Thoughts from the ammo line

Ammo Grrrll has an important message for her readers and those of her husband as well in BLESSED WITH ALL THIS LIFE. She writes:

Sometimes, when the President of the Free World has just announced that he has cancer which was brought on by an oily windshield when he was a lad in Delaware, where he moved from Scranton when he was 10, it can get a person down. Oh, also, to the best of our knowledge, he doesn’t actually have cancer. Which is good. Only pathological Leftists cheer when someone they hate faces a physical attack or wretched illness.

When that same president promised that if you got the weekly booster, you absolutely would not get COVID because the entire epidemic is now a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” and you are later informed that he has COVID, you wonder aloud if they think you are too dumb to remember what he said a year ago. And that thought hurts your feelings a little.

Occasionally, when you read something like “the gender-fluid, non-binary, trans queer community” has commandeered sole ownership of dinosaur emojis, the rest of us gender-solid, extremely binary normies feel like we have fallen into an endless episode of The Twilight Zone.

It appears to me that part of The New World Order Plan – never anything that hasn’t failed to apocalyptic levels dozens of times in the recent past – is to create a society so bizarre, so anti-rational, so terrifying that we all start to believe we are having the famous Acid Flashback we heard so much about in the ’60’s. All the more remarkable if we had never even once tried LSD.

If you grew up Christian, each Sunday you probably recited in unison either the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed, statements of belief repeated to keep them ever in your mind. Judaism has very similar statements of belief as well, from Maimonides’ statements of Perfect Faith.

Soon, instead of that or the Pledge of Allegiance, we will all have to recite the “Progressive Mental Defectives’ Creed”: “I believe that there are 57 genders (with more added daily), Obama visited 57 states, and there are 57 sauces all of which belong to Teresa Heinz Kerry currently. I believe that males need tampons in their restrooms (hey, it’s called “men”-struation, duh) and can have babies. I believe with perfect faith that disagreeing with that is the exact same thing as killing trans black hookers. To hold any opposing views is not just hate but murder. I believe that printing money and throwing it at favored groups is not inflationary. I believe that being on time for anything is white supremacy. I believe that carjacking is just a form of reparations.”

And so on. When you fear that your mind will be shattered by reciting such loathsome untruths, it is time for a break. Time to take a step back and remember that Life is so much more than politics. Then we must channel the inspirational words of our historic first Woman Vice President of Some Non-White but Very Light Color, Possibly Ecru: “Is it time? It is time for us to do what we have been doing. And that time is every day.”

And so it’s time to snuggle a child or – if you’re very lucky – a grandchild. Or, having none of those available, petting a dog or, in desperation, a cat. (I kid the cats…) No pets? Put on some Brahms or Mozart or Ella Fitzgerald, The Eagles, Alison Krauss, or Toby Keith and recall what a Heaven-sent blessing music is in our lives. Shut off the television, shut down your Smartphone, crank up your SUV or Silverado and go out for that greatest of American sources of sustenance – the medium rare juicy hamburger with pickles and either mustard or ketchup (I’m no purist) and not one made out of either soybeans or crickets. Savor every bite.

Here in Prescott, AZ, The View we watch is not on television, praise the Lord! We wake up every morning in our rental house and take our coffee out on our deck and watch all the life that does not care whether AOC was actually handcuffed (she wasn’t), or Liz Cheney is going to lose her Primary (she is!). A little lizard blends in perfectly with the bark on the huge pine tree and can only be seen when he moves. (I’m going to assume his gender because this is America and I feel like it.) He slithers hither and yon as though he is checking off items on his To-Do List.

A chipmunk runs across the deck and hooks up with a friend. A squirrel dwarfs them in size, but not in cuteness. A pair of obviously married goldfinches natter at one another and dive-bomb us periodically to keep us on our toes. Here’s something you never see in human society: the male appears to be trying to convince the female to go back to the nest for a bit! She isn’t in the mood.

A lone doe lopes across the back yard, catches sight of us and stares at us for a long minute as if to ascertain whether or not we represent any danger. She concludes correctly that we are Geezer-Americans who couldn’t catch her if we were paid to do so and saunters on her merry way. The first day we arrived, I saw a bobcat sunning itself in the grass.

On this particular day, the famous novelist Max Cossack was celebrating the completion of his seventh novel and had spent eight months paralyzed with an inability to choose a title from his list of 18 possibilities. Looking around, he commented, “We are so blessed with all this life,” and I said, “There’s your title.”

Max’s seventh novel, Blessed With All This Life, is a slight departure from his earlier volumes in that there is a very interesting back story for his main character, Hack Wilder. Even though I do not play a musical instrument, I found the story of how Hack learned to play piano applicable to learning anything – mind-numbing repetition, being open to learning from everyone who knows more than you, and practice, practice, practice. It is ever thus with learning a new language, learning to write, do standup, cook, virtually everything. Hack is helped immensely by lucking into a mentor and teacher who is a key figure in the novel.

Much later, while helping an elderly neighbor lady who’s been the victim of an Internet scam, Hack chances on an opportunity to repay a part of the Universe that has nurtured him. Oh, have no fear, the same “Wilder Bunch” of small-town Minnesota miscreants all appear in good time. Did the new baby arrive? Wild horses could not make ME tell whether or not that baby had chosen [sick] “their” gender yet. Buy the book. Please.

I have read this beautiful, uplifting book twice now while being tasked with proofreading. Any errors found by readers are absolutely not my fault — first, because nothing is anyone’s fault in The New World Order, but mainly because I was so engrossed in the lovely writing itself that sometimes – okay, pretty often – I lost interest in the proofreading part. I have already learned from Extremely Alert Readers (Hat Tip: the great Dave Barry) that, as the politicians say, “Mistakes were made.” They are now mostly fixed. Your copy may vary. Forgive me.

I laughed a lot, as is usual with Max’s writing, and cried some too. As I learned long ago after the ten thousandth time my toddler played the insufferable Marlo Thomas propagandistic kids’ album Free To Be…You and Me, “it’s alright to cry; crying lets the sad out of you.”

So relax, refresh, renew your souls, read a good book, and gird your loins, friends. Because we have a long, tough struggle ahead and politics will still be there when we come back. Other than that, no spoilers! And take a few minutes to thank God for being blessed with all this life.

Blessed With All This Life is available in eBook and paperback at Amazon here.

Or available in paperback with 20 percent Power Line Discount here

To receive the Special 20 percent Powerline discount on Blessed With All This Life and any other Max Cossack or Ammo Grrrll books, just enter PLDISCOUNT (all CAPS, one word) at checkout.

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