Joke

Guy shows up for his first day at work at the local soil ‘n’ aggregate yard. They got these trucks comin’ in an he’s gotta tell em where to go.

He labels the truckloads as they come in. You gotcher humus, yer gravel, your potting soil.

It’s easy, says Manny, showin’ him the ropes. Truck comes in, you check the paperwork. Chalk up on the hopper where it’s headed. Got it? 

Guy says “Yeah, I got this boss. Rest assured.” Manny says, “Great, and keep an eye out for the gravel. We got enough o’ the ordinary soil and need to build inventory in aggregate. I’ll see you around lunch.”

First load comes in marked down for loam. After that, aside from one hopper filled with beach sand around 10:30, one load after another goes straight to loam. He’s on top of it, marking each bin “loam”, until finally there’s a line of idling diesels waiting to offload, all at the same bay.

About this time, Manny comes back, humoring the trainee, but clearly a bit steamed to see the trucks all cued up.

“Ok, so I see you’ve been workin’ the incoming shipments, but I need to know why my yard is all jammed up.”

“I can’t help it boss! Look right here in my manifest! All loads read ‘to loam’”

 

Horror vs. Real Life

Horror movies: blood sucking vampires. Horror IRL: money sucking vampires.

 

Horror movies: scientist who builds a man from corpses. Horror IRL: scientists build a bomb to incinerate 10s of 1,000s of humans.

 

Horror movies: invisible spirits of dead people hurt you and you can do nothing against them. Horror IRL: the invisible state hurts you and you can do nothing against it.

 

Horror movies: witches. Horror IRL: fucking priests*. 'Nuff said.

 

Horror movies: zombies rise up. Horror IRL: the poor rise up. 

Folks, you gotta ask yourself if you are a zombie, that is to say, if you are really that worried that the poor ' gonna take away your Mustang, or if you are, in fact, the poor.

 

Horror IRL: Egyptian nobility who should be dead walk around doing whatever it is they do. Horror IRL: modern nobility** hoard billions of dollars. 

 

Horror movies: various creatures who come out of swamps or ocean depths. Horror IRL: marines. Sorry, but, hey, you know.

 

Horror movies: aliens from Mars who abduct, study, enslave, dissect and exterminate you. Horror IRL: aliens from Europe, ditto.

 

Horror movies: radioactive monster comes put of the sea to incinerate cities. Horror IRL: submarines rise out of sea to incinerate cities.

 

Horror movie: huge machines rampage across cities. Horror IRL: huge SUVs rampage across cities.

 

*nondenominational anthropological usage. 

**remind me about the weird thing we do w the word “noble”. Have y’all in fact read ANY history?? 

Cammies

Age 9: decide to wear "army clothes" whenever possible.

Age 13: join cadet group: wear suckass fatigues. Plot to improve situation.

Age 16: continue to wear various suckass green fatigues b/c cargo pants uniforms unavailable. Become familiar with genuine tigerstripe cammies my friend Brian has somehow acquired.

Age 18: spend entire life savings on crummy post-Vietname War commercial tigerstripe fatigues: 40 bucks.

Age 20: get groovy German cammies, arcane Desert Night cammies, wear all over Europe. Tell GF that I have decided to try to acquire every camouflage pattern in the world. She replies that I would then have exactly 2 patterns. 

Age 24 or so: decide to finally get serious about camo. Cover office/guest room with camo jackets on cardboard to display their pattern, make camo director’s chair seats. Mix camo jacets with jeans.

Age 30 or so: transition from camo jackets to camo pants, mix with plaid shirts [Pendletons!] Focus on few, cool patterns.

Age 40 or so: get multiple patterns in order to ease wear on few patterns, extend usefulness.

Age 50 or so: discover that exotic patterned fabric is much easier to find than exotic patterned pants that fit. Begin making pants. Start a Facebook page called Bad Camo, chronicling camo that is silly, stupid, and fascinating.

Age 55 or so: reach point that I can go an entire summer off from the school year wearing a different pattern each day.

Age 60 or so: realize that by any objective metric, I have far too many pairs of camo pants.

Age 62: realize that I have be a much more stylish fucker wearing non-camouflage pants. The too much camo remains.

