Nostalgia

My great uncle Ralph once had a boat, which he could afford because he was a fireman for a very long time. Because he was a fireman for a very long time, he couldn't afford a big boat, but wee Randal & siblings (just one, actually) & cousins & their acquaintances various & sundry nevertheless got to oft motor (as passengers in hideous dayglo orange vests, natch) the north coast from perch-laden Catawba to mini-burg Port Clinton & back.

One fine spring day, Joe Carter, Cory Snyder & Chief Wahoo graced Sports Illustrated. They were twenty-three games out of first at the all-star break.

Still makes me chortle.

Staying absorbed in a Van Halen mixtape was just the opportunity one fine summer day needed to help refine my brilliant on-the-fly plan, the cosmic candy Erie whizzing 360°, the wind-whipped clouds & Kelleys' sun-smacked quarries starboard gifting further confident glosses. Come see your children, yeah, they're lighting up the sky/you won't recognize them anymore. So back on shore, my cousin pouring everyone some Cokes, & bolstered with a ballsy yet earnest confidence that came & went like a comet, I attempted to dazzle her two friends (especially the brunette) via performing a couple of card tricks. I'm guessing card tricks still break no deadly iceberg, though being an awkward, fourteen-year-old dork is an albatross heavier than any ill-conceived scheme. Comets are also known portents of doom, so I should have known better.

Mouse Island hermitage was momentarily considered.

But adolescent naivete, rocketing stop-start power chord bravado, & a truly refreshing beverage on a hot noontide prevented such rash decision making. En plus, no electricity meant no this:



Ain't no song sans that.



Catch as catch can't.

Yeah, blah humbug, heard every backhanded dis under the party-time arena rock G-type star from SST cultists to pop slicksters to art freaks. If metal was Satan, serial killers, nuclear war, naught but dear Mr. Fucked-Up Fantasy, a beyond beyond grasp choked with psychotic frost giants, unholy cabals of movers & shakers, the truly screwed-in-the-skull, not protest music but, in mythic terms, the world as is, fallen & most important, irredeemable, then Van Halen was something else, fast-talking three-ring grit, the wise, worldly elder brother who knew about players, prostitutes, & pimps; dealers, divas, & dregs; imbroglios, insouciance, & infidelity. & yes, the occasional boy-meets-girl heureux dénouement. Lastly, the brothers Halen hailed from the Netherlands, home of red light districts, pot, & Cruyff. This was heady stuff to a Parmastan kid.



Played like Johan, technical, sharp, beautiful, ruthless.

Strolling back to the islands (I feel like a poor man's poor Kennedy), let's get a little Spaceballs minus former roommates for a moment. Joined by the granddaughter of my great uncle's cottage ex-neighbor, the two of us partook of kicky footie (no keepie uppie, her control was far greater than mine) in the big field next to the roller skating rink, her blond ponytail swaying in back-to-back-to-back summers behind a face of dark, inscrutable mien, the whip smartest chick I knew for a good long while. Take that + claymation burgers + book geekery at Gem Beach + birdwatching [ed. note: Drop Dead Legs being particularly effective when heron hunting] & darkthroning (before I knew what that was) at Crane Creek, all rolled into a sublime three & a half minutes:



If you, gentle visitor, are noticing a theme, your reading comprehension membership is good for another year. But pigeonholing is for pigeons, & music is the finest of palimpsests, a new memory of an inside joke easily layered upon an accurate pass, a strong trap, a whiff of sand, that everything, for a moment, is pretty fuckin' cool.

There's a new Real Van Halen record next week, first in nearly three decades. Whether it's good or not doesn't really matter. Plus ça change, plus I'm still a dork, et plus those albums are still spun.



Dealers, divas, dregs, & that wistful crap 
we all wanna punch in the face but secretly love anyway. 
Don't worry, the odds are that tomorrow will suck more than today.

Not-quite-night of the living peonage

Old shots always come in handy when I don't feel like posting about unimportant crap like Serious Issues & the women who love them, on the next Jerry Springer.

Not even arctic blasting can cross darkthroning off the to-do list.

Home away from work.

Footprints of the Old Ones! They were here!

Proof! Slightly askew gravestones!

Proof! Snow blown by interstellar winds!

I'm sure something happened here, too!

Proof! An interesting subject, poorly composed!

Proof! Ditto!
Apologies for the exclamations.
Being low on sanity points sucks.

Ah, that's better.

Verily, someone skedaddled with a quickness. Hmm.

Gasp! 'tis not creatures from beyond the stars at all!

The dead live!

Can't build a fort with just one giant Lego.

Come back, furry friend, zombies only eat human brains.

The Cautionary Tale of Home Cooking

 

Studio 54

Ours isn't velvet. Cheapskates.*

*yes, for whatever inscrutable reason, the Towering Slab does now indeed sport one of these, which I'm sure won't be abused, via clever assessment of seating arrangements, by certain colleagues averse to pitching in. Cocaine not included.

