So Obama isn’t very radical, but he offers the only apology our country will ever extend to the rest of the world for the last 8 years/2 wars. He doesn’t seem particularly qualified, and neither is Palin, but we don’t need qualified leaders, we need great public faces. The strings are pulled from behind. We’ve come to accept that. We are hiring actors in these elections, the script has been written.
Palin is awesome, a brilliant choice made by the Republican casting directors. A wild west woman, the kind that made this country what it is. Motherhood with a gun. Possibly unbeatable in November. Voting for Obama, with his Islamic name and part black lineage, is almost in itself owning up to our mistakes and a show of goodwill.
Do we want to own up to our mistakes? Is that really what this country is about? I don’t like to say sorry. I like to get back in the game and try harder. Hope I can make a lot of money and help that guy I dicked over later, buy him a beer at the bar sometime but not really mention I was wrong. I think I’m pretty American. I think we might give it to McCain.
I’ll vote for McCain because I hope he can make us look right in the end. Hope that he can give us a victory in Iraq and Afghanistan, hope he can make those detainees in Guantanamo feel lucky to be POW’s. “Someday, like I before you, so shall you be president of a great democracy, thanks to lessons learned here in Cuba,” he will say as he releases them back to a peaceful middle east. I hope we can be right. I hate being wrong.
This is a popular panhandler’s corner. The City came through this afternoon with a bunch of big trucks and cut down the shrubs alongside the off ramp and hauled away the camps people had made under the cover of overgrowth. I was at the dump myself, hauled the guts of a Victrola out of the rubble to pass on to a friend who repairs them. A giant metal sound horn, the gears, the crank were all there.
Anybody figure out their costume yet?
My grandmother drank coffee black. Seven or eight cups a day. One or two after dinner. This was before low fat milk and Equal, so to keep her feminine figure she had to cut out the calories. This is back in the days of shifty American coffee, too. Filtered Folgers. Bitter piss water. Everytime I drink black coffee I think about her.
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I’m laying in bed blogging on my telephone. I’ve got a cold and I’m tired by nightfall. Perhaps I’m dying, won’t live to see the future of technology. As I reflect back on my short life I think about the people who make me laugh. Who was just talking about 80′s parties? They wanted to freebase cocaine at the next one. Kids these days don’t even know what it is. DIY crack. Then the CIA figured out how to mass produce it and now people are too lazy to make it themselves. Life is good. The Republicans have stopped talking about privitizing social security this week as the government buys up failed banks. The Democrats are backing Bush’s bailout. I’m investing in board games and afghan quilts so when everything collapses people can huddle under blankets and play MasterMind. That’s what’s weird about the markets. People look to make money everywhere. No tragedy is too small.
when we were kids we weren’t allowed to touch my dad’s calculator because it was so expensive. It sat on his desk in his den, a brown plastic rectangle no bigger than a slice of pie. The numbers added up in red and it amazed me that by typing 9009 and holding it upside down it said “boob”. Technology was sexy, even in the late seventies.
photo posted from my iPhone
Was back at it in the original junk mail factory today. Instead of my old job of moving stacks of mail order catalogues around, they had me in the machine shop belt sanding excess glue off the printing press plates. Saw a lot of old friendly faces and enjoyed the way my mind gets to work when its freed up by assembly line work. Take for instance the jig. Seems to me the jig is responsible for most of our problems because it allows mass production. MacDonalds built a hamburger jig, WalMart built a price chopper jig, the Republicans built a fear jig and they’re all making millions while the sense of hand built artistry is stomped on. But those factory jobs sure give you time to think about a revolution. Nothing’s all bad.
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Have a couple more memories from the hour and forty five minute drive north yesterday. Passed a telephone pole with a “Vallejo Gun Show” sign nailed to it, and just below that was a different announcement, “Beat Foreclosure – We Buy Homes”. Every boom cycle someone buys up a bunch of farmland and tries to make their fortune in a development project. Then like a drought on crops, when the fortunes dry up the foundations planted in the soil don’t grow up into big healthy homes and people are cursing the lord for not taking care of ‘em.
