When it first premiered several years ago, TV Land was a pretty cool venue...at any given time, a viewer could tune in and find classic tv shows such as I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, Hazel, My Three Sons, and just about any other show from the hey day of television. These days though, you're lucky to catch anything besides Bonanza! Three times today I have switched over to find the antics of Hoss, Hop Sing, and Candy....and by the way, even back in the 60s that was a gay name for a guy! I'm disgusted I tell ya...of course it could be worse...they could be showing nothing but Gunsmoke! Oh wait...that's on after Bonanza!

Now, on to other matters...Happy Easter! I woke up this morning only to find that once again, the Easter Bunny forgot about me. You know, I'm beginning to think that he's not even real. I would write a letter to Santa to complain, but even that doesn't do me any good...the letters I've sent to him the past few years have come back stamped, "No Such Address"....

Not one to be discouraged, though, I did write an Easter story this year....it's called...

The Easter Bunny Returns: This Time It's Personal

As the Easter bunny began to prepare for his annual rounds of bringing treats to all children across the land, he heard a knock at his door. He went to see who it was, thinking perhaps his neighbor, The Tooth Fairy, was dropping by for coffee. As he opened the door, he was instead greeted by a rather unhappy looking Santa Claus. "Easter Bunny, I've come with a notice for you from the Home Owner's Association...it seems that the tulips you have growing in front of your home have exceeded allowable height and must be trimmed back immediately or you could face some pretty stiff fines." The Easter Bunny, a bit miffed, replied that he would take care of it as soon as he got back from his rounds, and shut the door. "Oh my, I'm so far behind," he muttered to himself as he gathered the sugary treats.

The Easter Bunny hurriedly hopped onto his magical egg and was off in a cloud of magical smoke. He hadn't gone far when he heard a siren behind him....with a heavy sigh, the Easter Bunny pulled over and was soon greeted by Magic Land's local police officer, Little Jack Horner. Officer Horner advised the Easter Bunny that his magic egg was not in compliance with local clean air ordinances and swiftly wrote him a ticket that carried a hefty fine. The Easter Bunny complained, "I just had this egg serviced two weeks ago..it was fine then!" , to which Officer Horner replied, "sorry, E.B....but the local government has seen fit to enact much stricter guidelines for air pollution just yesterday." Officer Horner also warned the Easter Bunny about the excessive magical smoke, stressing that some residents had complained.

As he approached the first subdivision on his route, the Easter Bunny was delighted to see that there were children asleep in their beds, surely awaiting the sugary sweet treats that he would be leaving them. As he entered the first home, the Easter Bunny found something rather strange..something he'd never seen in years past. It was a note addressed to him: 'Dear Easter Bunny, While we have certainly enjoyed your annual visits for many years now, we must respectfully ask that this year you not leave the children any candies that contain sugar, artificial ingredients, or preservatives. You see, in today's world, one must be diligent in preventing children from being exposed to things that are not good for them, and we feel that the best way to do this is to provide them with only healthy, nutritious snacks. Please leave plenty of fresh fruit and granola...please, nothing with peanuts though..our little Johnny is highly allergic. Signed, Mr. & Mrs. Jones.' The Easter Bunny, while quite confused over this development, complied with the parents' wishes and only left healthful treats for the children. As he visited other homes in other subdivisions all across the land, though, he was greeted by similar notes! This went on throughout the night, and the Easter Bunny became more and more frustrated. Finally, at his last stop of the evening, he found yet another heart felt letter addressed to him, requesting only the pure, non sugary treats be left for the children. Suddenly, his left eye started twitching, while his right eye bugged out slightly...a black cloud with a skull and cross bones appeared above his head. His face turned beet red, and finally, the Easter Bunny exploded into a fit which he'd never had before!

The Easter Bunny, now completely insane, grabbed his basket full of brightly colored eggs and headed up the stairs of the immaculately kept home in the fashionable, yet severely overpriced development. He crept past the bedrooms of the innocently sleeping children and headed to the parents' room..slowly, he pushed the door open and crept inside. As he approached the bed which was occupied by the parents, he reached into his basket and pulled out a brightly colored egg...with a whisper, he cast a spell: "Hippity hoppity, flippity floppity, Easter returns this year...take this egg and stuff it in your EAR!!" And with a flash of bright light and even brighter smoke, the egg grew and grew until it was so big that it exploded..sending brightly colored goo all over the land.

