More Greenwood

On our day off, after a wonderful thanksgiving with just the four of us, I convinced the wife to take a road trip to Greenwood, Mississippi. Her father spent some time there as a boy, then left as a teenager, moving to Atlanta to become a newspaper writer. We, the Ickers, live in rolling hill country in eastern Mississippi, but Greenwood, 90 miles west of us, is purely in the Delta, where the Tallahatchie and Yalobusha rivers join to become the Yazoo. It is cotton country, surrounded on all sides by cotton fields as far as the eye can see. I was a pure ding-bat tourist in Greenwood, wanting to snap pictures just about every time I turned a corner. There is much that I had to pass up and leave behind in Greenwood. But here are a few samples of what I brought back. I was told that the Robert Johnson grave site is the best of the three candidates for the actual burial site. Robert Johnson was not from Greenwood, I am told, but was poisoned and died there. There is a blues museum there but it was closed for the day. I can't wait to go back. I also can't wait to check out Clarksdale, Natchez, Vicksburg and Tupelo. As long as we can make trips like this I am a happy camper. The children are not yet old enough to enjoy these outings, but are finally old enough to tolerate them, as long as they have inflight movies and we buy them souvenirs.

Greenwood

So here we are at the Confederate War Memorial in Greenwood, Mississippi. If you look on that wall, you might find the name of my childrens' great grandfather. He was a veteran of World War One. If you read the inscription above the names (click on the picture for a larger version), you might come to understand why the names of WWI veterens are inscribed on the Confederate War Memorial. I was a little confused by phrases such as "the land they loved." Did these boys love France? And did we fight in WWI for four years? And what is this about 1898? Was that the Spanish-American war? I think it is nice that the people who built this memorial decided to honor the other veterans of the town at the time they constructed it, which would have been in the twenties I suppose, since my father-in-law remembers seeing this as a boy.

unexpurgated

The Unvarnished Truth:

I am tired of spinning yarns based on fantasy renditions and half-smirking fabulations of what might have been. I have decided that my long suffering readers deserve to have in their trembling hands the unexpurgated true facts regarding who I am and what I believe. I therefore resolve to henceforth present you with only the visceral marrow and bone of what actually IS present here beside me, an aging rebel, father, husband, and half-witted troubadour of the southern mesic plain. I present this in the tradition and honor of my literary idols, Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, H.L. Menkin, and George Bernard Shaw. So therefore let me make it clear that I do not indeed attend “Butt-whuppin’” class, but actually something called Judo. I go twice a week and come home sore and disoriented but always glad I did it. It is a good workout and a good way to meet people. To meet people actually, then grab them by their bathrobe and throw them into the planet. Let me add only this: if you suspect that your child might have a fever, and you want to take his temperature, and you can’t find the thermometer, I am telling you now, do not substitute the meat thermometer from the kitchen drawer. I know, I know, it seems like a logical and sensible play from this position. The meat thermometer is calibrated to read temps from 70 to 220, in increments of two degrees, so it would seem feasible that you could discern whether the chile has a temperature of 98 or a hundred or 102 (which is really what you are aiming for isn’t it? A hundred he gets an aspirin, 102, same thing, close attention, 104, ER) but I will tell you right now, when your wife comes home from a hard day at work and walks through that door and sees her little boy sitting on the couch with a meat thermometer in his mouth, well, there really isn’t much you can say at that point to make your pattern of thinking seem plausible at all. And, furthermore, if she says “he is a child, not a turkey,” do not, I repeat, DO NOT, say “well, he was acting kind of like a turkey earlier today...”
Whatever this has to do with the unexpurgated truth let me submit now for your approval another item: I heard a piece on NPR’s “Fresh Air” last Wednesday about a fellow who wrote a book about people who collect virtual items in multiple online role-playing games such as “World of Warfare” and sell them for real money. I have known about this since last summer when I read about it in Harper’s magazine and asked my sixteen-year-old nephew to explain it to me. See, to get some of these things, like to mine gold in the virtual mines and get a big bag of gold, or to take all of your hard-earned gold and buy a special magic sword, or to kill a lizard-man from the tunnels and take his skin, all these things take a lot of time and patience in the virtual world. If you don’t have the time, say you work a normal job, and you enjoy the game but your friends are moving on, getting rich and buying houses and castles, and you want to stay caught up, you can buy some of these virtual goods on ebay and maintain your status without having to go through the tedium of “legitimately” “earning” it in the virtual world. but it gets better. The guy told a story about one dude buying somebody's character account for about five hundred dollars. He found that this character had all this virtual stuff that was pretty valuable, so he sold it piece by piece on ebay. The last piece was a three-story tower that the character had built on some ocean front property. He sold this tower for $750 actual US dollars to a man who drives a Wonder bread delivery truck in Oklahoma. The writer tracked down this fellow and pointed out that he was not a wealthy man, why would he spend so much money on a virtual tower? His response was something like, well, I played this game for a long time, I used to roam around these neighborhoods a lot, I would look at these amazing houses and wonder what kind of people lived there, and I always wanted one of my own...
OK OK it gets weirder. Once you understand that these virtual goods can be sold for real money, the next logical step is to open a sweat shop in a third-world country somewhere and hire a bunch of young boys to create the accounts and play the games all day. That is what the Harper’s piece was about last summer. In Harper’s, the presentation was rather dreary: the workers do the same thing over and over, go into the same cave, kill the same monster, and win the same treasure. The Fresh Air piece highlighted a factory in Mexico where the workers actually collaborated and strategized together at times to come up with ways to kill the monsters. They worked 12-hour shifts and got one day off a month, and were glad to have the job. The factory owner said that he could get about three dollars worth of booty from each worker per hour, and was paying them a dollar an hour, so it was a pretty good investment. Every day, the workers got two hours of free time before bedding down in their plywood bunks for the night. What did they do to unwind? What do you think: play World of Warfare.
But it gets better. And here is where the real ontological confrontation comes into play. There is a guy in the US who does not need peasant workers. He has written programs that can do the simple tasks such as mine gold and can fool the game administrators into thinking that real players are there. He has fifty computers in his home that play WOW all day long and at the end of the day he collects all the booty and sells it on ebay. He makes about 80K a year on the side doing this. Of course, the administrators have started to catch on to this. So occasionally a game administrator will appear to one of these robots as a character in the game and ask them questions to determine if they are in fact “real.” At this point, the opportunistic scammer has programed his ‘bots to say “Got to run to the bathroom!” and log off. But when that got to be too obvious, he programmed the bots to call him on his cell phone. The game administrators are asking the robot a question like “what color is the sword I am holding?” much like we have word identification here on blogger to thwart ‘bot-generated comments. The entrepreneur gets a beep on his cell phone as he is sitting down to dinner, runs over to his bank of computers and types in “green! Just me over here playing the game!” What blows my mind is that here we have an instance of a real person, the administrator, materializing so to speak out of this virtual world, the World of Warfare, to confront a fake gamer, who is “playing” the game in order to ultimately generate real money for his real overlord, who jumps in a the last minute with a comment to keep the lie from being exposed. Two thousand years ago Pilate asked Jesus “what is truth?” From Plato’s caves to the ore-laden tunnels of virtual reality, the answers echo into a deepening and inchoate continuum...

