By Popular Demand (sort of) The Fabulous Ferd!

 

Since we started this blog about one year ago, we have introduced you to the ignoble character of Ferd.

While we are told we could not make such a person up if we tried, we often wonder why we would try.

 

Here you see a photo of the man, himself, drunken – on our money, as usual – on strawberry drinks at ChiChi’s, the once popular chain of ‘mexican’ restaurants.

Personally, we do not know how that chain lasted as long as it did, as to me no restaurant can call itself truly ‘mexican’ unless they have tamales on the menu.

ChiChi’s, coincidentally, is the only place where Your Humble Narrator ever worked in food services. That was enough.

 

So, about Ferd…what do we say, how do we explain?

First, let it be known that he has known Your Narrator since the tender age of eight years old. He remembers things that have vanished. He validates our (my) childhood by being the only other person who can remember it.  A year older, he claims he met Your Narrator at the Egypt Playground in the sandbox, when we threw sand on him

at age seven. It has been pretty much the same ever since.

 

We also went through quite a few psychedelic experiences together, even having had the same hallucination at the same time.

We believe this psychedelic connection formed a bond between he and we (the editorial we, as explained in The Big Lebowski by The Dude), as evidenced by the way we came into contact with him after 18 years of not seeing him.

An annnoying jackass was sending me drivel that he called a novel about his time in the US Navy. He sent me some every other day and thought it to be amusing but, as with many writers, he produced useless crap. His useless scribblings being about the Navy reminded us of the box of letters received from Ferd during his time on the high seas. One day, we dug out the box and looked at one letter. It was funny and showed a sense of style and humour which have long since been given up to the dementia of what is known as a ‘wet brain’.

Anyway, that very night we had a dream, a dream that Ferd was in some kind of trouble. It was not Ferd in the dream. The image was of Your Narrator, standing in a doorway, sweating. We knew it was Ferd, even though it looked like us. That is how dreams are.

It did pique the curiousity, however, and after 18 years we decided to look Ferd up…which is not too hard. We took to the internet and after finding a few embarrassing news articles which found him involved in strange behaviour, we procured the address and phone number.

Upon calling the number, we were greeted by the long-unheard voice of Ferd.  He was stinking drunk and had no idea who we were. We tried to make sense to him, until a shrill voice shouted from the background, “If you do not get off of that phone right now, I am leaving this minute!’…whereupon the phone was hung up on his end.

Imagining this to be a singular event, we tried the call the next day. Still drunk, we felt his mind reel over the wire. Then, using a phrase that was shared between only he and we, we managed to startle him into a brief moment of cognizance…”Mike…?” He sputtered. “Ferd!” We replied, to which he countered, “I had a dream about you the other night, you were standing in a doorway!” Amazing but true, how the common bond formed by the use of the funny stuff kept us so connected after so many years.

So, we made plans to get together and picked up our association with each other. He is too stupid to be a friend, so he says we are his ‘friend’ and we say, ‘He is our Ferd.’

 

When this blog started it had a slightly different title, which was Celebrating 50 Years of Substance Abuse. An opportunity showed itself, a while back, to see what LSD had become in the 21st Century and also to be able to achieve tripping over the course of four decades, just to be able to say so. We can tell all of the parents out there not to worry if their child has taken the acid of today. It is as weak as a baby kitten. We paid $20 a hit for what was called ‘triple-dipped’ blotter and had high hopes of a happy high.

Since Ferd had tripped with us a minimum of 400 times, we figured it best to employ him in the test of today’s intoxicants.

Not having used such stuff since the 1990s and way before the death of our parents, it was with a small bit of trepidation that we suggested to Ferd that we retire to our house to try the stuff. We arrived and, since it was supposedly ‘triple-dipped’, took a half a dose each. In the 1990s, a quarter dose of a single tab would be enough to elicit euphoric blissfulness.

We swallowed it and sat on the sofa, listening to Bob Dylan while watching him on Youtube. We started to feel a little ‘sproingy’ in the joints, that rubbery feeling in the elbows and knees, like there is great power there trying to take over us.

We didn’t feel much else, to be honest, and the whole affair seemed pretty mundane until the moment Ferd spoke.

“Opie got in trouble with his bike on the sidewalk,” he offered.

