A Little Mystery, a Few Hysterics and a Lot of Headaches – Not Tonight, Dear.

I saw the photograph. It was on Facebook. There I was. She had labeled me. The photograph Bob to took. Everythime I visit, I stand with my sister holding my little dog and Bob takes our photograph. She posted it on Facebook. God was I fat. Yes, I’m the fat one. You can also tell which one is me because I have a beard and she does not.  Winter has not been nice to me. What happened to your girlish figure. Hell, Fred, you never had a girlish figure. You’ve always been a dumpling. Mother’s little butterball. I need to get serious about losing some weight – about 30 pounds worth, I figure. It is that serious. Two years ago the doctor advised me to lose twenty. Frankie posted a comment – “How far north” and I answered to Michigan where my other sister’s son is getting married. I wish Facebook had a way to correct comments after they were posted. I’d also like to Photoshop that picture. Elongate it. Make be tall and skinny. I wish it were just that easy.

I began to wonder if Little People might be useful in solving mysteries. I knew that they could not be turned into detectives. I would have to be the detective. They would not chronicle our adventures either, I would also have to do that.  They were unreliable. They could not (would not) follow directions. They were never dishonest, I’ll grant you that. They knew everything or at least they knew how to know any thing that they might want to know. I think that is a very valuable talent, much more valuable than and set of limited experience.  But how to employ their talents was a whole different matter. I was determined to find a way. But the fact is that I knew nothing about being a detective but I have read a lot of detective novels. But reading romances don’t make you romantic, they make you silly. Neither Agatha Christie nor Dorothy Sayers knew anything about crime or detection themselves for that matter. Agatha proved it when she tried to do Aimee Simply MacPhearson. Where to start? Where to start? With a mystery of course. I had to find a mystery to solve. That was the first step. Then I’d find a way to use my Little People. What I had in abundance was a thirst for adventure and the Little People were my ticket. But first the mystery. I’m trying to think this thing out. I know. Then I discovered that they could read minds. I’ll tell you about it later when I have more time and how I came to find this out and how I intend to exploit this ability. I hope it doesn’t turn out to be another flop like my moonwalking was.

The first time I heard of it, I said, “that’s just plain dumb” and now it’s a billion dollar industry. If only I could make this thing with the Little People work as well. I’d come up with other schemes – like spinning straw into gold, but they hadn’t worked. With the Little People you can’t base your business plan on a character fault like greed or stupidity. That make’s it hard. But I’ll find away for the Little People to facilitate my good fortune. I’ve just got to stick with it. There has to be a way. It’s gotta be a way that benefits others more than me. And if that’s true, I can’t use it to get rich myself.  When the little people discover that their talents are being used to satisfy someone’s baser emotions they have a way of making you fall flat on your face.

Selective information is misinformation – Federal Judge Damon Keith

Male and female orgasms have completely opposite effects on brain activity – enhanced activity in the male brain and decreased activity in the female brain. The male gets excited. The female becomes sedated. That’s the way it seems to always play out.

It’s religion for

            The weak minded

The Bible is a menu

            Pick and choose

Al la carte

            It’s adjustable

One size fits all

            The word of God

There’s something for

            Everyone

Except for the queers

            And the Arabs

I was asked, are Little People individuals? I had been told (by them of course) that they were not since the same physical body could be any one of them but that no two or more bodies could be the same one of them. Under those circumstances, I have to say no, Little People are not individuals. But I can think of no way to substantiate this claim. And, of course, we already know that there can never be just one of them or so they also claim (there may be more and there may be less but there never just one). I have never seen just one, but that doesn’t prove that there can not be just one. I tried an experiment once. There were was more that one of them(if there are any of them they are always more than one) sitting across from me in the booth drinking beer. I took my coat which I had taken off and which I had lying on the seat beside me and thew it over one of them. There was  blurry motion, I think, sort of a wobbling. The one I had thrown my coat over was sitting beside me. I removed the coat that I had thrown over the one across from me and he was a different one than the one who was not sitting beside me. So which one was the one I had covered up, the one beside me or the one across from me? I’m not sure. So you see, at no time was there ever just one of them. And since no two of them can occupy the same body at the same time there must have been a period of transition when there was none of them. So there was never a time when there was just one of them and there may have been a time when there were none of them. Tyring to keep track of them individually is an impossibility.

