Noise War and Peace

I'm currently cat-sitting for a new friend of mine while he travels abroad...prudence dictates that I not post pictures of his vacant home on the internet; suffice it to say that his domicile has an honest-to- gosh yard, complete with a real front porch- a front porch that would be at home in the Appalachian foothills- a sittin' porch. A pickin' porch.

It was on this porch, however, that I learned that my musical prowess does not extend to the mandolin- I think I have a total of about ten ounces of body fat and it's evenly distributed amongst my clumsy, blundering fingertips... Electric guitar is much more suitable for me.

And bass. I love me some bass- I have an old 1960's Gibson SG Jack Bruce model that is so sweet and ergonomic that it almost plays itself-about half of my songs were composed on that bass -although my bassists often improved on my lines, freeing me up to work on guitar nitwittery.
That was one of the best things about being in a good band...I'd bring a rough sketch or recording of a song to rehearsal, introduce it to the band and we'd try it- often it didn't sound anything like my original vision- it would sound better. Less often, the tune would fall flat- this was usually the fault of the song, not the band...some of my songs sucked...anyway, back to my original point, which was...fuck, I dunno, sumthin' about guitar...or bass?

*************************************************************************

Some vaguely bass-related advice: Don't engage in 'noise wars' with people you can't beat.

Many years ago, myself and several other guys shared a second floor apartment- the dudes living above us were the real-life models for Beevis and Butthead and they liked to play their Poodle Metal music loud. Really loud, through a full-sized PA.
Louder than my guitar amp- I had a Fender Twin and I couldn't hear myself practice- seriously loud.
War loud, it was.
One night it became so bad that I grabbed my baseball bat and went upstairs and waited for the song -Pyromania, I think- to end. Then I started bashing the metal door as hard as I possibly could- I had left three massive dents by the time I heard footsteps approach and a wary shadow moved behind the peephole.

What they saw through the fish eye lens was a 19 year-old me- shirtless , sweaty, drunk, beet-red and holding a Louisville Slugger. Smiling.

"Open up.I want to adjust your stereo."

They didn't respond, but the tunes stayed off for the rest of the night.

It quieted down for a bit after that, but the bad upstairs behavior soon resumed.
At 19, I fancied myself to be quite the 'large-A' Anarchist; about the last thing I would have considered was calling the Police for anything...but in this case, I didn't have to.
The authorities came to me.

I was weighing narcotics on my triple-beam scale when the FBI knocked on the door. I thought it was a customer-fuckin' coke-heads were always early, beat the joneses, ya know- so I walked down the hall and answered the door without stashing my gear.

I was greeted by two FBI Agents, a youngish black guy and an older white man- in hindsight, they looked like the guys from Men In Black, but that hadn't been filmed yet- who informed me that they were doing a background check on Beevis, who had apparently applied for a position in Law Enforcement. Did I know Beevis?, they asked, was there anything about his character that I'd like to comment on?

"Well, he really likes loud music. Those dents in the door upstairs were made by me, trying to get his attention- you have to knock really, really hard for him to hear you."

The agents were taking notes.

"I see. By loud music, do you mean they have lots of parties? Crowds, meetings, gatherings...that sort of thing?"

"No, I think it's just the two of them, although they may have had company last night. They threw a sofa out of their window- it's still in the alley, go look."

This, swear to Godzilla, was 100% true. My roomies and I were watching TV the previous evening when we saw a large piece of furniture plummet past outside, narrowly missing the fire escape.
It was a couch and it wound up smashed all over the cobblestones below us.
Messy and dangerous.

"A sofa?", asked a dumbfounded Feeb.

"Well, it was actually a sofa-bed. That's why I think they had help. Those things are too heavy for two dudes to throw."
I helpfully described last night's incident.

"What...what did you do when you saw a sofa fall past your window?", asked the younger agent.

"Do? What do you mean, do? "

"Did you call 911?" , the agent elaborated.

"No. Why? It was just a sofa- it wasn't on fire or anything-besides, the whole upstairs smelled like pot smoke and I didn't want to cause trouble. There are drug dealers in this building and some of them are crazy."

This got their attention.

"Drug dealers? In your opinion, is Beevis involved in drug activity?"

"I don't know. All I know is that it aways smells like weed when they are home."

After that interview, I felt pretty certain that Beevis wasn't going to get his badge...although I sadly suspect I may have been wrong.

Much more recently, my new neighbors decided to have an impromptu house party...they arrived home shortly after the pubs closed at 2AM and decided to celebrate their drunkenness by playing the same disco-dance song over and over and over, screaming and laughing the whole time...I don't know the song, all I could distinguish was the bass line and the beat, which repeated endlessly for hours while I vainly tried to sleep...I briefly considered visiting next-door, but I was afraid that I might show an alarming lack of tact...better to remain calm, I thought...I used the extra waking hours to pick out songs for my radio show...

...throughout my entire two-hour show, I could not get that goddamn bass line out of my head.

When I got home from the station, it was barely 9am and the noise next door had stopped. I imagined that my neighbors had finally drank enough to pass out and were eventually going to wake with some pretty sizable hangovers...I, however, was wide-awake and sober and I could clearly hear the ghost of that bass-line; loud and insistent- the buried heart of a murdered man.

An exorcism was called for.

For my ritual, I summoned the demi-god Gallien-Krueger, who , at 100 watts, is surprisingly loud.
Especially at full volume.

I pointed the bass speaker at my neighbor's bedroom and played the fucking monotonous chromatic bass line from their favorite song over and over and over and over until I heard the sound of people stirring.

This took about two minuteS.

Then I stopped and took a long, uninterrupted nap.

Later, I tried to play the cursed bass riff...and I couldn't recall it.

Success!

It Never Stops

Good news first, then everything else: I made a road trip without breaking down or colliding with car-killing quadrupeds. My grandmother looks good and she feels better, more so than anyone but her expected- she may even be allowed to return home in two or three weeks if she continues to do well with her therapy. It's a cause for celebration.

At least it should have been.

I didn't get home until late last night and when I did, I had a phone message from my brother. Call him right away- it's important. So I did.


