Who Sent the Private Investigator To Check Us Out??? Where Is Old Snarly?

Gentle Readers,

This message is not really for you.

We are dropping the editorial ‘us’ in parts to make it less confusing. We think Cynthia Oldsnarly may have sent them.

On Friday, a private investigator named Kellie showed up at our Motel. She checked in with no luggage or purse, wearing a short-ish white dress and stylish hair and nails.
She came out of the front desk office and wandered the parkinglot aimlessly for an hour and then went to her room, near mine, when I came out on the balcony to see which room the possible hooker was going to visit.
As it turns she kept obviously spying on me, looking through the open spaces of a luggage rack on a car parked between us.
So, I decided to STARE at her to let her know she was not un-noticed. This prompted her to come over and up the steps to the balcony, where we sat drinking and chatting…about me…all about me…she said she would be gone in the morning and i watched her leave on foot, no luggage or purse, just a copy of Beatdom we gave her to read…

She kept me up talking about myself until 3am. We did not talk adult topics or any such shit…so why do people spy? why do they lie? why do they not be real in 2014????

funny thing is…we hide nothing, as all you kind readers know…and any import given to us is undeserved, since we are morons.

best from the staff!

*tis is a free blog…if you see typos, live with it or contact us about our exclusive paid blog!!!!!

One From The Poetry Corner

Esteemed Readers, Bottom Feeders and Counters of Meters, today we bring you an installment of the Poetry Corner. We promised to keep this blog going, so we are happy to be in your face.
The following poem is the first in what will be known as the ‘Yakima Cycle’ by Michael Hendrick, a drunken friend of ours who can’t be trusted with your daughter…a sad one, boys and girls, sniff, sniff. He redeems himself with his poems…maybe not this one but he seemed quite insistent that we publish it for him and it is a ‘limerick’ really. As per our buddies at the Encyclopedia Brittanica a limerick is a popular form of short, humorous verse that is often nonsensical and frequently ribald. It consists of five lines, rhyming aabba, and the dominant metre is anapestic, with two metrical feet in the third and fourth lines and three feet in the others.
These short rhymes often involve a city name. We chose Yakima as our city and Mr. Hendrick, in his infinite kindness, offered to share poems written just for this blog…a saint of a man, is he.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A certain young woman from Yakima
got randy but had quite a hacking cough.
Though she sounded a fright,
she loved a new man each night.
Her ten kids proved that she did not whack’em off.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now, Kids…it is nothing against women, nothing against Yakima and most certainly not against masturbation…if anything, is insulted here, it is the Rhyme itself, but it endures, year after year.

Oddly, though…the most popular blogs here are the ones having to do with insults and words and we find that to be very interesting and think we will do our best to include more such material in days and weeks to come.

Welcome to the Working Week!

