Author: Stephen J Frankenberry

The AC here is temporarily on the fritz, a fix to come, though it’s something I don’t mind really, even with the last few days being balls hot. I mean I’m glad that things have backed off a bit from sun stifling to just not quite but I’m alright with sweat and turning over my pillow. I was alright before this, probably wouldn’t have wanted to turn it on anyway as I’m not a big fan of AC. I’m a single dude so any stench or almost puddles are all mine with open windows and the girls haven’t complained yet, though their absence from the bed these recent nights does give some sweat’s stinky pause.

But I worried of them at Celie’s reminder and of maybe grabbing an AC if I could for the interim during this hot. They’re all older now, my little Bella being the youngest at 10 and there is only so much the tall fans I have are gonna do (though I love my tall fans by the way, two of them that I’m almost proud of, even remember the brand name, “Yeah they’re Lasko’s” over talk with old men and coffee who sing of such things, of great purchases made years ago that you always remark in your head, like those old men might, as you pass the breeze, of what great purchases they were). But it was Celie’s reminder to get my head out of my Ok for the moment and think about the girls. They’re not on the same sweaty plane as you Steve. They wear fur coats.

Now please know that I do not NOT think about my girls, you know me better than that I would think by now, they’re my constant, my thing, but sometimes I forget different comforts. Celie was right, as she always is.

So, telling my Sis of this, Beck, she offered me an AC that she doesn’t use. Cool I thought, literally, I know just the window for it and know the relief that I would feel, and them, that while I was away at work there was a spot here that was just a few degrees cooler than balls.

But that window I had in mind was in the living room, a huge room I don’t use, with, I don’t know, a 20 foot ceiling or something and dust, a lot of single guy dust, I’d measure it and clean but I am only so tall or motivated, but a huge room nonetheless that, with another room, the bedroom, next to it, might make the cooling a bit difficult. So, with another Celie suggestion, I hung a sheet between the bedroom and said unused living room to try and help that “new” AC” be more efficient, make it more of a “room”. It’s an old sheet from an older time that used to cover a comforter, an oversized pillow case (has a fancier name I think but I’m just gonna go with oversized pillow case) something I have kept all these years for no reason and with no purpose other than the memories of pretty toes and smiles sticking out from underneath it.

But, well, old men hold onto stuff, for those memories or maybe for future practical purpose that they will wait, sometimes years, to finally be proven correct in their holdings … “see, I told ya it could be used again”.

Would the girls figgur though?

Well, when I came home on the first of these last balls days, AC now in hand and running in house, my little Bella was on her living room kitchen table, Cricket had found her blind way to next to the couch that I never sit on with a TV with no remote, right next to the base of one of the ugliest side tables you’ll ever not want to see and the Memes was on the top step where I had placed a chair for bit of a sheet layover for one of my old men proud fan purchases to blow a little new, cooler air.

Yeah, they ain’t dumb … they figgur’d.

It does though, almost feel a little bordello-like now, with the attendant seemingly taking a break at the moment while I push back the curtain to pass, but, in this case, only to find comfortable not cathouse cats …

… though, in dreams, a bordello’s thoughts might be interesting.

Stuff.

Ya know I do stuff, stuff that just barely keeps a roof and beer and cat food, stuff that more often than not pisses me off, the stuff of required things for that roof and what’s under it. It is a stuff that is just that, stuff. We all have stuff. You have yours, stuff that you then put out there for the complained remarking, stuff that is your daily and stuff you want to be noticed if only to commiserate … we all want to commiserate.

Stuff.

But I do other stuff, we all do other stuff, hobby stuff, project stuff, exercise stuff, picture stuff, stuff that actually defines, stuff to distract us from the mundane pay the rent stuff, in my case stuff with words and sometimes a bit of a tune, stuff that mitigates that commiserating.

My best do blog stuff. Lori about books and Tom about all things horror in movies and other places and Mark, though he doesn’t know it, about things yet to be found and not just things that keep us informed, no he has stuff, I’m sure for the escape, like the rest of us. I’m most interested there Mark and if you ever need a cat or two for some company and muse by the way, we have a few extra lying around here. And Mike, my newest, podcasts about stuff. We stuff about our world, worlds, write or sing or pod about it, stuff that is a saver for us. Stuff for the real notice, at least stuff that keeps the head from fallin’ off it’s swivel.