It turns out that the man who got our mother pregnant has started drinking again. If I had taken the time to visit him, I might have been able to stop what happened from happening, but I didn't do that and as a result , things at home have gone from better to worst in less than a day.

Yesterday, dad apparently fell down the stairs at the family house and tumbled into my grandmother's most precious piece of furniture - her glass China cabinet. He completely destroyed it, along with many of her most cherished and fragile items...a porcelain doll that Granpa carried back from Okinawa after WWII...plates that belonged to her parents...glassware gifts from relatives no longer with us- I don't yet know the full list of losses or all the details of the accident. I'm sitting at work waiting for and dreading more information.


Here's what I know:


Sharon, who is a friend of Grannie's from church, had stopped by the house to feed the cat and check up on my dad, who can't be trusted, him having a long history of relapsing and fucking up. Sharon used her key to let herself in and saw blood and broken glass everywhere- but no dad. She was calling 911 when my blood-soaked parent returned from the store, carrying more beer. According to my second-hand info, he had a number of serious cuts but refused to seek medical attention- he was more than a little abusive to Sharon, who really does not deserve such treatment, and she left him to stew in his own demise.


After talking to my brother, I actually tried to call my dad. Of course, there was no answer.


I hate myself for making that call. I need to stop caring.


I have tried to care- I had fooled myself into thinking it was possible- I had thought that I had reached a sort of peace with my father and that this peace might possibly lead to forgiveness.


Instead, I am humiliated for wasting so much time and energy on such a lost cause- and my grandmother not only feels disgraced ( it's a small town and everyone knows about my dad) but when she heard about the accident her blood pressure sank like a stone. My father is killing himself and he's killing his mother at the same time- she has undergone weeks of grueling therapy; tests; rehab sessions and life-training classes just to learn that her adult son has smashed what few belongings of hers he hasn't already stolen and sold and is currently lying in a puddle of blood, piss and beer. The puddle he is occupying is on her new carpet where her china cabinet used to be.

When he relapses, her health fails. It's a cycle that's been going on for decades and I have done everything I can think of to break it but I can't. He has to stop drinking or he will die and he knows it - but he doesn't care. He doesn't care if he kills his own mother in the process.

He told his mother that he wants to die.

She has been fighting for her life and her son tells her that he wants to die, that being dead is better than having to take care of her.


If he lives, his actions will kill his mother.


If he dies, his death will have the same result.


I have once again given up all hope for my father. My brother, who has been considerably more loyal than myself, has also given up. My father's younger brother is hardly any better than my dad, he's a daily drunk in a deep state of denial, so there's no help to be had from him.

So the cycle starts again. My dad is a wounded fugitive from reality, a menace to every noun he can reach , and my grandmother is literally worrying herself to death over him and there isn't anything that can be done. The local police don't care what dad does as long as he keeps it off the road and dad has repeatedly turned down our Pastor's very generous offer of a church-funded 28-day rehab clinic. He needs to be locked up and forced to change- it is never going to come from inside him.
I don't know if there is anything left inside my father at all. I don't think he can come back from the place he has chosen for himself and that's where the pain really hits- that he has has chosen this life for himself.
People like to say that alcoholics lack willpower, but that is incorrect. It takes a lot of willpower to cut yourself into ribbons and still manage to limp to the store for more beer.
That takes serious determination.

You would think that no store would sell beer to a man covered in blood, but obviously that is also incorrect. After I hit a deer on Independence Day, I was forced to buy paper towels and cleanser at a crowded gas station and I had deer's blood all over me. Deer blood, for those without large-scale roadkill experience, looks exactly like human blood; over the course of an hour or more, only one person bothered to even ask why I was covered in blood.

Why should they care? Why do I care?

I am trying really hard to not care. I don't want to care. I am tired of the pain of caring and I am weary of the burden of false hope, but what else is there?

It would be so easy to start drinking again. Soon, all my problems would become other people's worries- on top of the frantic phone calls about his father, my brother would also start getting emergency calls regarding myself.

I like to tell people that it's fear that keeps me sober, and in a large part this is true. I know what will happen if I drink and it involves pain , bleeding and a slow death by self-torture.
That scares me away from the booze, but there's more to it than just that; this never-ending trauma with our father is having terrible emotional effects on my brother and I love my brother too much to inflict any more unnecessary, tragic alcoholic bullshit on him. I can't say as how I'm especially fond of myself right now, because I am not- but I love my Twin and the thought of causing him any more pain makes me feel as broken and torn as the deer that I killed two weeks ago.

So I'll add love to my short list of reasons to stay sober.
It will be enough. It has to be.

The Meter Readers

This is a pic of Vince and Sara. Vince and Sara are the website traffic meter technicians that I have hired to help me monitor and analyze the virtual mountains of raw data generated by the thousands of daily visits to this site.

Basically, it works like this:
Whenever a 'visitor' ( such as yourself) views this site, Sara prepares to install a new InterTube Measuring Machine (IMM) in the ever-growing wall of IMM's seen behind the pair of techs.


First she uses a Mathison Electropsychometer to determine if the visit , ('hit', as us 'insiders' call them) is from a valid IP address or just some sort of electronic 'spider'. Sara told me that if she counted all the 'spiders', she would need to bill overtime hours , so I told her to ignore them.

For those who don't know, a Mathison Electropsychometer is a primitive predecessor to
the Hubbard EMeter, currently used as a sort of mind-reading device for Scientologists.
Using it, Sara can determine not only if the 'hit' is from a human being with an actual soul, but she can also ascertain what rung on the Scientology ladder of enlightenment that that particular soul has reached. Sadly, according to Sara's EMeter readings, most of my visitors (myself included) are still suffering soul-trauma from our past lives as mind-controlled, implant-bearing slaves of the extinct extra-terrestrial dictatorship of Helatrobus.

Sara, who is a lapsed Unitarian, thinks Scientology is to religion what Kilgore Trout is to Science Fiction. I tend to agree, although I believe that Trout was a far superior writer to L. Ron Hubbard and that Trout's works are valid as both literature and philosophy, especially when compared to Hubbard's Dianetics and E-Meter User's Guide, which are both pure bullshit.



