Nicknames, I love 'em, fascinated by the psycho-social connotations of each one. Never had one, myself. A long time ago, a few friends took a stab at calling me "Ken-doll", but nobody's even tried to use that one in ten years. Guess my general demeanor and faded looks do not suggest affectionate diminutives. I take great comfort in that. But lots of my favorite people have been and/or still are heavily nicknamed. Sometimes names not of their choosing, but they are stuck with them just the same. "Hoss", because he was so HOS-pit-able, "Pima" cause of where he was residing, "Desert Dog" because he raised dogs in the desert, "Troll" 'cause well, he kinda looked like one when he was drunk. All of them assigned their monikers by a mushroom-like fellow called "Spore", because he floated on the wind without so much as a wallet and would root like mycelium on your couch.
Spore had a magic methods for procuring every drug imaginable and had few sexual boundaries. That might have helped with the whole drug procurement. His other mystical talents included the ability to give someone a nickname, sometimes seconds after meeting them, that stuck with them for life, living in comfort without a J-O-B and, oh, serious depression. He was really good at depression and describing it. So... when the inevitable happened, we had a hell of a party. Well about four parties, actually, if you count one per day.
Spore was the kind of fella that could only have been conceived in some sort of unholy three-way tryst between a wood-nymph, a fruit bat and a garden gnome. One too beautiful and grotesque for this world. When the time came to kick the smack habit, he set up a tent on the Taylor River, alone, and sicked it out for a week straight. The tent collapsed in a storm on the first night, so he wrapped himself in the nylon and brewed tea over a small fire in the rain for the next six days and nights. He came back to town so strong, so ready, then just lost it two weeks later when his cold-hearted woman gave him the boot.
One massive dose that evening and he never felt sad or empty again. The nicknames live on though, in people that shared and are destined to live out all of Spore's crazy adventures. That was our light at the end of his tunnel...
Praise be to the Flying Spaghetti Monster and His Prophet Darwin. Ramen.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
How to Drive Drunk
So you're drunk. So fuckin' what?
"How the fuck else ya gonna get the car home?", -Sam Kinison (killed by a DWI.)
Ya gotta drive, so you can go to sleep, so you can go to work, so you can pay your bills, like your car payment and car insurance and gas for your car and repairs to the car and you just start wondering why can't the car go to work since it's the one that has all these bills and I'll just stay here at the bar?
Anyway, the car never seems to buy that line of reasoning and ya gotta get the dang car back so you can use it.
For 'stuff'.
Who cares what??
'None of yer fuck'n' businezszzz'... (HIC!)
Follow this step-by-step procedure and you might not kill anyone or yourself.
1. Pull your shit together and keep it together. "Do not lose this mindset...motherfucker!" (said in the voice of Samuel L. Jackson).
2. Starting the car... Do NOT rev your engine. You drunkass.
3. Let the car warm up, even if it's July. This will give you time to check that...
a. Your lights are on. If you're driving drunk in the daylight, I can't help you. Talk to Bill W.
b. Your seatbelt is fastened. If you EVER needed it, NOW would be the time.
c. You have cleaned all the vomit off of your sweater, and turned off the dome light after checking said sweater for said vomit.
4. Pulling out, check all mirrors. Personal experience on that one. Now check them again. Does your date see anything? How about the hitch-hiking teenager with the fake ID in the back seat? If everybody says "All clear!", ease it out and gently but steadily toe the gas pedal to the stoplight.
5. From now on, focus on the vanishing point in your perspective. Don't let the moving lights, especially those of oncoming cars, distract you from the vanishing point. If you don't know what the vanishing point is, you didn't pass fifth grade art class and shouldn't be driving anyway. Really don't focus on the weed in the trunk.
6. Roll down the window, lean ever so slightly forward and turn on music you hate. Like anything around 103 point-seventies-crap on the FM dial. Those three annoyances, juxtaposed with your drunken striving to focus on the goddamn vanishing point, will essentially render you completely sober. Yes, even after all those mojitos.
Unhappily, the effect is only temporary. Try to drink close to your house. Or in it. But for christ's sake, do not try to smoke anything during your DWI journey.
7. Red means stop but especially red mixed with blue means stop. Don't be just another pinball under a police helicopter's spotlight.
You lose your presence of mind, you drive like shit, well damn it, you lost this one, they gotcha, now pull over and focus on rebuilding your life as you knew it. Unless you really WANT to go out as a few puffs of broken glass on a COPS video tape. Then by all means, floor it, please.
Love, Darwin.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Piano Lessons
We'd lived in the big white house with the seventeen oak trees for a couple of months, when the folks got it into their heads I needed piano lessons. I was driven, walked or rode my bike the mile or so to Mrs. King's small green house every Wednesday afternoon from 3:30 to 4:30.
