Hot Springs is full of Golden Agers (The Golden Age – Pericles)
- couples - couples on Gold Wings. He is wearing combat
boots and camouflage fatigues – desert sand. Big huge hogs (varoom varoom) with
a big ass mama on the bitch seats behind him. She’s wearing black leathers with
red & white stripes (US of A, US of A, of course of course). Dentists and
accountants pretending to be bad boys, oh my! Christian motels and Christian
ministries. Attend Cowboy church (Friday and Saturday nights as well as Sunday
morning – ticket window). “Oh look,” says a lady at the spring, “this is the
ivy that they sell at Wal-Mart”. She sticks her fingers in, “it feels just like
dishwater”. The widows have all come to shop. Tour the Fordyce, the restored
bath-house. Hell no. There’s a Hobby-Lobby at the mall just past the horse track.
It’s Spring Madness – there are four games on – Wakeforset and Duke, South
Carolina and Kentucky, Kentucky and Michigan, and Texas A&M vs. Texas. It’s
a bit too much basketball. But what is the alternative – it is not chasing these
blue rinses. Not that. God I hop not. No wonder men like sports – its their
quality time. One minute on the clock – time out – South Carolina with a three
point lead – 61 to 58. Carolina scores two. 12.2 seconds and another timeout –
score is 64 to 61. A foul at 10.0. Carolina one...0.2 seconds – 65 to 61 –
Carolina to the SEC championship game tomorrow. With two minutes and forty-five
second remaining Iowa is ahead of MSU, 42 to 38. With three minutes and
fifty-nine second to go Wakeforest is getting trounced by Duke. The second game
of the SEC semifinals will be Florida and LSU. Tomorrow there’ll be a quarter
horse racing at 1:30. Women want someone who will listen to them. They try to
talk in the midst of the critical play. Did you hear what I said? Sure, sure.
Thay’s why sports bars usually have the volumes turned off. So you can practice
following the game without the commentary so as you can learn to listen (or to
pretend ) to her while watching the simultaneously catching the real action.
Life’s a game with a lot of practice and then you die. Too bad that you got
redshirted.
The more accurately that something can be measured the more obscure
its meaning becomes.
Reading
the Bible
I
love that passage
God
gives a gift
I
love that passage
Picking
out a passage
Giving
anecdotal stories
To
what each of the verses
Means
personally
‘Bear
no fruit...’
A
great color line
Just
packed with truth
There
is something All American
Here
What
He – with a capital ‘H’
Is
saying is that He trusts us
With
a little ‘U’
Now
break it down
Piece
by piece
Shop around
Gather
thy daily bread
Break
it down
Passage
by passage
Pick it apart
Word
by word
Break
it down
Bit
by Bit
It’s got God’s words
Right
there in black and white
And red if it’s Jesus speaking
God
speaks in a plane language
So
that we can all understand
It
is all here
God’s
plan for the common man
For
anyone to understand
You
only need to have faith
And
God’s word will be revealed
So I am being told
“Everyone says I talk too much. If I talk too much let me
know.” “No, no,” I tell her, “you’re fine. No problem.” “If my talking
interferes with your wine tasting let me know.” “No, no,” I assure her, “my
taste buds and by ears are not connected. I can do both. I can multitask. I can
listen to you and taste at the same time. She thought this very witty. “I’ll
have to remember that and use it myself sometime,” she said. Her name was Sou
Sou or Fru Fru or something like that. It might have been Mou Mou. She bought
two bottle of the red with a strawberry/watermelon overtone and a bottle of
port, all produced here in Arkansas. “I thought you didn’t like the red?” “Oh I
don’t. They’re for my son.” It’s seven already. Time for accordion and tuba.
Smiley had said, “they’re our best friends in town.” She had talked about the
guy sounding like Tom Waitts. It happened something like this – we were talking
about polka at the art gallery (I don’t recall why we were talking about polka)
and I was reminded of a band called Polkacide whose saxophone player sometimes
played in the nude. He was the lover (she always used the word lover, never
boyfriend) of a coworker. Tom Waitts had once tried to pick her (the coworker
whose lover played saxophone in the nude) up in a park in Santa Monica, I was
telling her. And that led to her mentioning this band, the one playing tonight,
her best friends, the accordion and tuba. He sounds a lot like Tom Waitts, she
said.
