It's the only way to go,
Baseball on the R-A-DEE-O!
The ball field is in my mind and on the radio. Such a beautiful word to me: “radio.” It’s Vin Scully, that Dodger voice of my youth as we crossed over the California desert from Arizona on the way to Disneyland and, yeah, maybe a ball game or two. It’s the Arizona Diamondbacks over the past summer, when cable TV was unaffordable, filling my mind in the afternoons, into evenings when nothing else would do but baseball on the radio.
The contrast of the dirt infield and well-tempered green grass forming the diamond call out: The echoes of memories collected after two American centuries. You can drive by the little league ballpark and only rarely see a father and son playing catch. Nor are there games of pickup, easy and disorganized diversions where you just pick sides and play. Soon, little league teams will play there. Soon, the annual rite of spring will be renewed. But the World Series is on now, and thankfully, I can watch it on TV.
Not many young people understand this. They are into different games now. Video games such as Grand Theft Auto, or, World of Warcraft.
For some reason, for the local children, the game needs a jump start. Call it Little League, organized by dads, by men with whole different motives in mind. Instead of the pastime being as spontaneous as stickball in the street, it's an organized thing: An adult system imposed on childhood.
There are kids aplenty, and games for them on every level: Little League, Bobby Sox, Pony League, Babe Ruth, American Legion, high school ... but where do kids just go out and play?
The ball field is empty. Absolutely perfect. It's a Autumnal, World Series spring kinda day. The national pastime's light is on, but there is nobody sliding for home at the Field of Dreams in Iowa. Not today. Meanwhile, the digital streams of video violence run hot and true.
Why?
The sad state of the major leagues have something to do with this ebb in the continuum. "Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and reality of the game," wrote cultural historian Jacques Barzun in his 1954 book of essays, God's Country and Mine. Sure, in '54, the game was on a roll. In '54, major league baseball was in the full glory of the golden age of Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams and Stan Musial. Ebbets Field was still standing. The collective soul of Brooklyn was still intact. That year, Willie Mays made his famous "catch" in the World Series, and the Cleveland Indians were a contender. The Indians were expected to go to the World Series.
Oh how things have changed. Barzun, a professor emeritus at Columbia University, talked like a man betrayed. "I've gotten so disgusted with baseball, I don't follow it anymore," he said, taking it all back. "I just see the headlines and turn my ahead away in shame from what we have done with our most interesting game and best, healthiest pastime."
It's doubtful, however, the average 10-year-old really cares if the game is abandoning its sense of tradition. The average 10-year-old is much more concerned with Nintendo, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and whether Shaquille O'Neal can make the transition from the basketball court to the rappin' MTV video. Meanwhile, their parents are wondering how they are going to transport their sons and daughters to all of the soccer games, basketball shoot-outs and judo jousts. Baseball is just another stop for the carpool.
Kids haven't changed, but the competition for their attention span certainly has.
Which is a shame. Baseball began as a boy's game in the country fields of 19th-century America. If the game has continued to reside anywhere, it's been in the heart of the child, both young and old. At no time of the year does the heart of the child call out more than in the spring. That's when children drag out their dusty bags of bats, tattered balls and gloves flattened like pancakes from months of disuse. You can search through relics from days gone by, and in the green cathedrals of America, to hear echoes of that fading heartbeat.
On the cover of March 1928 issue of American Boy magazine, there's a picture of a boy in knickers and stirrup socks renewing the ritual. He's apparently just searched through his closet and found his old uniform. It's spring time. Holding the jersey up to the light, he's noticed some surprising holes in his cherished outfit. "Moths!," exclaims the type. At the bottom of the page, a teaser for what's inside: "Miller Huggins Discusses His New York Yankees."
One can just imagine the excitement of a 1920s boy at the receipt of this issue. This was just one year after the fabled 1927 Yankees of Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth. Yet, as famous as they were, such heroes were hardly the victim of overexposure. Or, for that matter, a cynical populace. For the standard kid in the Midwest, news of baseball was devoured like chocolate. Radio broadcasts were rare. Small town newspaper coverage was sporadic. And here it was, Miller Huggins, manager of the Yankees, talking about what it's like to breathe the same air as the Babe! One can just feel the hero-worshipping heart of the child at the very fevered peak of baseball in the 20th century.
And if that child could ever see the mighty Babe swing and play, well, that would be an indelible memory lasting long into childhood. Indeed, our childhood memories can resonate for a lifetime. They can be stronger than the game we saw just the other day. Which is why old baseball relics get saved to begin with: to keep those memories alive.
Move the clock forward to 1948: Ron Harner is six years old. His family, which lives in a small town in the coal mining region of central Pennsylvania, doesn't have much money. His father is good enough to play pro ball, but has to stay home to work in the mines and support his family. Any luxuries are rare. So it's a special event when Harner goes, with his mom and dad, to see the Philadelphia A's play the Chicago White Sox at Shibe Park in Philadelphia.
The A's! In person! Connie Mack! In person! Harner is ecstatic. But it gets better--in the form of a ticket stub: the picked-out-of-a-hat winner in a promotion held during the game. "I was six years old and ended up with a ticket stub that won a pair of free tickets and also an authentic A's jacket," Harner said.
The Harners go home and wait. Then, on August 9, 1948, a thunderstruck 6-year-old boy in Valley View, Pennsylvania receives the following message typed on official letterhead from the "American Base Ball Club of Philadelphia":
My dear young friend:
I know that you have been waiting patiently for the Athletics jacket which you won at the game with the White Sox on July 18th. I have just been informed that they will soon be ready.
I would like you to be my guest with one of your parents at the game between the A's and the St. Louis Browns at Shibe Park, Saturday, August 28th at which time it will be my pleasure to present this jacket to you ...
Looking forward to seeing you at the game, I am
Sincerely yours,
Connie Mack
There is no signature, and therefore no real way to know if Connie Mack wrote the letter. But Mack's hand was real when Harner shook it in the A's dugout 45 years ago. He still has that jacket, the letter and his memories of his mom, his dad, and the man whose career in baseball spans back to more than a century ago.
"I remember," Harner says, "an old man saying to me when I had the winning ticket for the prize, `Son, you just won a prize from the greatest manager in baseball.' "
Everyday he can look at that jacket and ride the only feasible time machine we'll ever have: the one inside our heads.
"Baseball always reverts back to childhood," said artist Andy Jurinko, another person whose memories of Shibe Park in the 1950s have powerful, relevant, lifetime resonances.
Jurinko saw his first baseball game at Shibe in Philadelphia when he was a teenager. In those days, he spent industrious hours making full-color diagrams of every major league ballpark. The drawings were for a dice baseball game he'd invented.
Eventually, he put childish things away. He went to Kutztown State College in Pennsylvania on a football scholarship, joined the Army, then art school, then spent years as an acid-dropping hippie artist in San Francisco in the '60s and '70s. His life was a metaphor for a changing America. His early work focused on pop culture and the street scenes of the era, topless go-go dancers, Hell's Angels, portraits of Jayne Mansfield holding a Chihuahua. Later, realizing his sense for gritty realism didn't quite fit in with flower power, he retreated east, trying to find a niche in corporate America.
Then, in the late '70s, he told a friend about his baseball dice game. Jurinko recreated the game, doing tempura paintings of old major league ballparks for the backdrop, and started playing diceball with his buddy for hours at time. He realized: This childhood obsession could be an adult one, too.
By 1986, he'd sold his first ballpark painting: A black-and-white aerial of Ebbets Field and a Polo Grounds oil, the latter going for $11,000. He was onto something. Next thing he knew, a Fenway Park piece sold for $25,000. There was money in memories. Now Jurinko is one of many who are making a living on fashioning his memories to reach a nostalgic baseball public.
Jurinko's work plugs into the way an old ballpark can conjure memories of youth. Even the most tinkertoy ballpark or ragged field can produce a cathartic flood of emotion. Such was the case for myself when I visited old Arlington Stadium in Arlington, Texas, which has since been replaced by the grand, neo-classic Ballpark at Arlington.
It was a few months before Arlington Stadium was torn down. I was let inside the ruin by an old African-American dressed in a guard's uniform with a Texas Rangers' insignia. He patroled the sun-punished remains of the ballpark as if games were still going on every night. He was a lesson in denial. His job was to refuse to let dreams die. He made the rounds, regularly checked the cluttered ramps, strolling through the red seat-backs strewn like a pile of autumn leaves.
The ballfield's infield was buried in a Kilamanjaro of scooped-out Texas peat. Windows in the luxury boxes were broken in spidderwebby patterns, and inside, knotted telephone lines were stunned into silence. I walked through all of this and got this spooky feeling. It made me feel like I was in the movie, The Poseidon Adventure, which was about a cruise ship that had been overturned by a tidal wave. The gutted luxury boxes were desolate except for cracked wall mirrors, and I wondered if this meant seven more years of second place for the Texas Rangers.
Because the Rangers were my team, ever since we lived in Dallas in the early '70s. But we left in 1972, and I didn't get to see very much ball played in this stadium as a boy. Perhaps, for that reason, the sight of that eight-ton scoreboard lying dead filled me with an overpowering sense of loss. Across the way, I could see the new stadium. It represented new dreams for all of the youths who talk their dads into buying them red caps and inflatable bats and baseball cards of Jose Canseco, Will Clark and Juan Gonzalez.
Yet, looking at the shards of seats littering old Arlington, like so many bodies after a battle, I saw my childhood denied. I broke down in tears, thinking about something I hadn't thought of for a long time: Dick Billings' wrist bands. Billings, catcher for the Rangers in '72, was my hero, mostly because of the wristbands he wore. Those red, white and blue wrist bands were the definition on machismo for this 11-year-old boy. Anyway, there I was, 34-year-old, crying like a baby. Just letting go. Then, I decided to take something of value, important to me perhaps, but nobody else. I gathered one of the red plastic seats, an old program, a blue plastic sliver off a refreshment stand that said, "Nachos."
I reclaimed my youth. And my hero, Dick Billings.
Later that day, I went to see the Rangers play the Oakland A's at the new ballpark. That night, we watched in the press box as O.J. Simpson played out his tragi-comic drama in his Ford Bronco on an L.A. Freeway. A few minutes before, I'd caught Will Clark and Jose Canseco in the hall leading to the dugout. They were ducking "The National Anthem." Canseco wheedled in an irreverent Tweedy Bird voice as Clark winked, "Can you imagine hearing that song one-hundred and sixty-two times a year and for twenty five or so spring training games?"
Yes, the modern sports hero has changed. So it's easy to understand how the intensity of a young's persons gaze is at a considerably lesser beam. But perhaps we always had to drag our kids to the ballpark. Maybe they always needed prodding to understand the game's nuances, its beauty and history. Tradition is taught, not inherited.
Father and sons play catch, at first with some tentativeness, and then with gathering speed. Adults look at their old four-fingered gloves, autographs and souvenirs and remember. It's not that we are so enamored of the game as children. It's that the seeds we planted so long ago have a way of growing on you. The continuum is funny that way, and so is listening to the sound of baseball on the radio.
28.10.10
21.10.10
... Finding Tatonka in Winfield, Iowa
Winfield, in the southeastern corner of the state, is far less bombed-out, bumed-out looking than nearby Morning Sun, Iowa, but that's not saying much. The people of Winfield appear, at least on this sunny day brighter, happier, perhaps even prettier. But that's only on this day. A sunny day. A Big Little Wagon Grain machine goes by and the driver waves; because, well, he's getting stared at by you, marvelling at such a large and marvelous device, because you can't get over your "am I a real boy" Tonka Trucks wonder years.
There are several cars in the front of the favorite and only restaurant, Pork's, where the food is cheap, tasty as hell, and served with an easy going smile and sense of merriment. People stroll out of the place with leftovers in styrofoam containers, big Buddha bellies, and on the way to their cars, taking up all of the parking spaces on the road out front, each and every one have one last fine thing to say to each other.
That, after nearly breaking their necks to look at you. Since you are still in that "Am I real real boy, Tonka trucks" phasey haze.
It's mid-October and the leaves are just starting to turn. Funny thing is: It was supposed to rain today.
The local historical museum, with fine bright-eyed seniors working in there, fully prepared with their centuries of knowing, to assist you in your not-so-private investigation. One lady gives you are tour. She is spry. Quite wise. Eager for this attention. She tells you, for example, that in 1907 the whole town, except for the hat shop, burned down. Another year an entire brick-made church was completely dismantled after two of the church elders ha got into a fight fight after failing to come to an agreement over how to spend the money donations attained, one would suppose, after many Sundays of passing the plate. Stuff like that, she tells you, as you gave at the black and white photos of what this church once looked like, as well as the bombed-out, post World War II firebombing look of what the town looked like after the fire of 1907, of bleak and figures silhouetted, of dazed survivors looking around, trying to figure out, "now what," after the disaster.
Now what? Indeed.
But such worries on this sunny neo-Depression era day are replaced by oyour notices of the reddish Winfield Wolves "welcome" flags posted high on the utility line posts. The noon siren on top of one of these streetlight-included posts shouts to workers and residents that it's noon ... time to eat, or leave, or just hang out at Pork's ... and so on ... as a thresher rolls by, a big Jolly green giant of a monster UFO kind. The driver waves. A king of the new Martian technology that is what really amazes you about the people and technologies of the area. The leaves keep turning into reds, oranges ... fall is coming (going by?) way too fast.
Yeah, it's one fine sunny day in this place. A day to remember. With everyone nearly breaking their necks to get a look at you in your dollar store shades.
Why? Because, because, because ... because of the wonderful things you does? Hell, no!
You are just lost in the amazement of that fabled "Am I a real boy" Tonka Truck haze and you just can't even catch up to not being in Kansas anymore ...
18.10.10
You are Definitely
Not Making a Movie
for HBO in
for HBO in
Riverside, Iowa
You were born in a cross-fire hurricane, and so therefore you can manage that kind of sad fact of life in the Disoriented Dysturbia of Disneyland, America. But if you go into a modern-day community casino, may the hair of the dog have mercy on you. You are now among the heathen, so the devil is your friend, and God is, well, an astronaut. You are in the Riverside, Iowa casino, and you are about to avoid, to the best of your abilities, dying young, dying old, and especially kicking off too soon before your number finely comes in.
You are a wannabe filmmaker, and so you are also definitely not here to make a movie for HBO about the future birthplace of Captain James. T. Kirk, which, according to the Star Trek film lore, in Riverside, Iowa. You most certainly are not William Shatner trying to film a phony movie, which turned out to be a real funny mock-u-mentary, mocking the poor people of Riverside. Not all of them are “poor,” quite likely, but some may be, unfortunately, due to the casino, built for just such fools. Fortunately, the bathrooms in the casino offer a little stand with a brochure on gambling addiction.
You find this highly ironic. Downright hilarious. You can easily go gonzo on this crap table of fodder for your little story. You might as well be in Las Vegas, loathing, fearing for not completely violating the copyrights for all you know about Hunter S. Thompson, the drug-crazed journo who made that place infamous with the book, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. But you are better than that. The drug years, even for the prescription pills, are over for you. Except for cigarettes and nicotine, which you are now sucking in at an incredible rate in the center of the gambling facility, which allows for such things, allows for the last legal intoxicants, other than alcohol (but you are definitely not here to not drink while definitely not making a movie for HBO) in Riverside, Iowa.
