WE'RE ALL THE SAME, BUT NOT ALIKE

All humans and our dozens of cousins, apes and chimpanzees and members of their families, variations of the species known generically as Man, were created in line with God's design.

They all are born with two of these and one of those, ten toes and fingers that open and close, a nose with multiple abilities, ears that hear and eyes that see and a mouth that eats and savors sweets, lips that kiss. smile, frown, reveal when we are up or down, jaws that harbor teeth that chew and a tongue that licks and sticks out and, no doubt, does what tongues are supposed to do.

Our extremities do not require listing here for they are familiar to most mammal animals on this sphere. So the point I'm trying to get make is this: If we're so much the same inside and out, and of this there's little doubt, where and why do the differences lie between ape and Man and members of this fascinating clan?

We can talk with words defined, stored within a complex mind, a memory. bank. Simians can talk, too, with grunts and groans and moans in different tones, but they can't talk on telephones. They must have other ways of expressing and revealing feelings and we can only guess at what they're concealing.

Are there professors, preachers, teachers, searchers, researchers, creatures in the zoo and jungles, too, who are much like me and you, making a fuss over them and us? Frankly, I would rather take the bus and leave the driving to---the monkeys in Peru or Timbuktu.

HEAVEN'S IN A HELL OF A STATE

Have you heard about what's been happening in Heaven of late? The economy's in a hell of a state. The clouds are outdated. They haven't been upgraded since they were created. The Golden Gate is antiquated and the accumulated cumulous clouds are sparsely populated. The real estate is poorly rated and who in heck'll invest a shekel in rundown, dilapidated Heavenly Condos? God knows.

The angels who buy and sell know well why Heaven's going to hell while Hell is booming even while flaming inflation's looming. The economy's hot, which was expected, because it's overpopulated by the loser/winner sinners, the rejected defectives who refused directives from their holy CEO millions of years ago.

It's preposterous how prosperous hell's become. Its economy is on a roll and the price of coal to fuel its fire keeps rising hire which is not surprising.

The Demon Dow is overjoyed. There are few unemployed. Just to keep hell hot keeps stokers stoking and rocking around the clock. Meanwhile heaven's freezing, hell is booming, God is fuming, What is looming for Heaven and Hell? Only Father Time can tell.

ALL ABOUT THE OWL

What does an owl do? What does it not? This sort of short and not so tall woodland denizen doesn't crawl, it bathes but doesn't need a towel, it shakes and flaps its wings and that is all. It doesn't have a Texas drawl or say "You all," It sails and soars and lands and flits to its perch on a bush with a swoosh, a swish, a sprawl or a day in a church or a city hall.

This intogritory inquisitory bird of prey doesn't pray or waste the time of day and only has one word to say repeatedly: "WHO? WHO? WHO?" It can't ask WHERE? It can't ask WHEN? Just reiterates WHO? WHO? WHO? time and time and time again.

The owl could have been a farm yard fowl, a rooster or a hen, a bear asleep in its den, a mouse hiding in a house, a rat in its master's hat, a bird laying an egg in her nest, a bitty kitty cuddled up between the two big breasts of May West's chest.

Why does the owl only have a one word vocabulary with lips that don't know how to kiss and thus, like cats and us, don't know the bliss of making out with a mister or his sister? An owl can't reply to WHY? It can't say WHEN or WHERE we'll meet again. Will it be now or then and even if he could tell time how could he say "Four after four and not a second more."

And how'll we mortals ever know how the owl learned to say WHO? and not know who it's talking to?

YOU CAN'T NEGOTIATE FATE

The world is overwhelmed, not with threat of war, but something far in excess of any force the world can guess. We all face not creatures from outer space but trouble from a source much worse, threat that must be met and cannot be debated or negotiated away.

There are no deals to be made, no trade, no way to evade a showdown. Each city and state, each village and town and Civilization itself will come humbling tumbling down. Man will die or survive or cease to exist depending on what God and Mother Earth insist.

Are we all on a one-way trip to Armageddon? God's armament is poised and ready and all set GO. When the War of the World against itself begins all sins will be exposed but no answers will be posed. And all houses of worship will be closed.

All evidence of events that make no sense like insane hurricanes, world-shaking quakes, mud slides and floods, lightning strikes the likes of which we've never seen will be buried by tons of human and animal bones and towers of the remains of man's creations will be deep in endless sleep from which only rats and roaches will creep to repopulate those of their kind. Meanwhile from underground the sound of one voice will resound. "I have found the way."

Whose voice do we hear? I fear God is hibernating and the devil's salivating, contemplating ways to even up the score. What is the world waiting for?

PEACE, LOVE AND BROTHERHOOD JUST A DREAM?

With millions dying, trillions crying how long can this continue? Could it be in this world gone mad we once had peace, love and brotherhood? Or are we in denial in a world on trial waiting while the jury of the just debate whether all must die and be reborn for one last try?

Will we be forced to face the fact that what we wait to come back was never here? That our land of peaches and cream was just a dream?

INFLATION EXPLANATION

I think I'm smart when it comes to art and I'm not phased when called upon to coin a phrase. I've never met a met a metaphor I didn't like and I'm in my glory when thinking up a tale or story. I never fail to spot a plot and turn it into a work of fiction. The English language is my addiction. But in spite of my education and years of participation in creation I'm a dumb bunny when it comes to money.

My frustration: I don't understand inflation. Is it when the economy is hot and everybody spends a lot for things they haven't got and there's less in the pot for what they need but can't afford?

