More Random "...NOTES..."

…I’m making my mark as a writer, I have been one all of my life; it’s what I do, good bad or indifferent I always wanted to be a writer and a painter and I am both…for years I’ve blathered and driveled away with puling bombast and idle twaddle only to be eclipsed in the end by a stream of spontaneously combustible consciousness like no other; no one writes like me - in the future, writers will be compared to me but there will be no one attains this peak for quite awhile…now this is what you call confidence!

It does no one any long-term good to be falsely modest about one’s attributes, talents and abilities; I’m no wallflower nor a braggart but I am a smart guy and I know it…or maybe it’s arrogance; whichever, it is semi-based in fact mixed with maximum embellishment, as is the wont of this screed…in the world of art I’ve been fairly prolific, a 1000 paintings in a lifetime is not too shabby, all are good, some are really good and about two dozen or so were really great in every sense of the timeless word…here’s three good ones...I call them Early Primitives.

How is it possible...

…my life is going/has gone by so fast!? How could it be that I - (in my aging, hoary head, looking in the memory mirror, am still a child, then a boy, an adolescent and then a man grown to maturity, now grown old and infirm!?) -how can it be that I have memories which are 60 years old!

How can it be that the thought of dying and of death is something I once rarely gave pause to but now when I think about It, it’s from an at-the-brink-of-the-grave viewpoint; all my life my mantra has been the unending refrain, Think About IT! Now I’m not so sure…there are frightening aspects to it.

'Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week...' - George Bernard Shaw

Random "...NOTES..." From Wrinkled Scraps...

As co-founder of Buzzard Brothers Construction ("Don't Call Us - We'll Call You..."), it was my job to not return calls and I was very good at not doing it, story of my life. In later years, with the passing of Dudley and Dewey Buzzard, an odd couple of birds, I inherited the firm, changed the name, sold off all our inventory and semi-singlehandedly began MY firm.

I take great pleasure in introducing to you: Hermit Construction.

In the 15 years of its laissez-faire existence since then, I am proud and pleased to announce as President-For-Life and Founder Emeritus, that to this day, only twice, think of it only TWO times - has Hermit Construction taken on a job, any job! The remainder of the time I've assiduously ascribed to our carved-in-stone motto, which we proudly display on our company t-shirts:

Hermit Construction
"...Turning Down Work A Specialty..."

"Rest Assured...We'll Be NO Help"

Had to leave town for a couple days...

...a friend of mine wanted to know could he use my pickup while I was gone so he might gather some firewood and I said sure you can only don't go getting drunk and driving my truck like a damned fool..."I won't."

Fast forward two days, I'm coming home a day early and it is after dark on a very snowy night, roads are treacherous, four inches of wet snow has piled up and those few of us on the road are anxious to be home.

As I come slowly down the steep and slippery South Acworth Hill Rd. about fifty yards above Michael and Lillie's house, suddenly from across the intersection my truck comes ripping around the corner streaking toward the store and my friend who is driving like a wildman, tires spinning, engine screaming, fishtailing side to side sending up a rooster tail of snow, is hammeredAND - I can't believe my eyes!- trailed by a flat-bottomed boat tied to the bumper on a long rope like a water skier and in this little pram Danny is sitting facing aft with a bottle in one hand (probably rotgut Schaefer) and holding on to the oarlock with the other, the two of 'em yahooing their way to the store before it closes so they can grab another case of beer they obviously do not need, and in my truck.

I say nothing and go home; they hadn't even seen me and next day when my truck is returned with BIG dents in the rear fender my friend dismisses it with '"Well, sorry, but it was really snowing and icy and I just slid off the road in slow motion..."

I haffta laff. Slow motion? Please...that little boat came around the corner like the last kid in 'crack-the-whip' on ice skates.

Where does 'Two can live cheaper than one' come from...

...and who says so?

In a way it's true, two CAN live cheaper than one, well, one of the two, the other's burden increases exponentially if my past relationships are any criteria; everytime I moved in with someone MY expenses went down, their's up, so two were living cheaper than one, yes, but one was bent like a fuckin' serf and doing most of the work while the other, namely me, was reaping in most of the bennys and making it seem that while you were out busting your ass for a living, I somehow was paying my way because the house was clean and the dishes done when you got home, as though you needed a maid, and in this case, a 'maid' - me - who would (did) eat/drink/smoke/be merry you out of your weekly paycheck...