As the sun peeked over the horizon, it was greeted by quite a sight..one which had never been seen before. All about were strewn easter eggs of all sizes and colors....M&Ms the size of footballs....chocolate easter rabbits made with REAL sugar and cocoa.....jelly beans as big as a Volkswagen....

Parents were in a panic....children everywhere were running as fast as they could, gathering up as many treats as they could stuff into their gigantic easter baskets, eating the jelly beans and M&Ms and running amuck! All the parents could do was look on as their children frolicked and played...and ate candies full of sugar and preservatives. In Washington, D.C. committees were formed. Comrade Bush was consulted. Laws were passed. Taxes were imposed. Congress argued with the Senate. Nothing could be done to stop the madness though. When police tried to enforce the new policies, they were met with hordes of children throwing hard boiled brightly colored eggs at them, machine gunning them with jelly beans, and wrapping them with plastic easter grass. As the Easter Bunny admired his work from a distant hill, he smiled to himself.

Well, for once, the weatherman, er, weathergirl, er, weatherPERSON was right. It's been so chilly outside today, I didn't even venture out, except to let Sammy the Poodle do his business. Ugh...I didn't even take my shower today until after 5pm! Yeah, it was just one of those lazy days...much like winter, ironically! At least it was still nice and sunny outside, so I wasn't in a total funk...just lazy! I did get something in the mail today that has got me to thinking....it was a bill from the county tax department for a car that I no longer own. It's worded rather harshly...telling me that if I don't pay the taxes on this car that I no longer own, I am subject to having the tags that I no longer have blocked from being renewed for the car that I no longer own. No, I'm not sweating about it, but it does pose the question...if I paid tax on that car when I bought it, then why do I pay taxes on it AGAIN every year? I guess the idea of no "double taxation" doesn't exist anymore. Yes, I am aware that there is a supposed difference between "property tax" and "sales tax", but the only difference is the NAME of the tax. It's like the food tax in North Carolina that was supposedly repealed several years ago. The idea was that it would drop by a percent every year until it was completely gone...that was more than 7 years ago, and at the time, the tax rate on food was 7%....it's still holding steady at 2%...of course, PREPARED food (such as that bought in a restaurant) is still at 7% minimum...depending on what county you live in. Wake County (coincidentally the capital & the richest county in the state) tacks on an additional percentage for prepared food. I had a rather heated discussion about that with an irate customer when I was managing a restaurant in Wake County. He was one of those nit pickers who wanted complete justification for every cent that he had been charged for his meal...what a jerk. Although I would sooner have died than admit it at the time, I am just as appalled at the extra tax as he was. There's an old saying that goes, "there are two things you can count on in life...death and taxes"....I guess that's true, but what makes it funny is that when our ancestors came over from England, one of the main reasons they hopped on the boat was to escape all of the ridiculous taxes imposed by the monarchy in England. Funny how a couple hundred years changes a people's way of thinking huh? Even more funny is that back in the old days, if you didn't cough up the gold to pay your taxes, the queen would dispatch her henchmen to come and collect it...and if you didn't have it, off to the dungeon you went...you could even be beheaded for non payment of taxes. Well, we don't practice beheading in this country today (or at least not that I know of anyway), but if you don't cough up that double tax, guess what. Yep...the "henchmen", better known as the IRS will stalk you, harass you, and yes, throw you in the dungeon (prison) if you don't pay up. Of course, by the time that they make their way to you, they've already charged interest compounded daily, so that you owe double, triple, or even quadruple what you owed in the first place! Hmmm....sounds kind of like the mob, doesn't it? Luckily though, we have in the past had some people who had the balls to write into law certain provisions that protect the average citizen from the mob..er, I mean, the government from shaking one down for all they have. If it weren't for bankruptcy, I'd bet that there would be prisons built just for those who owe back taxes. I didn't mean to get off on a tangent there...after all, I know that I'm just one person, and there isn't anything I can do about it. I also know that even if a vast majority of people in this country were to start complaining about it, nothing would be done...modern government has a way of squashing defiance these days. Sometimes it just feels good to get it off my chest though.