“What???,” we queried him, “the fuck are you talking about?”

“You know,” came his voice from his dazed haze, “When that rich kid told Opie it was okay to ride his bike on the sidewalk and he got in trouble with Barney.”

Incredulous, we thought about that last statement, until it dawned on us, “You are talking about the Andy Griffith Show? From the 1960s?…and you expect me to know what you are talking about.”

“Well, you know,” he countered, “Barney told him not to go on the sidewalk…”

Waves of laughter finally rolled over us, just like in the old days. Ferd sat there, uncomfortably wondering what was so funny. Everytime we stopped laughing and looked at him, we started involuntarily guffawing. It went like that for a couple hours. Everytime, we stopped laughing, we thought of Barney and the laughter returned, while Ferd sat – literally - twiddling his thumbs. It still makes us smile but it was also a sad moment because that was when we realized that the wet brain had affected Ferd to the point that he was no longer ‘with it’. He had gotten old in his mind. He had become the very thing we used to make fun of, with his beer-belly and tv addiction.

Having undertaken numerous attempts to bring him into this century, we finally gave up. We spoke to a shrink about it, who told us that Ferd was ‘demented’. Laughing out loud when the doctor spoke the word, we drove immediately to the home of Ferd to treport the findings.

“I am NOT demendet,” he insisted. His inability to say the word properly resulted in even more laughter and this was weeks or months after the Opie Incident. Since then, he asks regularly how to spell ‘demendet,’ so he can look it up and see if he really is. We do not give him that satisfaction.

 

One thing to consider here is that Ferd is probably the only person we know who we can post a photo of on the internet and he does not care. He does not have the internet. We created an email address for him and encourage him regularly to get a PC from the Veterans Administration or go to the library, even if it is just to watch videos of Bob Dylan or Barney. We tell him that we write about him but he is unphased. He does not care.

That is typical of Ferd, as one thing we can say on a positive note, is that he has never been known to do harm to anyone. He is pretty much incapable of being mean. He is too dumb. We will tell him we wrote this and posted his photo and he will blow it off like yesterday’s fish and chip papers. At least he remains himself and maintains his own character – which is a lot more than we can say for most people these days.

Bullies and Insults and Bears, Oh My!

     Interested Entities,

     It seems like the national anti-bullying campaign is still gaining steam.  It has nothing to do with Beatdom, the cool literary journal pictured.  I couldn’t find a good bully photo fast enough so it seemed to make sense to remind you all to get your copy of the Beatdom Sex Issue, which features some fine writing, including a few pieces by Your Narrator.

     However, with all the anti-bully rhetoric floating around, we cannot ignore that a large number of readers are brought here by searching on ‘insult,’ due to a recent post.  As an insult maven who sharpened his teeth on gritty replies as early as the second grade, this is found to be an encouraging sign…people are interested in insulting each other again.

     First, let it be known that, as an adult, Your Beloved Scribe, myself that is, only insults people I like.  An insult can be used a little term of endearment…a psychic poke in the ribs.  As far as people who are not liked, they are better off ignored and the insults saved for better subjects.

     One recent blog here noted how ‘insult cards’ were once available at magic and novelty shops.  These were meant to get laughs on stage when your magic trick went wrong, we reckon, but personal use of them was limited to siblings and schoolmates.  One great moment, never to be forgotten, was finding a copy of 1001 Insults For All Occasions in the adult section of the Whitehall Library, in Whitehall, PA.  As a bad kid, reading and writing were the only redeemable values going for me.  By fifth grade, the children’s section was exhausted.  All the Henry Huggins,  Beezus and Ramonas and other serials had been exhausted.  My perception level was not subtle enough to appreciate adult novels but the non-fiction section was a big draw for me.  At that time, in the mid-60s, the library had maybe a half dozen books of insults.

     Needless to say, they were all devoured voraciously.

     There are many resources available to us today, for insulting people all around the world.  My close friend and publisher, who spent a lot of time dealing with Korean insults, may appreciate the following.  I think it is nice to have a site that allows you to annoy foreigners, for a change.  www.insults.net will help you swear in dozens of languages.

     This is what they give you to go up against the Koreans in a battle of words:

How do I swear in Korean ?