SANDANISTA!

The third rock cranks it down on the diurnal spit, the traffic flows by the window across Stone boulevard, through the circle from Black Jack onto Oktoc, the no-nothing rebels on the local talk radio pitch and roll with a long overdue and welcome tide. I watch the election returns with bemused detatchment while the lady who shares my bed tunes in with insomnial intensity. Seeing Daniel Ortega emerge victorious warms the heart and brings back memories. I wish I could say that the Clash reunion tour cannot be far behind. I remember the shanties on the quad in front of Wilson Library, the Berlin Wall erected by the College Republicans in response, the Trendinista Dale McKinly waiting tables at the Carolina Coffee Shop, where I was the dishwasher, and how it pissed me off that he treated me with the same disdain held by all the other waitstaff. Did he not realize that, as a proper communist, he owed the lowliest cog in Byron’s capitalist venture his due respect? Bereft as we are now of the spectre of his Russian overlords, Ortega will never again rise to the prominance he once held in the lefty imagination or any colonial powers to come. I note a slight spasm of regret as I recall my behavior when I attented a speech by contra leader Aldofo Colero at Duke University back in those heady times. In my own defense, I was an impressionable lad, and had been told that Colero was essentially the devil himself. Most of us in the audience wore black, and stood through the entire lecture with our backs to the speaker. I’m still down with wearing black, but feel now that those who take the stage to make their case, no matter how obscene, are due some measure of respect, just as was I at the Coffee Shop earnestly engaged with my copy of Autobiography of A Yogi as the dishes piled up. Riding home with some hippies I recall someone pointing out that Calero’s aura was pink! Damn! Having spent the entire time with my back to him, I had not even bothered really to check out his aura!
So what am I up to? Registering for classes, doing laundry, buying groceries, making castles with blocks. Yes I am going to be taking some classes next semester, so soon you will hear all about my new life as college boy. I can’t wait to be part of campus life again. I fully anticipate taking over the administration building at some point, chaining myself to the president’s leg, chanting “Si se puede!” from an upper story window...Going to art openings, submitting my hackneyed doggerel to the literary magazine, stealing the Ole Miss mascot, which I believe is a young rebel soldier, sixteen years of age or so, and painting him maroon before the big game...

No news here

...but I have to keep posting or you people will lose interest and stopo hitting my site on the internets. You know I plan to build this thing up to be one of the most popular sites, like The Google. Well, lemme see, what has the ol Icker been up to...Well, last night I whipped up a big ol chicken enchilada cassarole, invited the neighbors over and we all chowed down before taking the kids trick-or-treating. We had four kids in all, a pirate, a cowgirl, one of mine as Darth Vader, another one of mine wore his favorite pajamas which have a picture of a gecko and the words GECKO NATION on them. So he went as Gecko Nation. We went to the historic Greensboro Street neighborhood, where the houses are larger than most in the downtown and they have interesting, gingerbread-like details, even a wrought-iron fence here and there. Sadly, only about one quarter of the houses even had lights on. But the ones we found were friendly enough. The kids came home with a lot of candy. Before that, over the weekend, we had dinner at a faculty member's house. Her teenage son was gone, but my kids went into his room and found an arsenal of guns of all shapes and sizes. Most were either toys or dummy guns used for military training, but there were also a few pellet and bb style guns, and a paint gun. Our host said that she had child-proofed everything, but how can you be sure? The food was good and we got out with all our fingers and eyes. I went to iTunes to download "Angel From Montgomery," you know, I did not even realize that was a John Prine song! I am such a doofus. So I will try to get that one down. I am working on my definative list. When I get back in the game I will do a whole set of just covers. How you like them apples. I have "Gimme A Pigfoot" on my iPod already, so if I can figure out the chords I'll do that one too. One thing about Halloween, it's one night I am glad that I am not back in Chapel Hill. The other day I watched a local hunting show on TV where the panel was having a discussion about why is it that in Mississippi it is illegal to hunt over bait. The guys were pretty upset about this. In Texas, Arkansas and Alabama, you can throw corn out on the ground, then sit and wait for something to come along to eat, then move in for the kill. But here you get a ticket for that! I was with them, man. Makes no sense to me. As an environmentalist and amateur ecologist, I don't like the idea of corn or other forage plants being propagated unrestricted in the wild, but you should be able to sit under a white oak tree ankle-deep in acorns if you feel like that's a fair hunt, for goodness sake...

I remember the sixties

My sister and I in our winter coats back in about 1970 or so.

Family Fun Day at the Noxubee Wildlife Refuge

I took the kids to Family Fun Day at the Noxubee Wildlife Refuge this morning. It was foggy and a little chilly. This man had brought a live alligator as part of an exhibit from the Mississippi Museum of Natural History in Jackson. We were encouraged to touch him. He was very calm in the cold air. Can you guess which of my kids kept touching the alligators face? Even after we told him not too...Anyway, we met some friends there and had a good time. We got to try archery and hatchet throwing, we saw a great display of insects, butterflies and moths, we shot at computer animated prairie dogs and quail moving on a big screen with laser guns, ate free hot dogs, listened to live blue grass, and went for a canoe ride around the lake. Now we are back home and the ROTC people have set up army games in the soccer field behind our house. They are running around, hiding behind sheets of plywood, lobbing dummy grenades at spooky black humanoid forms, while men with clipboards chase after them. I had judo last night and learned the hip throw. We started out practicing rolls. Over the course of the hour, I must have either rolled or been thrown in a pinwheel motion threw the air at least a hundred times. And since class is at 6:30, I had been seriously contemplating my usual cocktail before class. Boy am I glad my lover talked me out of that. I came home sore, nauseous and a little disoriented. But it could have been much worse.

Rockin

Played a gig at Bin 612 in the Cotten District with a new friend I have made here in town. Last Friday we jammed in a yurt with a fire pit a few doors down. Buddy is good on lead and can play harp. He has a number of clever tunes in the tradition of Billy Sugarfix or Magnetic Fields, but like those bands I have a great deal of trouble evaluating such tunes in my field of reference. They hold no content for me. Pal O' Mine is more in the tradition of early Dylan and The Grateful Dead. In Chapel Hill, covers were forbidden. In Starkville, anytime anyone stands up and starts strumming a guitar a vacant-eyed frat boy with hippie hair will ask, you know any John Prine? You know any James Taylor? Anyways, we stuck to our original material, more or less. Played some gospel in the E.C. and Orna Ball vein. We have a regular Monday night gig now. Bin 612 is a very nice bar, with patio seating right on the street, nice interior, and they serve food. We don't get paid, but we can drink free. We have a twenty-five dollar limit on the bar tab. This is a good thing. The bars close at midnight here, which surprised me. That is a very good thing as well. I am going to have to learn some covers to keep this crowd engaged. It is an entirely student crowd, unlike Chapel Hill. There is no slacker subculture here feeding off the fat of the land. And most of these students are molecular biology or aeronautical engineering students. Please suggest some covers that are not too obvious and haven't been beat to death by evey busker from Tokyo to Innsbruck to Cambridge and Aspen. I'm thinkin to placate the Dylan fans "Meet Me In The Morning." from "Blood on The Tracks," if they ask for Neil Young I'm going with "Out of My Mind," by Buffalo Springfield. Absolutely no Taylor, Buffet or Dead will come from this troubadour. I am feeling nauseous just thinking about it. Please nobody tell Kevin or Crow or Shawn that I am even considering this. How about "Sitting in Limbo?" could I pull that off? I heard a friend play "Redemption Song" once and thought that it was very pretty. But the idea of drunk college kids grooving to that just about makes me keel over. Am I just arrogant? Do I need to just get over it? I could have some fun with "I'm Not Like Everybody Else," or "Your Gonna Miss Me," or maybe "Primitive," but this crowd won't even recognize that shit. Is there a Skynard song I could do and not throw up? I have always liked "Gimme Back My Bullets," and you don't hear that one that often. My set list last night:
War
Omaha
Data
Bird
Golden Green
Schoenste Tag (this is a cover of a Tocotronic song, but doesn't count due to extreme obscurity.)
Hundred Ways to Roll (none of yu'uns have heard this'n}

