IF YOU WONDER WHY

Just in case you haven't noticed I've changed my address from Florida to Indianapolis. If you wonder why I'd give up the palm trees, the seas and the sunny sky for a midwest blessed with snow and cold four months a year, let me tell you why I'm here.

At the eighty-three (which soon, come June, I'll be) I decided it is better that I be closer to my son than to the Florida sun for whatever years are left for me. My daughter lives in NYC which is too fast and loud and crowded for a hick like me. And they agreed that what I need will be found in the cold and windy Indy, still not far from family.

I still can write throughout the night and sleep most of the day. The food is great at Morningside where I reside. The folks are friendly as can be. They seem to have accepted me and I, they.

I can't yet say how they'll respond to my blogs and I'll just have to wait and see. But I won't change my views. I'll still write what I choose. To those who don't agree or see things differently, so it be. But Hoosiers are like folks everywhere. They care, they're aware, concerned with what goes on and fearful of a future plagued by uncertainty. But still they're cheerful and have faith in the future of the U. S. A.

Through my blogs the whole world is my oyster, Indy is my cloister and Hoosiers are now my extended family.

BEST REGARDS, Ed (Wegads).

BIG BANG

At the instant the comet whopped and stopped prehistoric history in its tracks, Tyrannosaurus Rex was having sex with his ex while munching on a lotus leaf without the slightest belief his world was headed for such grief. His ex was in ecstasy and was not aware their world had been destroyed by an asteroid. Could Rex's sex have that effect?

Just before the shock that rocked the universe, she laid an egg while being laid and wondered amidst all the thunder, what will happen to our orphaned dinosaur? Will it be born all alone? Will its bones turn to stone? Will it be shown in a museum. Will it be a her or him? Oh, forgoodness sake, what difference does it make?

LIFE IN THE AFTERLIFE

I do not believe there is war after death or strife after life. If there is grief, it is brief, followed by a sigh of relief to be free from the fear that year after year you worried as soon as you were buried you'd be hurried to heaven or hell without a spell between the final scene.

I dreamt I died and was in an endless line at the All Night Heaven Seven Eleven waiting to buy a six pack of Cokes and telling dirty jokes to a Jesus freak fresh out of smokes. Then the talk tuned to confession and how it guaranteed admittance to heaven and good riddance to the devil. "And that's on the level," he said. "I know The Bible says it's so."

That was just a dream, but it seemed so real. Does it mean that even when I'm dead and gone the preaching will go on and on until I reach the Golden Gate after an endless wait at the All Night Heaven Seven Eleven?

Obviously, I'll just have to wait and see.

ONCE UPON A WORLD

Once upon a world ago there was a world that grew quite weary and all its children were sad and teary because they knew it was true their friend the earth was near its end.

The birds and bees, the towering trees, the rivers, lakes and all the seas were sadder still because they were aware there would be no one left to care for they would be the first to go.

Creatures great and creatures small could sense the pall that filled the world from wall to wall, The clouds were shrouds above it all. The moon soon would disappear, the sun was done, the stars had gone the way of Edsel cars, there was no snow, not a flake of real or fake, wind and rain were on the wain and Mother Earth had gone insane.

Words had become passe and passed away or gone astray for there was nothing left to say, and why pray to God who gave up the ghost and became the host at the devil's weenie roast.

WHEN DEATH'S A SIN

To die in a war that should not have been is a sin not by the ones who died but by those who lied to put them in harm's way to make the U. S. terrorist free for those whose lives were not wasted away.

True. not everyone can shoot a gun or fly a plane or slog through mud and rain to be blown up by someone on the other side pledged to commit not just suicide but multiple premeditated murder in the first degree. Not he or she acted sinfully. The sin lies with those who improvise and theorize, who set the date and estimate how many dead it will take to break the back of Iraq or some unforeseen future enemy.

They're wardroom warriors without the will or skill to kill, who fictionalize, oh so wise, the strategy and propagandize the GIs and the folks back home to justify why it's great to be a to be a dead hero just because some brass horse's ass in the Pentagon or the White House War Room says it's so. They use maps and charts and lots of stats to prove that that's the way to go.

