Call Me It

I wanna thank Enemy for taggin' me. It's an easy meme- basically it just says: "blog."
But there are some rules:

Rules Are:* each blogger starts with eight - ten random facts/habits about
themselves…* people who are tagged need to write posts in their own blog about
the tag and post these rules…* at the end of your post, you need to choose
people to get tagged and list their names… *

Sounds simple, eh? It's not. How does one "randomly" choose facts/habits about oneself? The Exquisite Corpse method comes to mind- surrealist Max Ernst called it a "mental contagion", which is, to me, a decent and workable definition for "meme"...so. I shall mentally shred my personal trivia and toss the bits into an imaginary hopper. Spin the barrel. Reach inside:

1. I have embraced my baldness. I started losing my hair before I was 21. When my mom was doing chemotherapy, I shaved my head as a gesture of solidarity. I still 'bald' myself on a daily basis, using a disposable razor and the cheapest shaving cream available.

2. My most secret fantasy doesn't involve sex.

3. My not-so-secret fantasies do.

4. In the spring of 2000, I predicted that John McCain would lose to Al Gore in November and that Mr. Gore would literally be my new boss. Instead, Bush stole the election and my Commerce Dept. career vanished faster than Bush's National Guard records.

5. In the absence of literature, I become constipated. My bathroom has it's own library.

6. Coffee is the cornerstone of my nutritional pyramid.

7. I recently obtained my Passport. There are places I want to see and people I want to visit. (See #2 and #3 above)

8. I am quite shy in person but I never experienced stage fright during my long and failed musical 'career'. When I was on-stage, I always knew what I was doing and why I was doing it.
This is not always the case off-stage.

9. I haven't performed in front of a live audience since New Years' Eve, 2001-2

10. I didn't own my first automobile until I was nearly 30 years old.

11. I am not very adept at following rules.

Hmmm...who to tag? Howzabout:

-Angel. She lives in an amusement park and raises dragons.

-Hawkwind_555. Too cool for words. Just number your paper from 1-10 and mail it to me. I'll treasure it forever.

-Invisible. More than meets the eye.

-JP. Queer, bitter and Nebraskan. Makes Omaha interesting.

- Sling. Whenever I hear Dylan's 'Days of '49', I think of Sling. Sling would've been a cool hitch-hiking buddy, back when hitching was possible...1849, I think.

What's Playing?

Things have been more than a little chaotic lately and it continues to be interesting...I've been temporarily cut off from the Intertubes at home so even Blooging is difficult. Bad news following bad news...it's a trying time, but I'm still here and am OK. To those of you who have been with me, listening and sending kindnesses, I thank you all. It does help. It really does.

Despite all the bad news, there are some good things that remain constant, and music is one of those. Here's my much belated playlist from Sunday AM:


Gong (w/ Alan Holdsworth)- Espresso
After Daevid Allen and Steve Hillage quit, Gong continued under drummer Pierre Moerlen's leadership. He recruited Alan Holdsworth and release a couple of percussive jazz fusion records.
I don't like jazz fusion very much, but I do like this album-(Gazeuse). The best thing I can say about Holdsworth's solo albums is that he isn't Al DiMeola. Faint praise.

Funkadelic- Into You
"I can't get into a drug addict principle...I can't get into the neutron bomb"
But I can get into you. If you want me to.

Focus- Sylvia
Let's go Dutch.

Gong- Heaven's Gate
From Gong's 25th anniversary LP...1996? I saw them in Baltimore and was ready to be disappointed by my tired old heroes...such was not the case. Those old fuckers tore the house down. One of the best shows I have ever seen, and I've seen a few. Original Gong drummer Pip Pyle died late last year, but he lived long enough for me to see him play. This show is for Pip!

Loreena McKinnett- Hearts in Space
I want to be a roadie in her band...no...I want to be a groupie. McKinnett just makes it work, ya know? Love at first listen.

New York Gong- Jungle Windo
Daevid Allen's 1979 all-star proto-punk album, one of the most influential records you have never heard. Features Fred Maher, Chris Cutler, Bill Laswell and, of course, saxamaphonist extraordinaire Gary Windo.

Pretty Things- Goodbye/Goin' Downhill
If there was ever an 'under-rated' rock band, it was the Pretty Things. They've been playing on and off for over thirty years- unlike their moss-gathering peers, these guys can still rock hard without a bevy of supporting musicians and an exploding SuperBowl backdrop.

Alan Parsons Project- Breakdown
"When I breakdown just a little and lose my thread, no one can understand the words that I said"
Emerson, Lake and Palmer- New Orleans
The best ELP tracks are the ones you never hear. This instrumental is one of them. It's under three minutes long... a real prog-rock oddity. Carl Palmer is so awesome on this that I forgive him for Asia. Really, Carl, it's alright. We all make mistakes.

Danielle Dax- Tomorrow Never Knows
I have had a burning crush on Danielle Dax since 1985. I still do. She plays with explosives and does really trippy Beatles covers. Dax plays many, many instruments and she has one of those love or hate voices. I love it. Her world turns me on.

Mott The Hoople- Death May Be Your Santa Claus
Another great underrated but influential band. I need to update my Hoople collection.

XTC- Life is Good in The Greenhouse
Despite it all, the song is correct.

Daevid Allen- Time of Your Life
From Banana Moon, this UK single highlights Pip Pyle's manic drumming. RIP.

Brian Eno - Mother Whale Eyeless
I love Eno. I'll buy anything I see his name on, but Taking Tiger Mountain... is a hard act to follow. You can hear his production evolve on this album- listen to this record and then listen to Talking Heads' Fear of Music. Hear that? Dude, that is some good sound.

Gong- Where Have All The Flowers Gone?
To Flower Heaven, where they decorate Pip's drumkit.

Lou Reed- What's Good?
My mother gave me a copy of Magic and Loss while she was dying of cancer. This album may very well be the most profound record that I own. I can't listen to it without risking tears.

Tom Waits- Walkin' Spanish
Tom needs a show of his own. Stay tuned!

Capt. Beefheart- Ashtray Heart
I feel like a glass shrimp...case of the punks, right from the start.

Soft Machine (w/ Daevid Allen)- Memories
From a 1967 demo tape recorded in France...Allen left to form Gong, after which the Soft Machine toured with Hendrix; later, Robert Wyatt drank, fell down and crippled himself. Wyatt's drumming is driven and intense but his voice is beautiful and haunting...the stuff of memories and dreams.

Gong- Tried So Hard
Don't give up. Never surrender.

Steve Hillage - Sea Nature
Steve is THE Gong guitarist. Not bad stringsmanship for a hippy, eh?

Grace Slick/Paul Kantner- Sketches of China
Speaking of hippies, that's the unmistakable sound of Jerry Garcia playing. I actually got a phone call on this song, a listener couldn't believe they were hearing it- "great song" they said. I love it.

Be Bop Deluxe- Japan
Equal time, ya know?
Oh , I'm so in love with my Japan...not. But I do love Bill Nelson.

Golden Palominos- Heaven
Everyone I see is missing something...

No More Lies

Sunday morning my uncle picked me up so that we could drive up to see my grandmother, who is in the hospital. She may never leave it, so it's important that we see her.
My uncle and I used to be fairly close, but that has changed in the nearly two years since I quit drinking. My sobriety has become a wedge between us. His drinking is not the problem- it's my sobriety that's the issue. I come from a family of alcoholics and my sobriety makes the drunks feel uncomfortable.
When he arrives, there are two plastic cups in the cupholders, both full of beer.

"Here", he says," I have one for you."

"Eddie", I reply, "I have quit drinking. It's been almost two years. I almost died."

"Oh. I thought you were just saying that. I didn't think it was true."

Eddie, who arrived at 11 am with Big Gulps of beer, has obviously not given up the booze. As I was clearing the pile of newspapers and trash out of his passenger seat- which hadn't seen a passenger in a very long time- I nearly gagged on the ripe brewery smell coming from him.
I used to drink in the morning too, and I know that if you are having beer for breakfast, it's because you have had beer for dinner and dessert the previous night. Hair of the dog, ya know?
I also know that by the time beer starts sweating out of your pores, you are drunk and have been drunk for a long, long time.

"Ed, why don't you let me drive?"
I have been awake for two days but at least I'm sober.

"I never get drunk. I don't let myself get sloppy." Uh- huh.

