Fred died tonight.

We rescued him from a family that was calling him Bocephus...Hank Williams Jr...of course, we took one look at him and said there is no way this bassett hound....this big lumbering short legged hound dog with ears that hadn't gotten the memo yet and were still long enough to stir the dust and waft the scent up to that CSI Superfly Noze of his.  You see, bassetts are according to legend bred from full sized blue tic hound with a Dachsund or some dog with short legs.…

Fred died tonight.

We rescued him from a family that was calling him Bocephus...Hank Williams Jr...of course, we took one look at him and said there is no way this bassett hound....this big lumbering short legged hound dog with ears that hadn't gotten the memo yet and were still long enough to stir the dust and waft the scent up to that CSI Superfly Noze of his.  You see, bassetts are according to legend bred from full sized blue tic hound with a Dachsund or some dog with short legs.…

I finished watching the extended director's cut of Blatty's The Exorcist.  

Rather than continue searching, I have started a group called Exorcism Survivors.  I hope others who have suffered the rite of exorcism and/or deliverance at the hands of Christians...or, worse yet, have participated in the rite of exorcism as the exorcist...can come together and share experiences.  I don't know what the approval process for a group on Atheist Nexus entails.…

I am so tired, so exhausted, by the discussions of atheism vs religion.  Am I supposed to continue from this point in my life to the end of my existence arguing against the obvious?  

God does not exist.  When I was a child, growing up and first realizing that there was a larger world outside my small town, outside my religious fellowship, that did not accept, that frankly was too sophisticated to acknowledge the existence of God...that it was this world I wanted to be a part of, that…

hey, cowboy, let me see your face

the scar where pain still lingers from

a broken-necked beer bottle brawl

the teeth gone bad and yellowed like old paper

from the chew you cannot swallow

the whiskers like a patch of stiff,…

Hi, I'm Phil Jarrett, the author and copyright holder of the sequence of poems posted on my blog today.

Someone got me thinking about growing up in poverty in West Virginia so I published the toys you never won growing up in Chespeake, West Virginia on the Kanawha River in the 'Fifties.  and that one led to a poem after the Sego Mine Murders The Ghost of These Dark Hills.  After came the one about my spiritual journey from the hard work and drudgerly…

prisoned inside my private world

i watch dust devils dash and swirl

and lift the skirt of a nubile girl

i hear the wind raping the trees

i see the bruised and battered leaves

come crumbling down around her knees…

if i could see the flowers growing

as van gogh once saw flowers grow

then these poems would twist and writhe

upon the page in torment slow

splash and swirl with yellow passion,

hock and spit a madman’s green

vomit blues and blacks…

when green the grass did grow

around the fumbles of desire

i followed my own footprints

up my mountain seeking...higher

looking with my eyes i found

myself too quickly blind

looking past my eyes…

there was chesapeake and i learned to spell the name on the yellow paper and i put my name and chesapeake and west virginia and i wrote them down and that was the name and i was there and living in it and being in it before i knew what it was called by people who were not in it and the noise and i lived above levin’s discount in three rooms with my brother and my mother and my father and he was the one and there was yelling all the…

            I am a West Virginian.  My father’s people came from France by way of Scotland to the area around Pinch up the Elk River to settle on a 900 acre tract of land bequeathed to them by the King of England in 1625.  My mother’s grandmother was from the Barker and Lewis families with links to the Melungeon clan who claim to be descendants of the Portuguese who chose to stayed behind when the others left to go home.  …

Is it all right to do nothing with you life? Simple question. What harm would come if you simply woke up in the morning and went to work then came home at night and enjoyed yourself? Working, of course, is an essential aspect of living. If you want to have a place to come home to that is your own, where you can be alone, then you have to work to make the money necessary to sustain you own life. You may not want to, you may find ways of getting around working. But experience has taught me…

when the glory of the lord shall shine

and blind men to his crimes

as the lies that he had promised me

would bind me to his tree

when all the angels in the dark

would brand me with the devil’s mark

i’d curse and cry with my last breath

‘i’ve still a half a bottle left!’

leave me alone, save someone else

i love my sinful, wicked self

take off from me this pit bull’s leash

save it for a pederastic priest

what good is my soul…

Having a conversation, either on line or face to face, with a Christian is something all of us have endured. Just out of curiosity, can anybody point to an incident where they accomplished anything by doing so? I know I can’t, but maybe some of you have a higher tolerance for fools than me.

So why talk to them? Perhaps you are afraid that by not responding you concede the argument and they win by default. This appears to have merit until you examine the idea closer. The premise is you…

the welfare and food stamps

the rich dole out to these sows and studs

serves as the paddock’s lock

and the lure to lead them up the ramp

so the ones with promise

can be separated from the duds

each season they trim their herd

this one has a beauty

worth cultivating

this one is tall and quick enough

to play pro ball

here is a voice to make them even richer

if they decide to let it be heard

a few with minds worth…

History is a funny thing. The more I live through the more out of touch with history I have become. There was a time when a first person account of a historical event was deemed primary evidence when assessing both the event itself and the implications that followed from the event. Now eye-witness accounts are treated as 'anecdotal evidence' as if they were some story I made up about what happened even though it happened in front of my eyes and to me. Unless they mesh with the received…

I'm sitting here listening to Tift Merritt...surfer girl out of Chapel Hill, North Carolina in the US of A and one of the best in Country Alternative...voice like Dusty Springfield one review of her work commented. Her "Good Hearted Man" is an anthem for every woman who is tired of dating bad boys and losers and is ready to grow up. If you don't know her work, look it up. I think you'll like her unless you're one of these people who is prejudiced against country music. In that case, to quote…

At last, I have achieved my goal!

I recently had a comment exchange on Deviant Art:

http://pjarrett.deviantart.com/  (not a safe site, as my McAfee always reminds me...but they seem to have solved some of their problems...be careful, in spite of its name "Deviant Art" they allow underaged children to post right along with adults!  If you're leary of the site...which I can't say I blame you...try my other blog at …

Death and the Lack of Alternatives