Mud

Sorry I haven’t posted much lately, but if I’m not out canvassing, I’m repairing the plaster walls upstairs in the shack next door. I don’t know why they only used a scratch coat. It could be the house was built during, or shortly after the panic of 1873, because it does roughly correspond to that period. In my humble architectural opinion, they should have pitched a tent and waited till they could afford to accumulate more sticks and rocks.

Maybe I’m just grousing because the place currently reeks of squirrel piss. I’m hoping that will diminish when I replace the rotted sleepers with hewn cedar beams; but then again, it will probably just smell like someone’s squirrel cage.

plaster dislodged by moisture and SQUIRRELS

another view of SQUIRREL damage

At any rate, I’ll be spending the next couple of weeks breathing dust from drywall joint compound while we watch the new great depression take hold like a case of clap.

And here we are

Call the cows to John Knowles?

We were canvassing for about six hours today, and now I’m just beat, and drunk. This song always comforts me, even though I haven’t got the slightest idea what it means. I’ve posted this thing so many places, I’m going to have to start paying Joanna royalties.

It was actually good out there today, even heartening. But I have to say I’m grateful I was never a city postal carrier, because I would have been one malicious bastard in the long run.

Suggested Title?

I’ve been trying to come up with a title for this picture. i think the subtext is the comical futility of the human enterprise, but that won’t fit in the bar I made for the traditional italic text used in old seafaring pictures. At first I thought “Cowboy can’t whale” would do it, since I gave the whalemen Stetsons, and then I was going with “A parable of the Bush Administration”, but I don’t want to be reminded of that constantly while I finish this up.

Here’s one of the working sketches:

And a couple of details (sorry about that flash):

Neat.

I’ve been sequestering a few sacred moments from my strangely busy life to make something interesting for anyone who’s currently reading, but interesting to me might not be quite interesting for you. This might be an indication of  abject philistinism on my part, or fortunate enculturation, i.e., elitism on yours. At any rate, I’m about to have a hot bath and heave my sorry ass into bed. Good night. Pictures Friday.

Goosetages

These two don't bite: They only love

Here’s a couple of our elder geese. A mating pair, in fact. We’ve had geese for several years now, and I really couldn’t tell you why, except they are occasionally amusing. I guess it makes up for them producing their own volume in shit on a daily basis, the biting, and the savage beatings they can give you during laying season.

The eggs are very nice for an omelette, if you can locate the nest and brave the hormone infused monsters guarding it. I have learned that you don’t want to let them get hold of any of your appendages, because they will work them back to the point of their beak where the fulcrum is strongest, and begin tearing your fingers, or whatever, to bloody ribbons.

They are also very loud, a condition abetted by that echo chamber some of them sport on top of the beak. Apparently that’s a very old system, dating from the time when they were 120 times their current size, covered with scales, and denuding the earth of primitive trees. It helped them report their location to other groups of animals who’d covered areas the size of Rhode island with a six foot deep crust of feces. I’ve lain awake many nights, listening to them gurgle and honk, and wonder why people still believe in God.

I guess they don’t have geese.

The royal march

I was looking through various versions of this, because I was convinced I had some point to make. After looking at several films based on some dork conducting this piece, I found one that showcased the talents of the trumpet player.

This kid is going places.

Gut the fuckers

The casual effrontery of these people is sickening. How about socializing the profit instead. Take their damned financial institutions and fucking trophy houses and plant a flag. They owe us.
And how about Bush and Cheney rotting in a jail, along with Paulson for even suggesting this heap of shit.

We are dying

But it’s OK, everyone dies. It’s just so strange to me how everyone bought into it. Like we weren’t individuals, but members of a cult. A cult that is now scraping the bones of exigency, where in the recent past, there was plenty.

Arthur

I think the first inkling I ever had of my own dissolution was when the hospital called my mother and told her Arthur was dead. He was her stepbrother, and he was an excruciatingly gentle person. His back was recurved in such a way he had to turn himself to talk to you, and you had to bend in to hear him speak. Like a lot of my mother’s family, he had a large,  awkward looking head, but it was always carefully canted to you when you were talking to him. He was one of those people you immediately identify as trustworthy. He hung his life on Insurance.

There was a small noise from the back of her throat. A sort of click. She put the phone back on the cradle and went to bed. We had to help dress her for the funeral.

He’d  essentially subbed for her father after her old man alienated her by routinely beating her with whatever household implements lay at hand. The old man beat all of the children: there were no particular favorites.

Arthur most resembled his sister Helen. The photographs of her from high school show an unusually pretty, alert woman. Arthur was also handsome, but his shoulders had already started to fall in the professional photographs he had taken to promote himself as an insurance salesman. They both relinquished their beauty early, and clung to the heartless jerk who destroyed them, even helping him through his dotage.

I remember a dull, stupidly hot day , when I was four or five, sitting by the driveway of our house when Arthur pulled up in his sedan. He slept in the car for a minute or two after it coasted to a stop. Then he began the slow process of getting himself out. Now I’m old , and I think back on his movements, he must have been in nearly intolerable pain.  He opened the rear passenger door and grabbed a couple comic books and handed them to me. “You can color these, if you want.  Your momma home?” We both laughed. My momma’s ass was always home. Cleaning everything from the  sick linoleum to the refrigerator fans with a fucking toothbrush. And then scanning the TV for Paul Lynde.