Al bare kah moo

"Do not wait for the last judgment. It takes place every day."

Camus became a vital part of my life during those angsty & suicidal teenage years.  "The Myth of Sisyphus" made me feel that not killing myself was an act of defiance.  "There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn."  Way to go on the reverse psychology, Al.  And I read The Stranger for school, but I read The Plague and The Fall and The Myth of Sisyphus on my own.  

Yesterday I was thinking about The Beatles (and listening to the MAH-valous 1+) and remembered that Alice Cooper had done a cover of "Eleanor Rigby" for a McCartney Music Appreciation album, so I looked that up on the internets, and that was a bit disappointing, so it led to other things, one of which was looking for a video of The Tubes's "Boy Crazy," and on one of the videos for that I saw the Camus quote ensconced above.

Sooner or later it leads to Camus.

Somewhere in this house of fallen books I have a copy of a Camus book--I think it's Resistance, Rebellion, and Death--which belonged to my mom.  I'm going to find it and read it.  It's possible I've read it before and forgotten it.  It's possible I gave her that copy of that book.  It meant something to her, and I want to evoke her spirit.

I miss my mom on a pretty regular basis.  I miss dad and Kate, too, but especially my mom.  We used to talk about everything.  Except sex, thank God.  But everything else.  She had a very uncommon mind.  Only an 8th grade education, but she read Camus.  Born in the Benny Goodman era, but she loved David Bowie and Iggy Pop and she thought the New York Dolls were cute.

You know, Camus only lived 46 years.  And he's been dead for 55 years.  Most of my life Albert Camus has been dead.

Uh-oh.  I think that's the opening line for a novel.

A New Work by My Favorite Artist

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By the way . . . the thing that St. Lucy is holding that looks like a baby? Its a cup with St. Lucy's eyes in it. Check out your Catholic iconography.

Saga Volume 5

A few of my favorite things:

"Being a parent pretty much ensures that you'll never spend another minute alone."

Chapter 26

Whoa.  Your idea of who Marko is totally changes here in Volume 5.  No details. Just sayin'.

" . . . maybe the universe is better off with some people just not in it anymore."

Chapter 28

"Every relationship is an education. Each new personae welcome into our hearts is a Chan e to evolve into something radically different than we used to be.  But what happens when those people disappear from our lives?"

Chapter 30--or maybe 29.  I forgot to write it down.

And with that . . . I'm all caught up with Saga.  Two and a half years's worth of comic book in a few days.  And now I either have to wait six months for another trade paperback . . . or wait a week for a tiny little splort of story.  

Damn it.

But what a great read.  Do it, brahs and tahs.  You shan't regret the time (and money, if that's involved) spent.

Saga Volume 4. Oh, and 1.

The LFPL still hasn't come through with Volume 1 of Saga.  No hating,  just relating.  So I just kept on, going from Volume 2 to Volume 3 to Volume 4.  Found some great stuff in Volume 4.  These are the ones I slowed down long enough to catch and pin and mont:

"Most jobs are impossible to do without drugs."
Volume 4, Chapter 21

" . . . never worry what other people think of you, because no one ever thinks of you."
Volume 4, Chapter 22

But then I was out for a bit, and I happened to be in Barnes and Noble, and I happened to go to the comic book section where I happened to see Saga: Volume 1, so I started reading.  And man, I do not even understand how I did not keep up with this book.  Volume 1 hits the ground running.  It is marvelous and wonderful.  And really fucking funny.  I read the whole thing sitting in B and N.  Here are the ones that didn't get away:

"If there's an opposite of a honeymoon, it's the week after a couple's first child is born."
Volume 1, Chapter 2

"Despite what you may have heard, good help isn't all that hard to find . . . it's just hard to find cheap."
Volume 1, Chapter 3

And there were a HO lot more, but sometimes I just didn't feel like stopping to catch them, and sometimes it was stuff that was just too story context contingent to pry off the page for the collection.  So there.

But I have to say, Saga is a must read.  

Going back to Volume 4 now.  And I am 7 of 7 on the hold list for Volume 5.  But you know what?  I happened to notice that they had several copies of Volume 5 at Barnes and Noble . . . . 

P.S.  Finished Volume 4 last night.  One more quote for the road:

"If you want people to pay attention to you, you have to talk about sex."

Chapter 23

Also just realized (slow on the uptake) that the chapters are numbered straight through, across the volumes, so no need to identify the volume.  D'oh.

Saga of My Saga With Brian K. Vaughan's SAGA Saga

I remember being pretty excited when Brian K. Vaughan's Saga first came out.  Not only was Brian quite a handsome devil, he'd also brought me great joy via Y:  The Last Man (starting in September 2002), Ex Machina (starting in August 2004), and he'd written seven episodes of Lost (2007 to 2009) 1 .  How could Saga possibly go wrong?  But when it made its debut on March 14, 2012, I wasn't there.  I don't know why.  As in I can't remember.  It's possible that The Great Escape sold out of the first issue by the time I got to the store, as I rarely make the effort to get there on New Comics Wednesday.  But clearly I was interested, as when I checked my Comixology purchases I found issues 1, 2 and 3 ensconced in the My Comics file.  And the rest was silence.  I do have a vague memory of being turned off by some tv-headed character fucking someone or getting a blow job from someone or something of that ilk.  Not sure why that would have turned me off, actually, but maybe there was more to it than that faint shit stain of memory on the underpants of my mind.  At any rate, I just didn't go back to Saga.  Until recently, when I found that the good old LFPL had all five of the  paperback collections which have been published to date . . . which actually brings us to the current issue, since #31 doesn't come out for another eleven days as of this writing (Saga #31 is to be published November 25, 2015, according to the Image website).  So I decided to dive in and see what, if anything, I'd been missing.