With the T-man I did:
Trials, Troubles, Tribulations (An E. C. and Orna Ball Tune)
Full Throttle
Radical
2nd Coming
One Day (E.C. and Orna again)

Somebody at one of the tables said there was a band there recently called the "Waco Dead." In the confusion I thought he said "Grateful Dead," and I tried to explain that, while I had a lot of respect for the Dead, I couldn't really listen to them or play that kind of music or any kind of jam music for that matter. No no, he said, this was a band called the Waco Dead, he siad. The Waco Dead? I replied. Now perhaps I would listen to that.

I suppose in the end I will have to work this out for myself, just like everything else. But I would appreciate some suggestions. If anyone wants to check us out this Monday we will be at Bin 612 in the Cotten District in Starkville Mississippi. Come on down. Ask to hear some Hank. Ask for Phish. I'm used to it. The question is, do I give in? And to what degree?

Lets get caught up

We did manage to get to the Tombigbee National Forest on Saturday. It was about an hour's drive to Choctow Lake, where we found a beach for swimming. It was a beutiful day and we ate our snacks and watched the boys splash around. Sunday we took it easy, did some housework, watched some football. On Monday I took the kids to Memphis to check out the zoo. We took the scenic route up, taking highway 9 to Oxford to have a snack under the trees on the courthouse square where Luster drove the wrong way around the monument in the final scene of The Sound and The Fury. We hopped back into The Climax of Blue Power and rode on up to Memphis, arriving at the zoo at one. Here you see the children in an upbeat mood in front of a gazelle, then later with the pandas in a faux Chinese palace they were pretty worn out. We left at 5:30 and got home at 8:30. I did not know it took that long to drive to Memphis, but I am glad we did it. The zoo was impressive, it included a herpetarium, an aquarium, polar bears, black bears, a tropical bird house with a walk-in bird habitat and much more. We were not able to see it all.

Check Out Darth Maul's Big Brown Eyes:

Here is a close-up of the evil sith which I took with the regular camera.

more fun with the camera phone

Last weekend I painted STGs face to look like Darth Maul. My wife snapped this with her camera phone. We went to visit some neighbors. We all had a good time. We watched Phantom Menace a few times. This weekend we are watching Attack of the Clones. When not watching these movies, the boys run around the house having light saber battles. They do this on playgrounds as well. Occaissionally they will get some other kid to join them. Usually they just get nervous stares. Hopefully we will get to roll down to the Tombigbee National Forest this afternoon. We may even camp out.

what fun

Another shot with my phone camera. I have a son in preschool and I went with his class one day to visit the campus police station. Each kid got to get in the patrol car and press the siren button. So here is my little one getting ready to hit it. I think the resolution is pretty good for a cell phone. It is a Nokia 6235i. More coming!

the things you kids are into these days...

I am learning how to use my phone camera. Snapped this in the grocery store. Interesting packaging and advertising campaign here. I guess this is being marketed to suburban tweens who get bored easily with the same old microwave pizza day in and day out. If you look at the picture, it looks like pizza with pop rocks on it. For those of you under 35, pop rocks were these things we bought as kids back in the seventies. They looked like ordinary rocks that any kid would want to eat, but when you put them in your mouth they fizzed up like crazy. If you put a whole bunch of them in your mouth, like an entire package, and every kid tried this at one time, it was like, hang on for the ride of your life. This package has the word "fizz" on it, so there must be some sort of carbonation sprinkling in there somewhere. I was intrigued right away by the product name: Mess with your mouth. Now, that just sounds gross to me. Call me an old fuddy, but I don't want my mouth messed with really, and I am not sure we should encourage that sort of compulsion in our young people. I wonder what kind of debates circulated around the table when the advertising committee came up with this one. Did it just fly through? Or were there reservations? It reminds me of the whole Mr. Whipple and "Don't squeeze the Charmin," campaign, again, from back in the seventies. That was a strange one, and very popular. Mr. Whipple seemed to occupy a position of some authority in the store. Why couldn't he just take a couple of rolls into the back and squeeze them in peace? And the housewives walking by imploring him to resist this ungodly desire, did they know something we don't about the darker paths awaiting those who fall into such temptations? As I look back on it, I hope that today Mr. Whipple has found peace and that those who feed children pizza with pop rocks on it have what it takes to bring the youngsters back from the brink when the buzz wears off and they want to crank it up a notch.

cool and wet this morning

I am stiff and sore today from my butt-whuppin class on Friday and further workouts on Saturday. At the playground, I have developed a practice of seeing how many chin-ups I can do. Yesterday I did two reps of eight each, then two reps of six each. I don't push or strain, just do what feels right. I stood on my hands for a while with my toes holding against the chin-up bar. So I will take it easy today. Spent most of yesterday afternoon on a ladder pruning up a top-heavy hedge of yaupon hollies. These are 30 foot tall trees with so much top-growth that the branches touch the ground in some places. I took a lot of weight and sag out of the trees and hung four bird feeders which you can no see from the house. There is a big pile of limbs out at the street. Hope the landlord doesn't mind. So today I will take it easy. Maybe put the kids in the truck and go down to the Tombigbee National Forest so Mrs. Icker can write.
Saw a good German film Friday night called "Im Juli/In July." Sweet and clever romance with a sort of "Bonnie and Clyde" motif. Interesting scenery, they go from Berlin to Bavaria, then to Budapest and Istanbul. Good date movie. OK for the kids, unless you have a problem with your kids seeing people smoke marijuana in the movies. My six-year-old loves to watch German movies with us. He watched "Comedian Harmonists" last week, and he liked "Beyond Silence" a lot. We didn't let him watch "Downfall," which was good because watching Frau Goebbles murder her children was disturbing even for me. When he was four he loved watching that Russian movie that was filmed in the Hermitage Museum, famous for being one (actually two, there is a splice where the camera zooms in on a painting, but you hardly notice) incredibly long tracking shot. I forget the title, but it is a dream, wherein the dreamer is lead by a mysterious figure through both the museum and the history of pre-Communist Russia. We were intrigued by STG's fascination with it. He doesn't understand Russian or German, but only rarely does he ask for the translation. Part of it is, he just really likes movies, and doesn't particularly need the dialogue. Last night we watched Pirates of The Carribean: Black Pearl. We had all seen it a few times before, but still got a kick out of it.
Got my Oxford American Summer Music Issue Friday. Nice to see Katharine Whalen in the magazine and on the CD. Terrible, terrible song, but she sings it so pretty. I also am digging "Three Is A Magic Number" by Bob Dorough. This came along just in time, as you know, my iPod was getting a little stale. I don't understand how they consider Richard Hell's "Blank Generation" to be southern music. Maybe because he moved to Kentucky and became a writer. Speaking of music, does anyone else get the feeling that Pink's "Dear Mr. President" was written by Jack Black?

