E-mail: Brian7Morris "at" hotmail.com Archives March 2002 April 2002 May 2002 June 2002 July 2002 August 2002 September 2002 October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 December 2003 January 2004 February 2004 March 2004 April 2004 May 2004 June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 current Blogs Mandapants farkleberries Uranium City Records The C.M. Sienko Foundation Storyteller Musings Solotarian Views Lynne Wiora Tek Poker News Blog Some Biscuits Evil Eye Emporium Niggling Doubts Pressure Release Sara as Mommy runswithscissors Defective Yeti Afternoon Delight trancejen The Terrarium Bird Nird Slipperily Tofu Hut Stereo Gum Links Fixed Gear Gallery Get Crafty This is Grand Featherproof Books Gapers Block Chicago Bird Watching	No one must know my terrible secret... House of Noh! Saturday, July 31, 2004 I’m moving tomorrow. After scrubbing for hours and hours today, my shower is finally clean. Also, to conform to our society’s restrictive conception of “cleanliness,” which is rooted in a lack of understanding about the interplay between the sacred and profane at best, or, at worst, is a calculated ploy to create excessive and unhealthy demand for environmentally unfriendly consumer cleaning products, I also had to clean out the brown stain under the waterline in my toilet bowl. My shower’s still not totally clean, but it’s pretty clean. I had a lot of work to do on it. My Dad and Sister were up just a few days ago helping me move, and my Dad got all uptight about the shower in its pre-”cleaned” state. But in his defense, he’s a baby-boomer, and when he grew up the conventional wisdom was that ecosystems could be completely controlled by humans with beneficial results - it was even considered desirable to eliminate certain species altogether, and under this logic various animal species such as the wolf, the sharp-shinned hawk, and many others were pushed almost to extinction. Today, however, people understand that a healthy ecosystem cannot be maintained under the iron fist of excessive human interference, rather, an ecosystem must be allowed to find its own balance, and in doing so, each and every species plays a critical role. But my Dad, all set in his ways, won’t listen to reason. He’s just all like, “there shouldn’t be ANY mold in your shower!” But now the shower is cleaned - shamefully, it might as well be a parking lot in there. But don’t worry, because there’s hope for the shower ecosystem: I couldn’t get all the mold out of the caulking and the grout looks really bad. But still, it’s pretty clean, I think it’s clean enough so that my Dad, having passed me on my way into the bathroom to take a shower as he was leaving the bathroom after taking his shower, wouldn’t pull back on the doorknob in an attempt to keep talking as I tried to pull it closed after listening to his anti-mold rhetoric for what seemed like forever. But the shower is still dirty enough so that I don’t believe he would step into it without wearing his flip-flops. Brian 12:37 AM (0) comments Sunday, July 25, 2004 I just found a new apartment. I’m pretty happy with it, but I’m a little dubious that all the gross pigeon poop is going to be cleaned out of the screen door before I move in. My landlord seems like an upstanding dude and I think he’s going to be a good landlord and all that, but he’s a bit hard of hearing. The conversation (and this is pretty typical of all our conversations) went something like this: Me: Before I move in, could you clean up all this pigeon poop out of the door? Him: What? Me: All these pigeon terds in the door, could you clean it up!? Him: What!? Me: (pointing) PIGEON FECES!! Him: No! No birds allowed! Me: (defeated) Okay. As I discovered when I looked through the place, my new apartment comes equipped with a truck stop style toilet. Me: Hey! Sweet toilet! Him: What? Me: (pointing at it) This is a truck stop toilet!!” Him: What!? Me: “TRUCK STOP TOILET!!” Him: “Street parking only!” Me: (defeated) Okay. I call it a truck stop toilet because it doesn’t have a water tank sitting above the bowl, instead, there’s just a pipe coming in from the wall with a Atari joystick kind of handle sticking out the side - the kind that germ-o-phones can flush with their foot (thereby transferring germs off the floor of the bathroom onto the toilet handle where other people who flush the toilet with their hand then transfer to the bathroom door handle - a germy, vicious (but perhaps not unjust) cycle which I hope there will be none of in my new apartment truck stop bathroom). When I first saw the truck stop toilet, I was elated. Because, hey, truck stop toilet! But shortly thereafter I was cast into doubt: did I really want to live in a truck stop? But then I was elated again, because I realized that just because I have a truck stop toilet in my place, that doesn’t necessarily mean my place is a truck stop - there’s no chicken wire over (all) the windows and, hopefully (but I‘m not making any promises), the amount of urine on the floor will never reach “puddle” proportions. Anyway, the announcement of my new truck stop toilet will come as good news for all who stayed at my place and encountered difficulties flushing due to what could be described as poor toilet tank maintenance on my part at my old apartment. But on that score, isn’t it laudable that I, like any good anarchist, did not enforce my power directive over the individuality of my toilet and instead came up with a method to flush the toilet occasionally, in harmony with the