Tenacious Pugnacious

Growing up there was a woman who lived alone in an old house a block over named Mrs. Guggisberg. I shoveled her walk in the winter. She looked exactly like a Mrs. Guggisberg. She was short and odd, to an eight-year-old neighbor kid. And kind of mean.

Once she asked me to look after her dogs for a few days and I did but I hated her dogs. When I went to the door for my dollar after shoveling, they’d be all up in the doorway, barking and yipping and spinning and loud as hell. And they were ugly. Pugs. Three of them.

Pugs are all smashed face and butthole, with whacked out eyes, fat, little football bodies and legs like tiny twigs. They snort and gag and wheeze – they can’t fucking breathe. (Thanks to human breeders.) And these were mean. When I was feeding them for her, they would attack me. I’d open the door and they’d already be there barking and I’d have to kick at them to get them to move back and work my way into the kitchen, put the dog food in the bowls, change the water, and head back out the door – all the while swinging my legs around to keep the hounds at bay. And the buttholes, put your fucking tails down, you weirdos!

And I had to do that for three days. And they never let up. They are tenacious little piglets. And probably just fucking with me.

Okay, people love dogs. I do, too. And you get into trouble when you badmouth a dog breed, which is why I’m now wondering if my rant about the misshapen, mistaken and poorly designed corgi, the Ikea dog (got the right top, but the wrong legs) might muster more backlash than the pugly pugs bit? I think so. People really love their corgis. And tenacious? You could throw a tennis ball for 24 hours and a corgi would bring it back every single time.

Buds

A couple of people asked me what the hell this is. It’s a voice inside my head, the loser me, the guy always trying to fit in. The bit about mooching the money is not me. I don’t think. Can I just say it was very strange to write it down? And not a little embarrassing?

Ha ha! It’s fun to be with you guys, I mean, that’s obvious! We’re just like, ‘hey, man’ and ‘what’s going on’ and stuff. Just chillin’. Everybody’s all ‘wha?!’ you know? ha ha! So, what is up? Wanna go to one or your guys’s cribs? Check it out, you know, ‘what’s up?’ Be all ‘sweet crib!’ Yeah, no, we could go to my place but it’s so small, we’d be all over each other, I mean, and we’re buds but not that kind! ha ha! Man, especially, anyone got any brews at home? That’d be sweet! We’d be all ‘wha?!’ Hanging out and shit! Drinking some brewskis! Ha. Hey! Shit. I was gonna ask, I left my wallet at home and if anyone can front me five bucks, that’d be sweet! I’d be paying it right back, I’ll be all, ‘what’s up?’ be like, ‘cash on the barrel head, bitches!’ right? so if anyone can, just let me know. Later’s cool! Ha. So are we going to hang out? That’d be sweet. A bite to eat. That rhymes! ‘that’d be sweet, a bite to eat!’ We’re all like, ‘wha?!’ be hanging out and stuff. Anyone hungry? Grab a little nosh? ‘what’s up?’ ha ha. Not to use a big word, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t invite you guys to my place in the very near future! It’d be sweet, be all, ‘wha’s up? want to par-tay?’ Hell yeah! So where do you guys want to go? There’s some good movies out nowadays. We could get some tix, poppycorn and bevies? ‘what’s up?’ be all, ‘I’ll take the biggest tub you got, homey!’ ha ha. So, movie sound groovy? Ha! I’m a freaking poet! ‘Four score and …’ wait! no! shit! That’s not poetry – it’s the Constitution! Damn! Everybody’s all, ‘wha? make up your mind, dumbshit!’ how many times I’ve heard that – my mom and my dad, that is, when he’s actually home, but, oh, shit! What am I doing? You guys are all like, ‘what about your dad, you loser!’ ha. Anybody got any brothers and sisters and shit? Hey! We gonna head out or what? Not that I don’t love hanging out here in the freezing cold – ha ha – you guys all got real winter gear. This beauty’s a wind breaker and it ain’t breaking any wind! It’s freaking cold out here! Wait a minute, isn’t breaking wind like farting? I mean, doesn’t it mean it? That’s hilarious! Good news, guys, my wind breaker ain’t breaking any wind! But someone here is! You all smell that? Be all, ‘Damn dude! That’s rank!’ and shit. Let’s roll! I mean, get on the road. ha ha it’s cool hanging out with you cats! Ha! Cats! You all be all, ‘you hang out with cats, dork?’ ha ha Then my cat will just disappear one day – poof! from the backyard. Dad didn’t bother to look for her. It was his day off. Ha! Just joshing! Be all, ‘I’m fucking with you!’ If you pardon my French! Ha! Damn. So, if anyone does have five buckaroos, that’d be sweet! I mean, I could probably get by with a little less, but, I mean if no one’s sporting a fiver, I totally understand. But one of you fuckers must be able to spot me! Ha! I’d pay it right back, I’d bring it right to your place – special delivery! So, I need the cash for medications for my mom who’s totally wondering where the heck I am! I’d be all, ‘Put a lid on it, old lady!’ ha. ‘wha?!’ But I should probably skedaddle – anyone able to… Naw, I get it. I’m totally cool with… Where are… Okay! Cool! See you guys! Cats! ha ha. cats.

