chicken

Someone actually stole chicken off our grill on our front porch in ghetto city. We'd escaped the roaches, and found bigger, scarier, porch-chicken-thieving cockroaches.
Who steals partially-cooked chicken from a grill left unattended because you're in the house focusing on your bong? It was like 10 minutes! Must have been a porch-chicken syndicate. Like a gang. Maybe they worked for KFC. I'd heard about KFC consignment pre-cooked chicken, but it had never been my problem.
Nevertheless, I don't understand this level of insanity. I might enjoy it's sheer bad-craziness, but I don't understand it or condone it. I won't condone it. My time is short. The pig is in the tunnel and I'd like to win my football pool two years in a row. I cannot tolerate partially cooked chicken theft. It is not righteous.
This weekend, I'm thinking of grilling some chicken and sitting unseen in a location where I can unleash the fury of my compound bow, 45 lbs. pull, graphite shafts, expanding broad-head tips. That would sting.

roaches

MPLS.1
Gotta get these stories down before pre-senile dementia hits and I won't be able to tell whether they're  true or not. So this is number one (MPLS.1).

July 1990. There are cockroaches here. A lot of them. You have to keep the Rice Krispie's in the fridge. Some get in there even. They skitter across the floor with an intuitive sense of obvious impunity. They are too fast to kill. You stop trying. You decide to work with them. Sharing space with respect.

So you turn on the kitchen light by reaching around the corner. It gives them time to run for cover. In return, they stay off the furniture and don't crawl on your face in the early morning hours. It's cockroach detente. A cold-war cockroach standoff.

And then you get a good job and move out. I'm sure the cockroaches throw a party and toast their victory. "Yeah, we win again ... puny humans ... yeah, pour me a bit of that rancid milk. Aaaahhh! The cockroach life."

I really think they do that, but I don't know, I moved out of their neighborhood and into a house in the ghetto. The cockroaches there were all meth-heads. They mostly stole from the ants. Solving two problems at once. I think I must have carried some cockroach cred - word on the street sort of stuff. "Dude is cool." In cockroach street terms.

So, I guess the moral of the story is that if you have to move to the city and stay one step above cardboard-hobo-camping down by the river. Befriend the cockroaches first. They will pave your way into big city survival.

can't fight

I was downtown last night and I think I met a ghost. Seether. She wouldn't walk with me in a straight way, she wouldn't offer me her smoke. I got all dressed up for this only to get shot down. Seether.
I remember her from Glastonbury. 1995.  Flat chested hardcore. 
I try but I can't fight the seether.
Seether.

new shoes

get some. your feet are weird.

harold and margo

harold and margo. margo and harold.
met at the soda fountain in buffalo, south dakota. 1983.
she'd heard about harold's pawnshop and what went down there.
harold and margo don't feel no pain.
cocaine, methamphetamine and loaded in the
middle of nowhere and never coming back.

box of spiders

Gran Gran keeps a box of spiders.
She says they're on me when I sleep.
Waiting in the out-house for me.
underneath the seat.
My great-grandmothers bout ninety-seven
and she is sure when she gets to heaven,
old St. Peter's gonna throw his arms around her and say
'I've waited so long for us to meet'.
She put the General in a box
and buried him behind the Stoney Point Church of Christ,
when I was three.
(and she says) "When the lord comes to take me,
I'll die with a smile on, cause He's taking all my pains and fears."
She said The Generals last words were
"It's hotter than hell in here".
Gran Gran keeps a box of spiders,
or so she told me as a child,
and I would hold it in for hours.
Too mean to die. Too mean to die. Too mean.

thinkin'

i been thinkin'.
thinkin' about faulkner and alabama.
bottle trees. ghosts in the cotton fields.
i been thinkin"
thinkin' about boiled choctaw cornmeal
blood sausage and yellow rice
cobbler
a place I want to be
in alabama at uncle leon's just east across the bay from Mobile
i can help him move that tree, eat some bay shrimp, okra. johnnycake.
fight the bloody British and whatnot
yell at it

for tammy

Tammy,
I am so sorry for your loss. Perry was a good man and a good friend. I lost him too. I'll miss giving him shit over the phone. I'll miss his Blantons on ice with a lemon twist. I'll miss his deadpan, ornery-ass humor most of all. He was a character and he had a big impact on me.
When we spoke you asked if I had pictures taken of the hunting trip he, his dad and brother and I grouped up for in South Dakota. I do. He sent all of them to me. Someday soon we'll have to go through them and I can tell you what was happening. The guide was good, birds plentiful and the banter between father and sons was extremely entertaining. Pete couldn't believe they didn't have a Starbucks in Gregory, SD. The coffee sucked, etc. HA!
Tammy, I still remember the trip well and as Perry once said to me, it was one of the best times of our lives. Brother Steve notwithstanding!
Take care and I'll call again soon.
Me

word

 A definition of discretion. Take heed Pinhead Filson, I know what you've been up to.