He [The Lord] is coming back as a warrior carrying a sword. And I believe now – I’ve checked this out – I believe that sword he’ll be carrying when he comes back is an AR-15… If you don’t have one, go get one. You’re supposed to have one. It’s biblical – Jerry Boykin

There is still snow on the ground here – been here for seven days now. It’s the South and it’s mid-March already. It still hugs the lee side of gullies  and the backside of logs and where it was piled up when they plowed the road. A small babbling brook runs next to my campsite.

13,400 separate items of space junk were being tacked in the year 2000. It was then estimated that there were at least 100,000 pieces too small to track. NASA’s estimated of space debris was about 4,000,000 pounds in Low Earth Orbit. A single paint chip was able to gouge the window of the space shuttle sufficiently enough for the astronauts aboard to concerned about its integrity during re-entry.

Even one war in space would encase the entire planet in a shell of whizzing debris that would thereafter make space near the Earth highly hazardous – Joel Primack – The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, 2002

We spent a lot of money figuring out high-tech means of defeating an opponent that in the end prove more costly to use than to them – war in space for example. Now we have to figure out ways to protect ourselves from drones. But it is good for the economy – it creates jobs we are being told – and sustains the careers advising us who tell us we need to do it.  Mindless activity can be justified if it creates jobs. Job creation seems to be a very mindless activity.

Young men then went to war believing all of the fine stories they had grown up with; and if, in the end, their disillusion was quite as deep and profound as that of the modern soldier, they had to fall father to reach it – Bruce Catton – Lincoln’s Army, 1951 p17

To fail a Turing test is meaningless. To fool someone into believing that its human, a machine demonstrates that it is intelligent. By failing to do so, it proves nothing.

The human being has 347 different types of sensory neurons in his nose and only three in his eyes

There are some 45,000 items in the average American supermarket – a quarter of them contain corn including many non-food item

There are routinely 250-300 incidents of puppycide reported in the press per year. It is estimated that there are at least a thousand unreported cases. One dog handler claims that 250,000 dogs are killed by police per year. This seems to be high. No one knows for sure. A lot of systematic data on the illegal use of violence is gathered but very little on the legal use of violence. The Indianapolis Star reported  44 cases between 2000 and 2002 in that city alone. The police in Milwaukee killed 434 dogs over a nine year period. But these cases do not report how many of those dogs were actually vicious, how many were stray or how many of them were mercy killings. We do know that SWAT teams routinely shoot dogs.

The Average Obese Adult American Male

The average obese American female gets only one hour of vigorous exercise (an exercise that burns fat like jogging or jumping rope) a year. The average obese male does a little better with almost four hours a year. I’m getting old and for me, walking is a vigorous exercise. Or maybe it’s because I’m fat. I can’t do  anything about getting old. And the doctor told me to lose some weight. The news item said that sex was not considered a vigerous exercie for the purpose of this study. It’s just as well as I don’t get much of that either. I’m having a hard time visualizing two fat people having sex. Oh baby, work it, work it. It would not have been a pretty sight. I’m trying to visualize a fat woman jumping a rope. I can’t visualize that either. It’s just as well, as she doesn’t do much of that either.

Big bosomed dolly

Thick boned lass

Starving her flesh

            Singing her blues

Hot mama

Hard blowing harp man

Chicago blues is loud

Bartender says

He’s his ol’ man up there

The man on the bandstand

            He’s a little man (his ol’ man)

Nick nack, patty wack

Chicago is crying

            This winter wind

            Brings tears to your eyes

Any place as cold as this

            Can be rendereded in just

            A few blue notes anytime

And A bunch ot of abstract

            Blue blobs

            Chicago is shrill

Like the wind from the lake

Let me take a moment and introduce

            The Mystery Band to you

Would that be all right?

            Give it up for...

To my left, my good friend...

