Ferd E’s In Love…Alpha Feelings In A Zed Male, or “Ask Them!!!!”

Gentle Readers,

We appeal to you today, as the title of this blog vaguely infers. More truly, it is our darling, Ferd, who is appealing. He was asking us an incomprehensible question to which we had no ready answer. He was inquiring as to what makes a person’s eyes, dart back and forth in their skull, from side to side, at an estimated rate of 1000 times a minute.

Our first inclination was to see if a human can observe something 1000 times in a minutes without it being a blur, at all. He does not own a PC so we could not Google it. We certainly imagine that it must create a blur for the person in question, who’s eyes must keep them in a state of constant blur. We could not think of any facts to correlate with whether such a thing was even in the realm of being possible. It did strike us as rather funny, when he held up his two index fingers, parallel to each other and two inches apart as he moved them back and forth repeatedly and said, ‘They go just like this!’..and made a machanical noise, “ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch”. We did not ask if the eyeballs make the noise, too,  but it added to the amusement so we accepted it.

 The eyes in question are attached to a young woman whom Ferd believes has an interested in him. She stares straight into his pupils when here eyes vibrate or bounce or whatever you call such ocular activity. For this reason, he really wants to know what is with the eyeballs. They smoke a lot of cigarettes together, romantically hanging around the dumpster in back of the supermarket where they both work. We told him that You, Our Dear Readers, may have an explanation for such a strange quirk of the body and if no answer was forthcoming that you would nonetheless find it of great amusement. Knowing his every odd habit is being reported on here anyway, he implored, “Ask them!!!!”, and so, Dear and Kind Readers, should you be familiar with this anomaly of optical physiognomy, kindly tell us why eyes, not just pupils, but the whole orbs of both eyes would look like they should register on the Richter Scale. If you know the cause of this, kindlt contact us here in the ‘Comments’ section.

 Her eyes are hazel by colour, by the way, and she is also his supervisor, besides being a smoking buddy. The intensity with which she stares straight into his eyes while vibrating has led him to the conclusion that, since she is in management, she may be scanning him like a bar code. We would love to see the lines in that bar code. “I think she is scanning me!,” he uttered in paranoid frustration.

 Ferd did show a little class, this time around, and as the trippiness wore off, he broke out a jar of cheap caviar and a box of Wellington Water Crackers, “the gold standard,” as it says on the box. Liking something salty to help develop a thrist for the Corona Lite, we were duly impressed, as was his black cat, Spooky, who smelled it right away and hopped onto a chair at the table, where we ladled out a spoonful of the black fish eggs for him to devour. As Ferd said his standard line about caviar, one we have heard no less than a dozen times since he bought the jar for our birthday, “Ma Kettle says they are like buckshot on toast!”, Wilhelmina, his other kittie, took a sniff of the caviar and left it for Spooky.

 So as we talked about life and love and 1000-moves-a-minute-eyeballs, Ferd dumped out his feelings for the young woman, some twenty years his junior. The attraction is basically that she talks to him and stares in his eyes kinescopically. It could be love. This aspect scares him. See, he has a problem with relationships, as he brought up the subject.

 ”I wear my heart on my sleeve,” he said, looking around for the missing Bic lighter we always pocket while visiting, “Everytime I have sex with a woman, I end up falling in love with her!”

 ”Well, Ferd,” we replied, trying not to laugh too hard, “you are supposed to do it the other way around.”

 Puzzled silence as he picked in his ear.

 ”I mean you are supposed to love somebody before you have the sex,” we explained.

 ”Really?” he sounded puzzled, “Maybe that’s my problem!”

 ”Perhaps it is, Ferd,” we offered while sniffling back another laugh, “perhaps it is…”

Tips For Road Ragers

 Clever Cohorts and Miffed Motorists,

Daily, if we drive an automobile, we are forced to deal with all sorts of things on the newly Obamasized highways and roads of our nation. Many of  them can and will annoy us, while others drive us, literally, to distraction.  Manners are in short supply but nowhere is the supply shorter than on our roads.

People do not care about the other driver anymore. It is like a battlefield out there some days. In the film, It’s A Gift, starring W C Fields, we see roadhogs get their due when our tipsy hero buys a whole fleet of cars to follow him around and purposely crash into roadhogs.

Roadhogs are one of the worst problems. They cause a lot of the rage. Roadhogs come in all shapes and sizes, like the Harley-Davidson rider who feels he belongs in the passing lane while going 40 miles an hour, because he is a ‘biker’. No wonder we hate bikers so much. It brings back the Carlin line about how people used to ride bikes to piss off the squares and now it is the squares who ride the bikes.

