SO, I AM SURE...
That you've all been eagerly waiting to hear the outcome of the meeting of the minds that took place on the porch last night, right? Well, wonder no further.
We, um, wrote a song. For that band in Chicago to play. Soon it will be a worldwide hit. Your children will be singing it. Really.
REVERSE JESUS
I was born up in a palace
To a skanky whore named Alice,
Guzzling whisky from a chalice
That was shaped just like a... cup.
I never left Chicago
And I'm stinky with bravado
And I never talk to God, though
I know where to look him up.
Oh, there are so many reasons
Why I am REVERSE JESUS
I turn wine back into water
And I love "Welcome Back Kotter"
When I play on teeter totters
I just fall down on the job.
I like to beat up kids
And I don't hang out with Yids.
I wear makeup on my eyelids
And enjoy corn on the cob.
Oh, there are so many reasons
Why I am REVERSE JESUS
I turn bread back into stones
And I'm bound to jump your bones.
But right now I have a jones
For some pork skins and a beer.
My blessings are like curses
And I never talk in verses.
Instead I ride in hearses,
Where I gamble, flirt and leer.
Oh, there are so many reasons
Why I am REVERSE JESUS!
I was born on Easter Sunday,
And I'll die on Christmas Monday
And I know that there'll be one day
When I'll kick some Roman ass!
I'll get drunk with Pontius Pilate
And we'll cause a little riot
And completely blow our diet,
Eating, farting, being crass.
Oh, there are so many reasons
Why I am REVERSE JESUS!
Then to Herod's house I'll roll
To turn diamonds into coal.
And we'll both just smoke a bowl
And I'll walk underneath his lake.
But he told me something funny.
Says he's running out of money.
But I told him hey now, honey,
Life is fine, we're on the take.
Oh, there are so many reasons
Why I am REVERSE JESUS
We'll just call up all our wives
We'll have the time of all our lives
Selling Ronco Ginsu knives
And making prank calls to the Pope.
Yes, Reverse Jesus is my name
And I do not want your fame.
And think disciples LAME.
Now go pee up a rope.
Oh, there are so many reasons
Why I am REVERSE JESUS!
Saturday, June 29, 2002
Friday, June 28, 2002
QUICK AND DIRTY...
...And probably about to get dirtier.
It's the last Friday in June and no one I know has accomplished anything of worth today, not even the golfers (it's windy and kind of clouded over, with the ever-present teasing threat of rain but yeah right), and I'm ten minutes away from racing home to shower off the sweat of the day (it's hard work sitting here reading e-mail and doing stupid bookkeeping chores) and get girled up a bit for a hard night's holding down the floorboards on the porch of the sometimes-famous Saratoga Inn home of some of the state's finest microbrew (and he has the trophies to prove it, does our pal E.J. Allen, all praise be to his name) and some really comfortable adirondack chairs.
And it's going to get stupid out, because accompanying me are a whole flotilla of friends from other places who suddenly, magically appeared here this week without warning, including FutureGrrrl, Tron, Erin-Go-Braless (not their real names) and, I just learned, yet another special guest star, Toughpacque Bougur, sometime drummer for the greatest rock band in the world (and the only ones ever to record songs I wrote, namely one about Saratoga's own Donut Ranch and, well, another one), Gyrating Bhtch.
Just another crappy evening in paradise...
...And probably about to get dirtier.
It's the last Friday in June and no one I know has accomplished anything of worth today, not even the golfers (it's windy and kind of clouded over, with the ever-present teasing threat of rain but yeah right), and I'm ten minutes away from racing home to shower off the sweat of the day (it's hard work sitting here reading e-mail and doing stupid bookkeeping chores) and get girled up a bit for a hard night's holding down the floorboards on the porch of the sometimes-famous Saratoga Inn home of some of the state's finest microbrew (and he has the trophies to prove it, does our pal E.J. Allen, all praise be to his name) and some really comfortable adirondack chairs.
And it's going to get stupid out, because accompanying me are a whole flotilla of friends from other places who suddenly, magically appeared here this week without warning, including FutureGrrrl, Tron, Erin-Go-Braless (not their real names) and, I just learned, yet another special guest star, Toughpacque Bougur, sometime drummer for the greatest rock band in the world (and the only ones ever to record songs I wrote, namely one about Saratoga's own Donut Ranch and, well, another one), Gyrating Bhtch.
Just another crappy evening in paradise...
