After Roy Rogers retired, he bought a chicken ranch at the base of Sierra Nevada range. He had a lot of money, and had become a bit of a dude after being so well-dressed in the movies. Because of that, one of his passions was boots. Fancy boots. Really fancy boots.

One day, a deranged chicken shat all over his favorite pair of boots. Enraged, he and Dale had chicken soup that night.

The next day, Roy headed into town to buy replacement boots. He found an absolutely fabulous pair: 4" heels, rhinestones, deeply tooled red Italian leather, with silver lace holes and silver on the lace tips. They shone in the sun, and turned the heads of all who saw them.

Roy was mighty proud of those boots, you betcha.

As he and Dale turned in for the night, he placed the boots next to his bed, so he could see the gleam in the moonlight. He fell asleep to dreams of those glorious boots.

Unknown to Roy, a puma lived in the mountains. This puma was somewhat weird, in that it had a fetish for leather. It picked up the smell of Roy's new boots on the wind, and slunk down out of the hills to find where the delicious aroma was coming from.

Finding Roy's chicken ranch, the puma crept into the house, up the stairs, and into Roy and Dale's bedroom. Unable to contain itself, it started chewing on the boots, releasing even more of the tantalizing aroma. And it started purring. Loudly. Loudly enough that it woke Dale and Roy up.

Roy jumped up and started yelling at the puma, which leapt out the window and escaped into the hills. As Roy looked down on the remnants of the heavily chewed boots, he became more and more enraged. So much so that he threw on his clothes, grabbed his rifle, and headed into the hills after the puma.

Several hours later, as the sun was coming up, Roy returned to the chicken ranch with the now-dead puma slung over his shoulders. Dale met him at the ranch gate, looked at him, looked at the dead puma, and said...

"Pardon me Roy, is that the cat that chewed your new shoes?"

Ensure domestic bliss: Johnny-Light!

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I found this via your basic web surfing "I fell over this" synchronicity. I'm ripping CDs to MP3 for the day when we tie the LAN to the stereo. Currently in the player is Ethel and the Shameless Hussies' Born to Run.

During the 1980's I worked for Applied Data Research, a software company (see the link for How ADR Got Into the Software Products Business for a fascinating read - well, if you're an ex-ADR employee, perhaps!). Each year ADR would host a user conference for its products, called CADRE (Common ADR Environment, or something like that), in a different city. And each year the attendees would find a favorite local bar and hang out.

One of the last CADREs was in Nashville, and the favorite bar had Ethel and the Shameless Hussies playing all week. They liked us, and we liked them. The prodigious amount of alcohol that ADR employees and customers drank might have had a little bearing on this, but the group was actually pretty good. Good enough that I remembered them years later (even though I don't usually care for country music) when I came across a cut-out CD of their only recording. One of the ADR product managers had developed a crush on The Hussies during that CADRE, and I bought the CD so I could send him a copy.

Being a curious sort of person, I wondered if they were still around and Google brought me to Kacey Jones' site, the founder of the group. Poking around I found a reference to the Johnny-Light. Another Google and here we are.

Aren't you sorry you asked? What, you didn't ask? Oh, well...

For those times when you just can't get enough Lord of the Rings.