I'm Your Man

Leonard Cohen sings it.

Whut?

No, nor was it ever "the skunk squashed in the middle of the road"!!!

Probably Not!

It wasn't ever, "The Rat Squawks," was it?

Damn Thing Better Publish!

Watch Out For Devil Posts!
Oops! That last was 1,666th post. If the number was in any way unlucky or demonic, I guess it's over--as soon as I can publish this one, the number will be at 1,667. Will we then be safe?! I will; I don't know about you!

New Shirts

I think I buy shirts now the way that I always understood how women go shopping. It never made all that much sense to me how women might derive pleasure from shopping or from buying things, but now I'm certain that I'm doing it, too--I buy some things, new shirts in particular, in just that way! I do it to cheer myself up. Not much, but some. So now I own more short sleeve shirts that I used to own shirts of all kinds before I lost so much weight. For that matter, I own more long-sleeve shirts than I used to own shirts of all kinds! I'm still fat, it's not as if I look as good as the underwear models in magazines, but regardless of that, I just enjoy buying the shirts, whether brand new or the fifty-cent ones from Good Will, that are new to me. If I buy five shirts for fifty cents each, I don't feel like I'm stealing them from some impoverished fat man who's worse off than me. Long ago, I worked at a Good Will store for a couple of weeks and I learned how they operate. There is not only a large numbers of shirts and other items that are SOLD there, but shirts that linger too long are soon "culled" for the giant bales of rags that the store produces for industrial clients. That ugly thirty-dollar shirt your aunt once bought you won't go to waste. At the least, that hideous shirt will make a great rag for custodial workers or garage mechanics somewhere. My sense of guilt is nil. Wish I could remember to buy for the current season, though; a couple of weeks ago, three of the five shirts I bought so cheap were long sleeve instead of short sleeve! So now there's two of them that I've never even tried on for size! You see, I have little resistance. The bedroom closet is nearly full now with approximately 20 short sleeve shirts on the left and another 20 long sleeve shirts on the left! Well, there's some pants in the middle, but not that many. The tiny area for haning clothes in the towels closet is also full. Maybe I can commandeer an extra closet somewhere! What's in YOUR closets?

What, No Fluff?

I ain't got no photos for you today. Ain't that a bitch? Sometimes you people are just too silly. There's more than enough photos in the world-- Go see Walt Disney or somebody!

Goodnight

[I like the line about the faucet--it sings well!] Loudon Wainwright - Lullaby Shut up and go to bed Put the pillow under your head I'm sick and tired of all your worries Shut up and say goodnight Say your prayers and turn off the light I'm sick and tired of all your sob-stories Shut up and shut your eyes No more histrionics no more college tries Stop pushing stop shoving stop straining Shut your mouth and button your lip You're a late night faucet that's got a drip All you're doing is merely complaining The excuse that you're crazy is useless You're not biting you're barking you're toothless But you're ruthless (you're Rufus) Shut up and count some sheep And do me a favour don't bitch in your sleep No more agony please no more sorrow Shut up and catch some Z's Ice cream with a cherry plus big pretty please I promise we'll resume tomorrow...Goodnight [You ever had this conversation?] p.s. I assume there's a hint about context when "Rufus" is mentioned--Loudon's now slightly famous son is named Rufus. I never ran into Rufus until I was checking out other people's renditions of Leonard Cohen's song, Chelsea Hotel, about Janis Joplin, etc. Not bad.] This link's for George's ears. The rest of us will probably just read it.

Damn Thing

Well, there is this damn thing by The Beatles.

Cold Night

I never used to think it was all that cold in Austin, Texas, but one night 30 years ago I found out different. We all sold arts and crafts and other crap in the Guadalupe Street market (aka The Drag) near the University of Texas throughout the year, but the Christmas season started getting popular and uncomfortable when competition forced us to "stay all night", sleeping or awake, in order to keep our "blanket spots" for the next day from being usurped by other anxious Johnny-come-lately hippies or eye-on-the-prize capitalists. For the first few nights, the cold seemed gradual, sort of got us used to it, but one night was far worse. (It reminded me of a night as a hitch-hiker when I spent time in a sleeping bag, only partially asleep in a field. In the middle of the night I realized there was a train track not too far away from me--God, was it loud! In the coldest hours of the morning, I shivered fully-dressed and even inside a sleeping bag!) On that Austin sidewalk that night, I was already wearing every layer of clothing and hat and scarf I could think of, but was still shivering badly. Then I could hear a commotion nearby and it turned out that one of the street peddlers was selling ski-masks at midnight, the kind that covers your entire head and face, leaving holes for the mouth and nostrils, and they were selling out in a hurry! I'd never worn one before and a whole bunch of us walked around looking like we were going to rob a bank, but I found out how much body heat escapes through one's head! Five minutes after I put it on, I stopped shivering! I felt like God had intervened, though the feeling has since passed. But if you're cold, cover your whole head!!! [I wrote another post a couple or years ago about the "drag" and the frenzy and competition there. Nobody got killed, not even Santa Claus.]