When not slowing traffic down, they often feel the should ride on the center of the double-yellow lines, to show their ownership of the road, which they bought with the title to the cycle…probably because they could not afford a decent car. If you see one on the double-yellow, swerve towards them. You are really doing them a favor, since the increase in heart-rate and blood flow will keep them more alert and less prone to injury. Plus, the look of terror on their faces is always a gas, too. Bicycles are the same way. They really do need to make separate paths for bicycles, as these idiots in the shiny pants (which leads one to question their sensibility to ride a skateboard, much less a bicycle) are some of the rudest variety of roadhog…the self-righteous alternative transportation roadhog. A blare of the horn as you edge up behind them always gets a little jump out of them, if you do not have a squirtgun full of warm milk handy.

Tailgaters are maybe the worst of all, next to the cellphoners. Tailgaters show some of the more developed asshole tendencies. Often they will drive 45 mph in a 55 mph zone, and to be sure they slow down everybody else, they do this in the passing lane. Remember the passing lane? It used to be for passing. If you pass a tailgater on the inside lane and then shift over to the fast lane because you are in passing mode, they will often speed up just to tailgate you for passing them. They were in no hurry before you passed them but they took the move as a personal affront and feel like they must tailgate your car so you know they can go fast, too. Of course, we know the most common way to deal with this is to ‘brake check’ them, that is to hit your brakes hard so they almost hit the back of your car. Keep in mind that if they hit you from behind, it is always their fault, by law.

Sometimes such an action will rile up the offending party and they will continue the dangerous habit of riding your bumper.  If you have a car (which is really the only thing to drive if you do not haul heavy junk and are environmentally responsible), you may have windshield wipers that spray washer fluid over the roof of your car and onto the windshield of the car behind you. If so, a good thing to do is to lay on the sprayer a few times until you see the car behind you put on the windshield wipers. When they are distracted by that and cannot see clearly due to the wipers, hit your brakes then! It usually scares all hell out of them. Again, it may only rile them up, so we suggest keeping a few rolls of pennies or a cup of old rusty nuts and bolts in the console of your vehicle. These metal objects, when flipped over the top off your car, will bounce off the highway and, depending on what speed you are traveling, bounce up into the  grill of the car behind you or, if you are lucky, the windshield. Old golf balls from the shag bag are good for this, as well, as the large white orb has a scarier effect when flying toward you. The good thing about using pennies is that they are barely visible, should an officer look for evidence of projectile-influenced rage.

Sunday drivers have been an annoyance for nearly a century now. They are usually old and have no idea what is going on. If you rage at them, it does no good. They have to turn up the hearing aid just to hear you honk at them and that action alone slows them down by another 10 mph. If you have to drive on a Sunday, take valium.

Most offensive these days is the cellphone user. Most roadhogs and tailgaters are cross-addicted to the cell. This works in your favour because they are distracted. To them a brake check is especially terrifying. They really ought not to be on the phone and most states have laws against it. As much as we at CFYSA hate the law, we try to help the enforcers of the laws when it comes to these selfish, talkative bastards who think they are so important that if they do not phone to say where they are at the moment, the world will stop.

 If you see someone on a cell, lay on your horn. The person on the other end of the line will get an earful, as well. Better yet, here is a trick we learned by mistake a few weeks ago. Sitting at a red traffic light, we looked over and saw a driver yapping inanely on the cell, waiting for the light to change. We were not even with this car but our hood was about even with the driver’s window, perfect for a blare of the horn. We were in a two lane left turn exit from a shopping plaza that dumped onto a well-trafficked road. Reckoning to give the driver/cell-user a little blast of sound, we hit the horn. When we honked, the car abruptly pulled out, through the red light, into traffic.  Apparently, they were used to being honked at for sitting through green lights while yapping and thought they had done it again. Luckily, they did not get hit by another car but it certainly opened a whole new avenue of fun to us. Try it sometime and see for yourself! We encourage you!

There are many other ways to deal with the rogues of the road but we just wanted to throw out a few helphul hints for the novice ragers in the ethernet. Happy motoring!!!

What Is So Beat About Korea? The Dog Farm by David S. Wills…a review

Rabid Readers, Rabbit Feeders and Gentle Souls All,

Still, again, we find ourselves apologizing for our absence. Since we last wrote, we had a strange interlude with Ferd, which we did manage to get on a cassette tape and will to you shortly.

More exciting, upon celebrating the anniversary of the birth of our hero, the great Lenny Bruce, we discovered that a friend of ours is a mutual friend of Lenny’s only child, daughter Kitty Bruce. We were offered an introduction and Kitty is granting us an interview which will appear in the tenth issue of Beatdom, the religion issue. Lenny took a lot of swipes at religion and we are very fortunate that Kitty is so gracious to share her time with Beatdom. She will be in good company, of course.

