Fuck yes, I'm from New Jersey

Every year my family would make our annual memorial day pilgrimage to "the shore" as we call it in New Jersey. My favorite shore city was definitely Asbury Park. We used to go to Palace amusements and ride the bumper cars. For a lot of reasons that I'm not going into, I got a picture of "Tillie", the smiling face on the side of the now destroyed Palace Amusements building, tattooed on my left arm. Yep there's Tillie, almost in my armpit. My left arm is almost all ink and there just wasn't any place to fit him in. I'd consider posting a picture but he's all nasty and puffy looking at the moment.

Thanks to Devil Dick for this swell song. DD is a great guy and a Jersey patriot.

I Like Jersey Best- The Phil Bernardi Band (Definitely no longer in print.)

Farm livin' is the life for me.

For those of you who are urban dwellers. City people often imagine that life in the country is quiet. Rural America is all about small, unmuffled gasoline engines. starting at sunrise.  Some guy has been running a bucketloader, back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and so on for the last nine hours. He's supposed to be preparing the riding arena by scraping off the top few inches of loose soil and preparing the ground so that several tons of sand can be dumped on it. The arena is about 2,000 square feet. You'd think he would have hit water if not China by now. Actually, the arena looks about the same, except for the tire tracks from the bucket loader. All of this is taking place about five feet from the sheet metal walls of my home. I am grateful to report that the guy got here before sunrise and wanted to get started right away but my landlord wouldn't let him. What is wrong with people? I can't think of anything that I would want to do at five in the morning. I'm guessing that several large truckloads of sand will be dumped at my backdoor at five tomorrow morning. Then the bucketloader dude can spend nine more hours spreading the sand, back and forth and back and forth and back and forth etc.

Don't get me wrong, it's beautiful here, but I'm thinking I might want to return to the big city. I'm not making any plans or looking at any apartments. I'm just putting it out there. The last time I put something out there, I got a job. I think I'd prefer a small, quiet place of my own but I'm open to the possibility of roommates.

I notice that nobody, nobody at all, pays any attention to the songs I occasionally post. This is great stuff here. Listen up. Here's some of what I'm listening to lately.

Howsabout I try a "provocatively" titled song?

The Girls Are Naked- The Creation (Buy) 

Dock Boggs was one fuck of a punk rock guy.

Old Rub Alcohol Blues- Dock Boggs (Buy) 

Finally, this is simply the most badass white blues song ever recorded. Absolutely.

Release Me- Charlie Feathers ( This is seriously out of print. Buy it if you can find it.) 

Any chump with ears can listen to music. Have you been producin' any art lately? (Comrades Nazz and Todd, you've already posted your answer in the affirmative.) I've worked up an almost satisfactory version of "Crazy" as written by Willie Nelson and made famous by Patsy Cline. For some reason I've been enjoying playing Television Personalities songs. The down side of my amateur musical career is that I have not been making it to any Ukulele Club meetings which is a real shame. I did however receive a fan letter for this very blog from the head anarchist down at the Petalukes. She publishes an interesting blog, California Women, I'm looking forward to reading more of it. My lessons with Tippy Canoe are  on temporary hiatus as Tippy tours and I reintegrate myself in the workforce. However, thanks to the good works of the Petalukes, I will be attending a work shop by Jim D'Ville. I'm just working around to studying Jim's book on music theory and his ear training for ukulelians video.

Sometime soon I'm going to work up ukulele versions of "Nature Boy" by Nat King Cole (among many) and "My Andy Warhol Poster" by The Time.

Life is pretty good.

The smell

So I started the new job today. It was OK. More some other time. What I ended up thinking is that if you willingly spend more than 5 hours a day taking the bus to work and back you are going to end up looking for a place to piss. In San Francisco the public sector and private industry have joined hands in closing every restroom in the whole goddam city.The last time I had to use a men's room in Golden Gate Park it was flooded in piss, ankle deep. It was the only public restroom for miles. I waded in and did my manly thing. In most of the city there's nothing that nice available. Despite the fact that it was raining off and on the whole fucking city stinks of piss. Really, the whole city is one giant urinal. I suppose I'll just have to take advantage of the city's many reeking doorways.