Swearing

"Would you swear to this or would you merely authenticate it?" said the Juror to the Teeth.

Square Rune

Put the dimmer on the light switch, Or stick it to the nurse. Keep the hair on the hall face, Leave the panic string on the bed rail, And quit your home and take your purse. Is there any wonder we can't work the phone When nobody here can shut their mouth Or hold their breath one second Or ever draw or cross a damn square rune! Oh, no, what's that tune?! i forgot, or something like that... I can't remember my place Or remember the proper names of anything... I'm looking for a world where women aren't all nurses, Where people are clumsy at times, but care what they do.

Woman Is The Nigger Of The World?!

Woman is the Nigger of the World By John Lennon Woman is the nigger of the world Yes she is...think about it Woman is the nigger of the world Think about it...do something about it We make her paint her face and dance If she won’t be slave, we say that she don’t love us If she’s real, we say she’s trying to be a man While putting her down we pretend that she is above us Woman is the nigger of the world...yes she is If you don’t believe me take a look to the one you’re with Woman is the slaves of the slaves Ah yeah...better scream about it We make her bear and raise our children And then we leave her flat for being a fat old mother then We tell her home is the only place she would be Then we complain that she’s too unworldly to be our friend Woman is the nigger of the world...yes she is If you don’t believe me take a look to the one you’re with Woman is the slaves of the slaves Yeah (think about it) We insult her everyday on TV And wonder why she has no guts or confidence When she’s young we kill her will to be free While telling her not to be so smart we put her down for being so dumb Woman is the nigger of the world...yes she is If you don’t believe me take a look to the one you’re with Woman is the slaves of the slaves Yes she is...if you believe me, you better scream about it. We make her paint her face and dance We make her paint her face and dance We make her paint her face and dance

Now could I have gotten away with saying that? The only reason John Lennon got away with it in 1972 was that Yoko said it first. Some black people, like Dick Gregory or Ron Dellums, felt OK with it. If I knew any black people, I might ask them about it. But it's actually all past. If we talk about it at all, it won't be because anyone plays this angry yet regretful song any more. Anyway, I am culturally and racially deprived. I don't know any blacks or niggers! And at this late date, it'll probably stay that way. I used to have a very good black friend in Austin thirty years ago and at least knew a few other blacks. None of them were inhuman or subhuman or superhuman, as far as I could tell. These days, everything has changed. Everyone I know is white, and I'm lucky if I have full knowledge of the bottoms of my feet! (What if I step on a pin or a staple?!)

I'm so cool. I'm a perfect fool. I lay in wait or lunge For prey Like any other sage or savage soul In pursuit of words or food. The older I get, the meaner I get About what's sage or savage And I wonder what is food and what isn't... Time goes on too fast, too slow, To chew it properly— And either way I miss John Lennon's art, Which was both fierce and fine-- It raised us high and laid us gently down In so many crucial moments of our anxious youth... He was not a Pied Piper, But he might have been Had he and we been only Slightly better than we are.

Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw: "My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity."

Wake Up And Suffer!

Are any of you piss ants awake or are you just dead? If the latter, you have my condolences. But how come you didn't invite me to the send-off party?!

