I Lay by the Pool - I Drank Some Beer

We went down to the beach where there were warning signs about the oil spill. We ignored them and went swimming anyway. They were wrapping up the clean-up. Most of the workers were sitting around in the shade under canopies, their equipment littering the sands. Boats offshore were reeling in the oil booms. I was unable to collect any tar balls, there were none to be found. The public beach was only a hundred feet wide between the high condos – “private beach – guests and members only.” You only learn what you should have done at the end. The National Seashore was only a half a mile away and an eight dollar pass was good for a week per car (and I could have gotten one car in free on my Senior Pass anyway – I had told them this the first day, but it wasn’t my show and I was ignored).

When the music stops… things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance – Chuck Prince (CEO, Citigroup, 2007)

Clouds move across the sky
        Without exiting
Prawns to  whales
        Without any protection
Victims of circumstances
The sun their principle enemy

“Is suicide punished, in the Army?” “Obviously, if you bungle it… And it should be. Selfishness must be punished – so must incompetence” – Victor Serge – The Unforgiving Years, 2007 p118

I lay by the pool and read ten pages of Hellman – it began to sprinkle and I returned to the condo – whimp that I am – I’ve having my first beer of the day and it’s not yet noon.

Drinking made uninteresting people matter less and, late at night matter not at all – Lillian Hellman – An Unfishised Woman, 1969 p56

Encountering someone who you know you know but cannot place, you hope that you will get a clue from the conversation, it may be nothing that they say, but the way that they laugh - you will probably not even recognize the clue as a clue. The name will just come back to you as if you had awoken from a dream and you will know that you had always knon it  and had  just temporarly stupefied. It was obvious that you had always known it, and you had just been caught daydreaming. And this young man with a ponytail comes up to me in the coffee shop and says that he read my blog and found it interesting. His is familiar but I don’t think I know him at not at least in this here context – who can he be - oh yes, the barista in the other coffee shop (I don't thing he wroks there anymore).

The good thing about war is that it leaves no time for thinking…It puts your consciousness at ease by suppressing it – Victor Serge – The Unforgiving Years, 2007e p272

I've attended two 25th Anniversary celebrations this week -SRC (Survivability Research Laboratory) and today The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. The opening address for the Sisters is given Assemblyman Mark Leno who as given Sainthood as “Mark of My Word”. He is followed by Carol Midgen and then there is a reading of the list of past Saint Hood. A self indulgent activity and boring. I found a seat in the grass to the left of home base and waited for the Hunky Jesus contest which was as the reason for my being here.

The hero… is a sort of monster who is immune to pain and suffering… life appears to him as art, and not as an ordeal – Henry Miller – The Wisdom to the Heart, 1960 p96

Is that it. Alright, Hold it. One more. Now we get to pick the winners. Me? I though that this was their job. Have I forgotten anyone. This is your contest Mr. Time and Robo Bunny. Well you are all winners. Any one who has the time to make this ridiculous hat is a winner. Very lovely. But in the end you in the audience have to approve. And Sunflower Man and Vegas Bunny. And I put two dollars in the hat that is being passed for the Sisters just because it feels good. And the winner is Chocolate Head because who else could I eat but him of course. He looks just delicious, I could devour him. Come back at four, it’s Hunky Jesus then. The weather is changing but that is OK as cold weather means perky tits. The sisters work all year …I would like to introduce my Sister. Today we are giving out to teen …your dollars to a worth cause. So put your hand… And it gets too cold for me. And it was still an hour before the Hunky Jesus Contest. So I got up and went to the “Sit & Spin” which was only two blocks away and had a roasted ginger tea. Michael said that it contained pan roasted green tea. I have socks on today. I tell Michael that it has nothing to do with the cold, it’s because the skin of my feet began to crack and split after I started wearing these sandals. Michael gives me his recipe for a concoction to re-moisturize the skin which, it included Shae butter and he told me says to wear wool socks at night.

You’re only free if you’re in good order with your neighbors, and even then not a hell of a lot of rope they give you – Henry Miller – The Wisdom to the Heart, 1960 p117

It’s now four o’clock and I head back to Dolores Park for the Hunky Jesus competition. I just passed the potter from Bellingham and her friend from Germany. Did you find the pottery studio, I ask her? We did and we got their card. Will now, I say to her, you can say, I used to live in Bellingham. They do not stay for Hunky Jesus. Michael had said good luck, maybe you can win. I replied, if it were a ‘honky Jesus rather than a “Hunky Jesus” I would have a chance. A polka was playing – appropriate because it is Polkacide that was playing on the stage. They had four faux girls pantomiming the song. The music goes oh de la umph and the dog goes aurf, aurf, aurf. Boom, boom went the bass drum. Oh de lay od de lay who oh. My God and a sister above and behind me is blowing a cloud of bubbles over my head. And without further adieu, I want to introduce Sister… And then an old black dog with dreadlocks walks bye and the one true Jesus struts his stuff, well the one true Jesus anyway. Sweet Jesus the Sister comments. A pope sweeps by in all his robes salmon colored robes holding amiter. Never mind what do you…

The message [of Avatar] … - like the message of so much else in mass culture just now – is, by contrast, that ‘reality’ is dispensable altogether; or, at the very least, whatever you care to make of it, provided you have the right gadgets… You don’t have to wake up. There is no need to go home – Daniel Mendelsohn – New York Review of Books [March 24, 2010] p13

The bottom half of the income earners in the United States own less than 1% of the nation’s wealth. The top 1% of US households own twice as much of America’s corporate wealth as they did fifteen years ago

We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarder at an every increasing pace – Victor Lebon (1955)

Almost half the counties in Michigan have converted some asphalt roads back to gravel in recent years. Similar road downgradings have been occurring in South Dakota, Alabama and Pennsylvania. Some counties in Ohio are simply letting nature do the downgrading.

From a certain point forward there is no longer any turning back; that is the point that must be reached – Franz Kafka

Bought a new pick-up truck
Goin to get a big Stetson hat
Take a shower and put on
          Clean starched shirt
Goin into town tonight
Got cash in my wallet
          Burnin … Burnin a hole
Look out honey, I’m looking
          For love and drinking whiskey
And what shall you have dear?

To invoke fate is to expose oneself to the chaos which blind forces of the universe are ever ready to set in motion once the will of man is broken – Henry Miller – The Wisdom to the Heart, 1960 p120