Ssibal-seki /
Samanes-seki            - Son of shit
eemee sheemee pek 
     poejee dah         - your mother has a bald pussy
Geseki                  - Son of a bitch

Yumago                  - fuck you

shibseki                - bitch, whore etc.

Ko-chu-pado             - suck my dick

Kochu                   - dick
Dong-mogo               - eat shit

K-sa-key                - bitch

She-pa-nom              - No exact translation but bad
Ja - shick              - You are a bastard.

     This is how they do it in Korea.  As you can see, they are not exactly a well-thought-out style of insult.  These are more like the type of insult you holler out of a car window.  You do not see much of that, anymore, either.  In younger years, one could not be seen in public, walking hand-in-hand with a girl, without some moron driving by and yelling out the car window, “Fuck her! I did!!!”

     You just don’t see this much anymore.

    

Facebook – Friends and Enemas, Part II

     Gentle Readers,

     Since so many of you were interested in the subject of the last blog and, since Your Humble Narrator had a nasty virus, we shall pick up where we left off – with poor, pissed-on Wankie and his appearance on the ‘friends’ pages of the same people who stole his car, poisoned him and pissed on his noggin.

     First, you will notice that today’s photo is one of a public library.  This is not the library I grew up with…this is just a library I happen to have a picture of.  It is the Reading, Pa., Public Library in the center of the city.  I have the photo because it is the first time I ever held a protest sign.  That is me, behind the sign with the Converse Chuck Taylors sticking out from beneath it.  I had two libraries as a child, a great one in Whitesboro, NY, which used to be an Underground Railroad station which had secret tunnels for hiding slaves; my other library in Whitehall, PA, was an excellent one, too,  since it was a brand new building and had tons of new material and a huge kid’s section.  This was the library where Your Narrator first threw up as a result of nicotine overload at age ten.

     When vomiting, you are pretty helpless.  Locked in that bright, well-lit library lavatory, spewing the broth with the librarian rap, rap, rapping on that door,  the puking was private until the door was opened by my ghostly form, sweaty and white as sun-dried bone.  It is best to be left alone in one’s misery.  Do Unto Others, as they say.

     So, that being said, mostly by way of ADHD-fueled diversion,  it was never my pleasure to see anybody suffer, aside from siblings when growing up.  My old man was a boxer in the US Marine Corps divisional matches.  My brother was a master of martial arts, Black Belt in Judo, Karate and Martial Arts Weaponry, all.  Much of this writer’s childhood was spent hiding from some bigger, older kids who were always rumored to be ‘after him’.  The urge to hurt others never took seed in me.  On the other hand,  my father and brother never got laid very much (judging by their childlike unfamiliarity with the sex act) and it is better to be a lover than a fighter, anyway.

     The kids who chased me were usually two or three years older, in high school and short…short as in sawed-off, as in runt.  Over six feet tall going into the seventh grade,  the target was on my back.  The library was devoid of this type of juvenile as well as most all the kids who went to school with me.  None of them cared much about reading.  Even in high school, only one or two were anywhere near approaching the state of ‘book smart’.  The library was sanctuary.  The outsider behaviour came early to me.  My friends were books and my dog, the ever-faithful Gus.

     But that is okay, since being an outsider kept me away from most scenes like the one described in the previous blog.  However, let us revisit that behaviour and ponder a few things.

     What real joy do we get from pushing somebody to the limits, using the most uncivilized behaviour?  Worse yet, how do we still find joy in incidents which openly point to our own depravity?  How do you find joy in what would be dubbed ‘torture’ if it were performed in Gitmo Bay?  We all do irresponsible things as youths but isn’t it a bit sick to revel in them forty years later when, as adults, we should own our actions in the name of either Karma, Christ or culpability?

     Worst of all, how do you ‘friend’ a person who has poisoned you and urinated on your shag hair cut?  How do you see the faces of people who stole your car, your weed, fed you treefrogs while hungover, laughed the whole time – how do you send a message to ask them to be your ’friend’?  Of course, we have always let bygones be bygones but some things are too warped to be bygoned.  Is it short memory?  Is it a desperate attempt to hold onto your school days?  Is it proof that the drugs in the 1970s were really that good and so such incidents are seen through a warm and dreamy haze of comfortability?    

