Theater resume headshot, 2002.   Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,      The night above the dingle starry,           Time let me hail and climb      Golden in the heydays of his eyes, And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves           Trail with daisies and barley      Down the rivers of the windfall light. And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,      In the sun that is young once only,           Time let me play and be      Golden in the mercy of his means, And green and golden I w...

 Now the fun begins. The root dex means "right-handed," "on the right side," " skillful, " or "fortunate". It originated from the Latin dexter, implying proficiency and strength.

  Lieutenant General Baron Roman Fyodorvitch Von Ungern-Sternberg, the Mad Baron.     As a boy, Ungern-Sternberg was noted for being such a ferocious bully that even the other bullies feared him and several parents forbade their children from playing with him as he was a "terror". Ungern was well known for his love of torturing animals, and at the age of 12 he tried to strangle to death his cousin's pet owl for no particularly good reason other than his cruelty toward animals.  Ungern-Sternberg had extreme pride in his ancient, aristocratic family and later wrote that his family had over the centuries "never taken orders from the working classes" and it was outrageous that "dirty workers who've never had any servants of their own, but still think they can command" should have any say in the ruling of the vast Russian Empire.  A highly decorated soldier, the baron was extremely brave but regarded as unstable, whatever that meant in the ...

 If I never loved I never would have cried.

We were very tired, we were very merry— We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry. It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable— But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table, We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon; And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon. We were very tired, we were very merry— We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry; And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear, From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere; And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold, And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold. We were very tired, we were very merry, We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry. We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head, And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read; And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears, And we gave her all our money but our subway fares. Edna St. Vincent Millay, Recuerdo. 1931.

Billy had the wife of an old friend over when she announced that she was getting a divorce. Took him by surprise, like.

  Billy is watching the sun go down from the old wharves.  He doesn't know it but some friends have come by to see him again, the dead miss their old pals just as much as the living do.

Thor is unable to lift his host's cat while staying at Utgard.  He is derided as a wimp.  Earlier he failed to even finish his beer, and his companion god Loki lost an eating contest. Then Thor loses a wrestling match to an old woman. What a pair of weaklings these gods are!   https://www.thecollector.com/thor-adventures-jotunheim-norse-myth-utgard-loki/

  It's a wonderful day by the waterside, An orgasmic day for a homicide- Would you be..,? could you be...? my dinner.

 My sister's dog, Gracie.  

  General Flaminius to you.

  To that kitten I was unable to save, I am so sorry.  I know we would have been the best of friends.  I am now naming you Purr,do! in a labored bi-lingual pun.  I wish so much I could have found you.  

  Friday I was finishing loading the car with groceries when I heard a kitten crying.  The cry was coming from a private lot, heavily overgrown with palms and live oak.  Every time I got near the cat would go quiet.  I went to the owners and got permission to look for it, but I could never find the kitten.  I went all weekend several times a day but I have not heard from the cat anymore.  I was even there today.  It breaks my heart thinking of a helpless kitten at the mercy of nature, but I am assuming the cat was dead soon after I first heard from it.   Oh my God, this is sad.  Cats are made for loving. Today I read that in Arlington, Tx, someone is poisoning dozens of well cared for "feral" cats.  The community along Main St. has fed and made sure these cats were vaccinated and neutered.  These are collective pets.  This is a mass poisoning and I hope this person or whatever is caught.  This is t...

Space Billy is a DEI hire, 

  https://www.thebillmayer.com/galleries/  

Photo by Steve Davis. https://www.instagram.com/sdavis.howdy/ The clock and the Exit sign add that frisson of perfectly composed diagonal line. See what I mean?

 1903.

  Is this guy a great artist or what?     https://www.deviantart.com/jamesb000       Sometimes I want to burn my pencils and join a monastery. 

Kilimanjaro is a snow covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and issaid to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit iscalled the Masai “Ngàje Ngài,” the House of God.  Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.  Ernest Hemingway,  The Snows Of Kilimanjaro.   1936. Photo taken in 1926. https://youtu.be/kfVb07pM2DE?list=RDkfVb07pM2DE

          Normally a towel would not be needed, but I must observe common decency and restraint. 

  Big guys sometimes attract trouble, usually from those who think they are tough, or are tough until re-education.  In this case, a local problem child thought that the bigger they are the harder they fall, especially when sucker punched.  Tom Bear just wanted a beer and conversation.  But those were brand new glasses!  With the bunny in traction until New Year's at least, maybe a guy can have a drink in peace and quiet.

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and sputtering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spreads of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause in outp...

  The author of this blog has 20 dollars.  Cigarettes and wine for tonight will cost him 17 dollars and change.  His 4 cats will run out of food by lunchtime, and there will be no more money for a week.  Here we see Billy consulting with his inner accountants on the correct choice to be made. Two bucks will buy a whole lot of cat food, after all. https://www.topcartoons.tv/apple-andy/ Billy D Bunny.  Yes, That's A Rabbit.   Deal With It.  

 Klarion the witch boy.           https://50yearoldcomics.com/2023/01/21/demon-7-march-1973/     (L to R) DC publisher Carmine Infantino, fan and “Klarion” model Barry Alfonso, and King Jack Kirby in 1973. 

This tale is based on an authenticated, documented fact. A man vanished—right out of this world. And where he went— In November 1809, an Englishman named Benjamin Bathurst vanished, inexplicably and utterly. He was en route to Hamburg from Vienna, where he had been serving as his government's envoy to the court of what Napoleon had left of the Austrian Empire. At an inn in Perleburg, in Prussia, while examining a change of horses for his coach, he casually stepped out of sight of his secretary and his valet. He was not seen to leave the inn yard. He was not seen again, ever. At least, not in this continuum....   (From Baron Eugen von Krutz, Minister of Police, to His Excellency the Count von Berchtenwald, Chancellor to His Majesty Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia.) 25 November, 1809 Your Excellency: A circumstance has come to the notice of this Ministry, the significance of which I am at a loss to define, but, since it appears to involve matters of State, both here and abroad, I am...