My Blog Lists Are Not Fat Enough

I think, or feel, that I should have more blogs listed, both in my "Intelligent Blogs" and in my list called "Incidental Infatuations". At the very least, I could rope some nearly strangers into the second group, couldn't I? With a name like that, it seems to inform the blog owners that we are not married, not even engaged.I don't know how I'm going to arrive at that little accomplishment since I've been so hostile, antagonistic, disdainful, and disagreeable to other bloggers lately, I think I've even lost a few, but that's nothing to brag about. I don't have to be nice to just decide to link to somebody, but I have to calm down a little even to do that small act. I have to try to not be a maniac. This reminds me: I can't remember when I last checked to see how many people were still linking to my damn stupid blog. I should look, even if it stabs me in the heart. I need some kind of motivation and maybe that'd be it! Oops, that wasn't it! Technorati said 51, but I remember when it was seventy something! I guess I'm slowly killing them all off. Welcome, strangers, but don't get near my lawnmower!

New Profie Pic

I suppose that some of you already noticed I put a larger photo in my profile (Lies About Me) section lately. It's not new, just new in that location. It's a little shocking to me, but now nobody has to strain their eyes. Just look in the sidebar and don't act startled—I hate it when you do that! Does this mean I am taking on this new appearance or existence like a new coat or costume? Maybe. I only know I don't have to comb my hair very much and I can't express how odd that is. I've had hair to comb since I was 13 and occasionally I wonder where it went! You hacked it off, you fool!

A Stroke and A Bad Temper

Helpless Helpless Helpless

Sorry if I keep bouncing back to this topic!

The oddest part of the stroke seemed to be that I have no notion of it, no memory. I don't remember waking up in bed or rising from bed or falling down (from wherever I fell), I only remember becoming conscious on the bedroom rug that morning and wondering why I couldn't get up or even sit up. I could flail a bit, so I got hold of my cane and smacked everything that might make noise. It took a long time to make enough noise to be heard! Days later I saw that I had scabs on my right elbow and right leg that were thicker than I'd ever had before! No idea if those occurred while I was falling or while I was flailing. When I was finally heard making noise, everything went from bad to worse. If I'd had any will-power at the time, I might have argued about it, but the ambulance was sent for. ("Somebody got lucky, but it was an accident...") Oh, well. When I came home a month later, I bought one of those air horns that crazed football fans blow at games. Those are pretty loud. I have since lost track of where it is, so I need to go look for it. (note: found it!) With good luck, I'll never need it, but I couldn't help remembering how helpless that feeling was. I didn't need to cry after I knew it was a stroke because by then some help had arrived. If I hadn't been so mad, though, I'd have cried plenty when I was still on the floor! So I conclude that having a bad temper sometimes helps the helpless! I hope you fare well and stay angry!

Insanity and Neuropathy

And Arthritis And Spasms

I can't stop posting! And I can't stop my leg! And I can't feel my feet! I'm getting old and frail with every breath! God fucking damn it! I don't care what you say, it stinks, it sucks shit through a straw, it's the enemy of all mankind! It'll get you, too--you and your little dog, Dodo! (Insert witchy laugh here and pretend I just flew away on my broom.) "I'll be back for you, my little pretty!" I scream.

Political Poetics

There is nothing here, There is nothing there, No politics or police will ever salve us, Save us, or even beat us down very far, And so we're left with only this, This fury of the fray And all the usual lazy illnesses of our souls, All those familiar insects crawling in our minds. Russia may look at America And maybe we still stare hard at them, But we might as well all stare at a cat! We're all too busy, too seriously Trying to make an irreverent buck While we circle our rusty station wagons Against radiation from Iran And wait for yet another midnight rut with a lady soldier In a camouflaged truck in dusty Iraq.

Fugs May Be The Mothers Of Us All

I am always creating new "radio stations" on my Internet radio, "Pandora". When I recently created a Frank Zappa radio station, I was having good fun from beginning to end, but after a while I was surprised to find Pandora playing some songs by The Fugs. Although I'd forgotten them for many years, I do recall that I discovered them in high school, about 1966, maybe six months or so before I heard of Zappa or the Mothers of Invention. The Fugs were largely a bunch of poets, writers, and other crazies who wanted to play rock music and be rude to America. Much like Zappa, their song titles and lyrics and behavior and appearance all outraged American mores and the cops. Too bad. One can even find a few black and white Youtube versions of their songs--very interesting to me, because I only saw a few still photos on the record covers in those days. Crazy shits like that couldn't get on TV or travel to Small-town, America! To me, they were only a voice from God. Maybe from the Anti-God, but something ludicrous like that, and I liked it like that! In fact, I still do, now that I think of it. They were definitely apeshit crazy in those days and that was good enough for me. It's odd how I'd forgotten all about them for decades. Maybe the drugs back in the seventies obliterated them from my memory. I like to think it was 2 or 3 trillion other memories that came along and obliterated them, doncha know! Or maybe it was just the lack of airplay that kept them out of sight, out of mind. Radio and TV still maintain the usual old bullshit, the tight-assed prudish Company line. Things change, but not much.

