My Robot Is Pregnant theme song!

Noe Welsh, my friends. (pronounced know-ee) A guy who drifted through New Hampshire until he took off for the West Coast, started working on movies, and who knows where he is now. Just one of those guys you never forget, no matter how short a time you knew him. Of course the fact that when you got him laughing, he’d fall down and pass out, made it great to have him around. We worked hard to be funny. It was a real ego booster when your little fart joke could collapse a man.

Sean has a story about working with him at a lobster pound. The lobster pound was on a dock in the mouth of the river that divided New Hampshire and Maine. Guys would come in from deep in the Atlantic having pulled traps all morning and sell live lobster to these guys, who would sort them out in salt water tanks inside a small unheated cedar shake building. The lobster who died from the ordeal were called slow runners. Not good for nothing.

You could also buy bait from Seavey’s, who had the bait fish delivered to them in a big dump truck. Sean was the older guy on the job, and Noe was new. Noe got sent up into the back of the dump truck to push the fish out of the small chute that funneled the bait into 35 gallon trash cans. Blood and fish shit poured out alongside the useable bait, and Noe was in a tilted truck bed unstopping the crush when Sean would throw a loose fish and hit Noe in the head. Noe was good natured and started to laugh, and fell backwards into three and a half feet of chum. It was medical. He couldn’t help it.

A guy like that will always be remembered. Even if he just passes through town and goes on to a new life.

Bo’sun Jessie, the original merchant marine of romance.

“We’ll knock off at five and give ‘er hell in the morning.”

Advice on painting ship decks: “treat it like a ten dollar whore – in and out, don’t make love to it.”

I’m 35. I need help. Do you know some one who teaches? Cuz I can’t remember math. I want every math teacher in our country to send out this word problem to the students for me, so the dumb kids know why they should pay attention. I mean really. Don’t be stupid.

I own my own business. I do the dumbest work I’ve ever done. EVAR DONE!! I throw out people’s garbage for them. I can’t figure this problem out. I don’t know if I’m making money or losing money. A simple concept…

Let me set it up.

There’s a hippy. He lives in the neighborhood. Nice guy. Wants to know if I’ll take about 400 pounds of “bad weed” to the dump. Let’s call it garbage. I need to take 400 pounds of garbage to the dump. No sweat.

“Give me twenty bucks,” I say. I figure, it costs $120 bucks for a ton, and a ton is 2000 pounds. If I’m lucky with my guess, It will cost ten bucks to dump and I’ll make ten bucks profit. But how the Christ am I supposed to figure out how much it’ll cost me at the dump?

I started dividing 120 by 2000, or 2000 divided by 120, and it was this 16 point whatever whatever, they don’t make U.S. money like that, so what the fuck?

If it weighs 400 pounds, how much dough does the hippy owe me? Can any one help me?

p.s.

I called my girl. She told me this, in an email.

$120/2000 lbs = ?/400 lbs
also, 120/2000 = ?/400
so, (120/2000)*400 = (?/400)*400 to get ? by itself and get 400 on the other side
so, (120/2000)*400 = ?

so, 24 = ?

$24 per 400 lbs!

I was like WTF? whattheFUCK? I lost $4? I’ll pay you twenty bucks to explain why! @%$*@#…….%*#$@&&$………*$%#@!&^*%…@.

NYT ONLINE: Clyburn said slowly. “Here we are 45 years after the ‘I have a dream’ speech. Forty years after the assassinations of Kennedy and King. And this party that I have been a part of for so long, this party that has been accused of taking black people for granted, is about to deliver the nomination for the nation’s highest office to an African-American. How do you describe that? All those days in jail cells, wondering if anything you were doing was even going to have an impact.” He shook his head silently.

It’s been more than forty five years and Barack ain’t hardly black, but it is pretty awesome. I’m not saying Ron Paul doesn’t talk sense, but just the fact we got here so quick inspires me.

I’m thinking about quitting drinking (drinking). It would be hard if i don’t switch over to weed. But switching over to weed isn’t too hard, so I’m gonna do that. I’ m even gonna grow my own. It’s legal here in this state. If you get a prescription. So I’m thinking of what to tell the doctor.

“I’ve got a wicked drinking problem. I brought it with me from the East Coast. I think I can shake it if I start smoking weed.” And of course the Davis graduate is gonna write me out a prescription for “soul searching weed”. I love California!