Thursday, June 27, 2002
TOURISTS AND OTHER GENIUSES...
This is... perhaps a little painful to write about since I’m pretty much supposed to be nice to tourists for a living, but sometimes one just has to shout out something rude and inappropriate from the rooftops...
...Unless one has a weblog!
Last week I came upon a local outfitter friend of mine, we’ll call him Johnboat (not his real name), sitting chuckling ruefully to himself over a bottle of canoe beer. He’d just gotten done telling Oscar the Grouchy Bartender (not his real name) a real whopper, one that he considered the best Stupid Tourist Quote ever.
“Kate,” he said to me, still sort of snorting and trying hard not to snarf his beer, “You’ll appreciate this.
“True story.
“I am SO not making this up.
“Really. This really happened.”
“OK, Johnboat, I’m ready. Tell me what really happened,” I said, or words to that effect.
“I took a group of people down the river today, and this one guy, this real know it all, who was driving his wife crazy showing her how to tie really bad knots and giving her horrible casting advice to cover up the fact that she was catching more fish than he was – you know the type I’m talking about...”
I nodded, watching Oscar still sputtering, too. This must be some story, I remember thinking.
“Well, as we were pulling out at Foote, he came over to me – and by the way, the bastard never did tip me – and said... he said...”
(Pause while Johnboat collected himself once again and Oscar, turning pink, had to leave the vicinity – he may have been making for the bathroom. This must be some punchline, I remember thinking)
“Hey John, hunter to hunter, you can tell me ‘cause I have a pretty good idea already: at what elevation in this part of the state do the mule deer turn into elk?”
Well, it took me a while to recover from this remark, which smacked me on the noggin and left me sort of stunned with my eyes whirling like those dealies in a slot machine, but then I had to burst his bubble.
I had a better one, you see.
A visitor had come into my office that same afternoon who was really eager to know what our utility bills are for heating the hot pool! No really! I could tell him! He was sure it would be very hard for me to justify such a staggering sum, to my constituents but I could trust him not to reveal it to any of them!
He left very angrily after repeated attempts on my part to explain to him that the changing rooms, like our downtown sidwalks, are geothermally heated. That wasn’t the point, you see. He wanted to know what it cost to heat the water in the pool.
Oscar and Johnboat agreed that this was even better.
Then Johnboat challenged me to a friendly game of billiards, which I of course lost handily (but with great aplomb) and the story just sort of peters out from there...
...Until today. When I finally drifted into my office at my usual shamefully late hour, there was a man at my desk, a man who looked sort of familiar. I’m not 100% on this, but I’m pretty sure it was my interrogator of the previous week! And he was using my computer!
(Note to out of town readers: Since no retail business downtown has yet cottoned on to the potential increase in foot traffic that would be afforded by providing public e-mail access in a store [HINT HINT HINT] [Hopeless, I know, but I’ve got to keep trying], the chamber office offers this service)
And he used it for a very long time.
And finally, he left, paying over his customary $5 (yes, people! E-mail has become such a preoccupation with travelers that most of them will PAY just for a chance to check it! HINT HINT HINT!) and winking as he bid us cheery-bye.
I sat down to get to work... and he had left FIVE browser windows open. He was still logged in to his Yahoo! account, his amazon.com account, his PAYPAL account, his Expedia account, and something else that I didn’t really note because I was still too stunned that this guy had basically given me carte blanche to spend all his money and ruin his credit rating and mess up his Amazon recommendations forever more!
Fortunately for him (I should get my head examined) I am honest. Fortunately for him (seriously, somebody smack me), I closed all of those windows with alacrity. Fortunately for him.
But on a serious note, I want all of you to know how welcome you are to come and visit Saratoga. We love you. Really. We want you to come. I want you to come. I’ll even let you sleep on my couch. Really. Please come. Don’t be mad. I didn’t mean it. Of course YOU aren’t dumb like them. You’re lovely. You’re wonderful. When you come to town, you will be greeted by the voices of a heavenly choir (and it will be heavenly, because the tenor section will be in the bar quaffing Guiness, most likely. It’s summer, after all, and the business of apologizing to tourists, playing directory assistance, giving directions and selling rubber racing ducks is thirsty work) singing you down the street. Come. Visit. The air is like perfume and we don’t have any smoke. Our river is full of water, which is full of fish which periodically stick their heads out of the water and ask us when YOU, yes YOU, are coming to catch them. They are practicing their graceful, spectacular leaps right into your cooler!
