by Tomorrow's Man
"I have to run my lines." is a phrase used by actors to refer to practicing and refining the performance of a play before they go live on the stage.
"I have to run my lines." is also a phrase used by foremen to mean that they must go into the factory to check efficiency and hopefully increase production on assembly lines.
I find this counterpoint quite poetic.
I had the kind of day that lets me type this:
"Today, while driving down the road, I saw llamas and helicopters."
That is a good day.
Fearfulness way up high, there's still lots of nuclear bombs out there that belong to the kind of men who know they're already saved by God and all your children crisped to bacon means not a damned penny in the ocean.
I bet there isn't a single woman who owns a nuclear weapon; ah, perhaps the Queen. There goes that dream.
This morning my platypus told me that I would soon come into a windfall of money. She didn't say if I should play the lottery, rob a bank, marry a rich Queen in 'Frisco, send my manuscript to Ira Glass, or dance like a monkey in the pale moonlight.
So, I danced like a monkey. I really don't feel like moving to 'Frisco.
Mares Eat Oats
And so does Al Gore, well he did yesterday when we were browsin' the flat cornfield. We walked the length of it, smellin' the manure they were jsut starting to lay as the first hint of Spring began populating the molecules of the air around us. "Manure," Al said, "is closer to God than any dozen virgin-spread nuns, I'd reckon."
I supposed I could concur, so I did. I handed Al the fifth of peach schnapps we were quickly downing, and said, really, I said, "Al, you know me, and you, and Jimi here, we're all just ovum shot backward into the vas deferens of a world curdling like cottage cheese on a HEMI. But that doesn't mean we can't still set fire to the occasional Stratocaster, or even smoke us some of this here fine manure."
With that, the ghost of Jimi Hendrix licked tight the manure joint (a "manoobie" in the parlance) and lit it up. Jimi, he said to Al and me, "Man, you two, you know how to hang like a prize hog's balls and all, but there ain't no swing left in the world without a chicken the size of Calloway struttin' the farmyard, man. One's you gotta stand up and be that chicken, my fine lovely friends. One's you got to find the Nommo. Be that chicken. Rule this sunshine waterworld with a lovehand."
Jimi passed the manoobie to Al, who definitely inhaled. I did too when it came back to me. It was kind of nutty. I handed it to Jimi, the three of us a parabolic, organic machine.
As we moseyed the third acre, I saw the single ear of corn sprouted high and full and green just ahead. We stopped and circled it. It swayed in the gentle, stinking wind, and Jimi smiled around the manoobie.
Jimi winked at me all blue-eye glitter and caterpillar moustache laugh, and said, "Mares eat oats, man. Take a bite."
Well, what could I do? I walked counterculture around the ear to Jimi, took the manoobie from his left hand with my left hand, and said, "Jimi, man...you are so hallucinating."
Having one of those 'break down and cry like the moisture that falls from a 400-member brothel sweating to the oldies after a richard simmons bitch-slap' hair days. Need a hat.
A big hat.
Roll that boulder, roll that boulder, ROLL THAT BOULDER SYSYPHUS, push it's warmth high high HIGHER, we need to feel 60 degrees and it's all in the heat burning your shoulders!!!
I have had the last line of the "Mary Tyler Moore Theme" playing over and over in my head for going on four hours now.
YOU'RE GONNA MAKE IT AFTER ALL
I can feel the cells of my ear canal leaping to their doom on my desk, my floor, around my shoulders.
YOU'RE GONNA MAKE IT AFTER ALL
My...fin-gers type...in-that-rhyyyythm.....
YOU'RE GONNA MAKE IT AFTER ALL
I am gonna make it after all.
YOU'RE GONNA MAKE IT AFTER ALL
I know, stop telling me that.
YOU'RE GONNA MAKE IT AFTER ALL
STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP!!!
...
Okay.
...
GONNA TAKE A RIDE INTO THE DANGER ZONE
GONNA TAKE A RIDE INTO THE DANGER ZONE
GONNA TAKE A RIDE INTO THE DANGER ZONE
GONNA TAKE A RIDE INTO THE DANGER ZONE
Put your left extensor digitorum longus in,
Pull your left extensor digitorum longus out,
Put your left extensor digitorum longus in and shake it all about,
You do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself around,
that's what it's all about!
Put your right lateral patellar retinaculum in,
Pull your right lateral patellar retinaculum out,
Put your right lateral patellar retinaculum in and shake it all about,
You do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself around,
that's what it's all about!
