Yesterday I woke up with a raging headache, nausea, stuffy nose.... Pretty bad stuff. My wife thought I might be getting another migraine, which would make sense because I had been drinking the night before, but I wasn't sure, because I hadn't had anything but a few beers. They were Labatts, made in Canada and therefore shouldn't have had the chemicals that American beers tend to have. I didn't take the migraine meds I have...Partly because they knock me out and partly because I wasn't sure about the migraine business. I had been able to walk, not crawl to the bathroom and get myself a cold washcloth. Now, with a migraine I would have been crawling, moaning, unable to bear the light. We have a line of bulbs above the mirror and it's pretty bright in there.

So, I figured it out later when the headache had passed. I had slept past noon and woke up feeling tired, but not wasted. It was chicken shit. I had been out in the henhouse the day of the headache and I noticed that the floor of the henhouse was not entirely covered with straw or woodchips. The weather here has been bitter cold. I went into the garage and got a big bag of woodchips. Before I dumped the chips on the floor I cleaned out the nests, which were full of chicken shit. The older birds in this house, the reds, the aracaunas, were not laying and didn't maintain the nests well. I know they feel bad about it and I'm sure the memories of all those eggs bother them, so I didn't lecture them about it. I also didn't wear a mask or gloves because I was just thinking about the woodchips and how much I needed. Chicken shit is bad stuff, full of toxins. Our hens are not fed dead chicken parts, they are free range and such, but even with that their shit is going to be poisonous. So, I guess I poisoned myself slightly, probably I chewed my nails at night, as I usually do. I'm real bad about that, I chew and tear my nails and my fingertips are often covered in bandaids dipped in comfrey oil.

This morning I awoke thinking about a friend of mine. Last night I had raised my voice at him, talking about the War in Iraq. He was taking the stance that kicking in the doors of Iraqi homes, throwing the father out into the night and pressing a boot on his head was reasonable because there was a chance that the father might be a terrorist. I should point out that he had served time in the military and is very protective of soldiers. I have no issue with the idea that young men and women should not die thousands of miles away from home, but I have had the experience of my door being kicked in, myself being roughed up, thrown to the ground,, humiliated and threatened by people I did not know, under circumstances I did not understand. Back in 1968 I'd been staying with an old school chum who, as it turns out, had been dealing drugs, and not exactly the same kind of drugs that his customers expected. Never sell bad drugs to bikers, it will almost always come back to haunt you.

My point is also that in Iraq the culture is strongly tribal, with the father as the ultimate authority. Also, in Iraq, the shoe or boot...footwear, is a strong symbol of disrespect. That's why they wave shoes at people to show hatred. Placing an American boot on the head of the father of the house show massive disrespect for the family. Most of the time we are in the wrong house and that father is not (yet) a terrorist. The young soldiers are there at the behest of the lies of our government. We know this, everyone in the world knows this, the government even admits it in a roundabout way. Sort of like a kid saying "You shouldn't have put the cookie jar on the table if you didn't want me to eat them all."

Well, I think it would be good if we, the People, were made sick by bullshit in much the same way I had been made sick on chickenshit. Think about some guy like Rush, chatting away on the radio about how we should have camps for Negroes to live in where they would all be happy dancing and drinking and stuff "those people" like to do. Suddenly, he grabs his head moaning. He bends over and pukes into the basket and staggers from the room, sick as a dog. That would be good....for us anyway. I'd feel sorry for the man as a man, but as a citizen I'd rejoice. We'd know that he had been spreading bullshit. Or picture the Shrub on CNN, giving a speech someone else wrote, and someone else coached him over the big words,(words he didn't understand, like "constitution" and "Democracy"). Suddenly he groans, clutches his head and falls on the floor puking. Everyone would know there was some bullshit flying.

We need this kind of thing in our country right now because there is so much bullshit flying. It's not as deadly as chickenshit, but just as distasteful. Actually, looking at our "Take over the world and grab vital resources" attitude I guess it is kinda deadly. In my case it could be even worse. Because we are billions, going into trillions, of dollars in the hole financing wars and CEO vacations, they want to get rid of things like Medicare and Medicaid. My son is on Medicaid. It eventually paid for his wheelchair, and it feeds him...thru a tube to his stomach, brown stuff flowing from a bottle, but it keeps him alive. If the people running the country have their way...and we can't stop them with letters to the editor....my son will be thrown out of the facility. They will shut it down and he will have to live with me.

Now, I am good with chickens, but I am a wimp about things like killing them when they stop laying. I just could not take old Red or Fuzzybutt and rip their heads off and plunge their corpses into a vat of boiling water to loosen their feathers. I like fried chicken, but not fried friends. These birds, and the regimen of caring for them, has helped me keep sane thru this brain injury thing. But if they close Lake Katrine I will have Jon at home. I will push a plastic tube down into his lungs thru that hole in his throat and suck the mucus from his lungs so he doesn't get another pneumonia. If he gets pneumonia he spikes a high fever and has seizures. I'd have to give him a shot of sodium pent and I can't use needles. Even back in the 60's all I did was acid and pot and speed, and that in pill form. I can't suction out my boy's lungs, but I would have to...I will have to....and that will make me crazy and my son will die and then I will want to die.

All because people used to tease Georgie Bush when he was growing up as the son of the Texan Governor. He grew up drunk, he grew up snorting coke. Those bikers that kicked in the door and beat me up and shaved my head to humiliate the long haired hippy, they snorted coke. That's the kind of thing that coke heads eventually get around to doing. And I'm pretty sure George has introduced Blair to coke. I saw the Prime Minister on TV and he was speaking fast, sweating and grinning wildly as he spoke of bringing democracy to Iraq. He was obviously comfortable saying big words and I got the feeling that he was actually saying things that he wrote, not some nameless woman who would later make money writing a book on her years writing speeches for the President. But I think that event would have been much better for all of us if, in the middle of thier speeches, Blair and George W. suddenly clutched their heads and dropped to the ground puking. The commentator would say, in an unscripted speech, "Well, it looks like the President and Prime Minister were trying to bullshit us again. The President apparently ate corn on the cob and perhaps some fried chicken at lunch. The Prime Minister seems to have had mostly beer. Both men may have been drinking milk as well, because their upper lips were covered in some white substance...probably milk.....Back to you, Connie"