I wanted to tell him that I spent five minutes cleaning trash out of his car just so I could squeeze into the side door, and that driving around in a huge pile of stinking garbage is something that many people would consider "sloppy."
I don't say that, though.
He is a drunk and he actually believes his own drunken lies, so arguing is useless.

Instead, we talk about his mother. Eddie is the closest thing to a 'functioning' adult child that my grandma has- I am relieved to hear that she has removed my father as executor of her will and named Eddie. I'm not so happy to learn that Eddie has signed the duties over to his wife, who also drinks for breakfast. She's not with us on this trip- she had 'things' to do- so I can't ask her any questions.
At this point, we aren't sure if there is money for a nursing home even if Grandma survives the next few days. I'm really worried. If she dies...well, that's one thing...if she lives, there may not be anywhere for her to go.

It's not until we reach the interstate that I get concerned for my own safety. Ed keeps his car in the right-hand lane so that when he swerves- which is every few minutes- the car rolls over the 'rumble strips' on the shoulder and not into traffic. I have survived two interstate accidents and I doubt I have enough remaining luck to survive a third, so I start getting a wee bit vocal.

"Eddie, pull off at the next exit and give me your keys."

"But I'm not drunk. I never get drunk."

"Ed, you are drunk right now. You can't keep your car in the lane and we are going to die if you wreck."

"I can't drive because you are talking to me. I can't stand lectures from reformed alcoholics. You people are worse than ex-smokers."

I think that I have given ONE lecture about alcohol in my entire life. It was addressed to my father and it was made in the course of an improvised intervention by me , at my grandmother's request. It sucked the life out of me and accomplished nothing.
It didn't do Dad any good at all, he cleaned up for a couple months and then went right back to the bottle, the filth and the lies.
I know lectures don't work. It's why I don't give them.
But Eddie is hearing lectures from somebody...his alcoholic defensiveness is in high gear.

Halfway there, he runs out of beer and he has to find a gas station where he can buy more. We stop at a 7-11 and he buys a 40 oz bottle of Miller.
I buy a sandwich and a coffee.
We argue about his driving. He gives me two choices: I can walk home or I can shut up and be a passenger. He can drive, he tells me. I give up. There's no point in arguing with a drunk.
Oh, right. Excuse me.
Eddie isn't drunk. He never gets drunk.
Drunks never lie and they never make mistakes. If he can't drive, it's my fault for talking to him.

We finally make it to the hospital and when he exits the car, it looks like Eddie has pissed in his khakis. There's a huge wet stain covering his crotch, ass and legs down to the knees.

"Did you piss yourself?"
Drunks never lie, make mistakes or piss themselves.

"No, I spilled a beer on my lap."
I don't let myself get sloppy.

As we walk the hospital's corridors, looking for room #209, I can smell the beer on him. He's been sitting in a puddle of beer for an hour and he smells awful. People pass in the hallway and wrinkle their noses at us.
Another great moment of family pride.

It's Sunday and there are a few ladies from Church visiting Grandma when we arrive. They look like they've been crying. There's a grey lump on the bed. A handwritten sign identifies the lump as my grandma...tubes are everywhere...the lump moves as we enter, tries to raise a hand, but the tubes are in the way.

Hello. We are here.
I kiss her cheek. Her skin feels like tissue paper, but she wakes up and recognizes me. All I can do is rest my hand on hers, let her know that I am there.

The tiny room fills with the mingled smell of death and stale beer. I will always associate those two smells with each other. Dying and drinking smell the same to me. They are the same to me.

The church ladies are murmuring:
"...her sons both drink, you know..."
"...poor thing, having family like that..."
"...don't they have any shame?..."

One of the ladies starts filling me in- last night, Grandma's heart stopped and they thought she was going to die, her abdomen is full of liquid and it's suffocating her heart and lungs. The drainage is not going as well as hoped and surgery is almost impossible, given her frail health.

None of this is new. My Grandma has been pronounced dead quite a few times over the last 15 years , so I'm trying to stay calm, keep cool. The lady who's giving me the information is not doing so well, though. She breaks into tears halfway through her recital.

I don't even know her name, but she loves my grandmother and that's good enough for me. I want to listen. I need to talk to an adult who cares and who knows my Grandma .
I am very lucky that this woman is here.

We step out into the hall so she can tell me more. She wants to tell me about my father. The police have gotten so tired of responding to my GM's requests to check-up on his whereabouts that they have stopped doing it. I had suspected this was the case, now I know.
One of the officers is a family friend and it was his new wife (whom I have never even met) who finally responded to one of the calls that her husband had been ignoring. She found my dad , he was passed out on the floor of his rental cottage, just where he always is. He's alive but couldn't be bothered to visit his mom. He said he'd be around in a few days- he's at the stage where it takes days to sober up enough just to be 'presentable'.

I tell the lady that I don't want him around, that he will just make it worse. She agrees and starts crying. There is so much compassion in her -where is it coming from?... she tells me about her daughter, her son and their drinking. They drank themselves to death, six months apart.
She has outlived her children. Twice in one year.
Her family is full of drunks who ruin everything...she knows what they do, how they poison the world of the living and now she has to see it happen all over again with my family. Her heart is still broken and it will probably never mend.

Uncle's showing up at the hospital drunk and dripping beer is not helping anything. This might be the last time that he sees his mother and he won't even remember it.

But I will. I will never forget any of this.

The woman asks me who is driving. I have already decided that I will take my uncle's keys away from him if even if I have to beat him, so I'm being quite honest when I tell her that I am driving us both home.

"Good. Your uncle has no business visiting his mother when he has been drinking. We can all tell that he is drunk. Your grandmother has told us the whole story. We have been praying that you don't drink."

That's something she needn't worry about, but I am glad to know that the family 'secret' is out of the bag and that there is at least one person who understands. Alcohol took this woman's children away...no wonder she can't stand to watch my grandma's sons destroy themselves.

"Allan, you are going to have to be the strong one. There is no one else. Your brother is too far away and your dad isn't any use."

Yeah, I know that. It's been tormenting me for a long time. I don't tell her that, though.
Instead, we hug and cry. I don't even know who the tears are for- there are so many people to cry for.

After a minute, we return to the room. My uncle is gone. He has left without saying a word.
I'm certain he's sitting in his car, drinking beer out of a soda cup.
His beer-smell was upsetting my grandma- she has oxygen tubes in her nose, but she can still smell the beer. She's as angry as the morphine will allow.
Her son has driven 150 miles just so he can sit in the parking lot and drink furtively while his mother lies dying, 50 yards away.
Another proud family moment.

For a short period, I am left alone with my grandmother and she manages to ask me if I am OK. She tells me some things, some things that I knew already, but I need to hear them from her own lips before I can accept them as true.
Now I can do that.
She's on life-support and she wants to know if I am OK. She is making sure I know these things, because it might be the last time we speak. There might not be another chance for her to tell me these things.
She wants me to be alright but I don't feel like I will ever be alright again.
I am not OK, but I lie to my grandmother and tell her that I am alright.
I tell her that I am OK.
I decide that this is the last time that I will tell a lie to my grandmother.
I make her a promise that I hope I can keep.

I will never forget any of this.

Pastor Bob arrives after services. His is the voice of reason. He's been a good friend to my small family and he's never sugar-coated his words. If he tells me it is serious, it is serious.

"It's very serious", he says.

He tells me the truth about how things have been for my grandma and for my father. It's exactly as I feared, only worse. My grandma can't help herself- it's against her instincts to tell us the whole truth.
She is a protector who can no longer protect anyone.
All the secrets are out.
There are no children to defend, we are all adults now and at least one of us has to act like we are grown-up.

"Allan, you are going to have to keep yourself together. I am praying for you. Call me anytime. Anytime at all."

I have done nothing to deserve this man's concern, yet he is extending himself to me. The world is full of strangers and near-strangers who are praying for me, who are willing to answer the phone if I need to call...this is too much. I am not worth this.
More tears come. Pastor thinks I am crying because of Grandma, but I'm not. I am crying for myself and my family. I'm crying for the woman who's children killed themselves with drink. I am crying because of what my grandma has been through, but not because she will be gone soon. I am crying because my grandpa never lived to see me sober. I have a long, long list of reasons to cry.
I am weeping now because I am ashamed of my family and I know it's going to get much worse very soon and when it does, I am very likely to find myself alone in whatever struggles arise.

