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Mr. BC's Cartoon Bubble
I've got some music digitally stored on a hard drive and I queued up onto Winamp the jazz folder last night about six, started it playing and this morning it's on song number 46, out of almost 7000 selections, so I don't know who that is playing right now but safe to say, alphabetically, it could not be anyone much beyond (or even up to) Art Blakey.
I have considered putting a couple of small claymore mines outside my bedroom door, which I keep closed as a preventive measure to waking up with a cat wrapped around my face. All the other doors are open, entry door wide open, screenless, come on in, shop around while I sleep. I leave a light on so you can see everything, sparse though it is.
A man who would even consider blowing up to bits a harmless feline is really no man at all, but I don't need an alarm clock, and this is what I would be conveying to Herman in all his puffy grandeur by blowing him to smithereens. Scratching outside my bedroom door every morning to remind me that he likes his breakfast early is not only not cute but damned annoying. I resist yelling at him because that only feeds the awareness of everyone involved. But eventually, every morning, I do say in conversational tone, shut up Herman, and that makes him so happy he flops down on the hardwood hallway and purrs to vibrate the whole house.
A remote control trap door leading down to sharpened bamboo spikes would be effective as well. Although messy. And who would I afterwards play kung-fu warrior with, assuming I'm not into feline-necrophilia?
Waiting for a little bit of this fog to burn off before I get on that fence this morning. No really Mr. BC, I'm not milking that fence job beyond all reasonable proportion. It's just that, in case you weren't aware, I was promoted to chief-assistant pool boy, and gardener's apprentice first class this year, so my responsibilities out here are many layered. As to that little cartoon bubble above your head with the innuendo-laden caption inside I would only remind you that it was at your moderately insistent prodding that I began to socially re-engage with other humans this year and so whatever little time that is taking from my duties, I can only imagine is much to your satisfaction.
Focussed Smashing
I had a stomache ache most of last week and considered the possibility that some of the locals might be poisoning me as part of a larger Munchhausen by Proxy scheme. A fair part of last week I was power sanding old paint off partially rotted fence boards and so I also considered that while a few select locals might be poisoning me, I might too be poisoning myself by breathing funky old powderized shit seeping in under the dust mask.
Some locals said there was something going around effecting people similarly, stomache aches all around, so at that point it came to me that either this local Munchhausen conspiracy is bigger than I thought, or, I just got a run of the mill tummy-ache, which as you well know is caused by the conspiracy between the airlines and the drug companies who are splitting the profit created by all the upset stomache medicine that is sold as a result of the airlines dusting the skies with mild poisons.
These ideas are part of my general day to day brainstorming sessions which occur while I'm working in the hot sun with a stomache ache. If you knew what the gentle breeze on my right shoulder felt like right now you would say--hot?! boy you don't know hot...and you would go on with some tale that would exceed any possibility I could ever experience, but you'd have to be in the deep south to be saying it so, god bless you for surviving all that.
I'm letting details overwhelm me again so I'm trying to get in touch with that, you know, work it out, become all that I can be by eliminating ridiculous bullshit from my path. Pretty obviously the most ridiculous shit in my path is me so get out of my way me.
Yeah I got more senseless prattle, like you had to ask?
Hammering nails with a hammer that moves along arcs parallel to the ground is hard if you forget the primary tenet regarding success for any venture--keep your eye on the ball, or in this case the head of the nail which you are intending to smash into the wood with brute strength and only moderate finesse. Focus, smash. Focus, smash. Focus, smash.
If jealous nearly ex-husbands of persons you are only friendly with drive by--try to look menacing and smash some more, don't forget to focus.
A Love Story
I was talking to the chef last night about New Orleans and he's got a bunch of stuff stuck in his head about it too, remembering kids with guns jacking him outside a nightclub and how they all parted cordially when he admitted to spending all his money at the bar and how when he said he was all fucked up the kids said, yeah, that they were too.
He used to lend his football to this kid in his neighborhood and one day the kid came back with a gash on his cheek from fighting off these other kids who wanted the ball.
