Noise Pollution
I've been struggling with something all week, some project I have but I'm mostly spinning my wheels. I've also received some potentially exciting news, but no chickens have hatched as of yet. So it's been that kind of week so far. Last night I was up fairly late, watching the college courses they broadcast. They were interesting, about other culture's indigenous music and so on. I finally fell asleep just as contented as can be. Now, in an ideal world I would have been able to sleep until about 8AM and wake up and get back to work. But somewhere between 6:30 and 7 the garbage truck showed up and did the dumpster/beep/ bango-rama thing. They were really into this morning. Fine. A little more not-so-good sleep, finally up and at 'em. Now there is an alarm wailing away. It happens occasionally around here. An alarm goes off for no good reason, a high pitched, non-stop, noise like floss through your brain.

Once when I was in Alabama I was living in a singlewide trailer next to a cornfield and a cow pasture. There was a tornado around somewhere and it had knocked out all of the power. It was interesting to be in such a rural setting with no electricity. It felt like how it must have been a hundred years ago or so, and I could hear little noises from far off in the distance. Life goes on.

Sick Day
I had a rare sick day yesterday. Too bad it happened on a Saturday, but one day is about as good as another for me. It's funny how much food that you notice on TV when you don't have an appetite and you don't feel like doing anything else but watching. After the cartoons I landed on PBS and saw those construction dudes and then a guy building a chair. Then it turned into cooking shows. I kept drifting in and out of sleep, and the voices from the TV were causing weird dream images, and then I would wake up to someone slicing up enormous hunks of meat or washing lettuce or the like. Some french guy showed up, and I could never tell what the hell he was putting together (he kept calling something "sweetbreads" I think, but it sure looked like chicken to me). Then of course all day long there are advertisements for all of the other edibles. I finally ate a few crackers. Take two and blog me in the morning.

With A Banjo on my Knee
There was an interesting convergence of events over the last couple of days. I was poking around and found myself mentioned in an article about a concert in Auburn Alabama. They were letting local people play and I was one of them. Somebody apparently spoke to me but I don't remember that part.

I spent a couple of years down there and had a great time. There was lots of home-grown music everywhere and people were very friendly. I hooked up with a rather unusual fellow named Burns Lollar and we played around town a bit. We were both odd ducks in our own way and made for an even more unusual duo. We made a CD at one of the local studios, more as a souvenier of what we were doing than anything. It was kind of a hillbilly They Might Be Giants thing. I did the graphics for the CD, with little illustrations for the songs. This one was for Chair Trilogy, one of Burns' tunes about an obsession with a chair, which we grafted onto one of mine, Beautiful, Beautiful Psycho Bitch (that gives you the idea).

Oddly, this morning I got an email from Burns and his woman. It's odd because I haven't had any contact with them for a few years, and had even tried to locate them not long ago without success and figured they were lost to me. That dang Collective Unconscious I guess.

Dear Diary,
Usual Saturday morning rituals yesterday. I was taken to lunch by my friend again (bless her heart). We've shared a few meals lately, about the only thing to make my existence in ABQ a little less bleak. I had doggie bags which I consumed throughout the day and night. I played Spider Solitaire and listened to a podcast, read a bit and then clicked the remote. I caught some of SNL. I even watched one of the performances by ludicrus. There's no reason I should get anything of what's going on with rap music, but what's with that name? It should be the name of one of their parody characters. (Websters -- "ludicrous - meriting derisive laughter or scorn as absurdly inept, false, or foolish"). Oh well, I'm sure he has a giant bathtub if he wants. I had a lucid dream (that's a dream where you know you're dreaming). I was flying around a department store. Then finally some deep sleep and then daylight and here I am again.

By my calculations, given some history of longevity in my family, minus a few years for unclean living (but I still suspect I'm headed for geezer-town) I only have approximately 10,000 more days to go. It doesn't sound too bad when you put it that way.

