My Robot Is Pregnant theme song!

I broke my cell phone and my camera and I’m heading south to Bakersfield for four days, so there probably won’t be a lot going one here unless I buy myself an iPhone before I split. Which I just might do…

Here’s a project I helped a friend with a while back. Forgive me if I linked to it back then. I’m the ape in the back row on the left. I love playing dress up.

My favorite thing on her site is Bucolic Life. Very surreal.

Back in ’49 you could take a squirt of piss and call it gold juice and some fellah with greennhorns would buy it for the price of a whiskey barrel. They had no idea what this part of the world was all about. Saw a lot of people go broke more’n anything. We were living as west as you could get and dreamers were thick as horse shit in the gutters. Wherever you find that many dreamers you’ll find twice as many deceivers. The Marshals weren’t any help, it’d be like sending a whore to drive the devil back to Hell. Surely she knew the way, but Satan was the one who showed it to her. And by all that I mean them Marshals was the crookedest bacon frying in the pan. What pan? Oh, don’t matter, I’m starting to lose track of it all myself. It’s hard enough thinking when my boots are on the ground, so have a little patience with me while I’m swinging from this tree. I don’t suppose you’d cut me down from here? No, they’d string you up for trying. What happened to the good ol’ days, back when shooting the shoeshine boy and stealing a horse were what men did? It weren’t no crime per se, just boys being boys is all. San Francisco sure changed mighty quick. Well, it’s gettin’ hard to breath up here with this itchy old horse rope around my throat. Would’a been nice if they put a little iron in my boots to be sure my neck snapped quick. No luck there of course. It’s been a bad day from the moment that shoe shine boy laughed at my broken heel. We’ll just have to see how the rest of the day pans out before we call it a wash, huh pardner? Maybe I’ll have some fortune here and stop breathin’ before a bear comes wandering down the trail and eats me from the toes up. I see you got to get going, so take care out there. Remember it ain’t such a wild west anymore. Careful where you go shootin’ and all. Take care. So long.

I love that cowboy stuff.

scroll down a bit to see the inspiration for this.

new hampshire has the country’s smallest coastline, FYI.

Texas is in the news – our President’s home state leads the nation in executions. 60%, I bet Bush wishes he had an approval rating that high. Of course, with a stolen election, there is no need to please voters! Sorry if I sound like a liberal hate radio show host, but with the news of Hoover’s plan to arrest 12,000 US citizens and the Bush administration trying to pardon telecoms for breaking the law (at the admin’s request) I feel like I’m living in a country out of control.

But let’s take a moment and look at the human side of these executions. Here’s an interesting link that records prisoner’s last statements. You can then read what crime sent them there. Many are terrible crimes that definitely call out for punishment, but remember, some of them were innocent, as DNA has proven. The most disturbing thing, almost every one on death row is a “laborer”. Things don’t look good for my profession…

Take a look at how they have a spot specifically noting the race of the victims. What is that for? How well do they research the race of convicted, by the way? A lot of these people look like they are mixed ethnicities, but in Texas the choice is black or white. If it is so important to note race, why not give real choices?

Kitty Wigs!

I house sat two cats this Christmas. I love cats. I’d have a bunch if they didn’t require feeding.

Let’s ask if America will be best remembered as the nation that armed the world. And instead of answering it, let’s take someone down an alley and break their head open on the corner of the grease recycling bin. Then we shall sell those human vital organs to a Chinese company so they may better understand how corrupt America is.

Superpower. You want it? You got it.

Here’s my competition over in the Mission. I forgot to put the bacon on my prep list. They wrap a strip of bacon around the wiener. Who can resist the smell of bacon? It’s easy money.

I had gone into an old folks home to see if I couldn’t steal something from some of the old folks. I figured if I put on a nice shirt and looked like I loved somebody I might get away with it. It was summer. I wanted to be with a girl. It was summer and guys were taking girls to the beach. I had nuthin’. Just two skinny legs, like two stacks of dimes.

The Central Valley is hot. Old people die in this heat. I’d take something from a dead one I decided. Lot of people say “Heat don’t bother me. I like it.” I hate the heat. I don’t like to wear shorts. If I wear pants no one sees my skinny legs. I’m like an old person. Old people don’t like the heat. They don’t drink enough water. They have to live indoors or stand under a tree. No one wants to eat when its this hot. I’ll find a dead one and take whatever fits in my pocket. Then I’ll give it to a girl and ask her to go to the movies. It’s cold at the movies.

* * *

“Oneness is sought because we believe it holds a state where there is nothing to conflict with.”

This is a story about trying to drive across the country but becoming afraid and turning around. It isn’t that great a country. Just big. The cities are dirty and sad and the people don’t smile. Out in the country they are poor and lonely. I drove through suburbs but never really saw anyone. Only lights on in houses, garage doors closing. Its a big country without an answer.

* * *

My Great Grandmother told me this story before she died. Not a death bed story, just a story of her youth:

“I’ve got a hammer toe. At Sterns* they had big hampers they’d bring me, and this one hamper was full of stainless steel plates and trays that I had to unload. They came in plastic bags and I dropped one on my toe. This woman in another department, Pam, called – and she was a queer woman. She had such a deep voice. She sounded like a man. She said, “This is Pam”, and I would have know without her telling me that.
There was a lot of competition between departments back then and when I told Pam I dropped a bag of 12 steel plates on my toe she said, “What? I’ve never gotten 12 steel plates at once in my department.”
That’s all the sympathy she had to show. Hope it’s enough!
Then she moved to the North Shore store and I never saw her. I don’t know what become of her.”

* a department store in Massachusetts. One of the original northern colonies.

Haiku

I check the weather
New Hampshire is under snow
right where it belongs

***

She was spending time on her exercise bike. The fog out there made it seem like we should sleep all day, but we didn’t. She’d found the bike on the corner outside. Just out in the street. It made lots of noise. Something needed grease. The fog made you crazy if you didn’t sleep, but we didn’t sleep.

* * *

Ken Hawkins has a heart of gold that he’s downtown trying to pawn right now. He was always dreaming. Then he started drinking. The two go hand in hand.

***

No Fault

something was wrong
and people stared
like my front end
was banged up and
my hood was tied down
with old black and orange
rope.

***

On most mornings Alice can wake up a few minutes before the 6:48 alarm and be ready for it. Yesterday at 6:25 am she died in her sleep while dreaming. If it was a good dream go to the last paragraph. If it was a bad dream, follow along.

Wolves, or wild dogs were chasing her. They wanted to rape her. She couldn’t run fast enough and the wolves had hands. Now you too will have this dream.

She was a child again, in a field with her mother. Her mother was taller than the hay grass, but Alice was not. She felt protected without being watched and she loved that feeling.

* * *

I did some traveling last summer. Even if you’ve taken a shower people can smell it on you. You’re from out of town. We’re still animals – hairy knuckles and genitals. It traps the smells. The hair comes from inside us, so we are leaking our past. I showed up in Asheville Oregon with the smell of a California barnyard still trapped in the follicles. Fell right in with some hippies in the park. That’s one way to see the world: live in a car, piss in a bottle, eat tuna straight out of the can.