And in this part of the state, at the elevation of about 12,000 feet, they turn into mako sharks. Really.
This is... perhaps a little painful to write about since I’m pretty much supposed to be nice to tourists for a living, but sometimes one just has to shout out something rude and inappropriate from the rooftops...
...Unless one has a weblog!
Last week I came upon a local outfitter friend of mine, we’ll call him Johnboat (not his real name), sitting chuckling ruefully to himself over a bottle of canoe beer. He’d just gotten done telling Oscar the Grouchy Bartender (not his real name) a real whopper, one that he considered the best Stupid Tourist Quote ever.
“Kate,” he said to me, still sort of snorting and trying hard not to snarf his beer, “You’ll appreciate this.
“True story.
“I am SO not making this up.
“Really. This really happened.”
“OK, Johnboat, I’m ready. Tell me what really happened,” I said, or words to that effect.
“I took a group of people down the river today, and this one guy, this real know it all, who was driving his wife crazy showing her how to tie really bad knots and giving her horrible casting advice to cover up the fact that she was catching more fish than he was – you know the type I’m talking about...”
I nodded, watching Oscar still sputtering, too. This must be some story, I remember thinking.
“Well, as we were pulling out at Foote, he came over to me – and by the way, the bastard never did tip me – and said... he said...”
(Pause while Johnboat collected himself once again and Oscar, turning pink, had to leave the vicinity – he may have been making for the bathroom. This must be some punchline, I remember thinking)
“Hey John, hunter to hunter, you can tell me ‘cause I have a pretty good idea already: at what elevation in this part of the state do the mule deer turn into elk?”
Well, it took me a while to recover from this remark, which smacked me on the noggin and left me sort of stunned with my eyes whirling like those dealies in a slot machine, but then I had to burst his bubble.
I had a better one, you see.
A visitor had come into my office that same afternoon who was really eager to know what our utility bills are for heating the hot pool! No really! I could tell him! He was sure it would be very hard for me to justify such a staggering sum, to my constituents but I could trust him not to reveal it to any of them!
He left very angrily after repeated attempts on my part to explain to him that the changing rooms, like our downtown sidwalks, are geothermally heated. That wasn’t the point, you see. He wanted to know what it cost to heat the water in the pool.
Oscar and Johnboat agreed that this was even better.
Then Johnboat challenged me to a friendly game of billiards, which I of course lost handily (but with great aplomb) and the story just sort of peters out from there...
...Until today. When I finally drifted into my office at my usual shamefully late hour, there was a man at my desk, a man who looked sort of familiar. I’m not 100% on this, but I’m pretty sure it was my interrogator of the previous week! And he was using my computer!
(Note to out of town readers: Since no retail business downtown has yet cottoned on to the potential increase in foot traffic that would be afforded by providing public e-mail access in a store [HINT HINT HINT] [Hopeless, I know, but I’ve got to keep trying], the chamber office offers this service)
And he used it for a very long time.
And finally, he left, paying over his customary $5 (yes, people! E-mail has become such a preoccupation with travelers that most of them will PAY just for a chance to check it! HINT HINT HINT!) and winking as he bid us cheery-bye.
I sat down to get to work... and he had left FIVE browser windows open. He was still logged in to his Yahoo! account, his amazon.com account, his PAYPAL account, his Expedia account, and something else that I didn’t really note because I was still too stunned that this guy had basically given me carte blanche to spend all his money and ruin his credit rating and mess up his Amazon recommendations forever more!
Fortunately for him (I should get my head examined) I am honest. Fortunately for him (seriously, somebody smack me), I closed all of those windows with alacrity. Fortunately for him.
But on a serious note, I want all of you to know how welcome you are to come and visit Saratoga. We love you. Really. We want you to come. I want you to come. I’ll even let you sleep on my couch. Really. Please come. Don’t be mad. I didn’t mean it. Of course YOU aren’t dumb like them. You’re lovely. You’re wonderful. When you come to town, you will be greeted by the voices of a heavenly choir (and it will be heavenly, because the tenor section will be in the bar quaffing Guiness, most likely. It’s summer, after all, and the business of apologizing to tourists, playing directory assistance, giving directions and selling rubber racing ducks is thirsty work) singing you down the street. Come. Visit. The air is like perfume and we don’t have any smoke. Our river is full of water, which is full of fish which periodically stick their heads out of the water and ask us when YOU, yes YOU, are coming to catch them. They are practicing their graceful, spectacular leaps right into your cooler!