I, not too long ago, changed my page here of entries of stuff with a new header, 30 bucks at some website I forget now and after so many searches of way too many complicated and visually busy possibilities at that site, I came to the simplest of things, a little swipe/swish that looks pen-pointed and with some colors added that I’m comfortable with. And I also added a little caveat to the header, “a Frankenblog”. I just like the way it looks and the way it sounds when I read it back … “Fankenberry’s Attic … a Frankenblog”. Then Tom jokingly said that this should be a network of, sorts, an umbrella under which we do this stuff, a Frankenblog production or family if you will. It’s silly but I can’t tell ya how much that makes me smile, especially with addendums made to the bottom of pages.

Friends and stuff.

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Mimi the Quirky does her, in her singular Mimi way, an uncomfortable looking cat stretch thing with a tappy tap above my keyboard till a lay down on a bar towel and she reminds me of stuff. She’s been a constant of mine along with Cricket the Blind and my little Bella of course for quite some time now. But it’s she that reminds that it’s stuff time as I pick her up after her straight legged clickety clackety clack steps across the hardwood from wherever she was catting to say do what you do human, I’m here, bar towel lay.

She reminds me of a keyboard she lays above, a keyboard that is a lifeblood that she’ll step across on occasion adding unintentional nonsensical letters or numbers in these steps for a left hip lap, or she just lays above, after that pick up, to tell me you got stuff, stuff to stuff.

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Lori’s book talk stuff has welcomed her to a talking books universe that is apparently pretty huge and also pretty unforgiving in its talking books judgements but she holds her own now after some navigating.

Tom has his crowd, folks that wait for his latest stuff in his quest to write yet another great post a day for a whole year of horror movie reviews and remembrances while straying from the initial idea on some days, those stray days being his best of things. I wonder what day 366 will bring with the triumph and the exhale.

Mark and I just tag along.

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“Ok, I’ll throw a die that says my cleric has you beat”

“Really? Is that what you’re going to go with?”

“He knows stuff”

“Does he know how to beat this dude?”

“No”

“Well shit, so much for clerics … get him big guy”

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Mark and I hunker down behind small hills with Lori and Tom in hand, another die throw, as I imagine our troupe just wanting to get into town and out of the wood, clerics now becoming fairly useless to lead us in the right direction.

Mark knows the way. He’d read of such, he always reads of such.

Stuff.

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Well now hasn’t this become the silliest of shit as stuff sometimes turns with no apparent reason, a turn with no purpose and and one that won’t circle back. Just sideways stuff.

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Stuff can take ya places even with sideways left turns (apologies to the left handed out there always feeling slighted by seeming condescending left handed references from the right handed) be it words or maybe words about it. Stuff that can be the thing of dreams or nightmares or the cliché of dreams and nightmares. Stuff that keeps ya sane, stuff that is just that, stuff … but your own stuff to that maybe get noticed and not in a commiserating kinda way.

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I gotcha Memes. Keyboard under your ass and stuff.

Yes, a few words Memes.

Your muse attentiveness so appreciated.

Stuff.

I popped my head into K-104’s Scotty Mac’s office on Friday to say both “Hey” and “Good Morning” while I toasted a couple of slices of rye bread that would eventually become my open faced tuna sandwich breakfast but with new lettuce and tomato that I had just picked up at Price Chopper on my way in (I was actually pretty excited for this … yeah, I know, a little pathetic). I love toaster ovens, love all things toasted, would be lost at a place that didn’t have one in its kitchen to the point where I would just have to buy one myself even with then having to share it with folks who might not be as mindful and respectful of toast.

He said “so did you see the latest moves …” and I immediately cut him off before he could continue “Don’t tell me … this is my Christmas in July just minus annoying radio promotions, trade deadline day … MLB dot com awaits my toasted tuna my friend so zip it”

He’s a baseball guy like me though, as a New York Yankees fan, he is always a bit more enthusiastic and optimistic than I could ever be with my Pirates.