I was telling the chef about an email I got this week from my friend still in New Orleans. She said these two murderers we know are back from their exile in California, and one of them has three times this week threatened with a gun one of her boarders, a near college graduate, a young man very close to escaping the street that swallows whole so many others.
The chef told me when he left he bought the kid a new leather football and said encouragingly that he hoped to see the kid on TV playing pro football someday and the kid looked at him first like he a damn fool and then took pity on the chef and his naivete and said sure, maybe that would happen. The chef was trying to describe something that you can't even cry away. That something that sticks. That briefest of moments when you really do see in someone's eyes the soul of them, their very essence of being, and it speaks only of despair past and forward.
I told him of this teenage girl I knew who lived around the corner in the projects and how beautiful and confident and smart she was and how I naively suggested to her one day that she would escape the city that care forgot and she said matter of factly that she would never get out of there. She had a baby last year at sixteen and I'm sure the kid will know, among other things, much love.
Did Jesus Recycle?
You toss down into this 200 foot long rectangular pit all your household garbage and when you're not looking some guys with machinery come and scoop it out and take it somewhere else.
Across from the pit is one big container, like a boxcar without wheels, open at the butt end, and into this big container people stack or throw their newspapers and by looking at those newpapers you sometimes feel the whole weight of it, the folly of printed expression multiplied by all the tons of recycled and mostly unread paper.
Next to the container are dumpsters, one each for plastic, green glass, brown glass, clear glass, and aluminum cans.
Once, a long while back, I had a couple sections of newspaper in the floorboard of my truck and I just tossed them into the trash pit. This local guy admonished me and I felt stupid, not only for my ecological lethargy but for not picking the guy up by his ears and tossing him into the refuse pit. At the time I was just relocated from the heart of a mean city and there in that city such an admonition by a well-intended citizen would have resulted in at least a return admonition such as--mind your own f-ing business, b-tch. (The person was a man but lucky for me the lexicon of my era allows me to use the B word for both sexes, and goddamn it, as well it should).
I'm going to admit now that I cut flowers and put them in vases and then enjoy the way they look and try not to feel too much like a girl because of it even though I'm sure being a girl is a fine thing but if I have to be one I want to be a lesbian. And the truth is I probably could not have picked the guy up by his ears because the guy was not short enough and I'm not sure how strong I am but safe to say I'm stronger than I look, which is to say I don't look all that strong, but the combination of not looking all that strong and picking flowers is a thing I don't want used against me. Or being a sexist pig, I don't want that used against me either.
I'm at this place I eat at a lot and as often as not I'm the only one there, not because the food sucks, but because I eat at off hours, and I'm standing behind this woman who is ordering at the counter but I have left a gap so that people (occasionally there are inexplicable rushes of customers) can pass and look at the prepared sandwiches in the glass counter.
And the guy comes in, only I don't recognize him because it's been months and months since the discarded newspaper incident. He pauses right before the gap, and let me say here I left plenty of room, room enough for a XXL kind of person. I'm up against the chips is what I'm saying, the wire rack is almost piercing my side (if you think I'm coming this far without a Jesus metaphor you are not only wrong for thinking it, you can go straight to hell.)
He pauses in front of me with a querulous look and I back imperceptibly further into the chips. I would have bled if I chose any more of a backward direction.
He speaks to me in a tone both concilliatory and reprimanding and as if he were speaking a foreign tongue I just looked at him, giving him a brief instant in which to consider the possibility that I may be without the sense of hearing, or, an actual foreigner who does not speak a lick of the local dialect, and will soon be pointing at the menu on the wall and hesitantly counting out the funny looking currency in his pocket.
The guy is starting to look--or at least sound--somewhat familiar to me and I finally get what he is saying. I am improperly queued. I should be wrapping towards the glass sandwich case instead of straight behind the one other customer but I'm not sure if this is what he's saying or for that matter why the hell he is talking to me at all.
The only unsolicited words I want to hear from other human beings are these: I love you, would you like another sandwich?, and, save room for dessert.