Flabber, gasted into a stupor

exoteric: drone drone drone standard question 2
esoteric: existential yawn
exoteric: drone drone drone standard question 3
esoteric: that that that that that isn't is
exoteric: drone drone drone standard question 5
esoteric: again
exoteric: with variation B
esoteric: I swear I killed you

Got shots from snowy last week, darkthroning natch, nah, not today. Lit a match under a batch of attempted comedy, but was thankfully saved from the grave where funny goes to putrefy, told you the side effects from Towering Slab asbestos cleanup would prove to be helpful, to wit: why did the chicken cross the road? To get away to Col. Sanders 'cause the alternative is death by a thousand bad jokes. Perpetually perky people scare the living fuck out of me. That lucky bastard gets to cross the road & die, tastes like processed slop. Go on, set the pump aflame, I inhaled.

Even Smooth Jimmy Apollo was right 52% of the time

No, I'm not reminiscing about what happened next after last week's reminiscing, so after you read the following, buzz off. Show some respect to Judge Reinhold. 

The Fucking Ravens @ The Fucking Patriots: Here, the lesser of two rooting evils is New England as Pol Pot, which in raw corpses is an improvement over SuperHitler [ed. note: so named as to distinguish the original from the subsequent cavalcade of merry boogeymen] or Uncle Joe, & thus, more root-able. I now would've referenced Roots Bloody Roots, but Sepultura post-Chaos AD is a bucket of vomit.



Not a bucket of vomit.

Anyway, the Ravens can't chuck it deep as well as they'd like, the Patriots are hearty & hale spraying hails of bullets hither & yon, oh hell one more metaphor, this sport being a crypto-fascist metaphor for nuclear war, plus a dollop of alchemick hatr'd, et voilà, The Fucking Patriots 31-24.

The Fucking Giants @ San Francisco: Like anyone outside of Rice-A-Roni would have predicted a quintuple increase in the Saints' turnovers/game, & they still almost won, & I nailed the exact final score of the Planet Hooston game, so I'm not 4-4 in a spiritual sense, outside forces man, they're everywhere. Trust no one. Which thrower do you? You know who, but I trust the complete-r team more-r because they're better, which in the new NFL, apparently means jack, but, on another last minute toss from Smith to Davis, Joe Cool +30, 49ers 28-27.

Gender dynamics & The Man

Prologue: the Towering Slab, being not just a book depository, but a shelter from the elements, lures the occasional, unsuspecting homeless regular into its demonic newspaper jaw. Some admin types commence with hand-wringing various & overt, but yours truly figures that if they aren't fucking with anyone, who gives a flying dinosaur. I know pterodactyls aren't dinosaurs.

Act I: Last fortnight, if last fortnight ended last Friday, one of these regulars, affectionately dubbed Mr. Miyagi because of his uncanny resemblance to the late Pat Morita, shockingly got his physical threat on with one of our student comrades in the stacks, & as anyone familiar with library layouts knows, certain groups of corridors are naught but diffused-light, sparsely-populated spooky noochies.

Act II: Long to short, cops come over, dudes for muscle, chick to talk to the accosted who's one of the more petite chicks you'll encounter, & seated nearby, I was taken aback with gusto as to how ho-hum the long arm of authority took her considerable freaked-out-nesse, especially in light of the continued rise of muggings & fisticuffs on campus & not always in the sunless night. So, today, the jackass camped out in the student lounge, knowing full well that she'd have to stroll past to work, for the PTBs didn't ban his ass, you see. After shooting him the evil eye enough to where it's now begun to twitch, the clown vamoosed.

Act III: Being neither a mind reader nor a wizard, I've no clue as to why this played out the way it did, nor do I give a fuck about anyone's theories conjured up whilst on the can about how permitting the cultivation of fear in the workplace leads to freely ceding ever more control in hierarchical power relationships [ed. note: in other news, ice cream is delicious] & that it's even more insidious when found in low-rung places such as a college library because no one ever expects the Spanish Inquisition there, or how she ought to know ninjitsu or gonad kickball or how The State™ is a much greater threat than one homeless guy, blah fucking yawn blah.

Epilogue: As the Duchess said, this is why people become super-feminists.

As the Earl says, this is why folks hate the fuzz.

Though, in fairness, everyone should be hated equally.

Façon de parler

O Lord, suffrin' poster's block
duh duh duh DUH
Oughta see the runnin' snot
duh duh duh DUH
Kiddin' kiddin' I swear, or not
duh duh duh DUH
Got me the this doggerel's better than what I pen & that makes me so lonesome I could cry lugubrious tears of heartsick sad bereavement ja wohl bluuuuuues

Stricken with flabbergast about being reduced to The Human Decoder Ring -- FYI homie, words hurt -- but if you don't check out the writing swankier & on a grander vista than you'll ever find here [ed. note: neither just sports nor death metal] at the Duchess's fresh crib (do The Kids still say crib, or has pad returned the real retro, Daddy-O?), heathens, 'tis thirty days of just sports & death metal.

