Alka-selzer, Amigos!

Don't know if people still use it.  Haven't seen it in ages.  But Alka-Selzer is iconic antacid shit.   Aspirin included. Ideal, in its day, for the hangover, or common cold, or heartburn.  Alka-Seltzer was more.  It was the symbol of the underworld.   


The ideal person drops two communion wafer size tablets into a glass of water, holy virgin H2O, and he or she is Humphrey Bogart.  It was a stylish antacid.  It's the very symbol of power.  The depth charge sinks down in the highball glass, bubbles fizz upward, and it's all sucked down by the most powerful being of all, a person.  Even the lowest of ass-wipes hold terrific importance compared to ants and mold spores.  We are a valued life form, even when we work at a fast food restaurant and wear stupid clothing. It's the process of fizzing upward and being consumed by a greater power that makes Alka-Selzer a metaphor to everything that matters.

I hope it still exists.

Another Horrid Question: Monkey Boys?

I've been one many times, many places, in several age brackets.  But do monkey boys still exist, or have witty  low wage colorful types been replaced with a new class of low wage transient worker?  I wish to ferret out specifics which guide conduct and perception.  A person has to be perceived as a monkey boy to be one.  Or are all peons monkey boys independent of how they are seen?

This is more archetypal horse shit.   If people see television models of monkey boys, leaping and scratching themselves  behind the counter at a coffee shop, or clerking in a big box store, while being kept in a permanent state of progressive music and no social standing, then media influence could sustain the existence of monkey boys,   While the Orwellian leveling effect, with it's perfection of the language for nothing but tasks and obedience, could mean no monkey boys.   Replaceable workers, not a monkey boy.  A person in all cases.  A low value person.  I'm not seeing anything in the way of an emerging new identity.  It's bad enough a lower primate's sense of self  was dumped onto humankind, but maybe no identity at all is a worse human condition.  Or a better one, if you are allergic to monkeys.

I'm suggesting this is a new age in degrading ways of life.  It is less defined, for newness, and is eternally prone to oldness and extinction.   I'm feeling good about the newest trend in how to be.  But I'd rather not be it.  I don't like being defined by a shit paying job.

Fashion Renaissance

Heavens, I wish the white cravat in the pic above showed up better.  It is bright shiny synthetic  matter, a foxy three dollars, mail order, ebay.  Saddened to see it succumb to glare.  It's a far better accessory than is pictured.   Sorry.   Vinyl themed biker jackets, this one our own stars and stripes, will be carrying more than their own weight in a long home fashion march.    Every week something has to be added to an ensemble, to propel this campaign.   And if feet are sore from marching, we all look just grand in this gala ghetto.   I call one of my fashion ensembles 'Ghetto Chic.'   It may work for you.

A Dreadful Bed And Breakfast

The continental breakfast here is a bag of Ramen noodles, and Vietnamese coffee.   The latter is cooked cowboy style, in a sauce pan and strained into a diner mug.   The Ramen noodes are also served in a diner mug.  There are a few thick white diner style plates to go with mugs, but I seem to have misplaced the baguettes and brie.  Maybe someone broke in, overnight.  Happens.  Sometimes I hide most inhumane rodent traps in the refrigerator.      There is some sort of ring of power that radiates from the foods, like the Ramen and java, and nobody steals it.  I think the crap is radioactive.  Just the expensive shit gets stolen.

And that is how cultures originate.   They evolve on a diet of shit no one else wants too fucking desperately.  Sometimes they wind up having little, tiny heads, from a protein deficiency.  Other times, they make wise use of agriculture.  Or they get good at stealing.  Thus they get huge and frightening.  New careers open for them, in crime and law enforcement.   Soon everyone has an SUV and giant size television.

The important thing is the internationalism, or globalism, that is taking place absolutely everywhere.  The low price of imported crap that looks Euro has enabled people to imitate globalism.  As soon as everyone imitates it, everyone will be very much alike.  Everyone will be comparably easy to govern.

I've decided to eat less protein.  Less worry.