"Lemmee see," says the chief of theory, "to take Hill Three will be a piece of cake. It'll whittle down our troops a a bit
but it's a hit worth making if it helps bring the enemy to his knees."

"Wow! I can see it now," says the president enthusiastically. "We won the battle, only a few of ours are dead, their wounded and fatalities surpassed all expectancies."

The high-paid toadies all agreed they'd had a good session and were in need of booze to await the news of battles won. "You all are doing great," the Chief of State said. They congratulated each other and headed for the nearest bar, thinking "Oh how smart we are."

HOW EXPLAIN DUBYA'S BRAIN

What kind of mind do Dubya dot? How do it dot dat way? It's wound up like a tin toy top dat plops and pops and starts and stops and slips and slops and has no plans but plenty plots and rots like pots of soup left to cool in a chicken coop.

How explain his insane brain? It stinks like a dumpster's unwashed smell, it's as drippy as a dried up well left a spell, abandoned by the farmer in the dell in the depths of the devil's hell. It's as uninspired as a treadless tire that's going flat because a rusty nail punctured the fresh air that maybe once was in there.

Was his thinker a stinker when he was born, worn out by worms and germs and tired sperms that squirmed around and jumped up and down in his spattered and splattered it-doesn't-matter gray graymatter? Why does he mutter and stutter and splutter and misconscrew every word that Webster knew when he wrote the wordy dictionary? Ain't it scary?

To think this missing link who drinks booze oozing from a dirty kitchen sink has put us on the brink of an holocaustic, hipacraustic Armageddon disaster faster than he could say "oops" when he stoops to send more troops he knows will never come back from Iraq, Iran or Pakistan or any hell hole who ran and stole and has turned the whole shebang into a den for thieves for gangs of no common sense incompetents!

This blinking, winking unthinking gink may be smarter than we think. While what he does may make no sense, it does pay
off in dollars and cents to the oily, slimy "you can buy me, honey, if you've got a mint of money and more to come, 'cause I ain't as dumb as some say I am. I'm just part nitwit and a bit of you know what slops around in your gut."

Well that's all I want to say except this fall his smarty party, hopefully. will be blown away and come zero eight this deadhead head of state will realize how much we hate Big B and Cheney and all the zany brainless guys he'll guide over a cliff if..if..if the billygoat voters take note of what I wrote and get rid if that stiff. If they realize he's a clown and cut him down to size and the new guy's no booby-prize there's still one slim chance America can again be the democracy it used to be.

PARSON LARSON

HE WAS CALLED The Write Reverand because he was the only member of the congregation who could write, or could read more than their names on their welfare checks, for that matter. They knew him as Larson, which was a fitting name for him. Add one letter to his name--Y---and you know what his ministry is all about.

Parson Larson loved rhyming. It was all part of his weekly sermons. "God lives in the sod." "Devil's on the Level." "Seize Us, Brother Jesus." "Boola! Boola! Hell-a-Lulu!"

He was not really an honest to God---or honest to anyone---minister because he had never been to preacher school. He was never ordained and hadn't even received a call from God, ever talked to Jesus or seen the Virgin Mary on a steamed-up mirror in the men's shower room at the local YMCA.

But one day while counting nickels and dimes at the convenience store to pay for a Pepsi and a bag of potato chips he was two cents short when it came to forking out the cash. He'd already eaten half of the bag of chips and drank most of the Pepsi. "Gimmee those two pennies rawt now or ah callin' the sheriff an' arestin' youall fer shopper liftin'. "

"Little short?" asked the rube behind him. He pulled a handful of pennies oiut of his pocket, dumped them on the counter. "Put you all money away. Ah'll pay the bill. The treat's on me."

He must have had a couple hundred pennies in that bulging pocket and plenty nickels and dimes in the other pocket. "Ah'm savin' the silver for a rainy day. The pennies I give to charity. Be my guest."

"You carryin' all that big money around in your pockets?" Larson asked. "And you don't mind sharin' yer wealth with me?"

