leeshure time of buddy don: grate musick at bb king's

yeterdy evenin me n miz bd had tickets to see the john hammond quartet at bb king's blues club n grill, witch the mane reason we know innythang bout john hammond is on a counta miz bds bruther bein a huge fan. he writ miz bd a note lettin her know bout the eevent n tellin her how she orta git toot, witch she gut them tickets rite away ...



we walked down to 42nd street, whar thangs is always happenin, witch ye kin see thangs wuz jumpin outside that thar club ...



we wuz seated quick a nuff, but the food servus wuz the wurst we ever had. our ontrays dint git thar till tuther folks at our table had dun et thars, witch we had orderd furst. then whenever that food finely cum, twuz cold.

but that one negative wuz moren made up fer by the musick ... startin with john hammond, a blues master who kin do ye rite with his guitar pickin, whuther lectrick ...



acoostick ...



or slide ...



he could also blow a purty rightchuss harmonica ...



but whut we dint egg speck wuz how marcia ball wood blow everbidy away. i never herd such piano pickin in all my born days ...



n whut a band she had, startin with this kid n his magick telecaster ...



n this sax player ...



ye kin see the hole gallery of pitchers here (i fergut to turn sum of em rite side up!)

we couldnt stay fer the hole show, but ifn i ever git the chants to see marcia ball agin, i will stay till the wee small hours. aint never herd nuthin so amazin as her band n singin.

dont tell miz bd, but i dun been to the itunes store this mornin n will be skippin to wurk to her musick on 4 hours sleep.

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

gardens of buddy don: aerogardens

whenever i wuz livin in tennessee i lacked to make a garden. since i been livin up here in the ny metro area, thay aint been no whars to do that. taint lack we dont have no plants, witch we gut over 60 of em a'growin lack crazy in our apartment on a counta havin a 10 foot by 12 foot winder facin south.

but i have been missin a garden with thangs ye kin eat.

so fer chrismus, loretta n paddy gut us one of them aerogardens, witch miz bd planted it with goremay erbs: mint, parsley, italian basel, purpull basel, chives, dill n cilantro. since twuz so obveeus how much i lacked it, whenever it cum my birthdy, she gut me a nuthern, witch we planted thatn with salad greens.

heres a pitcher of them erbs after jes two weeks:



but as ye kin see by the nex pitcher, tuck ten days later, they wuz jes a'gittin started (we dun been eatin sum of that thar basel):



heres them thar salad greens after jes 12 days:



(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

happy ness of buddy don: them Colts!

i am a tired but verr happy man this mornin on a counta them colts finely makin it into the superbowl. ever since peyton manning deecided he wood return fer his senior year of collidge, i been a fan of his. i am now even a fan of them colts, witch the mos i ever dun wuz drive thru indianapolis one time n i dint much keer fer the way reggie miller made them knicks look foolish (back befor the knicks showed patrick ewing the door, back, that is, when i could git myself to keer much fer them knicks).

but i have been a huge fan of tharn ever since they tuck peyton fer the qb.

las nite he give us ever thang innybidy could ever wont of a qb n then sum.

normally me n miz bd sleeps with the chickens, as they say, gittin into bed by no latern nine pee em, but i had to stay up to watch the game on a counta how could innybidy turn away frum it? twuz the best game of the post season so fer.

no more questchuns of monkees on the back.

no more talk of peyton bein grate but chokin when thangs is on the line.

no more talk of legacy.

jes that we seen one of the verr best qbs in the histry of the game.

now ifn only the magick kin keep up long a nuff to beat them bears, witch i lack them purty good as well.

n aint it grate that ye git not one but two black hed coaches fer the furst time in a superbowl?

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

reedoosed mizry of buddy don: that thar depakote

reglar readers of this here blog knows bout my trubles with migraines but thangs gut much better once i give in to the doctor who sed i should be takin depakote. i dint wonta doot on a counta them side effecks -- possibull permanent liver damage, weight gain, dull hed n other syptums ye mite eggspeck frum a drug that stops epileptick fits n keeps bi polar folk evened out n deepressd folk happy -- but i finely deecided twuz better to risk em side effecks than give up on life. one of them docters ackshly sugjested i ackcep long term disbility.

so i caint cumplain much. but thays one thang. we jes had one of them dredfull weather changes that has always caused migraines fer me in the past. n true a nuff, i woke up that last cuple nites with them awfull feelins. only differnts is i gut back to sleep n kin wurk today.

but as miz bd sez to me, i am havin a migraine on depakote. means i aint near a hunnert% but i kin wurk. i am thankfull fer the reedoosed mizry but wish i could thank a lil strater n rite sumthin uther than this.

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

pomes of buddy don: Our Long National Nightmare of Sacrifice

Our Long National Nightmare of Sacrifice

He said we 'sacrifice our peace of mind
When we see those terrible images'
All over TV during dinner time –
The pain of watching deadly scrimmages!

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

pomes of buddy don: Unleashed Forces

Unleashed Forces

At last he can admit mistakes were made
(But only stated in the passive voice) –
Disproved are all the reasons to invade,
But now we're stuck there, left with no good choice.

For if we leave the consequences are
Most terrible for us to contemplate –
The violence then would be, as now, bizarre,
For we've upset a hornet's nest of hate.

And if we stay how many more must die
To regain the security we lost
When we invaded based upon the lie
That claimed we could win this with little cost?

In fact, Iraq was just a box, much like Pandora's was –
We opened it and unleashed forces that will never pause.

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

readin of buddy don: dont read thisn!

i warn ye: dont read thisn. ifn ye start it, dont finish. ye shorely dont wonta brake yer silents neethur, rite?

tiz shamefull we gut to go thru this overn over agin. i hope ye had a grate day 'on' yesterdy.

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

quick note of buddy don: pomes

i been trine to git thru all my ole posts sos i kin putt labels on em, witch i started out wurkin on pomes. thang is, i dint have no idee how minny of em i had writ up to now. i still aint shore on a counta i gut a ways to go ere i git am all labeled, but at the moment, i dun labeled 63 of em.

wow! makes me wunder, when did all that happen?

i wake up ever day hopin to rite the nex chaptur, but taint as easy as it orta be. so jes to putt sumthin up fer the day, i git to makin rimes in my hed n nex thang ye know i am cunsidderin whuther to use my favert form, the shakespeare style sonnet. mos days i figger i jes tuck the easy way out. but whenever i gut reddy to figger whut to rite today, i noticed the list of labels n how minny posts thay wuz fer each of em, witch whut amazed me wuz how thays a slew of em n i know i aint gut em all labeled.

that putts me in mind of a feller i used to know in grad skool. he wuz one of the bes n funniest riteres i ever new, witch he wuz in the group i used to rite bout. innywho, he finely gut shed of grad skool n never writ a nuther story that i heard tell of. seems lack he could only rite stories whenever he wuz shirkin his other duties.

thats kindly how i feel bout them pomes (not that theys near as good as his stories): i felt lack i wuz shirkin my duties whenever i writ em, but now seems lack they are well wurth the effort that went into em. ifn ye click here ye kin see whut i mean, least in quanty if not qualty.

[i jes tested it n wuz sprized that the page that lodes dont give ye all them pomes, but ye kin git a purty good samplin.]

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

pomes of buddy don: Let's Whistle!

Let's Whistle!

I wouldn't send enough troops
When enough troops would have mattered –
Shinseki's guess was wildly off the mark –
Perhaps mistakes were made – oops! –
And the war plan has been tattered –
Let's send more troops and whistle in the dark!

