TRUMP THE TERRIBLE

My patio faces east. In the early afternoon the sun has embarked on its ancient descent toward the west and I relax on my lawn chair in the shade. I breathe deeply. My lungs are clear. Coronavirus has me contemplating life from a variety of angles. I am led to believe that those who suffer death from the disease suffocate. That doesn't sound like a pleasant exit to me. As a result of this grim reality, I have quit smoking dope. I don't want to weaken my lungs any more than 55 years of puffing on joints has wreaked on them. I have been retired for three years from the BISD after the superintendent threatened to fire me if I kept writing. I chose to keep writing. It is my spiritual calling. I had contributed 39 years to the school district and I was working for free. Retirement was a logical option. I don't miss the job, but I do miss my students, athletes and colleagues. I liken my present existence to floating down a lazy Hill Country river in an inner tube. Little did I kn...

Mother's birthday was today. Or maybe yesterday. I'm not sure. I have never forgotten the date of my father's birthday--January 13. But I'm confused about my mother's birthday except I recall it as an even number. I don't think it is March 26. I'm torn between March 24 and March 28. For many years my siblings and I never knew the exact year of her birth. She would refuse to tell us. We knew that my father was born in 1925, but my mother would only intimate that it might have been 1932. There were aunts on both sides of the family who dismissed that year as untrue. She was older they would insist. It wasn't until late in life that she confessed the truth. She was born in 1930, which means she is 90 as she begins her tenth decade, her health steady. She lives immured in a small house that resembles a cottage in the country embellished by the same flowers whose ancestors bloomed when I was a child. I am the oldest of the eight siblings. I was born December ...

J ack O'Connell, the great unpublished novelist, is keeping a low profile these days, but once a week he escapes his lonely apartment and drives to Estanislao Contreras' house where they sit on the latter's back porch, smoke dope, drink beer and shoot the shit. Since there are no sports to discuss these days and they have called Trump every name in the book, sex becomes the subject du jour. "Are you still humping that cute Matamoros nurse?" asks Jack. "Nope," replies the controversial poet of Chicano Fuck Songs. "How 'bout that chick at The Broken Sprocket?" "Nope." "And the widow?" "Nope." "It's just you and the wife?" "Yep." "Have you told her the good news?" "There might be a backlash if I were to break her the news of my newfound fidelity." "You're right. Why the sudden change in your life? I thought you were addicted to strange pussy?" "Coronav...

Olivia, who has been showing an increasing concern as the news grows more dire with people dropping like flies in New York and Coronavirus invading Cameron County while Trump gesticulates wildly that he is innocent, seemed more perturbed than usual as was discernible in her concentrated countenance. "What's the matter, honey," I asked as I savored an early afternoon beer while tuning my guitar. "We are down to our last roll of toilet paper and the store shelves are empty," she huffed. "You need to follow my example." "I can only imagine but tell me anyway." "You remember that I was suffering from hemorrhoids, right?" "How can I forget!!! I mistook your balls for hemorrhoids." "Besides eating the wrong foods that irritate my exit, there are particles of shit that remain in your asshole that no amount of wiping can eliminate. I don't know the exact matter I stumbled upon the solution, but after I flush, I thoroughly...

I was standing at the bar at Cobbleheads when I saw owner Joe Kenney walking past. I grabbed him by the bicep. "Pretty flabby for a guy from Phillly," I said. "Fuck you, Sully," snapped Joe before continuing with that goofy accent. "What do you want?" "I didn't get a chance to wish you Happy St. Patrick's Day! I'd pinch you on the butt since you're not wearing green, but you have a lousy lookin' ass. Let's toast the San Patricio Battalion." "A bunch of filthy traitors," spat Joe. "General Scott should have hung all the bastards instead of branding the majority of them." "You were in the Herald saying that Mexico and the United States had special ties as a result of these Irishmen switching sides in a war that Abraham Lincoln criticized as imperialism run amok." "It's all about business," confessed Joe. "I can't express my true sentiments about those Benedict Arnolds. I h...

L ike a hound pointing to its game, the Spring Breaker followed his boner to his condo with the blond co-ed in tow. She had stepped up to the beer bong thrice and could barely walk. He led her into his room and stripped her of her thong as if he were peeling a banana. He was soon straddling her when he stopped an inch short of entering her shaved pussy. "I must confess something," he said. "What?" she slurred. "I have tested positive for HIV." "Have you tested positive for Coronavirus?" she asked. "No." "Then let's fuck, cowboy!!!" 

I get it. COVID-19 is such a health risk that we are willing to concede our liberties. Plenty of life-long atheists have requested the last rites on their death beds. Stark realities work a cruel magic. I am as much a coward as the next guy. Paranoia is part of our DNA. It keeps us alive. Generally, it prevents us from making stupid decisions. Since I don't know anyone nor do I know anyone who has known anyone who has contracted Coronavirus, we have doubts about its lethalness. In Cameron County we have had 50 confirmed positives and no deaths. This is among a population of approximately 600,000. New York City has had 85,000 cases with 2,000 deaths. Texas has 4,700 confirmed cases with 70 deaths, the country has 240,000 confirmed cases with 6,000 deaths and the world has eclipsed one million confirmed cases with more than 50,000 deaths. The Spanish flu, which gripped the world from 2018 to 2020, claimed from 20 to 100 million deaths--nobody knows for sure. Our president accepted on...

