BULLAMANKA-PINHEADS Digest - 20 Apr 2002 to 21 Apr 2002 (#2002-109)and
recently it seems to have accelerated to supersonic speeds....
I guess I must be having incredible good fun!! Let me just check. OK,
yup. The lack of money confirms it. Mary D, need a cleaning lady? I'm
available.
Fear of NYC? Nope, and not cotter pins or worn idler arms either.
Ruth, I am truly sorry I missed meeting you. (As well as Bruce and all
the other PHCheads.) It's the middle of the night, and I just walked the
dogs around the neighborhood, Flatbush and Atlantic. NY1 reported today
that so far in NYC this year, murders are down, shootings are up.
Didn't see either tonight.
My kid doesn't read, but she DOES listen to 60's music, does that count?
Some of my friends' kids are reading Kesey, Thompson, Brautigan, Black
Elk, if that makes you all feel any better. And I have a friend just
graduating who is avoiding study for finals by using a javascript he
wrote to pull up whole months of early Doonesburys from Gary Trudeau's
website. I get these emails in the middle of the night: "hey, who is
john dean?" (April, '75, if you're interested.)
http://unixgen.muohio.edu/~mccoysg/f/cs.html
As for collections, suffice it to say, I was the last one out of the
house after my parents died. I inherited mom's, dad's, grandpa and
grandma's, and great-auntie's stuff, errr, heirlooms, as well as all the
crap my sister and brother left behind. Add to that years of salvaged
toilet partition and trailer hardware, and my Irma Rombauer collection
of cookbooks. I have a basement, an attic, a garage, three lockers, and
a truck, all full. The truck is full of Rubbermaid servin savers, the
lockers contain English bone china, Indiana oak and maple and
uncountable Rubbermaid Totes. I am currently working on the Brooklyn
annex, not to be added to the collections anytime SOON, hopefully, as I
cannot afford to DRIVE to Brooklyn many more times, much less maintain a
building here... for now, home (and heirloom) maintenance is Dear
Uncle's concern. ;)
I'm positive there are PinHeads who can top this, however. We must have
a packrat gene or something. (Ellen Goodman is reported to be raising
money to fund a search for a cure.)
I never had any problems with marble toilet partitions once I figured
out that they are like popcorn -- get them too hot when you're drilling
them, and they explode. Napoleon Gray was not a color selection offered
for new work by my supplier, Georgia Marble, and of all the marble
stalls I ever saw demo'd, only one or two actually held together coming
down. They didn't usually smell too sweet either. Good luck to the folks
in Nebraska in obtaining salvage.
I won't even start on the low bid/batting cleanup thread. I could end it
though, with these thoughts: in open market bidding, you don't get
awarded a contract these days, you get stuck with one, and, biggest
mistake gets the job. Doesn't that inspire your confidence in our built
infrastructure, busily being constructed by a bunch of unhappy losers
subcontracted to lowball companies which apparently lacked competent
lawyers? Near the end of my open market bidding days, I used to pray,
please $deity$, don't let me be low, let me be middle. If I was high, I
knew somebody was getting paid by the hour, busily ambrosing my bid --
soon to be reissued as "addenda". Oh well. I never put anything in
writing anymore. You'll just have to trust me. At least until the ASTM
standards for shitter and trailer renovation come out.
My favorite pyrate stories:
1) anything from Nebraska (fall of '99)
2) Full Moon (below)
3) pirates of the Mississippi (below)
Oh heck, all of them.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Date: Fri, 2 Apr 1999 00:44:01 EST
Subject: Re: Full Moon
per chance to dream..wot a moon...does this happen to you..
..just returned from a trip to Yosemite...where a party of ten yr. olds
had
captured Uncle Mike ;yours truly,and had to be resucued by swat teams(
no
kidding) when we all yelled for help with our Davy Crockett hats on..
