May 2, 2020 Diary entry: I was heading home on the bus after an out-of-state business venture, and there was a handsome young soldier travelling in the seat next to me, he was a brave-looking sort, I asked him what his military responsibilities were and he explained, “Well, my first responsibility is to muck out the horse stalls, then I dip out the latrines, then I go work in the mess hall, rolling out the dough for the biscuits”, he seemed like a fine young man and I felt a twinge of that old American patriotism I used to feel so long ago, anyway, the young man regaled me with his exploits all the way to Rusty Springs, where we stopped for fuel and supper at the Rusty Spoon Eat Gas and Go, the only menu item they had left to serve customers was the special, their famous Chinese dish, Rheel Lhoos Dhung with Mr. Fong’s Slippery Noodle Special, they advertise it as the dish you won’t forget, they only serve it to people who are passing through town, a kind of tourist special that visitors can take with them to remember their short stay, anyway, with all the talk about an ongoing crisis of mask shortages, I have begun a new start-up company and I’m making masks from old underwear I no longer use, I settled on a modern print design of off white with brown splotches, very chic, I expect rave reviews, and I have contracted with a local nursing home to buy additional materials at low cost, this could be the business deal that lands me in Money Town baby, we’re working on an ad campaign as we speak, expect to see me hawking my unmentionable wares on TV soon, “What do I have to do to put you into my old underwear today”, “All the most discerning of unique upper-minded people are breathing through Paulie’s basic gray this year”, “Be one of the in-crowd who are shedding the complications of life during a most distressing time, keep it brief, keep it Paulie brief”, “Paulie’s brief designer masks, $1.99 plus tax”, “We accept gratuities”, “Thank you”, anyway, where was I, there was something important I wanted to relay, but I forgot what it was, well, maybe I’ll think of it later, if I do, I’ll meet everybody back here at a later date, as it is, the clock’s hands are pointing to martini time, this is Paulie, the Masked Marauder of Television Advertising Fame, wishing you all shalom…

May 1, 2020 Diary entry: Question, if a dog walker walks a dog past my house and the dog craps in my yard, and the dog walker stoops down and picks the crap up and puts it in his pocket, am I obliged to tip him, I just want to be correct, and I have no idea, if there are any etiquette people out there, please respond with an answer, now that I think about it, I’m not sure readers of my diary are very much etiquette-conscious or they wouldn’t be here, speaking of etiquette, did you hear the one about the polite pig who drove a taxi in the South Bronx during the annual, hang on, does anyone else think Alex Trebek is lower than a diarrhea-infected nit’s rectum that is hanging off the little animal’s butt that lives in the tin can pile in your back yard and he rattles the cans around in the night and you can’t sleep; this has been the second rectum joke of our new Summer Rectum Joke Blitz which will run through the summer months, or until we run out of rectum jokes and move on to new territory, we hope you enjoyed, we invite you all to come sit at our table, we are serving the finest quality rectum jokes in the Midwest area, come and dine on gourmet-quality cuisine that is served fresh on clean fresh-pressed white linen table cloths, eat your fill of rectum jokes that were harvested just this morning from our well-manicured source by the loving hands of our prized staff whose only purpose in life is to serve you, the customer, that is all we do, well, there is a show coming on TV that I would like to critique for you, I’ll be back with the sordid details of why Andy and Barney never married, well, it’s time to feed the dog and toss Goober out for the night, this is Paulie, saying good night and shalom to all those within the sound of my voice, shalom…

