Here in Texas, we have a pickup truck full of local sayings and down-home descriptions, and one of our favorites that covers most of our female-induced situations is called ” A Hot Mess.” Sounds sort of like a hormonal-induced biography of Marilyn Monroe’s or Elizabeth Taylor’s life. What it really means is everything is “FUBAR,” another good one that came out of WWII. My father wouldn’t tell me the real meaning until I was a teenager. F…. Up Beyond Any Repair, you get the drift. All of us kids used it, because all of our fathers served in WWII. We heard it daily.

I can clearly hear those angelic acidic voices of my mother and grandmother talking about an unruly cousin (usually Cookie) or an aunt or uncle, or a neighbor being a “hot mess,” or a situation that is out of their control, which was usually me.

I wasn’t a bad kid; like Sinatra, I did things my way and paid for it in the usual way: a Tupperware, 9″ x 12″ hard plastic cake storage container to the butt. I still have a faint Tupperware emblem scar embedded in my left buttock, a free lifelong birthmark compliments of my sainted mother with the arm strength of an NBL pitcher. Then, to make matters worse, she put my birthday cake in the same container, and I had to suffer the humility of blowing out those candles of that lovely cake sitting atop that cruel instrument of punishment. Dr. Johnson, my pediatric MD, would always ask me about that scar when giving me my monthly penicillin shot in the butt for whatever ailed me. It was a fairly new drug back then, so you got a shot for everything. He would say, “Well, at least she made you a cake.” He was an old Army doctor and smoked unfiltered Camels while he examined me. I think he died young while mowing his lawn.

If I’m seeing things right, this country is in a “hot mess.” We got ragheads with missles and exploding drones blowing up large oil filled ships sitting in bean bag chairs working their Gameboy controllers, I-ugh-atolla’s killing all the young folks that want a normal life, crazy ass socialist trying to take over our governement, and are succeeding, a smiling sleezy-assed commie mayor of New York trying to turn one of our greatest cities into a third-world shithole, a million Somali’s ripping off us taxpayers and driving around in Lamborginis and Porsches, Lake Wobegon has gone to hell, and all the strong women and good looking men and above average children have left and moved to Texas and Florida, even old Garrison split for New York and is now trying to escape from Madison Ave to somewhrere where he can go for a walk without hearing a call to prayer five times a day on a sound system bigger than Lynard Skynner’s. I’m telling you folks, we are in a “Hot Mess.” One thing about Texas is, we all have guns, ammo, lots of coldbeer and pork rinds, HEB frozen pizzas, and we are pissed off most of the time because it’s so hot, so the “Hot Mess” the rest of the world is in doesn’t faze us that much. Governor Abbott already issued hunting tags for all the terrorists we want to shoot; limits don’t apply, and the taxidermy mounting fee is fifty percent off.

Don’t get me wrong, we still have a “hot mess” down here, but ours isn’t as bad as it is where you are. So, if it gets unbearable in your hometown, come on down to Texas; we’ll watch out for ya.

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