I gotta tell you, I'm the kind of guy who can't guzzle anti-freeze (that I had just drained out of the Nash), write an essay, and make some hobo stew all at the same time. Far too many tasks for my tiny brain.

Nevertheless, as it so happened, on one particular rainy night while I was trying to do those three things more or less simultaneously, and as I was sitting there in my left over USMC underwear at the table of my single-wide parked out by the train tracks, I was having trouble trying to think up some hateful things I could write to piss off the goody-two shoes and anyone who doesn't look like me. Being distracted by the guzzling, the writing and the stewing, I just threw anything I could find down my throat, on to the page, and into the stew pot. What the hell, I figured that was the whole idea. Throw everything together and you'll end up with a great drink, a great column, and a great stew. It was a veritable metaphor for diversity and multi-culturalism/multi-racialism. Blending. Genocide. Extinction.

Well, I must have dozed off for a while, not being used to this particular brand of anti-freeze. Anyway, when I woke up I stared at the Olivetti for a while and couldn't think of a damn thing to write. Deadline was looming. Where was my muse of hate? Just then, I smelled the stew. I ran to the stove and the crap was bubbling out of the pot. I looked into the pot, and suddenly it hit me--Eureka!--there, right in front of my beady little blood shot peepers was the inspiration for what was to become my most famous expression: "slimy brown glop." Yup, that's what it looked like. So, boys and girls, that's how I came up with those three words that seem to have stuck to me and which are now quoted and re-quoted and repeated over and over again, usually after being lifted from secondary and tertiary sources such as various and sundry "hate watch" websites that seem to actively scour the nation for words to be used to scare little old ladies into donating to them.

The point of the term, if I remember correctly, wasn't to disparage anyone as being slimy or glop like. It was just a colorful way to express a notion similar to the concept known by all good artists that one has to know when to lift the brush from the canvas.

Nowadays, it seems every time some smarmy dumb ass reporter for some liberal newspaper wants an interview with me, they always refer to that slimy brown glop remark that they never seem to have actually seen in context, and they then always ask if I'm a racist or a white-supremacist, or a Neo-Nazi. Of course, what they're really saying, by inquiring if I'm one of these three types, is: "You hate people because they're a different color. Don't you know we all bleed red blood? Diversity is our strength. There's only one race, the human race."

These reporters don't seem capable of understanding that racist, white-supremacist and Neo-Nazi are three different terms and mean three different things, and they have an even harder time understanding that I'm not any of these. But, dear liberal reader, you demur. So, I'll belabor this a little for your edification. First, I'm not a racist, because the term, in common usage, has come to mean one who hates others because of their race. I don't hate anyone. Indifference is a better term. Also, race is too small a term for the way I think about the differences between all living things. Geneist might work, I suppose, but even that is too small. If I think of a correct label, I'll get back to you so you can put it on me. Second, I'm not a white-supremacist, because, as I understand the term, it means that one thinks whites are superior to others. And, of course, they are superior in some areas, but they're not superior in others. All living things have strengths and weaknesses. Third, I'm not a Neo-Nazi, because I'm not a member of a Nazi party.

Of all the thousands of words I've strung together--including some things that even sound half bright and insightful, even if I do say so myself--those three words--slimy brown glop--seem to be the most famous, or infamous. I've become the guy who wrote those three brilliant words. I'm a friggin' Shakespeare, by damn.

Now, truth be told, those who want to read my stuff have to go out of their way to find it. It's sad but true. My essays are not delivered to their homes and they're probably not at the corner market. I also don't hold anyone down and make them read my essays. BUT WHEN I TAKE OVER THE WORLD!..uh, never mind. This little matter of having to go out of their way to find my stuff causes me to have very little patience for the numbnuts who do go out of their way to repeatedly read what I write and who then whine that they don't like it, all the while they keep reading more and more and whining more and more. Hey dopes! If you don't like what's on TV, turn the channel. If you don't like what's on the radio, turn to a different station. If you don't like what I write, don't read it. Again, no one is forced to read anything I write and, in my view, too few people do read any of it. And, cripes, even fewer understand that most of what I write usually concerns the big questions of existence. Surprised? Maybe it's because I don't usually put this big stuff in the dry language of the academy. Sneaky friggin' me.

