Archive for April, 2010

HIM:

What’s up you gorgeous beeotch?…we need to hang!!! I saw on your blog you reconnected with Eddie. It took me a few to decipher it all. I thought it was great. please call your mother and have a swell afternoob.

ME:

This is a little ridiculous, you and I in the same town and all. I heard you fart. Still living in the same place? Maybe we should have you over. My mom loves Jo. Then we could retire to your place and get hammered. I heard you fart.

HIM:

Yes we are there until July 1st. all is swell. Are you nude? I also heard you fart…J-men forever, I need to find that fine featurette. Yes, we need to. are you still doing the part-time Costco gig? are you floundering for a cigar?

I Remember a time eons ago, 1982 I think. You were tanning on the back deck of Viking Way Manor. Not an unusual occurrence in those days, at least not during that time of year. Oiled up in a speedo sipping on homemade sun-tea, I’d put the time at roughly 10:30 a.m. Vitamin pills get popped, nausea gets to start, groceries are fucking blown.

You were a bit taken back, as you learned the hard way, to always have the Malt-o-meal, prior to taking your daily vit-a-mins!

Cobalt the Barkeep 🙂

ME:

What I flounder for is a vienna sausages. I make Carsonites happier one window treatment at a time. I’m a monkey on a stick.

Let’s fucking drink and reconnoitre. Our absence is criminal. I heard you fart. I want to be lended that Phenolbarbidolls CD. I’ve actually been asked to helm another…………………………….

………..Sooner or later I will carve bacon from her back.

Let’s hang.

HIM:

Do you ever take a fork to your favorite bird? I remember you asking me that once in prison.

Si Senior, I will have to go to the storage facility and grab the disc for you. Jo and I will be taking an extended weekend with the kids in Santa Cruz starting this Friday morning through Monday.

Perhaps the week/weekend I get back we can hang?

Do you have a new girlfriend, or just a new local girlfriend?
Is your back covered in flies? have you seen the inside of
the Gypsy Conventional Remedial Learning Center? Do you bask in the devils of the whiskey forlorn? Does madge still dip her hands in Palmolive? have you tailored a new cod piece? did you mention your stance to the brethren of metal?
are dipped cones dumb, or just chocolaty delicious?

These questions and more upon our next close encounter
of the ninth kinder.

Wong Tip Larue.

ME:

I’ve always been jaundiced you know. Crazy as clacking lucite balls on a string.

I’ve got notions for you.

Do you even understand three bean salad at all?

Man, if you could do that for me I’d fashion a bust of you out of paper towels and catshit and Crest. Bathroom gore. I can’t explain it. I kinda need that record. I still have your copy of the Gooch. I take good care of it.

I store it in my ass.

Close to the Monterey aquarium? Ever been? Bring your pistol and some Cheezewhiz. I liked touching the macular degenerates.

I work weekends as a monkey on a stick. We’ll figure it out.

My back was covered in flies upon entering the Gypsy Conventional Remedial Learning Center. My girlfriend is the same one you met, but you know chicks can’t help it with me.

I bask in the Devil of everything from eggs to cakes. Do you suppose the aliens watch that commercial and laugh?

I picture giant insects purring over the green in the bowl.

My codpiece is fashioned from a rare meat, pounded and tanned to the texture of a dried parsnip.

My stance is wide.

Chocolaty delicious with a heavy German female accent.

I have to go now.

Paula Prentiss

Drinks for my friends.

My first blog wearing glasses.

I am here to tell you that the entire Tea Party movement is a house of cards.  Furthermore, I want to inform you, that the majority of members thereof, are douchebags.  I do lament the absence of, and pine for a third party, but as far as this one, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

Dickheads.  Asshats.

Loose lipped cashiers all of them.  When Michele Bachman, Sarah Palin and Dick Armey are blowing your skirt up, you’re not in Kansas anymore.  You’re in a place none of them would ever admit to but are invested in.  That they don’t understand where they are leading you speaks volumes about their intelligence and yours if you ascribe.  The Tea Party is a fool’s paradise.

I’m not sure how many of them realize as much, but the term “teabag”, is a verb and has long been reference, a colloquial advent of the contemporary American vernacular,  for the act of a man placing his ball sack on the chin or face of another man.  It really is most of what needs to be said here.  It honestly is.  All you need to know.

Still with me?

These proud adherents, are both best and generously explained as confused.  I prefer the word ‘fools’.  They imagine somehow that their reason has to do with the admirable notion that taxation sans representation is egregiously unjust.  Indeed, it’s the only thing they are right about despite it having nothing at all to do with what they are up to or claim to oppose.  They have no idea.

It can and does say all manner of preposterous things about the American Electorate.  It insults my intelligence.  It’s fucking absurd.  It baffles and confounds me.

The blind attempting to lead the naked.  Dumbshits whistling and gesturing at the willfully ignorant and tragically confused.

See, the middle class, what’s left of it, now enjoys one of the biggest tax cuts in history.  Tax returns are up by 10%.  95% of American tax payers are enjoying the lowest rates since 1955 -sourced from The Rachel Maddow show.  The cuddly whip smart lesbian.  I’m hetero so I want her to change her hair.  88% of said Teaparty disciples  don’t know as much.  They all watch FOX.  How tragic is that?

It’s a simple as the roads they drive, the police and fire departments, medicaid, medicare and social security they depend upon, to say nothing of the world’s most powerful military, ever and by far, in a long history of very powerful war engines and military industrial commerce.  Big business.  Huge business.   Literally,the biggest business on the planet.

Hello?

They are a simple folk.  What the mad fuck are they so afraid of?  What are they so angry about?

They know not at all what they would object to.

They inhabit a vacuum.  Fools.

