Beach House 2

We leave today. It’s average 60 here even when the sun shines, and we will be rolling into 85 degree weather. I considered just staying at a hotel and she can pick me up on Monday, but it’s too spendy.

Eagle eyes observers will notice two of those recent pictures feature a seal. On the dock. I was ecstatic. I live in Washington and grew up in Alaska, and I have never seen a seal lounging on a marina dock. Apparently they do on the Oregon coast.

Two hours to go until a meet with the boss. Both B and I wish that we could come down here during a time when neither of us is working.

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Mystery Author – Episode 5

This is that game I play where I type up a chapter or two from a famous novel (or other source) and you don’t find out who it is until the end. I think some people are going to know who this one is from the very first paragraph. I just have a feeling.

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“Not much has been written about the Ibogaine Effect as a serious factor in the presidential campaign, but toward the end of the Wisconsin primary race -about a week before the vote- word leaked out that some of Muskie’s top advisers had called in a Brazilian doctor who was said to be treating the candidate with “some kind of strange drug” that nobody in the press corps had ever heard of.

It had been common knowledge for many weeks that Humphrey was using an exotic brand of speed know as “Wallot”…and it had been long whispered that Muskie was into something very heavy, but it was hard to take the talk seriously until I heard about the appearance of a mysterious Brazilian doctor. That was the key.

I immediately recognized the Ibogaine Effect – from Muskie’s tearful breakdown on the flatbed truck in New Hampshire, the delusions and altered thinking that characterized his campaign in Florida; and finally, the condition of “total rage” that gripped him in Wisconsin.

There was no doubt about it: the Man from Maine had turned to massive doses of ibogaine as a last resort. The only remaining question was “when did he start?” But nobody could answer this one, and I was not able to press the candidate himself for an answer because I was permanently barred from the Muskie campaign after that incident on the Sunshine Special in Florida… and that scene makes far more sense now than it did at the time.

Muskie has always taken pride in his ability to deal with hecklers; he has often challenged them, calling them up to the stage in front of big crowds and then forcing the poor bastards to debate him in a blaze of TV lights.

But there was none of that in Florida.  When the Boohoo began grabbing at his legs and screaming for more gin, Big Ed went all to pieces… which gave rise to speculation, among reporters familiar with his campaign style in ’68 and ’70, that Muskie was not himself.

It was noticed, among other things, that he had developed a tendency to roll his eyes wildly during TV interviews, that his thought-patterns had become strangely fragmented, and that not even his closest advisors could predict when he might suddenly spiral off into babbling rages, or neo-comatose funks.  In retrospect, however, it is easy to see why Muskie fell apart on that caboose platform in the Miami train station. There he was – far gone in a bad ibogaine frenzy – suddenly shoved out in a rainstorm to face a sullen crowd and some kind of snarling lunatic going for his legs while he tried to explain why he was “the only Democrat who can beat Nixon”.

It is entirely conceivable – given the known effects of ibogaine – that Muskie’s brain was almost paralyzed by hallucinations at the time; that he looked out at that crowd and saw Gila monsters instead of people, and that his mind snapped completely when he felt something large and apparently vicious clawing at his legs.

We can only speculate on this, because those in a position to know have flatly refused to comment on rumors concerning the senator’s disastrous experiments with ibogaine.  I tried to find the Brazilian doctor on election night in Milwaukee, but by the time the polls closed he was long gone.  One of the hired bimbos in Muskie’s Holiday Inn headquarters said a man with fresh welts on his head had been dragged out the side door and put on a bus to Chicago, but we were never able to confirm this.

Humphrey’s addiction to Wallow has not stirred any controversy, so far. He has always campaigned like a rat in heat, and the only difference now is that he is able to do it eighteen hours a day instead of ten. The main change in his public style, since ’68, is that he no longer seems aware that his gibberish is not taken seriously by anyone except Labor Leaders and middle-class Blacks.  At least half the reporters assigned to the Humphrey campaign are convinced he’s senile.  When he ran for president four years ago, he was a hack and a fool, but at least he was consistent.

Now he talks like an eighty-year-old woman who just discovered speed. He will call a press conference to announce that if elected he will “have our boys out of Vietnam within ninety days”-then rush across town, weeping and jabbering the whole way, to appear on a network TV show and make a fist-shaking emotional appeal for every good American to stand behind the president and “applaud” his recent decision to resume heavy bombing in North Vietnam.

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McGovern’s solid victory in Wisconsin was dismissed, by most of the press wizards, as further evidence that the Democratic Party has been taken over by “extremists”:  George McGovern on the Left and George Wallace on the Right, with a sudden dangerous vacuum in what is referred to on editorial pages as “the vital Center”.

The root of the problem, of course, is that most of the big-time Opinion Makers decided a long time ago – along with all those Democratic senators, congressmen, governors, mayors, and other party pros- that the candidate of the “vital Center” in ’72 would be none other than that fireball statesman from Maine, Ed Muskie. By the summer of ’71 the party bosses had convinced themselves that Ed Muskie was the “only Democrat with a chance of beating Nixon”.

This was bullshit, of course.  Sending Muskie against Nixon would have been like sending a three-toed sloth out to seize turf from a wolverine.  Big Ed was an adequate senator – or at least he’d seemed like one until he started trying to explain his “mistake” on the war in Vietnam- but it was stone madness from the start to ever think about exposing him to the kind of bloodthirsty thugs that Nixon and John Mitchell would sic on him.  They would have him screeching on his knees by sundown on Labor Day. 

If I were running a campaign against Muskie, I would arrange for some anonymous creep to buy time on national TV and announce that twenty-two years ago he and Ed spent a summer working as male prostitutes at a Peg House somewhere in the North Woods.  Nothing else would be necessary.

