Attack of the Meme, again

George has hit me again with a list of questions. Many, many other people got this one too.
I like the fact that he included a list of "mandatory freedoms", which allow the respondent to mutate the question to their liking. It would play hell with the coding process were this actual research, but the human face of the thing shows so much more easily through.

So, let's answer...

25 Very Specific Questions

1. Greatest peak experience/s? (That is to say a positive or ecstatic experience/s that fundamentally influenced your life.)
Sheeit. They just keep getting higher and higher. I've learned lots, seen lots, and my advice is generally: do as many things as you possibly can before you die. Past a certain point, they're all peak experiences.

2. Nadir experience/s? (That is, a negative experience/s that fundamentally influenced your life.)
Well, I've spent a lot of my life alienating entire groups of people. Or being collectively shunned by them. Sometimes it was entirely my fault, sometimes entirely theirs, often a mixture of the two. And it learned me how? Be your own best friend, be at home with yourself. Don't think you're gonna do all that living and being yourself later. You can't not be yourself. People are either going to like you or not like you, and there's often fuck-all you can do about it. Be your own entertainment.

3. Had any paranormal experiences?
Yes, although I am often -even in the moment- noting to myself that this is still something that is happening due to my mind disagreeing with itself, or is the product of something that I don't understand yet.

4. Biggest irrational fear?
Not sure I have one. Can't think of one, in any case.

5. Biggest completely reasonable fear?
I really worry that I'll be brain-damaged in a completely random way. I fear this far worse than I fear death or even being crippled.

6. Biggest irrational aversion? (This is not the same as your biggest irrational fear.)
Which is to say a dislike, eh? Video games. I think they're stupid.

7. What are your core metaphysical belief/s? (N.B. By metaphysical belief I mean any principle that you think is true and live your life by but cannot be empirically or scientifically proven to others who don't believe it.)
Nice to see somebody finally define that one. I don't have one/those as such; I'm more of a "you're living in it" kind of a guy. Every time I've ever tried to codify it, it collapses on me. There are some key tenets, but that's all they'll ever be: I've found that it's safer that way.

8. What do you think is the ultimate fate of humanity?
To finally make this fine place somewhere that can no longer sustain humanity, I fear and strongly suspect.

9. What do you believe will happen to you after you die?
Dirtin' in th' ground, to quote the nice Mr. Waits there. And this belief, as I've said before, comforts me in what I suspect is exactly the same way someone who believes in an afterlife is comforted by their belief.

10. Which do you trust more, science or religion?
Science. Although -and this is a big one- science can also be dogmatic at times, and that is where/when it (and its pal Rationality) fail.
Religion though; I understand the comfort it apparently provides to lots and lots of other people, but I just think it's disgusting and wrong, and brings out the worst in a species that doesn't need any further justifications for the rank inhumanity in its ranks.

Now, it wouldn't be inaccurate to point out some hypocrisy on my part here: I'm willing to dismiss good works done by religious people and organizations as being more due to the innate goodness of people, and the manifold atrocities attributable to religion as being all religion's fault. I don't really think that people are innately good, although their self-interest coincides with the well-being of others, and that usually is motivation enough. Heh. There's a lot to this subject, of course...

11. Favorite book (fiction or non-fiction) written between 2500 BCE and 1 BCE?
I wanna say the Tao Te Ching, but I'm not sure. Surely somebody Greek belongs here...

12. Favorite book (fiction or non-fiction) written between 1 BCE and 1000 AD?
Probably Suetonius' The Twelve Caesars.

13. Favorite book (fiction or non-fiction) written between 1000 AD and 1800 AD? (There have been enough lists of favorite books that were composed mostly of things written between 1800 and the present so we'll skip that.)
This is a rough one. Most of the really good Sufi parables were written in this time, and we just narrowly miss being able to include Mark Twain. All the great Enlightenment thinkers fall in here, plus lots and lots of fantastic political treatises.
So anyway, I don't know.

14. What is your philosophical grounding? (If this is the same as your metaphysical beliefs then give your core ethical principles.)
I tend to be sharply reductionist, and I recognize that this often makes me a pain in the ass to deal with. Sorry, everybody. Actually, for a quick intro, see my answer to #2.

15. What political opinion do you hold that is most inconsistent with your other political opinions?
Well, the death penalty does no good in the area of deterrence, and we have decades worth of data to prove this. It is vindictive, pointless and often guided by shit reasoning regarding what our lesser minds insist on calling "race". However, the outlet it provides the victims' families seems to have some kind of closure effect, and I can think of far greater injustices being perpetrated in greater numbers...So yeah, it's dumb and unnecessary, but I'm not per se against it.

16. What makes a good person good?
I often boil it down to 'a quality of easygoing sanity'.

17. Aesthetically speaking which is more important, audience reception or creator satisfaction?
They're of equal importance, and take on or lose value dependent upon what you're trying to achieve.

18. Favorite painting/s?
Probably 'View of Toledo' by El Greco. Turns out The Greek there had something seriously wrong with him, and he really actually saw things that way, and we're all the richer for it.

The thing is, there's plenty of Impressionists and early Asians and Caravaggio in general I'd like to throw in here. Turner. Bierstadt. I can't really pick. And you should go do an image search of James Lavadour. He's an Eastern Oregonian by birth, lives here now. He does masterful pairings of the completely abstract with the wholly organic. Listen at me: I sound like an asshole!

19. Favorite living hero/heroine?
I'm not being flippant or dismissive when I say that I honestly don't have any.

20. Favorite dead hero/heroine?
Clarence Darrow?

21. Most important goal/s in life?
Is to be happy with the life I lead, which I am.

22. Details or big picture? (I know both are important. What I want to know is your overall leaning and if you consider that leaning a strength or a weakness.)
Well, big picture, although my big picture includes an encyclopedic overview of the details. It's like an aerial view of the freeway system encircling a city: you can see the overall pattern, but also the individual vehicles.

23. Depressive or anxious?
I tend toward the depressive. (Cue Bob Hoskins as the evil manager guy in "Pink Floyd's The Wall" movie, shaking the uptight hotel manager and screaming, "HE'S AN AHHHTIST!" over Bob Geldof's slumped, o.d.'d form.) It's more romantic.

24. Pick a super power, you only get one.
Invisibility. I already have other super powers, but most of them do me no good in my current form.

25. What would your diet look like if there were no physical or nutritional consequences?
More or less what it looks like right now.

That was satisfying. For as much shit as I talk about these things, they serve as awesome jumping-off points. I was gonna do my usual and write a Fourth o' July essay, but no. The lady of the house and I have sat here all damn morning doing this. Thanks, George.

44 Lines about 88 Topics?

Internet memes just don't make it with me. (Although when th' Tugboat Cap'n invited me to participate in one specifically about books four years ago, I quickly hopped right on.) So when I was asked recently by George to take part in another one, I sort of went 'meh'.

But consider that you can use any manner of lenses to look at a thing.

1. Do you like bleu cheese? Yes.
2. Have you ever been drunk? Sure.
3. Do you own a gun? Yup.
4. What flavor of Kool Aid was your favorite? The powdered form of Nestea iced tea.
5. Do you get nervous before doctor appointments? Not generally.




6. What do you think of hot dogs? I believe that to love a hot dog is to love yourself!

Awright!


7. Favorite Christmas movie? 'It's A Wonderful Life'.

8. What do you like to drink in the morning? Coffee. Lots of it.

9. Can you do push-ups? Many!

10. What's your favorite piece of jewelry? Don't wear any.

11. Favorite hobby? Now this one raises questions. What's a hobby, as opposed to something you regularly do and enjoy, but not necessarily with some sort of intent, or for that matter, what if your job is also kind of your hobby? Does 'socializing' count?

12. Do you have ADD? Nope.
13. What's your favorite shoe? Not sure I have one.
14. What's your middle name? Adventure.

15. Name three thoughts at this exact moment. Frank, Mart-Bell and The Amazing Dynamo.

16. Name three drinks that you regularly drink. Maker's rocks & a glass o' water, A Grape Soda (actually Monopolova vodka with soda water and a floater of Marie Brizzard Parfait Amour), an Arnie Palmer (Jack Daniels' optional).

17. Current worry? I work in an industry where I could be killed, crippled or catastrophically brain-damaged at any time. I need to work in a clear space, mentally. Or, as I put it recently, somewhere else and on entirely another topic:
"And then they all died..." is the real punchline to every joke. But y'know, only a fucking tool meditates on it too long. I'm also very likely to get old, and my body will cease to function as masterfully as it currently does. That would be my reward for Not Dying. Call it what you will; dark cauldron o' shadows or whatever. Enjoy your freakin' life, jack.