If I Were A Rich Man
I might as well admit that I'm not going to do anything else today. A lot went on this week and I have the debris of various projects all over the place, but I'm just going to leave it where it is. So I'll blog for a bit.

I don't think much about being wealthy. There aren't many things that I want. In fact one of my primary ambitions in life is to live without an automobile, but I haven't lived anywhere where that's practical. The only time I really think about being rich is when I take a shower. In my existence, this has always meant tweaking the faucet handles until I find a reasonable temperature, and then somehow getting that up to the shower head without being hit with that blast of cold water (maybe aiming it squarely on the top of my head or trying to avoid it somehow), and then dealing with intermittent changes in temp -- warmer colder scalding freezing. During those moments I wonder what rich people do -- big tubs and fancy fixtures of course. I would demand that the water be at my prescribed temp BEFORE it came out of the faucet. I would also have a tub that is big enough for comfort, with little jets all around so I could hit a switch or something and have new pre-heated water, instead of a little pool of warm water at one end of the tub that you have to swish around. Man, that would be the life.

I remember looking at the paintjob on the wood around the window of a house I was renting. It was decent enough, but had that familiar look of newer paint slapped on old wood. I thought that was how things had always looked for me, and more than likely how they always would look. So far that's been about right.

Casting Call
It's kind of fun to think about who would be good in certain roles, either for remakes or when you're reading a novel and so on. These are actors I'd like to see as people from history:
1. Michael Richards as Abraham Lincoln. This would be a cameo in a Civil War drama.
2. Eddie Murphy as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He could do an entire biopic. Why hasn't anyone made that movie yet? I would guess some legal wrangling somewhere. It would be interesting to see Murphy play it straight too.
3. Mike Myers as Charlie Chaplin. I thought Robert Downy Jr. did a great job in the movie, certainly no slouch in the comedic timing department. But I saw Myers horsing around on a talkshow and he seemed to have the same kind of physical compactness and energy as Chaplin. I'm sure he could handle the comedy, he's a pretty funny guy in case no one's noticed.
I'm sure Hollywood really wanted my opinion on this so I thought I would pass it along.

911
I would be remiss if I did not post today. I have nothing to say about the events of four years ago that hasn't been said of course. It was a weird morning, and a weird day, and things have been weird ever since.

My political views are left of center, not surprisingly, but they were forced firmly that way by the doings of the present politicos after 911. I thought the Neocons looked great on TV after the attack -- so American in a white male sort of way, go man go! Let's whoop 'em!

Then it turned into Iraq with Saddam put in as substitute villian for Bin Laden in a breathtaking sleight of hand. I'm sorry, but with my own cognitive reasoning I concluded that the War in Iraq was just a big land-grab, and I haven't seen one shred of evidence to make me think otherwise.

So now Mother Nature has hit us. Damn it, the other thing was great because we had this tall evil guy in a turban and a pointy beard what done it. What's his name, Ahab the Arab or something? I hear he lives in Iraky-town with the Eye o' Tola Sodom Whoozits and Shake Yerbootie. Let's go blow 'em up because we got blowed up and if we don't we might end up payin' three bucks for a dang gallon of gasoline!

I wrongly thought our own security would take priority, but it looks to me that we're still pretty vulnerable and certainly unprepared for the aftermath of a disaster. Oh yeah, let's not play the Blame Game (hey, that's a good one -- it rhymes and everything, say it over and over until we blame it on the Mayor and the Governor and Michael Brown and people for being poor and DING! we win the Blame Game).

When asked about resources going to Iraq when he finally dropped by the hurricane devastation, Bush said we've got to keep the "War on Terror" going. If you ask me, those American people looked pretty terrified waiting around down there. Nice job Dub, glad things are workin' out for ya.

Somebody mentioned this song in an email this morning, so I thought I would post it. Why not? I wrote it after Hurricane Andrew, way back in 1992 when I was still the guitar strumming goofball from the last post. It seems appropriate to the moment.