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Total candor with the press – or anyone else, for that matter- is not one of the traits most presidential candidates find entirely desirable in their key staff people. Skilled professional liars are as much in demand in politics as they are in the advertising business…and the main function of any candidate’s press secretary is to make sure the press gets nothing but upbeat news. There is no point, after all, in calling a press conference to announce that nobody on the staff will be paid this month because three or four of your largest financial backers just called to say they are pulling out and abandoning all hope of victory. When something like this happens, you quickly lock all the doors and send your press secretary out to start whispering, off the record, that your opponent’s California campaign coordinator just called to ask for a job.

This kind of devious bullshit is standard procedure in most campaigns.  Everybody is presumed to understand it- even the reporters who can’t keep a straight face while they’re jotting it all down for page one of the early edition: “Sen. Mace Denies Pull Out Rumors; Predicts Total Victory in All States”

The best example of this kind of coverage has been the stuff coming out of the Muskie camp. In recent weeks the truth has been so painful that some journalists have gone out of their way to give the poor bastards a break and not flay them in print any more than absolutely necessary.

One of the only humorous moments in the Florida primary campaign, for instance, came when one of Muskie’s state campaign managers, Chris Hart, showed up at a meeting with representatives of the other candidates to explain why Big Ed was refusing to take part in a TV debate.  “My instructions,” he said, “are that the senator should never again be put in a situation where he has to think quickly.”

By nightfall of that day every journalist in Miami was laughing at Hart’s blunder, but nobody published it; and none of the TV reporters ever mentioned it on the air.  I didn’t even use it myself, for some reason, although I heard about it in Washington while I was packing to go back to Florida.

I remember thinking that I should call Hart and ask him if he actually said a thing like that, but when I got there, I didn’t feel up to it. Muskie was obviously in deep trouble, and Hart had been pretty decent to me when I’d showed up at headquarters to sign up for that awful trip on the Sunshine Special… So I figured what the hell?  Let it rest. Looking back on it, I think it must have been so obvious that the Muskie campaign was doomed that nobody felt mean enough to torment the survivors over something that no longer seemed important.

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One of my clearest memories of the Nebraska primary is getting off the elevator on the wrong floor in the Omaha Hilton and hearing a sudden burst of song from a room down one of the hallways…. Twenty to thirty young voices in ragged harmony, kicking out the jams as they swing into the final, hair-raising chorus of “The Hound and The Whore.”  I had heard it before, in other hallways of other hotels along the campaign trail- but never this late at night, and never at this level of howling intensity:

O the Hound chased the Whore across

the mountains

Boom! Boom! Boom!

O the Hound chased the Whore into the sea….

Boom! Boom! Boom!

A very frightening song under any circumstances- but especially frightening if you happen to be a politician running or very high stakes and you know the people singing that song are not on your side.

I have never been in that situation myself, but I imagine it is something like camping out in the North Woods and suddenly coming awake in your tent around midnight to the horrible snarling and screaming sounds of a werewolf killing your guard dog somewhere out in the trees beyond the campfire.

*

-Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail.  

Big influence on me. Usually I say more but I’m feeling quiet today.

Reblog: Creative Flow — Thought Doula

After lamenting my difficulties in creating art in this space yesterday, the universe proved this was nothing more than a self-limiting belief. I had a lot of work to do, but I couldn’t shake the desire to draw. In the time before my journey… that other life which I am seeking a concise name for… […]

Creative Flow — Thought Doula

Da Witch Emerges

heh heh heh heh. I found another good republish for the Gizoogle.net filter. And this time it’s my work. I’m delighted at the result.

I’ll post the original at the bottom.

Da Witch Emerges

Da witch sat hunkered down in her hoopty up in a seedy Fred Meyer parkin lot in tha shittiest part of tha hood. Biatch was pissed. Thankfully, dat freaky biatch had a solution ta resolve her off tha hook irritation.

Tha witch decided it may be betta fo’ all concerned dat dis thugged-out biiiatch could only invoke one spell. Realistically – thangs could git skanky fast if dat biiiiatch was a all-powerful witch. Biatch knew dat shit.

Da witch was fond of her funky-ass 1960’s Ford Mustang. Biatch loved tha roomy interior, gigantic white steerin wheel, throbbin stereo grooves, n’ tha cherry red exterior dat brought her pleasure just lookin at it up in tha driveway at night.

But there was a problem wit takin dis hoopty on tha road: other drivers.

As tha witch entered tha Fred Meyer parkin lot on dis day, her big-ass booty steered her funky-ass hoopty slowly n’ methodically, takin care ta stop fo’ pedestrians n’ respect other drivers.

Yo, suddenly, dat biiiiatch witnessed another driver speedin all up in tha parkin lot at a rate straight-up wack fo’ a funky-ass busy parkin lot. Biatch was immediately incensed. Her nozzle opened up in rage.
Yo, she tried ta control her impulses – but dat shiznit was too late. All her senses prepared fo’ battle.

She kept a keen eye on dis driver n’ his crazy-ass modern yellow game car. Biatch looped round n’ followed his muthafuckin ass, kept her eyes fixed on his cold-ass tail lights. Biatch followed his ass until he approached a stop sign.

Yo, she waited until da thug was at a gangbangin’ full stop. She didn’t wanna hurt him, she just wanted ta seriously fuck wit his fuckin lil’ day.
It be necessary fo’ drivers ta be at a full n’ complete stop if a witch is straight-up determined ta pull dis evil shiznit on dem wild-ass muthafuckas. It’s too messed up otherwise. So tha witch followed her own lil protocol.

Dude slowed down n’ stopped.
Yo, she waited fo’ a moment n’ smiled.
Yo, she blinked her eyes three times up in rapid succession ta invoke tha spell.

BAM! <<<<
hissssssssssssssssssss

All four of his cold-ass tires blew up all up at tha same time biaatch!
She smiled n’ let up a cold-ass lil cackle. Biatch couldn’t peep his ass, but she knew exactly what tha fuck was goin’ down inside his car.

Dude was bobbin – overwhelmed by tha split-second adrenaline release. Dude looked round rapidly, sweatin n’ beatboxin expletives.
Fear
Pure, straight-up dope fear.
Dude didn’t KNOW what tha fuck had happened. Y’all KNOW dat shit! Not yet.
Has his thugged-out lil’ punk-ass been shot?! What was dat sound? That bang, biatch? Why was it so loud?