After auditing the visitor's soul with her EMeter, Sara installs a fresh IMM in the wall at CamelsBack Inc.'s IT Department, then she runs a length of North Korean surplus Cat 5 wire to the computer that visited the site, thus establishing a connection. This is how "cookies" get on your computer. Sara is a regular Girl Scout when it comes to cookie distribution.












Sometimes Sara needs a LOT of cable; on occasion the users of wireless services have complained, stating that they would rather not have 950 km of cable attached to what would otherwise be a portable computer.
For these installations, I send Vince along with a Tazer .

Anyway, once Sara has connected and installed the IMM, it's up to Vince to analyze the data and give me a report on what it all means. I don't know much about the Intertube, so I pretty much have to take his word for it. Vince likes to talk about browser specifications, OS mods, monitor resolutions and other arcane IT crap, but he really earns his money when he tells me about the
' who, where, when ,how & why' behind the internet visits to my site.

Vince is the one who pointed out last year's rash of 'possum' hits from the United Arab Emirates- UAE surfers were typing in phrases such as 'girls who eat possum', 'pink possum', 'virgin possum', 'nude possum fun' etc. and finding my blog. In real life, I am an expert on possums, but the UAE has ruined my fun with their pervy possum searches; as a result it's been nearly a year since I blogged possums.
Vince's theory is that perverts in Dubai mistakenly believe that 'possum' is slang for something else, something vulgar and/or pornographic- all I know is that my Arabian web traffic has all but ceased since I stopped blogging about possums.

Occasionally, Vince provides me with some truly useful data:

"Hey man, there are people out there who are finding you by Googling something called 'whalanol'. I'm pretty certain that there is no such thing as whalanol. What are they looking for?"

Investment opportunities, I tell him.

"Boss," asks Vince," have you recently asked someone out? Like on a date?"

How did he know that? Sometimes I think Vince is a Thetan Scientologist secret agent and he is using Sara's E-Meter to read my mind.

"Well, I see a few visits from local addresses and the referring search engine phrase was your full name. The last time I saw a flurry of hits searching your name was right after you asked Lenore in accounting if she'd like to have lunch. Don't you know that chicks will Google you? "

Fuckin' Thetan mind-reader.
He's right though. I did ask someone out recently, and she did Google me. According to Vince, she 'out-clicked' from my blog at 11:43 Sunday night.
Monday morning I got an email from her, sent at 11:47 pm Sunday: "I am busy for the next seventeen years or so, but thanks for asking, have a nice life..."

Vince also tells me, " Last night, between 9:36 and 10:45 , three web-surfers from three different U.S. states (FL, NY, MA) Googled 'baseballs float' and all three were directed to your blog. I'll bet you don't even know if baseballs float or not, yet the Intertube makes you out to be some sort of floating balls expert. Furthermore, in Malaysia you are the only source of info on 'MacDonald's (sic) Big Mac Specifications' - you are the only one who knows of McD's secret bovine eugenics program. Is this more whalanol?"

Uh, er...were any of the visitors female? Are they single?

Vince gives me a look of compassionate pity.

"What do I look like, a mind reader? I can't tell their gender or relationship status from their internet statistics. Sara is the one who does installations. Ask her."

I am afraid to tell Vince that, yes, he does look like a mind-reader and that I suspect him of being a telepathic Scientologist spy. If he is, then he is already aware of my suspicions.
Dealing with telepaths is a headache.

Vince continues,"Dude, here is an idea: why don't you just ask Sara out? She's kinda cute and I know she likes you."

She does? Really?

"Um-hm. She does. You two are, ah, how to say this?...you are both the same height, for one thing- and you both think the E-Meter is cow manure...she has even read your blog and she still likes you- the only real problem is that she's a bit nervous about dating a client- you are technically her boss, y'know? "

Well. I can fix that.

After lunch, I sat down and wrote Sara an email:

Dear Sara,
I just wanted to thank you for your great work over the last three years and let you know that you are fired. Friday is your last day at CB&F Inc.
Would you like to have dinner with me on Saturday night?
Sincerely,
Allan


When I told Vince what I had done, he stared at me in slack-jawed disbelief.

"Man, not only have you just doubled my workload, but you have also proven yourself to be the most clueless motherfucker to ever shit behind two shoes."

Mind-reader!

Vince's observations were cut short by a sudden explosion of shattering glass- something heavy smashed through the one-way mirror that serves as my office window. We both looked down.
Amid the shards of glass was Sara's vintage Mathison E-Meter. There was a note attached to it with a piece of twine. I untied it and read it- it was a print-out of my email to her. At the bottom, Sara had written a message in red felt-tip marker:

"You bastard! Sometime, somewhere when you least expect it, I will show up in the middle of the night. Then we will talk about this. Until then, I suggest you sleep with one eye open."

Hot Damn! She said "Yes!"

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

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.

Honk

I have an early childhood memory of riding in a car with two of my adults, but without my brother. I think I was four or five and it was probably 1969 or 70, but I'm not sure and there's no one for me to ask.
We were winding our way through the West Virginia mountains and were forced to go very slowly because the car in front of us was barely creeping along. The steep mountainous roads were narrow, full of cutbacks and blind turns and it was impossible to find a passing zone; there was nothing to be done other than to follow the slow car at it's own pace. In hindsight, it had to have been going pretty slow; we were in a VW Beetle and I don't think that little car was much of an uphill racer.

I was in the backseat, reading comic books and I wasn't really concerned about going fast or getting anywhere. During my childhood I moved a lot. I was always going somewhere I didn't want to, often without any warning at all, so a slow ride to nowhere was fine with me.
I had my books, that is where I wanted to go.

My adults were considerably more tense.

"Goddamn son-of-a- fucking bitch, get off the fucking road!", screamed the male adult behind the wheel.

Where? How? There's a forest on one side and a cliff on the other.

My driving adult started honking the horn. Honk! Honk!

The car in front of us maintained it's sluggish speed.

"You stupid fucking asshole! Drive, you dumb motherfucker!" Honk! Honk!

Then he started tailgating the car, pulling to within a few feet of it's rear bumper. I looked up between the two seats to see what all the shouting was about and saw that the car in front had two elderly people in it and the female passenger had turned around in her seat and was looking at us.