So I just asked the guy (by now he has occupied my space longer than I like for a guy to), are you asking me if I know what I'm doing, or what? And he says yes more or less and gives me some instructions which I'm simply ignoring and I say yeah mane, I'm just waiting to order, I don't need to look at the sandwiches, I'm having lasagna. He moves on towards the sandwich case finally, looking like a holy roller who has just failed at converting another lost soul (mind your own f-ing soul, bitch) and I say ( Not knowing why I am saying it, I feel like a man who has lost all context) "we can co-exist peacefully,"
But then, and now, I'm not sure if that is true. There's only a few of us living around here. I'll see him again I guess. See how that theorem proves out.
Email Pusher
Ok, first, just a reminder--I am not in New Orleans anymore, I have moved to Virginia. As to why I haven't changed my page, made up a new name, or at least changed that damn picture of the feral New Orleans cat, Shorty, I can't say, or maybe I can, but won't.
With this page I can go to what is called a referer
(<World-Wide Web> A misspelling of "referrer" which somehow made it into the HTTP standard. A given web page's
referer (sic) is the URL of whatever web page contains the
link that the user followed to the current page. Most
browsers pass this information as part of a request.) log and see how many people have had this page come up on the list that any given search engine might provide for things the searcher is searching for.
I used to write more about some people in the urban New Orleans ghetto and some of these people referred to themselves by using the N word and this I would report. At the same time I used to work with rednecks that used the N word pretty frequently and this I would also sometimes report. I say "sometimes report" because frankly I think there may have been stretches that lasted for weeks where I heard the word everyday and I just could not report this because it was beginning to hurt my feelings in a way that had some of the elements of hopelessness.
One day I got curious what would happen if I googled the word, the word is "nigger," if you didn't know, and my page came up number one (it was a horrifying moment), and from then on I tried to use the word less because, not in all cases, but in many cases, I don't want to mingle with people who search for the N word.
I was going to write about this anal compulsive Virginia dickhead I ran into for the second time but it seems I've gotten sidetracked.
Anyway, I just checked my referer (sic) log and to whomever searched for "email addresses of New Orleans pushers" I can only tell you I don't have any. I mean, I left my email address with some of the lads on the street but I haven't heard from them. With varying frequency I check the Times Picayune online to see if any of the lads have been murdered. That some of them have been on the other side of the gun, this I already know. Which I report to you as warning because I'm getting ready to give you not email addresses but actual street addresses so that you can meet in person that which you seemingly hoped to meet in cyberspace.
Stand on the southeast corner of Dumaine and Rampart. Lean against that building for a minute. Smoke a cigarette. If you don't smoke, you should start. Look in the windows of that building. It is a fancy restaurant, the last bit of fancy you shall see. Walk north, zig-zag easterly north-easterly through Armstrong Park, exit the east side onto St. Philip, continue north into the Treme neighborhood, cross Claiborne (overpass) and continue north for several more blocks. You should roughly be in the 1800 block of St. Philip. Or you can be on one of parallel streets like Ursulines or Dumaine or St. Ann. From there walk north, east, or west for twenty blocks or more and if you don't find the pusher you're looking for then my condolences to your family and may you RIP.
Caretaker's Wave
I am on the verge of missing this wave.
I got some chores to do. Everytime I pause I think of a new one.
Put the masterbedroom back together from last week's painting of it, vacuum a bit, blow off the sidewalks, cut some flowers, do the dishes (let me start that right now), brush my hair (done), move the sprinkler around the tennis court, check the pool, lock the pool fence, pick up dead limbs around the house, take the key out of the jeep, gather up all the different colored beer bottles from both houses and separate them by color for recycling bins at dump, haul trash to dump, vacuum up minute broken glass bits from upstairs bathroom floor, and remove broken picture.
This is starting to seem like a lot, and maybe I won't have enough time to accomplish all this before the owner's show up.
Ok, I just moved the sprinkler, and the pool I already did earlier, so...but...