     When queried as to why Wankie appears on the ‘friends page’ of these guys, they patently denied it…which was stupid since he was right there on the screen, in alphabetical  order.  When it was pointed out that they had to manually accept him as a ‘friend’ for his profile to show up there, it always seems to have been an accident.  “How did he get in there,’ they ask aloud. 

     Many of these guys married early, made homes, got taken by their ex-wives and are starting over.  Some of them hate women because of the grief caused by premature marriages which gutted any hope of an exciting future and bank accounts gutted by exes who got tired of coming home to hear the strains of Genesis drifting out of the windows.

     Can you get therapy for things like this? Certainly if you are the pissee as opposed to the pisser,  the need for therapy is probably a personal thing that begs to be answered in the recesses of the mind of the put-upon.  What kind of therapy do you give adults who still find this sort of stuff to be funny?  That is the real question.

     These days, ‘bullying’ is a big issue.  Considering the way kids acted when we grew up, the ‘bullying’ of today is small potatoes.  Kids need a certain amount of denigration to put them in place.  It toughens them up for the world of Facebook.

Still Legal But K2 Users Bluffed By Media

     A Happy New Year to all you people who enjoy reading this stuff. We have tried to amuse you in 2010 and hope we can hold your interest in the months and years ahead.

     Today we have the picture of the sexy librarian. Librarians are as sexy as it gets, since they have the power to ‘shush’ you but there is more to it than a fine finger pressed against pursed lips, warning you to shut up. Librarians are sexy because of what they know. They like banned books. They are often political and active in the community and in just plain life. They help breed that vanishing quantity…intelligence.

     What does being sexy in the stacks have to do with the consumption of intoxicants, one may ask. The access to knowledge is powerful. Take the K2-JWH thing. The newspapers, radio, television and internet were abuzz with news about how the dangerous and soothing substance was banned as of December 24. In the meantime, it is still legal and probably will be, at the very least, until Congress convenes on January 6.

     The newspapers lie. The internet lies. The news channels lie. The networks lie…take CBS, for instance…they make a ton, literally wheelbarrows full of cash from Pfizer, manufacturer of Robitussin. In April of 2009, Pfizer spent over $6.2 million just on cash handouts to the folks you elected to make the laws in DC. They will spend over a trillion dollars, by conservative estimates, by the end of this decade, assuring that things like medical marijuana or smokable herbal remedies are illegal and kids are ‘robo-tripping’ by guzzling the hallucinogenic cough syrup.

     Some kids build little ‘stills’ to extract the groovy juice and ingest it. Many get very violent. I personally know a twenty year old girl, a lovely child I watched grow up, suck down the robo until she was so whacked that she attempted murder. Now she sits in a state prison, her son lost to the system, her life a shambles…but Pfizer is sure to turn a profit this year. The next biggest spender of lobbyist dollars in DC is General Electric, gee, what a coincidence…General Electric, which runs the huge military/industrial complex President Eisenhower warned us about, also owns NBC and, consequently, NBC News!

     The two biggest ruiners of life in the country have the highest profiles by running their own communications networks and feeding us any news they want to concoct and people worry about Fox News? I watch the news from Asia and the BBC. They have a bit less of the old brainwash mixed in.

     CBS is especially hypocritical. My favorite american tv show is The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Craig is the most hip and intellectual talking head in the business. He can talk literature, comedy, philosophy and the arts. He often likes to hold forth on the topic of substance abuse and addiction. It seems he was hooked for about ten years. Well, Craigy, I hate to say it but so was ninety per cent of everybody who went to high school in the 1970s. You are really not so special, in your short run at addiction, although you play it for laughs with the gusto of a William S. Burroughs, who was an actual needle-using addict for decade upon decade and never went soft and said it was a bad idea.

     Anyway, if Craig really stood for his convictions about how drugs ruin youth, he ought to put his foot down about that Robotussin commercial they play when he goes to commercial break. Sure, it would be cutting his own throat but he would have what he claims he has now – self-respect…well, he often claims to have none, really, but that is his charm. We love Craig, wimp or not.

     The point here is…maybe in the New Year ahead, Gentle Readers, we can all expand our earthly knowledge by looking into things closely and not living off of sound bytes that the Illuminati want us to hear. Let us open the documents which the reports are based on, like we opened The Federal Register to find out that K2 and JWH are still wholly and completely legal in most states while we have all been told that they have been illegal for a week.