It occurred to me earlier this evening that I want to be a cat. They have it so easy….especially MY cat, Miss Bigglesworth. I’ve had her since she was barely six weeks old (she’s 9 now), and this cat has never ONCE earned her keep!

Not long ago, a mouse invaded my house….the little brown varmint wreaked havoc on my household for almost two weeks before he finally met his maker…unfortunately it wasn’t Miss Bigglesworth who helped him get to the pearly gates! In fact, I watched one night as this little brown mouse scurried in front of my cat with a piece of dog food in his mouth  (I’ve also got a toy poodle named Sammy) and Miss Bigglesworth did NOTHING! She just sat there and looked at me as if to say, “You REALLY need to do something about that mouse!” I love Miss Bigglesworth, but she has gotten such a princess complex over the years that she’s been living with me!

This crazy cat is AFRAID of bugs, mice, spiders, and anything else that is considered a “creature”! So, naturally, when some sort of bug or rodent gets into the house, SHE’S the one up on the chair screaming for someone to “KILL IT, KILL IT!”

Now, what Miss Bigglesworth WILL do is play with a stuffed mouse on a string…she’s all over it, chewing, biting, scratching the stuffing out of it with her back claws…but let a REAL mouse come in and she’s nowhere to be found! Picture an old Tom and Jerry cartoon where the little mouse actually chases the cat! Yes, that is my world. I’m actually embarrassed by her sometimes!

When the mouse invaded, it was Sammy who, when he spotted it would run after it, barking his little head off, while Miss Bigglesworth sat by her food dish waiting for it to be filled! Now, that’s pretty sad when a DOG does a cat’s duty by chasing the mouse!   

Of course, I only have myself to blame for this. When Miss Bigglesworth came to live with me, I vowed that she would be strictly an indoor cat. All of the cats that I’d had before her had been “in and out” cats, and most of them would end up either disappearing for weeks at a time or they’d get ran over trying to cross the street. As much as I love my “children”, I just couldn’t see letting something like that happen to Miss Bigglesworth!

Naturally, having spoiled my cat, I’m now paying the price. Her day consists of eating, sleeping, and spitting up fur balls all over the carpet. She’s so lazy that she won’t even go on the tile in the kitchen to hack up those nasty globs of fur!

I wish I had it so good!

With Easter coming up this weekend, I just knew that GrannyJo was going to have something special for all of us who are part of Blogstream..and I wasn’t disappointed!

Reading her recollection of Easter past made me remember some of my own Easter holidays when I was just a little guy. I’d wake up on Easter morning, go into the living room and find a nicely stuffed basket full of hard boiled, brightly colored eggs in a nest of green “grass”, and surrounded by all of my favorite candies. Of course, no Easter is complete without the obligatory chocolate bunny, which could be found proudly sitting among the bags of M&Ms and Cadbury Crème Eggs! Once my brother, sister, and I would get our fill of candy early in the morning, it was time to get dressed up in our best duds and wait for my beloved Grandmother (we called her Nannie) to arrive. Just about the time that I’d start crying because my mother would put a necktie on me, and pull it entirely too tight, Nannie would arrive and tell me how handsome I looked, and give me my very own HUGE bag of this hideous orange candy…”Circus Peanuts”. Now, just to set the record straight, I absolutely HATED this candy…to this day, it gives me a headache just thinking about the stuff, but I’d rather have been boiled in oil than to tell Nannie that I didn’t like the candy because I’d be running the risk of hurting her feelings! That just wasn’t an option for me, so I devoured those nasty things like a madman while she was around.

After a morning of stuffing us full of candy of all sorts, my mother would make a full scale Easter dinner, expecting the three of us kids to actually sit still and eat things like baked ham, green beans, yams, and corn. She was pretty young, and apparently had forgotten what massive amounts of sugar does to little children, so the better part of the afternoon would be spent with her either arguing with all 3 of us to “eat!”, or to “sit still”…resulting in her throwing up her hands and declaring that NEXT Easter there would be NO candy! Of course, we were never afraid because we knew that the Easter Bunny wouldn’t forget about us. Although one year, we made mom pretty mad and she said that she was going to hunt the Easter Bunny down and serve him for dinner! Yeah, mom had a somewhat sadistic sense of humor at times…..