It was trade deadline day and it had been a pretty eventful week leading up to it but there were still more deals to be made and eyebrows to be raised.

I’ve always gotten excited around trade deadline day as it is just a unique baseball thing, not that other sports don’t have the trades of players, they do, but not like baseball where there is a romance to them, a sudden urgency of that clock that’s been well known ticking and a storied history that you can look back on and maybe raise more eyebrows as to how they worked out. Did they help that one team down the stretch, as is always the intention, did the other side land that one seemingly unknown guy who would go on to glory in a new uniform begging questions in hindsight, did it actually work out for both teams and fill, exactly, the needs that both teams needed filling? Or were they lopsided or nearsighted looking back at them years later? Nolan Ryan always comes to mind for me.

Now last season, 2020, was an aberration, an asterisk, no trade deadline excitement, a season I paid absolutely no attention to, the only season in all my years as a baseball fan that I didn’t watch even a single inning of any game for the first time since I was a kid, even just an accidental portion of an any game with those dreaded NY teams on local TV I was forced to endure growing up living in this NY place.

When MLB TV, which I have paid for, for the past however many years it’s been available to be able to watch my Pirates, twenty years or so now, justifying the cost with a don’t buy this or don’t buy that at that moment whether real need or not, when they offered the possibility of me watching at a reduced rate due to Covid, a shortened season or to use the discount next year, this one, I opted for this one as opposed to the attempt to present a 60 game schedule then as an actual baseball season with actual yearly awards and actual champions that they say counted. Sorry, they didn’t … not to me.

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I’ve been a baseball geek ever since my Grandad taught me how to curse and throw shit, just words in my case but actual physical things for Grandad, at the tube when Grandma would allow me in the living room with him, the only grandkid she would while she sat lording in her kitchen. He’d been to Forbes field, my Bucco fan field of dreams, maybe not at the penultimate moment in 1964 but he’d been there and watched games from whatever section he was able to sneak into when he was younger. He was my reason Pirates guy.

I know “geek” isn’t usually associated with sports. That’s more a science or math or book smart or sci-fi thing or getting your ass handed to you in High School by those who would regret, years later, their shortsighted judgements, but I was a baseball geek, a studied baseball geek and well rounded. I could talk books and sports in the same sentence. I would even find myself later on writing stare at shoes well wrought self important poems in college while still checking pages for the Steelers latest victory story or my Buccos latest continued disappointment.  And I think my 8 Yahoo fantasy baseball teams with rosters I set on a daily basis and waiver wires that I get so much joy in scouring will attest to my geekines or maybe the need to get out of the house more often.

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I have difficulty with our current state of baseball though, the new things Rob Manfred finds to be important at the big league level and the changes in the minors that are being tested. Mostly dumb things, things that slap at the nature of the game. I am a purist, I guess, that dying guy who still wants current baseball to stack up with old baseball, the only sport that really has a history that you can compare. He had how many hits then?  He had how many home runs then, how many RBI’s? Did Jacob DeGrom’s ERA really rival 1968? Is somebody going to break a record that’s stood for 50 years or is there that one moment where some obscure guy does something also obscure that’s never been done in the long storied history of the game. It’s the only sport that really allows such.

A guy on second base in extra’s (an absolute embarrassment), 7 inning games, 3 batter minimums, pitch clocks in the minors and moving the rubber back some and all the other attempts at “improving” the game just screws that all up, it messes with the numbers, messes with that nature, messes with that shared history. And don’t get me started on Statcast, that glorified tape measure and protractor and speed gun that is constantly being shoved down our throats in every MLB dot com article.

Was it a hit? Just simply was it a hit? I don’t give a shit about how fast it went out there. I can guarantee you that there will never come a day where I will ask about or even be remotely curious about the exit velocity of any hit … ever. Just did it fall in? Did it make its beautiful way to finding a spot to bounce between fielders? Did it just get past and outstretched diving glove in the infield for a single or did it roll to the wall for a double or maybe bounce around in weird ways to become a triple with a head first slide? When that outfielder fielded it what were the new calculations he had to make now that everything had changed as he tossed back into the infield? That’s it. No useless numbers attached. No angles or silly catch probabilities or ground traveled distances. Just was it a hit maybe with a scorched or a dribbled or a Texas leagued attached?