Martial Arts

I have begun my training at the Starkville Acadamy of Martial Arts (SAMA). I found the Acadamy while driving around downtown and was immediately attracted to the large black and white storefront sign, which featured a man in a white bathrobe and black belt flying through the air with one foot extended. I’ve always wanted to be able to do that, so I went inside.
It turns out that the martial arts instructor was a well-known and well-respected member of the international martial arts community, with over forty years of experience teaching Judo, Taekwando, Ju-Jitsu and probably a few other disciplines. Unfortunately, this gentleman retired after my first lesson, and the new instructor was a rather portly and bearded gentleman who went by the name of Luther Murrel. He has decided to take the class in a new direction. He spends the first half of class teaching the traditional grappling, throwing, kicking and punching moves, but during the second half he mixes in a lot of more highly applicaple, “real world” knowledge, which he calls “old fashioned butt-whuppin.”
So last week we spent a lot of time on pool cues. I have decided to share some of the knowledge here as it could save your life. If your adversary picks up a pool cue, no need to panic. Usually this attack can be neutralized fairly quickly with a few simple moves. First of all, if there are any balls left on the table, grab one and throw it. Go for the head, and put some muscle in it. Think major-league pitcher here. If no balls are left, the cue ball can usually be located in its little pocket on one end of the table. Keep the table between you and your adversary as you maneuver around to the pocket. If throwing the ball fails, pick up a pool cue yourself. Remember to hold the stick upside down. You are not going to use it to shoot pool, after all, but to crack heads, so you want the heavy end up.
The week before we practiced with beer bottles. Master Murrel emphasized that smashing the beer bottle on the edge of the bar so as to improvise a sort of cutting blade, while a dramatic gesture, is not very practical, and is really only done in movies. You stand a good chance of then holding the neck of a bottle that has disentegrated completely and is of no use in a fracas. The goal with the beer bottle is much like that of launching the billiard balls. You want to stop the attack with one good lick. Once you have come in to close contact, if the lick has not achieved results, discard the beer bottle immediately and rely on your traditional grappling and throwing moves.
Next week we are going out to the parking lot to work on various things you can do with a handful of gravel.

mushroom, flower, monster

Some of my boy's graphic art done in an appleworks document creation program. Maybe I'm a biased, proud papa, but I think it's pretty good. Is it good despite of, or because of, the fact that he is not yet seven?

alien monster

My six-year-old has learned how to create painings in appleworks. He has his own documents folder he saves them in. I had to save this as a gif for blogger to take it. If it looks good I will put up a couple more.

boys

I got nothing to say. Here's a cute picture though. This is not my kid, and I did not take the picture. You can find many more like it at this page:

http://ebcrennie.googlepages.com/boys

what's on your iPod?

What I've been listening to lately, as if anyone cares. Got the latest Tom Petty, "Traveling Companion," from iTunes just before leaving CH. Good, solid album, especially the first track, "Saving Grace." I actually bought the video for that one. I really like it, simple black and white shots of the band playing the song with their shadows cast upon a white screen behind them. Middle aged rockers doing it right and looking like guys you would want to hang out with. Tom Petty is going to be one of the few big name rockers to grow old gracefully, like Neil Young and Johnny Cash. Speaking of Cash, his cover of Blind Boys of Alabama's (though they probably weren't the first, but the only version I know, from "Spirit of the Century," a must-have as far as I'm concerned) "Run on for a Long Time," has been in heavy rotation at the college station here. Great percussion, and some sort of ringing sound, while John intones "well goodness gracious let me give you the news..." I usually have to pull the car over and just soak this one in. When I heard that he was nearly blind and in a wheel chair when the album was recorded, I thought, what a shame, if that album sucks it will mess up his legacy. I listened to a few samples on iTunes and was unimpressed. But "Run on" carries some weight and grace, and though he slurs it a little, he conveys strength from a man looking directly into cosmic time.
On a lighter note, I downloaded and enjoyed "Morning Wood," by the Rugburns. This is an album that I have wanted since I first heard "My Boyfriend" back in the mid-nineties. It's college-age humor, but still funny to me. The songs are melody-strong and well-put together. A little too much so, actually, since a few of them, such as "Pit Bull," "Hitchhiker Joe," and "Holliston Street," got stuck in my head for a few evenings one week and just about drove me crazy. Everyone should try the Rugburns at least once. If you want to start with the best, just treat yourself to a taste, start with "My Boyfriend" and "Me and Eddie Vedder."
Generally speaking, I am bored with the 2713 songs on my iPod, and the cds are all packed away. I have a Smithsonian recording of black banjo players of North Carolina on the way from Amazon, so that will create some excitement. I have also been working on appreciating silence, which is altogether different here than it was back home. It gets REALLY quiet here, especially out in the wilderness, with no highways or airports nearby.

Optimist Club

I have noticed in the newspaper and the list of civic organizations given to us by the welcome lady, that there is an Optimist Club here in Starkville. No Alcoholics Anonymous (for that, you have to drive to Columbus), but there is an Optimist Club. What is that? A bunch of Polly Annas sitting around saying "you know, I think we have a good chance of solving this global warming thing," and "I don't want to jinx it, but I think the Iraqis are really close to establishing law and order on their own," and "Baby Suri is just so lucky to have Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes as her mommy and daddy!" My first instinct upon hearing about the Optimist Club was to found a Pessimist Club. Sort of to give people an alternative, you know, to the Optimist Club. But then I thought, no one would show up to that. It'll never get off the ground. It just WOULDN'T WORK.

zapperese

English word: backpack
Zapper's word: packback
English word: roly poly
Zapper's word: poly roly
English word: walkie-talkie
Zapper's word: talkie-talkie

Tailgate party

Here are some images of the lovely tailgate party hosted by the MSU College of Arts and Sciences. I was very impressed with the whole shebang and wondered if these sorts of parties are hosted by other colleges at other universities. There was plenty of food, live music and lots of friendly people.
When we walked up to the tent this guy was playing "Angel From Montgomery," which he followed with JT's ubiquitous "How Sweet It Is," and I thought "this is going to be nothing but frat party standards," but he mixed in some rather obscure tunes, such as the Holy Modal Rounders' "Mr. Spaceman," and the Beatles' "Rocky Racoon." He also played "Orange Blossom Special," the samba-lounge version of "Layla," "Horse with No Name," and "Steal My Kisses." Check out the floral display, really top notch:The boys had Bulldog shirts and pom-poms and closely observed a bean-bag tossing game being played at a neighboring tent. I am so glad that my wife works for a university that takes such good care of it's faculty on game day. At faculty orientation we received two tickets to the game, and it was eventually decided that I would take Bugs. We sat close to the field in a fenced off area. Behind us the students were crammed shoulder to shoulder. Although cowbells have been banned by the South Eastern Conference, and the stadium has a sign prohibiting "artificial noisemakers," the racket from hundreds of cowbells during the game was horrendous even in the open air. In the concourse area below it was thrilling. We were directly behind the opposing team, the University of South Carolina Gamecocks, who, as you can see, have the same team colors as MSU:This caused some confusion for the MSU offense, which scored no points and at one point threw the ball right into coverage. MSU picked off a pass early in the game as well, so perhaps the advantage was equal.