• S: (n) discretion (freedom to act or judge on one's own)
• S: (n) discretion, discreetness, circumspection, prudence (knowing how to avoid embarrassment or distress) "the servants showed great tact and discretion"
• S: (n) delicacy, discretion (refined taste; tact)
• S: (n) free will, discretion (the power of making free choices unconstrained by external agencies)
• S: (n) discretion, discernment (the trait of judging wisely and objectively) "a man of discernment"

drums and dinner

Drum concert and spaghetti dinner from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday, March 28, at the National Guard Armory on Range Raod. There will also be an auction. Free will donation with proceeds going to Relay for Life Bring a canned food item. Food donations will go to the Hochoka Healing Center serving the Pine Ridge Reservation.

 

Sunday, 28 March, 2010

05:00 PM - 07:00 PM

Cost: Free will offering

Location: 

National Guard Armory

Rapid City, SD

 

fond farewell

Elliot Smith, RIP

The Litebrite's now black and white
'Cos you took apart a picture that wasn't right
Pitch burning on a shining sheet
The only maker that you want to meet
A dying man in a living room
Whose shadow paces the floor
Who'll take you out in the open door
This is not my life
It's just a fond farewell to a friend
It's not what I'm like
It's just a fond farewell to a friend
Who couldn't get things right
A fond farewell to a friend
He said really I just want to dance
Good and evil match perfect, it's a great romance
And I can deal with some psychic pain
If it'll slow down my higher brain
Veins full of disappearing ink
Vomiting in your kitchen sink
Disconnecting from the missing link
This is not my life
It's just a fond farewell to a friend
It's not what I'm like
I'ts just a fond farewell to a friend
Who couldn't get things right
A fond farewell to a friend
I see you're leaving me
And taking up with the enemy
The cold comfort of the in-between
A little less than a human being
A little less than a happy high
A little less than a suicide
The only things that you really tried
This is not my life
It's just a fond farewell to a friend
It's not what I'm like
It's just a fond farewell to a friend
Who couldn't get things right
A fond farewell to a friend
This is not my life
It's just a fond farewell to a friend

proud willie

I am proud of my cat, Wilford Peter (Willie) Nelson. He has always been a successful cat with a serious competitive spirit, once beating me at HORSE out behind the garage with a spinning, back-flip dunk. Next time we'll youtube!
Still, I never thought he would achieve on this level. Willie is going into outer-space. He has been nominated to lead the first mission to the planet Mars. While Mars is still just a planet in our meager solar system, Willie plans on much bigger, extra-universal work later. He's that good! He has been training in California and, more recently, Florida. I can't say much more for national security reasons or something, but Willie lets on a bit. He talks in trapezoids and trajectories. Logistical aim. Looping algorithms. Terabyte processing in real time via over the horizon satellite technology. All conveyed intelligibly via a staccato system of meows. Like telegraph music on a blues foot-board in Duluth in December.
I am proud of Wilford Nelson, a mere, domestic indoor/outdoor cat. He can't produce offspring after the "surgery" but still, he is serving our nation honorably, as many cats likewise do. And when he's at home, he licks himself clean, enjoys policing the premises for bugs and errant twist ties and, most importantly, he only poops in his box. Bravo Wilford! Well done!

translation program

I can't speak Spanish much. And George can't speak English any more than that. But George works for me. We need to be able to communicate. So I asked him to write a post-it note saying what he needed to say to me in Spanish. I took his yellow post-it and typed the words into an online web translation gig/app. Result positive. George was impressed. Then I typed in English what I needed to say to him. It worked. We realized we weren't a million miles apart. I can't complete my daily paperwork without George's input. I sign his paycheck. Obvious. Classic co-dependence.
In the meantime, we talk a bit and learn a little of each others language. Mostly though, that's a matter of George working with me on correct pronunciation. I have a hard time doing well at it, but I'm trying.

alex chilton died

Singer and guitarist Alex Chilton, known for his influential work with bands the Box Tops and Big Star, died Wednesday. He was 59. He died at a hospital in New Orleans after experiencing what appeared to be heart problems. As the teenage singer for the pop-soul outfit the Box Tops, Chilton topped the charts with the band's song "The Letter" in 1967.

His work with Big Star had less mainstream success but made him a cult hero to other musicians, as evidenced by the title of the 1987 Replacements song, "Alex Chilton." Big Star's three 1970s LPs all earned spots on Rolling Stone magazine's list of 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
Chilton said in a 1987 interview with The Associated Press that he didn't mind flying under the radar. "What would be ideal would be to make a ton of money and have nobody know about you," he said. "Fame has a lot of baggage to carry around. I wouldn't want to be like Bruce Springsteen. I don't need that much money and wouldn't want to have 20 bodyguards following me. If I did become really popular, the critics probably wouldn't like me all that much," he said. "They like to root for the underdog."
Chilton had been scheduled to perform with Big Star on Saturday at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas. "Alex Chilton always messed with your head, charming and amazing you while doing so. His gift for melody was second to none, yet he frequently seemed in disdain of that gift," the festival's creative director, Brent Gulke, said in an e-mail.