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Grandad stood up, arms wide and turned and spun to whoever would look at him in the crowd like some baseball Jesus and said “I told you he would pop out, I told you he would pop out, he always pops out, he always blanking pops out!”

That was at the game (games, it was a scheduled doubleheader, a real one with 9 innings for both) at Shea so many years ago with my Dad and Grandad and that was Frank Taveras, our light hitting shortstop who, yes, always popped out.

You had that baseball Jesus thing down Grandad though not without with some slinking embarrassment from Dad and I.

That’s my go-to, that go-to memory, when it comes to baseball. Yes, I played the game, had my moments, played against a stacked club in my senior year of High School that some statcast nonsense would have given us a really improbable percentage of win, but a three hitter from me and an unbeatable John Belushi later and we took the two of three without a third. But Grandad? Arms wide and Jesus angry? That was baseball.

I even met John Candelaria that day when my homemade jersey bearing his name came to the attention of two small, and I mean small excited Mom and Dad’s (no idea where his height came from, and he is a tall guy, other than maybe a stacking of Mom and Dad’s genes on top of each other) in the filing out of fans at the two games end who made that accidental meeting happen at the player’s entrance. I was in heaven and walked away with a few signatures on my game program including Rennie Stennett and future Hall of Famer Goose Gossage in his only season with the Bucs.

Years later I would meet John Candelaria again, recount this story with a laugh and a handshake and an autograph of the Pirates Helmet I had bought that day almost 40 years ago. But it was grandad and Frank Tavares always blanking popping out that I remember the most.

I’ve always looked forward … no, don’t tell me Scotty, I want to check for myself … to the trade deadline and its deals, from the small ones to the blockbusters, so many deals and for teams that aren’t even mine, lived for the changes that happen to current rosters or future ones, to remember names that years later might become that story of the hall of famer, maybe, who was part of a now former team’s great regret.

Will all the guys my Bucco’s garnered at this year’s trading deadline pan out, will there be a future hall of famer in there? Couldn’t tell ya though ya never know.

But it’s excited reading fodder for me today over a morning’s tuna sandwich or a down the road watching and waiting to see who just might pan out out of all these names, a current and future Baseball enjoyment I just can’t put into words.

So, I don’t remember when, though it’s been quite some time now as working together goes back six years away to when I unintentionally left our common radio spot, but she told me her Mom called her Jilly Bean, possibly the sweetest, most genuine love felt nickname from a parent to a child that I’ve ever heard (and it’s a pun JB!)

From whenever that was, and it was way before the last six years apart, I’ve called her JB. She’s called me FB.

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She always thought of me and gave me first dibs on her Mom’s cookies and pastries and whatever baked wonderousness Mom would occasionally gift our way.

“FB?”

“Yeah?”

“Lemon squares”

“!!!!!!!! Loves me the Mom’s!!!”

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I kind of recall her first days at the station, group of stations, as an intern, though I couldn’t possibly tell you any specifics. I just know she was a daily welcome given, just knew she filled a room, just knew we did gigs together and I would always feel a relief when finding out she was on that remote’s ticket. Just knowing, no matter what the gig was or how it might go, that if she were there things would be done right at her insistence and laughter would happen, a lot of laughter and I looked forward to them because of.

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After my Benny passed away, my best of friend of 16 years, back in 2011, she was a one who gave me a kind word’s shoulder and hug to help me through. She knew. She also knew I had no intentions of searching out a replacement, at least not anytime soon. I mean how can ya? But a couple of months later, during one of my Pet of the Week segments on Mix 97 there came to be a kitten as that day’s star, the tiniest of things. Now some folks in the building might make their way down to the studio to meet that week’s puppy or dog, kitten or cat, sometimes rabbit or even a one time guinea pig (she gave me quite bit of laughing shit when it was discovered that I was allergic to said one time guinea pig as the right side of my face blew up like I had lost a fight, badly) but she was an always.