Except I won't be alone.

There are people that love my grandmother so much that they will be there for me when she is gone. I don't deserve that kindness, but I need it. I can't turn my back on that.
I do not deserve any of this love, but it is there and I can't help but cry because it's overwhelming to be this human.
Oh, how easy it is to drink, I think, if I was drunk, I wouldn't be so sad. I'd make other people sad, but drunks do not care about other people, so it wouldn't bother me a bit. It would all be someone else's fault.

I tell Pastor what my grandma told me. He said that she had talked to him about it and that he agrees. I don't need to punish myself for this, he reminds me. It is not my fault. Pastor doesn't tell lies, so I know that he's right. I already knew that, but again, it's something I needed to hear. He knew that, that is why he told me.

I tell Pastor about the promise that I have made.
He tells me never to forget those words.

I won't. I thought about it while I was driving my sleeping uncle's car home.

I will never forget any of this.

Gather

When I got home from this morning's broadcast, there was a message on my answering machine.
That means that someone called between 6:30 and 9:30 in the morning. Bad sign.

It was my grandmother's pastor. My grandmother is not well and she wants to gather the family.
Her youngest son is coming to pick me up in an couple of hours and I hope we return tonight, but I won't know until we get there.
Her oldest son has been missing for weeks, off on the latest in a career of drunken binges, and my dying grandmother is asking me to find him. I can do it, but I'm not sure I can handle what I find.
We are going to have a lot of work to do, and the last thing I need is my soggy, pathetic father fucking everything up with his alcoholic despair and destruction.
I think he's dead and lying on the floor of a rental shack somewhere, and I don't feel like dealing with that either.

Anyway, there's always the chance of another false alarm. There have been several of those already- in 1990, her doctor gave my grannie about a year to live, since her heart,kidneys and lungs were kaput, diabetes and cigarettes being the main culprits.
Earlier this year, my brother used his vacation time to fly home for just such an event.
I imagine he'll be flying home again soon.

It could be a false alarm.

She only had a year left in 1990.

That was seventeen years ago.

Seventeen years.

Time grows short and I must go no. I hope to see you soon.

Marie Gets Involved

Marie was scraping the inside of a catsup bottle with a butter-knife when the police arrived.

Don, Marie's boss, insisted that the waitresses extract as much catsup as humanly possible before disposing of the empty bottles. Food costs. That was Don's mantra. Pay attention to the food costs. Catsup costs money, Don liked to remind his staff. At night, Don insisted that the closing waitress consolidate the condiments before being allowed to clock out. Marie was getting paid $2.13 an hour to salvage hot sauce and catsup while Don pilfered the tip jar. She hated her job.

Marie was attempting to transfer the last globs of dark red ooze from a drained Hienz bottle into a newer one, but the sudden arrival of the police Jeep outside caused her to lose her grip on the knife. It dropped into the empty bottle with a glassy rattling sound.

Don was hurrying to the restaurant's front door, keys in hand, ready to admit the Sheriff and his deputy. His rat-like eyes gleamed with a happy energy that only showed when he was preparing to make someone miserable.
It's the same look he wore on the day that he hired me, thought Marie. Somebody's life is going down the toilet.

With Don distracted, Marie tossed the bottle, knife clanking inside, into a wastebin and covered it with soiled paper napkins. She hated Don, his miserly rules and his condiment obsessions. Throwing his knife away brought her a sense of guilty pleasure; more pleasure than guilt, she admitted to herself.

Why are the cops here? I wonder if Don knows that I threw away two forks and a chipped coffee mug last night?
She had a brief but vivid image of herself out at the County Landfill, looking through endless piles of frozen refuse for Don's forks while the Sheriff and his men watched, shotguns poised. Brrr.

"Gentlemen", said Don to the jacketed officers, opening the door. Cold air pushed into the eatery's vestibule as they entered. The Sheriff, a thin man with a squarish head two sizes too large for his body, merely nodded. The shorter, fatter deputy tried to look important, but his eternally youthful babyface didn't reflect authority. Deputy Hogue, who was 35 years old , was accustomed to being asked for ID if out of uniform when purchasing beer, cigarettes and pornography; his three passions in life. Beer and Camels keep me young, he was fond of saying. He never talked about the porn.

Sheriff Clatterbuck carefully adjusted his belt, ran his fingers over his holstered gun. He removed his wide-brimmed winter hat and looked at it, then put it back on his head.

Urgency was not Sheriff Clatterbuck's strong suit.

"What's the trouble, Don?", he eventually asked.

Don giddily rubbed his soft pudgy hands together.

"Well, gentlemen", he started, pausing for effect, "I have done your work for you. I have foiled a narcotics operation in progress"

Sheriff Clatterbuck didn't react. Deputy Hogue, taking his cue from Clatterbuck's stoicism, did nothing. He was thinking of his new VCR and the pile of adult tapes that came with it.

Marie wiped catsup off her fingers and feigned unawareness.

"Let's hear it", the Sheriff finally responded. He didn't much care for Don. Don was the only restaurateur in town that charged the police full price for coffee. Don's 911 calls were never emergencies and were seldom treated as such.

"Yes. Well. It's seems that one of my employees is a criminal mastermind. A major player in the drug game. A big wheel direct from the mean streets of Chicago."

Clatterbuck shifted his belt again.

Hogue rolled his eyes. Mean streets? Don was an idiot, he concluded.

"I have the contraband to prove it," continued Don."It's in the back. Follow me, please."

Employee? Big wheel? Chicago?, wondered Marie. Was Don talking about Brad, the 19 year-old salad boy/dishwasher? Brad was from Chicago. The poor kid had broken his ankle earlier that evening and fainted from the pain. He had been taken to the ski resort's clinic, which specialized in leg and ankle injuries. Marie generously estimated Brad's IQ to be in the high 80's, making him an unlikely candidate for a criminal mastermind.

She sneaked over to the kitchen's doorway and watched as Don led the two policemen through the darkened kitchen's greasy yellow twilight and into the stockroom that doubled as the employee break area.

She heard the sound of a metal locker being opened.

Her heart skipped. There were three Valium in her purse that she had received from another waitress as barter for switching shifts. Had Don raided her locker? She needed her coat and bag anyway, so she strolled casually down the short hallway, pretending she hadn't seen the Sheriff arrive.

In the stockroom, Don had one of the lockers opened. He was gleefully pointing inside.

"Here, gentlemen, is the contraband."

The officers peered into the locker, then looked at each other. The Sheriff shrugged. The deputy reached in and retrieved a Zip-Loc freezer bag full of marijuana.

On TV they put on gloves before they touch the evidence, mused Marie, watching unnoticed from the hallway. Life is pretty much not like it is on TV, she considered, not for the first time.

Hogue looked at the Sheriff.

"It's just a bag of weed, boss. Half pound, maybe. Looks like good stuff."

"Hmmm...go out to the Jeep and get the kit."
Hogue turned to exit the room and Marie reflexively ducked into the dishwasher station, out of sight.

Sheriff Clatterbuck looked at the pot and sighed in resignation. This meant paperwork. Might as well take advantage of the late hour. If he bided his time and took a number of unnecessary steps, he could turn in some overtime. Turning the stockroom into a crime scene would add a few extra hours to next Friday's check.

Hogue returned momentarily, carrying a grimy dufflebag bearing the County seal. Marie snuck back to the hall and observed as he rummaged inside the sack and produced an ancient-looking Polaroid camera, checked it for film.

Flash!

He took a snapshot of the crime scene, pulled the film out and waved it around in a futile attempt to help it dry.

"This", explained Don, pointing to the dope, "is the property of Brad Bradley, who is currently a guest at the Resort Clinic. These drugs will never destroy America. I have intercepted the shipment."

Sheriff Clatterbuck removed his hat and scrutinized the rounded felt interior. There was a dark gray ring around the headband, he noted. Perhaps he would buy a new hat next winter.

"Don, can we sit down? I need to get your statement."

"Certainly, Sheriff. We can sit at the bar. Coffee is on the house tonight."

"Great."

Marie slid into the dishroom as the trio of crime-stoppers returned to the dining room.

After they passed, she entered the stockroom and nervously opened her own locker. Her purse and coat were just as she had left them. She pulled the Navy blue peacoat on and tucked the leather bag under her arm.

