It is raining like a crazy bitch here. I bet all the bummed little trick or treaters are clamboring around the school windows in their costumes, eating candy corn and Gobstoppers and trying to will away this pouring rain. I am gonna scare the bed sheets and galoshes off any half pint ghosts who dare set foot on my porch! Bahaha!! The brave little beggars will come, however, even though their plastic pumpkins will be shaking with fear. Why take those tiny steps up to the door of the damned? Word on the street: the two fat dykes always have the best candy! Yes, yes, we do. And it is all I can do to keep my own babygrrl from eating it all!

Everyday Élan Vital | No Comments »

Good morning, all you people at work on a Mondee morning, makin’ bank while you Google yourselves and read this merry crap.

How do you do?

I had a most awesome birthday weekend — thank ya very much! The highlight was Saturday night. Christine put on her trademark leopard and her “goin’ out” eyes. I dressed like a shop teacher, same as I always do. We drove out to this turn-of-the-century, small Texas town with the typical two-story decorative brick buildings running down Main. You could hear a woman hollering the blues from the street! Last year, we went to see the last of the Delta bluesmen, ancient fellas who came racing (ok… racing rilly slowly) on hover-rounds. No lie. But there was this one young woman belting it out between sets at that show. We kept trying to catch her name so we could find out where she played. Well, here she was on the stage in this little town! I had no shame in claiming such a coincidence as the perfect gift. I’d like to say this was a country jook, but no… it was a parsley fancy dinner club where rich folks ate steak and lobster on white linen. But hey, the lobster was actually damn good and music was GREAT! Christine and I slammed back sipped appletinis all elegant-like… snickering as balding, old, white men performed their universal spinning wiggle dance.

I got an awesome blues book from a sweet friend, and another old friend gave me a badass knife sharpener that looks like a cruel BDSM pirate sword thingy. I immediately sharpened everything in our home and then made an announcement to my wife: “WATCH OUT! Aaaaawllllll this stuff is really sharp.” Christine gave me a blues distortion pedal so I could made some noise with my Fender in the dawghouse out back. Finally sharing some fun, peaceful togetherness with my girl was truly the best. Whenever life gets in the way, somehow we come around again to talking and touching hearts in the sweetest of ways. Not to mention, the essential birthday booty which I was claimin’ left and right! Heh.

All in all… a stellar weekend. A big thank you to all my fine friends for the well-wishes!

AND HAPPY HALLOWEEN YA’LL!

Everyday Élan Vital | No Comments »

Good gawd.

Hazardous materials specialists from the FBI Task Force removed doo doo tainted cookies from this grocery store right by my house. Glad I don’t shop there.

Customers Complain of Foul-Tasting Bakery Goods
Tainted with Feces
10:32 PM CDT on Tuesday, October 25, 2005
By TIM WYATT / The Dallas Morning News

Behrouz Nahidmobarekeh, 49, faces two felony charges of tampering with consumer products in separate incidents in July at the Fiesta Mart at Ross Avenue and Henderson Street.

In his opening statement Tuesday afternoon, prosecutor Taly Haffar told jurors that the store workers went through seven months of customer complaints that unpackaged, fresh-baked goods “smelled and tasted like manure” until the defendant was arrested in late July.

Mr. Nahidmobarekeh pleaded not guilty in state District Judge Vic Cunningham’s court. His defense attorney, Clark Birdsall, did not give an opening statement.

While a Dallas County epidemiologist testified about the possible health risks to customers who may have eaten the contaminated cookies, pastries and bread, the state’s main evidence so far consisted of two videotapes of incidents on July 13 and July 24.

In those tapes, a man with his back to the camera is shown scattering something over baked goods in the store while other shoppers pass by. No one reacts to the man on the first tape, but employees eventually detect a strong odor coming from a bread bin and begin to clear out the products and begin cleaning up.

A second tape is similar, except that the store’s security manager runs down and detains the man later identified by police as Mr. Nahidmobarekeh. Shortly after the suspect is led away, a young boy reaches up and grabs a cookie from the nearby racks.

“It looked like cracked pepper at the time,” Albert Bazan, a Fiesta employee, testified. “But it had a real strong odor … a foul odor.”

Dallas police reports state that a hazardous-material team collected samples of the contaminated goods and that authorities alerted the FBI’s terrorism task force.

Testimony in the trial resumes today. If convicted, Mr. Nahidmobarekeh could face up to 20 years in prison.