In traffic:

“Hey, we got stuff to do”

“It can wait. It’s Tuesday, FB’s got his Pet of the Week”.

She was always there first, damning whatever work needed to be done to hang with that week’s furry, even if only for a couple of moments.

I hold dear the fondest of memory of her stepping into the studio to stand in the back while I interviewed whoever it was from the Ulster County SPCA that had brought my latest guest, this tiny kitten on my chest, just underneath my microphone.

Mic off.

“Oh, you’re Fucked”

“I know huh?”

She knew, without even thinking about my consulting my better half at the time, she knew that this tinyness on my chest was coming home with me. She knew my empty of a Benny being gone.

She smiled a “good luck” to the explaining with a wink.

Bella, that’s her name, outlasted the relationship with that better half and is still with me, 10 years later, and really, it was that exclamation of me, as JB said, being “fucked”, that helped me cement the notion that this little one had found a new spot in her littleness world, no matter the possible objections.

She knew.

I can never think about my years with Bella without thinking of her.

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I stayed on her good side, no matter what, even if there were a disagreement on something I deferred. You weren’t going to win an argument and not because there might be louder talk, and she could be an in your face when she wanted to be, but because she was always right, aaarrrggghhh, she was always right. She always had her points down and even if she didn’t there was no one better to fake it.

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She mentioned to me one time, about my blog and my writings, which she would read and I was so glad that she did as there are those whose opinion you value, about how I tended to start a good number of my posts with a “So” or a “Well” or a “Now”, a kind of pause followed with a comma, a comma’s breath before diving in and how this seemed a bit of a crutch. I then found myself noting this, this using of a “So” or a “Well” or a “Now” or something similar and my things got better simply from being more self aware now and not just for that one crutch (thank you JB) or sometimes I noted the use and left it in, purposely, with a thought of her and that was well before now.   

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I will miss you JB, Jill, you were light and lord knows that the world can ill afford to lose such light and that makes me angry, angering at the universe and its random and its always picking lights to dim that don’t deserve to be dimmed, especially now and you being gone isn’t fair, not just to you or your family or to friends but to the world itself.  

I don’t know where you’ve gone, none of us really know where you’ve gone but … well … it’s just not here JB, it’s just not freakin’ here.

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“That’s kinda funny”

“What’s that?”

“That a small guinea pig has your face looking all beaten up”

“Funny? Really? That’s your take on my boxer’s face?”

“Yeah (giggles)”

 “Oh sure, that’s funny lady? Very funny JB.”

So yesterday was light bulb day here at the station (s) as our maintenance guy made his way around the building with new fluorescent bulbs, evil things that they are, to replace any that had died and gone to whatever Dante’s hell circle it is that is lit by dead fluorescent bulbs. Probably a place with IMAX sized Hieronymus Bosch paintings, except intentionally more perverse and disturbing, where the bright starkness of the light brings out even more explicit and unsettling detail than you would ever want to see but now can never be UNseen. 

I hate light bulb day.

When one or two of the devil’s light sticks go out around the building here it’s kind of a relief and makes for a much softer setting that doesn’t feel that as much of your soul is being sucked out of you (my studio, at least, is lamp-lit). But then comes Dennis, accompanied by some dark, foreboding deep bass soundtrack that makes time with his slow steps, he even seems to laugh for no reason as he enters the worst of spots in the building to make sure all the demonic lighting eye javelins are working at once … the Men’s room.

Stepping in there the first time after Satan’s assistant has ironically said “let there be light” when done I realize exactly why it is that of the three light bulb possibility I have in the lighting fixture in my bathroom at home that I use only one … and just a 60 watter.

No one needs to see themselves in this kind of light when looking in the mirror while washing hands, ever, especially not a guy who, as he gets older, has hair he forgets needs trimming coming from places you only noticed when you were younger in uncomfortable “can’t take my eyes off of” stares at some other old but back then guy. When you wondered exactly how eyebrows could unintentionally form points over each eye like horns (damn you Devil and your lights AND eyebrows!) how an ear could appear to be a planter of some sort of stringy exotic bush, how a nose could … no, I ain’t even going there.

