I’ve been just exhausted this week. Angela made me diner, Mediterranean chicken pasta, and we tried to watch the Frontline special on Born Again George, but we kept getting disgusted so we were flipping between Queer Eye and the insane guy. I fell asleep well before nine and had……

Free floating anxiety dream on this the last day of Mercury in retrograde.

In my dream I am driving into the ville to work on a house that I am living in with Brad and Erica. I have a ton of work to do on the house over the weekend so I stop off at a place called Skills and use my last forty dollars to rent some tools. I rent a drill and several saws, like tree limb saws. I have to sign a rental contract holding me liable for the tools. I then go “home” which is a new dream location – a run down house that is trashed and full of insects. I spend a good portion of the dream cleaning and killing large bugs, the two most significant would be a black praying mantis and a golden scorpion, I don’t kill these, but carefully put them out in front of the house – at one point I put little hand cuffs on the black mantis and make it fly in circles – I think I am the Mantis. The scorpion has personal resonance as a representation of our dual nature, good and bad we are what we are, to deny part or all of our nature is a “sin”. When I take the scorpion out front I notice that the lead singer of the Aaron Russell band, Aaron Russell of course, has set up across the street and is practicing a solo show. I go over to watch & I have all the tools with me, I ask if I can set them down in the back of his truck and listen to him – which is what happens, but as he packs up and leaves for his gig I forget the tools. As he’s pulling out he says, “finders keepers” and I spend the rest of the dream chasing Aaron Russell around the ville, talking to his wife on a cell phone, and generally in pursuit mode trying to get the tools back; which he has no doubt sold. I am constantly judged by Aaron’s friends over how high strung I am. They shake their heads and roll their eyes regarding how fucked up my priorities are and how much suppressed anger I am carrying. I’m not listening to the music. At one point I am asked to sing a karaoke duet and I suck, so they stop halfway through – Aaron’s friends put me through a course of trials in quest for the tools and this is one of them. Miner details – people from outside the dream keep calling and offering advice, Erica’s boyfriend Justin buys her a puppy, which is quite cute. Sebastian is stressed out and keeps going to the bathroom in the house (which is also my waking reality, I just had to steam clean a small section of carpet). Ah well, off to work. I get paid today! I pay Rent today. My car tags expire today, which means oil change, emissions test, personal property tax, and the license renewal fee. Broke again and I just got paid. Sate Tax refund, where oh where can you be?

The Meaning

Ok, I think I lack the tools and I am chasing them down, I’ve rented the tools with my last forty dollars. The tools have been stolen by a musician; by an artist. I am overextended and I have to use different kinds of tools, interpersonal tools, to get the physical tools to improve my life, but I am too exhausted and not spontaneous enough to do that well. I feel trapped. I’m going in circles. The energy all around me is dirty and needs a good cleaning. Erica’s boyfriend will soon buy her a dog.

What's that painting on the wall at Minn's all about?

I, like Jen, am full of busy, and to borrow from Miss E, things have been craptastic this week. However, you should leave feeling as though your visit was worth while - I dedicate this to Jen's recent flirtation with Catholicism.

I found a sentiment on Sister Randy's page that resounds with truth.

Don't forget the classics.

Angela's First Pissed off Blog:

Hey you guys!

I was a bit pissed Monday at the lack of coverage for our rally on Sunday. The count is now as high as 1,150,000 people. So I wrote something I am going to leave on NPR's listener comment line. I wanted to know what you think. Let me know.

Angela

I copied it in and attched in case you could not read. It should end w/ my name and city...just in case you dont' see that. Sometimes Yahoo doesn't let me paste all that i'd like.

So much for in-depth news and intelligent talk:

I attended the Rally for Women’s lives on Sunday, April 25, 2004 with over one million, one hundred fifty thousand other people.

Having left DC immediately following the rally we returned to STL 10 am Monday the 26th. After hurriedly gathering our things we rushed to the car radio in anticipation of the “in-depth” coverage NPR is known for.



We had missed Morning Edition and Andrea Seabrook’s story but expected to hear at the very least blurb at the top of the next hour. Much to our dismay and outrage…by the time our radios were tuned in -11 am the day AFTER the Rally, the Rally For Women’s Lives was old news. Throughout the rest of the day I listened anxiously…surely All things considered would go in depth. I waited w/ baited breath…and got nothing.



All the headlines read at the top of the hour had to do w/ Iraq or Afghanistan or some other war-torn country. I know these are important issues. I sympathize and want to know about them. I know they are relevant and that many Americans have loved ones there fighting for the people of those countries. But these reports are daily and on-going. We get the body counts and reports of yet more bombings. But NPR please…what about the women who inhabit these United States? What about the women, men, children, students, mothers, fathers, daughters who traveled all that way to our nation’s capital to speak up for the travesties of justice in women’s health and welfare? Why only one story? Why not go in-depth every day as you do for so many other stories? Legislation threatening to limit women’s health screenings and availability of information, education and access are up for debate in many states across the country. Why are we not hearing about this from you NPR?



Talk to me …talk to my friends, the politicians and celebrities that traveled across the heartland, through time zones and in some cases from one coast to the other to fight for precious rights that are threatened so severely so many would come together to protect them.



If it was not for the Diane Rehm show on Tuesday there would have been nothing more than the one report. I have been an ardent and enthusiastic supporter of NPR and my local NPR station for years. I have grown to respect and look up to the kind of reporting I hear daily. But this time I feel as though the efforts of so many has fallen on deaf ears. Like our president, you have down played, even minimized the importance of what we came together for on Sunday. It’s a shame. I thought you would have done more. I thought you would do our rally justice. I thought you, of all organizations, would be fair. I was wrong and sorely disappointed.

Ouch, I have very stiff joints this morning. One “benefit” of getting regular massage is that you are more tuned in to what is happening in your body. I took the basic anatomy class at the HAC and now I know which tendons and muscles are sore and why. The main “why” would be that I slept at my sister’s all weekend and what I slept in is not a proper bed, it’s more like a giant bean bag chair only softer – I think it’s actually called a love sack, anyway, at first you want one because they are super comfortable and then you regret that you’ve ever seen one because of the strain that it puts on your hip and knee joints.

So yesterday, after I worked the morning away, I went to celebrate Earth Day. Actually I went to take Ann the digital camera so we have images of our students doing chair massage for the newsletter that I am going to start writing for alumni. Some things to note about Earth Day in Forest park, it was cold and windy so attendance was down. The music was good, New Orleans style Jazz when I was there by the main stage. I want to set a scene for what I thought were several odd choices. The event was held in a horse shoe shape wrapping around the front and side walkways of The Muny Outdoor Theater. The right hand side of the event was dominated by environmentalists and retailers of bright silver jewelry and nature photography, while the left hand side had “consciousness” groups: health groups and recreational associations like rock climbers and camping enthusiasts.

The middle part of the festival had two lines of booths. Facing out, with their “backs to the wall” were the St. Louis vegetarian society, PETA, the various natural stores and cooperative food options. Directly across from them, facing in, were all the festival food retailers selling bratwurst and meat on a stick, “the best twelve inches of meat in town.” I haven’t had lunch at this point, so I get a brat and I am walking towards the “animals are our brothers table” when the obvious ridiculousness of this situation occurs to me. I am about to turn away when I hear protest shouts coming from a stereo at the table. The two representatives of the group are in casual conversation with one another, apparently unperturbed by my brat, or the reminiscent bloody ketchup oozing from the bun (didn’t this combo originate in this very spot at The World’s Fair?). They seem oblivious to their relative proximity to the flesh sellers, but they have put on an audiocassette of actually upset people angrily protesting at some other time and in some other location. It’s hard to get passionate in middle America, analogue protest with the volume quite low, will both make the point and keep the peace. Ah well, that’s the state of activism, even at a sparsely attended Earth Day. The fix is in ladies and gentlemen, the fix is defiantly in.

So after that I did the walk my dog, drive out to the county, walk V’s dogs thing and then around five I picked my nephew up at the airport. He bought me a fridge magnet in the Arizona airport to thank me for the dog care and we discussed what we should do until V got in at eleven. He asked me to help him with his procrastinated homework. I was exhausted, so while he got a shower and did another round of dog care I crashed out for about two hours. V called to let us know her flight had been delayed and then we spent much of the rest of the evening first with science and then with math. He had to read the chapter on cell biology out loud so I could help him with pronunciation and finding the answers to the questions on his worksheets. The worksheets followed the text exactly and were all about repeating what you’d just read in you own words. It was odd to remember learning this stuff, the parts of cells and their functions. Ah the banking model of education, deposit and withdrawal, read and regurgitate, what else to you expect from a capitalist system? Next we did math, which was both triangle identification/angle calculation and then percentages/ratios, if four out of five students wear gym shoes and there are 210 students in the eight grade then how many eight graders have gym shoes? T is in seventh grade – I know this bit seems a little dull, but it was really fun going through all that stuff – I even did a language lesson on why sometimes ch is Charles and why sometimes it’s chlorophyll, 1066 Norman invasion baby, smashing French into Old German at high speed. “You there, servant, we kicked your ass and will be living in the castle from now on, freely distributing the Latinate proper names from our romance language. Bring me that animal out there to eat.” “What, you mean the deer out there in the field? If I have to go get it I’m calling it a deer.” “Just leave it there in the kitchen Nanette will cook it up for us. Yes, we will have the venison! If it’s on my table I’m calling it venison!” Language and religion resulting in the sedimentary remains of class warfare, Goddesses percolate up and thunderclap chucking Zeus’ trickle down. hehe

The carrot dangling at the end of the homework was the potential of renting a movie, so when we got done we drove off to Blockbuster. Odd thing though, the percentages came with us. There was a gas station sale on coke, 5.49 a case. How many in a case dived from the price equals the price per can. Silly Irish accent results in, “we have Irish in us don’t we?” “Well, I’m one eighth Irish from my mother’s side, what does that make you one generation further removed?” You use this stuff everyday T, that’s why we learn it. My folks called to check in, dad had a small procedure – which of course we hear about afterward so as not to worry – went fine and they didn’t find anything scary. Family is the most important thing there is and your close friends are your family.

