DEAR MISS LANDERS

I’m inside looking around – this is a clock escarpment, there is the constant screeching, grinding of the gears.It’s not the same as outside  looking in – tick tock – it strikes three o’clock. Wind me up, turn me loose. Nor is it the same as inside looking out – google eyes watching the hands as they tick around the clock face, as they follow the cycle of dark and light. A good observer will have seen everything while ignoring all functionality. As if looking for the fist time.  A good observer will become the clock. Gilbert and me are up her in the Tea Cup mom. Oh, Beaver how did you get up there?

Being a Marxist in the 1930s, in certain circles at least, was a bit  like being a Darwinist in the 1880s : you had to put up some pretty good reasons for not accepting anything so blindingly obvious. It’s just that this is difficult to appreciate in the 1970s, where reasonable men tend an interest in medieval gynecology – Terry Eagleton

Walk and profusely sweat

This pain in the knee is excruciating

The dog takes a pee

            At every tree

And we have have to go

            Four times a day

And just as often I have to get up

            In the middle of the night

I find business speak annoying; anything about turning a profit or rationalizing a process whether it be flipping a house or re-engineering the corporation. I used to be a participant, but now I’m on the outside looking in, it all seems so utterly childish. Eddy says that most of the time people use such jargon because it gives them power. Sort of like being a medicine man, I ask? He goes back to reading his paper. This is good because he has his own jargon and there is no power anywhere in any of it. And besides when he finishes and leaves, I can grasp his discarded Chronicle. Unlike the Journal there is no power in this paper. On the bus going to work I used to notice the pink pages of people reading the Financial Times sort of like having a Pravda neatly folded and tucked into the right pocket of one’s brown leather jacket, an emblem of one’s party membership. The symbol of power is power. Sort of like a low-slung holstered 45. Better be fast if called on (actually it was not how fast you were with it but how calm you were in its use – slow and steady was always more deadly that a quick draw). Power is being cool in situations of stress. I’m not impressed. None of them have any power over me. But I’m still outwardly differential to authority – there’s no since taking a chance. I still feel that what authority has ordained for me is right and proper. I anxiously await to be informed as to what it is exactly they have ordained. How will I be informed. Will I read it in the paper? Is it written in the Bible? Will it be transmitted via a dental implant? Yours Truly, The Beaver.

Sixteen tons ain’t much

            To steam shovel

But you’re another day older

            Anyhow

And the little train that could

Keeps on hauling it all away

I’m keen on women with big noses this morning. This is something new. It’s my fantasy of the day. Not just any big nosed woman but tall lanky ones. I check out all the women I see. One by one I scrutinize them – eliminating the short ones and the chunky ones and the older ones. Then I look at the noses of those that remain. Twice this morning I have sighed with ectachy. As I enter the coffee shop, I sneeze. “God Bless You!” someone says. It’s one of them. “Thanks”, I reply but I want to tell her much her nose means to me. She goes back to writing in a notebook. She has her back to me now. There are no more opportunities for any chance encounter.  I still have my private reveries. And that is probably better anyway because tomorrow I shall have some new fetish. I sit and daydream. The morning goes by quickly. I keep my eyes open, watching all the women passing by outside. Some days its redheads. Some days its tattoos. Eddy say that I’m weird. He is one to be talking.

Did Larry’s mother really know Batman? Gosh Aunt Harriett! Oh Robin, I declare! Well maybe. Both shows were in re-runs at the same time. Can characters from different shows and in different eras be aware of each other. It was not inconsistent with anything that the Beaver was knew. He didn’t know everything.  It might be possible. He would really really like to meet Batman. Larry he thought get his mother to introduce him. A visit by Batman to his class would be much better having Ward tell about his boring job. That would shut Judy up. Miss Landers would be impressed. Maybe he should ask Gus. Gus was very wise. Gus told him all about the Purple Rose of Cairo. The Beaver had once brought Gus to class. Being a fireman was exciting. Being a crime fighter was even more exciting. Why was Robin called Batman’s Ward. They were nothing alike. He wished he were the Boy Wonder.

