Public Service Announcement

The Delta Queen is currently docked on the Cincinnati waterfront, unloading passengers from its most recent 7-day voyage along the mighty Mississippi and the noble Ohio. If the forces of evil within the U.S. governing bodies have their way, though, this could have been one of the last such treks for the proud vessel. Cruises on the Queen will be effectively eliminated this October if legislators don’t pull through and deliver a 10-year exemption specifically for the craft. But our help may be necessary. See what you can do to help the cause today: http://www.majesticamericaline.com/SaveTheDeltaQueen.aspx.

This is a grassroots effort that needs as many supporters as possible. If we do not rise up as honest Americans and defend our history, our heritage, our working class jobs and, yes, our River, the steams of our strongest ideals will evaporate in the haze of a vacant and lifeless future. And, perhaps more importantly, without such behemoth vessels dominating the waterway proper, the beautiful channels will soon become void of human interaction, the ecosystem feebly susceptible to brutal domination by the Seamonster that lies beneath, a mythical beast waiting patiently to be the largest object left around and free to eat anything that may drift by or sink beneath. Make your presence known. Make Our presence known! God Save the Queen!

Dont' go jumpin head of yourself, Chief. We thought things were gettin all clean and quiet another time, summer of 58. Cannons stirred the night. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes. Didn't see the first fish for about a half-hour. Cat. 18-footer. You know how you know that in the water, Chief? You can tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know, was that our mission was so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, catfish come cruisin' by, so we formed ourselves into tight groups. It was sorta like you see in the calendars, you know the infantry squares in the old calendars like the Battle of Waterloo and the idea was the catfish come to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin' and hollerin' and sometimes that catfish he go away... but sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that catfish looks right at ya. Right into your eyes. And the thing about a catfish is he's got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, he doesn't even seem to be livin'... 'til he eats ya whole, and those black eyes roll over white and then... ah, then you hear that echoin gulp. Sometimes it's messy, river turns red. You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don't know how many catfish there were, maybe a thousand... maybe 1. I do know how many men, they averaged six an hour. Thursday mornin', Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Portsmouth. Billiard player. He was bobbin in the water, half-asleep, barely holdin on to himself. I reached out to shake him. But he was gone. Disappeared, pulled under, never to resurface. A whisker slapped me in the face. At noon on the fifth day, a Lockheed Ventura swung in low and he spotted us, a young pilot, lot younger than Mr. Bastard here. Anyway, he spotted us and a few hours later a big ol' fat PBY come down and started to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened. Waitin' for my turn. So, eleven hundred men went into the water. 316 men come out, the catfish took the rest, June the 29th, 1958. Anyway, that river ain't clean.

In Evolution & Politics, there is no such thing as "Very Good"

http://www.wcpo.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=3be0c82e-42e3-499b-9c97-38a5983303b4

“Very Good?” How is this possible? Have the forces of darkness been removed from our valley and sent downstream to spread despair and ruin amongst the unsuspecting inhabitants of Memphis, Vicksburg, Baton Rouge, etc.?

Merely a mistake, we must cautiously assume. Some poor fool down at the Health Commission got all jacked up on Old Crow and low-grade tranquilizers and spilt some Aquafina into his samples. Hell, maybe the twisted scumbag even infused the river water with his own urine. Something must explain how that filthy muck could ever be considered clean in any standard set by the same manically paranoid self-obsessed society that spawned Nivea, pilates, Howard Hughes and the Screen Actors Guild.

Or maybe 8 is "very good" just as it is for a toddler bowling.

If not, we may be in for a bumpy ride. Within the fickle realm of bioreality in which Mother Nature lays claim to the throne there are only a few possible, albeit far-fetched, rationales for such madness. Maybe there are no more homeless floating in the Ohio River, all consumed by gigantic catfish at some point prior. Maybe the gar have all been swept out West by concerned citizens who also cleaned the river of all trash, flotsam, toxin, jetsam and bloody Steelers jerseys. Or perhaps, silent under a full moon, without pretense or motive, without forewarning or goodbye, closing an ageless era that will somehow outlive us all, like the last warm breeze on the last night of summer, It is Gone.

Stay tuned for further developments and idle speculation…

Here's a Haiku

whiskers in the river
an accidental splash
it’s good eats