It is a commonly held belief, if not precisely articulated, that babies are wise – that they have an accute understanding of fundamental truths which we have spent our lives overlooking. Babies just stare at us, unashamedly observing everything we do. They do it without apology, and they do it through something so comfortingly human that one discounts cold calculation immediately: drool. It's hard to feel you're being criticized by someone whose face and hands are dripping with spit.

And when we stare directly back, the baby never seems to mind enough to quit. Watching with large eyes and keeping its own silent counsel. Yeah, Interested Party, I can see why it is that babies may seem, to the layman, like they've got secret understanding on tap.

Rest assured, my Interested Party, babies ain't wise. I mean, it's easy enough to forget babies are folks who, with the addition yet unformed legions of neural pathways, advance to the point where they will try operating a doorknob with their forehead while running as fast as they can. However, let Yours Truly remind you, they're people who must practice for at least year just to contribute to a conversation by shrieking "Nononono!" and "Cooook-ie!".

Wise, my ass. Says a lot about us humans though, doesn't it? We human critters are gooooood at filling in the blanks. If you have a baby, you interact with him or her. Take my word for it, Interested Party. And they leave a lot of blank spots in their socialization. A baby will not, for example, say, "Hey guys, hold that thought while I go somewhere else and take a shit. But just as soon as I wipe my own ass, I'll be back."

There are a lot of things babies don't bring to a social situation. But one thing they do bring is attention. Acres and acres of raw, unabashed, non-critical attention. And one thing other people like is to be paid attention to. It's a perfect match.

Anyway, I expect this gorgeous kid of mine is likely to pick up some of my more endearing habits. He's already a flirt whose taste is developing right along. Some of this is natural apptitude, however, not simply learned behavior. He seems to be sorting out how to make his dimples work in his favor – and I, personally, am fresh out of dimples.

As you may suspect, my faithful little Interested Party, things in the Soverign Nation of Yours Truly have been different lately. Namely, I’ve been overthrown by a very small tyrant. I’m now living in his world now.

The first thing he did was start in with all the propaganda -- making things look as utopian as possible. It’s a social form of sleight of hand. Watch The Red Card, Follow The Red Card.

For example, Interested Party, he replaced a crazy, though affectionate, pregnant woman with a skinny little hottie whose sporting far bigger tits than she’d had before. Which seems good, right? You can see how a thing like that inspires loyalty in one’s constituency. But it’s only after he’s in power that I find these huge boobs belong only to him.

He follows this up with the requisite brain-washing techniques. Sleep deprivation, negative verbal reinforcement, etc. This way, see, you forget about not getting your hands on her rack. You forget that you are twenty-times larger than he is.

I am proud to say though, that I’m fighting back. I have taken up the hobby of reminding him how very much it is that he is a baby. I do this several times a day. I laugh as I do it. I demonstrate to him how easily I can feed myself and how I can operate the remote to the dvd player.

Don’t misunderstand me, Interested Party, he doesn’t seem to give a damn. None of my efforts seem to make a difference in actual policy. Fear not, though. I’m not giving up just because it doesn’t work.

It’s interesting to note that one of the properties of fiction, my old Interested Party, is its desirability. Here we have this enterprise that is, in its essential presentation, a lie – and what do we humans do with it? In some of the more obvious forms of fiction, we do things like buy tickets and popcorn and then sit perfectly still for two hours so we can devote our strict attention to it. In cases like, oh, say money, we spend a great deal more sweat and effort. And as for used bookstores… Yours Truly will wander lost in awe, briefly abandoning his offspring in front of the bullshit Koontz hardbacks, in pursuit of short-story collections sporting Wodehouse, Woody Allen, Dahl, Steinbeck, and James Joyce all in one cover.

Damnit, quit side-tracking me. What I’m getting around to is the appeal of fiction, you know? Why it is that one moment, we’re perfectly content to have never read a mystery novel all the way through – and then, when faced with a giant copy of the Complete Annotated Sherlock Holmes Collection Volume One, we suddenly know we must own it. We know it like we know the coffee maker will work tomorrow morning. We know it like we know there’ll be a tomorrow morning in which to coax the coffee maker into working in the first place.