Also, in Beatdom news, we made contact with Richie Ramone, fastest of the three Ramones drummers and writer of several Ramones hits, including Somebody Put Something In My Drink, a set standard at any later Ramones show. He has also agreed to talk with Beatdom about the Beat aspects of life on the road with the Ramones, among other things. It is interesting to note that the Ramones were the fastest-playing group in the original first wave of Punk. That makes Richie the fastest of the fast, and you can read him tell about it in Beatdom issue eleven.

So, it goes without saying that we have been busy (even though we just said it) and part of the bustle had to do with the release of the third book from the publishing house of the modern Beat, Beatdom Books.  Our third release is the ‘hot off the presses’ yet long-awaited tale of  a modern Beat suffering through an ‘on the road’ adventure, as given to us by Beatdom’s Fearless Leader and Editor-In-Chief, our partner, Mr. David S. Wills.

We are seeing more and more about Korea in the news these days, so as world-citizens, we offer this review of Mr. Wills’ tome:

What is so Beat about Korea?

 

  In his first novel, David S. Wills, creator of the literary journal Beatdom, takes us on a long, strange trip as he finds cultural astonishment in the depavity which surrounds him.

 

  His Korea, as presented in The Dog Farm (Beatdom Books, October 2011), offers the tattered tableau of a treacherous terrain where no mammals exist - except for on plates, to be consumed. Even the closest thing to a stray dog, behaviourally, are the vile and drunken denizens of Daegu.

 

  Spitting, cursing, staring, insulting his protagonist, Alexander, the whole of humanity in South Korea behaves badly, lashing out at our hero with fists, umbrellas and verbal assaults. Even worse, he introduces us to the vile smell of the kimchi, a gastricly gaseous foodstuff which pollutes the air of the country with the portentious stench that flavors sections of the novel. Kimchi, not only a food but a symbol of Korean superiority, holds the power to not only turn the stomach but causes a condition known as the kimchi rage…a violent mood-swinging behaviour, the ugly end of which usually targets Westerners, more commonly known as foreigners.

 

   Young Alexander arrives in this over-heated hell from his bleak hometown in Scotland, where he wiled away days drunk, stoned and on the dole. Korea, in his drunkenness, represented opportunity. White skin made him a faux-American, the first scratch at the surface of the racism prevailing in the strange, new land. While making him desirable as a teacher, since Korea is, of course ‘Number One!’, and the children of wealthy Koreans only get the best education possible, in their eyes – which is virtually no education, whatsoever, but as long as the teacher is ‘American’, all is well!

 

   Anybody with white skin can be American and earn a small fortune, with no formal education in teaching.

 

  Skin-tone may help with cashflow but in the drunken, dirty, dark streets of Daegu, it also incites violence and mockery, shame and shit-flinging. The racism works both ways. Alexander notes that he had no racism in his soul until being subjected to these anomalies.

We venture out of Daegu a few times, to the beach, the mountains, a glorious Buddhist temple, on an ill-fated escape to Japan and back.

 

  Along the way, we meet other characters, both the expats who form Alexander’s social circle, and the countrymen and women who dictate the rules of his existence at the dubious citadel of education, Charleston Academy. We meet the administrators, who are ugly, sleazy, greasy and dress cheesy. It is a nation of cheesy dressers. The master of the con is the oily Mr. Park, or ‘Parky’ as the expats know him. He implores Alexander to be good, not to drink like the others, not to sound Scottish and to make himself home in a squalid cell of an ‘apartment’…to stay there and not consort with those other ‘bad’ teachers who drink after work and see through the shell game of the academy.

 

   To return to our question, why is this Beat?

   It doesn’t get much more Beat than this. We have travel, sex, music, drugs, love, hate, exotic locales, odd new glimpses at human behaviour, danger, escape, corrupt society and crooked police hounding the hip. It’s the same old Beat but in a new country in a new decade. Alexander unwittingly morphs into the essence of Beat in this cruel petri dish of a country, where germs and humans cohabitate in unnatural transparency.

  Like those before him, he takes to the road as means of salvation and finds what one always finds on the road…more hard road to travel.

 

  If you have ever traveled to another country as an American during or after the second Bush presidency, you may have felt some of the prejudice and animosity described by Wills, but to a much-lesser degree. If you have ever considered travel to South Korea, outside of a safely-guided tour, you may want to read The Dog Farm first and perhaps consider visiting Japan, instead. If you have read all the Beat novels and are looking for something new, that is not a rip-off of Kerouac or Burroughs, but is a fresh, (relatively) new voice in the land of Beatdom, then this is the book for you.

 

  Available on www.amazon.com or www.beatdom.com or also on Kindle for those who like to read but do not like books.