18. Current hate right now? Aw man, I'm too much of a zen warrior about that shit. 'There is no enemy'. Well, yes there is...The tyranny of the mediocre? How hard it is to communicate even basic things to most people? How expertise is looked upon as a bit too effete, and is to be replaced by shouted, repeated Opinion?

19. Favorite vacation? Dreams.

20. How did you bring in the new year? Arguing with my girlfriend. I'm a class act.

(Stop. Did you just start talking about death? What did anyone else on that message board say?
"...saying that 'only a tool meditates on it too long' makes all of the great majority of great artists in the world into tools. Though, those who mediate on it on message boards are probably guilty of this, i.e. me, but I see that we have become a society so shallow, that thinks everything can be cured by technology, will have a lot of trouble getting old."

To which I replied:
"Well, in all honesty, art to one side, perhaps most of the artists in history were indeed a royal pain in the ass to actually be around...

Also, I agree: the main concern of any media orgasm like this has a great deal more to do with the individual need to see one's self as unique, and oh what a tragedy it will be when a soul such as your own passes from this plane.

After which we have religion, which generally promises that your soul will continue, and one so unimpeachably wonderful as yourself can live Forever!

I actually wasn't being dismissive with that 'tool' thing: be honest with yourself about your mortality -how could you not?- but remember that there's plenty of other things you can do between your birth and your death: that's all."

Can you tell? We were talking about Michael Jackson!)

21. Where would you like to go? The past.

22. Name three people who will complete this. Probably nobody I know in the immediate vicinity. They're pretty stupid questions, and so far I can't think of any better substitutes. If I do, I'll start an internet meme, I guess.

23. Do you own slippers? So far, I've been stymied in my attempts to find slippers that I actually like. Generally, it's garden clogs for me.

24. What color shirt are you wearing right now? Black, as is often the case.
25. Do you like sleeping on satin sheets? What are you asking?
26. Can you whistle? Like a champ.
27. Favorite color? As a rule, blue.
28. Would you like to be a pirate? Why? You recruiting?

29. What songs do you sing in the shower? Oddly, the shower is one of the few places I don't sing. These days, if I'm singing out loud, it's "The Porpoise Song" by The Monkees.

30. What's your favorite girl's name? Osa!
31. Favorite boys' name? Don't have one, really. Archibald!
32. What's in your pocket right now? Keys. Impressed?

33. Last thing that made you laugh? I laugh so goddamn much every day, I don't even know where to begin.
Actually, this comment thread about the death of Billy Mays:


Whoever delivers the eulogy at his funeral should SHOUT THE ENTIRE THING!

LET US PRAY. AND THEN LET US WIPE OUR EYES WITH A SHAM-WOW.

I HAVE HAD CAUSE TO WALK IN YOUR WORLD AND TRY TO UNDERSTAND! I SHALL LET THE PAST BE THE PAST, AND FOR YOU BILLY MAYS, YOU KNEW THAT THE COMBINATION OF THE OXICLEAN AND THE MIGHTY PUTTY, WAS SOMETHING MORE DEADLY THAN WE COULD IMAGINE!

He had apparently just signed on to shill for Taco Bell. I can't even imagine what that would have been like.

YOU SHUT YOUR WHORE MOUTH WHEN WE'RE CELEBRATING THE LIFE OF BILLY MAYS!

IT GETS INTO THE MATTING!

IT GETS INTO THE PADDING!

IT PUTS THE LOTION IN THE BASKET!

THERE'S YER MILDEW!

THIS BURRITO IS PACKED WITH CHEESE AND BEEF! YOU'D NEED A JACKHAMMER TO POUND IN MORE BEEF AND CHEESE!


(All of those lines were delivered by different people. Isn't the internet wonderful?)


34. Best bed sheets as a child? Pass.

35. Worst injury you ever had as a child? Oh my: um, either the one time when I was running down a hill with a rusty tailpipe in my hand, and narrowly avoided plunging it in my eye but did smack myself in the eyebrow, requiring eight stitches, or the time when me and a couple guys were playing "chicken" with a lawn dart, and I got darted in my right shoulder. I have faint scars from both of these injuries to this day.

36. Do you love where you live? Portland? Yeaaahhh...Most days. Our house? Sure, I suppose. The corn was well beyond knee-high by the Fourth of July though, in our back yard. I do love the back yard.

37. Don't you just WISH you knew... what made people tick? I don't understand that ellipsis...It might be a transcription error. In any case, through a lifetime of observation and experience, I know pretty fucking well what makes most people tick. The problem comes in how exactly you go about dealing with them, and how honest you can be about the source of their problems.
I mean, some people (okay; lots of them) are pests of the worst sort, and oddly enough, it's because they wish to be relevant in the lives of others. Now, would my telling them that help in any way? Certainly not; and it's hard enough to talk to a pest at all and keep it short: if they feel that you've insulted them in some way, you'll be standing there two hours from now, trying to soothe their hurt feelings. No: tell them how much they're alienating everybody else. That'll get it done.

38. Who is your loudest friend? Oh you, The Internet.
No. George.

39. How many dogs do you have? Two. Here they are:

From left: Goofus, Gallant.



40. Does someone have a crush on you? If so, I am unaware of it.

41. What is your favorite book? Good God. Do you know me? If I start talking about this, we'll be here all day. A better question for me would be;
What books do you wish you had enough money to buy right now?
There's a new translation of Herotodus' The Histories that looks awesome. Also; I just found out that Robert Graves wrote his own version of The Iliad, and it's called The (anger? fury?) of Achilles. Oh my gaahhhd.

42. What is your favorite candy? Hm. Dunno. Salty caramels from Pix?

43. Favorite sports team? Don't have one.

44. What song do you want played at your funeral? Sheeit. If you know me at all, you know we'll be talking about this all day. However, somebody does need to remember to play "Across the River" by the High Llamas.

Write on o' yer own?

45. Sweet or Savory?
Savory.

Press Conferencing

I keep having long, involved dreams in which I wander around a vaguely familiar setting (Seattle Center, say) where I just sort of happen to run into everybody I know, and haven't seen in a while. In an especially weird turn in dream the other evening, a movement began -within those personalities inside said dream- to write a play, or movie, or something. Eventually, I met the 'author', who I had spent much of the dream trying to find.
It would seem that my earlier belief that god is a black man might very be incorrect; it's actually a tiny Jewish woman with glasses and braces. It depends on interpretation, like lots of things.

I've made a policy decision regarding what to do when Seattle calls me for a job; unless I've already committed to somebody else, say yes. After this, the "whoever I said 'yes' to first gets me" rule goes into play.
In the most recent version of this dilemma, I said no to Seattle based on what I assumed would come my way on Friday in Portland. This is backward thinking, as I conceive it.
However, I also saved myself from another one of those deals where I run up to Seattle , work my ass off, sleep two hours and make the three hour run back to Portland in order to work the same gig (in this case, Taylor Swift) at Eight in the morning.

The Swiftians I worked with today tell me that they got out of the Key Arena at Three A.M. So two hours sleep...Just like I did between Beyonce and Li'l Wayne, whilst moving, over a month ago. Allowing myself to get run down, I got sick as a dog. Chest sick. Couldn't breathe.
Quit smoking, or more to the point, stopped. In that I didn't have the insanity, the laughing jags and crying jags...No destruction of property, et cetera. Haven't done it for over a month and I don't miss it. I do occasionally still hold my cigarette holder between my teeth, though.

Uh, Senor Discoteca? Where is this Gingerbread House you speak of? Oh, waitaminnit; got it.

George: I have said that social-networking sites are retarded, and I think this remains true. I don't have any actual reason to do it, but I also said the same thing about blogging, once. So who knows? I often have little to no discussion here on topics I think are worth doing a bit of talking about, but I also keep on failing to reach out to other bloggers.
On the other hand, I like these exceedingly long essays that aren't really blog posts. I wouldn't be okay doing them on a Facebook page, I think. I dunno. Send me a link!

I want to attend yer marriage celebration. I believe that I won't be busy that particular week, though the lady may very well be in a new job by then. The only issue here is money. So far, I see a lucrative summer ahead.

On Steens Mountain: That water rights symposium that Bee is attending will last six hours, I believe. I will indeed take that time to go sixty miles south, to the mountain.
Above all else, it is imperative that I reboot my entire system. Something needs to change in my thinking, and I got just the recipe.
For those unfamiliar with Oregon's terrain: the Steens rise suddenly, abruptly from the desert floor. You go from Nevada-like Great Basin low desert to Alpine environs in the course of a relatively short drive. It's weird.