They couldn’t be bothered when Dumbya was at the wheel.  They cannot tell you with any coherence what they object to.  They plainly, don’t know.  They are quite simply, pissed off.  And that, is all they are.  All they are.  Life sucks so they need to be mad.  They want to be mad.  And they just happen to be ignorant racists.  They see Mexicans busting ass for six or eight bucks an hour and refuse to own that it could be them.  That it might be them.  Fear of a diverse planet.  Fear of of a black man that has already helped most of them in far more substantial ways than any President in their adult lives.

Jackin’ shit up right and left.

Fear of God.

Assholes and idiots.  You stupid fucks.

It chaps my ass, these dipshits have at best, vague reasons for being so fired up, and they can’t explain it.  They know not what they do, they don’t even know why.  Willful ignorance.  Taking pride in causing some shit.  Packing heat to some non violent, peaceful, political event.  Intellectual laziness and dishonesty.  Flammable.  They consistently subject themselves to and prostrate themselves for, something so profoundly ridiculous that it can’t be explained and makes even less sense in any historical context whether it be recent or ancient.

“The wealthiest 10 percent of Americans now have a larger share of total income than they ever have in records going back nearly a century — an even larger amount than during the Roaring Twenties, the last time the US saw such similar disparities in wealth……….According to Saez’s study, which Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman drew attention to at his New York Times blog, the top 10 percent of earners in America now receive nearly 50 percent of all the income earned in the United States, a higher percentage than they did during the 1920s.” -RAW STORY

“We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” -Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

” The concept of wealth is of significance in all areas of economics, especially development economics, yet the meaning of wealth is context-dependent and there is no universally agreed upon definition. Various definitions and concepts of wealth have been asserted by various individuals and in different contexts.^[2] Defining wealth can be a normative process with various ethical implications, since often wealth maximization is seen as a goal or is thought to be a normative principle of its own.” -Wikifuckinpedia

A Plutocracy.  Not an oligarchy.

Wake up.

Ahem.  What’s crazy is they kinda want to hang the rich.  It’s mad because everything they participate in is a thinly veiled concerted effort to further the flow of filthy lucre to those that would eventually enslave their dumb asses.  All these, who as a class, as in used to be “middle class”, have ceased to matter, yet they rail and snarl in favor of what causes their unrest to begin with.  I’ll put my toe in the water and call them all men who don’t realize they are costumed in dresses.  Elaborate rhinestone purses.  Silly stupid shoes.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Great Unwashed, the 1/4 paradigm, doth march with open weaponry.  Forgive them for they know not what they do.  Or not.  Stupid fucks.  No one wants to take your goddamn guns away if for no other reason than we can’t.  We can’t.  It will never happen.  It’s done.  Leave it alone.  I know a good many of you have them that shouldn’t.  At the end of the day, it’s all they seem to care about.  They are unable to define themselves in any other way or by any other cause save abortion, taxes and the most twisted hypocritical Christianity that I’m tired of being made to pay attention to.  It’s you I have a problem with, not your God.

Jesus is just allright with me but his fans are losers.  They eat paste.  They throw tantrums.  They act like assholes.

It is ultimately a sad thing, a uniquely one dimensional thing.  Foregone sacred by city blocks.  Bereft of humor and decency by leagues under the sea.

“Faced with looming deficits, Reagan raised taxes again in 1983 with a gasoline tax and once more in 1984, this time by $50 billion over three years, mainly through closing tax loopholes for business. Despite the fact that such increases were anathema to conservatives–and probably cost Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, reelection–Reagan raised taxes a grand total of four times just between 1982-84.”  -firedoglake

Every icon they foist and worship is a tiger constructed of the thinnest paper.  I’m sick of it.  You lie to us and yourselves.  You suck.  Teaparty and/or Teabaggers are far beyond reprehensible.

Not only did Reagan raise taxes over and over, but he sucked off the rich and we suddenly won the cold war.  A simple strategy.  We out spent them with your children’s money.  Walk in the park.  Ronnie was no sharper than a marble, but he didn’t bend us over the stove nearly as bad as Junior Dumbya.

Tax cuts to the rich under Dumbya cost us two Trillion, with a “T”, dollars.  Honestly and seriously.  No shit.

I am weary of them.  The media affords them far too much light.  On their very best day, twenty five percent of all living and breathing Americans.  Thus far, their biggest achievement has been to allow the stupid to feel a little better about themselves for not being so shamelessly manipulated and therefore stupid.  It’s just that they have been so shamelessly manipulated and are therefore acutely and chronically stupid.  Congratulations to one and all.

I hate stupid and there’s no chance of fixing it.  They just aren’t willing.  They honestly don’t care.

At the same time, I am curious to see the effect on the vote.  The GOP.  I’m wondering whether the season may not be so bad for the Democrats because ham fisted idealogues cannot hold they smoke.  What we have here is a bifurcated tail.  Bacon and chocolate.  Not for everybody but I’m on board.  Let’s see what happens next.

Bacon and chocolate.

What crawls up my snatch is the deliberate obfuscation and subsequent fomenting of fear and lies.

It’s true that the great unwashed  have been diabolically misled, but it’s still their fault.  Ignorance of the law is no more an excuse than lack of intellectual curiosity.

Really.  The Tea Party is stupid.  So goddamn dumb as to not realize that the tax rate they’ll be paying has been rolled back to the middle of the last century.  For the first time in a long time they are getting unhammered.  95% are seeing a reduction in federal income tax.  5% aren’t.  That last tax cut to the 5% cost us two trillion dollars.

Did I mention with a ‘T’?

That was dumb.

No Shit.

Look at my thumb.  Gee you’re dumb.

