The Legend

I'm So Boring, That's The Rumor

In a former incarnation of "The Rat Squeaks", I started color-coding the background of each post and I even included an instructive chart at the top of the sidebar. I still do the color-coding, but with less furor and without the Legend in the sidebar. Nobody ever remarked on either the inclusion of the exclusion of that arrangement, so I don't worry about making it perfectly clear! I could look up old copies of my blog that I've kept on my computer, but I won't. Why resurrect the dead? On the other hand, I continue to use the color-coding as if it were a favorite joke. No Legend will be unearthed, though. I don't think anyone in the general public is much impressed with it, anyway. I must be, though, since I keep assigning meaningful colors or "texture" backgrounds to all the posts! Whether it is coded for Fiction, Nostalgia, Politics, or what, I used to think someone might use it as a visual code to what kind of posts they were skimming past, but now I'm unsure of that. Excuse me for a moment, please, while I say FUCK IT real loud! There. I feel better already.

When Rats Rut

Rats Rule

We get as goofy and swaggering as anyone else when we screw, except that part about chewing the electrical wiring in your house and causing a fire. Besides, we do that anyway. We have to keep gnawing at things or our teeth may grow through the top of our skulls! You wouldn't like that--that's a bloody fucking mess! And if I'm messed up, the first thing I do is to go shit in somebody's stupid breakfast cereal! ("Oh, those are just raisins, son!") Yeah, sure, Mom.

Lie Down With Dogs

Wake Up With Wolves

Or is it "wake up with fleas?" That would make sense, but so does the other. I don't know, but lately it seems as if somebody must have closed me down! Or is it just my true value being noted? Could be. But, wait, maybe it's the fact that I haven't commented much on other people's blogs lately! I haven't primed the pump! Could it be so simple? Yes, it could, though I may have also alienated people of all creeds and colors, since that's pretty easy to do. Many people find it easy to get insulted, and many, of course, find it easy to be insulted by me--I am very insulting, sometimes even unconsciously so! At any rate, I need to prime the pump to trick more people into being interested in me. I never understood why they were, and now don't understand why they don't, which just goes to show that I hardly understand anything. Probably just can't remember who I insulted. It's hard, though, when you don't think of anything but yourself. So throw me to the wolves!

Don't Step On My Damn Fedora!

Lame Excuses

I like my hat more than my hair these days. I guess that’s mostly a sign of age, though it could be just a new style of being. Might as well “be”, though, since my hat hides my hair and I wear one hat or another nearly all the time, indoors or outdoors. It’s fucking weird, as we used to say—or was that just me? I never learned to stop cussing, though all my other vices have deserted me. I am so "clean" that it's disgusting, if you can overlook the vile and violent language. I suppose some of you may prefer whiskey, beer, and tobacco, but I always resented the money that had to spent on that. But, for that matter these days, I resent the money for movies, books, and eating at restaurants, so I watch free TV, use the local library, and make lame excuses everywhere I go. Anyway, my hair is almost short, compared to former years; I cut it myself, and that's the reason that I don't wear it even shorter. If I could find a tool that would let me cut it short, but not a "flat top" or whatever it was that I used to wear as a kid (and wasted good money to pay barbers for such a bunch of nothing!). Maybe I could find a way to cut it as short as the Godfather's in the third movie installment of that endless saga. It seems to me, at least, that if I try to cut my hair shorter than I've been doing, I might gouge myself or at least do a bad job. So, for the moment, I'm stuck. If I screw around and delay it long enough, my naturally receding hairline will take over and finish me off. I won't have to think about it then, I guess.

Getting Old And Taking Pills

What Next?

I've dwindled down to where a day or night's occupation might be just buying a new plastic container to put all my medicines in. The dope (legal, you know?) was previously stored in a couple of ugly but practical shoe boxes. Every once in a while, I get disgusted with how ugly something is in my environment. Since I'm not strong and balanced enough to move my furniture around like I used to do (on the spur of the moment!), I have to diddle with smaller things. Oh, yeah--I diddle with that, too, but it's not only small, there's only one, and you can only occupy so much time with it. One of my OLD friends that I met 38 years ago is about to get married for the first time and it is a good thing, I'm sure, but there goes another of the lifelong bachelors. I hope it is a great joy and comfort to him, though! Anyway, my changes are very small these days. I moved the drugs into the new plastic "drawer" and placed the drawer on a low surface so that I don't to stand and get a horrible backache while extracting my day's pills and counting them out into yet another plastic container with multiple compartments. I used to count, but not lately--I think I take about 7 or 8 pills in the morning, then 3 or 6 more at 3 more times of day. I dispense them to myself sort of like an automaton, but sometimes lose track and have to review the whole damn thing to see I haven't reversed the numbers and given myself 3 or 4 of something wrong. Anyway, now I can sit down and make my mistakes with the pills. I wish, though, that some of my bottles were smaller! It's a piss-off to try to keep such different sizes of bottles stored together. I'll gradually relabel some small bottles and get everything into bottle sizes that are more compatible--then, I won't have to store some of them laying on their side. Presently my dresser looks clean and uncluttered for the first time in a long while, maybe 3 years, but I guess I'll fuck it up in good time--I always have. See what important stuff occupies one's old age? Of course, there's always the damn garbage cans and wondering if you've put them out for pickup on time! What a colossal waste of time and my superior brain power--I could be making bookmarks out of expired business cards or something! Actually, I feel like the trip was way too short between the life I used to have of jumping up and down off tractors without distress to being this doddering old fool! Anyway, if you can avoid these things by some means, do it, Do It, DO IT!

