Sunday's Best ... (Okay - Sunday's Dreck)

The first snowfall of the year here in Philly - really, more a sleet/snow mix. It was quite lovely to look at and thoroughly miserable to be out in. So I did more of the former and avoided the latter (easy to do when you're stuck working all day, as I was Saturday in an effort to prepare for the upcoming week off). But work is now done and I can turn my attention to more pressing matters. Whatever they might be. I'm sure I have some. Maybe not.

The hard physics problem I was grappling with yesterday while trying to juggle work and a football game? How to reach into the television with my jumper cables and attach them to the testes of the nitwits calling the SEC title game.

I was in an especially dark mood but I think with these clowns even Rachael Ray would be screaming "god damn babbling, yammering morons with special needs turrets - shut the fuck up or drop dead!" Or something to that effect. Then again, maybe that's her modus operandi whenever she's planted in front of the tube.  Folks with sunshine beams flying out of their asses 'round the clock are always suspect in my book.

But I'm meandering off track, as I'm wont to do.  Perhaps in a desperate attempt to hide the fact that I got nothing "on track".  I'm exhausted from the madness of the week's corporate chaos - mentally drained and in no shape to wax poetic on life's amusing follies.

Now it's Sunday and I'm listening to more brain-dead motor mouths calling the pro games.  Cables clamped on car battery, other end clamped to your testes, then I climb behind the wheel and rev the engine.  Call that play, dickhead. Verbal diarrhea in need of binding.  Eat some cheese, shitheads.

Clicking around the dial I see on Pay Per View "Jerry Springer/Big-Breasted".  Hmm.  Springer *and* breasts?  Intriguing. Tell me more.  Well, for just 9.99, you can see Jerry "shine the spotlight on the most-magnificent mammaries ever to grace his studio in this titillating collection of clips."  Clearly for the most discriminating tastes only.  Personally, I think that selecting "buy" for this fine selection should trigger an alarm in the local firehouse, followed shortly thereafter by the arrival of a fire-engine full of bruisers  at your doorstep, there to kick the living shit out of you (they'll first allow you to pull your pants back up, if you're lucky).

Boy, I'm really filled with vitriol this weekend.  That's not such a bad thing.  Vitriol - it does a body good.  Maybe it's all the coffee I've been slugging down.  Too much caffeine with me leads to bad skin and a pissy mood.   I should probably go for a run or something.  Get my frustrations out.  Fucking Michael Vick scores a touchdown in Atlanta.  And the crowd is filled with people cheering him.  A plague on all their houses.  I'm definitely going for a run.

Okay, this post is way too long for such drivel.  Perhaps I'll be inspired later.  A run with Dylan on the iPod might do it.  No, I need more anger.  Black Flag, perhaps.  Rage Against the Machine, maybe.

Until then, I apologize for any of you who've made it this far.  They're not all this bad.  Not all of them.  

I've started five books in the past month and have no desire to finish any of them.  I need to get my hooks into something really interesting as my A.D.D grows more severe with age.  Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem is the one next on my list.  Perhaps that will do the trick.  Meanwhile, after the run, I think I'll re-read Ginsberg's Howl, just for the fuck of it (it's one of my coffee table books that isn't about coffee tables).  That will also help dissipate some righteous indignation percolating through my psyche.  Just trying to find the release valves where ever they might be before it all erupts (usually on undeserving innocent bystanders for all the wrong reasons).

And so I'm off into the chilly late Autumn afternoon to slap shoe to pavement and drag my frustration along for the ride (hopefully, I can give it the slip in the bargain).

Storing away the nuts of a Folky Bum, Jon and Kate, and One Beautiful Loser

Squirreling Around

This picture on the right is floating around the web today and it caught my eye as I have a family of squirrels that have nested on one side of the window air conditioning unit jutting out my bedroom window at the head of my bed.