     In other words, we need to step out of the herd and stop being hapless sheep. Don’t count on organizations like NORML or the Willie Nelson Party. NORML has not done very much since it’s inception in the 1970s. Look at the statistics… less people got arrested before NORML. I have also yet to hear of a NORML victory. From what I witnessed in my brief affiliation with the organization, two out of the three chapters in my state are useless and, very unwisely, careless. I have hope for Willie Nelson and the brains who are behind his party. If they can get a big concert and a show of unity that would impress the next president of the country, legal pot could stand a chance in america.

     Lenny Bruce suggested ‘the marijuana mayor’ back in the 1950s. He was ahead of his time in so many ways. How many of the people who got fooled by Obama thought he would be the one who was liberal enough to take a stand, since he IS a user? Another example of the networks telling you what to do…first Bush, now Obama…what about the opinion of the common person, the voter?

     At this point, it is like LSD in 1967. It is still legal but it is in a grey area. I often wished I had been old enough in 1967 to have taken the legal LSD, just for the sense of history. Now, scientists at Purdue University are allowed to produce 1000 doses of LSD a year, to test the efficacy of it’s use on cluster headaches. After all these years, they admit that it is a useful drug…although the CIA has known it all along and uses it to heighten the effects of torture on people in Gitmo Bay and other secret dungeons around the world. They are also using it to enhance extra sensory perception (ESP), in order to spy better. They took a good drug, made it illegal and then brought it out of the closet for the most hideous of purposes…the cluster headache study is most likely a front so the CIA and other mindcontrolling entities have access to a good strong, legal source.

     From cluster headaches to clusterfucks, you can be sure the spooks who decide what the people we elected do for extra cash do not want you to read. So make an effort to read more in 2011 for your good and the good of this once-great country.

    Happy? New Year!!!

Thoughts For Samhain, Part One

     As Samhain is the end of the year for me, as it has been for Pagans since before the Romans forced Christ on everyone, I reflect on the past year…

     Last year at this time I was picking up the pieces and catching up on work I had missed by being the Volunteer Coordinator for the PA Sustainable Living and Renewable Energy Association. That was my fifth year with the festival, having tabled there for various groups.

     This year is the year of the non-volunteer for me. No more trying to help the community through activism. No more lending a hand to non-profit agencies that do not appreciate the work done for them. I kept my position as Keeper of the Gate at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, however. I like it there and have 13 years in so far. Even so, I cut back on my duties to just two weeks a month.

     Speaking of Hawk Mountain, last week I had the unusual experience of hitting a vulture in flight with my car. Leaving the mountain after my shift, sneaking home on twisty back roads, I spied two kitties sprawled in the center of a small intersection. They were watching for birdies and catching the heat as the sun hit the macadam beneath them. Not wanting to make a ‘schmutz’ out of any stray kits, I kept it in low gear and continued, watchful for pussies.

     Rounding a curve, a large black and grey turkey vulture stood in the center of my lane, picking at some roadkill. Slowing as much as I could, since there is always some annoying ass flying up behind you in order to tailgate, the car moved across the double yellows into the passing lane in order to miss the rapacious creature. I went too slow. The raptor flapped and lifted from the ground, flying in the direction of my car. It happened so fast that I barely saw it bump the windshield. It left a smudge and I thought that was it until a week later, when I noticed the soft, light feathers sticking out from the strip of metal that holds the shield in place. With feathers still stuck to my car a week later, I just hope I didn’t hurt the vulture too much.

     Maybe that is why I stick to Hawk Mountain. There is always a surprise from Mother Nature. It will still be very busy there for the remainder of fall and I enjoy every minute.

     While volunteering is a good thing, it was cutting into things I need to do for myself. Why I do not have the good sense to put myself first, I’ll never know but I have gotten started on that path.

     So, with that said, I still thought that a bit of activism would not hurt me too much. At some point in there, when the state stopped funding to the libraries, I went out to protest at the local library…the first time I ever held a ‘protest’ sign, even though I have been ‘protesting’ since Earth Day 1970.

