Would wait in this line for the new I-Phone?  Lots of folks did a West Town Mall this morning.

Thanks to my friend, Ed who sent me the low-down on some hidden funnies in Toy Story III.   Here’s the story on Toy Story.  More at The Pixar Blog.

I don’t want you to read this .. no… that isn’t right.   I want you to read this…unless you’re a … no.. that’s not right either…because most kids see more graphic stuff on their electronic games. But the images provided to me were graphically real.

In bazzilion megabyte  j-peg files, I saw them.

Several months ago, I tried to remember all of the killings, and all of the death I had seen.  I think it was an attempt to recall each one, and then purge them from my memory- empty my recycle bin of gore.  But as hard as I tried, I could not.  Death had come to these people in the most horrible ways you could imagine.

But nothing like this.   These images were so bad that after I saw them, I purged them from my computer, and shredded the files with a program that’s designed to keep secrets.   Deep, dark ones that are worse than any monster that you might have imagined lurking under your bed when you were a child.

These were real monsters.

I think the word of choice for them is narco-terrorist*.

The images started with some men hauling a nude (presumably dead) man out of the back of a pickup truck.  He had a rope around his neck.  There were three or four guys dragging this one man out to a field.  They all looked Hispanic.  But for all I know every one of them was an American citizen.   Their identities are not known, nor was the source of these photos.

The body was staked out face down in what appeared to be a low place between two grassy hills.  Then, as I clicked through the images, I was horrified to see one of the men slash the body diagonally, several times.

Then, the next click, I found out why.   Buzzards.   Dozens, maybe hundreds of buzzards descended on the remains, tearing away the flesh until there was no more.  I will not tell you about the next few images, scarce to say you could tell it was real, and a person’s body was being consumed.

And then, as if he was about to get paint on himself, one of the men appeared in the next image.  He was wearing a clear plastic poncho.  And he gathered the mans bones, cracked the skull, pelvis, femur, spine… into small pieces.  There were close-ups photos.

And the buzzards came again.

And there was no more body.

I believe these photographs to be real.

Made by law enforcement?  Maybe.   Made as a warning by one gang to possible competitors… probably.  And one of the most prolific drugs from Mexico now, is meth.  And there’s a lot of meth in this area- more than some folks shaking two liter bottles can make.  It’s cheap, and Knoxville is close to some of the pipelines.

There’s  a war going on just south of here.  And we bury some of the dead here in East Tennessee.

Someday, you might need some of these poorly crafted word images from me to describe just who their meth wholesale marketing team might be.

Before their personal buzzards come for them.

*There is this story from CNN tonight.

I saw this video:   “Kung Fu Bear”

And the bear has made international news.  CNN also reports it checked with the zoo in Japan, and administrators say yes, the bear can make those moves with a stick.

I think this video should be kept far away from the Smoky Mountains.   If the bears see this video “how-to”, there could be countless picnic-jackings.

It was hot.  Hot like today.

He was in one of those old-fashioned undershirts, white, ribbed knit, and no sleeves.   And the shirt was soaking wet, beads of sweat were forming on his forehead then coursing down to the end of his nose.  But he didn’t quit.

My dad was waxing our ’56 Mercury.  The car had been carefully washed, and the white wall tires properly scrubbed with a Brillo pad…all in preparation for the elbow grinding ritual of hand waxing a car.

He had parked it in the shade of the locust tree in front of the house on Ashland Avenue.  To get the car to the cool spot, he had to drive it over the curb, and angle it so the nose of the car was just over the edge of the sidewalk to the house , and the big back bumper was right at the edge of the public sidewalk.

He used paste wax, the hard tan-colored wax that didn’t want to be rubbed into the paint.  You had to use a wet cloth to rub into the wax and urge it onto the rag, and then onto a small patch of car.  The stuff would dry and go back to the stubborn wax nearly as soon as Daddy rubbed it into the paint.   There was no electric buffer.  So a piece at a time… half a fender, half of the upper half of a door, my father would carefully rub the wax on with one rag, then buff it to a gloss with another.