current state of the toilet? That’s what I used to be able to say before Chris S. found the new gasket on the top of my refrigerator that I was going to use to fix my toilet before I got distracted by something else. (Chris S. actually displays quite an aptitude for uncovering these sorts of this things - summers ago, when he visited me in my shack in Quincy Illinois, he refuted my claim of not having any hot water in the shower being a “zen training activity” as being, in fact, the result of lethargy on my part by carefully reading an ancient crinkled to-do list on my refrigerator: the box next to the tiny “call gas company” entry, sadly, having gone long unchecked.) Additionally in my defense, my old toilet was always operational, that is, if you followed the protocol and used the chopsticks (provided) to manipulate the gasket at the bottom of the tank. This process was fully explained during your orientation, along with the sources of some of the various piles of filth, what basins not to drink out of, what potted plants are not edible and which ones are delicious, and why - under no circumstance! - to EVER open my freezer door. Some people paid attention during orientation, but some people just laughed and joked around and ho-hummed and rolled their eyes - you know who you are - but you troublemakers, when you were stuck in the bathroom, just you and your stinky terd, you with no idea about what to do with the chopsticks in order to flush the toilet - those good students who paid attention during orientation: they were the ones laughing then! Brian 2:06 AM (0) comments Wednesday, July 21, 2004 This last weekend I learned another hippy secret. But before I begin, I need to clarify who I’m referring to when I say “hippy,” because whenever I refer to hippies as kind and gentle nurturers around my baby-boomers parents, they go off on how most hippies are the cruelest, most narrow-mindedest, meanest bastards ever and don‘t care about peace or love. I guess somewhere back in the 60’s my parents had a bad hippy experience. Regardless, the high esteem in which I hold hippies compels me to believe that the hippies of which my parents speak were pseudo-hippies or, at best, quasi-hippies, and the genuine hippy is still the sort of person supporting positive change in the world and understanding - the kind of person, if male, who would even wear a dress and is not ashamed to hug other men before they left on a voyage, even ones he just met, even when he has a semi-boner. (this was one of my first genuine hippy experiences, yes, it was a little alarming to me at the time, but he hugged a bunch of other hippy dudes and nobody made a big deal about it so I just played along. Nobody would have even known that the hippy had semi-boner but I think he was going commando under the sheer fabric of his dress. He should have worn really tight briefs under his dress, that‘s what I would have done.) So here’s the hippy secret: Dr. Bronner's soap. Even the paper packaging is designed to reduce pressure on forests. It doesn’t contain any animal products and the package even features a happy rabbit, jumping through a field of stars, freed from the horrors of cosmetological testing by Dr. Bronner’s steadfast stand against cruelty. Although, I must say that this soap is so fantastic that if I was a rabbit, I would VOLUNTEER to have it tested on me. Dr. Bronners also doesn’t engage in excessive profit taking, enabling him to use only plants grown under conditions that are safe to farm workers without making the soap cost prohibitive. Tingly clean Dr. Bronner’s All-One Hemp soap is not so much about destroying B.O., it’s more about working with B.O., harmoniously. You can make your B.O. smell like lemons, or eucalyptus, or peppermint, or a bunch of other scents. I’d recommend the peppermint - in combination with my B.O., if I’ve been out in the sun I smell like musky basil now; - Delicious! I think these wonderfully scented soaps are probably one of the secrets to the hippie’s sensuality - they’re a delight to all the senses and help one get back in touch with one’s minty B.O. body. And contrast this to the soaps many of us were raised on - those soaps that taught us that our bodies were things that had to be subdued and punished - soaps with names like Shield and Dial and Lava that were designed to put us at odds with ourselves and inspire us to hatred and war! Dr. Bronner’s utilizes hemp oil to help skin stay soft and healthy. What do the above named soaps do? They kill germs, it‘s all about killing. Kill, kill, kill! The only downside to Dr. Bronners is that I guess there’s a list of consumable goods and stuff that customs people use sometimes to identify who they think might be a smuggler. I’ve heard that Dr. Bronner’s soap is on that list, (I guess that customs is also in on this hippy secret) so it’s not the best product to take across borders or whatever, unless you are into butt searches. But in true hippy fashion, I refuse to make a value judgment on butt searches - if butt searches are your thing, I salute you! Brian 1:16 AM (0) comments Tuesday, July 20, 2004 I think it’s time for some more tattoos. I have a really rad idea for a new tattoo design for myself, across the first segments of the fingers on my right hand I’ll tattoo, in fancy calligraphic script, the letters, P, and O, and O, and P. On my left hand I’ll tattoo the letters, P, and E, and E, and E. This one’s better than what was my top pick, but is now my first runner-up: a stylized portrayal of the rusty old brown Dodge shorty van I owned in college above the caption, “Van’s Rule!” Brian 12:47 AM (0) comments Sunday, July 18, 2004 I’m not complaining, in fact, I revel in any opportunity to construe myself “under attack” and wear my old surplus military helmet. It proves that that it wasn’t a waste of $9.99 plus 2.39 shipping and handling plus having my name put on some sort of list somewhere for making a purchase from a catalog like “Crazy Pete‘s Cheap Military Goods and Survivalist Supply.