I had to start with the second collection, since somebody else had the first, but (1) I had read the first three issues way back when, so that was half of the first tpb, and (2) I actually had some memory of  the events from those issues.  And I enjoyed Saga, Volume 2 quite a bit, actually.  Enough to go through it in pretty much one sitting and to head directly into Saga, Volume 3 this morning.  Ah, Volume 3.  That's where I really got into it.  And it was the D. Oswald Heist bits that really put it over the top for me.  (Though I also liked Lying Cat quite a bit.)  But . . . oh, man, that wily old fuck really cracks me up.  One of my favorite two lines from Saga (at the moment, anyway) comes into the scene with D. Oswald:  " . . . no one makes worse first impressions than writers."

(Chapter 13)  That's just good shit. 2

So I'm on my way.  I'll finish Volume 3 in a minute (have to, it's due back at the library; some other motherfucker apparently wants to piss in my corner) and pick up Volume 4, which is waiting for me.  And by then Volume 1 should have shaken loose.  And then I'm on the list for Volume 5.  Ta-da.  Funny, ennit?  You can read 3 1/2 years's worth of comic book in a day or two.  Has much more of a punch that way, too.

Thanks, LFPL.  Thanks, Brian K. Vaughan.



1 In case you give a shit, here are the titles of the episodes BKV wrote:  (1) "Dead Is Dead" (2009), (2) "Namaste" (2009), (3) "The Little Prince" (2009), (4) "The Shape of Things to Come" (2008), (5) "Meet Kevin Johnson" (2008), (6) "Confirmed Dead" (2008), and (7) "Catch-22" (2007).

2 In case you give another shit, my other favorite line (so far, etc.) is, "Life is mostly just learning how to lose." (Chapter 15)

Thus Spake Captain Beefheart

"If you want to be a different fish you gotta jump out of the school."

Captain Beefheart said that his formal education was "half a day of kindergarten."  (He also said that he had a friend who said he stayed too long.)

Found a bunch 1 of Beefheart music on Amazon's free listen thing, so I've been hittin' that pipe.

Read a review of the compilation Captain Beefheart: Sun Zoom Spark: 1970 to 1972 (Rhino, 2014) by Andy Beta who said that Beefheart's music was "the closest rock music could get to cubism."  Which made me go hmmmmmm.  (Which autocorrect first wanted to make "hammy" and then "cmmmmmmmm."  Interesting.)  

Also interesting, this bit from the song "Lick My Decals Off, Baby":

“Rather than I want to hold your hand/ I wanna swallow you whole/ ‘n I wanna lick you everywhere it’s pink/ ‘n everywhere you think.” 

In another review, I read this line:  "For Trout Mask Replica, Beefheart and his band practiced for 14 hours a day, sometimes they slept in the studio."  Holy shit!  It's kind of hard not to take that kind of insanity seriously, ya know?

1 Dust Sucker,  Prime Quality Beef, Dichotomy, & Captain Beefheart Live at Bickershaw 1972

Running. Always chasing white light.

Just watched the video for "Running"* for the fourth time in a row** and this time around within the first few notes I started crying.  I wasn't sure why at first.  It's a beautiful song, and the interplay between Andrew Carroll's gentle voice,  Jessi Williams's lovely aching voice, the driving rhythm, and the haunting "strings"*** are amazing, but that wasn't what made me cry.  And the song's lyrics are very potent and poignant, and the video itself is really cool and unique, but that wasn't it, either.

And then I realized that it was you.  "My" L.A. Woman.****  

Which I should have realized immediately, since I think about you every day.  Several times a day. Every fucking day. Every. Fucking. Day.  

I'm pretty sure that you would have let me fuck you.  Well, that's actually just an understatement that my shitty self-image prompts me to say.  I know you wanted me to fuck you.  And I have regretted not fucking you thousands of times. Literally. And I've berated myself for not doing so.  For being a coward.*****  But watching that video for The Lonely Wild's "Running" made something click for me. It wasn't cowardice at all.  I thought that we were just beginning our relationship.  I thought we had years ahead of us.  So I didn't want or see a need to rush things.  Ha ha. The myopia of the love struck male.   Which reminds me of a short song I wrote called "The End."  Which I am just going to lay down right here and now.

I've learned in relationships

Keep your runway clear

So you can always make your getaway

Ah, it don't make no sense to pile possessions on the tarmac

'cause you never know where you stand with a woman, so boy

Keep your runway clear.

You might think it's the beginning

But it's the end.

* From The Lonely Wild's new album, Chasing White Light.   Which is a great album.  You should buy it pretty soon.

** I can't remember why I thought I needed an asterisk here.

*** I don't know if they are actually strings.  But they sound like they could be strings.  Or like strings.  You know, the part that goes, "Nnnnnrh nnnnrh nnnnrh nrh nrrrrh  nrrrrrh  nrrrrh."  Yeah, that part.  Ain't them notes strings?

****  Which is, in a strange bit of circularity / serendipity, the name I gave to the piece I recorded and sent to The Lonely Wild when they sent out a message asking fans to record stories and send them to them.  And the story I sent was about going to Los Angeles to visit L.A. Woman for a few days because my wife had just left me a couple of months before and I was a steaming hot mess.  And the story was also about sleeping with that beautiful woman and being afraid ****** to fuck her even though I really wanted to and was sure that she wanted to fuck me back.