..seems like Jack the Ripper took his "olidays" a few miles from where
Uncle
Mike and the ten yr olds were camping..and un be knowst to uncle
Mike..search
teams in full camo/metal jacket and face paint...were looking...for
bodies
and bad guys and stumbled on us in our re enactment of the Donner
party(ghost stories by campfire) anyway fortunately my half sister who
is no
light weight when pressed ; "splained " it to the rescue leader who
after
removing the 45 from my head ( I was telling ghost stories; but seen
through
a sniper scope I was meanacing kids....splained it to the C/O .who made
us
break camp and return to the main lodge kids in tow.; I had by now
consumed
all the emergency ginger ale to calm my blythe spirit; and considering
the
tension in "the valley" when they did indeed find bodies; decided we
best
partake for the sane world of San fransisco.
.and then.having read no newspappers let alone tube ..to come home and
find
our glorious luftwaffe pounding away in the Balkans.(more restoration?).
and now vlad the impaler; is holding 3 of our guys for shishka bob;
I mean wot a full moon..
.there was one brief sanity however; deep in the Southern Arizona desert
(South of Brisbee ) we spotted a mobile radio truck in camo; the
occupants
broadcast nightly over a station dealing in nothing but UFO and big
foot/bird phenonomen..with call ins all over the country....alas...... I
knew
we could find a bit of normalcy in a world gone mad. Up to the elbows
with
left over Girl scout cookies..Uncle Mike
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Date: 8-8-00
Subject: Re: Pirates of the Mississippi
Dear Friends;
I am sorry i have been out of touch...we are 200 miles North of the Gulf
of
Mexico in the broad American Delta that borders Louisana and
Mississippi. We
have only generators and cell phones here and have been tenting the last
4
weeks along bayous with names like little Pierre and bayou Fouch and the
River Yazoo near of the mother of all rivers the Mississippi. Day time
temps this august hover around the 105 mark. It is not a dry heat like
the
blast furnace of a desert; we have a steam heat equivilent to Vietnam or
India. In fact alot of America.s domestic rice is grown nearby.As far as
the
eye can see thare is nothing but cotton,rice and football fields of
catfish
ponds surrounded by inpenetrable swamp infested with dangerous snakes
and
aligators you could surf on,
..In the early mornings we pass streams of convict labor in stripe pants
and
crude strraw hats of cane working road beds under armed men on large
mules.I
must add these are men who volunteered to be outside on the chain gang.
Inside all day can be dangerous and deadly especially if you are white.
There is however no where to run to if you wanted to;
it would be shear death to head off into this terrain unarmed and
without
compass or drinking water. So they work and we work cutting and carrying
stone..We are building a mini chateau out of texas limstone that no one
will
ever see.
The brazos stone has those yellows in it not unlike the french kalkare
of the
south giving it a soft pastel look,.
My crew is French just out of Brittany;;former cathedral builders
with hard bodies who work shirtless as the sweat glisstens off muscular
backs
and tight abdominals.My laborers are Mexicano who sport gold teeth and
broad
smiles of no understanding who make childs play of the heat and giggle
at
your intlorence for the suns capacity of belittling a gringo.
We camp along the wide white sand banks of the bayou and enjoy the
pleasure
of each others songs accompanied by guitars and a french squeezebox
into the
early hours over cervaso and rough cut tequila
..Sometimes their women join us and it makes for a decent chorus.The
men sing
of bravery and love; the women of love and romance,For desert we cut
large
green casabas melon and pass pieces accompanied by roughly rolled blunts
of
homegrown.
I pass on the cigars and focus on the billion stars overhead listening
to
soft guitars over the meander and gurgle of the river Sometimes when
you
close your eyes and listen , its a perfect world. ...Blessings Michael
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
unless you're in downtown Brooklyn, in which case all you can hear is
traffic and horns and people shouting and WQXR up real loud and the
subway rumbling and sirens and and and and.... a bullfrog in the
fishpond in the tiny garden out back???? For real !! How in the hell
did he get there?!?!?
deb "last person on earth without a pager or cellphone" bledsoe
(busily reading BP archives late into the night, happy to be nocturnal
once again- give me a couple days and I'll be caught up....)
Note: new address -- [log in to unmask] BOYCOTT YAHOO!!
--
To terminate puerile preservation prattling among pals and the
uncoffee-ed, or to change your settings, go to:
<http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/bullamanka-pinheads.html>
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