Whale Wars

 

WHALE WARS

by

Anthonystjoseph

     Normally my stories, although thought provoking and spiritual, always involve a heavy dose of humor combined with sharp wit and a deep sense of enlightenment.  Somebody stop ME!  This time the only thing that I pray to God that I can inspire and evoke is enlightenment.  I had just finished another grueling day of work which involved navigating a human idiot at work and trying to put his idiotic brain pattern out of my mind and catch a nap when I happened to choose the wrong channel to nap to.  The television channel in question is the Animal Planet and the show that they were showcasing was this reality show that I have managed to miss called Whale Wars, one of a few that I’ve missed for I love reality shows.   All of a sudden I was clutching my chest and tensing my body trying everything that I could to help these poor defenseless whales get away from these Japanese Whaling vessels that are hunting and killing these whales.  Then, right in front of me on my own television in my own damn house in my own damn bedroom while I was trying to nap they harpooned a whale with a cannon and a steel arrow the size of a small telephone pole that looked like it could have killed King Kong and served as the devil’s toothpick. 

     My nap was clearly over and I was glued to the channel as I wondered what I could do to stop this act of insanity.  I realized that I have never been more involved in anything that I have seen on television before as I watched the Japanese whaling vessel chase and kill the fourth whale of the day.  I watched hoping and praying as the intelligent whales, who had already watched three of their friends and family be slaughtered just minutes earlier, tried to outrun the harpoon on the front of the whaling boat.  The whales were swimming as fast as they could and they were trying their hardest.  The whales in their intelligence knew that if they stopped long enough to take a deep breath to dive that the killers on the boat would get them with the steel arrow that looked the size of a small car.  The harpoon that they used to catch and haul the whales had to be big and thick and sharp in order to penetrate and retrieve the whale when they struck it. The Japanese whalers just chased the whales at a steady pace, the whalers were running on fuel and the whales were running on fear and adrenaline.  Needless to say the whalers have more fuel than these poor defenseless whales have adrenaline.  The whale that was being chased, he was one of two whom happen to tire out first, finally slowed down and was only around thirty feet from the harpoon boat when the man shot him with the harpoon.  It was an explosive release of the harpoon that you could feel and an even deeper explosion in your heart than the loud explosion that you heard when the harpoon hit the whale and the water burst and blood poured and the whale SCREAMED!  My God!  And sometimes I think he is MY GOD and maybe not all of yours.  How can we as humans, I know I can’t, kill so easily.  

     These were Orca Whales, or as some call them Killer Whales that these so called Japanese ‘Research’ vessels were killing so let me tell you a little bit about these whales.  Quite some years ago I had a friend who was infatuated with whales and inspired me to read a great book on the subject of whales and I learned a great deal.  First off, a little known fact is that the Orca or Killer Whale is actually a dolphin.  It just happens to be so big that they call it a whale but in fact it is a dolphin.  The fetus of the Orca is very much like the fetus of a human.  They have arms, legs, toes, and a head.  One might alert oneself to the simple fact that their brain is larger than ours and their vocabulary is also larger than ours so you might have to face a judge and jury upstairs if you do find yourself killing or eating one of these sentient beings. 

     As I watched the Japanese Whaler raise his fist in triumph over harpooning the whale and witnessing the explosive sound of death that he caused I was overcome with disbelief.  I will disclose my own bout with killing at this point to help you to understand my disbelief at his lack of concern in taking life. 

     As a young boy in Phoenix, Arizona, I hoped and dreamed that my mother would someday give me that BB gun that I always wanted.  Even though I try not to identify with most of the testosterone related pitfalls that are set for us men, I was born one so I have succumbed to a few of the traps.  Finally, a male friend of my mother’s pulled out a BB gun at his house while my mother and I were visiting.  I think I started salivating on myself like a male dog in heat who has just been shown a horny poodle that only came up to his knees.  I was speechless as I stared at the power of the Gun while my mother’s friend explained that it was no ordinary BB gun.  This Gun happened to be a Benjamin Franklin 22-caliber pump action pellet gun.  I was holding this power in my hand and rubbing the real wood and simply lost in the weight of the seemingly real rifle.  The man said that if it was okay with my mother that he had no more use for the gun and if she said okay, ‘I could have it.’  Well it was either the attraction that my mother had for this gentleman or the steel, soul threatening bullets, if she said no, that were coming from my eyes that convinced her to say yes.  I was happier than a pig that lives in the back of a buffet restaurant that gets all of the leftovers from uneaten portions where they watch you too close to sneak out what you don’t eat.  It was heaven.