***** Probably unnecessary to point out at this juncture, but since a little while ago I no longer think of this as an act of cowardice, but as an act of respect and confidence in the idea that we had a future together.

****** See *****.

a piece of ass

Jean-Jacques Lequeu [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons


from 1811, by Francis Grose

PIECE. A wench. A damned good or bad piece; a girl who is more or less active and skilful in the amorous congress. Hence the (CAMBRIDGE) toast, May we never have a PIECE (peace) that will injure the constitution.

I've also read somewhere--can't locate it right now--that "ass" was specifically referred to because that was considered to be the nastiest part of the human body, so it was a way of reinforcing the worthlessness of the woman who is only considered as a sexual object with no relationship potential.  It reduces her not only to her body as sexual object, but degrades her further by equating her with the part of the body which is most closely associated with waste.

Nasty.

I've never used this term to refer to a woman . . . not even as a "joke," and I'll say almost anything for a joke.  But a piece of ass is not in my vocabulary.  I remember standing in the hallway at school with a young female teacher and another male teacher my age, and a very attractive young girl walked by.  Almost immediately the young female teacher said, "She's a piece of ass."  And you could tell it was meant as a way of reducing the girl, not an acknowledgement of the girl's physical beauty.  I was stunned.  Even if that girl was the Great Whore of Louisville, she didn't deserve to be thought of as a piece of ass by one of her teachers.

But then again, a quick Google Search revealed a woman's t-shirt emblazoned with the words

100% Certified USDA Approved Piece of Ass √

which I'd assume only exists because there are some women who think that this is an apt way to advertise themselves to the world,  so maybe it's just me.

But I was struck by the fact that in the movie Saul fia (Son of Saul), the Nazis referred to the dead bodies of Jews as "the pieces"--presumably in order to distance themselves from the fact that they were participating in the merciless slaughter of innocent fellow human beings. 

That might be worth thinking about next time you hear someone use this phrase.

On Jesus's Side

I took the kids to St. James for service a week or so ago and my brain popped a long-stalked eye above the miasmic mist covering the scummy surface of my struggling to remain conscious mind when I heard this bit of the gospel reading for the day:



38 "Teacher," said John, "we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us."  

39 "Do not stop him," Jesus said.  "No one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, 

40 for whoever is not against us is for us.  

41 "I tell you the truth, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to Christ will certainly not lose his reward."

Hmmm.  Whoever is not against us is for us.  That seems like a pretty significant statement, doesn't it?  For instance, are Lutherans against Catholics?  I mean apart from the ignorant, fart-mouthed ones?  Of course not.  And . . . what about Buddhists?  Moslems?  Or, for that matter, atheists?  Well, some of them, of course, but I think there's a difference between an atheist and a God Hater.  A misdeist.  I don't consider myself a Christian anymore, but I certainly do have immense respect, admiration, and love for Jesus.  So I'm not against Him, for sure.  So . . . doesn't that mean that I am for Him?  And that I will certainly not lose my reward?

It makes sense to me.  I've long thought that if you're a good person, you are up for "the reward" no matter what God (or lack thereof) you worship.  I mean, really, could God be so tiny and insecure that S/he would say, "Hey, you're a really good fellow, and I see that you've spent your life trying to do the right thing consistently . . . but since you haven't invoked my name, you're going to have to suffer eternal torment."  How can people believe that kind of bullshit?  (Of course I know that they do.  When I was at the beginning of my mental illness phase I decided to join Middletown United Methodist Church.  Went to the first session of their version of RCIA, all good.  Went to the second session and the guy leading it said that he felt really bad for a long time because his mother was a good and moral person, but she hadn't accepted Jesus as her personal savior so she was going to go to Hell.  I asked him if that was his personal opinion or church doctrine (he wasn't a pastor).  He said it was church doctrine.  I pointed out that most of the people alive in the world . . . and most of the people who had died throughout history . . . were not Christians, and asked if he thought that all of those people were going to burn in Hell.  He said yes.  I told him that that made me sick and walked out of the meeting.  Thus endeth my foray into joining that church.)

So I'd like to know how the fundamentalists / exclusionists deal with that bit.  I'm pretty sure they just ignore it, as that's the standard modus operandi for such things.  But I'd like to chat it up with one of them and see what they have to say about it.

James Edward Sutherland

Big surprise:  I tend to be a bit obsessive.  Especially when it comes to writers and singers.  So it's not at all uncommon for me to try to acquire--or at least experience--a writer or singer's complete works.  Charles Dickens.  Henry Thomas Buckle.  E. L. Doctorow.  Harlan Ellison. Philip Wylie. George Orwell.  Carolyn Chute.  David Bowie. Bob Geldof.  Iggy Pop. John Cale. Lou Reed.  Ryuichi Sakamoto.  John Mellencamp. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.  Some times it's pretty easy. William Shake-speare was a fucking breeze.  Sometimes it's really hard and expensive.  Try collecting the complete works of Philip Wylie sometime and you'll see. And sometimes it seems impossible.  Because there's no trail to follow.