"Why shore. All us folks got lots o' pennies. We's the pennniest rich folks fer miles 'round. We're genruss peoples." He took a handful of pennies out of his pocket and dumped them in Larson's hat. "We shares the wealth. Who ever's needin' gits."
* * *
That started wheels spinning around in Larson's head. These hayseeds ain't got no church. Got no religion. Got no brains. But they got pennies. Maybe hundreds. So whyan't I start me a church and get rich as a son of a bitch! He didn't get a call from God, but he got an idea. "I'm gonna start me a church---the Gimmee Gotcha Church of God." And the next day he did.

A traveling salesman passing through asked Parson Larson where he got his "minister moniker. " The parson answered huffy-like. "I was the fuhst and only gradjit of the Confusion College of Preacher Knowledge. "Set fire by the devil and burned to the ground raght over thar." He pointed to a burned out patch of land across from the Town Hall. "Cain't nobody build
on that land no more. It be holey, You can tell by the holes in that thar ground."

"Holy? You mean like in Holy Father?"

"No. Holey like in holey holes. See them holes twixt the trees. Ain't them the holiest holes you ever did see?"
* * *
In his sermons Parson Larson's voice rose to a crashing crescendo. "Yea, the devil he died. Then he was rizrected. On the level the devil done riz. And that's what iz." Then he launched into his message. "Desire fuels the devl's fire. Those that's got lust is cussed Fornication is damnation."

Those words meant nothing to the flock. But they sounded good and they brought out the pennies when the collection plate was passed around. Parson Larson never menrtioned the Bible in his sermons because he never read it beyond the first begat. But one Sunday he got all fired up and gave a sermon that would go down in the history of the Gimmee Gotcha Church.
"We's gathered here on yonder hill overlookin' the holey land to give thanks to the guy who calls hisself God and lives on high." He pointed to the mountain behind him. "That's where this guy God lives. But don't none of you try to climb up that mountain because iffin you do you all will be smited down by his guards, the meanest old mountain lions you ever did see. They'll tear you apart from asshole to armpit. Sure as hell they will."

Parson Larson paused, chewed hard on his plug of chewin' t'backy, reared back his head and sent a stream of brown spit into the wind. The wind blew the spit in his face and formed a mist over the first row of his flock. "Spit spray sent down the mountain is this here guy's way of tellin' us to repent with givin' our pennies and we saved and by the spit spray
of God."

Parson Larson lifted his arms and pointed to the mountain. "Gather 'round. Toss your pennies in the air. Take out your 'backy an' chew an' an' repeat after me, 'With each chew I gittin' closer to him who am what I ain't not'.''

The congregation, men, women and children, filled their cheeks to overflowing, threw handfulls of pennies in the air and sent their spit into the wind and each other's faces.

"We's been saved by saliva salvation," the parson cried as he stooped down to scoop up the pennies and stuff them in his pockets.

A FISHY STORY---SORT OF!

When the bluff gets thick and sick enough the tough must show their stuff, forget the cream-puff politics, wield that big stick and stick it to them, show them what the Dems can do to undo the mess Guess Who's got the U. S. into. Action's overdue!

Let the voters know Georgey's a forgery, Cheney ain't so brainy, and all the clowns from Rice on up and down should hightail it out of town or the White House will come tumbling down, not by a terrorist's plane but by the insane fly-by-nighters and far righters who are corrupting and disrupting the rules and tools of democracy.

The fools they be make it impossible for them to see what may be if maybe they again steal what they already stole to dig a hole deeper than a ten foot pole. If they dig that digging and frigging fall into their own excavation and can't get out no doubt that could become the salvation of this double bubbled troubled nation.

Oh, what a better world this would be if the entire GOP would jump into the shark infested sea. And a million jaws would open wide and they would all fall deep inside where they'd get chewed up into bits and bait and that would be their fishy fate.

Of course that is a fantasy. Unfortunately, it will never be. But sometimes dreams do come true. And they might if the Democrats put up a fight and do what's right to right the wrong we've been going along with a ding-dong opposition with a missionless mess of unimpressed violence and senseless killing of unwilling GIs sound asleep six feet deep in hallowed ground.

