My friend @black3actual and I are at vicious loggerheads on some issues, and like the cogs in Swiss watches on others. He has written a provocative and timely piece concerning business and ethics; and his Q-and-A style makes what could be a turgid subject readable.

http://therionorteline.com/2012/04/27/the-interloper-and-the-wall-st-ceo/

"Three lines, please, people. Everyone with a Brimstone Pass, form up here, to my left, you're going straight to Hell." the Devil looked ridiculously earnest in his Conductor's uniform. "Let's do this in an orderly fashion, and the ride will be so-ooo much more pleasant," he said in his sincerest voice.

As he directed into Line Two those with assignments in levels 1-4, among whose number I had chosen to travel, demons of the Dark Lord were hustling souls in the third line down onto the tracks in front of the Helluvapalooza Express. There, other shapes took over and, with club, lash, and twist-ties, made new tracks with some of the new arrivals whose crimes were of a brutal and repetitious nature. Others, ones guilty of Sloth, slavers, pickpockets, politicians, and others who profited unfairly from the labors of others, were tethered, in two lines, to an impossibly long tongue connected to the train's obviously false engine. 

My disguise was more for the benefit of my fellow passengers. Rather, it was for my benefit, so I would not be inundated with belated requests for mercy. Thus, I was not surprised that Satan saw me immediately. Of course, nothing surprises me, unless I will it to be so, which I do on occasion, because I like surprises.

"Like what I've done with the place?" he smirked.

"I'll reserve judgment for now."

Satan did a sulphurous spit-take, snorting out noxious steams, chewed pieces of ravaged souls. "You, reserve judgment?" You are funny when you aren't waxing righteous wroth."

As the moaning, fate-bewailing throng took their seats(nothing special about the seats, they were the same hellishly uncomfortable benches found in rides across the United states), Satan sat astride the engine, his knees drawn up and angled out to an outlandish degree. A crack of his whip, and the train began to move. His minions had laid out the wretches on the track in such a manner that, as the train crawled forward, the cries and screams of those being crushed rose and fell in tone, a calliope of misery and regret. 

A microphone appeared in his hand, and a tinny version of his voice emanated from the cheap speakers on the ceiling. 

"Welcome, folks, to another day, another Beautiful day in Hell. An acid rain is predicted for this afternoon, as usual, right before the nightly s#@t-storm. I'm sorry but the umbrellas provided us by the LandLORD won't help much, as they are quite Hole-y." His cackle was infectious indeed; not only was everyone around me induced to laugh, several experienced eruptions of open, festering sores on their arms and faces.

"We will circumnavigate the Nether Regions, you will all see where your damned souls will be tortured in accordance to the sins you committed in life.." A scream cut his spiel short. "Thanks for the reminder, fella. Ladies and Gentlemen, do not stick your arms or legs out of the windows." 

The train rolled around a bend, "Here is the new Intake Center, Some of you will serve your eternal time here. Not so bad, there are worse jobs than cleaning broken toilets 24/7."

"Like what?", asked an impertinent man three seats ahead of me and across the cramped aisle.

Immediately, he became a toilet brush, which a demon picked and tossed to another fallen angel on the platform.

"I am here to answer your questions, as you can see. Are there any more?" There were not.

Just past the Intake Center was a metal floor under a bright red roof. "Those of you who just couldn't wait to get home to do your drinking, who know the joy of being drunk behind the wheel, listening to AC-DC, the wind in your hair as you speed down residential streets and through STOP signs, and whose victims were just as much at fault as you, yeah, right, say hi to your new home." The train stopped in front of a facade reading BUMP-'EM CARS. Under the gaudy flourescents were gaily-painted, riderless bumper cars, wheeling about, smashing into one another and the terrified souls of unrepentant perpetrators of slaughter and maimings who fled in horror from the fate they had incurred on others.

With a jerk, the train move ahead. A woman next to me started crying, "Oh God, dear God, Oh God...". Satan winked at me in the mirror mounted so he could watch the patrons.

"Maybe he can hear you, maybe he doesn't care."

 I did care, care for the son she sold to a pervert for enough crystal meth to make her heart explode. Her boy was now with me, she would end up so deep in Hell that even I won't hear her screams.

The next stop was in front of BeezleBubba's Nursery. "You three, this is your stop". At Satan's bidding, three men in camouflage stepped onto the platform, and looked around, scared. This was not their familiar jungle, and those kids swarming towards them weren't human, screaming as they were taken from their mother's loving arms, their hands or feet amputated, the lucky ones broken and made into little killers and torturers themselves. 

There are no children in Hell, but there are infant demons, with horns, razor-sharp teeth and lashing tails, whose phenomenally dirty diapers need constant changing and hand-washing, which is hard to do once your hands have been gnawed down to the wrist, one finger at a time.