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

pomes of buddy don: The Right Thing

The Right Thing

We did the right thing in Afghanistan –
Disturbed the breeding ground for terrorists –
For when our forces whipped the Taliban,
They put the keys to justice in our fists.

It seemed that any day we'd get our man
And bring him in, whether dead or alive,
To face the justice for what he began,
To show the world we'd never lose our drive.

How must it have emboldened his vile base
To see how easily he could escape
The greatest power on the earth's great face
To gloat and taunt us with video tape!

We did not see it through, no, we turned back
To seek him where he wasn't, in Iraq!

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

pinions of buddy don: questchuns bout thangs that dont make no sense

i figger i owe it to that feller who calls his self 'the author' to prove that i aint dead, so here goes sum thangs that dont make no sense to me:

• we dun been tole overn over agin that ifn we wuz to leave iraq, twood embolden them terrists: aint them terrists bold alreddy?
• why wudnt victry deeclared after we prooved agin whut them united nayshuns investigaytors wuz proovin, that saddam dint have no wmd?
• we have been tole that ifn we wuz to leave iraq, twood turn it over to al qaeda, witch ye gut to wunder wuz al qaeda in iraq befor the invayshun??
• since al qaeda wudnt in iraq befor the invayshun, how did al qaeda git thar foothold in iraq?
• did the chaos frum the war let al qaeda into iraq?
• wuz lies whut gut us into iraq?
• ifn ye kill one terrst by invayshun of a nuther cuntry whar thay wudnt no wmd nor no al qaeda neethur, how minny reglar folks deecide to join the terrsts? is it zero? one? more than one?
• why do folks keep wontin to join up with terrsts?
• how did escalayshun a surge wurk back in our other nayshunull nightmare uh, that is, quagmire make that, great forn pallsy adventchur effort to free the people of vietnam n keep them dominoes frum fallin n turnin us all into communists?
• whut ever happend to 'Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far'?
• is thay a penalty fer gloatin in a loud blustery voice n then showin the worl that yer big stick is broke?
• is it hubris or ignorunts that makes inny cuntry thank it kin fix this place?

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

innerduckshuns of buddy don: the author

i been promissin a feller i wood innerduce im n let im have a say, witch he holds to the mistuck bleef that he runs thangs here. he claims he is the author of this here blog, witch that dont hardly make no cents on a counta tiz clear i have dun writ everthang thats yet been writ on this here blog, ceptn them thangs i quoted.

but hes a verr insistent feller, witch we kin call im stubb on a counta hes so stubborn he wood argue with a fence post n blame it fer not upholdin fer itself. i am sick of his arguin over the keybird, so without futher do-do, here he is, the author:

One of the many odd things about my creation of buddy don duncan, a vehicle I created in order to tell a long story, is how he became an almost independent "person." My original plan was to work out his use of the hillbilly dialect I grew up around. I wanted to make sure it had a fairly consistent grammar and spelling.

My plan was not to do scholarship, to attempt to claim I could speak for all speakers of the dialect. As far as I can tell, there are regional differences between New River and Wartburg, much more between Lake City (once known as Coal Creek) and Oak Ridge. So my plan was simply to codify as well as I could the form of speech used by my family when they gathered for events such as Thanksgiving and Christmas. No matter what the context of the family's gathering, the high point was the telling of tales from the family history.

Though my grandparents' generation and my father's were educated, when it came time to tell tales, they always slipped into the folksy dialect of the hills. In some cases, this was deliberate, but there were several non-standard usages that were believed to be correct: Vick's Vapor Rub was always called "Vicks Save," meaning "Vicks Salve" with "salve" pronounced as "Save." As a sickly child, I believed that it was something meant to "save" the patient, and it helped me breathe through many sick nights. That's a small example, but there were many: "Vie-eenna" sausages, "putt" for "put," "tuck" for "took," "skillet" for "pan," "vittles" for "food," "uphold for yourself" for "defend your position," use of double-negatives to increase the degree of negativity (not to negate it) among others.

When I studied the philosophy of language in West Germany in the 1970s, I learned that English usage in the mountains of East Tennessee more closely resembles that of the English used during Shakespeare's time than English usage anywhere else in the world. Because of its isolation, East Tennessee's moutain communities continued such usage long past the time that English elsewhere in America was becoming more homogenized.

Once I began practicing this dialect using buddy don as my mouthpiece, I was surprised to find I'd begun a novel. I'd originally planned the writing of such a novel, but I always thought of it as something I would turn to someday. My habit of writing was well-established, and I figured once I had a better handle on life and truth and beauty, I would be able to take the raw material of my life and the stories I learned from other people and the stories from their lives and mix them all into a huge cauldron of the life and times of our country during the latter quarter of the 20th century.

But instead, the novel was what happened to me while I was busy practicing the language of the novel I was someday planning to write: the novel you write is what happens to you while you're busy making plans to write a different novel.

Once the novel broke out, it amazed me, the author, as much as it could have amazed anyone else. A lot of that had to do with the dialect I hoped to have buddy don use to tell his tale.

I have been fortunate enough in my life to learn two languages in addition to English: German and Spanish. I learned the former the "proper" way by studying at the university and then spending time living in a German-speaking country. I learned the latter the better way (but not "proper" way, according to language experts at universities) by meeting someone who spoke Spanish and learning it by using it as often as possible.

In each case, as I did so, I began to feel as if I had dug new deep ruts in my mind, ruts where German is spoken and where Spanish is spoken, both of them off the beaten track of English. When I say ruts, I am referring to the kind of ruts that develop in the backwoods, where there are deep tire tracks for the road and it's hard to drive anywhere but in the ruts. Once in the rut of Spanish, it's very difficult to steer the verbal vehicle out of the Spanish rut to speak German: all of the common terms want to come out in Spanish.

What most amazed me from this exercise was that I discovered a rut for buddy don's dialect that was as deep as any I'd dug for either of the non-English languages I had learned (not mastered, but I can "uphold for myself" in each of them fairly well).

And that led to a different and very pleasant surprise: writing as buddy don, using the rut I'd run through the wilderness of my creative mind to move my story along, led to better writing. When writing as buddy don, I don't have have the luxury of over-explaining things, which is a tendency I fight unsuccessfully in my usual writing.

It got to the point that I almost felt – Strike that, I should be more honest: I almost feel as if buddy don is a separate creature from me. My wife (buddy don's "miz bd") and I often speculate about what buddy don will write on a given morning.

But I also discovered more than that. Through the vehicle of buddy don and his dialect rut, I found myself reliving much of my life, looking at it as if through the eyes of a stranger, even though I am myself that stranger, or at least his "creator" or "author." Still, it has led to a lot of work on myself and re-evaluation of what I have done with my life and what I believe.

In addition, it's taken its toll in health matters. I haven't written a chapter on life n pinions of buddy don, hillbilly since life of buddy don, chaptur 145: puzzles of the hart. The day after posting that chapter I got a migraine attack and remained under its spell for 17 days. That led to a period of two and a half months of short-term disability, during which some of my doctors suggested I face reality and prepare to accept long-term disability. (I am much too young to consider that!)

But I have since found myself a little gun shy about picking up the story again. I have written the final chapter of the entire thing, have it all "outlined" in my mind, know what I have left to do with the novel, but I greatly fear the possibility that messing with such topics as honestly as I have been trying to do via the voice of buddy don, I am risking further misery. I truly don't know if there is a relation between my writing and my migraines, but every time I prepare to write the next chapter, I find myself flinching, as if to avoid the blow I know is likely to follow.