Zappa Zippa

Who but Frank Zappa would ever rhyme "hardcore ecstasy" with "abject misery" in a song lyric? Egads. (I was only listening to Internet radio, so I don't know which song!)

BWWWOS AWARD (First One)

Sporadic prize given for any blogger who has survived Blogging While Wrestling With One's Self!" (Try saying that with marbles in your mouth.) I'm giving the award to myself first. Why?!--Because I can! Actually, because I have marbles in my mouth! The rest of you can line up and just hope that the water is still cool when you finally get to the drinking fountain!

Stricken and Strangled

Stink me, stank me, String me up and spank me, Be a lady tonight, just once, And not so nice, Just take me in your hands if you want And don't crucify me When I stick my tongue in your secret place! Stick me, stack me, Don't turn me loose! I have a lot to say these days, But it doesn't go very far. My house is in tatters, My leg movements fettered, My freedom of movement is toast Like everything else I like the most. I'm waiting, I'm flailing, I'm failing-- How many more wasted hours will there be Wrested from all these fake and earnest complaints, These aching bones and hours and flesh? We are all inflamed with it, Infuriated by, arrested by, flung far by The lapses, lunges, leaps Of everything that can be alarmed-- Just like this damned old age that won't Leave or arrive, won't fold, Whether we dare speak it or claim it Or milk it or cleanse it or what! Those who may tell it Are not exactly congratulating us for it. It's not so bad to be old by yourself, You can figure out a way around almost anything Or else just cuss profanely and Decide it doesn't bother you any more Like it did for fifty years! Not much sense in that! But being old among the young Who are still walking past and going fast With no concept of what it seems like to others When young people dash in and out of a crowded walkway! You bastards under forty don' make much sense, either, With all that adolescent snot still hanging from your nose, So, no, I DON'T trust you to be as accurate As an Olympic athlete going for the gold. I expect you to be clumsy as a seal While you don't care how I feel And you pretend there's no one else On the planet but you, At least no one of any consequence. Your Mamma should slap your teeth out Or should've just choked you in your crib, But she didn't and She's not around to be ashamed, And God might do it in her absence, But He hasn't been seen Or heard from in these parts for years.

The Questions

So What's the answers?

It's frustrating when you know all the answers but nobody bothers asking you the questions. Or is it the other way round? It is, for me! What color is food? How tall is that couch potato? How loud is your dandruff? Does "duck" have two zeros or one? Can you hand me that machete? Can you wipe the blood off and pass it over? What did your nurse have in her hand when I came in? How long is your tongue when you're not lying? How thick's your length when you're hammered? How hammered is that hamster? What can you hear when you cup your ears? What song do you sing when your ear's full of tea? What time is body odor? How hard is yours? Why not, if you're here legally? If I'm turning grey, does that mean I've been saved? If I've been saved, will it show up on TV? Is this dark enough or will you require a sharper knife? Why's this shadow Why is it called 5 o clock when it lasts all day on a man? Why is it not polite to speak of a lady's leg or lip shadow? Is nature shameful? What made is badly bed? What bed is made by maid? What maid is made by bed? If my head is screwed on right, can I count that as sex for the week?

America?! Who, me?!

"Oh, shit, here it comes!"
Arnold Toynbee: "America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair."

Intelligent Post from Zandria

My friend ZANDRIA wrote a good post about her sense of not feeling like an adult until lately as she arrived in her later twenties. It was probably more thought provoking to young women than to me--nonetheless, I thought about it some and in my usual snotty way had these thoughts below: Ladies in their twenties worry about where they're going. Ladies in their thirties worry about where they are. Ladies in their forties worry whether they can keep up. But in their fifties and beyond, they worry somewhat about where they've been because by then a lot of shit has been thrown at them and they're very busy. If they don't feel like a grownup by then and if they're very smart, I wish they'd quit fucking around and come see me! I'm at an age where age is not so important as just finding an amenable playmate--one who likes me and is foolish enough to say so.