More About Heading West

Recently, the editorial ‘We’ left the East Coast and headed west. “The west is the best,” Jim Morrison said. It is true and it is also kind of sad. After fifty-six years in the same time zone, the Eastern Standard Zone lost the fun it used to be.
Personally, we first heard rock and roll in New York, as Roy Orbison exposed his whiney heart over radio in my parent’s old Desoto singing Born On The Wind. At five years old, we watched the Beatles arrive at Shea Stadium on the tv and the resulting new British revolution followed on the screen. In our teens we spat at the stage of CBGB, pogoed and slammed.
New York City, the City that never sleeps must have been napping when the Hip Train arrived in Colorado and Washington with legal weed. How can it
be the hippest city in the world when the most delectable commodities are easier to get here in the west? Our eyes moisten with tears of sorrow when we consider this. We think of the swinging forties and fifties when the Rat Pack ruled the dark streets and the punk rock in the seventies that restarted the heart of rock and roll in the face of the disco machine uptown at Studio 54.
Recently, the editorial ‘We’ left the East Coast and headed west. “The west is the best,” Jim Morrison said. It is true and it is also kind of sad. After fifty-six years in the same time zone, the Eastern Standard Zone lost the fun it used to be.
Personally, we first heard rock and roll in New York, as Roy Orbison exposed his whiney heart over radio in my parent’s old Desoto singing Born On The Wind. At five years old, we watched the Beatles arrive at Shea Stadium on the tv and the resulting new british revolution followed on the screen. In our teens we spat at the stage of CBGB, pogoed and slammed.
New York City, the City that never sleeps must have been napping when the Hip Train arrived in Colorado and Washington with legal weed. How can it
be the hippest city in the world when the most delectable commodities are easier to get here in the west? Our eyes moisten with tears of sorrow when we consider this anomaly. We think of the swinging forties and fifties when the Rat Pack ruled the dark streets and the punk rock in the seventies that restarted the heart of rock and roll in the face of the disco machine uptown at Studio 54.
We miss the dirty old New York City of our youth with her dirty pavements, leering pervs and beggars with outstretched hands. They brought a sense of danger that seemed vital to the city, like the visage of Moondog standing on Sixth Avenue shouting his poetry and scaring more timid foot traffic to the other side of the street with his two-horned Viking helmet. Philadelphia still sports a layer of dirt on it but Disney constipated the Big Apple by cleaning up Times Square, the once-beloved center of sleaze. The last time we walked down to Greenwich Village and got thirsty for a beer, we had to walk eight blocks…eight blocks!!! In NYC for a beer? The real indignity came with viewing the Lower East Side out the window of an Applebee’s because that was all we could find.
And what happened to the 25 Cent XXX Sex Show on Forty Second Street? As bad as it turned out to be, how could anybody resist finding out how much of a show you get for a quarter?
Well, now we reside in Washington, home state of the most prolific serial killers. The Son of Sam fell far short of some of the body counts we see here. To the south a couple of states, we have California so that gives us our minimum daily requirement of nearby whack-jobs. What is the difference between bad behavior at the Jersey Shore and bad behavior in LA? LA dresses it up better and has blondes. It all comes out the same on TMZ, though.
We arrived here at 70 miles per hour. That, in itself, tells volumes about the gap between coasts. We crossed some areas in Montana where there was no speed limit whatsoever. At 70 mph, we do not feel inclined to speed. Therefore, the police have no need to pull us over. If they did, they would find something that is legal, anyway. When they put out the DUI patrols here, they are kind enough to tell you which night of the week and during which hours on which road. That is so kind!
In fact, if we do not agree with the way things are run, they even have legally assisted suicide! How can we go wrong?
Some eastern states go to 65 mph but the norm is the old ‘stay alive at fifty-five’. Go 65mph there and they have a good reason to stop you. Take Pennsylvania (please…haha), if you are stopped and ‘suspected’ of being high on marijuana, you must consent to the urine test. The test used by the state police is so sensitive that it can spot the tiniest amount of THC metabolites in urine so that it can even turn positive if you smoked six months ago. If you prove positive you lose the license, get the fine, etc…if you refuse, you get the same thing…not nice!
No such things happen here. There also seems to be a great paranoia in the east. Before we left and as we packed, we heard numerous friends and associates warn us about the dangers on the road. “Keep your guns in the storage locker!” “Don’t keep any paraphernalia on you!” “Remember the facial recognition scanners every mile along the road!”
We left with two shotguns and a rifle lying right behind the seat under the open case of Pabst Blue Ribbon, which we drank all the way from Harrisburg to the bottom of Lake Michigan one June night and did not see a single police until we waved at one in a rest stop outside of Fargo. There is really nothing new to be scared of on the road. Take it from us, it’s the same old road. Be free.
Here, hitch-hikers still stick their thumbs out and serial killers smile at them. Beggars guard entrances to the shopping areas, mostly young methed-out tweakers with nothing to look forward to. Older ones drifted north after then-NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani solved the city’s homeless ‘problem’ by rounding up everybody in the parks and giving them a free bus ticket to LA, but only if they promised not to return. So we have all types here.
Most exciting, just to the south in Portland, the city hums with activity. We can feel the energy and a scene is taking place there…either that or the place is loaded with poseurs. From the many small music magazines we see, we know Portland has tons of small venues with live shows every night. Big acts tend to play Seattle and skip down to Cali. The scene in Portland feels organic, the visiting acts at local clubs seem to be an esoteric mix which blends with and compliments all of the fresh new faces releasing new songs on vinyl and playing crowded gigs.
Where can we get the best price for our old vinyl? Portland, of course. So many record and alternative book stores line the streets here that it reminds us of the Village in the old days, before Bleeker Bob’s and other old rare record/cd haunts vanished. If we sell an LP in Portland we get cash as opposed to the dreaded store credit, which has so often dampened our spirits. We take the cash and go to small clubs where the vibe reaches out from the city center into outlying neighborhoods.
Count up the clubs and the acts per night and we do not think NYC can keep up, not with the rock and roll end of things. We feel the loose, mellow, friendly haze of the current heroin epidemic there, as well. Funny how those things seem to keep time with each other.
Seriously, though, the scene in Portland, so robust you can taste it, may just break out and unleash a new twist, a new alternative to alternative, a fresh coat of paint to a passe’ form of music. What is happening in rock and roll right now? Who is hot? Where is the innovation? When did we last see a ‘movement?’ Was that way back when grunge hit?
The biggest sellers remain in place from the sixties, seventies and eighties. The geezers sell more ducats than youths do and that is wrong. College students listen to Pink Floyd and the Beatles. These may be old bands but soon we ought to be hearing from the young and angry again, unless rock and roll really is dead.
We’ll be sitting right here, watching from up close.
See ya!