Despite that, I know I have to continue if I am to do what I am on this earth to do (insofar as any of us can know what we are here to accomplish, I know that writing this huge novel is part of my reason for being). It would be easy if I had lived the life of a saint, but I haven't even come close to that. The next chapters begin taking me through a long and shameful part of my life, which though fictionalized and changed to make a better story, to get closer to "truth" than I believe "non-fiction" can do, will still be hard for me to confront as honestly as I need to do to reach my goal for this work.

In addition to that, as the story gets closer to the present (and it's still 24 years in the past at the moment), more and more of the characters can be mistaken by readers for historical people. I am taking the grist of history and using the mill of creativity to make something new. Any resemlance to the originals is pure luck on my part, if not lack of talent or just lazy writing. Even so, some of the people I know might mot realize what I am doing and want to "correct the record," as it were. But there is no record to correct: I am not trying to record the history of my world but to create a new world to illustrate the truths and morals that do not come from an accurate accounting of the non-fictional record.

So there are many risks involved with writing the next chapter, and for that reason, it has been almost a year since I attempted one (the draft of the last being completed on January 27, 2006). Despite those risks, for me the greater risks are in not completing what I have begun, in not having the courage to face all my demons, living and dead, real and imagined, threats to personal health or not.

To do that, I have to be able to quit chasing the will o'the wisp of politics. The little poems I write on topical subjects have very temporary worth, going out of date almost as soon as they are written. Commentary on politics only gives the amen chorus what they need to continue shouting "Amen!" But I truly do not believe anyone has a change of belief or viewpoint on the basis of reading what buddy don duncan has to say about any issue.

Enough of that! I hope from now on to devote myself to that, giving myself days off to do politics and such since I can't write a chapter every single day. But I must get back to writing that. I'm about to be on the planet for the 55th time it has circled the sun since I was born: there is no time to waste!

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

quick note of buddy don: cold or flu?

i wuz feelin good bout myself on a counta miz bd had a cold all thru the new years hallday n i wuznt the lease bit sick. but it dint last. i started gittin it nite befor last n couldnt sleep last nite much atall. so i wont be wurkin n lackly wont blog no more today neither.

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

pomes of buddy don: Three Thousand Dead!

Three thousand dead!

Though Iraq did not attack us
And old Europe would not back us
And no matter how they whack us
We will win unless we leave!

Three thousand dead!

It's a number, not a comma,
Though not worthy of such drama
As we know thousands of mamas
Have already learned to grieve.

Three thousand dead!

Absolutely we are winning –
For we still control the spinning –
And just need an extra inning
To resolve the mystery!

Three thousand dead!

Yet we know this higher number
Doesn't mean that we have blunder'd –
All will see the great good wonder
When we rewrite history

Three thousand dead!

All must praise their sacrifice!
We shun the ISG's advice,
Suggestions that, to be concise,
Would lead us to defeat

Three thousand dead!

We can't know how many more
We'll have to send to die before
Too many dead can't be ignored
And the Democrats retreat!

Three thousand dead!
Three thousand dead!
Three thousand dead!

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

pitchers tuck by buddy don: killer takes a lil stroll

killer the blue-clawed crayfish (crawdad) has dun molted agin. fer most of a week he aint been out, witch they hides when thar shells is soft n thar defentsless. when he finely cum out i tuck a few pitchers.

tiz hard to catch im on a counta he lacks to keep hid n when he duz cum out he jes wont sit still ...



heres a few more ...







(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

pitchers tuck by buddy don: fuzzy focus

i been practissin usin longer eggspozure times to git that feelin of movement. yesterdy mornin i tuck the camera with me n wuz sprized by whut i gut. befor i git into that, heres sum pitchers that shows the moshun i wuz talkin bout ...





but then a patturn strated to eemerge ...

homeless in man hattan:



homeless in man hattan:



homeless in man hattan:



or homeless in man hattan, witch ye caint see this pore woman verr well, but she wuz a sad site to see, lookin as if she had dun lost everthang n hoped to find it in the cracks of the sidewalk:



corse, tiz hard to tell sumtimes who is a'wurkin harder, the deelivery man or the homeless man. notiss the similarties in the final two pitchers fer today, startin with the deelivery man:



ifn ye click on thisn of this here hardwurkin homeless feller, twill take ye to the hole gallery ...



(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

quick note of buddy don: now he tells us

ifn he wuz a patriot n not a partisan, then mr ford wooda made this publick whenever he wuz furst thankin it:

In a four-hour conversation at his house in Beaver Creek, Colo., Ford "very strongly" disagreed with the current president's justifications for invading Iraq and said he would have pushed alternatives, such as sanctions, much more vigorously. In the tape-recorded interview, Ford was critical not only of Bush but also of Vice President Cheney -- Ford's White House chief of staff -- and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as Ford's chief of staff and then his Pentagon chief.

"Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction," Ford said. "And now, I've never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do."

he coulda told folks bout this as well:

"Well, I can understand the theory of wanting to free people," Ford said, referring to Bush's assertion that the United States has a "duty to free people." But the former president said he was skeptical "whether you can detach that from the obligation number one, of what's in our national interest." He added: "And I just don't think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security."

not that mr bush wood listen to nobidy that wudnt alreddy sayin whut he wonts to here, witch how kin we send this man a message? we march by the hunderds of thousunds, vote as strongly as we kin to tell im we dont wonta pore more gasoline on the iraqi fire, n all he kin say is surge, even tho whut he proposin is more lack a spurt than a surge. corse, a real surge wood take troops n at this point that wood take a draft (or a change of hart by all them 101st keyboarders who support the war in thar pjs -- magine the surge we wood have ifn they all volunteerd!?!).

ye mite remember (or mayhap ye dun red about) whut happend durin the last war we escalated.

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

critters of buddy don: them crawdads

i wish i could show ye sum pitchers of them crawdads, witch they dun gut tharself into sum verr innerestin bizness n fer that reason, they wont hardly cum out atall.

it all started nigh onto a munth ago whenever miz tenna (we used to call her onetenna since she only had one antenna whenever we gut her), whenever miz tenna gut to whar she woodnt hardly cum out n whenever she dun it, she kep her tail jes as titely rolled up as inny rolly polly bug ye ever seen.

so we googled em up online to find out whut could be a'goin on. this site deescribes sum of thar beehavyer.

after we red that, we knew miz tenna wuz holdin a tail full of eggs at the verr lease. whut we dont know is whuther she will foller the same patturns of them wild crayfish, witch 'crayfish' is whut sum folks calls crawdads.

meanwhile, killer dun went n hid fer the longest on a counta how he wuz moltin agin. he aint gut hard a nuff to feel safe cummin out, witch thats why i caint git no pitcher of im. but no matter whut, it should be verr innerestin to see ifn inny of them baby crawdads makes it.

a while back one of my bes friens on all them innernets, tennessee jed, ast a questchun that i meant to anser but never gut to, witch he wonted to know whut them crawdads eats. best we kin tell, thar happy to eat jes purt near everthang they kin git thar claws n ten lil feet onto, startin with the exo-skelton they leave behind whenever they molt. (witch that brangs up this questchun fer inny of y'uns thats flossofers: ifn ye eat a part of yer own body that ye molted offn yerself, duz that mean yer a cannibull?)

killer has been trine lack nobidys bizness to catch im one of them cichlids sos he could eat one of them n far as i kin tell, he lacks eatin live fish betten innythang, problem bein thar so hard to catch. they eat food rite offn his claws sumtimes n he still caint catch em.

them crawdads also makes the best scavengers i ever seen in a tank. they will go thru them pebbles one by one fer as long as it takes, cleanin up innythang they kin git no matter how old or rotten tiz.

at lease one of yall mite catch whut i mean by this: them crawdads is the vultchurs of the tank ... n we luv em fer that.

