1.31.2009

thinkin' about buyin' another condo

I've been thinking about buyig a new condo and I found this spot out in AJ (short for Apache Junction) at the foot of the Superstitions east of Phoenix. Sweet!

1.30.2009

moonies eat dogs, don't they?

And weirdo roommates try to convince you to meditate and offer lessons in meditation if you don't know how. I meditate for several hours each night on my Hemingway Sleigh Bed (leather and wood)). Sometimes my buddy, the great Willie Pete Nelson (cat) joins me. Usually off to the left, close to the window. He goes out several times each night to run and kill.
Last night, he brought home a huge canal rat. Spiky haired and reeking. It smelled like a seven-day gutwagon. It wasn't quite dead yet though and when Willie Pete brought it to me for my inspection, the bugger spazzed, flipped on the rat after-burners and scurried under the couch. It is there now while WPN (Willie Pete Nelson) keeps a close watch.
The drama means meditation is out of the question for now.

1.27.2009

get dressed up


we have photos

1.26.2009

big cat

Called my cousin Jim's house the other day. Got his wife, the mucho beautiful little woman. Jim was out hunting with Kenny. Hunting what I asked, since there ain't any seasons open this time of year up thereabouts that I know of except rabbits and blackbirds.
They were hunting a cat. A big, mean one. It was ranging out of the Hills to the west. Killing livestock and Jim's horse. That's a death sentence for that cat. You can't kill a man's horse and not get hanged or shot. When they find it, they'll kill him. I hope to see the hide next time I'm up that way. Maybe even sleep on it. For good luck.

1.25.2009

monkeys for sale


Who can live without an educated monkey? Not me! But I have more than I need at the moment and so I have several for sale. All of these monkeys are educated at accredited monkey colleges, shaved and dressed and ready for educational monkey action. They understand up to 100 commands, and are guaranteed to be proficient in Microsoft Word, Excel,Powerpoint and Outlook. They will hunt and fish and dig up nutritious root vegetables. And they often wash themselves so you will not need a high pressure hose assembly. Pricing is negotiable on a quantity basis. There is a special bonus for early inquiries. Cash only.

Photo by Zip.

1.24.2009

there's always room for jello in 2012

jello makes a case for the presidency while running for mayor in san francisco

1.17.2009

the monkey bars

Arlys Klundt sealed his fate when he challenged Billy Batest to fight him at the monkey bars after school. The reasons for the animosity were never clear. But the contest was on. And many gathered because the news had traveled throughout the school. Hootenanny was present as an independent observer.
At three PM the combatants were present and sneering at each other. Billy looked apprehensive even though the money pushed the odds in his favor. Arlys was grim. He had a fight to consider.
Assembled in anticipation, the bystanders watched as an impromptu 'fight circle' was formed. Scuffed shoes drew the perimeter while Arlys and Billy readied themselves for the fray.
It began and ended quickly. Billy delivered a single jab that sent Arlys to his knees. He followed up with a right hook that put Arlys on the ground, flat on his back. He didn't get up. The fight was over. Billy Batest had won.
But we still thought he was a fag.

1.15.2009

willis the lemur


I was talking to a friend at work and she said, "Why don't you get a lemur and name him Willis. Then you can say. 'What you talking about, Willis"? I had to pause to process the information. Then I weighed my options. A lemur? A really smart monkey-cat with a tail and freaky big eyes. I could maybe deal with a lemur.
But where the hell do you get one? They're endangered and mostly, at least the best one's, are found in Madagascar. To get there, you will probably have to run the Somali pirate gauntlet. You might have to overnite in Columbo, Sri Lanka.
Next, I asked a friend, "What do you feed a lemur?" He said spinach, garlic and sausage rigatoni. No tomatoes. Extra virgin olive oil.
(Got a call from my lemur sales guy - gotta go - story TBD).