Put your totus corpus in,
Pull your totus corpus out,
Put your totus corpus in and shake it all about,
You do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself around,
that's what it's all about!
Sadly, 'April Madness' attracts dubious and malicious stereotypes.
Luckily, I have Sam Adams.
I wrote a very long sentence but then my computer deleted it just as I paused to think to myself, 'wow, that was a really, super excellent long sentence,' while looking at the ceiling in wonder at the length of the sentence I had just created when I sneezed, I had to because the lights were doing that tickling in my nose thing, and there was no way I was going to be able to fight it and FLOOM I sneezed and damned if I didn't whack the keyboard funny or something and poof went my sentence, just like that POOF it was gone, and I guess I should not sit here whining about it but damn, it was one pretty rad sentence, I'm telling you.
I have these words that write themselves but only every second note, when the grease stains on the livingroom carpet are still faded and there's yet to be a Harley parked there in the middle of my mind again; Spring's coming, and I feel more than hear the lowing roar that brings the sword words back to me.
Driving home, I heard "Sunday Bloody Sunday" by U2 on the radio. I sang along full-volume and terrible, since I've always liked the song. It was then I realized I was listening to the oldies station, and that the song was over 21 (freaking) years old.
I thought 21?!? When did that happen?? I bought that album when it came out! That album could drink legally! And probably does, since it's Irish.
I have not had my recurring dream that I can fly in so long that it is starting to bring me down.
I did hire that bird to sing this song. I did buy it a mockingbird, too, but only as an amulet. The bird, she sang a different song, but in her eye was a diamond ring.
My rocks rolled down a mountain, stumbled blindly over immortal trolls (three of them) and splashed gaily into a verdant pool covered in the green of life, but I see no symbolism in this, do you?
I'm wearing garish clown makeup and watching cheap beer run down my minor scale as I listen about an earth we made into Hell. It may be Saturday, it may not.
They're coming and I'm not and it is great and swell because the rings I'm making are forming four-leaf clovers with luck enough for all of us, so take this as a prayer to you. wind at your heels, hurricanes for my flat feet.
My cigarette smoke floats up and up and through the hole in the ozone, kisses a comet, and wishes the next race hello as I wave goodbye to smoke and stories.
I placed the spoon at the end of the fork, married a loop of baling twine to their edges, then shone a 60-watt bare bulb down on it. I'll be damned if I didn't see the smiling face of Gloria Steinhem herself.
It was the sight off to the left horizon of the snowy crane circling a strawberry field at sunset that made me hitch my breath and think, I sure do have to get my pilot's license so I can rain frozen hot dogs down upon the highway.
Here to There
Earth to Mars, here to there, zoom zoom go, then back to Earth, get the pictures from a man to a man, from a man to a woman, get the woman home to bed, get her food in her belly, get her man in her body, get his seed in her cells, get her food in her blood, get her blood to her heart, through her veins, to her fingers and to her brain, get her blood to her brain, here to there, and pictures of Mars form in there while the rest of life swims.
John launched into a tirade once again, about the bees. Bees in here, they don't mix with the people well, he cried. All the honey drives them crazy. Makes them hungry, energetic, irrascible, angry.
It's always the same fight, every Sunday: us trying to have our mass in our church where all of the surfaces are coated in honey, including the statues and pews, while the thousand or so bees fly around us. John, though, he's always got a complaint about it, either the honey stains on his knees, or stings, or some doggone thing.
You'd think the man could just pipe down and worship Jesus like the rest of us.
Today's To Do List:
1. Wake.
2. Re-evaluate position on/in GPS.
3. Try to form fanbase of 'Blog Bunnies.'
4. Solar Yak Coccyges; future of writing implements?
5. Get off lazy left buttock and stop bloating blog with filler.
Only In Wisconsin
If I ever needed a sturgeon to the face to remind me where I've moved.
At the bar. Order a drink. Talk to the bartender. Great lady. Sit, drink. Get to witness this:
Patron sidles up next to me, orders a drink. Asks the bartender, "Hey, are you allowed to drink while you're working?"
The bartender, only in Wisconsin, replies, "No, absolutely not. The boss is right there, and we can't drink on duty.
"I can only do shots."
As I watched her pour three jiggers of Bushmills then launch one third of them down her throat, I thought, I have to write this down.