Now we are in Afghanistan again.  And broke.  Broken.  Our debt is less than most European countries.  America is too big to fail.  Really.  It is.  Therein lies the rub.

Bacon and chocolate.

I am rubber and you are glue.

Drinks for my friends.

Is it a coincidence that any food that is bad for you comes in loud packaging?

Think about it here in class.  The best snacks being passed around are the crinkliest.  I am bothered by this on more than one level.  A sonic manifestation for the guilt of indulgence.

I’m waiting to fail up one more time.

I have a kiosk at Costco.  I sell you on the idea that a design consultant will come to your home and measure your windows, dazzle you with samples and hold your hand while you and your family envision your new window treatments in all their glory and how much they will cost at no obligation.

It’s kind of intense.  Whoever you are, I’ve been watching you for somewhere between 15 and 75 feet depending on how busy it is.  By the time you get to me, I’ve sized you up and have an impression as well as an idea of what’s going on in your cart and what it’s contents may say about you.  I look at your shoes and how you’re dressed.  Your watch and jewelry.  Many fall short of the ideal of sartorial splendor.  It begins with eye contact and then it becomes guess and instinct.  Intuition.  If I make eye contact with you I may already have figured out what to say.  As often as not, I do that and just nod my head.  I monitor your passing from my periphery to see if you see what I’m selling.  You never know.  If I’m feeling it, I ask you about your windows or congratulate you on your new 72 inch LCD TV from VIZIO.  I might make fun of you for walking out with one item or ask what time the party starts if you egress with nothing but booze……..

I smile a lot.  I’m good at this.  I’m a salesman and I know what I’m doing.  I’ve sold everything from pipes to dildos to credit card merchant services.  I’ve done hundreds of trade shows.  Name tags are a decade of ubiquity for me.

I can sell ice cubes to Eskimos but have never been about the hard sell.

I’m a monkey on a stick.  At least I’m pretty anonymous.  Having grown up in this town, I recognize a fair number of faces but enjoy the luxury of not being recognized.

I love to watch people.

I used to have a Costco membership.  I had a  beautiful house and a hot fiancee.  Three felines and a big back yard.  Nice new cars in the garage.

There is no longer any reason for me to be a Costco member.

I’m firmly of the belief that some members take the idea of membership a little too seriously.  My display is across from the food court.  The smart ones grab a cart and enter at the exit to grab a snack before shopping.  Never shop for anything on an empty stomach.  Some people come just to eat.  A buck fifty for a big ass hot dog or polish and a carbonated cocktail of sugar but no booze is pretty serious business.  The pizza isn’t bad.  I just remembered I’ve never seen them maintain that onion dispenser in any way; just turn the crank and perfectly diced onions spill onto your dog effortlessly.  I work four hour shifts.  I can’t believe I haven’t clocked anyone so much as inserting a single onion.

The average body type trends toward endomorphic and is predominantly middle aged to senior citizen.  Either young people don’t often frequent Costco or the demographic paradigm has shifted dramatically in Carson City since my upbringing.  I see a few of you, my classmates in there.  I believe I’ve seen Bob Priest three times and had the good fortune to meet his wife.

There are regulars.  Costco has regulars.  The number of faces familiar to me continues to increase un abated.  Many of them don’t buy anything.  My guess is they show up out of boredom and for the free samples.  On weekends it’s a virtual buffet, a moveable feast.

There’s the guy with the gray scoop of hair all bristlecone pine or creosote bush shaped like a brain complete with frontal lobes and cerebral cortex piled high on his head in the most ridiculous of pompadours.  I figured out just today that his significant other is one of the sweet older ladies who passes out samples.

The thin woman in her mid sixties that still has serious sex appeal.  Petite and glamorous, she always chats with me a little, sunglasses on her head holding back her beautiful gray mane, tight pants and stilettos.  She is sweet and has intelligent eyes.  I think I’d like to share drinks and conversation with her.  I picture her driving a late model red Mercedes convertible.  She rarely buys anything but flowers or chocolates, yet she shops for hours.

The warm and pungent waft of three different pizza varieties.  Combo, Pepperoni or Cheese.  Tomato sauce, bubbling cheese, bell pepper and sausage.  I typically try to close a few deals before I take a stroll to the southeast corner for the buffet.  Brie and garlic raviolis, shrimp scampi, marinated tri tip, yogurt, juice, aged Irish cheddar, chili or lentil soup.  It irritates me that the yogurt, chili and lentil soup are served with a spork.  My father and I have discussed this.  How do you get at the last of it?

I am a DSR.  A Demonstration Sales Representative.  At the end of every shift I fax my DARs, Design Appointment Requests, into the home office in Portland Oregon.  I have run a $10 million dollar a year company.  I was hands on instrumental in guiding that company from shipping $20k a week to $50k a day.  I produced and engineered a record that sold nearly four million copies.

Then there is the brutal repetition of dreams.  Realized and impossible.

I keep moving.  The universe pays no mind.

Drinks for my friends.

I was the cockroach

with very brilliant gold shell

under an old log.

You were blue bottle

fly flitting about doing

good for the insect community, then

always crashing into trees.

We fell in love, made

two thousand children,

but I still prefer to spend

my time under logs

reading the fungus.

You still prefer flying about

doing selfless deeds.

Friends all marvel at

how well our marriage has worked:

you. kept from crashing

into trees; me, brought

out into daylight.  Still, the

greatest miracle

–our children, giant

flying cockroaches, fungus

loving gold-blue flies.

-Bob Preist

Drinks for my friends.

