Oops we’re doin’ it again

Apparently I didn’t hurt myself badly enough last weekend so we’re having another yard sale tomorrow and Sunday. But I’m taking Monday off dammit.
If you wish to consort with a cranky and stressed out Stell you know where to find me. If you don’t know where to find me, either follow the many signs or ask....

Earworm

Well it started first thing with Peter, Paul and Mary’s “The Great Mandala”. But that was almost immediately completely swamped, overrun, and annihilated by our newest song “Ants In Pajamas” (The Bottom 99). I don’t know that I have ever written a more insidious song. It plays for hours on end in my head. If it wasn’t so clever I might have to kill myself.

Dear Universe

Thanks for all the really cool stuff you have bestowed upon me of late. Particularly the amazing new roof, the awesome hammock, the funky and cool Wurlitzer Orbit III synthesizer, the copy of my favourite,The Rolling Stones “Her Satanic Majesties Request” with the original 3-D picture cover, and the pulp sci-fi with the gorgeous cover art. We will also try to be better plant parents and take good care of the new plants.

Also, Oliver is really in to his new room look. Thanks for all the purple stuff which helps him to not be as frustrated with how messy and full of weird stuff the rest of the house is at the moment......

As you know, I am really trying to uphold my end of the bargain and put a lot of cool stuff into circulation for cheap or free myself. So with that in mind, I’d like to articulate a couple of requests in order to facilitate the whole process:

I would really, really, love to be able to send my friends a check for at least a hundred bucks, more would be even better. It would be like early Xmas for them. I don’t need to tell you how hard they are struggling... In order to do that I need to sell their beautiful vintage formica set (with the 6 original chairs), the crazy tapestry thing and the McCoy Jardiniere. So if you could draw the right collector(s) to the next yard sale that would be really helpful, thanks.

Also we really want some wing back chairs in my colours (ember red, jet black, butter gold, or deep green). I can trade 2 chairs for 1 or 4 chairs for 4. I will begin the process by putting out the blue one for free, as I know my chairs will show up some time, some how. Thanks.

I am not sure

But I suspect I will be without a provider for some length of time. Probably starting Monday. The neighbor I “buy” wireless from is moving and the WEP password my other neighbor gave me for his system is not correct. So until his “tech dude” can show me the way I’m sunk. More feh.
We were counting on Wireless Washtenaw to have this situation in hand by now.

Creepin’ Crud

OK, which one of you devil humans gave me this crap? This is what I get for leaving the fortress of solitude and going out amongst you. Repeatedly.
Never again.

I am taking the echinacea, the Emergen-C™, the Robitussin™, the Hawaiian noni, the cough drops, the vitamins and drinking tons of water. Edy’s Lime fruit bars w/out HFCS are very soothing as well.

But feh for the lot of you dangerous, germy, folk. I’ll never kiss again.

Did you hear the drums Fernando?

This mornings dream was that a Satanist, pretending to be a member of ABBA, stole my cat. I shit you not. You can’t make this stuff up. Except that technically I guess I did....

Then I woke up to realize that I was probably trying to tell me that my cat IS Satan. He chewed through another mic cable yesterday and ripped open my rice filled neck pillow while we were sleeping. He can now turn on the bathtub tap. We started finding pieces of my jewelry in the basement. He chews up a whole Greenie™ bone in about 10 minutes then pukes. I think we are going to be purchasing pig ears and bull penis’ this week. He is like a bad puppy so I keep addressing it that way. I don’t know what else to do.

Restaurant-o-rama

Lord I have been on a crazy, eat out, don’t have to cook, bliss fest.
Saturday - I did Knight’s with Charley Daytona who was in town for the day. Frankly I was a little disappointed. The bread and the clam chowder were excellent but the ribs were sub par and the corn on the cob was cold. And they had 86’d the buffalo shrimp.

Sunday lunch - was the regular Chenai Vilas Indian food buffet with Dramamama. It was good but again slightly disappointing. I guess the Sunday buffet has some odd dishes in it. The Manchurian Gobi was just awesome as usual though.

