WATER SLIDE WITH MUD

I have four grandchildren now, and all of them love to go to the water parks where there are endless watery attractions. Waves, fountains, deep end, water falls, shallow ends, tunnels, slides. It's the slides that take me back to my own childhood in the 1940s on a wheat farm in the Dust Bowl. 

Of course we didn't have water slides; we had a big cow tank that we cleaned once a year so the cows could have cleaner water and so the kids, including neighborhood kids, could teach themselves to swim. But that was later, before my sister and I discovered, after a particularly heavy rain storm, a racing stream of water that ran from one pasture to another. We created what was possibly the first water slide in the Oklahoma panhandle.

Out wandering around in the fresh mud, because we had carte blanche from our parents to go wading any time we wanted, we found the water gushing like nothing we had ever seen. We called it the washout. Nothing could stop us. We waded right in to the top of the washout and let it carry us under the barbed wire fence into the next pasture, about fifteen feet. Then we climbed back to the top and did it again. And again. And again. 

Submerged, letting our long hair flow out behind in the muddy water, giggling, making the most of our good fortune before the water ran out. 

Did I mention muddy water? Did I mention that cows and horses grazed in those pastures? Did I mention that cows and horses poop in pastures? And that the water must have been filled with liquefied animal poop? We never thought of poop. Germs never entered our minds. We were ecstatic.

I sometimes wonder if we didn't have more fun than my grandkids.

ROBOTS IN YOUR FACE

Why is it that ninety percent of the time when the phone rings it is a call from someone you want to die? 

Those endless phone pests who want to tell you that if you don't call them back immediately, Medicare will cancel your service and you will die broke and alone in a frozen ditch in Siberia. Robots whose messages on voicemail record only half of their messages. 
You would think that a damn robot would be smarter.

You often hear the phrase, "We can send a man to the moon, but we can't . . ." Fill in the blank. Here, the ending is, we can't stop junk phone calls. Is anyone really trying?

My phone rings at regular intervals with the caller ID saying anonymous, or private, or even my own phone number. I have not yet been curious enough to answer the phone when my own phone number appears. It might be spooky. A voice from beyond.

We live in an age of frustration. Technology is so smart, yet it can't make the telephones we pay for free from the garbage we don't pay for.😫

REDACT, REDACT, REDACT

The Mueller Report is out, except for the parts that Attorney General William Barr felt free to redact, which appear to be many. Congress would like to see the entire report, and so would I. Barr apparently assumed that hundreds of collective congressional minds were incapable of reading and understanding the report, so he set his superior brain to interpreting it for them. This is the act of one egotistical suck-up handing another egotist exactly what he wanted instead of exactly what was true.  We are in for a long, nasty fight over this. An extended national migraine headache.

Here's what I think should be redacted: William Barr. Wouldn't it be funny if Barr were barred from the bar? 

A redacted Stephen Miller is way overdue. He should be forced to wear a black, redacted costume for the rest of his days.

A redacted Eric Trump might not even be noticed at the White House. Eric is one of those shadowy creatures who surfaces from time to time to praise his father. But no one outside the White House pays attention to him.

The Wicked Witches of the West Wing girls, Kellyanne and Sarah, need redacting. Starting with their mouths.

I wouldn't waste ink trying to redact the president. It's such fun watching him try to squirm out of his many troubles.

Ivanka and Jared Trump (Bonnie and Clyde) must suffer a different fate. For them I call on the Greek goddess Athena, who once turned a rival, Arachne, into a spider. Mr. and Mrs. Kushner must be turned into spiders. It would be so easy for someone to step on them that way. But in order to keep them from reproducing more of their kind, they must be sterile spiders. Sterile, to match  their hearts.

STEPFORD REDUX

Remember The Stepford Wives? (Of course you don't; you're too young.😅) It was a 1972 novel about husbands in a town called Stepford who, growing impatient with their wives' imperfections, created copies of them in the form of robots. The robots were, of course, perfect in all domestic and social respects. Let's don't get into their bedroom skills--I don't remember if they were discussed.

Don't remember what became of the imperfect, discarded bodies of the wives, either. Not important here.

Some people that I know of went so far as to accuse Nancy Reagan of being a Stepford wife. She had that glassy eyed, thin lipped, robotic stare and stiff way of moving. And the big hair that never moved. When she made the shocking faux pas of wearing a strapless gown to the inaugural ball, though, she might have been mistaken for an upside down floor mop. She had no shoulders. Her 
gown must have been glued on.

