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RARRRRRRRR!!!! Rarr rarrrr rarrr meow rarr?
RARRRRR!!! Rarr. Rarrr
rarr J-List rarrrr.

2010jul14. Hello, suckers! I am going to be attending a desert festival in which a tall wooden structure in the shape of a man is burned early again. If you are attending, perhaps you can stop on by with a shower and some decent food, not like Pop-Tarts and cereal. Do you have a sandwich distillery? I would like to be your best friend ever. I will provide a map later on in the month so you can plan your future life with me and what’s left of your perishable edibles starting with desserts. If you have trouble spotting me gravitate to the guy who is using a bullhorn to not shut up ever. I will considerately whisper in the bullhorn in the morning, not like the jackholes jackhammering outside my window right now at 9am. This is the first time I will be attending this desert festival in eleven years, so I will make hilarious critical mistakes. Here is my first visit to the festival which was seventy-bajillion years ago, before anyone was actually born.

2010jun17. Friday, in Dutch architecture, was traditionally the time to “roll in the harvest” of fried multi-berries. We pause and gather strength each Friday, with this knowledge or not.

2010jun11. Mail.

Hi,
I just wanted to say how much I really appreciated your “Shipping/Moving Your Stuff: A Consideration of Options That All Suck” article, since I am moving across country soon and found reassurance that throwing my stuff out will be beneficial and refreshing. Too bad I don’t have any time period furniture. How much pizza will it take you to help one move from Ohio to Colorado? Just wondering.
Thanks,
Caryn

Let’s get the most “bang” for our “buck” and go with Little Caesar’s Pizza. Now, when I was a wee lad, I was taken to one of the first few Little Caesar’s several times. They had a Plexiglas® window through which you could see actual pizza tossers actually tossing pizza. Your table – it was a restaurant – had a real cloth tablecloth on the table. They played Laurel & Hardy movies on real goddamn movie reels because the VCR was all like gasping and shit “invent me ... INVENT me ... try porn first, that’ll hook ‘em ... “

This was the beginning of the end of chainfood that had a remote sense of dignity, right there.

Now, you go into a well-lit Little Caesar’s and one of their teenage box-folding ro-bots will magically take a pre-finished pizza out of a sterilized holding cube and that will be $5.52, please. For a large. Given that number (finally), I can see that actually assisting you in your OHCO move will cost you approximately 81.521 pizzas. But you will have to send the money to me first – then I will buy the pizzas WITH THAT MONEY, after which I will buy a plane ticket OUT OF MY OWN POCKET and come and help you. But I promise the pizzas will be purchased and they will be DELICIOUS!

Im trying to locate vendors for indian fry bread and funnal cake in the phoenix az area can you help with contact info. thanks. chris.

If anyone has this information, please contact me.

Amazon.com would like to carry all your candy products immediately. Please contact me to pursue this opportunity.

Amazon.com is confused.

hello
thank you for this algorithm
we are an IT graduate and we have an image processing project which requires conversion from raster to vector using java.
we didn’t really understood the language of your code, so could you please write it in java and we appreciate any help.
thanks again

HAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH “Thank you ... now re-do it.” Yes, your royal completely highness.

Let me take you (all of you?) to the school of “hard knocks.” Your lack of understanding? That’s your problem, not mine. Your job -- if you want to use my example – is to understand it. It’s practically written in pseudocode, if you can wheel around in Java you should be able to devote a few brain cells to figuring it out.

Also, Java is a dead donkey in a desert which is just a skeleton covered by sand. Java = donkey skeleton. Do you hear the howling, unforgiving desert wind? It makes a whistly noise. Oooh, tumbleweed.

Fix my car,
J.

The gelatin in the ingredients, is it from a pork or beef source?

Sure.

Get your spam even bei YouTube, as video answering.

Just ONE such; “I can do that my own, too.”

Don’t ask me about that kinds in this town,

it’s annoying. :’>D

God ... totally.

are you a computer answering me ?:S

YES
I AM
BUT YOU DID NOT INCLUDE AN EMAIL ADDRESS
THAT IS:
DUMB
EOF

2010may21. Friday is something-something something. Please use Friday responsibly.

2010apr30.

2010apr02. I don’t think “Yahoo Finance” covered enough job interview mistakes so here are fifty more worster worstings.

51. Forgetting pants.

52. Remembering pants.

53. Asking interviewer for a delicious malted milkshake, “and don’t skimp on the malt, Charlie,” followed by a complicated physical send-off, like Pinky Tuscadero in the hit TV show “Happy Days.”

54. Secretly peeing behind shelves and/or filing cabinets. They’ll find out, trust me. There will be plenty of opportunities to mark territory once you land the position.

55. Foot binding. You, them, anyone. It is no longer practiced as of 1997 Q3.

56. Couch fort in reception area. It may seem safer, but it is a mind ruse, a self-delusion.

57. Offering sexual congress in exchange for employment, unless interviewer makes overt gestures to same. Be alert for exaggerated winking, finger-in-fingerhole pantomime, panting.

58. Not immediately answering the first conversational exchange with the following standard reply: “Okay, I KNOW this. Larry and Adam go over first – that’s two minutes, right? Bring Adam back, that’s another minute. Now we’re at three. Bono takes time off from saving Africa and goes over with The Edge, that’s ten minutes, so now we’re at thirteen total. Larry ditches the clods, that’s two minutes, total fifteen. Now Adam and Larry go back over, that’s seventeen total minutes. And scene.” Practice with flash cards.