I first read James Sutherland's Stormtrack when it was published in 1974 as the first book in The Harlan Ellison Discovery Series.  I remember liking it, but I forgot about it pretty quickly. In part, no doubt, because the second book in The Harlan Ellison Discovery Series was Arthur Byron Cover's Autumn Angels, and that was just an orgy at first sight.  But I never forgot about James Sutherland.  In fact, I still have a copy of Stormtrack around here somewhere.  And, since I hadn't bumped into any other Sutherland books, every once in a while I'd go Googling to see what I could find. And invariably I would find nothing.  But I never gave up. And yesterday I found some stuff.  Not as much as I'd like to have found, for sure.  3 stories, 9 essays, and a review.  None of them readily available, but most available-ish. In fact, even as we speak, the stories and two of the essays are heading my way, thanks to the munificence of Amazon.com .  Four of the pieces are ensconced in books.  Ironically, I once owned one of those books . . . but it was before I knew or cared about James Sutherland.  All 9 of the remaining pieces are available in issues of Vertex: The Magazine of Science Fiction, and were published between April of 1973 and February of 1975.  And, in fact, so far as I can tell,  February 1975 is the last time James Sutherland published anything.  Which makes me sad. Did he die?  The source I found (isfdb Science Fiction) doesn't think so.  It lists his birth date as August 25, 1948, and has no date of death noted.  (Then again, it also attributed two "essays" to James Edward Sutherland which clearly belong to James Runcieman Sutherland, so maybe they shouldn't be completely trusted.) 

Or did he just stop writing?  Imagine that.  Young James (a mere 24 years old) attends the prestigious Clarion Writer's Workshop in 1972.  Just getting into this place is quite an accomplishment, but it gets even better.  One of his short stories is published in a book put out by the Workshop (Clarion II).  And then he begins writing short articles which are published in Vertex.  Two more stories are published in anthologies.  And then Harlan Ellison himself accepts a story for The Last Dangerous Visions . . . and decides to publish the novel Stormtrack as the first book in his own Discovery Series. How fucking sweet must that have been?  How could James not think that he was On His Way?

And then . . . something happened.  After June 1974 only three pieces are published:  two articles for Vertex and an Italian translation of Stormtrack.  And those might have been in the pipes already.  So what the hell happened in June of 1974?  

Strangely enough, there's another JAMES E SUTHERLAND
who was born in the same year--1948 (but not the same day)--who died in Vietnam on 4/2/1971.  A little too close for comfort.  Which does, I suppose, beg the question, Did this James E Sutherland go to Vietnam, too?  And if he did, what happened to him there?

I hope nothing.  I hope he just got tired of the shit hole of science fiction and decided to do something else with his life.  Even though I would very much like to be reading his novels and short stories and articles to this day.

Here's the stuff I found on the internet:

James Edward Sutherland 
born Greenwich, Connecticut: 25 August 1948

US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "At the Second Solstice" in Clarion II (anthology 1972) edited by Robin Scott Wilson; in his Near Future sf novel, Stormtrack (1974), astronauts manning a weather satellite must deal with the Disaster of a storm of unprecedented ferocity. 


Novel

Stormtrack (June 1974) 
translated into Italian as L'osservatorio  (The Observatory) by Beata Della Frattina (March 1975)

Short Fiction 

"At the Second Solstice" (1972) in Clarion II June 1972)
"Beside Still Waters (1972) with Edward Bryant in Generation: An 
          Anthology of Speculative Fiction (July 1972)
"Swords of Ifthan (1973) in Omega (1973) --9 reprints:  Omega 
          August 1974, 100 Great Science Fiction Short Stories March 
          1978, August 1980, plus 5 other printings, and Urania #815, 
          December 1979
"The Amazonas Link (unpublished) --purchased for The 
                  Last Dangerous Visions

Essays 

"Introduction (A Journal of the Plague Year) (1968)*
"From Competition 4: Story Leads from the Year's Worst Fantasy and SF (1973) 
"The Truck That Flies (Vertex, April 1973) 
"The Next Drop You Drink (Vertex, June 1973) 
"Geothermal Power - Nature's Home Remedy (Vertex, October 1973) 
"Life At A Distance (Vertex, December 1973) 
"The Unhuman Explorers (Vertex, February 1974) 
"Ghost Universe (Vertex, June 1974) 
"Lands Adrift (Vertex, August 1974) 
"Europeans in Space (Vertex, February 1975) 
"Introduction (The Ladies of Grace Adieu) (2006) **

*James Runcieman  Sutherland 1900 to 1996
** Professor James Sutherland, Director of Sidhe Studies , University of AberdeenApril 26, 1900, died February 24, 1996.  Looks like these two are (1) not James Edward Sutherland and (2) are the same guy . . . though that's more than a bit confusing, since the second piece referred to here was "written" in 2006, which is ten years after this fellow died.  

Review 

Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke  (Vertex, February 1974) 

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?15768

How to Get Black People to Kill Each Other

"Part of the mechanics of oppressing people is to pervert them to the extent that they become the instruments of their own oppression." 

Kumasi 
Crips and Bloods: Made in America (2008)

I was thinking about that line and started pondering--in a Paris "Evil" way--and I thought, "The best way to make sure that violence continues in the black community . . . and to make sure that the police can arrest pretty much any black person at any time  . . . would be to make it easy for impoverished black people to get hold of guns and drugs.  A powerful lobbying group like the National Rifle Association could be ready to apply pressure to keep guns on the streets so that black people would keep getting (at best) killed or (at least) arrested.  But that's just liberal paranoid bullshit, right?  The NRA exists to defend our right to bear arms, not to contribute to the oppression of black people.

Well . . . I did a little quick research and found some data on a government web site.

Keeping in mind that  77.7% of the U.S. population is white,  13.2% of the population is black, and 17.1% of the population is Hispanic and Latino . . . of the 5,723 total gun deaths reported here, you'd expect there to be                           Instead, there are
4447 White deaths,                                  3,005
755 Black deaths, and                              2,491
979 Hispanic and Latino deaths.                 159
                                                                  and that mysterious 68             
                                                                 "unknown race."