Hi Folks...

From now on, I'm getting all my bibles from Bible Factory Outlet. Bible Factory Outlet beats the competition every time because they deal in volume, direct from the factory! Friends, if you buy a bible from anyone else YOU WILL PAY TOO MUCH!!!

Muff Doctor

Most of you who know me have seen me out on the town wearing my foxfur stole, white pants and leather boots with foxfur cuffs. What nobody knows is that I have a matching foxfur muff to go with the outfit. I never took along the muff because the satin lining is in tatters and there is an unsightly cheese-whiz stain in the fur. Imagine my delight when I found the Muff Doctor! I thought he would be like the Furniture Doctor in Carrboro, NC, and that he would be able to fix my muff good as new. I was looking forward to bringing the muff to a football game to keep my hands warm on some chilly autumn night, perhaps the Mississippi State/Arkansas game on November 18th. That’s gonna be a good one! There will definitely be some head-crackin’ at that one! Imagine my disappointment when the Muff Doctor, a 250 pound greasy gentleman with a very hairy neck and a cigar stub in his mouth, simply looked at my muff, shook his head and walked away. At first I thought that my muff was simply beyond repair. Then I realised, upon looking around the Muff Doctor’s facility, that he didn’t actually repair muffs at all! Or maybe there is some other kind of muff. Maybe the word muff means more than one thing. So when I got home I looked it up in the dictionary. Oh my goodness! I didn’t know it meant that! Oh I am so embarassed…

Ho Hum

Nice sunday afternoon. Walked with the family up to the Collis Wade Depot, which is the student bookstore. An impressive example of corporate insinuation into the life of a public university. A complete Barns and Noble and Starbucks along with a complete textbooks section, atheletic apparal with MSU logos, souvineers and school supplies all under one massive roof and right next to the football stadium. We got some books for the kids, some colored pens and Bulldog T-shirts. We have two tickets to the MSU vs. U of South Carolina game this thursday. They came with Mrs. Tobit's new faculty welcome package. We got the kids some pom poms too. I like the school colors, maroon and white. I look good in maroon.
Saturday we drove out to the Natchez Trace parkway and drove around. We found a spot that seemed to say that you could walk along the original Natchez trace. We took the trail into the woods and after about a hundred feet it just came to a dead end. WTF? We blazed a new trail to a country road and ambled back around to the car. Then we drove to Jeff Busby campground and up to a bluff with an overlook. I think I read there that it was one of the highest points in Mississippi, if not the highest. Something like 610 feet above sea level. Back in town we had a pretty nice meal at a restaurant in the Cotten District. The kids behaved well. They have been very good this whole time. The weather has cooled off considerably. Today's high was 93.

Unloading

Finally our stuff arrives. Our only complaint was that none of the hardware needed to reassemble the furniture was saved. Fortunately I packed my extensive collection of random screws. Also, we inquired about some wooden pegs needed to reassemble an antique table that were missing and the company, All My Sons, never called back, even though they said they would. I called twice, and both times they said they would call back in the next day or two and let me know what they knew, but they never did. We eventually found the missing pegs.

First day in Mississippi

Nice house, big rooms, hardwood floors. No landscaping.

Fill er up

This is why you pay movers. Lorenzo packed this truck full to the top. I was impressed.

Packing

We have a lot of stuff. It all fit. Barely.

I'm OK

We arrived in Starkville late in the night of Thursday, August 3rd. We let the cats loose, pumped up the air mattress for the sleeping children, unpacked the coolers and mixed our cocktails. We explored the empty house and were delighted with the hardwood floors, high ceilings and large rooms. The real treat was finding a basement garage. We got very little sleep as we had driven all the previous day and found it difficult to unwind. That and Spooky wandering from room to room howling. The next morning the kids were up at 6:30 their time, of course it was really 5:30 since we had crossed into central time. We got up and had some breakfast and waited for the movers, who had said they would arrive at eight. After a long morning with two excited boys in a house with no furniture the movers arrived at noon. It was already a hundred degrees outside. They had had trouble finding the place because of many roads on campus being closed. Well, we had the same trouble at eleven o’clock the night before, but we had made it. Oh well. We got everything unloaded by 5:30 and sent them on their merry way.

After two days of unpacking we decided to take a Sunday drive down to the Noxubee wildlife refuge. We walked on a boardwalk through a cypress swamp. We saw some interesting large wading birds. I couldn’t tell you what they were. We walked through a large forest of old pines that was managed by controlled burns and was a cockaded woodpecker habitat. We did not see any cockaded woodpeckers. A few days later we read in the newspaper that one of the two lakes in the swamp is going to be drained in an attempt to eradicate a highly invasive aquatic plant known as hydrilla.

Starkville is a small, friendly town about the size of Hillsborough or Pittsboro but with no sprawl to speak of. There is a brand new bypass on one side and three large factories coming soon. I am told that there will be a building boom in the next few years. Also, in a town with a university that offers masters degrees in landscape design and landscape architecture, there are no landscape designers in Starkville. Actually, I looked in the phone book and found exactly one. Everyone who hears that I can do design work tells me that this town needs it. The landscapers do the designs themselves on a sheet of paper pretty much on the spot, from what I hear. “And I am worried that it is the same old thing they just did somewhere else. I want something special,” said the guy who sold me my car insurance policy. I could do so much for these people. But I am thinking of going in another direction. I am taking a sabbatical from the world of landscaping.

Today I got my Mississippi driver’s license and Mississippi tags for the Golf. A very proud moment for me. I have much more to do. Better get to it.

The Climax of Blue Power

Here is our new wheels. We sold just about everything we own that has wheels on it so we could pay cash for this. It almost came out even. Let's just say I am not the world's toughest negotiator. If I had a job selling stuff that involved haggling at all I would be fired after about a day. But it is all over now, everything is gone, and all we have to do now is pack what is left and enjoy the ride.