59. Making too little eye contact; making too much eye contact; touching your own eyeballs; pressing your eyeballs against the interviewer’s eyeballs; touching the interviewer’s eyeballs while expressing a deep admiration for said eyeballs; opening up your briefcase to reveal rows of exquisite glass eyes mounted on a backing board covered with rich, luxurious black velvet; offering a trade.

60. Reading a comic book hidden by a pornographic magazine hidden by a contemporary novel, say the lusty delights of Rabbit is Rich by John Updike.

61. Describing your former porn career in excruciating detail; not describing your former porn career fully.

62-100. Seeming too casual; seeming too rehearsed; seeming not casual enough; seeming not rehearsed enough. Your elbow: there. Not there! Cross your legs! Don’t cross them! Up! Down! Assume the position! Sweat a little, no, that’s TOO MUCH! Your crotch itches, now what NOW WHAT. Scratch it ... discreetly ... not that discreetly! NO NOT THAT OPENLY!!! The interviewer begins to call security, but you reach over and hang up the phone! Now you’re got their attention! Run over, lock the door! No one gets in or out, see? Now how about that job. How about that job. [FX: blissfully itch crotch]

2010apr02. Friday. You will face many Fridays in your life. My job? Turn them into dainty chocolates. “Oh, hello!” That’s you, talking to the chocolates. Because they’re so fucking dainty.

2010mar22.

2010mar19. Friday. Get used to it, it keeps coming over and over. There’s nothing anyone can do. Don’t try to be a hero.

2010mar14. One thing that e-jackholes have been doing the last n years or so is making fake webpages then triggering a looksee on your domain, so the result shows up in your referer log. I guess what I’m seeing are those attempts to get trackbacks on weblogs, but since I don’t push that sort of junk, I’m the singular very special person that gets to see it. Today’s menu features lobsters. I replaced the term “lobster” with “spam.”

tinyflowers.com – http://frozen-spam-claw-recipes.wholesalespam.ca/81.html
phoneswarm.com – http://spam-back.wholesalespam.ca/98.html
macros2000.com – http://spamthermador.wholesalelivespam.com/48.html
cardhouse.com – http://wholesalers.wholesalespam.ca/2603.html
cardhouse.com – http://buying-live-seafood.wholesalespam.ca/216.html
cardhouse.com – http://blog.spampound.ca/1065.html

I don’t know, this all seems so tiring to me. Can I move into the woods somewhere? Does anyone have some woods? I could be a caretaker that slowly goes mad, talking to the trees. “Hello, trees!” Oh, how charming ... this olde caretaker is hilariously daft in the head. Have some of my lobster “thermador,” old man!

2010mar08. My site Phoneswarm died in 2006 for a number of reasons, one of them being that payphones that allowed incoming calls were rapidly disappearing from the landscape. I spoke with my friend who keeps Cardhouse alive about bringing Phoneswarm back, but with two additional features: 1) foreign payphones, and 2) other people. You would have had the option to get random calls, and the calls would have been routed through my own number, so no one would actually know anyone else’s number. Anonymous. I think the whole operation would have cost about twenty bucks a month. That was fun to talk about for a few months, then it died out and was filed in my super-meta-project Projects That Were Never Started/Finished which also has an entry for itself. What I should have done is shifted the medium of contact to video and called it something like "Dongroulette".

2010feb19. Friday blah blah blah doo wee blah.

2010jan26.

2010jan18. Excerpts from Harpo Speaks! by Harpo Marx with Rowland Barber (1951).

There was one supreme holiday every two years, and there was nothing sad about it. This was not a family affair. It belonged to everybody. The poorest kid in town had as much a share in it as the mayor himself.

This was Election Day.

Months ahead, I started, like every other kid, collecting and stashing fuel for the election bonfire. Having quit school, I could put in a lot of extra hours at it. I had a homemade wagon, a real deluxe job. Most kids greased their axles with suet begged or pinched off a butcher shop, but I was fancier. I scraped genuine axle grease off the hubs of beer wagons, working the brewery circuit from Ehret’s to Ruppert’s to Ringling’s.

I hauled staves, slats, laths, basket-lids, busted carriage spokes, any loose debris that would burn, and piled it all in a corner of our basement. This was one thing the janitor helped me with. The Election Day bonfire was a tradition nobody dared to break. If you were anti-bonfire you were anti-Tammany and life could become pretty grim without handouts from the Organization. Worse than that, the cops could invent all kinds of trouble to get you into. So around election time, there were no complaints up the dumbwaiter shaft about the leaks in our garbage cans.

The great holiday lasted a full thirty hours. On election eve, the Tammany forces marched up and down the avenues by torchlight, with bugles blaring and drums booming. There was free beer for the men, and free firecrackers and punk for the kids, and nobody slept that night.

When the Day itself dawned, the city closed up shop and had itself a big social time – visiting with itself, renewing old acquaintances, kicking up old arguments – and voted.

About noon a hansom cab, courtesy of Tammany Hall, would pull up in front of our house. Frenchie and Grandpa, dressed in their best suits (which they otherwise wore only to weddings, bar mitzvahs or funerals), would get in the cab and go clip-clop, in tip-top style, off to the polls. When the carriage brought them back they sat in the hansom as long as they could without the driver getting sore, savoring every moment of their glory while they puffed on their free Tammany cigars.

At last, reluctantly, they would descend to the curb, and Frenchie would make the grand gesture of handing the cabbie a tip. Kids watching in the streets and neighbors watching from upstairs windows were properly impressed.