She sat to my right in her stuffy, tiny basement and gently encouraged my scales and my dreadful renditions of "Little River Flowing". How exactly my parents had chosen this pleasant but painfully ugly old lady to guide my alleged genius, I never did ascertain. It was a mercifully brief episode though, as only a few months passed before I was informed, with many a sideways glance, that I would not be required to pedal over to Mrs. Kings house this Wednesday. I considered it a stroke of luck and proceeded to practice jumping my bike in a life-threatening way at the freshly excavated dirt lot down the street.
The next morning on my walk to school, I developed an inexplicable curiosity about the Lutheran church kiddie-corner from our house. Their windows were plain, narrow panels that ran from the ground to the roof of the square, gray building. So unlike the ornate Episcopalian stained glass masterpieces that were proper church windows. Perhaps a glance down the hallway would explain why these filthy Norwegians didn't know how to worship God correctly. I cut across the lawn and cupped my hands against the early morning glare on the pane.
Laid out there not a foot from my peering eyes, like she just had nothing better to do for the day, was something that looked a lot like Mrs. King, in what my brain could only insist was some kind of ...big... crib.
Blue as a raspberry Otter Pop and parked casually in this corner against the improper window while awaiting... I just didn't even know what.
Looking longer, I strongly suspected she didn't know "what" either.
She was a plank. A brick. She had clearly bought the farm, was pushing up daisies, had not a care in this world.
Having watched my cat Popcorn eat exactly half of my hamster Moby, I had a firmer grasp on the concept of death than my folks ever would have suspected. The possibility that this corpse was my piano teacher filled me with a certain... um... glee.
When next Tuesday afternoon rolled around, I asked coyly, with many a sideways glance, if I could ride my bike to piano lessons tomorrow. My Mom took a deep breath, told me to have a seat, then slowly explained that Mrs. King... had gone... to be with Jesus now.
I managed to squeeze out a tear or two for appearance's sake, but felt my performance was perhaps lacking the element of surprise.
Trying to observe an appropriate period of mourning as some sort of penance for my absence of real remorse, I waited a whole twenty minutes before asking if I could take my bike to the vacant lot.
She sat to my right in her stuffy, tiny basement and gently encouraged my scales and my dreadful renditions of "Little River Flowing". How exactly my parents had chosen this pleasant but painfully ugly old lady to guide my alleged genius, I never did ascertain. It was a mercifully brief episode though, as only a few months passed before I was informed, with many a sideways glance, that I would not be required to pedal over to Mrs. Kings house this Wednesday. I considered it a stroke of luck and proceeded to practice jumping my bike in a life-threatening way at the freshly excavated dirt lot down the street.
The next morning on my walk to school, I developed an inexplicable curiosity about the Lutheran church kiddie-corner from our house. Their windows were plain, narrow panels that ran from the ground to the roof of the square, gray building. So unlike the ornate Episcopalian stained glass masterpieces that were proper church windows. Perhaps a glance down the hallway would explain why these filthy Norwegians didn't know how to worship God correctly. I cut across the lawn and cupped my hands against the early morning glare on the pane.
Laid out there not a foot from my peering eyes, like she just had nothing better to do for the day, was something that looked a lot like Mrs. King, in what my brain could only insist was some kind of ...big... crib.
Blue as a raspberry Otter Pop and parked casually in this corner against the improper window while awaiting... I just didn't even know what.
Looking longer, I strongly suspected she didn't know "what" either.
She was a plank. A brick. She had clearly bought the farm, was pushing up daisies, had not a care in this world.
Having watched my cat Popcorn eat exactly half of my hamster Moby, I had a firmer grasp on the concept of death than my folks ever would have suspected. The possibility that this corpse was my piano teacher filled me with a certain... um... glee.
When next Tuesday afternoon rolled around, I asked coyly, with many a sideways glance, if I could ride my bike to piano lessons tomorrow. My Mom took a deep breath, told me to have a seat, then slowly explained that Mrs. King... had gone... to be with Jesus now.
I managed to squeeze out a tear or two for appearance's sake, but felt my performance was perhaps lacking the element of surprise.
Trying to observe an appropriate period of mourning as some sort of penance for my absence of real remorse, I waited a whole twenty minutes before asking if I could take my bike to the vacant lot.
Friday, January 19, 2007
Super Happy Fun Game!
Ok, I was gonna go with more true-ish stories tinged with personal recollections, but I just gotta keep up with the memeposts. This game is so fun, it will enhance your understanding of gravity wells and build a deep appreciation for what the Chinese have accomplished. Stupid monkeys.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Old and busted nuclear danger, fallout. New hotness, fall-up. Note: US media dropping this story real quick like.
Travel Time?