A Fashion-Forward View Of The O.J. Unpleasantness

The O.J. Simpson series people are enjoying lately is, in my opinion, a  low grade docu-drama, and the acting is a disappointment.  Just to be sociable, I'll fess that  the show  has the thin broth of a worthy legend to carry it along.  

Not a complete failure, there's a few things worth gaffing out of the video  news/info tuna boat.  Like O.J.'s athletic resistance to prosecution.  That, to me, is the nearest thing, in the pile, to his glory days of being a football hero.  I'm seeing a message emerge from the tuna:  Sometimes, when the better half of your career is over, and phase two turns out to be hard on the ex-spouse and her coffee/latte pal, there is trouble, and closeted derangement runs unfashionably, you have to put your best Buno Magli forward and deal with the mess you are in.  Our declined sports hero did that, and made a notable court case mighty special.   Misfortunes aside, an observer may form comparisons.   

Yours truly appears to be in reasonable condition, though worse for wear.  I'm calling the current life situation  the third phase of a shabby little career, but the O.J. flap yielded an operating  principle that can be applied.  I will lace my ugly-ass foot ware,  play golf with people, have embarrassing photos taken,  and walk tall in the unfortunate black hybrid Chuka boots.  But that's just being a drama queen.  There were a lot of drama queens at O.J.'s trial, so I feel the forces of a completely fucked up shitload of kindred spirits.  And I am a fool for a good unifying theory.

  The shoes aren't really as hideous as O.J. made them out to be. Bruno Magli got a raw deal in all those piney justice proceedings.    It may have been poor sportsmanship on O.J's part to speak so abusively about a pair of shoes that showed promise as a fashion item.  It is this one fish steak, among so many, that raises my tail fins.  You won't catch me trash talking Christian Dior just to get my ass out of trouble.  My code of personal honor forbids that kind of behavior.

 There has to be a moral to this shit.  Sometimes you have to type one up, print it out on a pre-cut sheet of file labels, and stick a few of them on your matching Gucci luggage ensemble.  When something truly dreadful happens, and it gets all sexed up in the news, and is then knitted into a gaudy cardigan sweater that is a rather shitty docu-drama, and there was a gruesome double homicide, only a real dickhead would neglect to fish from it all some type  of watchword.  

  People should dress well, and keep the fucking gray matter working a mite more properly than did one O.J. Simpson.   Love-sick super-jocks can be dangerous.  Disgruntled postal workers can be dangerous.   And so can all sorts of people who allow themselves to become deranged, homicidal pieces of shit.  You won't catch me getting that fucked up.   I'm mellow.  Thanks for reading.

Business News

It was a paltry couple years back that my life was changed, rather suddenly, though the element of time had  seasoned the impending change.  I had a divine intervention.  I was sitting on my ass in the living room, half paying attention to my eighth consecutive reality show about cops chasing serial killers, half sinking into the gloom of wasted time,  when God appeared in a vision.  She came in the form of Bea Arthur, from the old television series Maud, and she had with her Jean Stapleton and Maya Angelou.  Also some of the cast from the show Good Times, which I had been watching, hours earlier.  God often intercedes during a rerun of some hopeful situation comedy.  And it was on that day that God told me that I would be a total jerk if I didn't start buying and reselling fashion items.

I honor and heed all directives from on high.  My newest small business plan is precisely to buy and resell punk rock jewelry, cravats, guitars, hats, gloves, what the fuck ever.  If it enhances your appearance, I will do my fucking proudest to deliver.    This is one of those small businesses that are really, really small.  It fits in a nylon messenger bag.  Just happen to have one.  It's local business, mail order, too.  For now, e-mail for a shopping adventure.  Let's talk about how you can get hip.  I'm on a mission to help people accessorize.

Singing little songs

Somewhere....submerged in an active, yet taciturn tar pit.. back in 1998.   About two weeks after I moved into my chalet, here in Perry South, I was driving to work when I came upon my first shooting incident.   There weren't any victms, as they say here, laying down, or anywhere visible, but there was a huge police officer standing at the intersection of Perrysville and Charles Streets, with his car half blocking Charles North.  It was partially blocking yours truly, so I motored, two miles an hour, up to the gent and asked if it was okay to drive around the police car.   He smiled, oh so sweetly, and said  in sing song voice, like this was happening on stage at the Benedum, during the Broadway Series, "No, We had a shooting.  You have to put your car in reverse and go backwards, in a straight line, four blocks, then take a left and get on out of here."

