~ WHAT THE...

July 4th has always been one of those mixed blessings celebrations. Now, more than ever.

I have a little list of blogs that I glance at daily. That's it over there on the right. One of the regulars has been Kim DuToit. Well, OK. Today I am plowing through the list and come to this: closed till further somethingorother. Sigh.

I suppose that it is just part of the medium as message, or some shit like that. Bloggers fade in and out, depending on how much energy they can bring to the process. Lots of the guys on my blogroll have taken a break. Jim at Smoke on the Water. Alice, that Brit trapped down in Texas. Rachael Lucas. The guy at Clueless. You miss him too? He's doing something with anime now. What is that?

Anyhow, change is an inevitable part of the process. But I have to admit that du Toit surprised me. I suppose that it shouldn't. He's gone through a lot of changes in the last year or so. Slugging it out in the capitalist maush pit.

Well, maybe he's just giving it a little tweak. Most of those other guys have come back to the lure of the bully pulpit. The Acidman regularly threatens to hang it up... but I figure that is mostly ego talking. I'm gonna take my ball and go home!

July 4th. What a cheerful day. Actually, yes. This is the anniversary of the death of JoAnne Y.... the Very First. Yup. Guys always remember that first. JoAnne and I did it in the back seat of my mother's Buick in the parking lot of Sportstown, a pool hall behind Colonial Town Mall, in Orlando. Not that Joanie's death is the celebration, but that she went out with that punctuation mark beside her name in my memory.

Joanie was an adventurer. She was one of those victims of the 60s. Skin popping Number 4s and playing Neil Young on the 8 track (I hear you knocking on my back door, I love you baby can I have some more.) while the whole world swirled around us. Oh, the damage done.

JoAnne and I were friends through the years. She used to write me steamy letters when I was in VietNam. Smut to show my buddies while dreaming of getting back to the world. It's amazing how important that kind of foolishness is to an 18 year old soldier hunkered down in a mudhole in southeast Asia. I know that young guys still do that because one of my bailbond office workers is a young sniper in Iraq today and he sent me a picture of his quarters and he has a clinically explicit photo of one of his early conquests ductaped on his locker. Nothing changes.

Since that hot afternoon behind Sportstown I bonded JoAnne out of jail on 5 separate occasions, always for possession of controlled sustances. She went to prison twice. We both knew that if she got busted again she would be a habitual offender and would be in for life. But that didn't ever deter her from "getting well". Both times she went to prison I put her on an allowance. It's amazing how expensive it is to be a woman and you don't realize that until you have to go get girl stuff at the commisary. Shampoo and tampons, soap and that universal lubricant cigarettes, the medium of exchange inside the joint. I used to take her daughter and my daughter up to see JoAnne on Sundays at the Lowell State Prison of Women near Ocala. There we were like a couple of aging parents watching the girls playing in a sand box with a gaggle of other criminal's kids. Oh, damn. That little girl (my god child.. her dad dead from a dope deal)... graduated from UF last year. Top of her class. Drug free. I suppose that it is like genetic diseases. Skips a generation.

So off we go, stumbling through the darkness. I'm sorry that Kim is wearing out. He's a good guy. I'm also sorry that JoAnne isn't here to celebate the 4th today. She and another old friend decided to switch from the usual Dilaudids to some Oxycontin a few years ago so that they could get a little edge working for a big party culminating in the fireworks show in downtown Orlando. Joanie was always what I call a "prescription junkie". No Mexican tar of this girl. She wanted to get her connection at the Eckerds store. No horrorshow of big city dope fiends, no Traffic movie nightmares, none of that Moment of bliss and a lifetime of regret crap. Junkies with money don't suffer. Hell, this is America!

Anyhow, nobody explained to these idiots that Oxy is one of those slow release things and you can't cook them down and shoot them like the old Ds, so her and her friend Hurricaine Lorri just cooked a couple of the things up and milked some blood with them.

Taking a shot of arsenic would have been just as effective.

Well, damn. Come home Kim. Somebody needs to continue the good fight.

Bob