Hello, hello! Greetings and welcome

People keep coming here. Some of you seem to come here more often than me. Sometimes I think I should say something about my current situation.  My current situation is fine. I go for acupuncture twice a week. I can breathe. I go for long walks with my friend, Mark. I play the ukulele every day. Sometimes I go to Oakland and take lessons from Tippy Canoe. It's OK.

I seem to have landed a job. I'm going back to work for a company I worked for 26 years ago. I WILL NOT be driving. I'll be working in the office and the shop 2 days a week. I'll be working for my old bosses' son. Back in the day I was a young hot shot. Now they want me to be an old pro. It's OK.

I suppose I'll have to do something with this blog soon. Thanks awfully for coming here.

RIP

This little rooster was my good friend. A fox found our little family of chickens. It carried off a chicken every other day. The lone survivor was my friend, the rooster. He managed to last for a week and a half after his little wives had been killed. He was damn near crazy with loneliness and he would follow me around and stand next to me any time I left the house. I felt bad for him. He disappeared sometime today. He was a good rooster. He was kind to the hens and chicks. He wouldn't eat until they had eaten and wouldn't roost until he was sure they were safe. His little flock was prosperous and healthy under his leadership.
He had been hand raised by a young boy and he was always friendly and curious towards humans. He would eat out of my hand if the hens would let him. He would run to see me, flapping his wings and pausing to crow.
He was an uncommonly handsome bird. I will miss him.

Good Old Boys, Or, Why I Live Here

I'll have to admit, I don't get it. I don't really know why Southern White people with no money would identify themselves with the flag of the Confederacy. I get that poor white southerners feel like a separate ethnicity or culture or something. I know I was thinking about "If That Ain't Country" by David Allen Coe. I watched a video of Coe performing it. It's a simple little song, but he makes a hell of a case for poor white southerners as a misunderstood and disrespected minority and he makes it playing a guitar decorated with a Confederate flag.

So, I'm thinking about good old boys, while I'm sitting in the parking lot at the acupuncture clinic. I get that you've got to honor your heritage and I get that you've got to stand up for who you are and I get that you've got to call 'em like you see 'em and damn the consequences but what all of that has to do with the southern slavocracy I'll never be able to understand.

There aren't many poor white people in Northern California. There aren't that many genuinely poor people here. It's too damn expensive. We have a few people around who sort of fill the good old boy niche. They look like the guys in the picture above. They sit around and talk about Grateful Dead shows in 1967, what pot is selling for these days and why the Republicans are the cause of the world's woes.

Just then a cranky looking old white guy pulled his pick up truck into the parking lot. He was driving too fast and he looked like a bit of a mean old guy. He had a bunch of bumper stickers on the back of the truck. I couldn't see all of them but I could see that he was an NRA life member and a member of The Marine Corps League.

"Oh good", I thought, "maybe he's a real California redneck".

His wife got out of the truck first. She had to help him a little. It took him quite a while to get out of the truck. He was a dried up old guy and it looked like everything hurt. I could see where that mean look came from. I waited for him to walk past before I pulled out of my parking space. I drove past the back of his truck and checked out the rest of the bumper stickers. There were a couple more NRA stickers. There was a big red and orange sticker that said "Once A Marine Always A Marine". There was a sticker that said, "No Farms No Food". There was also a sticker that said, "War Is Never The Answer, Wage Peace" and another that said "No On H8- Everyone Has The Right To Marry."

Honor your heritage, stand up for who you are and call 'em like you see 'em and damn the consequences. God, I love it here.

