thestain

Send in the Clowns

...I haven't disappeared again, I'm just being drained of brain power by my job, currently.  Speaking of which, a good friend of mine, Davis Thorn,one of my favorite lazy-boy political analysists, sent me the following thoughts on what California can expect Michael Chertoff to do for the good people of the Charred Remains State:

What Chertoff will do is redefine...That's their latest strategy. Redefine torture, redefine wiretaps, redefine house afire. Torture is redefined as anything that causes things like death, anything short of -
that is not torture. We do not torture. Wiretaps are defined as some some buttcrack guy out there with his name printed on his shirt physically attaching wires to your telephone line, listening to your
conversations. Since they don't have to do that anymore, thanks to technology, we don't wiretap. House afire is redefined as "nothing left"...since the chimney is still standing...it can't be destroyed, so it goes in the "saved" column.

I picture a steady stream of old excessed FEMA trailers lurching their way across our great nation.  A big banner flown on the lead vehicle. "You're Welcome!"

Alloy Coated Z's and Crazy Mama

Okay. The NY concert was much better than anticipated.  I admit it, I'm always wrong when I make pronouncements on an empty stomach. 

He played about half old stuff and half new. 
Some of his newer lyrics did make me wonder if someone else wrote his music back in the 70s. 

It was nice to hear him do 'Cinnamon Girl' and 'Loner' live. It reminded me of someone else's youth.  Mine was more 'Powderfinger' and 'Welfare Mothers', which he did not do.

Anyway!

I bought a new cd - old blues, various artists, called 'Dirty Blues'.
I love it.

"If I can't sell It, I'll keep sittin' on it, Before I give it away..."

Plus: I bought a JJ Cale cd.  There is something that I love about him.  Maybe its nostalgia for my unfortunate 20's. Back when I was homeless (for about a month) and poor (for years) and living on the couch of a sleazy red-haired psycho woman. This woman, Wennie, and I worked together at Albertsons. In Food Service.  I was between living situations, and she was between baby sitters.

Wennie had 2 daughters, aged 9 and 11, whom she treated like second thought pets.  They were crafty, loud children who stole things and whined alot.  They were needy and damaged in ways that I was not capable of understanding or addressing.  I liked making them go to bed early.  The girls' shared their room with a guinea pig, which, as far as I know, was never deliberately fed.  He did, however, get out more than occasionally.  With him, I felt a kinship.  Somehow, they had come to name the creature 'Lucky Diamond'.

Fortuitously, this episode of our lives occurred during the summer, when Cienna traditionally spent a month with my parents, or this period could have seriously impacted her childhood. 
Cienna loved old westerns, and Wennie loved honky tonk cowboys and being beaten up by them.   

Wennie would bring a different one home each wednesday night (ladies night!) and on the weekends.  She'd stumble in after closing, waking me from near-sleep, trailing some big-hatted lunk thru into her bedroom.  I'd lay hunkered down on the couch, listening to her being thrown around and screaming, furniture crashing.  Unkind words exchanged.
"Whore!"
"Little Dick!"
Slapping.

"Should I call the police?" I'd yell tentatively.
"No...." she'd grunt, in an oddly cheery voice, "It's...ah...okay.  Go to sleep! G'night!"

Though the guy usually left within an hour or 2, I'd lay there listening to the guinea pig in the next room trying to chew thru his cage.

I had one tape (cassette) and I played it endlessly, softly. JJ Cale 'After Midnight', (or Special Edition).
Cajun Moon, Sensitive Kind....Crazy Mama.  It seemed more real to me than Wennie's couch.  It comforted me. 

I like to think the guinea pig felt the same.

 

Too San Update, sans cheese

Today I leave Tucson.  Tonight I see Neil Young in concert with my X-husband's wife.  At the moment I am in the airport, drinking lip searing hot, 7-11 pot caliber nasty coffee in a vane (SP? BFD) attempt to rally my raisin- sized super-ego, having just read about it.  I'm poking it with the stir stick but it barely moves.  My Id runs amok, meanwhile, threatening to tell the fat man across from me to unplug something and close his mouth when he breaths.  He's dressed in a shiny business suit (the man, not my Id, who prefers business casual, crotchless) and is hogging the one power outlet (mac ibook, nose hair trimmer, toaster. I may have imagined the latter, but I smell toast and anything is possible). (I'm hungry.) (Maybe its not toast. Maybe its his cologne).