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

celebrayshuns of buddy don: chrismus at paddy n jessicas

yesterdy we rapped up all our presents n gut a cab to cum git us n take us over to man hattan, witch this year chrismus wuz at paddy n lorettas. twuz a wunderfull event.

jack n vaclav wuz thar n friens of paddy n sallie cum, a feller frum philly name of franklin n a cuple thats been together ferever, zaneta frum the czech republick n ajani frum nigeria. paddy n loretta had dun tharself proud with them vittles, ham n turkey n dressin n yew name it. i baked up a cuple apple pies to brang along, n vaclav dun his magick with them amazin czech cookies.

heres ye a lil pitcher of all the loot, ere twuz unrapped, witch thay wuz more later, but i wuz eatin by then n couldnt operate the camera:



(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

pitchers tuck by buddy don: happy halldays!

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

pitchers tuck by buddy don: tiz the season

to me it seems lack xmas has turnt into one of the mos pagan of all offishull halldays: ye gut yer tree worship frum them druids n yer santas, witch everbidy lacks to git into that ack, but they aint gut nuthin to do with the jesus in the bible fer as i kin see. tiz a puzzle how them that claims to foller jesus squares the materialism of xmas with jesus sayin this:

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

the two idees dont hardly seem to fit. meanwhile, heres santa his ownself, perusin the daily news while waitin fer a train ...



as fer teachin yer children, as the song sez, ye kin see a good mix of commershillisum n santa on this lil gurls hed (ifn ye caint read it, whut it sez is 'commerce bank')...



(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

pomes of buddy don: For Want of Truth

For Want of Truth

For want of truth
The plan was botched –
For want of a plan
The museum was robbed –
For want of the museum's protection
The culture was dissed –
For want of cultural respect
Trust was lost –
For want of trust
Security was lost –
For want of security
The hearts and minds of the people were lost –
For want of the hearts and minds of the people
The chance for peace was lost –
For want of honesty about the lost peace
More troops were lost –
For want of a reason for more troops to die
Faith in the war was lost –
For want of faith in the war
The war was lost –
For want of honesty about the lost war
More troops were lost –
More terrorists created –
Our reputation tarnished –
And our safety threatened for at least a generation –
And all for want of truth.

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

pitchers tuck by buddy don: good mornin!

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pomes of buddy don: The Force of Price

The Force of Pride

The Bible says that pride precedes a fall,
And hubris is, of all the tragic flaws,
The one most likely to lose once for all
The chance of victory for any cause.

So what could come of pride in our great might –
Our military industrial strength –
But proof that force alone does not make right
Nor win the hearts and minds held at arm's length?

For that task we would need humility
Enough to ask if we might have been wrong
To think brawn could enforce stability
Upon a land where we do not belong.

How long will our pride force us to slog on
Long after hope of victory is gone?

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

nuther early start of buddy don: power agenda take 2

fer the most part, i luv publick transportayshun. i pay $73 a munth fer my bus pass n that takes keer of purt near all the transport costs i ever have, ceptn ifn we rent a car to go on a vacayshun.

but thays times when ye feel lack yer a hostage. yesterdy i wonted to ketch the 6:48 or the 7:00 or the 7:10 or the 7:20, but no bus cum till 7:25, n then twuz full to the brim with folk. i squeezed into the sardine can n rode to wurk standin up, gittin thar slow lack on a counta thay had been a acksident blockin traffick.

i wonted to blame publick transit, but fack wuz, everbidy wuz stuck on this side of the hudson till they gut the acksident cleard up. ifn i hadda had a car, i wooda been stuck in it in sted of the bus.

so i am a'gone leave out early agin today sos i kin do my power agenda.

btw, i menchund bout yesterdy bein comp day at goodbank whar i wurk. twuz a site to see. as generly happens, them that gits the most also gits the most upset (far as i could tell, n my evidents is all aneckdotal). sum of em even big winners thats made plans to splain that they wuz dun rong n needs more.

i dint have no cumplaints on a counta tiz a blessin to have a job at all after bein sick so much this year lack i wuz. my overall comp, as they say, went down frum last year, but i still aint gut no cumplaint. fack is, i wuz sprized to git innythang on a counta how i wudnt eggspeckin nuthin.

even so, i know fer a fack that thays a slew of bankers n such who wooda been insulted by a bonus that wuz 100 times as much n thays lackly sum that gut 1000 times as much.

whut makes me wonta laff sumtimes is how sum of them folks is still sad n feelin putt out, even to the point of badmouthin thar firm.

tiz proof that thay aint no such thang as a nuff when ye are trine to store up riches.

durin sum of them migraines i sufferd this year, i real eyesed that the true treasures in life cum frum the birthdy presents everone of us gut on our verr furst birthdy: hands, fangers, eyes, heart, feet, ears, waterproof skin, yew name it. thems blessins ye caint buy, not even with the best bonus inny banker ever gut. n we gut em fer free along with the luv of our own mothers n fathers.

how kin ye beat that?

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early days of buddy don:

a while back i writ bout a habit i have at wurk, witch i putt out a daily agenda n give a daily dollar to whoever wins on a given day. this mornin i am havin whut i call 'power agenda' on a counta the prizes is bigger ($13 fer furst, $7 fer secunt, n $5 fer thurd, given everbidy a chants to win ifn they win power agenda) n tiz sorta lack them power lottos they have. thonly reason i am a'ritin this now is to splain why i gut to leave out early this mornin sos i kin git it ready.

it should be a fun way fer folks to spend whut they calls 'comp day' in the wall street bizness, witch thats the day everbidy gits thar 'numbers,' witch that means they find out whut thar year end bonus is a'gone be.

once them numbers starts a'cummin out, thay aint hardly nobidy that wonts to wurk. in sted, everbidy sits round talkin bout how bad they wuz dun or whutever on a counta nobidy wonts to add mitt they gut em a good bonus on a counta thays otherns that dont git nuthin.

i am one of the luckier ones, tho, since i gut the best bonus ye could possibly have, the luv of my life in miz bd, my health fer the moment, n a good job even tho i been sick more this year than i ever wuz in life befor. fer me, a zero bonus is a positiv thang on a counta i coulda been putt on long-term disabilty or even putt out on the street, but goodbank whar i wurk aint lack a lot of them other banks or corporayshuns.

tiz a nuther proof that god cuntinues to bless the undeservin.

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

pomes of buddy don: We Want a Land

We Want a Land

There were no weapons of mass destruction –
Just as there were no al qaeda links –
There was no security for reconstruction –
Iraq was a puzzle worthy of the sphinx.

We dreamed Iraq would be a great beacon –
Freedom, Democracy, Liberty, too –
A land whose bright example would weaken
The hands of the terrorists we pursue.

But our noble goals have been restated –
We now want Iraq to defend itself –
To get its violent factions sedated –
To use its oil to build fiscal health.

We want a land that can do, unaided,
Things it could do before we invaded.