We miss the dirty old New York City of our youth with her dirty pavements, leering pervs and beggars with outstretched hands. They brought a sense of danger that seemed vital to the city, like the visage of Moondog standing on Sixth Avenue shouting his poetry and scaring more timid foot traffic to the other side of the street with his two-horned Viking helmet. Philadelphia still sports a layer of dirt on it but Disney constipated the Big Apple by cleaning up Times Square, the once-beloved center of sleaze. The last time we walked down to Greenwich Village and got thirsty for a beer, we had to walk eight blocks…eight blocks!!! In NYC for a beer? The real indignity came with viewing the Lower East Side out the window of an Applebee’s because that was all we could find.
And what happened to the 25 Cent XXX Sex Show on Forty Second Street? As bad as it turned out to be, how could anybody resist finding out how much of a show you get for a quarter?
Well, now we reside in Washington, home state of the most prolific serial killers. The Son of Sam fell far short of some of the body counts we see here. To the south a couple of states, we have California so that gives us our minimum daily requirement of nearby whack-jobs. What is the difference between bad behavior at the Jersey Shore and bad behavior in LA? LA dresses it up better and has blondes. It all comes out the same on TMZ, though.
We arrived here at 70 miles per hour. That, in itself, tells volumes about the gap between coasts. We crossed some areas in Montana where there was no speed limit whatsoever. At 70 mph, we do not feel inclined to speed. Therefore, the police have no need to pull us over. If they did, they would find something that is legal, anyway. When they put out the DUI patrols here, they are kind enough to tell you which night of the week and during which hours on which road. That is so kind!
In fact, if we do not agree with the way things are run, they even have legally assisted suicide! How can we go wrong?
Some eastern states go to 65 mph but the norm is the old ‘stay alive at fifty-five’. Go 65mph there and they have a good reason to stop you. Take Pennsylvania (please…haha), if you are stopped and ‘suspected’ of being high on marijuana, you must consent to the urine test. The test used by the state police is so sensitive that it can spot the tiniest amount of THC metabolites in urine so that it can even turn positive if you smoked six months ago. If you prove positive you lose the license, get the fine, etc…if you refuse, you get the same thing…not nice!
No such things happen here. There also seems to be a great paranoia in the east. Before we left and as we packed, we heard numerous friends and associates warn us about the dangers on the road. “Keep your guns in the storage locker!” “Don’t keep any paraphernalia on you!” “Remember the facial recognition scanners every mile along the road!”
We left with two shotguns and a rifle lying right behind the seat under the open case of Pabst Blue Ribbon, which we drank all the way from Harrisburg to the bottom of Lake Michigan one June night and did not see a single police until we waved at one in a rest stop outside of Fargo. There is really nothing new to be scared of on the road. Take it from us, it’s the same old road. Be free.
Here, hitch-hikers still stick their thumbs out and serial killers smile at them. Beggars guard entrances to the shopping areas, mostly young methed-out tweakers with nothing to look forward to. Older ones drifted north after then-NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani solved the city’s homeless ‘problem’ by rounding up everybody in the parks and giving them a free bus ticket to LA, but only if they promised not to return. So we have all types here.
Most exciting, just to the south in Portland, the city hums with activity. We can feel the energy and a scene is taking place there…either that or the place is loaded with poseurs. From the many small music magazines we see, we know Portland has tons of small venues with live shows every night. Big acts tend to play Seattle and skip down to Cali. The scene in Portland feels organic, the visiting acts at local clubs seem to be an esoteric mix which blends with and compliments all of the fresh new faces releasing new songs on vinyl and playing crowded gigs.
Where can we get the best price for our old vinyl? Portland, of course. So many record and alternative book stores line the streets here that it reminds us of the Village in the old days, before Bleeker Bob’s and other old rare record/cd haunts vanished. If we sell an LP in Portland we get cash as opposed to the dreaded store credit, which has so often dampened our spirits. We take the cash and go to small clubs where the vibe reaches out from the city center into outlying neighborhoods.
Count up the clubs and the acts per night and we do not think NYC can keep up, not with the rock and roll end of things. We feel the loose, mellow, friendly haze of the current heroin epidemic there, as well. Funny how those things seem to keep time with each other.
Seriously, though, the scene in Portland, so robust you can taste it, may just break out and unleash a new twist, a new alternative to alternative, a fresh coat of paint to a passe’ form of music. What is happening in rock and roll right now? Who is hot? Where is the innovation? When did we last see a ‘movement?’ Was that way back when grunge hit?
The biggest sellers remain in place from the sixties, seventies and eighties. The geezers sell more ducats than youths do and that is wrong. College students listen to Pink Floyd and the Beatles. These may be old bands but soon we ought to be hearing from the young and angry again, unless rock and roll really is dead.
We’ll be sitting right here, watching from up close.
See ya!

Tips On Stealing An Xmas Tree

In today’s economy this topic generates a lot of interest, Gentle Readers, so – in this atheistic, agnostic. faithless world – let us look at how we can ‘spruce up’ (ahem) our lives by sticking shiny things on dead trees. As you see in the photo provided by ABC News, some people like to get trees for free!

