Heat wave causes brain freeze

I am in the middle of writing something interesting, but yesterdays heat wave made everything come to a shuddering halt. Even the classic chocolate malt that I got to try to make myself not a stupid, bitchy, zomboid would not initially digest and just slooshed around inside me for a couple hours adding to my misery. By the time I got it relatively cool in here I was braindead.
Today I will try to write at work, where there is AC and everything is it’s own seperate entity because it’s not stuck together with hot moisture and where I can be soothed by cool, papery whispers, of air tendrils.

No AM Earworm!

Sometimes it’s really nice to wake up w/out anything insisting in my head. Especially after last weekends (at least) 48 hours of “Tiki Temple” by the Tsars. For 2 or 3 days there, it was so bad that I dasn’t turn off the TV or itunes or stereo because every time there was an empty space in my brain it would go right back to filling with hot lava while chanting goobah gaba and vestal nymphomaniacs were ceaselessly preparing aphrodisiacs and chanting jungle prayers. If it had been something like “Rhinestone Cowboy” going on in that fashion I would have shot myself dead and I’m not kidding. I can say this with great certainty as I once had “Afternoon Delight” in there for just a day and it made me want to go to psych ER and beg for Thorazine.

The reason I had “Tiki Temple” stuck so badly was that I was asked to write some prosody publicity for said Tsars. They asked for in the style of Andrew Looge Oldham and/or old Nancy Sinatra liner notes. What they’ve received (so far) instead is that ‘orrible, ‘orrible, bit of dreck below, “Put Another Nikolai In”. Although, I must admit to liking the bit about Aqua Velva and Tigress parfum. I wrote it in one session with the muses on Friday night. For inspiration I listened to their myspace playlist three or four times through. That was what proved to be my ultimate undoing.

I’d like to give it another whirl but I am slightly terrified that I will be doomed to another lost weekend of running from thing to thing trying to drown out “My Martini” or “734”. because believe you me, I am so skipping right over “Tiki Temple” this time. Just talking about it has started the whole surfey guitar and tomrolls thing right back up. I’m frickin’ doomed.

Big Dic

I found out today that I cannot just keep adding words to my spellchek user dictionary. I find that ridiculous. Why not? It’s digital information storage of single words. How much nano space can that ever really take up?
So, I had to go through the whole thing and delete a couple hundred words. Mostly formal names, but also a lot of items like argh, aarrgghhh, and arghhh.
See now? I’ll just have to add them back or else I’ll have to hit skip every time from here out...
Ridiculous.

Shucks and sucks

I am writing a paper, between today and Friday. It gets all, you get none. Even my earworms are all just me lately, so no loss there.
I am, however, verging, all up on, my 1st, vanity press, chap style, poetry book. So that probably gets next priority, probably over us.
Oh, and parties, I have decided that I am, w/out fail, going to every single party, dinner and lunch I am invited to this year. So far one lame party and one, fun happy hour friends band viewing, down, 8 parties and dinners, 3 anticipated lunches to go. I am in DESPERATE need of socialization. I am so very striking some hot iron before the bucket dip.

Whoa Nelly

I am not afraid of porn. I’m not particularly interested in it either.
I just read a filthy, filthy, book. And not filthy in a good way like Nitro von Borax’s “Pigglyland”. My cup of tea is like, looking at pictures of emo boys kissing or reading some mild erotica. Nothing too taxing or graphic. Having read “The Happy Hooker” when I was 10, then having lived the life I have, I am just too jaded to be thrilled by the hardcore.
When I picked up this particular novel that came with a load of books primarily comprised of self-help, christian mysticism, get rich schemes, vitamin bibles, and computer language manuals from Oliver's fathers estate I expected the male version of a bodice buster. Perhaps I might have a mild frisson', eh?

It says on the back cover “Mother’s Three Daughters" is one of the most famous works of fiction of the early twentieth century, thought to be the work of French novelist Pierre Louys, (I can’t find the umlaut anywhere, it should be over the Y), the author of “Aphrodite”.
It goes on to summarize the plot and then quotes Wayland Young saying
“ A notable modern novel written out of a perverse compulsion.... This is one of the largest and most real presentations of the whore-charachter in European fiction.”
If only that had meant something to me at the time!