It was a look of fear. She was trying to mouth some sort of message, a plea or explanation.
She ended with a weak, apologetic smile and held up her hand, palm facing us.

Calm down please. Stay back a bit, OK?

"Goddamned stupid fucking wrinkled old cunt," yelled my adult. Then he gave the old lady the finger. She blanched , turned around and said something to the gentleman who was driving. His panicky eyes reflected back at us in his rear-view mirror. He reached for something with his left hand.

In front of us, the car's Hazard lights started flashing.

Inside our vehicle, my adult was screaming bloody murder. He was preparing to throw a half-empty beer bottle forward through our open sunroof.

"Don't," said my other adult, a woman whose name I cannot recall.

She reached for the man's arm and our car swerved, almost colliding with a Ford Econoline coming the opposite direction. The driver of the van honked his horn, cursing us with his finger.

The two adults started yelling at each other and I went back inside my comic book.

After some time, we came to an overlook and the car in front of us pulled off the road, allowing us to pass. My adult cursed some more and flung the now-empty bottle out of our car as we sped by, the tiny VW engine revving in the trunk behind me.

I don't recall where we were going or where we were coming from, but I do remember one thing: I remember what I was told after we got there.

My female adult found a moment to talk to me alone. She thought that the man's violent display of anger and rage might have upset me and she wanted to comfort me. This yelling and throwing wasn't anything unusual in my experience, but she didn't know that, so she tried to explain an idea to me. An important idea.

"Allan, I want you to remember something. I want you to remember how [ my male adult] acted when we were on that road. When you are old enough to drive, you will be stuck behind cars just like that and I want you to remember this. This is important."

Important enough to stop reading Spider-Man?

"Yes. Put the book down. You see, sometimes cars break down and they can't go very fast. Sometimes cars get tired or sick or wear out and when they go up and down hills it is hard for them to go the same speed as the cars around them. But unless you are in that car, you can't tell what's wrong with it. There might be nothing wrong with it at all and it might the hill that is the problem, but you can't know that. Yelling and screaming at it isn't going to help it move any faster, the car can only go as fast as it can go. Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you?"

Yes, I lied, and returned to Spider-Man's world.

Today, I am ashamed to admit that I do not know who this woman was. I feel a sting of guilt and humiliation because she was trying very hard to teach me something and it took me over thirty years to understand it. Back then, I had no idea what she was talking about- all I wanted to do was read my comics. I didn't care about cars, all I knew of cars is that I seemed to live in them nearly as much as I lived in houses.

Like cars, houses sometimes broke and stopped working and the proper adult thing to do in either case was to yell, scream, get drunk and break things- in no particular order. That's what grown-ups did.

And when I grew up, that is what I did. Because I had forgotten what she said.

It wasn't until I found myself driving a fucked-up old Plymouth station wagon up a long, steep grade on a very similar stretch of road that I even recalled her words, much less understood them. The old beater was straining and it still wouldn't do more than 35, which was the posted limit, I believe.
It wasn't long before a trail of vehicles had queued up behind me, honking and flashing their headlights. I'm sure there was cursing, but I had one eye on the road and the other on the thermostat and couldn't hear them over the engine's death rattling...my car was struggling.

When the road widened to include a third lane, the parade of cars that passed each took their turn at cursing me .
Some of them yelled.
Some of them flipped the bird.
Others did both.

Every single driver had a deep and personal anger, hatred really,and it was directed at me- just for being on the same road as them. I was going as fast as I could and I wasn't breaking the law. I was just there and they hated me for it. It was mean in spirit, and worse, it was cruel. It reminded me of the past and that is always cruel. To some degree, anyway.

I wasn't in much better condition than the car that I was driving at that time. Circumstance and addiction had put me in a dark and haunted place, and by the time the last car- a BMW convertible driven by a woman who would have been beautiful if she hadn't been yelling "motherfucker!" at me- passed by, I was devastated. I arrived home in tears and went straight to the bottle and stayed there until all thoughts of screaming, all sights and sounds of honking cars and women who hated me had been blotted from my mind.
I was forgetting when I should have been remembering.

A lot of time has passed since then, but I remember what the mystery woman was trying to tell me. I know those words. I don't recall when they started making sense to me, but they do now.

It's not complicated.

It's simple. It applies to everything we do and since what I am doing right now is blogging, I will try to apply her wisdom to that.

Imagine that blogging is a sort of road- an internet highway, if you will.
Catchy metaphor, eh?
Let's consider blogs as cars and bloggers as drivers.

Imagine that there are thousands of lanes on this highway- more lanes than traffic could ever need. Most of the lanes are clear in both directions as far as the eye can see.

Now picture a sedan plugging along on the shoulder of this vast road. Maybe it's going as fast as it can, maybe not; in any case it's off the main lanes and it isn't blocking anyone. There are no flares or SOS signs.

In a passing car, another driver sees this, peels off the highway and slides onto the shoulder behind the slower vehicle. The driver follows the sedan at a distance of less than five feet.

From that close it's easy to read the bumperstickers on the leading car.

The stickers identify the politics, spirituality and sexuality of the car's driver, as well as a half-dozen other traits and opinions specific to that person.

They aren't the same as those of the driver of the second car.

So the driver of the second car starts cursing at the car in front. Personal words based on information scanned from stickers - words of hatred and rage, wielded like a weapon; a full-auto, hi-capacity handgun of hate. Aimed at the back of a stranger's head.

They honk their horn: HONK! HONK! GO FASTER!

And they curse: MOTHERFUCKER! I HATE YOU!

In the first car, the driver looks behind them and wonders: Why don't they just pass me?There are a hundred empty lanes. Why the hell are they yelling at me?

Meanwhile, back on the highway, cars roll by.

Some of the drivers look over and ask:
-What is that asshole yelling about?
-Why don't they just get back in their own lane and keep moving?
-Don't they have anything better to do?

When I see hateful, harmful and even abusive unsolicited comments left on the blogs of others, I tend to form a very low opinion of the person who left them.
Do you see them too?
What do you think?