Preferential parking ordinances proliferate mainly in neighborhoods with three car garages – Mike Davis

Dirty dishes

A little bleach

Rinse water

Cut the grease

Stay fit

            Avoid parasites

Shower, shave

            And put on clean underwear

            Tighty whities reduce the sperm count

                        They say

Live right

            Be uptight

If you ask me, I’d tell ya       

            That’s might white

                        Of ya  

Bo-log-na – I carefully attempted to pronounce the name – BO-LOG-NA. I stared at the label again. Strange I’d never noticed that spelling before. I’d always called it Baloney. When did they change the name? Bologna (I pronounced it with a hard ‘g’) uh! I know it is a city in Italy. When did they rename it that – the sausage not the city. I am aware that lots of food products are named after their place of origin (Burgundy,, Cheddar, Swiss and American cheese). I had never noticed the word “Bologna” before. It has Champaign always been ‘Baloney” hasn’t it? I’m sure that I’d never seen it labeled Bologna before. Had I just never paid any attention? Can I be than unobservant?  I am not paranoid. I know no one had changed all the labels just to confuse me. I had just take a toke. Going shopping was not proving to have been a good idea. Stay home and listen to some music. Lay down with head phones on and turn The Stone up loud. It’s normal to discover strange new meanings in rock lyrics but not on grocery store labels. I wanted to tell her all about it, but I knew it wouldn’t make any sense. It didn’t make any sense to me.  It didn’t have a context. It didn’t related to anything else. I knew that much. She continued to fill the cart. She asked me something. I sort of nodded my head. At the check-out counter I was marveling at how all these things could be translated into a single number. I swiped a piece of plastic and signed my name. Just like magic. I was still able to function. I could do this much. I was still able to perform tricks. Was I able to drive? She got in on the drivers side. I got in on the passenger side.  Live is beautiful. Now all this stuff is ours. We could do with what we want. We got home. I stared out the window. Is this our house. It’s a nice house. Could be someone else’s house. She unpacked the groceries. I was ravenous. I wanted a fried baloney sandwich with fried onions on a toasted sesame seed bun. She laughed and told me to go and lie down while she put the stuff away. I was evidently in her way. I could not get my mind off of BO-LOG-NA. God, it’s hard to get my skull around this. When did they start calling it that. Honey, I’m starving, I exclaimed. She brought be a bag of Bar-B-Que potato chips and a can of Bud. I liked the way it popped when I pulled the tab. Watch it, it’s easy to cut yourself on them.  I lay back on the sofa. She said, can you turn the music down. When I woke up it was getting dark. On the TV Ed Sullivan was talking to a mouse.

Gertrude Stein supposedly passed out black-bordered calling cards. On them was printed the single word “woe”. As she gaily handed them out she would say, “Woe is me”

AND A LITTLE MORE THAN ENOUGH TO DRINK; FOR THIRST IS A DANGEROUS THING

I try to stay out of the way. The boys are loading the big stuff into the trailer, the stuff that is going into storage. I peel back the end of the packing wrap and hand the roll to Jerry. It is not a big job but it is my job. I hold the lose end and he wraps it around the blanket that protects the dresser. Plastic adheres to plastic and I let go of my end. He goes around three or four more times. And then the boys carry it into the trailer and I prep for the next item that they bring out. It an assembly line and I am making sure that the widget is there when it is needed. I am old and decrepit and have bad knees. There are not many advantages to this condition but this is one. Not much is expected from  me and what little I can do is appreciated. But mostly, they want you to stay out of the way.

More often than not, the Bible don’t tell folks; folks tell the Bible. But what they say is that the Bible says…And they should be ashamed of themselves for it’s a lie and that’s a sin.

Men do not demand genuine beauty, even in the most modest doses; they are quite content with the mere appearance of beauty – H L Mencken – In Defense of Women, p32

He didn’t have

That Ol’ Black Sambo

Cadence One-Two One-Two

Cake Walk punch

Then he said

I though I was through

With the blues

And he read two more

            Of his poems

Based on

Based on

            He said it twice

On those old songs

His own version

Of Walker & Williams

Cork faced he read

And he got

A standing ovation

At the Apollo

Singing in falsetto

Will make em’

             Go wild

You can dance in feathers and loincloths

And boil missionaries

In big black pots

Only if you will sing to ‘em

            In falsetto

Avoid the sheppard’s crook

When up in there in the limelight

Do what is expected of you

            And do it in double time

Just like the preachers do it

            Martin Luther jr did it

            So did Gandhi

But Jesus did it best

If democracy be defined as the enfranchisement of at least half of a country’s adult population, then Finland (1905) was the world’s first democratic country

Science is the worse nuisance and greatest calamity of our days – Bronislav Malinowski

You can’t have economic equity without political equality

COLOR COMMENTARY

Gang violence is the least

Obscene and objectionable of the violences

That we exposed to

And like most

            Only vicariously

That’s what we’ve marginalized

            Them folks for anyway

At the other end of the scale

Is civilized warfare

Precision targeting

With munitions that have eyes

            Aimed at outsiders

            For our entertainment

And with or without collateral damage

It don’t make any difference

             A misidentified target

Is just another drive by shooting

            With more powerful munitions

Little boys with pop guns should

Stand asides and let the professional

            Have do it

To fill up the time on our wide-screens

Which otherwise would be blank

            Either that or re-runs of fifties sit-coms

Or high-lights of yesterday’s game

            Bring on the big guns

Then again violence may just be

            Part of a conditioning regime

Public exhibitions and executions in time for

            The six o’clock news

For the poor it is always different – David Graeber – Debt, 2001 p 379

Bacon is similar to spam but results from things that you actually signed up for but don’t want to read. Some “Friends” send out a lot of bacon.