On that note it’s off to work late to compensate for tonight’s Wayne Dwyer event. I anticipate tomorrows blog to take some time to compose. I still have a Seder blog on the back burner:

There’s no Seder like our Seder,
There’s no Seder I know.
Everything about it is halachic
Nothing that the Torah won’t allow.
Listen how we read the whole Haggadah
It’s all in Hebrew
‘Cause we know how.
There’s no Seder like our Seder,
We tell a tale that is swell:
Moses took the people out into the heat
They baked the matzah
While on their feet
Now isn’t that a story
That just can’t be beat?
Let’s go on with the show!

Ouch, I have very stiff joints this morning. One “benefit” of getting regular massage is that you are more tuned in to what is happening in your body. I took the basic anatomy class at the HAC and now I know which tendons and muscles are sore and why. The main “why” would be that I slept at my sister’s all weekend and what I slept in is not a proper bed, it’s more like a giant bean bag chair only softer – I think it’s actually called a love sack, anyway, at first you want one because they are super comfortable and then you regret that you’ve ever seen one because of the strain that it puts on your hip and knee joints.
So yesterday, after I worked the morning away, I went to celebrate Earth Day. Actually I went to take Ann the digital camera so we have images of our students doing chair massage for the newsletter that I am going to start writing for alumni. Some things to note about Earth Day in Forest park, it was cold and windy so attendance was down. The music was good, New Orleans style Jazz when I was there by the main stage. I want to set a scene for what I thought were several odd choices. The event was held in a horse shoe shape wrapping around the front and side walkways of The Muny Outdoor Theater. The right hand side of the event was dominated by environmentalists and retailers of bright silver jewelry and nature photography, while the left hand side had “consciousness” groups: health groups and recreational associations like rock climbers and camping enthusiasts.
The middle part of the festival had two lines of booths. Facing out, with their “backs to the wall” were the St. Louis vegetarian society, PETA, the various natural stores and cooperative food options. Directly across from them, facing in, were all the festival food retailers selling bratwurst and meat on a stick, “the best twelve inches of meat in town.” I haven’t had lunch at this point, so I get a brat and I am walking towards the “animals are our brothers table” when the obvious ridiculousness of this situation occurs to me. I am about to turn away when I hear protest shouts coming from a stereo at the table. The two representatives of the group are in casual conversation with one another, apparently unperturbed by my brat, or the reminiscent bloody ketchup oozing from the bun (didn’t this combo originate in this very spot at The World’s Fair?). They seem oblivious to their relative proximity to the flesh sellers, but they have put on an audiocassette of actually upset people angrily protesting at some other time and in some other location. It’s hard to get passionate in middle America, analogue protest with the volume quite low, will both make the point and keep the peace. Ah well, that’s the state of activism, even at a sparsely attended Earth Day. The fix is in ladies and gentlemen, the fix is defiantly in.
So after that I did the walk my dog, drive out to the county, walk V’s dogs thing and then around five I picked my nephew up at the airport. He bought me a fridge magnet in the Arizona airport to thank me for the dog care and we discussed what we should do until V got in at eleven. He asked me to help him with his procrastinated homework. I was exhausted, so while he got a shower and did another round of dog care I crashed out for about two hours. V called to let us know her flight had been delayed and then we spent much of the rest of the evening first with science and then with math. He had to read the chapter on cell biology out loud so I could help him with pronunciation and finding the answers to the questions on his worksheets. The worksheets followed the text exactly and were all about repeating what you’d just read in you own words. It was odd to remember learning this stuff, the parts of cells and their functions. Ah the banking model of education, deposit and withdrawal, read and regurgitate, what else to you expect from a capitalist system? Next we did math, which was both triangle identification/angle calculation and then percentages/ratios, if four out of five students wear gym shoes and there are 210 students in the eight grade then how many eight graders have gym shoes? T is in seventh grade – I know this bit seems a little dull, but it was really fun going through all that stuff – I even did a language lesson on why sometimes ch is Charles and why sometimes it’s chlorophyll, 1066 Norman invasion baby, smashing French into Old German at high speed. “You there, servant, we kicked your ass and will be living in the castle from now on, freely distributing the Latinate proper names from our romance language. Bring me that animal out there to eat.” “What, you mean the deer out there in the field? If I have to go get it I’m calling it a deer.” “Just leave it there in the kitchen Nanette will cook it up for us. Yes, we will have the venison! If it’s on my table I’m calling it venison!” Language and religion resulting in the sedimentary remains of class warfare, Goddesses percolate up and thunderclap chucking Zeus’ trickle down. hehe
The carrot dangling at the end of the homework was the potential of renting a movie, so when we got done we drove off to Blockbuster. Odd thing though, the percentages came with us. There was a gas station sale on coke, 5.49 a case. How many in a case dived from the price equals the price per can. Silly Irish accent results in, “we have Irish in us don’t we?” “Well, I’m one eighth Irish from my mother’s side, what does that make you one generation further removed?” You use this stuff everyday T, that’s why we learn it. My folks called to check in, dad had a small procedure – which of course we hear about afterward so as not to worry – went fine and they didn’t find anything scary. Family is the most important thing there is and your close friends are your family.
On that note it’s off to work late to compensate for tonight’s Wayne Dwyer event. I anticipate tomorrows blog to take some time to compose. I still have a seder blog on the back burner:

There’s no Seder like our Seder,
There’s no Seder I know.
Everything about it is halachic
Nothing that the Torah won’t allow.
Listen how we read the whole Haggadah
It’s all in Hebrew
‘Cause we know how.
There’s no Seder like our Seder,
We tell a tale that is swell:
Moses took the people out into the heat
They baked the matzah
While on their feet
Now isn’t that a story
That just can’t be beat?
Let’s go on with the show!

This is the best!!!

More rants – I just can’t stop them – like the weeds of spring.

If you are not into bitching you best skip these few weekend posts as I’ve gone off the deep end. Apparently I’ve been holding a lot in and we’ve hit the strata that we could call “the intellectual vomitorium of reactionary liberalism”.

Blah, what’s with me and all the ranting of late? My life is really no different now then it has ever been. Quit your bitching Karlito. Lovely morning, up before dawn to barking dogs. Gave them a five am walk and then came home to give Sebastian a six am walk, my elbows are sore from leash management. I got a shower and came in to work. I met Ann here at seven am and we went to Forest Park to set up for Earth Day. It took awhile to find our space and longer still to figure out how to set up our new tent, but we managed it in plenty of time for me to get back here and open the center at 8:30 for the start of the Sports Massage workshop – it’s team taught by a physical therapist, a massage therapist, and a trainer for The Rams – great class.

It’s ten am and the St. Louis Buddhist association KDK has not shown up yet, they normally meet here Sundays, so I am assuming they are down at the city Museum experiencing the creation and consecration of a sand Mandela. I’d like to make it down there but the funds are a no go.

I really cannot overstate how beautiful it is outside, cool and breezy with bright sun and puffy white clouds. I haven’t slept much as I finished giving the dogs a nighttime walk at 1:30 am – Brad and I went to a new place in South City called Iron Barley for John’s, of Karen and John, thirty fifth birthday. It’s just north of Bates and Virginia, on Virginia; which puts it a stones throw from Broadway Blvd. and the Mississippi. I guess the head chef at Frasier’s quit and opened this place, taking some of the staff with him. I didn’t eat, but those that did raved about it. Karen and John have made friends with the owners and that facilitated the birthday for thirty plus people, followed by a jam session – Karen and John are sort of hippies – though he’s a used car salesman and avid golfer so that picture is a little complicated.

I’m not so into the five guys with guitars all drunk and imagining that they are somehow in sync with one another, so we left soon after the jam commenced. They actually didn’t sound bad, but I have to level, I’m not so into the live music anymore. I still like going out to see Jazz at Riddles and other places, but the folk thing, not so much anymore. People will occasionally burn some CD for me that I just have to hear, but all the twenty something Dave Mathews type singer song writers all just sound the same to me. There’s not a Willey Nelson or Johnny Cash among them. I don’t know, maybe the new Wilco album will surprise me, but the great norming of radio does seem to have lead down the much feared path of flattening the national music scene to the reign of the lowest common denominator; what will sell the most in the most markets. I just can’t stop bitching, I am bitching about everything, what is up with me?

I saw Missy and Pat who I haven’t seen in months, and an old Dukum bartender who is currently dating Karen’s brother Allen. Allen is living in his mom’s house and was mentioned as a possible roommate, but I think it’s out of his price range. Angela called me a little after seven am to tell me they were getting ready to march on the old pres res in D.C., Vanessa had just ridden up in the elevator with Ted Turner. I think Beth also saw the governor of Texas. I have ten friends that I know of participating in the march, probably many more than that.

Apparently anti-choice activists are calling it a death march – let’s hope it’s the death of the current administration. I want to be tolerant, but is it any wonder that the collapse of the American educational system has coincided with the rebirth and rise of the religious right – the sort of people who tank foreign language programs to keep football, what was that coaches’ quote, “If English is good enough for the bible to be written in, it’s good enough for my kids.” Thomas Paine save me with the zinger, “One cannot say that most conservatives are stupid people, one can however say that most stupid people are conservative.”

I Loved John Kerry’s speech on Friday, it would be so nice to be done with this corporate body bag nightmare. I heard a great NPR interview yesterday with an expert on global oil reserves. Apparently US production peaked in 1978 and when that became public knowledge the OPEC countries, “knew they had us over a barrel”. Big shift is US policy after that, trying to get back control of world markets. Shell is currently in legal trouble and stock price trouble, having deliberately misstated its reserves by over 20%. According to the commentator, one of the only ways the US could break the OPEC price control monopoly, since we consume 25%+ of the global supply every year, would be to partner with the Saudis for control of Iraq’s oil – still the richest fields in the world. This is of course nothing new, but an interesting take on the wider history of oil production and exploration.