Snot?

No, it' snot, and it won't get any better. If you like it this way, you can stay here, but I'm going where the skies are blue (even if it is comin' on dark!

Call In The Killer

This Is Not A Poem!

My brain is toast lately, and my nerves worse. I've started working on a long poem (200 lines or ao) for the first time in a long while. It constantly wants to get longer and I want it to shut up and stay reasonable. I may have to call up the mericless pest control operator (aka Exterminator) aspect of my soul! But it is not much to talk about, even when I get it finished--it will be too long to spark much interest here, and almost the same if I place it in my poetry blog. I have now worked on the poem so long (so many versions, I mean, this past two months) that I'm puking-sick of it and I don't yet think it's finished. Maybe close to finished, but that's all. I'm hanging up on it for now. If I don't finish it before I die, they can bury it with me. Poetry always loves dead things; often enough, it tries to jump in bed with death. So when I say "Fuck it", things must be pretty bad or about to be

Joni Mitchell Getting Older (Like Who Isn't?)

Joni Mitchell - Both Sides Now - Tribute 2000
Uploaded by BBBVIDEO

It seems silly to say, but I am dumbstruck--how could anything be more beautiful?!

Killing Babies

Oh, What Fun!

34 spam messages came in today in the time that zero real messages came to me. Shit. Anyway, I still refuse to read or glance at those spam excretions. I wonder if somewhere in the world there are really people who think I long to get emails, mostly commercial, from people I don't even know? I don't take phone calls of that sort, either--I just hang up! The world is full of lowlife bastards who should have been killed when they were babies. But it's so hard to choose which babies to kill--that's why God made them so cute, I guess. Too bad.

Jazzy Hicks

Plus Licks

I don't care if you are bored by my bullshit, this is some of the kind of music that I ADORE, if only because it's so HIP. I'm more hip than you, there was never any doubt about that. But, if you bother to become acquainted with the oddly jazzy Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, you too will soon be among the Elite of the Earth! Of course, the pay is very low, but if you want more than a pat on the back, you are evidently not as Cool as you thought! Video below is Dan And Licks on the perennial favorite, "I Scare Myself". And I do!

crazy but lazy

Always Lucid, Never Clear

Mushy encouraged me to publish the following and I'll use any excuse to scrimp (make less effort) on my bloggerly endeavors. I suspect that by some definitions that I am "crazy". But crazy like so many people who never quite flip out and burn down the house or kill 8 or 9 college students. I do become eccentric in my thoughts when I begin to feel isolated. Isolation is like Picante Sauce--some is a good thing, too much will fry your braincells.

Banged or Banged Up

Never Can Tell
Goddamn it, pay attention, please! Well, there went the Christians. At least, I didn't insult all those other stupid people. Oop, I guess I just did. Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained, hey? Sorry, folks, just banging the pots and pans here today...

Stevie Wonder

He's A Wonder!
I always forget how much I like Stevie Wonder when I've been away from him for a while. Jeeze, what a marvel! Below is Stevie on Sesame Street, then with Ray Charles. Two blind guys? I should think NOT!!!

Sandidge Sculpture Studio

This is to mention the recently revived Sandidge Sculpture Studio. The Internet site, I mean! It was shut down for a while, but hopefully will stay now. I'm going to work some to get the site into the hands of the artist, Bill Sandidge, so that he can do his own changes, if any. Until he starts, I will continue to maintain it. If you perused it the last time it was "on the air", most of its changes have been cosmetic, but later I expect it will broaden. Until then, don't get drunk and break anything unless you want to buy it!

Pope Leo The Great

Leo served from 440 to 461. Fortunately, Bill had an old black and white photo to work with! For a larger image, go to Sandidge Sculpture Studio.