And in this part of the state, at the elevation of about 12,000 feet, they turn into mako sharks. Really.
Tuesday, June 25, 2002
OOH, FOUL TEMPTATION!
No, this is not another plug for a semi-pornographic blog, it’s a genuine cry for help, or at least advice, from my dear readers.
The website to which I directed your attention earlier today (IntroducingMonday.co.uk) has given me a truly wicked idea, one which I have the resources to reify if I so choose.
Many of you who know me personally are aware that tomorrow is my “hobo-versary,” the first anniversary of my disgruntled departure from a certain local media outlet. Many of you drank with me as part of my traveling hobo party; others urged me to start my own magazine or something to compete with this media outlet. At the time I had other plans (mostly breaking my own tequila consumption record)...
Today, though, gave me a fun, wicked, naughty puss of an idea.
As of today, June 24, 2002, no one has registered any of the following domains:
saratogasun.com
saratogasun.net
saratogasun.org
etc.
I could easily jump a certain someone’s unexploited claim on these and many other related domains and do a “la la la” or just use it to host this here blog or use it to keep track of this august media outlet's mistakes or... well, there’s just no end to the pettiness in which I could engage.
Of course, if I thought that certain someone was ever really going to follow through on his plans to take the thing online, I would just content myself with cybersquatting and wait for him to come to me and see how much I could wring out of him... but since I don’t think so, that wouldn’t profit me much or be much fun.
So, help me out, dear readers. Should I take the high road and tell the little devils sitting on both of my shoulders (the angel who belongs on the right side gave up in disgust back when I was still a teen) to feck off?
Or should I have some fun?
If you vote for the latter, what would you like to see in my La La La site?
Share your thoughts by clicking HERE and e-mailing me.
Please?
I need you.
No, this is not another plug for a semi-pornographic blog, it’s a genuine cry for help, or at least advice, from my dear readers.
The website to which I directed your attention earlier today (IntroducingMonday.co.uk) has given me a truly wicked idea, one which I have the resources to reify if I so choose.
Many of you who know me personally are aware that tomorrow is my “hobo-versary,” the first anniversary of my disgruntled departure from a certain local media outlet. Many of you drank with me as part of my traveling hobo party; others urged me to start my own magazine or something to compete with this media outlet. At the time I had other plans (mostly breaking my own tequila consumption record)...
Today, though, gave me a fun, wicked, naughty puss of an idea.
As of today, June 24, 2002, no one has registered any of the following domains:
saratogasun.com
saratogasun.net
saratogasun.org
etc.
I could easily jump a certain someone’s unexploited claim on these and many other related domains and do a “la la la” or just use it to host this here blog or use it to keep track of this august media outlet's mistakes or... well, there’s just no end to the pettiness in which I could engage.
Of course, if I thought that certain someone was ever really going to follow through on his plans to take the thing online, I would just content myself with cybersquatting and wait for him to come to me and see how much I could wring out of him... but since I don’t think so, that wouldn’t profit me much or be much fun.
So, help me out, dear readers. Should I take the high road and tell the little devils sitting on both of my shoulders (the angel who belongs on the right side gave up in disgust back when I was still a teen) to feck off?
Or should I have some fun?
If you vote for the latter, what would you like to see in my La La La site?
Share your thoughts by clicking HERE and e-mailing me.
Please?
I need you.
MEANWHILE, AT GAMES DESIGN HEADQUARTERS... LA LA LA...
...As my Able Assistant (not her real name) was discovering the pleasures of the Greatest Cybersquatter Ever, (whose signature ditty we sang out loud at the Hotel Wolf this afternoon. It’s a catchy tune, la la la), I invented a brand new game, and I’m very excited about it.
From the maniacs who brought you Big Game Paintball comes the hot new craze sure to be sweeping offices all over downtown Saratoga in a matter of hours,
DOGGIE SOCCER
All you need is a few dozen Golfy Goof balls (if none of these are at hand, ordinary hand balls or anything else that’s bouncy and vaguely round will do in a pinch) and two or more highly energetic dogs. Set up goals at either end of your store or office.