April is poetry month

Poetry is for assholes and I am an asshole. It truly doesn't get any better than Amiri Baraka. I'm sorry to say that I have not
spent as much time as I should listening to women poets of color but a lot of what little I know about life, I learned by taking 
the plugs out of my ears, sticking a plug in my mouth and listening to non white artists and thinkers.


Straight Street- John Coltrane (Buy)

The Confederacy can kiss my Yankee ass

The execution of a Confederate war criminal.

I haven't been posting much. I've been busy. Life is swell although I'll have to admit that I was pissed off about the whole Confederate History month thing. The subsequent "Whoopsies, we forgot about the slaves!" episode only pissed me off a bit worse. The Atlantic slave trade, the basis of The Confederacy, was one of the great crimes against humanity. The states rights argument which has been drug out time and again to justify outright racism is bullshit, plain and simple. The latest variation, "But there were Black confederates and lookit all them Black conservatives", is bullshit too.

I got somewhat pissed at a friend of this little blog for reviving some of those arguments. She's good people and a fine writer, but she's just plain wrong this time. I tried, and obviously failed, to keep my sense of humor. She can delete my comment. That's OK. This is not necessarily a free speech zone. I'm not going to link to her post. I will add two things. First, I'm aware of the fact that Lincoln was a Republican. I'm also aware that he was no champion of civil rights or the Black race. I went to liberal Yankee schools where I studied history. Second, this is not an altogether anti southern post, but really, fuck the Confederacy.

Here's what I said;

"Oh friend, if you make it to the end of this one, we are probably not going to be friends anymore.
It's a well known fact that I am a communist from Northern California. I believe that only homosexuals should be allowed to become bishops in the Episcopal Church, that all women should have an abortion whether or not they are pregnant and that all men should be forced to marry a gay person. I believe the federal government should force my beliefs on everyone.
I am aware of the fact that there are possibly as many as 37 Black conservatives in America. I have known one or two, although I have never seen two at the same time.
I am also aware of the fact that there are people who liked to be tied up, humiliated and given enemas. I have seen several of them together at once, although I don't understand them either.
I also know that many people are convinced that we have a two party system, not like the communists who were only allowed to vote for competing communist candidates. Here we have a choice of two candidates each of them representing different corporate interests, neither of them representing my interests.
Some people are stupid enough to believe that the oil and coal corporate party is the party of freedom. It is the party of oil and coal. I can tell the difference. I do not listen to the radio or watch TV.
As to the Confederacy, here's where we truly part company. I'd like it real well if all memory of the Confederacy was buried. If the burial ground was plowed and sown with salt, that would be even better. I'd like it if flying a confederate flag was considered an act of treason. I'd like it if confederate nostalgia was criminalized the way nazi nostalgia if criminalized in Germany.
I am real tired of sending endless federal dollars to the south and then hearing about how awfully the south suffers under the cruel burdens of medicare, food stamps, federal highways, school lunch subsidies, social security, unemployment insurance, workplace safety requirements, etc etc. If there weren't innocents involved I'd say we should grant you your wishes, stop sending money and let the south slide even further into third world poverty. Maybe Mexico would help you out.
Finally, if you insist on believing that we have two parties, look at the statistics. In the southern states, voting is almost exactly along racial lines. Black southerners consistently vote to the left of most northern Democrats while White southerners consistently vote the same as northern Republicans. Stop trying to hide behind black folks."


While I'm passing new laws for the south, I'd like if they made it illegal for people named Hank Williams, but who aren't really Hank Williams, to stop releasing records under the name Hank Williams. .If Pisspants Braindamage Williams and Pathetic Richkid Poser Williams want to keep releasing records that's OK. Just stop trying to trade off your tenuous relationship to a talented dead relative. 