About ‘the holidays’…here in the great North West, anybody driving in store parking lots over the past week can attest to how the holidays bring out the worst in people. As part of our calendar training this time of year represents our time…our chance to celebrate, our chance to consume, our chance to eat and drink too much, our time to satisfy as many cravings, gain as much weight, and kill as many brain cells as possible.
Banks used to have ‘Christmas Clubs,’ savings accounts where people squirreled away cash all year long to blow during the holidays. We wonder if the clubs still exist. Banks don’t stick around long anymore. A year is time enough to get scammed. Remember when we trusted banks? No, not when we trusted them before the Great Depression; we mean remember when we trusted banks up to a few years ago, after we forgot the depression.
The bottom line, as regards stealing a tree, here is: too many people are at the shopping areas. We act crazy enough, abusing our way through the tortuous weeks, but many must have their special holiday food and are in a hurry to get home and stuff themselves. Many can’t wait to see what they are going to pay for on credit for the next year and a half. Most want to park close to the door because they must carry the all of the precious bounty. Impatience reigns.
Cars get keyed. Frenzied parkers hit and run, scraping or denting anything parked on either side of their space.
Accomplish stealing your tree away from such behavior.

Several choices present themselves. Each person has their own way but since the holidays haunt us, we pose a few guilt-free solutions. First and most obvious, we present the old-fashioned way of driving to the woods, then parking along the road. Find whatever conifer grows in your path as you walk into the forest, you cut it down and bundle it on home.
The same method produces equal success when picking your prize from the lawn of a local mall or landscaped office park; your old high school principal’s house makes for a perfect spot to shop, maybe the school itself. Sticking with the guilt-free theme, bear in mind that nurseries have the nicest trees. These trees stand proud and straight in rows until sold….sold. It should be a crime to make money on holidays which celebrate spiritual beliefs. That is the same kind of shit Jesus threw the moneylenders out of the temple for. What harm can we do to an evil merchant?
When stealing from a business…make it a large business. Leave the Mom & Pop tree nurseries and find a chain store.
Most importantly, never ever steal anything from a friend!

Equipment is paramount to success. Chainsaws (we prefer Stihl) wake people so are best used only for deep woods scenarios, or very bold daylight ‘removals’ from front yards of vacationing enemies. Hand-saws present tricky problems, particularly if you use such tools infrequently. Green wood not only causes blisters, it shows the tenacity of a whole Druid nation if your blade is dull.
Those magic knives that cut through a can of beans, then cut down a pine tree and then cuts tomatoes into the thinnest wedges possible? Forget the part about the pine tree. Ha. We tried that years ago in a nursery one rainy night with a QVC gift knife which worked wonderfully on TV. With the rise of security cameras far off in the future, the new moon provided enough cover to allow us an hour to hack through the muddy trunk. Blisters formed in the first five minutes. Our legs froze from squatting down low enough to cut an even line across the sappy, cold wood.
Naturally, dragging the muddy tree into the house filled us with a sense of pride. Sopping wet, cold, blistered and bedraggled, we saved fifteen dollars to abuse ourselves with….enough for a case of beer at that time.

We presume that most Kind Readers are adults.
If you have children, then you probably need a tree. If not, think it over. For you parents in the house, we suggest the good old American Way – trickery! Tell your kids that Santa brings the tree when he drops down the chimney of the apartment you live in. Slip the kids a little eggnog (with a Mickey, natch) and take a midnight drive late on the 24th. Pack your pliers, a couple wire clothes hangers, and a machete or similar large knife. Avoid using QVC knives.
Drive toward your local shopping center (better yet, the best one in your town) and there you’ll find a beautiful assortment of misfit trees. Awww…just like on the Rudolph TV special, sorta.
Most trees have a good side – the one that is showing, or the side which is face up if it is on the ground. Turn them around and there’ll be branches barren and broken. Sad in a way, if you are an Arborist, however finding two half-trees to wire together with hangers solves so many problems. Besides providing for our families we utilize trees which would have otherwise died in vain. We see a certain urban heroism in this. Next, simply use the machete/knife to even out the bad sides of two tree of the same approximate height by chopping off the deformed branches on the ‘sick’ sides. Fit them together until they appear to be one tree. Children do not notice the double trunk if you steal enough presents to hide it behind. Bind top and bottom together with hangers, set it up in the living room and just watch those tender little eyes light up next morning! Be careful and try to find to trees of the same variety. A half-pine, half-spruce tree might cause a curious child to wonder; if this is your only option, concoct a good story and have it ready in the morning.
These few helpful hints carried us through many a holiday season.
We hope you find them to be useful, too! Just remember the security cameras!

Now, go get a tree – if you must.

Thank The Supreme Court And Ferd For This Post (contains explicit language)

Gentle Readers,

Given the subject matter in this blog, we tried to find a nice ‘lunatic’ image but ended up with an image of a ‘luna kit’ and since it is a cool image we may as well just go with the flow and take what our graphics department comes up with!

Why a lunatic? Ferd is quoted here, that’s why the lunatic!