Things I've wanted to blog about for a while, and will: Thomas Friedman's weird editorial a few weeks ago explaining how Mr. Obama failing to repudiate torture as practiced by our government's employees is not only inevitable, but kinda good, if y' think about it.
And: I found a letter from a fan to her famous rock star crush at the Fall Out Boy gig a couple months ago. Letter plus addenda, comin' soon.

Oh, and here's a picture of the Geiser Grand Hotel in Baker City, where we'll be staying on Thursday. I'm psyched.

People Got Talent!

Oh, man: this is great. Ladies! Don't you hate it when you're lying around in your newest pair of purple panties, considering the state of your Bikini Area, and a tiny man with a lawnmower, uh...

Hm. Well, that's what happens when you're doing a Google Images search for "Burns, Oregon". You will also find images of chemical burns, C. Montgomery "Monty" Burns, owner and proprietor of Springfield's nuclear power plant, and several shots of rusted-out farm equipment that is for sale in the Burns area. Also: Brooke Burns.

Where have we been? Well, in the time since last a-postin', we moved into the new house. This was in the midst of a dramatic uptick in work for me, and there was the especially interesting moment in there where I ran up to Seattle, worked the Beyonce show, went back to Disco Boy's and slept two hours, drove three hours back to Portland to work the Li'l Wayne show. Not long after, the load out of 'Grease', which ran until five in the morning. On top of all this, we packed, and got our asses out of the old place.
Thence into the new. I called upon a couple of stagehand buddies of mine to assist in the moving of large things, causing Bee to opine that there should be a stagehand moving company, for those long intervals between better-paying gigs. As we raced closer to the day that we absolutely had to be out of the old house, I was frantically trying to get the new one habitable while she was on the other end, cleaning like hell.

It all worked out. We even got the cleaning deposit back, which never happens. Now we are ensconced in the much smaller -but cozy- place. I don't mean 'cozy' in the real estate sense of the term ("so tiny that you'd never ever want to live in it") ; I mean it's actually comfortable in its compacted-ness.
She's dug a flower garden, I've built a planter box for herbs and veg. She temps for the bastards that laid her off, I work just enough. Most recently my stuff has been weird corporate gigs, but there was the journey to Tacoma for what turned out to be a filming of "America's Got Talent".

Since that was a teevee gig, I was paid obscene amounts, which was nice. Since the load out ran past midnight, and I had done some rigging and building as well, I was paid insanely obscene amounts. Getting that check on Friday; looking forward to same.
Best moment I witnessed in the show itself: a tranny (M2F) who had done a not-especially-great impression of Britney Spears explaining that, "I used to be a boy, and am now one-hundred per cent a girl. I deserve credit for that." This piece of classic American reasoning (i-am-special-so-therefore-you-should-reward-me-in-areas-not-associated-with-my-specialness) was given an epilogue by David Hasselhoff, who asked -after the performer left the stage- "Did they fly that person in from New York?"

Whatever that means. In any case, I continue to work in Washington more than Oregon. On union gigs, anyway. Just a moment ago, I was interrupted by Seattle calling me to work the Taylor Swift gig at the Key Arena. The problem with this being that the same day here there is the Allman Bros./Doobie Bros. show, followed up with Taylor Swift the very next day. I can reasonably assume that I will be called to work one or both of those shows, but haven't yet been called.
Whereas I have been called by Seattle. This would entail many things, and some output of money, but they also pay better. It's one definite gig versus two potential gigs. These are the choices I often find myself making.


Burns, Oregon is where we're going at the end of this month, for a water law symposium. This is Bee's area of interest, but it's also an elaborate excuse for us to get out of the Willamette Valley, and go see the rest of the state.
Yup, I long for the desert. And I long, more to the point, to go on an epically pointless, very long drive that more or less describes a loop* through much of Oregon. I will be bringing along McArthur's Oregon Geographic Names.



I haven't been writing on this blog for a while because I haven't felt like writing as myself. I've commented on other people's things a lot, and have blogged as various other people, but haven't had dick to say here, really.
Except I've had plenty, and to be sure there's plenty of things to note. Just haven't felt like it. I'll be back, though.




*The loop, for those who know Oregon's terrain: Portland to Salem, across the North Santiam Pass to Bend, east on 20 to Burns, north on 395 to John Day, over 7 to Baker City, I-84 back west through Pendleton and ultimately back to Portland. A feast o' places.

The Letter, part 2

A quick piece of background: when we left our narrator last time, he had run afoul of a violent piece of shit boss, who worked for a far more powerful piece of shit boss, lorded over by a husband-wife team, pieces of shit both.
Although I didn't delve into the personalities of John and Lucy Buchanan, I really should. They're incredible character studies, though in need of their own blog post; this one is long enough as it is.

I've said before that I've run three labor actions in my lifetime, two of them successfully. This is the one that didn't work. All three happened long before it ever occurred to me to join a union, and all were caused by employers who just failed to observe extant law. Do I think unions necessarily provide safeguards against this? My jury is out.

Funny thing about Rob Bearden; he influenced my writing in ways I hadn't considered until recently. He shows up in my fiction writing as pretty much any piece of shit savvy operator: "He smiled. He always smiled." Yup.
Even more so, whenever I meet people like him, I always make sure that they know I understand and appreciate their cunning. The fact that I'll never, ever trust them goes without saying, and therefore doesn't need to be said. I say so as a fellow Professional.

So back to the letter:

I suggested to interested parties with valid complaints that perhaps we should get together and discuss our grievances outside of work, off of museum property. Maybe even draw up a definitive list of complaints.
(The problem, of course, is that I was writing to an audience I couldn't necessarily gauge. So I didn't know how to frame arguments in a way they would find pleasing. If they saw it at all.)

As the time approached, I found myself considering that I was being asked by some to be a spokesperson of sorts, and that I wasn't really comfortable elucidating other people's problems. Especially the guards with legal reasons to fear reprisal for stepping forward. So I decided that it was everyone for themselves. Unfortunately, it had already been reported to Mike Sumpter that I was a "ringleader" of some nascent rebellion.
(And I knew who told him, too. That guy hated me because I had sex with his girlfriend long before he ever showed up. He really needed to grow the fuck up, and I told him so. Again, that's another story.)

Now, Mike and I had already tangled about appearance and job related issues. As far as appearance went, I was more than willing to comply, but he insisted on debating the reasons why one should look the way he felt we should. Many of the reasons were invalid to my mind, but again, I was willing to comply, and the fact that he kept bringing the subject up again and again felt much like harassment.
(Such drama over my habit of wearing nail polish, in those days. Really.)

There were also concerns of his regarding my job performance. This , coming from someone who seemed to be paid to smoke and talk on the phone (personal calls) for much of the day, this seemed a tad disingenuous. But I was willing to take his suggestions to heart. Again, he stayed after me for a week, restating his position, which I understood quite well the first time.
And again, in restating his opinion, he made a lot of what I would consider to be fallacious arguments, undermining much of what he had to say and confirming to me that I was merely being "rode" by my immediate supervisor.

(Who the potential audience for this letter could be, then or now, I couldn't tell you.)

So my identification as the "ringleader" of something potentially damaging to him must have seemed unsurprising. At this juncture, I was now beginning another solid week of harassment. This time, the charade I was asked to participate in, instead of doing my job, was extended debate about why I should not lose my job, what with me being the "ringleader" and all. I had it pointed out to me that complaint of any sort against one's employer, no matter how valid, was inappropriate, and reason for dismissal. I pointed out that this wasn't true in any legal sense, and furthermore had never been told such a thing at any other business or private organization I had worked for. This particular week went by slowly, as Mr. Sumpter seemed to have noticed my propensity for debate, and had decided (it felt) to argue me out of a job.
(I wrote all of this with Little G, who had just been fired by this asshole, looking over my shoulder.)

At the same time though, he was claiming to be my only protection against summary dismissal by Rob Bearden. On one hand, my appeals to Nolan Hibbard regarding Mike's behavior had been met with Nolan's usual response (which was, "Well, there's plenty of other jobs out there." True. But there are also laws on the books saying that if one is being harassed on the job, steps at least need to be taken to remedy it). So I knew that Mike essentially answered to a higher power in the museum structure.

Yet I strongly doubted that Rob Bearden devoted that much though to me in particular. Mike took pains to point out how much Mr. Bearden disliked me. I told him I suspected as much, but had never had any idea why. Again Mike asked, "Okay, what can I go next door and tell Rob so he won't fire you?"