Is a nation in inflation when the Dow keeps rising and savvy investors know how to make it go higher until the sucker buyer invests his dough and then the market loses steam and the American dream dies when the rise turns into a fall and that is all. Bad luck? All their bucks ain't worth a dime. It happens all the time.

So what if the economy's super hot and prices rise?. Just forget the store that charges more. The Salvation Army and Good Will will fill the bill with nifty thrifty prices far below the fancy chains who have no brains but lots of greed. Discounts are out to make a buck and crooks sell cheap from a pickup trucks. And with luck you can work off the book and gyp the taxman, hook or crook.

So, sports, wear last year's used jockey shorts. Your wife won't get a new brazier, You'll be out of style for a while. Who can tell? Everybody you know will be shopping thrift as well.


The good news is you'll give up booze and beer while inflation's here and get by till prices tumble down. Then you can go out and paint the town. And all those economy clowns whose brains went on vacation will still think red ink's the way to end inflation.

WHAT VIEWERS WANT VIEWERS GET

Once love and kisses and romantic antics, uncomplicated X-rated naked couples getting it on would mean more green for Hollywod. But the magic word's no longer Cupid. It's Stupid. Stupid antrics, not romantics; stupid plots with lots of shots of pratfalls and slapstick are schtick and yuck-yuck-yuck are the tricks that brings in the bucks thick and quick.

Who the heck wants sex on the screen when the real thing alive on the scene swings on the scene swings and jives. Husbands and wives, unrelated mates, same sex duos---there are plenty of those---do their thing in privacy. Who needs pornography? Who needs trick photography?

Reality is the sensuality that is the totality of what folks on fire most desire. But not when they watch TV or pay ten bucks to see a movie. The screen scene most often seen is idiotically comically. No whoop-de-dooodity nudity wanted here. Stupidity on screen and stage is the current rage.

So when you take your gal to a show thinking it will turn her on you should know a ha-ha-ha and a ho-ho-ho and popcorn and a Coke served with a joke no doubt will help you make out. Scorn porn, lotharios and romeos and put your faith in sitcom cameos and treat your lover to wine and dinner 9and you'll be sure to be a winner.

HOLIDAYS, OH HOLIDAYS!

Holidays, oh holidays, times to praise, to raise the flag, to salute and root for all that's great in these, our beloved United States, to fill our hearts with hip- hoorays and relive the memories millions wish they could forget, the deaths of those who sacrificed and paid the price with their life and we ere left to remember times like that fatal September, that December Day of Infamy, dates like 1776 and oh so many more, when war was waged and madness raged and blood was shed and the good left dead to test our great democracy.

Was it always thus. will it always be, is death the only way for us to protect our land from foreign bands of terrorists who persist in spreading heartless hate while the good debate ways to defend humanity from this senseless insanity.

Will we, one day, find a way to end all wars waged by masses caught in the grips of dictatorships controlled by tyranny? No longer will the strong oppose the weak nor will the weak seek support of freedom loving nations to rid the devastation destroying all civilizations. Then and only then will holidays evoke only memories of true love and brotherhood and all that's good, prevailed on earth as it should.

And it could!

THE SAME OLD SONG

There's got to be something wrong with a government that keeps singing the same old sing-along song: an incompetent president can't be ejected because he's been elected/selected, laws and the Constitution be damned. Just because a candidate gets in by an act of fraud or a pact with the Supreme Being or the Supreme Court or by selling the voters short.

Why have we never sent a president to jail or tossed him out on his tail when he's failed to obey laws in a land where justice allegedly prevails?

Mayors and govs and lesser elected pols have been affected by laws aimed at those presumed untouchable. But when they got in trouble they got their just deserts where it hurts the worst, time for their crime in the slammer.

Agnew quit. Nixon quit. Both got hefty pensions out of it. But not the current 'White House twit. Seems he just won't git. Crime after crime. Time after Time. What can we do about it?

Bush told a lie that sent thousands to die just so he could stay high in polls and it worked for the jerk a little while. But the GIs were dead before the voters said enough of that Bush bluff and guff. So what does Duby do? Start another war---for who? Not for me or you. For George to regain what he has lost at any cost. His goal: regain his numbers in the poll. Buy it back with more GIs killed in Iraq for the good of not me or you but just for You Know Who.

WORDS ABOUT WORDS

I'm a writer. I delight to write. Words are my stock in trade. They were made to convey what's happening in the world today, telling stories of past glories, selling merchandise, apologizing, compromising, making nice, breaking ice, being precise.

Without words we couldn't sing melodies, define theories, possibilities, utter inanities, Without words put together, we couldn't discuss weather. There'd be no dictionary, no Stephen King and all the things he makes scary, no Shakespeare and his Romeo, no Poe, no plot that thickens, no Charles Dickens, no Bible, no libel, no rhyme, what's worse, no verse.

I'd be unable to debate, to state views on news I choose to discuss. Why a fuss about words granted us to tell the truth as it is writ or lie and cheat a little bit? Words give sounds their meaning in spite of "uhs" and "you knows" intervening, They form expressions, relieve depressions, reveal emotion, profess devotion, describe motions of the oceans.

Politicians could not deny, imply or falsify what they said they didn't say. You know why? There'd be no words to judge them by. There'd be no pencils, pens or ink to reveal what we think. No typewriters, no type. No DVDs, CDs, tape recorders. No stores taking orders for best sellers, no story tellers or bad spellers. There'd be no confessors, word processors or English professors, no yes sirs, no sirs, second guessers.

One final note: Computers could not compute. They'd all be mute,