"At night I stake out my strong box That I keep under lock and key And I take it off to my closet Where nobody else can see I open that door so slowly Take a peek up north and south Then I pull out a Hostess Twinkie And I pop it in my mouth..." - Larry Groce "Junk Food Junkie"...

"Words mean things," Ronald Reagan once remarked. That's worth recollecting as news of an on-line petition drive at the White House's website seeking to allow several states to secede from the United States broke. The move's an extremist reaction to Barack Obama's re-election...

"Who will provide the grand design of what is yours and what is mine? Cause there is no more new frontier, and we have got to make it here..." -- The Eagles. "Harvest hath passed, summer hath ended, And we -- we have not been saved." -- Jeremiah 8:20 (Young's Literal Translation)...

"There's been a war in this country between the 50s and the 60s my whole adult life. This election is its Armageddon." -- John Perry Barlow. I voted early -- and proudly -- for Barack Obama last week. I'm not egomaniacal enough to believe my opinions herein would influence anyone...

"If this were the last night of the world, what would I do? What would I do that was different? Unless it was champagne with you..." -- Bruce Cockburn I couldn't sleep well a few weeks ago, one of the last evenings I spent in Terre Haute. Shortly after 1 a.m., I wandered down the street to the only place still open -- a friendly little bar, prone to serving up fresh-baked cookies to a cadre of creative types, professors, students and artists...

Horatio: "O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!" Hamlet: "And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy..." - Shakespeare. Halloween's coming. If you're not planning on dressing up, you should really reconsider...

The closest I ever came to a fistfight over my political views, oddly enough, was defending a staunch Republican. That might stun some who've read my column over the years, guessing -- more or less correctly -- I lean strongly libertarian -- if not outright liberal -- embracing a live-and-let-live perspective while favoring individuals assuming personal responsibility...

"Ah, this terrible gibberish. Grim memories and bad flashbacks, looming up through the time/fog of Stanyan Street...no solace for refugees, no point in looking back. The question, as always, is now...?" - Hunter S. Thompson. "The future is unwritten." - Joe Strummer...

"There are certain injustices in this life you've got to do something about. You can't just say that you can't fight it, or it's too much trouble, or that you don't have the time or the effort, or that you can't win." -- Harlan Ellison. "Yeah, we look the same/Both pumpin' steel, both sweatin'/But you know she got nothin' to hide..." - Patti Smith...

This week, I've been feeling sadder than usual, missing a tiny gray kitten who, rather unexpectedly, became a constant companion during the long, difficult summer of 2012. Her name's Alex -- a name I chose because when the stray who wandered into the newsroom arrived, she was so small even a vet had trouble telling what gender she was...

"I'm an accident/I was driving way too fast/Couldn't stop though/So I let the moment last/I'm for rolling/I'm for tossing in my sleep/It's not guilt though/It's not the company I keep/People my age/They don't do the things I do/They go somewhere/While I run away with you..."...

"Like so many kids brought up on a steady diet of Westerns, I always wanted to be the avenging cowboy hero -- that lone voice in the wilderness, fighting corruption and evil wherever I found it, and standing for freedom, truth and justice. And in my heart of hearts I still track the remnants of that dream wherever I go, in my endless ride into the setting sun." -- Bill Hicks...

"Remember, information is not knowledge; knowledge is not wisdom; wisdom is not truth; truth is not beauty; beauty is not love; love is not music; music is the best." -- Frank Zappa. In my heart of hearts, I love very few things more than music. I'm inept at playing it well -- a little three-chord wonder - but as an ardent listener, I have few peers. ...

It'll probably never make one of his commercials which just finally began airing -- a striking mix of homespun folksiness and political savvy that could just turn the tide against the better funded Mike Pence. Still, it's a strange thought for me to ponder, some 15 years removed from the Statehouse where I once served as bureau chief for the Evansville Press: Once upon a time, John Gregg, the man who very well could be the next governor of Indiana, busted me for kissing a California blonde while sitting upstairs in the empty mezzanine in the waning moments of a long legislative day.. ...

For those old enough to remember -- even if they received the ideas secondhand -- the idea of vast technological advances making life easier isn't new. In the 1950s and 1960s -- perhaps the apogee of the American Century -- dreams of flying cars, computer-driven homes, robots, lasers and a myriad of technological wonders spurred the imagination...

"Who lived here?/They must have been a gardener that cared a lot/Who weeded out the tears and grew a good crop/And we are so amazed -- /We're crippled and we're dazed/A gardener like that one, no one can replace..." - Elton John The skies over Linton -- and likewise Terre Haute -- broke open repeatedly Thursday and Friday, sheets of long-absent rain falling down like God's own tears...

Now for a moment of trivial things -- t-shirts and chicken sandwiches. There's sometimes a subtle message in a plain t-shirt that's not immediately evident. The reasons for wearing one may run deeper than simply grabbing the first shirt that's clean and on top of the drawer...

In evil's wake, we look for simple solutions - some Rosetta stone to comprehend the ridiculously incomprehensible notions of a murderer's drive. We look for some catalyst, some imagined means to keep it from happening again - as if we could identify some defining moment in a killer's life where they broke from the rest of us, a terminal point of insanity...

As controversy encroaches on Dugger over a cross on public land, it's worth remembering there's a difference between a symbol or structure and spirituality. Example? I'm Catholic. When I was a kid, I went through a phase where I was intensely devout. I'd serve two masses a weekend -- one Saturday, another Sunday -- as an altar boy...

"They say that the world rests on the backs of 36 living saints -- 36 unselfish men and women. Because of them the world continues to exist. They are the secret kings and queens of this world." -- Neil Gaiman, "Sandman." Now and again, you encounter majestic, true souls -- the heroic ones it's an honor to know. Despite challenges which would make lesser beings weep, they do considerable good...