Now, as the misty clouds of the past clear into the present, I suddenly realize that this year, Easter has a little more meaning than in has had for several years now. I’ve got an 18 month old nephew, along with a step-nephew and two step-nieces that are still young enough to enjoy the holiday as I did when I was young! Of course, I don’t see myself threatening to fry up the Easter Bunny (unless I get REALLY mad), and I certainly would not dare to inflict upon my nephews or nieces such a hideous candy as circus peanuts, but I think it’ll still be fun to watch them scamper through the yard trying to find hidden Easter eggs before the frost bite sets in! Yes, it’s going to be cold this year for Easter…bitterly cold in fact. Somehow I don’t think that will affect my little 8 year old niece proclaiming, “Why did Uncle Bry hide that egg in the top of a tree?!”

Like everyone else in the world today, I have a MySpace page, and like everyone, I too was at one time inundated with varying types of SPAM..email, group, and comment, just to name a few. Of course, MySpace being what it is, there are many different ways for spammers to send out their messages, which makes it an enormously popular venue for these trailer trash peddlers. There is nothing more annoying than going to your email or page and seeing that Tiffany, Jenny, and Bambi all want to be your BFF (best friend forever!) and while they are telling you how "hot" you are, why don't you just go on over and check out the "pics" on their page. However, I have learned over the last year how to eradicate these annoyances from not only MY page, but the pages of others as well. Yes, it's extremely annoying for someone to take the time to set up an account, post pictures, virus links, and other "fun things", only to sign in and find that their bogus account has been blasted into oblivion and their various (and often multiple) IP addresses banned forever. Annoying for them, gratifying for me.

Anyone out there who doesn't have a MySpace page, let me post something I found today while on patrol...this came from a page of a musician no less:

 "Let me tell you something that is on most girls minds but they won't tell you that size maters or will they? I am telling you this because it is the honest truth, look I should know, they say that it is all in the way you use it, not how big it is, well I got news for you all, that is pure lies. I know from personal experience, I will tell you about a secret that Joey has made me promise to never ever tell anyone, but since he has not called me in three weeks after standing me up, I am going to break the promise and tell you how he went from having a tiny wang and in 4 months he is now about nine inches and get this, it is still getting bigger. He has been secretly taking grow pills from this site, copy and paste the address into your browser to see them. *****.COM I found out when I was at his house, three fridays ago, we were getting ready to go to the mall, so while he was in the shower, I went in his room, sneeked under his bed and found a box with pill bottles in it, there was like 9 full bottles and 4 empty ones, all ordered from *****.COM I was laughing at first but then when he came in the room and caught me looking at them, he freaked out and made me sware to not ever tell anyone about them, especially girls from school or work that he has been dating for the past while, now that I think of it, he has been rather busy with all the popular girls around here, when just last year he was the shyest when it came to girls. I just never put two and two together until he explained it all to me, I did see his prick and yes, it is huge, pronostar huge, the thickest and longest one I ever seen. I know this sounds really shallow, but I am considering ordering 6 bottles from the website at *****.COM for you know who.. he does not have a myspace account, so he is not gonna see this. They guarentee that the pills will work on any man, or they give you your money back, living proof that they do work on any guy, seeing is believing. *****.COM" 

Yes, believe it or not, there are actually people out there who take the time to write this kind of dribble and then post it onto MySpace pages. Even more sad is the fact that there are simple minded people out there who not only BELIEVE this stuff, but what do they do? They sign up to be a "friend" of the spammer who wrote this crap!

Now, mother always told me that it isn't nice to make fun of people who are handicapped, but I'm really starting to think that stupidity isn't really a handicap...it's just a fact of life for some people. Therefore, I'm proposing that all stupid people, especially the ones with internet access, be corralled somehow, and prevented from ever accessing the internet again. For their own good! That way, we can put all spammers out of business forever! I know...wishful thinking.