Finally, he leaped outta tha hoopty n’ quickly discovered tha blown tires. His grill chizzled. Now da thug was trippin n’ mad salty. Dude circled round tha back of tha car, eyes scannin tha asphalt as da perved-out muthafucka struggled ta locate tha source of tha blowout.
Dude placed his handz on tha top of his head n’ paced, eyes still wildly dartin round tha pavement. His grill contorted, n’ his thugged-out lil’ punk-ass started beatboxin tha fuck into tha air:

“Yo… what tha fuck tha FUCK did I run over, yo?!”

Dude screamed dis nuff muthafuckin times.
Da witch hunkered down n’ kept her distance, watchin tha scene wit amusement n’ pleasure.
She placed her sunglasses over her eyes wit a sigh. This is tha part where she knew she must enforce Witch Ethics.

Witches must maintain self-control. They’ve been given a gift; tha juice itself is tha reward. No gloatin be allowed. Y’all KNOW dat shit. But she’s only human. Afta all.

Her first instinct was ta roll up next ta him, while da thug was still sufferin dis dire stress, roll down her window n’ yell:
“HaaHAAA, oh peep dat son! LOOK at dat son! Yo ass betta call triple AAA, biiiatch!”

Da witch resisted dis straight-up phat impulse.

Yo, such behavior is beneath tha dignitizzle of a witch.

And tha witch considered her muthafuckin ass Highly Dignified.

It would also arouse suspicion. I aint talkin’ bout chicken n’ gravy biatch. Dude wouldn’t know dat she’s a witch, mind you, but he’d quickly assume dat she’d somehow been involved.
An enraged mind don’t require facts or details ta arrive at rapid conclusions.

He’d sense dat dis sneerin lil biiiatch sportin a red pixie cut had somehow, up in some way, seriously fucked wit all four of his cold-ass tires at once.

And then tha cops would be on ta her, she figured.
They’d finally gotz a lead.

This wasn’t her first episode of tire destruction.
Tires had already blown up in stopped vehiclez all over town. Every time a asshole driver stumbled upon tha pimped out misfortune of Ms. Pumpkin – tha Mighty Tire Witch – blew up tires n’ mad drama followed. Everywhere.
Da hood already had a hell of a problem on they hands.
Da problem emerged over time, n’ hood officials was slow ta come ta grips wit tha strange shiznit up in they midst.

Eventually, word spread. Drivers fuckin started contactin insurizzle g-units, n’ tha insurizzle g-units called tha tire manufacturers. Companies fuckin started investigations. First, they suspected a problem wit tha actual tires.
They feared a freaky freaky design issue. They figured tha worst-case scenario facin motorists n’ tha automotizzle industry was likely pendin lawsuits n’ a massive recall on tires.
Yo, soon enough, they discovered it wasn’t just one brand of tires.
Every brand of tire up in existence was blowin out, n’ all 4 simultaneously up in every last muthafuckin incident of dis kind.

Now thangs gots Real.

Da five-o was contacted; it became apparent dat a cold-ass lil criminal was afoot. But how?!

All four tires at once , always at stop lights, stop signs or up in tha driveway of motorist home residences. Always when other drivers was a safe distizzle away.
They scratched they headz fo’ months. No evidence of bombs. No fingerprints, n’ you can put dat on yo’ toast. No meaningful witnizz statements.
There was witnizz statements all right, but all statements consisted of tha witnesses observin spontaneous tire combustion without a suspect nearby.
Zero evidence of foul play.

One day, they brought up a savvy investigator from outta town. Dude uncovered tha pattern n’ pinpointed tha motizzle yo, but maddeningly so, cuz it didn’t brang his ass any closer ta solvin tha case.
There was still a cold-ass lil complete absence of evidence n’ no suspects. Dude sat up in his crib readin five-o reports n’ sucka statements, leanin forward a lil wit rolled up sleeves n’ a gangbangin’ furrowed brow.

Yo, suddenly, he gasped n’ looked up.
“TOM!”, da perved-out muthafucka shouted, “Tom, git yo’ ass over here, I be thinkin I gots dat shiznit son!”
Tomothy circled tha corner wit a cold-ass lil cup of fruity-ass malt liquor up in his hand.
“What?!”
“I’ve found a…. commonality, I think fo’ realz. A trend among tha suckas.”
Da investigator stood up n’ paced back n’ forth, touchin his chin up in thought. Dude strutted over ta tha window, pulled down tha blindz n’ grabbed a marker from his fuckin lil’ desk yo. Dude paused fo’ a moment, then strutted over ta tha white board.
Dude fuckin started freestylin driver names on tha white board up in a neat column. Dude freestyled rollin infractions across from each name, separated by commas.
“HA!”, he yelled, “Do you see it?”

Tomothy squinted fo’ a moment, then his wild lil’ grill chillaxed. Dude slowly smiled.
“Yes muthafucka! Oh, hell fo’sho, why didn’t we peep dis before!, biatch? Speedin tickets, movin violations, noise infractions from dem god-awful subwoofers. Right back up in yo muthafuckin ass. Some of these playas even parked up in a handicapped unit biaaatch! These drivers is all assholez! That’s tha key!”

“Right!”, tha detectizzle yelled, “and these is just tha ones dat we know bout son! Da remainin suckas is probably just assholez whoz ass drive wild-ass all over hood but manage ta fly under tha radar!”

Tomothy sipped his wild lil’ fruity-ass malt liquor n’ sighed.

“Well, I’ll be damned. Someone is targetin asshole drivers indiscriminately, all over town, n’ takin up all four tires at once on they hoopties…”

“Yeah,” tha investigator cut in, “and whoever it is, I mean, dis is unprecedented. This type’a shiznit happens all tha time. We’re dealin wit a straight-up professionizzle here, so peek-a-boo, clear tha way, I be comin’ thru fo’sho fo’ realz. A real sophisticate.”
Meanwhile, tha witch stood beside her funky-ass Mustang on top of a hill overlookin tha ocean, leanin against tha parked car.
She wore stylish sunglasses n’ a long-ass red shawl draped over her shoulders, gently blowin up in tha wind.