Ferd does not have a computer and does not even have an email address. We told him we were writing about him several times but he has never taken the time to look at the screen to see what we say. That said, let us consider that the Suprme Court recently took all penalties off of using foul language and determined that is is perfectly legal to write, type or speak the words ‘fucking asshole‘.  We find this reassuring to know that when we are pulled over for yet another traffic violation, we are allowed to exclaim, “Thanks a lot, you fucking asshole” to the ‘officer’ who has cited us.

Thanks to our cultural heroes, it is now legal to curse in public and it is with the blessings of the High Court that we relate the following:

One recent hot, sunny Summer day, we found ourselves at the door of Ferd’s domain. Outside and sitting in the sun with no water and not enough leash to reach the shade was his cat, Willie. After pounding on the door, waking and berating him, he unhooked Willie and took her inside (“her” because Willie is short for Wilhelmina). Willie flopped on the floor, exhausted. We questioned Ferd on the lack of water for Willie, at which point he filled a bowl and Willie immediately started to lap it up. Feeling sorry for poor Willie, Your Humble Narrator looked at Ferd and called him a fucking asshole.

Many people would take humbrage or offense to such a remark but Ferd took it in stride. In fact, he complimented me on it. He recounted a day, some 40 years earlier, when Your Narrator was with a group of school friends and Ferd. Pot was pretty unavailable and five of us stood in a circle while the bowl was filled with our last remaining stash. Putting a light to the bowl, we took the first toke and passed it to Ferd, who immediately dropped it on the ground, where the remains could not be recovered.  Everybody cursed him, even himself. This incident had long been forgotten, albiet in the the mind of Ferd. He recounted the occasion and how we had called him a fucking asshole forty years earlier.

“You know,” said Ferd, seemingly amused at being insulted, “Do you remember that time I dropped the bowl?”

“No,” we countered, “and what does that have to do with anything and why can’t you take care of your cat?”

Blowing off the bit about the cat, he related the story of the dropped bowl. “You sound exactly the same calling me a fucking asshole today, as you did when you called me a fucking asshole forty years ago. I can close my eyes and it is like going back in time.”

Great, we thought, a fucking asshole in a timeless warp…or ‘Ferd…An Asshole Through the Ages’…

We thought this was humorous enough but, more recently, we were moved to refer to Ferd as ‘an imbecile’ and he objected strongly to the remark. He had his reasons. He said that being an imbecile was a part of normal human development and that he had passed that stage.  As he put it, “You are born, and from the time you ‘come out of the shute’ you are an imbecile. Then, later you develop into an idiot, until you become a moron. These are the stages of a child’s brain development. I read it in a book!”

We are not sure what book Ferd had his nose in that time – or what he had his nose in before he looked at the book – but  we actually searched the internet to see how he could have come up with such a classic way of distinguishing between inbecility and idiocy. Being a master of both, we almost hoped to find something to support his jive but could not find a single thing to back him up.

He must be a moron. 

 

Some Good Reasons To Buy Beatdom Issue 9

Cats and Kittens, Cherished Readers,

Open minds that have no leaders,

We return to you today after quite a long break in the action, although we see you have been reading daily and we appreciate the patronage!

Our disappearance was caused due to the fact that Your Humble Narrator is now Co-Publisher of Beatdom Books and we published our first two exciting volumes in the month of July…Beatdom Issue Nine and Zoning by Spencer Kansa, which we shall tell you about in the next blog.

     So why buy the new Beatdom? Ten dollars…one dollar per reason…as we have changed the format to that of a more traditional literary journal and also have gone to black and white, save for the excellent cover illustration by R.H.Harper, an excellent Philadelphia artist.

     First and foremost, you will find a lot of great writing from our regular crew of writers, as well as some new faces. We have new, yes NEW, photos of Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Norman Mailer which have never been published before and were donated to us by the remarkable Jerry Aronson, whose DVD, The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg is reviewed at length, as well as a review of the PBS Naked Lens film by filmmaker Yony Leyser,  William S. Burroughs: A Man Within. You can find reviews of both of them on this blog space if you use the search function but the review in Beatdom, with the photos from Jerry, make an exceptionally fine piece.

     The cover is so nice that you will be sure to look hip while reading it, so that is a reason in itself and it is a real conversation starter…just look at that cover…and there are numerous other great illustrations inside…you may ascertain from the cover that this is our ‘Drugs’ issue, so we have a number of articles with a droogy theme, as well as straight essays and poetry.

     …which brings us to yet another reason, which is the excellent fiction by Katy Gurin, Chuck Taylor and Dan Leo (as well as by Your Humble Narrator) and the accompanying illustrations and art by award-winning filmmaker Waylon Bacon and Haydn Lock.

     Then, we have the scholarly studies from around the world, like the essay on Hunter S. Thompson in Kentucky, by Rory Feehan in Ireland, and a detailed look at Mr. Burroughs’ forays into the jungles of South America in search of yage by Nick Meador and Geetanjali Joshi Mishra’s insightful look at Allen Ginsberg, From Ganja To God, about the late poet’s experiences with ganja in India, and a look at Burroughs’ groundbreaking work with yage by David S, Wills, our fearless leader.