Good job if you can get it but they don't last. Even the numbest catch on after awhile (at the end of one such rapprochement my companion de jour had gone so far as to mark the levels of bottles with a felt tip, meticulously count loose change, weigh every gram, check the odometer, left notes to 'KEEP OUT!' and generally badgered me into leaving) - and there you are, out in the street again, on the loose, prowling the alleys looking for a home.

Any ole port in a storm is never more true than when you're homeless.

Beer can-strewn closets in filthy after-hours speakeasys for a bedroom, dirty string mops for pillows with a cardboard mattress and a Rutland Herald blanket...ah me, maybe if I had polished the silverware and Lemon-Pledged the end tables I'd still have a home...

For all its (real or imagined) brilliance...

"...NOTES FROM THE DUMP..." seems to have peaked, reached critical mass, is afloat in the doldrums of apathy - no one seems to notice it anymore; now more than ever NFTD has become a novelty item, a keepsake as it were, of times bygone when writing was powerful and fluid, fun and informative, filled with deathless prose; the forecast was rosy...

Riches and fame beyond compare were mine! I was Golden Boy!

Say what?

...for whatever reasons, subscriptions have plummeted, renewals dried up,
old friends avoid it (me) as though I were - it were - anathema, a plague bacillus unleashed upon the land as in biblical days of yore...next thing you know locusts will destroy my crops...

OK...fling me into the bulrushes already...sheesh...

So now what? I can hardly reveal the foregoing to you and in the next sentence touch you up for your 30 dollar renewal in my usual appealing, if guileless, fashion; if no one else is re-upping, why should you?

Therefore, ever so reluctantly and with no little trepidation, I inquire of you (and request most urgently!) to tell me Dear Reader, where I have erred, if I have, and where and how I might correct our glide path through life aboard the good ship NFTD. (After all there's always the chance with me that I might blame it on every(body)thing except me; I've often convinced myself thusly of the rightness of a wrong argument. A la George Thorogood, doing things wrong is my way of doing things right...)

If you would be so kind - take a minute to jot down or e-mail or call and let me know what I might do in order to retrieve this thing of ours from the scrap heap of bygone journals - and thanks, much obliged!

We're doomed, kiss your ass good by...

…the United States, Russia and Britain are the world’s largest suppliers of arms…India, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, not to mention Israel, are bristling with weaponry of every imaginable horror thanx to this Axis of Death…and Russia, doing a solo blast, sold a bunch of stuff to Hugo Chavez who wants to show a little military sack to the world…fuckin’ Hugo got hisself some SU-30s – high tech Russian jets, lots of bombs, and a shitload of AK47s plus a promise from soon-to-be-prime minister Vladimir Putin, to build a 350 million dollar factory in Venezuela to, who’da thunk it – to manufacture AK-47s…talk about Russian roulette…we’re not spreading Democracy anywhere and there’s a dearth of it right here at home…the evil twins in the White House – President Bush and Dick Cheney riding shotgun, have set the world afire and left everyone on it on edge…

…no matter who wins the elections for the Oval Office the war will go on because logistically it can’t end overnight, ask the people of Saigon how that went…the damage is done and the damage is ongoing and the continuing damage, in my unasked for and less-than-expert opinion, will go on for years, bodies piling up – George Bush will be planning his library in retirement and continue to pretend to be an old cowhand; Dick Cheney will head back to Wyoming to shoot down his friends in duck blinds…I was on a hunt with him once – the One-Shot Antelope Hunt in Lander Wyoming, 1968 – 39 years ago he was a jerk too, but less dangerous, he only had one bullet, now he is second in command to the world’s largest arsenal and the man to see as overseer of the largest supplier of arms in the history of the world…what a despicable legacy.

Do you know what an AK-47 is and where its name came from? A for Alexander, K for Kalashnikov, Alexander’s surname, and the 47 is from the year 1947, the year the first AK-47 reared its ugly head – it is now the weapon of choice round the world…it is not paranoia my poor, innocent Dear Reader to think that you are surrounded by a ring of steel as volatile as an explosive belt because the truth is I/you/we/they are surrounded, and in check…

On the other hand I may be wrong and all is just ducky…