385 individuals own assets greater than the combine annual
incomes of countries containing 45% of the world’s population
“Excuse me but is your name Martin?” and I shake my head. I
was daydreaming (fantasying) about the young lady with the fuzzy white tam and
the fuzzy white sweater and the little pug nose sitting across the room. I have
to bring myself out of my trance - umpha umda umpf. “Martin?” No, I shake my
head. “What?” - umpha umda umpf. I can’t ever remember
where I am. Sometime back I was at the Brewery. I remember that. “Are you
Martin?” I remember the rep from the Sacramento Brewery coming in and changing
out the kegs. Switching the SacBew from Red Horse to the IPA. He gave me a
complimentary pint. “No, I’m not Martin,” I reply. But he hadn’t been talking
to me. He was asking the guy two stools down. And it fact, the guy did happened
to be Martin. Hunter S Thompson said he would be insane if it were not for
writing. Come again? And Bukowski? Bukowski would drink until he passed out and
then wake up and sneak out and go write all night because he said, you can’t
sleep life away and you’ve got to do a poem a day or life is just shit. I feel
something like that. It’s only 8:23 and it’s still light but I’ve had all I can
drink. I go home and tomorrow morning I’ll write this all down at my coffee
shop.
It’s an unfortunate fact about the flowers of geography that
they don’t bother to work as hard on their appearances as places less favored
by nature, like the muddy ford where London got its start, or the salt swamp
from which Venice triumphantly arose – Jonathan Raban – Driving Home, 2010 p291
You can’t comprehend without appreciating the milieu out of
which one of the possibilities manifests itself. History is much more that a
parade of great men.
“Warning warning” (shades of Dr Who – Darleks – no that was
“Exterminate, Exterminate; “warning, warning” was from Lost in Space). It’s the
Giant Voice again. “This is a restricted area. Unauthorized entry is
prohibited. Use of force has been authorized” The military unlike children are
to be heard but not seen. They like to make big noises. Boom! Kings Bay – Trident
submarines lurking - SLBMs – Kill kill – shades of robots on wheels (yet the
submarines are in the silent service, right? – run quiet run deep – so what’s
all this about noise? – it’s the army that bomarded Noriega with rock music).
Where are those ruby slippers when you need them? Now hear this. Now hear this.
Wa-u-wa Wa-u-wa. The sound of claxons. Alert, alert. All hand to battle
stations. Kaboom – the Arizona splits in half. One down the smokestack. The
General with his pointer poked at the image with a lone vehicle crossing the
Euphrates and immediately after he across the bridge goes Kaboom and the
General jokes – the was the luckiest man in Baghdad. Such fun and games.
Support the Troops! Freedom and Democracy are just other words for nothing left
to lose.
The more asymmetrical the conflict the more the weaker side
will resort to irregular tactics
Modern war is not about two roughly equal nations-states
clashing…It is about fundamentally weak forces – whether part of a nation sate
or not – learning how to fight the strong – John Ralston Saul – The Collapse of
Globalism, 2005 p259
Philip Marlow, Detective
Philip Marlow smokes a pipe, generally
Mr. Marlow plays classic chess games out of a book
Marlow turns down cases that he don’t think are suitable
He won’t take divorce cases at all – bread and butter
He doesn’t have to take cases that he don’t like
He may not like your looks – he likes the looks
Of that Madison in his hip pocket
Sometimes he takes a case just for costs
Philip Marlow isn’t a fish like Nick & Nora
Mr. Marlow doesn’t inhale Luckys like Mike Hammer
Marlow doesn’t ware a trench coat like the dirty cops
He has a gimlet in memorial to an old friend
One after another the connections are made
And he finds himself deeper and deeper into a case he didn’t
ask for
Deep into the web of things where people can be nasty
Especially if they have money
It is not good to be conscious
When you’re trapped in a spider web
‘Ever kill a man, Marlow’?
‘Yes’
‘Nasty feeling, isn’t it’?
‘Some people like it’