Funny how that works

The author, Edith Wharton, who has written ghost stories herself, once said: “No, I don’t believe in ghosts, but I’m afraid of them.”

Right? I’ve seen enough ghost chaser shows to know that there probably ain’t no ghosts. No one’s been able to properly photograph or record any sort of ghost-like phenomena, even in the ghostiest places. One doesn’t read about people being murdered by ghosts, just other people. So all actual evidence must lead one to believe that there are no ghosts.

Then how come I get scared by weird unexplainable sounds in my house? Why do I get all goosebumpy when someone tells me their own ghost story? Why did a huge flash of beautiful golden light fill the room the night my friend buried her mother? Not that we were afraid of the golden light, mind you, but we definitely got the goosebumps.

I suppose that, like being scared watching a horror movie, where we suspend our disbelief, we just might suspend some disbelief with ghosts, too? At some level, fear must feel good, although we’d need to define good in that particular statement.

Faux Poverty

I was walking around Lake and Hennepin in Minneapolis with my girlfriend back in the 80s and we watched an expensive BMW come around a corner. The trunk popped and a young man, dressed in ratty shorts and t-shirt with old flip-flops, and shaggy messy hair, jumped out of the passenger seat, opened the trunk, pulled out a beat-up skateboard and skated off.

A while later and a block away that same young man came skating up to us and asked, “Hey, man, you got a quarter?” I said, “Hey, man, you got a ‘Beamer?” And he rolled off.

Was it the hippies who inaugurated what my dad referred to as, “faux poverty”? Dad was a surgeon back then and he just loved to mock the very idea of people with plenty of money dressing like they had none at all. He had a field day with the new trend of pre-torn jeans, produced, marketed and actually torn by huge, multi-national, highly profitable corporations.

I’m guessing it was the hippies, but no doubt it was a statement about poverty and our consumer society for them. Hippies liked to make statements and if you look back over time, they were pretty much always right. But they made it cool and it made its way to artists, musicians and the like, who were then aped by those who adored them.

Like me. The surgeon’s kid. That’s how I dressed as a teenager (and I still do on occasion but mostly when I’m painting). The only difference back then was that you couldn’t yet buy ripped jeans so we had to wait for ours to fall apart or wear the oldest pair we had. It staggers the imagination just how quickly a teenager can wear out a pair of jeans, by the way. You could have a properly ripped knee in a few months. On another note, it was the seventies and I had jean shorts that were cut so high that the only thing between my legs was the seam. The pockets, often filled with bubble yum (or a film canister and pinch hitter), would hang down and out from beneath the material. Lovely.

And it’s still going on, of course. But you do grow out of it. You realize you look kind of stupid (unless you’re in a rock band) looking that way. I wonder just how many rock bands shot their gritty black and white photos in industrial areas, junk yards and abandoned buildings. (I was involved in a shoot like that, too.) Then you skedaddle back to the shag-carpeted, split-level home with a comfy bedroom featuring a Marantz stereo system with glowing blue dial, Magnaplaner speakers, black lights and rock posters of poor looking, exceedingly wealthy rock stars.

Why do we do that?

Don’t Go!

Dudes wanna go live on Mars, have you heard that? I wonder if they’ve spent much time thinking about it. A couple of red flags.

I mean, what if you don’t like it? You’re 232,000,000 miles from home. You’re fucked. Plus, the planet is about as inhospitable as inhospitable can be, not only in terms of temperature, dust storms, and no air to breathe, but there’s radiation and lots of it. Mars is essentially trying to kill you.

Plus, you’d be living in a state of the art Habitrail, and seeing the same fucking people over and over and over, day after day after day.