Disorientation is everything in a casino. It’s almost as bad as your regular local shopping mall. But Riverside residents, who were angry and embarrassed about what was revealed about themselves in the Shatner mock-u-mentary, have to go somewhere else to shop. Their town is dying, like most small town centers are dying, due to the big box culture of the larger communities and towns and cities, due to the Walmartification of America. But that’s a long story. Told all of the time. People seek out disorientation to shake themselves awake. To get some noise. Some excitement. You can never tell them the cities of gold aren’t bad, that they shouldn’t actually move toward the light, the phony light.
But malls rarely pay you back. They just take and take and take. However, casinos don’t. They give you hope. Insane, raging, completely irrational hope. They give you, for just that one rare momentary bit of living flame, a real sense for what it’s like to be alive. Rather than creature comfort, in a casino, the music is never as cool in the mall, it’s far cooler.
In fact, from one end of America to next, a casino offers the most serene and pleasing music ever made. That music doesn’t come from one sound, mind you, but the whole collaboration of sounds: the jingles, the bells, the whistles, the unholy cosmic blasts signifying nothing, but, perhaps, just maybe every now and then, big winners. It’s the music the very sun must here as it soaks up all of the sounds of the planets, and Pluto, too.
No sports betting at this casino mind you, but this cosmic music combines in your head, ebbing and flowing, and that’s all the God in you really needs to trust. In football, you trust. Because it’s spontaneous. Violent. Emotional from end to spinning spheroid. And coffee, too, and smokes, nine dollars a pack here. Unlike in many places in Vegas, the alcohol is not free when you gamble. So trust in that, too. But you only have one cigarette, and you are writing in frantic pirate text now, and the effect of having a cig hanging from your lip is so Hunter S. Thompson you don’t want to let go of that prop. The cig, a prop. Trust in that.
You are definitely not making a movie for HBO here in Riverside, Iowa. So you stay in the middle of the building, to keep from getting dizzy and you set your cell phone on maximum, in case you need a rescue. You stay in the center of the place, to keep from spinning out of orbit, but out of orbit is where you really need to go. To talk to the marketing manager: You are definitely not here to make a movie for HBO. Her name is Haselhoff.
Other than that weird coincidence, the Haselhoff connection, since she is not, however, related to David Haselhoff, the terrible actor who somehow made it big in Germany, according to the ongoing Saturday Night Live gag during the 1980s and early 1990s. No, this casino, other than the music of the spheres, is a pretty standard unit because all casinos are standard units. The Corvette is available for the occasional big winner, and so on …
So you are definitely are not here to make a movie about the future birthplace of Captain Kirk, who isn’t real, not anymore than anything else in the false world. You are not here to make a movie for HBO. The good and bad people of Riverside have suffered enough, and the future fake Captain James T. Kirk is still slouching to a slot machine, yet to be born.
~ Douglas McDaniel,
Riverside, Iowa
You were born in a cross-fire hurricane, and so therefore you can manage that kind of sad fact of life in the Disoriented Dysturbia of Disneyland, America. But if you go into a modern-day community casino, may the hair of the dog have mercy on you. You are now among the heathen, so the devil is your friend, and God is, well, an astronaut. You are in the Riverside, Iowa casino, and you are about to avoid, to the best of your abilities, dying young, dying old, and especially kicking off too soon before your number finely comes in.
You are a wannabe filmmaker, and so you are also definitely not here to make a movie for HBO about the future birthplace of Captain James. T. Kirk, which, according to the Star Trek film lore, in Riverside, Iowa. You most certainly are not William Shatner trying to film a phony movie, which turned out to be a real funny mock-u-mentary, mocking the poor people of Riverside. Not all of them are “poor,” quite likely, but some may be, unfortunately, due to the casino, built for just such fools. Fortunately, the bathrooms in the casino offer a little stand with a brochure on gambling addiction.
You find this highly ironic. Downright hilarious. You can easily go gonzo on this crap table of fodder for your little story. You might as well be in Las Vegas, loathing, fearing for not completely violating the copyrights for all you know about Hunter S. Thompson, the drug-crazed journo who made that place infamous with the book, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. But you are better than that. The drug years, even for the prescription pills, are over for you. Except for cigarettes and nicotine, which you are now sucking in at an incredible rate in the center of the gambling facility, which allows for such things, allows for the last legal intoxicants, other than alcohol (but you are definitely not here to not drink while definitely not making a movie for HBO) in Riverside, Iowa.
Disorientation is everything in a casino. It’s almost as bad as your regular local shopping mall. But Riverside residents, who were angry and embarrassed about what was revealed about themselves in the Shatner mock-u-mentary, have to go somewhere else to shop. Their town is dying, like most small town centers are dying, due to the big box culture of the larger communities and towns and cities, due to the Walmartification of America. But that’s a long story. Told all of the time. People seek out disorientation to shake themselves awake. To get some noise. Some excitement. You can never tell them the cities of gold aren’t bad, that they shouldn’t actually move toward the light, the phony light.
But malls rarely pay you back. They just take and take and take. However, casinos don’t. They give you hope. Insane, raging, completely irrational hope. They give you, for just that one rare momentary bit of living flame, a real sense for what it’s like to be alive. Rather than creature comfort, in a casino, the music is never as cool in the mall, it’s far cooler.
In fact, from one end of America to next, a casino offers the most serene and pleasing music ever made. That music doesn’t come from one sound, mind you, but the whole collaboration of sounds: the jingles, the bells, the whistles, the unholy cosmic blasts signifying nothing, but, perhaps, just maybe every now and then, big winners. It’s the music the very sun must here as it soaks up all of the sounds of the planets, and Pluto, too.
No sports betting at this casino mind you, but this cosmic music combines in your head, ebbing and flowing, and that’s all the God in you really needs to trust. In football, you trust. Because it’s spontaneous. Violent. Emotional from end to spinning spheroid. And coffee, too, and smokes, nine dollars a pack here. Unlike in many places in Vegas, the alcohol is not free when you gamble. So trust in that, too. But you only have one cigarette, and you are writing in frantic pirate text now, and the effect of having a cig hanging from your lip is so Hunter S. Thompson you don’t want to let go of that prop. The cig, a prop. Trust in that.
You are definitely not making a movie for HBO here in Riverside, Iowa. So you stay in the middle of the building, to keep from getting dizzy and you set your cell phone on maximum, in case you need a rescue. You stay in the center of the place, to keep from spinning out of orbit, but out of orbit is where you really need to go. To talk to the marketing manager: You are definitely not here to make a movie for HBO. Her name is Haselhoff.
Other than that weird coincidence, the Haselhoff connection, since she is not, however, related to David Haselhoff, the terrible actor who somehow made it big in Germany, according to the ongoing Saturday Night Live gag during the 1980s and early 1990s. No, this casino, other than the music of the spheres, is a pretty standard unit because all casinos are standard units. The Corvette is available for the occasional big winner, and so on …
So you are definitely are not here to make a movie about the future birthplace of Captain Kirk, who isn’t real, not anymore than anything else in the false world. You are not here to make a movie for HBO. The good and bad people of Riverside have suffered enough, and the future fake Captain James T. Kirk is still slouching to a slot machine, yet to be born.
~ Douglas McDaniel,
Riverside, Iowa
The Toto is No Longer in Kansas To-Do List
10) Wake up (Bark!)
9) Get out of the hotel room in Mythville, Iowa without waking every guest in the place in order to avoid getting kicked out or threatened bodily harm (Bark! Bark!)
8) Check the time (5 a.m.) ( Bark! Bark! Bark!)
7) Learn to count (Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark!) (Four times … I mean, five!) (Bark!)
6) Search stardimmed skies for UFOs, but grow frustrated due to WalMart distribution center lights (Bark! X 5)
5) Go to Wal Mart parking lot gas station store to buy a pack of American spirit cigs with “FSC” (fire retarded) notice to indicate the packaging label’s complete lie, due to the Iowa state liberal hobgoblin that each pack is 100 percent “additive free.” (Bark! X 6)
4) Fail to spend much time reading Thomas Pynchon’s most recent detective noir novel, something, something about “Vice” (Bark to the power of XJ37=B)
3) Notice the scent of coffee on the premises … o hell, grounds (Bark! X 8)
2) Make mental note to use “spell check” more often, except when writing in “pirate lingo” mode (Bark X 9)
1) Declare Monday, Oct. 18, 2010, as the first day of the administration of President Barack Obama that everything that exists is now officially his fault, since every decision made now until election day is 100 percent politically motivated! (Bark! X 10)
- 1) Take vowel movement …
For more roads to Mythville ... Click here
10) Wake up (Bark!)
9) Get out of the hotel room in Mythville, Iowa without waking every guest in the place in order to avoid getting kicked out or threatened bodily harm (Bark! Bark!)
8) Check the time (5 a.m.) ( Bark! Bark! Bark!)
7) Learn to count (Bark! Bark! Bark! Bark!) (Four times … I mean, five!) (Bark!)
6) Search stardimmed skies for UFOs, but grow frustrated due to WalMart distribution center lights (Bark! X 5)
5) Go to Wal Mart parking lot gas station store to buy a pack of American spirit cigs with “FSC” (fire retarded) notice to indicate the packaging label’s complete lie, due to the Iowa state liberal hobgoblin that each pack is 100 percent “additive free.” (Bark! X 6)
4) Fail to spend much time reading Thomas Pynchon’s most recent detective noir novel, something, something about “Vice” (Bark to the power of XJ37=B)
3) Notice the scent of coffee on the premises … o hell, grounds (Bark! X 8)
2) Make mental note to use “spell check” more often, except when writing in “pirate lingo” mode (Bark X 9)
1) Declare Monday, Oct. 18, 2010, as the first day of the administration of President Barack Obama that everything that exists is now officially his fault, since every decision made now until election day is 100 percent politically motivated! (Bark! X 10)
- 1) Take vowel movement …
For more roads to Mythville ... Click here
24.9.10
Beside the Dirty River:
Reaganized and Im-Palinized Along
the Fox River in St. Charles, Illinois
Symmetry comes to your mind, but it’s hardly late enough in the hour to consider it fully, completely. More like, it’s this: Listening to a long sad aphorism by Mark Twain, once of Hannibal, Missouri, thus misquoted, misre-engineered: The hardest thing in life, the thing that really wears you out, the rub, as they say (some call it entropy), is having to spend most of your life trying to convince completely ignorant, stupid, ill-mannered, superstitious or otherwise plain retarded people that there’s such a thing as being smart.
Not to get too prideful on the subject. To think too much of your own education is no humble way to go on living. In fact, information can really get in the way. Too much information, poison. If you have too many beeping crickets in your head, if you haven’t gone completely Luddite (and therefore mad), then you are simply pushing the envelope on what the mind can actually contain. There are just too many things that if you did know, you’d wish you didn’t. If you are like one of those poor folks who are suckerfish for data, well, condolences, bothered brothers, sorry sisters. And if you wield it all like a sword, using the word (lowercase, though solemnly used) like a shield instead of a sword, well, we regretfully inform you that your apologies are not accepted.
On that opposite side of that coin, sometimes, yes, you just need the effing noise. Say you are camped along the mad boulevard of St. Charles, outside of Chicago … and it’s a Saturday morning and the motors are roaring in front of you, camped at the Starbucks, sucking down your caffeine, getting your first cig with coffee for the day. A glorious morning, with motors a roarin’. Down America’s snaky trail they go: The rented cars, the newly bought golden bows, all funded by the cash for cars program, making the whole roadway look like a new car lot running like blood from the old century into the new; the cattle trucks, the dump trucks, the pickups carrying horses to their polo games, the motorcycles, the morons and their motors, there they all go … in camper cans and brightly colored vehicles designed in the late 20th century and made to all look like aerodynamic Clorox bottles, the Porches for the Plutocrats, the Lincoln Continentals for the Republicans, the Democrats, seeking prestige, in their Priusi (hybrids of dinos, still, sucking the vampire blood from the earth, but only half as often), the independents in their silvery gleaming galaxies of wheels, the Redcoats in their redcoats, the Blues in their bluesmobiles, sex and death and terror and awestruck to the bottom of the gully in front of the Starbucks, down the red brick canyon, carting coal or gasoline or ethanol, corn oil and hydrogen and eternal air in the morning’s last pure light. Lawyers dressed as gangsta bikers. Gangsta bikers dressed as lawyers. All of the dogs and cats and homos and lesbians in their convertibles, their hair glaze getting Beatled down by the sun and blazing classic rock radio, their stereos boom boxing their personal music, their power, their Powaqua, piped in by satellites now right into their husks, into their chests, and the latter, their long blonde hair flying wild in the evil, weaponized breeze … a wind, tainted by the Fox River, on this day overflowing and reeking of kerosene … Holy Ronald Reagan! … if you are downwind today it will make you dizzy …
And there you are in front of Starbucks, with your notebooks and designer coffee, your pack of smokes, American Spirits, expensive as a vote in these Chicago gangland parts, with the strange wise guy in a T-shirt staring down at you from his second-floor window right across the street, above the pizza parlor. There you are, with your pride, your conceit. O, you have so much information flowing in your head, faster, faster, faster … esters and ketones and raging hormones, from sex denied from living in the burbs for just one week, for living among the so-called (as Tom Wolfe put it), the “Masters of the Universe.” Little do you know that, even as you think all of these wonderful beautiful mind thoughts, he is plotting against you: the Dr. Cyclops, master of all the fatherlands you can currently survey.
And he won’t pick up the phone today. He, who lured you into this state of placated freedom after a full week of endless horrors. He who knows much more than he lets on, some effing one-eyed grandmaster, He! So you thought you had one grand Peter Pan fantasy in yer head … lazy post-literate you, without a so-called “pot to piss in,” as you have heard frequently during the week. Every time you heard it you looked into your Navajo-made sacred earn for your cig smoke ash. You with you shaman pretenses, your rael as blood pink sunglass lenses … He, with his plan, working against, and yet, despite his best efforts failing … because she is basic, gorgeous, a queen, true to her times as a bee in some mysterious hive, commanding the spirits of the earth, the underworlds and over worlds, her sex divine, her Joan of Arc in full arc, her animal magnetism, fully magnetized, all sharpened by the wickedly severe engine of grief.
O yeah, it’s real. The day you two arrived in this plastic castle fantasyland Dr. Cyclops was hatching his plot against this fairyland queen and long away from home Ulysses, both barely unable to even gauge which way was north or south or east or west, save for the unfamiliar sunlight and the direction of the foul winds, blown up this north by the British Petroleum-launched war to re-take America, an undeclared war that now, not even the U.S. military quite gets yet … from the moment the divide and conquer game was on as you are carefully guided into his road raging castle on the hills of the Shire. The whole neighborhood is a military base in the meadows of the Plutocracy, homes for colonels retired but still having their use, for KGB queens, but hell, they aren’t near half as dangerous to this sacred soil as the real estate mavens in their pink Cadillacs and their busy blood for time-is-money ways and means, all meeting the endless ends, the service to the great digitized seas of that false god: The caches of electronified cash, the stolen formulas for beers, the Kentucky fried generals on their furloughs, watching it all go down in deep bunkers beneath their homes … O yeah, trust this, if nothing else: It is so effing so! In God you can trust. In Ta’Iowa you can trust the things you wished you didn’t know.