These are some of the finest blues players in Chicago

Which means they are some to the finest

            Blues players in the world

And my name is Mr. G

Big-handed Wisconsin maid               

Don’t just turn and walk away
            Blond ponytail swishing

Freckles frowning

Just one more time Miss Dairyland

She smelt of mint and new moan

            Hay

Silver bangles glistening

She breezes by in

            An infusion of cornflowers

Young girls turn into women

Their hips broaden

They starve their flesh

            And shave their crotches

And head into the big city

Another Smithwick for me

I was going to be moving on

Three is my limit

And this is my third

I planned more stops tonight

But now it is too late

The blues is great

And there is plenty of space

So I shall stay in this place

            And try to make with the barmaid

Tonight

You can keep the damn cat, baby

This is Chicago style blues

Thank you. Thank you. That was an original song

I’m broke and I am hungry baby

            (and he passes the kitty around)

Baby takes a lot of blame

It is a man’s world after all

Baby gets no respect

Stand behind your woman

And support her in every way

My parents do not share a bedroom. Mother picked out her room. This will be my bedroom, she said. It faces south and looks out onto the garden and the closets are so spacious. I shall have it painted in a pale blue – a pale robin’s egg blue. I will have a white carpet put down with thick pile. It was large and had a bathroom. It’s what they call a master bedroom. They made an offer and agreed on a price and a month later we moved in. That’s when dad decided to occupy that large room my mother had chosen for herself. My mother is not to be pushed around. She likes to feel that she’s a victim  and she gets her revenge. Afer all, he said, it is called the master’s bedroom. This will cause endless difficulty. Is the old man stupid or what?

The previous owner had left a lot of furniture. My brother and I are going through an old desk. But first I want to explain about new a form of moving that I’ve discovered. No lot like moving in or moving furniture or that kind of stuff. This is about a new form of locomotion that involves generating a vibrational energy. I can do it on one foot. I set up a vibration in the sole of my foot and just glide along like a snake. It’s amazing. It’s sort of like moon walking on one foot, but forward rather than in reverse, although it can be done in both directions. Though I never seen a snake move backwards, come to think of it. It was the Little People who gave me this trick. It’s a trick rather than a skill cause not even I know how it’s done. You can’t teach it to anyone. It has somethingd to do with mind control, they told me. We discovered the Little People in the closet in what was supposed to have been my mother’s bedroom, what dad is calling The Master’s Bedroom. There was a little hole in the back of the big closet, in the dark, barely noticeable. We were playing toy soldiers in there when they came marching out in formation through what looked like a mouse hole. They were banging on drums and whistling into fifes and doing their moon-walk. There must have been a gazillon of them. We only play in here when dad’s at work. He would beat the shit out of us with his belt if he caught us in here.

Later as I gained more control of the vibrations, I managed to channel it though my hands. First I tried moon-walking on my hands but I had difficulty with my balance. I kept falling over. Then I discovered I could use it to move small objects – sort of like telekinesis. I try to teach it to my brother. But it won’t work for him. What’s that strange thing that that boy is doing, my father asked? He is not very observant. He doesn’t pay much attention to us, most of the time. Have a word with that boy, he told mom. I don’t want him growing up weird. He comes home from work and goes to his room. He sleeps a lot. He is a policeman. My mother pretended she hadn’t heard him. She is pretending a lot. I didn’t want to get into the middle of it. I quit performing in front of adults, espically the old man.

What about the desk? Oh yes, that. I almost forgot. We pulled out a drawer and removed it from its guides. We were looking for a plastic German soldier that my brother had dropped down a slot behind the desk. It was a kneeling infantryman aiming a rifle. My brother had bitten on the end of the gun.  Behind the drawer we found a shelf on which there were some coins and some paper money in clear plastic envelopes. I have a book about coins. I look them up in my book. They are very rare and worth a long of money. We decide to tell the Little People about them. They advise us to be quiet about what we found. They said that if we gave the stuff that we had found to them they would keep it for us and not tell anyone. That thing you showed me about vibrating your feet, I said. Well I’ve used it to move objects about. And I showed them. Don’t let anyone see you do that, they said. They’ll put you in cage in a laboratory and study you. It happened to one of us. Thanks, I said and gave them all the money that we had found.

