Sore Throat

Follow these easy steps and you too can feel like I do!!

Take a farm-fresh cactus, dip it in your favorite hot-sauce, then let dry.

Place the sauced cactus in a remote amazonian jungle, allowing poisonous ants to become attracted to the sweetness of the sauce.

With your bullet ant covered cactus, add 1/2 cup silver nitrate to the exterior killing the ants but allowing their toxins to remain, adding a delectable layer of cauterizing goodness.

Tie this to the back of a bus servicing Mexico City's slum districts with a ten foot rope, collect after 24 hours of service.

Bake in your oven at 375 for fifteen minutes, then immediately shove it in your mouth.  Allow it to settle directly behind your tonsils for best flavor.

Enjoy!

Receipt

This 'poem' was hastily scribbled on the back of a lengthy receipt while driving from Helena to Missoula.

It is dated 5/17/08

Seat-backs,
flapjacks,
relax,
it's Cinemax.
Must focus,
plague of locust
hocus pocus,
smog will choke us
sharps will poke us,
politicians still joke us.

For now alright,
shits all tight,
no need to fight,
blind your sight,
ignore
at the door
all the poor
Horsemen four,
their unsettled score.

Trim your beard,
as you feared
it will get weird,
the end has neared.
Hit the dirt,
less you hurt
your favorite shirt,
your blood will squirt.

Take this sign,
not as mine.
Nothing's fine,
husk and rind,
of a world
all unfurled,
lost and twirled.

You now ask why?
With a sigh,
but can't reply,
want to cry,
time to die
in our filthy sty.

My grandpa,
at see-saw,
wrote the law
of fist and jaw.
Then we took,
his ancient book,
moved our rook,
dice were shook,
all were six,
down in Styx,
sins will mix,
take our licks,
too late to fix.
The broken game,
of words and fame,
beasts we tame
never the same.

So love em',
hate em',
ad infinitum.

Do your worst,
try your best,
Alea iacta est.

Electric City

Took a drive down to the Electric City,
Kenwood 2 meter mobile transceiver unit
at 146.420MHz and a .5w input SMC-30 mic check.
Non-ionizing radiation and beef jerky check,
well-studied and half-assed check.

CQ CQ CQ this is Blackwater,

do you copy? Over.

We met the hams,
we took the ham test,
we shook the ham hands,
we became ham-handed hams in hand.

Impedance and resistance, Ohm I God!

They radiated in from far and wide,
curiosity frequencied at the speed of light.
They said hello with their mouths,
said who is trying to join our club with their eyes.

They wanted us,
They wanted anybody,
They needed anybody.
They reveled in showing us their ARES station-
I owe them this - it was awesome.

We left the Electric City as licensed Technician Operators,
with a hundred dollar tab at the Sip n' Dip.

Mission accomplished,

Over and Out.

Thoughts on the Annelid population

Where do the worms go in the winter?

Do they dig extra deep to avoid frozen dirt, getting closer to Earth's molten core?

Do they tunnel south?

Do they all freeze to death as they lay winterized-eggs that will be the new worm herd of 2012?

Is the one that I captured and put in the soil of my ficus the only surviving worm in Montana?

Do they simply have a high tolerance for low temperatures and continue to thrive all winter long?

Do they enter a cryogenic stasis that allows them to resume worm activities in the spring?

Do they have an elaborate underground worm city where the homeless worms sit around tiny barrel fires warming their mucous exuding clitellum?

Trust Me

It doesn't need to be
                                    Here

It doesn't need to be
                                    Seen

It doesn't need to be
                                    Known

It doesn't need to be
                                    Felt


It's There

A Cold Witch and Warm Beer

A cold witch and warm beer
That's what I like on the weekend

Beauty mouths her cryptic curse
It is not mine to understand

Driving fast down curved highways
Clenched digits and my simper

Down down into the deepest dark
She won't stop, she can't stop

Road unending, coping with infinity
Just sit back and bathe in it

Reality is danger, danger is tangible
I should have just stayed home

Another two days on the road
With a cold witch and warm beer.

Possibilities

Don't ever let anyone tell you that you stuffing your Thanksgiving turkey with a Thanksgiving ham is a bad idea.

Ill Fish

The women of Sean Kelley's are an interesting force.  Their effects on a man can be magical, mysterious, or malicious.  Men have a tendency to put on blinders and switch off their brains for the attention of one of these pretty ladies.  Things quickly turn to warfare between two men if they are vying for the attention of a single said fair maiden.  Men will typically reprioritize everything that was once important behind the priorities of their new affection.  This is not typical only of Sean Kelly's women, but for the purpose of this entry their singularity is accentuated.

I do not hold anything against the brave men courting these women.

I just feel like they might as well be fishing in the Berkeley Pit.