With a merry yell over his shoulder, "Kony2012, cast your vote!", Satan whipped the team into motion, and once again we were riding the human rails.

"About now is when it starts getting hot. How many of you would like a nice cold drink? All of you? I thought so. Well, me too." So saying, he opened up a cooler between his legs and took out a canned soda. He downed it in one long gulp, spit in the can and tossed it behind him into the first car, where the riders fought for it as if for a home-run ball hit by Babe Ruth.

By now the mood on the train had become more subdued; instead of fright and screams, there was brooding and silence, a sense of resignation hung in the air, like the smell of dirty clothes in a ratty gym. Satan doesn't like subdued resignation, one area of management where we agree to disagree. I like the idea of brooding upon your crimes, realizing what brought you to this. Satan, not having ever been in the business of saving souls, only consuming them, saw no value in repentance at this late date, and preferred to keep the fright and pain level high; it was his fuel, his drug.

So, in fast order, the train became a log flume ride, in a half-cylindrical track filled with molten lava, and headed for a pyroclastic slide into a bubbling pool of magma. The ennui vanished like smoke, which doesn't vanish in these environs, and soon all the riders were screaming, the ones whose laps filled with hot lava naturally taking the lead in the chorus.

I pulled the emergency cord that I had caused to appear, and the train ground to a halt. I got out, I had seen enough.

"Going so soon?" Satan looked genuinely hurt. We still have the Tunnel of Lusts, The Greed Palace, The Bungee Jump into the Valley of Thorns....."

"This is good," A wave of my mighty arm took in all of his corner of my Kingdom. Good, in a bad way." I joked, but the Devil didn't laugh; he rarely got my jokes, which were more subtle than his oven-hot pie-in-the-face type of humor.

"So, this means I..."

"You get to keep the lease, for another eon. Just do me one favor, and put in some more soundproofing, like I've been after you to do since the last meet-up."

"Done! Well, not done yet, but the next train will be perfect. All the suicide bombers are coming in on the Belial Flyer. Their padded suits are perfect for decibel reduction."

"Fine", My voice rumbled as my disguise fell from my being like feathers from a molting bird of paradise. As I soared heavenward, Satan's voice faded away....

"All you who sold their souls to me in life, the Helluva-View Condominiums are coming up on your right. Now on you left you will see....."

After an enjoyable week together, Dan and I are taking our re-union party on the road. First stop will be Dan's Uncle Jerry in Port Charlotte, where a round of golf is contemplated. Then onto Fort Lauderdale and Dan's new cousins, who are eager to meet him...

Having Dan here is like having Dad as a pal, only a cooler and hipper, less judgmental version of Dad.

Us, looking as unalike as we can

Our Dad, on the left, and Uncle Bill, his brother. Think we favor them any?

There will be dispatches from the front, unless I am sitting in the back. I will just update this post, unless things get unwieldy.

DAYS 2 and 3

Day One was travel, not much to talk about. We took the woodsy route, and beat Holley and Michelle, who were taking the Interstates down to Sarasota. Holley is moving there, Michelle is helping with the driving.

Anyway, we left the house about an hour after they did, and we reached the Sarasota area about the same time. Of course, we didn't scoff and chortle, being too adult for such things, and we had another hour of driving to do in order to reach our first goal, the home of Jerry R., Dan's uncle.

Jerry is one cool dude; he is retired, lives alone, and helps the local jazz society and a performing arts company by building sets and handling ticket sales. His nephew designed the comedian Gallagher's water-spewing, outsized furniture that he uses to hose down his audience during his act. He took in my brother during a time of family difficulties, and they remain close. We sat and reminisced for two whole nights, while listening to some truly tasty jazz.

A pretty bush graces Jerry's front yard. Anyone know the name of this plant?

The real prize of the first leg of the trip was seeing and touching this.....

When Dad and Florence got married, they bought a house in Detroit. The developer gave each new homeowner a ladder. After they lost the house, Jerry went over and got the ladder, and has kept it all these years, bringing it to Florida when he retired. After we had sufficiently grokked the heck out of it, the ladder joined some yard waste, it is being picked up by the trash truck as we speak. Jerry kept a piece of the paint tray, I took pictures of the 67 year-old appliance, then left it to its fate. Sorry Pops, no room in the Hyundai for 6.5 ft of memento, and Jerry wanted it gone. Thanks for keeping it just long enough, my friend.

Jerry remembers Dad as a get-rich quick wanna-be sort of guy, which is polar opposite of the penny-pinching, money-saving debtophobic that raised me. Guess dad's experience with losing home and family affected him. He joined the CAA, soon to be the FAA, for its swell retirement bennies.