 

Marriage

 

You must marry ___ so your father can become more powerful.

You are not allowed to marry ___ because your parents say no.

You made the mistake of marrying ___ without permission, so the king shall punish you.

You made the mistake of marrying someone not for rational motivations, but for the absurdity of love, so we shall think ill of you.

You must marry ___ so they can acquire half your lands.

You married someone with a different imaginary friend, so your imaginary friend shall no longer allow you to imagine that you are playing with them.

You married someone who talks to their imaginary friend differently than you, so same consequence.

You married someone whose imaginary friend we take exception to, so we shall not allow your corpse to be buried over here, but only over there.

You married someone who looks funny, so we shall hang you, or them, from a nearby tree.

You married someone who used to be married to someone else, so kitty bar the fuckin' door!

You didn't travel to this place here just to marry someone did you? No, of course not. That would be naughty. 

You don't want to get married to someone just so we will let you stay over here rather than over there, would you? That would be the height of cynicism!

You're getting married? Well, of course, their mother gets to choose the silverware and the menu. I thought you knew that!!

You got married? Good. We shall now title you so that everyone else immediately knows your status. Unless you're a man.

You got married? Good. We shall now call you Missus John Smith.

You got married? Simply everybody wears a silly little ring, so we expect you shall as well. Weren't you told that?

How lovely that you got married? Now, dutifully go 'round to every bureaucratic office you can and deface your surname.

Thank you for getting married. You shall now peep out from every genealogical survey 2 centuries now as merely "Peggy", with no other data assigned to you except who you gave birth to.

You got married? Lovely! We would like to know all about it. Here, pee in this cup. Give us some blood. Let us swab your cheek.

You will, naturally, need to be licensed to get married, just as you would to drive a car. Yes, of course, there is a fee! Congratulations!

No, you can't possibly have got married. You have an innie/outie, and they've got an innie/outie, too!

You're getting married? That's disgusting! To hell with your cake!

Highly Advanced Motorcycle Hipster

 

I’m trying to figure out who this guy is. He's on a knucklehead (or panhead?) Harley, a flatly unpretentious, stripped down machine that looks at home in about 1970, but whose engine hails from 2 or 3 decades earlier. Its breathy exhaust note appears to stem from the fact that its exhaust pipe- not muffler- is simply pinched shut in a linear gap. It is not terribly loud, not ridden to be loud. It idles great.

 

Rider is about 35, maybe Latino. There is little to set him apart from any given crowd. Worn, dusty gear, ball cap under half helmet, rolled up jeans, boots for work, not for appearances.

 

So who is this guy? A dedicated motorcyclist who keeps this grimy treasure in running, "live" condition for Sunday rides around town? Hipster scum living out the biker dream of my-not his- generation? Actual biker? Mechanical whiz with a love for the old stuff?

 

He pulls away ahead of traffic, the engine no more than loping. Pulls in the clutch, engine at idle, reaches down to the left below his seat and JERKS THE SHIFTER INTO THE NEXT GEAR. This, then, is the infamous "suicide clutch", foot actuated, meaning you can't put that foot down at a stoplight without dropping into gear. A number of you may remember Fat Freddie of Fantastic Furry Freak Brothers comics having a misadventure with this, falling right over on the unsupported clutch foot side, saying, as I recall, "Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no!" on his way down, the choices being between falling over and suddenly thrusting out into traffic.

 

One more detail. That rolled-up pant-leg? Selvedge denim. That's one pretty danged advanced hipster.

On the Black Block, February, 2017

 

I have a limited familiarity with the black block phenomenon. Many lack even this basic familiarity. Here is what I saw on Wednesday before the demonstration against the fascist provocateur and paedophile who tried to speak on the UC Berkeley campus:

 

As I stopped on Southside for a tasty vegan snack, there was a small group doing the same. They were a nondescript group-- 2 young white men, one young brown woman, one skateboard. It was notable that they were wearing all black, with black caps and zipped up black jackets. Their shoes were interesting: 2 of 3 wore nylon/leather black boots, same as many law enforcement people. I did not look at them too intently, preferring to leave them some privacy. One, though, wore a body camera on his backpack strap, so they wore backpacks. I assume they also were black.