 

On Occupying Wall Street…What Would Allen Ginsberg Do?

 Gentle Readers and Reasonable Minded Thinkers,

 We see here a photo of Allen Ginsberg, taken by Jerry Aronson, maker of The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg, which is reviewed (with four more exclusive photos) in Beatdom Issue 9. It was taken at Grant Park, Chicago, in 1968 during the infamous riots at the Democratic National Convention.

 Ginsberg chanted to distract the protestors from marching because he did not want them becoming active due to his presence and ending up with their blood on his hands because he incited them to challenge armed police.

 Allen Ginsberg is universally-known as a good and kind man. In Aronson’s film, a comment is made by counterculture icon Ed Sanders about how to decide if a course of action is right or wrong. He offers that the best choice is to ask ourselves, ‘What would Allen do?’

Today, someone took umbrage to the fact that we stated that the list of ‘demands’ offered by the protestors have nothing to do with day to day trading activity on Wall Street. The demands, if anything, would benefit Wall Street. Take the end of the war on drugs, for instance. If that were to happen and sweet marijuana were made legal, it would open up a whole new industrial segment and provide jobs for millions and bring billions into the economy yearly. Companies would be formed, like the already existing Medical Marijuana, Inc, (MJNA.PK), which would put a whole new breath of air into the sagging sails of the US economy.

The protestors want student loan forgiveness. If student loans were forgiven, people would have more money to spend on other things. This would lead to an increase of profits by many industry segments, including food, clothing and consumer discretional spending, to name just a few. The increased profits would lead to stronger balance sheets and the value of the stocks of these companies would rise with the tide. How is this an anti-Wall Sreet agenda?

How about ‘free education kindergarten through college’?  That one seems to undermine the whole financial system, alright, as who is going to pay and since we have never had any children we certainly hope these protestors have pockets that are deep enough to pay our share. Again, though…what does this have to do with Wall Street…not one bleeding thing!

Oh, and let us remind you all that these are ‘Official’ demands. Who is the official? Did the protestors elect another Obama-like figure who is the Official and presides over them? Speaking of His Nibs, the Prez, most of these protestors look like the same foolish bastards that were campaigning for Obama in the first place and if it were not for the pissing contest between Obama and the GOP in Congress, we would not be in the bad economic shape we are in.

The problem lies in Washington, not on Wall Street. Regulatory statutes are not voted on by the men and women who broker trades on Wall Sreeet. They are voted on by the elected official picked by the american voters. Put the blame in the right place if you expect any real action. This is the real world. School is out for ever, as Alice Cooper said.

Then we have the repeal of capital punishment…another hot topic on Wall Street. We guess what happens is that when somebody is meant to be executed, they are transported to New York City, where a bunch of stock brokers have a secret back room where they hang, dismember, gas, stab, shoot and stone the poor people who do not have jobs because Obama does not agree with Congress…does this make sense to you? Odd, it makes no sense to us but this is what people are getting their heads busted over.

Who is the great mind who thought of having all the kids go out and get gassed and clubbed by the garda? Who put the lives and safety of all those people behind their own twisted ideology and is responsible for the violence that the protestors wear like the red badge of courage? Who is the face behind this? That is your criminal. There is the evil force du jour.

Equal Rights for women…gee, we have seen many successful women on Wall Street. As long as they can hustle the equities, they are equal. As long as they make money for their company, they are equal. In the minds of the protestors, however, Wall Street is a place in New York City, once the most progressive city in the world until LA got the jump with medical marijuana, where woman are held in dungeons and treated like serfs. This is all getting a bit silly but we reckon you get the idea.

Why Wall Street? It does not make the laws. Wall Street is their saviour, if these moron would open their eyes. If they had jobs, they would not be in the park. If they were looking for a job, they would not be in the park. If they had not voted for Obama, they would not be in the park. Why not Washington? Why not in front of the White House?

These kids are amateurs, for one thing. They have no grasp of how society works, if they are in NYC and the problem is in DC.

They will affect no real change, except for the change in a few profiles when the billyclubs break their noses and open their foreheads. It is more likely that some old guy, some old WWII veteran, who’s wife died because she could not get the proper medical attention or because they could not afford medicine due to the tactics of our elected officials – the ones who are paid to represent our voices and then take money from lobbyists to stick up our collective ass. One of these old guys is going to take his hunting rifle down off the wall, where it has been collecting dust for 20 years and go to DC and plug himself a few pols. As he is led away in cuffs, some of his buddies from the VFW will see him on TV, while drinking at the bar, and feel the ‘band of brothers’ emotion that got them through that great war and take to DC with their own guns. They will not care about mace because they will just shoot. They are not far from dead and what they had is being taken away bit by bit, so what do they have to lose? Not a damned thing. The old guys are our hope for change, not these young wankers who think it is time for a party and may as well get their childhood agressions beat out of them by a uniformed cop.

