Who stole my funny bone?
While we sit, in comfort, others die. While I sit, children die! Who are you Joe, that you can maintain your ease while these people suffer? Why do you peck away at your keyboard as so much pain and sorrow tread the earth with boundless hate? Who are you to laugh at funny things while this suffering continues.
“But I have no power sir! The demands on my life have lead me to a disabled state! I cannot go there and help. I have no money to give. I have no sword to cut through the demented minds of these butchers! Why? Why are they so cruel? Why do they torture their own kind so? What is inside the soul of a killer of children, a raper of young girls, a mind that can not care for their own? Nothing can be done until we stand.
So it was with to us-we, the damn people! Some of us rise, and some of us fall. Some fall so that others may rise. Some lose it all; some give their all so that others may get. That’s the way we use to be. But someone wicked came in and led us to our freedom’s grave. They dealt in school ground tactics, pitting one against the others. When all have been separated from their brothers, they came in and shot the humans, whose only cause was right-the cause to live! We are only allowed, not, to be together that way now.
I would like to thank John Edwards and Howard Dean for participating in the “24 hours for Darfur” program. I couldn’t help but notice there were no participants from the Republican side. Where are they? Where is Bush? Where are the people?

Darfur: If only a place

The finite struggle to
live continues.
Faces pained with the pain of seeing death,
but still the children have smiles to give.
It’s the eyes that see things to make them old,
before they are young.
The rebels come and kill to Mothers and Fathers.
ratchet-clipping guns that the young indoctrinated love to hear.
Rocketing bullets scar the lives of the children left alone.
The boys are taken, to fight or die.
The rest are left to reason out why they were born!
They sit; some fear the happy school,
for the joy may be taken from them,
as if it were a sin.
Why the singing, the dancing, the laughing,
when their lives were so fit for hell?
If only a place,
where they could stop seeing their war,
their horror, this constant sound of fury and hate!
If only a place,
where happiness is not a crime,
where they could open their sweet eyes,
and hope.

I’ve always wanted to fly. Wouldn’t you love to be able to fly? So I decided I would. I’ve got it all down pat, accept for that take-off! This is Iowa, and someday, someone is going to fly. It’ll probably be here! That’s right, right here in Iowa- “A place to grow”. And nobody will be there to see it! Some ass hole in New York will get wind of it, and everybody will go crazy! But not here in Iowa because we’ve been doing it for years!

I’d love to travel but my sense of direction is very compromised. So now, when I need direction, I think of which way I would go, then go the opposite way. That’s how I ended up here in Iowa. Terry Brandstad was our former governor, had a slogan. He looked like “Boston Blackie” from the old television show, with him neatly trimmed, pencil thick moustache. He was not a ‘moustache’ guy. He wasn’t tough-looking enough. He was more like John Ritter, from “three’s company, a likeable guy, but not tough, and not smart enough to be governor. But, he was governor for about twelve years. This, folks, is Iowa: “Iowa-a place to grow.”. That was his slogan on the back of the telephone book, and road maps. His legacy-not much! I always thought “grope” would have been a better word.
Nothing ever happens in Iowa, well accept for the Iowa caucuses, every four years. The purpose of the caucuses was that you represented a certain candidate. All the folks from your area sit around for an entire evening, in someone’s house, trying to get the other guy to shit-can their candidate in favor of your candidate. Each representative states why they like their candidate, then the arm-twisting begins. The idea seems to be to get you to release your candidate, and vote for another. We here, call it: “the purest form of Democracy”. I think it’s more like arm-wrestling. And of course, I can’t participate because I have no party anymore. The vast, majority, independents are not represented. It a fool’s game anymore!