Elliot Smith performs a cover of Big Star's "Thirteen"

Stringbean Svenson and his Fiddlestring Band

There will be a Public Dance on Saturday March 13 with Stringbean Svenson and his Fiddlestring Band playing dance music from 7:30 until 10:30 p.m. The dance will be at the Viking Hall at 2900 Canyon Lake Drive Admission price will be $5.00 per person and everyone is welcome to attend.

ode to boudin

You are the chewing gum
of God. You are the reason
I know that skin
is only that, holds
more than it meets.
The heart of you is something
I don’t quite get
but don’t want to. Even
a fool like me can see
your broken
beauty, the way
out in this world where most
things disappear, driven
into ground, you are ground
already, & like rice
you rise. Drunken deacon,
sausage’s half-brother,
jambalaya’s baby mama,
you bring me back
to the beginning, to where things live
again. Homemade saviour,
you fed me the day
my father sat under flowers
white as the gloves of pallbearers
tossed on his bier.
Soon, hands will lower him
into ground richer
than even you.
For now, root of all
remembrance, your thick chain
sets me spinning, thinking
of how, like the small,
perfect, possible, silent soul
you spill out
like music, my daddy
dead, or grief,
or both—afterward his sisters
my aunts dancing
in the yard to a car radio
tuned to zydeco
beneath the pecan trees.

willard delka

Willard Delka stood on his chair in Third Grade and slugged Mrs. Horton in the stomach. I saw it happen. Willard was a missile base kid. Brought to western South Dakota by his Pa who was employed in the construction of nuclear missile silos. Itinerant. Unattached. Blamelessly evil. Scorned.
Willard died in the back of a fruit truck on a cold South Dakota hi-way. Knife wound. Stomach. Ironic.

moved in

As of today, I am ensconced in my new Minneapolis digs. It is very cool after a period of wandering aimlessly with only a few anchors; my girl, my sidekick and my truck. These are the three things very dear to me - oh, that and a job (and the truck not so much)! And Ethiopian coffee, Vietnamese food (Pho and Banh Mi Thit Bale). And music (Meat Puppets at the 400, Spoon at First Ave). A broadband connection. Friends. It's all good.
Last year, I fell off the mountain but I'm determined to get back up top. So I'm climbing again. I'm happiest facing challenges. I'm never bored. But I like the view. It's keen!

pinhead filson

Pinhead Filson reads his Meatpaper in the morning while seated on his tiny porcelain throne in his miniature recreation of his own mind's eye while restlessly squeezing every ounce out of the day before. It's come to this then he not so silently reasons, as the discarded carp toss in the turmoil below. "I'll be lost to my own degraded wit, a plumb bob to the wallpaper festering with decay in my tiny wool-bedecked pinhead."
It wasn't always this way for Pinhead Filson. At one time he sailed the roiling, cold waters of San Francisco Bay in a tiny skiff, hunting sharks with a sharpened lance and abalone deep below while holding his breath for minutes at a time. He'd scowl at the oyster pirates and later set-up his fellows for rounds at China Bill's on the wharf chewing seal blubber with pickled egg, all the while tickling the giggling Chinese with horsefeathers and broomsticks. But Pinhead took a turn for the worse and egged on by John Barleycorn,  took up residence in an opium den.
He lost his money, then he lost his mind. He's never been the same. He fled into the mountains pursued on all sides by his imaginary demons while his once swollen brain-case shrunk to the size of a pinhead. He took to wearing tight fitting skull-caps which only exacerbated the problem until his head resembled his name. He looked around for his fellows but none had met the same fate. He was all alone.
Today even, as Pinhead Filson mounts his throne in his tiny water-closet clutching his Meatpaper,  one can hear the wind gusting melodically, calling Pinhead home. He won't get there because it no longer exists.

deer tick

The deer tick lives in a cave in the mountains and can barely sustain himself. He's an ungrateful parasite that enjoys himself only when he's feeding off another. When the tables are turned he's nasty and mean. A stomper and a slammer of doors. An ineffectual thwarter of his perceived tormentor. Sure, he talks a good game. Burps up his food and suggests it is best to be a giver than a receiver. Conveniently forgetting what's been done for him. Debts forgiven. Gifts. Everything.
Thank God they make a pesticide for his type. It's also a good idea to avoid his habitat. It smells there anyway. Of the deceased and soon to be deceased. Just like any dream he ever had. Just like piss down a rope.