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

pallgies of buddy don: caint thank of nuthin to blog bout

tiz one of them mornins whar i caint git started. caint say whut tiz, tho thays a temptayshun to blame that depakote i been a'takin. since i started it nigh onto two munths ago, i have putt on 13 pounds. seems lack my stumach has dun turnt into a bottomless pit. sum folks tells me thats ok on a counta me bein on the thin side to begin with, but it still dont sit rite with me. this mornin i couldnt even button my shirt collar.

tiz simple to fix: quit eatin so much. but i half to add mitt, tiz grate when everthang tastes so good.

i aint cumplainin. ifn that stuff keeps them migraines away, witch they been a'doin that even when i have had sum tuff trigger events n thought i wuz halfway thar, well, ifn it duz keep em away, then i will ackcept the weight, even ifn i druther not have it.

mayhap tomorrow thangs will cum out rhymin agin!

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pitchers tuck by buddy don: lucky acksidents

i aint fallin fer the thang i found on blogger this mornin, witch it claims thays a new vershun of blogger that i am spozed to use. thonly thang thats changin is i half to login usin my google account, witch they make the ass sumpshun that i have one.

mayhap in the mornin i will try that. meanwhile, heres sum pitchers i tuck. ever one of em has sumthin ye could say is rong, manely on a counta havin too lil lite or havin em no in focus, but i kindly lack how they cum out ...









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evenin fun of buddy don: alvin ailey!

last nite i wuz one of minny folk frum goodbank that wuz invited to see the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, witch i gut sum pitchers of the recepshun they had fer the lucky ones at goodbank that gut tickets.



they had free wine n good vittles to snack on whilst we wuz waitin fer the show to begin ...



fer our innertainmint, they had em a three-piece band playin jazz standards ...



as ye mite could guess, thay wuz more beeyootifull people thar than ye could shake a stick at ...







thang is, the show wuz even better, witch ye wudnt allowd to take no pitchers in that thar theeater, but twuz amazin, cunsistin of three pieces name of Memoria, The River and Revelations

now i half to add mitt i aint no big fan of modurn dance. i caint hardly tell whut tiz all about most of the time, but these three thangs wuz so amazin i couldnt hardly bleeve they wuz over. i kep havin to check my watch to see did 30 mints really pass by whilst i wuz in a dance trance?

almos befor i knew it, twuz over.

ifn ever ye git the chants to see alvin ailey, git yerself thar! ye wont regret it.

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

pinions of buddy don: look, up in the sky! it's a bird! it's a plane! it's ...

Al qaeda, man!

Faster than the spread of Communism!

More powerful than Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, The Soviet Union and Communist Red China ... combined!

Able to topple tall buildings with a single plot!

It's a man!

It's a movement!

It's al qaeda, man!

Yes, it's al qaeda, man, strange islamofascists from another culture who came to the civilized world with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal nation states.

Al qaeda, man, who can change the course of mighty civilizations, bend western constitutions with their bare threats, and who, disguised as simple desert peasants or mild-mannered goat herders in tiny, barren wildernesses scattered throughout the middle east and the stans (Tajikistan, Dagestan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Etceterastan), fight a never-ending battle against truth, justice and the American way!

It is an enemy of such power that the only chance to save our consitution is to destroy it by removing the rights that make it possible for al qaeda, man, to bring down our government, destroy our way of life, and establish a new caliphate over the entire earth.

They may appear to be little more than a rag tag group of criminals, but in fact, al qaeda, man, comprise the most powerful enemy the United States of America has ever faced!!

How do we know this?

Simple:

• Never before has an enemy forced us to give up our habeus corpus rights!


• Never before has an enemy forced us to give up any suspect's right to be considered innocent until proven guilty (now such evil terrorist suspects can be tortured subject to aggressive interogation techniques including solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, enforced constraint in stress positions, administration of psychedelic drugs, and public vilification)!


• Never before has an enemy forced us to give up each citizen's sixth amendment right to "a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense."


• Never before has an enemy forced us to give up our fourth amendment right "of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures," a right that "shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized"!


• Never before has an enemy forced us to give up the checks and balances that made our nation great!

Using the fear engendered by simple and repeated over-estimation of a single enemy's power, our nation has moved forward from its crudely liberal and idealistic belief in an open society, for which we would willingly sacrifice "our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor" (to quote one of the primitive texts instrumental in the creation of our flawed democratic republic) to the creation of a land of timidly fearful citizens who eagerly sacrifice their freedoms, rights to privacy and shared faith in our outdated constitution!

We have replaced such outdated norms – certainly, if a law passed in 1978 is outdated and too pre-9/11, a constitution written by hand on parchment must be way too pre-9/11 and ready for the scrap heap of history– with a unitary executive who has all the powers he says he needs to protect us (but not the constitution he swore to uphold) from external enemies (but not from a potential dictator)!

Indeed, we now have a streamlined executive that is regaining most of the powers King George III lost in the U.S. revolution!

After all, if you are killed by terrorists, you have lost all of your rights anyway!

And isn't living with limited freedom better than living with fear of death by terror? Already, the terrorists in attacks on our shores have killed a whopping .001% of us (3,000 out of a mere 300,000,000)!

Let's face it, fellow citizens: the Unitary Executive is the only form of "green Kryptonite" available to counter al qaeda, man, right?

Al qaeda, man!

Be afraid ... Be very afraid!

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

pitcher tuck by miz bd: freein the intrepid frum the muck

it tuck two tries n had to be dun under a full moon n hi tide, but they finely gut the intrepid freed frum the muck it had sunk into n stayed in fer years. heres a pitcher miz bd tuck of the event:



woodnt it be nice ifn twere as easy to pull ourself outta the muck of iraq? will it take our congress wurkin a five day week?

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

pinions of buddy don: seein cunnexshuns everwhar

mayhap tiz jes me, but duz innybidy else see sum cunnexshuns twixt the follerin stories?

• Wal-marting and wealth:

  A single parent with two children working at minimum wage earns $10,700 a year, which $4,700 below the U.S. poverty level. Forbes magazine reported there are now 374 U.S. billionaires who have more wealth than the bottom 95% of the U.S. population.

• Number of billionaires surges:

  The number of billionaires surged this year, as did their collective pile of cash, according to Forbes magazine's annual billionaire list.
  
  The magazine said the number of billionaires worldwide increased by 102 people in 2006 to 793, a record number, largely due to bullish global stock markets. Their total net worth jumped 18 percent to $2.6 trillion.

• U.S. Army Battling To Save Equipment:

  Equipment shipped back from Iraq is stacking up at all the Army depots: More than 530 M1 tanks, 220 M88 wreckers and 160 M113 armored personnel carriers are sitting at Anniston. The Red River Army Depot in Texas has 700 Bradley Fighting Vehicles and 450 heavy and medium-weight trucks, while more than 1,000 Humvees are awaiting repair at the Letterkenny Army Depot in Pennsylvania.
  
  Despite the work piling up, the Army's depots have been operating at about half their capacity because of a lack of funding for repairs. In the spring, a funding gap caused Anniston and other depots to lose about a month's worth of work, said Brig. Gen. Robert Radin, deputy chief of staff for operations at the Army Materiel Command at Fort Belvoir.
  
  "Last year we spent as much time trying to find available money as managing our program," he said. "We don't want to go into the next rotation . . . with equipment that's at the far end of its expected life."