I’m gonna grow weed. I’m gonna try it. When I get drunk I WANT to drive. I WANT to fight. I give some women some very unnecessary attention. I trip over myself. When I’m high, I’m home on the couch, thinking about my taxes. Who could convict me?

November 2001 Oakland CA –

“Due to Stevie’s drinking the evening prior, intentions were unsuccessful and we departed at 10 a.m. for Thanksgiving in Seattle. It’s Wednesday. Small coffee. Light rain. 80 to the 5. It’s a straight shot. Steve reflects back that had he gone to bed early and had packed, we’d be in Oregon now. It’s a road trip!

Me: Who’s the most famous person you’ve ever met?

Steve Ravioli: Crispin Glover, Joe Strummer, Jeru the Damaja -

Me: Wait, you saw Jeru in an elevator. You didn’t even talk to him.

Mr. Ravioli: Shut up. I’m talking…the guitarist for R.E.M….

Me: You don’t even know his name?

Ravi: Peter Buck. All of the Alarm.

Me: You’re gay.

Ravi: ? I interviewed the lead singer of Spiritualized. He’s famous. He’s in magazines. I met John Havliczeck. He was on the Celtics in the 50′s but I didn’t give a fuck at the time. My friend Dan cooked dinner for Joey Ramone and Blondie. I’m talking credit for those too…

Me: Any politicians?

Ravi: No. No politicians. I met Ian Asterbury, lead singer of the Cult. He signed a one dollar bill. I think I still have it. I got backstage at a U2 concert. I drank complimentary soda. I didn’t see anyone. My friend played football with Edie Brickell in Central Park.

Me: What?

Ravi: You’re right. That doesn’t count. But she’s married to Paul Simon…

Me: Oh yeah. I’ll write that down.

Steve-o get’s curious about the countryside at the California/Oregon border:

“Christ, what do these people do? I bet the suicide rate’s huge up here. No one makes it past 40.”

Then he contemplates the romance of long haul trucking.

“How long do they last? 10 years? Sounds like a life sentence to me. (in judges voice) 20 years behind bars or 10 years behind the wheel.”

Thanksgiving day. Introductions were made. “I’m sure one of us is pleased.”

Mike, a one time music industry accountant, puts us up for a night in Portland Organ. We talked about NYC. He had to leave before big city money sucked him in. “Everyone lives in bars, they’re extensions of living rooms because everyone’s apartments are so small.”

Back in the car Steve and I discuss Pinata Parties. What to fill the Pinata with. Uncooked bacon. Beans and rice. A live skunk.

Ravi: “The pinatas you buy are too thick. You need to make one so thin and brittle it cracks like a vase and everyone in the room gets sprayed with corn chowder.”

Principles of Politeness and of Knowing the World
by the late Lord Chesterfield
For the Improvement of Youth but not Beneath the Attentions of Any

“In company with our equals or in mixed companies, a greater latitude may be taken in your behavior yet it should never exceed the bounds of decency; for though no one in this case can claim any distinguished marks of respect, everyone is entitled to civility and good manners.

A man need not for example, fear to put his hands in his pockets, take snuff, sit stand or occasionally walk about the room; but it would be highly unbecoming to whistle, wear his hat, loosen his garters or throw himself across the chairs. Such liberties are offensive to our equals and insulting to our inferiors.

Now if such behavior is rude to men it is much more so to women, who, be their rank what it will, have, on account of their sex, a claim to officious attention from the men. Their little wants and whims, their likes and dislikes, and even their impertinences, are particularly attended to and flattered, and their very thoughts and wishes guessed at and instantly gratified by every well bred man.”

- 1814

Jarid Del Deo sent this comic along the postal route back in the 1900′s.

Here’s something for you Lyle, must have been in the early 90′s when you were at UNH. Your money making idea was good enough for me to write it down.

“Lyle says he will play the Wheel of Fortune telephone game for his summer job. And just like any good business he will lose money at first until he gets the hang of how it all works. From then on, it will be smooth sailing as he wins one hundred dollars every five minutes, paying only an average five dollars for each chance to play. He will earn about $1,080 dollars an hour, sans lunch break. great plan.”