I responded, "For one, that I am not the ringleader of anything. Second, even if I were, that is not adequate reason to fire me. And third, what does he expect from someone paid so little for so long, who is constantly being promised a raise if he only does one more little thing or two? No. I'm only now even within spitting distance of receiving the first cost-of-living increase I've seen in two years. I'm not leaving."
(This is more or less what was said, although I think what I said was far more brief. Along the lines of, "That I've done nothing that I can be fired for, that's why," or something.)

It was announced that the guards would be meeting with Rob Bearden the next week. Despite our obvious mutual dislike, Mike continued his pattern of long conversations with me while I was Duty Guard. I asked what Rob had to say about the guard force in general, and he replied that Mr. Bearden thought we were all crazy. I suppose so, if he only had Mike Sumpter's impressions to go on. He said, "I mean, I'm glad I'm not on a plane with all of you that crashes in the desert. The way you all complain about a little raise like this, you'd probably all (sit there and whine) in the sand, and I'd have to take a shovel and kill you all."
I replied that that's probably the first thing he'd do anyway. The above is an example of how Mike chooses to view issues.

(He's hardly the only idiot I've met who does, of course. But this asshole was my boss. It was around this point that I started wondering if maybe more than just my job was being threatened.)

The meeting did not go well for the guards. In a nutshell, we were told that our raises were finally coming, in the next paycheck. We were also told that we would be expected to do a great deal more in order to "deserve" it. One guard, who is manic on the days when he's so depressed that he can't get out of bed, was put up to us as an example of the ideal guard.
(Larry also barely ever made it into work, but anyway...)

I attempted to express my concerns about Mike Sumpter's behavior to Rob Bearden, only to have him respond with unrelated material about appearance. I pointed out that he hadn't answered my question. He then dismissed the rest of what I'd said as "garbage". Mr. Bearden then emphasised the point that what Mike Sumpter said was not to be questioned...After what I have written above, it should be clear why some of us found this to be a less than comforting prospect.
Also broached was the legality of advertising a higher wage for guards than was actually being paid at the time. What we got back was evasion at best, and in one particularly uncomfortable moment, Mr. Bearden said he was "offended" by the implication that he was playing some sort of 'carrot and stick' game. I reflected to myself that I had never even heard that phrase until a year previous to this, at a similar meeting, where Rob described what we had to do to earn our upcoming raise (which never came), saying, "Okay, there's the carrot, now here's the stick."
(I love that.)

After this meeting, I called Rob Bearden twice, in order to receive a real answer to my question. To wit: did I really hear him say that everyone's job was subject to the whims of this rather unstable security chief? And furthermore, simply he felt I might have intended him harm, he saw fit to harass me for three weeks, and this was considered appropriate by the management? I never received a reply, which was all the reply I needed, of course.

After this comes an even longer laundry list of shady doings around the museum, all of them seemingly perpetuated by Rob Bearden's hires.

A couple of weeks later, I was fishing in the donation bin for coffee money (something everyone did, as the museum hadn't been donation-only for some time, and it was never clear where this money went), and was caught by Mike Sumpter. I was fired, as was the sixty-year-old guard who failed to stop me.

A week after that, Mike was accused of sexual harassment several times in the same week by the same guard, causing him to get fired. After this, I heard he was working security at a local mall.
I wish I could find the discussion thread I stumbled upon a few weeks ago. All the local news affiliates have terrible websites. But the discussion seemingly all was coming from people who actually knew the unlucky couple who had tased, beaten and pepper-sprayed the poor dude. There was lots of "...she was doin' just fine until she took up with that Mike..." type comments.

I note too that Rob is still chief of operations at the musee. Hm.

Pity I didn't attend his sentencing. I gladly would have been the voice from his past: tripped over your dick, didn't you, little man? BWAHH HAHH HAHH HAHH!!!
You know, but I didn't.

Rob Bearden Hired This Man

Hey, this is interesting: a guy who used to be my boss is on his way to jail. Wouldn't have happened, as I often say, to a nicer guy.

That's him over there. You can't see it represented here, but on the news tonight I could see his smug, sadistic smile, and knew immediately that it was him.

He was, briefly, the Assistant Chief of Security for the Portland Art Museum. I met him during this time, some ten years ago.
And I ain't one bit surprised that this is where we meet again.

So what happened? Well,

"Authorities arrested two people believed to have impersonated police when they broke into a man's apartment, robbed and assaulted him...While there, they allegedly took a cell phone and perhaps drugs, police said earlier."

Uh huh. Why?

"trying to get revenge for a dispute (the victim) had with a his former roommate..."

Sounds like cranked-out kinda activity. However, 'impersonating a police officer' is classic Mike Sumpter. I mean, he'd always claimed he'd been one, but who knows? He alternately claimed that he was fired for growing pot, or that he'd 'been shot too many times'. He was also fond of the story of where he beat the shit out of a man in front of his child, over a parking dispute.
He told me that he 'got tired of sending kids to prison for having a little pot.' It's clear that he shaped his story to fit the perceived predjudices of the listener. I wonder if he was ever actually a cop.

I have a letter here that I wrote to the board of directors of the museum. It was never sent, and it's probably for the best; it's not the best-written thing I've ever done. Besides, a week or so after I wrote it, he was out of his job anyway, having been accused of sexual harrassment several times in the same week, by the same guard.
At which point I called up his voice mail and shrilled, "Tripped over your dick, didn't ya', little man? BWAHH HAHH HAHH HAHH!!!" I could do that, as I was no longer employed there either.

His hiring was directly related to a turf war that had been brewing between Curatorial and Operations, which is to say the Art end of the business versus the Business end of the business. Business always wins in cases like this, but you're locked into it regardless and play out your role, no matter how stupid. Thing was, it didn't have to get as bad as it did.


Rob Bearden (on the left) was head of operations. Always kind of a shadowy figure, he seems to have been part of that weird gang of inept criminals who did all the booking at local rock clubs in the Seventies and Eighties. Exactly how he came to hold his current position is a mystery.
He really hated me, too. I'm not certain why this was. I applied for a position as his receptionist, back when I had no idea who he was, and was more or less told that I lacked the proper "game face". I think that the large cadre of frustrated artists who tend to comprise the staff of any museum bothered the shit out of him, and he determined to fire them all.

Rob had also promised us (the guards) that we would receive a raise and benefits, if we only met such-and-such conditions. The conditions were met, and two years later, we still hadn't recieved what we'd been promised. Also, more and more paid positions were being replaced by volunteers.
Museums are a fantastic example of how one can get rich running a non-profit. You spread the money around to all your other crooked friends in this crooked-est of businesses, while putting a minimal amount back into the museum and the community it serves.

So the guards, who as usual were misfit art people who just needed jobs, were being replaced by ex-military/law-enforcement personalities. This was not a job where violent conflict was much of a possibility; more of a public-relations, please-don't-touch-that, the-bathroom's-over-there type gig.
However, Rob Bearden was always hinting darkly at how the guard staff really needed some hard cases in charge, seeing how...Well, from the letter:

When Mike Sumpter was first hired, he quickly began speaking disparagingly of Denise Marsden, his predecessor. This struck many of us as an early bad sign, but Ms. Marsden's departure was still pleasing to many of us, as she had generally let her personal vendetta against the homeless and family issues with "people like" many of the guards get in the way of actually doing the job. This, Mr. Bearden has characterized as "being too good at her job".

'Being too good at her job' included at least once when she left a busy, packed museum on a Sunday -when only she and I were there- to go harrass a homeless man across the street, in the park. She would also cheerfully ask things like -while watching an elderly man slowly making his way up the stairs- "Don't you just wanna kill 'em?"
No, no I didn't, I said, and suggested that maybe she needed a different job. Back to the letter:

Soon, complaints arose against Mike from some of the female guards. They felt that they were being approached by him in an unprofessional manner, and he was all too open about muttering darkly to the rest off us that anyone who had a complaint, no matter how valid, was a "whiner" and didn't have "any business being a security guard".

Before long, the complaints were being logged, both on paper and otherwise, not only from guards but from women in several departments. Some of these are on file with Rob Bearden. Nothing seems to have been done about any of them.

Then, six guards all quit in one week. In two years of being a guard, despite the low pay and generally demeaning treatment of others (sic), I have never seen that many guards quit at once, especially since several of them had not passed their probationary period, and would have had to pay back their $200.00 certification fee.
(I had forgotten that nasty little detail.)