Jane Fonda Says "Cunt" on TV?

Why the fuck not?

Apparently, back in February of this year, Jane Fonda inadvertently said "Cunt" while being engaged by The View's bunch of idiots in a discussion of the "Vagina Monologues". Seems like a logical slip to me if you're going to talk about vaginas! The View (what's her name, Meredith Vagina?) prudishly came back from commercial break and apologized FOR Fonda (how'd they do that?) and for their own little pig selves that allowed it--America's virgin housewife ears had been sullied. I guess most of them still can't say "Vagina", so Fonda is obviously guilty of having tried to blow up the world. I hope she succeeds. Better that than having to be on The View repeatedly! At any rate, I'm a vulgar bastard and I EXULT in vile language on TV! Especially on TV shows that feel compelled to apologize for the nature of the world we live in! Get over it, View idiots--shit happens! IWWFZWHT? (I wonder what Frank Zappa would have thought?)

Big Fuckin' Deal, Right?

I started on the Internet by teaching myself about html. I must have done about a million Google searches for various terms because I didn't know any sites at that time that could teach me or that would even introduce me to the proper terms. It's hell to guess one's way toward html when you don't know the jargon! So eventually I could do a website that got better and better. Still, that beat me up badly. By the time I discovered blogs, I was so Proud of the website that I didn't think at first that the blog would amount to much. It was just a lark. Like other Newbies, I wondered how in the world I could write for it daily or even just regularly! Now I have 18 blogs, only 4 of them out in public view! Turns out that blogs were WAY more fun than the website and later I got so involved that I turned into a semi-expert about Blogger, so that one of my blogs, "Most Frequent Blogger Questions", consists of posts aimed at Newbies or at people who want to try something new and like to hear it from someone who remembers when it was hard to do! So of course I usually limit my advice to things that I've actually done myself. Every so often I give answers about things that I've only read about, but I try to make it clear that it's second-hand information I no longer even maintain the website that I started with! I almost don't recall the name of the website! The Silver Bunny? Lonely Baloney? Uh, I'll think of it in a minute. Oh, yeah, it was "Southern Exposure" and it was presented in a sort of magazine format! Anyway, as Grateful Dead might say, What a long strange trip it's been! (And I ain't won no prizes yet!)

Elevator Music

Praise be to God (and me) that you don't have to listen to any goddamn music on this blog unless you actively click some button to see a music video. You're welcome! I hate stumbling across those sites that just shit in your ear with whatever their favorite crap may be--whether it's rock, Snotra, or classical gas! It's all good sometimes, mind you, but not when it's inflicted without warning! To those bloggers who always run their own Elevator Music (they probably think of it as the Soundtrack of their lives), I just want to say, "Fuck you very much!"

Who Is This Guy?

Cecil Baxter: "You don't get anything clean without getting something else dirty." I sure couldn't Google the bastard and discover what he was famous for, other than that quote. I wonder if that's it?

Some Ancient Perversity

But now we're all clean. I think. Remember Aqualung who wasn't?

Youtube Sometime YouFaceInYouAssHole

I listen to a lot of videos on the Internet. You'll note I say listen when I should say watch. I find more of them satisfactory to my ear than to my eye. I like to watch the videos of artists actually performing, I care nothing for all the clever devils who have concocted clever montages of Jimi Hendrix or Frank Zappa or Janis Joplin. I want to see the goddamn musical performance, not some piss ant video that's been tacked on after the musicians were dead! But at times I am willing to watch a little of even the worst musical performances (bad audio, usually). Of course there has been some real drivel recorded and put online. Old interviews with John Lennon and Bob Dylan in the back seat of a car--I don't even know what the fuck they're talking about and I suspect they were stoned and also didn't know at the time! There's others. But the point is to say they stink and are a waste of time, so I dread to give you the links and add to your boredom level! And many videos turn out to be Covers of famous songs by the garage band next door, even when their title is the name of an artist coupled with a famous song. You click on it and discover that it's Bozo's Hairy Armpit Artistry that nobody ever heard of except the kids on their block. It's balderdash, a vast deception, and yet there is no authority standing at the portals to keep such deceptive trash out (or at least labelled)--I've never listened to even one of those after the 5 or 10 seconds it took me to figure out what sort of deception they were perpetrating! Short note: Lately a lot of Youtube videos have shown up without any sound at all! Not all of them, though, or I would have thought Youtube was trying to force people to sign up or pay. Now I don't know what to conclude.