1.11.2009

the bigger foot

Now I know that a lot of you don't believe in God, Jesus, Santa Claus or those other guys/girls (a rabbit that delivers hard boiled eggs and chocolate effigies - not probable), but many of you may believe in Bigfoot. I'd like to tell you a little bit about Bigfoot. The Bigfoot I have come to know and honor.
Bigfoot prefers the apellation of The Supreme Master Earth-Lord Bigfoot (SMELB). He does not ring your doorbell or drop off pamphlets or otherwise disturb your American suburban utopia (though he has been known to steal chicken from your grill).
Mostly SMELB hides. A lot. So folks are unaware of his work, planting and selling psychedelic mushrooms to tree-huggers and meth-heads and, occasionally, people like us.
Nonetheless, the Supreme Master Earth-Lord Bigfoot has successfully evaded detection and capture since time immemorial. Many question his very existence. He hides so well that he's never been found.
Now we all know a few friends that are unresponsive; phone calls and emails go unanswered. But The Supreme Master Earth-Lord Bigfoot has taken this to a new revolutionary level by having never been seen. The photographic evidence is inconclusive.

jane says

Jane says
I'm done with Sergio
He treats me like a ragdoll
She hides
The television
Says I don't owe him nothing,
But if he comes back again
Tell him to wait right here for me
Or just
Try again tomorrow
I'm gonna kick tomorrow
Gonna kick tomorrow

Jane says
Have you seen my wig around?
I feel naked without it
She knows
They all want her to go
But that's O.K. man
She dont like them anyway
Jane says
She's goin away to spain
When she gets my money saved
I'm gonna start tomorrow
I'm gonna kick tomorrow
Gonna kick tomorrow

She gets mad
Starts to cry
She takes a swing but
She cant hit
She don't mean no harm
She just don't know
What else to do about it

Jane goes
To the store at 8:00
She walk up on St. Andrews
She waits
And gets her dinner there
She pulls her dinner
From her pocket
Jane says
I've never been in love
I don't know what it is
Only knows if someone wants her
I want them if they want me
I only know they want me

She gets mad
And she starts to cry
She takes a swing man
She cant hit!
She don't mean no harm
She just dont know
What else to do about it

Jane says

1.10.2009

the chihuahua wand

The mail in the housing development in which I live is deposited and gathered from a central location. Usually, I hit the box on my way home from work. Just as often I cross paths with the North Laveen Hooker. She haunts the mailbox depository, mostly on Sundays. She's prettier than your average truck stop hooker. Stringy blonde hair, ruddy complexion, heels or boots. She stutters and walks at an angle like a crazy dog with rabies. But friendly and, apparently, accommodating.
Last Friday, I pulled up to grab my mail and she comes staggering from behind the block wall of the home adjacent to the depository. She has a crack pipe stuck behind her ear like a pen or pencil, smeared make-up and a chihuahua in tow on leash. The chihuahua makes a run on my ankle. You how those little buggers can be mean and vicious and wreck your entire day but I was prepared.
On the Thursday prior I stopped at the local mercado/carniceria to check on the fresh chorizo and saw, while I was waiting, a Chihuahua Wand. On the shelf, bright, shiny and in need of only four Triple A batteries. Two dollars and ninety nine cents.
Well, the chorizo was two days old so I passed on that but grabbed a six of Tecate and a Chihuahua Wand. What the heck, I thought, everyone down here has a Chihuahua and I may need this.
Well, the North Laveen Hooker approaches with Chihuahua on leash, what do I do? The dog is clearly rabid or just messed up by a century of Mexican inbreeding. I've got the handgun I carry in my truck in case I get in a shoot out with the cops and I've got the Chihuahua Wand. In a moment of lucidity, I grab the Wand. Chihuahua neutralized. If I had batteries.

1.08.2009

what has happened to customer service?

So I'm at Me Gusto on University Avenue in Tempe and I ask the waiter, 'could you take these chips and throw them back in the fryer for a minute, I like them crispy'. He takes the basket and all seems well. He comes back with a basket full of chip dust like he'd put them in a blender or something and then physically threatens me with his pen. He makes a stabbing motion apparently intending to poke me in the eye and before he can get to me, I flip the table and duck behind it. Luckily, I always carry a small .25 caliber auto in my sock and I clear it in time to fire a shot into the ceiling as he's coming around the table, apparently enraged by the turn of events.
I say, 'check please' and he responds 'certainly sir, one minute', but I still think the first part was uncalled for and so I wrote a letter to corporate. Rather than an apology or gift certificate, both due in this instance in my opinion, I get a plaque naming me Asshole Of The Year.
Now that's poor customer service. Even though the plaque was very nice.

