Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Read These While I'm Away (Four Parts)
Here's my last Blog for about a week. It's actually four days worth of blogs. You may want to come back every day and check one out. I'm going to Hawai'i. I thought I'd pull something from the archives and post it here rather than send you searching back. This is earlier stuff before I started trying to express it in lyric ideas on-line. I hope you enjoy it:From Tuesday, November 16, 2004
TERRORIST DOG TRAINING IN VENICE FLORIDA
I'd like to report this to the Department of Homeland Security but I know they wouldn't believe me. I don't even believe me. This report comes after several consecutive days of close observation and careful consideration. By "close observation" I mean speeding by on a bike at approximately 13 MPH. By "careful consideration" I mean I'm inspired by a lack of inspiration to write or think about anything else. But remember, a pair of 9/11 terrorists trained right here at the Venice airport. Not only that but this is the home district of Rep. Katherine Harris, R, who is believed to be credited for not counting all the votes in the 2000 election. By handing the presidency to her boss's brother, she parlayed her state job up to congressperson AND made this area a certain target for terrorists.
My report today is about the suspicious and consistent presence of large piles of toxic dog doo on the Venetian Waterway Trail. By "large" I mean a turban full. By "toxic" I mean, it's melting the cement. While it is NOT my habit to do drive-by forensic analysis on dog turds, it is impossible not to notice these peculiar canine land mines. I have to swerve to avoid them. This is not easy since I am usually already swerving to avoid persons much older than myself in three wheelers walking their leashed cats. Or I am holding my breath, waving hello and trying to approach warp speed to avoid Cigarman (see yesterday's Blog).
I've already mentioned the extraordinary size of the feces in question so I won't dwell on that except to say it might be a good idea if the Homeland Security people checked on existing federal grants to genetically alter the width of canine intestinal tracts. The appearance of these kaka things is not something any decent person would go into in any great detail. There being a shortage of said decent people, I will report that this creature must live on a diet of Crystal Burgers, plastique explosives and sulfuric acid. I know this is true because there are no flies within 500 yards of one of these mounds. An angry mob of dung beetles was rumored to be picketing one entrance of the trail with signs ranting about deteriorating living conditions.
As you can imagine, nobody picks this stuff up. It sits there for days, slowly oozing and corroding the cement until it is washed away by heavy rain or gobbled up by aliens seeking new power sources for their intergalactic warp drives. But that's another story. I just wanted to report this one. And so I have.
From Monday, November 15
STUNTMAN MEETS CIGARMAN
It wasn't one of my death defying stunts like when I jumped the curb on my bike and dislocated my finger on the Circus Bridge. It wasn't even like last Friday when the golf coarse sprinkler went off three feet from me, breaking my bike mirror and filling my left ear with that recycled "gray water." This time I just became distracted by the wild parrots sitting on the wire above the Venetian Waterway Trail. I hit the brakes pretty hard to avoid a post, went down a curb and managed to stay upright. My chain came off. That's how I managed to finally meet Cigarman.
I sat on a bench and inverted my bike to work on it. I smelled him long before his shadow entered my periphery. I could always smell him. Even if the wind was blowing the opposite way. It's like my sweaty smell blew into him and he sent a waft of his cigar stink back at me in harsh rejoinder. The amazing thing about Cigarman is that I've never seen him with a cigar. Yet panatela perfume emanates from him even more tenaciously and with a wider arc than an old lady returning from an Avon party. When I've passed him on other mornings, I could smell him coming and going for more yardage than you would think is normal. Cigarman is a planetoid with his own dangerous atmosphere.
But this morning his doggy got to me first and he smelled like a virtual four-legged cigar moon around planet Cigarman. He was a friendly, shaggy little lickyface guy named Fidel. As he stood on his hind legs to sniff and lick my ear while I worked on the chain I had the sensation of being doused in spittoon juice. Cigarman sat next to me on the bench to control Fidel and assault me with his noxious vapor. What he lacked in personal hygiene, he tried to make up for in loquaciousness.
"He won't bite, C'mere, Fidel," he said good naturally, through a thickly coated Larynx. His breath fortified any odor that might ordinarily have dissipated in the morning breeze.
"Yeah, he's a licker, not a biter," I managed to say without gagging.