It makes me think of a mad driver, too preoccupied with someone else's bumperstickers to notice that they themselves are driving erratically, swerving dangerously close to the cliff on the far side of the shoulder.

YELL! HONK!

Swerve.

There's a squeal of tires, a shriek of metal as the guardrail gives way.

10,000,000 lanes to choose from and some will always choose the cliff.

And they will honk all the way to the bottom.

A Picture

This plastic "horror" sign is a relic from the video room of the old comic shop. The adhesive strip on the back had long since dried and crumbled , so I propped it up on bottles of the prescription medicines I take in order to deal with daily life, thumbed the remote and took a snapshot.

Ice Cream Heart

I don't think my new girlfriend likes me very much. We hit it off pretty hot ( you know what I mean) in the storeroom at the Dairy Queen where we both worked ,but ever since I got fired for stealing a 5 lb. bag of crushed Oreos she's been sorta chilly towards me. Like, not nice at all.

It was a mistake, stealing those Oreos. I thought the expiration date said 11/01/05, not 11/01/08 and I was just trying to protect the customers and save DQ from a potential class-action lawsuit- I should have gotten a raise for being so thoughtful, but I got fired instead.

Who knew that crushed Oreos have such a long shelf life?

It's ignorance of little things like that that cause so many problems for me. I'm not a bad person, I just don't know sh!t about sundae toppings.

I was just trying to help.

So I tried to explain it to my girl.

"It's a mistake", I told her. "I was only trying to help."

"You are my mistake", is what she said. "I don't understand what I saw in you."

I think she'd appreciate me more if she understood me better, but she won't answer my calls or return my emails, so it's pretty hard to explain things to her.

The other day I saw a story about how a buncha guys were camping out at shopping malls in order to score Playstation 3's before X-mas, and it gave me an idea.
I wish I didn't have ideas.
Ideas always get me in trouble and this one was no exception.

My idea was to camp out next to my girlfriend's car overnight (she lives in a condo with an uptight security guard who won't let me in just because I don't live there) so that she would have to see me in the morning. Then we could patch things up and maybe I could borrow some money from her until I find a new job...but noooooooo.....

I thought that mixing Aristocrat Vodka with Full Throttle energy drinks would keep me awake all night and give me that little extra 'oomph' I need when I'm simultaneously hitting on a chick for sex and money, but I goofed up the mix with some pills I stole from my grandmother and I must have passed out sometime during my overnight vigil.

When I woke up, some big fat bald old guy was shaking me...he was pretty mad. He was using really bad language, mostly saying "...gonna kick your motherpluckin' @ss"- except he didn't say 'pluckin'.
My girlfriend was standing behind him and she didn't look very happy either.
Of course, I thought she was mad at the Other Guy for being mean to me, her boyfriend.

Man-0-man, I was wrong. You won't believe this-

She said, " This is that creepy guy from work that I told you about"

She said that to the Other Guy and she was talking about me. Ouch!

It really hurt my feelings- I mean, I thought we had something special, something real, something more romantic than dryhumps in the stockroom...but I was wrong.

I wanted to explain all this to her but the pills and vodka caught up to me and I puked on Mean Guy's New Balance sneakers instead.
Then he made it worse by calling me a pathetic p*ssy and a whole bunch of other stuff- words that look like #*^&#@! and *&$#%! when you see them in newspaper cartoons. He said I was lucky he was in a good mood, otherwise he'd f*ck me up.
What a bully! Couldn't he see I didn't feel so good?
If I hadn't been so sick I woulda beat him up.

It turns out that she thinks that Mean Old Guy is her boyfriend and she wouldn't even listen to me explain how sensitive I was and how she'd be better off with me than him-after all, he's old, probably at least 30- maybe 40 even...but she wasn't listening. She just got in her car-with the Mean Guy!- and kinda drove off. She kept accelerating and braking, start , stop, start, stop...I wanted to tell her that it seemed like her car was having transmission trouble but after the second start/stop I fell off the hood of her Taurus and landed on the asphalt.
I was only trying to give her some sound automotive advice, but she didn't listen- I coulda got hurt in the process!
She actually had the nerve to roll down the window and tell me that I was lucky she didn't run my @ss over- I already knew that- I could tell there was something wrong with her car just from the way it was acting.

But the window was down, so I made my move. As long as the Mean Guy had his seatbelt on, I figured I was safe.

So I popped my question.

She wouldn't even loan me twenty bucks! What a b*tch!

She told me I'd better talk to her boyfriend from now on.

Huh? Until this morning , I didn't even know she had a boyfriend. I thought I was her BF...she never mentioned the Mean Guy.

I think our relationship needs more honesty.

1986- Not Such A Great Year

This is the cover of a calendar that my mother's boyfriend, Cal Sorenson, produced in 1985. That is my mother in the middle, Cal is the animal that isn't a horse.
He was a bizarre man and he took a lot of photographs before he vanished in the early Nineties; he's almost certainly dead by drink by now, I am sure.
My mother carried those photos with her for years after Cal left her; in fact, she carried them with her until she died.

I don't know why she did that.

Those photographs, slides and films became mine after Mom died.

Some I destroyed.

Some I kept.

I liked Cal when I met him, he was the only 'Mom BF' that showed any interest in being my friend. He taught me how to fire a rifle, even if it was only a .22...Cal had apparently been a Special Forces sniper operating in Cambodia during the 'Nam war and a biathlon athlete afterwards - I was never sure what to believe, but he could use a 30.06 to put a perfect star pattern on a target so far away I couldn't even see it without a scope. And he could throw knives, kicks and punches with equal precision, so I knew he'd been into something...just not sure what.
Cal also got paid to take pictures of balloons and rodeos , which I thought was a pretty cool way to make money.

But my mother never did have any luck with men, and Cal was no exception.
See this? These are the credits from the back of the calendar:
So what's the problem?
Well.
My mother spelled her name 'Janice' NOT "Janis." Cal, who she was living with, didn't even bother to make sure he spelled her name correctly even though he could not have finished the project without my mother's help and money.
This calendar sold several thousand copies in Park City, which was a much less-traveled destination back then- Peter Fonda bought one. Paul Anka got mom to sign his.
Those of you who remember when the Tonight Show was referred to as 'Carson' might recall bandleader Doc Severinsen's frequent laments about his ex-wife. Doc's ex-wife (see credits above) owned the bookstore that Mom worked at and she (and I) got to meet lots of celebrities as they visited Evonne's store.

