What's Up

Dear Readers,
The Sur-Realist is touched with your concern for my welfare. Let me bring you up to date. Work takes up a great deal of my time; ennui takes up the rest. Blogging is not a passion of my life, thus thinking up something that might interest you does not fall within my natural talents, as you may have already noticed. Since our last contact I have kept in touch with Wes and have been fighting miniature terrorists.


Wes has been making an excellent recovery from his triple by-pass surgery. This cannot have been easy for him. He was stricken with a heart attack his first week in prison and had the surgery soon thereafter. Wes has had to go through the post-operative hospital stay without the comfort of contact with any family members who weren’t even notified. When he was returned to the prison compound, the friends he had made in the small community tended to him faithfully and helped him through his recovery. Wes was very weak for a long time but is now coming along very nicely. He has been removed from convalescent status and has been given the job of tidying up the unit. He enjoys having an activity that keeps him busy for part of the day along with the prayer group. We speak on the phone almost every week, and it certainly makes me feel better. It probably cheers Wes, as well, to keep in contact with people from home.


Anonymouse #1: You are right that the freedom to go to the polls is what makes America great. If only we had some decent choices . . .


Anonymouse #2: Yes, I’m okay. Thank you very much for inquiring. Someone has made an attempt to get to me, but we are trying to circumvent it. Unfortunately LegalSchnauzer, Roger Shuler, lost his house in Alabama because he continued to stand on principle when the Sheriff auctioned it off illegally for something like $2,500. I salute him for his integrity and single-mindedness. I’m afraid my pragmatism and need for a roof over my head would have gotten in the way of my principles in this case.


Anonymouse #3: You don’t understand the Sur-Realist. I have two extremely strong values that I uphold above all others: loyalty and protecting/defending those who can’t defend themselves, i.e., children, elderly, the sick, and the unjustly accused, among others. Just for the record, I spent all day yesterday on the phone trying to protect a molested child only to learn that the police in Georgia do not consider it a crime for a father to put his finger up his child’s panties. In speaking to the Judge in that misguided State, I did hasten to assure him that even though Georgia police do not consider it a crime, we here in Mississippi do. Apparently the judge shares the police’s views there because I was not successful in convincing him to protect the child.


Now about my personal fight with terrorists. It all started in our rather large bathroom where I was sitting minding my own business. You know how you get that feeling that you are being watched? The hair on the back of your neck starts to stand up, and you feel eyes boring into you. Those of you who grew up on the lap of luxury will not have this sense quite as finely honed as those of us who grew up in genteel or even abject poverty. We are the ones who can speak knowledgeably of outhouses. We are the ones who still turn on the bathroom light at night. In case you haven’t guessed why, it’s to make sure there are no snakes or spiders in there. And the Sears catalog was always handy. At least our outhouse was fairly near the house. My grandmother’s outhouse was on the other side of a barbed wire fence! No, it didn’t make any sense to me either, even as a child. Anyway, the point of this digression is that people who obtain their childhood training in outhouses become hyper-vigilant in bathrooms. Therefore, I was immediately on super alert when I felt beady little eyes on me. As I looked up, there across the bathroom stood a mouse, hands on his hips, staring me straight in the eye. Even without my glasses, I’m pretty sure it was wearing a little rag on its head. Obviously, Al Queda had invaded my bathroom. You’d be surprised how naked you feel sitting on the toilet without your Glock when you need it. Al and I kept staring at each other until, in a sudden kamikaze move, he charged me! Now what do you do when a mouse charges you while you are sitting on the john? You abandon your Sur-Realist dignity and run out of the bathroom where your spouse is laughing as if something is actually funny. Humph!


But Al Queda was not finished with me, not by a long shot. He bided his time, lulling me into a false sense of security. Months later, I heard a knock on the leg of my bedside table. Now what would you do if you heard that in my middle of the night? If you are at all like me, you would assume that it’s a serial killer. You see, I had stupidly forgotten about Al Queda. But I am always prepared for serial killers. My spouse does not like for me to fire the gun randomly into the bedroom every time a serial killer wakes me up, so I keep a bar-b-que fork for defense. My plan is to stab the serial killer in the balls and yell, "Snake! Snake!" This is to throw him off guard. So, here I am trying to locate my bar-b-que fork in the dark while the serial killer is actually knocking on my bed table. Between you and me, I find this disconcerting. I’m also kicking my spouse at the same time, thinking that we both should be awake for this. Finally, Spouse gets tired of the whole thing, turns on the lamp, comes around to my side of the bed, and discovers Al Queda caught in a mouse trap. Now, I did not actually see Al because Spouse took care of him, knowing I would prefer to dispense with Al using one of my weapons. Apparently, Al must have come after me wearing a little dynamite belt which padded the trap bar and kept it from killing him immediately because it flipped over and he was trying to escape dragging the trap with his mutilated body. I have no merciful feelings for Al Queda. Well, not too many. I hope he didn’t suffer too long. Maybe he and his ilk will leave me alone now.

See you later.