A Note to White Bear

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 Tue at 9:49pm

Seems our lives, as if not already limited enough, are about to be, or already are depending on the bar you hang out in in cyberspace, ensnared in a ‘144 characters or less’ world of no goodness, as I was unable to post to your wall much of anything other than the usual “whatup dog?” which though mildly amusing like a morning rub and tug are not nearly enough to sustain or feed us to the point of providing real heel kicking call a good friend and scream into the phone “Goddamn I’m happy! Aren’t you?!” joy, the kind that some of us still claim as one of our rights for the mere fact that we’ve made it this far. So I figured I’d throw you a note while my able bodied team continues to work out the kinks to our big move to “dedicated servers.” Meaning yours truly cannot post freely on his own empire turf due to CPU overages they claim are due to traffic violations on the information super highway. So here’s that ten-year note. Or is it twenty? Either way, it’s been a long time my friend. Too long.

For those in the know (readers of the Transcendence Diaries), this is where Fishy reconnects with White Bear, the beer belching bourbon loving bearded bard of infinite alliteration who mentored young Fishy in his college years while he called Atlanta GA home for a few years. And so, after many, many, many years, the reply to the unexpected electronic letter that appeared from nowhere went something like this.

Dear White Bear,
As older brothers go… I’ve been missing you too; for years my friend. In response to your question, yeeaap (not too long but slightly drawn out) I was wondering the same thing… I feel our spheres are close enough to share a drink or a two-hour chat now and then. (and they don’t call me the ambassador for nothing. I find it awfully difficult to not get along with just about anyone truth be told. Not always to my benefit. But certainly to theirs.) I wholeheartedly agree with you on the Kennedys. Thought Bobby was the White Knight we’d been waiting for for decades. Idolize the man. Love but hate the behavior of the dark forces that took him from us, those same forces that now seem to control everything except my left nut, though even that I wouldn’t bet on.

In terms of money and fame, I’ve haphazardly and ironically made a fortune over the years while chasing that ever-elusive dream of stardom seemingly forever intent on ignoring my imagined greatness. Unlike you, I’m not interested in money. Just give me the influence so I can help right the Becks and O’Reillys of the world. I’m glad we’re still playing at the same table on that front, but I do lean more toward the “you don’t really believe they’re working for different people still do ya?” view. David Icke et al. (Oh how i would love to see you laugh that one out in person) But truly I bailed on all those left versus right legends long ago and tend to operate somewhere outside of but in between it all. Some people refer to it as conspiracy theory (which I find fallacious because that would imply something “secret” and there is no longer anything secret about the self-serving cabal of blood thirsty murdering fuckhead bastards that rules all governments of the world at this point.) Others call it libertarianism I’ve heard, but I haven’t had time to check. I just call it being human. Fluid. Bamboo. Never stop researching.

One thing I’ll tell ya is that your influence was a great and mighty one on the young Fishy, once known as Ed Hale, then Eddie Darling, then Guess Darling, and eventually the pretentious as all hell Ambassador. Wrote like a mother f*&ker for 20 straight years based on your many deep-voiced mid-of-night suggestions and ended up with a ridiculously over-weighted 5000 page novel series called The Adventures of Fishy, spent eight years blogging from it (based on a suggestion from another brother from a different mother who you might equally enjoy we call G2) to something called the Transcendence Diaries. See it here: www.transcendencediaries.com. Some damn good passages in there. A few I’m actually proud of. And not a year went by that I didn’t wonder what you’d think as I pounded those keys. Thank you for that.

By the way. Got married recently. You may remember my hopeless romantic ideals that true love really does exist somewhere out there if we just wait for it that I would occasionally espouse during those obligatory drunken late night talkies (did we actually get college credit for those as you once told me?) Well it turns out that for once I was right. It does. Sometimes it may be right under our noses… PLT, better known to readers as Princess Little Tree, had and has been my best friend for over seven years when I finally proposed to her on a row boat in the middle of a lake in Central Park on the sunniest day the Good Lord ever created. But indeed you really do just have to wait for it. I had plenty of just about everything else; so I knew what I was looking for. And you know what it was? (still is…) A “Yes.” Something we hear inside that we ourselves cannot muster up no matter how hard we try. One day I hope she gets the opportunity to meet you… I am sure she will consider it every bit the honor that I did way back when.

Very very good to hear from you my brother. Your presence was missed.
E (or F as the case may be)
;>

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

Michael Douglass

Fuck me you little shit. David Icke, I’d sneer at ya.
I must say this. I am honored and flattered.

Understand, I was growing up too.

My memories of you are so fond. You fascinated me. A pompous sixteen or seventeen year old punk with a big ass thirsty brain who wore frilly blouses.

We met when you battled pimples and I was able to grow my first beard.

Honesty though. Painfully honest. Recklessly honest.

I’ve missed you too my friend. That I influenced you in any way is huge to me because honestly I meant to.

I have no idea why but I did.

I was pretty sure you were smarter than me but you needed course correction.

I’m about a third of the way through a rewrite of a novel and writing a book about the biz. I got this blog which I adore. I just get on it and spew or post a chapter from one of the books I hack away at.

Sheezus you flatter me. Thank you. From long ago and far away you have touched me today.

I’ll follow the link.

My old friend, how cool it is to hear from you. Let me count the ways.

I look back on my life and realize I’ve always had a collaborator, a partner, an intellectual counter strength for ballast and balance, I’ve long owned that you set the bar. Remember we called it “knowing”?

Exactly how simple is that?