...have to lay board across hay and seeded entrance to tennis court so no mud tracked on it. Telepathically communicate with approaching children of owner not to walk through wet hay, ha.
By the way, it's 62 degrees and sunny, in August, so it's not like I'm complaining, even though you aren't really inclined to swim when it's this cool, which isn't a complaint, I'm just saying.
So as it turns out I probably should have missed this wave.
The Folly Of Backspin
Yeh-uh, it was on impulse that I drove along the fence line in search of knowledge regarding fences. I was on my way to take a shower and I thought--I'll just drive my truck where I've never driven it before, look at fence, ruminate, and then go back to the house and clean up so I'll be fresh for the evening's beer drinking. I might have thought that I would be wiser for this experience, a wise old beer drinking fool, scratching his chin and chuckling about all the tidbits of wisdom floating around in his skull.
One might occasionally ruminate before doing stupid things, reconsider motivation, and finding none, abort mission.
I however don't always aspire to avoiding stupidity.
Off the path I saw standing water, drove just beyond it and to an elevation lower than it and turned in its direction. This I did to avoid getting stuck in the mud. I drove into a soggy bog to avoid getting stuck in the mud. And what I discovered was something wonderful, a world of untold mystery unfolded before my eyes; it was a magical time encapsulated inside a few ticking seconds; my heart beat wildly as I gazed upon the profile of her fulsome breasts (they say a man has a sexual fantasy every fifteen seconds).
But my fantasy was just a brief prelude to self-degrading, vitriolic, profane self-abuse. I cussed myself. You stupid f-ing d-head.
I walked to the top of the hill where the vaguely eastern-european day helper was sweeping the porch and I said, come on son, we got work to do, and I briefly described the predicament, telling him we would use the little jeep and try to pull the truck from the mud. You will try to use little jeep for this purpose? the vaguely eastern-european day helper said and I just grunted back, yeh-uh.
The little jeep has mostly been considered a toy for ferrying about the property visiting dignataries and it was a long shot to consider that it would have the strength to pull a medium sized truck stuck, or unstuck, in mud. With the broken-english-speaking vaguely eastern-european day helper driving the jeep and me behind the wheel of the truck and a tow rope between us, we conspired to extricate.
This proved to be a successful venture followed by me feeling so much the wiser. I showered but decided not to shave so there would be a few gray beard hairs to scratch that evening while I drank my beers.
The vaguely eastern european day helper said, now we play bocce? Sure kid, I said, and proceeded to school him regarding the folly of affected backspin.
Cute Furry Rodent
It is an ongoing battle in which I climb up this hill imagining every morning the hideous beasts from nightmares caught in the frail store-bought snare only to be confronted with mostly empty traps licked clean of the peanut butter enticement.
And when not empty the captured beast turns out to be a little country mouse. You've seen the cartoons which depict the differences between the smart-talking, wily, city mouse and the barefoot, simple-minded country mouse. I know you have.
Except that the country mice out here are naked. I mean they are not wearing suspendered dungareees, sporting straw hats, or clenching between their dead jaws, a corncob pipe.
The score, not that this is a battle with a clear sense of winner and loser, is something like 14-3, in favor of the mice. Of course the 3 equals dead mice and the 14 is just a dab of licked clean peanut butter from an unsprung store-bought mouse trap. So clearly, the stakes are a little higher for rodents around here.
I have tried two slightly different versions of the standard, snap-your-neck mouse trap with equally unpredictable results. I sense there to be a master mouse who goes as yet untrapped, who may in fact be luring his lesser foot soldiers into scenarios of guaranteed expiration. It is the sense of this master mouse which has me peeking with clenched teeth into this kitchen every morning, expecting something horrific, like one of those modern experiments gone awry. Not just a mouse with a human ear growing from its side but maybe a miniature human head, that looks like Dick Cheney but speaks like George Bush and smokes cigarettes, like Laura.
But no, not yet. The three dead ones have all been cute--grey, furry, petite, non-threatening even in their horrific poses of surprise demise.
Nothing caught this morning. Score 16-3.