The Prodigal Blogger returns.......

I know what you are thinking. "Where have you BEEN, THE Michael? Did you fall off the face of the Earth?"

Of course not.

I'm getting to heavy.

Anyway, here I am, back to grace your retina with another exciting episode of "THE Life of THE Michael, his Loving Wife, his sidekick canine Shiloh, and various other terrestrial life forms sharing their little acre of sand on the outskirts of the largest metropolitan area unknown to most people." It's called Jacksonville, Florida, in case your interested. The area, that is.

I'm listening to RAM, that old classic album by Paul McCartney and Wings while I type this post. Anybody remember that one? Anybody willing to admit to it? He he........

All kinds of weird and not-so-wonderful things have been happening since I last reported. The conveyance was making all kinds of strange, buzzing, grinding, "something just might fly out the side of this car at any moment" type noises for the last several weeks, getting progressively worse with each passing day, while I'm wondering what the hell I'm going to do for a way to work if our baby craps out on us (a baby we are still making payments on, I might add). Then, here I am perusing thru my wallet for no particular reason I can think of and guess what I come across? The super-premium extended drive-train warranty we payed for when we bought our Focus used back in 2004. With only about 4 thousand miles left before it expired! For only a deductible of $50, all the engine and transmission mounts were replaced and now our baby is quiet and not about to explode on us. As my buddy Buffalo likes to say, "Life is sweet.......".

One of our twins, the one I have referred to as being the "Evil" one, decided to move herself lock, stock, and barrel out to Arizona to be with a gentleman she met on the internet. I say "gentleman", because if any harm comes to her through no fault of her own, he will cease to be one and will suffer the consequences accordingly. Like parents anywhere, we do worry about our offspring, no matter how old they happen to get. We HAVE met him, once, and he didn't APPEAR to be a serial killer, but first impressions can sometimes be so off..........just ask my mother-in-law. Grin.

In order to make this as epic an episode as possible, I have included several photos of various things having to do with life here at Pendragon Hold. This here is our idea of what a bar should look like.





This one is a pic of my shrine to The Beatles. No, I don't worship them. Well, maybe a little.........








these are things we grew in our garden.





















This is a picture of THE Wife getting a gander at that one veggie. The long one with the bumps on it. Did I mention what a perv my wife can be sometimes?


This is the all-time favorite place in our household.


























Anyway, if you didn't already know, the wife has a new job and although she is having to learn new things, she really is enjoying herself, and is doing very well. She even gets to wear scrubs, just like me!

Somehow I volunteered myself to be a guest author on a blog called "The Gun-Toting Liberal", a slightly left-of-center political blog with many talented commentators participating. I am humbled to be amongst them. These guys are talented, to say the least.

I'm sorry I made you wait so long for a post, but I DO have a life, a life so boring it hardly ever rates a post in a blog. However, feel free to stop in on occasion in case some sort of inspiration smacks me upside the head and I actually post something worth reading. Ya never know!

For My Wife

I treasure you for reasons
you'd never imagine
and I love you
as an exercise
in being me
knowing you

Fixin' Things

The "terrorist" was plainly uncomfortable. Well, actually, "uncomfortable" was an understatement. The way I had him hog-tied would have challenged the comfort level of a spry young gymnast, much less this slightly pudgy forty-something asshole with a penchant for tossing garbage on my lawn.

While adjusting the gag I had on his mouth to better allow him to breath (I hadn't passed summary judgement on him yet, so it would be not be good form to have him suffocate on me before that happened), he screamed something about me "not having the right" to have him laying on my lawn trussed up like a pig, which annoyed me to no end. So, I encouraged him to get with a program of good order and discipline, much like that which they use on a regular basis at Gauntanamo, our luxury holding facility to the South. I kicked him in the ribs.

I got the gag back on him right and proper before he got loud enough to bother the neighbors. When one is enforcing actions necessary to defend one's way of life, which in my case included peace, quiet, and a litter-free lawn, one does not wish to upset the neighbors with the messy specifics of such enforcement, so I was pleased to be able to spare them the noise and quiet him down. Besides, you never know when it might turn out that one of your neighbors happens to be one of those namby-pamby, bleeding heart, squeamish people of the liberal persuasion who just can't help but to butt in and lend aid and comfort to one's enemies.

Earlier this day I had decided enough was enough and that I was not going to put up with this kind of crap anymore, nosirree! So having witnessed Bubba toss another one of his pearl beer cans over the fence onto my lawn, I went outside and invited him over to my side of the fence for another brew. Nothing works better to get an unsuspecting "terrorist" into your sights than false pretenses that include an alcoholic beverage on a hot, humid day, let me tell ya. So, Bubba, he walks around the fence, all prepared to reach out for a neighborly brewski, and that's when I nail him across the side of the head with the six pack; the six pack of Miller Light, that is, not that cheap redneck shit he likes to drink.

He went down like the proper overweight, out of shape terrorist he was, much akin to the landing of a ton of bricks. Having caught him by surprise, off guard, and unprepared for flight or fight should he catch on to the truth of the invitation, I whipped out the plastic zip ties I usually used to attach things around the house and bound him up nice and helpless like, before he could come back to his lack of senses. The fear and fury in his eyes was something to behold as I kneeled down and read him the charges, as I made them up on the spot, of course.