Sunday night we did the birthday dinner thing at The Real Seafood. Scotto, MsInLaw, Oliver and I went. It was really very good. I had lobster fettucine because I hardly ever get lobster since becoming Buddhist. The creme brulee was to die for but could have used a thicker crust. The bread delicious, the slaw was great. Our waiter - very cool.

Monday I stayed home and had leftovers and such.

Tuesday I went with the entire fam damily to The Blue Nile. Delicious, overindulgent and a great source of good poop.

Oh and I made myself a good little cake which we’re still chipping away at. French vanilla, heart shaped, layer cake with almond butter cream frosting and fresh strawberries. Yum.

Now, as so often, the birthday signifies the end of summer and the beginning of school. It’s so odd that we’re back to that place where I lived my childhood always knowing that as soon the fun peaked it was grind time. Into the Freylach I go....

Naan-ie Ringtail

I swear to god this cat is part raccoon. He is the most mischievous, stealingest, get into everything he ain’t supposed to, that’s not tied down, put away, and dragged away from him at the risk of multiple punctures, freakin cat ever.

It’s -ugh- official

Yesterday when at the secretary of state I was officially designated a corrective lens wearer. You bitch. I only missed 2 letters.

AM Earworm

Gentle On My Mind - Glen Campbell
Because I was singing it as part of my set for the corn husking competition in my dream. Go figure.

Hey Danny Boyoyo

Hey
Danny Boyoyo


Viet Nam
a trailer full'a death
still running crazy
on booze and nightmare

Ran you right over
mashed you right flat
Flat old gas bag
your corpse became
when long weeks of August
finally deflated

You couldn’t live
two dimensional
picture
perfect
soldier
You remain
oh
so
three

To stand on your dirt
Is to feel those sharp edges

Ho-ley Mo-ley

See this is why I can’t ever tour. At first today I just wanted to stay awake through Coronation Street. Then I wanted to just lay on the couch napping and croaking. Then I wanted extra, naughty, coffee. Then Pizza. Then I wanted to draw. Then I wanted to shower. Then tickle my cat until he bit me just to feel his little, big, harsh teeth in my palm meat. Now I needed to write. I’m going back to drawing now.

Writin' a rap

We’re doing a double dip tomorrow. There’s a party and Quatro Veda plays, then the 6 Foot Poles, then The Bottom 99, then Largebeat. So, Oliver and I will be doing 2 completely disparate sets. At least not back to back.

This is the intro I wrote for one of our darker songs (also shown). When you hear it with the lamenting clarinet with it, it really reminds me of when Klezmer gets sad.


“When I wrote this song in 2003, I had some vague hopes that the upcoming election would help make it irrelevant. It didn’t. First came Katrina, then hard on her heels the Sago Mine Disaster.
So, I’d like to dedicate this to the brave people still struggling for survival down in New Orleans, to those 6 workers dead in the dark at the Crandall Canyon Mine and the people who just died at the Gibson County Coal Mine.”

Pick and Shovel, Fire and Flame

To keep repeating history
Let them eat policy
Let them eat cake
To keep them on their knees
feed them on fallacies
how much will take?
To not acknowledge idiocy
greed and banality
is a mistake
Compounding the insanity
fake christianity
Who’d you forsake?

And still we die
from flames and fire
pick and shovel
wind and rain
Thirst and starvation dog this nation
ragged and driven
bowed in pain
We’ve become
awestricken, dumb
battered and numb
our hands are chained
And still we die
from flames and fire
pick and shovel
wind and rain

Mugly

The weather is finally turning (some). Up till now it’s just been intensely difficult to stand up under. So hot, so humid, so enervating...
Now it’s still as wet as ever but not so horribly hot. Someday my prince will come and he’ll have a central AC unit on his truck. Just for that one week in July and that one week in Aug. when I just can’t bear to get into a wet bed and sleep on that wet pillow.