May 1, 2020 Diary entry: Hey, I’ve only got a moment, I just stepped out of the party that’s taking place this evening, it’s really loud in there, we are drinking new wine, we’re drinking the new wine as if it will never run out, not really, somebody found some old beer out in the shed and that’s what we have tonight, it’s a bit skunky but it’s wet, some of our guests here are more than skunky, so it all evens out, the decimal level in there is deafening, my ears sound like morning church bells on a special holiday that the whole town has to know about for some reason, I don’t know why they have to ring those bells anyway, maybe they are trying to raise the dead, all I know is, when our parties get a bit loud, the city circulates another petition, that’s why we can no longer hold our 4H pig rodeos like in the old days when parties were real events that weren’t forgotten until the next one rolled around, we were defendants in a sensational trial that mesmerized an entire county like a hypnotist’s pendulumming watch mesmerizes an easy subject who is an idiot to begin with, they say you can’t lie under oath, well we won’t fall for that trick again, several members of our little group are ex 4Her’s, hardened veterans of the early Pig Wars back in oh six when the most spirited pig-riding competition ever, took place, and the county women’s club tried to shut us down and have the whole place burned and the land salted, geez, one little party and the whole world hates you, people just don’t party these days like they used to, what has happened to our populace, what has been done to them, they once were all limber young willow branches that bent and whipped up fun, now they are as kiln dried boards, all stacked and packed, all cut to the same exact dimensions, the people of the world are all dead dried-out wooden boards that have been nailed into a hideous house of horror that encloses their group mind into some ugly thing that they can’t seem to escape or break out of, and they are trying to drag us inside with them, they don’t like outsiders who are still growing like river oaks that will never allow themselves to be cut down and sawed into dimensional lumber by sadistic men who whose only desire is to own them on their own terms and use them simply as merchandise to sell to amateur home renovators who don’t know a ball peen hammer from a ball earth, who will not measure carefully, and they will cut them short, then cut them short again, then fasten the pieces of a once glorious tree into some hideous patchwork of confusion in which they dwell as if everything was, in fact, clear, well, the fact is, you are as clear as the squid stew you slurp up like a dog slurps up his own vomit, anyway, I think I’ll head back in to the party, they’re calling for the first Wiener Dog Dance Contest contestants, I don’t want to miss any of it, one of the tall skinny people with big ears always wins, but we will still all be in there trying our best, well, this is Paulie, barking out a loud love to his loved ones, and growling a low snarling “Go to hell” for the rest of you, shalom..

Apr 29, 2020 Diary entry: This Perry Mason is starting to really upset me, he doesn’t have any legal skills or deftness of tongue, he accuses every person in the courtroom and he badgers every witness under cross examination until one of them breaks down and can’t take it any more and they scream out they hated the murdered guy and killed him because his guts stunk like hell in a garbage can and they are glad they did it, and they wish the guy was alive so they could murder him again, I think the point is, uh, well, everything doesn’t have to have a point, let’s just leave it right there, Perry simply upsets me, he is really no more than a glorified Gilligan in a fancy suit who drives a nice car and takes his pretty secretary to late night soiree’s after court lets out, if Perry Mason was stranded on the island with the castaways, the Skipper would be on his ass for losing the compass and being a stupid dip shit; just because the guy has his own show, they make him out to be some kind of hero, look, I knew Gilligan, and Mr. Mason, you are no Gilligan; I have little-known information that was leaked to me by an unnamed Hollywood source whom I cannot identify, he was on the set of the Perry Mason show during the early years, he did Perry’s makeup before every taping of the show, he has documented proof that Perry Mason and the prosecutor Hamilton Burger were lovers, the producers had to keep it under wraps because they were afraid of losing the female viewers who were all enamored with Perry’s forceful ways, anyway, the relationship soured for some reason and Hamilton Burger hatched a blackmail scheme to get back at his former lover, anyway, a meeting was set up to meet at Burger’s cute little bungalow out on Belle Vista Boulevard where Perry was to pay him off with a suitcase of money, the whole thing went sour instantly, a fight broke out and Perry hit Hamilton Burger on the head with an antique Oriental lamp and killed him instantly, Perry set up the crime scene to make it look like suicide, then he hightailed it back to the office to meet Della under the pretext of going over past legal drafts about possible infidelities involving the prosecutor and another well-known Hollywood attorney whom I cannot mention by name, anyway, the cops scoured the crime scene out on Belle Vista Boulevard and came up with some damning evidence against Perry, but by this time, Perry had emptied out his wall safe and flown out of LAX to the islands, nothing short of extradition could bring him back to LA, he became one more Gilligan castaway on a remote little island in the sea where he spent the rest of his days looking for his lost compass and trying to build a coconut radio so he could get the game, well, life is certainly a continuum isn’t it, it revolves and revolves, and we seem to go right back around, from our future, right smack back to our past, I think life is a wheel that never leaves it’s axis, well, this is Paulie, turning in for the evening, good night house, good night mice, and good night world, I bid you all shalom…

