"What Could Be More Harsh Than This"
Dean Kendrick, 4/2001

"What could be more harsh than this? I mean, really?" queried Lady Winston Filtertips-Long.
"Well, I admit there are very few things that come to mind," Elgar Pomposity remarked. "Although, poo is one."
"I can think of some. Oh, you betcha!" interjected Cap'n Kablooey as he stood up waving a ladle feverishly about in the air.
"I can think of plenty! Yessiree! Heh, heh!" he quipped as his voice suddenly took on the strains of a starving and jiggly-skinned old miner '49er. "George Damn Dubbya! That's harsh! That's much more harsh!"
"Oh, now, please," said Elgar shrouded in reasonable tone. "Don't devalue our nation's greatest son."
"...of a bitch, you mean! Heh, heh!" continued Cap'n Kablooey, gratingly, in his Walter Brennan as "Chuckwagon Cookie"-type voice. "Or what about our so-called free guv'ment telling women what they can and can't do with their own preggers! Hecky, the fetal thang is physically attached to the innerds of this gal and the guv'ment tryin' to find a way to control it! Damn! Pope on a rope! Heh, heh!"
"Now, boys!" an increasingly more agitated Lady Winston Filtertips-Long said, shaking her head from side to side violently.
So violently in point of fact, that her spectacles were thrown across the room smacking a Chia Pet TM right off of the mantle.
"I merely..."
"Or what about equal rights for the homosexuals?" Cap'n Kablooey interrupted, his voice now more like a younger Walter Cronkite on a day off.
"Equal rights? There's nothing equal about them. They want special rights. We're talking apples and oranges here," barked Elgar. "Or rather, apples and bananas," he added with a misplaced smirk.
"Look who's talking fruit!" Cap'n Kablooey retaliated as if a guest on a midday television talk show. "Special rights indeed. Homosexuals ask for the very same rights and protections under the law that all heterosexual citizens of these United States have always had."
"But they kiss each other... kinda makes love harsh," explained Elgar self assuredly.
"What could be more harsh than YOU!" bellowed the Cap'n as he hurled the ladle at Mr. Pomposity's right eye.
Exhausted and damp, Lady Winston Filtertips-Long gurgled up a few last words before vacating the premises entirely unconvinced. "I wish you could hear yourselves. Really hear yourselves."

"Sweet Little Halliday" (e-mail correspondance to Dean):
John Carpender 5/2003

OK, so here's the deal with my little 2 year old girl
Halliday. Today she said two totally excellent things
and I just gotta tell you about it.
First, this afternoon we were in the car and she
told me she loves bats. I said "Halli, did you just
say you love bats?" and she said "yup". Then we got
out of the car at the ice cream place and she walked
up to the people waiting in line kinda
singing/shouting "I love bats,I love bats, I love
bats!"
So, as if that weren't enough, just like 2 hours
later, we're in the car again, she's in the carseat
next to me and she says "Daddy, I got to take your
temperature" and I said " You've got to take my
temperature? Why honey?" and she says "Cause you sick"
and after a pause she added "And I want your heart"
and I said "What ? You want my heart?" and she said
" Yup." and I said "Why do you want my heart honey?"
and she said "'Cause I wanna eat it."
So there you have it. In only a few hours my
darling 2 year old daughter declares both her love of
bats and her desire to feast on human flesh.
I must be doing something right.