ahem

in honor of decade's end, suum cuique.

Baseball: the least onerous of the major religions

With a certain alienated majesty

It is often said that thinking the thought prior to the swing
is not in and of itself going to lead to bad results or confu-
sion, so long as the thought is just like a trigger (akin to
the physiological movement of the waggle of the club) and not
something on which to get fixated. Some people play better
three beers deep to get the mind out of the way.

I was always a worrier, congenital or hereditary maybe. The
yips and the bleets - a kind of athletic Tourette's - sometimes
came at inopportune times early in the season, when dirty gray
piles of snow, pitiful and sickly - something you wanted to
end for its own sake and for mercy's too - sat in the little
mini-coulees where young cottonwoods were competing with one
another to see which could last until the eventual drought year
came.

A swing thought is what it's termed.

what has and has not

grim emotionalism in leading man fashion, sparked by a paper cut
in a computer lab, I witnessed this yesterday.

long standing personal bias in favor of moving slightly to the
right of the street to hit big slush puddle remains fully intact.

noxious yellow and purple gases, certainly stress emissions, seen
drifting up against the ceiling and its reticulated plaster skin.

An arrival - Sundance Magazine - full of beds and jewelry and
well-oiled fashion senses - an error in the mailroom.


Do not sleep on Goodie Mob, do not sleep on Warren Zevon, do
not sleep on Scriabin sonatas, do not sleep on Math Rock Bach,
do not sleep on Jasper Johns, do not sleep on Zebra Cakes with
Chocolate milk, do not sleep on being in airports on horizontal
escalators making eye contact with each specimen headed in the
opposite direction.

i think it's fair to say that this thing here is now over.

february

about three days of the year i regret. today is all brisk
wind and elementary particles, vanilla bean at $9 piecemeal
and roast beef slowly realizing itself in the oven. some
college boys were trying to fly a kite in the street last
night and the wash of the light made their voices sound like
the 1970s. shadows from naked tree limbs dance across this
screen here - probably not on yours, though? that is part of
it all, i suppose.

It doesn't change the thing that occurs if no one happens upon the occurrence

I.

Holy shit crazy Gulf War II it seems like it's been so long we've known
each other - why haven't you left my life yet? And you won't even
when your dad Bush goes, will you? We've witnessed white rappers and
boobs on TV and bubushka music from Brooklyn, vegetable wife saved
by congressmen and -women and I dont want to go on because it makes
my memory hurt . . . And you're still here. HBO did a mini-series
or whatever HBO does now on you, but no fade to black on your fedaheen
or feyaheen - God, it was so long ago that Newsweek explained to me
in discrete summarized details what you were about - I remember fingers
with blue ink and decapitations with crescent moons on flags in the
background, but what else?


II.

Holy shit dominant constitutional paradigm, it looks like your reign is
on the outs, yo!!!! A text is a text is a text, and if it doesn't say
"butt sex is allowed" you best be sure that eight dudes and a lady
aren't going to collectively remonstrate otherwise. High hopes with a
prez who taught you and tried to forestall those who hearkened your
demise, but all the dudes who find your demise logically unassailable
are young and run and have hidden their aneurysm, or old and too god damn
ornery to take a seat. So, goodbye and adios and it's nice to have
invited the exclusionary rule along, but get the fUcK out.

lets make some music make some money some models for wives

Outre references to back in the day continue not to compel. Mute moments
of introspection don't either. But at least no face makeup. And not too
much nostalgia for doing drugs while listening to music made by people on
drugs. Boxes of wheat thins consumed ever divided by the times I've had a
passport stamped before recently is a biggish percentage, but stamp away
and adjust your notion of "before recently" in order for it to go down.

The fact of it being Thursday just exceeds what can be fathomed. Simply.

Burned hand man

I once knew a guy who had a burned left hand - top of the hand, I guess -
charred, scaled skin with wiggly lines pushed up in asymmetric patterns.
He was good with a Pulaski, skilled with a saw, gutted his Copenhagen,
and had very little to say about any of it, ever. One time we went down
to Red Lodge to skid out some lodgepole for a corral the Asst Ranger
wanted to build out in a cabin on the southwest corner of the forest so
he could take his wife there for Christmas. This guy with the burned
hand, one of the things he said once is that the assistant ranger was a
spitting fucking substantiated image of Curly from Of Mice and Men.

And so we're cutting down these skinny little lodge pole and skidding em
down the hill, two at a time for the bigger guys but mostly one at a time
for me. The rain turns to snow, and we get the load we want and one
of the others tries to pull down into the ditch in order to pull a U-turn
but the ground's too soft and the truck and trailer full of poles careens
down the side of the ditch, in slow motion like, until it's clear that
both truck and trailer full of poles will tip over. And the guy with the
burned hand is watching this and smiling, knowing what I do not know. That
is what I remember.

Since sliced bread

IF WU TANG MEMBERS WERE NBA PLAYERS:

http://therapup.uproxx.com/2008/11/if-wu-tang-members-were-nba-players.html