I heard another quote that just dumfounded me, Bush actually thought that establishing a democracy by force in Iraq would set an example for the region and ultimately cause they end of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict – what unbelievable stupidity – how can you even begin to have sane foreign policy with idiotic ideas like this at the top. Of course this is just posturing as we’ve done more of late to deliberately aggravate the situation. I can’t believe that this rhetoric is more than a ploy. It’s just unbelievable that smart people buy this crap.

I watched Phenomenon yesterday while I was chilling out with the dogs. John Travolta Dianetics human potential plug. When was that made? There’s an odd scene where the FBI is trying to get him to break a coded communication between Britain and Saudi Arabia – odd subtext given our current political scene. Travolta’s character threatens to go to the press, “they’re supposed to be our allies.” Very odd indeed to see such nested political commentary. Jen has Just IM’ed me that she wants to see what I am writing and I’ve been derailed from my ranting by actual work here at work – so I imagine I will rant more later. I told her that I am pissed off right now and she commented that it gives my writing energy. It feels good to be pissed off, I should get pissed off more often.

Ah, I'm for sale

Two things - one i have joined the g-mail club

and two - (this is the holy shit one)

I've been republished online

Shorthand philosophy Rant

My weekend has gone to the dogs. Friday after a long day at work - during a week when everything that could go wrong did - which is fine as I am the fixer, but when there's a never-ending stream of problems you worry for your sanity. A front desk worker pulled an astrology chart out of his wallet and told me that Mercury is in retrograde until the 30th - what does that mean? Well, if you were astrologically minded you would be aware that three to four times a year the planet Mercury appears to slow down, stop, reverse direction, slow down again, stop and resume its normal progress in the night sky. Obviously Mercury is zinging along at its normal pace, but our relative orbits to one another create this illusion and if you thought that the Earth were the center of the universe you might be tempted to theorize as to why that planet up there keeps throwing it into reverse every few months.

People who pay attention to these things, and who wrestle with free will versus determinism, feel that the retrograde period is a time when miscommunication is common, travel plans are generally screwed up – Mercury being the winged foot god who runs messages between individuals - he has got his hat on backwards and his signals are getting crossed - Hermes would be the alternate name (“Roman's had crap gods so they had to steal the Greek ones” Eddie Izzard).

In the current land of the New Age this is not hard determinism, just advice, don't try to upgrade your software right now, wait a bit, it'll go smoother. You can try if you want to, but don't say I didn't warn you. Don't buck the backslide of the incoming wave.

Hermes.... When we talk about looking for meaning in texts relative to history and other disciplines we sometimes call that the Hermeneutic Circle - Hermeneutics as a term was first used for biblical studies -scholars were reading the Greek old T and they happened to have a lot of other Greek books cluttering up the old library at Alexandria - So they asked themselves, "How does the bible jive with other historical texts from the same period etc?"

They got fancy and used words like diachronic and synchronic. Synchronic - synced up - at the same time - What were the Chinese doing while all this was going on in the Middle East? They had their own center of the universe fantasies cooking along quite nicely (I mean they had a natural knowledge of God that was not informed by actually hearing from him). This is odd as we defined “him” as omnipotent and omniscient, so omnipresent should go with that, but they did have a very big wall. I guess the phone lines were down. But still, go forth and make disciples of all nations and if they die before you get there… well I don’t know wish them well and try to talk their kids out of ancestor worship. Tell them that Guan Yin and Mother Mary are the same goddess, yeah that’s it that’s the ticket (well what the hell it worked in Africa & Latin America).

Diachronic – chronos - time - across time - across time does this stuff hold up? I mean that was then and this is now. St. Paul said no gays (most of the Greek philosophers were into man boy loving)! And women quit tempting me with your hair - get a hat damn you, a hat! (Does St. Paul scream repressed Homosexual to the rest of the world as well?) So, Kennedy stopped wearing hats - so we're done with hats, but the gay
thing is still up for biblical/social debate, at least in some circles, and of course in the Middle East they went past hair and said "awe just cover up completely - we'll give you a little window to peak out of."

Have you read the Leviticus stuff on sodomy? Lot, that’s his name, he offers his daughters to the angry crowed as a sexual sacrifice. Why is rape in this instance condoned? Lot is the only God-fearing man in the city, albeit married to a salty woman with a propensity for looking back. Why is the male rape of his male houseguests the big taboo and not the potential, remember he offers, rape of his own daughters? Because it’s the guest taboo not the sodomy one, and we don’t have the guest taboo anymore, it went missing like a sock in the wash. Just exhausts you doesn’t it.

Ok we have religion and we have culture, and we know that culture changes in that we used to live in caves and paint ourselves blue and we're sort of done with that - so what about this religion thing which claims to never change, but keeps getting translated in wacky ways and throwing out new religions every so often - who let those Jains in here - what are they Buddhists, Christians, is it a grab bag? Step right up and give Mormonism a whirl, everybody gets a planet!

But of course there are other books that really start to undermine the whole thing and like Nietzsche you eventually find out about Zarathustra and virgin births cropping up all over the place mythological speaking - Zeus had them literally coming out his ears - and so you think, well at least we've got the term that has transferred to the process - maybe the process is more true than the shit we're shoveling into it. Well teacher Karl, as long as you're wearing that hat, and I thought you were going to tell us about your weekend, what interests you about this Hermeneutic Circle?

I think I've already answered that question, however, if I were to pontificate further I would observe that if you throw a bunch of rocks into a stone polishing machine you're liable to get nice looking rocks. The machine is just as interesting, if not more so, we keep having to get new ones or at least adding settings to the dial. Think the meaning of the text comes from what the author intended it to mean, set the dial. Do you know what Bob Dylan intended for you to get out of that song? No? Like it anyway? Got your own personal mythology? Set the dial. Lets just take the text on its own terms, forget the writer, what does the text say about itself? No, the reader is what matters, what does the reader find in their quest? Got an adjenda? Feminist, Post Colonial, Existential, Freudian, Lacanian, Marxist, Inuit? Set the dial. We're in the business of both uncovering and generating
meanings.

Meaning exists in the dialogue, the conversation between readers
and text, writer and reader, writer and text. And during this conversation Mercury is always in retrograde, the ongoing telephone game spits out one Thousand and one beautiful Haiku.

The good, the true, and the beautiful - Plato sought. Aesthetics is where it's at - eat the apple - why else would it be there - it tastes good.

Speaking of shoveling shit, V's dogs are quite respectful of the local
Neighborhood, fearing that a neighbor might step in something untoward they have resigned themselves to crapping in the kitchen. My dog does not get along with her dogs, so I get to make my own little hermeneutic circle all weekend long gauging miles per gallon and lengths of intestine. It’s time for a walk in the rain.

Toxic Blog - read at your own risk:

More financial bitching about my check-to-check life with a little educational bitterness thrown in for flavor or maybe as a cautionary tale for the many I know who have yet to Rapunzel out of the tower:

I was wavering on my decision to cancel DSL, but the new bill came today, as I did not sign another yearlong contract with them – SBC - (which just ended in March, if I cancelled early I had to pay 200 dollars (to explain why it hasn’t been cancelled long before now) when I signed the contract I had two roommates and didn’t know they were leaving). They now want me to pay 49.95 a month for “access” – that is one bill I clearly don’t need. I might get dial up for 10.95 if I keep the phone, but we have DSL at work and I spend all day at my desk, in front of my computer, so other than the late night or weekend blog there is no real need for it at home – so say goodbye to Karlo’s internet connection. Either the cell phone or the landline is next.

For those of you keeping tabs on my finances my bank account is once again negative, just one in a long list of character flaws. I will not be the victim of my own stupidity any
longer! This is a good version of what usually happens to me (what I allow/participate in happening). Friday Deby asks if I want coffee – we go to this gourmet organic coffee shop nearby which is a Blog in its’ own right as it is run by this small Korean woman who is a nutritionist and she will take you to task for what you order. She’s just like the soup Nazi from Seinfeld. They generally send me from work because I get what I order – if any of the girls go she changes the order based on what she wants for their health – “No, you not order that, you have this, it healthy for you now.” If the other thing isn’t healthy then why is it on the menu? And if the women get special treatment for their health, are the men just supposed to die? Patriarchy is at times perplexing.

So, I get online and I check my bank account. I have forty some dollars and I know I have a tax check out there, but it won’t clear today surely, as I just sent it and I was hallucinating that the state refund would hit before the federal debit. Still I say, “I’ll drive if you’ll buy” because it’s not worth the risk, right? So she gives me ten bucks. The total is ten dollars and thirteen cents – I just have the ten, so I have to put it on my debit card. I actually then go to the bank and deposit her ten dollars. Of course the tax check clears leaving six dollars in my account – the debit clears leaving me negative, the deposited ten won’t hit my account until the next day because of when I deposited it and my banks policy on funds – my bank charges me 32 dollars for going four dollars negative and I don’t get paid until next Friday. I have eight dollars in change from the old piggy bank to last until then and I am burning gas between two houses to let the dogs out for my sister.

Monday night when I go see Wayne Dwyer he’s going to tell me this is my fault. That the universe is a mirror and I get what I give. He’s going to advise me to “intend” something else for myself, so I’ll keep you posted on “The power of intention.” I intend to get a new roommate, I intend to win the lottery, I intend for my student loan debt and credit card debt incurred in an attempt to live a more noble life to magically vanish. For those of you friends currently racking up the debt to get the Ph.D. please don’t think that your lifestyle of ramen and cheap booze is temporary. You have a one in five hundred shot a university job and no matter what job you get those bills start getting paid six months from your last paper. Marry well, be the educated trophy spouse.
When I got back to the office Deby asked for her change from the ten and I told her the story, she looked at the menu and showed me that they’d overcharged me, ringing up two coffees as larges instead of 12 oz. Fucked all around, what are you going to do? Go let the dogs out.