Countdown

We are very busy packing and unloading stuff. It's hard sometimes trying to figure out what to give away and what to try to sell. Like the leather sofa. Surely somebody will give us money for it. But really, we just want it to disappear. It would be really good to get these two trucks out of here. I have sold the trailer and the bobcat and all the extra guitars.
Our friends from Germany are staying with us. I spent a pleasant day hanging out with my son Zapper and a little German boy. J chatted away the hours, not caring that Jasper did not understand a word he said, and I very little.
Zapper is still insisting on scary stories. And not from a book either. Once I tried to read him a book and he tore it from my hands and threw it across the room. "You make up a scary story!" he hollered. One night I tried to convince him "The Pokey Little Puppy" was a scary story. It is not! he said. It's not scary! But look here, I said, they looked back and the puppy was gone! That's pretty scary! When they crawled under the fence, there were five of them, now there's only four! WOOOOO!
Zapper wasn't buying it. He often will give me the subject. There's a ghost, in a castle, he said, NOW TELL THE STORY! The other day he said there's a head, floating in the sky, with no body, NOW TELL THE STORY!

Tons to do

Well I am back in town now, obviously, vacation is over, and there is much to do. The good news is that while we were on vacation we got an offer on the house, and we are now under contract, so hopefully that will all go well. The buyers have a few odd requests that I am doing my best to accomodate. F'rinstance, they want me to remove the graveyard of cockfighting champions in the back yard. I am not sure where to inter the remains of these legendary roosters. The contract does not specify, so I'm thinking...how 'bout the front yard? Also they want me to finish my series of totemic sculptures in honor of the giants of the Harlem renaissance. I am finally satisfied with the Zora Neal Hurston mosaic, but I am having touble getting the arch of Josephine Baker's back just right with the barbed wire and blue bottle mobile...and on top of all this I have to sell all my vehicles on Craigslist and pack up a five bedroom house. Yes, chirrun, I have a lot to do. I think I'll start with a nice cup of hot coffee.

Eighth Wonder of the world

Today I was a little more productive...

Weather is beautiful. Wish you were here.

This was pretty much my whole day Wednesday.

sand and foam

Gen Xer with iPod

I got an iPod for my birthday. Can you believe it? I'm 39 (today), I shouldn't be falling for that crap. Well, I love the damn thing. I got some speakers for it because I have a serious phobia about sticking anything in my ear. Also, walking around listining to music that nobody else can hear is just a little too close to being genuinely psychotic for my taste. Anyway, by the end of the first day I had about 600 songs on there and put that thing on shuffle. It's like having your own little radio station! I now have almost 1300 songs loaded up. The literature says that it can hold up to 15,000 songs. I told my buddy Jeff that I was going to try to fill it up. "Then what happens?" he asked. "The void," I said, "Oblivion. I throw it away and go buy the next shiny thing that strikes my fancy" I pity the poor kid that steals my iPod. What is this crap? Blind Willie Who? Norman Blake? Cat Power? The Be Good Tanyas? I am rocking to Tuvan throat singing, the anthology of American Folk music and the Clash. I was listening to a six-year-old describe the Black Death to me the other day, only he kept calling it the Black Dot. Good name for a band, I thought, The Black Dots. Sort of a rip-off of the White Stripes.

New Place

Here are some pictures of the house we am going to be renting in Mississippi. It reminds me a little of the house we used to own on Nunn St in Chapel Hill. The landlord lives next door and apparantly has quite a gun collection. It's good to know we will be safe and protected. I guess that means I won't need any guns myself. As I have for my entire life, I will rely on my razor-sharp wit and keen awareness of my surroundings to protect me and my family.

It is now or-fishal, we's movin tah Missippi.
Mississippi is the maganolia state. The state bird is the mocking bird. As you ornithologists know, a mocking bird can pretty much whup a cardinal's ass. Hell, I once saw a mocking bird damn near kill a cat! The name "Mississippi" is derived from an old Indian word meaning, "I'm not sure, but I think my uncle is my brother-in-law." Here is some more of the straight dope on the home of the delta blues from my old buddy Keef Pickly:

As for Mississippi, you'll be quite close to Tuscaloosa, where they have the Kentuck Folk Art Festival in October. I can highly recommend the event. Loads of artists sellin' their wares, plus top rate entertainment for very low cost (Norman Blake one year, Roger McGuinn the next). You'll also be about six hours from the Angola Prison Rodeo. You'll also be close to Tupelo, home of Elvis and Greenville - where I believe they have a good blues festival. In any event, you'll be close to the delta, home of the blues.

You'll be 2.5 hours from Holly Springs, home of Graceland Too, a museum dedicated to the King. You'll also be close to Birmingham, home of Joe Mintner's Art Yard, a sculpture garden by a self taught artist with a civil rights theme. Alabama is also home to the Ave Maria Grotto (on the way to Nashville) at a Benedictine Monastery - it has miniature replicas of various famous buildings and some mythical ones (i.e., Hansel & Gretel). You'll also be close to Montgomery, where the late Reverend Rice has his "Garden of Crosses" - a yard full of fundamentalist signs, such as "hell is hot" "no ice water in hell" "sex kills" etc.... He's gone, but hopefully his scary signs carry on.

Yeah, you're headin' to some great country. Best of luck to you guys.

roll call

Wife left town again, I am home alone with boys. Everything OK except that we are out of orange cheese, which is kind of a major thing since cheese and crackers keep everything rolling around here. Fortunately we have half a can of black olives, and naturally plenty of the green olives, to keep things more or less quiet until we can replenish the orange cheese stocks. We are also out of the boys preferred toothpaste, but let's just keep that between us shall we? The trick is to give them my toothpaste, and get their teeth brushed quickly while they scream that the lovely peppermint flavor is burning their mouths apart. We have also run out of the cats dietary supplement, and god knows what else, but I still have my keen wit and the classic Juniper Tree version of Grimm's fairy tales with the Maurice Sendak illustrations, so survival is assured. Mrs. Tobit is in the deep south, seeking out Faulkner's grave. Perhaps we will pilgrammage to the wispy contrails of the Old South as summer turns to fall...

What have I been up to?

Adding boulders to a slope with my trusty Bobcat 463...

After

Boulders and plants installed.

Tobit kills the vacuum cleaner

Well, while the rest of you were down at Wrightsville beach snapping amusing photos of each other, I attempted to clean off my desk (where I make all the magic happen) and vacuum my office over the holiday weekend. It was kind of like when the Nazis opened the ark of the covenant in the final scene of Indiana Jones: Raider of The Lost Arc. My vacuum cleaner did not understand the power of the filth in which I live and breathe and make stuff happen, and the intrepid vacuum expired in a shorted out mess of smoke and hot currant, legos, synthetic horse hair and cat pee. You remember those Nazi faces melting as the power of the arc destroyed them, that is exactly what happened to my vacuum cleaner as I tried to clean up the office over memorial day weekend. Despite that, Mrs. Tobit and I did enjoy a couple of relaxing evenings and even managed to entertain one of Mrs. Tobit's most charming friends and colleagues, Lady Wulkzin, and her young charge Thomas, a very pleasant evening indeed, as well as a luncheon at the Weave with K.A.G., who you all know by now will not ACTUALLY be recycling her own water on the earthship. Look, I gotta go cook something up for tomorrow, you all ROCK ON, keep it real, keep Poe alive, WWCamusD, and so wieter und so weiter...