To mom, having her picture on the front of a calendar that real-life famous people were buying was a big deal. Mom grew up poor and stayed that way most of her life, but during this brief period she was happy. The famous people liked her for the same reasons everyone else did- she was fun to be around. She was always doing new things, skiing, photography, drawing...trying to learn as much as she could about the world, despite having no real education.

It meant a lot to her that Cal used her as a model and I knew she expected him to propose marriage, he used to hint at it all the time - look at the freekin'pic-but he didn't have any intention of doing that.
He didn't even spell her name correctly.
He was living with her and he couldn't spell her name.
This hurt her a lot- an awful lot- but it took me years to understand that.

Years later, when I had my very first paid comic book story published, the publisher mis-spelled both my first and last names in the credits. I pointed this out to mom and she pulled out one of these old calendars.
Me too, she said.
Mom and I shared a bitter laugh at our own expense.

During this time, I was fairly happy too-I was 18, I had a place of my own and a really sexy girlfriend named Natalie, who just happened to sing and play piano. We were gonna form a band and be famous underground artists- it was inevitable. Fate.
I was nuts about that girl.

One day, when I was visiting Mom, Cal gave me a manila envelope. He asked me to give it to Natalie when I saw her next- sure, no problem.
What's in here?
Photos.
Ooo, cool. Let's look.

What. the. fuck.

That's Natalie on the left.

Tame by today's standards, but I was 18 and had only had two lovers in my life- and one of them was in this picture. I wasn't ready for that.

There were other photos, but I didn't see them all until much, much later.

I asked Cal what the hell was up with the naked graveyard pics of my girlfriend.

"She didn't tell you?"

He claimed that some semi-adult magazine had commissioned him to do some naked vampire shots...well, OK, he really was a pro photographer... but there's another man's penis in a photo with my girlfriend and I didn't much care for that.

So I took the pics to Natalie's...and it was pretty clear she hadn't planned on having me see them. She thought I wouldn't understand and she was right.

"How much did Cal pay you?"

"$100" (a lot back then)

"Did you fuck the naked guy?"

"No, he is gay. It was just pictures, is all."

I should have stopped right there, but I didn't.

"How about Cal? Did you fuck Cal?"

"Uh...."

"You fucked Cal! How cou..."

"Ah, no. I didn't fuck Cal. He asked me fuck myself with a lit candle though."

"....did...you...?"

"Yeah, sure. Why not? A hundred bucks is a hundred bucks..."

My mother's boyfriend was paying my girlfriend to masturbate while he took pictures of her.

I think I started pulling my records out of Natalie's collection and smashing them at this point. I don't remember much after that.

But it was over.

Hobbies and Lies

" Make a left here- the side street- now kill the lights."

"Kill the...why? Oh. Right."

I never was able to lie to Kathy- she was smarter than me and besides, she knew every trick- but this was different. Earlier that evening I had told her a story that would have caused most women to flee in justifiable panic- but not Kathy.

Her response was : " We can take my car."
I loved her.
I had lied to her.
Now we were in her car heading downhill through the darkness towards a quiet suburban cul-de-sac and that lie was on my mind as I gave her instructions. It's for her own good, I told myself.

"Let me out here- kill the engine and coast down to the circle. Turn the car around and park in front of one of the houses they aren't finished building yet...turn the motor on but keep the lights off and watch for me in the street."

"Watch for you? Are you planning on leaving in a hurry?"

"Yes."

"I'm unlocking the backdoor then. Don't waste time running to the passenger side, just bail in the back."

I loved her alright. She knew all the tricks.

A kiss for luck later and I was standing in front of a dimly- lit rancher, a much older house than most of the cookie-cutter prefabs that were encroaching on it.
Those newer dwellings were not here the last time I was in this neighborhood- they looked vacant, unfinished, unoccupied.
Good.
Neighbors might ruin my plan.

Not that I had much of a plan- Kathy was the planner and I couldn't tell her about this- I wanted her to be able to pass a polygraph if it came down to it, so she couldn't know what I was going to do. What I thought I was going to do, anyway.

From the front, the ranch house seemed empty and dark, but as I crept closer I could hear the noodling, vaporous notes of a Grateful Dead guitar solo, and as I rounded a carefully placed cluster of tall shrubbery I saw that the rear of the home was well-lit, illumination pouring out of the sliding glass kitchen doors and into the ill-kept backyard. It sounded like a small party was in progress-damn!- and there was a tall wooden fence that wasn't here last time.

Last time. That was supposed to be the final visit, but here I was again. Lies had brought me back.

The gate was locked.

I found a plastic trash can outside the garage and gently rolled it towards the backyard. The contents of the receptacle clattered and rattled as I inched it along and I was glad that the music inside house was so loud.
I placed the can next to the fence and climbed onto the sagging lid.

Crap. There were two hippie kids sitting at a wooden table on the back porch, one boy , one girl. The music was coming from a boom box on the table between them.

They looked to be a few years younger than myself, they probably should have been in High School. They hadn't seen me or heard my approach, the boy was engrossed in rolling a joint and the girl was talking - I couldn't make out the words, but she was speaking in vacant and reverential tones...probably extolling the virtues of Ralph, the man I was here to visit.

If I timed it right, I could probably drop onto the porch and sneak into the kitchen without either kid seeing me. I pushed myself up off the wobbly trash can and scrambled over the fence.

The momentum from my push was too much for the unsteady wastebin and it fell over backwards with a clatter, almost drowning out the loud thud I made when I landed on the wooden porch. The two kids turned around in stoned surprise.

"What's up?" , asked the boy.

"Are you OK?", the girl followed.

Jesus, I thought, I must look like one of them except I'm wearing all black and grey sneakers; not tie-dyes and barefeet like them , my shoulder-length hair is tied in a perfect Kathy-made ponytail much like the one the boy has- a few years ago and I could have been that kid. Not anymore. Things had changed since then.