And yet all these billionaire dudes are actually seriously planning to do that very thing. Don’t go, fellas. It’s a really, really bad idea and the reality of Mars is that no one who’s rational, therefore, trustworthy, would ever join you.

The science is cool though.

Real Dialogue

From the NYT.

I didn’t respect them.

But I did respect respect others. I respected many others that said the election was rigged.

My instincts are a big part of it.

That’s been the thing that’s gotten me to where I am, my instincts. But I also listen to people.

There are many lawyers. I could give you many books.

It was my decision. But I listened to some people.

Cut and Paste

“Leaves are staying on the trees of northwestern Ohio a month longer than they did a century ago.”

And

“The number of stars visible in the sky will fall by 60 percent in the next eighteen years.”

And

“…and windy outdoor conditions were worsening bacterial contamination on chicken farms in the America West.”

And

“Five-year-olds will believe a trustworthy robot over an unreliable human, even if the robot is shaped like a truck.”

Too many Americans continue to believe in the trucks long past five years old.

From Harpers Magazine, “Findings”, June 2023.

A Biblical March and Two Babies Switched at Birth

Two fascinating articles from the New York Times yesterday, both of which stopped me in my tracks. The first is about the protests in Israel and how one woman – a particle physicist – has become the “face” of the protests. This paragraph is what surprised me:

“Dr. Bressler sealed her status as a symbol of the protest movement last month when she led a miles-long column of demonstrators on a multiday march to the hills of Jerusalem from coastal Tel Aviv. It evoked a biblical pilgrimage, and they picked up tens of thousands of supporters during the journey.”

If you look at the accompanying image (below), you cannot not be struck by how that is exactly what it looks like – a pilgrimage (with lots of flags), and what Jewish communities have been doing for millennia – walking, marching, traveling, in this case, to the capital city, to stand up to those intent on suppressing them and their freedoms.

The next story is two babies accidentally switched at birth. One baby was born of a French Canadian father and a mother who was Cree and French Canadian, a Métis. He was given the name Richard Beauvais. The other’s parents were the children of Ukrainian immigrants. They were prosperous farmers and also had a general store and post office in a town. That baby was named Eddie Ambrose.

So, the kid with Ukrainian ancestry was taken home with the Cree and French Canadian mother, and ended up on the reservation after the death of the other baby’s father. The child of the Metis mother ended up with the well-off Ukranian parents. They both came to figure this out recently after family members convinced them to do DNA testing while researching their respective family’s history.

It’s an amazing story all-around and destined for a movie, I would think, but I found it absolutely fascinating what the Ukrainian boy endured along with his family as a child and at the hands of the Canadian government. The article states:

Then, when he was 8 or 9, came what he called “the worst day” of his life. Government workers swooped into the log house to take custody of the children, who had been left by themselves.

Mr. Beauvais remembers hitting and kicking a worker who had slapped a sister, who was crying, then being thrown off a low roof. The children were eventually taken to a room with pink walls where, he said, they were picked “like puppies” by foster parents and he “was the last one to go.”

“There was no compassion,” Mr. Beauvais said. “If you were Native, the government workers didn’t care.”

But he was not Native, right? Or is he, for all intents, purposes and a lifetime of living, and being treated, as a Native? Fascinating! I won’t comment any more and allow you to read the stories, if you’re interested.

Right!

“What we measure is the Earth kind of moving in this sea. It’s bobbing around — and it’s not just bobbing up and down, its bobbing in all directions,” said Michael Lam, an astrophysicist at the SETI Institute and a member of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav),*

I was thinking about joining NANOGrav. 😐

*I’ll find the source if anyone wonders.

Ambient Sunday: 3

Biosphere is the nom de plume of Geir Jenssen, a Norwegian electronic musician and composer. He lives in a place called, Tromsø, which is within the Arctic Circle; in other words, way the fuck up there. You can see how someone living in such a achingly dark and cold place could create the sort of Ambient music he does. (Of course, they do have some long, long summer days.)

Substrata is his masterpiece. As I’ve mentioned before, talking about Ambient music isn’t easy, so it’s hard to even tell you why I believe this is so. It’s haunting, has lots of overdubbed old recordings of voices and even singers, chilly effects, and yet remains (often) really quite upbeat. So, there you go; A masterpiece.

There are more than one Biosphere-named artists out there – just an FYI. I will definitely be sharing more of his work as I go through my favorite Ambient albums.