“We live the small-town life here in Iowa. Hey, it’s great! The best Chicken I’ve ever eaten was in a town called Mt Hamel. It had a Grain elevator, an Ammonia tank, and a Tavern, called Mt Hamel Tap. Why do they call some taverns “Taps”? Every time I go in the place, people are drinking canned, or bottled, beer. We used to take a twelve pack, and a couple of joints, and head down to Mt Hamel on Friday night. At eight o’clock, a little blonde girl would take the small stage and begin her show, “Corky at the Organ”. We would sing the stupid songs we sang in grade school. It was very ‘campy’ to sing “You are my Sunshine” when you’re stoned and full of Chicken! The highlight of the night was us doing the ‘chicken dance, to “Old MacDonald”. Talk about ‘campy’? And God, the Chicken! People from all around came to Mt Hamel for that Chicken. It had extra thick, crispy coating that was like a meal in itself! And the damn Chickens were mutants! They almost scared you, they were so big!
I asked the guy who owned the place, why he doesn’t change the name to, say Mt Hamel Tavern. He said:
“We don’t want to be like everybody else!”.
I said: “Everybody else? There’s no body else here!”.
“Exactly!” he said. This is Iowa folks-A place to grope!

Sevara Nazarkhan-Uzbekistan
The affect of a musical expression is its ability to elicit an emotional connection to the singer, by the listener.
Sevara Nazarkhan has a soft voice that begs emotional feelings. I don’t need to know the language; that is the power of her voice. A song that reaches inside to evoke a deep of lonely, loving embrace of her music.
I think she is somewhere around 20 years old now. When I first heard her, she was 14, and seemed to beyond her age. I stumbled upon her at "World Music" on LinkTV. They run videos from all over the world. Some are huge classics. Check it out if you have 'dish'. You'll see the humor of the Gypsies, the power of the Aboriginies, Irish, Ughandan, Cuban, Latins, and Middle East. There is a lot of great music on it. I highly recommend it.

If God was to do it right, politically correct, he would have made men suffer the pain together with the woman at childbirth. SBP, it’s called-shared birth pains. Why do we, the men, get to have all the fun of childbirth without suffering the pain! Of course, during those last three months you women are having identity problems with your weight, and I guess you don’t feel all that good about making love, and you do look a little bloated, and angry-at us? Hey, you’re the women here, not us! I mean, I know the guys out there, are thinking: “Why’s this guy tryin’ to fuck up our action?”. But, it isn’t fair. Just because Adam had seniority don’t make him cock a’ the walk! I would have been willing to share the pain of childbirth with my wife. Hey, I’ve had diarrhea; how much worse can it be? And I know you women have a low threshold of pain! We hit our thumbs with hammers, for Christ’s sake! We know what real pain is! So she’s carried this human around in her stomach for nine long months! Big deal! We suffer through six months of the goddamn baseball season, then it goes right into football! Talk about your pain! We have to put up with all those sappy-assed drunks in the tavern when we hand out cigars! Then they start buying us drinks-for God’s sake, we have to drink those! How bad is that?
So, the night before the little one is about to come forth, us guys get real nervous. I mean, we’re thinking: “This is the girl who thought Buddy Holly was a Christmas decoration. I hope she doesn’t screw this up!”.
You go to the hospital; you get her registered; then we have to wait. Damn it, we were in the fucking Army. That’s all we did was wait! Pop that baby outa’ there, and let me get to the tavern, so I can prestige my fucking manhood! And, if it’s a boy, I can really make those girl-making guys squirm! If it’s a girl, we’ll merely say how happy we are that “it’s healthy”.
Yeah, I think we should share the pain.

The last child we had, Diane ground my hand into dust! She jerked up screaming: “This baby is coming!”. Nobody believed her but me, and my hand. There was blood everywhere. It was like a massacre had happened. I went screaming down the hall, thinking my child was certainly dying. The Nurses thought I was too anxious, and it wasn’t time yet. But when they saw the scene of my wife’s anguish, they knew it was! They took her in. The doctor interviewed me about a name, afterwards, as Diane was sedated. She’ll tell you I waited two days, but I had the name.
“John,” I said, “his name is John.” the doctor looked approving.
“That’s a good Biblical name,” he said. I signed the certificate.
When Diane came out, I held her hand again. It was still sore, but the smile on her face was too sacred to miss. I never thought about any pain. The sheer joy I felt was a true revelation. And, I have never loved, or had so much respect for, one human being in my whole life, as I did her on that day.
The gift of childbirth is something given to a man, by a woman, that he can never repay. All the work, hassle, pain, is worth what she has done for us. We mere men, will never know what absolute power there is in that. We are not blessed with this great vision of expression, this Artistic renewing of humanity. We are the lesser for that! God bless every Mother that has ever been, for they are the most Noble people on Earth-the Mother.
I love you.