Reaganized and Im-Palinized Along
the Fox River in St. Charles, Illinois
Symmetry comes to your mind, but it’s hardly late enough in the hour to consider it fully, completely. More like, it’s this: Listening to a long sad aphorism by Mark Twain, once of Hannibal, Missouri, thus misquoted, misre-engineered: The hardest thing in life, the thing that really wears you out, the rub, as they say (some call it entropy), is having to spend most of your life trying to convince completely ignorant, stupid, ill-mannered, superstitious or otherwise plain retarded people that there’s such a thing as being smart.
Not to get too prideful on the subject. To think too much of your own education is no humble way to go on living. In fact, information can really get in the way. Too much information, poison. If you have too many beeping crickets in your head, if you haven’t gone completely Luddite (and therefore mad), then you are simply pushing the envelope on what the mind can actually contain. There are just too many things that if you did know, you’d wish you didn’t. If you are like one of those poor folks who are suckerfish for data, well, condolences, bothered brothers, sorry sisters. And if you wield it all like a sword, using the word (lowercase, though solemnly used) like a shield instead of a sword, well, we regretfully inform you that your apologies are not accepted.
On that opposite side of that coin, sometimes, yes, you just need the effing noise. Say you are camped along the mad boulevard of St. Charles, outside of Chicago … and it’s a Saturday morning and the motors are roaring in front of you, camped at the Starbucks, sucking down your caffeine, getting your first cig with coffee for the day. A glorious morning, with motors a roarin’. Down America’s snaky trail they go: The rented cars, the newly bought golden bows, all funded by the cash for cars program, making the whole roadway look like a new car lot running like blood from the old century into the new; the cattle trucks, the dump trucks, the pickups carrying horses to their polo games, the motorcycles, the morons and their motors, there they all go … in camper cans and brightly colored vehicles designed in the late 20th century and made to all look like aerodynamic Clorox bottles, the Porches for the Plutocrats, the Lincoln Continentals for the Republicans, the Democrats, seeking prestige, in their Priusi (hybrids of dinos, still, sucking the vampire blood from the earth, but only half as often), the independents in their silvery gleaming galaxies of wheels, the Redcoats in their redcoats, the Blues in their bluesmobiles, sex and death and terror and awestruck to the bottom of the gully in front of the Starbucks, down the red brick canyon, carting coal or gasoline or ethanol, corn oil and hydrogen and eternal air in the morning’s last pure light. Lawyers dressed as gangsta bikers. Gangsta bikers dressed as lawyers. All of the dogs and cats and homos and lesbians in their convertibles, their hair glaze getting Beatled down by the sun and blazing classic rock radio, their stereos boom boxing their personal music, their power, their Powaqua, piped in by satellites now right into their husks, into their chests, and the latter, their long blonde hair flying wild in the evil, weaponized breeze … a wind, tainted by the Fox River, on this day overflowing and reeking of kerosene … Holy Ronald Reagan! … if you are downwind today it will make you dizzy …
And there you are in front of Starbucks, with your notebooks and designer coffee, your pack of smokes, American Spirits, expensive as a vote in these Chicago gangland parts, with the strange wise guy in a T-shirt staring down at you from his second-floor window right across the street, above the pizza parlor. There you are, with your pride, your conceit. O, you have so much information flowing in your head, faster, faster, faster … esters and ketones and raging hormones, from sex denied from living in the burbs for just one week, for living among the so-called (as Tom Wolfe put it), the “Masters of the Universe.” Little do you know that, even as you think all of these wonderful beautiful mind thoughts, he is plotting against you: the Dr. Cyclops, master of all the fatherlands you can currently survey.
And he won’t pick up the phone today. He, who lured you into this state of placated freedom after a full week of endless horrors. He who knows much more than he lets on, some effing one-eyed grandmaster, He! So you thought you had one grand Peter Pan fantasy in yer head … lazy post-literate you, without a so-called “pot to piss in,” as you have heard frequently during the week. Every time you heard it you looked into your Navajo-made sacred earn for your cig smoke ash. You with you shaman pretenses, your rael as blood pink sunglass lenses … He, with his plan, working against, and yet, despite his best efforts failing … because she is basic, gorgeous, a queen, true to her times as a bee in some mysterious hive, commanding the spirits of the earth, the underworlds and over worlds, her sex divine, her Joan of Arc in full arc, her animal magnetism, fully magnetized, all sharpened by the wickedly severe engine of grief.
O yeah, it’s real. The day you two arrived in this plastic castle fantasyland Dr. Cyclops was hatching his plot against this fairyland queen and long away from home Ulysses, both barely unable to even gauge which way was north or south or east or west, save for the unfamiliar sunlight and the direction of the foul winds, blown up this north by the British Petroleum-launched war to re-take America, an undeclared war that now, not even the U.S. military quite gets yet … from the moment the divide and conquer game was on as you are carefully guided into his road raging castle on the hills of the Shire. The whole neighborhood is a military base in the meadows of the Plutocracy, homes for colonels retired but still having their use, for KGB queens, but hell, they aren’t near half as dangerous to this sacred soil as the real estate mavens in their pink Cadillacs and their busy blood for time-is-money ways and means, all meeting the endless ends, the service to the great digitized seas of that false god: The caches of electronified cash, the stolen formulas for beers, the Kentucky fried generals on their furloughs, watching it all go down in deep bunkers beneath their homes … O yeah, trust this, if nothing else: It is so effing so! In God you can trust. In Ta’Iowa you can trust the things you wished you didn’t know.
22.9.10
And Now
For a Few Words
on Buying
a Plastic Compass
at Wal Mart
You hear them gun up. They are like tanks gassing for battle. Just as the sun rises. You are at the Wal Mart distribution center in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, and the not-so-tiny army is just getting ready for the pusch.
You want to salute, but a tall, highly distinguished looking, slightly limping, downright admiralesque truck driver is watching you, watching him, and that already, as the sun continues to climb, makes the perfectly "normal," well, perfectly "paranormal." The distribution center features a huge complex, maybe four or five football fields long, with vast numbers of trucks in the back, enclosed by a barbed wire fence. Activity is continuous after the sun rises. It is systematic. Ghosty, with few souls to be actually seen. Downright robotic.
But you are simple folk. Practically human. Actually somewhat happy. Your plan for the day is to buy a compass at the Wal Mart nearby, and if it wasn't for the blazing orb in the bright orange in the circus animal clouds, you'd never be able to tell that the Mt. Pleasant Super Center is directly east. However, you do know this: If the great cities of the earth are 24-hour-a-day hotspots, your friendly neighborhood Wal Mart burns just as brightly in the spangles still gleaming, the stars brightly steaming, and so on .... With retirees at the door. Half the county is employed there, at the Super Center, actually. The other half? Most likely running in and out of the Super Center in a kind of wild-eyed state of panic.
The panic is for going in, quite truthfully. The release can be determined, the very sense of a short-term satisfaction, maybe only as good as the car ride home, in the trail of candy wrappers, soda cans, plastic pieces of all kinds of things, that stream, chaotically, along a nearby access road bordered on both sides by fields of corn grown for ethynol.
The front of the Super Center big box store is more palatable to the eye. The front is decorated with the words "Always" in a kind of cursive, red, giant type, and "low prices," half as large, directly below: reading, thus "Always low prices." But above is not always as so below, so when it comes to the medium being the message in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, you really only know one true thing: Something is quite FUBAR here. Because, for one thing, if you check the prices in the surrounding small towns, prices are far lower, just to compete and ... maybe, just maybe, even survive.
Meanwhile, over the technologically zombiefied distribution center, the angry sun continues to rise in the east and the trucks continue to gun up and line out for invasion and the people, one out of seven in America now living in poverty, continue to get, well, hungrier, angrier, more anxious, more in panic. Toward the north (one supposes, since we are still sans a compass), the trucks slowly move out in a parade of equally metered marches to thy mind in a military mode.
The Wal Mart trucks, loaded up with every conceivable kind of petroleum- or corporation corn-seed-based product, are streaming out in a viral march into every demographically correct corner of middle America. Humming onward sweetly. Moving not-so-discretely. In perfect echelons of control. One might consider how each truck driver might be as equally automated as the consumers they are targeting now.
However, as those consumers line in and out, one is more easily led to understand quite the opposite. People who work at Wal Mart are completely varied human beings, with their own tastes, flavors, beliefs and so on ... So before you go on categorizing the consumers of middle earth as being a race of Lilliputians gone completely insane, let's set ourselves in proper motion. Let's ground ourselves. Let's first seek to maintain a proper moral compass. Let's just do that first. As the sun rises. Before it sets.
One handy way to do just that is to take a closer look at what is happening within the concentric circles of what is happening, even as you read this, in other small towns in southeastern Iowa. In places like Morning Sun, for example. Maybe 30 miles away as the crow flies. In Morning Sun, you will find, the situation downtown is dismal. The whole place could be bought up now with Monopoly money. The only storefronts or commercial retail spaces left standing look burned out, bombed out, forgotten, dead, de-neighborized, closed for the rest of steaming eternity under the angry sun.
O sure, there might be, in any one of these surrounding towns, the occasional shop keeper left standing, who will greet you like Daffy Duck, waving his finger. He wags. He complains. He dreams of moving getting out his business, entirely. If not for the few good folks who come in to shop locally, he'd be in Bermuda by now. Since the finger wagging is a universal sign indicating the common small-town accusal, meaning, "Shame on you," each of these towns on most days would be classified better as ghost towns.
"Shame for all who shop at Wal Mart," they might say. "Shame on all of you who drive out of their communities, burning all of that gas, burning all of that time and money, to go out of their way to destroy the very towns they live in. Shame on all of you, far worse criminals than the little thieves who sit in their tiny small town cop jail cells, who go all of that way to buy all of that foreign-made crap, when they can buy some of my crap, much of it frequently locally produced, that they could buy instead."
But holy Ronald Reagan, sweet finger-flipping Jesus, as everyone must not know, as all wild-eyed Wal Mart shoppers do not feel or deny or fail to understand, they know not what they do. They know not that they are citizen soldiers as well for the zombied technological armies of the corporately sponsored seige against the American dream. They can't even see how they are bleeding their own communities dry. They do not know that, without their moral compass; hell they can scarecely listen or even be told, how the Wal Mart army is a big bluesy vampire sucking their very vitals, their lifestyles, their values, completely dry.
So go ahead, buy your plastic, Chinese-made compass at Wal Mart. Notice how it breaks easily. It will happen ... someday soon. You can always buy another one, and another, and another ... and if you have enough money, in great bulky bulks at Sam's Club, too ... all soon to be built on the surface of the moon.
You hear them gun up. They are like tanks gassing for battle. Just as the sun rises. You are at the Wal Mart distribution center in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, and the not-so-tiny army is just getting ready for the pusch.
You want to salute, but a tall, highly distinguished looking, slightly limping, downright admiralesque truck driver is watching you, watching him, and that already, as the sun continues to climb, makes the perfectly "normal," well, perfectly "paranormal." The distribution center features a huge complex, maybe four or five football fields long, with vast numbers of trucks in the back, enclosed by a barbed wire fence. Activity is continuous after the sun rises. It is systematic. Ghosty, with few souls to be actually seen. Downright robotic.
But you are simple folk. Practically human. Actually somewhat happy. Your plan for the day is to buy a compass at the Wal Mart nearby, and if it wasn't for the blazing orb in the bright orange in the circus animal clouds, you'd never be able to tell that the Mt. Pleasant Super Center is directly east. However, you do know this: If the great cities of the earth are 24-hour-a-day hotspots, your friendly neighborhood Wal Mart burns just as brightly in the spangles still gleaming, the stars brightly steaming, and so on .... With retirees at the door. Half the county is employed there, at the Super Center, actually. The other half? Most likely running in and out of the Super Center in a kind of wild-eyed state of panic.
The panic is for going in, quite truthfully. The release can be determined, the very sense of a short-term satisfaction, maybe only as good as the car ride home, in the trail of candy wrappers, soda cans, plastic pieces of all kinds of things, that stream, chaotically, along a nearby access road bordered on both sides by fields of corn grown for ethynol.
The front of the Super Center big box store is more palatable to the eye. The front is decorated with the words "Always" in a kind of cursive, red, giant type, and "low prices," half as large, directly below: reading, thus "Always low prices." But above is not always as so below, so when it comes to the medium being the message in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, you really only know one true thing: Something is quite FUBAR here. Because, for one thing, if you check the prices in the surrounding small towns, prices are far lower, just to compete and ... maybe, just maybe, even survive.
Meanwhile, over the technologically zombiefied distribution center, the angry sun continues to rise in the east and the trucks continue to gun up and line out for invasion and the people, one out of seven in America now living in poverty, continue to get, well, hungrier, angrier, more anxious, more in panic. Toward the north (one supposes, since we are still sans a compass), the trucks slowly move out in a parade of equally metered marches to thy mind in a military mode.
The Wal Mart trucks, loaded up with every conceivable kind of petroleum- or corporation corn-seed-based product, are streaming out in a viral march into every demographically correct corner of middle America. Humming onward sweetly. Moving not-so-discretely. In perfect echelons of control. One might consider how each truck driver might be as equally automated as the consumers they are targeting now.
However, as those consumers line in and out, one is more easily led to understand quite the opposite. People who work at Wal Mart are completely varied human beings, with their own tastes, flavors, beliefs and so on ... So before you go on categorizing the consumers of middle earth as being a race of Lilliputians gone completely insane, let's set ourselves in proper motion. Let's ground ourselves. Let's first seek to maintain a proper moral compass. Let's just do that first. As the sun rises. Before it sets.
One handy way to do just that is to take a closer look at what is happening within the concentric circles of what is happening, even as you read this, in other small towns in southeastern Iowa. In places like Morning Sun, for example. Maybe 30 miles away as the crow flies. In Morning Sun, you will find, the situation downtown is dismal. The whole place could be bought up now with Monopoly money. The only storefronts or commercial retail spaces left standing look burned out, bombed out, forgotten, dead, de-neighborized, closed for the rest of steaming eternity under the angry sun.
O sure, there might be, in any one of these surrounding towns, the occasional shop keeper left standing, who will greet you like Daffy Duck, waving his finger. He wags. He complains. He dreams of moving getting out his business, entirely. If not for the few good folks who come in to shop locally, he'd be in Bermuda by now. Since the finger wagging is a universal sign indicating the common small-town accusal, meaning, "Shame on you," each of these towns on most days would be classified better as ghost towns.
"Shame for all who shop at Wal Mart," they might say. "Shame on all of you who drive out of their communities, burning all of that gas, burning all of that time and money, to go out of their way to destroy the very towns they live in. Shame on all of you, far worse criminals than the little thieves who sit in their tiny small town cop jail cells, who go all of that way to buy all of that foreign-made crap, when they can buy some of my crap, much of it frequently locally produced, that they could buy instead."