     Since my new Benjamin Franklin 22-caliber pellet gun was pump action, you know I had to spend all night in my pajamas pumping it, the rifle, to its maximum power for that first shot in the morning and I knew exactly what I was going to shoot, BIRDS!  I learned with my first shot what the United States Army would learn later.  I was an expert with a rifle.  The first bird I saw was a sparrow and let me tell you that two minutes after I saw him, he saw God!  I went on for weeks killing every bird I could catch standing still for a few seconds and some that were even in flight.  I remember to this day the hummingbird I shot in flight and how small he was when I walked up on him.  All I thought of was how good a shot I was for shooting something so small that was MOVING!  WHO’S BAD!  I WAS!  That was all soon to change.

     My mother and I at this stage in my childhood development lived in some condos on Thunderbird Trail right on the golf course near South Mountain in Phoenix, Arizona.  The golf course provided little Tony with plenty of hunting grounds.  It was the first shot of the day and I think I had even forgone breakfast in order to get my first kill in.  I was walking on the golf course with my rifle slung over my shoulder like the true Tennessee backwoods hunter that I had descended from.  I had only got about fifty yards from my home when I spotted him.  There he was just as pretty as can be and waiting just for me to provide myself with a new merit badge for my crimson soaked collar.  It was a new merit badge of bragging because this was a RAVEN!  I had never killed one of those before.  I had taken out silly sparrows, passive doves, nasty pigeons, cranky crows, and even some tired quail, but never a RAVEN!

     I stopped in my tracks and slowed my movements as I watched the majestic raven with his regal posture stand proud atop the telephone pole and observe the land and smell the wind.  I took my rifle off my shoulder around a hundred feet from the very tall telephone pole that he was perched on.  The telephone poles were a lot taller than normal telephone poles in order to keep the telephone wires from interfering with the golfers shots.  I aimed my Benjamin Franklin Rifle right at the raven and let all the power of the first shot of the morning, with all the pumps through the night, loose.  I exhaled after the shot with a smile on my face and looked at the raven and nothing happened.  I was a little shocked.  I rarely missed.  I looked at my rifle wondering if it was working and it seemed to be fine and then I looked back at the raven as he continued to stand atop the pole majestically and then it happened. 

     As I looked back at the raven, all of a sudden, he just leaned over and fell the huge distance from the extremely tall ‘golf course’ telephone pole and hit the ground.  I swear to this day that there was a loud dull thump when he hit the ground, and my soul even remembers the ground thump were I was standing as well.  I looked around to see if anyone saw because something about this act of murder seemed different.  Although all life is precious this was no silly sparrow.  I slowly walked up to the raven and when I got up to it I experienced some of the deepest sense of regret and fear that I had ever felt up to that point in my life.  I looked down on a bird that was bigger than a small poodle.  I again looked around because I knew I was going to jail because this bird was so big that it clearly had a birth certificate and a driver’s license.  I was so scared that I turned and ran all the way home and never in my life wanted to shoot another bird again.  I even avoided stepping on ants after that little act.  Now don’t get me wrong here.  If I find a bug up in my house and they aren’t on the mortgage, they got to go, and by go I mean RAID.  Don’t make me break out Luke 10:19, ‘…behold, I give unto you the power to trample on serpents and scorpions…’ to me that means spiders and snakes!  I don’t like them.

     Seriously speaking, I could feel and tell that the raven I had shot was a creature that was most likely intelligent and clearly I had no right on God’s earth killing.  It didn’t take the later knowledge in life that ravens were monogamous and kept the same mate for their entire life to make me regret my actions, nor did it take the actions of the ravens that later in life followed me for four blocks to protect me from imminent danger to make me feel sadness over my actions.  It also didn’t take the ravens that seemed to watch over me on my journey from San Diego to Denver when I found out my grandmother passed during the trip.  It simply took the true emotions of a considerate and compassionate human being to walk up on that large creature and realize that I was in the wrong.  I had taken a beautiful creatures life that when I was up close to it was one of the most beautiful animals that I had ever seen.  I wrote a piece titled ‘Stoned’ which was an homage to one of the birds I shot that is also on my album ‘Passion Flowers’ and it goes like this ~

‘He said to me again and again

Just don’t you worry

You’ve been chosen to win

For all the cries of ‘you’re crazy I see’

You are more and more with We

For you have been chosen to help spread the word

As one would if a hummingbird

For when you were young and the one that you shot

With him and with you there was a lot

He is still with thee as he will always be

But for him and you to do there is a lot.’

~Anthonystjoseph

     So it was with great horror that I sat and watched as the harpooner raised his hand in a celebratory fist after killing one of God’s greatest creatures.  And if you don’t believe in God, let’s just say the whale is one of Earth’s greatest creatures.  To see the blood and hear the scream of these majestic creatures was more than my seriously in need of sleep self could take.  As I watched and realized that Japan’s love of whale meat and its belief that whale meat is an aphrodisiac is what feeds this insane act of humanity I came to an awakening.  I realized that my Toyota in my garage has paid for WHALEMEAT!  I realized that anything that I own which was built in Japan is paying to KILL WHALES!  When I turn in this Toyota for my next car I guarantee you it will NOT BE A JAPANESE MADE AUTO!  This is the official announcement of my personal boycott against all things Japanese until they stop this horrible act of murder on the high seas of beings that are most likely more intelligent than us free will having humans. 