"Need a hand?"
"Nope. Thanks, nearly got it," but in my hurry to finish and escape, I dropped the chain. I sat back for a minute and turned my head away looking for fresh air. None was to be found in this end of the solar system.
"I seen ya flying by here pretty fast every morning."
I was thinking I can't go fast enough to escape. I wrestled the chain up again and stood to upright the bike. He stretched his long boney legs out and was nearly in a reclining position on the bench. Big lovable smile. I guess it got to me enough to ask him jokingly, flippantly, but not unkindly, "Got a cigar?"
"Oh, no," he said with an air of Who Me? "I got plenty of 'em back at the trailer but I never smoke em' out here. People don't like to smell cigar smoke. Interferes with their sense of nature or somethin'."
"Uh, yeah," I managed, "go figure. See you tomorrow." I peddled off in standing position looking desperately for my next clean breath.
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
THE OPPOSITE OF HOT TUNA
The smell of fish and cold weather. Two things that assault my senses as badly as roadkill in an elevator and a root canal without Novocain. I could offer psycho- analytical reasons. There could be nothing more to it than a hypersensitivity to that odor and that feel. Like an allergy. But then there are those who claim allergies are psychosomatic as well. Who cares? Here's my version:
I was a picky eater as a child. I couldn't get vegetables past my lips without a heavy gag reflex. My older siblings, Jack and Judy, used to laugh at me and tell me the nuns would force feed me when I got to school. That was a particularly shitty thing to say to a four year old who was about to start serving a 17 year sentence in catholic school. But I can't think of two people I love more than them. This gives rise to hope for world peace, I suppose.
I'm sure the fish aversion started on our yearly trip to the Jersey shore. With the industrial odors of the Philly and Camden waterfront well behind us, we whisked too quickly through the sweet Jersey Pines. The final hurdle to Long Beach Island was a wooden causeway that scared the living crap out of me. The huge whitewall tires of the '51 Pontiac rumbled over the planks which seemed way too flimsy a separation from the putrid bog rot of Barnagat Bay. We always hit it at low tide. The smell of rotting sea life permeated the car. My brother took enormous delight in wrenching every ounce of humor out of the situation. He insisted that we were about to crash through the planks and tumble into the wretched muck beneath us. My sister was always highly amused by this. My reaction was to curl up on the floor and cower, certain of impending death or, worse yet, having the source of that smell fill my nose and other orifices. So who could eat anything that smelled like that?
Inexplicably, however, is the lone exception of fried flounder. A bottom feeder coated in stale bread and oil. Mercury, possible mold and saturated fat. Never more, of course.
I'll save the cold weather phobia for tomorrow
THE OPPOSITE OF HOT TUNA, (Continued)
Cold hurts. People argue about which is worse, hot weather or cold, but they lose sight of this fact. Stub your toe on a freezing cold day and it's way worse than on a hot day. Unless it's sunburned, perhaps.
But my aversion to cold may be associated with having to walk home from school on cold windy days. I didn't seem to mind it that much on weekends. Especially if it snowed and there was something to do. When I got old enough to be in charge of moving snow and driving in it, my attitude changed dramatically.
Having lived in Florida now for two years, anything below 70 is unreasonably cold. I deeply resent it when it happens here. Usually it's only late at night but we have our days. A nasty trick of nature. It happens more frequently in the winter up here in north Florida where I'm vacationing now on Amelia Island. Down in Venice on the South West coast, it's more unusual.
The most unpleasant winter memory of my childhood, then, involves a family down the block who must have been on an all fish diet. I delivered their paper and once a month had to knock on their door to get their money. On a cold blustery day, an open door into a warm house was extremely welcome. Except there. When they opened to my knock, I was frozen from behind by the day's arctic blast and assaulted by the rush of warm fish monger air. They were nice people. Always smiling. But I think it made them seem demonic in the context of a house that smelled like the dumpster outside an all night fish restaurant. I often went months, not collecting their money to avoid them.
It occurs to me that the life of an Eskimo or anyone living in a northern seafaring/fishing town would be as unpleasant to me as a double stretch in Hell. Yet there are people who retire to places like that. Sr. Mary Confusing said Hell is a hot place. That's her opinion.
posted by Bud @ 10:41 AM
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