This is a prickly pear cactus on Rusty Sunshine’s spread. I picked a box full and brought them to the bar. Paul, owner/chef at the Tee-Off, grabbed one and tried peeling it with a potato peeler.
“Careful. It’s full of tiny spikes,” I warned. He said his hand was tingling for the rest of the night. The fruit is red and the size of an avocado, and has tiny nettles in clusters across the skin. He did not give thanks to me.
Got a replacement iPhone, but can’t get online. That means no photos till it gets sorted out. Do you ever wish our planet had a ring around it like those far out ones? I only ask because I’m still learning to be happy with what I have – an expensive cell phone that doesn’t have any rings around it, so to speak. It does, at least, ring.
Nikki Stix and I went to the Tee-Off to watch football and drink Guinness and eat an awesome free Thanksgiving dinner, right down to the deep fried bird and yams made with Kahlua. He told me most planets have a bunch of moons, and we only have one.
“And it’s called The Moon. How boring.”
Earlier in the day I was down to Rusty Sunshine’s. We had breakfast at the Omelet House then went back to the ranch to look at pictures of an old Oliver tractor.
Rus says to me, “Do you listen to music on your internet?”
“Sure,” I say. “Want me to show you how?”
“Oh no, I have enough trouble with the stuff I’ve already learned, I don’t need something else too.”
Later I wrote out checks for his Comcast bill and the portion Medicare didn’t cover for his last doctor visit. I made him promise to change that blue towel acting as a table cloth for what’s going on years. It’s sticky now. The terry nap is clumped down and parts of snacks, chips I guess, (is that a raisin nib or a booger?) all kinds of crud is stuck to it.
“I ain’t hardly working now so I got no excuse,” he says. The farm channel is on and muted. Someone is haying on camera. All the junk mail gets thrown on the floor under the bill table where we sit and at the bottom of the pile is a box of checks.
“I keep them here so no one steals ‘em,” he says as he’s on his hands and knees pushing aside a bunch of BestBuy circulars and torn open envelopes. “Now that I’m down here I don’t know as I can get back up.”
It’s tough gettin’ old, he always tells me, but he’s always making me laugh too. So it’s good for something.
I’m from New Hampshire, so I’m number 9 in line. In other words, 41 states have to listen to me before they can talk about America. But I have moved to California which is falling apart and some people say it’s because they wanted to give a free education to every citizen.
I was just painting Sean-O’s kitchen while he’s at his step mother’s celebrating Thanksgiving. Some radical listener supported radio station started playing reenactments of Indian massacres. We, as white people, on that ragged eastern Seaboard, had wiped out Indians by 1850, but out here in the West, Gold Fever just struck. We had Chinese, Mexicans, and a few scared natives still running around. Imagine taking a pack mule through some stretch of woods you didn’t know. This is the time where alien really was alien. Alien among the species.
Let’s switch gears…tomorrow’s Thanksgiving. Those first settlers just wanted to thank their God that they survived winter. The first Thanksgiving is before we started, as white people, killing Indians.
I know, you’re watching football and you don’t want to hear about that. But I’m in the West now. There’s probably more real Indians out here than there are cowboys. I mean, cowboys only really lived for about 40 years. But I went to SF State with a girl who, when her Grandmother died, she saw the last person who knew how to speak her language die.
I’ve met Indians in California. No amount of fishing derby on the Winnacunant will match that. New England killed it’s Indians way better than the West ever did.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Will you give thanks for things for things you achieved by hurting others? Are you happy that you have a home because you’ve sent others to prison? Are you thankful that your family is successful because there is a war in Afghanistan and Iraq? I mean, am I thankful myself that suckers don’t see me coming? I’d like each of you to send me twenty bucks this sacred fourth Thursday of November, to show your thanks that free speech is still alive.
I promise to spend it on a round of beers at a local bar, where I will tell everyone what I think.
Thank you.
My pal from poetry classes sent me a poem, wanna hear it/hear it goes….
GIFTS & SALVAGE
Central California
drains out of one
dry swamp
dub
KPOO
postcards from:
Kaikoura
Mystic Seaport
Chicago
on my desk
a salvaged
piece of
shelfwood
from
back when
Lumber and Wood
was on
Folsom and 23rd
holds my typer—
and a light
bought off a crackhead on Haight
on my bookshelf
a gift bottle of
napa valley
2002
the red
cast iron
US
MAIL
coin bank
was my
greatgrandfather’s
a LUCKY
STRIKE
chapbook
by toughguy
and red abalone
shells
full with
changecoin
toughguy
gimme the desk
too
Sean-O wanted to see a fight for his birthday. It was a good time. No heavyweights. No big knockdowns, but it’s interesting to see it live. And they serve beer.
Sophia is into St. Germain lately. That and Sweet Tea infused vodka. Who isn’t into that stuff? It’s like drinking iced tea that makes you want to sing karaoke. I went around the corner to buy some lemonade to make a proper Arnold Palmer from the stuff, walking around the piles of poop on the sidewalk, saying hi to the beggars and waylaid drifters who pile up on 16th, and into the liquor store. Oh, what New Hampshire is missing! Only buying liquor from a state sponsored store…no chance for weirdos hanging around the register bullshitting. Sure, you can always count on some boxes when you have to move, but it’s not a fair trade. California let’s you buy hard stuff anywhere. Two guys were in the middle of a debate when I put my lemonade on the counter and picked a good looking lime out of the counter top basket.