Why are they so relaxed? I don't have a disguise- can't they tell what I am? Don't they know why I'm here?
I hadn't expected a calm response. I hadn't expected any response.

This wasn't supposed to be that sort of visit. I had murder on my mind and these dumb kids were asking me if I was OK, as if it were normal for other kids to appear from out of nowhere in the middle of the night.

Knowing Ralph's "hobbies", it probably was normal.

Still, I had come here to kill Ralph and it pissed me off that these Deadhead kids didn't find me threatening. They should be scared.
They should run.

The boy puffs up the joint, offers it to me.

"No thanks, I'm here to see Ralph."

"Oh. He's inside, upstairs."

"Upstairs? There is no upstairs in this house."

"Yeah, man. The attic, ya know?", the boy looks at me suspiciously, offers me the joint again. "You aren't a cop are you? You have to tell us if you are."

"Yeah, maaaaan", I answer, mocking his stoner drawl while I lie to him , "I am a cop. This place is getting raided in five minutes. You have 60 seconds to get away."

"Whoah..." says the boy.
"But our stuff is inside," protests the girl.

"45 seconds", I reply and they vanish into the night.
The backyard gate is now unlocked.
Good.

I enter into the kitchen- empty. I peer into the darkened living room- there are heavy blankets on the windows - for privacy, I'm sure; cocooned bodies slumber on the two sofas and most of the floor space, probably teenage runaways. The room smells unclean.

Like I said, Ralph has "hobbies".

Halfway down the adjoining hallway there's a pull-down trapdoor staircase leading up to the attic. Another tangle-haired hippie boy sits there, he's awake but he's just sitting there- I don't even know if he's aware that I'm watching him.

What the fuck is wrong with these kids? Have their lives been so full of fucked-up craziness that they don't even blink when a killer crosses their path? Is it so bad for them that they consider this house to be a 'safe place'?

I can't allow myself to worry about that right now.

When I approach him I notice the boy's wide pie-eyes. He's tripping really, really hard; no wonder he doesn't respond- I'm an hallucination.
He should be scared.
I'm terrified of myself. Why isn't anyone afraid of me?

I can't get upstairs without moving the hippie and I move him rather roughly.
I want him to be afraid.
I want him to be hurt, but all he does is roll on the scuffed wooden floor and look up at me with eyes that are larger than his universe.

"Oh man, what're you doin'...can't go up there... Ralph is busy...whoah..."

Oh hell. This pitiful kid is on sentry duty for Ralph. That means Ralph is probably fucking this kid's teenage girlfriend right now.

Hobbies.

Ralph is evil but he's not stupid. Halfway up the rickety folding stairs there's a hanging bead curtain with metal wind chimes tied to the beaded threads. It's going to be impossible to get through it without causing the chimes to ring.

So much for a surprise attack.

The kid on the floor starts yelling.

"Hey! Hey!..." , his voice trails off, I look back and see he's noticed something cosmic in the woodgrain of the floorboards and is staring intensely at nothing.

Nothing left to do but rush upstairs.

For a moment I'm lost. The upstairs grotto is a patchwork nightmare of every tacky piece of pseudo-counterculture trash I've ever seen: psychedelic paisley tapestries, Che; Mao; Lennon and blacklight Hendrix posters vie for room on the crowded walls, incense fills the air - and of course there's plenty of Ralph's paintings - stupidly, I find myself wondering how they are affixed to the sloping interior walls of the attic hideaway...
I barely notice the two naked girls on the mattress across the room and they don't seem to notice me either- but Ralph has seen me.

He's scared and naked, his eyes only need one glance to know why I'm here - he starts scanning the room for something...his clothes? A weapon?

Finally, someone who is afraid of me.

To the children in this house, Ralph is a savior; a messiah; a God; a Prophet; a Shepherd who loves his flock.
He is their Family.

To me, Ralph is a pedophile who can't find his pants.

To Ralph, I am The End.

There's nothing in the room to use as a weapon, this is a fuck-chamber of pillows and mattresses. I should have brought something with me.

If I hadn't lied to Kathy, she'd have known what to bring and what to do with it after I was finished, but I had lied to her and now it was just me, my bare hands and a naked Ralph.
I hadn't even worn gloves.
My fingerprints are all over the murder scene and the victim isn't even dead yet.

So much for plans.

Ralph starts telling me lies. He is really sorry. He didn't know. It was a mistake. Let him explain...after all, he's known me since I was little boy, he's my Mother's friend, he didn't mean to hurt her...Ralph has just said all the wrong things and he suddenly knows it. He knows.

He stops lying and the room is silent except for the muffled weeping coming from one of his teenage 'brides'.

I haven't thrown a punch in years- I am no warrior- but I get really lucky and knock Ralph down with one blow to the face.
He whimpers in unison with the girls he had been molesting.

His penis attempts to retreat into his greying pubic hair and I assist it with my right foot, wishing I'd worn my hiking boots and not my sneakers. More lousy planning. Kathy would have made sure I had boots, gloves and other proper tools for the job.
Why did I lie to her?

Frustrated, I kick Ralph in the balls. Something feels squishy under my foot and Ralph suddenly gets pale and sweaty- I'm almost certain that he's lost track of what is happening to him - it's hard to separate the sounds he makes from the noises the girls across the room are making- pure animal sounds of fear and suffering. Some are coming from me.

This is the fear that I wanted. This is the suffering that I felt.

Feel this, Ralph?

In the teeth. This is for my mother.

In the nose. This is for the girls up here.

In the ribs. This is for the children downstairs.

I grind the sole of my sneaker into his face and that one is for me.

I am done.

I've been here too long. Kathy will be worried. Again, I wish I hadn't lied to her.

I told her I was coming here to buy cocaine and she knows people sometimes get hurt in the course of such transactions- I don't want her coming in to see if I'm OK. She doesn't need to know about Ralph. She doesn't need to know this much about me.

Ralph is moving. He's shakily reaching for a wooden box and I think he's probably got a gun in it- I don't care anymore.
I am done. I need to move but I can't.

Ralph opens the box and reaches into it.

I brace myself for the inevitable impact.