That poor kid, she muttered, thinking of Brad. First he breaks his ankle, now this.

She looked at Brad's open locker. The bright green marijuana was still there.

Nice buds, she noted.

Marie glanced around her. She was alone.

She grabbed the dope and slipped it under her coat and walked towards the rear exit. As an afterthought, she picked up a heavy cardboard case of 20 oz. catsup bottles and carried it outside with her.

She set the box on the ground behind the building and lifted the metal lid of the restaurant's dumpster.

With some effort, she hoisted the case of catsup up and tossed it over the rim and into the filthy blue container. She could feel Don's food costs rising as the carton bounced on the refuse and clanged against the cold metal dumpster's side.

Catsup costs money.

I quit, thought Marie.

But she had only begun.


------------------------------------
(This is the third part of a series)
Chapter One.
Chapter Two.

Talk Is Good

My grandmother loves to talk. She used to follow you out to your car and lean in the window and tell you the story about how she and Granpa had a picnic outside the Bean Factory or inform you that the bus used to cost a nickel each way.

She's been on oxygen for several years, so she doesn't walk to the car anymore. There's a lot she can't do now, like take care of herself on a daily basis. She's 87 and still alert, but the flesh is weak.
My dad, who has been living off his mother since I was born, is supposed to be taking care of her, but he's disappeared again, so she's been alone for several weeks except for visits from my cousin and some friends from her church.

She's been feeling badly for a long time, but I talked to her just a few days ago and her only concern was for about her missing son- she didn't mention that the house had fallen into ruin and that she had tripped over her oxygen hose and fallen and hurt herself or that she hadn't passed for two weeks.

I found that stuff out last night when my cousin called to tell me that she was in the hospital, she'd started vomiting and was in severe pain. He had found her, sick, alone and injured in a filthy house and she hadn't even called for help. On the phone she said she was fine, but she wasn't.

I called her tonight. I asked her what the situation was.
She informed me that there was a tube in her nose and that her stomach was being pumped.
She has a blockage and there is stuff in her that needs to come out, and if it won't come out one end, it'll have to come out of the other.
If the stuff gets out, the tubes and drugs might clear her system.
I haven't talked to her doctor, but I gather that she has probably got a severe internal infection of a nasty sort.
We will know more after they finish pumping her, she said.
Then she gave me a detailed rundown on every invasive procedure she'd endured over the last day.
Tubes in here, tubes in there; food through a tube , water via tube.
She was getting aggravated by tubes.
But if the tubes work, she won't have to have surgery. Surgery is the second most dangerous thing. The most risky action would be to not have it.

She told me all of this while she was getting her stomach pumped. I've had my stomach pumped before and all I could do was make gargling noises that sounded like: "please kill me now."
My grandmother is tougher than that.

She likes to talk.
She can tell stories with a tube in her gullet.
She's determined to talk and that's a good thing because the last thing she said was to tell me that I shouldn't worry so much , that everything was going to be alright.

My grandma wouldn't lie to me.

Respect My Disbelief

I didn't know it at the time, but in the months preceding my forced hospitalization I did make a few half-hearted and ultimately doomed attempts to "get help" for my drinking.

Jenny was one of those attempts. Jenny was a girl that I worked with during my on-again/off-again temp assignments at Bank of Generica. She was slender and bookish, keeping her long auburn hair in an unfashionable bun and wearing unflattering, baggy clothing with minimal cosmetics.

She looked like the kind of girl who would play Dungeons and Dragons with you- the sort of chick who would allocate more points for her character's Intelligence than for Strength or Charisma.

She wore librarian glasses and sensible shoes.

To me, she was hot. She was real, and it made her the most attractive woman in our department, so I was delighted when she approached me as we were leaving a meeting.

"Do I know you from somewhere? You look very familiar- have we met?", she asked.

For a drunk, this is a tough question to answer. Drunks have bad memories and worse behavior. If she 'knew me from somewhere', it was probably from me being drunk and hitting on her in some stinky-ass rock club.
Perhaps I had sold cocaine to her?
Hmmm...I like this woman. Did I know her?
I wanted to.

"I don't know...are you into the local music scene?"

Maybe she had seen me at a radio-sponsored event. Perhaps she'd even seen me play guitar or bass on-stage!
That would be cool...but the look she gave me indicated that she wasn't aware that there was such a thing as a 'music scene'.

"No...that wouldn't be it. Have I seen you at church?"

"Uh...no, I don't think so."

Church? When was the last time I went to church? I have never attended church in my adult life. I'm sure she hadn't seen me in church.

"Well, it's from somewhere...I feel like I know you..."

She likes me, I thought, but work intervened before I could follow up.

A few days later, we were working together and she picked up our truncated conversation.

"I think I did see you at church."

She named a church. Sure enough, I used to attend AA meetings there when I was on probation, but I didn't want to tell her that.

"Oh, yeah...I have, uh, been there before. It's been a long time, though."

Jenny smiled and said she was glad she figured that out- she'd been thinking about me for several days, it seems. That turned me on. She likes me, tra la la...

We worked together quite well, Jenny was smart and funny and our tedious tasks were not so bad when we did them together- over the course of our talks, I learned that she was into Jazz Dance and liked to write fiction. Cool.

She rarely drank and she didn't do drugs.

I did both daily, but I didn't tell her that.

I didn't want to keep doing those things, I just didn't have a reason to stop. I didn't even know that I wanted to quit- all I knew is that my head was full of really bad ideas and I was desperate for something...but what?

One of my really bad ideas involved Jenny.

I thought that if I could get Jenny to date me, I would find the strength to quit. I would get my courage from her, not from a bottle.
For a woman like Jenny, I believed, I could do anything- including quitting booze.
I hadn't had a significant relationship for years, and the women I did know were at least as drunk and fucked-up as me. Eightballs and benders...I didn't 'date', I binged.

One time, my girlfriend stole all my dope and then tried to sic her half-wolf/half-Shepherd hybrid on me when I demanded the return of my drugs, which she had already sold and shot.
I was the one who usually fed the poor dog-beast, it liked me a lot so it just sat and whined while we fought, but the whole scene was fairly indicative of my success in relationships.

Hey man, can I crash on your couch for awhile?

Why?

My girlfriend threw me out. She tried to attack me with a wolf.

What would happen if I dated a a girl who didn't have a coke dealer on speed dial or a wolf in the backyard?
Maybe if I dated a 'straight' woman, I'd get clean- that was my hope. At least in hindsight, I think that was part of what I was looking for- Jenny was much too bright to date a fuck-up, so I thought maybe she could magically "fix" me just by sleeping with me on a fairly regular interval and doing whatever else it is that people do when they aren't fucking or getting wasted.

That was a false and wholly unfair hope if there ever was one, not to mention a completely ass-backward approach...definitely not a moment of clarity or reason for me. I had completely bottomed-out and didn't even know it.

But the bad idea seemed like a good one at the time.

Of course, first I had to get her to go out with me.

This was really easy to do. A friend of mine was playing at a local Jazz club and I had free admission. When I asked Jenny if she'd like to go, she readily accepted.
She'd been waiting for me to ask. So we went.

We had dinner in the club's quiet dining room- when the waitress cleared our plates, I noticed that I had three empty beer bottles and two shot glasses on my side of the table.

Jenny had consumed about one-third of a glass of wine.
Jenny was aware of this disparity.

"Look, I need to ask you something and you might not like hearing it", she leaned towards me.

"OK."

"How can you be a Seeker if you drink so much? How can you find anything in that condition?"

A Seeker? What is that?

"Um...what's a 'Seeker'?"

"A Seeker of Christ. Of the Truth. I thought that's what you were."

"Uh...well...honestly, I'm not religious..."

Oh no. I can't have this talk right now, I thought. I have too much liquor in me to be tactful and I'm not drunk enough to tell lies. Why is it assumed that I am a Christian? We've never even discussed religion before.

I raised my arm- another beer and a shot over here, please.
I am not ready for this.

"You do believe in God, though. Right? Don't you?"

Make that shot a double!

"Ah...no. I don't."

"What? How can you not believe in God?"

"I just don't...I'm an atheist...or maybe an agnostic. I dunno. I haven't really thought about it much."

This was true and it still is- except for the thinking part. After that night, it occurred to me that I might stand to benefit from giving religion some thought. I figured I 'd better learn enough about it so that the next time a woman asked me if I was a 'Seeker', I'd be able to give the answer that got me laid.