I think we are leaving for Fort Lauderdale today, but Dan is no more an anal-retentive plan-each-moment type A personality than I am.

I will let you know as soon as I know, deal?

days 3 thru 5

I've been a little busy, sorry to keep you waiting. We did leave for Ft. Lauderdale the next day. and had a pleasant ride across the peninsula via Alligator Alley. 

Kathy and Mitten, our cousin and her husband, were glad to see us when we got there, and took us to a ball park to watch their grandson play T-ball. Jason, their eldest, is the coach for the team. Rain forced a cancellation, and we returned to their house for dinner and conversation. Dan's Uncle Jerry had surprised us with the news that our dad's older sister had an affair with Jerry's brother back in the day(1940's), and we got share that juicy gossip with Kathy. Thursday morning, mitten took us with him to drink coffee with his crew at a cafe called Einstein Bros. While they are no dummies, we saw no evidence of genius, either in the customers or the employees. So Dan and I decided that they were EINO's, Einsteins In Name Only. 

Dan and Mitten;s Mom, a wonderful lady

the site of the annual Swartwelder Easter Egg hunt

After sharing info and pics, we decided, pretty much on a whim, to head for the Keys, so Dan could see the house on Summerland Key in which Mom and Dad had lived in the middle to late seventies.

Then we drove on the Key West

Your better photographers look for and capture the symmetrical harmony that is inherent in the natural world

While pondering the state of the world in Cowboy Bill's, Dan gets a call from our cousin Shirley, who had just gotten off the phone with yet another cousin, Janet, daughter of our Aunt Dorothy. Janet happens to live near our planned route northward, so we added a day to our trip, and two long-separated brothers will be meeting with a long-lost cousin this afternoon. Janet's sister Carol has passed, and her other sister, Doris Jean, is ill. Doris Jean lives in Hawaii, so meeting her is out this trip. I plan on getting her number from Janet, or maybe calling from Janet's would be the way to go. 

We saw Janet! More later!

Days 5 and 6

We experienced little hassle at the border...

Janet is the oldest of Frank Cobb's grandchildren, only Richard's daughter Kelly is younger than I. Janet, or Jan, which she prefers, and I are 28 years apart in age, but she is one fit lady, I'm here to tell you. 

Jan lives in a very nice trailer park near Tampa-St. Pete. She is active in her church, she is a distributor for an alternative health supplement supplier, and she paints.

 Boy, does she paint! Observe....

She also has paintings of feet and dogs, which I failed to photograph, and she paints pictures on husks of the seed pods of palm trees, which she collects from the piles of yard waste in her trailer park.

Jan would not part with any of her pieces, although she does sell some, and she gets paid to do portraits of peoples' dogs. I hope that she can find the time to do a picture of one of our Pomeranians.

I have discovered this week just how lucky I am to have such good and creative people in my family. 

After an enjoyable meeting and dinner, Dan and I bid goodbye to our cousin, and got a room in Homosassa Springs. Stop snickering, out there. Homosassa is a Creek Indian word, meaning 'land of many pepper plants'.  

Cathy met us in Perry yesterday, and we said our goodbyes. I would have been glad to have spent another week with my new-found brother, and I think Dan felt the same way. I am decompressing now, coming back to my regular life at a slow steady pace, pondering the discoveries and familial camaraderie of the last six days. 

There was no reason to expect that Dan and I would find common ground, that we would bond, or even enjoy one another's company. All three things did come about, however. Both of us needed closure concerning Dan's abandonment by our father; every day, Dan felt Dad's absence in his life, and I have always missed not having a sibling, especially since Mom and Dad passed. We were each other's friend, counsel, soundboard, and confessor this past week, the best week of my life.

See you real soon, brother-man.

CROSSING THE LINE 

On line I can woo you
embed you and peruse you
But our little digital heaven
must end each night by twenty to eleven

Crossing the line, on your website or mine?
{six-four, athletic, one ninety!}
Cross that line, mix your font with mine
{5-9, statuesque beauty!}

It isn't really cheating 
if we don't really plan on meeting 
If we don't count dividing our passions 
We're still loyal spouses, after a fashion

Cross that line, when we're together online 
Ok, now I kiss you 
cross that line, you're ten gigs of fine 
Ok, now I spank you 

Our relationship is quite real
though I wouldn't know you from a seal
We always type to mutual elation
Because you never beg off due to constipation

Who said they mind, your spouse or mine?
Ok, I'll delete her!
(fade...)
.........

I disagreed with Some of Breitbart's  methods, and violently so. Still, he seemed like he might be a fun guy in person, and he served notice on politicians that their digital selves could and Would be found out and their every dalliance exposed. Breitbart died this morning, I started writing the song this morning, to add to my political musical, before I knew he had died. Here you go, Andy...