     We have poetry smuggled out of the heart of a womens’ prison, poetry about addiction and poetry about supermarkets, plus more poetry, for the verse-lovers in the crowd.

     Another fine reason to buy this treasure-trove of Beat knowledge and enjoyable fiction and poetry, as we mentioned earlier, is that we have made it available at the ridiculously low price of $9.99 a copy, plus $2 for shipping…that is two dollars in America and two euros for international customers. Our first copy was sent to a reader in Australia…if you order quickly (www.beatdom.com) you may even get your copy before the first one hits the land down under.  We have squeezed the large, airplane-browsing-sized, full colour issues into a standard format literary journal, so it is easy to keep in pocket or purse. In fact, we dare you to find something better to read at that price and if you find something even half as hip, we want to know about it.

    This is actually an old reason, but Beatdom is the world’s most popular Beat-themed literary journal. We have readers on every continent except Antartica and we may open an office there just to stimulate sales…when we have the cash, that is…which may be a while since we only hope to break even on this endeavor…as has always been the case with Beatdom, all along…we are not here to get rich on your hard-earned book money. We are here to keep the Beat spirit alive and let you know what is happening in the world of Beatdom.

     This issue was printed and bound by the prestigious Sheridan Press. We chose them so that we could offer you the best in quality, not just in the writing and art but in the reproduction of such fine work. Sheridan is a venerable force in the publishing industry, printer of the best among literary journals…and that is why we chose them to bring you the finest Beatdom possible.

     It will not be online for immediate free download, like the older, more expensive issues were. It will be in the future – but at the moment, the only way to see it is to open a copy and start enjoying yourself. To older readers, consider this a literary take on ZAP Comix…great art, good messages and hip from beginning to end.

      Also, check out the cover illustration for David Wills’ upcoming (on Beatdom Books) novel The Dog Farm. You may have heard recent news about the glow-in-the-dark dogs which were created by those krazy koreans but Mr. Wills gives you a whole new view of South Korea.

    So what are you waiting for? You can buy it with check, money order or Paypal. Orders paid with check or money order will be shipped once funds have cleared, which is overnight in the day of instant wire transfer…so take a chance…don’t be a mooncalf, don’t be a fuddy duddy…get hip and get yourself a copy of Beatdom Issue Nine…it may sell out before you get the chance…

More Cute Than You Can Shake A Stick At

     Feline Fanatics,

     We remind you that no kitties were harmed in the making of this blog.  The kit on the left is just being adventurous.  The photo session started because he kept trying to nose his way into the frig everytime the door opened because he knew the milk was in there.  We scooped him up and got a few shots of him standing on the top shelf in the fridge, smaller than a pint of milk, sniffing the goods.

     The microwave was simply a photo opp which presented itself at the time.  We would never do, nor encourage, such a thing.  Cats have now outnumbered dogs in America by about a million.  More households have dogs but the data indicates that cat owners often own multiples, as we do with Inkie and Budderz, and that dog owners are also prone to have a kittie or kitty or two around, as well.  The cats usually dominate the dogs in any of these situations.  Many are horrified at the thought of introducing a cat into a house with dogs but the cats are crafty and take great advantage of canine idiocy, often doing bad things that get blamed on Fido.

     The folks at Animal Planet have siezed upon these facts and have, in the past few months, released a number of new cat-related shows which cater to pampering owners.  Last season, they produced Cats 101, which was an excellent rundown of breeds, studying the quirks, cuteness, foibles and follies each breed gets into most frequently.  It was a good show but, in our humble opinion, it does not hold a candle to the merriment involved in the new program Must Love Cats, which we wrote about in a previous blog and which you can search for and read on this very page. 

     One night last week, they introduced Too Cute, a documentary on three litters of kittens growing from birth to the tender age of eight weeks.  There are laughs, drama, bits of related information but it was mostly about kittens being cutesy…and it works.

     Tonight, they unleash MY CAT FROM HELL (sorry for the caps…that is how Animal Planet lists it).  Jackson Galaxy, the host, plays guitar – as does the host of Must Love Cats.  Why a human singing to cats about mice and birds and whatever else a cat thinks about is a standard for these type of shows, we will never know. Maybe it is the cute factor but it would be more cute to me if a woman sang.  You have to give Galaxy credit, though, for his creative use of barber tools, as he has no hair above the ears and is very creative with all the follicles which sprout from the temples down…we would post a pic but we expect if you read this far you will see for yourself.  We do not mention his tattoos, as they are pretty normal in that they seem to cover most of his body, the norm for the 21st century expression of individuality – cover yourself with tatoos like everybody else.  We do not know how that many tatts make you that individual since, viewed from a half a block away, they look the same as anybody else who is covered in ink. 

