A poem by one of my pen names

Exiting the Sinus Cavity
by Al Mooseprocter


is it true that a man can be sneezed?
if left in a snowdrift like Amundsen
denied the proper seal skin
fed foods not indiginous to foriegners
then a moose could inhale such a victim
last such mishap was mine
I rattled inside the head of that windy moose
I bellowed for liberation
made the single phone call they give you
in captivity
culpable tracks leading to moose
demands ordered out of that predicatent
could not amble out of that hostile three foot sinus
I was suffered to find my way out
and was trampled
the moose did not even sniff

Disclaimer, a big hairy one

Before anyone goes ape, I would like to assure everyone near and dear that there is no validity to my ficticious accounts of a fiefdom I call, "Brusistan." My proposed and hoped for comic opera, titled, "The Prince of Brusistan," is a work in progress, while in the mean time themes and variations of urban renewal have been bandied about with some caprice. There is no such city sanctioned renaming or rezoning of the Perryhilltop neighborhood. It's the same fine place it has been for my past decade of residence here. It is with artistic licence that I have been calling this part of town 'Brusistan.' I have been refering to myself, in works of prose, as "the Prince of Brusistan." This, too, bullcrap. But it's art.

The Boomerangs in Brusistan

To bring you up to speed, the North Side neighborhood in which I own a shanty has been renamed. It was called 'Perryhilltop' but I renamed it, after me. The new name for 'Perryhilltop' is 'Brusistan,' a newly christened third world American slum. I am a proud and productive resident of Brusistan.

As far as I know, one of the few manufactured goods made here in Brusistan is boomerangs. All shapes and sizes. Made of durable industry standard materials, each hand made. Thus far I have manufactured some of the best rangs any rollicking rowdy individual could love or dream over. My boomerangs, properly thrown in good weather conditions, return. The industry standard 'rangs, made of five ply cabinet grade baltic birch plywood, perform a diverse family of arcs, runs, sweeps and encirclements. They do the tricks that boomerang experts world wide recognize as throughbred horse-like elegance in motion.

By goodness, they describe a ramping tear-drop shaped flight in the air above a good sized sports field. The first arc travels near eye level away from ground zero, then takes a short sharp run up and around, most of the way back to the thrower. But not entirely. A great boomerang will slow down on the return sweep. Just over it's tender's head it will go into small circles, like a falling maple seed in nature's helicopter configuration, gyrating gently to fertile soil. A world class fine 'rang will lower itself down to you, spinning and circling, which is how these fine sporting devices say to you, "Catch me, catch me. Take me you, fool."

A champion boomerang is like a champion horse. It looks great standing still, and it looks great in motion. It has a pleasing disposition. It has a proper sense of self and community. Unlike some people and places I could mention.

The State of My Ass Address

I'm in tight-woven navy blue gaberdine, a serious rayon neck tie, and white button down collar. This post pre-empts other blog drivel. This is an important, once a year thing, like a medical exam, but with personal fancy and screamed out through a bull horn while driving around and around the downtown cultural district there about Penn Avenue and Liberty. It's where I'm at, and I'm belting it out the way US presidents do the State of the Union Address.

I'm old enough to croak of more or less natural causes, depending on how you look at it. When you are 35 years old, you are too young to die. Fifty-one is a reason to be more careful. It's a good time to be sagacious, if possible. A calm, goal oriented approach to gluing my personal history into the scrap book of now is in order.

Here, here. The project on the front burner is boomerangs. I am in the process of refining some of the boomerangs I first made om 2005 and 06. Some of the 'rangs made back then were better than others, and I am in the process of filing, sanding and re-sawing to produce a family of boomerangs to make you proud. You will be proud to own a relic from my studio here in Perryhilltop, a neighborhood I think of as my own personal third world fiefdom, named after me, Brusistan. A boomerang producing third world slum in Pittsburgh.

Making A Holiday

A friend of mine invented a name for the year end holidays. Ramachriskwanzooka is Ramadon, Christmas, Kwanza and Hanuka smooshed into a pablum of holidays that both the friend and I have had trouble, in the past, digesting.