 

What they did not have is any sort of law enforcement or skinhead vibe or iconography. They also lacked any other sort of vibe.

 

On their own, they might have been just another knot of hipsters, but as i walked north on telegraph, I noticed more small knots of 3, similarly attired. There was a mix of genders. There was nothing at all flashy about them. There were some nonwhites, but no Black folks. They may have had any sort of philosophy at all in their minds, but no right wing ideation was apparent. They rapidly coalesced, pulled bandanas over their faces and threw up barricades completely blocking Bancroft with about 30 people working together. 

 

I saw no apparent right-wing action. I saw apparent anarchist coalescence, work and action. I did not see the people at the center of the crowd at Pauley Ballroom. There were fireworks including large firecrackers. These may have been different folks, though it seems a safe bet that they were the same folks.

The Four Sights

Prince Gautama Siddharta lived a sheltered life. His courtesans contrived to keep him away from the harsh reality of real life outside the palace walls.

One day, the prince managed to evade his handlers and began to wander around the city.

He came upon an old smoker with grey pallor and rheumy eyes. The man coughed  and wheezed. This saddened Siddharta, and he recognized that the life of a smoker was smelly, filthy and uncomfortable.

Next, the prince came upon a drunkard. The man was crawling in a gutter in a pool of his own vomit.  The further saddened Siddharta, and he saw that the life of a drinker made one bleary-eyed, incapable of walking, and nauseous.

After that, the prince saw a heroin junkie. There was nothing more to do for the man, as he was already dead. Siddharta saw that there were old smokers, old drinkers, but no old junkies. It saddened the prince to learn that heroin brought only delirium, sloth, and, all too easily, overdose and death.

Finally, the young prince came upon a hasheesh eater. The man sat, smiling, hands folded on a plump belly. From this, he learned that hasheesh was part of a full, satisfied life.

Siddharta resolved to be more like the stoner and to avoid the suffering of the smoker, the drinker, and the junkie.

Memory and Memories

     A patient killer stalked my mother’s mind. 

    Dementia appears to me, watching it happen, to be a process of at least 10 years. Often, I wonder if something my mother, Cerini,  did or said was because of her person or because of her pathology. 

     She enjoyed learning of little tidbits, amusements to her curiosity. One I remember appears to be a product of her person. I suppose my memory is from about 15 years before her death. She had a National Geographic article about comparing beach sands under a microscope. “They’re little THINGS!,” she said, a usage of the word meaning “creatures”, referring to the recognizable shapes of the tiny animal shells composing beach sand under our feet. I remember the phrase because it is a linguistic sample*, but the reason I bring it up here is the wonderment it brought to Cerini’s face.

    An example that appears more like a product of her pathology is when she told, several times, of a TV news story relating to climate change. It showed the earth tilted. She seemed to think that the tilt affected climate change, whereas any 5th grader should know that is merely the basis for the seasons. What really aroused my mother’s suspicions was the fact that she never saw the picture displayed again.  The subtext of her story appeared to be that pernicious forces of social control had suppressed the depiction.

I can understand how an isolated person like Cerini could be fearful in their ignorance of the workings of the world, especially sipping information through the soda straw of television.

 

    Television increasingly was her window on the world, even as she drew the blinds on the literal windows of her house, anticipating the long, windowless sleep of death that she approached. On 2 occasions, the TV let her down. Once, she pressed the wrong button on the set, and a repairman had to come out. Until then, she sat in her living room and stared at the street with the 1 or 2 degrees of view that her front door afforded her. Another time, the electricity went out, and she was powerless in more than 1 way.

 

    In at least one instance, her TV reality bled over into her real one. Once, from a bluff in Avila Beach, we watched from the seats of the car as whales, orcas, I believe, surfaced to breathe a mere 500 yards away. Often, we would walk on the pier nearby, looking down at the water 10 yards below. An advertisement, which appeared regularly in this time, featured a giant fish, emerging with open jaws toward a fisherman. She conflated this into a story of an orca emerging toward us on the pier, a worrisome breakdown of her grasp on what was real and what was not.