I just turned on the radio and heard the jazz standard “Rich on Dreams.” I guess that’s it, I’m rich with imagination and friendship and poor when it comes to harder forms of currency.

We thrash about in our youth,

and when are we not young?

Dierberg’s you woo me with your cheap gin prices. $7.49 for a bottle of Gordon’s and Vess Tonic water for only 79 cents. Including tax, my habit did not break a ten spot, would that the Schnuck’s would be so bold as to meet this price challenge. They have better chicken wings, but the gin’s the thing wherein you’ll catch the conscience of the king! (From the mousetrap scene of course, there are more things in heaven and in earth then are dreamt of in your cocktails, Horacio).

Mary requested that I blog about the ghetto Schnuck’s at which we sometimes shop. Brad has spoken to the manager about their dearth of tonic. Can you imagine that scene? An irate Brad mad enough to get after the manager, “Where is the fucking tonic? You obviously have a demand for it, you would think that would inspire you to stock more!” Mary brought grapefruit juice over last night as she encountered yet another run on the precious anti malarial (the origin of the gin and tonic – the best way to take quinine in southern climes and if you want to, you can add limes). Gin itself was developed as an anesthesia, image that, the crack cocaine of the eighteen fifties fresh off the Christmas tree and ready for surgery. Ghetto Schnuck’s can be distinguished from Ladue Schnuck’s, Esquire Schnuck’s, and many other Schnuck’s by its’ ghetto fabulousness. This is a self conscious quality perhaps best exemplified by the last time I rented movies there (Monday and Wednesday .99 new releases on DVD). Imagine that Florence from The Jefferson’s is checking me out - “Can I see your license? I know you’re the only one with that name in this computer.” Canned laughter follows the scene; this is what Willis was talking about. We love the ghetto Schnuck’s as it cuts against everything that Schnuck’s is about, wealth and privilege meets the hood. Ghetto Schnuck’s is high-end food for low-end people, livin liminal and livin large.

Another day, another dollar, punctuated by yet another trip to the airport. I drove V to fly out for the funeral of her ex mother-in-law in L.A. Brad is taking care of the dogs tonight and then I have them for the weekend. Pretty dogs, but totally undisciplined Weimaraners. http://www.akc.org/breeds/recbreeds/weim.cfm

I also have the brand new Jetta, which is a fun change from the super fund clean up Chevy, but was given to me with the gas gauge on empty so that’s no good for broke man, who is of course broke again having made my monthly blood letting payment of $650 to the creditors. My car with the full tank is parked over at V’s (a half hour away with the overdo movies in the glove box of course) and the high end German driving machine will have to prove to me that better gas mileage is not just a function of German diesel engines, so look forward to my blog about running out of gas on a St. Louis highway.

Are you a St. Louis resident in exile, reading my blog for the casual mention of touchstones from your own youth? Well, if you are I have sad news. Everyday for the last three years I have gone zinging by the Parkmore diner on my way to work. Just the other day I came over the rise and saw only half a roof. A giant device of destruction was slowly eating its way through the restaurant in the way that countless drunken patrons had systematically moved through their meals ad infinitum below that hojo orange roof. The Parkmore has been closed for years, but you can picture it easily. It was located on the busy corner of Clayton and Big Bend avenues, sandy brown stones quarried from the limestone cliffs of south-county, set into the concrete like the Vegas eateries of the fifties. It quietly screamed to me on each passing, “you are destined to open a Tiki bar within these very walls.” But alas, it was not to be, Walgreens has beaten me once again. The interior was nearly identical to the diner in Pulp Fiction – orange carpet, brick and the never ending counter with coffee station upon coffee station for all that “honey” cares to drink.

The following story is pure fiction and fantasy – don’t believe a word of it.

The last time I dropped Acid I was in the Parkmore. I was in my year off after high school, but I was hanging out with high school girl named Nanette. She was a theater tech and into all things French. Nanette and I had gone to the diner, this would have been April of 1992, and we were having food when she slid a tab of white blotter across the table to me. Sure, why not, she’s kicked it up a notch and I am generally game. I put the tab of paper, generously soaked in psycho-tropics, under my tongue. I went to hippie High School, Clayton in the eighties thought it was 1968, so there was some experience with this sort of thing. White blotter acid is a mild trip, sort of an emotional intensifier. You’re not going to see God barreling into your chest in the form of a rainbow (that’s another story), but you might find something very funny.

Post dose, Nanette and I decided that it was spring and we needed to fly a kite. We walked up to Walgreens and found a kite with a giant mermaid on it. The fish woman was having a mild flirtation or conversation with a Dr. Seuss fish and this seemed perfect. We had one significant problem, which was the total lack of wind. I suggested that wind often comes off of bodies of water so we should find water. She reminded me that St. Louis is really just an island mid-river, so we picked the Mississippi and headed for The Arch. At 10:30 that night we were under the center of The Arch. I found enough draft to get the kite air born and we were enjoying the mermaid’s ascent under the metal work and above the grass that had replaced the blighted warehouses of the previous century.
Got a ghetto? Level it and put in a national monument with a conspicuously forgetful history museum in it. If that doesn’t work try putting in a couple of four lane highways, nothing kills a cultural district like dropping a four-lane highway on it, just ask Mayor Dailey. You can do all kinds of social engineering with a well-placed highway, it works just like a moat, only cars at 70 mph are harder to get across than a lake full of gators. If that doesn’t work, move out to the county and only come in for ball games.
The Arch is a national, rather than merely a local fixture, so when the mounted police rode up on their Arabian bred stallions with their shaved heads and Dudley-Do-Right hats we did consider the possibility that we were in federal, rather than state or local, trouble. Bad cop called me over sternly, I gave Nanette the reigns of the mermaid, who was gliding effortlessly higher, though without enough string to reach the red blinking light at the apex of The Arch. The light is right below the window from which you can see both the house I grew up in and the curve of the earth. Good cop leaned off his horse, the lights of city hall behind him and groups of drunken tourists moving across the lawn, “The Park closes at eleven. I like your kite.” Good and bad cop rode off to a safe distance and watched the gentle scene. They really liked the kite. At ten fifty we reeled in the mermaid and drove out to a parking lot near Lambert to watch the planes take off. Near dawn we were in Forest Park, the fountains weren’t filled yet so we watched the morning mist rise from the grass from our dry vantage point in the unfilled concrete basin just below The Spanish Pavilion. I remember watching a bridge appear out of the mist and talking with Nanette about the parity between the morning and an impressionist painting. When I took her home around eight or nine her mother cursed a blue streak at us both, I haven’t seen Nanette since, but I kept the kite until just a few years ago.

Ah well, off to bed in preparation for another long day. A storm is coming in and Sebastian is upset.

Today I am a busy man and in the spirit of that haste I would like to share a special moment with you.

Blogs for Jen and more

If I were attempting in this blog to get a summery of my daily itinerary then I would have to admit that I have fallen very far behind. Time spent writing on cold days is too easily replaced when warmth arrives ushering in long walks with the dog. St. Louis has a rapid transition of seasons. Monday last I had to bring the plants in due to a possible frost, my neighbors turned their central air on over the weekend because of the heat, it happens that fast – five days. I actually turned my heat off back in February as it was a mild spring and I needed to save money; the dog has fur and the fish have their own little tank heaters.

We left off at Thursday I think. Friday night I took Angela and Vanessa to the airport and gained Stoltz for the weekend. I equipped them each with a flask full of Sky vodka and sent then on their merry way. Brad and Beth came over Friday night and we grilled in the backyard – very mellow. They left early and I watched the made for the Science Fiction Channel mini-series Children of Dune. I enjoyed that and am reminded how much I enjoy those books. I might reread them soon as my nephew just got the first one. It would be fun to read it with him.

Saturday Brad came over in the morning and we walked the dogs down to the Loop. We had coffee and read out in front of St. Louis Bread Company. Lots of little kids came up to pet the dogs.

“How old is your dog?”
“He’s ten, but he still acts like a puppy.”
“I think my rabbit is ten, but she has a problem.”
“Oh yeah, what’s that.”
“Well I think she’s blind or something, wanna know where she goes to the bathroom?”
She leans in close, “She goes to the bathroom in her food dish, ewwwwww.”

“Honey, come and eat your sandwich.”

A twelve-year-old girl Asian girl set up her cello on the steps next to us. Her music books were decorated with drawings of butterflies and had titles written out in her own hand. She must have been instructed to transcribe the music as part of her training. Her teacher was busy setting up her stand etc. while she applied hand lotion in preparation for her performance. Brad and I were both expecting Mozart, but she cut against the grain and began to play fabulous American roots music.

After the dog walk I cleaned out a lot of Mitchell’s crap from the basement, I put it in the garage with the remaining debris from Richard’s estate sale (held well over a year ago) and later in the day the men who had been cleaning the garage out earlier in the week came back to finish the job. Feels good to be rid of some of that psychic weight.

Saturday night Arnie and Alana took Mary and I out to dinner at The King and I for wonderful Thai food. It was probably the best meal I’ve ever had there, they must have a new chef. Afterwards Mary came over for Gin and the Steve Martin film Novocain.

Sunday I mostly relaxed and cleaned. I watched About Schmidt and picked Angela and Vanessa up from the airport. I watched Sopranos over at Angela’s and helped her put her new fish tank together.

Monday I picked Christine up from the airport and we had House of India for lunch great food. She had a good trip enjoyed the break from her daily life that conferences allow. Later I went bowling – we lost – and I went to Tiffany’s for late night breakfast after – Vanessa ordered me something called The Shiter, which should be self-explanatory, but involved sausage, hash browns, and two eggs covered by a healthy portion of chili – served with toast and coffee. I don’t plan to eat today as I’ve had my calories for the week.

I might expand on these scenes, as there were some noteworthy moments, I initially just wanted to try and recall chronology.