The cover art did nothing to warn me either. As usual you just can’t take the era out of the girl. The three models in the photo are so definitively from the late 60’s, early 70’s. No amount of faked up, turn of the century, chemises and pantaloons could ever convince anyone otherwise. As well as so clearly not being 10, 14 and 20 years old like the prostitutes in the story. Oh, did I not mention that two of the prostitutes were under 15? The most sadistic and jaded one being the 10 year old? Anne Rice’s weak attempts at a titillating baby vampiress has NOTHING on this.

I will never, ever, think of the victorians and post vicky’s the same way again. Corphragy, sadism, incest, anal, bestiality and really, really, naughty, potty mouths. This so totally explains why generations all around that era were so completely conflicted. And here I was wondering what the hell was going on with Japanese porn lately, what I thought was a “sudden and new” obsession with corphragy, it turns out is just another turn of the wheel.

I am way out of my league with this one, I think a couple months strict diet of children's books is needed to put my digestion back in order.

(Did I mention the male narrator is a royal asshole?)

Swimming With the Sharks

I get really annoyed with the bloggers who don’t blog. I then assume (project) that you’all are annoyed with me. Well:

• My muses are apparently occupied elsewhere, (I wrote a couple songs last week).

• It was Oliver’s Birthday and the small, but nice and lengthy soiree wore me out.

• The illness ( and chemo like doses of antibiotics) were causing me to nap up to four times a day and suffer from both enervation and ennui for weeks.

• While sick, I have been hustling, preparing to hustle, and planning several hustles.

This drive to get, and keep, some money is pretty strong at the moment. I spent a solid week while sick in bed anyway, going through approximately 5000 “Magic The Gathering” cards I have had packed away for about 15 years.
So if you know anyone crazy enough to really, really, want “Time Walk” and “Time Twister” in near mint condition, I’ll let them have both for 600 bucks.
Or if their pockets are a little shallower and their tastes a little more to the exotic I have a lovely “Sharazad” and some nifty efreets and djinns.
No really, if you or your loved ones like the game, I have thousands of cards which retail from .13 cents to 500 big ones I’d love to sell ya.....

We also have started the process of preparing for The Big Yard Sale. Now if the weather will just cooperate we’ll get that party started this weekend or next. I’m thrilled. Really, I am simply thrilled. I just love sitting, hungry, thirsty and in dire need of a pee in the backyard for hours on end selling my bits for pennies on the dollar. However, getting the basement emptied is a real incentive. And in this weather hanging out down there is not the worst thing one could do. The cats find it fascinating anyway.

These and other schemes are taking some mental, emotional, and physical effort. Of which I am still slightly limited at the moment. So while I await my MRI and the subsequent results I’ll be hustling my bustle and scheming my dreams. I’ll let you know how the life of the fabulously wealthy turns out.

Sleep Tight

I have what they call in the biz, fairly good sleep hygiene. Well ok, there are few knots. I wake up too much during the night and I do “stuff” in bed other than sleep. But when it comes to waking up, I’m a champ. I almost always wake up within a 45 minute span right around 7 am. No matter how late I went to bed (up till 3am anyway) or how drunk I got last night. That’s right baby, I got smashed last night. Woke right up at 7. Took a couple ibuprofen and I’m now having my cuppa tay.

See, really, at heart, I’m a big old drunk. It’s just that now I only let that girl out every four years or so. I love getting drunk. I’m not so fond of the three to four days it now takes me to recover when I get as drunk as I can though. Which is why last night was a total baby drunk (despite the seeming enormity of 17 glasses of champagne and a shot of fantastic vodka). As soon as I realized I was smashed I went home and made myself puke. In the old days it would have been time to start really drinking.

I never had such a penchant for drink until I used it to get off a much worse habit. Then I really hit my stride. I think what is so appealing about it is, that all the other drugs make me think really, really, hard. Alcohol makes me really, really stupid. When you live with a crazy busy, chattering, incessant, monkey mind it is really fun to essentially flip a switch and turn it off occasionally.

