internet, but something felt funny about buying it on the internet. I wasn't sure what the exact part was, and I didn't want to buy it blind. I decided to check with a neighborhood Latino shop that did me right once before. They deal with starters and alternators, but I thought I'd ask if they had distributors. The man at the counter said no. But then he added, Yoonikee.
            Yoonikee?
            He wrote down a number on a scrap piece of paper and sent me on my way. I called Yoonikee. He said he could rebuild it at a real fair price, half of what the mechanic was going to charge me. I picked up the distributor from the mechanic and took it to Yoonikee's. It turned out Yoonikee is Unique. The man at the counter had his doubts about rebuilding it. He made a phone call and talked to Unique and told him I was waiting for him.
            When Unique walked in he seemed to circle around the distributor and eye me at the seem time. He picked up the distributor and examined it closely. He turned to the man at the counter and said a few words in Spanish. He was still holding the distributor in his hand. I was getting a sinking feeling, like he wasn't going to be able to fix it. The the man behind the counter translated for Unique, "It's going to be a little more, the parts are hard to find"
            Then Unique spoke to me in broken English. "I've been doing this for forty years. I gave you a good price." I nodded my head in agreement. Unique was wearing a Dodgers cap. He had small eyes, and a big heart. I felt like the cosmos had cradled me in its arms. 

The Pine Tree Dropped Its Seeds

           
            I'm a compulsive weather watcher. I like to look at satellite pictures from the National Weather Service. I'll check the site two or three times a day to see what the clouds are doing in the Pacfic. My hope is that it will rain someday. But I'm constantly fooled. I've been let down so many times, I'm beginning to resent Oregon.
            A curious thing happened the other night. I was awoken from a deep sleep by the sound of pine nuts falling on my deck. The pine tree that abuts my cabin is dropping seeds. The seeds look like, and are about the same size as Milk Duds. I thought it was odd that the tree would be dropping seeds without the prospect of rain. At least that's what the experts were saying. No rain. But when I looked at the satellite picture it looked like rain to me.
            Does the pine tree know something about the weather that scholarly man does not? As it turned out, it rained the following day despite the forecast. Just lightly, but it rained. My assumption was, yes, the pine tree does know more about the weather than scholarly man. Of course it could be coincidental. But it's cloudy now and the forecast says clear days. The satellite picture says rain to me, and the pine tree dropped more seeds ... I'm betting on the pine tree.
             Days later: It never rained. The storm conked out. Lesson: Never bet on a pine tree when it comes to predicting the weather. 

Click-on Breasts

     
          Here's a question: Why is it acceptable to be deceptive on the Internet? It seems like if a website is not trying to trick you, they're not putting in the work. I think most people have come to accept this as normal. Or they don't even think about it as depraved.
          I'm not saying the Internet should have rules or anything like that. I'm just saying I'm aware of how its affecting my life. I can't even click on a photo of a nice pair of tits anymore. It's disgusting. I'm led down a rabbit hole to a world of horrifying faces and tummy tucks. It's just not right. Nobody asked me if it was okay. Would you like to see our horrible world? No, they just put their foot on the gas and blammo! I'm looking at cosmetic surgery disasters. It's hostage taking that's what it is. And it ain't right.