Right-wing celebrity Bastards!

This morning, I had breakfast with my grandmother. She supported and worked phones for John Kerry in 2004. She's reticent about Barrack Obama, and expressed the opinion this morning that she thought John McCain impressed her. She's around 90, and previously referred to him as "John McClaine"- I doubt she's seen any "Die Hard" movies, but I worry about our country's future. I watched the debate, and Jim Lehrer was terrible as moderator- an ass I say! Obama was more composed, and a far better orator, no surprise, than McCain. The Senator from Arizona made many clumsy ham-handed cheapshots, gaffes, and references to Reagan than I could keep track of. He's no Reagan, just as Gov. Palin's no Hillary, not that I want her to be. Maybe he wouldn't be as terrible as George W. Bush, but that's giving him the benefit of a doubt, after eight years of wanting to gouge out my eyes, and move to a democracy.

Pray For Susan Hudgins

Some big dude came up to me in a sketchy local parking lot, this evening, to hit me up for change. I knew this from the start, it's one of those spots where this is a local nuisanse. The guy put out his hand to shake and squeeze mine! I hate this macho gesture, it doesn't intimidate me, so I squeezed back. He went into this patter about he wasn't going to lie to me, which is the con that never should work. I was rolling my eyes, and digging for the two quarters in my pocket to put him off my scent. I hand it to him, to cut off his sob story, as I usually do, not that I like to encourage begging. It might shut him up, and that would be worth four bits. I didn't want his sob story, which he gave me anyway, he was fresh from the pen, as he claimed, and hungry. Shit, I should have kept my money, rather than give it to a criminal with bad teeth. I could have given it to the crippled vet accross the street rather than an ex-con, of all people! Well I got shook-down for fifty cents, and what good does it do to beg for money in this world, if it dries up the empathy in charitable souls?

I have another blog, you ghosts might want to look at, it's byrownpet@livejournal.com check a later post if that link doesn't work. I tried to post on coming the other way, and it didn't work.

Electric Company Boogaloo

Today I saw a traditionally outfitted Jewish man (Hassidic? I don't know) with the hat, curly sideburn things ( feel free to post a tip on what they're called, I have read the Torah and a little about Kaballah, Kafka, etc., and am open-minded, imho- I mean no offense) and all black outfit, carrying an infant in diapers while talking on a cell phone. It was at a small shopping mall in Richmond, Va, so this was unusual, for me, but charming like a artful photo in "Life" magazine. I almost said, "By golly! What the heck is that?" and had the chaw drop from my puckered lips, not unlike the little bird I'd been whittling at my seat outside the Starbucks, from my sunburned, chapped hands. We southern folk just can't find the time to moisturize, proper-like.



On a completely different note, I have to say Target stores really have the right idea pimping "Spidey" related merchandise. I picked up a pen that not only lights up when you write, not only has a stamp of "Spidey", not only can be used to inject insulin to diabetics, it also has a bubble wand, with soap bubble stuff in the stem of the pen. And it only cost a dollar! If I were six, this would have wasted twice as much of my time as it did yours, for reading this, or maybe not. I have purchased a few other "Spidey" brand products over the years from Target, most notably the coin bank shaped like his iconic masked head of this costumed fictional character. I loved him as a kid, and dutifully read comic books about him and ate "Spidey" brand sugar confections at every opportunity, but that sugar rush wore off, sadly. I wouldn't pay to read of the wall-crawler's convoluted adventures these days, but I remain drawn to the brand, the icon, the kitsch and the big screen adaptations, minus the dance in #3. As ritual, I drop pennies into the bank shaped like his head at the end of the day, as I empty my pockets, and acidly taunt, "Penny for your thoughts, Spider-Guy?" Usually, I suppose his empty head is noting how some corporate douchebags are exploiting him, and how it sucks to have no recourse for litigated recompenesation, license rights, cereal box picture approvals (just imagine him taking a dump, with the lower half of his costume around his ankles, sadly slurpng from a bowl of Count Chockula).

nuff said

This ad attacking Obama for being friends with this Weather Underground Ayers guy is lame. It makes me like Obama more really. I'd rather have this country run by a man who isn't afraid of radical dissent, like most our founding fathers.

I've been reading lots about the people who created our United States, and more about American civics than most of us bother with after high school. Quite a few of our founding fathers would have likely associated with people like the Weathermen, had they existed as contemporaries. I'm referring to Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, Sam Adams- all men much admired today, for being the eighteenth century's equivalent of today's radicals. Doubtless, had Ben Franklin lived in the nineteen-sixties, he would have rubbed shoulders with Weathermen, Black Panthers, communists, yippies,free speech advocates, civil rights activists. I couldn't imagine any man or woman of strong ideas and convictions he'd avoid, or worry about his reputation for the association. In Jack Fruchtman Jr.'s American Cousins, Franklin is portrayed as a forward-thinking and great man, who associated freely with these kinds of people- abolitionists, revolutionaries, free-thinkers and men of radical ideas. That I admire, and the current presidential candidate for the Democrats for the same reason. McCain used to seem like he could be one of those types of people, back when he was proud to be called the maverick. I might have voted for that guy, but not this dopey W.-clone who doesn't even know how many houses he owns. If I were him, I don't think I'd need to add the white house.

