|
6/10/03 Damn Those Gator People
Hey If Doug knew you was coming, he'd have grilled a cake. In the rain. First order of business (if I was a rapper I'd say bizz-i-nez or some fucking thing- if I was Dusty Rhodes I'd say bidness, and thank you to keep out of it, probably with an elbow to the top of your noggin) would be cook out report. I thought it went exceptionally well, I hope every one who showed had a good time, I'd like to give special thanks to Doug "I'm A Cooking Machine" Moore for being a cooking machine, and bringing his cooking machine along, and to Joe and Laura for supplying the meat. Lots of people brought sides and desserts, Chris brought some exotic beers for the beer tasting as well as 6 Harpoons (I'm drinking my three as we speak, review later, and only my three, Budweiser tastes like fizzy sugar water after these), Mary and Jack provided my big rental yard, and later faux thrills when Jack brought down one of his black powder pistols loaded with toilet paper instead of blood spilling hunks of metal, goddamn his thinking ahead ass, and handed it to me . . . so what exactly did I do? I INVITED YOU ALL, HA. My parents were there (I felt like I had to invite 'em, what can I say, it'd probably hurt their crazy old feelings if I didn't) and it boggles me to fucking tears how people will say to me "Your mom and dad are so nice". WHOSE MOM AND DAD?! "Yours". Man, you been drinking too much. My dad was in the kitchen going off on some rag about bratwurst and damnation and Osaka in '46, or some such, and Sarah's friend Patrick (not boyfriend, this is another guy, just friend) just sort of shook his head in awe and said "They don't make 'em like THAT anymore." Yeah, thank God. Sarah's boyfriend, Robbie, won the award for most ludicrous and out of place goth make-up/get up at a COOK-OUT (?!), I think like, ever. Try that shit in Uncle Sam's Navy son, and let me know how far it gets you. The rat pack were also there, not nearly as bad as I've seen 'em be, but bad enough that Chris offered to loan me his .22 any time I wanted it. Don't think I'm gonna need it, though, cos I'm once again in charge of them, and once again one of them has gone missing. Jack and Mary went out of town again for a week as of today, and when I went to feed them tonight the other little rat bag terrier, the one I call Humpy, was gone. This is starting to look bad even to me, but I swear I never touched him, and like I also said earlier, if I was gonna do one of them in it would be Miss Barky Ass Beagle, who was at it for over an hour earlier this am, between like 1 and 2-ish (she doesn't know I don't have to get up for work in the morning, little shitter). The old dog I like has had some recent mini strokes and I've got to make sure he gets his anti-brain swelling medicine each day (yeesh). He's 19, and I don't think he's got much left. He's also got a tumor on his butt will wreck your fucking day to look at, so I don't when I can help it. Looks like I'll be relating a dog burying story soon, I'm sure complete with Jack's Eulogy For Old Dog With Great Big Tumor Hanging Off His Ass. Might also get to hear his Sonnet On Why Do My Dogs Keep Disappearing Whenever I Leave Them With Bill. Well, Jack, maybe because it's not a coyote at all but a monster from my Id that's doing away with them. That definitely works for me, but Id, GET THE BEAGLE, DAMMIT. Went out a few mornings after the cook out to clean up some of the beer cans still in the back yard- I got to it when I felt like it, okay?- and this big old garter (NOT "gardener", goddamn, was trying to tell someone about it and the they kept going "gardener", JESUS) snake was there at the bottom of the stairs, gave me a turn, not cos I'm scared of 'em but because of that whippy snake in the grass thing they do that startles you when they first start moving, man, am I glad he didn't make an appearance at the cookout, there's folks there who'd have probably had a fucking heart attack, seriously. Chris brought Monty Python Holy Grail Ale, Hobgoblin Ale, Dorothy Goodbody Stout, (he shoulda left the stout and just brought Dorothy) Riggwelter Yorkshire Ale, and Romsey IPA, for the beer tasting. They were all good to very very good, the only one I remember well, as my palate was already wrecked by mucho Buds was the IPA, which was excellent, as IPA's tend to be. As for the Harpoons I'm drinking at whatever am- right now it says 4:28, and no, I CAN'T sleep, got the insomnia bad again- they're also excellent. Short review, but accurate. Chris says they're his favorite beer, not sure what mine is, but I can't think of anything I like better than Newcastle Brown, so maybe that's it. Man, that beagle is outside now howling like a coyote, I swear, and creeping the living shit out of me. If this newsletter just suddenl-