I have hated Christmas songs from the origins of my acrid consciousness. Too, and though I may be homely, I boast of being truly averse to materialism. By nature, by natural selection of good taste, and not by the years of studied left wing thought, the mixed solemnity and greed makes me gag.
Nativity scenes remind me of wards where they tube feed crack babies. And then there is all the religeous conflict among Jews, Christians, Muslims and all alliances that hate the rival grouping for color, creed, mode of operation or cut of costume. From Thanksgiving till New Year's Day there is a reason per second to attack or flee. It's the time of year that thieves come out of the woodwork. I get depressed. Without the aid of good thought, the holiday season serves as nothing but a cold sheet steel sliding board into the freezing, rotten winter.

There is hope. In creative intelligence. The holiday, Ramachriskwanzooka, may include the entire late fall and complete winter. It remains a baby food of pureed hope and happiness, but it is an honest holiday for the bleakness of the weather. People around these parts, by and large, are missing a few spokes, by world standards in achievement. So until the month of April, it is a good idea to fertilize the barren mud with contrived spiritual mumbo jumbo.

A better reason, yet, for the four month holiday is that winter is slow physical degradation. I need a lot of brisk physical activity in warm sunlight to be all that I can be, in terms of joy and achievement. All winter the dearth of what is needed leaches away the life blood. To help, there isn't a transfusion, or an exorcism, just a home remedy for the blues. Winter blues. Invent a celebration.

At The Risk Of Being A Bore....

........there may be a soft warm membrane that separates what people believe from what is. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan claimed to have believed that the housing market was stable and secure all during the decades long process of real estate costing more and peons earning less. Or while peons took two full time jobs instead of one, just to eat and shit. It was either in the Chairman's immediate interest to ignore the financial erosion of the middle class, or else the communiity with whom Alan interacts kept Alan in a state of ignorance. But I'm feeling plucky and pontifical at the same time. Alan is a big victim of the pink tarp that separates what one would like to believe from what is. Or it separates immediate self interest from the victims of poor thinking, e.g. the wee folks with name tags and generic macaroni and cheese for dinner.

I'm boring you with this thrumming moral rant because just about everyone has been forced or allowed or encouraged to accept a view point that serves immediate best interest. It has become impossible for people to make a decent assessment of circumstance, and impossible to originate and complete a corrective course of action.
There. I've made myself yawn. You're boring, sometimes, too.

Bigotry and Hatmunching

In the early days of television it was common for game show hosts to say, "...I'll eat my hat." The expression isn't used much now. On a related point, references are no longer made to rhubard, especially not on the news when reporting the weather, and no one at all in those days said, on television, they were, "happy as a pig in shit." On this Monday I am going to eat my hat, check the rain on the rhubarb, and I am happy as a pig in shit.

The Pittsburgh Steeler's sixth superbowl victory feels great. I feel unreservedly proud of the home football team. And its a situation in which I got proven wrong about one hundred sixty thousand things relevant to major league football and this town. Certain prejudices just got corrected by yesterday's Superbowl victory.

From lotsa years back, and putting into this that I'm a transplant to the 'burgh' and come from a family of sports dysfunctionals, I was under the impression that the team wasn't worth its salt. I thought Big Ben was a poor choice, I thought he was going to retire from injuries before managing to became a star in history, I was prejudiced against people who have had a lot of concussions, and our great quarterback did what great people do to clear up doubt. Santonio Holmes seemed to me like some sort of flash in the pan when I first heard the name on the news (I almost never watch an entire football game) and now it is impossible for that first impression to be true. The two plays, a first pass through Holmes' arms, and the completed touchdown pass that won the game, was as thrilling as it gets. All in all, it appears that the team is the "real deal" and I had thought otherwise. I'm eating my hat about the Superbowl, and there are more hats to munch on.

All the while that I was expressing my doubts about Ben, some of my die hard Steeler fan friends insisted that he is the 'real deal.' Their ability to see the talent in the sports figure deserves notice. It's a lot of hearts and minds deep in a fine city and champion team. The future looks better, my collection of hats is depleting, and the eradication of prejudice feels good, like winning the Superbowl.