A real journal entry

I am going to try record actual things that happen to me. Last Wednesday I felt a little, I guess you could say, out of it, and had a lot of trouble backing the truck up with the trailer. Especially with the trailer fully loaded with brush and backing uphill, up my driveway, where the visual reading in the mirror is obscured for an instant at the crest of the hill, an instant in which, due to all the plants stored in the parking pad and how they are arranged, you need to turn the trailer slightly. I tried four times, and kept ending up too close to my other truck. On the fifth try, and running late now and tired, I plowed that trailer right into the truck. Actually what I hit was the truck front tire with the signal light housing of the trailer. Put a four inch gash right into the sidewall. The tire deflated in about twenty seconds, making a very impressive noise. And life goes on.
The lovely and beautiful Mrs. Tobit has been at a conference on the coast all week, leaving me in charge of running the house in her absence. I am having fun with the kids, but it would be very difficult to go on like this for more than a month or two. I can slack off at work some here and there, but I have to make money. It is hard to imagine working full time and taking care of young'uns alone. Fortunately for me the kids haven't been giving me any crap about putting clothes on, taking baths, eating dinner, etc. They have been pretty well behaved. Except yesterday Zapper climbed on top of the VW and started hitting the roof with a two-foot long peice of scrap iron he salvaged from the neighbor's yard. I guess he was trying to tell me that it was time for me to take him to preschool.
Had a nice dinner with my sister in downtown Carrboro yesterday. We both like to make a lot of jokes. She is going to live in a earthen hut in the deserts of the southwest, in a planned community that aspires to live off the grid, that is, in a sustainable fashion. The hardest part for her is going to be recycling her own water. I hope that when the community leaders start talking about rejoining the mothership she will come back to North Carolina.
Time to go start assembling the caffeine-delivery device and feed the cats...

Botanist

I have been experimenting with a vernacular meter known commenly as hip-hop or American rap. This has been quite popular amoung the young people lately, and I thought I would give it a go:

I’m a botanist baby, I got what you need,
You got the plant I got the I.D.
Just give me a manual, a backpack and hand lens,
I’ll make a sammich and head out to Penny’s Bend
I get bit by a copperhead but I just don’t care,
Echinacea laevigata is out here somewhere.
What was that noise? A white-eyed vireo?
Sounded like a wood thrush, what the hell, I don’t know.
You want an ornithologist? That’s a different kind of man.
A bird watcher can’t give you all the things that I can.
I’m better than a rock hound or the guy that runs the zoo,
They don’t know what I know, they can’t do what I do.
I can take apart a flower and show you what’s in it
And teach you all the parts, just give me twenty minutes.
This here’s a corolla, here you got a sepal,
Now your gaining knowledge, more than other people.
My mind is like a library, bigger than the Vaticans
Don’t touch that baby –toxicodendron radicans.
You need a botanist so you can live the dream.
I’ll take you to the woods, down to a little stream
And show you trilliums, jewel weed and hellebores
Gooseneck loosestrife, cypress and sycamores.
I’m a botanist baby, and I got what you need.
You got the plant I got the I.D.

All Religions Say Basically The Same Thing

That all life on earth originated from spores brought here by a group of insect-like extraterrestrial creatures. That if you had a telescope strong enough to see to the edge of the universe, what you would see when you looked through it would be the back of your own head. That when you break any object in the universe down to its irreducible parts, those parts are completely lacking in heft and girth and are best described as pure energy. That the poor are the salt of the earth, and too much salt can kill you. That any god that can be killed, ought to be killed. That the first word ever uttered on Earth was an exhortation yelped out in panic in response to some terrifying event, that some psychotropic substance was probably involved, and that is why we never give LSD to monkeys. One talking species on the planet is gracious plenty. That we are all in good hands, which also means that you can’t get ahead, you can’t lose, and you can’t break even. That I was made for loving you baby, and you were made for loving me.

Bird

I can't stand it when other people put poetry in their blogs, I will try to stop doing it. This one totally rocks, though.


Bought my soul from the candy-man, he had one laying around
Wrapped it in wax paper and I took it out on the town
I lied about my cigarettes and the whiskey in my car
And sixteen years of chasing falling stars.
You can't tell the difference if it's freezing cold
Or hot enough to fly your hot dog back
Tennessee don't remember me and I can't remember you.
I reckon there are worse things you could do.
You could hold my hand and tell me not to talk so loud
About the little man pulling levers inside of me
Touch your hair when your feeling scared of my pilgrims plow
And apologize for my useless fantasy.

Lost my soul in Black Mountain, 'twas a sight to behold
Five hundred miles from Nashville with a soul shot full of holes.
I wept openly over antifreeze and problems with my car
I lost the trail of the tail of my rising star.
You never know what trash will blow across the open road,
And when the crowd shows up, what they're going to smoke.
Memories that are pissed at me 'cause I don't know 'em by name,
But I guess that's test of the best of the troubador game.
You won't get far from here if your map is too clear.
If you understood my story it was badly told.
I don't fear a couple more years of grinding gears
And letting go of whatever I happen to hold.

Kansas

The moon and star-slung sullen sky is fortified with satellites and story-songs that seek to share the fire and wind and breath of fear on mountain-tops, in fever dreams, the crack and spark of covenants and promises that I can't say you ever kept or what was lost but all I know is when you're not here, my whole damn life is meaningless. And all I know is when you're here, my whole damn life means even less.

I can't explain the suzerain, the endless chain, the ancient claim of novelty that seeks the source of what you bring forth from your store of chemistry and inspirations, testimonies and bad translations of solemn creeds, calumnies, wicked lies and strategies but all I know is when you're not here, my whole damn life is meaningless. And all I know is when you're here, my whole damn life means even less.

Things I Want To Do Before I Die

1. Hack the amber alert system. You are driving down I-40 and you see this scroll by:
ALIEN CRASH LANDING RADIOACTIVE CLOUD VAPOR RAY OF DEATH EXIT 133 EXPECT DELAYS
or:
SINNER! APPLY THE EMERGENCY BRAKE! TURN AROUND BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!!!
or:
YES THERE ARE TWO PATHS YOU CAN GO BY, BUT IN THE LONG RUN, THERE'S STILL TIME TO CHANGE THE ROAD YOU'RE ON

2. Have dinner with CNN foreign correspondant Christine Armenpour. Try not to drink too much.

3. Spend one entire Christmas day on a park bench.

Neighborhood news

I live in a leafy older section of Chapel Hill. There is a neighborhood list serve where the residents post complaints about speeders (although I never see any) and the occaissional break-in. Having lived in neighborhoods where there actually was traffic, and all kinds of traffic let me tell you, I find a lot of the traffic whining to be a little bit silly. But tonight something happened that really bothered me, and I just got done filling the whole neighborhood in on it, and I thought I should let you guys know as well. You see, I was going on my usual after-dinner walk around the neighborhood, when I saw a silver Honda approaching me. He was not speeding, at least as far as I could tell, but he was playing some music quite loudly. Blocking his path, I got him to stop and began to explain, calmly but gravely and with a sense of purpose, that he was driving through a quiet neighborhood of gentle and loving families and that his loud music was an affront not only to me personally but to everyone within earshot. Well, I did not get very far into this explanation when the song on his hi fi ended and I heard the quite familiar intense bass intro to "Psycho Killer" by Talking Heads. Now, it has been a very long time since I have heard that one and it is, as you all know, one of the best songs ever. "Hey," I said, "turn that up!" The young man turned it up about half way, then I reached in and cranked it to wide open. The accoustic guitar and drums came in, and I started grooving. I started with the camel walk, then morphed into a sort of rooster strut with some chicken wing action. I was planning my next series of moves, preparing for a pirouette and then to drop to a half split with the opening line "I can't seem to face up to the facts..." when the sonofabitch DROVE OFF! HEY! I yelled after him, "Come back here!" But the idiot was gone. I was too devestated to get his license plate number, but he's got to live around here somewhere. I just wanted to warn you all about this guy because I thought that was VERY rude and he totally killed my buzz.