Throw the lumber over, man! Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need – a homely home and simple pleasures; one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, a a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing – Jerome K Jerome – Three Men in a Boat, 1889

But I know how tall

            I am and like Alice he

Placed his hand on top of his head

            I am this tall

And the Caterpillar said

            Three inches is

Is a very good height indeed

Give to Plato or Aristotle the same fund of knowledge than man to-day has access to, and Plato and Aristotle would reason as profoundly as the man to-day and would achieve very similar conclusions – Jack London – The Somnambulists, 1905

A game involves the creative application of fixed rules. There is a means/ends rationality to it, but its objective has no functionality.

A century ago there were no more than a dozen cities with a population greater than one million, now there are as many as 500. The twentieth century has been the century of urbanization

The same social structure that permits democracy also enables totalitarianism. Bottom up or top down, its the same control mechanism. What varies is the visibility of the information flow through the process and the direction of that flow.

History is a dialogue with the past. Aspiration is a dialogue with the future

We have to establish a new relation to the future, to stop seeing it as an indefinite “progress” giving us more of the same – Cornelius Castoriadis – Figures of the Thinkable

We’re off to the county youth fair – rabbits and pigs and sheep and cows and goats, oh my! Lots of greasy food to be eaten. The kids take Dakota on some rides. The roller coaster frightens her. She cries. They stand in line for the Ferris wheel for a long long while, but it brakes down just as the get to the head of the line. They won't give a refund, not even to little kids . Just wait there there until it is fixed, they are told. How long will that be? There is no reply. They could stand there all night or go take ride on the merry-go-round. The Ferris Wheel was the first thing Dakota spotted as we got out of the car. But she was happy as long as Dave and Heather rode with her. She went home with a smile and some cotton candy.

Flatteries addressed to God are called prayers… God’s vanity, which is gigantic, [is] like himself - Elias Canetti – Auto de Fe, p444

SWAT teams are employed across the US 100 to 150 times a day – about 50,000 times a year. This is up from only a few hundred times a year in the 1970’s. Most of these deployments are for serving warrants for drug trafficking. Part of our war on drugs. The last time war was use by the government as a metaphor was Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty.  Has the militarization of this country resulted from our “war on drugs” or was the “war” merely an excuse for militarization. Our “war on terror” has allowed us to export our war culture to Asia and Africa. With our “war on terror” the “war on drugs” is no longer needed. Now there is talk of rethinking our drug policies. So what will all those SWAT teams and those armored police vehicles be doing then, now that we have become accustomed to them. How will prison contractors make a profit unless they can keep their beds occupied. For tax purposes they are all real estate companies.

Mobile phones use more electricity than the total world electrical usage for 1985. Hourly Internet traffic now exceeds yearly traffic for 2000.

Men experiencing ‘resource insecurity’ (aka poor) prefer women with large breasts, while men who are financially well off prefer women with smaller breasts. Men interested in fatherhood prefer women with larger breasts than do men who are not interested in fatherhood.

It is a “Big Mac” and not a “Good Mac”

My first suspicion of the dictionary was aroused. Prior to this moment I had taken the dictionary for granted much as one does the Bible – Henry Miller – The Book in my Life

Bumblebees and Blackberries

It all begins - trees come down. Big trees. Garry swings on a rope from three to tree sawing off limbs.    What a shame. Such big trees. They've been landmarks at the southern end of the lake for years. Five ashes had died from emerald ash borer infestation and would have had to come down anyway. Eight had occupied the building site. The big maple four foot across is lying on the driveway. Two men and a truck come tomorrow to haul away the appliances. Then the power company to relocate the power lines. A week from tomorrow demolition will begin. Next spring it will all be different. Hell its all different now. The carefully maintained lawn is all a mess. The big trees and their shade are gone. They are late today. They come when they get around to it. They're not on a clock - these tree men. They work when their are bills need to get paid. Otherwise, well depends on how they feel.  Don't you wish you could live like that. You learn their life stories - how many divorces, how many times in jail. Several of them are in a band at a local bar. Doug started yelling, God Damn it, the boys where too anxious to start clearing away the brush and were in the middle of the fallen tree. Wait till I'm finished here, it might roll on top of you. Doug had watched his father die when a gust of wind blew a tree in the wrong direction. You can't blame him being concerned.  I won't be here for the demolition. It's back on the road for me. I headed south for the winter. This is the best camping season - September to mid-November. The children are in school and the show-birds haven't begun their migration yet. It's cool and breezy today, but yesterday it was 95 and humid. A miserable day and the cabin air-conditioning had already been disconnected.

