It

Wind in trees

 Clean air in lungs

Dirt underfeet

Signs of dreams

Puffy clouds across blue sky

Bird song in the air

Duff makes no sound

Mushrooms peek through

Earthy scents of the hidden

Dewy shadows of green

Diamond speckles of light

Forest of jewels

Crunch of leaves

Tap of the woodpecker

Startled rabbit runs

Well packed trail

Up the path goes

The glen is so hidden

This is it.

I found it.

This must be it!

I want it to be it!

And so it shall be.

Ode to Blondie (might offend the closet-dirty-minded and conservative or most likely just my mom)

Once upon a time there was a baby born. A screaming, ninja of a blond baby.  This baby was the loudest baby ever to have graced this earth.  Seriously, you have no idea.  This baby would just never shut up. Shit you not, no stopping the lungs on this kid.

Wait, I can't write this.  I was going to write a sort-of-true-ish fairy tale commemorating the birth of my best friend Sonja.  Of course I was trying to do it in a style that would prevent her from getting a fat(ter) head; thus the derogatory comments about her giant lungs. But I just can't do it.  Unfortunately my imagination is defunct tonight, but my memory is just fine. Pretty much anyway.

I cannot tell a lie.  OK I lied. I can, but what-the-fuck-ever; it's my blog and I will claim un-truths as truths, and as I see fit.  And if you understand even a little of that last sentence, you are freaking awesome. For realzies.

"Break 1-7."
"Go ahead break."
"Thanks. Hey! Blondie!  You gotta copy on Sunny Day?"
"Yeah, this's Blondie."
"Hey, travel down two."
"10-4."
"Break 1-5".

We were so damn cool.

So here goes.  I am going to attempt to make a tribute to Sonja's birthday.  We all would like to commemorate the day that she erupted from her mother's vagina with a squall and a fart (that's how I heard it anyway) and say Happy Birthday!

If you had not been born I would have had no one to "teach" me how to fight at Meadow Park while we skipped school.

If you had got stuck upside down and never been born, I would not have had someone to hand me my first cigarette.  (gee thanks)  lol

If you had not been born, I would be in prison or at least had a juvie record for bashing in Chris McCoy's knee with the baseball bat in high school. Thanks for stopping me.

If not for the fact that your mom actually had the strength to push your fat head out of her orifice, I would have punched that window back then with the wire mesh inside it and I would probably be typing this one-handed.

If not for you, I would never had realized just how retarded I was when I wanted to punch you for laughing at me when I flew off the mechanical bull and landed ass-first on my hat.  I was an ass-hat.  You were the bigger person.  Show off.

If not for you I would have never been scared shitless about a cougar.  Imaginary or real, the fear is the same I don't care who you are.

Thank you for not making fun of me for being vegetarian while you sit on the phone talking to me while holding a rifle so you can shoot the deer crossing your yard. And thanks for trying the chili I made with VeggieMeat.  (your giant child-man ate two bowls if I remember right)

If you had not been born I would have probably gotten the crap kicked outta me numerous times.  I can hold my own, don't get me wrong, but you make my imaginary balls bigger.  And not in a "gay" way. Seriously, is there a way to say this shit without sounding "gay"?  And when I say "gay" I mean it in the "retarded" sense, not in the homophobic sense. And when I say "retarded" I don't mean it in a derogatory sense, just in the sense that some people are just plain ol' stupid.(It is so hard to be PC these days . . . five friggin pages of disclaimers kinda takes away the moment ya know?) Fuck.


If not for you, I would have forgotten just how awesome I am or can be.  I tend to forget and you remind me.  "I said what!?  I did that?  Oh shit I forgot all about that.  You are right, that was fun as hell!"  How many times have I said it? Never.

If not for you, I would never have known just how much the feel of a dry, warm sweatshirt feels at the end of a long-ass walk, in the dark, down hill, with a POS flashlight, and a cougar-bear-fucking-sasquach stawking us.

If you had not been born this day, I would never had had the occasion to yell, "Fuckng lean!  Not my way!  Your way, lean!".

If it had been just me out in the hills "Clarkin'", I don't know if I ever would have discovered Ostrich Point without you.  

I would have never known that the decapitated head of a deer packed in a box with styrofoam, strapped down in a hurry, could tumble as far as it did, if you were not my best friend.

If you had been given to gypsies after you were spewed and freed from your placenta connection, I like to think that we would have met anyway; wondering about how we oddly we look alike, but also instinctively knowing that this was a person we knew we could trust.

But seriously, if you had not been born, I am not sure how my life would have turned out.  At different times you have been my friend, my savior, my conscience, my confessor and my sounding board or even the person that told me "what for".  There were moments when I thought all was lost and you pulled me out, so I guess what I want to say is:  I'm glad that we were able to recognize our coolness in each other,  I love you and Happy Birthday!