At least, my Interested Party, like I knew it.

And I knew it while my offspring sat, no doubt perplexed by a surprisingly large string of horror novels that aren’t nearly as good some people think.

The same could, no doubt, be said of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle too, you understand.

Because, we pick our fictions, you know? We pick which lies reflect a ring of truth. We vote or we work or we read or we watch whichever breed of CSI happens to be on at the moment.

Damnation. I didn’t really intend to get this deep. I mean, really – I’m only two beers along tonight.

I think I’ll just sit down and read a short story by Steinbeck, whose talent seems to be in telling stories I don’t give a rat’s ass about in such a way that I don’t want to turn away from them.

How’ve you been, my old Interested Party? Not too bad, I reckon. Things come and go - which is remarkably like Things, ain’t it? They come, they stay, they go. And still, when it’s all said and done, you and I are still here with a little more to show for it than a simple ticket stub. Plus, well, Things are notorious for doing all this at a far greater frequency during the summer.

So, I’m glad you’re still here.

As for Baby Doll and me we’re peachy. We’re beyond peachy. We are phenomenal. And so is the Descendant. So far as we have any indication, he is simmering along right on schedule. He digs the Beatles, the Eagles, Pink Floyd, and Chris Cornell. He’s been like this since long before he actually hatched. How do I know this, you ask? Because he used to stomp Baby Doll’s pancreas in time with any of their songs that happened to be playing loud enough for him to hear.

Now of course I have hundreds of pregnant chick anecdotes I could share. Thousands of pregnant chick quotes. Among my most recent favorites would possibly be: “It’s been a full two blow jobs since we’ve had normal sex.” And what more can a guy ask for than that sort of genuinely unpolished and still abruptly hilarious wit? Nothing, Interested Party - at least nothing that doesn’t involve chocolate chips at any rate. I could sing the praises of Baby Doll, who didn’t have a drop of pain meds during labor. Or how conscientious and attentive a mother she turns out to be. Or how less than a month later, her ass looks every bit as sweet as it did when I first began contemplating buying it a drink - causing me much gnashing of teeth at that damnedable Six Week Rule.

Anyway, here sits Yours Truly watching Moonlighting on DVD and I’m drinking in a most non-Baptist manner. I must say that the two go together smoothly.

Good thing I’m not a Baptist. Nothing personal if you are, my drenched little Interested Party - I just feel a little sympathy for anyone who is so opposed to alcohol that they’ve had to build a full quarter of their religious doctrine against it. Really, though, who knows? Maybe there are Baptists who realize that alcohol isn’t near so bad an idea as a shit load of the ideas that folks come up with on their own. Like gossip. Or mayonnaise.

I am suddenly of a mind to quote the weatherman on one of the local channels. During a recent bout of wicked thunderstorms rife with tornado watches in this region, there was a weatherman on who said, and I quote, “These clouds are out-flow dominant - which is good news for folks in the Wynnewood and Pauls Valley area who want to remain that way.”

Now, I know what you’re going to say, my old green baize Interested Party: “What’s any of this got to do with the price of whang in china? What about the baby? I want to know more about him! And also, Where In The Fuck-berries Have You Been?”

Rest assured, Interested Party, that you are not chopped liver. How’ve you been?

I'm a little teapot, short and stout
Here is my handle, here is my spout
When I get all steamed up, hear me shout
Just tip me over and pour me out!

Now don't you wish you hadn't gone three months without posting, Jeff?

One morning, a while back, Baby Doll called just minutes after I'd gotten home from her place.

“What's up, Good-Lookin'?” says I.

“You really need to come back over,” says she.

So I did.

The reason for this turned out not to be my boyishly handsome looks, despite the fact that they are -- not directly, anyway. Was it the charm I wield, which inspired her to beckon me once again into her presence? Nope, not exactly. Mayhap, then, my prowess in making her feel like the woman she is? Alas, my Interested Party, that wasn't precisely it either.

Turns out, we'd gone and caught an abrupt case of pregnancy. Go on and re-read that if you've got to, but I assure you the sentence won't change. That's right – Yours Truly is going to be someone's ancestor.