But holy Ronald Reagan, sweet finger-flipping Jesus, as everyone must not know, as all wild-eyed Wal Mart shoppers do not feel or deny or fail to understand, they know not what they do. They know not that they are citizen soldiers as well for the zombied technological armies of the corporately sponsored seige against the American dream. They can't even see how they are bleeding their own communities dry. They do not know that, without their moral compass; hell they can scarecely listen or even be told, how the Wal Mart army is a big bluesy vampire sucking their very vitals, their lifestyles, their values, completely dry.
So go ahead, buy your plastic, Chinese-made compass at Wal Mart. Notice how it breaks easily. It will happen ... someday soon. You can always buy another one, and another, and another ... and if you have enough money, in great bulky bulks at Sam's Club, too ... all soon to be built on the surface of the moon.
20.9.10
Fer Bermuda, Aye!
For those about
to wake up
for their next
tropical depression:
I blow a kiss
and an antidote
loaded with Vitamin D
For my brothers
and sisters,
weak, picked on,
flipped on their backs
like doomed sea turtles
for the past twenty years:
I push a little blue button
issuing a satellite beep
causing instant pain relief
For a phony Noah's Ark
full of pixilated African animals
diving deep into twin lakes,
moving slow or fast,
enjoined at their hips:
I call up a might cloud,
concealing a thunderbird
For illegal immigrants
(as well as half-human aliens)
hiding like Apaches
in the motel rooms
of America: I send
a silent warning,
a three-hour head start,
initiating a two-year
launch sequence before
the power all goes off
For dangerous rip currents
building something together
in cascades of waves,
the top one silent, deadly:
a unified nomenclature,
be you rogue waves,
sneeker waves,
baddass high tides,
a roiling, boiling
but quite sexed up
good egg project
shaping smoother shores
so we can all learn
just a little bit more
under mostly cloudy skies
For all of the supposedly poisonous
under toads, intelligent horny toadies,
a tinted glass manufactured
by mere mortal men,
to hide behind
and therefore
to evolve anew
and grow
For all of the rest
of you angel hatchlings
in your fleshy husks:
for each, a single ticket
to ride, to sink and then fly,
riding high up in wood coffins,
rising up to the sea's surface,
like the meek in the Hopi bible
swimming with the shore
~
Douglas McDaniel,
Coralville, Iowa
For those about
to wake up
for their next
tropical depression:
I blow a kiss
and an antidote
loaded with Vitamin D
For my brothers
and sisters,
weak, picked on,
flipped on their backs
like doomed sea turtles
for the past twenty years:
I push a little blue button
issuing a satellite beep
causing instant pain relief
For a phony Noah's Ark
full of pixilated African animals
diving deep into twin lakes,
moving slow or fast,
enjoined at their hips:
I call up a might cloud,
concealing a thunderbird
For illegal immigrants
(as well as half-human aliens)
hiding like Apaches
in the motel rooms
of America: I send
a silent warning,
a three-hour head start,
initiating a two-year
launch sequence before
the power all goes off
For dangerous rip currents
building something together
in cascades of waves,
the top one silent, deadly:
a unified nomenclature,
be you rogue waves,
sneeker waves,
baddass high tides,
a roiling, boiling
but quite sexed up
good egg project
shaping smoother shores
so we can all learn
just a little bit more
under mostly cloudy skies
For all of the supposedly poisonous
under toads, intelligent horny toadies,
a tinted glass manufactured
by mere mortal men,
to hide behind
and therefore
to evolve anew
and grow
For all of the rest
of you angel hatchlings
in your fleshy husks:
for each, a single ticket
to ride, to sink and then fly,
riding high up in wood coffins,
rising up to the sea's surface,
like the meek in the Hopi bible
swimming with the shore
~
Douglas McDaniel,
Coralville, Iowa
18.9.10
Thunderbolt
The Reformed
Presbyterian Church
was hit by a thunderbolt
and Morning Sun, Iowa
was rendered back to the year
Nineteen Fifty One
And brother Jesus
sat on his Cardinal corner
with the ghosts of three gauzy
British colonial columns
behind him, more than twice
the height of the man
commanding them,
who lives four or five
times more often in life
than in death,
but who's counting?
Meanwhile, the local fire captain,
Tom "Torch" Lawyer
sits as the Grand Poopba
in the unmarked Oddfellows Hall ...
He, a Big Brother, of the weather map
and he sings, "O Hey, Gaia, what did I do?"
"O yeah, there was that, and that and that ...
I'm so sorry angry sun, sorry for this,
sorry for that ... O Kracken King Igor,
heavy weather hanging from across the plains
to the mountains once made pleasant
from Denver, Colorado
to Bloomington, Indiana:
Where John Cougar Mellencamp
is still wearing his hard hat ...
"Please, O Kracken,
spare me your change
and please spare
me some of my favorite
old mason bricks,
and spare me
from my brats
"Leave me one
Rosetta stone
and at least three
favored stocks
for six hundred
and sixty six
Fortune 500 companies
and please sponsor
my one last storm rider
so he can broadcast,
like Paul Revere in silver
my long last broadcast
on the Weather Channel
on Ruppert Murdoch's
Blue Ray Disc-shaped
magic Thunderbird carpet,
so that music can still be
piped in like rock'n'roll
in a cowboy hat
at the local Wal Mart
"And spare me your golden
spike in natural gas,
your January jolt
in coffee prices,
and spare me your sanguine
advice on what to expect
and spare me your photo radar
lanes used by Fed Ex,
and spare me your
weaponized Pineapple Express
as it tingles a trio
of water spouts
across the forty eighth paralell
"But please remind me later
to use a higher quality
white ashy paint
so I can smile upward
with a stun gun kept
quite safe behind my back
as I move beneath overhanging
chemtrail inspired clouds
to keep my doormats dry
when you try to reclaim
your honestly inward saints
"And tell that bastard
Mr. Ringo, he's running
out of time, and though
he bought a Wal Mart sold
Chinese-made plastic compass
that we have him lined up
in our electronic eye sights
and he'll never get across
King Henry the Eight's
magical river line
"Because, you see,
Medicare doesn't cover
everything,
especially his supposedly
secure bright and sunny
horizons, or bullets
or my elitist religious conceits
because he can't use his cell phone
or even mark a fully mastered retreat
with the sunspots buzzing up auroras
against his great hope for liberties
because they will always cost him more
than his lonely Roosevelt socialist dime
"Say a big hello
to that second toughest
man in America,
that next-to-last Templar
because I can see, feel and read
the second coming of Joan of Arc
sleeping in her shrine ...
'Coswe all know there's nothing
more exhausting than inaction
and his sacred pen as shotgun
won't bring his dead doggies back
"So hey! Angry Solari,
let's just say it was all
a good old boy's
misunderstanding
and even if the annointed We
run the risk of getting heart arrested,
or if sanctified gloomy We
speed through our Freemason made
towns, rocket launched
at the speed
of thirteen million
miles per hour,
and even if Johnny Ringo
can teach himself
to silence the two stormy
coasts in the centered
silences of his mind,
we can cut off his touch
to Taiowa her in Iowa
in order to remain in Tombstone
to review the cannons loaded,
in the late afternoon aspenglow,
as they are pointed
at Cochise's last stronghold
so that we, alone, can enjoy
the bonny bones of Norteneo
from our weaponized
plastic transister radio,
nor can he enjoy sweet
Maggie Marlowe, sleeping
in nicotine terrified migraines
without a tweet in our jail-baited
basements humming up thunder
from our cold dark basements
down below, so we can
keep up our plans to sell off
glassified dead scorpions
to the last of the plutocratic
touristas at the high noon
military movie show."
~ Douglas McDaniel,
Morning Sun, Iowa
The Reformed
Presbyterian Church
was hit by a thunderbolt
and Morning Sun, Iowa
was rendered back to the year
Nineteen Fifty One
And brother Jesus
sat on his Cardinal corner
with the ghosts of three gauzy
British colonial columns
behind him, more than twice
the height of the man
commanding them,
who lives four or five
times more often in life
than in death,
but who's counting?
Meanwhile, the local fire captain,
Tom "Torch" Lawyer
sits as the Grand Poopba
in the unmarked Oddfellows Hall ...
He, a Big Brother, of the weather map
and he sings, "O Hey, Gaia, what did I do?"
"O yeah, there was that, and that and that ...
I'm so sorry angry sun, sorry for this,
sorry for that ... O Kracken King Igor,
heavy weather hanging from across the plains
to the mountains once made pleasant
from Denver, Colorado
to Bloomington, Indiana:
Where John Cougar Mellencamp
is still wearing his hard hat ...
"Please, O Kracken,
spare me your change
and please spare
me some of my favorite
old mason bricks,
and spare me
from my brats
"Leave me one
Rosetta stone
and at least three
favored stocks
for six hundred
and sixty six
Fortune 500 companies
and please sponsor
my one last storm rider
so he can broadcast,
like Paul Revere in silver
my long last broadcast
on the Weather Channel
on Ruppert Murdoch's
Blue Ray Disc-shaped
magic Thunderbird carpet,
so that music can still be
piped in like rock'n'roll
in a cowboy hat
at the local Wal Mart
"And spare me your golden
spike in natural gas,
your January jolt
in coffee prices,
and spare me your sanguine
advice on what to expect
and spare me your photo radar
lanes used by Fed Ex,
and spare me your
weaponized Pineapple Express
as it tingles a trio
of water spouts
across the forty eighth paralell
"But please remind me later
to use a higher quality
white ashy paint
so I can smile upward
with a stun gun kept
quite safe behind my back
as I move beneath overhanging
chemtrail inspired clouds
to keep my doormats dry
when you try to reclaim
your honestly inward saints
"And tell that bastard
Mr. Ringo, he's running
out of time, and though
he bought a Wal Mart sold
Chinese-made plastic compass
that we have him lined up
in our electronic eye sights
and he'll never get across
King Henry the Eight's
magical river line
"Because, you see,
Medicare doesn't cover
everything,
especially his supposedly
secure bright and sunny
horizons, or bullets
or my elitist religious conceits
because he can't use his cell phone
or even mark a fully mastered retreat
with the sunspots buzzing up auroras
against his great hope for liberties
because they will always cost him more
than his lonely Roosevelt socialist dime
"Say a big hello
to that second toughest
man in America,
that next-to-last Templar
because I can see, feel and read
the second coming of Joan of Arc
sleeping in her shrine ...
'Coswe all know there's nothing
more exhausting than inaction
and his sacred pen as shotgun
won't bring his dead doggies back
"So hey! Angry Solari,
let's just say it was all
a good old boy's
misunderstanding
and even if the annointed We
run the risk of getting heart arrested,
or if sanctified gloomy We
speed through our Freemason made
towns, rocket launched
at the speed
of thirteen million
miles per hour,
and even if Johnny Ringo
can teach himself
to silence the two stormy
coasts in the centered
silences of his mind,
we can cut off his touch
to Taiowa her in Iowa
in order to remain in Tombstone
to review the cannons loaded,
in the late afternoon aspenglow,
as they are pointed
at Cochise's last stronghold
so that we, alone, can enjoy
the bonny bones of Norteneo
from our weaponized
plastic transister radio,
nor can he enjoy sweet
Maggie Marlowe, sleeping
in nicotine terrified migraines
without a tweet in our jail-baited
basements humming up thunder
from our cold dark basements
down below, so we can
keep up our plans to sell off
glassified dead scorpions
to the last of the plutocratic
touristas at the high noon
military movie show."
~ Douglas McDaniel,
Morning Sun, Iowa
15.9.10
Lost Hero Blues
Laying down his bones
in the dispossed back alley,
the bone man shivers in the streetlight
Ambushing archers, waiting in the wood,
keep a keen eye far into the distance for the enemies of love
She picks up his bones breathes flesh from her stone,
but then walks away, stinging his flesh with a slap to awake him
Leaving his bones, again ...
Le Heusero died again, and he lingers here, beneath this tree,
as the corridor waits to hear the song of the beautiful man
whose legend is told from hill to hill,
mountain to mountain & sea to misty sea.
Information Disease
After seeing the morning light
through three motel room windows
the dog came out, delivered by a member
of the Select Committee to Keep Me
From Doing Anything But Writing Poetry
and in that morning blight, the red and yellow light
yellow as the angry sun, degenerated all of mankind
into a dumbed down cromagmun gun, that, lacking
any more access to information, imagined itself into a slick
And just as fast, although less permanent,
in the corner of my eye, the profound Eris of the deep
caught up with conversation with an heiress of the Grand Old Party
and the earth's unpleasant grip on the dominion of sin quaked, rattled, rolled
and water vapor seeped up, toward the earth's surface, from underground and flowers
bloomed louder and we all got younger and the wind softened and daylight sent love sighs
into the breeze
~
Douglas McDaniel,
Morning Sun, Iowa
13.9.10
The Solar Bath
She awoke
shapely but shaken
And I watched her bathe
In blinding electricity
Beneath the solarized sky
Tiamat met Zeus
Were unable to reach
The porch to punish her
And over the cornfields
Of Republicanated Iowa
Thunder a’ trumpeted,
And Tesla’s lightning
Failed to defeat her,
And solar light bounced
Off the feet of her
Bouncing upwards
Off the earth, to fire
Up the weaponized,
Quite culinary clouds
On the ninth
anti-anniversary
Of September Eleventh
She awoke shapely but shaken
As the neighborhood watchers
Faded away like gargoyles,
Draconian unbeings,
As the Ta’ Iowan
dawn made
The winds sing
A new day, and all
The old fucked up
Old ghosts all
But ran away
I watched her bathe
In electricity last night
As we watched the watchers
And then all of the watchers
Started signing in Morse Code
And before dawn we chased
Each other around
Wondering which one
Was pretending to be
The scariest and smartest
of them witches on
the mirror ball wall
And internationalist
Viagran huntsmen fumbling
For newsy spells to foul
The electrician’s switches
As the shapely but shaken
Wake up call doomed up
A first breath of hurricane fires
Churning up in the earns of the earth
And I imagined how the tectonics
Of how the globe might burst
Sending more seawater, yes,
Up from down below,
Way way way down below
More even than
the moon can send
if Zeus ever came back
to toss that old rock
down again
And before dawn she bathed
In a lake of fire
Sent down from the sky
And we all chased down
The shapely but shaken
Without causing a ruckus
Or a Venusian star
to start screaming
About her long lost
Gothic Civil rights
~
Douglas McDaniel
Morning Sun, Iowa
September 11, 2010
She awoke
shapely but shaken
And I watched her bathe
In blinding electricity
Beneath the solarized sky
Tiamat met Zeus
Were unable to reach
The porch to punish her
And over the cornfields
Of Republicanated Iowa
Thunder a’ trumpeted,
And Tesla’s lightning
Failed to defeat her,
And solar light bounced
Off the feet of her
Bouncing upwards
Off the earth, to fire
Up the weaponized,
Quite culinary clouds
On the ninth
anti-anniversary
Of September Eleventh
She awoke shapely but shaken
As the neighborhood watchers
Faded away like gargoyles,
Draconian unbeings,
As the Ta’ Iowan
dawn made
The winds sing
A new day, and all
The old fucked up
Old ghosts all
But ran away
I watched her bathe
In electricity last night
As we watched the watchers
And then all of the watchers
Started signing in Morse Code
And before dawn we chased
Each other around
Wondering which one
Was pretending to be
The scariest and smartest
of them witches on
the mirror ball wall
And internationalist
Viagran huntsmen fumbling
For newsy spells to foul
The electrician’s switches
As the shapely but shaken
Wake up call doomed up
A first breath of hurricane fires
Churning up in the earns of the earth
And I imagined how the tectonics
Of how the globe might burst
Sending more seawater, yes,
Up from down below,
Way way way down below
More even than
the moon can send
if Zeus ever came back
to toss that old rock
down again
And before dawn she bathed
In a lake of fire
Sent down from the sky
And we all chased down
The shapely but shaken
Without causing a ruckus
Or a Venusian star
to start screaming
About her long lost
Gothic Civil rights
~
Douglas McDaniel
Morning Sun, Iowa
September 11, 2010
10.9.10
The Rivalry
The sun came up cold, wolf-nosed,
with its business being your business,
and I knowing neither north nor south
and the divided elusive spheroid lands,
a football chopped into the Tao of two,
half cheese, half butter, all corn-fed,
rolling a gutter wash flood of drunk
monkeys into an Iowan university town ...