The One With All the Quotation Marks and Italics

I noticed something telling . . ever since the "Occupy Eugene" thing, a lot of the "homeless", "jobless", "stranded,"vet" people are not on their prospective corners. . . I didn't know they were all members of Adbusters.  Go figure.  

In case you didn't know ( I didn't at first either) but the Adbusters are the one's that started Occupy Wallstreet.  They are a Canadian-based group, that's right I said Canadian, that fights against "consumerism".  They also have sister groups in France, Norway, Sweden and of all places, Japan. I won't go into detail about how it all started, however I do find it interesting that there is no sister on the Occupy family tree based in the United States.


The other day some dude in the sauna asked me, "What do you think about this "occupy" thing?". I found that I really didn't have an opinion.  At the time, the primary reason was because he had interrupted me while I was very obviously reading a book.  Frankly, it took me a second or so to leave the world of Judy Blume and go into the world of politics I care not about. What? Every woman should re-read "Are you There God? It's Me, Margarette?" at least once.  I can't believe the difference in the hidden, literal meaning from now and from when I was 11. I also have to roll my eyes at my eleven-year-old self, as you should too.


Anyway, I really had not thought about it.  I don't know if it's because I rarely leave my own neighborhood, which is blessedly "occupier" free, and I tend to just enjoy my own space or if I am just too jaded.

We in Eugene have one of the most visible (intersection signs), yet also un-enforced "no loitering" and "no panhandling" laws in the state.  The police either have no man-power or no inclination to arrest or cite the people who disobey.  Those that disobey this ordinance stand on the curb, sometimes within 2 feet of the cars waiting for the green or for traffic to lag, with a cardboard sign begging for $ or supposedly "anything" because it "helps" and "God bless".  They ask for this because they are "a vet", "disabled", "homeless", "stranded", apparently.


Just about any major intersection will have a person with their own sign on every corner.  They own their own imaginary property rights for certain corners that they consider a "good one". No joke.  I asked a few. Or sometimes they plant themselves at a busy driveway like Winco.  There is a dude that holds a sign down there stating, "The aliens are hungry and need a taco. Donations please."  Seriously.  There is another guy that is usually at the intersection of Ferry Street Bridge and 6th who begs, claiming to be homeless in his nice shoes, Levi's and Duck shirt/jacket.  If you see him, just out of curiosity's sake go inside the Good Times bar on the same day, about 50 yds from where he stands, around 6-7 o.clock in the evening.  He's usually shooting pool or throwing darts until about 9 then he leaves in a cab.  I shit you not.  Not sure what his story is.


So anyway, I went down to the latest Occupy camp site and I was not impressed.  Half the people that were hanging around the tents didn't even have an opinion as to why they were there.  Now, I'm not dissing the people who really do know what they are doing there.  Or even the people who have only a vague idea of what they were doing.  


So here is the part when I get to spout my opinion on my blog.  I get to do this because it's my blog.  See how that works?  What I saw was a lot of the dirty, skanky, people who have just recently been kicked off of Heroine Hill recently.  I know this because I used to work at a grocery store near said hill and said Occupy camp, and the same faces would come in to buy the quart glass bottled milk on food stamp day, go outside and dump the milk on the ground to then come back and receive the $2 cash deposit in their pocket.  The same faces that would come in to return the GIANT bags of beer cans for the deposit that they collected at the stadium on game day, only to turn around and buy beer with it.  These people are currently taking advantage of a situation to be able to "legally camp" in town.  They are taking advantage of the free food that hardworking people donated to the Occupy Eugene political cause.  They are taking advantage of the professional medical people that volunteer their services for the true, legitimate rally-ers.  I asked one woman what her personal reasons were for being there, and she said, "This is awesome!  I know I have a place to sleep and party until the middle of December!".  True story.  I'm pretty sure she was high.


I also understand that the Occupy people are also taking a stand on the homelessness in our city and across the nation.  Funny, it seems a convenient way to make your forces bigger without any drama.  "OK gather around . . . smelly, drunk, homeless people camp over there.  The rest of us upper-middle class wanna be earth savers will be over here.  We won't bother you if you don't bother us.  Oh and by the way, we are going to use your lack of hygiene and roof as another platform. Thanks so much."  These are not the homeless that I care about. Fuck 'em. I care about the hard-working people who lost their roof, and home due to no fault of their own and are making an effort to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.  Those people don't have time to "occupy" shit.  They are too busy busting their hump trying to live. 


So anyway there it is.  The mystery of the disappearing homeless sign guy solved.