• GSA Chief Seeks to Cut Budget For Audits:

  The new chief of the U.S. General Services Administration is trying to limit the ability of the agency's inspector general to audit contracts for fraud or waste and has said oversight efforts are intimidating the workforce, according to government documents and interviews.
  
  GSA Administrator Lurita Alexis Doan, a Bush political appointee and former government contractor, has proposed cutting $5 million in spending on audits and shifting some responsibility for contract reviews to small, private audit contractors.

• Gilded Paychecks; Lure of Great Wealth Affects Career Choices:

  A decade into the practice of medicine, still striving to become “a well regarded physician-scientist,"Robert H. Glassman concluded that he was not making enough money. So he answered an ad in the New England Journal of Medicine from a business consulting firm hiring doctors.
  
  And today, after moving on to Wall Street as an adviser on medical investments, he is a multimillionaire.
  
  Such routes to great wealth were just opening up to physicians when Dr. Glassman was in school, graduating from Harvard College in 1983 and Harvard Medical School four years later. Hoping to achieve breakthroughs in curing cancer, his specialty, he plunged into research, even dreaming of a Nobel Prize, until Wall Street reordered his life.
  
  Just how far he had come from a doctor’s traditional upper-middle-class expectations struck home at the 20th reunion of his college class. By then he was working for Merrill Lynch and soon would become a managing director of health care investment banking.

• Everybody's Business; In Class Warfare, Guess Which Class Is Winning:

  NOT long ago, I had the pleasure of a lengthy meeting with one of the smartest men on the planet, Warren E. Buffett, the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, in his unpretentious offices in Omaha. We talked of many things that, I hope, will inspire me for years to come. But one of the main subjects was taxes. Mr. Buffett, who probably does not feel sick when he sees his MasterCard bill in his mailbox the way I do, is at least as exercised about the tax system as I am.
  
  Put simply, the rich pay a lot of taxes as a total percentage of taxes collected, but they don’t pay a lot of taxes as a percentage of what they can afford to pay, or as a percentage of what the government needs to close the deficit gap.
  
  Mr. Buffett compiled a data sheet of the men and women who work in his office. He had each of them make a fraction; the numerator was how much they paid in federal income tax and in payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, and the denominator was their taxable income. The people in his office were mostly secretaries and clerks, though not all.
  
  It turned out that Mr. Buffett, with immense income from dividends and capital gains, paid far, far less as a fraction of his income than the secretaries or the clerks or anyone else in his office. Further, in conversation it came up that Mr. Buffett doesn’t use any tax planning at all. He just pays as the Internal Revenue Code requires. “How can this be fair?"he asked of how little he pays relative to his employees. “How can this be right?”
  
  Even though I agreed with him, I warned that whenever someone tried to raise the issue, he or she was accused of fomenting class warfare.
  
  “There’s class warfare, all right,"Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

• Protecting the Military? Just “Junk” Says Bush Court Nominee:

  On Friday, the American Bar Association hosted a conference in Washington on national security. Among the speakers was Scott Stucky, General Counsel of the Senate Committee on Armed Services and President Bush’s nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. When the subject of the amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill that protected military families from payday lenders, according to someone in the audience, Stucky dismissed it as “junk.”
  
  The Department of Defense had asked Congress to cap interest rates to military families at 36%, effectively outlawing the 400% loans and other high priced lending practices that the military said “undermine military readiness, harms the morale of troops and their families, and add to the cost of fielding an all-volunteer fighting force.” Sorry, Mr. Stucky, but this isn't just “junk.”
  
  DoD had done its best to make clear that predatory lending affects troop readiness. The Center for Responsible Lending estimated that the payday lenders had one in five military families in their clutches. After the DoD report came out, statistics also showed that there had been a nine-fold increase in the number of troops who have lost their security clearances because of debt problem, further undercutting our ability to field an effective fighting force.

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pomes of buddy don: Give Him Peace of Mind

Give Him Peace of Mind

The little man could not admit he ever made mistakes –
That was his calling card throughout the land –
Though roadsigns called for caution he would never use the brakes –
His gut was all that he could understand.

If soldiers died in searching for what never could be found
Their deaths would be the reason to slog on –
Even with three thousand of them buried underground
He wouldn't even say, "I'll be doggone!"

So whom could he appoint to bring fresh eyes to stale events –
To tell him in new ways the same old tales?
To make intelligence claim that what it misrepresents
Is proven by the classified details?

Experience in such a feat is surely hard to find
But at the gates there stands someone to give him peace of mind!


(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

a stonishmint of buddy don: goin pro?

inf i wuz to see this feller ...



... scoutin the corners of our apartmint, i couldnt be no more sprized. i gut a email frum a deesigner who wonted to know whuther she could use one of the pitchers i dun posted on this here site ... n she wuz offern money fer the privlidge!

but even bettern wontin to buy the rite to use one of my images wuz how she splaind the need fer images lack i take n places whar ye kin putt em sos more deesigners kin find em. fack is nigh onto 90% of the traffick this site gits is on a counta the pitchers on it, so ...

mayhap i will putt sum of my pitchers in such places as thisn.

who knew folks wood pay fer pitchers i caint resist takin innyway?

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

pitchers tuck by miz bd: huntin deer in shenandoah

as ye kin see, miz bd caught her own refleckshun in this pitcher ...



in this one, she caught a cuple of curious deer ...



(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

pomes of buddy don: We Must Complete the Mission

We Must Complete the Mission

Al qaeda is to blame –
Their power has not faded –
They joined the fight with evil aim
As soon as we'd invaded.

But we won't quit until we win,
You simply must believe –
We will not take it on the chin
And lose if we should leave!

So it can't be a civil war –
Since that would mean we'd failed!
For those at home keeping score,
We stay till we've prevailed!

We came with force into their land with freedom to bestow –
We must complete the mission we accomplished long ago.

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

tours of buddy don: buffalo trace distillry

as ye mite know (or mite not), the buffalo trace distillry is the oldest cuntinually operatin distillry in the united states, stayin open durin prohibishun on a counta whisky bein cunsidderd a medicin, witch ifn ye wuz ailin jes rite, ye could git ye a pint ever ten days.

innywho, i tuck a slew of pitchers thar n aint had time to putt capshuns on all of em, but ye kin look at em by clickin on thisn:



i am hopin to git back into the habits i had ere we wint on vacayshun, but so fer, i aint been able to doot. hope ye enjoy them pitchers frum buffalo trace! thar whisky is fine, too.

by the way, yesterdys pitcher is upside down. heres a nuthern that gives ye a better perspecktive:



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pitchers tuck by buddy don: still feelin upside down

we had us a grate vacayshun, but todays a nuther wurkin day n i caint hardly git back in the rut i am most used to runnin. heres a pitcher i tuck at the buffalo trace distillry, witch i hope to have more on the trip soon. as ye kin see, thangs aint never whut they seem.

but tiz grate to be back home!

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long vacayshuns of buddy don: the thanksgivin tour!

me n miz bd is finely home frum a grate vacayshun, witch we

• drove 2200 miles
• drove thru 8 states (new jersey, pennsylvanny, marelund, west by god verginny, verginny, tennessee, kentuck n ohio)
• listend to or skipped past 1214 songs on a iPod set on shuffle
• drove over part of the skyline drive in virginny, witch ye kin see the hole shenandoah vally frum up thar
• tuck a tour of the buffalo trace distillry in frankfort kentuck
• had thanksgivin with my folks in tennessee on the saturdy before thanksgivin
• had thanksgivin with miz bds folks in ohio, witch we had fried turky agin n twuz jes as deelishus as the furst time

ye kin bet i will rite more on all this direckly, but furst, tiz grate to be back home n me n miz bd has thangs to do before gittin back to wurk on mundy.