“ So, in your face, all you people who doubted my need for an old army helmet! IN YOUR FACE!! So, like I said, I’m not complaining, but I can’t help but think that my neighbor, who looks like Bombarter from one of the later Conan movies, shooting high-payload illegal fireworks off his porch right now is perhaps behaving a bit inappropriately. (and you’re not fooling anybody, Bombarter, acting all casual in your kitchen when the firework actually goes off, everybody sees you sneaking out of your screen door to light the fuse in the dark.) And it’s good that I’m not complaining, as my third floor apartment porch defenses (read: old broomstick and a couple of plastic cups covered by crinkled foil and filled with my whiz) are largely ineffectual against artillery attacks. But you would be mistaken to see my hesitation to join inter-apartment hostilities as any sign of weakness. You do not want to lay siege to my apartment, I assure you; those cups of whiz have been out there for a long time, and they sit in the sun for a good part of the day too! I’ve also watched Ernest Goes to Camp like a million times too. Do you remember that character Bombarter from the Conan movies? He was a really big warrior guy hired by the evil sorceress to accompany Conan, his retainers, and a sexy yet naïve princess to an eccentric wizard’s ice/crystal fortress. They were all supposed to steal some sort of magic horn from an eccentric wizard (who wasn’t really hurting anybody, I guess he just had a really cool horn collection or something - see where it got him? The dude got all stabbed by Conan and shit.) and bring it back to the evil sorceress to animate some sort of statute monster, but Bombarter’s mission, unbeknownst to Conan or his loyal retainers, was to kill Conan as soon as the horn was stolen. But Bombarter failed, and Conan made it back to the sorceress’ castle where he bit Bombarter’s ear off in a climactic battle before Conan stabbed the statute monster to death. In Conan’s defense, this all happened a long time ago, back when biting ears off was cool. Nowadays ear biting is discouraged in most fighting circles, sort of like how when we were little kids my Grandma would tell my brother and I that if we were going to fight we should just punch at each other like good and honest lumberjacks and not kick, because “kicking is for sissies.” But biting ears off is still big in nursing homes (and among a small population of very tiny high-school aged French foreign exchange students). A good pair of choppers is a serious weapon in nursing homes, I’ve read. You know the folk wisdom on how you shouldn’t pick a fight with a person missing his or her front teeth?* The nursing home corollary to the above rule, I would imagine, is that you don’t want to cut in the cafeteria line for pork cutlets in front of or have television remote control disputes with patients missing fingers and noses and ears and stuff. They’ll fuck you up. * I’ve only known one guy who you could tell didn’t have any front teeth. I worked with him at a restaurant and the folk saying is true as far as this guy was concerned. He’d lost his front teeth fighting in prison, which he told me was really important to do as soon as he got put in there, because then if he beat up a bunch of people, other inmates would want to be his friend. He’d go to jail almost every couple months for silly stuff. He called going to prison, “taking a vacation.” Brian 3:17 AM (0) comments Thursday, July 15, 2004 I should preface this all by saying that my dad is a really handy and crafty dude. For instance, when I was a kid we won the [Native American] Guides rubber-band powered paddle-boat contest (worst trophy ever! - it was a piece of blue-painted wood with “1rst Place“ written on it), and we were longstanding champions of the pinewood derby. When it came to the pinewood derby, my dad was all about spoke shavers, graphite-lubricated axle nails, the works. He had a system; he knew the pinewood derby science. I remember very vividly watching out the screen door the night before the race as my dad squatted on the back porch and melted lead with a propane torch into a secret compartment bored into the wood until the car was just a hair within maximum weight. I’m a little off topic now - but you see these Nascar drivers getting all the endorsements on TV and whatnot, the ones who are allowed to spray comically large bottles of champagne onto whoever they like, and everybody thinks it’s cool and appropriate? (in contrast - one of my friends throws one or two full pitchers of beer in a bar and everybody freaks out!) Being a winning race car driver sounds great, right? But let me tell you, the life of a winning racecar driver isn’t all it’s cracked up to be - it’s a lot of stress, you know, like behind the scenes. But don’t worry, our pinewood derby winning streak ended before all the glittering fame and success turned me into an Olson twin. Our last pinewood derby victory was just prior to me getting old enough to demand, and receive, creative