What’s up with my math? I guess I meant $1,080 a day, not an hour…Did that ever work out?

it’s somewhat troubling…

Who doesn’t worry about their teeth? Mine are getting as grooved and yellow as old ivory piano keys. But the real issue is why my gums bleed, and how come that one tooth rocks around a little where it sets? They’re nice enough to charge you half price up at the dental school where the young ones are learning how to drill into you without taking out too much of the good stuff.

I head in there this afternoon and meet my new dentist and he seems handsome and confident. He’s got on a pretty blue green perhaps celadon colored smockdress over his shirt and pants and he leads me into an area not unlike a well kept 4-H livestock barn with orderly little cubicles set up each with its own reclining seat, comes with a reading lamp attached over it and a washing up sink is there and I’ll bet I stepped in shit if that isn’t a little fountain right by the seat so you can set there and have a root beer float whipped up for you while you’re waiting.

Turns out that doesn’t offer soft drinks, just water and air and a suction hose. Nothing more barfy than being settled in on your back with some fellah holding your tongue in his latex gloved fingers so he can get a good look at the nether region of your mouth and from the next pen over you hear the distinct slurp of spit being funneled at high speed up a small tube. I figure that woman’s spit gets strained in some filter beneath my feet and comes out my water tube cool as a cucumber and no one the wiser.

Why folks get the calling to Dentistry I’ll never understand after todays experience. The poor devil was trying to fetch out “a piece of pepper” from betwixt my two rear molars. Turns out it was a chunk of rot so I head back tomorrow with some more money and they’ll drill it out and plug it up like I pulled into a gas station with a flat tire and called out for a patch job.

The one good thing about the place was the gal wearing pink heels over across the way. I thought that showed a real sense of humor.

title page of a book of poetry I started in ’01. I got six pages in and gave up.

It’s so hard to throw shit away. I have boxes of old journals that I thought should be donated to the appropriate institute after my death, most likely the Smithsonian. But a few years of reality have passed since high school and the stuff is not so much embarrassing, but simply crude. As in carved with blunt instruments. There were quite a few stories from English classes about committing suicide or sitting alone in a room unloved lighting candles. Lots of candles in those stories. I think I was longing for an Amish revolt.

I have thrown these stories out. If I ever get a novel written, I don’t want anyone to know how hard it was for me. How far I’ve come. Better to appear a natural. The fact I didn’t chop off my hands after reading my “early years” has me baffled. How could I let myself ever write again after that six year warm up excercise? It must be that same overinflated sense of self worth that allowed me, in a sophomore English class essay, to ask emotionally stunted questions about why God forced me to be born, and how America could claim I was free. At one point I came across my hand written lyrics to The Cure’s “Lullaby”. I can’t cut these hands off now, they have so many apologies to write. So much damage to undo.

There are stacks of paper – the old computer printer type that had perferations along the vertical edges, a series of little holes that the printer wheel gripped and spun the paper around by. These could be detached later. The whole ream was itself ostensibly one large sheet with another line of minuscule horizontal perforations every 11 inches down. These early ignorant ramblings of mine are thus able to be pulled open like an accordion’s bellows. That is the single entertainment value they provide me so many years later. “Battlestar Nostalgica”.

Writing well surely isn’t about sharing your feelings. Just the opposite. You need to keep your feelings out of it, because most likely you are an emotional juvenile delinquent. You are still carving your name in hearts that don’t belong to you. Writing well involves becoming, for a moment, a person you want to be. That’s the trick – ignoring yourself. First you have to think you are great – then you can pick up a pen. Then you have to admit you aren’t – then you can create a great character. Hopefully people confuse the character with you, so your ego doesn’t get too bruised.

Here is the one poem out of six “Jacuzzi Enthusiast” poems I thought was somewhat interesting. I’ll print it here, but I’ve thrown the rest out.

The moon does weird things. You have to watch it to understand.
One night it will rise up in the sky like a little mushroom cloud missing
it’s stalk. The next, I see it sink below the hills with a crescent wink.
What does it do when it is out of sight? Consider this:
I once had a cat who thought when no one was looking it should drag
things over to the dog’s water dish and put them in. So, you think the
moon could be working on something to drop on us? Perhaps the moon
has a workshop. That is where so many inventions come from. Things
like spiral galaxies. The moon made them. Your thoughts on creationism.
The moon gave them to you. And right now the moon is hard at work
on the big one.

