the words of the preacher

Oh that's right, first Alaska then the army, still twenty-five is a little early to be all settled with wife and mortgage and dogs, in the house I assume you will live in the rest of your life.  Myself I was halfway through my CO stint in Herrin pining to join my beer drinking buddies in Champaign. 

But I said at the time, I was using a little dramatic license, to show the fallacy of making decisions on our values, ethos, morals, I don't know exactly what to call it, but you know what I mean, then and considering that to be a done deal.  I mean we have learned a lot, and thought a lot since then, haven't we?  Maybe we were wrong fifty years ago. 

So no, on the Dinty Moore, huh?  I may try it yet anyway, just to once again taste the food of my youth.  We sixties types are hung up a bit on our youth, talking 'bout our generation, hoping to die before we get old, never trusting anybody under thirty.  Well I suppose it was a good thing I didn't carve my values in stone at that age.  Still we sixties type put a lot of value in our youth, we still pine for it, we are still wild hippies with hair down to our assholes inside our bent and white-haired bodies. 

Well I have admitted to taking literary license, but you are no stranger to hyperbole.  I was just going to make one of my analytical comments about your second paragraph, about gays renouncing their wickedness and rehabilitating themselves, but the second reading around I believe that you make big joke.

That thing about man being man's biggest enemy was in response to something you were saying about the Cecil thing, about how lions kill each other, the implication being that man wasn't such an enemy of lions as they were to themselves, like somehow they were the reason for their extinction (by not renouncing their wickedness and rehabilitating I guess) and not man.  Maybe I should have said that the animal that kills more people than any other animal is man.  Did you know hippos kill more people than lions, and domestic dogs more than either?

I don't remember a plan at the end of the Lost City, but I like it very much, maybe we can get to talking about that, two old dogs talking about their youth, what could be more interesting?  We didn't get as much out of the other book did we?  I am still about halfway through it, still slogging, skipping here and there.  Am surprised there was so much violence in Gage Park, wish they would say exactly where, in front of St Galls, by 63rd and Western?

A friend of mine has been reading this.  I joke about our audience but I never thought we had one.  She will be nameless of course, but she did call me preachy.  Preachy?  Me?  Kindly Uncle Ken?  Can that be?

Well maybe.  Sometimes I reread stuff I have written and I think who the hell does this guy think he is.  Well I do have this belief, pretty close to being carved in stone, that if you believe something you should be able to say why you believe it and not just say you believe it just because.  Am I right or wrong here?