Saint Hayden Fry,
a cash-in-carrion
mixture of cow tippin',
tow truck drivin',
methane dispensin',
hawkwind huntin'
demythologian,
dark sunglass wearin',
Jim Jonesian hero cult
leader of the local FBI ...
Scoured and scorched
pump and dumpin' fear
into the rectangular fronted
armies of black-and-blue
burned bloody armies,
yellow hawkwind beaked,
technocratic beepee
station technocratic
fire and ice breakers
of split-levelled skyboxers
pointin' binoculars top-down
onto the grassy flats of evils
won and lost beneath
the split-level sky
A remote viewing post-toasty
hosting a contagion of baddass
battalions of flankers and big-necked
booboos, uneven into elevens,
spinning once snapped
into sun-punished twenty twos,
balancing their rises and falsies
just like the American Civil War ...
Except now the uniforms
are more graphically beautified
and the forward pass unpunted,
as opposed to the run and gas
is rewound into the awkward
remains of unconsecrated,
polyunsaturated ground ...
And there's always, outside the box
the African-American man,
remade as black boy,
who was once a believer,
shaking a broekn banana in town
since now he's unable to reach
anymore money-grubbing,
property owner theiving thieves
on the apartment rental emergency phone
in order to earn his martyred manger
for his hollowed out poverty mole mound ...
You, season ticket holder,
may have never known him
as more than a mere jersied number
but he came to school
with airy Jordan skills
glitters of jittering futurtastic
static plastic stars
in his decieved eyes
And I remember a hooded
bulldogger, drill sargeant,
screaming, "Are you a pussy?
Are you a pussy? You are just
a plain pussy, aren't you?"
I remember dirt seat and scarecrow
scared, gasping from behind my facemask ...
I remember being emasculated
for the terrifying linebacker's task
of using my helmeted Hopi head,
full of old Gaelic soul, wordy woes,
to fill a gawdamn imagined hole
so he could go home and howl
to his half-deaf bored overweight wifey
that being a wannabe Vince Lombardi,
now there, bitter cherry berry,
now, that's the life ...
Animal mind controlled
on fields of stolen gold
prairie son bloodied
all skylighted to maintain
Romanesque economies
of momentary plunder
between waves and waves
of beer and truck commercials,
church churned into jars of cash
and coins jingling into thunder ...
Yeah, Hayden Fry ...
Here's my greatest wish
to broadcast on my hopeless
limping satellite dish:
I hope that when they carry
you in that grand parade to your
tummy tucked tomb
that they bury you alive
with Iowa license plates
tattoed to your ethanol eyes ...
The sun came up cold, wolf-nosed,
with its business being your business,
and I knowing neither north nor south
and the divided elusive spheroid lands,
a football chopped into the Tao of two,
half cheese, half butter, all corn-fed,
rolling a gutter wash flood of drunk
monkeys into an Iowan university town ...
Saint Hayden Fry,
a cash-in-carrion
mixture of cow tippin',
tow truck drivin',
methane dispensin',
hawkwind huntin'
demythologian,
dark sunglass wearin',
Jim Jonesian hero cult
leader of the local FBI ...
Scoured and scorched
pump and dumpin' fear
into the rectangular fronted
armies of black-and-blue
burned bloody armies,
yellow hawkwind beaked,
technocratic beepee
station technocratic
fire and ice breakers
of split-levelled skyboxers
pointin' binoculars top-down
onto the grassy flats of evils
won and lost beneath
the split-level sky
A remote viewing post-toasty
hosting a contagion of baddass
battalions of flankers and big-necked
booboos, uneven into elevens,
spinning once snapped
into sun-punished twenty twos,
balancing their rises and falsies
just like the American Civil War ...
Except now the uniforms
are more graphically beautified
and the forward pass unpunted,
as opposed to the run and gas
is rewound into the awkward
remains of unconsecrated,
polyunsaturated ground ...
And there's always, outside the box
the African-American man,
remade as black boy,
who was once a believer,
shaking a broekn banana in town
since now he's unable to reach
anymore money-grubbing,
property owner theiving thieves
on the apartment rental emergency phone
in order to earn his martyred manger
for his hollowed out poverty mole mound ...
You, season ticket holder,
may have never known him
as more than a mere jersied number
but he came to school
with airy Jordan skills
glitters of jittering futurtastic
static plastic stars
in his decieved eyes
And I remember a hooded
bulldogger, drill sargeant,
screaming, "Are you a pussy?
Are you a pussy? You are just
a plain pussy, aren't you?"
I remember dirt seat and scarecrow
scared, gasping from behind my facemask ...
I remember being emasculated
for the terrifying linebacker's task
of using my helmeted Hopi head,
full of old Gaelic soul, wordy woes,
to fill a gawdamn imagined hole
so he could go home and howl
to his half-deaf bored overweight wifey
that being a wannabe Vince Lombardi,
now there, bitter cherry berry,
now, that's the life ...
Animal mind controlled
on fields of stolen gold
prairie son bloodied
all skylighted to maintain
Romanesque economies
of momentary plunder
between waves and waves
of beer and truck commercials,
church churned into jars of cash
and coins jingling into thunder ...
Yeah, Hayden Fry ...
Here's my greatest wish
to broadcast on my hopeless
limping satellite dish:
I hope that when they carry
you in that grand parade to your
tummy tucked tomb
that they bury you alive
with Iowa license plates
tattoed to your ethanol eyes ...
4.9.10
How to dispatch a Jehovah’s Witness
For many years, for as long as I can remember, I have fallen into the trap of getting drawn into discussions with Jehovah’s Witnesses. Not that a “trap” is such a bad thing. They are good for catching things, capturing things, altogether being good for the collection of just all kinds of things, including special information that just might get you through the day. That includes such highly specialized information as how to get to heaven, why you are going to hell, why you generally suck … and so on.
In fact, I’ve had furious but generally beneficial discussions with Jehovah’s Witnesses in the past. In fact, just once, while I was a reporter covering religion for the Prescott Courier*, I decided it would be a fine idea to do a story about what it was like to be a door-to-door evangelista. So I talked two of these Jehovahcrats to allow me to follow along with them as they went through a neighborhood. Turned out to be a fine story. I wrote it in real time, like a day in the life kinda thing. And if I learned one thing, it’s this: It’s no fucking fun being a Jehovah’s Witness.
Ever since then I’ve remained compassionate for these people. I became even more curious about them. They seemed to have the thickest skin of any style of religious zealot ever, save for perhaps Jesus of Nazereth … you know, that original polydactal cat who, in being paranormal, or, perhaps quite insane, was made to be “normal,” by agreement of many so-called wise Jesus historians, clergyman and political thinkers, about seven centuries later in a nation I believe at the time was called Byzantium, in a city I think was called Constantinople, but is now called Turkey, about seven centuries after he was reportedly crucified. In other words: When his round peg was fit into a square hole (“whole?”, hell no!) thus leaving four odd joints all quite unaccounted for at each corner. Not a perfect fit, save you, but, at least, it made for a decent book, which today they still call the Bible. Now, to complete that thought, and I apologize for getting so far off the point, there remains many clear thinking folk who at least can agree on one thing; and that is, some key portions of the real story were left out.
Those points, in fact, were always pecadillos for myself, and they became keys to my ongoing conversations (OK, OK, arguments) with Jehovah Witnesses. I mean, I’m just a reporter, after all, and to report on an event seven hundred years after the fact is just plain no bueno.
The problem with these folk, as I see them, is you can’t get a word in edgewise once they get locked into explaining to you why you can’t get to heaven, why you are going to hell, why you suck … and so on. This is one reason why people don’t like them to come to their door. It’s not so much the invasion of privacy … though that irritation is no doubt included. Getting spammed by Bible beaters is, after all, about the worst thing anyone in America has to accept without question … due to the First Amendment … and so on … no, the real problem with Jehovah’s Witnesses is you can’t tell them a fucking thing without causing a hemmorage to break in the vessels of their brains, and then they start spewing about the blood of Jesus all over you, the unhappy consumer.
The wisest amongst us just tell them to go away. But that rarely works. They are trained to remain steady. To stay thick skinned. To hang in there. To become, well, victorious. Victory, being, I suppose, an elusive hope, since absolutely nobody really knows if you’ll make it to heaven, or, hell, or why you really suck … not one fucking living soul, anyhow, despite all of the different claims, once you are dead. And so, you can probably see why they can get under your collar … in case you don’t have a First Amendment clause in your city, state, nation or planetary system …
After many years, I have become something of an expert, though, in discussions with Jehovah’s Witnesses because, well, I’m a compassionate guy who believes you can learn something from everyone, especially (and this is one of those completely quite remarkable things about life) complete fools.
But as time has gone by, I have learned to save time on these discussions, and here is my secret: Just fucking agree with them. Then, they will leave.
But don’t agree to anything else … boy, this is a fine point, the real “deal breaker,” because if they get a whiff of your dissent … they will launch into when, exactly, they can come over to launch into more disagreeable discussions, or, want to know when they can come over and take you to their church. I’ve, personally, never been in one. In fact, since the last time I was in a church, a Presbyterian haunt in St. Charles, Illinois, I completely messed up the whole sharing the sacrament ritual, since it was my first time at that place, and I was raised just straight Presbyterian, and but they didn’t do the breaking of the bread or the drinking the Kool aid thing the same way … then, later, and belive me, this never ever happened: the madman named Dr. Mengele, who brought me there, left me at the church and the pastor had to drive me home to this strange city I’d only been in for about 48 hours, without mountains, nor compass, nor stars to even remotely comprehend, much less the fucking weather, which nobody (this part being true, even understands anymore) … and it turned into a real mess, and now I’m seeking counseling for that particular unfortunate, quite traumatic event …
Anyhow, to conclude, to be a real Jehovah’s Witness de-neighborizor, you have got to scare them with something far scarier than hell, far more truthful and therefore less apparent than heaven, while at the same time, at the end, telling them you totally agree with everything they have to say.
This is how it worked for me in the morning sun the other day: I went outside my front door. I saw three of them coming toward me. I said, “Boy, you guys are really in trouble.” Then, I said, looking up at the incredibly suddenly stormy sky, “Look up there, we’ve got weaponized weather,” then making a broad circle with my other hand, creating a globe-like circumference, continued with “a hurricane headed toward the Gulf of Mexico named Earl,” and finishing it with, “and I totally believe in everything you say.”
And so, they left. Scattered, in fact, in three directions down the street. One guy went over to a house that looks like some kind of Adams Family recreation, perhaps even a Disney recreation for a very scary ride, and he got stuck trying to get his way through the bushes and deep, deep weeds. He looked back at me, and, to continue my de-neighborizing, I shouted over the increasing winds, “Don’t go there. Nobody home. Everyone who is actually home here mows their lawns.” So then he turned, after tripping through the brambles a bit more, to get away. The other two went scurrying down the street, looking for homes with fully mowed lawns, I suppose. I knew, of course, since this is basically a Presbyterian territory, that they were really headed for even worse trouble. I laughed to myself. Imagining the horrors that awaited them …About 15 minutes later, I saw them drive by in a white compact car. No doubt driving out of town as fast as they possibly could. I think I will never forget the deer-in-the headlights look of the youngest of them sitting in the back seat car. He gazed back at me in amazement as I smiled and waved. He looked as if he’d just seen a ghost. Oh God how I will miss him. He could have actually been a real friend ...
For many years, for as long as I can remember, I have fallen into the trap of getting drawn into discussions with Jehovah’s Witnesses. Not that a “trap” is such a bad thing. They are good for catching things, capturing things, altogether being good for the collection of just all kinds of things, including special information that just might get you through the day. That includes such highly specialized information as how to get to heaven, why you are going to hell, why you generally suck … and so on.
In fact, I’ve had furious but generally beneficial discussions with Jehovah’s Witnesses in the past. In fact, just once, while I was a reporter covering religion for the Prescott Courier*, I decided it would be a fine idea to do a story about what it was like to be a door-to-door evangelista. So I talked two of these Jehovahcrats to allow me to follow along with them as they went through a neighborhood. Turned out to be a fine story. I wrote it in real time, like a day in the life kinda thing. And if I learned one thing, it’s this: It’s no fucking fun being a Jehovah’s Witness.
Ever since then I’ve remained compassionate for these people. I became even more curious about them. They seemed to have the thickest skin of any style of religious zealot ever, save for perhaps Jesus of Nazereth … you know, that original polydactal cat who, in being paranormal, or, perhaps quite insane, was made to be “normal,” by agreement of many so-called wise Jesus historians, clergyman and political thinkers, about seven centuries later in a nation I believe at the time was called Byzantium, in a city I think was called Constantinople, but is now called Turkey, about seven centuries after he was reportedly crucified. In other words: When his round peg was fit into a square hole (“whole?”, hell no!) thus leaving four odd joints all quite unaccounted for at each corner. Not a perfect fit, save you, but, at least, it made for a decent book, which today they still call the Bible. Now, to complete that thought, and I apologize for getting so far off the point, there remains many clear thinking folk who at least can agree on one thing; and that is, some key portions of the real story were left out.
Those points, in fact, were always pecadillos for myself, and they became keys to my ongoing conversations (OK, OK, arguments) with Jehovah Witnesses. I mean, I’m just a reporter, after all, and to report on an event seven hundred years after the fact is just plain no bueno.
The problem with these folk, as I see them, is you can’t get a word in edgewise once they get locked into explaining to you why you can’t get to heaven, why you are going to hell, why you suck … and so on. This is one reason why people don’t like them to come to their door. It’s not so much the invasion of privacy … though that irritation is no doubt included. Getting spammed by Bible beaters is, after all, about the worst thing anyone in America has to accept without question … due to the First Amendment … and so on … no, the real problem with Jehovah’s Witnesses is you can’t tell them a fucking thing without causing a hemmorage to break in the vessels of their brains, and then they start spewing about the blood of Jesus all over you, the unhappy consumer.
