Green Hell

Guilty Pleasures

   Yeah, fine. You got me. Just call me a bone-smokin' commie. I, too, own a pointy guitar. It needs a fret-job and new strings, but since I didn't pay anything for it (another Bogtrotter gave it to me by way of repaying a loan), you won't hear me whining. 
    It's a no-name axe, but those non-descript-lookin' pickups roar like a rabid bull with his nuts caught in a barbed-wire fence. 
    Thanks to the wife for shooting the photo this morning. Tá grá agam duit, mo mhuirnin. (Although tomorrow, I may very well be sighing "Níl aon tóin tinn mar do thóin tinn fein," or perhaps even "Kiss my Erse." Get it? Yeah, that was a horrible pun, even by my standards. Heh, heh heh....) 



    And speaking of horrid puns, the tui fa line in my last story was one such. The Chinese art of massage is called tui na  or tui fa, which closely resembles the word tuifa, which, in the Okinawan dialect, is the term applied to the weapon called a tonfa in Standard Japanese. 

The Chase is INFINITELY Better Than The Catch (Another Episode in the Perpetually Unfolding Saga of Bill, Dave, and Walpole)

     “I’ve never understood it,” I told the muddy, amber drink; the muddy, amber bottle; the muddy, amber light suffusing the barroom; and Walpole’s muddy, amber face. “People and their fuckin’ goals, I mean. Especially here in the West.”
     He replied with a muddy, amber nod, just as Bill returned from the john. For a moment, I braced myself, half-expecting him to announce that he’d left something muddy and amber in the pot. When held his peace, my relief was as profound as his own.
     “Dave was just sayin’ that he doesn’t understand Western goals, Bro,” Walpole said.
     Like a mildly besotted Atlas, Bill shrugged.
    “So? All kinds o’ shit I don’t understand about the West. Like why, if they’re so fuckin’ concerned about the environment, they gotta move to a Goddamn desert, which means irrigatin’ an’ buildin’ power plants an’ shit. An’ why, if they’re so into solitude, their cities are damn-near crowded as New York.”
     “I think he meant the western world, Bro.”
     “Thank you. That’s exactly what I mean. The whole, goal-oriented, purpose-driven, self-empowering, so-full-of-shit-they-squish-when-they-walk western world. I honestly don’t think al Qaeda hate us for our freedom, boys. I think they hate us for Dr. Phil, Wayne Dyer, Anthony Robbins, and Oprah fucking Winfrey. They’re what I hate us for, at any rate.”
    “ISIS,” Walpole corrected. “Al Qaeda’s old news, Bro. ISIS is the new existential threat to civilization.”
     ‘That’s part of what I’m talkin’ about!” I said. “And who’s gonna be the badguy next week, fer feck’s sake? OSIRIS? ANUBIS? And does ISIS work with a group called SHAZAM on Saturday mornings, by chance? These ridiculous, contrived acronyms are symptomatic of the problem! We’re suffocating under the accumulated mass of our own bullshit! Well I’m sick of it! I say we start our own group! Bellicose, Obstinate Gaels Tenaciously Resisting Overbearing Twats’ Temerarious Efforts at Reeducation and Social Engineering: BOGTROTTERS!”
    “Slainte!” said Bill, on a spray of ebullience and pilsner. His joviality and affection nearly dislocated my shoulder. “Now that’s the Dave I know! Bubba, you done had you a six-year dry spell! I was gettin’ worried.”
     “Me too, man,” said Walpole. “We been shadowing you, in case we had to do, like, an intervention.”
     “Damn Skippy,” Bill added. “We got our people watchin’ ever’ barber shop in town!”
     “No need to worry about that,” I said. “I’ve been living on beer and diet pills since April. And I think it’s over between Veronica and me. Those Virgo/Aquarius matches are doomed from the get-go, you see. It’s all very superstitiously astrological – rather like global warming and feminism.”
     “Told ‘ye them mixed marriages never work,” said Bill.
     “Precisely. That’s why I have my eye on a nice, compatible, Manchurian rabbit.”
     “Would that make her a snow bunny?”
    “Yes. And therein lies the rub – she is good at tui fa, by the way. I suppose she has some Cantonese in the woodpile – even though I only know the Mandarin word for what she does. But that’s neither here nor there. Anyway, Veronica wanted me to start shaving my chest – and my chin. Said I was too hairy. When I tried to explain that I was a goat, she wasn’t having it. Neither was she giving it, if you catch my drift. Hmmm… or perhaps I should say that I was pitching, but she wasn’t catching.”
     “Least she doesn’t have anything catching,” Bill added in an attempt to redirect our attention to the brighter side of perception.
     “Now I am a goat, but I’m a fire goat, you see. A red fire goat. This condition of zodiacal, elemental, and colorific servitude renders me artistic, spontaneous, and quite outspoken when something pisses me off.”
      Bill’s nod of assent was timeless and funerary.
    “This is to say that I’m horny as a billygoat, a smidgen incendiary, and inclined to go red in the face when others’ behavior is egregious enough to violate the moral order of the universe itself.”