     I’m going to get a hamburger.  And I don’t want to hear anything about cows.  Cows are dumb ~ You know they’re dumb because they only make ‘white milk’, if they were smart they would make chocolate and strawberry.  Then I would have their back and point out their intelligence.  It’s called comic relief.  Please join me in never purchasing anything Japanese again until they change this senseless act of murder on the high seas. 

By Anthonystjoseph

All works copyrighted  and protected by law

Did You Just Slap Me?

 

DID YOU JUST SLAP ME?!

by

Anthonystjoseph

     For about the last year my reality television fixation has taken an ugly turn…  I have been a fan of this new form of entertainment since I was a young kid and the first version titled ‘Real World’ appeared on the scene with seven kids in New York who were my age…  I later ran into Tami Roman of ‘Basketball Wives’ fame in California when we were both young sprouts and she was filming or had just finished her season of ‘Real World’, I’ll tell you about our encounter later.  This new turn my ‘reality’ palate has taken is what some would call ‘ethnic’ shows like ‘Love & Hip Hop’, ‘Basketball Wives: Los Angeles’, and ‘Basketball Wives’ itself.  All these shows are similar in the fact that you have these UGLY WOMEN attacking sometimes smaller women, sometimes prettier women, and sometimes wealthier women, but it’s always stemming from a basic jealousy that is attributed to something else that is clearly not a reason to strike somebody…  She stopped talking to me, “I’m gonna slap HER!”  REALLY?!

     I had gone through a couple of years of hearing about ‘Basketball Wives’ and easily, as everyone has, grasped the fact that it was a popular show.  I don’t like watching anything that I haven’t seen from the beginning so I decided to jump into the fray when ‘Basketball Wives: Los Angeles’ premiered…  It was a banal and silly show with women I could develop no affinity towards.  There was one interesting character on the Los Angeles version that was very attractive and clearly outshined the other characters as far as entertainment quality plus her supposed history with Chris Brown after Rhianna.  The other women were having none of it and then decided to put this little ninety pound girl in a ring with an overweight bitter societal castoff who proceeded to beat and pummel the little ninety pound beauty within an inch of her screaming ‘UNCLE’!  She took that beating like a trooper though.  I did say she dated Chris Brown didn’t I?  Just checking.

     Lord, I promised a friend I wouldn’t write about these shows but sometimes I can’t help it…  Something has to be said!  So after the ‘Throw momma from the train’ character on ‘Basketball Wives: LA’ beat up the little teenage beauty queen I was done with that show and disgusted with the obvious misplaced jealousy.  I hadn’t had enough…  I decided to check out this ‘Love & Hip Hop’ and it drug me in...

     On ‘Love & Hip Hop’ the big bitter betty is this girl named Chrissy who has everyone on the show scared of her.  This woman named Chrissy who’s married to some rapper named John, or something, I don’t know who he is, but he IS an interesting character; this Chrissy walks around like she will beat up Mike Tyson if he says something wrong to her.  It’s almost comical the way she looks at EVERYONE when they’re talking to her as if, ‘SAY THE WRONG THANG!’…  She’s mentally inebriated in her own masculinity and genetically confused by some misplaced chromosomes.  She’s got some serious issues and I have no affinity for any of her editions.

     All in all, the ‘Love & Hip Hop’ show was entertaining with the Chrissy-don’t-worry-me attitude of Yandy Smith, an upwardly mobile entertainment manager and entrepreneur and very bright personality.  There was a tinge of violence on ‘Hip Hop’ but sometimes things happen…  And for once it wasn’t a bully beat down.  It was like the simple cat fights that originally occurred on ‘Real World’ but here again we are dabbling into violence on others which we should NOT celebrate, condone, or laud because kids are watching.

     So after ‘Love & Hip Hop’ didn’t totally turn me off, I decided to watch the first and original of these three, titled plain and simply, ‘Basketball Wives’…  There was ol’ Tami Roman who I watched on the show ‘Real World’, where she let herself be manipulated by the ‘Evil Beth’, as we called her in my circles.  Tami, with the help of Beth, was taking out people’s careers back in those days as well (Meeka ~ where she go?), poor David on the ‘Real World’ and his bad prank never had a chance with Beth’s diabolical mind around; where did HE go?!  The first and last time I actually saw Tami Roman in person I felt like an antelope in Africa that had been separated from the herd and was being circled by a killer lioness who didn’t know if she wanted to bed me or eat me and I was scared of both prospects.