The wisest amongst us just tell them to go away. But that rarely works. They are trained to remain steady. To stay thick skinned. To hang in there. To become, well, victorious. Victory, being, I suppose, an elusive hope, since absolutely nobody really knows if you’ll make it to heaven, or, hell, or why you really suck … not one fucking living soul, anyhow, despite all of the different claims, once you are dead. And so, you can probably see why they can get under your collar … in case you don’t have a First Amendment clause in your city, state, nation or planetary system …
After many years, I have become something of an expert, though, in discussions with Jehovah’s Witnesses because, well, I’m a compassionate guy who believes you can learn something from everyone, especially (and this is one of those completely quite remarkable things about life) complete fools.
But as time has gone by, I have learned to save time on these discussions, and here is my secret: Just fucking agree with them. Then, they will leave.
But don’t agree to anything else … boy, this is a fine point, the real “deal breaker,” because if they get a whiff of your dissent … they will launch into when, exactly, they can come over to launch into more disagreeable discussions, or, want to know when they can come over and take you to their church. I’ve, personally, never been in one. In fact, since the last time I was in a church, a Presbyterian haunt in St. Charles, Illinois, I completely messed up the whole sharing the sacrament ritual, since it was my first time at that place, and I was raised just straight Presbyterian, and but they didn’t do the breaking of the bread or the drinking the Kool aid thing the same way … then, later, and belive me, this never ever happened: the madman named Dr. Mengele, who brought me there, left me at the church and the pastor had to drive me home to this strange city I’d only been in for about 48 hours, without mountains, nor compass, nor stars to even remotely comprehend, much less the fucking weather, which nobody (this part being true, even understands anymore) … and it turned into a real mess, and now I’m seeking counseling for that particular unfortunate, quite traumatic event …
Anyhow, to conclude, to be a real Jehovah’s Witness de-neighborizor, you have got to scare them with something far scarier than hell, far more truthful and therefore less apparent than heaven, while at the same time, at the end, telling them you totally agree with everything they have to say.
This is how it worked for me in the morning sun the other day: I went outside my front door. I saw three of them coming toward me. I said, “Boy, you guys are really in trouble.” Then, I said, looking up at the incredibly suddenly stormy sky, “Look up there, we’ve got weaponized weather,” then making a broad circle with my other hand, creating a globe-like circumference, continued with “a hurricane headed toward the Gulf of Mexico named Earl,” and finishing it with, “and I totally believe in everything you say.”
And so, they left. Scattered, in fact, in three directions down the street. One guy went over to a house that looks like some kind of Adams Family recreation, perhaps even a Disney recreation for a very scary ride, and he got stuck trying to get his way through the bushes and deep, deep weeds. He looked back at me, and, to continue my de-neighborizing, I shouted over the increasing winds, “Don’t go there. Nobody home. Everyone who is actually home here mows their lawns.” So then he turned, after tripping through the brambles a bit more, to get away. The other two went scurrying down the street, looking for homes with fully mowed lawns, I suppose. I knew, of course, since this is basically a Presbyterian territory, that they were really headed for even worse trouble. I laughed to myself. Imagining the horrors that awaited them …About 15 minutes later, I saw them drive by in a white compact car. No doubt driving out of town as fast as they possibly could. I think I will never forget the deer-in-the headlights look of the youngest of them sitting in the back seat car. He gazed back at me in amazement as I smiled and waved. He looked as if he’d just seen a ghost. Oh God how I will miss him. He could have actually been a real friend ...
28.8.10
Thy Father's Needs
(Forgive, But Don't Forget)
In the secret agent shades
along the dirty boulevard
the disquited boys try
to hunt down new divas
with energies circling,
tryin' not to rust
As the shadows get longer
no longer rough
is no longer enough
and the divine fems
keep in their corners
reportin' on their formers
Thy father's needs
Thy father's needs
Thy father's needs
cause the earth
to bleed
Who is left or right
of the center
keep untying hearts
and poisoned darts
together feelin'
funny about the weather
And the Overlord plays
his fiddle to bards split
right down the middle
letting the dust of fast
polarities just plain settle
Thy father's needs
Thy father's needs
Thy father's needs
just suck the rust
off the gristy griddle
There's a guy here
waitin' for the gals
to complete their
conversations
dreamin' of their
own truths to private
Cherokee nations,
Cherokee people
as wedding bells ring
and a divided nation
fails to swing or sing
on either wing
Thy father's needs
Thy father's needs
Thy father's needs
boilin' up corn seeds
to cut all those Joans
of Arc but deep
Don't you feel
O so incomplete
due to thy Father's needs
Thy father's needs
Thy Father's needs
dryin' corn seeds
O so incomplete
to his dirty deeds
his dirty deeds
crossed up
cotton seeds
Ozo incomplete
Ozo incomplete
Ozo incomplete
to thy father's needs
thy father's needs
cut down those weeds
let it all just bleed
for Thy father's needs
Thy Father's needs
Thy father's needs
the whole damn earth
plain gone to seed
~ Douglas McDaniel,
The Bards of Mythville,
While on military tour
in St. Charles, Illinois
26.8.10
Black Hawk Up
Eleven a.m
and the unarmed
dying of the dark
can't catch up
to pre-dawn me
Upon the Midwestern plains,
the planes boss, the planes ...
Their thunderbird songs sing
to thee ... tho many of those bros
have never flown
much further West
than the Miss Yi Yapee
Dark clouds move
across the red sky
from the Southwest
airlines, all guidelined
by pill pushing plumbers,
electrostatic electricians,
by zombie-eyed truckers
dumbing down magical,
no longer mysterious
or even once mythic roads
Full moon all day headlining
to disappointing misfortunes
of Dionysus, who died that night
well before the clouds move slow
and covered wagons move fast
to confuse the fine old sun's
meandering eyes, red satellite
rounded ...
Since we are at war now
against cosmic nations
in corporate disguise
and a single black hawk
emplores the baddass
updrafts to remain,
to be still
and wise ...
~ Persperide,
Colorado
Eleven a.m
and the unarmed
dying of the dark
can't catch up
to pre-dawn me
Upon the Midwestern plains,
the planes boss, the planes ...
Their thunderbird songs sing
to thee ... tho many of those bros
have never flown
much further West
than the Miss Yi Yapee
Dark clouds move
across the red sky
from the Southwest
airlines, all guidelined
by pill pushing plumbers,
electrostatic electricians,
by zombie-eyed truckers
dumbing down magical,
no longer mysterious
or even once mythic roads
Full moon all day headlining
to disappointing misfortunes
of Dionysus, who died that night
well before the clouds move slow
and covered wagons move fast
to confuse the fine old sun's
meandering eyes, red satellite
rounded ...
Since we are at war now
against cosmic nations
in corporate disguise
and a single black hawk
emplores the baddass
updrafts to remain,
to be still
and wise ...
~ Persperide,
Colorado
16.8.10
El Cathedral
Light leaking through the trees
in a voice of sun music
as a Jesuit-taught cowboy
poking gruff holes through
the forest, a well-worn
horse-made trail ...
In the morning's blaze
Sunshine Peak smiles
through touristas
in hangover cobwebs
after a night's
culture shock therapy ...
She is kind, but wise and cautious
as the deer but fearing nothing
except for the coming bulldozers
and coyotes of commerce
preying on the young, the weak ...
(Ah, the weak,
now there's some
cheap meat ...)
And it wouldn't be here
in the future, which is today,
and yesterday is just
this poet's old ghosts ...
roamin' ...
The next day and for years
after that, Set would go on nibbling
on greens, for no one,
said Horus, the hawk,
could crunch on greens
better than Set ...
Among he are those times
is monies folks, old blokes,
who pushed women around
for centuries, like cattle,
due to God's half-written call
And they were good
intentioned men,
just like me ...
who went home,
all unsatisfied,
to beat on their wives,
to then sleep for another day
with their brokers, pork belly
stokers, livin' among chain
smokers, all bragging about
how they had this girl and that girl,
when, in fact, they had not ...
She is kind, and wise
and no longer
free to be
alone ...
~ Persperide,
Colorado
(originally written
in the summer of 1996,
now updated for you,
the consumer)
Light leaking through the trees
in a voice of sun music
as a Jesuit-taught cowboy
poking gruff holes through
the forest, a well-worn
horse-made trail ...
In the morning's blaze
Sunshine Peak smiles
through touristas
in hangover cobwebs
after a night's
culture shock therapy ...
She is kind, but wise and cautious
as the deer but fearing nothing
except for the coming bulldozers
and coyotes of commerce
preying on the young, the weak ...
(Ah, the weak,
now there's some
cheap meat ...)
And it wouldn't be here
in the future, which is today,
and yesterday is just
this poet's old ghosts ...
roamin' ...
The next day and for years
after that, Set would go on nibbling
on greens, for no one,
said Horus, the hawk,
could crunch on greens
better than Set ...
Among he are those times
is monies folks, old blokes,
who pushed women around
for centuries, like cattle,
due to God's half-written call
And they were good
intentioned men,
just like me ...
who went home,
all unsatisfied,
to beat on their wives,
to then sleep for another day
with their brokers, pork belly
stokers, livin' among chain
smokers, all bragging about
how they had this girl and that girl,
when, in fact, they had not ...
She is kind, and wise
and no longer
free to be
alone ...
~ Persperide,
Colorado
(originally written
in the summer of 1996,
now updated for you,
the consumer)
The Valley of the Single
Black Escaped Pig Fiasco
The engorged valley
was wide as the Grand Canyon,
but wider the Abdominal Void,
and shale-white stone,
a single one, most noticeable,
pointed toward the West,
toward a happy life, happier endings,
than the imaged hat-brimmed
man left in the dusty dust,
the aquarium rescue dream,
of turquise particles, dust,
and a ghost, perhaps, or a lover's
old friend, who left a single marble
from her head, to point the way
With great fear, fear alone, tore back
down the mountain ... which shook loose
again after a mere ten minutes
at the insatiable blue counters
of your local Walmart crack pipe dealer ...
After dinner, her hair turned blue
and she got the shingles from shaking
too many demons out of the newborn
skulls of other ... and she wept in the morn' ...
and the sound of a single-family home,
another of many more undone for the day
burned a new red hole in me ... and I could
barely smoke, or speak, or feel, or touch
my own nose from looking so hard to see ...
But somewhere out there in middle America
a single black pig is running free in the streets
while a shadow's brilliant pink red Father Sun
has also come undone from the blazing glories
of incomprehensible amounts of feminine hunters
charging in the last great light brigands
inspired by trampled patriarichal old souls ...
~ Persperide,
Colorado
Black Escaped Pig Fiasco
The engorged valley
was wide as the Grand Canyon,
but wider the Abdominal Void,
and shale-white stone,
a single one, most noticeable,
pointed toward the West,
toward a happy life, happier endings,
than the imaged hat-brimmed
man left in the dusty dust,
the aquarium rescue dream,
of turquise particles, dust,
and a ghost, perhaps, or a lover's
old friend, who left a single marble
from her head, to point the way
With great fear, fear alone, tore back
down the mountain ... which shook loose
again after a mere ten minutes
at the insatiable blue counters
of your local Walmart crack pipe dealer ...
After dinner, her hair turned blue
and she got the shingles from shaking
too many demons out of the newborn
skulls of other ... and she wept in the morn' ...
and the sound of a single-family home,
another of many more undone for the day
burned a new red hole in me ... and I could
barely smoke, or speak, or feel, or touch
my own nose from looking so hard to see ...
But somewhere out there in middle America
a single black pig is running free in the streets
while a shadow's brilliant pink red Father Sun
has also come undone from the blazing glories
of incomprehensible amounts of feminine hunters
charging in the last great light brigands
inspired by trampled patriarichal old souls ...
~ Persperide,
Colorado
12.8.10
The Eleventh
of Twelve Elves
of Mars ...
Gorgeous sun,
mother of sun
uneasy to appease,
easier to please
but bitter in death
untaking the taste test
after dinner thinker
but not much
of a drinker
This insane chain
around you was sympathy
Overpowered by your pedal
mad but no longer snoring
dreaming of diamonds, Goddess!
She law languid but stolid,
a cool, brilliant underwater
apparatus, but hell ...
no damn Illuminatress ...
... at least not quite yet,
she barely got wet
Bathed by a winged white
Macaw, disorder and the law,
unloved in luscious whispers
beneath the yellow gown
of a new moon, a taste both fast
and sweet, in glory, in flesh
and in heat ...
~ Sir Freudo,
Telluride, Colorado
of Twelve Elves
of Mars ...
Gorgeous sun,
mother of sun
uneasy to appease,
easier to please
but bitter in death
untaking the taste test
after dinner thinker
but not much
of a drinker
This insane chain
around you was sympathy
Overpowered by your pedal
mad but no longer snoring
dreaming of diamonds, Goddess!
She law languid but stolid,
a cool, brilliant underwater
apparatus, but hell ...
no damn Illuminatress ...
... at least not quite yet,
she barely got wet
Bathed by a winged white
Macaw, disorder and the law,
unloved in luscious whispers
beneath the yellow gown
of a new moon, a taste both fast
and sweet, in glory, in flesh
and in heat ...
~ Sir Freudo,
Telluride, Colorado
4.8.10
We all fell
like thieves
through the day,
the sudden cloud,
shadows of sentiment
and fully sentient
unbeings, unfeeling, unquieted
watch like angels over our shoulder,
shouting up new storms, loudly ...
~ Mingo, Kansas, exit. 22
Zen Presby Rebellion Begins at Home
as Sir Freduo Lands Upon the Plains
of Pop Goes Paranoid ...
At Medicine Helmet he noticed he himself had become a kind of Hobbit oil leak, gazing into space, not realizing the nozzle had gone wrong. This new self-unregulated issue of finding himself unable to attend to that kind of connectivity the dino-to-car-to-forward movement kind ... well it must have been a new, in fact, the first side effect of not wearing the Ring of Doom (copyright completely ignored).
Yes, Sir Freudo kept arising with the odd call of the muses at 3 a.m., and the stars were all quite bright at the same grand country roads ending along the way. Finally, he found himself at the far end of some annonoplace outside of Chicago ... and alas, there were no more guards around. He saw a UFO in the sky, a chemtrail across the otherwise heavenly evening sky, but he was unimpressed with the sauturnine presence of these things. It was like, "Dudes, I really don't need that right now."
Things are strange and weird enough in a America at Not Quite Declared War as it was already.
He went back inside the still unfamiliar castle afforded him by his queen friend later on, having refound the ring from his various travel boxes, feeling better, empowered even ... considering the wide open possibilities for his future: Imagining
friends, family, loved ones, left behind. Then, he wept ...
Lacking an internet, he sent messages of love back to his family and friends and fans by mental telepathy alone ... another nice new supposed "evil" of the Ring ...
After taking a breath, Sir Freudo began to investigate the castle's vast library, located in one special center room deep in the castle, used as a gathering point of all kinds of phantasmagorical imagery, where two frames of the lore of the early history of the first Presbyterians of Scotland was related. One of these frames contained a dark old painting that was hard to view due tot he darkened glare of much reflected sunlight from the outside. However, it appaeared to be an image of wild rogue Scot peasants conducting some kind of emotional intolerabration. Everyone was in the square braying, and wailing and gnashing their teeth; Freudo surmised that he could impose himself closer to get a better view, he might be able to begin to fathom the relationships between the nighly individuated, downright imoortalized figures in play. But, actually, he was far more curious about he other frame, which seemed to include alternative lyrics to ELP's version of William Blake's "Jerusalem":
In Scotland's green and hilly lands,
walking oer' the oil-dimmed tides,
there's nothing sacred t0 be read
that doesn't smell like gasoline ...