Occupy Wall Street? Why not occupy Disneyworld?  That would hurt a lot more people. It would dent the tourism, airline, automobile rental, hotel and restaurant businesses from Florida to all ends of the USA because people would not be buying gas or taking planes or stopping to eat or staying at a hotel on their way to the wonderland of american moronism. This would really hurt Wall Street.

With the elections coming up, all this protesting does is to keep focus off the real issues and agendas facing the american people…like voting for somebody with a brain who can get us out of this mess.  This is the sort of thing the FBI of CIA could arrange to keep the country is a state of upheaval so the light is not shone of the FEMA camps they set up in Denver, CO, this weekend. Did you hear about that? – or was there not enough space for the news on both so you hear about the protestors, instead? These kids in the parks deserve what they get. Anybody who is dumb enough to challenge a policeman, whether you are on the right side or the wrong side of moral boundary, is gonna get one up against the side of the head. That is how it works. It has always been that way and if you do not get it, you are a right imbecile!

These people act surprised that the police are hurting them…what the fuck? The city is broke enough and can’t feed kids in school and has other programs where funds have been cut and now they have to pick up the tab for all the overtime the police are working to contain this foolish fracas.

We hope that every cop who gets paid overtime for working the Wall Street Occupation, cashes his check and takes that money right to Wall Street and purchases some stock in American companies. Then, the ‘occupation’ would actually help the economy. We wonder how many displaced pretzel and falafel vendors have gone out of business because they could not find space to park their food carts. This occupation is for idiots but we are a nation of idiots so it will probably drag on for a while…but on the bright side, at least they are not teabaggers.

 

 

 

From the Poetry Corner ~ What Doesn’t Kill Me Makes Me Stranger

 Gentle Readers,

 While not every poem we write is a great one, sometimes we write them anyway. We realize it is time for a blog and Ferd hasn’t done anything noteworthy to report on today, so why not just take the time and take this rhyme and maybe enjoy it and maybe not.

 It was on a piece of paper next to the laptop when we woke up, so we may as well share it here and then we do not have to stick it in a drawer with all the other poems on loose leafs.

 Our eventual friend, Mr Happy Death, awaits us all, so we may as well give the devil his due and what better way than with some good, old-fashioned poetry?

 

Many times in this short life

I’ve put myself in danger.

Looking back, I came to know

what didn’t kill me

made me stranger!

 

Nobody leaves this place alive…

on that I’d always wager.

If you can say a better way,

tell me what it is.

I’ll trade you.

 

It always goes that way

but there’s still no need to pray

Earth is worth a dearth of mirth.

Why give birth to dismay?

 

Golden flowers on the quay

float, and bobbing, drift away.

They twirl and whirl, unfurled, then curl.

Surely, sinking ends their day.

 

~

And that is it,  Dear Readers, nothing heavy, nothing lengthy, just a little verse spilled over the wall. A short blog for a rainy day.

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.

One From Far Left Field And Past The Poetry Corner ~ repost

 Gentle Readers,

Today we bring you a bit of poetry that has been hidden for decades like a gem waiting to be found or a snake under a rock, coiled and waiting to strike. A recent discussion of the film The Doors left us wondering if our copy of the Jim Morrison poetry book The Lords and The New Creatures  was a first print or not.  It was on a shelf in the bedroom, so upon retiring last evening, we pulled it from the shelf to find it is a second printing.

However, we did find a few curious things sticking out from inside, one being a poem scribbled on a Chi-Chi’s mexican restaurant receipt and the other was a vitriolic poem, apparently written as an insult to Your Humble Narrator, and judging from the timely reference to Phil Donahue, a TV celebrity from the 1980s, we estimate it was written somewhere around that era.

This is a poem left by an ex. It could be an ex-wife, ex-girlfriend…sounds more like an executioner…anyway, it was fun to fall asleep laughing, really laughing hard.  The poem is quite an effort and since we always are the first to laugh at ourselves, we are more than eager to share. The poet shall remain unknown and un-named but it could be the same character who appeared in Issue 8 of Beatdom, assaulting Your Narrator with a rubber chicken.

Let’s read:

 My Mind is a wasteland

so is my cat’s eye’s. (sic)

Snow drips off my chest

as my nipples are licked.

Fire in my microwave,

frozen in my freezer -

just pull the plug.

Rat poison in my wineglass

better put it in it Mom’s, instead.

Go ahead and try to distract me

you piece of ‘naive crap’ Poet!

Go rub your balls on frosted glass.

No wonder why women lick tweeter

instead of peckers…

less of a distraction.