"Asshole, you are hereby declared, having been judged quite able to take a swing at me had I given you the chance, to be an "illegal combatant", that being because I do NOT consider it legal for you of all people to lay a fucking finger on me when it was YOU, Asshole, who has been littering MY lawn with your fucking beer cans! Therefore, deciding that people like YOU make life for people like ME to damn miserable for people like ME to afford dickweeds like YOU the opportunity to defend yourself, perhaps weaseling out of trouble with the assistance of some ambulance chaser and a liberal, bleeding heart judge, I hereby circumvent all that bothersome bullshit and pronounce you guilty of being a fucking ASSHOLE, a crime for which the punishment is me kicking your ass all over this nice lawn of mine, and then taking your bruised and purple carcass out to the dump and leaving it there where it belongs! Do you want to bother to plead, because, honestly, I don't GIVE a rat's ass what you have to say concerning your guilt, your innocence, or how sorry your SORRY FUCKING ASS is about littering my lawn!"

Man, did that feel GOOD! I have seen many the Rambo movie and let me tell ya, my fellow Americans, none of those scenes of commies getting mowed down by the hundreds came close to the exhilaration I felt taking the law into my hands the way our President did in order to take the war to those scum terrorists! Nothing pisses off a patriotic American more than having the Supreme Court and it's criminal comforting pack of pussies muzzle our fighting men when all they want to do is keep America safe for Mom's apple pie and the Beaver! We simply cannot have all this jurist prudence getting in the way when we have terrorists blowing up planes with bottles of Listerene, of all things!

So, following the example set by our great President, I wrapped Bubba up in an old tarp I kept the lawn mower covered up with, and hauled him off to the dump as promised, before the wife got home. You see, the wife has this delicate disposition, and gets kind of upset when she sees ME get upset and do what has to be done, like the time I knocked that paperboy off his bike for breaking my window with the newspaper, making me think the terrorists where driving down my street shooting up the neighborhood. Having to deal with the kid's father was distasteful, to say the least, especially since he was of the insane opinion that I had responded in a manner excessive to the crime and threatened to sue me for my public service. So, I try and do what one must do when the wife is not around, as not to upset her, much like the CIA does with it's extra-ordinary rendition at it's secret prisons. I tend to be considerate that way; not that I have to be.

If Bubba ever extricates himself from his unpleasant situation before getting buried in garbage, I hope he learned his lesson and repents his behavior, coming to God and thus becoming a much better citizen. As for me, I'm sitting here on my front porch, reading the paper, and fuming at all these defeats the administration is suffering at the hands of the federal and supreme courts when it comes to it's war on terror and the methods it must turn to to keep us all free and our gas tanks full. I have my blood pressure medicine, so I should be OK. After all, I still have, what, a year and a half of safety, being protected from arabs and liberals by our great leader and good Christian patriot, George DUBYA Bush. After that I guess I'll just go back on the prozak.*






Folks, the what you just read was nothing more than parody, and I hope to Bob you would not think for one minute that THE Michael would behave in such an unsophisticated and primitive manner.




Or would he............?




Naw!



Grin..........

A Fresh Start

Yes, I know, it's been a few days since the last exciting installment of TTEM, and you guys are wondering if I went off somewhere and died. Well.......no.

I read alot of blogs and some of you guys seem to have this constant STUFF going on, like a soap opera, plenty of post fodder to keep your readership entertained. I have no idea if I should be jealous, because I know from experience that one should be VERY careful what they ask for, like, for instance, having a life chock full of blog post fodder. To tell you the truth, we DO have plenty of blog fodder going on, but sometimes I have to err on the side of "you really don't need to know this", simply because, well, you don't really need to know this.

However, I DO have something rather pleasant to report concerning my better half, known to all of you as THE Wife. Today was her last day on the job, the job she is joyously giving up in favor of a much better one, in so many ways. For many years she has suffered the indignities of working in retail, specifically, selling shoes, and you all know that when women and shoes meet, nothing good comes of it. This job has taken it's toll on her, ruining her feet and knees, causing her much anxiety, and the remuneration truly has not equaled the price she's paid being a damn good shoe salesperson. Her employers truly hated to see her go, but of course, where not willing to go the mile needed in her direction to keep her. They will instead replace her with three part-timers who will try and cut each others throat in order to garner those sales, only they will not have half the dedication to their job that my Wife had and never truly was rewarded for.

Monday she starts her new 9 to 5, off weekends and holidays kind of job, that will actually let her sit down for a change, and her wage will not be dependent upon a commission. She will, for once, truly be able to put her talents in customer service to use, instead of trying to juggle five impossible tasks all at once all the while being yelled at by entitled shoe hungry harpies who have nothing better to do with their lives than fill their oversized shoe closets. I really pity these women's husbands, I really do.

On a personal note, I would like to mention that I have become a contributing writer for a political blog known as "The Gun Toting Liberal". It remains to be seen whether or not I gain any sort of fame, or more likely, infamy, for the kinds of observations I make, but I am in good company,sharing the page with many great writers, including the Buffalo, one of the best home-spun writers I have ever had the pleasure of reading and commiserating with. So, if you would like to get a dose of plenty of provocative thought invoking observations, head on over and take a gander.

Summer Solstice is just around the corner, marking the longest day of the year, when the days begin to shorten and we head back in the direction of winter's cold embrace. As the temperatures have begun to climb and the humidity weighs everything down, I am already longing for cooler times. The storm season has just begun and I can only ask of Gaia to spare us one more season from a direct hit from one of the powerful hurricanes that man in his folly has helped to create, thanks to global warming. Still don't believe in global warming? Still deaf, dumb and blind?

Anyway, thanks for stopping by, and may you all be blessed, in whichever manner suits your karma.