The squirrels have been there since winter and I thought when I cranked the AC unit up in May, that'd be it. Nope. They're tenacious fuckers. I knocked away their nest but they just rebuild it. They haven't otherwise bothered me, but when I open the blind in the morning I'm often presented with just this image (well, minus the people in the background).

The Mystery Tramp

Apparently, Bobby Zimmerman of Hibbing Minnesota was wandering around Long Branch recently, several blocks inland in a 'low income, predominantly minority neighborhood' doing some 'sight seeing' when he was questioned by police.

They asked his name and the 68 year old disheveled 'bum' muttered, "Bob Dylan."

Blank Stares.

The 20 something cops apparently did not recognize either the man or the name. They just saw an aging potential vagrant.

"What are you doing here?"

"I'm on Tour, just looking at houses until the show."

He didn't have ID. Why do famous people never have ID on them? He should at least carry a folded up copy of one of his cover shots from Rolling Stone or Creem.

At least sing for them, Mr. Voice of a Generation.

"Who am I? The answer my friend, is blowin' in the wind."

"No it's not, that's one of the industrial chemical plants just north of here, you're in North Jersey dickweed - I ask again, who are you?"

They took him back to where he was staying and the tour staff vouched for Mr. Tambourine Man.

He shoulda known better, he said it himself once upon a time:

"Up on Housing Project Hill It's either fortune or fame
You must pick up one or the other
Though neither of them are to be what they claim
If you're lookin' to get silly
You better go back to from where you came
Because the cops don't need you here
And man they expect the same."

Jon and Kate + Hate

For me, the devolution of Jon and Kate from learning channel curiosity to huge family-friendly sensation to full-on Jerry Springer / car-wreck-we-can't-avoid-watching phenomenon sort of parallels the relationships in modern American mainstream politics. Specifically, the centrist wings of the Democratic and Republican parties. To be more clear, I'm referring here to the 'professional' politicos, not those of us out here in the peanut galleries of 'main street'.

Sure you've always had the extremes of both bents railing at one another and at the center. I've been watching the pros in this league kind of closely, as I play Left Wing position in pick-up games on the weekend.

But I think the mainstream has in recent years become much more polarized than they have been in a while, certainly since Reagan, and maybe since Watergate.

It's all cyclical on the generational scale, but we're definitely in the midst of a bad patch.

The latest 'break-up' I feel came to a head with the invasion of Iraq (though the 2000 election shenanigans signaled a separation and certainly there were fireworks during most of Clinton's second term).

Oh, the centrists tried working it out over the last few years as the Yeh Ha Cowboy Nutso antics of Bush/Cheney became ever more pronounced and Grandpa Grumpy saddled up with Sista Sarah making the central right look more like Limbaughland than the Gipperville he advertised.

They even tried moving back in together during the recent election, keeping it going for a couple of months of the Obama administration.

But that temporary reprieve all ended for good with the maelstrom that is health care and the false specter of Socialism on a Grand Scale, the central left understanding that the Fear-mongering is all one big red herring and the central right not taking any changes.

I'm not yet sure who is who in this admittedly 'stretching it' Jon and Kate analogy.

But I'm guessing Jon is the randy Dem, hanging out in Vegas with the babysitter, a 'Looking for Mr. Goodbar' type who'll no doubt be his downfall.

Kate is the self righteous Elephant, seemingly all 'family-first' but who will eventually be outed as a deviant loon. She's already had one brush with the law ('bad girls, bad girls, whatcha gonna do when they come for you?').

The kids are, you might have guessed, all of us.

Beautiful Cohen

After watching the PBS Leonard Cohen concert the other night, I picked up one of the two novels he wrote (he has several collections of poems and short stories), first published back in 1966. Beautiful Losers. "God knows how far up your moccasins were laced." The guy's gotta way with words, in song and in story. It's a bit too metaphysical for my taste and his prose can get mighty purple, but he's always on his game with an inside out turn of phrase and a heady mix of the pretty and profane.