Witch work is exhaustin sometimes. Castin spells, even minor ones, can seriously tax her juice levels.
She decided dat shiznit was time fo’ a lil chillaxation. There’s not a damn thang like a cold-ass lil cup of black chronic n’ a phat book ta unwind up in moments like all dis bullshit.

Original:

Presenting: The Witch Emerges (Episode I)

Hahaaaa the part about how she’s mufuckin Highly Dignified is the best.

Thanks for reading.

A Worthy Republish

Last week I looked up this blog on Gizoogle.net. Not all posts were available, however, my feature about Grace was available to run through the Gizoogle filter. I was so pleased with the results that I decided to Republish some of it here. To see the original Grace feature, click below.

Introducing…Grace St. Clair

The original is awesome in it’s own right. But let’s read the Grace feature ran through the Gizoogle filter and converted into Snoop Dogg dialect. I did this copy job on a phone, and was forced to do the paste in small little chunks. Thus, I hope someone enjoys this as much as I do. I am damn tempted to do the same thing with Holly’s work.

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Grace Filtered by Gizoogle:

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Todizzle be all bout Grace.  

At times she’s reflectizzle (borderin on philosophical), other times she’s sarcastic n’ humorous.  Above all, Grace writes a shitload of tha dopest poetry I’ve seen. 

Below I’ve highlighted some passages from Blogger dat I enjoy:

“If you live any amount of time up in a place you pick up tha local lingo. I’ve lived a shitload of different places but certainly never lost mah natizzle lingo n’ have often found mah dirty ass tryin ta explain what tha fuck I’m tawkin’ about.

Our local mini-mart is owned by Hindu people, ghetto unknown, n’ when I looted mah lottery ticket tha other dizzle tha gentleman holla’d, “Don’t forget our asses when you win”. I holla’d, “From yo’ lips ta God’s ears” yo. Dude looked all up in mah grill funky.”

“It’s a odd feelin – phantom hair.
Fluffin afro dat isn’t there,
I have no vibe of despair.
It will return, I have no diggity.
Until it do, I’ll do without.”

“My fuckin ‘conversations’ wit tha cats:
Is you crazy?
Must you be everywhere I am?
What have you gots now?
Do you want tha cheese or not?
Move yo’ fat butt.
Leave her A-lone biaatch! Didn’t I just rap ta git down, biatch? Am I not bustin lyrics?
Git OFF!”

“When I say ridin – I mean lil playas would gather all up in tha candy store, take up all tha stools all up in tha counter, order a cold-ass lil coke n’ basically act like fools. Which teenagers do. Periodically there would be a funky-ass brou-ha-ha n’ all tha lil playas would git thrown up n’ possibly banned fo’ all dem days. In which case they would migrate ta tha other candy store – but dis was not always a phat solution cuz Jack n’ Ruby always knew which lil playas they had thrown up – so if you gots banned from Jack’s, Ruby would know n’ da thug wouldn’t let you in, up in which case yo’ hood game was screwed until you apologized.”

“I was struttin home from work dis afternoon n’ I was stopped dead up in mah tracks by tha graceful antics of two lil’ small-ass butterflies – they flew close ta tha ground – win ta wing; swoopin n’ gliding; then chasin each other wit tha smalla one gettin under tha wing of tha larger one so they looked as if they was one; they tumbled all up in tha air, tossin theyselves bout n’ then they parted n’ flew off up in opposite directions.
And I stood there wit a gangbangin’ foolish smile on mah grill while traffic rushed round mah crazy ass n’ and tha lunch time diners gave me strange looks as I stood stock still watchin dis incredible gift.”

“We piled outta tha theatre, hopped up, excited, straight-up jazzed. Y’all KNOW dat shit, muthafucka! As we made our way down tha street, without forethought or planning, we fuckin started ta dance, snappin our fingers n’ rappin – “When you’re a Jet, you’re a Jet all tha way, From yo’ first blunt ta yo’ last dyin day”

Us playas jostled round n’ reformed ta rap – “Gee Officer Krupke, what tha fuck is we ta do, biatch? Gee, Officer Krupke, Krup You!”

We settled, n’ strutted n’ then one of mah thugs started ta rap – “Could be, Dum diddy-dum, here I come biaaatch! Who tha fuck knows, biatch? There’s suttin’ due any dizzle I’ma know right away Soon as it shows…” 15 dope, dope teenage voices joined in. I aint talkin’ bout chicken n’ gravy biatch. One of tha thugs ran ahead, leapt onto a light pole, ala Gene Kelly up in ‘Singin up in tha Rain”, one arm wrapped round tha pole, tha other flung up n’ up …and we busted – “It may come cannon-ballin’ down from tha sky, Gleam up in its eye, Bright as a rose. Dum diddy-dum, here I come biaaatch! Who tha fuck knows?”

“I hear noize up in mah head, dat no one else can hear.
Da disc jockey keeps a steady beat;
the turntablist throws a riff
While tha sax playa blows it long n’ low –
it finally hits mah Nikes.

A shuffle, then a funky-ass bump, a swing,
as hips go side ta side
And then tha trumpet sidlez up in n’ I begin ta glide.”

*

heh heh. The bit featuring the teenage days is priceless.

The Aurora Lamp

The pictures did not adequately capture the amazing magic of this thing. Then I remembered all about YouTube… and videos and stuff.

I was also just talking about SP, and I have the lamp sitting next to the SP flag. Which makes it even cooler because the flag features the same color palette as the lamp.

Therefore, it made perfect sense to me that I should also include the weirdest SP song in their entire catalog. This is a folky little weird-ass number called “Meladori Magpie”.

I recommend making it full screen to see the full magic. We have come a long way since people put oil drops on slides in the 1960’s and people manually moved the slides.