That's how I saw religion. As a tool to be used to coerce others into doing something that they might not otherwise do. A means to power.
Sure, I'll pretend to be a Christian if it means getting laid. Or a raise. Or elected.
Or at least I used to think that way.

After sober reflection, I have no faith that any 'God' exists, but I do believe that using religion as a tool for manipulating people is inherently wrong. It's how wars get started and it's a pretty shoddy foundation for a healthy relationship.

The truth is, I don't really care if there is or isn't a 'God'. It doesn't much matter to me.
I can change myself , but I can't change God. Can I ? Would I even want to?

The beliefs of other's shouldn't be cause for killing.

Does this exchange make sense?:

"Why do we hate them?"

"They worship in an improper fashion."

"How do we know that?"

"Our Book About God tells us that."

"And that is worth killing for?"

"Yes."

"But our God tells us not to kill."

"Die, infidel, die."

It doesn't make sense to me, but it happens every day.

When I was dying, coughing up my shredded guts onto the cold white ER floor, I didn't pray.
I didn't think about God at all. I wanted to live. I was afraid of dying, but not of judgement.
I was bleeding to death and I needed surgery.
God wasn't a part of the decision to go to hospital instead of letting the darkness fall.
Pain was. Fear was. God was not.

Who will feed my cats? I remember thinking about that, but I don't recall saying any prayers .
I remember wanting an ice cube really, really, badly and suddenly feeling quite cold.
No praying.
Whomever said: "there are no atheists in foxholes " was wrong.
I've been in a foxhole of sorts and I didn't convert.

But that was to be in the future.

In the past, I am still talking to Jenny.

All I needed to do was to lie to her and say I believed- and I would have been in her bed, making her cry "Sweet Jesus and Amen, Hally -Yoo-Ha!" all-night long...all I had to do was lie...but I didn't. Looking back, I'm glad I didn't.

"How", she asked, "is it possible to not believe in God? How can you even live like that?"

"Jenny, I really just don't know. I guess I just muddle along. I never really give it much thought."

Jenny was a bit stunned by my revelation.

"You haven't thought about it much? That's not possible."

Maybe I should have lied. She didn't believe the truth. Maybe I should have asked what particular faith she was...not that I much cared. She wasn't a puritan or a tee-totaler, I knew that much.

"Uh...it just doesn't come up much."

This was true, but it wasn't well received by Jenny, who was Seeking Truth.

Jenny took a long sip of her wine and stared at me. She looked stricken. She glanced down at her wine. I thought she was going to gulp the rest of it but she set it down, pushed it aside.

I thought, she's ready to leave and the band hasn't even started yet.
I'm not getting any tonight.

"I respect your beliefs."

That's what she said.

"I respect your beliefs."

It was a concluding statement but I was too drunk to let it go. Mistakes were made.

"You can't respect my beliefs. I don't have any beliefs.
I know things or I don't.
Things are or they aren't.
Whether I believe or not doesn't change reality, so I choose not to believe in anything."

Of course, I was too much of an asshole to keep that belief to myself.

"Are you sober enough to drive me home or do I need to call a cab?"

"I believe that I can drive."

"Liar."

Ooops

I'll finish that one soon.

All Day

Work is slow.

I am thinking.

To Be Continued

I took the day off to attend to some personal business.

First, I took a cue from my long-time blogpal Sling and used my Blooger skills to set up a 'sample' blog that the radio station could use as a newsletter/forum, thus keeping our internal politics off-the-air and off our public website; things that have been a problem for us lately.

Then I spent a long time talking with my grandmother concerning my father's whereabouts- he's been MIA (Missing In Alcohol) for a couple of months now. He had almost 90 days of sobriety but he chose to go back to the bottle.

His last words to his mother:"Say goodbye to the cat for me."

So I did a little sleuthing. Don't ask me how.

I found that Dad's bank and credit card activity ends abruptly on May 7th. This activity is how I used to track him down- back when I still cared enough to bother- it's possible that he figured out that he can be tracked via his plastic and has switched to all-cash, but I think that's unlikely.

The most likely scenario is that he's been dead since May 7th. Or 8th.

It must seem awful cold of me to be able to write about it like that, but that's the way is with alcoholics. I have tried to help him, but he has made his choices and he'll die with them.

I've made my choices too.
My choices are not his choices.
I intend on living with mine.

Anyway, I expect the shit will hit the fan very soon. There's already a considerable amount of fecal turbulence in my neighborhood, so if I'm not around much, don't be alarmed. I'm doing what's needed and I'll be back soon.

Then again, I could post again in an hour.

I honestly don't know what's going to happen, I only know what's NOT going to happen.

-I am NOT going on a wild-goose intervention chase for my AWOL parent.

-I am NOT going to stop playing music, alone or on the radio.

-I am NOT going to quit writing.

-I am NOT going to take a drink.

Not giving in,
Allan

My Head Is My Only House Unless It Rains

A double-shot of programs this weekend.
First, Songs From The Big Hair, our weekly 1980's show. This week I was training JY, a new volunteer. She has previous DJ experience and picked up our system easily; it was nice having another person in the booth.
DJing is sort of a lonely job, y'know? Like being a lighthouse keeper or something.



SONGS FROM THE BIG HAIR

Replacements- Go
12" vinyl on 45rpm. Hi-Fidelity! Go! Go! Oh, wait...later for them.

Danielle Dax- Big Hollow Man
I call my program 'The New Breakfast Snob' in honor of Michael Hawkesworth, the original Breakfast Snob. Mike had an all-nighter show on Park City, Utah's NPR station. He let me hang out while he played weird art rock and experimental punk. Among other things, he turned me onto Danielle Dax . Mike and I once played live on his station, doing a Residents-style Casio, feedback and poetry jam...Mike, this one's for you.

God will provide the way You read about it every day -I'm tellin' ya All you gotta do is pray And furnish His house with silver

X- Poor Girl
So, like, if you call me with a serious problem and you ask me to help you, I will.
And I won't take it lightly. But don't talk to me when you are drunk, because being drunk is your problem.
You should know better.

Lou Reed- Don't Talk to me About Work
This is another sore subject.

George Clinton- Tweakin'
Chuck D joins George C for some serious slammin'.
Hookin' into the extra input...

Oingo Boingo- No Spill Blood
Who makes the rules? Someone else!
This is Danny Elfman's old band. Great arrangements and lyrics...now go watch The Forbidden Zone.

The Kinks - Add it Up
So I have done the math, see? And it doesn't add up.
It never does.
I can triple-check it, but it won't help. The error is caused by a constant variable and it all adds up to nothing.

The Stranglers- Ice Queen
I was never sure of the accurate score...and so it goes.

The Damned - Grimly Fiendish
Yep.

The Soft Boys- I Got the Hots for You

Well, yeah, whatever. *yawn* So what else is new?

Meat Puppets- Meat Puppets
It's amazing that the Meat Puppets were allowed to record a second album. Their first one is almost unlistenable.
Their second LP is a modern Lo-Fi classic.
This is from the first album.

Snakefinger- The Model
Former Residents guitarist Snakefinger does a great cover of a Kraftwerk orange.


Lizzy Mercier Descloux - Wawa
Antena - Easy Street
Pet Shop Boys - West End Girls
New Order - Thieves Like Us

I let JY fly solo for a couple cycles while I listened in another room, filling out her evaluation. Before she went on she asked :"Is 'West End Girls' too Top 40?"
I didn't want to admit that I had no idea what a 'Pet Shop Boy' sounds like, so I said, sure, play it.
Now I remember...aaargh...yeah, it is too Top 40.
Nevertheless, I gave her high marks in every category because she earned them- welcome to the station, JY!

Chameleons - Up the Down Escalator
The Go Go's - We Got The Beat
Psychedelic Furs -Sleep Comes Down
Cowboy Junkies - Sweet Jane

JY's second set- The Furs reminds me of...well, nevermind. It's a fond memory.
Whim enjoyed the Chameleons, which I second...thanks for tuning in!

Crack the Sky-All the Things We Do
Am I the only living Crack the Sky fan? These guys were great- they used to play around Baltimore when I was a teen. Terrific band, but I think there were problems-nevertheless , John Palumbo rocks! Meat guitar played with a scalpel, not a cleaver.