If that's not startling, then look at it this way:  if Whites died at the same rate as Blacks,  then 13,341 White deaths would be recorded here.  

I was looking at a review of Crips and Bloods: Made in America and saw this

" . . . let's not forget about how many guns and assault rifles are on the street, thanks to the NRA."

from cdowning423.  So if I'm a paranoid liberal propagandist, at least I've got some company.

Another line from the documentary . . . 

"That's the new cotton field right there:  the pen."

W.E.B. DuBois said the same thing in The Souls of Black Folk.  Which was published in 1903.  So much for The Post-Racial America.

For a little dose of reality, check out "8 Stats That Dispel The Myth of Black Violence" on the Atlanta Backstar website.

Blow Jobs, Jobs, and the Protestant Work Ethic

I've been doing a little research (oh, research, is that what we're calling it? ha ha) this morning on blow jobs.  Seems that according to several sources the sexual act most requested of prostitutes is . . . aw, you guessed it: a blow job.  And check this out (from one of the articles I read--yes, I read--during my research):

I Googled "what men loved in bed" and it said blowjobs so i researched how to give a good bj and started doing it to my partner (after being together 9 months) he loves it and i enjoy giving and its unbelieveable how he has changed towards me! He worships me! I give him one as often as possible and i cannot believe how devoted to me he is now! Renee was right about if you want him to commit to you, the last 5 months have been amazing!  (sic)

I know, many of you are thinking, "He had to wait 9 months?  Sheesh!"  (And the rest of you are thinking, "How often is as often as possible?")  

And I'm thinking, you know, it's all good . . . but (1) I don't think any form of love making should be one-way, (2) I think that people who don't consider oral sex as sex are probably whore mongers, and (3)  there's a big difference between a blow job and face fucking someone, and I don't understand the latter at all.  I haven't been there myself (and can pretty much guarantee that I won't ever be there), but it just doesn't look like much fun for the recipient.  But what the fuck do I know.  

Speaking of jobs . . . this is by far the longest period of time (since I first started working at age 17,  if you count Junior Achievement--and yes, I did get paid) that I have not been working.  Three years plus something or other.  And I've definitely gotten the impression that a lot of people don't cotton to the reality of not working.  I can't tell you how many times someone has asked me, with an incredulous look on his / her face, "What do you dooooo?"  Or has told me, "I couldn't retire.  I wouldn't want to just sit around and watch tv."  And I know several people who have either retired and then gone back to work or retired and started working somewhere else . . . and not because they had to for economic reasons, but because there were just too many hours that they couldn't fill without work.

Which is kind of strange.  I had quite a few jobs when I was a worker  . . . let's see if I can do this in the proper order . . .             (?) vehicle emergency light maker & salesman with Junior Achievement, (1) janitor with Abacus, (2) dishwasher with I Don't Remember, (3) math tutor with Catonsville Comnunity College, (4) stock boy with G.C. Murphy's, (5) Signal Security Specialist with the U.S. Army, (6) gas station attendant with Lansdowne Exxon, (7) wire harness assembler with Metro Fabrication, (8) cutter with Label Specialties, (9) janitor with Bellarmine College, (10) stock boy with Target, (11) telephone solicitor with DialAmerica, (12) English tutor with Bellarmine College, (13) substitute teacher with Jefferson County, (14) window washer with I Don't Remember, (15) test car driver with Bendix, (16) proofreader with McCoy's Business Services, (17) teacher with Jefferson County, (18) tutor with Educational Resources, (19) independent tutor with Oldham County, (20) G.E.D. teacher with Jefferson County. Actually I'm not completely sure about the order around the middle section, but more or less that.  Oh, the colors?  Blue is for Baltimore, Green is for the Army, Lilac is for Louisville, and Yellow / Red is for South Bend.  (Cause they're sun colors.  If there's a color that starts with the letter S, it's not in my palette here.)   

So where was I?  Oh, yeah.  I've had quite a few jobs.  And at every one of them I got the distinct impression that my co-workers's main focal point of interest was to not do any work as often as possible.  To maximize break times, to maximize looking-like-I'm-doing-something-when-I'm-not times, etc.  And  no, I don't include myself in with them.  Sorry, but the Protestant Work Ethic must have been drilled into my bones, because I can sincerely say that I left it in the ring on every one of those jobs.  No brag, just fact.  So it's funny, isn't it?  Because you'd think that retirement would be perfect for damned near everybody, because they wouldn't have to pretend to be working anymore.  They could just be not working.  But maybe it's the pretending that's the important part here, not the not working part.  Because when you're pretending you feel like you're getting away with something.  Like you're cheating the system. *  Which seems really pathetic to me.

But then, I'm more of a "Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.'" guy, I suppose.  I feel guilty and horrible if I hurt, cheat, or otherwise abuse someone and try to make amends once I realize that I've done so.  Maybe that's not a pervasive operating system.  

Oh, sorry.  Should I have skipped the blow job stuff?  My bad.


* "It's the system / Hate the system / What's the system?"   "Saturday's Kids" written by Paul Weller, appears on The Jam's Setting Sons album.

Roister: Caught in the Act of Cracking Corn. *

* But I don't care.

That's what Brother Noam said.

"Bureaucrats have nothing to do except to make life difficult for people."

" . . . practically all of organized religion is based on the assumption that God is so stupid that he can’t see that you’re violating his commandments. So you find all kinds of trickery and devices to get around the commandments, which almost nobody can live up to."