About a half-hour later, the hansom cab would reappear, and Frenchie and Grandpa would go off to vote again. If it was a tough year, with a Reform movement threatening the city, they’d be taken to vote a third time.

Nobody was concerned over the fact that Grandpa happened not to be a United States citizen, or that he couldn’t read or write English. He knew which side of the ballot to put his “X” on. That was the important thing. Besides, Grandpa’s son-in-law’s cousin was Sam Mars, a Big Man in the Organization. Cousin Sam had a lot to say about whose name appeared under a black star on the ballot. And it was he who made sure the carriage was sent to 179 at voting time. A man of principle, which Grandpa was, had no choice but to return the courtesy by voting.

Then came the Night. The streets were cleared of horses, buggies and wagons. All crosstown traffic stopped. At seven o’clock firecrackers began to go off, the signal that the polls were closed. Whooping and hollering, a whole generation of kids came tumbling down out of the tenements and got their bonfires going. By a quarter after seven, the East Side was ablaze.

Whenever our 93rd Street fire showed signs of dying down, we’d throw on a fresh load of wood, out of another basement, and the flames would shoot up again, After my stash was piled on the blaze, I ran upstairs to watch from our front window with Grandpa.

It was beautiful. Flames seemed to leap as high as the tenement roof. The row of brownstones across the street, reflecting the fire, was a shimmering red wall. The sky was a great red curtain. And from all over the city, we could hear the clanging of fire engines. Our bonfire never got out of hand but a lot of others did on election night. [pg 47]

I decided to take Groucho on as a partner (as Chico had once taken me on, in the cuckoo-clock promotion), when I found out that stores in the neighborhood were paying a penny apiece for cats. I’ve forgotten why they were. There must have been a mouse plague or a cat shortage, or both, that year.

So now I was a promoter. Groucho and I put on a show in our basement. We performed Uncle Al’s popular sketch, “Quo Vadis Upside Down.” Admission: one cat.

It was my first public performance. As I remember, we grossed seven cats at the boxoffice but made a net profit of only four cents. Three cats got away. Well, that was show business. [pg 59]

One scene I will never forget. We were presented in England by a famous promoter and sportsman named Cochran. When Cochran called for auditions to round out our show at the Alhambra, a mob turned up. Ever act in the British Isles – except the Coliseum Danseuse – wanted to share the bill with the balmy Marxes. Cochran, who hated to say no to anybody, had the painful duty of turning down ninety-eight percent of the hopefuls.

One of these was an aged hoofer – he must have been damn near eighty – who’d obviously spent his last copper getting his costume out of mothballs and into immaculate condition. He came out in gray suit, gray derby, gray spats, gray shoes, and swinging a gray cane – straight out of a Victorian music hall – and went into his song and dance. He put up a courageous, dapper front. But his bones creaked, and his voice and rusted to a croak. It was an embarrassing moment.

Cochran, down in the orchestra, raised a hand to stop him. “I thank you very much,” he said, unhappily. “I shall let you know.”

Then, instead of retreating in defeat and humiliation, to make room for the next act, the ancient hoofer stepped grandly down to the footlights. He leaned over and pointed his cane at the conductor.

“Maestro,” he said, “would you please play four bars for me to go off with?”

The conductor complied. The old gentleman danced offstage to the music, waving his derby, as if it were his fourth curtain call. Everybody in the house, including the impresario, broke into applause. [pg 151]

Crazy bits of Round Table talk come back to me still, over the years, like isolated lines from an old show whose title and plot I’ve long forgotten. I can hear the voices clearly, voices of some of the most brilliant people who ever lived, but what I hear them saying is not always brilliant, and never very profound. [pg 197; see also Flapper for more Algonquin Schmalgonquin]

Neysa had one failing as an art instructor. It was, as far as I knew, her only failing, period. That was her passion for fires. If a siren or bell should sound during one of our late-night seminars, that was the end of the seminar. Neysa was such a fire buff that she once dashed to Penn Station and jumped on a train when she heard there was a four-alarm fire burning in Philadelphia. [pg 203]

Not long after this, I felt in the mood for another good deed. The beneficiary this time was Tiffany’s, the famous jewelry store on Fifth Avenue. Tiffany’s, I told myself, was too stuffy for its own good, and something had to be done about it.

I bought a bag full of fake emeralds, rubies and diamonds, at Woolworth’s, then went to Tiffany’s. I asked to look at some diamonds. The clerk pulled out a tray of stones, and while I looked at them I turned over the bag from Woolworth’s behind my back. Jewels went spilling and bouncing all over the joint. Bells rang. Buzzers buzzed. Store detectives appeared out of the woodwork, hustled out all the other customers and locked the doors. Meanwhile the whole sales staff, including the manager, in cutaway coat and striped trousers, were down on their hands and knees retrieving my sparkling gems.

When they were all collected and put in my hat, the manager saw they were phony, every one of them. The attitude of Tiffany’s changed abruptly. The store dicks hustled me out the door, with the recommendation that I never return to the premises. On the way out, for a final touch, I tipped the doorman a giant ruby.

Tiffany’s, I found out, had a long memory. Five years later I went back there to make a legitimate purchase, some silver for a wedding present. The minute I stepped into the store, two detectives recognized me and grabbed me. I convinced them I was carrying no fake jewels. Nevertheless, they stood close by while I bought the gift, and followed me to the door with visible signs of relief.