Yesterday at 12:00am ·

 

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Ed Hale

Wow. My heart just grounded one step deeper into earthly comfort as you mentioned “Knowing.” For i carried the term quite far and wide over the years, long past the end-zone and off the field entirely into the world and beyond, sharing everyone what this cool guy from college and I used to talk about and how few actually even seem to get it… that… See More “to KNOW is to know you don’t know. If you flat out know you don’t know shit, then at least you KNOW. But if you think you know, then you don’t KNOW. I found a few other people who understood the concept… Harry Palmer (created the Avatar Materials – deep as all hell; talk about KNOWING. His first book blew me out of the bathtub i was reading it in at the time). Reconnected with an old Junior High crush known as Juliet who turned out to KNOW, G2 got it, and of course PLT… She so gracefully “doesn’t know” that she may just KNOW more than any of the rest of us. It honors me that you remember that. I had assumed you had abandoned the ideas of our youth.

And no i had no idea that you intentionally were attempting to have an influence, but rather thought that I was just leeching due to feeling you had so much to offer. I will never forget this subtle but impactful father to son talk we had sunning by the pool where you taught me that just because I may be generous at times does not imply that I can just assume others are the same way and that perhaps I should ask others before I eat their food or use their ______(fill in the blank). I LEARNED that. I took it with me. It changed me. I HEARD you. It helped. Tremendously. I always wanted to tell you that.

There were many such instances.

Yesterday at 12:22pm ·

 

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Ed Hale

PS — in direct line with this same thread, I took up a similar mantle with a young man who lived in the same building as I here in New York known as Little T. Found him when he was a mere 11. Had him reading Howard Zinn by age 13 and writing better than Van or Bruce by age 15. Recognized his genius long before he or his parents or teachers did. … See MoreFor a brief spell it felt as though I was his only lifeline… SO despite how difficult it was at times (I remembered your occasional frustration when I would fall) I stuck by his side. I often reflected back on you and your subtle don juan like life lessons even when I pained your ass just by my very presence. But without you there would be no Richard Bach, no Carlos Casteneda, no Kurt Vonnegut, no Steely Dan or Mozart… Little T couldn’t pass a urine test when I found him let alone a final or entrance exam. I knew all he needed was someone that understood he KNEW, that he was special. Happy to report that my work is now finished with him, that he not only gets straight A’s, attends Bard College two years earlier than the rest of his lot, but that i openly acknowledge that he is leagues more intelligent and more well read than I am already (he is 17 now) so I now use his lyrics for my songs rather than my own just due to the sheer humbling fact that they are so much better than mine half the time. Talk about a humbling experience… but i figure better to sing great lyrics penned by a 17 year old poet than to sing mediocre lyrics penned by myself just for the sake of doing so. My ego doesn’t need the tickle. I just want to sing great songs. He offers me that. He also strangely has turned into one of my best friends, which, well, talk about weird… but if we do KNOW anything, then it is that “age” may just have nothing to do with “it” at all.

Yesterday at 12:43pm ·

 

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Michael Douglass

Man. You haven’t changed but to hone yourself either. I’m sincerely so goddamned impressed I can’t stand it. Gorgeous honing my old friend. Your voice is so clear and honest, literally like bells.

I like who you are, who you’ve become. Because I know. Certain things after this long, we know for sure. I see you’ve become a human who’s easy on the eyes for them who see enough to understand there’s far less known than not.

“I find it awfully difficult to not get along with just about anyone truth be told” -that’s what I’m talking about. You were a bit of a cunt back then but I understood that much. … See More

We need face time.

I hesitate to say it it because it smacks of patronage, but I’m overwhelmingly proud of you. The tone of your typewritten voice is all I need. I tell you this as an equal.

Understand, I never considered you anything else. You were the smartest person I’d met at that point in my life. I worried a little that you might be smarter until I understood it just didn’t matter. I learned that from you my friend.

I understood I didn’t have to worry about every good brain I came across but rather aspire to appreciate it. It helps me as of today.

Later, I met a lot of people way smarter than me and ended up grateful for that lesson.

You taught me plenty my friend, much of it by example. I have been grateful to know you since we met and have thought about you too over time.

The idea of “knowing” meaning we can’t begin to be so enlightened as to even understand understand what we don’t know, I doubt to be an exclusive concept, but I believe you and I put it into those specific terms together. It never was my idea, it was ours. I could never abandon such a thing. Profound truth. We know it now for sure don’t we?

That you’ve mentored someone into a muse must fit into some rare and delicate self actualization. I trained a few engineers but …………yes, age has nothing to do with “it”.

Allow me to update you: “……….don’t doubt that the randomness of life is in some way synchronized with all the things that we don’t understand about the universe. It’s what we do know that confounds us. All the while, what we don’t know blows us along. ” -I wrote that.

I’m traveling through an exasperating period in life. Frustrating. I haven’t stopped learning and understanding new things however.
It never stops as I’m sure you know.

It would be huge to drink dirty cheap whiskey with you.

Someday soon I hope.

10 minutes ago ·

 

Drinks for my friends.

He is my uncle Larry.  One of eleven brothers and sisters on my mother’s side.

A jockey.  A laborer.  A father, son, brother, cousin and uncle.  No doubt a grandfather.  I really don’t know him as well as I would like.

He’s a mild misanthrope.

Broken collar bones, shoulders, arms, knees and fearlessness.  A slight man atop a charging behemoth; both human and beast taught most all of speed and finish line.  Grace thereof a fortunate and beautiful artifact of an archaic contest.  Forty seven miles an hour on a twelve hundred pound engine wearing a vest that would merely call sexuality into question at any other venue.

A man who most certainly loves in his very own way.  You’ll see what I mean.

He and uncle Skid were just here last week.

I call him uncle Skid.  I didn’t make it up.

He hugged me goodbye and said in my ear that he was glad I was here.  I thought he meant to tell me I was doing some good here with my parents.  My father having suffered numerous injuries and illnesses, both taking an enormous toll on he as well as my mother.  I thanked him for saying it and he reassured me I was.  I told both he and Uncle Skid that I loved them and they told me that too.