For example:

I arrived at Mary’s on Saturday at about ten till seven. While we were waiting for Arnie and Alana Mary revealed that she had a bottle of wine to share as they toured her new house, however, she had no opener. Oddly enough (this is odd) I didn’t have one with me, after a quick check of the car I went inside and found her junk drawer. If you ever find yourself in this predicament you may be tempted to force the cork into the bottle. This results in the shredding of the cork and everyone’s wine glasses being filled with floating debris. Instead, locate a long screw and screw driver, use a knife to cut back the foil as per usual and then screw the screw into the cork. Having done this you then proceed to remove said cork with the claw potion of the hammer. Always remember the Marine Corps motto kids, “When in the field, improvise”. This is never more true then when you are under threat of being denied consumables which are present but obstructed somehow.
My father tells a related story of compromise from his days in the Korean War. The American Marines were on a troop transport train with members of the Australian military. The Marines had been provided with food rations while the Australians had not. Having a different hierarchy of needs, the Australians had case upon case of Foster’s Lager, but no food. The compromise seems obvious. The improvisation, which arose to remove obstacles, involved throwing the American MPs off the train as a removal of impediment to shared consumption. When in the field, improvise.

Iraq information war hinders impartiality, says Reuters 16.04.2004

As fighting intensifies in Iraq, journalists’ ability to impartially report on events and avoid getting embroiled in the US military’s public information campaign is increasingly hindered, says a Thursday report from Reuters. The news agency detailed the parallel battle journalists are fighting in Iraq, as US authorities tighten the reigns on the flow of information and violence keeps reporters from moving about freely. “Gaps between statements read from the briefing room podium and information coming from the ground has widened in recent weeks,” Reuters reported. “I think it’s important to understand that they [US authorities] view public information as an area of battle,” the news agency quoted Carl Conetta of the Project for Defense Alternatives as saying. “They call it a battle space. They understand that both within Iraq and outside the direction of public opinion, the weight of public opinion, is very important in terms of what freedom they have to act.” The report uses the example of the US-led forces’ crackdown on insurgents in Falluja, following the murder and mutilation of four US civilian contractors there earlier this month, as an example of the information war. News agencies have reported that some 600 Iraqis have died in the fighting in Falluja since early April. When questioned about those casualties, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the US Army’s chief spokesperson in Iraq, said the Falluja operation was “tremendously precise, tremendously circumspect, and well within the rules of engagement”. While that statement was largely predictable, what came afterwards was not. Television footage, including from Reuters, has best illustrated the tragedy in Falluja, broadcasting scenes of hundreds of wounded lying in makeshift hospitals and the bodies of dead children and elderly men and women scattered about. To that, Kimmitt suggested that viewers simply change the channel. He suggested that media outlets reporting that US forces were responsible for large numbers of civilian casualties should simply be ignored. “On the images of American and coalition forces killing innocent civilians, my advice to you is change the channel…The stations that are showing Americans killing women and children are not legitimate channels,” he said. Aside from Iraqi civilian casualties, the Reuters report said that authorities also appear to be trying to quell the dissemination of information about wounded US soldiers. But the US Army insists it has done nothing to halt the free flow of information. “We have never actively held back information, the only thing I hold back actively hold back are those things that are classified. I think we run an extremely transparent operation here,” Reuters quoted Kimmitt as saying. (ISN)

Cool

Let's see if I can get this interesting link to work.

Are you political in the ville? Do you put your money where your mouth is?
Your neighbors do and here's how.

So Easter is now behind us and we're all clear on how the pagan fertility festival was taken over by the crazy Christians who stuck crosses in the rabbits warrens when.... no you're right it makes no sense..... unless

Spring Cleaning & The Mental Weekend Wander

There is no disinfectant like light and fresh air. My car, formerly known by Mary as the superfund site of a tragic gasoline spill is just now neighboring on the familiar musty old car smell, or I am just used to it. The house is doggy, especially with the extra dog Stoltz who is currently sleeping literally on my feet, but I just vacuumed, the windows are open and I am burning a few candles. What funster epics have I left out of my blog? We went and sang karaoke on Thursday night before Christine got here. Beth called me after her work party; a CPA celebration of the end of tax season. She and I met Mary up at McClain’s. There are two bars here in St. Louis that remind me oddly of shrunken versions of counterparts in the ville. One is Off Broadway, which is a dead ringer for The Golden Spike, and the other is McClain’s. I have a theory about the psychic population pressure of a major city forcing these recurring locations into smaller spaces, but I would need several other similar bars in varying size cities and good population statistics to make truly scientific calculations.

McClain’s is like the long lost Dukum of old. Well, The Dukum Inn post turn of the century inn, post prohibition, post Biker Bar, pre lightning strike funded mass expansion into student centered disco-rama (which is growing on me, I am no Luddite). It has the same red ductwork smoke eater over the bar, but it is made of smaller pipe hung from a lower ceiling. It has the exact same red brick interior with mounted dead animal heads, but less of them, and is half the floor space of the old Dukum pre bathroom smash. It also has food, so perhaps Dukum when paired with the now caved in and hauled away Taco Shop; the foundation of which Craig, the owner, has thrown an awning over and calls The Dukum Out.

McClain’s has the same Budweiser rotating Clydesdale’s circling into infinity above the center of the old, mirror backed bar, which is covered in the same kind of weird memorabilia placed there by patrons long dead or departed. The same Mega Touch machine is mounted to the end of the bar. It has Trivia Whiz, but lacks Wally sitting there playing it, fingering his jewel encrusted money clip given to commemorate his years in the factory. The necks at McClain’s are long and mostly red, but infinitely friendly once it’s clear that you’re going to drink and sing like every last one of them. A pint glass gin & tonic is two dollars and fifty cents, you would have to go far back in time indeed to get Dukum prices like that, or you could walk up to Ryan’s and get one for a buck and a half. Harry, “I just don’t understand why the kids drink over at the Dukum when we are so much cheaper.” Karl, “I don’t know Harry (atmosphere, atmosphere, atmosphere & the smoke and grease smell from the poorly vented “kitchen”).”

McClain’s is located catty corner from the McDonald’s that my older brother Andrew worked at in High School. Back in 1983 he leapt over the counter and helped a patron make it through a severe epileptic seizure. Well done there. You can’t step in the same river twice, but you certainly can sit under the same old tree for a bit and marvel at how the river’s changed.

There’s another bar there in that same area that we used to frequent when the boys were all still in law school at SLU. It’s called Shoot A’Rack and has several full sized pool tables, which took me awhile to get used to after the miniature tables of the ville. “That’s a lot of green.” Long before it was Shoot A’Rack, back when Andy worked at McDonald’s, it was a liquor store called Deer Run Liquor, which I always found odd, as everything back in small town Wisconsin was Deer Run this and Deer Run that.

My sister V’s wedding reception was held at Deer Run Country Club located on The Deer Run Golf Course. I spent most of that affair in the basement playing Galaga. There was a choice of Beef or Shrimp and my other sister Sandy’s boyfriend Brian asked me to request Spirit in the Sky from DJ. Brian was a graphic designer and athlete who won a small part in the film Major League, which was filmed in Milwaukee’s Brewer’s stadium. You can see his face briefly when they’re all getting chewed out in the locker room, otherwise he’s just in the outfield and you can’t tell it’s him. Brian had a habit of loosing his wallet and he drove an orange Ford Fiesta until he wrecked it and my dad used it to Frankenstein Sandy/Andy’s white one and his/mine red one. Not exactly Marcel Proust, my remembrance of things past suffers from a postmodern sense of disjuncture and obfuscated meaning.

I’m still quite good at Galaga, which survives globally in laundry mats. There’s a sit down version in the laundry mat next door to Shoot A-Rack. I would often play it when R and I used to go there to do our laundry. There’s a standup version at the mat over on Millbrook, that’s a hood laundry mat where people often drink beer while doing their laundry. I was oddly upscale with my Corona during my last visit more than a year ago.

Idle speculation that should be removed from this blog: (as if it isn’t all idle)

Why would they call the Liquor store Deer Run? The golf course allusion is obviously linked to the deer that live and run on the actual course. This liquor store was after all in the Deer Run shopping plaza, but now we’ve just shifted the blame. It’s in a bit of a valley next to a viaduct that must have replaced a small river. There are railroad tracks right there that speak to the former more industrial economy of the area. Deer use both rail lines and viaducts to navigate into the heart of Mid Western cities like St. Louis and Chicago. Maybe it was just a popular name for things built in the late seventies and early eighties, like all the thirty one year old Jennifers, and five year old Sages, who roam the earth. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call a folk etymology. It sounds plausible, but it is most likely bullshit.

When I first grew a beard in High School, Deer Run would sometimes sell to me. I would buy weird things, like Matilda Bay wine coolers and bottles of expensive red wine, to throw them off the scent. When Angela was in college at Webster, she would go there on the beer run for her dorm. These places form an odd triangle of locations that apparently hold a certain gravitational influence on my life. I stopped going to “the rack” gradually, but an event that marked my real separation from that bar was the recent death of Rowland the bartender.

BJ was in town on a Friday night and we went up for our usual poolathon. Rowlad would have made me several drinks that night. I think early the next week he had a stroke behind the bar, while working, and was rushed to a hospital. He was fine for more then a week when a second major stroke killed him. There is some room for a negligence suit as he should have been stable. The lawyer boys were consulted on our last visit to the bar, but I haven’t heard anything nor would I. Dan & I went to the visitation, where we were both welcomed and appreciated. I went to the funeral by myself and probably shouldn’t have. I guess I didn’t know him well enough and some of the more regular regulars seemed uncomfortable that I was there. Though his daughter appreciated me coming, she’s replaced him at the bar and has trouble remembering my name since I’m rarely there. It’s ok because I have trouble with her name beyond the moniker “Rowland’s Daughter”. She knows I drink gin & tonics though, and is always sweet to us when we’re there. They had only recently reconciled as father and daughter. “At least,” she says, “we had a little time together and he got to know his grandson. At least we had that.”