Apr 29, 2020 Diary entry: Hey everybody, I’m here at a new bar and grill down in the southern part of the state, I don’t even know the name of the place, anyway, the conversation was lively to say the least and someone mentioned how they loved “Georgia gals”, you know what a “Georgia gal” is don’t you, it’s a sow who just gave birth to her piglets and she is too tired to run away, the people down here are something else, the guy in the gas station said they have a special room up over the saloon where a man can get the best “possum pie” in the county, but it costs extra if you want the trimmings, the sign at the town limit says “Welcome to Possum County, our Georgia gals are the prettiest anywhere around”, anyway, I wanted to talk about those recurring dreams we all have, I have had the same scary dream my entire life where I’m in a pasture and a great big bull spots me and he charges, and I start to run towards the fence but I never make it in time, this bull has snot and smoke coming from his head and he has a face that looks like Jackie Gleason, and he’s doing like Jackie always did at the end of his show, you know, he comes out from behind the curtain carrying a cup of coffee on a saucer in one hand and he’s got a cigarette between two fingers, and he has smoke coming out from his head, and he calls out to his bandleader “Take it away Sammy!”, then he makes a little kick and dances off the stage after saying “Thank you ladies and gentlemen”, my recurring dream always ends up the same way, this charging bull ends up being Jackie Gleason at the end of his show, I sometimes wonder what dream interpreters would make of it, it’s just the weirdest thing, anyway, other than that, it has been a slow news day around here, the animals are doing better since I changed their feed, except for Goober my cat, he is not doing well and I fear I may have to drop him off in the country somewhere, he has been the blessed light of my life but there is only so much I can take, sometimes you just have to simplify your life, well, it’s getting late, the dogs are howling to be let in, Goober’s going out whether he wants to or not, and I am going to go root around in the cellar to see what I can find, so good night, good dreams, and good love, shalom…

Apr 27, 2020 Diary entry: Oh god my life is pathetic, this desolate house is barren except for two skinny little mice who I saw this morning playing Russian roulette with a mouse trap, I overheard one of them say that life here isn’t worth living, and he was pointing a loaded mouse trap at his head, what has my meager existence become that common vermin don’t want to live here anymore, am I doomed to live a solitary rest of my life in a rodent free house because the last two rodents around here reject me, I am a man without a country, I am an outcast in my own home, I am the quintessential pariah, I am the warmed over leftover of the past which the dogs won’t eat, oh how far I have sunk, I am as the water-soaked worm who has been on the hook so long that even the lowly bottom-sucking fish won’t touch me, well, the sun has to rise in the morning, the light has to follow the darkness, Paulie will carry on as always with his feet on the ground, his arms outstretched toward the sky, and his eyes forever focused on the heavens above, well, this is Paulie, drinking a short martini with no olive, shalom everybody…

Apr 27, 2020 Diary entry: Oh good goddamn gravy, the lies are so obvious that a drunken, blind, and retarded comatose roadside carcass with his eyes scooped out by the sharp beaks of famished buzzards can see that all this present nonsense is fake as Aunt Fluffy’s cheap Wal-Mart wig, the people of the world have no eyes, even if they did have eyes, they would not comprehend what they see, the staff here at Paulie Gee’s Realtime Diary are discussing ceding the race, we are tired, we have no more words, we want to give up the whole game, we can get no one on board with truth and reality, we have tried to feed the inhabitants of the world, but they will have none of what we offer, you all have a few morsels of food and that is all you care about, your dusty cupboard is bare and you don’t care, well, we leave your life up to you, we have warned of rocky reefs up ahead but you have spurned our warning, you refuse to alter your course; oh well Shit Freakin’ Insky, word has just come in advising that the CDC has added six new symptoms to the already insanely long list of symptoms that cause the fake thing that people believe is real, these fake story tellers are trying to unite every symptom in the history of symptoms into one stupid fake disease, just like they are uniting the world into one sick and twisted stew which should have been dumped into the garbage long ago because it is old and cooked for so long there isn’t anything left to it but a stinking brown jelled up mass of something that resembles your toilet contents after you got drunk and ate Taco Bell after your wife’s best friends wedding because the reception took place in the parking lot outside the River County jail because your wife’s best friend’s family came into town for the first time in ten years and they wanted to party enough to last another ten years on the mountain top back home where they raise muskrats for breeding purposes and they sell the dead ones to their relatives because everyone wants a fancy sit down meal on the solstice which they mark like they mark their scent on trees and fence posts to just say “Hi” to their neighbors, anyway, our staff is tired, we are out of words, we cannot think of anything more to say, we cut you loose, you people are on your own, find your own path through this dangerous and deceptive world, may God have mercy on your ragged and diseased souls, shalom…