Tho most Sinclairs are gone to red
there be hope amongst us still
that where we dwell
will be a land
that's safe for us
with water to drink
And tho we weep
with a great sense of loss
of choking family, friends and fans
We'll do our best
to carry on
the best we can
to help every man ...
Because 'ol Dino Sinclair
was a grand 'ol fellow
we all walk upon
Scotland Yard's
yellowy yellowbricked
Roady roads, Ahmen ...
~ Somewhere's in the Midwest,
August, 2010 ... late in the day,
but out of the black rain
like thieves
through the day,
the sudden cloud,
shadows of sentiment
and fully sentient
unbeings, unfeeling, unquieted
watch like angels over our shoulder,
shouting up new storms, loudly ...
~ Mingo, Kansas, exit. 22
Zen Presby Rebellion Begins at Home
as Sir Freduo Lands Upon the Plains
of Pop Goes Paranoid ...
At Medicine Helmet he noticed he himself had become a kind of Hobbit oil leak, gazing into space, not realizing the nozzle had gone wrong. This new self-unregulated issue of finding himself unable to attend to that kind of connectivity the dino-to-car-to-forward movement kind ... well it must have been a new, in fact, the first side effect of not wearing the Ring of Doom (copyright completely ignored).
Yes, Sir Freudo kept arising with the odd call of the muses at 3 a.m., and the stars were all quite bright at the same grand country roads ending along the way. Finally, he found himself at the far end of some annonoplace outside of Chicago ... and alas, there were no more guards around. He saw a UFO in the sky, a chemtrail across the otherwise heavenly evening sky, but he was unimpressed with the sauturnine presence of these things. It was like, "Dudes, I really don't need that right now."
Things are strange and weird enough in a America at Not Quite Declared War as it was already.
He went back inside the still unfamiliar castle afforded him by his queen friend later on, having refound the ring from his various travel boxes, feeling better, empowered even ... considering the wide open possibilities for his future: Imagining
friends, family, loved ones, left behind. Then, he wept ...
Lacking an internet, he sent messages of love back to his family and friends and fans by mental telepathy alone ... another nice new supposed "evil" of the Ring ...
After taking a breath, Sir Freudo began to investigate the castle's vast library, located in one special center room deep in the castle, used as a gathering point of all kinds of phantasmagorical imagery, where two frames of the lore of the early history of the first Presbyterians of Scotland was related. One of these frames contained a dark old painting that was hard to view due tot he darkened glare of much reflected sunlight from the outside. However, it appaeared to be an image of wild rogue Scot peasants conducting some kind of emotional intolerabration. Everyone was in the square braying, and wailing and gnashing their teeth; Freudo surmised that he could impose himself closer to get a better view, he might be able to begin to fathom the relationships between the nighly individuated, downright imoortalized figures in play. But, actually, he was far more curious about he other frame, which seemed to include alternative lyrics to ELP's version of William Blake's "Jerusalem":
In Scotland's green and hilly lands,
walking oer' the oil-dimmed tides,
there's nothing sacred t0 be read
that doesn't smell like gasoline ...
Tho most Sinclairs are gone to red
there be hope amongst us still
that where we dwell
will be a land
that's safe for us
with water to drink
And tho we weep
with a great sense of loss
of choking family, friends and fans
We'll do our best
to carry on
the best we can
to help every man ...
Because 'ol Dino Sinclair
was a grand 'ol fellow
we all walk upon
Scotland Yard's
yellowy yellowbricked
Roady roads, Ahmen ...
~ Somewhere's in the Midwest,
August, 2010 ... late in the day,
but out of the black rain
25.7.10
Freudo Unbound:
Things to Undo
in Demver
When You're Dad
The last time Sir Freudo was in Demver, he had been thrown out of the Gimpy Hippie Coffee House by the Gimpy Hippie Coffee House Nice Nazi Lady ... for being a little too Hobbit-colored for his own good.
Apparently, they didn't serve Hobbits at the Gimpy.
Certainly, not his type, anyway. All he'd said was that he wasn't there for the Uncreate '68 meeting at all, and was most certainly no spy. He was merely there for a hangout to meet with the counter insuccient rock band he was then smoking with on the patio, and then, later, to meet "a bunch of witches who were with his girlfriend at the church down the street" ... too which he was immediately thrown out of the place for being too Hobbit-colored.
But Freudo was way too far gone now to worry too much about over the counter liberal arts cruelties served during an election year filled with so much uninvented sorrow, anyhow. But the event at the Gimpy still hurt, somehow, as all hurts will ... when hurting is most self-oriented.
Perhaps it was true, yes, he had some inhibited soft Hobbit guilt inside ... some deep need to fix it all since his people had fucked it all up so bad. But was there any just reason, other than being talkative and eccentric, to be thrown out of the Gimpy Hippie on a bright Sunday morning?
Seemed a tad unfair. Very Gimpy, yes ... but Hippie ... decidedly, not so much ...
If only because even in the halycon days before the Bushites pulled the plug on the center of the earth, attempting to leave, quite successfully ... most might say ... the entire planet in unbrokered flames and ruin ... he tried to help in any way he could to depublicize to its proper light the notorious Uncreate '68 brough ha ha ... and still remain quite liquid when it came to both fast cash, coins and Gimpy Hippie eloquence ...
But everywhere Sir Freudo went ... he seemed to be learning and re-learning all along the way ... when he wore The Ring (copyright notice goes here) ... people treated him like they were in danger of receiving the blight of too much sun ... and so, the off-putting counter insucciency ...
If the anything, the Nice Coffee Nazi Lady at the Gimpy Hippie in Demver ... where poor Freudo doesn't have a friend at all anymore, it appears ... was yet more proof that on the road to Mythville ... ding dang Demver is just plain too Otherstuffsville at this point to consider as a proper option ...
At least until, that is, the Nice Coffee Nazi Lady at the Gimpy Hippie in Demver is willing to accept his apology for being too soft Hobbit colored and all ...
Things to Undo
in Demver
When You're Dad
The last time Sir Freudo was in Demver, he had been thrown out of the Gimpy Hippie Coffee House by the Gimpy Hippie Coffee House Nice Nazi Lady ... for being a little too Hobbit-colored for his own good.
Apparently, they didn't serve Hobbits at the Gimpy.
Certainly, not his type, anyway. All he'd said was that he wasn't there for the Uncreate '68 meeting at all, and was most certainly no spy. He was merely there for a hangout to meet with the counter insuccient rock band he was then smoking with on the patio, and then, later, to meet "a bunch of witches who were with his girlfriend at the church down the street" ... too which he was immediately thrown out of the place for being too Hobbit-colored.
But Freudo was way too far gone now to worry too much about over the counter liberal arts cruelties served during an election year filled with so much uninvented sorrow, anyhow. But the event at the Gimpy still hurt, somehow, as all hurts will ... when hurting is most self-oriented.
Perhaps it was true, yes, he had some inhibited soft Hobbit guilt inside ... some deep need to fix it all since his people had fucked it all up so bad. But was there any just reason, other than being talkative and eccentric, to be thrown out of the Gimpy Hippie on a bright Sunday morning?
Seemed a tad unfair. Very Gimpy, yes ... but Hippie ... decidedly, not so much ...
If only because even in the halycon days before the Bushites pulled the plug on the center of the earth, attempting to leave, quite successfully ... most might say ... the entire planet in unbrokered flames and ruin ... he tried to help in any way he could to depublicize to its proper light the notorious Uncreate '68 brough ha ha ... and still remain quite liquid when it came to both fast cash, coins and Gimpy Hippie eloquence ...
But everywhere Sir Freudo went ... he seemed to be learning and re-learning all along the way ... when he wore The Ring (copyright notice goes here) ... people treated him like they were in danger of receiving the blight of too much sun ... and so, the off-putting counter insucciency ...
If the anything, the Nice Coffee Nazi Lady at the Gimpy Hippie in Demver ... where poor Freudo doesn't have a friend at all anymore, it appears ... was yet more proof that on the road to Mythville ... ding dang Demver is just plain too Otherstuffsville at this point to consider as a proper option ...
At least until, that is, the Nice Coffee Nazi Lady at the Gimpy Hippie in Demver is willing to accept his apology for being too soft Hobbit colored and all ...
13.7.10
Just Before Crossing the Swamp
Where the Battle Once Was ...
Beware: The Dadlands!
As reported by KGB-TVHO, Harlingen, Texas ... Sir the Artist Formerly Known as Frodo Now Known as Freudo has been reportedly ... um, transported ... to deep South Texas, at the mouth of the Rio Grande River, and he was mumbling something, sounded like he was jabbering, actually, to himself, in Japanese or Navajo or something, as if he'd gone completely insane over the so-called magical Ring of Doom (copyright notice goes here) ...
Before that he reportedly said, "All of the king's soldiers are slaves, same as the whores, but I'd won't sleep with either and I sure as hell won't fight without any reason," said Sir Freudo. "There is nothing left to prove, nothing left to discuss, nothing left to do, but love."
At the sound of these words, several reporters ... um, reportedly, left the room screaming with their ears on fire and their mighty pens melted. An occurrence to which those who remained at the impromptu press conference held on the beach at South Padre Island, just off the jettie allowing now, floating dead birds and dead fish and dead dreams to fog on in to the inlet leading to Port Isabel, once a quite seaside town, now a quite Wormwoodianly enclosed seaside ghost town, all of the king's reporters and all of the BP men in hazard gear ... the whole greasy crew, stood there, agape. Awed. Amazed, even, at the visit of such a person as dear Freudo.
"Diffusing lies, one day at a time," he laughed at the rest, scoffing. "You guys wouldn't know Hitler if he walked right up to you and handed you a letter to the editor, hah! ... as if that's a doctor's visit to anyone anymore."
###
Where the Battle Once Was ...
Beware: The Dadlands!
As reported by KGB-TVHO, Harlingen, Texas ... Sir the Artist Formerly Known as Frodo Now Known as Freudo has been reportedly ... um, transported ... to deep South Texas, at the mouth of the Rio Grande River, and he was mumbling something, sounded like he was jabbering, actually, to himself, in Japanese or Navajo or something, as if he'd gone completely insane over the so-called magical Ring of Doom (copyright notice goes here) ...
Before that he reportedly said, "All of the king's soldiers are slaves, same as the whores, but I'd won't sleep with either and I sure as hell won't fight without any reason," said Sir Freudo. "There is nothing left to prove, nothing left to discuss, nothing left to do, but love."
At the sound of these words, several reporters ... um, reportedly, left the room screaming with their ears on fire and their mighty pens melted. An occurrence to which those who remained at the impromptu press conference held on the beach at South Padre Island, just off the jettie allowing now, floating dead birds and dead fish and dead dreams to fog on in to the inlet leading to Port Isabel, once a quite seaside town, now a quite Wormwoodianly enclosed seaside ghost town, all of the king's reporters and all of the BP men in hazard gear ... the whole greasy crew, stood there, agape. Awed. Amazed, even, at the visit of such a person as dear Freudo.
"Diffusing lies, one day at a time," he laughed at the rest, scoffing. "You guys wouldn't know Hitler if he walked right up to you and handed you a letter to the editor, hah! ... as if that's a doctor's visit to anyone anymore."
###
10.7.10
Frodo, the Missing Years, Day ... Whatever ... Summer, I think ...
Frodo sat on a rock, made of plastic, overlooking Black Cibola, the famed city of glorified Mammon, and took another look at the Ring, which he decided to keep, then give away, then send out a rescue team to get it again, because they said, "What a shame." He looked at the so-called "Ring of Power" and said to himself, "Wow, what a piece of shit."
Sure, he was eating better. Feeling better about himself, empowered and all with his mission, as well as the book deal. His effort to throw it into Mount Eyechart in Iceland was a bust, and that was the wrong damn volcano, anyway. Then, returning to the Shire and moving down south fast by personally Fed Exxing himself to the Port of New Orleans, there was the by this time well-publicized mission to throw Ring into the Oilcano. But the pressure was too much. The Ring, tiny as it was, seemed to slip off everything down there, no reasonable planned fittings at all ... clearly it wasn't mean't for that. Not at those depths. Not at those freezing temperatures.
And so Frodo ... or Freudo ... as he was more gladly apt to call himself, had earned something of a public name by, first, like we said, deciding to go George Costanza on the whole thing, keeping the ring ... and before that, trying to be a hero, that failing ... either earning scores of favorites from different quarters, most of them somewhat mixed in their own motives about the Ring, or then, at the polar extreme edges, earning the scorn of those who claimed he was not only a quitter, but a greedy one at that.
"The road to hell is paved with ... ," he thought, just as he heard a bustle in the hedgerow behind him.
~
Frodo sat on a rock, made of plastic, overlooking Black Cibola, the famed city of glorified Mammon, and took another look at the Ring, which he decided to keep, then give away, then send out a rescue team to get it again, because they said, "What a shame." He looked at the so-called "Ring of Power" and said to himself, "Wow, what a piece of shit."
Sure, he was eating better. Feeling better about himself, empowered and all with his mission, as well as the book deal. His effort to throw it into Mount Eyechart in Iceland was a bust, and that was the wrong damn volcano, anyway. Then, returning to the Shire and moving down south fast by personally Fed Exxing himself to the Port of New Orleans, there was the by this time well-publicized mission to throw Ring into the Oilcano. But the pressure was too much. The Ring, tiny as it was, seemed to slip off everything down there, no reasonable planned fittings at all ... clearly it wasn't mean't for that. Not at those depths. Not at those freezing temperatures.
And so Frodo ... or Freudo ... as he was more gladly apt to call himself, had earned something of a public name by, first, like we said, deciding to go George Costanza on the whole thing, keeping the ring ... and before that, trying to be a hero, that failing ... either earning scores of favorites from different quarters, most of them somewhat mixed in their own motives about the Ring, or then, at the polar extreme edges, earning the scorn of those who claimed he was not only a quitter, but a greedy one at that.
"The road to hell is paved with ... ," he thought, just as he heard a bustle in the hedgerow behind him.
~
13.6.10
Frodo, the Missing Years, Day One ...
Frodo then returned to the Shire, feeling dejected about his botched first attempt at being a glorified worldwide hero by taking this supposedly all-mighty, all-powerful magic Ring and plugging up the Oilcano with it … because, quite obviously, it lacked the proper design and research and development necessary to do that. Pretty overrated ... No, really, really overrated, as far as it’s solutions for saving humanity went. “So,” he thought to himself, “Wassup with this damned Ring?”
His grandfather had left it for him in a green metal box filled with other a bunch of Boy Scout-like badges and so on from some ancient war only he could give any details on, and he’s gone and dead now. He pulled it out to view since it was held close by a blue and yellow intertwined string, another remnant of history, his own, from some other Boy Scout year long gone. It had strange, and yet, not completely unfamiliar symbols. But strange enough for him to get distracted, if just for a moment, to dream on his truly unstated hope. And that hope?