There was a cross in the North East, made out of clouds or more likely some Piper Cub pilot. It looked like it was calling us out of San Francisco to come find the Lord in the country. We got to Davis and Fisher, who was along to help with the move, showed me another cross, one that caused an uproar in town. People complained that the cross could be seen from the highway. Well why not, they need to get it as high as the McDonald’s golden arches if they want to compete for our dollars.
Sometimes I think I’ll move to the country myself, and be good again, be nice for a few years before I die, so in case there is something to all this religious stuff I won’t be sorry. But I’m never ready to quit all this sinnin’, even when the drugs have me thinking I’m about to die, or the sex makes me think it’s gonna kill me. It’s like that gambler said, “You gotta get up and change tables and you gotta set a limit.” Or else you end up dead in the city that keeps on sinning.
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photo posted from my iPhone
Dixon. Aka dickskin. Know for tomatoes this time of year. East of Vacaville its tomato harvest time. Trucks pulling double hoppers loaded with tomatoes rumble up and down the 80. “Watch out for a small spill. A patch of tomatoes is like ice.”
Red ice. The Dixon killer. They grow alfalfa out that way, a lot of sunflower, feed corn (which we called cow corn back home). And lots of lamb.
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photo posted from my iPhone
Moved a gal an hour and a half north east of San francisco. Nothing new nothing old. Its just living.
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A long time ago Mr. Hawkins and I were strolling along the quaint cobblestone back streets of historic Portsmouth New Hampshire with probably a 36 pack of Natural Ice in our communal stomachs. I had never been in a fight, and I was curious how it worked.
Without warning to my companion, as two strangers approached us under the cast iron street lamp, I grabbed one’s shirt with my left hand and punched his face with my right hand. Being new to the sport I landed a few blows then took off running, not at all sure what to do since the man was still standing and I had given it my best. The two gentleman were a little upset and there was Mr. Hawkins standing there by himself.
When I didn’t hear any footsteps chasing me I stopped to assess the situation. Mr. Hawkins was actually running not too far behind me with two fellows chasing him. I think all three of these men wanted to catch me and beat me at this point. When Mr. Hawkins took a quick corner around a parked car, he bumped it and hit the sidewalk.
Ask yourself what you would do in that situation. Normally you would go back and defend your fallen comrade who has no idea why you even attacked the two men in the first place. As I said, I was new to the sport and not at all confident I would be of any help to Mr. Hawkins. I was stumped. I stood my ground to consider other options.
Now the two men were up to Mr. Hawkins and taking their time kicking him on the ground.
“Help!” He cried. It was then I noticed the red fire alarm box on the telephone pole next to me.
“Help is on the way!” I yelled confidently as I pulled the white lever down and alarms rang out across the block.
I’ll always respect Mr. Hawkins for not being mad at me for all that. Yes, he mocked me many times over the years, and occasionally, when we get in a tough spot, like hitting a fire truck, and no one knows what to do, I’ll hear his voice as though he were right next to me, and he says, “You could always pull the fire alarm.”
Sean, you just blocked Briar.
Sean invited me over to his third birthday. “There’s gonna be a jumpy castle and I’m getting a Princess cake.”
I know what a jumpy castle is, but I had to ask about this cake.
“It has all the Disney princesses…Snow White, Cinderella, you know…”
I was a little confused about it. Sean’s 36 years old. Why had he had only three birthday parties before? Maybe he was Mormon and had recently quit it. I know he drinks liquor. That’s not very Mormon. So I bought a bottle Wild Turkey 101 and wrapped it up for him and stopped by this afternoon.
There were a lot of kids running around and Sean was very excited to see me and it was kind of weird to see the giant inflated pink castle in the backyard but I figured Sean was catching up on some missed childhood experiences so I didn’t say anything, just handed him the bottle all wrapped up.
I only intended to drop by but stayed about an hour. At one point I asked why he hadn’t opened the presents yet, since I saw I had missed the Princess cake cutting.
“Nowadays kids don’t open presents till after everyone has left. It’s so no one feels bad about not spending as much as the next person on the gift.”
I thought that was interesting. “When I was a kid, I tore into presents right after cake. And I’ll tell you right now, Wild Turkey 101 is $21.99 at the Safeway,” I said.
It was about then that Sean and I realized my misunderstanding. So I want to apologize for that, and wish Briar Moon a happy 3rd birthday!
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