On the way out, I tipped the doorman a giant ruby. [pg 207]

One time I was traveling with Beatrice and George to their country home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. We decided to have lunch on the train. The diner was crowded, and an old lady asked if we minded her taking the fourth chair at our table. That was okay with us. It was only mildly embarrassing to George. He was apprehensive, I could tell, that I might somehow get involved with the old lady and make a scene. But I said nothing to her. I didn’t even look at her.

She finished eating first. The waiter brought her check on a saucer. Still not looking up from my plate, I reached for the saucer, salted and peppered the lady’s check, and ate it. Kaufman twisted in such agony that I was afraid he was going to screw himself through the bottom of the car. [pg 209]

Our last excursion was to Naples, so Beatrice could pay one last visit to her favorite acquaintance in Italy – the sensitivo in the Naples aquarium. The sensitivo was a fantastic kind of shellfish. It drew into its shell whenever any strange object came near it, then peaked out of its shell when the object was pulled away – all in a weird, synchronized movement. Beatrice could watch it and play with it for hours. The real reason she was so fascinated, she said, was that she knew a lot of people who were sensitivos. She refused to name any names, however. [pg 263]

Our office was over a real-estate brookage, up a flight of creaky stairs. I was still a city boy who believed that stairs belonged only in tenements. Otherwise you took an elevator. So I preferred to do my business on the street.

When I whistled from down below, Rachel, the secretary, lowered my day’s paper work out of the office window in a basket, on a rope. I then sat on the curb of Beverly Drive attending to bills and correspondence. When I’d finished reading my mail and writing checks and memos, I’d reload the basket and whistle twice and Rachel would pull up the rope. It was a very efficient office. I never saw it. [pg 286]

When I returned to New York there was a cablegram waiting for me. It was from Chico, who was still in England. His message was desperate: Dying for sports news. Can’t get results here. Please send papers. I devoted the rest of the day to fulfilling Chico’s desperate request. I scoured the city and bought copies of the London Times, London Observer, Manchester Guardian and the Scotsman. In each paper I underlined scores of association football, rugby and cricket matches, and shipped the whole batch off to Chico. I cabled him that the papers were on their way with the latest results, and wished him the best of luck. [pg 342]

2010jan14. The first Friday Free Day of 2010. This means something to someone. I’ll be over here, packing my things.

2009dec25. Friday. It is another ordinary day, unless we spice it up with rum. Or naked people. There are choices in life.

2009dec21. There is a Charlotte Gainsbourg video that features Beck. It is here. It is directed by Keith Schofield. On November 19th, the photographer William Hundley pointed out that an image used in the video – a skateboard perched on top of four delicious hamburgers – was incredibly similar to his own hamburger-lofted skateboard photograph. A flickr fracas ensued, and eventually the director contacted Hundley and put his name in the credits for the video.

The video also contains a few seconds of a scene with an astronaut whose head is entirely comprised of delicious pancakes.

This image is incredibly similar to an image that appears on the website Petsinuniform.com as a tribute to National Pancake Day in 2006:

The owner of Petsinuniform.com is a friend of mine. I don’t know if he has any demands for the director, but what I do know is this: I was able to just ask him if I could use the photo on my own website (Cardhouse.com), and he said “yes.” Asking: an innovative system for showcasing the work of others without generating ill will.

Note: Petsinuniform.com is a wonderful way to salute the quiet dignity of our domesticated companions by dressing them in clothes that require saluting. Try Petsinuniform ... today.

2009dec15. Girls Who Love Boys Who Love Boys: Inside the Midwest’s first celebration of all things yaoi — where the screaming never stops. Girls who love boys who love boys who are countries dress up as boys/countries for panels.

A panel for Hetalia: Axis Powers is almost entirely occupied by girls in quasi-military uniforms. Hetalia tells the story of twentieth-century world politics with each country represented by a pretty boy. The panelists make a few half-hearted attempts to introduce themselves to the uninitiated (“I’m America, and I’m Russia’s bitch because we’re in debt”), but they can’t resist acting out their roles. Spain and China show up late and get glomped by Italy and Japan. Italy cuddles on Germany’s lap. France gets down on bended knee and proposes marriage to England. Slowly, the non-Hetalia fans file out of the room.

Spain and China? They were glomped.

2009dec06.

2009dec02. A brief programming interruption here – QI, the BBC comedy panel game television program hosted by Stephen Fry, has started on series “G.” Thursday’s episode features a certain “John Hodgman” person whom you may know as the living embodiment of the hated Microsoft-controlled computer machine in a seemingly-endless series of television advertisements in addition to his books and/or appearances on the The Daily Show. You can find every single episode on the internet if you are a crafty person. I have included clues below to some of the more recent ones.

2009nov26. Friday Freeday. Early But Late Edition. Some of it I squirreled away in June as a hedge against the harsh winter. Now I have unearthed these treasured electronic acorns and we will feast in earnest. Except the ebay auction. Ebay is sitting on untold riches with their humongous archive of Photos/Text About Stuff That’s Being Sold but like most larger companies they wander around the Cash Forest blind, occasionally bumping into a dollar tree. Ebay hears the rustling! Oh, to have eyes. Well, at least the Killing Joke video is still there. Ebay I will be your eyes! Okay ... it’s like the band is playing in front of these billowing swaths of fabric, and there are occasionally fade in-out shots of stern-looking peasant folk holding various farm implements and delicious stalks of wheat ... I think it’s supposed to represent on some level the 1931 overthrow of the Spanish Republic monarchy which was replaced by the creatively-named Second Spanish Republic which was then replaced by a five-gallon tub of spackling paste. Does that help, Ebay? I don’t know why the drummer both looks and is dressed like Dexter of the TV show “Dexter” mid-serial killer elimination, Ebay. I just don’t know.