control of the pinewood derby project - see, my dad‘s concerns about “aerodynamics“ were like this box, and my plans for a totally rad looking pinewood derby car just wouldn’t fit in this box - that wasn’t, like, what my vision of the pinewood derby was all about. I maintain however that the correlation between team Morris implementing my pinewood derby designs and our following series of heartbreaking losses is a mere coincidence. OK, so my point is, my dad’s a really handy and crafty dude. That said, sometimes he meets his match. One day years ago, I was at my parent’s house, I think for the summer, and I was drawn outside by the sound of frantic pounding. I found my dad below the garage in the side-yard by a drainage pipe. He had lost all composure and was covered in mud. His face was purple with rage and he was beating mercilessly on the drain pipe with a hammer. He’d pound for a while until he was exhausted, then rest, hands on his knees, breathing heavily. Then as soon as he had the energy, he’d start pounding on the drain pipe again. I didn’t ask for an explanation, but as soon as he saw me he told me what he was doing. Despite his obvious rage with the drainpipe, he explained himself very calmly and logically, which is what I thought made what he said funny. “I’m trying to unplug this pipe,” he told me. “I tried a sewer snake, and I tried looking into it with a flashlight. I tried some drain cleaner and I asked the guys at the hardware store for suggestions. I tried poking around inside it with a dowel, and I tried threading a cable through it. Nothing works. That’s why I’m hitting it with this hammer.” Then, having rested again while he explained himself, he turned back to the pipe and pounded on it, turning purple with rage again. So, that’s how I learned that there’s a time to hit stuff with a hammer. I spent a good portion of today trying to get into the freewheel on an old Schwinn I found in the trash so that I can disable the ratchet mechanism. It’s thwarted me at every turn. I tried hitting it with a hammer hours ago. It wasn’t as satisfying as hitting stuff with a hammer usually is. I think I’m going to heat it up really hot with a propane torch, there’s some plastic parts in there I think that will burn. I don’t think that will necessarily help me take it apart, but at this point I just want to teach it a lesson. Brian 2:15 AM (0) comments Wednesday, July 14, 2004 Here’s a poem I wrote. I originally wrote it to go along with a Polaroid snapshot I took, but I think the poem works without it. I hope you enjoy it. It’s about change, growing older, Luddite riots and machine smashing in post-WWII Europe, but most of all, my wang: where we’ll only eat chick peas (or garbanzo beans) each winter by the fire; come spring we’ll germinate the remaining kernels - the perfect dried miniature ram’s heads - in a shallow pan of water; placing together the tender green sprouts in our hand-tilled backyard furrows; on this rainy day. Brian 12:32 AM (0) comments Friday, July 02, 2004 I don’t know why there was a stripper’s pole on the Jerry Springer show today. I joined the program in progress so don‘t look to me for any explanations. What I did see is, at the urgings of the chanting crowd, a woman get of her chair and climb up on the pole and swing around. I’m pretty sure that Jerry was only joking when he suggested that the elderly woman in the audience who wanted to say something to “that whore in the blue shirt on the end” was going to be the next person on the pole. This old woman in the audience - she was really, really, old, and none too steady on her feet. I doubt she had the upper body strength to competently executive any really cool strippers’ pole moves. Maybe she could like, hump it or something, but that’s it. The crowd didn‘t care. Immediately, the crowd started chanting, “Go on the pole! Go on the pole!” at the old woman, who got this really horrified look on her face and started to take a few feeble and shaky steps toward the stage before Jerry explained to her that she really didn’t have to go on the pole, even though the crowd was chanting that she should. So I’ve been thinking about it. If Jerry’s going to take sides against the chanting of the audience, then the chants probably aren’t started by the producers. It makes me wonder: who starts those chants? Is it just some dude in the audience? It can’t be that easy because there’s a lot that goes into starting a chant. First, it’s got to be a good chant, with the right number of syllables. You know, one that’s got a ring to it. Second, it takes a lot of confidence to start a chant; the chant-starter has to chant by him or herself loud enough to start it up, but if the audience doesn’t start in, that would be really embarrassing for the would-be chant starter. Starting a good chant involves serious leadership. I won’t even try to tell you about all the horrible things that went wrong with the chant I tried to start today on the number 22 bus. Only a few people chanted with me, and the bus driver - he didn’t even consider doing what we were chanting for him to do. Needless to say, I’m never going to try to start a chant on the bus again. Sadly, it appears that I am lacking in the leadership skills required by chant-starting. I suppose I can still be the guy who shouts, “Yo Quiero Taco Bell!“ really loudly on the bus. They can’t take that away from me because it doesn‘t require audience participation. Yeah, “Yo Quiero Taco Bell” - it’s an oldie but a goodie. Brian 7:58 PM (0) comments

