In the Ghetto

The planting mound out front is looking good.

The roses are blooming in Bushwhack Alley.  I will either have to sacrifice these at some point or move them elsewhere.  They were here when I bought the place and from them I learned a minor lesson:  Don't plant roses in your walkway.

Do, however, plant petunias in a box.

And if you plant perennials, you have less planting to do next year.  The only addition I made to this arrangement is a marigold plant, which is not even visible in this photo.

Nearby, however, I planted all kinds of vegetative goodness.

And now for the art piece.  I call this "Still Life With Rose and Some Other Flower."

And this one I call "It Finally Bloomed."

Heat Beat the Spurs

We have a series, ladies and gentlemen.

I can't decide who I'm leaning towards, the Spurs, with Tony Parker lighting it up and their deep bench, or the Heat, with all the flash and attitude.

I think it would be cool if Birdman got a ring, though, so most nights it's the Heat.

A Different Mode

Seven posts in May.  That's it, only seven.  I'd consider that a bit of a slowing of pace, but don't worry, faithful readers, I'm not giving up the sport just yet.

What I have been doing is trying to think a different way.  As a writer, I've gotten used to letting things percolate in my subconscious throughout the day.  Throughout all these years I've been blogging, that process has not really changed.

But what has changed was the content of those percolating thoughts.  Once it was characters and plots and descriptive details, but soon it became political screeds and critical commentary.  The stories I should have been thinking about became the blog posts I wrote.

So I've intentionally avoided dipping into the blog well, if only as an exercise, to see if the old story well has yet to run dry.

And it hasn't.  Just like riding a bike, man, it's still there.

Just the other day, I was watching a show on Youtube about Jack Dempsey, the boxer.  He was from Manasass, Colorado, a little windswept cluster of streets and houses in the San Luis Valley, and last time I drove through that town, we stopped to see the local memorial. 

In the 1920s, Jack Dempsey was one of the most famous men alive.  He was selling out arenas and making millions, making history.  Here he was a little Mormon kid from a dusty old West town, a literal rags to riches story.

But Jack Dempsey had brothers.  One of them, I think his name was John, later met an ignoble end.  He, too, was a poor Mormon kid from a dusty old West town, but he was not a world-famous boxer.  He was kind of a wanna-be playboy, actually, who moved to Los Angeles and played hanger-on to the stars.

He found himself hooked on smack and, as they stories go, he ended up on the giving end of a murder-suicide.

In the bloggy-mode, I would have wrote about this as a factual account, Jack Dempsey, the brother, the heroin, the murder-suicide.  Two brothers, same origin story, two very different results.

But since I'm not thinking in bloggy-mode, all I saw was this 1920s cop.  He stumbles upon a crime scene in some dingy low-rent hotel in Hollywood, a dead girl and her killer, gun still in his hand, bullethole still smoking at his temple.

Imagine the look on the cop's face when he finds out the stiff is Jack Dempsey's brother.

Now that's not a story...but it's an idea.

Another example, a few weeks ago I went to a store and checking me out was a fairly attractive young woman, so of course I checked her out, admiring the curve of her jeans, and then I saw the arm.  A little mutated appendage with little nubs for fingers.

I thought about blogging about it, but instead I wrote in my notebook.

Story about a guy that dates a girl with a short, deformed arm.  She's obviously a lefty.  Can only hold hands on one side.  She's a nice girl, but he just can't do it.  Aside from the hand thing, she's perfect.

Now I don't think I'll ever write that story, this flash of a sick and twisted romantic comedy, but it's an idea.

And that's way better than blogging about foreign policy, let me tell ya.

Weed Town

Yesterday Colorado governor John Hickenlooper signed into law the marijuana legalization bill that passed last year's election.  It's a fairly radical move.

The bill doesn't just allow for personal use, but it allows for the commercialization of legal weed.  Pot shops are already itching to open, and in many ways, the infrastructure is already there.  Just take down the green cross sign and put the sham doctor out on the street.  Don't even have to move the cash register.

But there will other effects, some not as good.  Being the first and only, we will become a magnet, not just for pot tourists, but for the criminal element. 

I'm not so naive to think that drug runners from other places won't seek out refuge in and around our beautiful mountains.  Does pot grow well in the San Luis Valley?

We shall soon find out...

Is It Man or Ash?

Dig this painting my nephew made out of ash.

Stuff

Hannibal Lecter has been in my thoughts lately.  I've become enamored of the new show Hannibal, watched pieces of Manhunter last week, and I'm currently reading Red Dragon.  If I were a different sort, this descent into escapism would manifest itself in Game of Thrones or Star Trek but I'm a dark sort...so it's Hannibal the Cannibal.

And I hate to say it, but Hannibal Lecter has provided me with more hope and inspiration than my non-fictional fellow humans have these past few weeks.

First, it's a fucking joke that it's been so difficult to put a dead terrorist in the ground.  I mean, hey, I get it.   He bombed the Boston Marathon, killed a cop, and terrorized a city.  He's unquestionably a villain.

