Handsome young billionaires, married or otherwise, are going to have sex with beautiful women around the world.    This an elementary truth, not unlike the Heliocentric Theory of the universe:  everything orbits around the guy with all the money.    Hell, we must be living vicariously through Tiger Woods, as well as his women, because this so-called "news" is decidedly UN-shocking and blasé.     Honestly, who didn't know Tiger Woods was boning every man, woman, child and animal in both hemispheres?!     (Even his name sounds like that of a porn star!)
       If I were Tiger Woods, I'd be having sex with every single one of you -- simultaneously -- while servants fill my cup with wine made from fermented supermodels and a tribe of golden Jesuses fight for the right to bring me the remote control....   I'd be sexing up cameramen, putting greens, golf carts, owls, everything....  And I'd be crushing small countries, too -- simply because I have the power and the will to do so. 
     But what about my beautiful wife and darling children?      Well, they'd be, like, "Okay, he is a billionaire; he's obviously not perfect!"     Actually, they'd be my biggest apologists, because I would appoint angels to wash their bottoms, and I would give them platinum, mink-lined spittoons and vitamin supplements made from the ptuitary glands of endangered species and teeth made of real diamonds.    I would build for my wife her own domed city, so she could shop during nuclear exchanges.    My exotic pets would have their own exotic pets.    Even my children's pitiful imaginary friends would have their own living quarters.
     Our fecal matter would not be evacuated from our bowels, but removed daily through surgical procedure.   We'd have our own taxidermist to mount on the wall the heads of Elvis, Babe Ruth, and the Unknown Soldier.   The Shroud of Turin would be the tarp covering my snowmobile limousine!    I'd buy Vatican City, import it to Tennessee, then turn it into an amusement park called Pope Land U.S.A.!     I'd rent Congress for a day and have those bastards rake my yard!
     Pardon my sanctimony, but it's obvious everyone is living out vicarious fantasies through the Tiger Woods saga!    It's just embarrassing.   Get a life!

       I removed all historic evidence of the last 30 days as I tore July from my desk calendar this morning -- the time having passed so quickly that the sheet had scarcely become coffee-stained, boogered or dusty.   Hell, it seems like just yesterday -- and maybe it was -- that I removed June.   In fact, I seem to recall, mere weeks ago, seemingly, when this very desk calendar was brand new and I was habitually dating everything 2008.
       Meanwhile, as time is whizzing past me like the piss of delirium, relativity is creating everlasting summer days for my children.   Just yesterday, in the span of time it took me to remember what day of the week it was, my son had learned to ride a bike, swam with no flotation devices whatsoever, and learned the game of soccer.   Now, granted, most developments and accomplishments typically occur when we're young, while negotiating our way through an expansive reality, and we have far less to accomplish as we get older and life takes us down this cone-shaped path of increasingly limited options.   Hence the disparity, I suppose.
       Neither Sam nor myself can remember what we ate for breakfast on any given day.   I can't remember because my brain is awash with the cascading dreariness of routine, while Sam is unable to remember because, to him, breakfast seems like a lifetime ago.   Is this fair, on any kind of existential level?
       I want to taste wonderment once again, but learning doesn't seem like lucid new experience anymore.   Occasionally, I'll experience what I believe to be an epiphany, only to realize later that it was something I'd realized long ago and simply forgotten.    And there are no memorable first times, such as losing your virginity or buying your first car, that encapsulate climbing growth and development.    First times for people my age are much more banal (if not horrifying, like a first heart attack or first gray hair), and they occur on the rushing downslope of life.
       I'm not bemoaning my existence or even my age.   I'm just trying to figure out why I seem to remove a month from my calendar every single day.   Each birthday is like a rock in the stream of life, and I'm hopping from one to the other as I advance to the other side.   Superbowls and World Series pass with the regularity of a goose.   Songs and movies are suddenly a decade old, two decades old, three decades old.    Even the lives of my children are flashing before my eyes, as they get older and older with each passing month that seems like a day.  

       Living on a mountain ridge is interesting, to say the very least, when it comes to various forms of wildlife sharing one's environment.   There are deer that regularly congregate in our back yard to eat Mesilla's hosta as if it were a complimentary salad, but we consider deer to be only a slight nuisance because they're so doe-eyed and cutesy.   We have turkeys, too, and aside from being excessively unattractive creatures, they're really not a bother.   And there are hawks, owls, buzzards, bats, snapping turtles, squirrels and rats....