The museum was now faced with not nearly enough guards to adequately cover the needs of a large scale exhibition like 'Egypt'. As the exhibit progressed, the understaffed guard force was in an understandably dark mood. Massive overbookings of poorly chaperoned school children made their jobs tenfold more difficult, and the official line was "we like the numbers".
(This was a direct quote from Rob Bearden.)

This struck many of us as dangerous thinking. "The numbers" drove up the incidence of injuries, almost certainly packed the museum with crowds exceeding the fire capacity, and the damage to the permanent collection continued apace.
(Layin' it on kinda thick there, but it was true.)

Amidst all this, we noted that our Assistant Chief had been hired merely to spy on us, generating a decidedly adversarial relationship with him, and the rest of his time was spent smoking cigarettes and talking on the phone. The level of complaint rose sharply. One of Mike's hires, a would-be police officer, had a bad habit of both arguing with visitors and making sexually inappropriate comments to female staff. When said staff members asked security personnel about who to complain to, they uniformly were told that Mr. Sumpter certainly wasn't. In the end, that particular guard left us.

So, as a guard with some experience at the museum, a number of people approached me with complaints about Mike Sumpter. Generally speaking, they were from women feeling sexually predated upon by him. But a few of them were about seeming entrapment ploys by Mike. One guard being offered drugs, another asked to buy drugs for Mike,
(And those highly varied stories I mentioned earlier about why he was no longer in law enforcement.)

This put me in an awkward position to say the least. I had listened to so many complaints at this point, and knew from experience that (Chief of Security) Nolan Hibbard wouldn't act on them, that I had to do something, but had no idea what.

(Oh, indeed. I'm gonna come back to this.)

Driving around, looking at things

The guy is sitting at the entrance to Smith & Bybee lakes with an entire drum set, rocking out. Better still, there is no rest of the band, no camera crew. He's just having a not-entirely-private moment on Columbia Way, providing music to bikers and joggers, providing a puzzle to passing motorists. I should have taken a picture, but I also didn't want to bother him.

As often happens when I get bored, I have started taking the long way to get to anywhere I need to go. "It's so wasteful and weird," as I pointed out to a friend I ran into, "but it's what I'm in the mood for." He laughed.
I'm always in the mood for lookin' at things n' considerin'. I took a completely meaningless detour into southwest Portland the other day, simply for the purpose of driving the entirety of Boone's Ferry Road, from start to finish.

The journey is beautiful at times, from the Tryon Creek woods around Lewis and Clark college, to ugly as hell (most of the rest of it). It only has value if you can envision what it looked like a hundred years ago. Here's what it took for you to get across the Tualatin river, if you lived in Burlingame.
Rolling through twisty curvy hill roads, across railroad tracks, through the woods down by Day and Coffee creeks, eventually down the central valley that eventually would house Interstate Five (matter o' fact, Boone's Ferry spends its last ten miles paralleling that road, separated by a fence). What I'd never done, despite driving this road a million times, was follow it to its terminus.

Wilsonville, Oregon is another one of its conservative capitols. It at least was home to the Oregon Citizen's Alliance, a vocally anti-gay lobbying concern that put up a number of potentially terrible bills in their day, though ultimately lost due to their clear stupidity, lack of legal knowledge, and failure to file any taxes.
It also is a long drag of strip malls and little else that I'd ever seen, until last week when I finally discovered old Wilsonville. And right there, at the end of what had once been main street, the road ends, and descends into the water. Here's where it ended.

Train trestle above, concrete remnants of where Mr. Boone put his landing, houseboats and marina across the water. Like Taylor's Ferry Road and Scholl's Ferry Road, this road doesn't lead to an extant ferry, and hasn't for a long time. But all the same, with the eyes I've always had to see these things, I could stand there and see exactly how good it would feel to finally get there, after a day of driving your wagon.

** **
We crossed Scholl's Ferry Road a few days later, on the way out to the casino. As usual, some of my stagehand friends were talking about the various conspiratorial things they had learned. The latest? Those FEMA camps we're all going to be locked up in.
Conspiracy theory is a tough one with me. I feel it's helpful to include the phrase "...and here's what some people thought happened..." in any history lesson. I also acknowledge that in most things, the official version will fail to cover a lot of the important nuances, generally to the benefit of those Officials whose version it is. The tendency to dismiss distaff opinions of tragic and catastrophic occurrences with "I won't dignify that with an answer," only confirms the suspicions that I, and many others have.

But, there's also plenty of equally bad things happening in the full light of day, and they are fully reported. They continue, and no cry is raised, since those who generally would are wondering about the camps where the New World Order is no doubt planning on putting your family, or how Satanic interests control global finance. The Masonic imagery employed in street gangs' imagery.
"Of course, so does the Klan," I couldn't help but think; the Masonic imagery, that is.

My fellow employee who brought all this shit up is a tiny guy, though a badass. He is nice as pie, but he believes terrible things, because like most people I work with, he's an undereducated fuckin' cracker. In this way, he gets the rest of their asses riled up.
He listens to Alex Jones, who I feel is a complete tool, in a literal sense. In the sense that while there's so many actual crimes out there that get shovelled under by the sheer weight of undifferentiated bullshit, and are no secret whatsoever, he'd like you to think that The Masons are gonna kill us all, or that the fat cats who gather at Bohemian Grove each year are actually worshipping Satan. Or that Communism was dreamed up by John D. Rockefeller, and a bunch of other tycoons who felt the need for a worthy opponent to Capitalism.
"He kinda sounds like one of Them, doesn't he?" I always want to ask.

No; instead I opt to tell the smarter half of the vehicle that deep down, I don't think there's any cost-effective reason for locking all of us up, when it's so much easier to make us Stupid. And so begins the day.
We are here to build a boxing ring. Although the ring itself -we have been told- is not to be touched by us; a separate crew is doing that. So much for that whole other boxing ring my boss rented (true story).

And on the way back home that night, further uneducated shit about the trannies in the local stage community. There's at least three transsexuals I've noticed in the Local, and they're both good and bad, as is the case with people.
But that doesn't stop the outrage, I tell ya' on the part of these...Look, I know that your dad was (closely associated with a hugely famous band we've all heard of) all those years, and I can be excused for finding you to be a shrill, delusional hippie chick gone to seed in middle age. But the fact that you're a bigot, too? Un-for-give-able. The fact that our business manager is gay? No, no you're not getting it; we hate him because he's a sociopath and a bad business manager: his sex life is surprising to me in that he even has one. So: Not The Point. You're off again.

I? I just keep on using the phrase "this person" over and over, while talking about the individual things that might annoy me about each. This Person. I don't like to start fights any more about this sort of thing, in a crowded van full of people I expect to work with for years. But I don't let 'em poop all over the discourse. The rest of us are trying to have a Civilization here, y'know...
But scapegoating is real, and it pops up the worst when everyone's poor, and having a bad time.

The next night, I introduce everybody to Nannerpuss.

Again, we all kind of live inside of each others' heads, and joke about how easy it is to get a song stuck in someone else's head for the next three hours. I'd been on the Nannerpuss thing all night long, with some people starting to sing the song without any idea what it was from.

This took away from the earlier unpleasantness, where our production office had been invaded by violent folk of all sorts. A boxer's girlfriend had punched another boxer's girlfriend in the gut, and the one who had received the punch was pregnant.
Suddenly the back hallway is filled with stupid fuckin' boxers and entourage. The office holds we who are trying to get out onto the stage to do our jobs, two security guards, the punched one, and her boyfriend who is still in trunks and covered with sweat.

Security is trying to pacify the situation, saying, "We'll take care of this," and the boxer says what tradition and a million bad movies tells him to say; "No, I'll take care of this!", dancing around and pounding his fists together like the trained monkey he is.
I, for my part, want to say: dude, this is a casino. Everything you do in here is caught on camera, and will be used when this goes to trial.
But above all else, I'm also just not wanting to get my ass beat simply for being there. I say, "We're out of here," and we take the stage.

Thoughts on Place, Pigs

"We are forces of chaos and anarchy/ everything they say we are, we are
and we are very...Proud of ourselves..."
Jefferson Airplane, "We Can Be Together"

Portland's motto is (was?) "The City That Works". This has led to some interesting juxtapositions.
In the late '80's, there was a bunch of billboards in that War on Drugs motif -block letters, red white n' black (Nazi colors!) color palette- that read, "DRUGS DON'T WORK IN PORTLAND". As my friend and I were on acid as of this viewing, at least one of us must have said, "Shit; they seem to work just fine." Then we noticed the billboard next to it: A bunch of Corona bottles riding a chairlift to the top of the slopes. The brilliant punchline? "Brew-Ski."

