Goods and Bads

My pal Schlep had a cookout at his house last evening and I stopped in for a visit on my way to the radio station. This (below) is Schlep's block. He lives in a thatched-roof hut behind the shrubs on the left...there used to be more trees on this block, but in 2003 Hurricane Isabel knocked them down and Schlep, practical man that he is, cut them into logs and built a cabin in an unsuspecting neighbor's backyard. He's been squatting there ever since...he even has his own vineyard now!




I met Schlep on Blogger...he googled "Snakefinger" (my all-time guitar hero) and found my blog. After an exchange of comments and/or emails, we established that not only do we both live in the same town, we live exactly one block apart from each other! Small world , eh? Since then, he's turned me onto some cool music, especially a band called Cardiacs, who are simply too good to be well-known.

I, in turn, gifted Schlep with my special recipe for Marinated Possum Kabobs (below). Basically, you catch a possum, fillet it, marinade the strips of flesh in a mixture of olive oil, garlic, cilantro and Clorox, place them on skewers and then grill them over coals until they change color. Any color will do.







At one point, the discussion turned to cameras. Did you know that they sell cameras with the YouTube logo on them? For some reason, that makes me paranoid.
In a cagey attempt to capture Schlep's image in pixels, I took a picture of the aforementioned camera- alas, Schlep reads this blog and knows all too well what happens to the pictures I take, so he turned his face away at the critical moment.

Sadly, I had to engineer a band last night, so I didn't get to stay long enough to eat my fill...if I like a band and have a good time producing them, I will usually blog about it.

I'm not blogging about last night's band.

When the session was finally over, the crowded studio was suddenly empty, leaving just myself and my assistant, Galaxy Girl, to put away the gear and clean up the mess...where did everyone go?

They went downstairs for dinner and beers. As GG and I left the station, we peered through the plate glass window of the restaurant below the studio and saw the band and a gaggle of DJ's yukking it up. Man, I sure was hungry...I really could have used a meal but I am what is known as "dirt-poor" and eating out is not in my playbook.

So I went home and ate this (below). I guess it doesn't look too bad until you consider the fact that I've been eating the same pot of chili for five days and I swear to Godzilla, I'm about fucking sick of it by now. One more day and it will be gone...



My boss isn't here today. I don't know where he is or who to ask...I'm kinda stuck on the project I'm working on and there isn't anyone for me to ask for help. My boss is a responsible-type guy and it's not like him to just not show up- that's more my style- all kidding aside, I'm a little worried.

Oh! An Outlook message! Maybe it's from my boss- I hope he can answer my work questions...oh...nevermind. Tomorrow is "Hot Dog Friday"...hot dogs will provided to the workers tomorrow.
Great.
I don't eat hot dogs unless I am in Chicago, and even then I'm a little picky... I guess I'll bring the last of my chili with me tomorrow.
De-fucking-licious.

Rabies on an Upswing

Do possums attack people? I sure as hell hope so.

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


Animism:

1.	the belief that natural objects, natural phenomena, and the universe itself possess souls.

2.	the belief that natural objects have souls that may exist apart from their material bodies.

3.	the doctrine that the soul is the principle of life and health.

4.	belief in spiritual beings or agencies.

Secular:

1.	of or pertaining to worldly things or to things that are not regarded as religious, spiritual, or sacred; temporal.

2.	not pertaining to or connected with religion.

I have combined these two disparate concepts into a unified whole, a belief system that works for me : Secular Animism.

Dude, you might say, that doesn't make any sense.

It doesn't have to make sense. That's where this comes in handy...

Faith:

1. Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
2. Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.

I suppose Secular Animism could be defined thusly:

1. the belief that natural objects, natural phenomena, and the universe itself exist.

This, I admit, is a pretty dull foundation for a religion. In fact, when you take animism and strip away all the parts about 'souls' and spirituality, you are essentially left with little more than science, which can be dreadfully academic. Science also requires proof, which tends to preclude faith.
Proof is also hard work, so we will exclude it and leave science to Dr. Moreau, Dr. Doom and their egg-headed ilk.

In lieu of proof, I proffer possum.


The New Breakfast Snob, March 23, 2008:

Claanad- The Hunter
Is there an award for reverb?

Alvin Lee- The Rapper
Ten Years After twenty years later.

Stranglers- Hallow to Our Men
From 'The Gospel According to the Men in Black'.

Damien Dempsey- Celtic Tiger
Greed. What is it good for?