Pere Ubu- Bus Called Happiness
It passes without stopping, splashing mud on my trousers as it roars past.
I hear the laughter of aquatic mammals. They are laughing at me.

XTC- Poor Skeleton Steps Out
Joey D. Viver!

Nena- 99 Red Balloons
This song is about nuclear annihilation. Let's take it one step further- how about we divide the world's nukes into two equal piles and place one pile at the North Pole and one at the South Pole?
Bam! The polar icecaps become a gigantic cloud of cleansing radioactive steam! All of humanity's problems are solved in an instant.

Elvis Costello- Poisoned Rose
Dude.

Cocteau Twins- Violane
Years ago , one of my female friends asked me why I liked this CD, they told me that straight punk dudes weren't supposed to like the CT's.
But this CD sounds so good it's impossible for me to dislike. Production...how did you get that sound? I bought my first set of condenser microphones after hearing this record.
That's why I like it.

Talking Heads- Once in A Lifetime
Same as it ever was...


( For deep delving into the video vaults of the 1980's go directly here: the Eighties)
-------------------------------------------

The following morning found me back on-the-air, this time it's my weekly show:
THE NEW BREAKFAST SNOB

Steeleye Span- Blackleg Miner
Feeling like some Celtic beats this morning, this is a recent acquisition and it sets me up nicely.

Fairport Convention- The Way I Feel
This version of the Gordon Lightfoot song is wonderful. The way I feel is not.

Maire Brennan- Beating Heart
Does she mean 'beating heart' as in 'beating a baby seal to death with a baseball bat?'
I don't think so, but that's what I hear anyway.

Claanad- The Other Side
Maire Brennan is the lead singer for this group, which has several members with the surname Brennan. Like a family or something...more great production.

Pentangle - The Hunting Song
"Whoever said, 'the heart is a lonely hunter' should have their head stuffed and mounted above my mantelpiece."
-AB

Velvet Underground- Sunday Morning
Yes it is. This song, like the one before it, features bells. Bells trail off, bells lead in; it's an epic cross-fade.
A beautiful moment of transcendental DJ bliss. I wish someone else had heard it.

Damien Dempsey- The Jar Song
Damien Dempsey sings about getting drunk with the likes of Shane MacGowan...have one for me , boys!

The Kinks - Mr. Pleasant
Last week's listener request, filled too late- which sort of fits with the theme of the song...

Sweetwater- Crystal Spider
Look. I like trippy 60's bands with chick singers. I just do. OK? Sheesh...

The Pretty Things - October 26
If I wanted to/could I depend on you/...my friend?
And the guitar sadly shakes it's head and walks away.

Loreena McKennitt- Caravanserai
I want to be a Druid. Really, that's how good this is.

Tom Waits- Shake
If you bastards don't behave, Tom is gonna show up at your door with a gun totin' preacher, a pair of knife-wielding hookers and a wagon-full of hot tubes. Enough!

Eleanor McCovey- Whisper and Prayer
Haven't I heard this somewhere before? It all sounds familiar.

The Wipers- No One Wants an Alien
Yeah. I know that. I really do.

Jade Warrior- Three Horned Dragon King
This record has an op-art pinwheel on the label instead of a song list. When it spins, you get dizzy if you look at it. Groovy.

The Alan Parsons Project- The Raven
I feel a strong affinity with E. Allan Poe and I love Alan Parsons' production.
I should do an 'all-Allan' show one day...oh, nevermind. I did that last year.

The Stranglers- The Raven
I LOVE the Stranglers. A lot. Angry keypunk! And that bass has serious growls, like a hungry Tyrannosaurus, y'hear that?

King Crimson- Model Man
Look for the signs/ look for the symptoms...
Not a model man/not a saviour or a saint/imperfect in a word/make no mistake
but I/give you everything I have/ take me as I am ...

Dude.That and two bucks will get you a cup of coffee.

The Who - Faith in Something Bigger
Inside ourselves.

Motorhead- I Don't Believe a Word
Neither do I. I want to believe, but I don't. Sorry.

Robyn Hitchcock- Midnight Fish
This album is on opaque white vinyl. That makes it very difficult to see the groovy decay between the songs...it's a good thing that I'm an expert, otherwise playing this could be dangerous.

Television- Prove It
Or not. I already knew that.

Cop Shoot Cop - Two at a Time
Using up your lucky days two at a time...

Neil Young- Welfare Mothers
I really wanted to play this on Mother's Day- my mom had a wicked sense of humour and would have approved- she gave me this album!- but I decided to wait until today.
Neil shoulda got an award for bein' so gentle and extra-sensitive...dee- vorrrr-ceeee...

Be Bop Deluxe- Panic in the World
The more things change, the more they don't.

Capt. Beefheart- Crazy Little Thing
How'd ya get a name like Crazy Little Thing? Maybe it was the name that drove you crazy all along

Pere Ubu- Nobody Knows
Sure they do. They just don't care.

Jethro Tull- Teacher
Ah, there's slight problem with your term paper. You see, I Googled your subject- Franco's rebellion- and it appears that you just printed an entire article from Wikipedia.
Leaving the URL at the bottom of the printed page was a dead giveaway.
Still, I'm giving you a C-minus just so I don't have to look at your stupid face next year.

Don't Join The Baby Seal Club

I think I have undergone a cuddly, Kafkaesque transformation. Unlike Gregor Samsa in Kafka's famous The Metamorphosis, I do not wake up and find that I have become a vile giant insect. I wake and am somewhat slow in realizing that I have changed into a precious Baby Seal.

Goddamn, but I am a cute bastard, I think as I look into the mirror. And it is true, for I am adorable. I'm a baby motherfuckin' seal!

Hello Mr. Bus Driver!

Hello My Favorite Passenger!

The driver grins and lowers the wheelchair access ramp for me so I can waddle aboard.
A disembarking gentleman gently lifts me into one of the front seats before stepping off onto the sidewalk. He waves goodbye.
I make a squeaking sound, pleased.

The entire bus erupts in cheers and applause, two dozen beaming smiles light the vehicle's interior with a warmth that would make roses bloom. I resist the urge to take a bow, a prudent caution given that I have no legs or waist with which to bow.

Instead, I wiggle my flippers in happy reply.

They love me, I think.

I love them back. It's a special feeling on the bus. This is the bus to happiness and I am it's happiest passenger.
We are riding on paradise and I'm the only one who knows it.
It shouldn't be a secret.
Who should I tell?
I tell everyone I see, and they all concur.
Some of the people even give me sardines.
Life is good. You don't have to be a baby seal to know that.

At lunchtime, I try to tell this to the Fur Trappers.
Using mallets, they bludgeon me to the edge of extinction.
Crimson stains blossom on my snow-white coat.

I escape their nets and somehow manage to make it back to my lodgings.
On my porch, someone has left a bucket of herring guts decorated with a ribbon. I nourish myself with this gift and my wounds quickly mend, my fur regains it's unsullied fuzzy whiteness.

Ahhh...

And that's how it's been the last two days. Everyone I meet either wants to cuddle and feed me or they want to beat me with blunt objects and flay me alive. That's how people react to baby seals. Cuddle or destroy. Compassion or cruelty.
There are no minor events, only the grandest of celebrations and the starkest of tragedies.

Ahhh...*ahem*

Dude. Don't you think that just maybe you are getting a bit worked up over a few bills and petty aggravations? Why don't you change back into a human and start over, and try making sense this time, eh?

Um. Ok.

Well, yesterday sucked. But I can't go into that here because it involves 150 other people.

So...good news!

Today I finally got my raise! It's only a few cents an hour, but it's retroactive to the beginning of the year- I am suddenly two hundred dollars ahead!

When I got home, my mailbox was jammed with bills. First I open my power bill.

Good news! The power company has issued me a credit for nearly $175! I had been over-charged last summer, something I thought was a lost cause, but someone must have filed a class action or something...I dunno, all I know is I won't have a power bill for months!

Hot Buttery Damn! How often do you open the power bill and do a Snoopy Dance?
First, a retroactive raise and then a credit from the Electric. Now I'm $375 ahead!

Keep on rollin'...

The cable bill is exactly what it should be. The last one.
I have canceled my cable and decided to save the money for better things: fifty bucks a month = $600 a year. That's airfare to London, that's what.

This makes me pause and think of other good news- today I got confirmation from the State Department that I will have my Passport within three weeks. Application approved! Anyway...