E-mail: Brian7Morris "at" hotmail.com

Blogs

Mandapants
farkleberries
Uranium City Records
The C.M. Sienko Foundation
Storyteller Musings
Solotarian Views
Lynne Wiora
Tek
Poker News Blog
Some Biscuits
Evil Eye Emporium
Niggling Doubts
Pressure Release
Sara as Mommy
runswithscissors
Defective Yeti
Afternoon Delight
trancejen
The Terrarium
Bird Nird
Slipperily
Tofu Hut
Stereo Gum

House of Noh!

Saturday, July 31, 2004

I’m moving tomorrow. After scrubbing for hours and hours today, my shower is finally clean. Also, to conform to our society’s restrictive conception of “cleanliness,” which is rooted in a lack of understanding about the interplay between the sacred and profane at best, or, at worst, is a calculated ploy to create excessive and unhealthy demand for environmentally unfriendly consumer cleaning products, I also had to clean out the brown stain under the waterline in my toilet bowl. My shower’s still not totally clean, but it’s pretty clean. I had a lot of work to do on it. My Dad and Sister were up just a few days ago helping me move, and my Dad got all uptight about the shower in its pre-”cleaned” state. But in his defense, he’s a baby-boomer, and when he grew up the conventional wisdom was that ecosystems could be completely controlled by humans with beneficial results - it was even considered desirable to eliminate certain species altogether, and under this logic various animal species such as the wolf, the sharp-shinned hawk, and many others were pushed almost to extinction. Today, however, people understand that a healthy ecosystem cannot be maintained under the iron fist of excessive human interference, rather, an ecosystem must be allowed to find its own balance, and in doing so, each and every species plays a critical role. But my Dad, all set in his ways, won’t listen to reason. He’s just all like, “there shouldn’t be ANY mold in your shower!” But now the shower is cleaned - shamefully, it might as well be a parking lot in there. But don’t worry, because there’s hope for the shower ecosystem: I couldn’t get all the mold out of the caulking and the grout looks really bad. But still, it’s pretty clean, I think it’s clean enough so that my Dad, having passed me on my way into the bathroom to take a shower as he was leaving the bathroom after taking his shower, wouldn’t pull back on the doorknob in an attempt to keep talking as I tried to pull it closed after listening to his anti-mold rhetoric for what seemed like forever. But the shower is still dirty enough so that I don’t believe he would step into it without wearing his flip-flops.

Brian 12:37 AM (0) comments

Sunday, July 25, 2004

I just found a new apartment. I’m pretty happy with it, but I’m a little dubious that all the gross pigeon poop is going to be cleaned out of the screen door before I move in. My landlord seems like an upstanding dude and I think he’s going to be a good landlord and all that, but he’s a bit hard of hearing. The conversation (and this is pretty typical of all our conversations) went something like this: Me: Before I move in, could you clean up all this pigeon poop out of the door? Him: What? Me: All these pigeon terds in the door, could you clean it up!? Him: What!? Me: (pointing) PIGEON FECES!! Him: No! No birds allowed! Me: (defeated) Okay. As I discovered when I looked through the place, my new apartment comes equipped with a truck stop style toilet. Me: Hey! Sweet toilet! Him: What? Me: (pointing at it) This is a truck stop toilet!!” Him: What!? Me: “TRUCK STOP TOILET!!” Him: “Street parking only!” Me: (defeated) Okay. I call it a truck stop toilet because it doesn’t have a water tank sitting above the bowl, instead, there’s just a pipe coming in from the wall with a Atari joystick kind of handle sticking out the side - the kind that germ-o-phones can flush with their foot (thereby transferring germs off the floor of the bathroom onto the toilet handle where other people who flush the toilet with their hand then transfer to the bathroom door handle - a germy, vicious (but perhaps not unjust) cycle which I hope there will be none of in my new apartment truck stop bathroom). When I first saw the truck stop toilet, I was elated. Because, hey, truck stop toilet! But shortly thereafter I was cast into doubt: did I really want to live in a truck stop? But then I was elated again, because I realized that just because I have a truck stop toilet in my place, that doesn’t necessarily mean my place is a truck stop - there’s no chicken wire over (all) the windows and, hopefully (but I‘m not making any promises), the amount of urine on the floor will never reach “puddle” proportions. Anyway, the announcement of my new truck stop toilet will come as good news for all who stayed at my place and encountered difficulties flushing due to what could be described as poor toilet tank maintenance on my part at my old apartment. But on that score, isn’t it laudable that I, like any good anarchist, did not enforce my power directive over the individuality of my toilet and instead came up with a method to flush the toilet occasionally, in harmony with the current state of the toilet? That’s what I used to be able to say before Chris S. found the new gasket on the top of my refrigerator that I was going to use to fix my toilet before I got distracted by something else. (Chris S. actually displays quite an aptitude for uncovering these sorts of this things - summers ago, when he visited me in my shack in Quincy Illinois, he refuted my claim of not having any hot water in the shower being a “zen training activity” as being, in fact, the result of lethargy on my part by carefully reading an ancient crinkled to-do list on my refrigerator: the box next to the tiny “call gas company” entry, sadly, having gone long unchecked.) Additionally in my defense, my old toilet was always operational, that is, if you followed the protocol and used the chopsticks (provided) to manipulate the gasket at the bottom of the tank. This process was fully explained during your orientation, along with the sources of some of the various piles of filth, what basins not to drink out of, what potted plants are not edible and which ones are *delicious*, and why - under no circumstance! - to EVER open my freezer door. Some people paid attention during orientation, but some people just laughed and joked around and ho-hummed and rolled their eyes - you know who you are - but you troublemakers, when you were stuck in the bathroom, just you and your stinky terd, you with no idea about what to do with the chopsticks in order to flush the toilet - those good students who paid attention during orientation: they were the ones laughing then!

