Sympathy For the Entertainment Industry

Here is a picture of me cutting metal in the shop at OBT.

Okay? Good. And now:

this is a stupid thing to complain about, but i keep checking your blog... nothing. write, my friend.

ain't nothin' better than when folks you love create good art. if i was still in portland, i might get a little bit more of that good stuff from you. i'm not, so at least let me know how things are going since i talked to you last.

keep it awesome.

Disco Boy, as always, has the bon mots. When I saw him earlier this summer, the occasion was joyous: several of us old friends gathered in Skee-dattle to catch up and jabber loosely at each other all night long. Some of us havin' babies, others starting new relationships, some just having to rush their girlfriends to the hospital for having run sharp things (unintentionally; we've all grown up a bit) through the palms of their hands.
Yeah, right? And then I come back to P.O. and lost both job and girlfriend in one awful weekend. Now, the thing is, I'm not especially fond of whining about these things in public, though I will talk about them if you ask me, and at times I still just feel that there is a delicate balance to be walked between Being Honest About Your Feelings and Being A Pain In Everyone's Ass.
There was a period there of some further online dating. Matter of fact excuse me again:

I live and I am glad lifes and in each afternoon. Irrespective of, it is cloudy or solar, one or in the company, I work or I have a rest. Where the person who can support me which will love me such what I am. Without reproaches, without a rage and misunderstanding??? I know you find me!!


Those are the thoughts of some non-native English speaker who has an ad up on one of your local sites for dating. This is not a person I pursued, mind you. But the whole extended sociological experiment that is online dating is just plain fascinating. I really, it turns out, do like to watch. Not to be a pest, but I almost wanted to spend some credits just critiquing other people's ads. (The other night, the Cult Baby, Gringa Alta Prima and I spent the entire evening just looking at men's ads on a popular local website. Brutal.)
So, in the end, I took my ad down. It's just not fun anymore, and is another addiction, which I certainly do not need. As a source of companionship, eh; not so much. As a source of cheap laughs, well...

Do I want to talk about why MacBeth and I busted up? No. Not here. It's not easily put into words, and sometimes she reads this thing.

I started another blog, right here on Blogspot called "House of Cheer". It is entirely about local politics and restaurants. It is, as yet, one posting young. Enjoy.
There will be a further blog soon, tentatively titled "Maybe Somebody Should Say Something: Carl's Thoughts". It dates back to a story The Tulsa Kid wrote about a Subaru salesman we both know named Carl, who has a hilarious story about the first time he ever visited the west coast, from Chicago.
Now I have made up a Carl story too, and am proposing that the blog I am dreaming of here will be a cooperative writing project in which Everybody and Anybody can contribute, as long as they are writng in the flat, sardonic voice of Carl, hopefully along the lines of Kid from the Midwest Encounters the Weirdoes out Here for the First Time. We'll see.

Drove Daddy Frank (my truck) down to Cave Junction, way down in Almost-California. Hung out with the Provost for a few days. I found the Bible his late Granma had, and I think saw the last passage she circled. (Sorry: don't have it here for you.) It was about death, and she knew she was dying, and so the passage is about how basically, You're Not Really Alone, You Know. Pretty nice. Made up for all the Tim LaHaye and Hal Lindsay shit on her shelf otherwise. If you want a few bitter chuckles, check out Mister LaHaye's "Things You Should Know About Homosexuality". For the chuckles, as well as an insight into those 'Who Me? No, I'm certainly Not Gay! GAWWWWD! I Love My "wife"!' types.
Thence to Crescent City, California, through the Redwoods. Awesome. Up to the town of Florence for a few days relaxing with Ma and Step-pa in the RV park on the Siuslaw there. I discovered that I like sleeping in the back of my truck. Ate some good food, wrote my daughter an email about her older brother who she's never met. I myself haven't seen him since the day he was born. He turned 18 four days ago.

The post's title was from however many months ago when I received that picture up top, and was going to talk about my job as a roustabout. But I haven't had a stagehanding gig all summer long, and the food jobs I had I've since managed to lose, since I just don't give a fuck, currently, for coddling the fragile egos of passive-agressive control freaks who own or manage businesses.
Yes yes; but also, sure: I'm undergoing a bit of a Crisis of Faith with myself. I'm not believing in myself so much, perhaps believing other peoples' bad press a bit more than I should. In any case, whaddya do about that, huh?
Huh? Ain't no God in this world I inhabit, so no falling back on That (even if I believed, I'm imagining that I'd be one of those guys who sees god as Distant, Disengaged, but occasionally Amused). Those geniuses at Alcoholics Anonymous would have one believe that belief in a higher power is the only way to conquer adversity (or at least, addiction). And they say, for their non-Believing clients, that Anything can be your Higher Power. A Pet Rock, say.
Well, what fucking sort of Higher Power is something that doesn't matter at all, not even to you? There's not even any of that mystical stuff that I occasionally get off on: "It's all around you. It's everything. It's the entire universe, and is bigger than sex, bigger than gender, definitely bigger than religion."
But those marketing types at AA leave it at; Look, lie to yourself until your behavior changes, all right? They follow this up with further fulminating about how you yourself have no say in this; you must leave it up to the Higher Power.
Oh, you mean my rock? Fuck, by all means let's leave the issue of personal responsibility out of this, right?
According to the last time AA released any stats about their success rates (1985, I believe), they were commensurate with those who had chosen to go cold turkey, without a group to encourage them.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to type this, when my 'n' key has long since fallen off, and now is a sharp little nub?

I have an idea for the next time I'm up at Bobby Massage's place, and the camera is on me. The Character Known as Rich Bachelor will talk about the actual historical event where, late in the degradation of the Roman Empire, the Entire World was sold, at auction.
The guy who bought it was a general, I believe, or just a very rich man. The Entire World, of course, was described by the boundaries of the Roman Empire (since nothing else known of was worth a shit, right?). He made it forty or so days, I believe, before somebody killed him.
But where I'd take up with it is that, even though the man died, the mechanism that sold him The World still existed, and his descendants have owned the Entire World (expanded to include the whole globe [at least]) ever since, up to the present day. The only serious challenge to this came from the family of Iesus ben Pandera (Jesus), and such is the history of humanity.

As always, when the interviewer asks, "Do you really believe that?", I laugh and say, "Of course not." Then I fix the camera with a nice long stare.

Next week, out to the Bachelor Family Beach Cabin outpost/hideaway, to ask the ocean the questions I always ask it, and shout my frustrations to it. Surround myself with friends and family, perhaps get to ask Cats Dig Me all about his recent visit with Jacq.

Thus ends this here State of the Bachelor. Back soon.