Thursday, July 30, 2009

fire

Fire, what an element.
Flammable/inflammable interesting that.
A touch of the old Crazy World of Aurthur Brown and a long parade of musical, poetic tributes. Arson, spontaneous combustion. It's just amazing.
I've had my little relationship with it, some incredibly positive and some so not.
Weirdly enough there are too many stories, memories and snippets that I feel presently inadequate to proceed into story-telling mode. So I will leave this theme and know that I've fed a salamander somewhere. Blaze on.

Sunday, July 26, 2009

tv shows

Cable TV with a lot of channels excluding the extra packages and I can't find anything to watch. So, I was thinking of some of my old favorites and a few of them were extremely short lived.
  • VR5 - I can't even find a remnant or DVD much less rerun
  • Max Headroom
  • Kung Fu
  • Firefly - was glad to see this on the rerun circuit for a brief run; I've got the DVDs anyway
  • Sea Quest
  • Space Precinct - not much of a show but I'd like to see one anyway; Barney Miller in space

I guess this shows some of my tastes. I'm pretty sure that I also like a few mainstream shows too.

  • X-files
  • some of the Brit-coms particularly Faulty Towers

I could even go for some old Westerns

  • Rawhide
  • Maverick

I think I'll hit Netflix instant and catch an original Dr. Who. Nope i'm gonna catch an episode of Earth2

Happy viewing to you.

nothing to say

What a great old Jethro Tull tune.
I'm just taking one of those quick breaks in my Sunday to sip coffee, catch up on some on-line activities, test some tunes on a compilation disc, smoke a cig. and enact an entry to facilitate rhythmic activity, still awaiting the cascade effect to fall out of this glaciated pace.
OK back to Mundania.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

decadence a way of life

So the season is winding down in Florida and I spent some days in Gainesville where I ate some Skeeters Big Biscuits and picked up a T-shirt; purple with the slogan "DECADENCE A WAY OF LIFE" emblazoned across the chest. Later that summer I went dancing in a club in Portland Maine with G. and the bouncers were bidding on my T.. Needless to say I did not part with it even when the bid hit $40. (this was back around 1980, I had paid $6 for it)
Back on the row, the following season, in the hinterlands of Alabama where the famous white breakfast is the extent of morning choices in the local eateries. White toast, eggs over, grits and biscuits with white gravy. I caved due to my pangs and was in consumption mode when a heavily accented voice was persistently asking for some attention. In an accent you could cut with a chainsaw I hear, hey was' tha' theer Dee-Kay-Dense some kinda cult? So in my most accommodating sonorous voice I replied that no it was not a cult; but that it is a sect of Zoroastrianism. The conversation terminated.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

sunday

Sunday evening winding down folding in pushing thoughts of another Monday away and digesting a sumptuous meal. Pondering how bare my soul or what purpose this blog. Looking forward to a gathering next month in the Northlands.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

what i'm reading

  • Setting Free the Bears - John Irving - 1968; yes I have read this before
  • Yon Ill Wind - Piers Anthony - Xanth - 1996; goofy-pun filled have not read this one but have read a few other Xanth entries - will finish today
  • The Divine Matrix - Gregg Braden - 2007; picking up where I left off a few months ago
  • Einstein - Walter Issacson - 2007: also picking up where I left off
  • Norse Code - Greg van Eekhout - 2009; finished, good read
  • Zoe's Tale - John Scalzi - 2008; finished also a good read

crew list

Some of the Hoedad crew I worked with in the three years on the row.
I planted a million trees in AL, AK, TX, GA, LA, MS, & FL
  • Z - Waco TX. ex-con with his (cha who-a who-a) killer
  • JD my older brother (1st year & we shared the original trailer, it was way f**king small)
  • the Tough Tomatoes - three ex-military lesbians (one did some chiropractic)
  • Juicy and Busey - I can't remember her name but she was the hottest chick on the row, he was also called OD
  • Bruce and Mother Superior - crew chief 1st year
  • Big Mike - overboss 1st year, Napoleon complex
  • Kevin and ? - I want to call her Denise but that's wrong
  • Captain Quaalude
  • the Banker
  • the Dells - Smiling Js - Jim Judy John Joan - never cracked a smile but they did have some pickled weasel saddles in their larder
  • the Bookends or Books for short and they brought a Short Story - D9 with them the next season
  • Linda Lou
  • Gravy, and Kat came along the 3rd season
  • Charlie and Sue - crew boss 2nd and 3rd season
  • M-
  • Farm Boy - a refugee from "The Farm"
  • Crimson White Feather
  • ?????? the crew changed and there were a lot of others I can't remember names of (hey this was over 25 years ago)

Saturday, July 11, 2009

songs

I enjoyed the post string on FOI (Fish on Ice) that And y had started and probably had more posts than the rest put together. It was called play this song when I die, or at my funeral, or after I'm dead.... well you get the idea. If I knew how to make this blog dance I would slip in one of these and add to it as the whim takes me. I don't know how to do that yet. So I guess I'll just slap in an occasional list and see what I can learn along the way.

So how long do you think a memorial celebration would take? Should I make a sound track? Hmmm, but could I limit it to under 1,000 tunes?

just words

Just words sequenced by their own will unedited and unimpeded. Where will they take us? Back a week memory-wise (is there a single word to encompass this ?) "Saturday in the park, I think it was the fourth of July" by Chicago and I didn't even play it then. Now works.