    “No shit!” Said Bill, kicking Walpole’s ankle for emphasis. “You shoulda seen him at Megadeth, when he thought they wasn’t gonna play ‘Black Friday.’ It was only this far north o’ butt-ugly, tell you what!”
    “ She, on the other hand, is an earth monkey with a bit of the anole in her. And although I never really noticed it before, because she usually wears her hair long, she has ears like a monkey.”
     “Got lips like a snappin’ turtle, too,” said Bill. “Prob’ly on account o’ her walkin’ around with ‘em pursed, all smug-like.”
     “Funny that you should mention that. I tried to remedy the condition, but she always insists that I lie on my back when she does that. I prefer to have her kneel while I stand, to afford me a better view of the proceedings – and because it’s a dominance thing, and because I read too much John fuckin’ Norman when I was in high school – but she says it’s demeaning. ‘Yeah,’ says I, but when we do it that way, I can use them monkey-lookin’ ears o’ yours like jug-handles.’ That really lodged in her craw – no pun intended.”
     Walpole stared at us in horror.
    Bill nodded and said, “Yeah, buddy. This women’s lib shit is just-plain gettiin’ outta hand. An’ how come folks is so thin-skinned these days?”
     “Well, that’s not all,” I said. I interrupted my narrative just long enough for the waitress to leave a fresh bottle of beer, gave her the once-over as she proceeded to a booth across the room.
     “See-saw butt,” I said.
     “Beg pardon?”
     “See-saw butt: one cheek rises as the other one dips. I wonder if she does that on purpose? And those blue short-shorts make ‘em look like porpoises, after a fashion. Anyway, Veronica made a regular barnacle of herself when Clark had to be institutionalized. Even worse when he self-medicated himself into a first-class ticket on Charon Cruise Lines.”
    “Jaysus, Davey-O! Have some pity!”
    “Oh, I do! You have no idea. Given my own past, I had empathy gushin’ outta my asshole and poolin’ on the overpriced terra-cotta kitchen floor. But then she started gettin’ weird – lettin’ her looks go, gainin’ an’ losin’ weight like a yo-yo, and all that. Even worse, she took to ringing up her mother at all hours of the night, conversing in weird and worrisome whispers. I think the oul’ hag put it into her head that I was responsible, that I’d employed some ancient and hideous Druid cantrip to ensorcel puir Clark to his tragic fate. Got a little tipsy on trendy, Napa Valley wine one night, and asked me point-blank if I practiced the Black Arts. I told her that while I am arguably a noir writer, I was in the middle of a blue period when it came to ticking the canvas’s erogenous zones. Jaysus, the fit she pitched! It was a four-alarm conniption-hiss! Next thing you know, she’s made an Italian living room of the place, with kachina dolls, dream-catchers, crystals, crucifixes, and all that. You know she makes good money, right?”
   Bill and Walpole nodded and sipped in tandem.
   “So one day, she’s on the phone, askin’ someone about importing enough Lourdes water to fill the hot tub. Then she asks a priest to come and bless the swimming pool. And she’s a Protestant, even!”
     “She keeps that shit up, she’s gonna be an institutionalized Protestant,” said Bill.
    “To be sure. But I’m not finished yet. Somehow or another, she pinched some holy water from one church or another, and poured it into my beer when she thought I wasn’t looking. Then she started insisting that I wear this cross.”
    I opened my jacket and tugged at the collar of my t-shirt, by way of displaying the bauble.
     “Then it was asking me to say the Lord’s Prayer – which I did, in English, Latin, and Greek – and demanding that I say aloud that Christ is Lord, that he’d come in the flesh, and all that. But I put my foot down when she took to dragging me into church every Sunday.
     “First off, I have no use for her denomination. Secondly, I’m not at all comfortable tempting fate by going to church in an ongoing condition of sin, it being as what we’re at is quite bad enough, thankee kindly. To be sure, I took a few for the team, but my conscience made a termite of itself every time. Told I her I’d rather not spit in God’s face by fornicating one night, then attending services the next, and that since we weren’t married, it was all fornication. At that point, she went on the defensive, accused me of pressuring her, of taking advantage of her recent bereavement. Got even angrier when I said that it was an observation, not a feckin’ proposal. There’s no mollifying the bitch when she’s spoiling for a donnybrook – all quicksand and spring breezes.”
     “Damn, Bro. What did you do?” asked Walpole.
     “What do you think? I let the little stoat know she’d just badgered the wrong badger. At which point, she becomes a leaky pillar of salt! Went racing upstairs, and-”
     “And you done followed her?” This from Bill.
    “Of course. I could kick myself, too. Now I’m gonna have to wait for the season finale of Game of Thrones to come out on DVD. And if you gents’ll be so forebearing, I’ve gotta play my own ‘Game of Thrones.’ I’m thinking those fried green tomatoes were more green than fried. Back in a sec.”

