My Robot Is Pregnant theme song!

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This is a penis bone.

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a letter written from prison

My parents write to a guy in jail. No one they know, just some morale booster thing I suppose. Prison might sound romantic, but reading this guys letter makes me feel his loneliness. He isn’t intentionally revealing it, but it seeps out all over the place. The desire to be alone after long term confinement with others, the desire to be with a woman but the fear of them after being in prison on a rape charge. He’s got a twenty year sentence, according to my parents. They aren’t sure of all the details and didn’t want to ask.

There was a time about ten years ago when I was facing charges that could have put me away for some years. I was pretty scared. The charges were dropped against me and I don’t think about it too often, but for a while I couldn’t think of anything else. This letter was about four pages long, but this first page is enough for me to read. I know I don’t want to ever go to prison. This fellah wasn’t so lucky…

Taking his dog and horse through the McDonalds drive thru. That’s his dream. An impossible dream, because he is locked up. Every morning I wake up I have the potential to ride a horse through the drive thru. So much is possible in my world. Yours too. If you have lost your job or you’re worried about getting laid off, think about that. Let’s get creative this year and not worry about money. Nurture your lover and chase your dreams. That’s it. Stay free.

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If the snow delay gets too frustrating rip the fucking door off and throw it on the tarmac.

“Plowin’s stressful,” says the driver of this rig.

This beautiful Peterbuilt sits at Suds n’ Soda, a hometown favorite convenience store with a tackle shop upstairs.

Jason McKenzie tells me business is great due to the cold weather.

“We usually don’t get bay ice till the end of January but it’s already froze up,” he said, referring to Great Bay. That’s a smelt fishing paradise right down the hill from where I grew up. When the brackish water gets iced deep enough to support a few guys and an old shed you see the bob houses appear. It looks like a used outhouse lot with a bunch of drunks in heavy winter clothes trying out the offerings. But please don’t go number two in the hole in the ice, no one wants to hook a turd and wrestle a frozen poo off their line.

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…soon it will be Christmas Day. Think that’s how the song goes but I can’t memba’ it’s been so long since I sung it. Jesus Crow boy ain’t they gut a lotta ways to open up them streets aftah ah stahm! A snow stahm! Cripes yayyes they do. That crazy machine cocks in half fah’ sqeezin’ ’round corners of sidewalks. Ain’t that somethin…

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They say as long as it’s not windy the cold don’t bother you. But what the hell is this guy thinking?

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Happy Birthday Mom! Here’s an email from our favorite childhood trouble maker who’s turned it around, Mr. Poopies. Thought you should see it Mom, and know how many people tell me how special a person you are. I agree 100%.

That’s poopies and a puppet, not Mom.
“Now having freed up room in my mental wharehouse, i have taken up photo taking,,, i am not a photographer, but rather an entusiast who is noting things in my life, quite amusing, i must say, Iv’e been thinking alot about your mother,,,,,,,,,,,,,I hope that doesn’t creep you out, but a gental woman she is,, the kind of mother i wish i had, she had patience, wit, and and iron hand that would would make any man mind, a true woman, please tell her happy birthday from the guy who used to live down by the tracks take care

Lamb chop

photo posted from my iPhone

photo posted from my iPhone

Here’s my host scraping the car windows. She asked me to help her skin a fox. So we did.

photo posted from my iPhone

photo posted from my iPhone

I left the house at 7:30 last nite and now I’m at Logan airport waiting for a bus to take me to New Hampshire. There is brown slush on the ground and overbearing Boston accents behind me. Twenty hours well spent.

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You just locked eyes with an all original 1935 Plymouth PJ and you two already love each other. You’ll drive out to a tall grass field overlooking a reed studded pond and park. The six volt powered radio will seranade AM emotions as you climb out and sit down on the running board and watch a pair of ducks lift out of the water and take wing in the blue air.

Not so fast loverboy. This here is Rusty Sunshine’s lady. He trailered her over the hill from Pescadero last week.

“Bring your camera next time you come through,” he said to me. “Got something for you to see.”

“You buy another tractor already?”

“Nope. You just come down and take a look,” he said.

I wish I’d dropped out of school and started working right away. Now I’m nearly forty and still paying off student loans instead of buying mechanical marvels of the last century. Oh well. Locke came by and we tried to get her turned over.

If you have an eye for it you’ll see the hay bale twine tying the hood up and the little gas can resting on the front end. Rusty bypassed the fuel lines and using gravity feed had gas going directly into the carb. Locke sprayed starter fluid in the open barrel and as Rusty turned the key Locke placed his palm over the mouth, choking off oxygen. It nearly caught but just wouldn’t quite.

“We had her going the other day, a little gas direct in the cylinder. Couldn’t believe how good it sounded.”

I grabbed Rusty by his plaid shirt. “I have no idea what you’re talking about! I’m a Romantic, not a mechanic. Let’s get this running and buy suits and an old pistol and rob every gas station in our path till the coppers pin us down and we’re gonna die right inside this tin beauty.”

looking backward while moving forward is a good way to trip but as a journalist it becomes necessary to at least glance over my shoulder at 2008 this first week of January ’09 and offer a bit of a synopsis and perhaps point out some tripping hazards for those coming along behind.

Journalists like to use the form known as “The Top Ten List”, but as our culture transitions from print to online media condensation becomes mandatory, so I offer a “Top One” list.

My personal Top One: box trucks

Political Top One: Obama

Top One in Entertainment: kissing

Musical Act: this is the year someone awesome gave me The Felice Brothers disc.

Biggest Top One Dissapointment: World still not built to my specs.

Top One Improvement: Watching the difference in Sean’s daughter as she went from two to three years old.

Top Two of Being One: my parents, from what I understand, are still happily married.

Top One Time: One time in New Orleans I met a bartender and we threw a pirouge in her truck and paddled around a bayou. Alligators, park wardens, the little boat almost blowing off the truck on the freeway made for an epic adventure.

It seems like a good time to end with a prediction for 2009. Obama’s gonna disappoint us Progressives a bit and you Conservatives a lot, the economy will get a makeover show on MTV, digital media will stop using digits and with push from the rising Chinese influence will start using character based algorithms.

When I get out of the airport and around a computer I will add an email from a friend I made in 2008 – Dante, the expert yard sale sign maker.

UPDATE
Here’s Dante’s Italian advice for the new year. Probably too late for this year, but make sure to do this next year.
“In Italy we have an old superstition/tradition. In the morning of the new year the first person that will cross your treshhold has to be a male. That will bring you luck and that is what, as a child, I used to do in Milan, knocking from apartment to apartment, whishing them a happy New Year and of course, at the same time, getting a few Lire in my pocket. Remember, it has to be a male.
Ciao and don’t drink too much.”

It was also a grave oversight not to mention the gal I spent practically all of 2008 kissing. My girlfriend. Who goes unnamed, but was directly referenced in the Top One Entertainment. I hope that didn’t denigrate our relationship by placing it under entertainment. That’s just what I liked to do best when I had free time.

Thanks Laurel!

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That’s what Glen always says. I wish I was gonna be there tomorrow to see if the deck we jacked up is still standing. I pulled the bottle jack out and now the weight rides on that toppled piling. It’s just that easy. As it is, I’m heading to New Hampshire for a week to celebrate Mom’s 60th birthday.