When I’m drunk I turn into Brother Martin. This is what the Rom traditionally called their dancing bears. I am slightly obsessed with Brother Martin, he shows up in my songs and poetry on a semi-regular basis. That’s because he is me and I am him. Along with spiders he’s one of my totemic folk.
Here’s a piece of a piece about him:

Brother Martin waltzes on the boulevard
Brother Martin waltzes gathering a crowd
for shiny, careless, pennies wrested from the mob
Brother Martin dances to the cymbalom.

If you think about it, blogging is totally a Brother Martin-ish thing to do.

Write Right? Yer Bloody Well Write

I am supposed to be writing a paper, I am supposed to be writing lyrics to like, 15 songs that are waiting, I’m supposed to be writing for the writing group, I’m supposed to be writing for this, for my own my personal satisfaction, I’m supposed to be writing for Poetry Club.
I am not writing. (As I’m sure you have noticed.)

I’m smoking like I am. I’m not doing common domestic stuff as if I was in “the vortex”. I am experiencing all the lack of other discipline that would seem to indicate the need to feed the creative beast.

Either some kind of frenzy is lurking around the corner and I’m gearing up for it, or I’m in a slump.

I have, however, been cooking my butt off. You should have tasted my stuffing last week, ok two weeks ago, it was a miracle. Perhaps there is some cosmic rule that I can only create unidirectionally. But I want to be fully renaissance though. One of those Clive Barker, Nitro Von Borax, UBU, and dare I say it, Maynard, types who can be creative in 6 directions at once.

Wah wah wah. It sucks to be, limited me.

AM earworm

Anna, and, Begun Again - The Bottom 99
That’s what I get for spending the day at home with Oliver, a head full of our own stuff that won’t come away.

Road Music II

• The Best of Sam & Dave
• The Rolling Stones - Metamorphosis (My 4th favourite Stones album. The 1st being Beggars Banquet, the 2nd being - Her Satanic Majesties Request, the 3rd being - Some Girls.)
• The Big Three Trio (This was totally new to me, some kinda cool 40’s boogie, jump and blues that Oliver pulled out of his butt.)
• Rock At The Edge (My version)
• The Best of The Shangri-la’s
• Carwash The Soundtrack

This time I took pictures. I haven’t downloaded them yet as I am lazy. Well, and we got home really late with another big load of stuff to be brought in. Maybe tomorrow.

On a different note, while I’m nowhere near the 20 new songs I am hoping to write this summer our newest one is REALLY interesting..... Vocally it reminds me of Nick Cave, then there’s (another) very middle eastern influenced instrumental. It’s a sad one, surprise. Lyrically I really like most of it but I’m unhappy with the chorus. I am at a loss there but I’m sure it will come eventually.

“We’re coming to your town, we’ll help you party it down... ”

• Earworm - “Lollipop” morphing into “My Boy Lollipop” which is sometimes “My GIRL Lollipop” depending on the version. The ska version is male though and that’s the one I’m hearing. This despite Oliver trying to poison me with GFR’s “American Band”.

• I don’t feel human in the morning at all until I’ve brushed and done something with my hair.

• Second time this week I’ve had distinct psychic TV. First my earworm was playing the “Peter Griffin Can’t Touch Me” version, (do the Peter Griffin bump). And that was the episode that aired last night. Last Sunday I said “Dash Riprock” (with no real provocation) and those were the two Beverly Hillbillies episodes today.
If this is the main affect of these abilities then they just become evolutionary blips.

• Speaking of The Beverly Hillbillies - Julie Newmar as a guest star, in a bathing suit no less. Mmmm Mmmm Good. 2nd only to Diana Rigg.

• Speaking of Diana Rigg we’re very excited about our new album cover by Sebastian.
A mod portrait of HERSELF for our latest (not finished due to the floating bass player debacle) album “The Woman” by The Bottom 99.

• After being interrupted in our LP, recent acquisitions, playing, orgy by the dying, moans of the turntable, our most recent trip to the asshole of Michigan (it’s very near Colon), yielded not one but two potential replacements at least while my Technics is in the shop. The one that is working is odd. It’s a ”linear arm” little thing, I’ve never seen this before but it’s kinda cool. The second (which is not working - yet) is a big, expensive Swedish/ Danish? Bangen/olfssonn something or other, Quadraphonic - Whoot! Now I could potentially play my “Night At The Opera” album and get all freaked out by “The Prophet’s Song” just like in 7th grade when for the first time I actually got stoned. (As opposed to smoking pot in 6th grade and thinkin’ “Man, cigarettes are a much better buzz”).