Ralph's hands reach towards me. He's holding a wad of cash and a bundle of cocaine packages.

The bastard thinks this is about money. He thinks it's about the drugs. He thinks I'm robbing him.

He knows who I am and he knows what he has done and he still thinks this is a robbery.

He thinks it's about anything except what he is.

This isn't about money .
I scream this at him- or I try to, but I have no voice left. I am done.

I slap the contraband out of his hands and start towards the stairs when I remember the lie I told Kathy. I reach down and gather a handful of twist-tied cocaine bundles and place them in my jeans pocket before I leave. I don't touch the money.

Without thinking, I walk downstairs, past the broken tripping boy and exit through the front door- the lost children are stirring a little bit, but no one is awake or alert, probably drugged or drunk.

Kathy is waiting outside in her blue Mustang, the headlights off. I walk around to the passenger's side and get in.

"You get it OK?" , she asks.

"Yeah, sorry I took so long...you know how it goes with this stuff..."

"So long? You were only in there for a couple minutes."

"Oh. It seemed like a long time."

When we get home she asks me again how the deal went. Was it OK?

"Of course it was OK- check this shit out. It's pure rock."

" You are lying to me."

"No, I'm not. Everything's cool."

"Then why do you have blood on your shoes?"

That was the last time I lied to Kathy.

Frustration

NOTE: This is not addressed to ALL dudes. Sadly, you DON'T know who you are. You should.

Dudes. Listen up.

Your girlfriends and wives are not happy. Do you not notice this?
You aren't giving them the attention they deserve.
Are you taking your woman for granted? That is a mistake.

I'm single and have been involuntarily celibate for about ten gazillion years and it drives me crazy when your women complain to me about your lack of enthusiasm and imagination. They tell me how dull you are and I start having detailed fantasies- sometimes I share these ideas with your unsatisfied lover and this is what your wife/GF tells me:
" My man wouldn't do that."

Well, I would.

And I wouldn't stop until your wife begged me - and even then I'd draw it out for a loooong time.... The only thing stopping me is a vow I made to myself to never sleep with a married/attached woman again.
Ever.
For five drunken years, the only women I slept with were sexually frustrated married/engaged women that I met at work. All that repressed sexual energy had to go somewhere- and sometimes it came to me.

For some reason, they felt comfortable telling me how much you suck in bed.

Doesn't that feel nice? Your wife told the file clerk about your "problem"...then she took him to a Motel 6 and used your money to pay for the room. I was siting right next to her while she lied to you on her cellphone. That rattling sound was me fixing her a drink.
Nice, huh?

Nowadays, the file clerk doesn't drink and he doesn't have affairs.

The file clerk is adamant about the drinking, but if he keeps hearing these complaints, he might have to change his mind about that adultery vow.

Better get busy unless you want your wife moaning the file clerk's name in her sleep.

Bastards! (At least it's not disco)

This is a scan of an album cover from my record collection. The album is King Crimson's USA , a live album that sounded a lot better when I first heard it on 8-track cassette- King Crimson is a great band but this just isn't a very good recording, even by 1975's standards. It sounds like it was recorded in a giant aquarium with the microphones placed underwater, singer/bassist John Wetton has a wonderful voice -but not on this album. He sounds like me at a 1985 keg party on this record-but it was 1975 , so it could have been worse.

It could have been disco.

1975 sure did have different standards- note that this is a DJ copy- it's hard to see on the pic but the two "suggested cuts for air play" chosen by Atlantic Records : 21st Century Schizoid Man and Easy Money , clock in at 7:32 and 6:32 respectively.




Man, I'm a DJ in real life and I get a chuckle out of that- a record label suggesting that we play a seven-minute song!- and what's funnier is that the second song contains the word "bastard" and has a three-minute avant-garde experimental instrumental improv jam toward the end.

Cool. Hard to listen to for some folks but at least it's not disco...

One of my shows is early Sunday mornings and I'm not sure if I'm even allowed to broadcast the word "bastard" in the morning .
Ever since Janet Jackson "shocked the world" by flashing a tittie on TV, it's been downhill at the FCC- that 'incident' , in my opinion, should have warranted maybe thirty seconds of airtime, maybe part of a 'bloopers' segment on the Leno show or something- certainly not a weeks-long media circus and a complete overhaul of inherently useless FCC regulations.

We, as an audience, have some fucked-up priorities.

It was just a flippin' tit and I never would have even known it happened if the media hadn't acted like a bunch of 7th graders about it. Football fans don't watch the half-time Superbowl show and they don't give a damn about the commercials. It wasn't until the next day that I even knew about the wardrobe malfunction - my response: " So what? And who is Justin Timberlake?"

In 1975 the Record Companies encouraged DJ's to play a song with "bastard" in it, in 2007 the FCC is vague but threatening when it comes to profanity- what's OK at night in some areas is not OK during the days in others...it's very arbitrary and ill-defined and by the time you find out what's unacceptable it's too late.

The obvious things like 'fuck' are no-no's but others are trickier- for instance , I am allowed to bitch about FCC regs in the evening hours but if I call my boss a bitch on the air, the FCC can slam my ass...I mean my butt. Unless it's after six ( five on the west coast) , in which case it's ass...I think.
It's nebulous, intimidating and confusing and you don't get a second chance.

You are presumed guilty and it's up to you to prove you aren't. This sort of brouhaha is great publicity for millionaire DJs like Howard Stern but it's a real pain-in-the-ass for us real-life radio DJ's.

(Can I say pain-in-the -ass?
I don't know- what time is it? If South Park is on , you can say 'pain-in-the -ass'...)


When in doubt, it's safest to play something else.

The word 'bastard' might inflict irreversible injury upon the innocent ears and souls of the Kleenex generation- so I won't play 'Easy Money', despite Atlantic Record's recommendation- from listening to the production on this album, I suspect that King Crimson and Atlantic were at contractual odds- artists have been known to sabotage their own works just to lash out at their corporate masters- ask Lou Reed or Captain Beefheart.

So much for playing 'Easy Money'.

Besides, it's six-and-a half minutes long...

I will play something with more appropriate content and length, such as 'Land' by Patti Smith.