2009nov20. I miss cellphone hot dog. Does anyone have cellphone hot dog? Cellphone hot dog.

2009nov13. Friday.

2009nov05. Are you ready ... for the LOG CHALLENGE (LOG CHALLENGE)? The beach at Sutro Baths used to be host to thousands of severely-dressed mens and womens who gaily frolicked betwixt the pools of the Baths and the coast of the unforgiving, relentless Pacific Ocean. Sitting within ash-falling range of the Cliff House is a large split boulder.

The crack has a secret, though, if you are inquisitive enough to look or if you can see this entry on a web browser. A small, handy log has been pushed by the relentless, unforgiving Pacific Ocean into the depths of the crack. The crack gets smaller farther inland ... the log fought back valiantly ... but eventually it was jammered right in there real good as if it belonged there like “welcome home, log” and “Oh, thank you I’ll just hang my log scarf on your boulder hook” just like that [3x Bonus: Diagram this sentence {including this aside}].

I tried to brace myself against the sea wall and kick it out with my mighty feet, but even I was no match for the jammering. ARE YOU? Can you unjam the log? TAKE THE LOG CHALLENGE! Winner will receive one (1) log.

2009nov02. You are invited to a party. It is in two hours. You do not have a costume. An hour and a half later, you finally decide to make a costume. What do you do what do you do. Then, after making your “costume,” the hours fritter by and you are never actually told where the party is. This is good, because then no one will see your stupid last-minute costume.

2009oct10.

2009oct09. Friday. You should not work on this day.

2009sep26.

Whoa nelly these liquid lurchers are a real corker I’ll tell you what. Built with reinforced, beautiful pivot points and miracle “plastic” body. Should be in the Louvre. All other drinking birds are for sucks and heathens. Shame owners of now-inferior ’47 Glub-Glub. Confuse your friends, start a riot.

2009sep11. I took a road/train trip through PA NV CO UT MI CA OH IN IL NE IA AZ WI. Travelling through large expanses of America re-acquainted me with numerous sub-cultures which I had forgotten about, and the sheer goddamned delight of feebly scrabbling around fly-over states for acceptable foodstuffs. 2500 miles on the train, 4500 miles in the car; highest 114 degrees, lowest 53. It was sunny. Flat tire. It rained. Dead battery. Things happened. Things didn’t happen. Some random observations follow; I also updated the Travelling Cross-Country By Train page with photos and a semi-large chunk of extra text.

UTAH REST AREAS UTAH
I now have an additional reason to non-love these places. No power outlets. They’re all capped. So no cellphone charging. No battery re-charging. No portable autoclave autoclaving. Also they have something called a “rest stop” which is not a rest area – it is a “private/public” co-whatever I didn’t read the sign. The one I went to was: (A) 2.5 miles off the freeway in the exact wrong direction (B) “Sponsored” by Chevron (C) Actually just a Chevron gas station with the standard day-glo sugardrink/HFCS fakefood store bolted on. But: one rest area had real glass mirrors, not the usual useless metal ones that do not allow me to check myself out and re-confirm that I am hotter than a thousand suns. FINAL GRADE: D

CLOUDS [MULTIPLE STATES]
I took a lot of photos of clouds. They don’t hurt anyone and are nice. The ones in Colorado kicked all the other clouds’ asses but don’t tell them that. [sigh] I liked all the clouds in every state equally. I would like to live in the clouds but that is currently physically impossible. I wait, patiently, for science. FINAL GRADE: A+

THAT LITTLE BIT OF I-15 THAT SNIPS A CORNER OF ARIZONA ARIZONA
That is some jaw-dropping visuals there, is what that is. I should live there someday. FINAL GRADE: A

MYSTERY HILL MYSTERY MICHIGAN
I was in the Mystery Hill gift shoppe looking at all of the horrible t-shirts that weren’t of the awesome Mystery Hill arrow. I didn’t go into Mystery Hill proper. I got a call on my cellphone while I was there, but it was set to “NO BOTHERING” and the operator silently took the call and filed it in my “missed call” box. Two hours later, I listened to it. It was my friend, calling from Mystery Spot, located five hours away. He was asking if I wanted a t-shirt from the gift shoppe, which he was in, but he hadn’t/wasn’t going to visit the Mystery Spot proper.

NEVADA TOURIST WELCOME CENTER NEVADA
I took a Nevada logo sign survey here “for a free cold drink.” I told the guy about my Utah rest stop experience. There really wasn’t room for jazz free-form improvisation on the survey form. I had to bend my answers a lot. “Which would you rather eat at: family style or fast food?” “Uh, not fast food, and ‘family style,’ to me at least, means stay away.” [FX: pause; pen hovers silently above unchosen options] “I guess just put ‘family style.’” They’re always BOXING me in, goddammit man, BOXING ... ME ... IN. The final question: “What would you like to see listed on logo signs?” “Abandoned buildings. This way to see the gas station that’s been sitting empty for ten years.” [FX: pause] “Hahahaha, yeah, they’re not going to put that on a logo sign. Just leave it blank.” To his credit he wrote it in. The man then opened the cooler which contained many cold drinks, one of which was now mine forever. I chose the bottle with non-dayglo transparent fluid. The state partially hydrated me that day for semi-answering their broken poll. I forgot about the bottle for awhile because I had three gallons sitting in the front seat, another three in the back. If you drive anywhere in the desert without boatloads of water you are a dumb dummy who is dumb. FINAL GRADE: C-