Two thousand and more, that's the score. dead on that foreign shore with oil glut but not much more, not even a Walmart bargain store.

A SLEEPING WORLD

This is a bleeping sleeping world curled in a fetal position, refusing to face the fact our acts are leading us to perdition if we don't adjust our way of thinking and realize this stinking earth is shrinking, sinking into a sea of rising tide and no more shore.

The warming is harming and alarming and is something we must fear if we care to stay here until our land disappears along
with the once clear atmosphere we hold dear.

Contamination of all nations is tearing lungs asunder and stupid blunders will escalate arrival of our fate. The date is set, it's all arranged, but ain't it strange, it can change. It's up to us and a smelly bus, a fuming truck, the muck schmucks dump in the sea and you and me and he and she and them and they who day by day are pissing it all away.

Nature's beauty will be among the first to go. Trees, flowers, even weeds, will no longer grow. We and the animals will no longer mate and sex will be an altered state. The sun and moon and all the stars will be consumed like candy bars and wars will end in defeat for both sides of the street.

If East meets West and tries its best and South and North do things of worth and Arabs and Jews refuse to fight and Washington stops lying and starts trying to right all they did wrong and the rapper's song is clear and filled with cheer and maybe a baby will be born who will grow and know how to do what must be done to give us one more try before we die.

NOBODY WINS. ALL WOULD DIE.

Bush has his finger on the trigger. He figures, "All I have to do is point our weapon at Iran. I can. And I will. We will kill a million or more and end the war that hasn't begun. Death is done and we have won."

Won what? An historic victory? Just like HST in World War II. The world knows what happened then. Do we want it to happen once again? One more blast could be our last.

Then and now are not the same. Then, Japan was waging fanatical war. The A-Bomb was a farfetched, wretched sc-fi scheme. Nobody dreamed it could or would be done. Just another kind of gun. In World War II we weren't real sure what it could do. Neither were they. We both found out. Now there is no doubt.

Japan burned. Millions died. The whole world learned an atomic war could be the beginning of the end of civilization. So we all had reservations against the use of this wanton weaponry. Between then and now there have been threats and yet, somehow, it hasn't happened. And do you know why? Both sides would lose. We all would die.

ADVICE TO FLYS

There came the time in life my wife and I decided we must confide the facts of life to our sons and daughters: beware of swatters and those who spray from a little tin can a mist that can make you history. Stay away from sugar bowls, sweet rolls, pies and cakes and, for goodness sakes, steaks on grills and picnic tables filled
with foods you're in the mood to snack.

And if you escape a real close smite don't go back for a second bite. Just stick to buzzin' with your kin and cousins and you might survive a short but happy life.

All flys are hated by humanity. We drive them to insanity and violate their vanity when they swat or spray and we get away. Remember this and you may never die prematurely: Don't be a flyby wise-guy foolish fly. The fly is not always quicker than the eye.

SAGA OF SHAME IN WORLD WAR II

It happened on our minesweeper in the South Pacific during World War II. Our little wooden ship with a crew of 29 men and four officers, and hundreds just like it, played a vital, risky role in the war against Japan.

The night before each invasion we sat in the galley writing letters to loved ones, They were placed in a bucket and left in the ship's safe. If we survived, the "bucket of tears," as we called it, would be doused with alcohol and set ablaze. The ashes would be dumped into the sea.

Our job was to clear the waters of mines so the big ships could sail safely into shore. If there were no mines we could cruise right up to the beach and see the Japanese in their bunkers waving at us as we sailed by. If the seas were mine-free they wouldn't fire on us. That would reveal their positions and they would become targets for gunners on the big ships waiting off shore. If the waters had been mined, we became their targets.

Our ship was shot at but never hit. Others weren't so lucky. They were sunk by Japanese fire or blew up when mines got tangled in the sweeping gear and exploded close to the ship. When one of our ships was hit, all that was left was floating debris and splintered wood.

Each night before an invasion the captain told us what to expect. We were warned on the eve of one invasion that there would be an unusually large concentration of mines. We were ordered to keep sweeping no matter the flack from the beach. We were assured the big ships and planes would protect us and bomb the hell out of the enemy. That assurance didn't set well with the crew.