AM Earworm

Today - Daughters of The KAOS - Luscious Jackson
Yesterday - Let’s Hear It For The Boy - Deniece Williams
You know, it’s not that I don't like Deniece Williams, I, in fact, loved her first album, “This Is Niecey” very much. But she then allowed “them” to pretty much turn her into a schlock queen. Girl you’re so much better than that!
Maybe it was really the issue of it becoming the 80’s that doomed her....

On Patti Smith, Gender & Cohorts

I went to the Patti Smith concert. It wasn’t until today that I really was able to become coherent with my thoughts about some of the odd things she said between songs.

The first thing that struck me was when, after she sang “Kimberly”, she mentioned that it was the birthday of her sister for whom it was written. She then dedicated it to her and said “happy birthday Kimberly, wherever you are”. I thought “how strange, does she not have a relationship with her? Is she dead?” Because I only say that about people who are missing and presumed, deceased or long gone from me.

Later she was telling little stories about her relationship with Fred Smith. Let me state baldly that I am not a “worshipper” like many locals. Having done my time doin’ dirty deeds with M.D. I am so fully cognizant that those guys are just very, very, human. But I do respect them in a general way.
She told a story that when she was in disheveled Mom mode and the kids were dirty, Fred would walk on the other side of the street from them. Don’t get me wrong, she said it in a humorous and loving way. People laughed, cheered, whatever. Because it was an Ann Arbor crowd they got all excited that they could act excited about a local hero. She also intro’ed “Because The Night” by telling another story about how either they wrote it together or she wrote it for him (I get confused) calling him “a very good friend”. Which she then explained by relating how he once had said he wanted to introduce her for some award, she asked if he would say she was his wife, and he said he would say she was a very good friend. Meanwhile everyone is just gaga because she’s sharing stories of their idol “His Royal Majesty” Fred “Sonic” Smith. While I’m wondering if they are even stopping for one damn minute to consider the implications of what she is relating?

Because here is what it sounds like to me;
An internationally acclaimed poet/performer moves away from her career and life to marry and have kids with a somewhat famous, himself, guy. They/he seem to have some issues about gender roles and her success relative to his. Likely because they are from a particular (what I learned this year in Soc. is called) cohort, they don’t seem to be able to fully deal with a total equality based relationship thing. It’s not that I don’t think there was likely plenty of love, respect and creativity etc. I just got an urgent sense that she, in fact, subsumed some (perhaps largish) portion of herself to his personality. That it probably was a gender influenced decision, and that like many of my female friends who are getting older and more reflective she now has had an opportunity to gain a different take on it since he’s now been dead over a decade and her own career has resumed.

I looked around to confirm that they were both born in the 40’s. I think that this is a really tough place in time to have come from. Many of the people I know from that era have intense conflicts that no amount of decades of new and alternative thinking can resolve. I mean imagine that you have had a minimum of 20, and potentially up to 30 years of indoctrination in traditional gender roles when The Women’s Liberation Movement begins. It’s just likely to be too much to ever completely undo. Hell, I was born in the 60’s and those first 7 to 15 years of stereotyping still have a tremendous effect on me.

I guess what really bugged me was some creepy, unquestioning, adoration/celebrity factor. Whether it’s about her or him, the idea that some people don’t even question “stuff”, just blindly supporting a “cult of personality” mentality, not grasping that these people are ordinary, complex, heroic, flawed, poopin’, humans just like you and me. These issues are not really meant to be the stuff of titillating, celebrity gossip. Rather should probably be looked at and utilized to help liberate ourselves from restrictive role playing. I felt like her intention was to humorously and sweetly divulge and expose some quirky, uncomfortable, flaws and a lot of the people were just making it into a completely different thing. “Oh man, Fred Smith made Patti walk ten paces behind him haw, haw, he’s so cool”. It’s painful.
But other than that, I, Mrs. Lincoln, really enjoyed the play.

METAL

BLUE BRIDGE