Before I was five I learned to fear him.  When the phone rang at two a.m. there was no one else it could be but my mother’s little brother.  Uncle Larry.  On his way to some track in California to race.  Maybe some desert town for a quick purse.  Uncle Larry confused me.  I loved him and he was good to me……..not nearly as good to me as uncle Danny was.

All these people are chapters.

I was but a toddler the first time he electrocuted me with the glorified cattle prod he carried at all times.  He reached into his pocket as he asked did I want to see his frog?  He had it on him at all times to shock the shit out of whatever human he may come across I guess.  I remember the hollering of uncles and cousins subjected to it.  He once laid in wait in a San Francisco motel room until his younger brother entered the shower, he dumped ice water on him and shocked him when he fled.  We heard the screams.  We were four or five doors down.  The sun wasn’t even close to ready for the morning.

Yeah, he’s a funny little bastard.

The whole family is just a little off.

He was fond of using a tissue and putting it back in the box.  One day shortly after Christmas my family returned home to discover the tree in the front yard festooned with every bra, pantie and undergarment my mother owned.  My mother’s middle name is Lenore.  He’s called her “Manure” ever since I can remember.

Until I was ten, my feet would churn before they ever hit the ground if he reached for his pocket.  By the time I was twelve or thirteen I was probably big enough to kick his ass.  I woke one morning in Scottsdale Arizona with his dirty socks in my mouth.  He would hide crab or lobster shells or a soiled diaper in your car in August.

Uncle Larry is a bit of a sociopath.  I sense he honestly can’t help it.  It has a lot to do with why I like him.

A few years back he and my uncle Skid showed up and spent time visiting my sister and her family.  As per normal, any member of my mother’s family is always willing to help in any way they can.  All the brothers and brothers-in-law are handy and capable of anything from plumbing, construction, heating & air conditioning to electrical to concrete.  Together they could build a nice house.  They covet a challenge and to the man, all believe they can fix anything.  They are a clever and capable clan.  I don’t recall exactly what my sister needed done but Uncle Skip as everyone else calls him, and Uncle Larry, were more than willing to lend hands.

My nephews ended up with fiberglass insulation in their beds.  Uncle Larry advised them the the next morning that the very best thing was to take a shower just as hot as they could stand.

I’m forty five years old and I lock my bedroom door when uncle Larry is in town.  My niece and nephews now do the same.

For what it’s worth, I did a pretty thorough job of returning all my uncle’s favors at a family reunion some years back  I called an executive order on the fish caught in the creek that day and that’s all I can say for reasons of national security.  He plays with me like he doesn’t know it was me but I know he knows so I just lie my ass off about every aspect of it.

He is one funny little bastard.

I don’t worry too much about uncle Skip when he’s around by himself or with anyone but Larry.

They have a bond.  It’s interesting.  Uncle Skid is basically a sweet metrosexual but he can swing a hammer and dig a hole.  He could maybe be in the Village People but he’d need to buff up quite a bit.  Let me just tell you this about my uncle Skid who’s real name is Ralph, he used to have a handlebar mustache.  He’s a good looking, well groomed accomplished man or guy.  My uncle Skid rocks.

My uncle Larry is one obstreperous, ornery, mischievous sonafabitch and I love him too.  They are Hardings and I need to tell you what that means.  My last name is Douglass, but it is with pride and humility I tell you I’m a Harding too.  In many ways, Uncle Larry is no different than any other Harding.  My mother’s family is enormous, I believe I have over forty cousins.  Almost without exception, any one of these people would do whatever and jump at the chance to drop everything, sacrifice anything, to help anyone they love and care for whether they are family or not.  It is one very loyal tribe.  Just about everyone of them has a sense of humor somewhere between childish and devious.

They do love to laugh.

It is a family who’s love and respect for each other is more than unlikely for it’s size.

The in law uncles understand they are Hardings.  The in law aunts have been a bit more reluctant but they have succumbed or moved on.  It’s a thing.  Like The Borg from Picard era Star Trek.  Assimilation.

The rooster weather vane blew off the folks’ house this winter and my uncle Fred reattached it.  I overheard him on the phone tell someone that “Doug’s cock fell off so I screwed it back on”.  His last name is Phillips but he’s a Harding.  He’s a little bit of a whack job Republican.  Lives in the sticks and has an elaborate room/vault for the family’s guns.  I hear it’s impressive.  I’ll be the judge.  Uncle Fred is one of my favorites and always has been despite how profoundly different we are.  He and my uncle Bob take inordinate pride in any and all things they find along the road.  Chainsaws, guns, tools……  I miss my uncle Bob.  He likes to laugh.  A tall gangly mouth breather with a mysterious but warm sense of humor who had some kind of fortune to fall in love with my aunt Shirley.

Poor bastard.  You want everybody to be aware of something, tell my aunt Shirley.  For better and for worse, she is the Harding Hotline.  She sees it as a public service.  I adore her.  She loves hard.  If she loves you she loves you.

Cousin Scotty, who has nothing to do with any of this, once stabbed his licorice ice cream cone onto the enormous butt of a woman wearing white stretch pants walking by in a shopping mall. He looked at me and giggled.  He was missing his two front teeth.

They are all chapters.  It’s a close family.

Larry is an odd little man with big ass ears.  The ears and a sizable gap between the two front teeth, “The Harding Split”, are a genetic family marker.  Many in the family have since erased the tooth gap via modern orthodontics.  Mother lost hers in a car accident at eighteen so she’s long since been repaired.  Larry has the ears but must have had his grill restored.  I’m grateful to say I inherited neither.

He speaks in a somewhat nasally but gravelly twang.  His tone is smartass.  His hair has nearly disappeared on top and his build is particularly slight from the endless chemo and radiation treatments.