And you wondered then how that some other old but back then guy didn’t notice these things and do a bit of trimming of the hedges unless, of course, he also used only one 60 watt bulb in his bathroom, or unless, of course, maybe you had somehow become him and now that younger you, on the other side of the mirror, is fixed with an uncomfortable “can’t take my eyes off of” YOU stare.   

I hate light bulb day.

I got a text from Celie not too long ago, around 5p, while I watched whatever reason has me trying to justify my newly spent 9 bucks a month for Netflix (Sweet Tooth is worth the justifying by the way, at least for now).  

It was timed 8:15 am. I got it at 4:53pm though I didn’t note the time at first, it was a just a text.

Celie: Just in case you are going anywhere Shark is under your car

Me: Ok

(Celie would eventually mention to me that she didn’t understand my response, I told her that I didn’t realize the text had been sent 9 hours earlier but didn’t arrive until then and I also didn’t know Shark was gone)

Not too much later when I actually did note the time of the text I remembered a morning.

I had gone downstairs to throw my once a week in the washer while Cele, who was there with the gang, made a point to not allow me to fold what was done in the dryer of her and Matt’s stuff.

Celie: You don’t need to do that … grab, grab, grab.

Me: But I actually like folding clothes, it’s ok (I really do like folding clothes)

Celie: It’s good …. grab, grab, grab

It almost makes her mad I think so I cut whatever could be losses and let her grab, grab, grab.

I then threw my one stuff set in the washer and stepped into the kitchen around a barking Louie and a bouncing Chi Chi and slumbering others, sorry, a slumbering others AND a Georgia back flop belly wait.

“Aaaaahhh, love ya Georgia, but ya gotta stop this back flop belly thing girlfriend. I’m an old dude and all this bending for belly rubs every time can only go so far.”

Amid the bouncing of a Chi Chi and way too loud barking of a Louie, a Honey Bob Tail “Boo” stepping over some chairs towards me and Florida’s unmistakable meow and seeming reticence to but wanting a pet anyway, Sharky came about my feet with some light huffing and a head turn. I picked her up for an under ear shoulder.

Not too long ago Shark had come to aging with an abscess of some type in her forehead, a one Celie and the Doc down the hill at the shelter drained as often as they could but eventually was faster than the drains leaving her with a somewhat quasimodo looking noggin. It was an indicator of bad things and soon short days. But in these short days she had taken to front porch breezes or grabbing spots under cars and trucks and behind tires in our parking spot.

Earlier in the week

Celie: “Keep an eye for shark before you head to work. She can’t really hear now and I’m not sure how much she can see with this thing either.”

“Will do” I said and did do with bending’s down behind BB replete with old man sounds and breaths just before each head off.

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Celie said she may be saying goodbye to Sharky today. The prettiest of Calico cats, a one who looked like an animatronic doll, with a just so head tilt and eyes the envy of any anime character.  

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One of my greatest pleasures in this place has been feeding the cats on occasion, slowly talking to them all as I putzed about old man like in someone else’s kitchen, confirming crazy cat lady guy status and shooting Celie a text eventually that said “cats are good”. Covid changed that as we all distanced but Sharky, then, was my assistant chef, a hop up on the counter and a face in the big bowl I would use for mixing a couple of cans of wet stuff with some dry and a bit of water. That’s where her name came from according to Matt, her ravenousness as if she had never eaten before. She was a “you’re not helping Shark” as she moved under my hands at the sink’s sponge with a bowl or two to wash. She was my nose to forehead in this sponging wet hands only wanting to finish and then see the dole out of food, cat noses down.

There’s been a number of goodbye’s in my 3 + years here. Blue, Bruce, Chubs, Bunny, Dolly, Lola, Spanky, Sweets the Fox (I try not to think about that one as that will just bring torrents) all who I called friend with a shoulder ride and a behind the ear like Sharky now. Well not Blue, not that he wouldn’t have liked the attempt I’m sure, but he wasn’t a cat and was a big boy. Nor Sweets, a skittery giggling backyard Susan of a Fox who minded me with a little distance, closer with my handful of the wet raw stuff on mornings when Celie wasn’t around.

