Resurecting Rollicking Rowdy Enterprises

Here's some of the old school credo:

1. This house is my studio. I used to call my studio 'Rollicking Rowdy Enterprises.' Haven't been calling it that lately.

2. Inside the studio, a whole gang of projects have been, and still are,under way. There's no longer a name for the whole shebang, but it's the same hive of activity. Products made here include boomerangs, throwing knives, folding knives, jewelry and sculpture. There is always some visual art being poduced, and there is always one or more small businesss plans in progress.

3. There's a house philosophy at work at all times, based on Milton Friedman's economics. It's an encompassing school of thought which states that both the economy and macro-culture are in poor shape, and leftist Keynesian economics must be replaced with an erudite method of applying free market economics.

4. Creative intelligence is to be valued, loved, worshipped. There is to be a new heirarchy in creative thought, which places on the highest plane creative work aimed at the development of earning operations. People can't function very well without money.

5. Private support for the humanities is to be encouraged. Tax deductible cash support for nonprofits is to be discouraged. The nonprofit cultural community is an unfair business practice, and is a bane in providing, at public expense, material support to base opportunists.

6. My studio supports the position that low earning Caucaission Men are an oppressed minority in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and should be eligible for affirmative action, same was women and protected minorities.

The name changed but the goals are all the same. I am in the process of resurecting Rollicking Rowdy Enterprises. It's a little like the Esalen Institute, and a little like Spahn Ranch. The new name for my studio is "The Spesalen Institute of Deviant Ranching."

Libertarians Meaningfully Floundering

Free market economics is believed by a giddy few to be the only path to personal freedom. According to my hero, economist Milton Friedman, without the right to free speech, the indivdial can't bargain in the processes of free enterprise, and usually winds up like a victim in the movie "The Conquorer Worm," featuring the late Vincent Price. One must be able to ply one's trade and enter into agreements among risible prosperous merchants, if there are any. Or do what I'm doing, which is to dry up like a pimple.

Going to New Lengths to Communicate

Genteel poverty is a concept that has some status in New England states, and almost none here. It's something of a watchword of mine. If peaceful, dirt poor and scholarly people were to fill in some of the very cheap slum properties here in the Observatory Hill area, it might be a start towards intitiating a less pitiful state of affairs than our most conspicuous norm.

I suggested years back The Fair And Equal Access Campaign be formalized, to open public revenue sources to individuals in the community who face hardship and who are, and have been, unspoken for through affirmative action. Open new revenue sources to low earning Caucaission men.

Squeezing the Inhumanity Zit

A zit is a wispy duct that engorged with pimple germs. Soon it's a maraschino cherry size blemish right on the puss.

Old Loughner, with a freshly shaved head and maniac smile, looked like a big zit in the newspaper. People have been spouting off like Mount Saint Helen's about the shooting rampage, characterizing it however best scratches the self-expressive itch. As a concerned citizen I feel everyone should, in his or her own way, try to squeeze the zit out of existence.

If only it was so easy. There's always something gross left on your face when you pop a pimple. Passivity. Best option.

Moped Conversion Kits (alternative transportation)

One of many new projects at the house here is mopeds. I'm installing conversion kits, and can't wait to begin testing these things out this spring.



Am also considering some imported mopeds available mail order off the internet. Small gasoline engines are the best option with which to reduce dependence on gasoline. It will provide a cheap alternative to public transportation, as weather permits. Mopeds I am working on now will be under 75 pounds.

Mopeds are a nice way to reduce parking congestion, are easy to store, safe.

Off In The Chlorine Clouds

pouring it into a turquoise espresso cup
with escutcheons surrounding the loop handle
the standard mix of ethanol
stained green with lime gelatin
quadruple whammy
we are overtaken
our synthetic delivery system of joy
giving up whacked in measured doses
we are not whole
till the apartment is all pure chlorinated water
we share the need to be in an aquarium
new age of pisces
and we are changing

College Bowling

Of all my studies at a state college, there was one course that stayed fresher in mind than most, and which remains a wellspring of meaning and metaphor. And when learning stays alive like this, for nearly thirty years, I'm able forget, for a moment, what a rip-off and abomination higher education has become.

It wasn't math or science or philosophy, or even the English Lit that I still bang around behind me, like tin cans tied to the honeymoon Chevy Nova. It was the phys-ed requirement. Oddly, I haven't been to a bowling alley more than twice in twenty years, but the course in bowling I took has been so dear to the heart that I sometimes stare at my gym bag and blast Lulu's song "To Sir With Love" on the portable stereo. That instructor turned the college course into a 'special relationship.'
He was a man with a method, and a man who believed in bowling. It was more than a sport to him. As much as a really good score, like 150 or better, he was a sportsman who appreciated the human form in motion, and could see in his work young people flowing through space like Baryshnikov, though on the other side of the tracks. It's not all about winning, which is great, because I wasn't planning to.

He seemed to take a special liking to me. More than once, when he had a chance away from prying ears, he confided that I was among the most graceful bowlers he had ever seen. When it was my turn to roll, he would often watch from directly behind, and admire my four steps, the clockwork timing in pushing the ball forward (most important component of proper bowling method,) the pendulous backward swing of gravity as the keggler takes the ball behind the fourth rib, then that final step and the release. Speaking of release, this wasn't the first time a gym teacher seemed to enjoy watching the way I move my ass.

During his lectures on the subject, the instructor made his point that bowling was sensual. The sight of the ball curving into the pocket, leading the orgasmic crash of pins, is like creation itself as falling pins add up on your score sheet. And then all the hidden meaning.

A seven-ten split, for instance, reminds me of how hopeless the economy is. A gutter ball mirrors all incidents of human failure, with descent into dark nowhere. My last girlfriend was a gutterball. She thinks the same about me, and we only went bowling together once. That's how precise the sport of bowling is in reflecting the warts and moles in human nature. A strike is one discrete unit of victory. Twelve strikes in a row is a perfect game with a score of 300. Angelic. Angels are said to be perfect. And when you pick up a spare,it is redemptive, like picking up the pieces of your shattered social life. Just now, my love life is an open frame.

That teacher was probably married with kids, but like so many athletic coaches, it is across their own genders that they find the secrets of the soul. He took me aside once to tell me, personally, how a bowling team is the most important relationship in a man's life. You can't compare family responsibilities to the obligation to fellow man. Score too low too often, and you could be off the team all together. Or you might just bring the whole team down, if you don't force yourself to excell. He told me again that I had beautiful bowling form, and might have a future, if not as a pro, as a man among men. At the bowling alley. With men like him.

But when all was rolled and scored, at the end of the semester, I got a B and not the A I thought he was going to give me for my phys ed requirement. The dissappointing grade may have reflected some disappointment he felt, as if the love of bowling could be unrequited. Then, too, he may have been a closet queen who hoped to score with a lithe young stallion bowler, maybe the prettiest horse on the lanes. That course in bowling made me feel pretty.