I remember him as an athlete.  A good one.  A smart one.  A man who knew what he was doing.  Always a little unpredictable.  Way too much piss and vinegar.  He smirked all the time.  He has always had smarts in his eyes.

About two and a half years ago he was suffering from chronic abdominal pain.  Initial doctor visits turned up nothing.  Eventually he ended up in an ER where it was discovered his body was riddled with stage four cancer that had spread from his colon.  My eyes leaked tears when my mother gave me the news on the phone.  By then, the percentage of him that had been consumed by sheer blackness was near overwhelming.  Prognosis grim.  My mind that night.  A protracted war with an all but inevitable surrender.  The news took my wind and kicked my legs from beneath me.

I wanted to know him better.

So he fought.  He battled.  He waged war by never letting his spirit or will be compromised in any way.  Any manner of subjugation to this potential death that certainly loomed over every waking second and doubtless inked his slumber in all manner of hopeless and desperate ways, was never allowed the light of his days in any way for anyone to see.  When he was all of 90lbs, gums bleeding and wearing a colostomy bag, he smiled and carried on with life.  There was no denial or self delusion, but rather a simple and resolute conviction that he would kick and punch until the contest came to an end.

He was and is a tough as nails and a perpetually optimistic clown of all trades.  He beat it.  I’m convinced it was sheer force of will.  Speaking only for myself, I was sure he was a goner.  I knew he’d bloody the nose and lip of blackness but I didn’t estimate him to have nearly enough fortitude or resolve to knock it down because nobody does with any such brand of so insidious and pervasive a malaise.

But, as an agnostic, I’m tempted to thank God that he did.  I am grateful.  Despite everything I’ve recounted, he is both hysterically funny and what my mother describes simply as a “love”.  He loves sincerely.  He would do and has done anything for those he loves.  He is a Harding.   He would sabotage you in a heartbeat while on your feet but he would carry you to bed if you were down.

If you share blood or friendship with a Harding or an in-law thereof, count your blessings.

Not too many months ago, he began to experience pain in his back.  He went to a chiropractor, to no avail.  Long story short, spots of cancer were discovered on his spine.  Radiation treatments, half a regimen of a dozen chemo treatments and he shows up here to meet uncle Skip for a visit with us.  He looks pretty good but a little like Gollum and I tell him as much.  This time he’s losing his hair.  I think I hope he was enough in the wind to not remember I said that or at least not have heard me.  Maybe I don’t care all that much given the Geneva Conventions on torture he violated with me as a child.

Some few days before they arrive, mother and I sit and watch two sections of backyard fence capitulate to a windstorm while having cigarettes and gin on the back patio.  Dad has a bum wing so mom calls uncle Skip and advises him to bring work clothes and call uncle Larry to do the same.  Easter Sunday I find myself with my two uncles attempting to repair the fence.  We get it done and it’s hell for stout.  The truth and cliche’ of all good stories is that it was the journey.

I’ve been pretty busy the last thirty years.  Careers and fiancee’s and new houses and the like.  Never had enough time for my parents much less my extended family.  The last year has borne witness to a pretty spectacular face plant on my part.  You can’t always get what you want, but sometimes you can get what you need.  The silver lining to my very dark cloud has manifested itself in many many ways.  I had more fun in the wind and weather repairing that fence with my two uncles than I’ve had in recent or ancient memory doing anything.  The banter and teasing back and forth was profoundly ridiculous.  Crude.  Adolescent.  It was mean and vulgar and completely lacking in respect, decorum or discretion.  When uncle was unable to find a hole for a bolt or nail he was chastised for being unable to for a lack of hair around it.  We made fun of my old man in absentia for having only one eye.  If he sighted down the fence from his disadvantaged angle, he’d never detect the bow we ended up with.   When we were close to done, uncle Skid leaped on me.  Uncle Skid is a kid.  It’s why he’s so shiny.

There was a point where I noticed for the first time my uncle Larry’s hands.  He’d been wearing gloves but took them off for whatever reason.  They were very old hands.  Much older than the body they belonged to.  I was shocked and did a mental double take.  The sight hit me hard.  My tailbone ached and I needed to evacuate.  His battle with the blackness and subsequent treatment had rendered them nearly translucent.  Mother says she noticed it before, the last cancer, and it’s not permanent.  I could see every vein and half imagined the bones beneath.  I was reminded of his father’s hands.  My grandfather’s hands, before he died after some ninety five years.

Cancer fucking cancer.

We came in from the cold and had beers to continue mocking and teasing.

I will tell you that although he has more treatments scheduled, he is once again cancer free and officially in remission.  Whenever I think of this fact, my heart feels about to burst like a berry pie dropped from some guest window.

What goes up must come down (cowbell enters)
Spinning wheel got to go ’round (full drum kit enters)
Talking ’bout your troubles it’s a crying sin
Ride a painted pony let the Spinning wheel spin

Drinks for my friends.

“…..perfect unrepresentative left-wing machine dedicated to a secular socialist future.” -Newt Gingrich at the Southern Leadership Conference

Newt, the slimy little fucker, is far from stupid.  He knows the difference between socialism and what’s going on here.  By now they all do.  The acolytes.  They know that by their definitions of socialism, police, fire and library services would all be communist bovines for slaughter.  This is what makes them assholes.  They know and understand they are lying through their wicked teeth and across their lizard tongues.

Pricks.

The thing is this, the 1/4 paradigm or the great unwashed, don’t know or even suspect a goddamn thing.  They don’t ask questions.  They hate us.  Makes sense.  I hate them too.  Otherwise perfectly rational human beings.  Sometimes.  The things they don’t ask about are the the things they’re not rational about.  The less they ask, well, you see where I’m going with this.  They take pride in being underinformed.