• I think I’ve given up on the idea that I have to be funny/clever in the blog. Perhaps this will allow me more spaciousness to actually blog. If you think you’re neglected you should see the double secret blog, it’s a veritable desolate, wasteland at the moment.

• I’m still doing daily squatter watch. Nothing particularly sinister has happened recently besides them temporarily picking up, and bringing home some of the more obnoxious street people around here. Luckily there appears to have been a rapid falling out between them and they (the annoying little brunette street woman and entourage) moved along to greener pastures albeit somewhere else farther up into the neighborhood.

• Porch sale happened. I did OK. Never enough to make up for the amount of effort put in though...... We’ll try again later towards fall. We now have so many electronic gizmos as to make it potentially quite profitable for Mon Oliver as it’s his dad’s estate stuff.

Lists

Apparently I have switched my focus from writing to reading. However I’ve got to get back in the saddle as I have three major writing projects on the summer burner. I have really enjoyed the several weeks of reading a novel a day though. Nothing like being sick for an excuse to just lay around munching down the mind candy. Lot’s of John MacDonald and children’s books, but I never finished The Prince which is a day overdue now.

I’m back to thinking about Blake, Tolstoy and Swedenborg, their manias and visions and am hoping to squooze in some more research on TLE now that I’m thinking about it again. But my list of summer tasks grows each day and I’m not making much counter strikes on the scratching the finished ones off as of yet.

I am back on the blood sugar efforts as well as having got myself down to one black tea bag a day and no chocolate for a couple weeks now. I’ve also gotten the smokes back down to 18 per day. Having trouble getting beyond that yet. Been sounding very Sylvia Simon lately.

First order of business is triune: Get the hole in my stomach healed, get ready for a big garage sale beginning of June and get the Elder program up to par.
In between all of that I have to try to get going on finding some money for school next year as well as get admitted somewhere. Those are the big ticket items.
The rest is the perpetual house chores and I’m hoping to garden.
Now that I don’t have to do crap like writing 12 page papers, I hope to get more of this sort of writing done as well as I’ve set myself a goal of 20 new songs over the summer. I have 2 half written so far.

All right, that’s a start. I'll get back to you with something profound when I get it put together. I’d say I’m getting stronger everyday but I see where that gets me.....

Holy Spumoni

Almost everything is done except the damnable paper! 8 pages, at least 15 bibliographical sources, at least 5 works cited, MLA style, due Thursday, no late papers accepted. My topic - Why vice prohibitions don’t work.: Exemplified by a brief history of the mafia and the street gangs of Detroit. I will be back to blogging after I sleep for about a week.

Nigel - did you know at least one major mafia kingpin lived in Mt Clemens and there was even an enclave in Dexter?

Poetry on the fly

I’m going to give you some examples over the next little while of some stuff I wrote recently at my school poetry club. The exercises are to just write on the fly with something like a picture or a list of words or a particular topic as the starting point. I think he said these exercises are from a book about the Iowa Writers Workshops. So these are raw and unedited (much). Unlike my usual stuff that I have sweated over and rewritten sometimes for 20 years or more.......

On pictures of the back fence

I will plant a trellis rose
Will mirror tendrils of my hair
When July blooms have come to bear
I’ll keep just one to wear

This time I’ll take the time for earth
For crumbling leaf moulds in my hand
For troweling compost into sand
Inhale the rich breath of the land

This year I will not stint
To give myself such moments
Which calm my hectic torments
Just are, not needing comment

Note to self

Read release
Brazilian peppers
Spread thin

Found to be unintelligible on 3/12

Accchh

Ok I have learned several new things about this process:
1. That I must write off line and then post it or risk losing the frickin' post I JUST spent an hour writing, through some stupid manuevre on my part.
2. That there seems to be no counter nor anyway to get one that I can find, this makes me a sad panda as that is one of my favourite things, to see comments and stats.
3.That I really am such a massive computer tard, that its a wonder that this is happening at all.
4. That it is better to publish then edit, than to try to act like I know what I'm about.