Too Sleepy!

I wish to God somebody would wake me up! I'm getting sleepy in front of the TV, in front of this monitor, in front of the minor children--I'm out of control! I sleep really well in bed, too, but that's as it should be. Ain't nobody coming by to save me, though, and I can't wake up enough to let some scoundrel in, anyway! Someone will have to save me while I sleep!

Celebrating Me

And The Me Blog

This makes 1,643 Posts! Isn't that weird? Anyway, it is to me. I remember when I didn't know if I'd write a second post. Boy, was I confused! I wonder, though, how many Real posts I wrote—that were of serious length and/or pertinent and/or well-written and/or goosed somebody who really needed it—and how many of them were really just fluff made of daffy duck feathers coated with thin air? Most of the fluffy ones have been those labelled Quotations, Daily, or Erratic. There's more, but why pillory myself? After all, I was having more fun than a boy can usually have without using his penis! I have loved the blogging, sincerely hated Blogger, changed or did partial renovations of my template endlessly, and along the way I probably explained different parts of the blogging experience to more than a thousand people. And yet I still don't know my ass from a hole in the ground!

Thank You, Masked Man, Once Again!

More Dull Mechanics About How I Do Things Or How Things Do Me

I had a thank-you note arrive a couple of days ago marked as being from a reader of MFBQ, the blog where I dispense addled advice and prerecorded messages. It wasn't the usual request for help, but a thanks from someone who'd already helped himself by reading some posts at "Most Frequent Blogger Questions". That was cool with me! I'm always glad to hear that the work has already been done for me! It's often enough that I can't offer any help at all to people whose blog is misbehaving—I can't always guess or make a good diagnosis of their perverted blogs from this distance. I used to more often get bloggers to consider letting me have their password so that I could get in the driver's seat—like my dad, an auto mechanic mostly before computers in cars, used to do before he'd give up on guessing, but I don't do that much any more. I don't know why not—did I lose my nerve? I never harmed any blog as a result of "going inside", and sometimes I even discovered their problem. I admit that I did feel uncomfortable about having to log out of my own account before I could log into theirs—I suppose I had some notion that I might get stuck in someone account and not be able to get back home! That never happened. I guess as time goes by I felt it was more and more probable that I'd screw the pooch in some way, crap in their blog, hammer their code into mush and not be able to restore it, get my beard caught in the gears! Some people would turn me down like I'd offered to fuck their sister. Hell, I don't blame them. I would have turned me down, too! Too much intimacy is never a good thing among strangers. We have family or sweethearts for such familiarity—we aren't comfortable rubbing bellies with people who are not in any sense a sensual, sexual, romantic, or familial associate. But I DO love an occasional Thank You note!!! The older and more clumsy I get, the more I appreciate those blog-happy notes from total strangers, otherwise known as Newbies. I know lots of people (mostly younger) who know more than I do about Blogger, but that's okay. I never set out to know everything or even to know this much! It just evolved, and of course it's easy to know more than New Bloggers! If you're new, take heart! In no time, you'll be an old hand, then an old fart, and before long you've been committed for nonexistent crimes of the brain! Nurses will try to make you explain your bad behavior! "Fuck, I don't know!" won't satisfy them.