It’s you versus the dogs, with dogs acting as both midfielders and goalkeepers. Your aim is to get that ball into the goals – either goal – as many times as possible. Yes, you may use your hands, and you’re going to need them, because if the dogs get the ball away from you, they make straight for the couch (if you don’t have a couch in your store or office, you don’t belong in business in Saratoga) and start chewing on it, and there’s only one way to get the ball back: snatch it, drool still dripping from its chewy surface, right out of your favorite hound’s jaws.
Best when played with a border collie who has never, ever showed any remotely playful behavior before (seriously! this dog has been de-freakin’-prived!) and a very mixed breed yellow eyed cartoon dog, especially if the game goes on in full view of the two people in town who least approve of Saratoga’s Dogs of Business.
Perhaps I’ll organize a tournament soon.
...As my Able Assistant (not her real name) was discovering the pleasures of the Greatest Cybersquatter Ever, (whose signature ditty we sang out loud at the Hotel Wolf this afternoon. It’s a catchy tune, la la la), I invented a brand new game, and I’m very excited about it.
From the maniacs who brought you Big Game Paintball comes the hot new craze sure to be sweeping offices all over downtown Saratoga in a matter of hours,
DOGGIE SOCCER
All you need is a few dozen Golfy Goof balls (if none of these are at hand, ordinary hand balls or anything else that’s bouncy and vaguely round will do in a pinch) and two or more highly energetic dogs. Set up goals at either end of your store or office.
It’s you versus the dogs, with dogs acting as both midfielders and goalkeepers. Your aim is to get that ball into the goals – either goal – as many times as possible. Yes, you may use your hands, and you’re going to need them, because if the dogs get the ball away from you, they make straight for the couch (if you don’t have a couch in your store or office, you don’t belong in business in Saratoga) and start chewing on it, and there’s only one way to get the ball back: snatch it, drool still dripping from its chewy surface, right out of your favorite hound’s jaws.
Best when played with a border collie who has never, ever showed any remotely playful behavior before (seriously! this dog has been de-freakin’-prived!) and a very mixed breed yellow eyed cartoon dog, especially if the game goes on in full view of the two people in town who least approve of Saratoga’s Dogs of Business.
Perhaps I’ll organize a tournament soon.
Monday, June 24, 2002
ISN'T IT AWFUL?
"Dammit, Kate, you are my worst friend ever!"
- message on my voicemail left just minutes ago
Sometimes I think I owe pretty much everyone in my life one big fat apology for their even having met me, but then I remember that it wasn't really my fault that we each chose to be bored in the same bar, or signed up for the same course in the philosophy of language, or had tickets to the same concert, or got invited to the same wedding. Not my fault at all.
What we've done together since then, now that's probably my fault. I don't know what it is, but somehow I seem to be everybody's worst friend (though some are still naive enough to say "best" instead). I'm an excuse on two legs for being late for work, drinking too much Guiness, not completing a homework assignment, missing a date with that special someone, whatever.
And the thing is, the excuse seems to work!
I remember one famous period of time at Beaudacious Bard College - a year after I had graduated, when students of a certain computer science professor (who never did get the guts to go skinny dipping with me, though he'd promised to as my graduation present) actually got away with not doing their homework because I was there for a visit. He told them "I haven't gotten much done, either."... quite ruefully, as I recall...
But you should be glad you have me, oh you little worker ants. I admire your better traits while being baffled by them. I encourage your bad habits. I improve your tolerance for alcohol. I loosen your tie. I waste hours of your time talking about nothing. I baffle your children. I overwhelm you with web pages for a few days and then hit a dry spell, then overwhelm you some more.
And in the meantime, I don't answer my phone (the fans in this house are very loud and very necessary, and my phone is just a pitiful little jangle in the white noise), I pick up my mail maybe twice a month, and generally only make myself availalble when I feel like doing so, which is usually at a wildly inconvenient time for you, but you run off to play with me anyway.
Poor, poor darlings.
But no one is forcing you to say yes.
Hugs and kisses,
Your Worst Friend
"Dammit, Kate, you are my worst friend ever!"
- message on my voicemail left just minutes ago
Sometimes I think I owe pretty much everyone in my life one big fat apology for their even having met me, but then I remember that it wasn't really my fault that we each chose to be bored in the same bar, or signed up for the same course in the philosophy of language, or had tickets to the same concert, or got invited to the same wedding. Not my fault at all.
What we've done together since then, now that's probably my fault. I don't know what it is, but somehow I seem to be everybody's worst friend (though some are still naive enough to say "best" instead). I'm an excuse on two legs for being late for work, drinking too much Guiness, not completing a homework assignment, missing a date with that special someone, whatever.