The light in the fridge goes out when you shut the door?  What about the one over the stove?

They may be angry because they have begun to understand they are among the inevitable one in four.  I myself avoided an IQ test until my late thirties.  I just didn’t need any proof that I might actually be stupid.  I think they begin to smell something, they have begun the discomfort of not fitting in at a real job.  They realize they might be sliding toward a universal stupid.  One that everyone else recognizes.  One they can’t figure out.  They only have a chance for something in common with one of every four they meet.

They are lonely and pissed off.  Really bitter.

Wanna know why?

You’ll forgive the triteness of my thrust I hope.  That was funny.  But it really is the media.  Seriously.  An extravagantly trite thrust.  FOX NEWS is misanthropes anonymous.  All the air personalities and everyone who watches the incompetent and dishonest train wreck.  You know, the socially retarded, anal and brainal retentive, paranoid and spiritually compelled by some form of Christianity but so obviously empty they can’t help but judge everyone that isn’t like them?  Sometimes they even execute a sentence or two.

See, that was a pun.

Sometimes they wear pointy white hoods to fit their pointy white heads.  It seems like there might be quite a few of them but there’s not.  Americans love loud and stupid any way they can get it.  We just want to chew our nails or bite our palms.

It’s so sad.  I was really starting to think I could trust Newt.  Didn’t he and Hillary make bffs a while back?

My father would say “…..in a pig’s ass.”

Newt Gingrich sucks.

See here, the deal is this, these asswipes that are being so dishonest with their constituents as well as the public at large, at the same time they are at the very very least being egregiously intellectually dishonest with themselves.  They are husks.  Newt and Robertson, McConnell and Boehner.  While Hannity and Limbaugh can be a bit more nimble………………. Bachmann and Palin is a pairing/cage fight we’d all like to see.  There is one absolute sweeping generalization I can make about the great unwashed.  They are repressed.  Not just sexually, despite hating dildos almost as much as health care.

Fear of a black planet.

Give me a break.  Fucking Coburn blocking unemployment benefits tells us all we need to know.  They believe the average, out of work man or woman expects a hand out.  A triter thrust still but I whip it in anyway…………    What people want is a hand.  These people don’t want a free goddamn lunch.  They want a job.  Self respect.  Suspending their benefits for some bullshit inconsistent principal makes me wonder if you don’t belong in a dishwasher.  As in dish.  A DISH.  Just a dish…………

Asshole.

I’m going to go out with grace.  I’m still swinging, however.  I know the answer to all of the above and it’s discouragingly simple.  If you think you know the answer, leave it as a comment.

Drinks for my friends.

I’ve never been able to stand those who would take themselves too seriously.  It is neon for loser and or phony.  Hand in hand are those who would believe they are smarter than they actually are.  Like they know something you don’t while they know even less but expectorate good energy after bad convincing folks they do indeed know something, some thing, and and stand resolutely for it.   It’s disgusting.

The degree of intellectual dishonesty chaps my motherfucking ass.

We are talking about Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann.  The best and brightest from the GOP.  Crowdpleasers.  It’s true, they are shiny.  True, that they are the best the party has.  How sad is that?  I’m gonna go all rogue sexist, misogynist and chauvinist on you here here and invite them to my pillows.  Good on the stump.  See what I’m saying?  Hot dumb brunettes.  My kinda cheerleaders.

McCain attempts to slip slide away from ‘Mavericky’ while welcoming Palin onto his stump.

Heh.

I’ve dated very few blonds.

Where were they today?  Minnesota.  Oh boy.  The land of cankles.  No wonder they adore.  It is this simple.  Women want to be them and men want to bone them and nobody who shows up cares that they are as dumb as they so obviously are because they cater to the lowest common denominator and that’s who shows up.  The great unwashed.  The 1/4 Paradigm.

I believe the media is gullible and reprehensible but two vacuous hags doth entertain me.  We need a bikini contest and a talent segment.

Bring it!

Run these ignorant bitches.  I swear I can’t wait.

They will either be our demise or our cautionary tale.  Either way, it is a lesson the electorate needs to swallow.   These are, without a doubt, stupid and crazy bitches and if we embrace them, well then, we deserve them and the havoc they would wreak.

On the other hand, and I’m not willing to hold my breath, they may just be the example we need to prod us from our slumber enough to study the issues and the candidates for once.  I’m here to tell you that I look at these two broads and wonder just what the fuck.  They have both demonstrated ignorance beyond what any elected official should be in possession of.  Both have stepped in ass, thigh deep, more than a handful of times.  Shit has come out of either mouth that should have been slapped out prior to becoming a teenager.  I swear to God I adore and respect women more than I do men but I’m here to tell you that these are two extraordinarily dumb cunts.

Both were shameless in propagating with egregious profligation the idea of “death panels” when it came to health care.  Both have sought and seized every opportunity to de-legitimize the elected President, at and with, any opportunity regardless of obvious glaring fiction.

“Did you ever hear of a wish sandwich? Well it’s the kind of sandwich
where you’re supposed to take two pieces of bread and wish you had some
meat” -The Blues Brothers.

I hate that we’re still here.  That bullshit is still at nose level.  That the Palins and Bachmanns of the world can still find audience.  I hate it.  I do hope their hubris is enough for them to continue however.  We need them.  We need their stupidity.  We so need their soiled example as an abject lesson.  We actually deserve it.

It becomes safer and safer to say that the the Tea Party will end up splitting the Republican vote much to their detriment.  Can you say Ross Perot?  That is my wish.  That is my hope.  That is my prognosis.  I’m a glass full kinda guy.

My fear is the violence that is nearly inevitable.

Drinks for my friends.