Slime covers my earlobes,

you are not good enough

to lick off.

My chickens (sic) is better

than a ton of your

‘let’s get in touch with

our feelings’ crap.

Who’s dick do you suck anyway?

Phil Donahue’s?

Well, folks, haha, that is it. Now we can remember why the Humble Narrator married her to begin with…the sense of humour!!!

Dylan Blog Featuring Handicapped Bullies And Linda Ronstadt

Gentle Readers,Who watch your parking meters,

We find ourselves half-blindly pecking at the keyboard to give you an account of the Bob Dylan/Leon Russell show the CFYSA crew took part in this evening, or last night or last month or whenever you read this…to all Gentle Souls.

The trip to the show began with the drive to collect Ferd, who dressed surprisingly normally for a victim of dementia (haha), with the exception of too many gadgets, which posed later problems, as you shall see.  Ferd  saw the last Dylan show in the area with us and it was a great show but this one was better. The sound was spot-on, although we still heard morons in the parkinglot after the show saying ‘couldn’t understand a single word’. Perhaps if one has a vocabulary, one notices words and understands them and if one does not read and has no vocabulary further than rudimentary gobbles and the drive-thru menu at McDonalds, it would be hard to understand. They should buy a dictionary and try to read one book a year, for a start…then see if they understand.

So, the show was great and the setlist is available on www.expectingrain.com …the link is on the page above. We shall comment more on the event as a whole, rather than the sterling performance of the most influential force in pop music over the past 50 years. Ferd played a key part in the fun. While ‘dressing down,’ he still managed to be turned away at the entrance when they scanned us for metal items and found him to be carrying a knife, among other contraptions…ironic, since earlier in the day, we had told our close friend and confidant, Electra, about his gadgets and about his cap with the four mini-mad-lights on the brim, with a flashing light for good measure, and the knives and radios and Three Stooges Zippo and the myriad of junk he carries. Electra was amused but nonplussed at why a person should outfit themself in such a way.

At the Main Entrance, he was sent away, instructed to hide his knife under a rock…which he did and after standing in line again - while we drank cider inside the venue - he entered and was proud to note that they only found one knife and that the better one was in his back pocket. Why do we need knives in this day and age…portable knives, not at the workplace, that is? They come in handy for crude types to pick their teeth with but are an inconvenience, otherwise, as evidenced by Ferd’s second trip through the entrance gate, where he still ‘beeped’ on the security equipment; but they were so tired of him they just flagged him through…terrorists, take note! haha…

As enjoyable as the show was (the highlight for me was Dylan playing guitar while singing Beyond Here Lies Nothing, the first song on his latest LP, and theme song for the first season of some hoodie-kid-vampyre=tripe show, the name of which escapes us in our slight inebriation, post concert…True Blood perhaps?) we were disturbed by an idiot urging us to sit down. Our seats were in Row 13, so twelve rows of standing flesh would have blocked our vision, were we to comply. It turns out the person was handicapped and did not want to sit in the section where he could have seen the show nicely. Perhaps he was being independent by shining his flashlight in the faces of four rows of people while hissing/begging, “sit down, you bastards!!!” …Not an effective approach!

He poked Your Humble Narrator in the back twice with his finger, Your Narrator being 6’4” and often suspect of shenanigans when tall people are guilty of things…but personal intrusions like poking are bullying behaviour and we had to inform the patron that his index finger would soon be handicapped, should he poke one more time…an empty threat but effective.       

Handicapped people at public events can be quite mean. They expect special attention but do not make arrangements ahead of time. Some people have themselves declared as handicapped just to get a good parking space. More power to them? Having cheated cancer the hard way, we have no mercy…we live on borrowed time, so do not disturb!

Also, another bully memory goes back to the 1970, when we were in the employ of a regional daily newspaper and, having carved a niche in entertainment writing, was sent to do a review of a Linda Ronstadt show, when she was at the height of her fame. This was in the 1970s and Ferd was home on leave from the Navy and we were bending the rules of chemical consumption and blending hallucinogens, when it occurred to Your Humble Narrator that a story was due at the city desk by 1030pm…Putting two words together was a challenge, much less opining on the performance of songs we were only half-familiar with. Heart Like A Wheel was her best LP to date but she had gone pretty commercial. While not knowing what to write, the City Desk waited…Deadline waited…and so we made our way to a payphone in front of an ice cream vendor and put a dime in it…yes, a dime, and yes…a payphone!!!

The editor, a true friend, was helpful, writing the story for us while pumping for details so it sounded like he was writing about an event that actually happened! The reporter’s notebook in my hand contained most of the names of the songs she sang, but that was it, aside from what she wore. He took the information and crafted it into an acceptable concert review, slapped my byline on it and saved my career - but it took a bit of time to get the facts over the phone to him.