All Pop - No Culture | No Comments »

Who in the HEY-YULL made poor baby jump and squeel by spraying a water hose under her lil velvet skirt while she was bent over in the backyard this mornin’!?!??

Cuz it shure wuzzent me!!!

:)

Everyday Élan Vital | No Comments »

Continuing to spackle, sand and smooth my musical ignorance. Sheer pleasure discovering songs I missed while I was headbanging.

NPR had did this list of the 100 most influential songs of the 20th century and I have been listening to snippets on Itunes. I am partial to sparse music with EMOTION and ANGST and ATTITUDE — rock, rap, blues, old honky tonk, some folk. However, I keep trying to learn more about jazz, open my ear to some of the standards. I LOVE most of the really good torchy croony love and longing stuff that Christine listens to (Nina Simone, some Ella, ANYTHING uttered by Etta) but you know what? I am finding I don’t like jazz so much. All the bibbity bibbity upbeat swingy punchy horns just don’t speak to me. Too sophisticated and complicated for my ear maybe?

Anyways, jazz fans please gimme your thoughts on the genre and share some good jazz numbers that should never be missed.

Here is the NPR list if anyone is interested.

Bitty bitty bop.

Linkage, All Pop - No Culture | No Comments »

Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com

Satire & Silliness | No Comments »

Pulling three espresso shots is the most I can do to will night hours into morning. Once my brain blinks from idle sleep to cerebral imagery, it is futile to pretend I won’t be nagged from my bed at some crazy hour! The older I get however, the more I treasure watching the sky turn peach at sunrise, especially since fall has finally tiptoed in so quietly on cozy little cat paws. I feel most lucid while the rest of the world sleeps.

This morning I remembered a time when Chris and I first embraced the fact that we had indeed fallen into a ferocious love. We sat silently across from each other and sketched our goals for the next year, five years, and 10 years. Well, that was almost a decade ago. As raw, wandering and moonstruck as all 40 of my years have been, how soothing to confront those forgotten old notes, realizing somehow I rarely wavered. I exist in the immediacy of life’s rich colors, metaphoric ironies, sweet pangs of fugitive love, and polished luster of love eternal. This is why it came as such a surprise to recognize on paper an adventure I have dreamt and also lived. Yes, another consistency is that I feel much too deeply and I probably always will, but so far I have survived it.

I never considered neither the gift nor the dare of another ten years. I realized this morning I should probably sketch a new blueprint, if only to discover when I am older that my rambling rhapsody was concerted all along.

The Saga of Swagger, Highlights | No Comments »

These videos are old classics by internet standards, but I thought I’d share in case some of my less geeky friends missed out.

A poor dorky kid videotaped himself going all Jedi warrior and a coupla guys from his high school uploaded it on the internet, which prompted some totally hilarious parodies.

(Watch at least part of the original video first.)

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/starwarskidv.html

The famous hilarious clip below is called “Pastor Gas”. Make sure your sound in on (but not too loud if you are in a cube farm… or else people will think it is you who had the value menu burrito for lunch.) I can’t watch it. It gives me a hernia.

http://blogs.salon.com/0004870/fpreacher.htm

Satire & Silliness, Linkage | No Comments »

Wow. I fell asleep in my office this afternoon and when I woke up, Janis Joplin was on my television jamming out with Jerry Garcia from the Grateful Dead! The documentary called “Festival Express” is running on Showtime. There was also footage of Buddy Guy, the Band,

and a whole train full of other musicians partying, playing, and touring together as they crossed Canada in the summer of 1970. Janis would play her last concert as that summer of ‘70 came to a close. She went to her high school reunion in Sept, recorded “Pearl” in Oct, and then died of a heroin overdose in November. At about the same time I started elementary school. I checked out one of her recordings from the public library, found a hero, and had my first feel of the blues. I never did return that tape. To this day, no one who shares my last name in the small town where I grew up can get a library card, and I ain’t lyin’.

Everyday Élan Vital | No Comments »

Crazy.

A Nazi stage-mom has really, really kneaded her eugenic baked goods, a twin set of 12 year-old Hitler Youth folk singers who have put a sweet jailbait face on white power. The Olsen wanna-bes (Lynx and Lamb) took the name “Prussian Blue” for their duet after the color of the residue left behind in the gas chambers from Zyklon-B canisters. (!!!) How would 12 year olds know such a thing? How would *anyone* know such a thing, really? Curious, I googled and listened to one of their songs. Hate to insult any kid (see how this packaging works?) but these schooled little haters have zero talent.

Story on ABC News

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