Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Nice motel. Clean. I can recommend it. Very close to the churches, the other motel and the liquor store.

I'm not kidding. Over there on the right, when I say I post too much at other people's blogs I mean that all of my best shit ends up in someone else's comments section.

Mr. Beer N. Hockey mentioned his desire to move to a small town, and before I knew it I had written the following. It's the most interesting thing I've written all week.

"I am undecided. Sometimes I walk around SF and think what a swell place it is. I could live there easily. I could partake of it and abstain from it as I see fit. I would live like a king. When I lived there I felt like the only time the whole city wasn't in my face it was because my face was being rubbed in dogshit.

At the other extreme, I have friends in Boron, way the fuck out in the desert. It's an hour's drive through featureless sand and sagebrush to get to a grocery store that sells fresh produce. The town exists because of one of the world's only known deposits of Boron. The mine is what the whole town is about. That and Edwards Air Force Base, "The Gateway to Area 51."

My friend's dad retired from the Air Force and worked at Edwards as a civilian employee for 30 years. He loves to obliquely mention some remote location, "over the hill" and then say, "That would be talking about Groom Lake, and I'm not allowed to do that. Yuck Yuck."

Boron has about 500 people, eight churches, two motels and a liquor store. Ore trains roar through the center of town several times a day. You can see the hill where the Air Force tests rocket engines. I mean big ass ICBM -Mercury-Space Shuttle rocket engines. Periodically they fire one up and the whole town shakes. Also, the Air Force has a special exemption that allows them to overfly the town at supersonic speeds and as low as 500 feet. If nothing else is rattling your dentures you can look forward to an experimental jet screaming overhead so low you can see the pilot's face, followed by a sonic boom that knocks all the china off the shelf.

I really like it there. I must have some bad white trash genes in me because there's nothing to explain it except the call of the blood.

If you're ever there, go to the Mexican restaurant. It's also the only bar in town. All of the astronauts drink there. They have all kinds of Air Force memorabilia signed by authentic space heroes. The story is that it's a money laundering operation for some very heavy Mexian Mafia guys. I've met them. They are charming. Some guy broke in there a few years ago. He tried to steal the safe. A few days later he was found in his basement. His mouth was taped shut. His hands were taped behind his back. His legs were broken. His feet were touching the ground, but he was hanging by a noose around his neck. The sheriff walked around the body and ruled his death a suicide. I guess the boy was despondent or something.

Don't let anybody tell you small towns are boring. Boron is totally punk rock."

It was one hundred and two degrees here today. The fires are still burning all over the state. The air is thick with smoke. My eyes are red and swollen. My sinuses hurt. I have not been sleeping well. Don't expect much from me.

This morning, I went swimming with my stepdaughter, April. We were in the pool at the condo where she and my ex live. It was so hot the water was warm, but it was still better than being out of the water. Afterwards I went and did more volunteer training at Free Mind Media Center. I volunteered to clean the bathroom. It is now much cleaner than the bathroom here at mi casita mobile. I found out that my fellow trainee is from Evansville, Indiana. She lived in Bloomington for a few years. She knew my friend Tommy Donahue. If the temperature was less than 102 and if the sky was some color other than orange we would have laughed at the coincidence. Too much work though.

And speaking of coincidences, the mystic algorithms behind iTunes did some fabulous DJ'ing and sequenced these two songs together. It's a seamless mix if you listen to them in the order presented. Grime meets surf pop somewhere over the desert.
A Little Bit Of Shhh (Smallstars Remix By Adrock) - Lady Sovereign
Silent Screamer - Dave Myers Effect
I swear I had some real serious writing planned for today. I was gonna write about the virtues of sweaty old white men with heart, and the class struggle and why I still don't heart hippies. It was gonna be major, with major musical contribu's to match. Not that kind of day. XXOO

6 comments:

mwhybark said...

hope the weather gets better there, Jon. I guess we're starting to get some of your smoke now. The air smells like campfires and I'm starting to sneeze unaccountably. Thankfully we've been getting the PNW summer - three days in the eighties and one day of rain. Hope it keeps up.

ib said...

Great post, Jon. What else can I say ?

I imagine writers in the pre micro chip era would have pawned their false teeth just to be able to publish their shit at the push of a button, and have it instantaneously transmitted half way round the globe and back without ever seeing a rejection slip drop through the mail.

Seriously.

And then they would sit back and uncap a cold one and think,
"Wait a minute. Where's my fucking advance ?"

There's always a drawback. Always something to get pissed about.

Well, at least I'm rid of Silliman.

My site was beginning to look like the yellow pages in my minds eye, all one way traffic and collegiate boards clinking champagne glasses on the Obama Campaign Trail at the other end.

I post "fuck y'all" on my site and try not to think I must look embittered and complaining.

That's the good thing about blogging. You watch the new eat up the old. It's a seamless ream of virtual paper running away from yesterday.

Your driver said...

A seamless ream of virtual paper. Well put.

Mr. Beer N. Hockey said...

I like to riff off other people's writing as well. Because you are reading on your writing machine it makes it real easy to read, then write.

I'm your muse? God help you.

Your driver said...

Beer, I'll take my muses anywhere I find them.

Hagar's Daughter said...

Jon,
When The Husband and I moved to So Cal about 15 years ago. We tried to find Edwards AF Base, but never could. We would see and hear the planes, rockets, or whatever. We thought the location was a publicly sworn secret that everyone knew but us. So we stopped looking.

I had something else to say, but completely forgot.

FEEDJIT Live Traffic Feed