Dimes were no problem, compared to what was to come next. A small army of handicappers in wheelchairs surrounded me at the phone. Our brain was split betwen two realms of psychedelia. These pushy, wheely cretins wanted to call to get their ride home.  They deserve the designation of ‘cretin’ due to behaviour, not handicap. 

The story was only half done and the phone could not be given up. By the time we finished phoning in the story, no less than ten handicappers were cursing me with tongues a-snarling and using language most foul, they waved canes menacingly…multiple canes ready to strike…it is always shocking to hear the infirmed curse you and wish you unwanted anal penetration and this is not a blanket indictment of all people in wheelchairs. They were mean. They were bullies in wheelchairs. They have a way of milking the sympathy out of a person to get away with anything. Shocking, is what it is!!!

It reminds us of Richard Widmark as Tommy Udo in Kiss Of Death…

If this blog seems intolerant, it IS. We paid close to $90USD for those seats and we do not need to be stressed in our post-cancerous state, It is stressful. It is mean. It is bullying…from now on, we think twice about “hiring the handicapped” and will only hire the ones who have good manners…because manners, Dear Friends, are the glue that holds society together!!!

 

Spring is Here, With All Good Cheer. Birds Chirp. Frogs Burp.

     Bargainhunters, Runts and Punters,

     If the title of this post sounds familiar to you, it is because it was lifted from a book by the late Bennett Cerf, called Write Me A Poem, Baby.  This was a favourite book from my youth, in which Cerf asked children to write poems and collected them into a book, maybe even a second volume.

     What does that have to do with ratty, old shoes?  What?  Do you think we start these blogs without a solid purpose in mind for each and every one? Of course we don’t!  We write these by the seat of our pants for a few lovely people who look forward to them.  The shoes, by the by, have seen more wildlife than many children who live in the city.  They have been thrown at rabbits, squirrels, dogs and a few other small mammals. 

     Purchased in December of 2002, while picking up a pair of black oxfords to wear to my dad’s funeral, these became my ‘going to the office shoes’ until we were downsized in 2004.  They had an easy life for a year after that, until they were no longer fit for casual wear in public.  At that point, a new pair of dock shoes were purchased and these became the ‘lawnmowing/snowshoveling’ shoes.  They have weathered feet of snow, countless walks through my lawn, which by any definition is not actually a lawn.  At this time, it is mostly pretty, blue violets, as you can see…

     This sort of thing drives my neighbors crazy, as they think lawns should be green and comprised of grass.  We do not have a lawn so much as some grass mixed with violets, strawberries, dandelions and whatever the birds drop there.  The birds come for the flowers, we think.  We also believe that the creator puts those blue flowers there to sooth us and get us through the days of Spring Fever.  We enjoy sitting on the porch and letting our eyes relax to a blur and letting the colours sink in while we listen to the laboured grunts of all the neighbors who are on hands and knees on their lawns, digging and poisoning these little gifts of the season.  These people wear big boots and use noisy equipment in the maintenance of their yards, protecting their tootsies from mower blades, slips from ladders, icy patches and all those thing we ignore while shovelling and mowing barefoot in worn-out dock shoes.  These people have a work costume for each season.  It is the only funny thing about living here.

     The birds do enjoy my yard, as the returning families of robins, bluejays, cardinals and doves attest.  Plants are put in for their benefit, so that they swoop in and expose themselves to my cats, who sit in the window and think about what they would do to them.  This year, we may build a small chicken-wire-and-wood house for the kitties, so they can be outside on nice days.  Up until now, they have had to settle for the fresh catnip which grows out back and is already about eight inches tall, as you can see…

      If you have cats and do not grow catnip for them, shame on you.  You need to be a better pet owner and that is the fact, jack.  It is pleasant to see the catnip up so early and our pals, Inkie and Budderz, are quite happy with the fact.  What does worry us a bit is the early bloom of the lilacs.  We love the smell.  Some are put in a bedroom vase to evoke dream images from Springs Gone By.  It seems that they usually do not bloom until late May or early June but it is time, as you can see…

     That smell sure brings back the memories.  It reminds me of Mother’s Day and the hope of Summer.  The lilacs are nice and we are proud of them, even though they were here when we bought the house.  Prouder still are we of the fern, which we planted along the whole North side of the house and the tendrils of which are just pushing through the soil and reaching to the sky, like so…

     If you were to see the neighborhood the house is situated in, a white trash hell where Nascar is King and the proof is in the trucks parked on the lawns, you might understand why plants and pollen are so important.  Most of these plants upset those boot-people near me, since they cannot cut them to a height of one inch nor be sure all the blades of grass point in the same direction.  Birds appreciate what humans do not.