So I don’t drink there much anymore, just when BJ is in town. The Rack reminds me of Ryan’s, never many women there anymore. Cheep booze, clouds of smoke & a body count. Though I suppose that’s an apt description of nearly every similar dive bar in the world. We used to hang out there with a group of women we called the Volley Ball girls – they were Webster’s Volley Ball team in the fall of 2001, we did a cultural exchange where we taught them how to swing dance and they explained who Nelly was, but those are stories for another day. Remembering Rowland has taken the wind out of me for a bit so I think I’ll take the dogs for a late afternoon wander and sort Mary, Arnie and Alana out for dinner.

I’m feeling a little lost today. It’s odd when self perception collides with other views of you. Angela has commented that I seem really happy and together lately while Deby told me today that I have occasionally snapped at her this week and people have asked her if I am doing ok. I think she’s exaggerating. She said she knows that I feel overqualified for the work I do and that I am unhappy in my job, I’m unhappy when birds are attacking, no actually that was kind of fun, but honestly I am really just grateful to have a job. I feel badly that she’s perceiving me this way and I busted my ass this morning to display job commitment, a major shift like a job change is the last thing I need right now. Is my job secure? How long did BJ look, a year or more? And yet I made no secret of the fact that I was applying for those teaching positions. She pointedly asked me, “How old are you going to get before you figure out what you want to do. Don’t you think you better start figuring that out?” I think I’m longing to interact with students in a more meaningful way then the avenues I currently have. What if I were a teacher here? How would that look? I’ve only taken level one, so I’d have a year of classes and then I would have to practice for two years before I was eligible to instruct. Still, I like everything we do here, everything we’re about. If I got my shit together I could do a writing workshop here – but I’m not sure I could stomach saying all those old cliché’s – write what you know – write everyday – start a blog for self growth.

Christine told me last night that she was jealous of how open my life is. She said, “You’re young enough and smart enough that you really could almost go anywhere and do anything.” That’s the trick, what do I want to do. Christine and I really talked about a range of things last night, I keep running our conversation over again in my mind. She flew out this morning to a conference on Celtic studies. I think she and I use language in similar ways which makes it easier to communicate somehow, Adam and I were/are like that too. She left her car at my place and later Vanessa will drop hers off, eek, I’m a car service and I will have been out to the airport twice by days end. Wealth comes in giving. Or does wealth come in being? Small thoughts, what’s my purpose in life, how do I figure that out? I look at images I get from web services like career.com and I don’t see myself reflected there. I feel an affinity with the disaffected writer who is something of a cultural outsider, but what kind of a fantasy is that? I don’t know where I want my stories to go anymore than I know where I want to go. I really need to get clear – to make an effort to get clear on exactly what it is I want. I need to get me found.

I've added an email link should you wish to bend my ear in private, please do so -k-

Strange things are afoot at the circle K my friends. As I left my house this morning and began the walk down my driveway to my car, which I park behind the house, I noticed a small headless squirrel. Further investigation revealed not one, but three headless baby squirrels, several blood stains from various stages of their demise and no offending creature in sight. Since I would imagine the body to be the meatiest part, what’s with the decapitation? Is there a French Revolution underway in the land of small squirrels? Is squirrel brain a kitty delicacy? Three dead baby squirrels in your path on your way to work, after you’ve been in combat with a bird earlier in the week, will make you question what the universe has up its sleeve. The critter omens are coming fast and furious with nary a Shaman in sight to make with the interpretation.
What changed post squirrel? I went home at lunch to discover that the realty company had finally sent someone over to clean out the garage. I had talked with the guys for a bit. This is odd as I just told Vanessa I would clean out a space in the garage to store her car for the weekend and here that wish has come to pass. How are three dead squirrels an omen of garage cleaning? Certainly it’s good Feng Shui that all that shit is out of there. Now I have some place to set up my garage sale. This is good, right?
Well, if they are coming true then I best get wishing. We’re going to play a little Wayne Dwyer game called manifesting intentions.
I do need a new roommate. I need a roommate ASAP to help with bills and generally be a force for good in this our troubled universe. My manifested roommate will drop into my metaphorical lap in the next few days and we will have a grand time this summer with multiple siestas to fill our lives with party-rific joy. This new roommate will be nearly issue free and will fit into my life like a ceramic statue of a saint fits into your garden for all to love and enjoy!

You must all now play with the chicken.

My friend Kate was on NPR’s Morning Edition yesterday chastising the Bush administration for a lack of global awareness pre nine eleven. Kellie was on NPR yesterday in her capacity as a voter’s rights activist – my friends are getting their fifteen minutes in and getting our voices heard! So odd just running into Kellie and commenting that I occasionally hear her on NPR and then there she is just a few days later.


Synchronicity, or as Mary would say, “that’s a video-synchrocy.” We actually had a synchrocy (neologism coined by a friend of Mary’s) last night when a Patti Smith song was featured in the film we were watching after being a cover story on NPR just a few days ago.

Mary came over last night and swam a few laps with me in the gin pool. We watched Wonderland with Val Kilmer. Interesting to watch the film with someone who was living in LA at the time of the wonderland murders, add to that Mary’s chops as a media guru and communications prof skills and you’ve go an encyclopedic wealth of knowledge when it comes to any film – makes for good viewage.

Ah well – have some “work from home” stuff to take care of before I am out the door. I need to find some photos I scanned of the center for that brochure I did last month, we’re finally going to press and JPEGs just wont do.

Besides, a massive number of people have been fired from teaching positions in the last year so there is a huge demand for the positions that come open. The St. Louis Schools are failing, imagine that Mr. Bush, and as part of the budget crises they’ve had to let a ton of people go. As I have a job already, one that I like well enough I might add, I don’t need a job. I hope someone who really needed a job got that position and I suppose that goes for the other positions I applied for as well. I know I have a set of friends who are adamant about teaching being my vocation and something I really need to get back to, but there are lots of ways to teach and maybe the classroom just isn’t where I need or want to be right now. I have lots of vocations and have many rabbits to chase before I catch what I am looking for.

Confession: I don’t really want a roommate. I don’t want to move. I just want to be rich and afford the place in which I live now, the place I love. Is this in the cards? I don’t know. After Erin moved out how many potential roommates have we gone through? Thad, Nada, Andrew, Mark; that’s not really that many. Nada, Andrew, and Mark can’t afford the place and Thad fell in love with Liz, was left in the land of the unrequited when Liz began a thing with the train engineer Chris and so as a consequence I get no roommate. Hmmmm. Perhaps I’ll float and flounder, cut cost etc. and just do this by myself. It’s making a tremendous commitment to live poor in order to live well, an odd compromise. Every home I’ve had has been just that – a home – I can’t wait to get there after work and just be – my place recovers and restores me.

So I am not really upset that I don’t have a roommate. I also got a rejection letter yesterday from one of the schools I applied to teach at. It didn’t surprise me and I don’t feel rejected. I didn’t see myself teaching there and only really applied as an afterthought. I don’t think my life will go in that direction right now, there is something else right around the corner. So I guess we’ll wait a bit and see what that something is.

What should I write about? I get these few minutes at lunch – we’ve been really busy this week. News of the odd, we had a meeting on Monday – during which we began to hear critter noises coming from the ceiling. Continuing with the turkey theme, a bird had worked its way into the space above the drop ceiling. I get all the resident boy jobs of which this is just a colorful example. I went and got a sheet from the clinic and a broom from the back room. I closed the office door and removed a ceiling tile. I then began to herd the bird toward the hole by hitting the ceiling with the broom handle. Eventually the bird flew into the office proper– at which point I was trapped in the room with a pissed off bird which then began to fly in circles, perching on the fake tree, the shelf, the golden statue of Ganesha, the bamboo plant on the filing cabinet, etc.
I tried at first to throw the sheet over the bird, but was having no success with that, he was quite adept at changing course mid flight. I got him once, but he escaped behind my desk before I could close the trap. This made the situation worse as now an unseen pissed off bird was making a mess of the computer connections between my desk and the wall. He eventually regained the air and made the mistake of attempting to alight on the sill of the French doors. I was able to press him against the glass with the bristles of the broom and then get the sheet around him for safe transit outside. Debbie told me that birds inside are bad omens, Tuesday was a horrible day full of fear and loathing, so Monday’s bird did in fact predict a ridiculously rigorous day.
Today is much more low key. I have a massage scheduled for four. I also got paid!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So now I get to decide what I can live on for the next few weeks, and then I’ll send the rest to past due utilities. The fish get a filter, the dog gets a bone, I get Gin to swim in, and all is well with the payday world. More later.

My dream over the weekend that linked the HAC to a burning barn under attack from large turkeys has all come true. I had to “fire” a front desk worker, we’ve suspended a student, the director of admissions is out with appendicitis for possibly a month and I will be doing parts of her job in addition to my own & I am out of coffee. On the good side I scrounged enough money to go bowling from my various change jars and I bowled a 151 last night. We won three out of four games, but have still slipped to fourth place overall. How did we win them? How did I get a 151? I got a “turkey”. The subconscious is a strange place.

Written last night:

Angela quote of the day, “It’s funny that Disco Fuck Shower and Department of Family Services start with the same letters.” Angela has a little bit of a wine buzz on. We just got back from Venus Envy which…

Written today:

Which was quite good. Though nothing to go to if you have claustrophobia. There were something like five thousand expected to attend. What is Venus Envy? Well, check out the link, it was an art show, music fest, performance “happening”. We entered through the lobby and immediately there was a press of people, like moving through the most crowded room at a college party, a constant negotiation of both direction and personal space. We of course made our way first to the bar, which required a sneaky elevator ride (sneaky as most people were using a very crowded grand staircase to get up to the second floor lobby). The bartenders were serving behind the old teller windows, think Jessie James hold up and you’ll get the picture. The second floor lobby is actually a two-story space with large windows facing in. A belly-dancing troupe was performing in the window to our upper right keeping time to a solo musician on the stage just to the right of the elevator we had ascended. Angela went to Webster with the performer, but I can’t remember her name. It was a dollar donation for a glass of either wine or beer, so we started on the Yellow Tail Shiraz and made our way back to the music. Every free wall space was covered with art installations and for many of them the artist was nearby to meet and talk with. There was also an assortment of chocolate covered truffles, cheesecakes, etc.