On Treatment

 

It was good to be overweight beforehand. I lost 50#. That's 25% of my previous weight.

I practiced breathing exclusively through the nose, like by biking uphill, both inhaling and exhaling since about 8 years previously. The mask worn for radiation treatment is bad. Your mouth is totally blocked. You use whatever tools you can to remain calm: count your breaths (about 55), retreat into your mind, practice meditation/mindfulness.

Contact with friends is crucial.

Taking long walks is part of it.

It is a long process, and there are loads of details in the depths of that time. It’s been a year since my treatment started. I still have tiny little symptoms. I kind of forget how it was in the darker days.

Constipation because of anti nausea meds is awful. I had a fecal blockage 3 times and used home enemas. Next stop would’ve been ER where “they will dig it outa you”, as my friend Josh says.

I was at ER twice. Once to get IV nausea meds because Ii couldn’ keep the pills down and once because I passed out after a bath and cut my forehead open.

The kind of Zofran anti-nausea pill that dissolves under your tongue is amaaaazing! It takes immediate effect and can stop a nausea incident.

“Nausea” is a Greek term meaning “repaint  the walls with vomit”.

Relinquish any thoughts of drinking. I am thankful to have been able to get stoned. (I recommend small amounts of THC in gummis for exact dosing.)

The battle against depression is important. Stay stoked as much as possible. Avoid speaking to folx who need “stoked” explained to them.

You will take damage— teeth, salivary glands, hearing.

Main thing is change: this will change you.

And don’ sweat the whole death thing. It’s pretty much outa your hands. You know how to die just as well as you know how to grow your hair. It’s perfectly safe. Just focus on doing your job— getting to appointments on time, complying with medical advice, doing your swallowing exercises, eating and/or using the (fucking) gastrotube to get food in you. 

Put “death” in a different box. 

A Man

 Was a boy just last week or so,

Rude, pale flesh, hairy dong,

Perfect, but for torn flag of leg, or throat, or gut,

Interrupted by fire engine red of gore, a flower of exit wound,

All else about the man is sheathed in dun,

Dedicated dust, engineered earthtones,

Mimicry of soil,

And the man’s frantic attendants.

New Terms in German

From my 2024 trip there. I began noting these on my phone, and it became quite a list.

Talahon- quasi gang member, immigrant background, rap fan, often Muslim (learned of this before the Germany trip)

      Visiting Gabriela

bodenständig- down to earth

Adipositas- obesity

Legasteniker- dyslexic person

     Visiting Coffey

Hyrox— indoor track-and-field-type sport

Pfortader- portal vein. ??? Something to do w the organs on the right lower abdomen

Wasen- Kerwe

Kutteln- beef stomach

Herrgottsbscheißerle-Maultaschen: uh… a bakery item?

Kloster Maulbronn ??

     At Eva and Martin’s

Kirrle- durcheinander: mixed up, disorderly

Untergewand— undershirt

den Bach runter— bergab

Fibel- secondary meaning: brooch: learned  at karlsruher Schlossmuseum?

Rampensau- glory hog? Attention seeker, said of a performer

Spinalkananalstenose- pinched spinal nerve

Jostabeeren- Kreuzung zw Stachelbeeren und schwarze Johannesbeeren: cross between gooseberry and (red or black?) currants, I think

Hexenspiel— ein Kinderspiel: something easy to do?

Hausbrauerei- brewpub

Fimmel— a soft spot for something

verstaatlicht- nationalized

Hausnummer: starting price/ real estate

Wasserstandsmeldung: same thing

     At Malaika and Torsten’s

Maulbeere— mulberry

Jacke wie  Hose— same thing either way.

Bio-Bike— not an E-bike

Forellenpuff— recreational trout farm for fishing

Schlehen— urpflaume: blackthorn

Klöntsche— platt: kandiszucker

lauschig— gemütlich

Insektenhotel: log with bore holes which provides habitat

Engerling- larva of large insect: june bug, potato bug. Lives underground.