Got back Friday from a camping trip to Watoga state park with Doug and
his extended family, the weather unfortunately sucked, so it was too damn
wet to be as much fun as we'd hoped it would be-they stayed on till this
Monday, hell, I guess that's today, hope the weather cleared after I left,
which would be typical- but during a sunny period Thursday afternoon me
and Doug's youngest son, Chris, hiked Kennison Run Trail, tied for longest
in the park at 3.5 miles. It was an extremely nice hike, along an old
logging railroad grade through hemlock and rhododendron thickets, the
trail doesn't loop, we did probably two miles or so before turning back,
and as the trail guide advises, "many creek crossings are encountered
so wear sturdy shoes" which translates to be aware you're going to
spend a lot of time walking in Laurel Run. The woods were beautiful, and
very cinematic, with the sunbeams shafting down through the trees, I had
my eyes peeled for both raptors and
"The potential for hallucination in peleogeonomics was high. There was not only the omnipresent role of instrumentation in the envisioning of the ultramicroscopic fossil material, but also the metamorphosis over time of the material itself, both the DNA and it's matrices, so that the data was invariably incomplete, and often shattered. Thus the possible projection of psychological patterns onto the rorschacherie of what in the end might be purely mineral processes had to be admitted." Uhm, yeah. Real damn page turning material there, can't wait to find out what happens next (man, if Drains doesn't sell there is no fucking justice in this world). However, one of Bitner's Rules Of Reading states, Any Book Begun Must Be Finished (don't ask me why, it's just the rule), so I struggle on, until I finish, or the Library Police tow me away in irons. Chris S. brought Robert Crais "The Monkey's Raincoat" to the cook out for me to read, may be a while before I get to it. And yeah, I know book titles are underlined, stories go in quotes, but I don't feel like fooling with the underline thing, okay?
Since we're talking about Dave, and being reminded of things, there've been quite a few requests come in since last issue for the story of Bill shitting on the homeless guy's head (you sick bunch) so here it goes. Back in the early 90's Dave and I used to go fishing a lot (those were really good days, or so I thought at the time, anyway). I also used to drink A LOT back then, so maybe they weren't as rosy as I'd like to remember. Anyway, I drive over to Dave's house early one morning (this was when he was still living in Dunbar) and we take off in his truck. I'd been drinking beer till a few hours earlier, so my guts weren't really in the shape you want 'em in when you're heading away from porcelain and paper products, but that's how I lived back then. We stop and get coffee cos we're both bleary eyed, and head up toward this little bait shop on Washington St., only place like that open at that ungodly hour. We're crossing the bridge there at Orchard Manor when the coffee kicks in. B: Stop the truck. I go running under the bridge, it's dark as the fucking center of the earth under there. I go just far enough back under there so that you can't spot me from the road, cos I'm serious, I couldn't see a thing, drop 'em and do what needed to be done. All of a sudden, from directly under my ass, this outraged voice goes "HEY!" Man, I almost hit my head on the bottom of the bridge, I jumped so high. I go flying back up the hill to the bridge, pulling my drawers up one handed, as this poor fucker comes staggering out from under the bridge, shit dripping off his head and shoulders. Man, who'd THAT GUY piss off. You're already sleeping under a damn bridge when along comes this crazy half drunk bastard and dumps a huge load of beery shit RIGHT DAMN ON YOUR HEAD. Imagine waking up to THAT. I always thought Geddy Lee of Rush (new subject), besides being almost as fucking ugly as Baltimore's neo-Gandhi, and having THE worst singing voice in rock (neither of which stopped him from selling millions of records, so fuck me, I guess) also had one of the dumbest names. Geddy? What the fuck's that all about? Well, I just read in Goldmine that his real name's Gary, Geddy is how his Yiddish grandma used to pronounce it, and he uses it as his stage name in tribute to her. How sweet. If I did that I'd have to go onstage as Dirty Bum Heimus (hey . . . ). Bet you didn't know that about old Ged, did ya? Now you do, glad to be of service. Gonna put something out for a vote, did this last summer with the butterfly men photos, partly to see how many of you are paying attention, and partly because I want some input on this. Out of these four super team names, which one is the coolest?