Noam Chomsky

International Socialist Review

Issue #97 (Summer 2015)

Again, Southeast Christian Church

Third trip to Southeast Christian Church yesterday, first without P & first with Q & O. 1 Neither of them were too sure about this deal, as they rarely go to any church other than St. Williams with mom and St. James with me, but I really thought that they would like the music, so I asked and they acceded.  On a contingent basis.  I wanted to make sure that Q, especially, was comfortable, since she tends to be less elastic than O, so before the service began I told her that we could leave early or anytime that she wanted to leave.  She immediately said she wanted to leave, but when I suggested that we at least listen to one song she agreed.

She continued to tell me that we were going to leave early during the run-up to the start of the service, but once the first song started she seemed interested.  About halfway through the service she said something to me that I didn't hear, so I put my head down to her lips and asked her what she'd said.  She blew me away when she said, "I appreciate you bringing me to church."  I don't think she has ever said anything like that before.  And then I started to hear her voice, small and hesitant at first, during the hymns.  Or songs, I'm not sure that they're hymns.  

We stayed until the end of the service.  Even after a bunch of "I've got to leave and beat the crowd to the parking lot" people streamed past us.  

So there's that.

It's funny how my attitude towards Southeast Christian has changed so completely.  I used to laugh when people called it "Seven Flags Over Jesus."  I used to nod when people talked about how it was just a place people went to so that they could make contacts to use in business.  And I used to think the very idea of a church so big was ludicrous and wrong.

Then I took the little Js to the Shine Dance last year, and I was astounded at how many of the members of the congregation showed up to help out, and about how joyous they were.  And I could only guess at how much money had been laid out for this party for special needs kids, most of whom probably didn't even go to the church.  It was about as pure a Christian act as I've personally witnessed, and it moved me greatly.  

It didn't turn me stark raving Christian or anything like that.  But it did make me reevaluate myself in terms of how quickly I'd judged the place even though I'd never been there.

Now I've been there three times, and I've always (1) been greeted cheerfully by multiple people, (2) felt comfortable--not like an intruder, as I've felt in many of the churches I've visited, & (3) been moved by the sermon.

The sermon this time out particularly surprised me.  It was very challenging.  The basic message was, You shouldn't sit on your ass while people close by are suffering.  And it had barbs.  I didn't agree with everything that the minister had to say by any means . . .  and I thought that there were some internal contradictions, logical by-passes, etc. . . . but for the most part I thought it was a powerful message, and one that was actually very Christian in the best sense of the term.  (As in something that Jesus Christ wouldn't mind being said.  I don't think many of the sermons I've heard in the past half a century could pass that muster.)

Also, there were three or four blind people with dogs who came to the service.  Q found this quite interesting, and this morning she said to her brother, "Some people are blind in church."  Which I found (1) poetic & even elegant, (2) pretty interesting on a metaphysical level.  If I could just have her language, I think I could write a truly great novel.

I think we'll be going back to Southeast Christian church.  


1   Funny, I was just proofreading this thing prior to hitting the Publish button (I occasionally do that, which may be difficult to believe . . . but you could help out if you'd holler when you catch a typo) when I realized that these letters are in alphabetical sequence . . . which is just an interesting thing, don't think it qualifies as coincidence, much less synchronicity.  But I've always referred to Jacqueline and Joe as Q and O here, respectively . . . initially because I was incognito, and here just because I felt like it.  And P is Pat, my friend.  So it's not like I engineered it or anything.  Oh, shit . . . this is only interesting to me, isn't it?  Sorry.  Shutting up now.

色彩を持たない多崎つくると、彼の巡礼の年 by 村上 春樹

Only two more chapters of 色彩を持たない多崎つくると、彼の巡礼の年 to go now, so I'm guessing one more day / bike ride will do it.  It hit me today that one of the strange things about this novel is the way that the dialogue is written.  It seems very awkward at times, and almost non-sequitor-ish in the exchanges.  Characters say things and I think, "Why would anyone say that?"  Which kind of makes it both less and more realistic simultaneously.  Less for the obvious reason, but more because people really do speak that way.  Mostly because they usually don't listen to each other.  

But I'm enjoying this story quite a bit.  The New York Times Book Review Review said that the audio-book version was excellent because of the way the narrator reads the novel--without emotion, distant--and I'm glad that I took the advice . . . and that Scribd had the audio-book available.  

One of the things that resonates with me is the idea that most of what we do in this life is bullshit.  Not that  村上 春樹 comes right out and says that, but I think it's implied a number of times.  Like when Tsukuru is thinking about people commuting, using as much as three hours of each day to get to and from their workplaces.  And how that was probably not only lost, wasted time, but that it probably also eroded the person's energy for other things as well.  So much of life is going from one room to another room, talking about shit that we don't even vaguely care about, etc.  So what happens when you strip all of that bullshit away?  What's left?

I'm working on it.

Biking / Scribd Audiobook Coincidence Number 4

My current bouting book (thanks, Scribd) is Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami, which I am enjoying immensely.  (I'm sorry to say that I have yet to finish a Murakami book.  I was reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and really getting into it, but it got to something so gross and disgusting that I put it down and never picked it up again.)  Today's "reading" included a description of a character's cell phone ring as being a snippet of Elvis's "Viva Las Vegas."  There was also a bit of chat about the movie / song accompanying that detail.  Three hours later I walked into Barnes and Noble and headed for the magazine racks.  As I settled into position, two of the employees walked by, and one said to the other, "I love Elvis.  "Viva Las Vegas" is my jam."