That leaves the phone bill, which is always the same.

Except it's not. It's $375 more than it should be. I have let my guard down and Verizon has shafted me to the tune of ninety cents a minute- for 400+ minutes! After sifting through the gobbledegook, I find that next month my DSL goes up from $15 to $40. Injury! Insult!


Screw that. I had to work my ass off to get that $15 price- years ago, Verizon had tacked me with $400 of long-distance that I contested-and won.
After they cleared my account , I was so mad I told them to cancel me, I was switching. To appease me and keep me on-board, they offered me ultra-cheap DSL and a cheap long-distance plan that was subject to change.
Frickin' fine print. Damn me for missing it.

I called the competition and got my services switched- at about half the price. The slight increase in my new DSL is offset by the savings on the phone, so I feel pretty good about it- I'll save about twenty bucks a month...

Hmmm...for twenty bucks extra, the new company will add digital cable w/ a year of HBO.

Sold!

Dude. So after all that kvetching and gnashing, you are basically even, money-wise, as well as being a few steps closer to travel? Things have evened out and as a bonus you also get cable TV again . Is that what you mean? Is it?

Uh...yeah. I guess it is. Balance is maintained and all that. Harmony, y'know?

So have you learned anything from this?

Um...it's better to act like a man than to feel like a seal?

Welcome to the world. Have a sardine.

Selling Jack

I recently inherited a new PC at work- one that runs on an 'operating system' known as 'electricity' . The old one used a system of springs, gears and wires and was 'booted-up' by turning a hand-crank for several tedious minutes each morning. This is how automobiles were started back in my childhood years, but shouldn't something as futuristic as a computer have an internal, electronic 'ignition' mechanism?
Like a button you could press or something?

Here is how a car was started back in my day, except instead of a smiling maiden doing the cranking, it would be me; standing barefoot in cold, ankle-deep mud:

Look at the date: Sept. 1911. By 1911 , advertisers were already using sex to sell cars - a technique apparently discovered before the invention of the automobile battery and 'hot-wiring'.
There is nothing accidental in the erotic composition of this picture, but please don't make me explain it.
I'm already distracted enough.

Check out what Crank Babe is wearing- in 1911 America had some really bizarre standards of dress for women- a repressive puritanical desire to cover everything.
Not unlike current Islamic standards, really:



Hmm...a little ankle , but no sash to emphasize the waist and I like the white gloves on the American lass better...
I have a crush on the model from that ad. I wonder what she's doing today?
Here she is in another ad.
This 1911 advertisement starts off by insulting the reader:

"Are You Lazy ?" it screams at them in the text.

If that ad were produced today , it wouldn't ask that question. It wouldn't have to.

Today, we are all lazy and we all know it, so why should we waste what little energy we have answering rhetorical questions?

Today the text would promise to help you lose weight or to overcome depression.
It would sell.

Again, there's nothing accidental in this picture.

Them Bones

Tying Lois

In the 1960's and 70's DC Comics published a seemingly endless number of spin-off comics featuring nearly all of Superman's friends and 'family'- Jimmy Olsen, Supergirl, Krypto the Superdog, Superboy and even Supertramp.

Superman fought Muhammed Ali. Supes lost in a repeat of the Great White Hope fiasco...I think space aliens intervened to make it a fair fight. Anyone got a copy?

Anyway, the longest running one was Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane. It was the book that Superman editor Mort Weisinger would assign to writers and artists he was miffed at. It was intended as a sort of punishment, but some of the writers may have enjoyed themselves, perhaps too much.

One has to wonder at the 'creative process' behind this cover. In the illustration, Superman's two rival 'girlfriends ' have grown tired of Superman's unwillingness to commit and decided to put themselves in suspended animation for 5,000 years to punish him. The note at the foot of their iceboxes reads:

"Goodbye Superman! We're tired of waiting for you to propose. When we wake up in the future , you'll be DEAD, DEAD, DEAD! Lois and Lana

That's a pretty hateful goodbye letter. Vicious and frigid.

I must admit that I'm appalled at Supe's reaction to this. He's agonizing over what to do when what he should be saying is:
"Thank God the two most fucked-up bitch-persons I know have removed themselves from my life for 5,000 years. I'm freakin' Superman- I should be able to find a girlfriend that isn't completely insane. "

Instead he's acting like a SuperWuss.




After Julie Schwartz took over as editor he tried really hard to boost sales. Lois Lane was tied-up and threatened with all sorts of bizarre defilements every thirty days. I'm not sure exactly who these comics were being marketed to and apparently neither was DC Comics; eventually they stopped publishing Lois Lane, but not before she got into some pretty interesting binds.


These covers
are fairly blatant examples of fetish art, yet they were approved by the puritanical
Comics Code Authority,
which once refused to 'approve' an issue of Amazing Spider-Man because it featured drug use.
In the story , a druggie got high and flipped out and Spidey had to save him from leaping to his acid-induced death, so it wasn't exactly a pro-drug story, but the mere mention of dope, even in a negative sense was considered to be unsuitable for children.
Marvel Comics ( with Stan Lee calling the shots) published it anyway, without the CCA seal of approval. This was very controversial at the time and some newsstand distributors wouldn't carry it but I have always been grateful to Stan Lee for having the balls to tell the CCA to get lost , helping pave the way for the 'Non-Code'
"mature readers'' books that came later.



Lois should be grateful that Superman never seemed into getting down with her. As writer Larry Niven points out in his essay Man of Steel , Woman of Kleenex:

... Superman's sex problems are strictly physiological, and quite real....Assume a mating between Superman and a human woman designated LL for convenience.

The problem is this. Electroencephalograms taken of men and women during sexual intercourse show that orgasm resembles "a kind of pleasurable epileptic attack." One loses control over one's muscles.

Superman has been known to leave his fingerprints in steel and in hardened concrete, accidentally. What would he do to the woman in his arms during what amounts to an epileptic fit?

Lastly, he'd blow off the top of her head.

Ejaculation of semen is entirely involuntary in the human male, and in all other forms of terrestrial life. It would be unreasonable to assume otherwise for a kryptonian. But with kryptonian muscles behind it, Kal-El's semen would emerge with the muzzle velocity of a machine gun bullet. (*One can imagine that the Kent home in Smallville was riddled with holes during Superboy's puberty. And why did Lana Lang never notice that?*)

I wonder if this is why they don't show 'Smallville' on my local cable?

*****************
Covers found here.

One Down

"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.' "
-Jerry Falwell on 9/11

With Falwell gone, who will protect us from Tinky Winky's
Big Gay Illuminati and their insidious Man-Purse Agenda?

I can honestly say that I am glad the man is dead. He has been waging a campaign against human rights since 1973, when the Supreme Court of the United States had the temerity to give women sovereign rights over their own bodies in Roe v. Wade, outraging a young Falwell with their decision.

Calling feminism a "satanic" movement, in 1979 he founded the ultra-right wing fundamentalist lobbying cartel, the so-called 'Moral Majority', whose main goal was the destruction of the walls between Church and State, the ultimate target being an American Christian Church/State- the sort of New Rome that attracts apocalyptic nut jobs who think it's OK to attack abortion clinics and shoot doctors while simultaneously ranting about the Islamo-Terrorists
that we need to be protected from- at the price of our civil liberties.
Unless you were gay or female. Then you weren't supposed to have any civil liberties in the first place.
His vision was one of a Christian America that would assert itself in a global struggle with the 'rising tide of evil' in the growing Muslim world.

The sort of Nationalistic Christian America that would return to the days of the Holy Crusades, using it's military might to spread it's ideology outside it's own borders, while using the so-called 'word of God' to oppress and suppress any at home who might disagree, including politicians and the press.


"I shudder to think where the country would be right now if the religious right had not evolved," he said when he stepped down as Moral Majority president in 1987.

Twenty years later, most of it under the sway of the Religious Right, and the country is in the worst shape since the Depression. Falwell's ideology was a great fit with the Reagan-Era neo-cons who help anoint Bush 43 as our Emperor.
We got our Crusade.
It's called Iraq and it's going rather poorly, which any thoughtful person could have predicted.

The Generals and advisers who called the Iraq occupation a bad idea were fired, demoted or otherwise had their lives and careers torn apart- see war critic Joseph Wilson's wife Valerie Plame for an example. Or they sold out, drank the Kool-Aid, repeated the party lies, were pilloried as scapegoats and retired in disgrace: see Colin Powell.