I was gonna add The Legion of Super Pets but I figure it would win in a
landslide so I'm leaving it off. Joe, you may have trouble finding some of
them, but if you could put pictures of these guys (and gals) on the
website that might help folks make their decision (unless they are already
familiar with all of them, in which case, will you marry me?- the familiar
person, not Joe). So, vote, please, I'll post the results in a future NL. Stopped in the Beckley CCIL office coming back from camping Friday, first time I'd been there in over a year. Jesse is still the sweet soul she always was, Michelle is still as crazy as a damn nine eyed bedbug, new girl Melissa seems very nice, and that's all who were there, which was still pretty good for a Friday. Did I really make that drive every weekday for five months? Fucking hell. I've been stopping in and checking on this old geezer in Huntington for the past couple weeks, stopped in last Monday and he's drinking an Orange Gatorade and just RAGING about what shitty orange juice it was. When I finally got it through to him that he wasn't drinking orange juice, it was Orange Gatorade, which wasn't easy to do, he gives the bottle this look of pure hate and says, real intense, "Damn those Gator People. Damn their Ade." I had to go outside so he wouldn't see me laughing. Along with the insomnia the nightmares are back. I don't know if it's because of all the damn rain lately or what, but a lot of 'em have been water themed. Had one last night (that I slept) that I was this scuba diver in some sorta post alien attack apocalypse world, the aliens had irradiated all kinds of important stuff and dumped it in bodies of water to hide it from us- why? fuck if I know, damn inscrutable aliens, I'd a just blown it up or something- and it was my job to take a geiger counter and dive down and try to find this shit. Unfortunately, the aliens had also irradiated and mutated all this aquatic life to guard this stuff, so you never knew if the geiger counter was leading you to a stack of old Playboys or a giant three headed carp until too late.
This female reader has been after me for a while to tell her my exact date of birth, down to time of day, so she could do my personal horoscope. I kept trying to determine how it could be a scam, but since I couldn't figure out how she could access my bank account by knowing what time I was born, I sent it to her, and she sent me the below back. She said this was the brief one, the in-depth one would run about six pages. This is fine. I think it's fairly accurate, but, no offense to Kayla, I also think you could read any three random newsletters and come to the same conclusions. Horoscope- Sun in Sagittarius- High spirited and impetuous. Capable of great brilliance and daring. Dislike of routine, bored by petty details. Freedom and independence highly important. Needs to develop diplomacy. Too outspoken at times. A loyal friend but relationships with women can be difficult. Selfish and demanding in domestic situations. Can be highly critical of relatives and partners. Highly strung (HIGHLY STRUNG!?!). Danger of nervous breakdown if under prolonged strain. Moon in Venus- Tendency to criticize may antagonize others. Generally sensible where money is concerned. More likely to become involved with cold intellectual women than the more passionate type. Hardworking (HAAAAAAAA). Mercury in Capricorn- Idealistic rather than realistic. Capable of using others to obtain material needs (hey, buy me a beer). Often restless and discontented. Tendency to moodiness. Can be sulky. Good memory and a strong sense of duty. Habit of slipping into depression if things go wrong. Often avoids facing up to anything unpleasant. Venus in Scorpio- Emotions and sexual desires unusually strong. Passionate, with a tendency to sensuality. Loves sensual pleasures. ATTRACTED TO UNUSUAL FRIENDS, OFTEN THOSE CONSIDERED ANTISOCIAL (my caps). Needs to control intense emotions. Capable of fits of extreme violence. Despite magnetic personality, never really satisfied. Dissatisfaction can lead to degenerate search for stimulation and excitement( whoo hoo). Sarcastic. Selfishness masked by a friendly exterior. Can be cruel at times. Mars in Gemini- Active and mentally restless. A low degree of mechanical aptitude. Likes action for it’s own sake. Agile, mentally and physically. A sharp mind, but lacking in concentration. Very witty, but often at the expense of others. Jupiter in Leo- Self confident. Likes to impress others. Expects personal adoration and appreciation. A natural leader, often capable of inspiring hero worship. Well suited to any occupation where it is important to impress the public. Marriage partner likely to be extravagant. Proud and ambitious. Broad minded. Saturn in Gemini- Tendency to be sardonic and bitter. Musical ability in composing, conducting, and singing, though may lack the discipline to develop these skills. Cunning, can take advantage of people. Father is a stupid dumb head (okay, she really didn't say this one). I think that's enough for this late night/early morning edition. Gotta do the parent/doctor haul here in a little while, think I'm gonna lay down for a bit. Two choices- lay down and die Later Bill
|
You're
wasting my time and I'd like to 
What's
Bill been up to? Watched "Pork Chop Hill" for the tenth or so
time last week cos they were doing a tribute to Gregory Peck-another one
done gone, best thing about old GP was that great voice of his, he
couldn't have played a sniveling shit with that voice if he'd tried- and
caught something in PCH I never had before, there's this part where Robert
Blake has been wounded and GP is sending him to the rear, RB asks,
"You won't need me as a runner no more?" and GP tells him no, so
RB goes "Okay- think I'll get old and kill my wife, then." It
was eerie.