Our ship survived. We were pulled out of he convoy at the last minute. Why? On the eve of the invasion, the machinist's mate on watch in the engine room was urged: "Why don't you throw a monkey wrench in the works?" The next morning our engines were dead in the water. We were yanked out of the flotilla and arrived three days late. It was a brutal invasion. A lot of minesweepers were sunk. A lot of sailors died while we waited in drydock for our engines to be repaired. There was a temporary feeling of relief when we realized we'd been spared the brunt of the battle. Guilt set in. We heard about the casualties. We saw disabled landing craft, a sea filled with debris.

The realization of our cowardice and complicity in a crime of sabotage caused us to search our souls and suffer the shame of what we had been party to. But to the best of my knowledge no one ever revealed what happened on that fateful night before the invasion in the South Pacific.

LOST LIVES

Lost lives---millions and more to come---if they had been allowed to live and give their gift to the civilizations of once gifted nations, how different might a future, bright with unrealized destiny, have become? Some will say they died to save the USA and the American Way. Others doubt, will say "COPOUT!"

Death legalized, apologized and sanitized by written or unwritten law does not lessen the brutality or finality of a bullet in the head, a bomber who spreads the dead by an act of suicide. This no sane man can abide.

The evidence of providence is there:

A youth with flair for phrase beyond compare might one day have shed the light and penned a telling answer to the swelling view that the end is near.

A budding scientist might have persisted in his belief that a solution to many a medical mystery lies in an ancient theory long ignored by the profit motive-driven pharmaceutical industry.

A religious truth might have gained approval in the voting booth to a bill to finance advance for peace instead of war, support love and good and brotherhood before it's too late to change our fate.

A world leader might have emerged who realized, to the world's surprise, the folly of all war and have led all people on this earth toward goals of worth, away from poverty and toward prosperity.

Every death will have been in vain, not only the selected few who would have used their brain and creativity to contribute to the world's continuing livability.

We all are members of the Clan of Man. We all must give what we can to meet the ever demanding, expanding need for those who will lead us in our endless pursuit of wholeness and true happiness.

TALE OF A TYRANT

I am a liar, a twister of truth, a teller of fact turned to fiction, a cheater who cheats with words and ideas with never an honest conviction. I am a teller of tales best untold, of falsehoods of my fabrication. I am corrupt, an unspeakable blot on the record of God's great creation.

I look into eyes of trustworthy souls, then spin webs of disaster. Men are such pawns for well-chosen words; lies make them slaves, I their master.

When I was a child at an innocent age and life became all too abusive, I found my escape from prisons of truth in make believe dreams less elusive.

I closed both my eyes to obvious facts, told myself lies without trying and soon felt secure in the hard shell of sham without foolish comfort of crying. Slowly I learned there is power in love, much greater power in hating. This is the path I chose for my life. I found a world eagerly waiting.

They all stood before me the black and the white, the Christians, the Jews and the others. Each without knowing soon was to spring at the throats of their sisters and brothers. Each would respond to my taut puppet strings, eager to further my mission. Anxious to plunder, to scatter their souls on well-beaten paths to perdition.

This was my plan, this was my scheme, this was my game of beguile. The world quaked and cringed. My mastery worked, at least for a very sort while. When I was exposed as the fraud that I am, the two-faced faker of fury, I was accused by the world I abused, sentenced by my judge and jury.

CONTACT: IT NOW IS A FACT!

"I've done it! I've done it!" the scientist raved. No one believed he could achieve the probably impossible goal he aimed for. But if what he claimed could be done, he'd gain fame by doing what he did: establish voice contact with man on a planet so distant colleagues were insistent it couldn't be done.

By Einstein, perhaps, and a few other chaps. But they were all dead, or so it had been said. Even they had thrown up their arms and said, "Oye vay. There ain't no vay to find a vay to do voht Got don't vant us to."