     When I returned, the clock face peeked at us through frightened, acutely angled fingers. Bartleby had since dropped the blinds, turned off the signs, and expelled all but the regulars.

    “Where was I? Oh, yeah, heading upstairs, I was. Not that I had much of a choice. Had she not wanted me to pursue her, she’d have gone to a motel. And even then, she’d probably have wanted me to pursue her. Women are like that, sometimes. Then she regaled me in robes of woe: she was getting fat, she was getting ugly, she was getting old, she was losing control, and wouldn’t and couldn’t and shouldn’t complain and would understand completely if had an eye for a younger woman, and did I but know the circumstances of her life, I’d understand why she was the way she was.”
     I took a deep gulp of beer.
    “I wasn’t buying that horseshit for a second, mind you. Heard it all before, when I was young, dumb, and fulla cum. Well, in case it still hasn’t occurred to her, I’m neither young nor dumb these days. How feckin’ stupid do they think we are, anyway? I’m after being a marionette, but I was doing my level and charitable best to salvage the situation.
     “Don’t even say it,” I gave. “I dried her cheeks, kissed her like I would my niece after a nightmare, and put her to bed. The differences between them being that my niece is five years old rather than forty-five, doesn’t pretend to sleep when Uncle Dave has chased the boogers and buckaboos away: she really does go to sleep, and she hasn’t the guile to use one nightmare as pretext for generating another. Oh! And I hope it goes without saying that she doesn’t wake me up by….”
   They nodded – but horizontally this time around. And it was both disconcerting and touching to see a Buddhist and a Taoist cross themselves.
   “Peace reigned for a week or two or three, but it was an Augustan peace -- and we were trapped with each other and her prevarication, because the sky itself wept for our souls – and washed out the bridge over Buckley’s Creek. Oh, and I got laid off, temporarily. Seems that some employers have never heard of flextime – poor, hidebound, traditionalist bastards.
     “Anyway, she was Delilah of agreeability that week – if you discount the odd question.”
    “What kind of question, Bro?” asked Walpole.
    “My ancestry, for starters. As if there’s any question about that? Irish and Scottish, for the most part-”
    Bill raised his hand.
    “Yeah?”
    “Did you see this text-message Healy sent me?” he asked.
    “No. Can’t say as I was privy to it,” I replied.
    “Well, he says we look more like North Britons than Gaels.”
    “Did you tell him that several P-Celtic-speaking tribes lived in Ireland for a very long time?”
    “Sure did. That’s when he pissed me off. Congratulated me for being man enough to admit it.”
    “True to form. True to form. Did you explain to him that perhaps those La Tene culture-bearers were the legendary Milesians, and that the black-haired, green-eyed types were the Tuatha de Daanan?”
    “Yessir. Now he’s sayin’ I should look under the hood before I start the car.”
    “Good. That’ll teach him to question our pedigrees, the bastard. Speaking of which, I mentioned that I had a bit of Welsh in me, too. How do you suppose she replied? Made dovey-eyes at me and served me a load of coyly steaming tripe about stealing hearts. Next thing I knew, she was posing as a prospective employer, and obtaining copies of my high school and college transcripts. Have I ever mentioned that few things annoy me more than a clumsy snoop? Then it was the games – all of which were feckin’ IQ tests, fer feck’s sake.”
     “Holy Jodie Foster, Batman!” Walpole exclaimed. “Down with Nazis and eugenics, Bros!”
    “Wasn’t a problem,” I assured him. “Man, was she pissed when she found mine was two or three points higher than hers, though! ‘That’s why you should listen to me,’ says I. ‘I understand the transience of all things material.’”
     “That’s a cheap shot!” said Walpole.
    “No shit. She thought so, too – and served me an even cheaper one in return. How could I say such an awful thing, it being as Clark…?
     “More tears, and more wearin’ the green down to so much overcooked sloke. Didn’t even wait long enough to let me ‘test for echo,’ as it were. That made a five-day-old zit of my suspicions, you see. Of late, we’d been ‘flying without a net,’ her assuring me that given her age and whatnot… Yeah, she’s one of those chicks with ellipses hangin’ off every sentence like dingleberries from a dago’s ass. Gets it from her mother, I think.
    “Well, the shit didn’t hit the fan until I got my credit-card statement the next month. Now I love my beer more than most, and more than is healthy, boys, but even I’ve never been fucked-up enough to spend five-hundred bucks in a fertility clinic without my own knowledge. Seems she’d grabbed mine by mistake – my card, that is. She was grabbin’ my other asset with knowledge and intent.
    “This was before the born-again, Jesus-freak twelve-stepper, of course. Pardon me for getting ahead of myself. I tend to do that when I’m working on m’ own twelve-step program. Did y'all ever notice that twelve multiplied by twelve is a hundred and forty-four? Does this make me a closet Charismatic?”
    “The what?” gasped the antisocial antistrophe.
    “Don’t get all PATRIOT Act on my ass. And does either you know anything about remote viewing, by the way?”  