Song of The Month – Eric Burdon doing House of the Rising Sun

I like to do Song of The Month features. It’s fun too… because I call them song of the month but sometimes it’s only twice a year. I just do them when I feel like it. 😁

Today features House of The Rising Sun by Eric Burdon and The Animals. I fuckin’ love Eric Burdon. Listen to that goddamn voice.

hot damn. I discovered one of his greatest hits albums in the early 2000’s around the same time that I discovered The Who and a bunch of other classic rock stuff that was new to me at the time. Burdon was yet another fantastic treasure I found during a period of ripe discovery.

I tended to discover a good classic rock song and either I would order a best hits comp, or the entire early catalog of each band. It was a joy to receive these discs in the mail and put them on right away…usually while taking a huge bong rip.. start listening and say to my girlfriend, “hot damn! EVERY song on this CD is amazing.”

Burdon’s compilation was like that. It featured “See See Rider”, “Montery”, “Sky Pilot” and all his 1967-1969 stuff, including an excellent version of “River Deep, Mountain High”. I never did check out the earlier era of The Animals because it seemed like it was just a bunch of covers. I may do that soon. Because honestly, rising sun is a cover and it’s possibly the most famous and skillfully executed cover song of all time.

I am learning this one and it’s trickier to play than it sounds due to the pick scrape action and the fact that it’s in 3/6 combined with the pick technique. But I am obsessive so I will get it.

Listen to that voice. Makes my nipples hard. Burdon is such a weird guy too. In the best way. Listen to him in the song “Winds of Change” and this weirdness becomes evident. He does this weird deadpan thing and I love it. Just a very unique and special voice in the Canon of rock legends.

he also looks a lot like me. Burdon could be my dad. I am adopted so it warms my heart to think maybe there’s some chance that I am actually the product of Burdon and some groupie. Heh.

heh heh. “Have you seen Tina Turner?” This one makes me want to dance or walk circles in my living room.

Version Battle – You Keep Me Hanging On

This post is inspired by Grace. I needed breakfast material, so she did me a favor. Grace is apparently not a fan of girl groups or the overproduction of Motown sound. Whereas, The Supremes doing this song makes my nipples hard, and it inspires a desire for me to walk in circles in my living room listening to it. For comparison, let’s hear 1 other version and then a jaw-dropping medley by Tim Buckley which features the song at the end. The way he segues into the song with his acoustic still gets me.

And since it’s V-day and Supremes annoy Grace 😆, I will feature another song that I love, the Symphony song. I LOVE this shit. Come on Grace, can’t you see the tall handsome black man with a thin mustache and a million dollar smile giving her flowers and does it not make you swoon a little inside? 😁 this song makes me want to wear a pink dress. In reality I am rather boyish, but this song makes my soul put on a pink dress. Ross’s mastery of the vocals here kills me. Utter perfection. The way she does a lispy and whispy thing on certain words to bring an extra little femininity…absolute mastery.

now if you’ll excuse me I must swoon to this last song a time or two and then I must return to my work station.

Introducing… Holly (who surprised me with her fiction talent!)

I enjoy promoting other fantastic bloggers. I’ve actually promoted Holly once before in the past, but this is before I learned that she is a talented fiction writer! She used to simply journal. I promoted her in the past because her online diary was (and still is) hilarious at times.

She still journals, but now she treats followers to her storytelling talent between journal posts. Below I’ve pasted the first part of one story. It’s a dark little number about a killer named Ralph.

For the full series, visit this link: https://therightingprompt.wordpress.com/category/ralph/

*tip – you have to start at the bottom of the post and scroll up to read the entire series. That’s just how her blog is.

Okay, here’s that sample:

Ralph – by Holly

Claire searched frantically through the house looking for her husband. She finally found him, not dead, “thank God”, she thought, but wrapped like a mummy in plastic. She didn’t know how he was still breathing, but he was. And panicking. She tore at the plastic covering his face with her fingers. It was so thick and stretchy she couldn’t breach it. She knew she was running out of time, but she had to leave him again. “I’m coming back!”, she yelled at him. He stopped squirming for a moment, shocked perhaps? She couldn’t see his face clearly to be sure. A strained squeal leaked from his wrappings, but she had no time to waste reassuring him.

She leapt up and looked around. She was in a bedroom, fully furnished. Rushing to the dresser, she violently snatched drawers open, praying for a tool of some sort. “Fuck!” she yelled when she found the first two empty. She opened a third, again finding nothing. She wrenched the open drawer up and down in the dresser until it broke, hoping for a sliver of wood that she could use to free Carl. Having no luck, she smashed the drawer against the dresser until she did. It had been only seconds, less than a minute, she was sure, but Carl had grown still.

She rushed to his side. “I’m here, I’ve got you, just hang on.”

She pulled the plastic taut and away from Carl’s face then stabbed at it with the drawer fragment. The point broke and the splintered wood dug into her hand, but she kept at it. She was chanting “no, no, no” under her breath like a mantra. Finally, she was able to make a hole large enough to get a few fingers into, and she used all her strength to make it large enough to allow Carl to breathe. But he didn’t breathe. He didn’t move. She threw her tool down and started pressing on his chest, trying desperately to revive him. Nothing. Her mantra grew louder and more agonized.

She kept at it, blind with grief until suddenly Carl jolted, drawing a screaming breath.

She laughed though her tears, wild with excitement and relief.  Carl was still trapped, but he was alive. “I’ve got you! Hold on. I’ve got you.” Claire said as she moved back to the hole to start tearing again, exposing the rest of Carl’s face. Then, Claire’s head was gone. Her torso slowly tilted forward, falling onto Carl’s wrapped chest, the blood pouring forth from his wife’s neck filling his nose and mouth, silencing his screams.

“That’s better.” Said Ralph. He walked to the bed and wiped his machete clean on the crisp white duvet. The contrast was stark, almost artful. He thought it added some much-needed flair to this boring ass room.

*

What a hell of a beginning, huh? It gets so much better than this.