     Cats do not get tattoos but they appear in quite a few of them, most notably those cool ones that the punk/rockabilly band The Stray Cats had on their arms.  Those are the most notable ones we recall.  Some where out there is a woman with a tattoo of a cat on one asscheek.  It is in the hunting position and is reaching to catch the tail of the tattooed ‘half a mouse’ which is drawn so it looks like it is crawling into her butt to escape.  Trust us.  It is a big world.  This is out there somewhere and, if not, we suppose we are sick for thinking of such things.

     So do tune in at 9pm EST in the United States.  We are not sure how these things get broadcast worldwide.  One would imagine that tv programs would start to ‘synch up’ worldwide, rather than go from one country to another as they get older.  That should happen about the time some woman gets that tattoo. So watch! Enjoy! It is Kitties!!!

Gas Shock Clocked, Writer’s Block Stopped

     Understanding Readers,

     We have not posted for a week or so. One of our last posts detailed problems with the pc and an outage at Verizon’s internet banks.  Yesterday, a Verizon worker came to my house after three days of me switching out old wires, phones, jacks, you-name-it, only to tell me that my phone line had been disconnected at the main office, for no reason.

     Falling off the face of the earth, with no phone or internet, was a very strange, lost feeling.  I felt disconnected and could not communicate with friends or go on the stock market or watch videos of fuzzy kittens.  Once used to it, the amount of work that had been put off for no particular reason became easy to tackle without the interference of the web.  I got a lot of interference from my cat, Inkie, but she is just a bug no matter what.

     Nonetheless, my trusty auto, which has been taking me from here to there since 2004, sucked up over $50 worth of gas the other day.  In seven years, it never took $50 worth.  This does not bode well for my idea of the crosscountry kittie caravan in the 30foot RV.  It makes me wonder how much more people will take. 

     Of course, as usual, there is always somebody to blame…now who would we blame if America was rich in oil and natural gas, yet the people living here are not able to afford to fill their cars, trucks and oil tanks at home?  Who would we blame if all the gas and oil we are allowed to consume has to be shipped from halfway across the world, while people who produce gas here could do it cheaper but are not allowed to because of hidden political agendas?  Who would we point to as the Anti-Christ?  If you said ‘Obama’ you could be right on all counts.

     My next door neighbor does not like Obama.  She is 82 years old and was a nurse for many years of her life, in facilities around Long Island, NY, where she is from.  She says she learned to read people’s faces and can tell when people lie about being in pain or caring about others or other facial ‘giveaways’.  She does not like the look on Obama’s puss and you have to admit, he is one of the MEANEST-looking presidents we ever had.  I can only remember back to Kennedy but nobody in that office ever gave the dirty looks that Obama can deal out to those who disagree with him. Sorta like this…

     So, it can be pretty obvious that he does not like people.  That would explain why he wants to screw his own country in a way that will take the rest of history to undo.  Five states now have gas above the $4 line and he can ride around on Air Force One and look down on us.  He could tell SecRATary of the Interior Salazar to stop the moritorium on american oil companies.  BP is drilling in Alaska, where a lot of people think our reserves are…guess what? They are BP’s reserves now…we are not allowed to drill but BP can because they are not American, yet they drill on our soil.  We are giving our resources to BP so they can resell them back to us at an elevated price.

     Why?

     Because we let him; because we elected him (not me), and because we do nothing about his actions now but to watch in awestruck horror as he dismantles the economy and ruins the lives of countless millions in the Gulf.

     Soon it will be April 20.  420.  We suggest that on that day, nobody take any substances which will muddle their thoughts.  We suggest that you get together, as planned…but instead of getting high, figure out how to use your votes to get this disaster off our backs and out of office.  Once that is done, you can get high…if you are lucky.

Things I Do For Kitties

     Browsers and Meowsers,

     It may sound ridiculous but currently, we live in a house we bought for a cat.  Having bounced around, living in doorways, cars, sofas, spare rooms and all the other dubious choices of habitat…that was alright for me but it is not something a cat should be subjected to.  Cats need windows and birdies to look at through those windows.  They need a regular place to find their bowl.  Were it not for my first kittie, a beautiful Maine Coon named Copernicus (Purrnie),  Your Humble Narrator could still be dwelling who-knows-where.

     The responsibility of the cat settled me down, ending a wild streak of moving from place to place, city to city, over a number of years.  Purrnie outlasted my ex-wife, my parents, several jobs and half a dozen cars.  The only stable force in my life for quite sometime was the cat that met me at the door everytime I arrived home.  Cats can hear your car miles away.  An amazing fact, picked up from Animal Planet, is that your cats cannot only hear your car at least a mile away, it can tell the difference between your car and the exact same model that came off the assembly line immediately before or after your vehicle.  They can tell the difference.

     We fielded some questions from a fervent kittie fanatic recently.  This Beloved Reader reported that “I HAVE A CAT THAT IS NAMED SHADOW IT IS FAT AND LOVEY.”…Now, isn’t that a pleasant thought?  A nice fat kittie!  The reader was also interested in my status and asked these thought-provoking questions, as well, “DO YOU HAVE A CAT YAS OR NO” and “DO YOU LICK CATS YES OR NO”????

