Well friends we've come a long way (😘😘😎😎😘😘) .. and if I could just say a few words, I'd be a better public speaker!

Seriously though folks let me just start this brief acceptance speech off the way I end up starting everything more and more the older I get. With an apology.

I'd like to apologize for my tardiness.. believe it or not however I'm a fairly punctual fella in my wild age... gone are the days in which I'd get reprimanded on the prediction of being late to my own funeral on account of my hair and so forth. So I'll just leave this here as you think about what I'm apologizing for with that first line. 🐣🐣🐣

I have officially made it out of my collapsing tomb back in ol' Tex and to my final destination. In all sincerity I truly could not have made it here without each and every one of you. Those who donated, those who didn't, those who lent me an ear and put up with night after night of my midnight ramblings and tearfully uncomfortable voice clips and paragraph-length ravings of a certified lunatic at all hours of the day and night. All of you who stayed up and kept me company as I wept hysterically in circles lamenting the mess I had made of my own life, the love of that very thing who I never meant to take for granted and whose sweet nature I just completely blew apart as I set fire to my own life for the one hundredth time in as many years, and all the old sweethearts who likely know me better after all these years than I'll ever know myself.. thank you. Without any one of you I wouldn't be here. I'd be hanging on the back of my closet door in Texas. Some of you who came together at the 11th hour of the 11th month at what I was hoping would be the very last year of my life and essentially peeled me out of my death bed and forced me to stop decomposing in it are likely due an extra round of thanks here because we all know i wouldn't have ever done any of this on my own. The problem with giving up is that if you're too tough to die which i apparently am (as has been proven to me over and over again in the last two years) it means pretty much that you're not just going to pass away and be done with it. You were never that lucky.

But I clearly am- to have such an amazing network of caring souls, many - no MOST I'd even wager.. I have not seen or spoken to in anywhere from ten years to however old I am. (I am eleven now)

You have all saved my life, for good or ill. And I can only say that THIS time it'll be different. Hell I changed once before .. I can do it again. I put in the greatest years of my life before I fell flat on my face this time. I did some real good in the world, I learned a lot of lessons from all the women in my life, as always, and I managed to survive losing absolutely everything I had... once again.

At any rate, I sincerely apologize for scaring and disappointing everyone I know or who ever dared to care about or love me. We all need help sometimes. Let me leave you with this:

Years ago during one of my longest and slowest capitulations, I was in a court room thickly populated with those who always take up most of every court setting I've ever been in. What they're called varies quite a bit depending on region but they all share an affinity for JBLs in public and freestyling on the bus and in holding cells. They are also really white and really racist at the same time somehow. At any rate this court broke out into utter disorder and disarray at the sight of a septaguenarian fellow, a wino as they used to be known (Its ok i can say that.. some of my best friends are alcoholic) making his way to the front after being called upon. He wasn't making a very good show of it, nor much progress. I and a few others got up to help steady him but he managed to pull down computers and turn over chairs and scatter paperwork about ..etc.. on his way, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake essentially as the prison bound crew got louder and louder in their merriment. He was eventually escorted out as the judge smashed his gavel repeatedly into the podium a good ten to fifteen times in a very successful effort to restore order to his court room. As the "freestyle on the city bus" crew's mirth had finally dissipated, he addressed the room thusly:

"Well now .. it would SEEM that quite a few of you have found something humorous today in the sad state of Mr. Barness. I'd just like you all to know that I've known him since 1964 and there was once a time.. not too long ago.. when he was just..

like..

. . YOU.

Have some grace next time because one of these days it'll be you. "

Man.. when I tell you you could have heard a pin drop in there.. you could have heard a pin drop in there. Literally.

So... not to get too Texas High School Football on all of Radioland but .. it's been said, (on television but still) and is heartbreakingly true.. that at some point in our lives we will all fall. How fast or slow, how long, short, near or far we do it depends on a variety of factors but there before the grace of God goes each and every one of us. I pray that anybody it happens to is as blessed as I am to have been afforded the opportunity to get back up. I'm not gonna say "I won't let ya down" because that is not really in my wheelhouse and SAYING things like that definitely isn't. But I suppose I will continue to walk. I learned how to crawl. Let's see what else they got for me.

xx

P.S. I will be removing the crowd funding link but am still in need as I had to abandon everything in my entire life except my sweet baby kitty Lulu. My sidearm. This means I lost all of my instruments. Two guitars and two pianos.. all my notebooks and tapes (songwriter crap) a majority of my clothing, my vehicle .. and basically everything. Some incredible people have gifted me a keyboard and an acoustic guitar recently.. im over the moon on that. I do have a good job lined up but obviously it will not be starting immediately. I aim to find an additional job and attempt some services such as food stamps.. though I'm not sure whether there is a mandatory residency period before approval etc.. I'll be finding out. But I do still need some sundries and things of that nature and don't really have anything to eat at the moment.

I cannot tell you how much it hurt to leave Texas behind. The kind of exodus you don't recover from. It was the one constant I've ever known since birth, and the last decade there was the most real and true period of my life. if anybody would care to donate for this last leg up I'll post the apps I have below. I will be on my feet soon if I don't fall down into the canyons on my one good foot. (OH yeah I can only feel my left foot so wish me luck in the mountains! Love yous.

--Prince Philip the Dumb

PayPal: Hankblackhorse@gmail.com

971-302-0818

Zelle: see above

Venmo: Philip- Holman-8

971-302-0818

With the email and phone number any of those should be easy to find just make sure you never send to any Philip with two L's because these apps will not get it back to you