Lately I've been reading a book about the U.S. citizenship test, which has all the questions that you might be asked, if you weren't lucky enough to have been born here like me. I'd have passed, I didn't find a question I couldn't answer, even though I think they usually only ask a few of the easier ones to most folks. I've worked with a few legalized immigrants over the years, and I don't think any of them had the english skills to answer more than a fraction of them. These are Cambodians, a Vietnamese guy(who is really stupid and annoying, not because he's Vietnamese, I should say), and Bosnians. They all have friends and family that want to immigrate here, I'm passing on the book to them, when I finish the appendices tomorrow. The questions have a lot of follow-up material that explain and put things into context, but besides some presidential trivia that would be useful watching Jeopardy, it's stuff I knew already. Thanks, largely to Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. This book should be mandatory for anyone who registers to vote, but only in a better world. Even though people would still vote Republican in that one anyway.

My brother is helping me get a scanner/all-in-one, so hopefully soon I'll have pictures and other multimedia, for all none of you that will probably ever notice. I have a video camera, but you can easily find more interesting v-content elsewhere. For instance, "Hell-bent for Election" on YouTube. Prosit!

At Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, VA, you can have your picture taken with a tiny owl, perched on your finger. My brother did this yesterday, and got several prints, including wallet-sized and a keychain. Andy Warhol would have loved this, I'm sure. Before my brother in line was a little girl with a cast on her wrist, upon which the owl obligingly posed for the camera. The cast was pink, and it was easily the cutest thing to see in the world, my head almost exploded. I wish you could have been there too, if only to have seen your head explode, as well.

Williamsburg is home to William & Mary College, where James Branch Cabell once studied. He's the author of 50 books, and was once notorious for his novel, "Jurgen"- sorry, that should be underlined, as is proper for a book title, but then again, the book was scandalous, when it was published in 1919. It's full of sexual innuendoes, which offended some Boston librarianesses, but it's not vulgar, really, and I don't understand how it wasn't attacked for its blasphemy, which is cavielier and witty, which is typical of Cabell.

He had a house around the corner from me, and I love his books, which are now obscure. In the 1920's, he was a household name, and it was a kick for flappers to tell you they read his books, that branded you as a sort of rebel. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald were fans, and Cabell was singled out by H. L. Mencken as the only southern-based writer he didn't think sucked, which is typical of yankee lit sophisticates at the time, but consider James Thurber's short "Bateman Comes Home"- Cabell was a writer with imagination, style and talent, far beyond the turgid cliches of the sleepy, sultry South.

Thurber as well must have read Cabell, referencing his fictional Poictesme in his very funny "My Life and Hard Times". Poictisme is the setting for several of Cabell's novels, and it's pronounced "Paw-tem", but the author outgrew the fictional setting, and wrote several novels set in Florida, and elsewhere. He died in the fifties, and was buried in Richmond's Hollywood Cemetarey

Jason Hemulin

Yesterday this truck driver Nat told me about his daughter taking up the drums, in his footsteps. She's 16, and posts on youtube, and man was it cool and refreshing to here Nat gush about his daughter. He's a really interesting guy, and easily my favorite person to work and interact with at my job at Brass Beds of Virginia. He grew up in Richmond's Oregon Hill neighborhood, which was immortalized in a Cowboy Junkies song, look it up. He's told me some great stuff over the years, less recently about Schwinn's line of Stingray bicycles, from the 60's and 70's, also look that up. His daughter posts as "flyleafer4life" and don't you forget, she's only 16, and furthermore, she could probably kick your ass, the way Nat tells it. She rocks.

Earlier this week I finished Tove Jansson's "Moomin" book series, which was a pip- some great children's lit, from Scandanavia. English translations are in print, and well worth seeking, unless you don't read, or only read crap like 'beach" lit bestsellers. These are charming and funny books, unless the inner child in you is on a milk carton, basically.

Oh! I must recommend the Soviet propaganda cartoon "Oil, War, and Hypocrisy" from the 1940's- it's also on youtube, and a bit mind-blowing, if you keep up with current international events, i.e. the war on terrorism, Russia's aggression in Georgia, and whatever else. Like a strange ctritique of U.S. non-intervention in the 1930's, only this was produced after WWII, apparently.

Admittedly, I need to make this blog more interesting to the eye, and will work on this, and figure out how to make links to other sites to keep stoking the fires of attention deficit disorder sufferers, at the very least. I've eyed an all-in-one machine or two at Office Depot I could afford, which could help me scan, paste , etc. recently. I'm below any sort of radar, for the forseeable future, so for now, this is a red dress press, and I'm a Patty, alas.

monkey + typewriters

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