Long Hair and the Slow Long Haul

I used to wear my hair long; I guess it was a defiance of some sort. Youth likes to disobey, to rebel, to stray from home, to refuse conformity, to avoid compliance. I avoided every variety of compliance I knew of for a few decades, breaking minor laws, offending mores, breaking some (not all) commandments. So what? If I'd done all that without letting my hair grow long and without wearing all those hippie beads, I would have been a great deal less conspicuous, but I'd have been the same kind of trouble—I knew some people like that, who never could quite land in a place where they truly belonged or where "bad names" they might be called ever stuck to them. They drank or smoked or doped while many of the people in their life never never of it! I don't mean that they were necessarily uncomfortable anywhere, but just that they fit in with so many groups that their persona always seemed a little indefinite in either one. Of course, all this ignores all the straight kids who didn't have time to fuck with shit like that because they were busy with cool things like school and frat parties and keg parties and piano practice and pantie raids. At events like Eeyore's Birthday Party in Estes Park, all the people in Austin or elsewhere seemed to merge momentarily into a bunch of goofs and gooses just having a good time, but those times didn't last long. I don't think George Bush was there, but it's not impossible. Before that time and after that, I never felt like I belonged in any group, and looking back, I agree that was mostly correct. I looked like I belonged, but I couldn't join the new and I couldn't cling to the old. I used to hitch-hike, too, and with my long hair (not even very long yet) would get yelled at from passing pickup trucks, "Hey hippie!", and other mutterings less intelligible. In any case, I'd mostly hope to God they didn't turn around and come back to press the point. I had my own speculations about who they were or what they were like, but I didn't want to find out too much about it. Some of Them may have been some of You, if you're old enough. And me, when you're on the road like I was then, both acts of hostility or acts of kindness seem very rare and yet very large indeed to a solitary traveller. My contact with the police of various states and municipalities were pretty negative, although there were some California Highway Patrolmen who, AFTER they gave me a ticket for just being there, kindly gave me a ride to get me out of their jurisdiction. It was better than a beating. I don't remember how long I kept that ticket, but I certainly never paid it. A thousand emergencies, large and small, intervened. Some of this shit ain't worth remembering... They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom For trying to change the system from within..." First We Take Manhattan, by Leonard Cohen After that I spent 20 years in the workforce, and, though I got about as anonymous as anyone else, I never did fit in. At my very best, when I had the greatest amount of responsibility or regard from coworkers, I still didn't fit. I didn't like where I was and nobody really needed me there. My hair got short, then long, then short again—I could never be nailed down. No one could quite predict me, and I found myself unpredictable, as well. Sometimes I strictly did the right things, and other times I played for the other side. Either way, I couldn't win. I merely maintained. Now I'm out of it, it would seem. Life is something else these past five years since I got diabetes and other ills. My stroke this year compounded everything that was already bad, adding a $40,000 medical debt to what I already couldn't stand. If I live to be a hundred, I'll still be in debt. Now I don't much think about it all, and I can't much care what happens. Paying bills has become a joke to me. Maybe I'd feel better if locked up in prison, except that I'd lose my current access to the Internet. Nothing is perfect, except our distress or the pain in our backs. I am, or should be, at perfect liberty to grow my hair down to my shoulder blades or even down to my ass, but the Care And Feeding Of Hair is just too much work these days—I can't do it. In fact, I keep cutting my hair shorter and shorter until the next step would have to be shaving my head! But that, too, would be too much work.

Disbelief, Idleness, The Impossible

William James: "As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use." Floyd Dell: "Idleness is not doing nothing. Idleness is being free to do anything." Arthur C. Clarke: "The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible."

Welcome, Gun Powder!

A few Texas fire-starters finally got their fireworks out last night. It was quite fun for me while I thought maybe they'd all died, but alas that was not true! They blew up everything they could, then set fires where it was possible. Problematically, it's not usually adolescents who do all this, but "adult" males who still like to "bust bottles" and shoot off their own toes. There is no salvation and no reprieve to be had, possibly not for hundreds of years. We still like to play with fire and firepower and would kill our own grandmothers to protect and preserve our right to do so! It's lame, but "it's" us.

Fooled Again

No real email today, but three spam messages filtered through, only one of which looked "innocent" enough that I mistook it for an MFBQ reader email and opened it. That chaps my ass. I like to just delete them without prejudice if they have that "spammy" look to them. I have to give it to Gmail, they do filter hundreds of such messages and only a few ever make it to me. There must be some incredibly stupid or bored people in the world who keep opening spam. As just noted, it's a rare thing for me to do EVER! Fooled again, though. And what's happened to July 4th?! Usually in Texas, idiots will start their private fireworks at least two days early and maybe two days past Independence Day, but I haven't heard anything to mention so far! Has Marshall Dillon come to town and pistol-whipped them all into compliance with laws that have long been on the books but long ignored? I like it this way, but I've always been a pervert who wished the local loons weren't having so much fun on their residential property, day and night! I hope the Marshall has whipped them, but I doubt it. Everyone here also violates the fire laws all the time by burning debris on private property. We are all outlaws in this township, but I suppose that someday we'll have to get around to obeying the laws we pass. Probably not today. Not on Whooping Independence Day. Ann, are you redwhiteandblue yet? Probably take a little longer...