Apr 27, 2020 Diary entry: This is your life coax Paulie here, now Paulie knows you don’t have much life inside you, but what little bit there is, he will coax it out of you somehow, some way, or another way, Paulie and his experienced staff here at Paulie Gee’s Realtime Diary are experts at what we do, we have been breathing life into seemingly dead fish that today are the first ones up the fish ladder, we have highly skilled chefs who rescue and repair spoiled dishes that you people made because you didn’t follow the recipe, we follow the perfect, ancient recipe that comes from above, the recipe written by the restaurant owner, Yahawah, who cooked up the heavens and the earth by his spoken word, your watery jello minds remain unset because you never had the recipe, you didn’t read the recipe book, you have added too much of the world’s contaminated water given you by dirty greasy-spoon cooks who cough and wheeze on everything they handle, turn yourselves over to us and we will firm you up and set you on course, you are seriously dripping on those around you who are already soggy enough, there is a disease spreading in this world, and it’s called the Drip, the Drip from your melting brain drips on another, and then that person drips on another, and on and on it goes, until we find ourselves swimming in an ocean of stupidity that threatens to wash us out to sea, our staff is the crew in the boat who uses their little tin cans to bail out your accumulated fetid drippings to keep us from capsizing and sinking to the lowest depths of the cold ocean; we need you all to dry up; dry out those mushy thoughts that have led you into the marshy quagmire that you believe is solid ground, your doughy brains have avoided the oven long enough, stay here and accept our help, our oven is hot and we never turn it off, we want to bake you until you are done, it will take much effort and a lot of time, but this is our job, it is all we do, we are the bakers and you are the doughy raw material that will never amount to anything until you feel the heat, don’t worry, we won’t scorch you, we will cook you until you are a perfect golden brown, and you will take the center position at the table on the special silver platter, and all the diners will ooh and ah over your magnificence, so turn your soggy buns over to the professionals, we patiently await, shalom…

Apr 27, 2020 Diary entry: Hello there Blind Eyes, how I wish you could see the world around you; though I relentlessly and continually describe the world to you, you don’t see it, and when I’m away, dirty wicked men whisper sweet words in your ear, telling you fantastic tales of what the world is, you listen to the words that drip like honey from their mouths, but you can’t see that blood drips from their snot-wettened snouts, and that their eyes are cold as a reptile, oh Blind Eyes, how I wish you would let me show you the world you live in, the real word based on fact, I am your friend who loves you, you know me, but you prefer the fictional tales of strangers, strangers who hate you and want to do you harm, what can I do to make you see, you are a lame cripple to facts and truths that are grounded to the earth, but the fairy tales and lies of evil men stimulate you and make you dance on clouds; all that you see is in your head Blind Eyes, it’s all only in your head, how I wish I could take you by the hand and show you the world, but I can’t, your heart belongs to another, his hand you take and you allow him to lead you places that don’t exist, he makes you see what you want to see, he hides the world from your eyes because his world is ugly and corrupt, he sees you as ugly, and he wants to corrupt you just as he corrupts everything he touches; I call you my companion and equal, he calls you a royal princess without equal, I want to walk with you, he says you can fly, I give you a single flower, he says you can have gardens, I give you reality, he says you can live your dreams; my hope is that one day you will gain your sight, but I fear that when you do, it will be too late, well, this is your faithful guide dog Paulie, wishing you his usual love, shalom…

Apr 27, 2020 Diary entry: Now some people live in a home their entire lives and they never know the history of their house, the house Paulie lives in has a rich history indeed, John Dillinger once used my house as a hideout for him and his mob, it’s fascinating, now as you are all aware, Dillinger loved the movies, especially first day releases and matinees, the cops knew that movies were Dillinger’s weakness, and one afternoon, on returning from a screening of Old Yeller, the cops ambushed Dillinger from the bushes in the front yard, a famous shootout took place on a lazy late June afternoon in Indiana and I still have bullet holes in my door from Dillinger’s American Bulldog .38 revolver; I still have the antique copper bathtub in my house that Dillinger had shipped all the way from Terre Haute, Dillinger loved baths, they say he had never taken a shower in his life, he used to love soaking in a hot bubble bath as he read the movie reviews, Dillinger was an immaculately clean man although his behavior was spotty at best, Indiana in those days was a hotbed of gangster activity, and my house had become a central meeting place because of it’s proximity to the grand old movie houses of the day and big banks that were not very well guarded, Baby Face Nelson once slept in the bed which dominates the decor of my master bedroom like a Tommy gun dominates a knife fight, Baby Face loved my master suite because it had all the charm of a quaint old boarding house and the bed was right next to the window which allowed the morning sun to kiss his face like his wife used to do when they were young, there is wording scratched into the mahogany headboard which reads “Baby Face slept here”; I believe many people’s homes have rich histories such as mine does; during this current slowdown, I think people should use the time to research the histories of their abodes, there are many excellent resources available that people can utilize to learn more about their home and their heritage, if we don’t study the past, we have no future, let’s all try to learn a little bit more about where we live and who we are, we owe it to ourselves and those around us, well, this is Paulie, pulling the trigger on a magnum load of love, shalom all…