Römertopf - ceramic casserole

pedativ— said of an after school-program, not nec. v good??

linke Bazile— mean person

falscher Fuffziger— ??

langhorriger Bombeleger— left wing extremist

Schäpperle— latch

Rindspimmel— insult: bull’s penis, right?

Förderklasse— special ed

bildungsnah/ bzw. -fern— proper teem for uneducated/ better educated

     Visiting Walter, Peggy and Alex

Befindlichkeiten— facts?

Havarie-shipwreck

Henkelmann— WWII German mess  kit

Affe: German mil backpack used in pre-NS time, still used by some Boy Scouts. Note: marching song still used by German troops because it is not an NSDAP song.

des Teufelsküche— devil’s kitchen: locus of chaos, disorder, error, I think

Kontrollsucht— OCD

Befehlsnotstand— when you are forced by circumstances to follow illegal orders?

unleidlich— unausstehlich? Impossible to get along with?

Speckgürtel: suburbs of a city that benefit from it by extraction of wages and taxes

      With Claudia, DW, and Ulli. New terms most likely all from Ulli

Persianer— some kind of rug?

Geysir— geyser

Pantau— Cz Kinderserie

Hast du Hummeln im Arsch?— are you in a hurry, nervous, etc.

Bedarfshalt—??

Schotter: Geld

     Back visiting Gabriela

Mahonia— a kind of berry

befegen—??

linker [linke?] Socke— left winger

Bisamratte— nutria?

 

Kitty Update

 "You can't just let your cat dominate your life" -a friend, watching as our cat dominates aspects of our life

     There was some response when I shared a very long description of our odd cat's very odd behavior 2 summers ago. She started spending inordinate amounts of time outdoors. Then, summer before last, my son and his most excellent partner stayed in our house while we were away for a month, and she acted out again in some way that I can no longer describe well., but was well short of, say, pooping in our shoes. She did go back to her usual oddness, to wit, insistence on one indoor spot and one spot only to curl up in. Cooler weather will apparently bring her back in to us again, but she has not set foot in our house of her own accord since about March.

     If we leave town these days with a neighbor, something of a cat whisperer, looking in on Zou-Zou, then we can't really justify if for more than 1 night. When she was indoors and we left for 2 nights or so, she sometimes had very _minor_ potty problems, an anomaly for such a Good Kitty. We interpret this as a manifestation of her emotional state. We have no intention of making our kitty sad. Poor kitty!

     I'm having a hard time hitting my stride, narrative-wise, so I'll give a brief description of where she's at and leave it at that.

     Canned food please. We are a kitty of a Certain Age [17 or so] and we have certain tastes. No, not that can. Wait- that's yesterday's food fluffed up. No thank you.

     She will come to within 10 feet of the door to eat. No closer.

     No laps unless she chooses to jump up after significant amounts of foreplay, making it a commitment by the human of half an hour at least. For about 10 minutes of serious lap-sitting.

     Kitty was not blessed with a particularly dulcet-toned meow. I wonder if the neighbors flinch when she goes into her act at 5 and 5. That's morning and evening. It's OK. That's when I wake up.

     Litter box is right out. Now, she prefers to dig a hole in the soil of the garden, poop next to it, and leave it unburied. 

    Kitty Safe Places, a feature of kitty's peculiarity all her life, have included a comfy chair, one part of a carpet, a window overwatch, one spot on the couch-- NOT another, thank you very much. Oh, you wanted to watch TV? Claudia's work desk has been a favorite for all concerned parties. Now, she has moved on from the outdoors spot on the dirt where she can watch for intruding quadripeds to a place on the concrete, the wrought iron chair [there is not enough wreaking of iron these days], more dirt spots, and a cozy bit of rocks and sod. Don't ask me why.

      Claudia says kitty suffered a stroke at some point, making parallels with her late mother's troubles in her dotage. That might explain kitty's departure from the warm and cozy domestic life she had settled on. In all of this, she has stayed a handsome feline, but under her fairly luxuriant fur she is just a little bag o' bones. 

     We really hope that she is still here when Claudia returns from her vacation, but we just never know. 

     Yes, that's right. Claudia takes her vacation, and I take mine. We wouldn' wanna leave kitty All By Herself, now. Poooor kitty!!