Just as sweetly, and all smiles, like an angel in dark blue, with a big gun and assorted other cheery, risible weapons, he went on for a moment to explain there were spent cartirdge casings 'all over the place' he had to pick them all up, and I wasn't allowed to run over any of them, if I hadn't already.  As a result of all the good cheer I met there at that famous-for-violence corner of heaven, I went away feeling half way good about the bad news I had just heard.  A shooting.   So declasse', as the French might agree.  But a jovial cop can sure instill some good feeling at an awul crumby turn of human experience.  Maybe it was the songful way he had of delivering mighty fucking bad news.

I'd like to be as songful as that wonderful, gigantic police person while suggesting there may be some sort of freak ass divide and conquer methodology built into Obamacare.  Some folks benefit royally.  Others are getting screwed six ways till Sunday.  Thus there are two factions, one who loves the current status of health care, and the other is really, really unpleasant about the whole fucking mess.   Thus, again, it will be very hard to get the stupid system scrapped, which is the only decent way to handle a business that is 'too big to fail.'  I predict the federal government will be resorting, in one meme or other, the same excuse for bailing out the banks over a decade ago.   Too big to fail.  Maybe, for the meds biz, they are too urgently engaged in their practices to be forced into better business practices.   It will be worded one way or other, but, my crystal ball has opined that the same principle will be applied by which a corporate hell gets fed like Fido the house hold Saint Bernard.

One way of viewing the high cost of medical care is that an industry must face the same type of corporate downsizing other corporations carried off since the late 1970s.  Free market methods need to be forced into the medical economy.   Competition among providers must be enabled, or invented, if necessary.  The most forceful refrain is that the Fed has no business forcing consumers to buy health insurance.  It is something people need, and a better business model is the way to provide for it.   People who are happy with their health care might find the decency to support the rights of those who aren't.  It is possible to resist the built in divide and conquer tactic.  Be a fucking moralistic consumer.  Be a reactionary consumer, fuck it all.  It's the way to move government to the common good.

 Did I sing good?  Was I off key?  Did my suit look nice?  Fuck.

Last Night's Poem: Not Having It

Not Having It

when the echoing returns softer

spaced at random

more sober

and less reserved

your car speeds up  by itself

you are past fear of crashing

you fold your legs on the seat and yell ‘weeeeeee’

throw in the sponge

take your hands off the wheel

let ‘er rip

time  kills Zika virus

space kills avian flu

velocity kills the boredom from waiting

for the best in people to return

rudderless

it seems less likely to take hold

the eroding sense of self

takes charge

Can't recall how much I've posted so far....

.....but for purposes of review, and to establish that I thought of this shit at or before the time and day I posted this stuff, for establishing copy rights on a theory and a plan, the meat is that I have been studying and applying Freudian analysis to myself, in the form of recorded spoken word media, and also, I am trying to develop a news and information podcast in which guests and I record, together, a process of analysis, expressly intended to reveal news and information.

Some points I'm playing are that there is a subconscious mind, and that it can be worked with.  Few people believe Freudian analysis is beneficial as therapy, and I don't think so either.  It has been used successfully in the advertising business, notably in booze ads.  My premise is that the psychoanalytical process, recorded, might provide useful news and information from memory.

Freudian News Gathering.  That's one of my projects, based on one of my theories.  More on this soon.