       The visiting animals that I would put in the Nuisance category are groundhogs, wild pigs, coyotes, raccoons, opossum, rabbits, etc.    The groundhogs and pigs tunnel and dig, creating bone-jarring, teeth-rattling craters that will nearly swallow a tractor and bushhog.   Coyotes, well, they're just nasty little carniverous bastards, plain and simple.   Raccoons get into trash cans and compost heaps; they abscond with our dogfood; and, along with rabbits, they can tear a garden to pieces in just one night.   Finally, cattle regularly find a hole in the fencing and amble up to our yard to eat our tasty grass and excrete massive deposits -- by the gallon -- of foul-smelling waste.   Cows are regularly considered domestic creatures, sure, but once they escape the bonds of servitude, I feel they are little more than lawn terrorists. 
       There are several critters that are actually quite dangerous, and these are the ones we take most seriously.   Coyotes can be dangerous, but really only if you somehow manage to fall into the middle of a pack.   Mostly, they're shy but noisy.   One of the most dangerous creatures around here, believe it or not, is the skunk.   People tend to think of bats as the predominant carrier of rabies, but it's really the skunk.   They are a portal to hydrophobic doom.   There are also a few wild cats, mostly the smaller varieties like bobcat and lynx, but they're so very rare that you'd be extremely lucky to get mauled by one.
       Insects are a problem, too, particularly if one is allergic to bites/stings/probes.    (Like myself.)    There are bees, wasps, hornets, yellow jackets...   spiders as big as leaf rakes...   and even scorpions!    Hell, out here we have moths big enough to carry off a small dog.
       I suppose it would be no surprise to tell you that snakes are our largest concern.   Not only do the woods and rocks seem like a great place for snakes, they really are.   Granted, the gravest danger when it comes to snakes is having a heart attack when you see one, but poisonous snakes are definitely abundant here, and they will bite you if you get too close.    On a cool summer day, they'll be right out in the open, just gettin' some rays.   Now, we have bare-footed (and otherwise naked) children running around the property, so whenever I see a poisonous snake, as non-politically correct as this may seem, I blow it's head off.    I've killed at least a dozen copperheads, one as recently as last week.   It was the biggest copperhead I'd ever seen -- almost 3 feet long -- and when it comes to poisonous reptiles, size does matter.
       Snakes are a portent, at least in my experience.   Every single time a see a poisonous snake, something bad is happening or has happened.   I think snakes are nature's caution lights.   One day, I had a feeling of dread, so I stepped out onto the porch, and 5 inches from my toes was a copperhead.    At that very moment, Missy's grandma was being bitten by another copperhead in her garden.   She had to be hospitalized.   Other times, snakes have been present when relatives have become ill or died.   That's what happened this Saturday.
       I sensed a feeling of foreboding that morning, and when the phone rang, I just knew someone had died.   I was quite relieved to find out that it was just Missy's mom calling to chat.   But the phone rang once again, and it was my own mother calling to tell me that my grandma had just died.   Not 5 minutes later, we're in the car going to the grocery store and there in the driveway was the largest rattlesnake I have ever seen -- almost 5 feet long.   I told the kids to stay in the car, and I ran inside to get my shotgun, and then I blew that snake to Hell in a million pieces.
       I'm a champion for animal rights, but there's a different reality on a farm than most people are aware of.   You simply cannot allow a poisonous snake to live.    Now, if I was a trained herpetologist, I'd tag these snakes and relocate them to unpopulated areas, but I'm not a herpetologist.    Believe me, it's not a hatred of snakes, because we have a ball python in the house that likes to watch baseball with me.    But if I were to simply, peaceably allow a rattlesnake or copperhead to escape, they're not going to gratefully migrate to a place far away.    No, there's a 150% chance that very snake will one day bite a child or an animal.     So, with surgical precision, I remove their heads with a quick and thunderous blast from my shotgun.    And, in the case of this timber rattler, I kept it's rattle as a souvenir.   (It had 8 rattles and a button, so it was at least a 9-year-old snake.)