Little Bird Attacks Big Bird

Whilst fiddle-abouting yesterday I saw a large bird glide by, and there was a smaller bird flying parallel to it, just a few inches above its neck.  My first thought was that this was like a pilot fish and shark* situation, but then I saw the little bird pecking at the big bird and realized that it was attacking the big bastard.  Oh, yeah.

* Dangerous, Cannot Help



" . . . to ignore the apparently insignificant was to admit that one was condemned to sit defenseless on the parapet connecting the rising and falling members of the bridge between chaos and comprehensible order."

László Krasznahorkai
Satantango

Biking / Scribd Audiobook Coincidence Number 3

So this morning . . . a Sunday morning, in case you didn't notice, which could add to the oddness of this coincidence . . . I set off for a bike ride at 9:33.  I have been listening to (and enjoying) Michel Faber's The Book of Strange New Things on my most recent bike outings (or boutings  as we Bikers say).  Been meaning to get back to Faber ever since I finished The Crimson Petal and the White.  And did get a few nibbles out of a short story collection, Some Rain Must Fall: And Other Stories--and was enjoying it--but got caught up in the whole Béla Tarr / László Krasznahorkai thing.  (Which I'm not yet finished with.  I have seen all of Tarr's films and have almost finished reading my third Krasznahorkai book (plus that little pamphlety thing, "The Bill"), but I've still got one more novel to read (been on request at LFPL for a long time), one more pamphlety thing to read, and one more book coming out January 15, 2016.  Which, had we not gotten divorced, have been the 33rd wedding anniversary for me and Jo Ann.  Wow.  But enough about me.)

So there's this company in the novel--The Book of Strange New Things, if you've lost track midst all of these twists and turns--which was called USAC . . . or so I imagined.  Because the narrator has a British accent.   And I was biking down Willow Springs Drive, and as I rounded a corner I saw a truck parked (and empty) on the side of the road.  As I passed it, I saw what was written on the door:

USIC

Which is pretty odd, right?  And why was that truck (from USIC's website:  "USIC is North America's leading underground utility damage prevention firm.") out on a Sunday morning at 10 am-ish?  (It was about 3/4ths of the way through my bouting, by the way.)  When I got home I went to Amazon's Look Inside for The Book of Strange New Things, and look what I found:

     "The Slavic-looking young man shook his prognathous face slowly to and fro.
     "Too late, bro."
     "Too late?"
     "Twenty-four-hourly stock appraisal, bro. Began an hour ago."
     "I was told by the USIC people that food is provided whenever we need it."
     "Correct, bro. You just gotta make sure you don't need it at the wrong time."



So what do you think about them apples?

Thought for the Day: Being a Brief Meditation on the Veracity of the Advertisement and Presentation of Various and Sundry Brands of Mixed Nuts, Specifically as This Pertains to the So-Called "Peanut"

Since a peanut is actually a legume, and since all attempts to have it re-named "pea-legume" have come to naught, doesn't this mean that truth in advertising requires that labels on such products should read

Mixed Nuts & "Peanuts"?

And maybe even a little * after the "Peanuts"

with the legume information.

This reminds me of two "nut" jokes.

The first is from The Simpsons.  Homer has been kidnapped and taken to Brazil.  As they are tooling down the Amazon River, he says to his (Brazilian) kidnapper,

Homer Simpson: Listen, I really need a rest stop.

Kidnapper #2: Again? 

Homer Simpson: I have a bladder the size of a Brazil nut.

Kidnapper: Uh... We just call them nuts here.

Is that funny or what?

The second isn't actually a nut joke, come to think of it.  But it is a Brazilian joke, so you see there's just that one degree of separation. Okay.  It goes like this:

George Bush was receiving his daily report from his Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. 

During the report, Rumsfeld said; “And yesterday, three Brazilian soldiers were killed in Iraq.” George suddenly went pale, put his head in his hands and began to sweat profusely. 

His staff were astounded. They had never seen the president react like this to such a small loss. Then, after he had recovered slightly, the president brought his head up and quietly asked the aide next to him, "Just how many is a brazilian?" 

Good times.

The Melancholy of Resistance by László Krasznahorkai: 2 Things

Thing 1:

" . . . he decided to demolish the few rarely used rickety old bridges that still existed between him and the world, to apply the rules of his earlier self-distancing from an ever more lawless society with even greater rigor, to leave this fatal stew to rot by itself and withdraw completely with only his friend for company."

Third try to comment on the above.  None of it quite right, so just this:  I know the feeling, but haven't started burning in earnest.

Thing 2:


" . . . his home . . . where the tiniest thing possessed some significance . . . . "

What a lovely way to describe the importance and meaning of home.  Yes, as a matter of fact, I DO need that broken Gorton's bobblehead.

This Morning's Mini-Drama by Jacqueline

The Murder of Judge Judy

Mickey:  St. James, I'm sorry I killed Judge Judy by mistake on purpose.

St. James:  That's okay, Mickey, everybody makes mistakes.

Scribd Audiobook Coincidences.

The first one was amazingly weird, but for some reason I let it go.  But today I had a second one--not as weird as the first, but still pretty weird--so I figured I'd get down to it.

Okay.  The first one.  I was listening to Under the Volcano whilst riding my bike.  And at the exact moment that the narrator said, "And Hugh actually did ride over a dead garter snake, embossed on the path like a belt to a pair of bathing trunks.", I road past a dead snake lying in the gutter.  Granted, I didn't ride over it, but I wasn't more than a few inches away.  Pretty fucking freaky, yes?