RADIO [MULTIPLE STATES]
The car I had had a radio plus a slot which I imagine was some sort of new-fangled inoperative cheese slice dispensary. Radio is still the shining jewel it has always been; it seemingly continues unaware that the last ten years have actually happened and that it’s next to obsolete. “We will play you the same 40 songs over and over and over; your personal music player holds probably ten, 20 songs at most. [SFX: Several obnoxious sound effects] KDED radio.” There is also a lot of bible-reading radio out there. I would start listening to a station thinking that I was in the middle of some noirish detective drama and after awhile realization would fold over my brain like a warm blanket, smothering it. 300 miles later I’d forget what I learned and the loop would repeat. I also heard a few horrible pop song fragments repeatedly, it was like I owned them already in my head for free and didn’t have to buy the record at the store. It was PIRACY OF THE MIND. FINAL GRADE: D

SHOOTING STAR IOWA
I saw a shooting star. In Iowa. FINAL GRADE: A++

THE TRUCKER’S INFLATABLE TRUCK BAG PENNSYLVANIA
There was a huge traffic jam on the other side of the freeway. A truck had fallen on its side because it was sleepy. There was also a service truck there that was righting it; somehow they place bags under the truck and inflate the bags. It made me laugh for approximately ten miles. “Inflatable ... BAG ... hahahaha” FINAL GRADE: A-

BURNT OUT CAR CARRIER UTAH
I got my crispy car quota for the trip filled when I eyeballed a completely charred car carrier on the side of the freeway with a full load of also-charred cars. It was a trend. “Dude, seriously, everyone is doing this.” [FX: combusts] FINAL GRADE: D

COLORADO RIVER COLORADO
While following this on the train, I looked longingly at the water. When driving back via car, I stopped at a really nice rest area along the river and put my hands in. Right then the same train went by and I felt sorry for everyone on board which could have included me if I time-travelled and didn’t know it. This paragraph is dedicated to them (and maybe me), the non-Colorado River touchers. FINAL GRADE: A

LAS VEGAS NEVADA
Vega$ is a hole. My intention was to just glance off the Northern outer crust of Vega$, and get some food and gas and get out of there before I was swallowed by a doomed housing construction project. Unfortunately I’d become real picky about my vacation eating over the last month. Pizza. Deli. Anything other than a chain shop/strip mall/Chinese (it’s hard to find a good Chinese place without electronic guidance. I did mention that I don’t have one of those goddamned Iphones, yeah? The general rule I live by is that it is very hard to screw up pizza and pancakes, and very easy to screw up Chinese). Good fucking luck in Vega$, the whole place is one big strip mall. You can find a wealth of non-familiar/non-chain gasoline stations, though. All the same, I do not wish to gas up at a business called “Funny’s.” I finally found a decent pizza shoppe in a half-dead strip mall, initially being attracted by the enticing proposition of a panederia next door which turned out to be the empty shell of a store. The first time I was feeling talkative during the trip, the pizzamakerperson was not, though I did learn that they’ve been there five months. Just go down Rancho Drive and take three rights at the 217th strip mall.

The emptiness of Vega$ is hard to explain. Photos don’t help. The streets are huge. The grid intersections are huge. All of them. Pedestrians can go die. Out on the edge of maniacal growth, I saw a traffic light with an actual left turn arrow, something that largely escaped the city’s attention back when growth was even more redlined. Glimpsing that arrow was like seeing an astronaut in an inoperative spacecraft gain inner peace as the ship hurtled helplessly toward the sun. Watch me earn the big bucks on the Las Vegas City Planning Commission: “Duh, it could be square blocks filled with shiny wholesome beige corporate shit? And it could go on forever? Wait. More lanes.”

Finally, I was in a Las Vega$ gasoline station being pitched by a dinosaur – I pulled out my wallet while walking through the store and three guys in different areas of the store had their eyes glued on it. Maybe this happens everywhere and I just had a little confirmation bias thing going on. Or maybe when the entire city you live in wants a piece of you, it does things to your head. Also there is gambling and monied sex. FINAL GRADE: E--

GREEN RIVER UTAH
There are a lot of abandoned gas stations here. FINAL GRADE: B+

DENNY’S
I had a shake at Denny’s. A lot of people had the cowboy hats. It was the only thing open. It was a small town. I like visiting small towns. I like getting the mixing cup, it’s like a bonus meal. Shakes are meals. I left. They stayed. FINAL GRADE: B

TURNPIKES [PENNSYLVANIA OHIO ILLINOIS]
I forgot to check “don’t use toll roads” on the internet route mapping service and I ended up taking a turnpike when using a non-turnpike would have added ten miles to my trip. My mistake, but still: turnpikes are a wholly managed experience that I do not like, above/beyond the extra cost. Walk into a “service plaza,” travel 200 miles, and then walk into the same damned plaza. It’s magical and so comforting! There’s absolutely no chance of popping into a swell run-down diner or the like. In the future there will just be a single restaurant chain in America with two menu selections: FOOD and DRINK. “I’ll have one food, please. Oh, and one drink.” Sleeeeeep ... sleeeeeeeep. This ends my original essay on the homogeneity of stifling modern consumer culture. Clarice & Jasper will now hand you your complimentary gift bags. Thank you. Thank you. FINAL GRADE: D-

NOT CROPPING OUT CARS AND PEOPLE [MULTIPLE STATES]
I used to creatively crop photos in-camera to remove all traces of civilization from nature-type shots. Now I make sure they’re in there. It was like lying ... to myself. Such a self-liar.