     I was about twenty one, twenty two years old when I walked into a building for a business appointment I had and all of a sudden I felt a warm HOT sensation in my nether lands and looked over to the direction of the psychic energy beam and it WAS Tami Roman from the ‘Real World’ and future ‘Basketball Wives’ star eyeballing me and making no bones about it…  It was like she lost all focus on anything but ME!  I kept eye contact, which seemed like a smart move, as she ignored all around her and honed in on her intended target, or as I was starting to feel, INTENDED PREY!  She was a pure predator in raw form I kid you not.  She was a skinny little thing back then.  She didn’t have on any makeup but she was clearly a VERY beautiful woman…  She looked like she took trophies though and I was her potential next trophy.

     She walked away from the woman talking to her who I think she no longer even heard as she slowly came towards me as a Cougar approaches its prey, as in not wanting to startle it, the prey(me!)…  I think if she would have made a quick move I might have tried to run and make a break for the door thinking I could get away and it probably would have proved fruitless; she looked pretty quick.  Even though she was younger than me by a year or two she still had me frightened…  There was something in the look.  She finally got to me as we were the only ones in the main room.  She then circled me as she looked me up and down as if my name was Kunta Kinte and I was on a block up for bidding.  I think I heard her say, “Show me your teeth”.  I stood there praying that master wouldn’t sell me to this mean lady because she didn’t look like she had good intentions…  She had me covering up my junk and trying not to tinkle on myself.

     All of a sudden the Jungle music faded as she let out a huff and a sniff and then walked off.  I sat there wondering what had just happened and wiped the sweat off my brow as I realized I had just had some type of encounter.  I think she saw me shaking and realized I wasn’t worth the kill.  A baby fish she threw back in the water until it grew more.  Say what you will but I was thankful for another day.

     So, I’m watching my first season of ‘Basketball Wives’, which is most people’s fourth season, and I am finding it enjoyable.  Apparently Evelyn and Tami (go figure) are the two figures on the show that everyone is scared of because they are capable of violently attacking you at anytime.  Tami announces regularly that she cannot control herself and if you get too close or say the wrong thing or don’t say the right thing or don’t do the wrong thing at the right time or…  There are so many rules that she tells the girls will get them ‘POPPED’ that they are all scared to chew and talk at the same time around her…  It seems that the Evelyn Lozada character has survived a round with Tami and so this gives her ‘street cred’.  From what I see, if Evelyn found herself in a true ‘street’ situation, she would be in serious trouble.  Stop with the antics and all the ‘fronting’ Evelyn, you’re not that tough.  YOU are not about THAT life.

     Then there’s another woman on the show named Jennifer Williams who has a listed net worth on Celebrity Net Worth of Twenty Five Million Dollars so you know there is some deep seeded juvenile feelings of envy towards her which are disguised under other titles.  Jennifer is the ex-wife of some guy named Eric Williams and I don’t know who he is either.  OH! He plays basketball!  DUH!  Jennifer sent letters from her attorney to Shaunie O’Neal (Producer), Tami, Evelyn, etc… informing them that she would SUE anyone who attacked or touched her.  In a lunch gathering that was designed in the ‘get-jennifer’ theme, all plots and plans were put in place to pull a serious mean girl event.  Evelyn Lozada’s assistant is all up in arms over the fact that ‘Jennifer’ won’t talk to her anymore…  The assistant then decides that this behavior of ‘Jennifers’ warrants a beat down.  How dare you not talk to me ANYMORE!  Wow, really!  She proceeds to get up and walk around the table and SLAP Jennifer Williams with all her might.  Jennifer Williams then, without missing a beat, utters one of my favorite lines of the year, she says, “Someone needs to put a number on this b*tch and let her race around the track because she’s acting like an animal”.

     Jennifer Williams has now become one of my heroes for 2012.  She has pressed criminal charges against the woman who slapped her for the sake of the cameras and has also filed a civil suit.  The violence perpetuated on these reality shows is teaching our kids the wrong thing and clearly sending out the wrong messages as in this type of behavior towards your fellow man is acceptable when in fact it is NOT. 

     There has been much mention on the internet of a contract that these women signed to be on ‘Basketball Wives’ and in that contract that they sign it states that they are accepting that they may be hit or experience violence as a result of ‘participating in the project’…  That may be true but what is definitely true is that Jennifer Williams sought LEGAL COUNSEL and I’m sure she told him of signing that disclaimer…  What Shaunie O’Neal needs to understand as she seemed not to at the ‘get-jennifer’ luncheon when she said, “Why did she send me a copy of the letter?”  She, or better yet her attorney, sent you that letter telling YOU she would sue because you are the executive producer and that letter SUPERSEDED any previous legal statement from her in regards to ‘TOUCHING HER’.  Jennifer Williams’s attorney amended that contract and the slapper is going to get SLAPPED in court.  I am thankful to Jennifer Williams for her courage in standing up to bullying and the possible ridicule she’ll get for acting like what some would say is a punk.  I think she is one of the most courageous people I’ve seen on one of these reality shows. 