Every day is one of those days, or, posting as rote

What I had almost written was almost interesting, almost swear. Almost.

Hello, Dean? You're a stupid head!

Since we remain tangentially on the subject of den Vinteren død,

that black streak bisecting the screen? A clear road. Je sais, je sais, low-hanging seed pods, but I don't host the most thought-provoking site 'round town.

Now, onto vastly more important things.

Let's pretend the season stopped there.

& that the last dozen never started? Anyway, a quarter of a century ago, & I still have my ticket stub. Hibernating in the past doesn't bother me save when it comes to this bloody arena. 5-11s & 4-12s should be rendered unto McKay. 

New Orleans @ San Francisco: The most brick-meet-head bit about these irresistibles vs. immovables is the reheated rehash browns (the other kind, though that might explain some things), of defense + running = victory parades from too many talking hairpieces. Even Phil Anselmo knows NOLA is Barcelona, pass, pass, pass, ZOMG Nawlins only nabs 27/game on the road contra 41/dome. That's still a prorated 436 points, you dumb fucks. Saints 27-20.

The Fucking Broncos @ The Fucking Patriots: 20/20 isn't always hindsight. Safeties sprinting into the box & sprinting back out @snap had more than one pal cranial scratching, if I had any pals. Sure, Tebowmania makes Zombie Al Davis proud, but mad bomber redux won't be enough 'cause Champ-no-more & The Chopped Livers will be joining Ike Taylor on the march to Madame Le Guillotine. The Fucking Patriots 38-24.

Planet Hooston @ The Fucking Ravens: If, if, if. Not you, Columbus. If Schaub, Then Win. Rowdy Yates isn't Clint, nor very rowdy, but doesn't need to be. What needs to be for the home side is the hope that the Good Fu Manchu shows up. I hope not, but know better. The Fucking Ravens 20-13.

The Fucking Giants @ Green Bay: Number 4 has retired from retiring, so stow away your oh-seven delusions, you arrogant fucking burg, there won't be any ill-timed wounded ducks littering the winter Wisconsin skies. Packers 31-19.

Pieces parts, or, where's the beef?

This has nothing to do with this post (not really), but, looken sie hier, snow!

A painter gazes at his/her/its [ed. note: too many of you conveniently leave out the denizens of hollow earth, feel shame for your ism] work, grimaces, then relentlessly daubs like a giant, radioactive paper wasp over the mistakes, stroke over knife-edge over stroke, pleased with this fortress of tint in miniature. Or scraping it away, the righteous judgment of the gods, or the Borg, channeled through one unworthy, on a thing unworthy.

With the written, once it's molted & is ready to provocatively display itself, it appears flat -- just like the feeling after reading it, badoomboom. I can don my imaginary top hat & flâneur my way through a museum & nudge (relatively) close, seeing the topographical scansion in gobs of oily or plastic goo. Par ailleurs, the text is flat ink on a flat sheet (usually) or electricity on a screen (also usually). But I see, always, the detritus of the crossed-out, the arrows to the replacement, arrows from that to the return of the murdered word, the game invisibly played out whilst typing because the visible is Finished, the Great Deceiver.

So, rereading, rehashing, delving, digging, thieving, an archaeology of expression in order to express the inexpressible, which is not so because it's the key to the pyramids or long lost esoterica; the most common sentiments are the most uncommonly difficult. All this crap isn't new to you, I'm simply tired of being unable to throw the same piece in a six-foot hole & run away, but since I've yet to find a shotgun to kill this zombie dead, on the board we stay.

Murder was the case that they gave me

The title: there were some a few years back, pre-renovation.
The feet: we wished to experience how much comfort millions can buy.
The verdict: concrete lounge chairs aren't as relaxing as mesh lounge chairs.

Not a burial mound. Officially.

What a view.

The seats are too low, the table too high. As The Duchess astutely pointed out, it's as if it was designed by someone with an intimate knowledge of gulag dining.

Anti-homeless makeshift boudoir guard rail for your protection.

We've got one, too. See, I'm positive, I'm fucking positive.

AMERICAN ISN'T CAPITALIZED RALPH IS A RED

This green space looks suspiciously like my high school track.

Well, okay, as long as the ordinances are codified.

"Duchess, what could this miniature table possibly be used for?"

"Doing a line." True story. The conversation, silly rabbits.
We can't afford drugs on a Peon's salary.

The garbage can of the future -- today!

Viking booty storage.

Avian industriousness elicits both applause & tears.

Thinking caps, kids. What's wrong with the following pair of images:

Front.

Back.

Clevelandia Tilt-A-Whirl.

When low on funds, snark is an acceptable substitute.

False advertising.

♪ MY LOVE FOR YOU IS LIKE HULETT, BERSERKER ♫

Attend? I'd much rather disregard them.

Mmmm.

Sacrilicious.

Lack of snow makes me seasonally affected & disorderly.

More scare tactics.

COULD BE TOXIC CALL FEMA

Because we're twelve years old.

Looking glass Wicky Wacky thumbs up with gusto.