But Sharky was part of the lot of my kitchen cat shoulders, usually the place to just distract her away from the under hands attempt at that bowl wash or two or a face in the big bowl.

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Later

Celie: Sharky is no longer with us.

Me: Sigh. Dammit.

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She’s gone now though and not to some mystical place with paws across a mythical bridge to help us feel better, no, she’s just a life lived well that finds its end. I’ve lost my Grayson and lil’ kit Blink in my time here as well as the rest. Lost friends you can’t ease with thoughts of rainbows no matter how much you try.

You remember singular things. Grayson on the fridge top swiping at your head or a walking around this place talking to himself, Blink plopped down on a pile of newly dried laundry to a quick “oh cool, laundry … Ok I’m out … zzz”,  Blue in his intimidating big chested look to run over to BB like a puppy at your get homes, Dolly and a Broadway “Hello” song in your head, Chubs and prairie dog stand ups waiting for that night’s can crack, Bruce, the most Lebowski of cats, with a Billy Idol looking smirk frightening the dogs merely with his presence, especially Pea who would tap and bounce and whine and growl at him as he blocked a doorway, scared to death, Bunny and that one bent ear that loved a bit of a rub, Lola who owned you and reminded any that needed reminding of that with a pop, Spanky in her littleness but determined “I’m here with the big ones”, Sweets playing with a then Georgia puppy in the mornings and, well, just the magic that was Sweets the Fox … and Sharky as my assistant as I imagined myself some sort of cat food chef only needing a crack sound and a spoon for the preparing.

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I took her on my shoulder under ear out the back porch to the pool for a sit and she grabbed a spot under one of the bushes that sit poolside. There was sun and a breeze, a light thing, but a breeze. She layed down under the bush’s shade. I swear if she could have …

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C’mon Shark hop up, yes I know, it’s big bowl time. Can ya give me a hand?  

You could say a Picture is worth a thousand purrs huh?

I’m sure for whoever might occasion this place, minding footsteps for cats (appreciated) and watching their heads, that me adding another tune to the clutter here in the Attic can bring a breathy , heavy “sigh” … but it’s kinda my thing, or at least part of it.

So another something to sit in a pile of things or maybe on top of a cat window spot storage bin with a comfy towel for the moment … though Bella could give a shit for the extra company.

To the tune “A Horse With No Name” and for the intent of pointing out the revisioning lying nonsense we’re currently bombarded with on a daily basis courtesy of the GOP cultists.

In A Trump Cultish Way

La La …

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On this next part of the journey  

Revisionists they work a big job   

Re-write Trump things play the whitewash card

Dems to blame for looking at scars

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Dem’s want to rehash a thing with no gain

Nothing to gather – commission won’t change

Just ask Ron Johnson or Andrew Clyde

No insurrection but Clyde he did cry

–

They come down the mountain in a Trump cultish way

They bring tablets of lies now in play

Nothing to shame – to make them take a new turn    

Cause polit-ti-cly they need truth to burn

–

La, la, la, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la

–

After 5 months since the cap riot run

Where insurrection had backup’s white guns

From vivid vid proof and 5 people dead

To normal folks doing touristy things

Or simple protest and what patriots did bring

A re-write to protect their gold king

–

You see they come down the mountain in a Trump cultish way

They bring tablets of lies now in play

Nothing to shame – to make them take a new turn    

Cause polit-ti-cly they need truth to burn

–

La, la, la, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la

——–

After four years a new playbook was writ

A How to to democracy’s fall

How to chip away at institutions held dear

future despots could now hear the call 

They devote to the pages like some gold gilded tome

Where lies are truth you just repeat on and on

It’s like a scripture handed down from their king on the mount

To disciples not held to account

–

You see they come down the mountain in a Trump cultish way

They bring tablets of lies now in play

Nothing to shame – to make them take a new turn    

Cause polit-ti-cly they need truth to burn

–

La, la, la, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la

La, la, la, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la

La, la, la, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la

La, la, la, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la, la, la
La, la, la, la, la

Hey Ron, you ignorant prick, what the fuck is an-tEEfa?