Well, we certainly don't want you doing any drugs, but we fully encourage you to ski drunk. There are others who would suggest that maybe Portland's motto should be "The City That Is Way Too Proud of Itself". As I've said, as annoying as Portland's supporters are, Portland's detractors lose a lot of points with me for what seems like way too much anger at things that don't really damage anything noteworthy.
While just across the river is Linnton, who modestly posits that their community is "A Place to Live and Work." Unlike the rest of those places.

And for a while I had this t-shirt that said, "Missoula; A Place, sort of," and it had -I believe- a frog with a duck bill on it? I do not recall. Better still, I remember someone having an actual explanation for this, but I don't think it made any sense.

These issues of place loom large over the lady of the house and myself. That's us to the left there, on our fortieth anniversary, in 1985. Those damn kids got me a Cosby sweater again that year.
Anyway, we need to move to a smaller house, and we are. It, like our last house, is tiny, though situated on a large lot, and features a li'l shed out back for keeping tools and scheming darkly.

It's in a neighborhood whose existence I was not informed of. Hemmed in by industry of all sorts, it's out in the country while still entirely within city limits.
Across a large boulevard to the south, shootout territory; ghetto-type shit. To the north, railroa' tracks. To the west? The port!

And if you go east enough, Portland at large, Marine Drive, Edgefield, the Gorge, Mt. Hood, y'know.

"WE ARE AWESOME TO THE EARTH 42", reads the sign along Hwy. 99. It is ostensibly advertising some business along the way, but its unclear what that would be. Something that needs to be somewhat defensive about its earth-friendliness, I would imagine.
But it also looks like the work of someone who -bored- spends a lot of time wandering down the street/highway in the exurban sprawl that precedes Wine Country, changing around the letters on signs.
And '42'? Well, if you'll remember, that's the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything. (And, by a nice coincidence, the episode number of the first Monty Python show Douglas Adams showed up on.) When the further issue of "...Okay, so what's the question, then?" came up, there was a search conducted, and when they found it, it was rendered in huge letters on the surface of a distant planet. But over the millenia, they had sunk into the soil so much that they now read, in the local dialect, "GO STICK YOUR HEAD IN A PIG".

More coming. This is all from a rather interesting week.

The 13th Step?

So lessee: Had that seven-day week there, then we went out to the coast. That was three or four days of beauty; made a fire on the beach each night. Then, another seven-day week, although minus the ten-hour days and near-death experiences.
Another year, another PICA shirt: It's TBA (Time Based Art) festival time again, which is kind of like class reunion for me. These tend to be days spent with people I literally work with once a year.
And 'PICA'? Portland Institute for Contemporary Arts, not the psychological disorder in which you eat highly inappropriate things (like your own feces, or drywall), or the type-size.

In the middle of all of this, the Bear starts texting me again. A couple months ago, I received another one of those messages that seem to be aimed at the former holder of my phone number: "Hey man wuz up?" kinda shit.
As always, I respond, "Who dis?"

But this time, the response is "The Dream Team".
And I say, "What?"
And it comes back, "Is in the house".

Ah. That's the chorus to "In the House", by the L.A. Dream Team (members: Rudy Pardee and Snake Puppy), a mediocre dance assemblage of the early 80's. And yes, that was th' Bear, my old dance club-goin' buddy. I didn't say anything back.

As you may recall, the last time I had heard from him, he was on step nine of his twelve steps, where he was making reparations.
As you also may recall, I feel that above all else, this person is a vampiric presence in my life, and I don't want to encourage him in any way. He can find his own friends, and perhaps grow the fuck up a little...But the particular variety of insanity he displays is one common to many Americans: overwhelming self-absorption. These people tend to be violent when they fail to receive the proper kind or amount of attention, and I don't feel safe around them.

Oddly, Bee and I had just found a small copy of the Alcoholics Anonymous book on the beach, and had been enjoying it while also enjoying a few beers. When I get back to my phone, it showed me that he had sent me one that just said "Fuck u".
I wrote back, simply, "Stop."
He wrote back, "No".

Hehhh...So as usual, I know that if I engage him in any way, I'll be there all night. We drove back to Portland later on, and upon our arrival, I see that he has texted, "Puck you motherpucker".
This signals to me that perhaps that was a friendly fuck you earlier? Or something? And as always, I'm just failing to see the special, life-changing humor of this special, special guy who is only trying to broaden my perspectives and alter my consciousness with Zen-like pranks. Or something. In any case, I again did not respond.

This morning, I get a text that reads, "Sorry for trying will let go". Oh, I see. You were just passively aggressing and sort of behaving like a stalker in an attempt to show your love and care for me. Riiight. And I also see that it is my fault for responding in the expected and appropriate manner.
The thing is, I believe that he is being encouraged by a couple other friends of mine, who have expressed that it's just damn tragic that two people who were once such close friends can not find their way past their differences. One of them holds a degree in psychology, and in most other cases I believe would very easily accept that people have a right to put distance between themselves and those who make them feel unsafe.
Our differences here being simply; yes, I can't trust him, and I believe him to be borderline enough that he'd fucking harm me, given the proper "reasons". And too that it would be my fault for not seeing the simple beauty and indeed, Enlightenment in his fucked up behavior. I am a terrible, terrible man.

Interestingly, I note from the writing of Bill W. in the Alkies' Bible that the whole "higher power" concept -so problematic for the legions of alcoholics who also happen to not believe in God- sprung out of Bill W's equal disgust for religion, and its brutal effect on humankind. He goes on about it at length. The fact that the "higher power" thing -suggested to him by a successful ex-drinker- for some reason seemed a decent substitute is a matter for study, I feel.
It may very well have been the first time in American culture that someone suggested the whole mushy I-don't-know-what-it-is-but-there's-something spirituality that is now practiced, I feel, by most Americans. Before that, the idea of picking and choosing your divinity would have been pretty damn not okay, I think.

Post script: and since I wrote Disco Boy about this issue just a minute ago, Gmail did its usual helpful number and thought it might show me a few other places where people like me -with our interest in bears- might like to go. It came up with the Gloomy Bear Store. Enjoy at your own risk.

To George

Hey there. Just to say it, when I said "kudos, y'damn fuckhound", that was actually a reference to something that happened to me, once.

I'm not sure why I was downtown. I think it was a job interview. So I sidle up to the bus stop across the street from Powell's, and set to doing the crossword, when I am beset by a tiny woman with tight blond curls. Although she is railing in a very loud voice against all present as well as society in general, it's pretty clear she isn't homeless.
Or at very least, someone somewhere was taking care of her. Her clothing seemed to be vintage; and by that I mean, her style, if I had to describe it, was a sort of fashionable Little House on the Prairie. All the way down to her perfectly clean white socks, which she was wearing as her only footwear on the pavement that day.

I just had to do it: I can't not look, which is something I know both you and I are completely guilty of. If someone put a gun to each of our heads and commanded us not to Observe and Report, we'd both be in serious trouble, especially on the Report part.
So, for just brief moment, I flicked one eye her way. This was enough. Probably lasted a lifetime in schizophrenic time, and the reaction it got was immediate: I became the specific focus of her tirade.

Somewhere in here, as I was doing that cowardly fucking thing people do -oh, well maybe if I just stand here and enjoy my crossword puzzle, maybe this other person who is less than a foot from me, screaming at me, will see fit to go away, as reason dawns upon them, what with me being so calm and unflappable- she crescendoes finally, completing the whole thing by calling me, "...you old fuckhound!"

And well, it sort of made me want to say, it's like you know me, or something. Yes it's true; I've spent a fair amount of my life chasin' tail, and I've only occasionally seen something bad about that.
I mean, what the hell was our dynamic the whole time we lived in Oly? Me as serial monogamist, although utterly unable to not cheat, as was my steelo in those days, and you being a hundred per cent up front with people -I'm not going to be your damn boyfriend, and if you think I really don't mean that, that is your delusion. Consider yourself warned - with me wondering how the hell I could pull off something similar...And realizing that trying to be someone else was just never going to work, in my case. I'm me, goddamn it, whether I like it or not, and regardless of how many people thought we were secret cousins or something, we do our thing in different ways.

Somewhere in there, I learned that I was never gonna get whatever it is that I am afraid of losing from someone else. I might go on being afraid of losing it for the rest of my life, but at least I could see to it that I don't take it out on other people, psychological disorders being what they are, and everybody having them, far as I've ever noticed.