“Ask your customer,” one guy said.
“Ask. I’ll answer from the heart,” I said.
“What’s the G in G-string stand for?” the young guy asked me.
“G-spot?” I asked back. I had no idea. For sure I thought this liquor store register question would be easy, like the first few block questions on Cash Cab. The $25 ones.
“I thought that too,” said the guy wearing a military style jacket. Maybe they were Mexican or Arabic or Sicilian. I had no idea about that either. They sounded American. They just weren’t white. I still get surprised by that.
“Maybe it’s Groin string,” said the other kid. We all laughed.
“Groin string.” I said it out loud like I was trying on a shirt at Goodwill that looked promising. It was used but I liked it.
“What about genital string?” asked the cashier guy. He pulled out his phone and texted the question. My iPhone was in my pocket, useless. I dropped it one last time yesterday. Now I hear it ring and see who’s calling but can’t answer it. I could have googled it right then and there.
I paid my money and passed on a bag. I put my change and my lime in my pocket. I poured some lemonade in my glass of Sweet Tea that I had walked with from Sophia’s. It feels wonderful to walk through the crowded 16th street dark sidewalk with a cocktail from home in my hand.
I got home and googled it. G string. There were pictures of men and women there. Who are these people who reached an odd fame for exposing most of the ass cheeks for educational purposes on Wikipedia? Lucky people.
You’ll have to look into it yourself if you want to know the answer.
This radio won’t help you
The Flagpoles have Nikki Stixx back on the skins for one evening only – TONITE !!! LIVE on Pirate Cat Radio about 8 pm Pacific time. You can hear our 5 song set streaming online here.
This station was broadcasting illegally for about a twenty block radius in the Mission till the FCC hit ‘em with a $10,000 fine. Somehow they’re still allowed to stream online. So take a listen if you can.
Kal’s a good neighbor. Once a week I pull up to the house and spread a bunch of junk out and start sorting it. What to keep, what to sell, what to donate and what to throw out.
Today I had a truckful to unpack – a woman down the block is moving and gave me as much as I could haul away. Thing is, she’s a smoker. A lot of stuff I just left on the curb for the smoke tolerant scroungers.
I was trying to decide what pile the Xbox 360 discs should go in when Kal came out.
“You didn’t work today?” I asked. His new blue Tundra hadn’t moved since morning.
“Had a little incident with the girls this morning.” He put his hands in his pockets and waited for my question.
“Why? What happened?”
“My oldest fed a battery to the baby.” He smiled and shook his head and I started laughing.
“You didn’t ask what size!” he said.
“What size?” I asked.
“A frickin’ D cell!”
“What?!”
“no, it was just a little watch battery. Still, I took her to the doctor.”
The doctor said she’d poop it out. We laughed some more and I gave Kal some electrical switch boxes and a broken DeWalt work radio.
This is the vision Sean has of the completed playhouse. He’s missed a few daily photo submissions, I have no idea how far along he is. I think he’s turning the wheels on the tricycle right now.
Lucas B came by and grabbed my bass, which clamped together nicely, if not perfectly. Lucas quit his terrible office job a few months ago and is trying to make a living building effects pedals and as a recording engineer. He’s gonna try to get the constant hum out of my bass. Lucas grew up here in Northern California, perhaps Redding or some other little town with a large meth problem. He told me as a boy he and his brother would be in the yard with baseball gloves on, throwing fastballs to each other, trying out curves, missing and chasing balls through the grass. The neighbor would come out and start a bonfire and burn all the chemical containers and detritus of his amphetamine lab – the black smoke would drive the young brothers back inside. I picture that innocent childhood game of racing through the house closing windows, trying to beat the first plumes of carcinogens through the screens.
they’ll probably steal my sign
My neighbor Kal gives me old water heaters when he pulls them out of a house for a remodel. Two or three a month, sometimes more if his friend drops some off. Saves them the dump fee and I stick them in the bushes alongside my house that is the scrap pile. When enough builds up I take it to the metal yard and cash it in. Problem is, lately someone’s been stealing my metal.
After my latest victory with taggers, I’ve decided instead of electrifying the pile of junk in the bushes with 220v, I’ll do it legal. I’m posting the “No Trespassing” sign, and I am monitoring the area with a CCTV. I’ll turn the VHS tape of the thief over to the Police and sue the guy in civil court. They took four water heaters from me this month! I am working towards justice.
let’s hope they steal in the day when I can see their faces
Of course it’s hard to tell without snow, but we’re heading into winter here in SF. I hope that’s why the bees aren’t so active, otherwise they may be dying off. This is a photo from the back yard taken a few months ago: yellow-jacket vs. honey bee. The honey bee in this case is a drone (male) who had his legs chewed off so he couldn’t fight back, then the yellow jacket bit his head off and flew away with the body to feed to it’s young.
In other news, they discovered water on the moon. It won’t be long before we open a bar up there.
The Flagpoles played a house party at Rajeeves for Halloween and I let someone use my bass to “jam”. The stranger dropped my bass, cracked the wood body and broke a string, along with putting a bunch of scuffs on the finish. I’m glueing it back together, and hopefully my rock career is not over.
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