I saw Neil Young in concert a few years ago. Huge disappointment.  I think he played *ONE* song from his Good Days. The ones that made us forget he was Canadian. The rest was his really mediocre newer stuff.  The Pretenders opened for him, however, and they were very good. On the cheese scale (yep, I'm really hungry) I would rate their performance a Gruyere.  Neil's, an individually wrapped kraft single.  With a rat hair sticking to it.  (Or 'carpet squirrel' as rats are called in Canada) (Not Really! I mean, I don't know...maybe!)

I don't know who opens for him tonight.  Maybe we'll get lucky and it will be a buffet.

My battery is running out and that 3 piece gelatinous orb is still sucking all the current into his suspicious creases.

That thing I've been poking, it turns out, is my dried up sunny disposition. 

green ink2

I just want to say that Larry Craig is, and always has been, "As queer as green ink."

Why? Because I've heard this from SO MANY PEOPLE, who grew up with him, lived next door to him, worked with him, etc.  And I've been hearing it for almost 20 years.  No one who has ever offered this opinion offered it in any sort of judgemental light, or not many of them. Conversationally. Mostly it was just an amusing fact that people who have known him for a long time have taken for granted. 

I can't stand the man's politics, his hypocrisy, his voice.  That over enunciating preachy tone that says, "Mother used to give me enemas and blame Satan for my fluttery hands. I stopped wearing my sister's panties once I got married...I'm Cured!"

Larry Craig isn't gay, he's queer.

I think the only thing that could make me warm to him even slightly is if he would come forward and say, "Honey, I'm here, I'm queer, get used to it!" 

If he'd sing these words, dressed like Cher, on a glittery stage, I'd work on his 2008 campaign. Jim Risch is a douche bag.  We'd win.  Then I'd help him find the right man, off of Craig's list, and they could have sex in a variety of public restrooms all over Idaho.  Where no one will ever suspect a thing.  Win/win. 

Doctor Heal Thyself

I'm a member of various dog yahoo/google groups and someone, because obviously dogs can't type for themselves, and anyway this doesn't seem like a dog idea, since it doesn't feature food or a long ride through a squirrel festooned neighborhood; some person sent the following:

"I found a man that will tattoo our dogs thighs with our phone # or Drivers Licence or whatever you want. For a group, it's 10-15 dollars a dog. Why, do you ask? Because some people that find a dog
are too stupid to look for a chip. This is the same tattoo artist that is doing my permanent eyeliner. He also does work for plastic surgeons after surgery so he is highly recommended.  If you want a heart or something, it might be a little more painful for the dog, but he does have a topical ointment that
numbs the area. Anyone interested?"

I'd like my dog to have a tattoo of a baby with a snake wrapped around his neck. The snake will have dice for eyes and the baby will have a cute bow shaped mouth, with a super long tongue protruding...
And the words, "Lucky" tattooed on the his/her thigh.  The longer you look at the snakes skin the more you see, like the words "Live Fee or Dry" or American Gothic, only with an old guy and a really young hot wife, with dice for eyes... tattoed on my dogs inner thigh.  And mine.  Matching.  For $15. Maybe a group discount.

BUT can we trust this guy? I mean, fresh out of plastic surgery,  "Ahhhh Ms. Fisterlick you don't look a day over 31 and a half! I've lined your eyes and your lips, PLUS I've thrown in dashes where your nose used to be for free!"

Dr. Maybelline then zips the bmer out of hospital reserved parking straight to some rural neighborhood, to some anonymous back yard where a bunch of panting high-strung border collies
circulate peeing on bushes and yapping and snarling...dogs who are freakishly smart, yet afraid of odd things like mail boxes and oven timers....

"Ahhh Sparky! Who gave you a Brazilian, you saucy bitch! Hold still while I use this electric needle to stab a few permanent things into your soft pink dog thigh....your master's phone number and your name and birthdate....small google map of where you live....food preferences...and a heart. And some butterflies..."

Why would anyone want their eyes lined permanently? Why not a permanent smile? Or dice for eyes?

A squirrel on each lid.  I'd like a Utah-sized tube of that numbing topical ointment...

***********

Yeah. It's late.  Tomorrow I drive North to CdA for Old Lady duty.  Make my mom soup, play cards, and answer to the name "Judy'....
If I get a chance for an internet cafe I'll post on Saturday and/or Sunday. 