Brian 2:06 AM (0) comments

Wednesday, July 21, 2004

This last weekend I learned another hippy secret. But before I begin, I need to clarify who I’m referring to when I say “hippy,” because whenever I refer to hippies as kind and gentle nurturers around my baby-boomers parents, they go off on how most hippies are the cruelest, most narrow-mindedest, meanest bastards ever and don‘t care about peace or love. I guess somewhere back in the 60’s my parents had a bad hippy experience. Regardless, the high esteem in which I hold hippies compels me to believe that the hippies of which my parents speak were pseudo-hippies or, at best, quasi-hippies, and the genuine hippy is still the sort of person supporting positive change in the world and understanding - the kind of person, if male, who would even wear a dress and is not ashamed to hug other men before they left on a voyage, even ones he just met, even when he has a semi-boner. (this was one of my first genuine hippy experiences, yes, it was a little alarming to me at the time, but he hugged a bunch of other hippy dudes and nobody made a big deal about it so I just played along. Nobody would have even known that the hippy had semi-boner but I think he was going commando under the sheer fabric of his dress. He should have worn really tight briefs under his dress, that‘s what I would have done.) So here’s the hippy secret: Dr. Bronner's soap. Even the paper packaging is designed to reduce pressure on forests. It doesn’t contain any animal products and the package even features a happy rabbit, jumping through a field of stars, freed from the horrors of cosmetological testing by Dr. Bronner’s steadfast stand against cruelty. Although, I must say that this soap is so fantastic that if I was a rabbit, I would VOLUNTEER to have it tested on me. Dr. Bronners also doesn’t engage in excessive profit taking, enabling him to use only plants grown under conditions that are safe to farm workers without making the soap cost prohibitive. Tingly clean Dr. Bronner’s All-One Hemp soap is not so much about destroying B.O., it’s more about working with B.O., harmoniously. You can make your B.O. smell like lemons, or eucalyptus, or peppermint, or a bunch of other scents. I’d recommend the peppermint - in combination with my B.O., if I’ve been out in the sun I smell like musky basil now; - Delicious! I think these wonderfully scented soaps are probably one of the secrets to the hippie’s sensuality - they’re a delight to all the senses and help one get back in touch with one’s minty B.O. body. And contrast this to the soaps many of us were raised on - those soaps that taught us that our bodies were things that had to be subdued and punished - soaps with names like Shield and Dial and Lava that were designed to put us at odds with ourselves and inspire us to hatred and war! Dr. Bronner’s utilizes hemp oil to help skin stay soft and healthy. What do the above named soaps do? They kill germs, it‘s all about killing. Kill, kill, kill! The only downside to Dr. Bronners is that I guess there’s a list of consumable goods and stuff that customs people use sometimes to identify who they think might be a smuggler. I’ve heard that Dr. Bronner’s soap is on that list, (I guess that customs is also in on this hippy secret) so it’s not the best product to take across borders or whatever, unless you are into butt searches. But in true hippy fashion, I refuse to make a value judgment on butt searches - if butt searches are your thing, I salute you!

Brian 1:16 AM (0) comments

Tuesday, July 20, 2004

I think it’s time for some more tattoos. I have a really rad idea for a new tattoo design for myself, across the first segments of the fingers on my right hand I’ll tattoo, in fancy calligraphic script, the letters, P, and O, and O, and P. On my left hand I’ll tattoo the letters, P, and E, and E, and E. This one’s better than what was my top pick, but is now my first runner-up: a stylized portrayal of the rusty old brown Dodge shorty van I owned in college above the caption, “Van’s Rule!”