She also has a touching story “Lucy and Luther” which is equal parts adorable and disturbing. Holly’s talent for mixing horror with cuteness is mind-boggling. I don’t know how she does it, but it’s pretty awesome.

https://therightingprompt.wordpress.com/category/series/lucy-and-luther/

You can find even more fiction if you visit Holly’s external site and click on “short stories”.

-ZP

If you liked this, you might also enjoy: https://zerospace05.wordpress.com/2021/08/07/introducinggrace-st-clair/

I have no idea why WP no longer embeds, but it’s groovy anyway I guess.

Mystery Author! Episode 3

It’s been a while since I’ve done Mystery Author.   In this feature, I type up a chapter (or more) from a famous book or other source for your reading pleasure.  The fun part is you don’t find out who the author is until the end.  This one is incredibly special.  Consequently, it’s much longer than any other Mystery Author episode.

This author’s writing has an excessive amount of ellipses… (now I know where I picked up this habit from!).  I was tempted to edit them out, but I’m leaving them in.  The writing still flows just fine.

*

“To this day I still don’t know the exact reasons why my mom was committed to a mental hospital…all anyone ever said to me about it was that she had taken “too many diet pills” while trying to lose some weight and flipped out…I wasn’t around when whatever happened ‘happened’…she was held for over 2 months, until she dramatically escaped by jumping a fence and running away (no doctors ever came to get her and take her back)… no one ever told me at the time what was happening, or explained why my mother was gone.

I recently found some of my mom’s writings from when she was in the hospital…there were some diary entries, and much to my surprise, a few poems. Finding her writings on the eve of publishing my own poetry book was an funny, unexpected discovery… all this hit me kinda strange, because I had never viewed her as an artist type…my dad was the talented one, and he carried the mysterious persona that goes with someone who has a gift…my mom was straightforward to a fault, but didn’t strike me as a failed dreamer…but looking now, I think life was all too much for her, and any outward spark that she had in her died along the way and was buried deep down below…I now understand where both of those faces in me come from, the restless magician and the sad, longing soul.

*

My father reappears one fine afternoon out of the blue, and without explanation, takes me to live with him…I have had no clue as to where he was, what he was doing, or that he had gotten re-married, so it was all a big shock to me…after living in almost near bliss with my great-grandmother and grandfather for a year, he yanks me out without ceremony, giving me little time to pack or honorably say goodbye to them.

As we drive, he gives me a very basic ‘here’s how it’s going to be’ speech (because he is uncomfortable with any damage he might have caused me, and sees the very act of mentioning it as a sign that he is guilty)…he never really puts into context why he disappeared, made no contact with me in that time, or what had happened to my mom…it was as if someone just shows up one day and changes the channel on your life, and you are supposed to play the same character you were playing on the other show, exactly as if it was the same reality you had been living in all along.

*
It is still light out when we pull up to the trailer park, and all the snow on the ground gives each motorhome the gentle appearance that they are quaint country cabins…walking in, I notice right away that everything seems much colder…I meet my father’s second wife, my step-mother, for the first time…she is small, around 5 feet tall just like my mother, but more petite…however, where my mother’s features are soft and dark, her features are angular and straight…she speaks in a clipped, overly affected tone, which on the surface one without a keen ear would easily mistake for graciousness, but secretly underneath hums the lower bell of controlled chaos…my welcome from her is neither welcoming or dismissive, but I can see straight away she is not happy I am here…I am also re-introduced to my brother, who is grown now into a cherubic, golden-locked boy of 3…last I saw him he was still a toddling babe, but now moves through the space with the confidence of an only child, for it is his…I am shown the lay of the land, and directed as to where to find my bed, which is the bunk that straddles the top of the driving cab…and that is it, life moves on.

*

My dad leaves almost every evening to play gigs, leaving me to sit in silence with these 2 hostile strangers…my step-mother is a totally different person when my father is not around, speaking in a cold monotone and exhibiting little patience for any questions I might have…the entire message is clear—’we don’t want you here, but we have no choice’…my brother sees me as his competition for my father’s affections, because he has grown so used to him all to himself…(this sadly sets up a self-defeating competition between us that would last for 20+ years)…but my sibling does not concern himself over my relationship to our step-mother, because he is her only son now, and she his only mother…he calls her mom, a sound I find strange…my father informs me that I must call her mom as well, even though the thought repulses me…if I try to retreat to my bunk to find solace, I am told by my step-mother that I am not allowed to be up there unless I am going to bed…naps are not allowed, so I sit uncomfortably in the booth seats that also serve as an ad-hoc breakfast table and try to keep busy…there are no toys or books of my own, so I go out and play in the snow a lot.

*

Day by day, I begin to detach slowly from the past, as the memory of living with my mother and my grandparents fades into the distance, and a dawning reality grows that this situation I am now in is not to be temporary like the others…I wish I could go somewhere, but I couldn’t tell you where…anywhere but here, I suppose…the entire time we are in Cicero, I do not see my mom or her relatives at all…and as is the custom, I am not allowed to speak of her.

As time has passed, my role in the family has settles in…I act essentially as an independent entity (think unwanted adopted child and you will get the picture)…my father lavishes praise on my brother, and my step-mother treats him as her own…I am tolerated, but it is made clear I must earn my position in the family, particularly by my step-mother…I must sweep the floors while my brother plays…I must clean up for the family after dinner because food is expensive…every move I make, everything I do is given an assigned value against what I am costing the family…my father is distant, unable to deal with his prior abandoning of me…unable to deal with his own guilt, he treats me more like a buddy…it breaks my heart when he sends my brother hand drawn pictures from exotic locales and doesn’t even mention me in his letters…I feel invisible, but I cannot hide enough…everything I do is to not be seen, although there is nothing I want more in the world to be seen…school will soon will start, and I look forward to going every day to relieve living in this pressure cooker…I share a room with my brother, and spend a lot of time up there reading my new favorite book, “The Jungle Book”, by Rudyard Kipling…I want to close the door, but I am not allowed to by my step-mother (no explanation is given)…but when I read, I escape into a world without step-mothers and absent fathers and fairy tale mommies.

