generations of valor

this heartwarming photo courtesy of baby brother ed via e-mail today.
thank you, darlin’…
this picture speaks volumes about loyalty, commitment and brotherhood, selflessness and honor…

thank you, stevie!

ok, here is an exerpt from The Master’s latest novel, “Duma Key.” just a little nibble for ye; go to cheap-mart and drop your own $16.88 and you can experience the entire entree! i am certain that the best is yet to come, but i already have a huge shit-eatin’ grin {whoever coined that disgusting phrase?}, and i just opened the book!

his wit, craftiness and sarcasm is what draws me to him, and keeps me hungry for more. i also happen to cherish the way he secretly names people according to their personalities or traits…

for you Constant Readers, you well know that although he has been called “the master of horror,” the body of his work is not always terrifying monsters that jump out at you in the dark. sometimes it’s the very real, palpable terror of what transpires in the deep dark regions within the mind.

…just at page ten, already reeling me in with his introduction to characters so familiar, they could be people we all know:

   …”Kathi Green the Rehab Queen had only been divorced once, but she and Tom were on the same wavelength. I remember her sitting cross-legged in her leotard, holding my feet and looking at me with grim outrage.
      “Here you are, just out of Death’s Motel and short an arm, and she wants to call it off. Because you poked her with a plastic hospital knife when you could barely remember your own name? Fuck me ’til I cry! Doesn’t she understand that mood swings and short-term memory loss following accident trauma are common?”
      “She understands that she’s scared of me,” I said.
      “Yeah? Well, listen to your Mama, Sunny Jim: if you’ve got a good lawyer, you can make her pay for being such a wimp. Some hair had escaped from her Rehap Gestapo ponytail and she blew it back from her forehead. “She ought to pay for it. Read my lips: None of this is your fault.”
      “She says I tried to choke her.”
      “And if so, being choked by a one-armed invalid must have been a pants-wetting experience…”

******

      My next visitor was Dr. Kamen, the psychologist who gave me Reba. I didn’t invite him. I had Kathi, my rehabilitation dominatrix, to thank for that.
      Although surely no more than forty, Kamen walked like a much older man and wheezed even when he sat, peering at the world through enormous horn-rimmed spectacles and over an enormous pear of a belly. He was a very tall, very black black man, with features carved so large they seemed unreal. His great staring eyeballs, ship’s figurehead of a nose, and totemic lips were awe-inspiring. Xander Karmen looked like a minor god in a suit from Men’s Warehouse. He also looked like a prime candidate for a fatal heart attack or stroke before his fiftieth birthday.
      He refused my offer of refreshment, said he couldn’t stay, then put his briefcase aside on the couch as if to contradict that. He sank full fathom five beside the couch’s armrest (and going deeper all the time–I feared for the thing’s springs), looking at me and wheezing benignly.
      “What brings you out this way?” I asked.
      “Oh, Kathi tells me you’re planning to bump yourself off,” he said. It was the tone he might have used to say Kathi tells me you’re having a lawn party and there are fresh Krispy Kremes on offer. “Any truth to that rumor?”

o.k., that’s all for now. gotta go…back to Duma Key.

weapons of grass destruction

no words necessary here. enjoy!

focused

for all the crazy unadulterated bullshit that fell on my shoulders this past year, there is a wealth of goodness, beauty and grace that i have been blessed with, and feel compelled to acknowledge…

• no-less-than-amazing offspring, pursuing their dreams, nurturing their families
• the long-distance love of family
• being privileged to work with the most ill of patients; so bittersweet…
• a gentle prodding back towards my creative self
• a fat lazy yellow lab named JACK, who believes that all food was placed on this earth solely for his eating pleasure
• sunshine; the promise of a new day…the stars, another promise
• old and new/renewed friendships and new experiences
• new contractors {the “Christian Soldiers”}
• music, music, music
• wonderful food and drink
• the beautiful freedom of riding on the back of a motorbike sans helmet, the wind whipping my hair about
• Dr. Frasier Crane  🙂

  …undoubtedly i could go on and on. there are so many people out there, friends and even strangers, who have touched me in some way over the past year – with humor, friendship, love, a tender word, a helping hand.

• …or allowing me to help you, for those who know me understand that this is an integral part of herself……i am so very grateful…and now you are part of the intricate weaving that is the process of me.

never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups

hmmm….where to begin?

yesterday i got an urgent phone call from the vice-principal of my son’s {public} school. when he didn’t reach the landline {yep, still have one!}, he called my cell phone. apparently they had to confiscate a weapon from my 10 year-old son.

“my God!” i exclaimed {eyes rolling upward},”did anyone get hurt?”

the weapon in question was an M-16 assault rifle…
um, made by HASBRO for…
um, G.I. Phucking Joes.

they wouldn’t give it back to him. they insisted i drive to the school to pick it up. wouldn’t send it home in a sealed envelope. no, sir. had to go pick it up, because it “raised some eyebrows.”

above is a photo of the reason my son got “in trouble” at school yesterday. now i feel compelled to do some lengthy internet research to discover just how many serial killers played with G.I. Joes as children.

“well, ya know, bubba, you just cain’t be too careful these days.”
those are MY tax dollars, hard at work, baby.

as stephen king would say, “fuck me freddy.”