     The bottom line for us all in this new phase of our entertaining ourselves is that we seriously need to pull back on the violence in all areas of our lives; sports, television, music, literature, & thoughts.  We are leading mankind down a path that will do us all harm in the end.  We should try to leave the ‘Thunder Dome’ in the movie of the same name and not drag our future generations unsuspectingly into it.

by

Anthonystjoseph

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The World Of Tennis

THE WORLD OF TENNIS

By

Anthonystjoseph

     My fascination with the game of tennis actually started a long time after my initial introduction and relationship with the game began.  I received my varsity letter in tennis as well as a couple of harsh lessons from my father in the sport itself.  I went through all this never even caring about the game in the least.  I didn’t come to enjoy the game of tennis until I started watching a young girl named Venus Williams, who was African American like myself, start playing on the professional tour competing in the big events on television.  She was young and eager and full of life, hope, and ability.  It was explained that Venus had a younger sister named Serena that was going to start playing in the tournaments as well but was too young at that time to play professionally.  Venus and Serena were just so endearing with their big smiles, big hopes, big dreams, and big serves.  Whenever I watched a match I would just hope that I would see my girls with the white beads in their hair on one side of the court because that meant that it was going to be fun.

     I have watched since the beginning of their wonderful and rewarding careers.  I have watched as Venus sat in the stands and had to go through the ‘life moment’ of watching her younger sister win a Grand Slam before she did and had to ponder what that had to mean to Venus.  I sat through the wonderful Wimbledon matches and witnessed the glory and joy of Venus finally winning her own Grand Slam Championship.  I watched as Richard Williams jumped for joy that his daughter Venus had joined her younger sister Serena in becoming a recognized champion.  These amongst many others were such wonderful moments to be a witness to.  It has been an emotional ride for those of us who have ridden the wonderful rollercoaster called the Williams Sisters.  I’m not sure if it was the twelve pack of Bud Light that generally accompanied my watching of their matches or true emotion but I even cried when Serena beat Venus at Wimbledon a few years later and almost wanted to whip up on Serena myself for doing IT!  It tore me apart when the camera was on Venus and her index finger just slowly scrolled down her cheek as she looked stunned.  I’m sure it was at least a little from the beer; I was usually knee deep in a twelve-pack by the end of the match.  I was young…

     One of the joys of having watched the Williams sisters come up was how much honor, pride, character, and family loyalty that they showed through all the madness that sometimes surrounded them.  There are stories out there that the predominantly ‘white’ game of tennis didn’t really take to the Williams sisters hitting the field with their level of success and attitude.  I loved the attitude and enjoyed the success.  In the beginning I have read that they would even be taunted with such juvenile acts like dirty underwear being left in their lockers and all sorts of silly and immature pranks.  Serena’s dog was even found suspiciously drowned in a pool one day.  Three such events that happened to them will always speak loudly in the history books as far as I’m concerned.

     The first occurred at The Indian Wells tennis tournament which has surprisingly changed their name since the event happened.  Venus had to pull out of the tournament due to injury and this apparently angered the largely Caucasian crowd, or I should say mob, at Indian Wells and they decided to take it out on Serena during her match.  It was embarrassing as a fellow human being to watch the way the crowd treated this young woman playing tennis who was just a child herself.  It was a complete testament to how a mob mentality can become completely devoid of intelligent behavior.  Richard Williams has said, which I believe, that he was even called the ‘N’ word in the stands during the match.  The Williams sisters vowed never to play at Indian Wells again and have not to this very day, a decision which I support.  Overall, I was impressed at how maturely Serena handled the situation and was mostly impressed that she went on to win the match despite the crowds venom hurled in her and her father’s direction.

     The second event occurred at the French Open where this manly girl thing named Justine Henin out and out CHEATED!  I publicly called for a tar and feathering of her back then when she did it but my voice went unheard, go figure.  Tennis is a game of manners and honor as there are only two people and four eyes playing sometimes so you have to be honorable in what YOUR EYES see on your side of the court sometime.  For example, if you’re on the court with just one other person in the morning playing tennis and the ball is close to the line on the other side of the net your opponent has to be the umpire on YOUR SHOT and vice versa, so you have to use the honor system.  This honor system migrates through the whole game and is expected in all fairness and all levels.  It is expected so much that it is almost unbelievable when the honor system or code is broken.  That is why when someone holds up their hand to say they aren’t ready for a serve, you do it over and wait for your opponent to be ready.  You want and have a desire for the results to be fair and ACCURATE.  So when Serena went to serve and Justine Henin put up her hand to say she wasn’t ready, Serena went to do the serve over.  Serena felt the need to clarify that it was a do over, i.e. first serve, and sure enough the chair umpire hadn’t seen Justine Henin’s hand up saying she wasn’t ready.  The chair umpire turned to Justine ‘NO HAND’ Henin and she denied holding up her hand and had a sudden DUMMY ATTACK on what was going on.  It was such a breach of game etiquette that it threw Serena off who was still mastering the art of playing tennis on clay that she didn’t win the match which she should have.  Justine ‘NO HAND’ Henin went on to win the tournament and several others with a defeat that should have an asterisk in the record books as in *CHEATED!  Justine ‘NO HAND’ Henin has since retired early from the game of tennis and has disappeared off the scene.  I actually think that the mustache and beard she was growing from those herbal drinks got her forced out of the game but that’s just my opinion.  I think they caught her and told her to leave quietly because she had too many wins to make it public but again that’s just my opinion.