But he's dead.  He can't hurt anyone anymore and, more importantly, no one can hurt him.  While I understand the impulse to refuse to bury him as an emotional response, it's kind of, I don't know, childish.  Don't want to bury him?  Then what are you going to do with his corpse? This is not an abstract question.

Obviously you can't leave him on a slab.  I've heard that some people want him to be cremated, which seems like a practical solution.  The only problem with that is that the dude's family doesn't want him cremated and his religion forbids it. I know, I know.....here comes the "Fuck his family and fuck his religion" chorus, which might fly in Russia or Saudi Arabia, but really doesn't fit in with, you know, American values.

Here we respect religious differences --or at least we're supposed to, and we are only supposed to convict the guilty, not the whole family.

This whole episode has kind of made me think that these "values" are written in smoke on ice.  How easily they waft away when we're trying to impress our Facebook friends.  The sun shines and they evaporate.  We're back to wishing his head was put up on a spike outside of town to warn the other evil-doers.

To me, it's simple:  The living bury the dead.  We really need to get over ourselves and reacquaint ourselves with basic human decency.

And then there's the 3D printed gun.  Gun nuts and Libertarians are jizzing their pants over this thing.  "This," they say, "proves once and for all that gun control is impossible.  You can't trace the gun if I print it out."

Well, that may be true.  But what makes you think you can't be prosecuted?  Typical Libertarian blindspot, I guess, but really?   You print a gun designed to defy gun regulations and seriously think the ATF is just going to shrug it off?  "Clever Libertarian outsmarted me again."  C'mon, man....

David Frum gets it:

Wilson, a libertarian activist, calls his gun “the Liberator” — implying that it will empower the beleaguered individual against the forces of state tyranny.

But you won’t be wanting to take “the Liberator” with you into the field against Bashar Assad’s goons. Wilson’s gun fires a single bullet at short range with limited accuracy. It’s main utility is its ability to pass a metal detector. It is, in other words, an assassin’s weapon.

This should go without saying.  You can't fight tyranny with a little plastic zip gun.  However, if you are deluded enough, you can think you're fighting tyranny with your little one-shot popper.  What you're really doing, though, is being an asshole. 

A Dead Scumbag Terrorist

With background checks dying a fiery death in the House, it continues to amuse me to hear these right-wingers pretend they were victorious in defeating Obama's gun control regime.

Yeah, I guess....but we still have gun control.

Indeed, here's a perfect example of it:  (Warning:  A dude dies in this video)

This guy thought he was fighting tyranny.  He instead got into a shootout with some better trained cops who killed his ass.  Wolverines!


Seems like a real winner too:

[Police Chief] Stanko said officers found eight 40-round magazines for the AK-47 and books in Gilkerson's car. According to Stanko, the books were "Backyard Rocketry: Converting Model Rockets Into Explosive Missiles," "Advanced Close-range Gun Fighting," "Homemade Detonators: How To Make Them." Another, according to Stanko, was a book about how to dispose of a dead body.

Stanko said: "He was a scumbag, and a terrorist, and he's dead.

Probably a lifelong NRA member, too...

Utter Uselessness

"They told me to call...."

A five word clue that I'm about to embark on a fruitless conversation with someone who is as ill-equipped as they are unprepared.  

I mean, I have no doubt "they" told you to call, but surely there must be a reason for the call besides this vague command from some unidentified "they."  

Is there something you would like to accomplish?  Oh, you don't know?   Well, then....

Tell "them" you called and have a nice day. 

Stuff

The Nuggets lost in the first round again.  Jeff Hanneman from Slayer died.  Iron Man 3 is in theaters this weekend.  It's been a pretty crappy week.

But when it comes to marijuana policy, we're doing alright.

Check this out:

The Senate Finance Committee still has yet to vote on a bill that sets a 15 percent excise tax and a 10 percent special sales tax on recreational marijuana.

The State's going to get 10 points on every legal marijuana purchase.  Now them's some terms.

Allergies

Ah, what a strange spring it has been. Weekly snowstorms, cold temperatures, and then when it clears, as it did late last week, an allergy attack of biblical proportions. It started on Friday afternoon with the sniffles. By Saturday, I had the sniffles, a cough, and my eyes wouldn't stop watering. I left work early and drove home with one eye closed. All the trees and grasses figured that they might as well get pumping on the pollen; it is almost May after all.

I slept most of Sunday, getting up long enough to take a shower (I took probably five of them that day) and drink some water. Monday, I put the fever in hay fever and had to drag my sick ass down to Walgreens for some acetaminophen. It reduced the pressure behind my eyeballs enough to at least watch some TV.

Today is the last day of my weekend and while I feel 100% better, I'm still at 50% capacity. I've managed to do some things around the house, like making my bed, but all the big garden stuff...again delayed.

 They say it's going to snow tomorrow, not much, but hopefully enough to exact some revenge on the flora that has been attacking me. Stupid plants...

Cons Conning Cons (But No One Else)

Here's a video of an Alex Jones flunky discovering what it's like when people stop being polite and start getting real.
I can't say that this is the best way to deal with brain-addled conspiracy nuts, but it does seem to be the most appropriate.