HAPPINESS BANG BANG SHOOT SHOOT.....is a warm..yes it is....

Remember when you could turn a walkman up loud enough to hurt your ears? Remember a walkman? Tapes. The purported savior of transportable music. The sober offspring of the besotted 8 track. Heralded.

Fuck a discman. Tapes. Analog. Wearing out a tape was a sign you knew all the words. Knew to get to your favorite track play it to one spot on the A side. Flip. Crackle. Listen.

Cats need 40 gig Ipods. Way too much music. As many portable songs as people at BHO's inauguration. Keep the change. I am too young to be a dinosaur and tapes came out when I was three.

And if you want some fun, sing

OBLADIOBLADA...llalalalalala.....

Life goes on.

Sunburned and hammered he stepped to the pavement. Wide brimmed hat and shirt 10 years older than he was. Expensive sunglasses given as a gift that he didn't deserve, winter's pasty paunch dangling above his swimtrunks. He grimaces. Figures its as good a day as any. Chinch bugs by the storm drain, a trollop in the sprinklers. Sprayed but not drenched. He giggles. Solo cup filled to the brink of explosion with a potently clear effervescent beverage, he can manage to meander loaded through the nascent southern evening. As the hoi polloi are garnished up north with rock salt and snow shovels, he is armed solely with a palpable aura of relacksayshun.

He left the brown liquor in a dirty snowbank just as Elizabeth's Islands were reaching winter's menopause. Hopped a bus to Logan with a tall boy and a pint of Black Haus. Stumbled through security and waited for a 65 dollar direct flight to America's phallus. Overserved on the plane the college freshmen next to him pulled her oversized handbag closer. Not to worry sweetheart. No threat there. He was harmless as he sung to himself.

I know its hard to keep an open heart.......when even friends seem out to haunt you.........

Heatstroke or sun poisoning? Stained wifebeater and empty fifths of flavored vodka. Lawnmowers with mexicans and pink hairdos sticking above steering wheels of late model Crown Victorias. Route 19, the carotid artery through which the blood of Pinellas and Pasco pump, runs down to the Skyway. The Gulf Coast his sandbox, he waits for the bus.

They sing.......

After all the jacks are in the boxes, and the clouds have all gone to bed, you can hear happiness standing on down the street, foot prints dressed in red...........