Routine

So many mornings my too-hot coffee sits in front of me as I stare at the blogger website struggling to ignite an entry.  It seems to be the most logical time to write, seeing as my routine doesn't offer any other promising moments (that's not true, but I like to tell myself it is).  I'm admittedly tired this early in the day, but that is no excuse and that is why I have the molten joe.  Things tend to end up short and simple after a morning write, night writes are deep and sometimes dark seeing as they come after work.  We and our outputs all end up shackled and bound by our habits and schedules.  My weekday routine is like a traffic control officer blowing its whistle and directing my day, although there isn't much traffic to be directing.

Coffee, pooping, and trying to write in the morning.  Work and or video games all day.  Sleeping and smoking dope at night.

From start to right now has taken me 12 minutes to compose.  I will close with an updated photo of Beard of Winter.

Turkey Tuesday starts now.

It is happening

Big plans for the center of the world.
Two hemispheres held in hand.

Getting Somewhere

We do not know if we are going to travel, but we are reasonably sure.

I have not applied for my passport, but I have picked up the application.

We do not know where we are going to travel, but we have some ideas.

My dad still drinks like a hammerhead, but he finally admitted to it.

I've never grown a beard before, but I'm three weeks deep in my first.

Those people are still in their fucking tents.

As all the world spins around humanity, we are in fact getting somewhere.

Will it be a good where or a bad where?

Recumbent

Because something can, should?
If able, must?
Passed a point of comfort,
strained, wrinkled, taut,
still one life but twice as long.

How far should we stretch,
to be with those we love?

Hello November

The End of October

Ernest Ange Duez

October has misted away like a phantasmal witch on a straw broom into the silhouette of the moon.  Troll parties and light staffs are in the furthest possible closet of my brain.  That annual voice telling me to get working on a great original costume is at its faintest.  Our big plastic pumpkin bowl is full of candy still, soon to be picked at like a rotten armadillo in the Mojave flats.  We didn't get any Trick-or-Treaters (we did have our crazy neighbor fall on a TV tray and require my assistance (her apartment was like a haunted house (only more disgusting))).  Actual organic pumpkins were carefully carved and now missing from our steps in traditional November fashion.  My car has snow on it, my car has snow tires on it, it is all very appropriate.  Soon I will yank the guts from a giant frozen bird and replace them with a loaf of crumbled bread and drink hot whiskey ciders.  Yes, October has crawled back into its grave for another 11 months.  Hello November.

And who knows, it may just never rise again.  October 2012... Will we make it?

Mr. A. Snowman

Bouldered endless snow covered the land
which wore a blanket of patchy white,
alone out here or there or where.

Yet, I

Watched a speck approach to figure,
off grey and pointed my way
it danced and grew and shifted.

Yet, I

Could not help but stop and stare
at this mystery twinkling down,
from across our plane of winter.

Yet, I

Noticed as it grew and neared,
it was not running but rather raging
a link from then to me right now.

Yet, I

Couldn't find the thought to flee,
held frozen by its nearing form,
dumb as details shot up like fur.

Yet, I

Flared my eyes as it ran me past,
and held a breath as it waltzed right over,
and I always will look back and think
if it could truly be what it was or when.

7-Up

I pride myself on not letting things get to me emotionally.  Letting things roll off my shoulders has always came easily.  With that being said, if something does manage to worm through my defenses, it is very difficult to remove that thing from the front of my mind and concentrate on something unrelated.  My job, or rather the attitudes of the people that I work with, keep me up some nights (like last night) exhaling heavily out my nostrils (in the bad way).  Here is me trying to step over this unnecessary life poop and focus on something else.

Memory and our senses hold a very powerful bond with each other.  Whenever you take in any sort of stimulus, whether it be through your skin, nose, or whatever, your mind will autonomously scroll through its databanks and fire off memories of instances where similar stimuli were involved.  I've recently caught whiffs of perfume that instantly bring to mind a girlfriend from the fifth grade that has not been thought about in over a decade and a half.  There she stands in my mind clear as day, down to the yellow jelly bracelet and glittered flower patch on the knee of her jeans.  I didn't plan on this memory, nor did I necessarily want it, it just happens thanks to the power of shared association.   Sometimes I like to think that all the electrical impulses and synapses firing in our heads are not unlike a herd of wild stallions made from an organic-electricity sweeping across the planes of grey matter that make of the folds of our brain.  They run wild and go where they want, tending to return to pastures where they had once grazed before.  We can try and herd them one way or another, but at the end of the day they do what they want.

So... whenever I take a drink of 7-Up I always think back to my childhood.  I'm sitting in the nurse's office of Radley Elementary School.  In an effort to make myself look as pale as possible I am breathing as slowly and shallow as possible, almost suffocating myself.  My mom comes in and signs some papers.  She is dressed for work with a tan blazer and matching skirt, blue eye shadow and a gold necklace too.  She looks at me with a look that is part disappointment and part "I understand."  We get into her white mini-van and swing by the IGA to grab a 2-Liter of 7-Up.  The rest of my day (or two days if I play my cards right) will be spent drinking the soda out of a big pitcher with a lid and noisy crinkle straw while I sit on my banana chair and play Nintendo.  I'm not sick.  I'm just overdue for a day off.