This is not a Genealogy Story

    Nigel has begun to ask genealogical questions, starting with, "You say the girl in the painting is buried in Oakland. Let's go see the grave." The girl is a curly haired boy in the early 1800s, age 8 maybe, curly hair, Francesco Cerini. We go. I walk straight to the pillar in Oakland's old Catholic cemetery. We stop off at the office for a xerox of the names of the other 8 or 9 folks there interred.

     Oakland has 3 cemeteries close together at the end of Piedmont Ave. Catholic, Jewish, and one for Normal People [I intend this with irony: default/ protestant, not marked religious sets.] 

     The latter is mmmmassive and wondrous. 

     I've been to the grave of my Oaktown anchor before. He is Robert Holmes of the Holmes Book Store, which closed in 1995. He died in 1931, and was born in Lincolnshire. I knew the orientation and location of the grave, but there is just no way to find an ordinary gravestone at Mountain View Cemetery on your own, so I used Find A Grave online and then Google maps in a game of warmer/colder/red hot.

     When we located the stone, I saw it was angled backward about 25 degrees. Thinking it might be on a bent pin between gravestone and base, I went to right it and it fell flat.

     Great. Vandalizing graves in broad daylight. No one was around, but still.

     Turns out an 8" thick slab o' stone is right heavy. Nigel used some creative lift-with-your-back geometry and gained purchase. I got in under the stone and was able to help him actually raise it.

    I'll tell you the ending now: we placed it upright on its pins, and even wiped it off, leaving it in much better shape than when we arrived.

     Thing is, between raising it and placing it, there was quite a lot of hunching and grunting and positioning. There we were, 2 grown men humping a gravestone right there in front of gOD and ever'body.

     And laughing.

Riffing on a Name

                  Curtis-Wright Corporation

Hawk: Curtis fighter planes P-1 and P-3, 1923

Superhawk: P-5: same but, well, super.

Japan Hawk: P-6S exported to you guessed it.

Cuban Hawk: same.

Turkey Hawk: unable to find references. Not sure if a model exported to Turkey, or named for a raptor that ostensibly preys on turkeys.

Seahawk: naval fighter plane S7C. Term refers to an osprey.

Sparrowhawk: absolutely fascinating US Navy dirigible-based fighter that landed by matching speed with a hook below the mother ship and being hoisted within. Refers to an actual bird.

Goshawk: naval F11C fighter. Name is coterminous with “sparrowhawk”.

Hawk: fighter plane P-36, 1935

Mohawk: export version of the P-36. Not a name of a raptor, rather to an indigenous people, a recurring theme here.

Tomahawk: P-40, 1935: an improvement on the P-36 using a different engine. Name is more indigenous tomfoolery: not raptor-related, but a type of indigenous battle hatchet.

Warhawk:  P-40 in USAAF service. Marketing term, I suppose. 

Kittyhawk: same plane, cutesy name given by the UK: does not refer to any kind of hawk.

                       

Sikorsky Aircraft

 

Black Hawk: Sikorsky utility helicopter UH-60, 1974: named for an indigenous military leader. At least the US mil didn’t name this particular chopper for a vanquished indigenous people, as had been their convention before this.

Seahawk: Navy version: all one word.

Jayhawk: Coast Guard version: all one word. What precisely coastal search and rescue has to do with Kansas Jayhawk[er]s, anti-slavery guerrillas in the 1800s, I do not know.

Pave Hawk: USAF search and rescue version. “Pave” seems to be a USAF code-word applied to many suffixes, some  nonsensical, some topical such as “Hawk” in this case.

Night Hawk: UH-60 for executive transport: 2 words, as opposed to the real bird nighthawk. 

White Hawk: same: It’s painted fancy-- white on top.

Gold Hawk: same.

Battle Hawk: export gunship model. Pretty obvious.

Desert Hawk: export version for Saudi Arabia. Which is a desert.

Naval Hawk: export naval version. Seahawk wasn’t good enough?

Firehawk: firefighter version: my personal favorite, and the inspiration for this list. May refer to a comic book character or to an Australian indigenous term for birds which purposefully propagate fires, rather than fight them, in order to flush out game.