His father, a scientist in his own right, had had breakthroughs that made news throughout the universe. He'd proven twinkling stars were just lightning bugs in jars collected by kids on Jupiter and Mars as part of a project to project light in spite of the fact such a bright plight was out of sight.

His dad also found the world was not round, but was actually square just like the moonies who lived there. That discovery set the world on end and a few dropped off and were never seen again. He turned to his son and said "No one can talk to someone a zillion million miles away just like, hoo hey! Have a nice day."

But said his son: "I done it, Dad. I'll prove it with my Radrad-radio-yo-yo with a micromaniac yak-yak flow."

His son switched a thousand switches one by one. It took two days and the job was done. Then he turned up the squawker-talker-bleaker-squeaker- speaker, and suddenly voice was heard. It was absurd! It was a voice, yet it was not. It said no words and screeched a lot. It sounded like chimp and her pimp having you know what. Very complex, real high tec interstellar sweller sex.

Sonnyboy was full of joy on his michaelphone, jabbering back in old world Chimpimpumpanese. His Dad said, "Excuse me please. You say this whatchacallitese comes from zillions of miles away? At the speed of light your grandson will be old and gray when your reply finds its way to where you say it's going to go. As time goes, that's mighty slow."

"I know, Dad," said his lad, "but just think how proud you'll be to be the dad of me when we meet a zillion skillion years from now up in that 7/11 in the sky. I can't wait...sigh, sigh, sigh..."

"Neither can I," was Dad's reply.

DAMMIT! IT'S OUR PLANET!

Forget the moon, forget Mars. Be aware, care, be concerned what's happening to this planet of ours. Forget about oil, forget about wars, forget about gas guzzling cars and twinkling stars, just look at the scars our land has endured and we have made scant effort to cure and you're sure to understand the demands we must meet to lower the heat that's depleting and defeating our chance to survive and protect populations of future nations to remain longer alive.

The rude, crude lassitude our leaders exude in defying the fact our acts of genocide kills hills and dales, mountains and streams, hopes and dreams, technicalities we have ignored, claiming we can't afford to waste money making polar regions less sunny, hurricanes milder, jungles wilder, wetlands wetter and so much better, reducing emissions and changing conditions, lest we destroy more than we consume on the way to our doom.
We, the greatest democracy, most hated hypocrisy, do-little nation ignoring devastation of flower and fauna and everything else on a hell-bent road to annihilation.

Bush should not alone shoulder the blame, but his name is synonymous with what's upon us and will get worse next year and the year after next if we fail to redirect our energy to correct what was caused by short-sighted laws and programs that make no sense and contribute to events like immense hurricanes, torrential rains, droughts and out of control starvation, devastation and deprivation.

Who knows what else the world has in store waiting for us on some nearby or far distant shore! Dammit! This is our planet. How long can it survive if we don't keep it alive?

WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD

What a wonderful world we're living in, but how much better a world it would have been if God had not allowed His children to commit sin, the first and worst crime of all time.

There is nothing in recorded history that gives a clue to solve the mystery of how life started way back when there may have been no strife, no violence, no hate but only love of man and beast and birds that fly in the sky and fish that swim in the sea and every waterway and even tiny insects I expect were there because He had a reason why they should be a part of the first family who shared and cared for all equally.

But somehow God, from then till now, put too much trust in the souls He did entrust to all the creatures great and small. He stood aside and watched them slide into a world of His design until He saw the danger sign, but by then it was too late for greed and hate, lust and mistrust, had infected what He least expected would become of some, not all, He granted birth on this earth.

What happened as his flock progressed and spread far and wide across the breast of this world of magnificence and majesty and what God dreamed the world might be for endless time after He had completed His creativity. Love, sharing, caring, declaring dedication, but also desecration, death and annihilation. bloodletting and violation of the rules of God that went astray. And from then until this day so many among us have lost their way.

Imagine how many have suffered, how many died, how many cried. how many gone before their time, victims of man-created crime, who might have contributed events of glory to the story that even preceded, I do believe, the garden of Eden and Adam and Eve,

If things had worked out to God's plan, we can surmise, Man would be more wise, humanity would not compromise and God would be elated by the world that He created.