I saved letters from friends over the years, placing the envelopes in old cereal boxes as a method of separating authors. Mr. Bleacher’s have been stuffed into a bulging “Limited Edition” Bedrock Blizzard Fruity Pebbles box. Yes, for a short time you could buy Fruity Pebbles that were “FRRROSTED”. Why it is legal to put frosting on sugar and sell it to children for breakfast, I can’t understand. But it’s a free country, as Mr. Bleacher’s lack of jail-time testifies.
If the letter was returned to the right envelope, this was 1998. Mr. Bleacher was living in a tree in the Santa Cruz mountains.

“Rolston! My God! You saved me. In the days preceding your letter I have had almost everything I own stolen from me. I am left with juggling pins, guitar, notebook and pride. I am on a starvation fast until my possessions are returned in goodwill by the misled saints who stole them. I may die but I am prepared for that. I also refuse to speak until the moral fiber of the planet is strengthened so it’s good I can write to you. Truly I had lost hope and welcomed the rest a slow death would bring me. I lay in my bay tree (my home) with the tree mice and 56 species of spiders, some poisonous, and some banana slugs that sleep in my hair. I sat there wasting away realizing as well that at my arraignment for my camping ticket I came off like Perry Mason on speed or Matlock on acid, torn shirt and all waving my arms and accusing the judge of heresy.”

You’re asking me to throw this letter away, Mr. Bleacher? I think not. You go on to talk about carrying a placard saying
“Fast until death –
I need my sleeping bag”

You lament the loss of your toenail clippers, also stolen from your tree. Let’s sample another missive. At this point you are living in the trailer at Rusty Sunshine’s…I’ve scanned your actual letter so you can’t deny the content.

This is the letter about your affair with a blow up doll. Actually, about two different dolls. The first left you because you were abusive.

“She deflated again. I locked her in the bathroom so she couldn’t leave again but when she started to cry I let her out. She ran away and I saw her get picked up on Canyada Road by some painter the Bitch! I was so mad I went out an bought a new doll called “Cherry” because she has an artificial hymen that makes it feel like you are busting her cherry every time….it comes with a tape and it sounds like she’s getting screwed over and over…I don’t go to work or clean the horse shit. I just lay in bed with Cherry. Russ said he’d call the police and I said I didn’t care as long as Cherry could come too.”

These are just the first two letters I opened. How about some news from Al? This was from another chatty letter.

“Nov 4th – Al went fishing yesterday in La Honda. He fell in a river and spent the day drying out his stash. Then he faded away to the north wearing my shoes and Brad’s clothes. I also got a letter from the sheriff/coroner of Santa Cruz and expected my ex-girlfriend had been murdered in prison.”

There are at least a hundred more letters in this box. Any one of these would incite the Muslim countries to unite and declare Jihad on our country. I should burn them. But I won’t. One day I will publish them all.

I’ve been making one of a kind cards for my website and handing them out. Thought I ‘d share a few with you. I put them on the back of old monopoly cards.

Sean sent me this a long time ago. I’m cleaning out the garage and have saved all the letters ever sent to me. I never go back and reread them, but I save them out of respect for the people I suppose. Or to know that someone cared about me. As a monument to friendships? Actually, I’m not sure why.

Yeah, I found this book in the garage, can’t remember where it came from. A book on Orthodontia published in 1889. All kinds of crazy wires to pull your teeth together. Not much has changed.

You have to be in a city awhile to find that kind of stuff out. The hidden nooks, the unbuttered crannies. None of that has anything to do with this awesome graphic for a very strange lightbulb. Doesn’t have to. I have decided to forgo perfection and start being easy on myself. Throw out my tape measure and hope for the best. Stop hoping for the best and just give it a shot. Too many things don’t get done because I’m afraid I won’t do them right or well. I’m not talking parachuting either. I’m talking about trying to paint a watercolor of the telephone wires obstructing my view of the Golden Gate Bridge. Failure would not hurt. I sit at my window and watch the clouds change the color of the water and then my eyes settle on the crazy wires tethering my building to poles and more wires and my neighbors up and down the street. A world famous monument fades in the background as I consider the L-shaped spikes hammered into the wooden stanchion that allows a lineman access to the insulators. It’s a telephone pole. Easier to look at than the bridge in the distance. Nothing’s perfect. But things are going well. Sorry to scare you the other day.