Uruk
Hai
Still
trying to finish this book I checked out before the first trip to Rock
Hill, "The Hard SF Renaissance", its way overdue and I'm
starting to get death threats from the library- "Bring back the book,
dammit, or we're gonna kill ya. Oh yeah, and you are a stupid dumb
head." I'm on page 505 out of 957, but it's slow going. Here's why,
though, how's this for an opening paragraph-
Listening
to? The Rascals, (to drown out that beagle/coyote noise, brrrr, watch,
with my luck it'll be the beagle AND a coyote out there now and they'll be
mating and soon I'll have a whole pack of night barking, howling little
shitters out here grinding on my nerves) listened to them a lot lately,
never during NL time though, Dave (who missed the cook out because of
illness) suggested I NL them which is a good idea, Dave's a big Rascals
fan (you should hear/see him do the intro to "I Ain't Gonna Eat Out
My Heart Anymore" after he's had a few beers, you'll fall out of your
fucking chair). Rascals best of's CDs are cheap and plentiful, if you
don't have one you really ought to pick one up, I still listen to Dave's
old Time Peace LP, "good time music" is one of those ghastly
expressions akin to calling a movie a "thrill ride", but that's
how I see the Rascals (anyone who hates the band's name, that's okay, I'm
not in love with it myself) and stuff like "Groovin'" and
"It's A Beautiful Morning" are really sweet, uplifting sings.
Add in lovely ballads like "How Can I Be Sure" and "Love Is
A Beautiful Thing", dancers like "Good Lovin'"- remind me
to show you the "Good Lovin'" dance sometime- anyway, you can
get a Rascals best CD for 10-12 bucks, I'm sure, worth every penny and
more. Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I made this
recommendation in an earlier NL as well, if so, now I've made it twice.
There
were three other divers besides me, Gunner and Sarge from the old My
Fighting Forces comics, and Ernie Borgnine, but not tough and cool Ern
from Wild Bunch, but dumb and useless Ern from McHale's Navy (it could've
been worse, at least it wasn't that damn Gavin McLeod, he's got the most
girly butt I've ever seen on a guy, how'd he ever get to be- oh, never
mind). We're down in this lake up next to this dam, cos the aliens have
supposedly dumped a bunch of shit at the base of it, getting our gear on
in the water, which was stupid, I know, but it was a dream, and Ernie's
bitching cos he can't stuff his fat ass into his wet suit (which in my
dream we called hot suits, maybe cos of the radiation, or maybe cos we
thought we looked hot in 'em), and I hear this swishing noise like wings,
and then Sarge (or Gunner, I wasn't actually looking) goes
"SHIT!" and this thing like a huge aquatic pteranodon comes
right up in the water next to me and grabs me across the chest with his
beak and drags me under.
It
was really vivid, the water was this deep green and I could see the
surface light getting dimmer and dimmer as he dragged me deeper, and blood
and bubbles rising up from me. Gunner and Sarge had stuck their tommy guns
under the surface and were shooting at the whatever it was, and their
bullets were zipping all around me making those neat underwater bullet
trails (SHOOT THE MONSTER!) and I hear that damn Ernie laughing his ass
off, "Call me fat, will he!". And then I died. And THEN I woke
up.