Who did you run into Karl? First I saw a guy I used to wash dishes with at Sadie Thompson’s on Demun. Then the parade of R’s friends began. First were Katie and Julie, the lesbian couple that live a few doors down from her. Julie went to high school with Brad and Katie went to college with us. Katie seemed happy to see me, Julie less so, but there you go. The same graded reaction when we ran into Casey and Jeff, Jeff was friendly as always and Casey was cold. She had been a friend of Erin’s so there we could have a double dislike. Casey & Erin have matching fish tattoos, but at the time Erin moved out she and Casey weren’t really spending any time together. Erin was having trouble connecting with the “new” Casey and wasn’t sure how she felt about their pending marriage. I know a great deal about the relationship dynamics of these two couples and am tempted to write about them as I am journaling, but I suppose it’s best not to in this more public forum. Suffice it to say that all long-term couples have their messy moments. So if I am to feel judged by them it is with a very large grain of salt. Those are R’s local friends, or they were during that first year here, maybe two or three more (Thomas, another Katie, and her current roommate Ann) and that’s it, she really felt lost here in St. Louis without the wider circle of friends we’d had in the ville & Katie didn’t always treat her very well. I wish her good supportive friends.

So after that set I ran into Marie and Amy from the center, a few HAC graduates, one of my former students from TSU, a few of Angela’s clients, one of Karen’s coworkers – Laura – Kelly from TSU – who didn’t recognize Beth. Many of these people are professional activists for women’s, gay, disability rights etc. I hear Kelly on NPR all the time. Paul the Osteopath was her last male date before she switched teams.

St. Louis really is a small town when it comes to circles of culture. Angela observed that there were lots of fascinating “real people” there and also lots of poseurs. She liked the photography more than anything else, I really went for a diversity of art, some of course was total crap – someone had bought seventies style oil paintings and did makeshift cats all over the pre-existing pictures – I could have done that instillation in under two hours including the time it would take to junk shop for the already painted canvases, to anticipate your argument it was not conceptually interesting either, it just sucked.

I liked the ghosts most of all; the elderly art critics in their 1970’s attire, the women in long hippie dresses and the men with turtlenecks, many of whom were walking with canes (ah the cane detail from my dream last night). Watching them was like watching slow moving dinosaurs, unhurried in the press of people, taking time to evaluate and digest what they were seeing, somehow tragic in their disconnection from the production of this moment. The women were all shrunken and then men were all bent, as though they had turned to ask someone behind them a question and were frozen in their twist, doomed now to move forward while always looking back.

After we’d explored every nook and cranny we headed over to Vanessa’s as we’d never been and we were close. I’m dog-sitting Stolzt the next two weekends so she’s going to bring him over later today to get adjusted. This coming weekend the girls are doing a girl’s trip to Chicago for Bethany’s birthday and the following weekend they are all marching on Washington for Women’s rights, together with Paul’s wife Caroline, Linda & Bob from the ville, I really know a ton of people who are going.

Vanessa’s place is really cute, she has these great huge prints that had hung in the cooperate offices of Purina for forty plus years. They are actually too heavy to hang so they’re propped against two different walls. My favorite of the two is an aerial view of checkered wheat fields, the view you’d have from a plane flying over Kansas. We have the same desk, a door balanced on two filing cabinets. As part of her increasing political activism she is reading Clark’s new book, as well as Bob Woodward’s assault on the Bush war machine. I need to make more time to go beyond my NPR education and get into the meat of this current nightmare. I bullshit daily in my blog and body bags are coming back into the country un-filmed and undocumented.

Rant:
After Vietnam the military realized it had to control the message. They over-controlled in Desert Storm and all we saw were hotel lobbies, unless you were anywhere else in the world and then you got to see the napalmed highway out of Kuwait, I remember this image of a blackened hand hanging out of a charred Suzuki Samurai.

How many bodies have our imbedded journalists shown us to really viscerally experience the human cost of warfare? And I live in St. Louis, where many of those bombs and the planes that drop them, come from. My daily economy is supported by this bloodshed. The bloodiest century in human history and I am worried about a new pump for my fish tank, capricious at best. Think globally act locally, is that enough?

Gore Vidal wrote about how Timothy McVeigh ran a bulldozer in his tour of duty in Desert Storm, pushing bodies into mass graves. Vidal argues that it was this experience, together with his reaction to Waco Texas, that turned him against his own government and led to his involvement in the Oklahoma City bombing. He also calls America, “The United States of Amnesia.” It's easy to "forget" what you've never known about recent history - I guess my point is that I am constantly aware that we only only get the iceberg's tip from the mainstream media & I am castigating myself for my own apathy. bell hooks asks us to be “enlightened witnesses” if we are in the position of the observer we must observe critically and ask others to do so. Is that enough? I worry at times that to do more is to invite the Socratic response, martyrdom for corrupting the youth of Athens. The people don’t want to know the truth and they will kill you rather than hear it. (Plato's allegory of the cave - Dr. Martin Luther King, Ghandi). How to you crtique & challenge without getting killed for it? I think about Jen's recent "dialogue" with her former college friend, agreeing to disagree is not democracy - we need to converse - to dialogue - to arrive at actionable consensous..... Blahhhhhhh

Happy Easter, I’m going to my sister’s for ham.

Dream fragment from last night

The Healing Arts Center – or at least a school with a similar cast – has been moved to a farm and classes take place in the barn. I am coming up the road to the barn on a bicycle when I turn around and See Dr. John’s van coming out of the woods with a cop car behind him – he’s not driving on any road, but is making for the road. The chase gets closer, passes me, and I’m racing to catch up with them to see what is going on. John stops in front of the barn but instead of a cop getting of the cop car a giant turkey gets out with a shotgun. Two of the farm hands and myself race up and we have picks and hoes and we are trying to fight off the giant turkey which is having a hard time firing the shotgun with it’s huge talons. We eventually get the gun away from it and chase it off.

An African American couple brings their very young son into the barn to learn medicine from Dr. John. I am thinking how beautiful the chemical equations are all over the board. I am also still thinking about the giant turkey and I think that I need an axe should it come back. I look at several axes that are mounted on the wall and choose something small that is more like a tomahawk. I look at the handle and it is plastic, it says “Boomerang made by Frisbee” and the handle is loose. A boomerang tomahawk is perfect for that giant attacking turkey/cop.

One of the farm hands tells me I should go inside and learn how to use it. I go inside and a shaman and his wife are there, they have just arrived. I am prompted to tell him my vision, but he doesn’t want to hear it, he wants to play music and make small talk. His wife wants him to hear my vision – they mean the attack of the turkey – and eventually she convinces him, so he makes me sit with my back to his while he plays his drum and she plays a flute. I never get to tell the full tale of the dream within a dream – I start to say, “but this is a waking vision” but he just wants to know how old I am. I tell him I am almost thirty-one and he says, “I have a cousin who is thirty, you’ll marry her” and we shake hands on it while I laugh. He then tells me that I need to go visit, “the city of the mounds in Missouri.” I wonder upon awakening if this is a mixed location of Cahokia Mounds and the Cave of The Mounds in Wisconsin.

The next thing I see is TV footage of the city of the mounds, like a tourist commercial, followed by a news segment about a giant burning barn. The barns roof collapses and I see two firefighters leap into the flames below. I might be one of them. A phone is ringing. Someone is calling to tell my friend Beth that I am missing. She says, “No, he’s fine, I know because his cane is here”. That’s the last image of the dream.

What else?
Oh the tigers
Earlier in the dream I work at a zoo – this is my second Siberian tiger dream – all the animals are in cages except the tigers, which are allowed to roam free. I have several encounters with tigers throughout the dream, young and old tigers on the ground and up in trees, and I am telling a women about how afraid they make me and at the same time how I get past the fear and are with them and love them. There are two women in this part of the dream who are jealous of one another and trying to find things out about each other through me. There is a third woman who is a new keeper and I am training her on how not to get killed by the tigers, where not to stand or crouch. That part of the dream is more vague – I just don’t remember it that well. Ah well, interpretations?

A good day to do your taxes, when you’re broke and it’s raining. All things considered I came out ok. I owe the feds $49.84 for the old illegal war (I hope they spend it treating the members of the military who have been poisoned by their own radioactive bullets – spent uranium shells cut through steel like butter, but they don’t do your testicles or ovaries any good) and the state owes me $141.00 for the car repairs that come of driving on Missouri roads and dealing with the graduates of our under-funded schools. They did this great thing when they brought in the lottery, they promised that much of the lottery profits would go to education, which happened, however they then funneled the money that had been going to education away to other “projects” and ended up with a net loss in funding for schools – what a bunch of bastards.

Broke=motivation. I spent the day getting ready for a rummage sale and cleaning, when the weather is better I’ll make a sign. All my spare cash is apparently stored in the mountains of useless crap that I own, so the time has come to render a crap to cash conversion. Last time I did this I made fourteen hundred dollars (from four sales over the course of a month). Maybe I should do ebay – I have a digital camera and access to mounds of free packing materials that we just recycle at work– hey that’s an idea!!!! I’ve considered getting a booth at a crap mart, but they cost 100 dollars plus a month to rent, plus you pay them a percentage of your sale. It hardly seems worth it, especially when every time I go to these places I see much of the same crap – it’s more like paying for storage than actually having a retail business.

I also hung out with fish and dog. I built the Cichlids a cave from some rocks in the front yard. I really need to get them a filter, a basic filter for a ten-gallon tanks costs twelve dollars. Perhaps I should put my twenty into that and gas.