Emperor Duck

It seems he has moved his empire south,
gone is he from my daily walk.

Cat tails and baby coots,
the bread crumbs they would stalk.

Twice the size and creamy grey,
unique among his buoyant flock.

Will he be back again next year,
to quack and shit and squawk?

I'll just have to wait till spring,
to see which duck controls the block.

Frost (First)

Tiny symmetrical ice mazes have descended by the millions of millions onto the city of Missoula this morning.  They have undoubtedly worked their way in through my car's air intake, flowed through the vents, found that one break in the seal only they know about and covered the inside of my windshield with a thin layer of annoying frost.  Nothing is safe.  Every discernible blade of grass I can see out my window moans and pleads to have the insulating blanket of snow cover up its frigid pain until spring.
"Let's get on with it," they all are saying.  "If its gonna be frost it might as well be two feet of snow."
The mountains of Lolo south of Missoula aren't even visible.  A frosty mist is busy eating away at them like a plague of locusts.  This has created a diminishing effect in my neighborhood.  Two blocks are as far as I can see.

Its as if the world got smaller and tougher to live in.

Its as if the frost wants us to slow down.

Boulder Bound

Family time is some of the weirdest and most cherished for me these days.

Occupy Serengeti

A large group of gazelles have gathered in a makeshift community around the local watering hole to protest the injustices of the system they are forced to live in.  Picket signs with "End the Circle of Life" and "Prey for our Survival" speckle the  dry grasslands surrounding the oasis.  A spokesgazelle said that the movement is aimed at restoring freedom for the 99% of wildlife in the Serengeti, to end the oppression that predators have over prey.  "The eco-system cannot be reformed, it must be overthrown," they said.  "Why must the lions and cheetahs be given claws and fangs?  Why must we run for our very lives?"  Currently, no lions were present for a response.

Nearby, a baboon sits in an acacia tree and watches the commotion.  He is not impressed.

Deuteranopic Fall

I have a condition.  It is a medical condition and it is called deuteranopia.  It has been with me since birth, and affects me every second of every day.  Most of the time it doesn't register, having grown accustomed to its effects.  Sometimes though, like on a sunny autumn day like today, it sits perched on the top of my brain like a dragon on its horde.

It is a day that seems so ripe with seasonal change, like a big cold sponge saturated with 'fall' got wiped across the city.  I could feel it while I was in the shower, before I even looked outside.  The window was open and let it all pour in, cold dry air mixing with hot steam.  It got me thinking of the seasons, it got me thinking of leaves.

Out the door and on my way to the store, I pass the two maple trees that stand guard outside my apartment building.  They are getting ready for winter.  Their leaves are changing color from green to what could be red or orange.  I don't know exactly what green is, or red, or orange, but I do know this is happening.  This is my deuteranopia at work.  I'm color blind.  I don't see the leaves as green in the summer, nor do I see them as whatever color they may be today.  I know the leaves are green in summer, and I know they are not green today.  Knowing the difference comes from education, not experience.  There is a difference.

Looking at the leaves and concentrating on what it looks like, I decide that though I can't see the color change, I can hear it.  The way the leaves gently shake sounds more brittle, just like the air.  A spring breeze is like a child dashing out of a porch door to go play, where as a fall breeze is more of an old woman settling tighter into a blanket.

Yep, an orange leaf sounds different than a green leaf.  Not for the first time in my life, I've heard color instead of seen it.

My Coffee Break with God

I do not consider myself a religious man.  I've been to church enough times to know that dinosaurs are real.  I believe in Afterlife and I believe in Beforelife, and they are both very similar.  I believe that this 'Science' stuff has got something going for it, something like three thousand years of merit and discovery.  I also believe in certain fundamentals of Nature that we as human beings will never be able to explain, intricacies that we shouldn't try to.

So as my coffee pot gags and wheezes out the last drops of this morning's brew, a 14 hour work day waiting just outside my apartment door, I grab the coffee cup that rests in front the others.  I'm not thinking of dinosaurs or angels, I'm thinking of onions and tomatoes.  The coffee cup reads:

Lord,
I know
that no matter
what happens today,
You and I
can handle it together
Amen.

I've drank coffee from this mug (its not mine) hundreds of times before.  I know what it says, I know what all the coffee mugs in my apartment say, and I don't take them very seriously.

For some reason today though, I couldn't agree more.

It has begun!

Thanks to Mitch for picking at me to write, and for directing me in a blogward direction.

I can already tell this will be a fruitful endeavor.