And the thing is, the excuse seems to work!
I remember one famous period of time at Beaudacious Bard College - a year after I had graduated, when students of a certain computer science professor (who never did get the guts to go skinny dipping with me, though he'd promised to as my graduation present) actually got away with not doing their homework because I was there for a visit. He told them "I haven't gotten much done, either."... quite ruefully, as I recall...
But you should be glad you have me, oh you little worker ants. I admire your better traits while being baffled by them. I encourage your bad habits. I improve your tolerance for alcohol. I loosen your tie. I waste hours of your time talking about nothing. I baffle your children. I overwhelm you with web pages for a few days and then hit a dry spell, then overwhelm you some more.
And in the meantime, I don't answer my phone (the fans in this house are very loud and very necessary, and my phone is just a pitiful little jangle in the white noise), I pick up my mail maybe twice a month, and generally only make myself availalble when I feel like doing so, which is usually at a wildly inconvenient time for you, but you run off to play with me anyway.
Poor, poor darlings.
But no one is forcing you to say yes.
Hugs and kisses,
Your Worst Friend
NOT FUNNY!
I just pulled a column out of my guts – it was more work for less quantity and quality than I've ever put out for this web page – and just as I went to post it, not, of course, having even bothered to save it yet (ominous swell to the bass section), my operating system (Mac OS 9.2 for those who care) engaged in rare crashing behavior and froze me out. I did not dispair, however, because most of the time when this happens my system recovers the text I lost when I re-boot, if not all of the text at least most of it, a mini-saved version from a few minutes before disaster struck. It might not have all of the corrections and polishing, but at least it is intact and still there...
But not this time. I've tried every trick in my formidable bag to coax those golden words (you don't know how badly the column sucked, so you have to take my word for it. Haha!) back onto my screen, to no avail. Alas and alack.
So you have been spared a big long excursis expanding on Henry Miller's theme in Tropic of Cancer in which he described himself as swollenly, awkwardly pregnant with his book, a metaphor I find occasionally apt on days unlike this one, when I know right away what I'm going to write about and a whole weird section of my brain sets to work churning out the copy I will actually type up much later. At such times I'm writing while I take coffee with my friends, while I walk my dog, while I give out the Saratoga Inn's phone number for the fourteenth time that day (gritting my teeth and trying not to let that fourteenth caller know how deeply it irritates me to be used as directory assistance. Or is the suspicion I am coming to believe more and more each day, that I am the very last person left in Carbon County who both has a phone book and knows how to use it, a true one? For it's not tourists, potential or otherwise, asking for the number. No! Usually I recognize the voice on the other end of the phone, sometimes it even slips up and calls me by name and since when is it quicker to dial the chamber's phone number than 411 you cellphone toting ass?) (not that I'm bitter about this or anything) (I just wish our Local Podunk Phone Company [TM] all kinds of ill for bringing this state of affairs to pass).
It's not always like that, you know?
No.
Sometimes it's just me sprawled out on my air mattress (remember, I'm not like other people who think a whole room needs to be devoted to just being unconcious: I took what most people would use as a bedroom and crammed it full of books and notebooks and desks and file cabinets and call it the study. When I do sleep, it's on a quality air mattress in the living room, with the couch for a headboard on which my dog stretches out for lights out and from which she dangles by about 3 a.m., sharing a pillow with me, her hot, moist doggy breath beating down on my neck. Such is the price we pay for slavishly devoted companionship) staring at the weirdly patterned light fixture (it looks kind of like the UFO language Obie the Artist and I made up for the alien abduction set in our Haunted House last year. Honest. Someday I will unravel its message and be able at last to contact VALIS and unlock the knowledge that is my birthright as a living creature on earth but that the evil demiurge keeps me from seeing by distracting me with petty material concerns like the laws of physics and food and sex) (really, it does) and wondering what the hell I'm going to write about now. I've covered it all, I tell myself, and everybody is going to get bored and go away and then I'll slog out the next 60 years of my life wondering what the hell to do with myself besides try to decipher my light fixture.
Wait, that doesn't sound like too bad a life to me.