The Radio
The radio is calling out, instructing everyone.
A hurricane is on the way, high winds have now begun.
One mile from shore the hardware store,
stands in the safety zone.
Plywood and nails will never fail
to fortify their homes.
And they'll huddle inside and watch the tide,
and listen to the wind.
Some will die, but all will try
to hold out to the end.
But it makes no difference who you are
when the sea makes up its mind.
They'll be looking for you with a camera crew
following close behind...
but what will they find? What will they find?
Two baby dolphins swam in the sea.
One looked like you, and one felt like me.
I ask myself, how can this be?
As I recall the sound of a distant memory...
The radio is calling out, instructing everyone.
A hurricane is on the way, high winds have now begun.

© 1992 Dan Thomason

Give Me A Head With Hair
My hair is suddenly too long again. Not this long -- that was about ten years ago when I was a guitar strumming goofball. I'm still a goofball, but I don't strum the guitar as much as I used to. Long hair like that is a hassle, I don't even know why I wore it that way, just because I could get away with it I guess. But I'm annoyed with my hair and annoyed with my shirts, which keep wearing out, and I can't sew on a button to save my life. It's really the collars though, when they get all frayed. It's sad when one of your favorites goes the way of all flesh, er cloth. Wow, deep thoughts today (not).

Blog-Break
It's time once again, ladies and gentlemen. I have the place to myself for a couple of weeks. No, I don't live alone. I share an apartment with my older brother, who is heading to California to visit his kids. In fact his daughter just had a baby girl, so he's going to go be grandpa. I'm known far and wide as Uncle Dan by the six offspringers of my siblings (I think I'm considered the free-spirit of the relatives). They're all great young people. So yes, after all of the travels and lives and wives and all of the rest of it, here we are for now; eating Subway sandwiches and using a futon for a couch and drinking beer and grunting greetings on the way in and out. I really should settle down, but I keep getting bored and restless, dang it.

Katrina
I'm going to have to write about Katrina, because if I don't I won't be able to do anything else. I've been cruising the blogs over a cup of jo, and it seems that I'm part of a shared sense of loss and sadness this morning. After a fairly sleepless night (not unusual for me) I finally woke up to the sunlight and the daily wake up call of the garbage truck banging and beeping as it wrestled with the dumpster below my apartment. Then I hit the remote and watched and dozed through the local news and then some of Good Morning America.

I guess I can say this; I have to count my blessings. For example, since I'm such a rambler I don't sleep on a regular mattress, and for the last several years I've gone through a series of air mattresses for the sake of moving-day convenience. I've seen at least one (maybe more) such air mattresses being used as a raft, as we all have witnessed. My nest is rather inelegant, but it is warm and dry. I can eat, drink, and be merry when I choose. I don't have to drive very much so I don't have to buy much gasoline. For these things I'm grateful.

Metaphorically, we have been thrown a curve ball. Mixed metaphorically, we have been kicked in the balls. We just lost one of the coolest cities we had -- at least it will never be what it was. I never made it there, but now I wish I had. I figured there was plenty of time to get around to it. I did spend a wonderful weekend in Gulf Shores Alabama, and I wanted to move there, but the thought crossed my mind that I wouldn't want to deal with a hurricane.

I think things will get harder for all of us. The politicos in power can now blame everything on Katrina, which is lucky for them because they wrung all of the excuses for what they couldn't do for us out of 911 for the sake of their wars and elections. I wonder what kind of preparations were being made for our security (isn't that sort of their job now?). So if someone drops a dirty bomb on Albuquerque, will they all shrug their shoulders and say, "Oh yeah, we didn't think of that... wait here in the Walmart parking lot for five days while we try to find you a bus." I don't know. OK, I'm done. Onward, and let's all do what we can to help.

I would like to have something profound to say about this hurricane, but I don't. It's amazing and sad.