The second one happened today.  Yesterday I'd been reading the excellent, superb, and astonishing Drawn & Quarterly: Twenty-five Years of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics, and Graphic Novels, edited by Tom Devlin, and I'd read a really interesting story about how this guy--don't remember his name and don't feel like looking it up, sorry, but it doesn't matter--had been in Sweden or Norway or Finland, one of those cold countries, and had found a box of comics that contained three book collections of Ingrid Vang Nyman's Pippi Longstocking.  And there were a few pages from those comics--which Drawn and Quarterly did go on to publish in English, by the way.  I was surprised to find that they were kind of cool, and thought about looking around to see if I could find them at the library or on Scribd.  So today I went on a bike ride, and I was listening to Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and I heard this:

     Of the books, about half were mystery paperbacks from Wahlstrom's Manhattan series: Mickey Spillane with titles like Kiss Me, Deadly, with the classic covers by Bertil Hegland. He found half a dozen Kitty books, some Famous Five novels by Enid Blyton, and a Twin Mystery by Sivar Ahlrud--The Metro Mystery. He smiled in recognition. Three books by Astrid Lindgren: The Children of Noisy Village, Kalle Blomkvist and Rasmus, and Pippi Longstocking. 

Pretty fucking weird, eh?

This shit happens to me constantly.  There has got to be a way to use this super power to my advantage.

Tin Hat

Yes, Tin Hat.  Oh, yes.  Yes, yes, yes.  

Ahem.

I have a new friend.  And she sent me a Spotify playlist.  I wanted to respond in kind.  I'd known of Spotify's existence, but had never used it before.  But I had a lot of fun putting that playlist together.  And I was surprised to find that most of what I looked for was there.  (Given that my taste in music is a smidgen on the outré side of things, you know.)  So when I finished that playlist, I went poking around to see what else I could find.  And there was some seriously cool shit . . . some rare shit.  Like (as provided to me by R.) a live version of Roy Harper doing "Rock 'n' Roll Man" from the Stonehenge 1984: A Midsummer Night Rock Show, which I've never seen before.  (But which you can get through Amazon.uk, I've just discovered.)  Hey, wait a minute.  That's not the name of that song.  It's "One Man Rock 'n' Roll Band."  Fuckin' typos everywhere!  

Ahem.

So I was poking around to see what else I could find post R. playlist, and I went looking for "Little Neutrino," by Klatuu.  Yep, there it was.  So I thought I'd start another playlist just for the hell of it.  I entitled it, "I Am Someone You'll Never Know" because (1) it's a line from "Little Neutrino" and (2) given the high intensity and volume verbal flagellations I've received from several of the women in my past, this may have some applicability to moi.  (Though I have to admit that I don't see that at all--I think of myself as a pretty upfront guy.  Could be speck in neighbor log in yours thing, though, right?)  And that kind of became the rudder for this little musical ship.  So I followed "Little Neutrino"  with "Streets of Fire," "Everybody's Talkin'," "There is a Mountain," "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)," "Peace in Mississippi," "Broken Stones," "Search and Destroy," "Isolation," "I Am a Rock," "Atlantis,"  "It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)," "Squarehead," "Careful With That Axe, Eugene," "Fuck World Trade," "Busload of Faith," "The End," "(Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay," "I Feel You," "Buried in the Murder," "(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais," and "Good-bye Mr. Ed."  (By, in case you needed to know, Klatuu--as previously mentioned--, Bruce Springsteen, Harry Nilsson, Donovan, Jimi Hendrix, Jimi Hendrix, Paul Weller, Iggy Pop and The Stooges, John Lennon, Paul Simon--sans you-know-who, Donovan, The Suicide Machines--who bring some balls to this R.E.M. song (love you, R.E.M. . . . just sayin'), Iggy Pop, Pink Floyd, Leftover Crack, Lou Reed, Lullaby of Beatle Land--'cause the Beatles's version wasn't available, but I dig the accordion--, Otis Redding, Depeche Mode, The Lonely Wild, The Clash, and Tin Machine.)

"I have my books and my poetry to protect me."

Hells yeah.

Speaking of Tin Machine . . . I was checking out what Spotify had, looking for stuffs I didn't have.  And there were some items, lemme tell ya.  And I hit a play button by accident, and some strangeness started playing.  It was Tin Hat, which was intermingled with Tin Machine.  Because of the Tin, you know.  And it was some groovy kind of shit.  So I started checking out Tin Hat.  And lord and begore ya, they (or one of them, and then joined by some others, maybe all of the others) did the soundtrack for Nebraska, which is one of the most awesomest movies I've seen in some time.  Small world, ennit?

And that's how I became a Tin Hat fan.

You come, too.

ADDENDUM:  Went back to listen to some of that Nebraska Tin Hat . . . and Tin Hat man Mark "Tin" Orton also did the music for Sweet Land, one of the bestest movies ever.  World keep gettin' smaller, chile.

ADDENDUM to the ADDENDUM:  Also found out that The Tin Hat Trio did a song on the soundtrack for Everything is Illuminated (2005) called "Fear of the South."  Everything is Illuminated is a superb film, definitely a ***** in me umble . . . and yet I just saw that it lost over $3 million  (Budget $7,000,000, Box Office $3,601,974).  Is that some shit or what?  I really can't imagine anyone not liking (or even loving) that movie if they sat down to watch it.  What the fuck, people?  Avengers: Age of Ultron grossed $451,039,000 as of 19 June 2015--and is still going strong--and let's face it, that was not a good movie.  (And you know I love comic books, comic book movies, AND the first Avengers, so this is not sour grapes.)  You can't throw down a measly three million on Everything is Illuminated?  Sheesh.