     The third thing happened at the US Open.  Serena Williams was actually penalized a point which was MATCH POINT because of something she said to a linesman.  They got her for un-sportsman ‘like’ conduct.  It was all over a foot fault called at a crucial time in the game.  The reason Serena showed anger and got upset is because a foot fault at that stage in a match is almost unheard of.  It was clearly a biased call.  It is extremely annoying and unsettling to me because during the rain delay of this match, they showed a ‘classic’ match with the beloved ‘Jimmy Connors’ who rudely, boldly, caustically, loudly, and angrily told a chair umpire OFF for about a whole minute where you could clearly hear what he was saying and he wasn’t PENALIZED!  NOT AT MATCH POINT!

     So these authorities, umpires, and one little old line person took the match from Serena while she was on the SIDELINES!  I was through with televised tennis and would not watch it again for months out of anger.  I could not endure another moment of Martina Navratilova saying how appalling it was for Richard Williams to dance on top of the box at Wimbledon because his daughter who grew up in Compton won her first Grand Slam Tennis Tournament.  I could not watch as another snooty self privileged self entitled girl thinks that she can commit a dishonorable act just because she feels she deserves to win.  I am so proud of the Williams Sisters and what they have accomplished and the enjoyment they have given me. 

By

Anthonystjoseph

All works copyrighted  and protected by law

 

P.S.  They asked Serena in the press conference afterwards if she had any regrets about losing her temper.  If I was her I would have told them that I had over fifty million dollars in the bank and I don’t have to regret anything that happens on that court.  That’s over fifty million reasons NOT to have any regret!

Public Notice!

PUBLIC NOTICE!

by

Anthonystjoseph

     On this occasion I had been sent to a town called Ward in the state of Colorado.  I was told that my client’s home was hard to find so I could go to the post office and she would meet me there if I had trouble finding her home.  I drove through the mountains for an hour and arrived in the town called Ward.  It looked like something from a Clint Eastwood movie.  The town was only about three blocks long and comprised of all steep hills with houses very close to each other.  I stopped at the general store and parked to ask directions not wanting my client to know that I was unable to find her home.

     In parking my car as I looked out the passenger side window I saw an outhouse with a sign posted on it.  It was a supposed public notice that had been put up to warn.  Well I had never been to Ward, Colorado so I figured I better READ UP!  It read as follows:  saying things like 'if you're not prepared to kill your neighbor' on line fourteen:

      I sat there in awe reading this letter and wondering about the person’s psyche who wrote it.  I assumed it was an old man who escaped to this small town to avoid the ‘voices’.  I found out later it was a young man of about thirty years of age.  Can you say UNABOMBER!  J  Surely I jest…

     I then went into the grocery store and the store clerk, a barefooted woman in a flowing skirt walked from the back smelling of incense and wearing crystals but still not that friendly.  She had no idea where the street was I was looking for because as I was soon to find out the street didn’t really exist, well at least it didn’t exist at that time of the year.  My client’s street, as she later informed me, actually closes down during the winter months.

     The store clerk decided not to cast a spell on me and pointed me towards the post office which was on the opposite hill from where I was standing at the same height.  I drove the block to get there and asked a man getting into his car did he know where Crank Street was.  He said, “Yeah, who you looking for?”  I said my clients name and he abruptly said, “No one lives on that street with that name.” Then he jumped in his car and sped off.  Uh-oh…  I walked into the post office and saw a list of registered voters posted in the foyer and there was my clients name with the same street address.  That was strange – welcome to Ward.

     The post office clerk or post mistress, as she is called, was warm and friendly.  Very different than the woman I saw walking through town with a huge backpack carrying a baby or a doll in her arms, I wasn’t sure, I was sure she thought it was a baby though.  There was also the two gentlemen, which I thought for a moment were young confederate soldiers, driving a midnight blue Riviera who sent a slight chill through my spine the way they looked at me like I was prey…  Getting back to the post mistress…  She was very friendly and receptive and told me my client had informed her I was coming and she would call her.

     I couldn’t resist the opportunity to bring up the ‘PUBLIC NOTICE’ posted on the outhouse!  The Post Mistress asked what I thought and I politely said that I thought it was very eccentric and I would love to meet the author explaining that he seemed very passionate about his beliefs.  All the while people kept coming in and getting their mail.  Maybe they knew I was there but it was sure busy.  All of a sudden the Post Mistress clamed up at my questions and told me I should ask HOWARD if I wanted to know more about him.  I felt as though I had offended her or something.  I apologized and she got my client on the phone.

