Read Raymond Chandler; Mix A Metaphor; Wink at a Homely Girl or Boy and Mind Your Manners

"She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight." ---The Little Sister (Chapter 12)

Now that Civil Unions are a reality in Illinois, I have lost fat, increased my muscle tone, sprouted darker richer and more lustrous hair, play the oboe as well the banjo and guitar, found more zeroes before the decimals in my checking account, and am no longer troubled by Low T. No, not the evil Chinaman Loan Shark and Opiates Purveyor from Morgan Park, but that new affliction of "guys 45 and over." In fact, now that same sex couples can begin bringing an avalanche of lawsuits against everything from gumball machines to the State of Illinois, I sleep much better knowing that thanks to Greg Harris, Deb Mell, the Illinois Democratic Party, WTTW, every news outlet in Illinois and Asian Carp Civil Unions is the path to Liberty.

The last fifty plus years, have been absolute hell!

Well, thank God that's over. Now, I have time to go back and re-read Raymond Chandler.

Raymond Chandler was an Irish-Chicago born , British educated writer who captured the sound and sense of urban America like no other writer, since Mark Twain. As a young man, Chandler fought in the trenches of France during WWI with the Canadian Gordon Highlanders and later transferred to the RAF. After the war, he settled in Los Angeles, married woman eighteen years his senior, clerked for an Oil Company and began writing Pulp Fiction -after he was fired for his boozing.

In one of his early stories his narrator states, "I'm an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard." --"The King in Yellow"

His novels The Big Sleep, The Little Sister, and Farewell My Lovely also helped launch his career as a Hollywood Screenwriter. Hollywood now hires kids who can barely read but create Graphic Novels. Try an find a script that is not lifted from another work -AVATAR is Dances With Wolves from Walter Scott's Waverly.

Chandler represented the epoch when movies were an art unto themselves and actually had wit, craft and a theme.

Now, that my life will be a path strewn with roses, rainbows and lollipops, all thanks to Civil Unions. I can re-read Raymond Chandler.