Saturday, January 24, 2004

Could This Be My Lucky Day? Could this be my lucky day? A spider crawled across my back. My good luck coins, they jingle in my pocket. A bee has flown into my house. Prepare for the visitor. I feel volatile. I cannot kill the bee. At last it flies out on it’s own accord. I saw that she had laid her hat upon the bed… Thirsty, I leaned against the screen door of the back porch, trying to fit into the little spot of shade. Work, a little work, there was still a little work to be had, and I leveled the weeds on the northern bank of the Bartleson house, fifteen minutes it took me, maybe twenty, but it was plenty hot in the unprotected sun. Will Work For Water. And I get so lucky July twelve, Misses Bartleson, she gives me a case, and dried fruit as well. The old man’s passed on and she’s ready to move on out herself, just hadn’t had the energy to make the effort. There's an old saying that you teach what you need to learn. Good fortune comes to those who ask for it by name. 6:47:27 PM    on the other hand  []

Advice for Howard: Stealing the Meme Many interesting pieces this week on Howard Dean and the scream. The scream being not so much an event as a meme which has finally borne fruit. It's a disease, a thought virus, and it was developed by The Special Clique through constant battle during the Clinton Years. Clinton was defined as guilty from the early days of his administration. 'The Process' was perfected in heavy battle. It relies on media in order to infect large segments of the population, who in turn feed new energy to the virus until the patient is, mmm, consumed. Gore could not believe that 'The Process' was real until it was too late. He could not accept that the process used against Clinton would now be business as usual, and he went down like the proverbial deer in the headlights. He barely bothered to whimper. Here is rule numero uno of The Process, stolen right from Mister Ibsen, an old Scandinavian troublemaker who's not  gonna miss it anymore. You don't have to write it down verbatim. The essence of the rule is that 'if you show a gun in the first act, you have to use it by the third'. It's not a matter of agreeing or not. And what are your options for deciding which information stream to process, the image in your eyes or the voices in your head. Because you can't deal with them concurrently. And anyway, they're both wrong. And so a scenario is built around one of the ten million eyes of God, a scenario that will become true because we are legion, dig? It's just a matter of paying attention and picking the right piece of film. Stealing the meme, that's easy, too simple, so simple that it confuses the enemy. "Yeah, that's me" you say, and suddenly you are in possesion of both the sound and vision. You're free to cut it up and reassemble to remix it filter it collage it play it again and again until it lives outside of context, make it your theme. A critic once asked Miles Davis what he did when he blew a bad note and he said I play it again and then again and it becomes the right note. 11:36:05 AM    on the other hand  []

Wolverton Mountain This is a sad song, aye...  A really sad song. We learned it for our set tonight... Ya know, we give and we give. This is historic... There's a tip bowl by the door. Can somebody give me an E?  Okay, thank you Elroy, hold just a sec, my G strings gone out again... okay then, here we go. Oh wait, run down and get your dobro out of the minivan Chester... This is gonna take a lot of you back. Heh, heh, some of you younger uns, it's goona take you back before you was even a gleam in your daddy's eye. This goes all the way back to 1992. Shucks man, that's a joke, we're talkin 1962. It was the very first hit for a gentleman by the name of  Clyde King, and I think it could well've been his only hit. By the name of Wolverton Mountain. And it's a real sad tune, and we're proud to be playing it for you here tonight. Uh-one, two, three, four... They say don't go on Wolverton Mountain, If you're looking for a wife. 'Cause Clifton Clowers has a pretty young daughter, he's mighty handy with a gun and a knife. [vamp behind me boys] Now that was a pretty serious warning back in 1962. I mean the Ruskies had the A-bomb, but most of us... most of us was more afraid of a man who was pretty good with a gun and a knife. You might be thinking that Clifton Clowers is a pretty darn funny name, but I'll just bet you would never say that sorta thing to his face. He was a proud man, a man who protected his sweet daughter.  Her tender lips are sweeter than honey  And Wolverton Mountain protects her there.  The bears and birds tell Clifton Clowers  If a stranger should wander there. [vamp behind me boys] Now it's right about here that this song starts weirding me out just a little bit. I mean, this ain't some fictional place we're talking about, no sir, this is right in Conway County, Arkansas. This Clowers joker apparently had his pretty little thing locked up on top of a mountain and the bears and the birds were helping him out. Birds, that I can believe a little, but the bears would sooner take a bite out of your ass than to help ya out. All of my dreams are on Wolverton Mountain. I want his daughter for my wife. I'll take my chances and climb that mountain Though Clilfton Clowers, he may take my life [vamp behind me boys] Now wait a second here. Old Clifton might have been pretty good with a gun and a knife, but I think that Clyde is just a little bit on the paranoid side with the kind of observations he's making here. Clifton was a World War I veteran and a member of the Mountain View Baptist Church where he was a deacon for several years. I'll tell you this: something tells me that this Clyde King was a little lightweight it the balls department. Nancy boy, ya know what I mean? I'm thinking what with Clifton being born in 1891 for Christ sakes,  just how young was that pretty young daughter, anyhow? Ah, these old songs they really make you think. Allright, let's take it home, boys... I'm going up on Wolverton Mountain, It's too lonely down here below. It's just not right to hide his daughter From the one who loves her so. Her tender lips are sweeter than honey And Wolverton Mountain protects her there. The bears and birds tell Clifton Clowers If a stranger should wander there. But I don't care about Clifton Clowers, I'm gonna climb up on his mountain, I'm gonna take the girl I love. I don't care about Clifton Clowers, I'm gonna climb up on his mountain, I'm gonna take the girl I love. Thank you. God dangit, I just learned the chords, that did come out good. Thank you. Whoo, boy, that's one weird song there.... I think that one's out of the repertoire, that's what I'm leaning toward. Whole thing just gives me the shudders... 10:20:47 AM    on the other hand  []

"The trouble with Dean dropping back is that the D's then largely lose Iraq as an issue (unless Kerry is smart enough to use "I was fooled, too" without looking foolish). I think that's a mistake. In the first place, because it was so egregious, if not criminal. We were, in fact, lied into a war we didn't have to fight. And the results are not happy. In case you hadn't noticed, 100,000 Iraqi Shiites were protesting in the streets Tuesday." This is from Molly Ivin's piece about Howard Dean and the political world he wants to live in. I want to highly recommend it, and you know I rarely recommend shit.. Anybody that's kept their eyes open over the past ten years and still chooses to live in it without having already been blessed and thoroughly indoctrinated by The Special Clique has got to be either stupid or half crazy. And I'm just not in the mood for stupid. 9:54:28 AM    on the other hand  []