During the first exam, the midwife was able to give us the Date Of Conception. When I asked what we'd been doing that night, Baby Doll reminded me of a certain bottle or two that we'd shared, which helped set the stage for one of those tangled evenings where you get so caught up in a moment – or, as it happens, a few dozen moments – that you both wind up making use of whatever furniture is available. Like half of your living-room suit.

It's not a glamorous beginning for your ancestors to provide for you, but hell, got to start somewhere. And while the initial circumstances might be a bit – if you'll pardon the pun – screwy, there are some things that Baby Doll and myself can provide for this kid.

Her cutting wit. My deadly charm. Her killer eyes. My bad-assed nose. Her sharp sense. My occasional wisdom. As for things like creativity, passion, vocabulary, and generally gorgeous looks – the kid can reap these from the both of us.

Life's a trip, Interested Party. It's a fucking trip.

Twenty-thousand hits, my groovine little Interested Party. Techincally, I suppose it's over twenty grand.

Since November of 2003.

Not bad, since lately I only seem to post regularly for a given value of 'regularly', eh?

Fire, my Interested Party. We have, as a species, manipulated it as a species since long before we even thought of ourselves as a species. Or anything else as its own species, for that matter. A civilization's ability to produce iced-down drinks may be a high water mark, sure – but fire's the thing that allows a civilization to be a civilization in the first place. Without fire, a civilization is only a bunch of critters getting together in order to hit the local fauna with the local flora.

And yet, Interested Party, fire is not exactly tame. Look the wrong way at the wrong time and fire will steal your house and your eyebrows. Sometimes you don't even have to look the wrong way -- you just have to have enough of the good beer to make drinking the bad beer seem a little easier to bear. Sometimes you only have to follow around after the Flaming Gas-Can Brothers.

Wait -- let me back up and start from the beginning. It won't make much more sense, but it'll be more entertaining that way.

Big Crazy Friend, the Mighty Buzzard, and myself were out at Big Crazy's place last Friday night. He'd been drinking some of your more expensive brands of beer and had, at about dark-thirty, decided that we all needed to Get Us A Bonfire. Being as Big Crazy had spent the day cutting and stacking brush along the bank of the lake on the back of his place, he claimed he knew just the spot.

“The wind's blowing like hell, man,” said Yours Truly. “We'll wind up burning down the whole county.”

“Nay!” said Big Crazy. “It's blowing out of the south-west! It'll throw all the embers right out over the lake! Come on, cowards!”

So I grabbed a flashlight and we loaded up in the truck, intending toward Glory. Eventually we found a truck that worked. Again, eventually, we got the truck out of the hole Big Crazy had driven off into. And then, Interested Party, eventually, we stamped off through the woods and the briers after Big Crazy insisted that he knew the way to the brush pile at the lake.

So we stumbled through what was, by now, a moonless night. Somewhere in the middle of all the briers and brambles and other miscellaneous thorny thing on the property, the flashlight shuffled loose the mortal coil. Undaunted by our lack of sonar or armor, Big Crazy insisted that we were almost there. He took roll and seemed very pleased that Buzzard, Yours Truly, both gas cans, and umpteen bottles of beer were still present.

Buzzard, lamenting his terrible thirst, began pointing out how good the beer would taste when not accompanied by puncture wounds from bois d'arc thorns as long as your finger. Big Crazy agreed. Which brought about the subject of the bottle opener. We didn't have one.

Buzzard said, “Screw it, we'll use pliers.”

And finally we arrived at what Big Crazy insisted was the brush pile. I was having to take his word for it. He handed a gas can to Buzz and sent him off to start the magnificent blaze.

Eventually, Buzz pointed out that he'd just slung a gallon of diesel onto the brush heap and would Big Crazy please Hand Him A Gas Can With Some Actual Gasoline You Bastard. See, Interested Party, diesel burns hotter than gasoline but with great power comes great responsibility – in the form of a higher ignition temperature with diesel. Toss on a match and watch as it goes out. But don't do it in your living room or anything.

Eventually, Buzzard got the gasoline spread out in the brush to his satisfaction. Eventually, we got the matches to stay lit long enough to start the fire.