Sometimes, he would turn the key to accessory current, and listen to the radio.  I have tried, but I can’t remember what he listened to.  It had to be an AM radio station because there were no FM stations in town.

The Mercury was exactly like the one here.

I think the factory called the color “Persimmon” , but I have never seen a persimmon that color.   It’s really hard to describe the color, and I’m glad I found a photo of  somebody’s well preserved Mercury to show you.   As you can see, a thousand words probably could not come up with an accurate description of “Persimmon”.   But Mother and Daddy liked the car, and traded a 1950 gray Ford for it.   I have a few memories of the Ford, mainly of my mother trying to learn to drive a standard shift, and lurching all over Riverside Drive.  My dad  howled with laughter, as I  flopped from back seat to floor to back seat.  I’m not sure mother ever got the hang of clutch-gas-clutch.

The windows were all down in the Mercury while my father  waxed it.  It was the one time I was allowed to sit inside alone.  The only thing I could touch was the steering wheel.  I would sit behind that huge wheel, and while my dad rubbed and rubbed,  I would carry out fantastic adventures… and more important- I’d carry on long conversations with my father.

It would take a half day for Daddy to finish working on the Mercury..wrestling the hard wax into a bright shine.  Those were the days of chrome and big fenders.  One bumper on the Mercury probably weighed as much as one Smart Car.

When the waxing was done, the windows would be rolled up, and Windex’ed  inside and out.  Then, with all four doors open, I would help with  wisk-brooming the floorboard.   For those who might not know what a whisk broom is, think of it as a small straw broom, about half the size of a kitchen broom and an extremely short handle.   This pre-dated the kind of vacuum cleaners that everybody has now.  Dirt Devil wasn’t even a lower demon yet.  It took a long time, and my dad was right there, to supervise and instruct.

I do remember one time, a few days after we had worked on that Mercury.   It was raining, and Daddy took time to point out how the water was beading up and rolling right off the car because of “our” wax job.  He explained how wax protected the paint, and you should always take care of your stuff.

My father lived his life lessons.  He showed me how to be a man, by being a man…an honest, hard-working man on the job, and at home.

One stormy summer afternoon, I was with my mother when hailstones the side of ping-pong balls slammed into the Mercury.  My mother made me climb into the back seat, and like a Secret Service agent protecting the President, she shielded me with her own body in case the hailstones came through the glass.   It was a relentless pounding on the car, an ear-splitting roar.   And when it was done, the Mercury looked like someone had taken a ball peen hammer and hit every inch of the car.  The body was ruined.

My parents soon traded the now pock-marked Mercury for a “Chestnut” and white Ford Galaxy.   This one comes pretty close.  Ours had more white paint.

You couldn’t wax a car for a certain amount of time after you bought it then.  New car paint had to cure. But as soon as it was time, Daddy was out there again with that hard paste, a wet rag, and a dry one.

Lesson taught.

Lesson learned.

Happy Father’s Day, Daddy.

She was once a bright and shining star.  Now, people are walking out of her concerts.  The latest on Whitney Houston.

Do you remember what happened June 6th?

And there is this update from France.

This is a curious story about fair play.

My son, Jon will attest to the fact that many a time, I coached a youth team that lost by far more than five points.  I don’t think any of the kids on the team left the field psychologically damaged (although a couple of times they had to run laps ).

You have to learn that life sometimes gives you a good ‘whuppin.  Other times, you have to lean when to put your less-skilled players on the field when you are up by several goals.  It’s called sportsmanship, and making a game- just that…a competition… a challenge.

In the class where I earned my FIFA license, the instructor stressed that until a child is a certain age, the main object of playing a game is to have fun, and learn basic skills.  Let the children be themselves and don’t allow yourself to re-play your own childhood.

Sometimes I was successful at coaching children.  Other times, I failed my son, and the team because of poor skill on my part.  My  greatest hope is that that they learned something about life beyond soccer:  their own personality, tactical thinking, a love for the game, teamwork, and friendship.

And how to lose….

..and win with a bit of class.