     On December 2, the hearings for PA HB 1393, the house bill for the legalization of medical marijuana, were held and I was there to testify as a cancer survivor. The whole thing was a circus of emotions. Women carried signs with pictures of youths who ‘died from pot’ and silly stuff like that. There was testimony from doctors and experts, but mostly from people giving empassioned stories about other people who died and how pot helped them. Not a single person who had a medical condition and was helped by MJ was allowed to speak. It was mostly a horse and pony show for the Philadelphia NORML group, who are still posting videos of themselves testifying ten months after the fact. So I and my missing rectum became part and parcel of the house bill and PA history…for all the good it did.

     Also in December, I threw a stick into the mighty Mississippi River. I had flown over it before but never got that close. I had fallen into a bunch of people I used to know on Facebook and one of them lived in St Louis. It was a chance to drive many miles, like I used to love so much.  I was able to cross six states in 12 1/2 hours of non-stop amphetamine-fueled driving and then, five days later, back across those same states five days later in 10 1/2 hours.

     When I think back to youth, the roadtrips are always a highlight. I loved breaking land/speed records, like the time I made it from Chester, PA, to Gainseville, FL, in less than twelve hours. I won’t say much about the visit but I will say one thing for Facebook – when you find somebody on there that you haven’t seen for 38 years, there is probably a good reason for it. Facebook lets you relive the things you forgot about doing in high school, while reminding you why you stopped hanging with these people. They are fucking boring!

     Face it, if somebody is really your friend, they will call you or see you. If they pop up on FB after decades of non-communication, think twice before you make plans. You may revisit the wrong part of your youth. That is not to say I have not chatted with people I am glad to hear from…just think twice, that’s all.

     The wintry winds of the first few months of 2010, along with the piles of snow which came with them, found me stuck in the house, reading a lot and trying to price a bunch of antiques and old books and magazines I want to sell. I picked up a few copies of’  ‘The Outsider,’ which had been nestled in my shelves for years. Printed in 1961 and 1962, they featured works by Bukowski, Burroughs, Kerouac, Ginsberg, etc. I had paid two dollars an issue for each issue at a antique/craft shop in Old Forge, NY, twenty years ago. This seemed like a good place to start.

     Online, I discovered that ‘The Outsider’ literary journal had been the subject of a recent movie by Hunter S. Thompson cinema-biographer, Wayne Ewing. An article I found said that in issue two (I hold issues two and three) there was a poem by Jack Kerouac that was the focus of some scholarly study. The Outsider was hand printed and collated. Due to this, a certain poem was found to have several versions printed and nobody was sure which one had been what Keroac had written. A professor in England was working on it. The article said that only twenty copies remained in existence. I was happy to report that I held copy number twenty-one.

     To reach the professor, I contacted the author of the article, one David S. Wills, founder and publisher of literary journal, Beatdom. I gave David the details of the version of the poem that was in my copy of The Outsider. Somewhere along the line, we fell into e-conversation and I told David about meeting William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky. As a younger man, I had corresponded with Ginsberg and I told David about a postcard I got from Ginsberg, where I actually got the peacenick to say ‘fuck you’ to me, twice…yet in a kind, sage way.

     Mr. Wills asked if I would be kind enough to write the story up to be used in Beatdom and, happy to do so, I sent it along. It appeared in issue six and Mr. Wills was kind enough to accept submissions of other essays for following Beatdom issues. Now, I still have the two issues of  The Outsider and my house keeps filling with more books, including Beatdom.

     About this same time, I was still feeling the actvism and went to a meeting of NORML in Philadelphia. Being a member of a group of potsmokers couldn’t be a bad thing, could it? The meeting was hard to deal with. It was unstructured, with people shouting out and ideas popping up like jumping beans. I wanted to do some work. I wanted to help make pot legal. I was told that more got accomplished on the group’s website than at the meetings. I tried the website and will only go as far as to say that potsmokers should not join groups. Nothing gets done. I saw an idea for making t-shirts and selling them, which had been floating around the site for over a year. I offered my services – myself, a six-foot table and a car to table at events in a five county area, if they wanted. Naturally, they said they could not use me since they did not have enough literature to fill a table. A few asinine suggestions later and I was convinced that NORML was not for me…too young, too foolish, too lazy. So much for that scene.

     At this point, my blog is much longer than planned, so I shall finish it tomorrow, so as not to rush.

     Cheers!