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message frum buddy don: we are a'gone be away fer a lil while

i dint wont nobidy to thank i wuz havin migraines, witch i aint so fer. me n miz bd is a'gone git in the car sos we kin visit sum relatives, drivin home frum ohio jes after thanksgivin.

so heres hopin ye all have ye sum grate halldays!

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pomes of buddy don: A Glowing Proof

A Glowing Proof

It was a glowing proof for all to see –
While ravaged by war we held elections!
Talk about the softest bigotry
Of the very lowest expectations!

But as for me, I truly think it's great –
Maybe we'll have more in two thousand eight!

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

grate weekends of buddy don: hanging out with them kids

me n miz bd had us a grate weekend spendin time with two of our three yungsters, witch thar gittin past the yungster stage (31, 29 & 26), but all thangs is relative. we had a chants to see jack n vaclavs new apartment for the furst time on saturdy nite. vaclav cooked sum amazin soup, rye bread rolls n a deesert honorin the czech flag, witch they recently had thar july 4th, only thars cums on october 28. (twuz yummy nuntheless!)



on sundy we wuz tuck up the river by loretta n paddy fer the fall foliage tour. twuz a wet n foggy day witch tuck sum of the color out of them trees, but we had us a grate time innyway. turnt out ye kin have a lotta fun with the wax coatins of them babybel cheeses. heres sum critters that wuz discoverd:









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random thirteen of buddy don: visions ... frum jersey on a gray mornin

Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're tryin' to be so quiet?
We sit here stranded, though we're all doin' our best to deny it
And Louise holds a handful of rain, temptin' you to defy it
Lights flicker from the opposite loft
In this room the heat pipes just cough
The country music station plays soft
But there's nothing, really nothing to turn off
Just Louise and her lover so entwined
And these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind

1. Visions of Johanna by Bob Dylan
2. Never No Mo' Blues by Jimmie Rodgers
3. On the Other Side by Leftover Salmon
4. Racheland by The Jazz Butcher
5. I Saw Her Standing There by The Beatles
6. To Be Alone With You by Bob Dylan
7. Aeroplane by Bjõrk
8. Switchboard Susan by Nick Lowe
9. Big Strong Man by Shilelagh Law
10. The Band Is Playing Too Slow by Chris Knight
11. Friday I'm in Love by The Cure
12. Why Should I by Bob Marley
13. Alison by Elvis Costello

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dinners of buddy don: eatin with a frien in korea town

last nite i had dinner with a ole frien name of joe kim, witch i hadnt seen im in a long while. hes a feller that cum frum korea to this cuntry whenever he wuz jes a lil 11 year ole. now hes full growd n we been friens ever since we wuz wurkin together over at badbank. hes a'wurkin thar still.

he called me tuther day to say how amazed n deelited he wuz that tennessee wuz in play fer a senate seat. he sugjested we have dinner after the eeleckshun sos we could eethur celebrate or co-miserate.

so we met at the corner of 32nd n broadway round five-thirty n he picked out a place fer us to eat, witch far as i could tell, we wuz thonly ones in thar speakin english n i wuz thonly one in thar that wuznt korean. we cuverd lots of territory but not all we wonted to discuss, so we plan on gittin together agin real soon.

i tole im he could order fer us, speshly since i dint speak the lingo, n he dun it. the food wuz grate -- rice noodles n sum of the best slow cooked beef ye ever et n a nuther dish that had eggs n rice n seafood n other good stuff.

only problem is i woke up aroun 2:30 with that feelin, witch whenever i had it in the past, i wood git a migraine ere the sun cum up. this time i sufferd the fear but not the attack, so i am thankfull fer that. seems lack that depakote is wurkin up to now.

oh and by the way, he wuz verr happy bout the eeleckshun, witch he is hopefull the rest of the worl will understand that we the people aint george bush n dont bleeve in everthang them publicans stands fer, witch we aint n we dont ... n we prooved it on tuesdy.

he also aint wasted no luv on kim jong-il, but he did splain purty well whut drove im to try makin a nuke. as he splaind it, ye gut lil choice whenever yer accused of bein a part of a axis of evil n then see one of tutherns in the axis attacked by the worls only superpower: ye gut to do sumthin to make shore ye dont git attacked. he aint sayin twoodnta happend ifn bush hadnt had that axis of evil line, but he wuz sayin that once bush sed it, tuther two had to do sumthin to keep em frum bein invaded. he also noted that nobidy coulda thunk the murkins wood do so bad a conductin a war.

nuther thang he sed wuz whenever he went to git his amurkin passport renewed, he wuz ast to give lots of exter infermayshun bout his fambly n homeland n such, witch they tole im he dint have to doot, so he sed he dint woodnt. then they sed ifn he dint, he mite git called out of a line at a airport n forced to anser them questchuns n the airplane woodnt wait fer im, but he still woodnt doot. thay wuz sum other statements made that coulda been threats, but he woodnt give in (hes a verr tuff feller even ifn he probly dont way 130 pounds).

i am about to git mine renewd n caint hep but wunder ifn i will git them same questchuns.

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

pallgies of buddy don: no blogger till twuz too late, so heres sum awefull stuff fer ye to read

blogger wuz bloggerd this mornin whenever i wuz trine to make my post n now that its back, i aint gut no time to post. so with pallgies ...

whut i wuz a'gone rite about wuz the grayshus way them rite wing bloggers has reackted to losin. ye mite not have known how bad off thangs is, till ye read em. heres a lil samplin, witch i wont make no lanks to this kinda stuff frum my blog, sos ifn ye really wonta read em, ye gone half to find em yer ownself:

frum sumthang that calls itself hyscience:

The elections are over and America has fallen for the al-taqiyya and distortions of the Democratic Party, rolled over on their backs, and surrendered to al-Qaeda. Radical Islam has won a very important victory, and the West is now full on its way to defeat. You are loosing [sic] the war on terror - the one that people like Nancy Pelosi don't think exists. Mohammad and even al-Zarqawi are laughing their asses off from their graves - they now know that America is too weak to fight their ideology and that you will surely be defeated.

frum strat-sphere:

Bin Laden and Zawahiri and all the rest of the goose-stepping Islamo fascists are probably besides themselves with glee right now. And every brave Iraqi who stood up to take control of their country, who braved suicide bombs to vote, are probably cowering in fear. The Democrats are coming, with people like Keith Olberman at their head spewing insults and conspiracy theories.

but thays 'good news' too, as hugh hewitt rites:

President Bush will not flag in the pursuit of the war, and Senator Santorum is now available for a seat on the SCOTUS should one become available. GOP senators will have the chance to select leadership equal to the new world of politics which, as the past two years have demonstrated, does not reward timidity.

thays sumthin name of balloon juice that rites these perdickshuns:

Tomorrow, Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, and Chuck Schumer come over to my house, and, at taser-point, I am forced to give all my money, have an abortion, and promise I will never ever enjoy gun violence on TV. Afterwards, they hand me the new National Anthem- in Spanish. Afterwards, we are we are all forced to attend a mandatory rally for the Democrats and Al-Qaeda, because, after all- the terrorists have won.

then ye gut riehls world view:

The Democrat Platform that isn't there, save for the usual pandering with our tax dollars.... In other news, the Dems are up to their usual BS - crying and whining about everything. Because if Liberals don't win, why there must be something wrong. I don't think I've ever heard anything more arrogant than Pelosi the other day when she basically said, "The numbers are there. If we get an honest count." That, before the polls opened. These people are a disgrace to democracy.