I ALMOST DIED WHEN I WAS THREE WEEKS OLD MICHIGAN
You find out the funniest things when you visit your family. I would have missed out on a few experiences had that happened. Like the time I did that thing? No, wait, I’m thinking of someone else. FINAL GRADE: C-

ROUNDABOUTS [MULTIPLE STATES]
I like roundabouts; several have been popping up in my “home state” and elsewhere. The problem here is that Americans are too stressed out trying to score the last few bucks from a system about to fall on its face. The merry-go-round goes faster and faster and then you encounter a traffic calming agent that is shaped like a merry-go-round and well, I don’t blame you for not following the directions and smashing into someone else, really. Actually yes I do. You suck at driving. Chill out. FINAL GRADE: A-

JACK-KNIFE ACCIDENT PENNSYLVANIA
Two trucks tangled on a reduced-lane highway in the rain; one truck went left, the other, right. The highway was elevated, so they both plunged into giant ditches. The one on the left went straight and came to a stop; the one on the right jack-knifed which tore up a section of the container. Jack-knifing: trucks still do it. FINAL GRADE: D

STRETCH FINGER GRABBING [MULTIPLE STATES]
Sometimes when I stretch I end up grabbing one finger of one hand with the other and I torque it while stretching and one day I’ll probably accidentally break it. FINAL GRADE: C-

YOSEMITE CALIFORNIA
Yosemite is always spectacular, but this time I also wanted to drop into the valley and hit their cafeteria, since I had been on an oatmeal/fruit tear for way too long. A dynamite gal at that ever-growing Lee Vining convenience store/gas station told me that the valley was closed because they were running a managed fire. Bad timing. FINAL GRADE: A-

RAVENS YOSEMITE CALIFORNIA
Two ravens flew past me, about 20 feet in the air. I could hear that one of the pair had squeakier wings than the other. Age? Oil? I do not know, but it was the first and probably last time I’ll hear something like that. Divine. FINAL GRADE: A+

YOUNG SQUEAKY ROSY-CHEEKED OUTDOOR ENTHUSIASTS YOSEMITE CALIFORNIA
Every time I go to Yosemite they’re always standing outside the camp store yammering about how they’re going to tackle Half Dome using only their sense of smell and two straightened fishing hooks for hands and they’ve got all the latest nano-resistant Totalflex™ Shimmerpodjam® gear strapped to them in dynamic places and you walk by them feeling like a cigarette snuffed out in a plate of scrambled eggs but secretly you want to have sex with all of them but one at a time real slow like, you’re not a sexglutton. I think they’re hired by the park to remind all of us to strive to reach our full potential, perhaps sex-wise. FINAL GRADE: B-

NOT TAKING ENTERTAINMENT FOR GRANTED MICHIGAN
That was one of the themes of the trip. One time I went with friends to a tricked out open-air concert space in the deep undergrowth of Detroit with all sorts of old carnival ride signage and the like. It was an amazing place. But the MC was not good. It made me appreciate good MCs. Later some of my other friends decided that ten years was a long enough time away from multi-player cooperative games and they shanghai’d me into playing “Rock Band,” a video game in which you pretend to play instruments. It made me appreciate musicians so much more, with the notes, and getting the right notes, though these notes were fake. Conversely, apparently some musicians aren’t good at rock band because Rock Band is too precise, like a drum machine. No one should have to be a drum machine. That’s why there are drum machines. There were non-official Rock Band accessories like lasers and lights and whatnot and the light bank that was nearest to my head was moving in an arrhythmic manner, making noise that kept me off the fakebeat. Then something happened; after that, my friend got back from a break and wondered out loud why the light bank was not working anymore and I lied in some fashion. I asked my friends what the Japanese were playing now that the US has caught up to 2003 and they looked at me with stony silence. I got passable grades after awhile; then I went to a family member’s house and went back to sucking on “Rock Band"’s apparent predecessor, “Guitar Hero.” FINAL GRADE: B

PLAYING MY SISTER AND NIECE IN AIR HOCKEY MICHIGAN
First the niece tap tap tap tap then my sister BLOOD BLOOD BLOOD then back to the niece tap tap tap. It was funny. FINAL GRADE: A

THE DRIVE BACK FROM YOSEMITE TO THE BAY AREA CALIFORNIA
This is insane. It seems to take way too long. The same two switchbacks over and over and over. Maybe I’ll grow a pair one day and take the quick way down. You know what I’m talking about. Old Crazed Syphilitic Miner Road or whatever it’s called. Following that there’s the flat-out section through Almost Yosemite. That takes three days. I don’t get it. FINAL GRADE: C

DUBUQUE WIFI IOWA
Dubuque has public wifi but you have to click on a website every hour or so. Though I am obsessed with advertising I still don’t understand how it works on people ... I would think that something like this would make you dislike the websites you have to click on, even though they’re sponsoring your porno e-glide. Active v. passive. I didn’t even notice, I left it in another tab. Also I was hangin’ out in Dubuque but all the shops had closed for the day so I didn’t get my Dubuque-oriented business taken care of at all. Dubuque. FINAL GRADE: C+