All he really wanted to do was sit at home and write early in the mornings while listening to supremely optimistic days of his rebellious youth. So he could mock the flocks of sheep gathered upon some green field around him and listen to Pink Floyd. Or, better yet, to realize that Grand Funk wasn’t all that bad, damn the critics. Same for Three Dog Night.
Then he returned to thoughts of his grandfather, Charles Stewart Parnell, not the historical one of Irish political lore, but the one was quite clearly the worst racist he’d ever met. Elves were some of best friends now. Same for the Dwarves. He even met a bunch of Orcs and, once you got to know them, they had good qualities, too. Sure were handy when shit was going down.
“Why should I consider this proper attire, this stupid Ring?” he said to himself, nobody else was listening or watching or caring (as far as he knew, since he wasn’t online, mentally, anyway). Somehow, the symbols etched upon its gold surface were appealing, but unthreatening. It had a couple of intersecting compasses with the letter “G.” It had what appeared to be a symbol for a masculine sex act on one side, a feminine sex act on the other. Lot of sex implied here. Pretty fertile sentiments, overall. Really weird old thing, considering it was a prized possession well before the advent of online porno.
He put it back under his black shirt and sighed. Now supposedly safe at home in the Shire, Frodo understood full well why it was his view of his childhood home would never be the same again. He’d seen too much, he knew. To Frodo, the magic and innocence his youth had been replaced by a sense of ongoing dread.
He began to hatch a new plan. Always trying to be self-less, he knew if he hung onto the Ring he would become increasingly intolerable. He would become a loose cannon, mouthy, expressive, about how clearly stooped sheep were. What was he supposed to do all day long now, go around like some bitter goat butting heads with Flat Earth folk who couldn’t be convinced there was such a thing as being smart? No, the wise Hobbit could clearly see it was a different tree he was looking at, much more sophisticated and smart and needed, then the ones they all let their dogs just pee on.
He decided to take a sabbatical. To keep the Ring, but to get away from all of the sheep so that they wouldn’t be eaten due to this growing outrage his was feeling about not even being able to breathe Shire air safely anymore. No longer able to even abide, like the Dude advised (and where was He these days?).
So he packed up his bag, filled it with a flute and a pen and a notebook and a Swiss Army knife, placed a little day-old pizza in a NASA inspired aluminum foil packet, and headed out the back door and into the woods, thinking of Salinger …
Frodo then returned to the Shire, feeling dejected about his botched first attempt at being a glorified worldwide hero by taking this supposedly all-mighty, all-powerful magic Ring and plugging up the Oilcano with it … because, quite obviously, it lacked the proper design and research and development necessary to do that. Pretty overrated ... No, really, really overrated, as far as it’s solutions for saving humanity went. “So,” he thought to himself, “Wassup with this damned Ring?”
His grandfather had left it for him in a green metal box filled with other a bunch of Boy Scout-like badges and so on from some ancient war only he could give any details on, and he’s gone and dead now. He pulled it out to view since it was held close by a blue and yellow intertwined string, another remnant of history, his own, from some other Boy Scout year long gone. It had strange, and yet, not completely unfamiliar symbols. But strange enough for him to get distracted, if just for a moment, to dream on his truly unstated hope. And that hope?
All he really wanted to do was sit at home and write early in the mornings while listening to supremely optimistic days of his rebellious youth. So he could mock the flocks of sheep gathered upon some green field around him and listen to Pink Floyd. Or, better yet, to realize that Grand Funk wasn’t all that bad, damn the critics. Same for Three Dog Night.
Then he returned to thoughts of his grandfather, Charles Stewart Parnell, not the historical one of Irish political lore, but the one was quite clearly the worst racist he’d ever met. Elves were some of best friends now. Same for the Dwarves. He even met a bunch of Orcs and, once you got to know them, they had good qualities, too. Sure were handy when shit was going down.
“Why should I consider this proper attire, this stupid Ring?” he said to himself, nobody else was listening or watching or caring (as far as he knew, since he wasn’t online, mentally, anyway). Somehow, the symbols etched upon its gold surface were appealing, but unthreatening. It had a couple of intersecting compasses with the letter “G.” It had what appeared to be a symbol for a masculine sex act on one side, a feminine sex act on the other. Lot of sex implied here. Pretty fertile sentiments, overall. Really weird old thing, considering it was a prized possession well before the advent of online porno.
He put it back under his black shirt and sighed. Now supposedly safe at home in the Shire, Frodo understood full well why it was his view of his childhood home would never be the same again. He’d seen too much, he knew. To Frodo, the magic and innocence his youth had been replaced by a sense of ongoing dread.
He began to hatch a new plan. Always trying to be self-less, he knew if he hung onto the Ring he would become increasingly intolerable. He would become a loose cannon, mouthy, expressive, about how clearly stooped sheep were. What was he supposed to do all day long now, go around like some bitter goat butting heads with Flat Earth folk who couldn’t be convinced there was such a thing as being smart? No, the wise Hobbit could clearly see it was a different tree he was looking at, much more sophisticated and smart and needed, then the ones they all let their dogs just pee on.
He decided to take a sabbatical. To keep the Ring, but to get away from all of the sheep so that they wouldn’t be eaten due to this growing outrage his was feeling about not even being able to breathe Shire air safely anymore. No longer able to even abide, like the Dude advised (and where was He these days?).
So he packed up his bag, filled it with a flute and a pen and a notebook and a Swiss Army knife, placed a little day-old pizza in a NASA inspired aluminum foil packet, and headed out the back door and into the woods, thinking of Salinger …
12.6.10
Deconstruction of Arizona
Arizona, I don't recognize you anymore
Your creosote roots lie beneath
the perfect piles of McDonalds parking lots
Arizona, an unequal symmetry
of rubble piles collect
Ten thousand miles from here
Arizona, you are responsible ...
The middle-aged businessman
with expendable income
sweats for pleasure
Arizona, when can I stop sweating?
I swear in the heat like a pizza oven
Arizona, you are a car part store
but you got no glass to see through
and the beige collection
of air-conditioned caves
are conditioned to respond
in all the right meets wrong ways
The forests are in ashes
as the governor gapes
from a helicopter high
for the diversionary tactic
of the the unrael politic
Arizona, I can find no fluid,
no friend, nor car phone
to lean on
for company
By GPS,
you can find me in the living room,
darkly lit, with rayolight flashing
bible black blurbs
Arizona, not even Ginsberg
would gripe about your tripe,
so blurred with anonymity
hell hardly matters anymore
Arizona, my life's belonging
sare melting in a storage facility
and there are more things that beep
here than I can count
Arizona, you haven't hassled me for a while,
though I'm a loose cannon at the mousy mouth
roaring at the corporate big box store
The world is flooding, bleeding, burning
and all of the above
as you dry up and blow away
Arizona,
a kid almost got crushed in your parking lot
and I went to one of your social service buildings
and was amazed about how many homeless lurks
were sleeping in the lobby,
dreaming of Mississipi burning
Arizona, I can't get assistance at the cash register
and the mountains are closed, cats run free
and all the lizards are gone
Arizona, you are sucking in souls,
eating them, spitting them out,
at very low wages ...
of sin ... I suppose ...
Arizona,
I think you should battalion
the borders with snow
and big bad bars of soap
~ Paradise Valley,
Arizona
From, "Ginsberg Rolls Over,"
the latest book of poetry
by Douglas McDaniel
16.5.10
Arizona Burning
Being Red, Day One? My first day as a red went okay, I guess ... we poisoned the apple of knowledge at the school teacher's desk and I shouted her down when she told us about the census. I tossed a rock at her on the way home from school ... Then, at football practice, we were given a rousing speech to hold our ground. Coach Boehner, too had been especially incensed about the new social contract being passed around Funny, he'd been so quiet for nearly a decade ... Shit, we are going to hafta, like, take care of each other now. Later, we went home and watched bully pulpit teevee and it lit up the oven in our eyes. They were high sock days, white cleats, hard rock days, daze of football glories when I could sail over their eyes, duck around their walls since getting tackled was well ... inconvenient, hurt like a sucker, yes, so I learned to run in fear ... At homecoming assembly, Coach Boehner cheered us on, Lombardized and lobotomized since winning was everything ... Yeah, the kid's mind went squish in that game at the U.S. Capitol Sugar Coated Sugar Candy Pill Complex, and yes, we do teach our kids to tackle like torpedoes. It's just a wink you know. O, certaintly yes it's unAmerican to aim to kill. He just stood there, the tragic suited one, at the kickoff, he did, and there was violence and a collateral cry across the field and the kid stumbled toward us, in a daze: Fortunately, Coach told us later, his dad was a brain surgeon. But now my broken knee has been plowed into ploughshares, my swords, cow-pastured, thirty years from that yesteryear believing in that gridiron dream imagined into a pre-existing condition of crunching bone and graal ... Now we cry "
Marshall, Marshal, Martial" ... As anyone who watched Wallace and Ladmo knows, Marshal "Martial" Good died jumping through the window of the Twin Towers holding the last known photocopy of the Fourth Amendment. Which is why now in the Verde Valley the toothless methheads just wave their rights before the dogs arrive. Yeah, check their records. Superman search has rendered search and seizure asunder. Which is why Dick Cheney can bring his shotgun into the Pink Pony and steroids are the drug of choice before Sarge says, "Let's be careful out there." Marshal Law: He Big Man! Him law provides cover to the car part store of the mind. Him Law, Marshal Law, martial law ... is broadcast behind pulled-in blinds, spitting out Bible black blurbs ... just ask your doctor, Marshal law is so grisly in Meachamite-glories, the Constitution hardly matters anymore. Martial law is punishment society. And as anyone who laments for Marshal "Martial" Good, that good old gawd abidn' Lone Ranger of Justice, (Dang!) ... as big him he might remember, we adore our enforcement with a tinge of tragi-comedy. Which is why the photo radar captures images of Sheriff Joe out breathalyzing tonight so breathless and bluesy... Which is why soon Big Him Marshal Law will battalion the border with snow ...
Meanwhile, Momma def poppa returned from their red, white and black road racer rally car trip to Nevada dehydrated from drinking too much tea. On the way back they discussed checking the brakes at the East India Trade-In Company, then stopped off at the Wal-Mart to buy a Krate of Klassic Koke, an eighty-four percent share in Monsanto korn seed, Kool Aid for the kids, got home (paid for), checked the U.S. Mail, tested the Teev-Ho for the latest on the NFL draft, and any new instructions from Poppa Bear on how to resist socialism and thought control.
Unlike the usual church sermon, they still had visions of posterized black-faced Obamas dancing in their heads and their bull eyes kept konjuring the kulars: Black, white and red ... They found the kids at home, waiting, playing Monopoly ... They were playing with their children, and the children of their children ... Momma def Poppa had just missed the debate about the rule about the rule about the rule of how and when ... you simply toss the board and start over again when nobody has any money. Reshuffle the deck ... Good game theory .... Despite the appeal to those eeking it out on Baltic Avenue, too many remained unconvinced the gig was up, and they klung like bees at the bank window to their paper money hearts of reds, black and white, to their pixilated imaginations of digitized seas of more time, more money waiting to appear if they just pray and work hard enough. Meanwhile, Pablo sat out on his porch listening to Norteno way too loud into the night since it was a full moon and he could still dream of amnesty and learning how to read Thomas Paine ...7.5.10
Why the cable news media failed us this week
Terrorism, in terms of market share, proved to be the only winner for this ... one terribly turbulatin' week of news.
Maybe the media declared a "system worked" tag on this week's Times Square terrorism spectacle, but it was an "all systems failed" day for the media itself. Anytime a poorly fabricated fireworks display pushes back time for a story on a global oil catastrope ... as well as the sudden sinking of a great American city like Nashville ... something is really off.
Within minutes of this posting you would have found the same thing happening.
A bag of books and a bottle of water were found on Times Square. For yet another day, every major cable news media eye in America is focused on one block in NYC ... capturing the view of dazed onlookers. One of the on-screen monitor readers gasped about how "it takes a village" to catch the terrorists, in terms of cops and citizens pointing out the potentiall explosive devices. But in that same gasp, we can see how the very sense of the "Global Village" of media is being broken down. We can see how the media can only care as far as the viewer lens of local concerns. We can see how a decade of degrading, ever centralizing media is just dumbing every damn mind in America down ...
Meanwhile, the Gulf of Mexico is being transmuted into black tea worthy of biblical tales of Wormwood, in places literally burning, and not too much time is spent broadcasting shots of the tragedy in Nashville, re-awakened volcanoes in Iceland closing down airports in Ireland, soul-sucking stupidity on Wall Street ... and so on.
Last night, Anderson Cooper on his 360 show finally made it to Nashville, Tennessee four days after the storm that claimed at least 30 lives in the region. He agreed that the national media failed in its duties as an emergency responder. Indeed, all of the usual media front-runners to the catastrophic storms were missing. So were the usual rescue angels. As of last night on 360, well into a show that included a spastic attempt at a music telethon for victims of the catastrophe, the ground total had yet to reach a half a million bucks.
"We should have been here sooner," said Cooper, whose show featured Tim McGraw and Faith Hill as recognizeable guides to the disaster. "I didn't cover this as much as I should have this week."
In terms of values ... the point makes sense. As a life or death issues, in Tennessee, 30 people have died in the flooding, and many, many people need immediate help ... Haiti-style assistance. But where is the attention of the media eye focused? At Times-Square, the only thing that died was civility and sanity.
Yeah, it was a New York-centric story, which explains the passion and interest focused on the local threat. But hey folks, as the news media proved this week, that part of the system isn't working. If anything was a success this week, as opposed to a disaster, it was for the terrorists themselves ... both for the apparently lone suspect (oh yeah, that word "alleged" doesn't seem to exist anymore in terrorist plot vcoverage), who scared the life out of any journo with walking range of New York's Times Square ... and for of course whose who make a living on selling fear.
How did the media machine ever become such a tool?
Fear certainly is a mind killer, Yoda might say. Hardly a source for education, enlightenment, understanding ... or good civic-minded decisions.
For example, who are these crazy sheeple running the machines all dialed into the New York Stock Exchange, jittery heartless folks capable of sending the index down 1,000 points in say, 15 minutes? Willing to sell out the whole planet's economy over a riot in a European city? Jeez, good thing we didn't have a machine mind like that in 1776. Riots in European cities during those days were common, but even more, to have a device such as the daily Dow Jones average, a kind of mad media indicator for the general health of, what, a way of Capitalist life, is another simple metaphor for what is wrong in the media, in general, on all topics related to panic and fear.
The media itself needs to do a more conscious look in the mirror about how it handles terrorism. When real violence appears on the fields of sport, for example, I think the NFL does a much better job than hockey, in taking the viewers eye away from the melee, rather than profiting from it. Acknowledge it, warn us yes, but don't go on all day using your contact lists of the same old talking heads to spend the day mooning on what might be in the minds of these nutbags, on how amateur their bomb-making seems to be, and why Oh wny Oh why didn't we learn something this time.
Because, face it, news guys in New York. Though ye may be blocks away, these highly effective if crude weapons are intended for you.
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