     As we started this rambling tome with a poem, allow us to end it with a piece of primordial literature, mined from the files and spilled from the skull of a nine-year-old Michael Hendrick, who in the Fifth Grade showed great slyness in using words to waste space in order to avoid being ruler-whipped by a nun who was easily enraged by blank spots on sheets of paper.  This may be one of the earliest works of art by the young Poet, as he learned words were to become his salvation.  Please enjoy ‘Spring’s Charms’.

Is It The End Of The World Yet?

     Followers of Faith,

     Many are heralding the end of our planet Earth, as predicted in the Bible, as the Last Days begin on May 21 and come to the grand finale on October 21 of this year.  We do not question peoples’ religious beliefs, we just report on them if we need material for a blog.

     It is rather hard to ignore the events of recent weeks and months, which seem to put this sphere on the brink of disaster.  That is, after all, why we call this series of blogs The Tipping Point.  It is true that we have reached the tipping point and that things just get worse from here.  If you grew up in America in the 20th century, chances are that you had one of the highest standards of life quality ever afforded to humans during the history of our species.  If you go one hundred years in either direction, 1910 or 2110, conditions would not seem near as comfortable as we in the USA have grown used to.

     These are the final days, no doubt about it.  It takes the sting of death away when you know that, once you leave the Earth, it will never be as nice or as much fun as you knew it to be in life.  The elected officials will have nothing to do with trying to save us, as evidenced by the recent events in Japan.  When the nuclear waste from the accident became a quandry, Japan announced to the world that they would dump all the radioactive materials into the ocean.

     Two days later, they dumped it.  Where was the United Nations? Where was anybody responsible?  How could you ignore the dumping of radiation into the ocean, where it works it way around the world via tides and jet streams?  Picture a green field, full of leafy spinach, or maybe arugula.  Picture the atmosphere sucking the ocean water up into a cloud.  Now look at the rain hitting those green leaves.  Mix in a bit of spilled BP oil and other chemicals and you hardly even need a vinaigrette.

     Once that rain gets into the soil, do you reckon that it can be rinsed off?  No, it becomes part of the cellular structure of the leaf.  It may not kill you immediately but it will add up.  It is a good thing we are so involved in cancer research, since we are going to see the number of patients double, triple or quadruple as the years pass.

     What good thing can we say about the final days?  At some point, it will become the common denominator as rich and poor alike succumb to environmentally-caused diseases.  Then everybody will be equal and the class wars (which are just starting to rumble in the curtains backstage) will not be an issue.

     We have seen so many changes over the last 100 years that the next 100 years will be a real bummer for a convenience-oriented society.  Enjoy life while you can!  If you are older, like Your Humble Narrator, you might as well live it up before things start to really suck.

     What about the end of the world, though?

     Since we are universally denominational at CFYSA, we cannot suggest that you pray to a certain diety or another – although we do suggest that you say your prayers.  Many people are talking about the end, so let us look at what one of our heroes, Arlo Guthrie, had to say on the subject in a recent post on his website…

According to some people, the world will come to a close fairly soon – sometime between now (if you’re reading this it hasn’t happened), and sometime next year 2012. I’m putting together a list of 5 things to do just in case the world actually comes to an end.

1) Clean underwear is a must every day. There may not be laundry in the after life. Be sure to be wearing appropriate attire – a white robe will provide suitably for here and there. Note: Hell is clothing optional, so be prepared for anything. And don’t just leave your clothes in the closet, give to an organization who will pass it along to those who may be traveling with you but don’t have stuff to wear right now.

2) Be generous to your favorite charities After all, they may survive in some parallel universe where they will be able to benefit from your generosity here. The Guthrie Interfaith Church (my favorite 501 c 3 foundation) is always looking for help and is multi-dimensional as well as existing on earth.

3) Leave enough pet food and water for your pets. If you’re wrong and the world doesn’t end, they will miss you but eating helps a broken heart.

4) There’s no mention in scripture of there being female angels. All the angels have male names. So either there’s not much sex in heaven or the after life is part of the gay agenda. Act now before it’s too late.

5) Beware the Mayans. Their calendar ends but it could be a ruse. It could be the date when they plan on returning and taking over the Americas again. They obviously would not wish to announce their coming – thus their calendar just quits giving details. Spending Christmas 2012 under Mayan domination could be enough to rip the heart out of any true believer.

The world ends every day for some people, and each day the worlds begins for others. Despite claims to the contrary, it will be that way for a very long time. Any one who distracts you from caring for each other – coming or going – is selling something. If there’s no one buying, no one can be selling. Don’t be fooled by anyone or any group no matter how sincere they may appear to be. People may believe the world is ending but believing doesn’t make it true.