Wildwood Flower

This got my Sunday morning off to a good start. I don't have much to say here because I've been out and about in the real world. I'm going to start missing the money soon, but I don't miss my old job one little bit. Many people have said they've never seen me smile so much. I wasn't in a bad mood before, I was just too tired to work those face muscles. My health is improving. My blood sugar is essentially normal I'm losing weight. My breathing is better I haven't had anything like a real asthma attack in weeks. This is OK. I even got offered a part time job, driving a big rig to Portland and back a couple of times a month. I'm not sure about that one. I don't know if I feel like crucifying myself behind the wheel again. Then again, I could probably use the money and how many people are being offered jobs, unsolicited these days? I've got a few weeks to think about it.


I'm also being showered with ukuleles. Here I am with Gary Timmons number 001. A very successful prototype built by my friend Gary. What a jolly old bastard I'm becoming!

By the way

Click on the picture for a look at the detail that goes into a Style O Deluxe. Why is God so good to me?

I'm feeling pretty good but I'm finding that taking care of myself is pretty demanding. My travel plans are starting to seem over ambitious. I spent two days away from home last week and damn near starved to death trying to stick to my food plan. I'm staying home and cooking for myself for a while. I'm still going to try to make it to the So Cal desert next month (Todd?). I'm hoping to make it to Seattle to pick up a banjo uke from Jere Canote in May (Mike?) and I might even make it to Indiana for the Ukulele World Congress in Needmore in June. (Anyone in Bloomington?)

In truly weird uke news, I was checking craigslist last week while having my coffee. There was a posting for a National Style O Deluxe resonator ukulele. I know I said I liked my Republic resonator better than the National I tried, but I was curious. It's hard to imagine a classier resonator uke than a style O. So I called the guy and he was asking less than half of list price. He said the ukulele was almost unplayed and in mint condition. The big hook was that he was just a couple of miles down the road.

So I saddled up the elderly Volvo and headed over to see what turned out to be, as advertised, an almost brand new Style O Deluxe.

I played it a little bit and it was apparent that it is more ukulele than I need. I'm just not that good, although I am enthusiastic. The seller turned out to be a pretty good player and he ended up letting me fart around with the uke while he got out some other ukes and gave me some tips to improve my playing.

After a while, it began to dawn on me that I would never see another Style O at that price again. I would spend the rest of my days going, "I coulda hadda Style O for cheap, but I felt that I was unworthy". It also dawned on me that I would probably never again find myself with a little bit of cash to call my own and a Style O at the same time. As to the quality of my playing, well, that's what practice is for. The Style O is sitting across from me in all it's nickel plated glory.

Much as I've loved it, The Republic resonator is for sale. Or not. There's a lot to be said for owning too many ukuleles. I mean, God forbid, what if the world ukulele supply suddenly ran out?

And you know what I did the next day? I went to Oakland and took my first ukulele lesson from the great Tippy Canoe. I think I've gotten as far as I can with the self taught thing. I need someone to correct my mistakes and push me in new directions. Tippy turns out to be, among other things, a great listener. She heard me play, she listened to what I hoped to achieve and she gave me a push in a good direction. She's got me working my way further up the neck, playing chords in more positions, and she's got me working on playing with others. I think we also had a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to going back soon. What fun!

By the way, Tippy is teaching at Acme House of Music. I was curious about Acme, I pictured a hipster haven, done up in Nuevo Retro style. I couldn't have been more wrong. Acme is a truly ratty old music store, littered with weird musical junk that, on closer examination, all turns out to be unbelievably cool. The store was recently bought by a younger couple, but the original owner is still enthroned and holding forth. I liked hanging out there. I got there early by accident the first time, next time I'll get there early on purpose. There's a good coffee shop across the street. I'm looking forward to a nice cup of coffee on Acme's sofa.

For some reason blogger has started making up it's own mind about things lately. I'm not allowed to post pictures or links or much of anything else because I get error messages about something called "span". I've gone to war with this damn software and won before. I don't feel like figuring it out now. I'll get around to it sometime soon.

summer is coming.

I was going to buy a t shirt from this blog but it seemed kind of pricey.