THE TRUCKER’S TIRE GAUGE PENNSYLVANIA
A worker bee at a Pennsylvania turnpike service plaza gave me a truck tire gauge when I asked for a tire gauge at a car-based filling station. The ticks start at 100 psi (man those are some bloated ticks) whereas your modern car tires get up to about 40 psi tops. It was big and heavy and could be used as a weapon on a train (see Travelling Cross-Country By Train). I took it to the car to have a few moments with it to wonder what it would be like to be a trucker and to express admiration, from one object to another. When I finally handed it back the worker smiled like everything was super-fine even though I said “I have a car, this is for a truck.” I think it was that thing that happens to people in the service industry wherein they’ve gone through the motions for so long they stop reading faces and listening to people or even themselves (ex: flight attendants and their garbled “in the event of a water landing” etc pre-flight safety announcements). FINAL GRADE: C

ATTACKING AIR FORCE BASE NEVADA
There are warning signs in Nevada that I can’t remember ever seeing: DUST HAZARD. “Dust hazard? What kind of wimpy shell of a person needs a sign warning th – OH GOD MY EYES” When you lose your vision on the road, you should gradually pull the car over and stop. After the first time, I was ready; I closed the vent as soon as I saw the sign. But it wasn’t fast enough and sand started scraping holes in my eyes again, digging in to survive the harsh desert winter. There was an exit sign as well, and a driveway coming up, but it was oddly at a right angle. Okay, that’s how they do things out here. Took the exit, careered right into what looked like a pre-staging area with lots of official signs that I could only see the outer shapes of, quickly stopped the car, splashed a gallon of water on my face. Composed myself, toweled my face off, and found myself staring at the guard shack for an Air Force Base. “Yeahhhhhhhh ... I’ll be leaving now ... ” The incident will be filed in my permanent record. I had the same dust problem a third time about an hour later, but it wasn’t as fun as this one. FINAL GRADE: D-

RHYOLITE NEVADA
I got here in the middle of the night so I pulled over on the street, took out a pillow, laid back on the pavement and watched the stars for awhile. Rhyolite is the remnants of a mining town about three miles outside of Beatty. There was no one around, no sounds; I could suddenly perfectly hear all of the little whirring and clicking my camera goes through during normal operations. Occasionally I could hear an insect bullshitting another ... grasshoppers, intermittent buzzy things (“SEX! SEX! I AM HERE! TIME FOR SEX! I AM VERY GOOD AT THE SEX”). Then the sun came up and I explored the abandoned town and associated outdoor art gallery. I took a photo holding the penguin’s hand of the giant penguin & miner statue, same photo as ten years ago so I can laugh at how I’ve aged. It is a funny. The olding. FINAL GRADE: A+

HERSHEY PENNSYLVANIA
Most of my time in Hershey was spent within walking distance of the Hershey factory; 50% of the time the odor of chocolate lingered in your nose. Sometimes there was a much smaller accompanying scent of puke in the air. But across the street (Chocolate Avenue) from one of the factory’s exhausts the scent was 100% Hershey Cocoa. I stood there awhile. Also I hadn’t eaten anything except oatmeal cookies/bars for two days and I went into a pizza shop (Bricker’s Ponessa Pizza and Restaurant) at 8:30pm and they were closing at 9pm so no slices and back to oatmeal. I came in the next day and ordered a slice; the owner sent over another slice free because of my unfortunate timing the previous day. I camped in a park that had an insect/frog chorus so loud I used earplugs to go to sleep. It also had fireflies which more than compensated for the Croaky McBuzzy Choir. FINAL GRADE: B

SOMETHING SOMETHING SILVER SLIPPER CASINO PARKING LOT SIGN BEATTY NEVADA
When I was last here the parking lot was for a casino which had been renamed. This is my guess since it wasn’t “Silver Slipper Casino” anymore and there was a slipper on the sign. But the casino has magically turned into a hardware store, which means it’s twice removed from the sign so can I have it now? FINAL GRADE: A

VALLEY OF FIRE NEVADA STATE PARK NEVADA
My original intention was to “check out” this area and camp overnight, grabbing a much-needed shower. I stopped in at one of the campsites. Campsites now seem to have “hosts” which I don’t remember from back in the day but a friend has indicated this has been the procedure for awhile at campgrounds. Host: “We’re having a problem with Africanized bees right now. They are attracted to any water source. They’ve set up bubblers away from camp to help draw the bees away.” I went and grabbed a campsite, got out, and pretty much immediately a bee landed on my pants where I had spilled some water earlier. “Maybe that’s a coincidence, and in an unrelated thought, boy it’s time to go look at stuff far away from here.” I didn’t even take a shower, which was dumb at 104 degrees. I stopped at several trailheads and got about halfway down the paths, eyeballing petroglyphs and bright orange rock and sand and tafoni and striped rock and etc before turning back because it was 114 degrees out and I know my limits. I saw only one other person tackling a trail. Too hot. I got back to the visitor center and hung out under the aircon for an hour. Then I left instead of camping for several reasons. The bees came in at about 20%, heat 30%, didn’t get around to packing anything but oatmeal 30%, some other junk 20%. FINAL GRADE: A- (see me after class about the bees)

This trip reminded me there’s a lot out there that no longer makes/never made any sense to me and that jobs are getting harder to get.

2009jul31. BIN LADEN DETERMINED TO “HANG TIGHT” WITH AMERICA. Greg Palast already covered some of this. But you know, let’s keep acting like this was yet another anomaly and that all the good the government does is worth occasional silly things like this. “HA HA WE SUB-CONTRACTED TERRAMISM” “Okay! Now let’s see justice!” “HA HA OUR HANDS ARE BLOODIED/TIED HA MAYBE 50 YEARS FROM NOW WE’LL MAKE A HALF-FACTUAL PLAQUE OR SOME SHIT”

2009: sep oct nov dec | 2010: jan feb mar apr