Well, this week, as with most weeks, I was contacted by the usual types of neurotic bigots and shills who take some of the thousands of things I've written over the years and who cherry pick a phrase or word here and there, and then use what I've written out of context to build a column for their newspapers about hate and racism. Dumb asses. Most of these morons are definitely not Mensa material. But, the sad thing is that many of their readers are even dumber as evidenced by their gullibility in believing everything they read.

One puerile punk breathlessly wrote recently that some of my essays have appeared on "Neo-Nazi" sites. This idiot then whipped out the slimy brown glop quote for his low I.Q. readers. Whoopeedo. Actually, my essays have appeared just about everyplace, and I'm thankful to editors and web masters of all persuasions, who do run them. I write to be read. They've even appeared in some Black owned and probably even some Hispanic owned publications and web sites, and I thank these folks for running them. Hey, what's race or political persuasion or religion got to do with it? I don't agree with everything in every publication and on every web site where my stuff runs and I know damn well that the editors and web masters don't agree with everything I write. Even though we have a growing number of sacred cows in this country, we still do have some rights to think as we wish and to tell others what we think.

While I'd just as soon not have two digit I.Q. types, who can't even spell philosophy, bother trying to figure out the big three and four letter words I use and the simple concepts I'm expressing, I do want people with open and questioning minds, and who have the intelligence to know what they're reading, to read what I write. Maybe they'll like some of it. Maybe they won't. I figure some of my stuff might just act like a Zen slap across some snoozing cerebrums and send their carriers into cartwheels of enlightenment and higher consciousness. Well, why the hell not?

One moron writer, who wrote about me, kept throwing around the word "racist" a lot and mixed it up with the word "hate," so that the two words probably were seen as synonyms in the small, tepid brains of his readers. No doubt his readers didn't even think of the word genes when he mentioned race, so they probably didn't bother to scratch the surface and try to learn something about why there are races of humans, breeds of other animals, and varieties of plants.

Let's be clear about something. Genes matter, even when dopes don't know it. That's just science. The problem in our current Dark Age is that the hysteria over the subject of race is so common that the subject has become a sacred cow and no one wants to write about it or talk about it lest they be called a racist. That's good enough reason for me to want to write about it, and I do, and that's why I get these questions all the time about whether or not I'm a racist. Ho hum. Once, those on the cutting edge of societal change were considered risqué when they used certain swear words. Those sacred cows were toppled long ago. It's time to topple some more.

I once wrote an essay about a doctor in France who believes that the high mortality rate for Black babies is the result of an incorrect medical belief that all humans are the same. Such a false belief causes doctors to not deliver Black babies when they should be delivered--a couple of weeks before White babies are normally delivered--according to the doctor I was writing about. This doctor tried out his theory of racial differences in baby delivery dates and, as he expected, fewer Black babies died. What did he get for his trouble. He was called a racist. Ho hum. And, I was no doubt called a racist for writing about it.

The thing humans have that most other animals don't have (as far as we know) is the ability to think abstract thoughts about such things as the nature of reality and life and all the other big questions of existence. Bigots, however, don't want us to think or talk or write about some things. Those are precisely the things that we should think about, talk about, and write about if intellectual freedom and free speech, and just maximizing what it means to be human, mean anything at all, and if, as I believe, the major badge of being "human" is this ability to use our minds.

A White reporter interviewed me recently and she tried to race bait me. I quickly told her that she could continue interviewing me, if I could interview her. We then traded question/answer for question/answer. I asked her if she noticed that black people were a darker color than white people. She got flustered and didn't know how to answer. I kid you not. She was absolutely silent for several minutes. She then tried to do a verbal dance to avoid answering (because, she knew where I was headed). I persisted, and refused to answer any more of her questions until she answered mine. And, then, finally, she tried to answer by hedging and said, "For the sake of argument, suppose someone does notice that different people are different colors?" I persisted some more. Finally, she said that yes she had noticed that black people are black and white people are white. I then told her that some people would call her a racist for noticing this. She got flustered even more at this. I asked if she was a racist. She replied that she wasn't. I then asked her when she had stopped being a racist because she had just admitted she was one. She got flustered again. End of interview.

Such is the nature of closed minds that once a person is labeled with whatever the current general purpose smear term is, it becomes both like a bad joke going around a room at a party, and a "Do you beat your wife?" question. "Are you a racist? No? When did you stop being a racist?"

Screw 'em. The next time I make stew I'm not going to ruin it by throwing everything I can find in the pot.