     I then drove back out of town about two blocks to meet my client on the highway and we would have to WALK to her home about ‘two and a half football fields’ as she put it, ‘UP THE MOUNTAIN’!

     My client was an extremely friendly woman of about sixty with a roaming dog in tow.  She wanted me to leave my car on the highway to which I wasn’t comfortable with due to the fact that the confederate soldiers in the  Blue Riviera saw me.  I could drive it up about fifty yards and then we would have to walk the rest of the way she told me, I said, “Okay”.  My first attempt up the fifty yards was a total failure.  I got stuck in the slush and ice and started sliding down the hill backwards.  Uh OH!  I still couldn’t leave my car for the confederate soldiers to dismantle so I made another attempt and was successful.  Thank God.

     Then she said we had to walk the next two hundred yards.  I gathered all my presentation materials and gave her a bag as well.  She obliged.  I then proceeded up rough terrain that reminded me of my old Army days.  We came to a wooden house, and I’m being very liberal calling it a house, that was basically just boards nailed together with no electricity or running water.  My presentation is four hours so at one point during this presentation I had to use the restroom.  She pointed me towards the restroom.  THE TREE IN THE BACK!  I do hope that was the dog’s poop I was looking at.  Something tells me it was her poop.  She did tell me it was ‘the’ toilet.

     She had a horse and a parrot to keep the dog company.  The parrot, as she explained to me, was neurotic, so it had pulled out all its feathers a while back.  Later that day it thought my finger was a feather and went after it!  No stitches but it did break the skin.  An hour into the presentation I needed something else from the car – NO!  YES!  I had to make the trek back to the car so we made it together.  The horse came up behind me and nudged me from the back – I guess the mane of hair I have led him to believe I was another horse or something…  Thank God he didn’t try to mount me.  He did scare the heck out of me though because she was in front of me and I had forgotten about him on this isolated mountain.  Flashes of the confederate soldiers went through my mind.

     She informed me during our visit that the town had had a town meeting to go after the Post Mistress because of the ‘PUBLIC NOTICE’!  Apparently it was originally posted at the post office but the Post Mistress had it removed.  So the whole town of potential una-bombers had accused her of censorship.  Hence the clam up I had received from her after all my questions regarding the notice.  She probably thought I was an attorney or something for Howard Drew Brittain considering I was wearing a suit and tie and an outsider.  The man who denied that my client lived on her street was the police commissioner it turned out, and thought I was someone from the public defender’s office regarding one of my clients ‘cases’.  Apparently my client has a little problem with the justice system herself.  So in fact, I hadn’t offended the Post Mistress, I had just gotten involved in one of her battles.  According to my client, the town meeting was pretty intense and she was the villain in the piece.

     The presentation was over and my client was happy, so I gathered my things.  I proceeded down the mountain and made it a lot quicker due to the fact that I fell down half the mountain and slid through horse shit, dog shit, snow, and ice…  And I’m sure some of her human feces was in the mountain slide recipe somewhere as well that painted and ruined my Oscar De La Renta SUIT!  Even though I looked like Katherine Hepburn after falling in the river in the movie, ‘African Queen’, I got up and acted like it didn’t even happen.  I’m sure it was the medical condition referred to as shock. I drove home thanking God for the wonderful job that was revealing more of his wonderful interesting world and took a long HOT SHOWER!

By

Anthonystjoseph

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I Live In The Future

 

I LIVE IN THE FUTURE

by

Anthonystjoseph

     Recently I got home from about a year of being on the road.  After many hours of driving on the road, I relaxed to try and wind down and get some rest.  I turn on the Sci-Fi channel which happens to be one of my favorites.  They have changed their logo from Sci-Fi to SyFy in some goofy and curly font.  I couldn’t be more offended.  You see, I take my science fiction very serious and for them to have such a silly looking flagship of a logo for a subject that is very serious is sort of debasing the idea of science fiction.  I guess this is where I should inform you that I live in the future.

     I will explain.  I think this is where you just said, ‘Please do.’  See, I was just in the future…  There are those people in the pre ‘round world’ of Christopher Columbus who adamantly said and constantly voiced that the world was flat.  You could not dissuade them and their prehistoric thinking.  Some of them died believing the world was flat, in fact, most of them.  A human like Christopher Columbus actually looks at his surroundings and observes with an open mind, open heart, and open eyes.  All you have to do is stand on the beach and look at the ocean in its entirety one time and you can see that the earth is round.  Look at the moon at night or the sun during the day and you can see it as long as your heart, mind, and eyeballs are open.  Mankind thankfully has enough of us with our selves open that we progress us all as a whole.  If it weren’t for the writer, or the scientist, or the artist, we would all still be dragging the ‘long hairs’ around the cave grunting at each other.  And I am proud to say that the writer, being the most important, is the one who had to turn your grunts into words so you could say, “I’m cold” to the scientist.  And he could say, “I got an idea!”  There by warming your ass up.  Then the writer had to write down the formula for the heat, i.e. how to operate, so your sons could continue giving warmth to the ‘long hair’ so she would stop complaining about how her kids are cold too.   