Brian 12:47 AM (0) comments

Sunday, July 18, 2004

I’m not complaining, in fact, I revel in any opportunity to construe myself “under attack” and wear my old surplus military helmet. It proves that that it wasn’t a waste of $9.99 plus 2.39 shipping and handling plus having my name put on some sort of list somewhere for making a purchase from a catalog like “Crazy Pete‘s Cheap Military Goods and Survivalist Supply.“ So, in your face, all you people who doubted my need for an old army helmet! IN YOUR FACE!! So, like I said, I’m not complaining, but I can’t help but think that my neighbor, who looks like Bombarter from one of the later Conan movies, shooting high-payload illegal fireworks off his porch right now is perhaps behaving a bit inappropriately. (and you’re not fooling anybody, Bombarter, acting all casual in your kitchen when the firework actually goes off, everybody sees you sneaking out of your screen door to light the fuse in the dark.) And it’s good that I’m not complaining, as my third floor apartment porch defenses (read: old broomstick and a couple of plastic cups covered by crinkled foil and filled with my whiz) are largely ineffectual against artillery attacks. But you would be mistaken to see my hesitation to join inter-apartment hostilities as any sign of weakness. You do not want to lay siege to my apartment, I assure you; those cups of whiz have been out there for a long time, and they sit in the sun for a good part of the day too! I’ve also watched Ernest Goes to Camp like a million times too. Do you remember that character Bombarter from the Conan movies? He was a really big warrior guy hired by the evil sorceress to accompany Conan, his retainers, and a sexy yet naïve princess to an eccentric wizard’s ice/crystal fortress. They were all supposed to steal some sort of magic horn from an eccentric wizard (who wasn’t really hurting anybody, I guess he just had a really cool horn collection or something - see where it got him? The dude got all stabbed by Conan and shit.) and bring it back to the evil sorceress to animate some sort of statute monster, but Bombarter’s mission, unbeknownst to Conan or his loyal retainers, was to kill Conan as soon as the horn was stolen. But Bombarter failed, and Conan made it back to the sorceress’ castle where he bit Bombarter’s ear off in a climactic battle before Conan stabbed the statute monster to death. In Conan’s defense, this all happened a long time ago, back when biting ears off was cool. Nowadays ear biting is discouraged in most fighting circles, sort of like how when we were little kids my Grandma would tell my brother and I that if we were going to fight we should just punch at each other like good and honest lumberjacks and not kick, because “kicking is for sissies.” But biting ears off is still big in nursing homes (and among a small population of very tiny high-school aged French foreign exchange students). A good pair of choppers is a serious weapon in nursing homes, I’ve read. You know the folk wisdom on how you shouldn’t pick a fight with a person missing his or her front teeth?* The nursing home corollary to the above rule, I would imagine, is that you don’t want to cut in the cafeteria line for pork cutlets in front of or have television remote control disputes with patients missing fingers and noses and ears and stuff. They’ll fuck you up. * I’ve only known one guy who you could tell didn’t have any front teeth. I worked with him at a restaurant and the folk saying is true as far as this guy was concerned. He’d lost his front teeth fighting in prison, which he told me was really important to do as soon as he got put in there, because then if he beat up a bunch of people, other inmates would want to be his friend. He’d go to jail almost every couple months for silly stuff. He called going to prison, “taking a vacation.”

