Give me 30 minutes of your time.
Scroll down my sidebar and click on KONY.
This madman has to be stopped.
Now.
Please help to make this asshat so famous that he can’t walk into a McDonald’s and order fries without being noticed.
Read his ‘Disney-like’  Wiki Page HERE
Kony needs to be taken to the Chateau Eternity.
Extra topsoil.
End of story.

~m

A co-worker was walking back to the store last week after lunch when he was approached
by a grown man dressed as a Girl Scout.
Dress, hat and all.
Around Park Square in Boston, freaks like this elicit little but a glance.
This freak spoke to my colleague in passing and said,
“I always wanted to be a Girl Scout. If you could buy a box of cookies you could make me really feel like one.”
Really?
These people exist, folks.
We get phone calls from people looking for K2, Salvia and numerous cannabis alternatives.
The latest is ‘Kush’.
I took a call yesterday from some bonehead that asked, “You guys have any kush?”
I said, “Try ‘Bed, Bath and Beyond. They sell it by the boatload.”
Click.
Dial tone.
I think BB&B sells bath salts too.
We hear you can smoke those and get off with the right pipe.
Christ save us all.
Off to snort some totally rad solid Degree deodorant.
Pass the aaa batteries . . .

~m

There has been a question that’s been rolling around in this head of mine for ions now.
I asked ‘said’ question to a fairly close friend of mine recently and was a wee bit startled by his answer.
It was the total opposite of mine.
Know that this friend of mine is an MD and a highly intelligent individual.
I would have thought that everyone would see it my way but that is obviously not the case.
While the question is illogical, hypothetical and a virtual unfeasibility,
I found it mind-numbing nonetheless.

If you came upon a celestial tollbooth in your life where you were told:
You need to give up either your sight or your hearing, which one do you choose to lose?

My answer was almost immediate which was no shock to me and possibly of little shock to you.
So as not to sway anyone this post will be in two parts, this one being the first.
What would you choose?
Sight or Sound/Hearing?

My answer will follow next week.
If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter there will be a link there soon.
Think about it people.
Give me your best shot.
I already have my answer locked and loaded . . .

~m

This song is deeply personal to me.
Interpretation is as always a unique thing.
Jimmy Webb has inspired me for many years.
His writing style, lyrics and unmistakeable piano chords make me yearn to
write again someday.
‘Mistress’ has been recorded by many people over the years but no version gets to me like
Webb’s.
As I said, the song is embedded deeply into the tapestry of my life.
A secret and a mystery I will take to the grave.
This is the beauty of the written song . . .

Peter Hanson made a cell phone call to his father at 09:00am on 9.11.01

“It’s getting bad, Dad. A stewardess was stabbed. They seem to have knives and Mace. They said they have a bomb. It’s getting very bad on the plane. Passengers are throwing up and getting sick. The plane is making jerky movements. I don’t think the pilot is flying the plane. I think we are going down. I think they intend to go to Chicago or someplace and fly into a building. Don’t worry, Dad. If it happens, it’ll be very fast….Oh my God… oh my God, oh my God.”

[As the call abruptly ended, Hanson's father heard a woman screaming.]

In the past few weeks I have had numerous hits on my blog and
70%  of them have been related to the tragedy of  9/11.
It’s a part of our history that will be told from a million different perspectives and from a million different hearts.
A sunny, beautiful and blue sky forever September day that changed the face of the United States forever.
The tenth anniversary of anything as monumental as this will have 99% of people scouring the internet for information regarding one of our nations darkest of days.
On the 5th Anniversary of 9/11 a website was born, dedicated to the writing of tributes to all those taken by this senseless and avoidable tragedy.
I thank Dale Roe for taking on the challenge.

I have written 3 tributes for the site thus far:

Amy Jarret, a stewardess on UA Flight 175
Bobby Minara, a NYC firefighter that was to retire in two months
Steve ‘Jake’ Jacoby, a passenger on American Airlines Flight 77 that hit the Pentagon.

I decided to write another tribute on this 10th anniversary;
for Peter Hanson, his wife Sue and their 2 ½ year old daughter Christine.
The conversation you read at the top of this post was from Peter Hanson’s cell phone, a message left minutes before Flight UA175 hit the south tower of the
World Trade Center, the plane we all saw live on national TV (and the flight Amy Jarret was on).
My thoughts now are what was going through the mind of Peter.
You are on an airplane that is headed for a destination unknown and you know it’s not a good place.
Consoling a 2 ½ year old is trying enough without knowing that you are about to die.
The plane they were on was descending at 5 to 10,000 feet per minute towards the end.
You can’t explain that to a child.
You probably wouldn’t want to.
My heart broke reading about the final moments of their all-too-short lives.
In my heart, I know they were all together and died in each other’s arms,
a beautiful prayer of sorts.
To the Hanson family, I can’t even begin to estimate the size of your sorrow.
My heart breaks for all of you with the upcoming 10th anniversary on Sunday.
In my mind, I see three candles lit and burning brightly, piercing the darkness.
Three souls together.
Three hearts finally at home, albeit a bit too soon.
God bless you Peter, Sue and  little Christine.
You are all with the angels now.
Of that I am sure.

Maybe it’s time to turn the mourning of 9/11 into the celebration of the people that once were.
Thoughts of death and dying every year on 9/11 is futile.
It gets us nowhere.
Let’s look at celebrating the vibrant lives of all those lost, the unexpected heroes, the ones that gave all that they had, the ones that took a stand on UA Flight 93, a proud moment for Americans everywhere.
September 11th will never be a happy date but I feel it’s one that needs a serious makeover.
It’s been 10 long years of grieving and the United States of America has accomplished so much since.
I say it’s time we show the world just how strong we really are, and can be.
God Bless this land that we love . . .

~m

I have no words for this video.
I love Billy Crystal and Helen Mirren.
This one took me by surprise.
Crystal and Mirren have some serious alchemy.
If you’ve seen the original movie and need a smile, please watch.
And if you haven’t, please watch.
Edward Cullen, watch out . . .

Unconscionable
Apathy that’s palpable
As [St.] Anthony bleeds . . .

For the sake of a Needle . . .

~m

White houses showing iridescent blue fangs of frozen water that linger long
into the bleakness of a frosty January dusk,
that sets upon my windowpane ‘dead on arrival’
This bleak and frigid season chills me to the inner core,
the brittle bones,
the essence of my iced heart that’s adamantly out of touch with the emotional temperature of the season.

White, snow, mountains, drifts, deep thoughts of Fahrenheit and Celsius,
the twin sons of different mothers,
make the world a colder place depending on the shifting of the wind . . .

. . . chill, skid, the crunching of metal, slide, scrape, snowblow in an effort to jumpstart
an anti-freezing world that has no gloves anymore,
a world that has no answers, too many questions and one too many December’s
on a calendar that never freezes, is never late on a bill and continues on,
damn the frozen torpedoes and the godforsaken overpaid weatherman

White houses sport melting teeth of ice, dripping endlessly into the foundations of
a winter that was, that seemingly had no ending, no rhyme, no reason, no porpoise.
Flipper.
Flipping this middle finger.
Enough already.
Flip this world upside down to Spring, for Christ’s sake.
Sometime soon, and . . .
Make the white houses finally go away.

~m

7 words:
Coolness.
Alternative.
Period.
Amen.
Phoenix.
Headphones.
Required . . .

~m