Well one day we (my brother and I) were in a truck. We were in back. There was no one up front. The truck started moving and was headed downhill towards our house. I used my telekinesis to stop it, but not before it ran into the house. Straight into the big bedroom were my father was sleeping. He is in the hospital. We when to visit him. Mother and father are talking again but neither of them will talk to us. Dad would but he’s not allowed to shout. It could have been a lot worse, I try to explain, if I hadn’t used my powers to stop the truck when I did. Dad could have he been dead. For that we got a thrashing. What was that for, I asked. For telling lies, my mother said. I told the Little People about it. They laughed. It’s just like the big people, they said.

My uncle  Bill helped my to write this. He is in the army. He said he knew all about the Little People. He wanted me to show him that moon-walk thing. I tried to but found that I could no longer do it. Just like the Little People he said. The end.

Tramping off to work

Tramping

            Tramping

                         Tramping

Tramping off the train

            And into the rain

Tramping in from the ‘burbs

Tramping off to work

Tramping
             Tramping

                        Tramping

Tramping off to work

See them with their dog tags

            Around their necks

Put on your happy face

See them with coffee in their hands yawning

See them

            See them

                        See them off to work

Off to sit behind their desks

See them

            See them

                        See them off to work

With backpacks and handbags and jogging shoes

            Some wear shorts and change at work

See them

            See them

                        See them off their labors

Watch them arrive

Imagine what they do

Which ones are the clerks

And which ones are the bankers

Who works with his hands

And who works with her brains

They are all walking,

            Walking

                        Walking by

Train load by train load they arrive

Working stiffs – men and women

            From the hinterland

They put on their walking shoes

Walking

            Walking

                        Walking

 To uptown elevators

             up into the atmosphere

                        Up sky high

                       

Babies from poor families where are given full-time day care during their first five-years of live grow up to be both more intelligent and more healthy than similar babies not given such care. The results are in from a 42 year study of 100 infants in North Carolina. It was expected that they would be smarter but that they were healthier as adults was totally unexpected. An infant in the group given special care was five times as likely to go on to college as was an infant in the control group.

- from McLeansboro, Illinois 

Get Around on the Round About

Music – From the sound system - at present the call and response of a bickering couple. The response is a falsetto: “I love the way you bark.” “I love to do the dog (the falsetto part). The bartender was doing his inventory. Then he gets a ladder and begins to clean the tall mirror behind the bar. I like it in the afternoon when it gets hot outside. It’s cool and dark in here. I’m the only customer and that’s fine with me. He has taken down all the bottles in the racks against the mirror. He whips each one carefully before putting it back. “How often do you have to wipe”, I ask. “I do it once a week. Those down there,” he pointed to the ones below the mirror, “have to be done twice a week. They are more popular.” “They get more fingerprints,” I remark. “Yeah, but we also go through them faster,” he replies. There is a country song playing now: “Sometimes I get mad when people treat me bad… pretty girl to love me with the last same name. When the flowers wilt a big old quilt to keep you warm…” There’s a whining bit of guitar. “…I’ve got the sun to see your blues eyes and tonight you’re in my arms.” There’s a big TV screen above the pool table. On it  are Nazi soldiers in black and white. They are at the mercy of some GI Joes. The Nazis are nasty,  but the big ol’ GI gallookis are merciful of course – the brown things. I go back out into the sun having finishing my pint. I like to ask questions. There is a French laundry two doors down. I ask the Chinese lady behind the counter, “What’s a ‘French laundry’”? “It’s just the name.” she says. I had been in the Elbow Room. It was just a bar just up the way where you can bend your elbow. I had been in there almost an hour and the only other person who came in had come in to drop off a resume. The bartender looked it over. “I’ll make sure it gets passed on”, he had said. When I left a Ska tune had been playing.

What a toe stubbing big rock

            It is that God can’t lift

And then I was told

            It’s all just

Part of God’s plan

            I’m awe struck

I truly am

            And my toe still hurts too

The clouds are moving across the sky faster than I could ever run. One has to get good at what one does. Then that skill is no longer needed. I was good at asking questions, but everyone wants answers now. No one wants to answer questions anymore. As dusk approaches the clouds travel faster and faster. They are racing faster and faster. They become blurs passing the moon traveling at the speed of sound. I listen to my footfall. I try not to trip and fall. Once it did not bother me at all. If I fell I just got up and dusted myself off. Now I worry about breaking a bone. It’s the beginning of the end.