Brian 3:17 AM (0) comments

Thursday, July 15, 2004

I should preface this all by saying that my dad is a really handy and crafty dude. For instance, when I was a kid we won the [Native American] Guides rubber-band powered paddle-boat contest (worst trophy ever! - it was a piece of blue-painted wood with “1rst Place“ written on it), and we were longstanding champions of the pinewood derby. When it came to the pinewood derby, my dad was all about spoke shavers, graphite-lubricated axle nails, the works. He had a system; he knew the pinewood derby science. I remember very vividly watching out the screen door the night before the race as my dad squatted on the back porch and melted lead with a propane torch into a secret compartment bored into the wood until the car was just a hair within maximum weight. I’m a little off topic now - but you see these Nascar drivers getting all the endorsements on TV and whatnot, the ones who are allowed to spray comically large bottles of champagne onto whoever they like, and everybody thinks it’s cool and appropriate? (in contrast - one of my friends throws one or two full pitchers of beer in a bar and everybody freaks out!) Being a winning race car driver sounds great, right? But let me tell you, the life of a winning racecar driver isn’t all it’s cracked up to be - it’s a lot of stress, you know, like behind the scenes. But don’t worry, our pinewood derby winning streak ended before all the glittering fame and success turned me into an Olson twin. Our last pinewood derby victory was just prior to me getting old enough to demand, and receive, creative control of the pinewood derby project - see, my dad‘s concerns about “aerodynamics“ were like this box, and my plans for a totally rad looking pinewood derby car just wouldn’t fit in this box - that wasn’t, like, what my vision of the pinewood derby was all about. I maintain however that the correlation between team Morris implementing my pinewood derby designs and our following series of heartbreaking losses is a mere coincidence. OK, so my point is, my dad’s a really handy and crafty dude. That said, sometimes he meets his match. One day years ago, I was at my parent’s house, I think for the summer, and I was drawn outside by the sound of frantic pounding. I found my dad below the garage in the side-yard by a drainage pipe. He had lost all composure and was covered in mud. His face was purple with rage and he was beating mercilessly on the drain pipe with a hammer. He’d pound for a while until he was exhausted, then rest, hands on his knees, breathing heavily. Then as soon as he had the energy, he’d start pounding on the drain pipe again. I didn’t ask for an explanation, but as soon as he saw me he told me what he was doing. Despite his obvious rage with the drainpipe, he explained himself very calmly and logically, which is what I thought made what he said funny. “I’m trying to unplug this pipe,” he told me. “I tried a sewer snake, and I tried looking into it with a flashlight. I tried some drain cleaner and I asked the guys at the hardware store for suggestions. I tried poking around inside it with a dowel, and I tried threading a cable through it. Nothing works. That’s why I’m hitting it with this hammer.” Then, having rested again while he explained himself, he turned back to the pipe and pounded on it, turning purple with rage again. So, that’s how I learned that there’s a time to hit stuff with a hammer. I spent a good portion of today trying to get into the freewheel on an old Schwinn I found in the trash so that I can disable the ratchet mechanism. It’s thwarted me at every turn. I tried hitting it with a hammer hours ago. It wasn’t as satisfying as hitting stuff with a hammer usually is. I think I’m going to heat it up really hot with a propane torch, there’s some plastic parts in there I think that will burn. I don’t think that will necessarily help me take it apart, but at this point I just want to teach it a lesson.

Brian 2:15 AM (0) comments

Wednesday, July 14, 2004

Here’s a poem I wrote. I originally wrote it to go along with a Polaroid snapshot I took, but I think the poem works without it. I hope you enjoy it. It’s about change, growing older, Luddite riots and machine smashing in post-WWII Europe, but most of all, my wang: where we’ll only eat chick peas (or garbanzo beans) each winter by the fire; come spring we’ll germinate the remaining kernels - the perfect dried miniature ram’s heads - in a shallow pan of water; placing together the tender green sprouts in our hand-tilled backyard furrows; on this rainy day.

Brian 12:32 AM (0) comments

Friday, July 02, 2004

I don’t know why there was a stripper’s pole on the Jerry Springer show today. I joined the program in progress so don‘t look to me for any explanations. What I did see is, at the urgings of the chanting crowd, a woman get of her chair and climb up on the pole and swing around. I’m pretty sure that Jerry was only joking when he suggested that the elderly woman in the audience who wanted to say something to “that whore in the blue shirt on the end” was going to be the next person on the pole. This old woman in the audience - she was really, really, old, and none too steady on her feet. I doubt she had the upper body strength to competently executive any really cool strippers’ pole moves. Maybe she could like, hump it or something, but that’s it. The crowd didn‘t care. Immediately, the crowd started chanting, “Go on the pole! Go on the pole!” at the old woman, who got this really horrified look on her face and started to take a few feeble and shaky steps toward the stage before Jerry explained to her that she really didn’t have to go on the pole, even though the crowd was chanting that she should. So I’ve been thinking about it. If Jerry’s going to take sides against the chanting of the audience, then the chants probably aren’t started by the producers. It makes me wonder: who starts those chants? Is it just some dude in the audience? It can’t be that easy because there’s a lot that goes into starting a chant. First, it’s got to be a good chant, with the right number of syllables. You know, one that’s got a ring to it. Second, it takes a lot of confidence to start a chant; the chant-starter has to chant by him or herself loud enough to start it up, but if the audience doesn’t start in, that would be really embarrassing for the would-be chant starter. Starting a good chant involves serious leadership. I won’t even try to tell you about all the horrible things that went wrong with the chant I tried to start today on the number 22 bus. Only a few people chanted with me, and the bus driver - he didn’t even consider doing what we were chanting for him to do. Needless to say, I’m never going to try to start a chant on the bus again. Sadly, it appears that I am lacking in the leadership skills required by chant-starting. I suppose I can still be the guy who shouts, “Yo Quiero Taco Bell!“ really loudly on the bus. They can’t take that away from me because it doesn‘t require audience participation. Yeah, “Yo Quiero Taco Bell” - it’s an oldie but a goodie.

Brian 7:58 PM (0) comments

<< chicago blogs >>

Archives