Socially Conscious Poem: Why Intangibles Matter

Why Intangibles Matter

ya’ hafta' hike to the dark side to tangle with it

skeeter repellent on the copper protective process  with tracking device

gladius rubber helmet and mutton chops brass of imported alloys

the tech revolution radiates

the way of intangible scarabs

ya’ hafta imagine emotional strain growing white wings and crooning

rotation of celestial lamp fixture with Tiffany shade

lights  a round of eight ball on junior size table

paid time off from the X-rays

next thing you know, you’re buff

it’s not worth reaching out for

a hot mass of atoms

and they don’t even stay still

naturally everyone installs lead siding on their lux bunkers

who wants to fireproof their catcher’s mitt

and rescue a pocket of fizzled out sparklers?

there ain’t enough fluid in the bucket

to cool a jillion firebrands

studio audience says

don’t go out much

deflect the gamma rays

wear protective honey

Ya’ hafta’ drag out the rule book

worse for wear than the phone book

reach your two Abe Lincolns directly into the barrel

pull out a double armload of dainty old platitudes

visit the play room

an air jet suspends random fundamentals painted on ping pong balls

if the right combination gets hauled down the duct work

bowling pins clatter

air horns play disco

some rustic rides off with a sweetie

back at the ranch

we still have a load of obstructions

rounders won’t earn strong again

the emotional structure is radically changed

the subconscious bypass procedure got infected

mighta’ got Zika

you can’t approach it  logically

l

Breaded Urban Landscapes

It is on the dark side of the moon that ill-proportion staggers into the realm of beauty.  An unnamed franchised fast food restaurant on Smithfield Street was that lunar eating place.  

Laying like a carp on that lumpy,  unlit side of the cosmos,  the importance of coffee swings on it's drip technique cord, pendulous, over the stretched canvas.   Metaphors drip on the Jackson Pollack method picture being made, of people standing in front of me, waiting for food.  Their hips barnstormed neath and over curling i-beams made of silicone.    People had buck teeth.  Beer related largeness.   Drug related complexions.   Goiterama. The museum action came free with a large coffee.  Damn nice deal, daily life.

I'm calling today "International Bad Breeding Day."   Everyone on the planet should thank their lucky stars that everyone doesn't look or act like George Pepard and Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's.  Randomness is a genius.   No one could have made up the picture.  It's gorgeous,here, on the dark side.  Visit often, so not to get too depressed over opulence, elsewhere.

Alternative World Cultures

This wily old galoot went to college a passel of relative time arcs ago, and every cuss that snagged sheepskin had to take a course in world cultures.   Fucking liberal arts requirement, no matter what us dunces and anomies hoped to make of our rusticated, inbred  selves.  

There was this eight hundred pound world cultures guy, Ph.d, and he drummed diversity and exotic modes of thinking into our hides real good.  I'm still to this day picking cognitive shrapnel out of my lower back, from all the heated debates.   And eons forthwith from those piney college discoveries, the very source, the grail, the golden honey dripper held heaven high, dripping honey on people, turns up downtown everyday.  Would you fucking believe it's the 83 bus?

Many a time it hauled, in relative discomfort, my calloused bones through the Hill District.  It's always packed like expensive salmon in a plastic vacuum container, and passengers get hurled around as the bus navigates the narrow winding side streets. It's like conducting a family reunion  inside a cement mixer.    But it provides a better course in world culture than the one I got at college.  Yesterday it had to do with the subject of human relations in a distressed community.  

In the course of a conversation, a young woman explained that she and her sisters all live together, and, her words precisely, "We can't stand each other."  Before that, she was talking about her best female friend, not related to her, who was the one person she could always be nice to.   She and her sisters yell at each other all the time, and it's the way it is.  Some high brow college cretin might start in here with people 'compartmentalizing' their emotional lives, defining boundaries, applying ordinary common sense to a situation  less than ideal, but necessary.  The young woman was both revealing and confirming the clearest representation of a whole course of study.  As usual most people on the 83 bus are more edifying than that dusty college course I had to take.

She had a great deal more to say about both the human condition and her own relationships within it.  Off the cuff she added, "If I don't know someone, they ain't my friend."   I'd heard this credo expressed before, in the Hill, and the irony is that I had to learn exactly that, the hard way, a million times over, in a lot of different places.  All I was doing, at the time was overhearing a conversation on the miserably crowded bus.  And it provided me an affirmation.  I got the news, weather and sports, figuratively speaking. I got the 411. On the 83 bus.  Even numerology comes crashing into the picture.  Collectively, it was and always is a bountiful trip through the Hill.