To be continued

And There Was Much Rejoicing...

     My new, mostest favoritest place in the whole, wide world: Cindy's Herbs, 5209 Buford Highway, Doraville.
     I was out grocery shopping today, when I spotted the sign from the highway and decided to have a look-see at their selection. As you may have gathered by now, I wasn't at all disappointed. Cindy's carries tieh ta wan/dit da yun, zheng gu shui, and damn-near everytihng else a martial artist possessed more of enthusiasm than of discretion could want or need.  

    While I'm on the subject, the herb shop in Great Wall (2300 Pleasant Hill Road, Duluth) ain't bad, either. 
     

Pointy Guitars are Strictly for Bone-Smokin' Commies!

Fender Stratocaster: When you absolutley, positively have to kill every last motherfucker in the room, accept no substitutes. 

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream 'Cause We've Got F***-All Better Uses for Our Time

     FYI

     Lest anyone ask me again...
     
     Yes. "Fookin'" is considerably more obscene/offensive than "feckin'." 

     Attention, Wilkinson:

     So what's it gonna be, dude? Are we gonna call the band "The Rolling Commandos" or "Süperflüöüs Ümläüts?" And are we stilll gonna record the long-deferred Death Metal cover of Tommy Roe's "Sweet Pea"? 

     Anyway.... Since I didn't get to bring my own toys when last we lowered your neighbors' property values, here's my "classic" ("classic" being a euphemism for "Grow up and a get a fuckin'' life, you superannuated Hawkwind wannabe!") effects setup. All stomp-boxes, you'll note. (Rack-mounted effects are the signal-processing equivalent of narcissists -- entirely too fucking delicate to survive more than a few hours in my company.) 
     I'll defer to your judgment when it comes to purchasing another wah, incidentally. Just remember how quickly I destroyed the (appropriately named) Crybaby before you advise. 




     I've saved the worst for (nearly) last: Loath though I am to be the bearer of ill tidings, I've had no luck when it comes to recruiting members for the Stacia Tribute Chorus Line. 
     Imagine my perplexity, by the way.
     "Let me get this straight... You'll show your tits for a string of cheap, plastic beads, but not for the sake of art? And you call yourself an 'intellectual!' Pffft! Vade retro, philistine! Back to the trough with the other convention-bound, materialistic Kapitalistenschweine and their pusillanimous, dissembing notions of hypocritical, nouveau riche, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses morality! What was that? Fuck me? Fuck you, bitch!" 
     On the positive side, however, I have learned to sprint whilst shielding my genitalia with both hands. That's gotta be one for the Guinness Book of World Records. Which leaves me wondering who's managed to set the world record for Guinness-consumption.   