What if they take us forward? There seems to be more daunt in this than a simple remembering and since all time is simultaneous why have we made that so? The curious case of Benjamin Button may have lingered in the brain pan and helped to stimulate this train. Casey Jones did not have anything to do with it I promise.

Tendencies are to either go far into the future and lay down some wannas bwanna and hope to fake it till you make it, co-create, visualize into being with maybe a side order of chant-o-matics; or of course to creep forward into the morrow since it has a certain predictability based on lists written or unwritten.

Tomorrow I can see me cleaning house prepping some groceries and screwing around on the computer. That was easy. Since I worked today the regular weekend needs to be done gets compressed.

Farther and further into the future distant way out west towards the end of my physical days; wheezing a bit with the effort required to upright after a fitful sleep wishing that coffee was already brewed and accepting that this is a good day to die. Thinking that an old fashioned pyre with feathers and prayer-ties would be appropriate and knowing that interference would ensue. No rush all of the time in the world and then some; OK so maybe a lawn chair is a bit tacky but it's comfortable enough to dismiss the body and engage the spirit. So long and thanks for all the fish.

Friday, July 10, 2009

some authors SF/F

  • Charles De Lint
  • Philip K. Dick
  • Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
  • Tad Williams
  • Terry Pratchet
  • ...

Monday, July 6, 2009

stay tuned

I recon I will shortly add some lists. Maybe like Blogs I read, authors, music-that is almost daunting, I think my favorite song is Summertime, but by who? and I encourage all of you who are willing to stretch their audial input to look into Joiking. Pronounced like it begins with a Y.

I was tickled when I found out that Micky Hart also was enthralled by a specific record, vinyl, when he was a kid. I didn't know that there were really any more copies being listened to besides the one I owned. The music of the rain forest pygmies. Reference the early part of his book Song Catchers.

I had some nice verbal trajectory brewing while I was at work but I can't see to retrieve it.

Sunday, July 5, 2009

hollywood

So, Hollywood, that's what they called me. At least towards the end of season two and thereafter. It was May and we moved from the Mobile area down into the peninsula in the area of Cross City. The weather was hot for the intensely physical demands of hoeing the row. Gravy and I in usual fashion would hit the row early and hard, slam in a bag, approximately 1000-1500 loblollys. While the rest of the crew was still afield we figured it was too f***ing hot to go back out while the sun was directly overhead. So like any adventurous wild men we decided we'd hit town for a while. Town was a pretty small affair with little to offer, but there was a bar, with a drive through window, a guy on a horse rode up and got a six-pack while we were there, pool tables and simple fare. We had lunch more than a few beers and shot a few games. Around 3 PM we figured we should head back to get another bagful in the ground. Charlie saw our sorry state and wouldn't let us back on the row so I went back to town to prowl around the thrift stores to find some row threads. Our crew had developed an interesting habit of dressing up or down or maybe sideways for the row. This helped to lighten things up and infuse a bit of humor to the hard work and long days. I found a bright yellow shirt with quarter sized blue polka dots and a pair of red white and blue skiers sunglasses. Deciding a little more overhaul was in order I stepped into the back of my home on wheels and shaved off a six months beard exposing some very white flesh comparing to the tan the rest of my skin sported. Getting back to the site decked out and feeling pretty good, I emerged from my vehicle in stealth circumnavigated a few other interesting rolling dwellings and was greeted by Johnny Z's loud exclamation "who's that Hollywood dude?" and there you have it and so did I.

Saturday, July 4, 2009

wishin' stick

So, back to the story. It's not a big one but it has stuck in my mind all of these years like a possum in a croquet wicket.
One of the bookends, the shorter rounder one, I surely cannot remember his name, about 6'3.5" weighing in @ 18 stone, was around the nightly white man's fire with 6 or 7 others. Buzzes were aplenty, also as usual, and some music played. Guitar, some eefing or body percussion, bamboo shakahatchi and voices. Things were winding down to a mellowness when our book took center. He started dancing around the fire like a wounded bear, thumping , staggering with a little grace thrown in; when he decided that he needed a partner. I guess he hadn't gotten laid in a while. Seeing that the only women in attendance were either clearly gay or obviously involved he decided on some firey branched stick almost as tall as himself that was, yes, in the fire. I thought that he was going to cath afire himself as he began singing loudly "Oh wishing stick, wishing stick, my stick, my wish, my wishin' stick....." and began the rythmic horizontal dance of a madman. The show lasted for 15 or 20 minutes. Of course we applauded and helped to create the soundscape, having a merry time watching as he moved a little more beyond the norm, ironically joining with the majority of his fellow hoedadders.

Friday, July 3, 2009

just a note

So it's the day before the US celebrates Independence, gotta wonder at the reality of this country and it's people. But, instead of going off on a political tirade I am simply going to cop to my laziness. I am not proud to admit how sedentary I have become in the physical. My synapses though continue to fire with great speed and in a combination of worn and pioneering pathways. Hopefully I will come back here sometime this weekend and see what verbal stream flows as my previous jots have pointed to, there are a few themes that I fully intend to expand and/or elaborate on.