     While we do not feel the sense of urgency indicative of a phrase like “YAS OR NO”, we do find the quries to be valid and, in so doing, we address them directly.  Yas, is the first answer, there are two cats living in my house.  One of them, you may have seen part of, as his white, rear tootsies decorate the wallpaper behind this post. 

     Do I LICK MY CATS, yes or no?  While not directly licking them with my tongue,  sometimes I do wet my fingers and pet them in a way that affects them in the way of a washing.  The moisture leads the cat to think it was licked and they usually respond by licking my hand in return.

     Licking cats is one thing but I think more devotion is shown in the care and grooming of Inkie’s butthole.  This is Inkie.  In the seven years Inkie has been here, not once would she keep her eyes open when her picture is snapped.                                                                        

     She is a very pretty girlie-girl of a kittie and, from looking at a ‘breed chart’ at the vet, she has been determined to be mostly Angora.  She has the soft, silky Angora fluff that gets stuck in my eyelashes and the corners of my mouth when I sleep and Inkie gets in my face in her attempts to wake me.  This gorgeous, sleek fur, while making her a little diva, can also cause her a bit of annoyance at this time of year, just before the winter coat of fur gives way to the summer coat.  The winter coat gets so thick before the change that it actually forms a layer over her anus and the ‘poopie’ gets stuck halfway out, held into her by fur.

     To remedy this, Gentle Readers, we must take a small scissors and cut a little ‘tunnel’ through the fur so that Inkie may relieve herself.  One must be ever-so-careful when nearing a cat’s anus with a pointy pair of sharp scissors; one little slip could hurt the fuzzy girl.

     There were times in my life when, if you told me I would be cutting tunnels to cats bums,  it would seem like an absurd statement.  This is what cats have done to me.

     Along the more normal lines, providing food, water and toys are also daily duties but how many times have I gotten stuck in my seat because one of my cats got onto my lap and looks way too cute and comfortable to move.  Try typing with a laptop on your thighs and a curled up kittie on your belly.  It takes practice to not wake the sleepy little git and still hit all the right keys.

     Some people do much more for kitties, as evidenced on the Animal Planet Network’s Must Love Cats show.  The cat-owners on Must Love Cats are much more fanatical than myself.  It is amazing what lengths people go to to keep the little ones happy.  Saturday past, Animal Planet ran a marathon of the show again and, in watching and dozing off and watching and dozing off,  the day turned into a surreal dream, punctuated every couple hours by the yodeling kitties.

     So, the purpose for this blog?  Aside from taking the time to reply to a Most Esteemed Reader,  it was just an excuse to ramble on a favorite subject…felines!

A Little Slice Of Real Life Featuring Alpha Male

      Loyal Readers,

      As yesterday was National Womans Day,  we present this little slice of life which unfolded one day back around 1980.  It goes to show that, when there is a writer around, even the most insignificant of conversations can be kicked around for years or dug out of the cold grave of memory (or in this case, the notebooks of Your Humble Narrator).

     This involved roommates that once shared domicile with us, back when we could still stand the thought of sharing space with virtual strangers in order to save a buck.  All of us knew each other but not too well.  Becky had the lease, so it was her apartment technically.  Steve was mainly on the mooch and was always trying to convert Becky into a Rainbow Vacuum Cleaner Salesperson – the end of the food chain for jobseekers.

     Let’s look…

     Becky sat on the lumpy sofa with three cats, Steve and his wife.

     “How was your day,” asked Steve?

     “It sucked like Hell,” replied Becky.

     “Why is that,” quizzled Steve?  He liked to ask questions because he always had the answer before he even asked.

     Becky recounted the events of her long, fruitless day.  She related how she was victimized at her job and how she was constantly the victim of the inconsiderations of others.  Becky was a loser, more or less, but had a big heart.  People did take advantage of her, especially at work.

     “Complain to your supervisor,” Steve counseled, as he was his wont to do.

     “If that doesn’t work,” the advisor continued, “Go higher!  Keep going higher and higher!  Go as high as you have to go to get results!  Thats is how to do it!”

     Becky knotted her eyebrows together and scratched the back of her head with a pencil.  “Do you mean, ” she countered, “That I should go to the President of the United States about my job as an assistant cook at a fast food chain?”

     “Of course!  Think positive!,” advised the Knowing One.  “In fact, once I didn’t get my paycheck and I kept complaining.  Finally, the damn thing was three weeks late so I called the White House and left a message for the President…a couple days later – I had my check! How about that?”

     He turned to Carol, his long-suffering wife. “Didn’t I call the White House,” he asked her?  “Yes,” she replied softly in a voice that sounded beaten down from too much agreeing.

     “Wow,” thought Becky, in her open-minded way,  “This guy is intense!”

                                                                ~                        ~                          ~