     It is the artist who first imagined that we would fly.  It is the scientist who decided that we could fly.  It is the artist who first planted seeds of us landing on the moon.  It is the scientist who took us there.  Well, those scientist are constantly at it and those artist are constantly dreaming and painting and I tend to prefer the artist who can stand on the edge of the beach and look at the ocean and say, “Oh yeah, that’s round.”  In the creative nature of science fiction there are movies and books of potential ‘round world’ theories that you see or read and just have to know that it is possible and most likely probable.  I could watch a movie about us landing on Mars thirty years ago and believe that we would land on Mars.  Some people actually didn’t believe.  I can watch a movie about us traveling out of this galaxy and setting up a colony on another planet and say to myself, “Well there goes are modern day Christopher Columbus.”  He would be leaving never to return in some people’s minds just like they thought the original Christopher Columbus was leaving to fall off the edge of the earth.  Well guess what? 

     When Christopher Columbus got there…  When he got there…  THERE WERE ALREADY PEOPLE THERE!  Open your eyes to what is out there.  We have one Sun that supports nine planets.  Out of only NINE planets we are here; LIFE!  That’s just ONE sun and the power of what it can do.  Now how many stars are there?  If you can accept that the Sun is a star than you can realize that every single star in the sky is ONE of our suns and is capable of supporting LIFE.  We are not alone, people.   And if you’re too religious and into the word to believe it, let me as an artist, writer, and scientist try to help you.  If GOD made this world in SEVEN days then what do you think he has been doing since then.  TAKING A VACATION! 

     So on this subject of ‘we are not alone’ you can either die thinking the world is flat and live in the past, or you can live with the knowledge that we are not alone and live in the future where we will know that we are not ALONE.  I prefer to live in the future where the understanding is better.  And oh yeah!  You should see their furniture.

By

Anthonystjoseph
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Arguing With God

 

 

ARGUING WITH GOD!

By

Anthonystjoseph

     A friend just told me today that she ‘had’ to go to church this Sunday because she had missed the last two Sundays.  I replied, “Well I haven’t gone to church in around four Sundays because God and I are arguing right now.  She said, “What do you mean!?!”  I said, “Well the last time we talked, we, God and I, got into a serious argument and I feel it’s necessary that when you’re arguing with somebody you don’t go over to their house until all parties concerned have calmed down.”  I felt that the argument got to the point where we were both saying things that we didn’t mean.  He was saying things like, “Mary hold me back!  You better hold me back MARY!  I’m telling you to HOLD ME BACK!”  I was saying things like, “NO Mary!  Let him go!  I ain’t scared!  LET HIM GO!”  Then Jesus piped in with, “Tony!  Can’t you just keep your mouth shut just ONE TIME!”  I said, “HE STARTED IT!”

     These arguments between God and I go way back and have carried on from lifetime to lifetime.  I remember the time when he got so mad at me he screamed, “I’ll STRIKE YOU DOWN YOU LITTLE…!”  I yelled back, “THEN GO AHEAD AND STRIKE ME!  I DIDN’T TELL YOU TO HAVE ME!”  Apparently that last statement of mine is one that really gets his goat because believe it or not he then closed his eyes and said, “Serenity now, serenity now.”  He scares me the most when he gets that quiet tone that he’s known for and starts talking about serenity.

     I think his main problem is that he always has to WIN every single argument.  He thinks he knows everything, and if you have ever known someone who thinks they know everything then you know what I have to deal with.  Have you ever been in an argument with someone who has to win every single debate and has to have every SINGLE last word?  It can get to be so annoying.  I am constantly telling myself to just let him think what he wants and just shut up and that I know the truth, but I just can’t keep my mouth shut as Jesus would and does say. 

     The one thing he’s NOT going to do is apologize so I’m just going to give him some time to cool down and generally that doesn’t take long with him because he’s got so many other problem children aside from me to take care of that in that way I’m lucky.  When it comes to some of the other problem children I look like a saint.  That’s why he calls me Anthonystjoseph.  When he’s in a good mood and I haven’t pissed him off he often tells me how much he loves me and that Saint Anthony and Saint Joseph are proud of me since I was named after them.  We have lots of good times but the arguments just get carried away sometimes and he can be spiteful and vengeful and really ‘mess’ my days up when he’s mad but I go on and hold my head high knowing that I’m right and sometimes he’s not all right.  He then lets me know that he’s always right and I then say, “Sure you are” with my fingers crossed behind my back.  Once, Jesus told on me and said, “His fingers are crossed dad!”  God yelled, “YOU DON’T THINK I KNOW THAT!  I KNOW EVERYTHING!”

By

Anthonystjoseph

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