Must be the Benadryl talking. Take enough of that stuff and it might as well be codiene cough syrup (the elixir of insanity our local physician gives me to ease the burden of my astonishingly frequent attacks of bronchitis, pneumonia, pharyngitis or a pleasant mixture of all three; a friend of mine in Moscow [Russia, not Idaho] [are there drugs in Idaho, or are they still smoking potatoes?] who has a taste for smack now and then but can't always get it when he has a mind tells me if I were to suck down a half-bottle of that it would be exactly like a heroin buzz. Just what I need to know when my tonsils swell up and close off my throat and my muscles feel like Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield had a bare knuckles brawl on top of me). Combine it with the copious amounts of coffee I have to consume just to get enough of a start to go take a shower and you have the metabolic mess that is me in the summertime.
Wait, so what was I talking about again?
OK, I'd better save this....
I just pulled a column out of my guts – it was more work for less quantity and quality than I've ever put out for this web page – and just as I went to post it, not, of course, having even bothered to save it yet (ominous swell to the bass section), my operating system (Mac OS 9.2 for those who care) engaged in rare crashing behavior and froze me out. I did not dispair, however, because most of the time when this happens my system recovers the text I lost when I re-boot, if not all of the text at least most of it, a mini-saved version from a few minutes before disaster struck. It might not have all of the corrections and polishing, but at least it is intact and still there...
But not this time. I've tried every trick in my formidable bag to coax those golden words (you don't know how badly the column sucked, so you have to take my word for it. Haha!) back onto my screen, to no avail. Alas and alack.
So you have been spared a big long excursis expanding on Henry Miller's theme in Tropic of Cancer in which he described himself as swollenly, awkwardly pregnant with his book, a metaphor I find occasionally apt on days unlike this one, when I know right away what I'm going to write about and a whole weird section of my brain sets to work churning out the copy I will actually type up much later. At such times I'm writing while I take coffee with my friends, while I walk my dog, while I give out the Saratoga Inn's phone number for the fourteenth time that day (gritting my teeth and trying not to let that fourteenth caller know how deeply it irritates me to be used as directory assistance. Or is the suspicion I am coming to believe more and more each day, that I am the very last person left in Carbon County who both has a phone book and knows how to use it, a true one? For it's not tourists, potential or otherwise, asking for the number. No! Usually I recognize the voice on the other end of the phone, sometimes it even slips up and calls me by name and since when is it quicker to dial the chamber's phone number than 411 you cellphone toting ass?) (not that I'm bitter about this or anything) (I just wish our Local Podunk Phone Company [TM] all kinds of ill for bringing this state of affairs to pass).
It's not always like that, you know?
No.
Sometimes it's just me sprawled out on my air mattress (remember, I'm not like other people who think a whole room needs to be devoted to just being unconcious: I took what most people would use as a bedroom and crammed it full of books and notebooks and desks and file cabinets and call it the study. When I do sleep, it's on a quality air mattress in the living room, with the couch for a headboard on which my dog stretches out for lights out and from which she dangles by about 3 a.m., sharing a pillow with me, her hot, moist doggy breath beating down on my neck. Such is the price we pay for slavishly devoted companionship) staring at the weirdly patterned light fixture (it looks kind of like the UFO language Obie the Artist and I made up for the alien abduction set in our Haunted House last year. Honest. Someday I will unravel its message and be able at last to contact VALIS and unlock the knowledge that is my birthright as a living creature on earth but that the evil demiurge keeps me from seeing by distracting me with petty material concerns like the laws of physics and food and sex) (really, it does) and wondering what the hell I'm going to write about now. I've covered it all, I tell myself, and everybody is going to get bored and go away and then I'll slog out the next 60 years of my life wondering what the hell to do with myself besides try to decipher my light fixture.
Wait, that doesn't sound like too bad a life to me.
Must be the Benadryl talking. Take enough of that stuff and it might as well be codiene cough syrup (the elixir of insanity our local physician gives me to ease the burden of my astonishingly frequent attacks of bronchitis, pneumonia, pharyngitis or a pleasant mixture of all three; a friend of mine in Moscow [Russia, not Idaho] [are there drugs in Idaho, or are they still smoking potatoes?] who has a taste for smack now and then but can't always get it when he has a mind tells me if I were to suck down a half-bottle of that it would be exactly like a heroin buzz. Just what I need to know when my tonsils swell up and close off my throat and my muscles feel like Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield had a bare knuckles brawl on top of me). Combine it with the copious amounts of coffee I have to consume just to get enough of a start to go take a shower and you have the metabolic mess that is me in the summertime.
Wait, so what was I talking about again?
OK, I'd better save this....
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