But now we have a new twist on Stepford wives: Stepford husbands. Picture Jared Kushner. Have you ever seen his face move? Have you ever seen his lips move? What does Ivanka know that we don't know? Come to think of it, maybe she is a Stepford product, too. Just a bit more animated than Jared.

He hangs around Daddy Trump like a dog on a leash. Was he programmed to do that? If Trump goes to jail, will he have to go?

If Don Jr. visits Stepford, will he insist that his robot must have a stronger chin? How about Eric? Can robots be programmed to be that dippy?

I shall continue to observe Jared for signs of life. And I shall continue to monitor his father-in-law for signs of intelligence.

GUADALUPE FROM GUATEMALA

She was standing in a wire cage at the Tijuana border crossing clutching an old tin wash tub and wash board. The border guard asked her her name. She replied, "I am Guadalupe Gonzales from Guatemala, sir. 

 "And why have your brought such very unusual objects with you to America," he asked pointing at the tub and wash board.

"Ah, sir," she said, "I have come in hopes of getting a job at the White House doing the president's laundry."

The border guard couldn't restrain his laughter. "But I'm sure the president has people who do his laundry for him. He hasn't cut any part of that budget."

"Oh, no, Mr. Border Guard," she insisted. "In Guatemala we hear quite often that Mr. Donald Trump is 'airing his dirty laundry in public.'"

The guard saw how serious she was, and that she was not familiar to that old bromide, "He is airing his dirty laundry in public," meaning that a person made no attempt to hide his or her misdeeds.

And then he thought how good this story would look on the front page of The Washington Post. So he took a picture of her, her wash tub, and her wash board and called a fellow he knew who worked at the Post.

Damn, I wish this were a true story. 👿

TRUMP AND VIETNAM

Donald Trump finally made it to Vietnam last week. He tried so hard to get there fifty years ago, but those darn bone spurs kept him from military service time after time. But he was so determined to get there at last that he became president so he could still go on the government's dime. He and his true love Kim Jong Un (he said in a speech that they fell in love) met in Hanoi for their second mating dance. But the love gods were angry, or maybe listless, and Trump came home unfulfilled. Perhaps Kim fell out of love. Or perhaps he is jealous of Vladimir Putin and is playing hard to get. Trump didn't say. His heart little tin heart must be broken.

How many Trumps does it take to screw in a light bulb? Don't be ridiculous. Trumps don't do manual labor. They leave that to the undocumented aliens that they hire secretly to work at their golf courses and mansions.

Trumps many and varied crimes and corrupt activities are finally crawling out from under their rocks, into the light, to be inspected by House democrats licking their lips, interviewing Michael Cohen, and making up for two years of repression. Did Mitch McConnell think he could run the show forever?

I listen to Rachael Maddow's podcast every weekday to learn the things that don't always make it to the TV evening news. She is a gold mine of information. Trump must hate that.

FOURTH AND FIFTY

Football's answer to Vaudeville is finally over. Super Bowl One Zillion. I didn't watch; I have an aversion. I'm one of those odd ducks who doesn't like football. It's violent and brutal and slow. Four hours of watching huge men smash into each other. A half-time show that I'm told can involve naughty incidents of wardrobe malfunction.

If you are a fan, just think what watching a game involves. You get to the stadium all hyped up, your blood pressure maxed out from wanting to see your team win. Then the players run onto the field and get introduced. Your BP is somewhere in the stratosphere. Then everything gets quiet for the kick off.
Your BP sinks to near normal. Then the kick off and the players start running and smashing for a few seconds and your BP spikes again. This goes on for the next four hours. You are having a great time, but your blood vessels are screaming STOP!

You probably have had a few beers and need to go to the bathroom. If you are a woman you stand in line for twenty minutes waiting for a stall. Then you stand in line again to wash your hands. If you are a man, I've heard, you walk right into the bathroom, hop over a few suspicious looking yellow puddles, use the urinal, and walk out, not bothering to wash your hands.

Then you stop at a food stand and buy a hot dog and nachos, which you eat gleefully with hands that have not been washed.

Before half time your team were playing like a bunch of blindfolded gorillas. Wile E. Coyote, sitting behind you, spills his beer down your neck. You are too hyped to even turn and give him a dirty look.

Hours pass. Your gorillas finally stop sleep walking and get into the game. Yea, team!

Final score: Bad Guys 14; Gorillas 15

You cry from joy.

I don't get it.