AD&D: Nanny-Nanny-Boo-Boo!

     If gloating is indeed the mark of a small person, I suppose I could have a piss on the edge of a dime -- lying flat. 

     A couple of weeks ago, I was raiding my favorite used bookstore, in search of something to impulse-buy with the ten bucks a week Margarita (who apparently spent far too much time jiggling her beads in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Blessed Parsimony during her formative years) magnanimously allows me to spend. 

   Shopping in used bookstores is generally a hit or miss proposition -- the selection consists entirely of trash or entirely of treasure, it seems, with no happy medium between the two. 

    The latest foray, though, was unquestionably a hit. 

    There, staring me in the face (for which I flipped it off and said, "Take a picture, motherfucker! It'll last longer!") was a not-quite mint (note the wear at the edges of the binding) 1979 printing of the 1st Edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide. 
     The best part? 
     I scored it for a quarter -- and by that, I don't mean that I traded the clerk a quarter-ounce of "the Devil's lettuce." I mean that I got it for twenty-five cents. 

   Pretty sweet, nicht wahr? 

Updated Reading List

    Today's the wife's birthday, and we're celebrating with crab legs and Grade-B horror movies. (Anything featuring summer camps, giant arthropods, and makeup that looks suspciously like it came from an old Pressman "Monster Magic" kit.) No time for ranting. Instead, I'll post my updated reading list. 

Trapped in the Mirror: Adult Children of Narcissists in the Struggle for Self – Elan Golumb
Justinian’s Flea: The First Great Plague and the End of the Roman Empire – William Rosen
Way of the Samurai – Mishima Yukio
The Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America – Howard K. Philips
Showdown: Why China Wants War With the U.S. – Jed Babbin*
Hard Sayings of Jesus – F.F. Bruce
The Two Cultures and A Second Look: An Expanded Version of The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution – C.P. Snow
Sounds of the Passion: Meditations on Jesus’s Journey to the Cross – David M. Owen
The Republic – Plato
The New Thought Police: Inside the Left’s Assault on Free Speech and Free Minds – Tammy Bruce
National Museum: Sculpture – Bronzes – Vases – Basil Petrakos
Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality – Anthony de Mello
Atlas of the Ancient World – Christopher Fagg
Dynamics of Faith – Paul Tilllich
Existentialism – Mary Warrnock
One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture is Eroding Self-Reliance – Christina Hoff-Summers
unspun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation – Kathleen Hall Jamieson
The Control Freak – Les Parrott
The Politics – Aristotle
Chinese Yoga: Alchemy and Immortality – Charles Luk
Acupressure Techniques: A Self-Help Guide – Julian Kenyon
The Art of Greece and Rome – Susan Woodford
Christianity and Culture and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture – T.S. Eliot
The Lords and The New Creatures – Jim Morrison
The Grand Miracle  -- C.S. Lewis
Around the Wicket Gate: Help for Those Who Only Know About Christ – Charles H. Spurgeon
The Twelve Caesars – Suetonius
The Complete Odes and Epodes With The Centennial Hymn – Horace
Charismatic Chaos – John F. MacArthur
The Satires and Epistles of Horace – Horace
Myths of the Greeks and Romans – Michael Grant
The Ancient City: A Study of the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome – Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges
On the Nature of Things (De Rerum Natura) – Lucretius, trans. Anthony Esolen
The Civilization of Rome – Donald R. Dudley
The Roman War Machine – John Peddie
Sex, Literature, and Censorship – D.H. Lawrence
The Nature of the Gods – Cicero

*This one was dreadful. The author took a very real concern, and spun it into an absurd, neocon fantasy. I include it only as a cautionary tale, the moral being that it doesn’t pay to put too much stock in prophets and pundits.

     And (of course) the “Injured-List Playlist.” Dedicated to the blue-and-white Kachina.  (It’s an inside joke.)  

“I Am the Storm” -- Blue Oyster Cult
“Black Juju” -- Alice Cooper
“Black Magic” – Slayer
“Elric (The Enchanter) – Hawkwind
"Nightmare: The Dreamtime"-Motorhead
Psi Power -- Hawkwind

Grrr.

     My own blog has risen against me.

     For some incomprehenisble reason, the rant I meant to post a few minutes ago has opted to italicize itself without my consent. 

Lest We Forget

     Today marks the 717th anniversary of the overwhelming Scottish victory at Stirling Bridge.

     Alba gu brath!