Dyed, for Your Sins

Last night Heinrich accused me of "hating conservation" because I refused to watch a second episode the new HGTV series "Living with Ed", starring frugal (eco-friendly!) funny-in-an-autistic sort of way Ed Begley, Jr., and his wife, Factory New Age Blonde, Personality Sold Separately.

"No fucking way, I'd rather have that 10th generation Chinese master from last episode Feng Shui my woman's bits with the contents of our garage...." I believe were my heartfelt words, delivered at the onset of this new episode, which began with Ed digging through the garbage to investigate evidence of Wanton Waste in the household. 

"We have perfectly good hand towels!" Ed cried, finding a small collection (3 tops) of wadded up paper towels huddled in the corner of a half filled trash receptacle.  His hands flew to his head, then to his heart, dramatically.  "OHMYGOD This has to stop!"

Eric was already nodding like a fucking solar powered Jesus freak. 

"No. NONONONO." I grabbed the remote control, and started punching buttons.

"That's the phone," Henrich informed me.

I listened, but could hear no ringing. 

"No, you are holding the phone." 

Sure enough. I could hear someone on the other end faintly repeating, "HELLO?...HELLO!?"

Heinrich waved a 2nd remote.  "Why do you hate conservation?" he asked.

Of course at this point, there isn't too much else to say except, "Because it hurts the economy."  Something I don't believe or practice except when pushed into a corner by an Ed Begley fan.  Then I am capable of anything. 

"I'm going to hang a sign in our yard that says, 'This Family Supports the Paper Towel Industry'.  I find that I mean it as I'm saying it. Ed Begley is poison to the soul. 

"You should watch this. There are good tips for living with a smaller ecological footprint." Heinrich gestures to the huge screen filled with Ed's red face, lisping something, just like that kid in 10th grade who told on everyone.

"I also enjoy the occasional paper napkin, Heinrich." I sneer, thinking I'll buy some embossed with little dancing (non-solar) appliances.

He is ignoring me, watching Ed. 

"A HANDDRYER for the BATHROOM!" Heinrich enthuses. "That's ingenious!"

"Yeah, or that continuous roll of dirty cloth, another fav of the rest stop public toilet...Let's just use our clothing! OR one another's!"

Now Ed is at Bill Nye's (The Science Guy) house. I've lost him. The only thing Heinrich likes more than conservation and television is science and television. 
"I also hate science," I sigh.

"I know," Heinrich nods.

I go upstairs to find something to worship.  I have a flask that says "What Would Jesus Do?"  I sit and drink some vodka, staring at the paper towels hanging on their dispenser in the kitchen.  Persecuted.

The Blood Countess...Debra Cagan

"I hate all Iranians." - Senior Bush Official by day, Vampire Nazi by night?

"She is very forceful and some of my colleagues were intimidated by her muscular style." - British pussies.

I'd like to see us hire Chloris Leachman, in whatever grim shape she's in, dead or alive, polyurathaned corpse with red blinking halloween lights for eyes, to play this woman's role in our upcoming government.

The Sweeps Years

People keep asking me, "Katy, who are you voting? Obama? Hillary? Will you be hippie-delusional and write in Kucinich using 100% natural berry dye? or blood from an all natural recyclable tampon?"  Then, instead of listening to MY ANSWER, I have to listen to these same people tell me who they're voting for, or not for, and why:

Basically, Hillary is unattractive and harsh and phony and her new laugh seems to be her internal organs rising up and calling bullshit on everything that she pretends to stand for or not for, which is as strong as she'll get on any risky position.

Obama is a precocious lad, but doesn't stand a chance.

Whatthefuck show was that Fred guy on?  Was he any good? Win any Emmys? I don't really watch much television, but based on where we are these days, as a nation, I'm all for not so much ELECTING a leader as auditioning one.  Instead of breaking our parties out by pretend ideaology and pseudo-vision, let's do it by genre: Comedy Party, Romance Party, Drama Party, Suspense Party. Family Party, Sci-fi Party...  It's nice to not just have 2!

Fred can audition, along with that guy from West Wing, and Lorenzo Lamas, a captain or 2 from whatever Star Trek series is still viable...Fuck the electoral college. Let's drop out! Let's audition our new president, pick one, and then instead of Congress/Senate, we'll hire a body of writers who can script our national policy and lead our country episode by episode, as God apparently intended. 

I'd like to nominate Harry Dean Stanton in his roll from Big Love.  I think a narcissic dangerous reglious zealot thug is an honest choice, at least.  Sponsored by Coca-cola and General Motors.