I shudder to think where the country would be right now if the religious right had not evolved," he said when he stepped down as Moral Majority president in 1987.

I love the irony of Falwell invoking evolution so much that I'm re-pasting the quote.

The Religious Right can't evolve. It's fundamentally against evolution.

Much like a Great White shark, it doesn't have to evolve, merely adapt- it's already the perfect mindless and unreasoning devourer, with a nearly unstoppable and all-consuming appetite for more power and wealth, damn the costs in lives. Violence is inevitable in the face of such aspirations.
The same religious madness that drove generations of armor-clad European fodder to the meat grinder of Jerusalem during the Crusades is still in force today.

It's what makes people hate others simply because of the way the others love.

It's what makes people burn books that they've never read.

It's what makes people fly planes into buildings full of people they've never met.

It's insanity and it's advocated by both the Taliban and American Evangelists. Both groups spell god differently, but both strive for a militantly strict patriarchy of putatively heterosexual men; holding women as little more than breeding stock for more Jihadists/Crusaders.

Those are some of the 'old-fashioned values' our Evangelical Christians seek to return to. Imagine Cotton Mather leading a legion of Clayton Waagners with the world's most devastating weapons at their disposal. Their enemy: Anyone who stands in the way.

That's what Jerry wanted. He may still get it, but I imagine it's going to be hard for for him to enjoy it from his reserved suite in the darkest pit of Tartarus.

In Search of

Saturday becomes Sunday and I know it's going to be one of those nights.

There will be no sleeping. I have taken as many pills as I feel safe with and they haven't done anything.
I get out of bed at 3:30 AM and make coffee- not so strange considering that I usually get up at 5:30 on Sundays to do my show- when I turn on the radio I hear the same goddamned Mix Loop that was playing last week- it's what plays when the 3am-6am DJ doesn't show up. Drums n' Bass 180 BPM headache, I can't even shave with it playing, much less think.

Well, if I don't like what's on the radio, why don't I change it?
Good question!

I get dressed, grab some extra records and head to the station to do exactly that.


PART ONE- 5am - 6am:

Gong -Vive Gong, Gong est Mort - Sides A and D
I have some wiring to work on and it's much easier to work when there's no one else in the building- I put a record on each turntable and attempt to 'un-spaghetti' the cables behind the console. This is probably the best Gong record ever released, it's gets me into my zone.

Atomic Rooster W/ David Gilmour- Hold Your Fire
This isn't as good as I was hoping- I have a Pretty Things CD from around the same period (2001?) that also features Gilmour and he's not especially good on either one.
Oh well, it's 5:45 am and it sounds OK to me.

Cop Shoot Cop- Last Legs
I love this band. This is not a very nice song. Too bad.

Hawkwind -Master of the Universe
I think this is the first song that I ever learned how to play on bass. One of my bands used to do a cover of this and I was always too stoned to recall the lyrics, which was OK - "the winds of time are blowing through me/It's all a figment of my mind", it always worked out somehow. We used to play at parties in Park City,Utah - mushroom tea was served at the door, so we could be a little sloppy, if you know what I mean.

Billie Holiday- Lady Sings the Blues/Come Rain or Come Shine
I love Billie, but have a hard time working her into my regular show. There's a Gospel DJ coming in at 6AM, so I start toning it down with that it mind.

Anuna - Invocation
This Celtic choral ensemble are the second-closest thing to Gospel that I ever play...Hawkwind's Live- Space Ritual being the closest. (That and Aretha Franklin)

The 6 o'clock guy is here now:

"Dude! What are you doing here? Was that you playing all that space-warp music?"

"Well, I took a couple Ambien, went to sleep and when I woke up , I was here, playing records."

This is true- except for the sleeping part. I drive to a 24 hour pancake joint and have breakfast during my one-hour intermission. Mmmmaple syrup...mmmmaple syrup...
I'm tired.
Can I get two large coffees to go?

What, you don't have large cups?

Make that four coffees to go then.


PART TWO:
Spoon- Believing is Art
If there is Spoon that I don't like, I haven't heard it yet. The title of this track says it all.

Thin Lizzy -Johnny
This is what happens when I have too much time on my hands...there is exactly ONE person that knows why I'm playing this song. I'm hoping that they are in the audience, thinking: " He is playing it just for me!", because in this case, it's true. Plus I like Phil Lynott, he's seriously under-rated. Irish rockers rule!

10 CC- Worst Band in the World
Godley and Creme make me laugh...but they weren't even close to being the worst band in the world.

Uriah Heep- Roller
This is as close to the worst band in the world as I feel like getting. They aren't the worst, but 10CC was better.

Funkadelic- Cosmic Slop
Oh man, I was watching an interview with Bootsy Collins, he was talking about playing with James Brown and how you gotta get it on the 'one'- ONE 2,3,4 -ONE, 2,3,4...this, for me, is a very suitable Mother's Day song.
"I can hear my mama call, I can hear my mama call"

Ray Manzarek- Bicentennial Blues (Love it or Laeve it)
This is starting to become my favorite album of all-time. I bought it thirty years ago and it just keeps getting better. At the end of this song, Ray slips the organ riff from "Light My Fire" into the vamping...did he used to play in some famous band?
(You may gaze upon the fish-eyed majesty of Ray Manzarek's superlative sideburns here)
"Guess I'd better get out"

King Crimson- Heartbeat
I saw this tour. It was awesome...the contrast in style between Fripp and Belew was a joy to behold- Fripp sitting on a stool, staring at his floor pedals; Belew up front , whanging his twanger...ahhh, you shoulda been there.

Fiona Joyce- Cry Over You
I wrote about this song last week. Today, it reminds me of someone that I used to know.
No more tears, but I wonder: where are you?
People are looking for you.

Led Zeppelin- Ten Years Gone
Ten Years After-Once There Was a Time
For Mom.


The Wipers- Window Shop For Love
"I feel like a piece of cold ice forming inside a chamber of lost illusions...maybe the ground below will ease the pain- a perfect landing might just ease the pain, ease the pain, ease the pain...loneliness is such a drag"
Next Valentine's Day, I'm putting this song on a loop and playing it for 24 hours. Actually, I probably won't do that, but there was a time when I would have.

Hey, I left my Gmail chat open and one of my favorite bloggers (semi-retired) has tuned in!

"Play Misty for me", she asks, a request that I cheerfuly deny. I don't have the Kinks song she wants either- I usually do, but not today dammit!- but I must admit being called 'Mr. Fantasy' is kinda sweet.
I'll find something for ya...doing dishes, are we?
Gotta find something bouncy...

Joe Jackson- Sunday Papers
Oh yeah! Bouncy, subversive and it mentions Sunday. This could be my show's theme song!

XTC- My Weapon
I have no idea what this song is about.

Bill Nelson's Red Noise- Substitute Flesh
Does this relate to the preceding song or the one following? I don't know what it's about either. The word 'penetration' is used a lot.

The Kinks- Artificial Man
Need Kinks? I got Kinks.

Jethro Tull- Too Old To Rock& Roll, Too Young To Die
Yeah, I used to think that too.

Frank Zappa/Capt. Beefheart- Carolina Hardcore Ecstasy
This song makes me think about The Liberator.
"She put a Doobie Brothers tape on/ I had a Roger Daltrey cape on"

Flaming Groovies- Teenage Head
One of the best rock and roll records of all time.

Eleni Mandell- Dreamboat
If Tom Waits was a female punk rock caberet torch singer, he might sound like Eleni Mandell.

Eleanor Shanley- Road To Glory
Did you know Dublin was founded by Vikings? It was.

Nina Hagen - White Punks On Dope
Pure guilty pleasure- a Teutonic Tubes Tantrum! I love this! I think I'm the only one who does, but it's my show. Suffer! Love that guitar at the end...

Gary Numan- Film
Gary was singing about YouTube before it existed. Gary was way ahead of his time.

Wire- Ambitous
Wire were way ahead of their time.

Damien Dempsey- Celtic Tiger
Damien, where are my CD's? I wrote such a nice letter...well, if he won't send them to me for free, I'll buy them. New and at the 'import' price. I like the guy's work that much.

Paw- Seasoned Glove
I finish my Mother's Day show with a song about the world's worst father. Mom would be proud.