Tourists have space but no time

            A re-creation palace

A collection of people without

            Content but with strong connections

Give them a context

            Send them back in time

Clowns are people with content

            But without any connection

Give them some time without

            Any space

In a state of extraterritoriality:

Aliens, refugees, soldiers, sailors

Airline stewardesses, sex workers

Prisoners, winos, the homeless

The uninsured, pedestrians

Bureaucrats, shoe salesmen

And don’t forget the tourists

            And the clowns

The tourists are waiting

            For the show to begin

The clowns are waiting

            To be shown were to stand

It’s all dramaturgy, you know

Stupidity… testify(s) to a thinking that is not that of representation so much as production, mutations and creation – Clair Colebrook – Giles Deleuze, 2002 p15

The worst place to be poor is the best place to be rich

Walter has found some Betty Boop fabric. He thinks it would be great if we all had Betty Boop Hawaiian shirts. We would all wear Betty Boop Hawaiian shirts when we come in here to the coffee shop in the morning.  A row of old geezers along the back wall all wearing Betty Boop Hawaiian shirt. I  fancy the idea. He has a plan. “I will take one of my old shirt apart and use it as a pattern”, he says. He says that he can borrow Mrs. Boyd’s sewing machine. But button holes have him stymied. He doesn’t know how to do button holes.

I suggest that he get Michael to make them. “He still owes you big time,” I remind Walter. I forget what Michael owed Walter big time for. I think it might have been something that Walter made for Michale’s hand crafted soup enterprise. We all got to help him with ideas for names of his different lines of soap. Some woman up in Washington was importing a soap from Japan called “Fish Off”. It was for removing the odor of fish from your hands, he explained. What about ‘Queer Off’ for washing doo-doo off your do dah. He didn’t care for that at all. Each soap was to have a different blend of essential oils. Jennie was helping with the logo and the packaging. He didn’t like any of my suggestions.

“Does he sew?” Walter asks.

“Oh, yes. Big time”

He runs the idea past Linda. “Oh, no,” she says. “Get a pattern from Britext.” I was all for that. I knew that any shirt of Walter’s was going to be too little for me and too big for Linda. And way too big for the ‘Little People’. Linda even volunteered to cut the fabric and do the button holes.

Walter had been complaining that he had too much time on his hands and yet I doubted that he’d carry through with his project. I stopped by Britext and bought the pattern. Now he has no excuse. “Do you have enough material to do Betty Boop Hawaiian shirts for the ‘Little People”,  I asked.

“How many of them are there,” he wanted to know.

“Oh, their numbers increase and their numbers decrease, but there is never just one”, I told him. “They would need at least a couple. If they need more they can make them themselves.”

“Do they have the of Betty Boop fabric,” Walter asked: “And can they sew?

“Have you ever met a ‘Little Person’ who could not sew or at least cobble shoes,” I asked him?

“No, but then I’ve never actually ever really met a ‘Little Person’.

Anyway Walter has the sewing machine and he has the pattern and he has the fabic and he has friends with all the know how that he needs.  And he has plenty of time. Still there are no Betty Boop shirts. And the ‘Little People’ had said that they would help too. They even said they could make as much Betty Boop fabric as we could possibly use.

“Can you make it out of rayon,” I asked. I preferred rayon to silk. Walter’s Betty Poop fabric was mere cotton.

“Any thing you want,” they said (I always say ‘they’ because there is never just one).

“Can you spin it out of gold?”

“If you supply enough straw.”

“How much is enough,” I asked? Meaning by that how much straw would they need. I guess that depended on how much gold I wanted them to spin. I had a vision. The Little People don’t like it when you get greedy.

First it’s an apprenticeship

Then it is time for servitude

And lastly stewardship

It takes a long time

            To become a dignitary

Twenty years learning

Twenty years conforming

Twenty years expounding

It took a long time

            And now it has been

                        Accomplished

Twenty years to go

            The consequence of

                        Getting old

The difference in longevity

            And the failure to

                        Conceive of a new role

For those of us who have gotten old

            And wouldn’t it have been better

                        Spending a lifetime exploring

There is a lot of forgiveness in a little salt and pepper

The average age of an American farmer is 58.3. A third of all US farmers are older that 65.