1.07.2009

scared

the crazy Chinese guy is in the kitchen
taipeng or taiwann
i don't know
a name like that

1.05.2009

1.04.2009

the year of the dingleberry

a list:
1. republicans
2. democrats
3. fools
4. shamans
5. birds (that poop on your car)
6. dogs (that bark without reason)
7. cats that don't hunt mice
8. books that start on page 9
9. page 9

1.02.2009

python

there's no possible way this movie could suck

don't worry holly

i'm working on the header ... you have to admit, aesthetically i'm headed (har,har) in the right direction

ps: this chick can write

What Were You Expecting?

click the link, idiot

1.01.2009

reboot (hard)

Time to Reboot America
By Tom Friedman
December 2008


I had a bad day last Friday, but it was an all-too-typical day for America.

It actually started well, on Kau Sai Chau, an island off Hong Kong, where I stood on a rocky hilltop overlooking the South China Sea and talked to my wife back in Maryland, static-free, using a friend’s Chinese cellphone. A few hours later, I took off from Hong Kong’s ultramodern airport after riding out there from downtown on a sleek high-speed train — with wireless connectivity that was so good I was able to surf the Web the whole way on my laptop.

Landing at Kennedy Airport from Hong Kong was, as I’ve argued before, like going from the Jetsons to the Flintstones. The ugly, low-ceilinged arrival hall was cramped, and using a luggage cart cost $3. (Couldn’t we at least supply foreign visitors with a free luggage cart, like other major airports in the world?) As I looked around at this dingy room, it reminded of somewhere I had been before. Then I remembered: It was the luggage hall in the old Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport. It closed in 1998.

The next day I went to Penn Station, where the escalators down to the tracks are so narrow that they seem to have been designed before suitcases were invented. The disgusting track-side platforms apparently have not been cleaned since World War II. I took the Acela, America’s sorry excuse for a bullet train, from New York to Washington. Along the way, I tried to use my cellphone to conduct an interview and my conversation was interrupted by three dropped calls within one 15-minute span.

All I could think to myself was: If we’re so smart, why are other people living so much better than us? What has become of our infrastructure, which is so crucial to productivity? Back home, I was greeted by the news that General Motors was being bailed out — that’s the G.M. that Fortune magazine just noted “lost more than $72 billion in the past four years, and yet you can count on one hand the number of executives who have been reassigned or lost their job.”

My fellow Americans, we can’t continue in this mode of “Dumb as we wanna be.” We’ve indulged ourselves for too long with tax cuts that we can’t afford, bailouts of auto companies that have become giant wealth-destruction machines, energy prices that do not encourage investment in 21st-century renewable power systems or efficient cars, public schools with no national standards to prevent illiterates from graduating and immigration policies that have our colleges educating the world’s best scientists and engineers and then, when these foreigners graduate, instead of stapling green cards to their diplomas, we order them to go home and start companies to compete against ours.

To top it off, we’ve fallen into a trend of diverting and rewarding the best of our collective I.Q. to people doing financial engineering rather than real engineering. These rocket scientists and engineers were designing complex financial instruments to make money out of money — rather than designing cars, phones, computers, teaching tools, Internet programs and medical equipment that could improve the lives and productivity of millions.

For all these reasons, our present crisis is not just a financial meltdown crying out for a cash injection. We are in much deeper trouble. In fact, we as a country have become General Motors — as a result of our national drift. Look in the mirror: G.M. is us.

That’s why we don’t just need a bailout. We need a reboot. We need a build out. We need a buildup. We need a national makeover. That is why the next few months are among the most important in U.S. history. Because of the financial crisis, Barack Obama has the bipartisan support to spend $1 trillion in stimulus. But we must make certain that every bailout dollar, which we’re borrowing from our kids’ future, is spent wisely.

It has to go into training teachers, educating scientists and engineers, paying for research and building the most productivity-enhancing infrastructure — without building white elephants. Generally, I’d like to see fewer government dollars shoveled out and more creative tax incentives to stimulate the private sector to catalyze new industries and new markets. If we allow this money to be spent on pork, it will be the end of us.

America still has the right stuff to thrive. We still have the most creative, diverse, innovative culture and open society — in a world where the ability to imagine and generate new ideas with speed and to implement them through global collaboration is the most important competitive advantage. China may have great airports, but last week it went back to censoring The New York Times and other Western news sites. Censorship restricts your people’s imaginations. That’s really, really dumb. And that’s why for all our missteps, the 21st century is still up for grabs.

John Kennedy led us on a journey to discover the moon. Obama needs to lead us on a journey to rediscover, rebuild and reinvent our own backyard.