Welcome to the Coronavirus Club!!! Politico, the most read liberal news outlet on the internet, has at the top of its page an illustration that shows the hot spots where the pandemic is hitting the hardest in the United States. As displayed by a map, Brownsville and the Rio Grande have qualified for this list. We didn't know we were walking on thin ice. Our mainstream media is more committed to ribbon-cutting stories than hard news. According to the latest count, Cameron County has soared over 150 cases with several deaths, the majority related to a Harlingen nursing home where an employee and patients passed. "Brownsville and Cameron County never achieve any positive coverage," said an ex-columnist for The Brownsville Herald. "We are know for poverty. We are known for ignorance. We are known for corruption. You cross the river to drug-infested Matamoros or Reynosa and the small towns that exist between the two major cities and you are entering a blood-soaked region ...

Dr. Polyphemous Pangloss calls Scott Steinbeck, the managing editor of The Murphy Report: Doctor: We will pass 200 cases in Cameron County by early next week. Coronavirus is assailing Houston. We don't have any idea to the extent of the disease in Matamoros. Why is there any reason to reopen the schools? In the most perfect of scenarios we are going to have the virus through May. Steinbeck: The BISD should end classes until August. We must return to normalcy before we can even think of returning to classes. You remember the show The Munsters? Even those freaks would be so frightened of Covid that they wouldn't send their children to school. Doctor: It's all a sham. The superintendent is trying to give the community the false impression that instruction is taking place with this distance learning, but for the kids it's out-of-sight, out-of-mind. They dumped their binders in the trash weeks ago. The superintendent wants to have a turf war with the mayor. He says that the ...

I have stood in the middle of Gateway Bridge, called the New Bridge in Brownsville even though it was constructed decades ago, and looked down into the roiling, brown waters of the Rio Grande on the tail end of its 2000-mile trip from its crystalline source in Colorado. I have added to the poisonous and polluted waters by vomiting over the rail after many nights of partying in days of yore in Matamoros.  (Those days are over, not only because I am an elderly gentleman in COVID's crosshairs, but the cartels' drug trade and accompanying violence have undermined Brownsville citizens' confidence in their safety venturing across the river.)   Is there a river that has claimed and still claims more lives than the Rio Bravo as the Mexicans call it? In 1520 the conquistador Diego de Camargo and his crew sailed west from the mouth of the river emptying into the Gulf of Mexico. They had to flee for their lives when a Coahuiltecan tribe ambushed them. The Spanish lost many men and a...

Today is Easter Sunday. I fixed bacon and eggs for Olivia and myself. We were going to sit on the back patio, but the morning sun was in a pitiless mood and we retreated to the air-conditioning. While much is touted about Jesus Christ's resurrection and his victory over death, one of the least known accomplishments in the pantheon of supernatural feats was God's creation on the eighth day. The Garden of Eden, located in the Middle East, can get damn hot and God, despite his terrible temper, was a practical thinker. He blessed humanity by inventing air-conditioning. I think of God as the first Thomas Edison for lack of a better comparison. South Texas is grateful for his extra effort on our behalf. It is early afternoon and my step-son Lorca is sleeping. He delivers food and works well into the night. He says he is wearing gloves and a mask, but I don't know. I don't inspect him as he comes and goes. He could prove the chink in our armor. Mick played video games all nigh...

There are hundreds of stories like the following tragedy as the death toll climbs toward 25,000 and the number of Coronavirus cases nears 600,000, both stats the highest in the world with few signs that these numbers won't double, probably triple, perhaps quadruple before the Grim Reaper has collected his quota of corpses in his pursuit of death. The BISD as well as the other Brownsville charter and private schools know that the threat of this pandemic won't cease until, at best, this summer. Does the press need to document cases locally like the heart-rending article that The Murphy Report features? The school year is over. There may be minutes ticking on the clock, but the result is a foregone conclusion. We are well into the fourth quarter. There will be no comeback. We need to be safe and not sorry. This is no time for rash decisions when lives are at stake. Would the school district's trustees or the administrators for the charter and private schools sleep well at nigh...

"Why are you on the road, sir?" I'm going to McAllen because I read on Facebook that one of the HEBs has toilet paper. "Why are you on the road, sir?" I'm going to South Padre Island because my hour glass ran out of sand. "Why are you on the road, sir?" I'm going to Matamoros to buy Viagra because I'm stuck at home with my wife and she wants to fuck three times a day. "Why are you on the road, sir?" I'm going to Los Fresnos to collect manure at the rodeo arena so I can fertilize the flowers I planted. "Why are you on the road, sir?" I'm going to San Benito to lay a wreath at Freddy Fender's grave because it's the anniversary of his death. "Why are you on the road, sir?" I'm going to Mercedes to purchase clothes for my kids because the outlets have end-of-the-school-year specials. "Why are you on the road, sir?" I'm going to Harlingen because the gringos can tell the Mexican-Ame...