Eventually, the fire got hot enough to ignite the diesel whereupon it turned into a ten-foot tall blow torch burning a hole in the middle of the brush pile. This was a Pillar of Fire from biblical times, I tell you. The high winds we were having were not remotely able to persuade this fire to bend. Finally, the fire began to die down in a serious way.

“Quick! More gas!” yelled Big Crazy. And then I pointed out that the wind was not out of the south-west anymore, which brought all our attention to those embers. They were catching nearby grass and trees on fire.

Big Crazy frowned and said, “Uh, that's not supposed to happen.”

At this juncture, Buzzard somehow managed to catch the nozzle of the gas can on fire. He ran backwards a way and threw it down. Big Crazy, paying no attention to my arguments against his intelligence, stood over it for a better view – so Buzzard ran up and kicked it onto the brush pile before it could explode. Where the fire on the gas can promptly went out.

Big Crazy ran up into brush fire, snatched up the gas can, and jumped out to calculate how best to continue pouring gas on. This is about when he caught the damned gas can on fire -- only being neither as sober as myself, nor as smart as Buzzard, Big Crazy tried to sling the fire off the end of the gas can nozzle.

Suddenly, my Interested Party, Big Crazy had himself a flame-thrower. After he caught a few more patches of grass and bushes on fire, he decided it was time to take my advice and put it the fuck down. Plus, well, he was on fire by then and he needed to see about addressing the issue.

Remember stop, drop, and roll? He didn't do that so much as he just hopped around yelling and slapping himself until the flames on his pants abated. Then, my combustible Interested Party, he ran back to the gas can and stomped it on the grounds that It Hadn't Exploded Yet. It worked.

Eventually the fires all went out and we stomped through the stickers back to the truck.

Okay Interested Party, from sheer laziness I'm going to toss out another older work for you to take a gander at.



Dig it, baby.

I'm going to tell you about one of my favorite authors this fine evening, my Interested Party. Why? Because I realize you might possibly feel neglected lately with all the attention I haven't been paying to you. It's nothing personal. I've been busy.

I quit looking for westerns to read about the age of fourteen, Interested Party. That's also the age I quit reading Edgar Rice Burroughs' very lengthy Tarzan series. I'm not sure what -- developmentally speaking – was happening to me at the time. I just vaguely remember realizing that they all tended to run together and I couldn't keep straight which one Slade was the main character of, and which had Vance. And then I realized that it really didn't matter, since they both always did the same shit. They held a gun, they shot the bad guys, loaded up the broad at the end.

In their favor, I will admit that they didn't bother singing.

So despite my lack of significant Give A Shit where western novels are concerned, I will boldly and unashamedly point out that one of my favorite authors is a guy named Elmer Kelton. That's right, Interested Party -- the cat's first name is Elmer.

I'd like to take a moment here and point out that if your first name is Elmer, you'd better be one really good fucking writer. Not only had you better have one hellacious story to tell, but you'd also better be extremely capable in the telling of it. If your first name is Dane, for example, you don't have to write worth a happy damn. Some folks are going to read your shit for precisely the same reasons they'll read a story about someone name Slade: Because they're thirteen year old boys who like the idea that all it takes to pick up chicks is blowing bad guys all to shit -- which, of course, is easy to do when you have a cool name.

Anyway, my groovy Interested Party, back to our man Elmer. First off – and surprisingly relevant – is that Elmer Kelton is actually from Texas. And not just Texas – but southwest Texas. The difference is similar to that which exists between sipping some lemonade versus chewing an actual lemon. West Texas is Texas concentrate.

His stories are about people. People who are trying to keep their little ranch alive during Times of Drought. People who are trying to keep their old way of life alive during Times of Change. People who are trying to keep their family alive during times of, well, Being Kin To Stubborn Bastards. Basically, it's about people. It just happens that the majority of his stories happen within the rusty borders of a cliché genre.

Go grab yourself a copy of Good Old Boys, Interested Party. Or The Time It Never Rained. Maybe a copy of The Man Who Rode Midnight. Be glad there are writers who transcend genre without ever having to sneak under the wire. It sort of justifies ever having had to be thirteen.