Last night we watched Human Nature with Tim Robbins and others, by the writer director team of the currently released Spotless Mind. You could tell it was a little rough around the edges by comparison. Overall I enjoyed it, though I don’t think that I would rent it a second time. Angela and Vanessa want to take me to Venus Envy tonight, it’s an art show in celebration of women’s voices. Sit here and be moody or let art save my soul, easy call.

Broke man walking:

I know you want the end to the sacred item story, and that’s in me somewhere, but before we get there I just need to bitch for a second and move laterally on the topic of prosperity. I am bad with money. I want to be good with money, but I am bad with money. You, you are the ants and you’ve been socking money away since kindergarten. You are already planning for your children’s retirement. I am the grasshopper, I have fun while the summer is here and then I die. It’ll be quick, because I have no health insurance, I can’t afford it. I can barely afford car insurance. I may even be dying now and not know it because I haven’t been to a doctor in years, four and a half years to be exact. Of course I am dying now, as birth is the leading cause of death.

It’s worse than just being a grasshopper though, because I work a fifty hour workweek, I have one week vacation a year, you get the idea. I work hard, I have a strong work ethic, I arrive 8:30 and leave after 6. I work like an ant. I also play hard, if you worked like that you’d want a drink too, and then that’s it – no net gain, but in experience. I have huge debts I am paying off and so all the money I make goes to them and only a fraction of that goes to principle – most is just maintenance. In three years I’ll have the credit card debt paid off and then I can start on my student loans.

I went to my boss at Meramec and explained to him why I was quitting, I ran up all this debt to get the education to be a teacher and now I can’t actually afford to live on what a teacher makes – catch 22. R said I had a lot of anger. I did have a great deal of anger about that then. I’ve never really fit into the culture in terms of what I value or think should be valuable, versus what is actually esteemed and rewarded, but I was never more at a loss or had an stronger sense of idealism betrayed when I had to leave teaching because I couldn’t pay my light bill. Ah well.

Not that much has changed. Confession, I have two dollars and eighty cents in my bank account. Now that’s my checking account, but in my savings account I have, oh wait I don’t have any savings account. But my home is worth, oh, I rent. Well my stocks and bonds are worth… nothing cause there are none. Some people might tell you they have two dollars and eighty cents and then mean “I have two dollars I can spend before I get to my cushion” – I have no cushion. I get paid on the fifteenth, that’s my cushion, payday. I have half a tank of gas, I own a bike and could bike to work if need be. I have twenty dollars in cash that I got by selling my office mate my warthog grass edger. I would have a garage sale tomorrow, but it’s supposed to rain all day.

I don’t have a drug habit, I don’t gamble, what I earn I spend on my life. I am a drinker, but not generally in bars anymore – too expensive. I spend eleven dollars a week on my Monday night bowling, but I can’t afford to go Monday. If you’re saying, “see even no when he’s making more money he never has any” that is in part because I am trying to pay off all the debt I ran up living half on my teachers salary and half on my credit cards, which have long ago been cut into small pieces.

I would be doing much better right now had I not been financially fucked by my dearly departed ex-roommate, may she waste oxygen as far from me as possible on this our green Earth. All trial roommates thus far have fallen through so I am going to have to go post a sign at Wash –U out of desperation.

How will this affect you dear reader? I am shutting off DSL and possibly my cell phone, so these posts will be less frequent, maybe I should keep the cell and cut the landline. Ah well good riddance. Milk is spilt – let’s be grateful, I have a job, I have food, I am not living in my parent’s basement, the pets have food, I have my health, none of the utilities have been shut off yet and I get paid on the fifteenth. But why do I always live check to check? I’ll ask Wayne Dwyer when I see him. See things are looking better already – Brad has just called to offer me gin and a movie at his place. I am always provided for, the universe loves me. I need to go bask in the emanations of the sacred wall hanging and then look for a second job. (I actually did have a second job for a few months, but the hours were crazy and I finally had to quit). Thanks for tolerating my rant. Everything always works out, until it doesn’t, and then you just go in a different direction, right?

Every so often my job, which seems normal enough once you’ve been doing it long enough, takes an odd turn. That was my day yesterday. I need to preface this story with some background. There is an organization that my boss studies with and promotes, that is based in the Philippines. They have two headquarters in the U.S., one on each coast. The people in the West coast office are in charge, the people on the East coast are subordinate. The East Coast people have their shit together. Everyone I have dealt with in the West Coast branch is an idiot. Rather, let us say that the people who manage the retail of books associated with the “teachings” are idiots. They routinely miss bill us, send us randomly wrong items, it can take months to get an order. They have packaged CDs, books, and special certificates all together in single box with no packing materials, such that half of a thousand dollar order needed to be returned because they neglected four dollars in packing materials. We’ve had CDs arrive that were produced in such a way as to be unplayable. I keep a digital camera handy for when their orders come in. My patience with them is thin at best.
Ordinarily if you received a package that was damaged in transit perhaps you would not accept it. Yes, it could have been packed more efficiently, or it could have been handled better by UPS etc. What do you do when the object being shipped to you is sacred? The object has been specially blessed by a Master of a Tradition such as to enhance the prosperity of all who come within the influence of its energetic emanations? Well, the answer is that you accept it and tell you boss that the East coast office, as I said before, are idiots. This sacred item is a wall hanging, let’s call it a poster, that was placed between two pieces of cardboard. Now they did included bubble wrap on both sides of the poster and wrote “Fragile Do Not Bend” on both sides of the packaging, however bubble wrap hurts and doesn’t help posters in transit. Rocket scientists in the Weimer Republic discovered that rolling posters up and placing them in cardboard tubes was an effective method of shipping them across Germany, but there are unfortunately no rocket scientists in the West Coast office.
To compensate for the damage and disrespect that said sacred object had been shown it was decided that it needed to be framed that day and hung up on the wall. Fine, I accepted the challenge and started calling local frame shops. “We have a two week turn around.” “Today, sure, but it has to be a metal frame” Finally I find a place in downtown Clayton and take the sacred item up there – making sure that I carefully protect it in a large metal poster rack that we use for retail in the store. I’m not halfway there when I get an upset call from my boss on my cell phone. He is shocked that I have taken it out of the building but doesn’t tell me that, he just wants assurances that it will be back today. Apparently he was much more upset when he found out I’d taken it, but was reassured by my voice. He had wanted me to go buy a frame and bring it back so we could frame it here.

There is more to this story but I’ll have to finish it later as I am out of lunch hour.

I’m not sure how long this link will last, so click at your own risk. My friend Vanessa got interviewed at the Democratic rally in Forest Park, she was asked by the RFT to disclose what cults she belongs to. Vanessa is in the upper left corner of respondents.

Ten Bad Plagues
(to the tune of Three Blind Mice)

Blood and frogs,
Lice and beasts,
Boils and hail,
Cattle disease,
Bugs that feasted on all our land,
Darkness so thick that it’s hard to stand,
Our firstborn dead – that’s not what we planned.
The ten Bad plagues,
Ten bad plagues

There were four tables of ten plus each at the Seder. We sang this in rounds.
(I’m saving the best song for last, and this is not the last song)

Yesterday was a good day filled with happy accidents. Work is slowing up, we’ve gotten most of our start of the session kinks ironed out. My new fish are still alive and attempting to establish territories in a tank that is too small for them, I figure I’ll buy a larger tank before it matters too much. Yesterday afternoon I came back from lunch and Deby suggested that we go for Ted Drews Custard to reward ourselves. After we got back from ice cream, I always get a chocolate concrete, two clients had not shown up for their massages so we both had to get one hour full body massages (do you hate me yet?). I was on the phone with a massage stone rock dealer out in California, we were working up a specialty kit requested by one of the instructors, and he asked to call me back in a little bit after looking at his inventory. I said, “Actually I am on my way out the door to a Cardinals game, can we talk tomorrow. “Ha, that’s great because I am actually on my way out the door to a Dodgers game, so I’ll call you tomorrow. I actually only answered the phone because I thought you were my buddy out front telling me he was here to pick me up.”

I picked Angela up and had rosemary chicken over a bed of linguini at her house, we took the metro link down to the game had the same seats we did last time. In the top of the second inning a ball popped up over the screen and came right at us, hitting the railing in front of us it ricocheted up and hit the ceiling behind us, bounced out of several people’s hands and ended up getting caught by the guy sitting next to Angela. This guy from the section in front of us brought his son up to where we were sitting, in the front row above the walkway on the first tier up from the field. He asked if his boy could see the ball and in the same instant he asked he brought his wallet up and set it on the concrete divider as collateral – an unspoken assurance that they weren’t going to run off with the ball. The guy next to Angela did a bodily shrug towards the wallet to communicate that the gesture wasn’t necessary, and he handed the child the ball as the man took his wallet back; a more fascinating incident than the catch.

In the interest of scarce funds we split one large beer from the middle of the third inning to the top of the seventh. The young girls behind us were not quite twenty-one, drunk, and chattering in annoying circles. High points of their conversation included “well back in Seattle” at five-minute intervals from a recent émigré, comparisons between dropping a penny and dropping ejaculate from the top of the empire state building, and the merits of getting drunk in one’s car before the game. Like a tree that seems to be reaching away from the road it is supposed to shade, trying to escape the fumes from the cars, I spent the game hunched over the railing out of both a desire to follow the action and a repulsion from the youthful toxicity behind me, which wouldn’t have been so bad were it not constant and in a pitch one notch below dog whistle.

Baseball for me is always a mixed bag, I am not a huge sports fan but I do like going to games. I’ve written about this before, I have become more of a sports fan with age. It’s hard to ignore the degree to which the racial politics of Bush stadium in St. Louis suck. What do you call the sort of structural racism implicit in an event where ninety five percent of the fans are white suburb dwellers, and ninety five percent of the people working there and waiting on the fans are African American urban dwellers? And as my old landlord and friend Richard used to say, “St. Louis wouldn’t have a team if it weren’t for the Dominican Republic.”

Ah well, more thoughts later – I must get work.