Pentangle- Storyteller
Deep Purple- Hush
Savoy Brown- Poor Girl
Neil Young- Motorcycle Mama

Damien Dempsey- Colony
I sing the song of the colony
How many years and you're still not free
And your mother cries and you ask god why
Greed is the knife and the scars run deep
How many races with much reason to weep
And your children cry
And you ask god why

I look to the east, I look to the west
To the north and the south, and I'm not too impressed
Time after time
After crime after crime
They raped, robbed, pillaged, enslaved and murdered
Jesus Christ was their god and they done it in his name
So he could take the blame if it's not all a game
With bible in one hand and a sword in the other
They came to purify my land of my Gaelic Irish mothers
And fathers, and sisters and brothers
With our own ancient customs, laws, music, art
Way of life and culture
Tribal in structure
We had a civilisation
When they were still neanderthal nations
We suffer with the Native American, the Indian in Asia
Aboriginal Australia
The African people with their history so deep
And our children still weep and our lives are still cheap

You took what was not yours
Went against your own bible
You broke your own laws
Just to out do the rival
But did you ever apologize
For the hundreds and millions of lives
You destroyed and terrorised
Or have you never realized
Did you never feel shame
For what was done in your country's name
And find out who's to blame and why they were so inhumane
And still they teach you in your school
About those glorious days of rule
And how it's your destiny to be
Superior to me
But if you've any kind of mind
You'll see that all human kind
Are the children of this earth
And your hate for them will chew you up and spit you out

-Damien Dempsey

Whoa. Then I played a few choice snippets of Patti Smith...you know the ones.

Great Big Sea - End of the World
Well, I played 'Colony' and Patti Smith on Easter and lightning didn't strike me dead...but if it had...

John Prine- Please Don't Bury Me
I'm donating myself to science. Unless my cats eat me first.

Velvet Underground- Lonesome Cowboy Bill
Gentle Giant- As old as You're Young
Emerson, Lake & Palmer- Hoedown
Jethro Tull- Moths
Grace Slick & Paul Kantner- Earth Mother
Fiona Joyce- Cry Over You
Frank Zappa- St. Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast Medley
Steve Hillage- Wait One Moment
Dude. Collect yourself into the Cosmic Power of the Great Healing Wave or something...Hillage is a fantastic guitarist but he would make a lousy secular animist.

Nouvelle Vouge- In A Manner of Speaking
Brian Eno -Mother Whale Eyeless
Altan- Eoghainin O Ragdain
Mr. Acker Bilk - Easter Parade

Roy Buchanan- I Won't Tell You No More Lies
Dude, that's a double negative. Perhaps that is why this song is an instrumental.

Pretty Things- God Give Me The Strength To Carry On
Amen, y'all.

Have a Happy Day, Holy or otherwise.

Answered!

Do possums attack people?

According to Google , there are 87,400 answers to this question and answers #1 and #2 are both provided by this blog.
My site meter tells me that, on average, three people per day visit this site asking : do possums attack people?

The answer is : No.

Unless they have rabies.
Or are cornered. Or hungry.
Or mutants.

Why are they asking this question anyway? It's the sort of question most people would only ask when confronted with a snarling possum; by which time it's usually too late to cry for help, much less go on-line and Google "do possums attack people?"

I mean, have you ever seen a possum snarl? Of course not. No one living has.

According to one expert , human encounters with possums lead to over 2 million fatal attacks per year. These attacks are almost invariably fatal only to the possum.

In one of his lesser-known experiments, Nik Tesla discovered that possums possess an acute sensitivity to minute changes in the Earth's magnetic field, such as those produced by solar flares on our own sun.

Shortly before he vanished while demonstrating a prototype 'time weapon' to the U.S. military, Tesla established a link between increased solar activity and unusual possum behavior. He observed that during periods of flare-ups, the possums outside his squalid New York boarding house would engage in otherwise unheard of behavior, such as devouring automobile tires and holding strange marsupial orgies involving ceremonial headgear and human sacrifice. He speculated that possums could be exposed to a combination of solar radiation and negative energy and transformed into 'electro' warrior-animals designed to act as advance troops in the obsolete art of trench warfare.



This idea was rejected by officials from the U.S.A., England and the Soviet Union, who were more interested in developing tanks, planes and artillery. Tesla's research into weaponized possums was lost when he vanished nearly two years later.

So, no. Possums don't attack people. But they very well could have.

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!"

Easter Possum Playlist

XTC- Wake Up
Steve Hillage-It'sAll Too Much
Captain Beefheart- Too Much Time
Bob Dylan- Meet me in the Morning
Victor Banana- Slumber Precious
Loreena McKennitt- Gates Of Istanbul
Fat Freddy's Drop- Ernie
Led Zeppelin- Rover
Jethro Tull-Rover
Fairport Convention- Million Dollar Bash
Snakefinger- Bring Back Reality
Gary Numan- Metal
Drive-By Truckers- Birmingham
Flaming Groovies- Doctor Boogie

Pink Floyd- Bike
Nina Hagen -African Reggae
The Clash- Clash City Rockers
Danielle Dax- Tomorrow Never Knows
Crack the Sky- I am the Walrus
Mothers of Invention- Let's Make the Water Turn Black
Damien Dempsey -Colony
Kantner/Slick- Sketches of China
Gong- Heaven's Gate
Sweetwater- Motherless Child
Brice Woodall-Control Freak
Pretty Things- Bitter End