*

I am often given bathroom duty, being expected to clean the toilet and the shower to a military level of cleanliness…I must get my step-mother to come in when I am done cleaning so that she may inspect the work herself, standing there awkwardly as she looks closely at the areas around the toilet, sink, and bath…if I have missed anything, she tells me I must clean for another long period of time (like another half-hour), and not to bother calling her until I am positive the area is perfect.

Because the bathroom itself has already been cleaned once, I spend a few minutes re-cleaning the area, and then just sit and wait the appropriate time in silence before calling her back…the first time that she comes into my room screaming in the middle of the night (my father isn’t home normally until 5am) involves something that has displeased her about the bathroom’s lack of cleanliness, and she drags me out of bed by my hair all the way to the bathroom down the hall…she shoves my face into the base of the toilet, so close that I can smell the odd mixture of cleaning solvents and urine, asking me if I feel that this area is clean…not knowing how to answer, she insists that the toilet is filthy, and makes me clean it all again in the middle of the night.

Her frequent night attacks, which involve being woken up suddenly with her standing over me screaming at the top of her lungs also include beatings and the occasional shove down the stairs…being thrown down the stairs usually involves something to do with cleaning up the kitchen…the terror of all of this gives me a terminal case of insomnia, and makes me a very light sleeper (I still suffer with insomnia at times, but it has gotten a bit better—it was very terrible for almost 25 years or so)…when my father comes home, I lay in bed awake listening to her prepare him food…I dread these sounds, the sounds of pots and pans and cooking, because it means I will have to do the cleaning up later.

*

I start wetting the bed almost every night…the first few times, my step-mother takes the wet sheets off wordlessly…after the first few incidents, she starts to get very angry…if my father is aware there is a problem, he doesn’t show it…my bed wetting seems to send her into overdrive, and she compounds the problem by telling me that something is wrong with me, that if I was normal like all the other boys and girls I wouldn’t be having this problem…I am terrified of her, so I start trying to hide the evidence as it were if I have wet the bed…I get away with this a few times, but she takes to checking the bed every morning, often before I get up…if she finds that I have wet the bed, she makes me stay in it for hours, as punishment for what I have done…I just lay underneath the wet covers and ask God to please kill her for me because I hate her so much…this is the time that the real violence of my life begins, becoming intertwined with all that I do and all that I am.

*

On a particular cool night, I am making my usual trek to the liquor store to buy my step-mother cigarettes…she has given me a $20 bill, which to my 7 year old mind is a tremendous amount of money…the moon is full, and as always when it is, I feel the call of the wild in my bones…the clean air fills my head, and for the first time in my life I consider running away…of course, there is nowhere to go, no one to see…I imagine I can live for a little while on the 20 bucks, but of course will have no way to get any more money once it runs out…I figure the best place to live would be under an overpass bridge, but I will have to figure out where to get some blankets…I walk particularly slow, weighing each aspect of my decision with each step I take…the situation at home is so utterly toxic to my nerves that I cannot possibly stand another night…it is a rare moment where I only think of myself, leaving my younger brother and anyone else I love completely out of the question…there is no one to be seen on my walk thru the back alley behind the stores, it’s just me and the possibility of leaving for good…I come to figure that I will probably be caught, and will only get beat worse when I do…I have come to be used to the beatings, they are fairly regular now, it is just the waiting for the beatings that drives me insane…the pregnant pause between the release of the impacted energy thru violence and the long sweep of the tide out, till all is still…then, a faint rumble as it heads back into my direction, and the numb roar that comes up thru the floor, until fists meets temple, and the cycle is complete.

*

I have learned the fine art now of judging what is expected of me when I am being beat…it takes a keen ear to detect if the desired result is one of the following: submission, capitulation, confession, or negation…sometimes when I am being beaten down, the desired result appears to be tears, a bleating “no more, no more”, until the monster is satisfied…in stark opposition, sometimes the desired result appears to be to stop me crying, until a numb pall falls over the scene…as she beats me, she repeats over and over again “stop crying, stop crying you piece of shit”, and the formula reads that once you do the beating will stop…I learn the fine art of giving her whatever she desires, if only to feel that I am the one ultimately in control…

On a visit to my maternal grandmothers, I am up in my aunt’s apartment, sitting on my haunches in the corner, staring at a curio case full of porcelain figures…I think calmly through the things that plague me, which at this age are that I hate cigarette smoke, and I don’t like anyone to see me cry…I make two decisions in that moment I remain faithful to till this day…one, I will never smoke cigarettes, such is my hatred of the smell (I have still never smoked a cigarette in my life)…and two, that I will never cry for any reason (I would estimate that I have cried just 6 or 7 times in my entire life since that moment, the circumstances usually so overwhelming that I cannot override the feeling.

So when I am beat now, if the desire seems to be to make me cry, I learn a sort of fake sob, dramatized to heighten the necessary effect…she doesn’t seem to notice the difference between the fake version and the real deal, so this passes muster and therefore I never need to cry at all…

My father spends most evenings getting stoned and watching TV…this becomes our time together, the most effective way to be in his presence is to learn to enjoy what he enjoys…for my father has little interest in what I am interested in…any attempt to get him to watch a baseball game perhaps results in a waving of the hand and a dismissal of the game as “boring”…fortunately for me, my dad likes to watch things like “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” and “The Midnight Special”, which was a program that featured live music from new bands…this was in many ways my first exposure to international rock music not covered by our local radio.

*

I am standing in the kitchen, talking to my father…about the past, about the future, about whatever is going on with us…my father is sweet person, who means well, that is until you do or say something that crosses one of his many emotional boundaries and then it’s everybody for themselves…living with my dad the way I do, in the wake of having returned home from Florida a complete and utter failure, has finally settled into a peaceful routine that feels equitable…I am not reliant on him beyond the roof over my head, and he doesn’t ask much from me beyond us getting along and me doing the dishes regularly…the place is such a dump that the concept of ‘clean’ is a kind of surreal subjective notion that involves the appearance of frugal, stark order, but everywhere you look are signs of creeping oblivion.