A long time ago, in a city not so far away, I was six. It was lunchtime recess, and a second grader had gathered quite a large crowd by doing ten complete pull-ups on the jungle gym. I had never tried such a thing and determined to do so, I jumped up and grabbed hold of the bar as soon as he dropped panting to the ground. Some of the youngsters I had cut in front of protested with mumbles, then let their attention be diverted by everyone's favorite new toy, the brightly colored Butterfly Duncan Yo-Yo. I kicked my body weight to the left and the right as I had seen him do, then gave a tug to place my chin above the bar as seemed the custom.
I was very surprised and delighted to find my body springing up by simply directing my will through my arms and hands. I'm guessing that all that hanging from the shower curtain rod (when I was supposed to be taking a bath) had prepared me. I threw myself into it, marveling at the way my body accommodated the added strain of each repetition. The five or so friends that had resisted the brightly colored Butterfly Duncan Yo-Yos cheered me on. I had reached "thirty -three" and was heaving and shaking. I felt some sort of accolade was due, perhaps a ceremony with a small pendant to wear around my neck so the world could understand what I had accomplished.
Alas, the bell rang and my spectacular pull-up demo was forgotten as quickly as those demon brightly colored Butterfly Duncan Yo-Yos.
The kids all ran for the big gray concrete stairs back up into our prison, um, school. I plopped down from the bar to dash up the stairs with them and discovered what I later learned was called adrenaline. I was so pumped from the pull-ups, I had to be up those stairs first, despite the fact two hundred kids had a head start on me. I had pushed and shoved to halfway up, when somebody's retaliatory leg tripped me in mid-flight. The fall from three feet to zero feet couldn't have been all that slow, but it I remember it as taking... all... after...noon. My sense of time was completely warped and all I could hear was my own voice in my head saying, "Today's the Day that you knock your front tooth out".
Sure enough... and that wasn't the last time that happened.
A beach in San Fransisco, an attic in Minneapolis, a ravine in Seattle, many times my brain whisperer has said "Today's the Day that...".
It's beyond deja vu, it's more like Slaughterhouse Five in that there is this feeling of time travel and a sense of time itself being verrrry static all at once. There is this quantum theory of time that basically says,
"Every moment that you have ever experienced has always existed and always will. The seconds of your life are like the pages of a book that have "been" forever, will "be" forever and are referenced in a particular chronological order only as a matter of computational convenience for your poor limited fleshy brain."
Is it possible that small children and the senile elderly are not constrained in their views of their own "books" the way responsible adults are?
Maybe when Grandad thinks it's 1963, it actually is. When little kids talk about "when they were grownup" they aren't kidding.
Ya just never know, but hey, you can try to know.
All Praise Be to the Flying Spaghetti Monster and His Prophet Darwin.
Ramen.
I was very surprised and delighted to find my body springing up by simply directing my will through my arms and hands. I'm guessing that all that hanging from the shower curtain rod (when I was supposed to be taking a bath) had prepared me. I threw myself into it, marveling at the way my body accommodated the added strain of each repetition. The five or so friends that had resisted the brightly colored Butterfly Duncan Yo-Yos cheered me on. I had reached "thirty -three" and was heaving and shaking. I felt some sort of accolade was due, perhaps a ceremony with a small pendant to wear around my neck so the world could understand what I had accomplished.
Alas, the bell rang and my spectacular pull-up demo was forgotten as quickly as those demon brightly colored Butterfly Duncan Yo-Yos.
The kids all ran for the big gray concrete stairs back up into our prison, um, school. I plopped down from the bar to dash up the stairs with them and discovered what I later learned was called adrenaline. I was so pumped from the pull-ups, I had to be up those stairs first, despite the fact two hundred kids had a head start on me. I had pushed and shoved to halfway up, when somebody's retaliatory leg tripped me in mid-flight. The fall from three feet to zero feet couldn't have been all that slow, but it I remember it as taking... all... after...noon. My sense of time was completely warped and all I could hear was my own voice in my head saying, "Today's the Day that you knock your front tooth out".
Sure enough... and that wasn't the last time that happened.
A beach in San Fransisco, an attic in Minneapolis, a ravine in Seattle, many times my brain whisperer has said "Today's the Day that...".
It's beyond deja vu, it's more like Slaughterhouse Five in that there is this feeling of time travel and a sense of time itself being verrrry static all at once. There is this quantum theory of time that basically says,
"Every moment that you have ever experienced has always existed and always will. The seconds of your life are like the pages of a book that have "been" forever, will "be" forever and are referenced in a particular chronological order only as a matter of computational convenience for your poor limited fleshy brain."
Is it possible that small children and the senile elderly are not constrained in their views of their own "books" the way responsible adults are?
Maybe when Grandad thinks it's 1963, it actually is. When little kids talk about "when they were grownup" they aren't kidding.
Ya just never know, but hey, you can try to know.
All Praise Be to the Flying Spaghetti Monster and His Prophet Darwin.
Ramen.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Hi.
Liberal Redneck here. Got tired of old blog. No idea where this one's gonna go, should be fun. Unable to post pics for now, computer needs help.
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