But I've left the girl back on the corner. Now, she is only a few inches from my face. I look her square in the eyes, and see that this is actually just a more or less okay person who has slipped off her meds, just this particular day. Probably the rest of the time, she is a hundred per cent manageable, and is just sharing her thoughts on this whole humanity thing with its members.
And what does she say to me, once she's sure she's got my attention? "Strange, isn't it?"

That's when I lose it. "No, no it's fucking not! Actually, it's incredibly fucking typical!" And I stalk away, with her screaming something I might have found interesting at my back. I only walked down to the next bus stop on Burnside, and hoped like hell I wouldn't have to continue my interaction with her on the bus.

But: you old fuckhound...Like I say, it stuck kinda nicely. I have found few people that genuinely don't like sex -but they definitely exist- and all that leaves is the other 98% of us. Still, a somewhat smaller number are...Well, stars of track and field, to borrow rather liberally from Belle and Sebastian.
Not to over-value that sort of thing -sport fucking for its own sake, and without shame- but it sort of stands as part of something that I hold as a pillar of my own belief system. It dovetails nicely with something you once said to me: let's not settle for Dissatisfied.

Matter of fact, I inserted that into a poem I wrote at the time. I followed it up by saying,
"and don't play that Me Good Chink Cholly Chinee shit with your captors. You don't even have any captors."
Because on one hand, every damn one of us has that thing that hunts and pursues us, and won't let us rest until we die, but only we can make ourselves truly despair.
Hm. That doesn't quite do justice to what I was actually trying to say on that one; it particularly does a huge disservice to those who literally are in captivity. I'll work on it...Something about how you owe the world your complete honesty, or something.

Meanwhile, while I was on day three or four of a seven-day work week, down at the waterfront, when I get that surprise text message of yours. I know that Kittie also -at first- had no idea what she was looking at. But then it all clicks; municipal building, two nicely dressed people tinily standing in front of it.
Ah, that's right. People I know do, occasionally, get married. I can offer, as a person who really thinks that the whole institution is a buncha shit, that you truly did not fuck up, in my opinion, in marrying this one. Quite the opposite.

Congratulations, and hope like hell I can make it out there next summer.

Old Things

Since we're still pretty brand new in a brand new house, there's a lot of going through storage containers going on.

When not gazing lovingly on old photos and postcards, I have done the first overview of my rock poster archive in years. There's three decades worth of stuff in there. The same is true of my show-biz archive: no doubt my backstage passes alone will keep me fat n' sassy in retirement.

But best of all, out comes the old notebooks. Up on top, stuff from more recent years, including the manifesto I keep referencing, titled...

Toward A New Theory of Customer Service (ca. 2002 or 3)

The fact of the matter is, all you ever heard on this subject (in print, anyway) is from a managerial perspective. I have my own take, as do all servers.

For instance, as I've told more than one novice server, you're not paid enough to lick asses. If you were being paid asslicker's wages, that'd be one thing. What I mean is, of course you should be friendly -even charming- but never feel like you should let yourself be abused by a custy. Nine times out of ten, the shit attitudes displayed by the Served comes from nothing more remarkable than the novelty of Being Served, and feeling like part of the dynamic is abusing the Server. If you have actually screwed up, that's another thing.

But even there, you're still human, and all you must do is apologize, and right the wrong. Some people like a little sass with their sauce, as it were, and those that don't are cry babies, and won't tip anyway.

My serving guru told me most of what I needed to know, ever. For one- "First thing right off, acknowledge them. Let 'em know that you know that they're there." Sure. And then: "Get 'em menus and water as fast as you can. In the first thirty seconds they're sitting there, say. All the rest is garnish."

(I'm not really happy about how well this piece has aged. I skip forward here...)

Above all else, remember that sometimes you're really, truly running someone else's tax write-off. And that their ideas about what is a professional attitude is informed by information that can be flawed, at best. The same people will pull all sorts of unprofessional shit like questioning your judgment in front of customers, threatening your job in private conversation as a matter of course, and in general acting like a hyperactive twelve-year-old who really ought to seek a real life, in lieu of employing "friends".

(I'm all too aware of exactly who I'm talking about, here. It's a little too on the nose. Here's what a colleague had to say about him, in fact.)

It behooves you to remind them (without actually saying it, natch) that the fact that they own your ass is not a plus in their column. That they really, truly need to treat you well, or suffer the consequences.

(Actually, a far better way of saying that is: "You employ me, you don't own me.")

Hm. What else do we find in this notebook?
Well:

Let's hear it for the meek, always going around, inheriting everything.

Had a dream the other night in which I was walking around with Phil Hartman. In keeping with the apocalyptic nature of dreams of late, I'm walking with a dead person; nattily attired, smoking.
We're walking around the warehouse district of inner Southeast, and people who remember me -but I do not remember- keep approaching and hugging me.

After I am mauled by a huge blonde woman in some sort of meat-packing uniform, I look over downtown Portland and see two oily mushroom clouds rising.
"Well, I guess we'd better go that way," I tell Phil, indicating the opposite direction.

Oh, and some more adages about the service industry:

"Sometimes the customer gets what they want, and sometimes they get what they deserve."

"I don't go down to the plasma center and tell you how to relax and accept the needle, so don't tell me how to do my job."

"Take away every element of danger in most people's lives, and they'll just sharpen a spoon and plunge it in their eye."

Jesus. Cynical much, Me of five or six years ago?

God forbid we admit that a lot of what we've loved in the past has been complete crap. Popular culture examining its own asshole should be just that, but it's not. Item: the only book of poetry to actually make money in twenty-some-odd years is currently climbing the charts. It's by a seven (?) year old with muscular dystrophy, and is largely oriented around the idea of 'courage'.
(It's Cancer Boy from the Kids In The Hall movie, "Brain Candy", but nobody has admitted it yet: celebrity based on bathos.)

Some thoughts on my profession at the time:
I am actively promulgating evil at my job. Delivering auto parts (using an automobile, no less) to repair shops, to power the unnecessarily large passenger carriers with compulsory American flags that I curse so. I'm not a bank or anything, but nonetheless I am helping to drive the slave boat that is the engine of progress. This leads to genocide in my name on the other side of the world. Just a job? Yeah, sure; at the Baby Shooting Farm.

And, one of my favorite quotes, from Apuleius' The Golden Ass:
"The same fancy haunted us all the way home, that the Goddess of Honesty must have left this upper world, distressed at her bad treatment, and gone to live among ghosts and corpses. However- here we are, and there's the loot."

Followed by a quote from the great animator Chuck Jones:
"You can have a lot of fun with Silly Putty, but no one will ever love it or care what happens to it."

True dat, Mistah Jones.

Portsmouth, Mon Amour

We have been living up here in Dockworker's Paradise since last August, and have come to know it quite well. St. John's is every bit the strange mix that I like in a place: this may very well be the most truly diverse neighborhood in Portland, and I mean that in the good and bad senses. Kenton is not without its charms, though it does play home to one restaurant owned by someone I consider to be an awful human being. The Kenton Club had some role in the 1972 roller derby movie/Racquel Welch vehicle "Kansas City Bomber".

But what of the weird stretch of town most immediately around our home? It's the zone that lies directly east of the railroad tracks (really) and west of...Chatauqua? I'm not actually sure.
It boasts Fishwife, which is one of the better names for a fish restaurant I've ever heard, and it's always packed. It boasts several seedy looking bars, only some that I've explored. On the Shell station's sign, there is always some sort of personal message to someone that has recently been born, married, or died, inevitably right under some other message like, "Shell Card Users Get Same As Cash!"

It contains Fortune Avenue and Lovely Street, as well as the intersection of Willis and Drummond, for any "Dif'rent Strokes" fans in the audience.

It is home to Encanto, which is one of yer better New Mexican joints, though I suggest sticking to one of perhaps three dishes on its menu: All the rest are basically you paying too much for a burrito. It is where the Red Bicycle is, which is to say; hipster owned, bike-loving, generally swamped by a million and one hip parents whose children are the most important beings in the world, and god help you if you interfere with someone's little miracle expressing their creativity. Good sandwiches, though.

But this is a strange neighborhood, in that it has no central location that defines it...No 'heart', if you will, unless you're talking about the aforementioned Shell station adjacent to the Eagles 'aerie'.
That Eagles' parking lot hosts a flea market every Sunday, and once a year hosts the most depressing looking carnival, right around the time it really starts raining. This is that horrible moment where you're trying to be romantic about it-hey honey; let's go ride the Scrambler and get a hot dog-and you remember that cheaper hot dogs are available right across the street, and if you want excitement, it's hard to beat the car wash.