(looks lack nancy pelosi wuz rite bout whut wood happen with a fair count ... jes sayin). larry kudlow splains how black is white, up is down, n good is evil:

Look at blue dog conservative Dem victories, and look at Northeast liberal GOP defeats. The changeover in the House may well be a conservative victory, not a liberal one. Blue dogs are rabid budget balancers.

(so them publicans won after all? btw, long as them publicans caint say the word 'Democratic' when talkin bout the Democratic Party, i bleeve they should be called 'Publicans,' but thats jes this ole hillbilly talkin). but wait, thays more, frum sumthin called iowa voice:

I think we're in for two years of defeat and retreat, pandering to Islamic extremists, extreme political correctness, multi-culturalism, open borders beyond belief, amnesty...in other words, we're going back to the 1970s, right after Vietnam. This is what the Democrats wanted to do, because that was their heyday, when they last had this kind of power.

all of this stuff cums by way of The Daou Report in Salon, witch ye gut to have a subscripshun to git it. for the last quote, ye kin read how Thinking Meat dun tuck this fellers 'logick' apart:

From this day forward, every soldier that perishes in SW Asia is blood on the hands of Speaker Pelosi until every soldier comes home.

sorry bout the quote fest, speshly since tiz of such vile stuff. mayhap blogger will be up early in the mornin!

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

deelite of buddy don: the people has spoke!

Proudly hubristic as old King Midas
They thought they'd win if they could divide us –
With slime as their pitch, our discourse seemed broken,
But America's greatness – the people – have spoken!

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

civick duties of buddy don: votin!

me n miz bd dun gut out to the polls n voted this mornin. we wuznt furst to vote, but we wuz amung em. i am hopin this eeleckshun will be a sea change fer our land, puttin it back on the rite track, witch its been way offn it fer the last five years or so.

while we are waitin to see who will cum out the winner in them eeleckshuns, heres a pitcher of a nuther kinda fite, twixt a cuple crawdads, witch the one on the left is killer n the one on the rite is miz tenna, witch her name wuz onetenna on a counta she only had the one antenna till she molted n cum up with two of em. we aint shore shes a female, but as ye kin see, her size n colorin is smaller n less flashy, witch tiz often the case in natchur with feemales.



ifn ye click on the pitcher, twill take ye to a gallery of pitchers of the tank, witch once ye git thar, ye kin look at the originulls to see them crawdads a hole lot better.

i hope ye git out n vote n have a grate day ... n end up sangin happy days are here agin sumtime tomorruh. heaven knows we need em!

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

reeminders of buddy don: dont fergit to vote!

• ifn ye lack whut mr bush has dun alreddy dun to attack n shred the constitushun on the eggscuse of pertecktin amurkins, witch that turns on its head the vow he made to perteck the contsitushun, witch that document is whuts spozed to be pertecktin us
• ifn ye thank gods gift of reason dont mean nuthin ifn gods gift of faith seems to disagree
• ifn ye thank tiz wurser to point out the predators of yung people in the publican party than twuz fer the publicans to allow them predators to git away with thar evil
• ifn ye thank we dont need no oversite of all the money thats dun been wasted n is still a'goin wasted in iraq
• ifn ye bleeve the fedrul gummint blongs in yer bedroom n listnin in on yer fone with no warrant or searchin yer house without lettin ye know, also with no warrant
• ifn ye thank the problem with this cuntry is taxes on the rich (caint the poor pay fer everthang? thays a slew more of em!)
• ifn ye bleeve them corporayshuns kin po-leece tharself n make shore they dont cheat ye nor pollute yer air nor runoff thar sludge into yer drankin water
• ifn ye lack thangs the way they been run fer the past six years, then ye gut no choice but to vote fer the publicans ...

... or whut they really is, rubberstamplicans, witch ye mite member the lil song i writ bout em:

We Are the Rubberstamplicans!

We are the Rubberstamplicans
We Rubber Stamp the laws
We do not think, we do not blink
Mere winning is our cause

We stayed up late one night to pass that medicare fiasco
We did it though it was as fun as drinking pure Tabasco
We know that "government's the problem" so why should we try
To govern well since that would tell the truth to our great lie?

We cut the taxes of the rich, sent soldiers off to war
We built the largest deficit the world had seen before
To those who say we must be madder than the maddest hatter
We simply parrot Cheney saying, "Deficits don't matter!"

For we are the Rubberstamplicans
We Rubber Stamp the laws
We do not think, we do not blink
Mere winning is our cause

If Bush says black is white or dirty air is really clean
We'll Rubber Stamp the notion with our Rubber Stamp Machine
If Bush says building roads and cutting trees make forests healthy
We'll Rubber Stamp the falsehood and thus make our cronies wealthy.

We will not check our president although he breaks the law
For like all Rubberstamplicans, when shocked we stand in awe.
Besides three decades in the past that FISA law was hatched
To be secure we must endure having our freedoms snatched!

For we are the Rubberstamplicans
We Rubber Stamp the laws
We do not think, we do not blink
Mere winning is our cause

ye wont more of the same? rubberstamplicans are fer yew.

ye wont a change n a chants to do better? ye gut to vote fer them dimcrats.

tiz jes that simple.

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

pitchers tuck by buddy don: firewurks in the park ... frum hoboken

we caint figger whut they wuz a'celebratin, but we tuck sum pitchers of it. ifn ye click the pitcher, ye kin see more pitchers of the man hattan skyline.

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

pitcher tuck by buddy don: halloween in brooklyn

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

pomes of buddy don: Left Behind

Left Behind

They say we left one of our own behind
In the Baghdad slum of Sadr City –
An area we cordoned off, confined:
The kidnappers' enablers found no pity.

Relations with the government were strained
As checkpoints snarled Sadr City traffic –
About which al-Sadr loudly complained
Till Maliki appraised the demographic.

And knowing that he had a Devil's bargain
He chose to order our troops to desist –
Excuse it using diplomatic jargon,
But shouldn't all Americans be pissed?

That's an odd question but what is odder:
Have we emboldened Muqtada al-Sadr?

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)

grate meals of buddy don: reunion at peter luger

thays a ole boss of mine in town frum californy, witch that wuz eggscuse a nuff fer my irish frien micky to round up a table of folks willin to brake bread – or cut meat – together at one of new yorks most famous stake houses, a place thats been in bizness fer over 100 years name of Peter Luger.



ye go to Peter Luger fer stake, witch the best way to git it (i been tole) is to have a gigantick porterhouse fer two, witch thay wuz four of us, so we had '2 fer 2.' one of em wuz cooked medium rare, tuther rare, n they lived up to thar reputayshun n then sum. thar appetizers include thangs lack verr thick bacon (ye mite could thank twuz ham ceptn fer the smell n taste), lamb chops, tomaters n onions, that kinda thang.

thay wuz lots of joshin bout everbidys foibulls n by the time twuz over, i had dun et too much.

on the way home i wuz reeminded that twuz halloween whenever our car tuck us thru the village n near to one of the most amazin parades ye ever did see. nex year i plan to go thar!

hope everbidy had em a good time fer all hallows eve! i shore did.

(ifn ye wonta make a comment, ye gut to click on 'link' below.)