A Fourth tradition – the big tractor parade - little tractors, big parade – fifty restored antique machines – pucta, pucta, pucta – pudder through the park – purpa, purpa, purspa. Squat little Fords, Minneopolis-Molines with long engine blocks, Olivers painted bright green, red Internationals and Farmalls, and Orange Allis-Chalmers.  All lovingly restored and freshly painted. Putta, putta, putta. The big farmers waves and we all wave back.  They look big on their little tractors. Dwarfed by the behemoths that actually work the field. Iowa – rows of corn to become cheep E-85. Make sure your vehicle can use flex-fuel. Warning - Not gasoline.

You can’t have cutthroat competition where there is no one stopping people from literally cutting one another’s thoats – David Graeber – Debt, 2001 p303

A big man with a fat cigar

Hand rolled in Guatemala, no Paroddie

Name brand whiskey, neat

What would be the harm

If  I took to smoking again

Except that now you have to do it outdoors

And it took years to get the reek

            Out of the clothes that hang in the closet

The Surgeon General’s warning

Only refers its affect upon fetuses

And as I get older, what’s the difference

I am going to die of cancer anyway

            Given the environment

Get some Swisher Sweets or some White Owls

            And light up

But everyone else is smoking hand rolled cigars

            From Santa Domingo or Cuba

I will just stink up the place

            And be chased away

Let the big men smoke their big cigars

            The rest of us will screw

                        Their pooches

Private acts in public spaces – put your eyelashes on, on the bus. You are late. It was a rush getting out of the house. Hold the compact mirror in one hand and affix your eyelashes with the other while carrying on a conversation. This is the age of multitasking. Put on your lipstick while driving. Hopefully you can do it at the stoplight. Honk! Honk! Stick your arms in the air and apply deodorant. Yes, its a type of stick up.  Oops forgot to shave and I’ve got a client meeting in thirty minutes. Buzz, buzz.  You can shave and talk on your cell phone at the same time while you ride the elevator up. Keep an eye open for your bus at the stop. You become absent minded as you wait in line. Your panties are wedged in your butt crack. Casually reach back and dislodge them. The world is your boudoir. Do you have a problem\, mister? No! No, problem at all. Well then, keep your eyes to yourself.

An altered state of consciousness that’s what the cinema is. You come out with a warped sense of reality. I came out wanting to write my great opus - that which has been struggling inside me trying to find a voice. And this is all that I wrote down.

In this business how could you be so stupid? Couldn't you lie, swear, forswear, promise, and then perform or fail to perform, like everyone else? Couldn't you crawl on hands and knees like the others?  Denis Diderot - Rameau's Nephew

I was nine-tenths on my way to infinity

I was a long long way away

Too far away to be seen or to see

Far faraway but not yet far enough

To score a touchdown

Or even have have a chance

            At a field-goal

“Beach Volleyball” is she queen of dumb sports if you exclude the X games and mud or Jell-O wrestling. There are in fact too many to enumerate like linebackers pulling trucks (celebrity strongmen competitions in the off seasons). I do have high regards for the Bicycle Messenger Olympics.

And the ‘Fog City Blues’ played on a melodeon down the block. Someone had been playing it over and over, all night. It was now three AM and I was about to go mad and attack the blind tiger from which the infernal racket was coming, but I also knew that that was ‘Chicken John’s’ place and that such an act while heroic would be a little foolhardy. Instead I joined the crowd and pumped the musicians with cheep wine until they pucked their guts out and promptly passed out. I was relieved to learn that it was not the “Frog Town Uptown” that Cab Callower had ridden. And no one could answer my question as to wether frogs would sight read. Someone explained that it was a well know fact that frogs had better eyesight than hearing. And why was I so interested in the musical abilities of frogs anyway? I wanted to know why they were so fascinated with pianos, I explained. He said that he didn’t know that they were. I assured him that it is true. I went home and slept for the two remaining hours before dawn when I had to be at the stockyards again. I barely made enough to pay for rent and keep the melodeon players dead drunk, but I had managed to eek by and now six years later I think back and laugh.

Mommies drop by with little kids

                        In tow

To pick out birthday cakes

Mommy I like this one here

She thumbs through a book

            With pictures of cakes

            Under plasticine covers

Mommy, mommy, I want some of this

Hold on. Hold on, she tells him

            And she orders a cake

            To be baked

And the lady in white gives them

            Each a sugar cookie

One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid.  Douglas Adams – The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy p82

We are given to favor those who favor us