The real story of any community though, I think we'd all agree, is to be found in its dive bars. Along the joyless stretch of Lombard that really is the town's center, we have Jack n' Jerry's tavern, the Two Points Inn, the University Grill, Darcy's (All Lottery Games), Nicola's, and the Twilight Room.
Jack n' Jerry's recently was renamed the Sundown, actually, and I haven't set foot in it yet. Actually, I've only been to that place at all just the one time, and I'll say it: it's a friendly li'l beer bar, but it's so damn clear that a small group of perhaps five or six people wholesale carry that place. The dude in the wheelchair? Almost certainly he lives around the corner and goes there every day. Everybody knows each other, and that's fine.

The Two Points is kind of the same thing, except it's not housed in what I'd call a proper building, as such. More like a rail car/shack that is falling over, with attendant freakishly low ceilings, attached to a larger, more stable building.
Your only food choices are hot dogs n' chips. It's so damn small that privacy is impossible, but it also means that if someone wins big at video poker, the whole bar (generally five or seven people) gets a round. They do have Tom T. Hall on the jukebox though; more places should have that.

Darcy's All Lottery Games is pretty much what it sounds like: mostly a place to lose money, with a somewhat emphasis on 'deli' foods. I can't say too much though; I've only stepped in- then walked right back out.
The Twilight is okay. It's kind of a second home to University of Portland students and thereby to be avoided, but that's just at night. Free popcorn. Nice bartendresses.
I haven't been into Nicola's at all, and The University Grill is like the bar at a Denny's.

Today, perhaps a bike ride out to Smith and Bybee lakes is in order. The other day, I had a bunny cross my path twice (which is either very good luck or very bad luck, depending on where you're coming from), and saw a family of turtles sitting on a log.
To reach this place, one must first endure a few minutes of riding past the Columbia Boulevard Sewage Treatment Plant (with its attendant Nuisance and Vector Control center), past some weird golf course, onto what-I-believe-is Marine Drive, wait to not get run over by a car, ride into an eerie section of rail yard, past sketchy Rest Area in the middle of nowhere...Then you're there!
It's pretty standard for Portland: you have your beautiful riparian area completely surrounded by industrial parks. But, I appreciate that they try.

After you pass the lakes, you now have a very long, flat, straight, joyless ride through the Rivergate section of the Peninsula, right past where thousands of Hyundais make landfall (for instance) each day, past Kelly Point park, and back, eventually, into St. Johns.
Along that section, I found a piece blue plastic with several different renderings of Barney The Annoying Purple Dinosaur. Each of the pictures may have been buttons, and the weird flanging up top may have been your earhole. This, perhaps, was your phone for communicating with the world of Barney, ca. 1996, and here it was laying forgotten under a bridge along the Columbia Slough.
I never know how to feel about toys laying in the middle of some vast area that hasn't seen kids in gawd-knows-how-long. Presumably you don't think about it at length, and that's a whole lot better now, isn't it? In some other ways, it feels nicely metaphorical about this part of town I call home.

Recreating

One of the spooky things about the internet is how people continue to misinterpret the function it serves. I routinely see people discussing the phenomenon known as 'internet dating' who honestly think that the entire enterprise is conducted over cable, and never results in actual humans actually meeting. There is usually some sort of 'Call me old-fashioned but, I like human contact' comment that follows.

Or the continuing moon-eyed thoughts of various cultural commentators who feel that since everything can be done over the internet now, we're going to lose all that manly backbone and ingenuity that made our country great. Forgive me for saying so, but: just because you order the thing from the place using a computer (still) does not mean that it will magically appear on your desk-top. There is still a warehouse somewhere that has your thing, and people who work there get to go look for it, bring it over to shipping, package it, ship it, and have it then delivered by a person on legs who delivers things for a living. You yourself might very well have to sign something before you may take ownership of the thing.

Or the already over-used trope of You The Audiophile finally making some room in the house because now you can just put your entire music collection on some sort of tiny digital player that fits in your pocket. This is true, but isn't there a law of sorts from an earlier age in computing that says, Always have a backup, always have a hard copy? Yes, there is. You might very well drop your iPod or Zune or whatever in a very real toilet, and lose all that memory. It might get crushed under the wheels of a bus. You might just fuck up and erase everything yourself.
Now, it's not like there isn't still music out there to be had if any of these cases occurs, but all the same, you might be glad to know some asshole like me with my roomful of vinyl after Shit Goes Down, Man.

So anyway, technology doesn't solve everything, it just provides more options, I guess would be my point here. You already knew that, because you're very smart, but I just feel it needs repeating.

Here are the Mosier Twin Tunnels, which lie on the Mark Hatfield trail, which is a remnant of the old Historic Columbia Gorge Highway that runs between Hood River and Mosier. This isn't the greatest image of it, but it will have to do for the time being.
Th' Bee and I have been spending a great deal of time there lately. It provides a sort of nice walk along the cliffs that is pretty flat but also damn pretty. It is also only three or four miles long.

I had wanted, as a small child, to walk the length of the old highway, at least in the many places where it was abandoned; those glimpses of tunnels and bits of bridges up there among the rocks were tantalizing. I knew too that most of the highway is either still in use, already a trail or underwater. A fair amount of it is under I-84, too.
As you walk on this road, you gotta ask yourself, And how exactly would a '47 Packard and a '49 Merc do passing each other on this skinny ass, winding road? It also is high up enough off the Gorge floor that it is more likely to be snowy or icy up there. It's incredibly susceptible to landslides, as well, so why put a road up there?
In the '20's, when it was built, the dams were yet to come. Down there in the valley, the Columbia routinely flooded (and occasionally froze, if you can believe that), so building a road down there on the floodplain would have been a singularly bad idea. Hell, as late as the '70's there were still walking sand dunes along a fair amount of it. These would occasionally cover the freeway.

The tunnels are now a place where the wind whistles, and the shoring-up work they did along the approach looks like something Christo would do, except it's way more interesting. There's still a portion of the wall in there where two guys carved their names: they were stuck there for six days after an avalanche, some time in the '20's.
This is how we spend our time. Well, when we're not snowmobiling.

This is not a picture of either of us. Also, until last weekend, I had never participated in this activity (I'd think twice about calling it a sport).
Maybe I'd call it a sport, actually. The challenge is somewhat of an equestrian one: at first, the damn thing is so squirrelly, and every inconsistency in the terrain seems likely to throw your ass. Your arms go numb both from the vibration and the need to have them stuck in exactly the same position for a couple hours.

It's actually sort of amazing that I grew up in eastern Oregon and managed to escape this sort of thing. Of course, I wasn't taken hunting by my father, either. I've only rode a horse once in my life, too, and I was Four, or something.
But anyway it was tremendous fun, though another example of technology vs. personal culpability: the faster it goes, the less squirrelly it is-but- the faster it goes, the worse the damage if something goes wrong. And if you flip one of those fuckers, it'll crush you.

Above all else, I enjoy a trip to the pseudo-alpine architecture of the high Cascades. I love the sharply pitched roofs and gingerbread n' beaverboard construction. The sun shone down on snow that stood a good five feet taller than I am, and though pretty much everybody was a douchebag (I can't really stand skiers/snowboarders, in general), they were happy douchebags.

The day before, on a hike up to Angel's Rest, my back was screaming at me, as was my right ankle that pops so much these days. I was hyperventilating and somewhat tachycardic, at one point feeling like I'd pass the fuck out.
Then-after leaning panting and wheezing against a damn tree-I felt much better, and made it the rest of the way to the top. But all the same, Angel's Rest is not an especially high peak, and I was reminded yet again: You must change your life.

So I rode my bike to the store today. Baby steps. Tryin' to clean out m' colon, too. Bought some milk thistle to make liver cleansing tea...Eating more greens...Next week it's smokes quittin' time again.

Thread idea: I've already thrown out my thoughts on the Worst Presidents Ever (oh hey-happy Day of Celebrating the Concept of the Presidency, by the way), now how about your top five Worst Bands Ever?
I'll go first.
1. Starship
2. Bachman Turner Overdrive
3. Styx
4. The Sundays/The Cranberries (they're one item, I feel)
5. (I'll need to think about this a bit, clearly. The criteria here is that the band in question needs to have never ever made a song that you liked. For instance, Emerson, Lake and Palmer don't quite make this list; I think they may have one song I don't mind. There could certainly be some measure of wasted potential in the equation-I'm lookin' at you, Starship- and they also need to be blithely unaware of how terrible they are. If anything, that's still too many people we could be discussing here.)
(But-discuss.)