Having left us to live and essentially fend for ourselves with our step-mother around 8-11 years ago (it depends on who’s counting), I am finally feeling secure enough in my relationship with my dad to open up about some of the things that happened at home when he wasn’t around…I have come to rely more on my real mother to be the filter of all that has happened, for she is more consistent and doesn’t end up laying the blame at my feet…her position is one of good friend or confidant…she listens, points out who she believes was at fault (usually my father, but she hates my step-mother too), and reminds me that those things are over with now, etc.…if there is any fault in my mother’s position about the past, it is that she has never fully come to grips with the fact that she abandoned us as well…in her eyes, she has never fully ‘left’, but consistently been in our lives the whole time…which is true to a fault…my father, on the other hand, cannot deal with the damage of his own decisions, generally taking a “well if it hurt you, it hurt me even worse” position, which renders any talk or argument about the past dead on arrival…so this is something new, to try to reach out to him in this way, to find some empathy in his heart and heal some of the still raw wounds.

We are talking about whatever when it suddenly takes a sharp left and we go into talking about the very real abuses of my past…as is his custom, my father talks about how he was abused as well…I counter by offering up some abuses that he was not aware of, and he gets quiet as my emotions rise…I am not blaming him, rather I am just letting him into a space that I have never asked him to come into before…feeling overly confident, I don’t hold back, because there is no longer anything to hold back for…I am off and running now, going into detail and over the cliff as I am prone to do…he is calmly leaning in the doorway to the middle room…the front door is open, and the sun is coming through…it is a beautiful day, and this is a moment that I have waited for a very long time, because I finally have a pathway from my heart to my father’s ear…

He stops me, and repeats something that I have heard from my grandmother many times (his mother—in other contexts), a basic soliloquy about how life is tough and the only way you can survive is to forget about these things and move on…it is a fairly sophisticated nullifying argument, a means to an end that once served a whole generation though world war and nuclear terror, and he robots it back to me almost verbatim…I tell him he doesn’t realize what he is saying, which is if you essentially bury it, IT will go away…which is not true, because one only needs to look at the drug abuse in his life, the chaos surrounding him, and the trail of tears in his wake to realize that this has not been an effective strategy…I don’t want to bury it, I want to dig the bodies up and properly and honorably bury them with dignity…this is not a call for sympathy, this is a call to action, because I do not want to die, or live in the shadow of symbolic death, which for me is to live but not really be alive…

I lose my cool with my father for the first time in my life, and drop the mask that I have learned to wear, which is the one of the dutiful son, who endures and protects him from reality even if the walls are falling down around my ears…my voice rises, and I chastise him for looking the other way…I tell him in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t there, that he doesn’t know what happened, he has no clue what was asked of me…and he is only now making it worse by telling me his version of events, which gives major credence to what he went though at the time, and no credit to the sacrifices of his children…it is a moment that all children must inevitably go though, the moment when the parental edifice comes toppling down…they can no longer save you, for you are on your own, and maybe you always have been…my father is stunned, for he has never seen this kind of emotion from me…he is used to me being emotional, but I have always refused to break down in front of him…the emotions wash over me, and I cannot control my mixture of rage, anguish, betrayal, and sadness…I break down in tears and leave him standing there, cursing that I bothered to tell him anything at all.

*

My real name is William Patrick Corgan, and I was born at Columbus Hospital (just across from beautiful Lincoln Park which straddles Lake Michigan) in Chicago at 5:41 pm on March 17, 1967…most know me as Billy Corgan, but “he” didn’t arrive until age 18…my father was Billy, and I was known to the family as “little” Bill.

I am the architect of the “Billy Corgan” that you know and love, or hate, or don’t give 2 cares about.

I created him, and at times have loved him, feared him, and despised him more than you could possibly dream up…it is the author of this being that wants to tell you this story…depending on how you look at it, it is the brutal truth or a sad sob story…a tale of glory and failure or the fictional scrapings of a madman and has-been…the author is ok with however you take it, because it happened TO ME…the closets are thrown open, and the sweet mist of a life blown by come spilling out…there are dead bodies and old pictures and pornographic gasps and ghosts so shy they are the ghosts of ghosts…but all the voices are here, and they want to talk to you…in fact, there is a fight as to who goes first! But it’s all the same, cause in my mind all is happening at all times…backwards and forwards, we can survey what has happened and what is yet to come, and have a laugh and a cry…but in the end, it is my wish that there will be no more secrets worth keeping, and no more fear worth running from…all that should remain is the clear heart and a vibrant joy, and of course, music.

*

Normally I would only do two chapters at most.  Because typically I type from a kindle.  The length of this thing is explained by the fact that you can find the entries above right here. (And much more, it was challenging not to paste all his friggin’ posts from the 1992-1993 tags, trust me).

It’s not enough that he became the most talented and prolific songwriter of the 1990’s, he also just had to be a pretty good blogger too.

*

“Quiet, I am sleeping, in here we need a little hope

For years I’ve been sleeping, helpless, couldn’t tell a soul

Be ashamed of the mess you’ve made
My eyes never forget, you see, behind me

Silent metal mercies castrate boys to the bone

Jesus, are you listening? Up there to anyone at all?

We are the fossils, the relics of our time
We mutilate the meanings, so they’re easy to deny

Be ashamed of the mess you’ve made
My eyes never forget, you see behind me

Quiet, I am sleeping
Quiet, I am sleeping

Quiet, I don’t trust you
Shut up, shut up, I can’t hear you now
Be ashamed of the mess you’ve made
My eyes never forget, you see behind me

Behind me, the grace of falling snow
Cover up everything you know
Come save me from the awful sound of nothing.”

-Quiet, The Smashing Pumpkins

*

If you liked this, you might enjoy the (much shorter) Mystery Author 1.