True Stories

I have decided to start writting down things that actually happen to me, like other people do in their blogs, so my friends and family can all keep track of where I am and where I am going on life's journey. So you can expect things to get a lot more exciting. So, starting with this morning, let's see, I got up, took a quick shower, made the coffee and toasted a frozen waffle for the older boy and a bagel for myself. I ate my half bagel with cream cheese then went downstairs to get a warmer shirt. When I came back up to the kitchen, the younger boy was eating my other half bagel! I guess he thought I made it for him!

The landscaping is going well. I am still a one-man operation. I have a lot of homeowner clients who all want small jobs done for them and I am spread kind of thin, taking care of many small details at once. I am looking forward to a vacation in July. I need to practice my scrabble skills and learn some patriotic tunes on the guitar.

Lately I have been trying to come up with some athiestic bumber stickers. WWCD: What would Camus Do? Or: God didn't say it, I don't believe it, does that settle it? I saw another one on a discussion forum last night: In case of Rapture, can I have your car? And another one I liked, though it is not athiestic: Stop Continental Drift.

I am a Christian athiest. I can usually keep up with the Apostle's Creed in church. Anyone who wants to understand more about how you can be both Christian and athiest, check out some of the books written by the retired Episcopalean bishop Dr. Shelby Spong.

I have had a series of very good hair days. Just the perfect amount of fluff and bounce. The key is to stay away from showers, shampoo, that sort of thing.

I am taking a taxonomy class at the botanical gardens. What a hoot. I hope to write more about that later.

Now, time to get to work.

Za anyone?

Saw an artical in the paper today about how the Official Scrabble Dictionary has included the "za," as in a slang term for pizza. The reporter called an Italian pizzaria in New Jersey and asked them if anyone had ever ordered "za" and they said no, they had never heard of it. Have any of you guys? I think they just made this word up to make the game more exciting. And they added the word "qi" for the energy that flows through the body according to Chinese medicine. I have always seen this word written as "chi." Come on people, if you can't handle having a z or q left on your rack at the end of a game of scrabble maybe you should play something else.

Slow time

Slow day today. You know once, a long time ago, I saw a commercial on the TV for an overnight laxative. It showed people waking up in the morning feeling just fantastic, accompanied by the chorus of the Arlo Guthrie classic folk tune "The City of New Orleans." You know the line: "Good morning, America, how are you?" Well, I have always liked that song and thought it was a little sad to hear it used to push laxatives. But of course I was intrigued by the challange of composing a few more verses of the hypothetical constipation-themed version. I am particularly proud of the way I managed to come up with a rhyme for the word "beltline".

Well I’m more backed up than the I-440 beltline.
There’s a train inside me but it ain’t about to move.
And you’ve done dropped yours but I ain’t even smelt mine.
It ain’t funny boys, I can’t get in to the groove.

I don’t care if I mess my pants, I’d settle for some flatulence,
Did I really need to drink five pints of beer?
Some water would be fine by me, a bowl of bran flakes, some broccoli
Suppositories…just let me be free and clear.

Good Morning America how are ya?!
Me I’ve seen better days on the dark side of a war.
I’m in pain and I blame an irritated membrane.
I’ll have gone 500 times when the day is done.

Advice for newlyweds

Having been happily married to Mrs. Tobit for lo these many years, I have been considering dispensing my copious wisdom regarding conjugal matters to those youngbloods out there who are just getting into the game. Here is one particularly salient object lesson I would like to share:

One day I noticed that we had way more spoons than would fit in our flatware drawer. We had about, oh, I'd say, three hundred spoons, and it was very difficult to get them all to fit in the drawer. How many spoons do we really need? I asked myself. Like a fool, I did not ask Mrs. Tobit this same question. I surmised, using what I realize now was extremely faulty logic, that we needed about a dozen or so. I put the remaining spoons in a plastic grocery bag and gave them to a Mexican family down the street that had just moved in and didn't have much of anything. Well, 'twasn't long before the love of my life was on the phone with her mother and various cousins and friends all across the country and some abroad in foreign lands, that I had given away all the spoons, and now we could not host any parties of any kind or entertain in any way, given the lack of spoons, we would not be able to seat twelve for salad, dinner and desert obviously without having to jump up and wash a bunch of spoons in the midst of the festivities, and of course, that just would not do, and for the time being, the hospitality flag would not be flying over the house of Tobit, due to the current spoon crunch.
As you propably have guessed by now, the spoons started arriving post haste. No waiting for birthdays or anniversaries, all manner of spoons came by frieght, air-mail, rickshaw, taxi, telegraph...Every two or three days some cousin or great aunt would drop by with a box of spoons and a comment about how they heard we didn't have any spoons. Since I am the one who usually washes and puts away the spoons, life for me suddenly became much more complicated. We were back up to the three or four hundred spoons in the drawer in no time at all, and we had stocked boxes of unopened spoons in the sideboard, the china hutch, the attic and even the crawl space before the whole spoon crises ran its course.
Moral: Dudes, don't make unilateral decisions regarding flatware, no matter how certain you think you are.

Ghost stories

I have been telling these kids some ghost stories. Of course I don't know any ghost stories, but in my inspired moments I can cobble together a pretty good spine-tingler from the fragments I dredge up from what I have heard, decapitation stories, headless horseman, tailey-bone, the teeny-tiny woman, Phantom 309. Tonight we sat on the back porch for a very fine hour, listening to the thunderstorms gain and flow, and with each terrifying tale, the younger child, not quite even four yet, would get very quiet and still. When brother and I would ask him, did you like the ghost story? He would shake his head no. We sit quietly a moment longer. Then young man says: tell another ghost story. So of course I would. He wanted more and more. Then mrs. Tobit came out and learned what I had been up to. I don't think it is a good idea to be telling these stories to a three-year-old, she says. We sit for a while, and the boys ask for more scary stories. I am all out, I maintain. Mrs. Tobit says the same. But then, in response to the little ones' persistant cries, Mrs. Tobit improvises the creepiest, most bone-chilling tale I have ever heard in my life. It involves a young boys' stillborn twin ghost haunting the cellar of an old house. Speechless and stunned, the three of us can but gesture, please....tell another one...

Sorry...

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, gang, but I have been busy. My publisher got me this gig writing a pamphlet for teenagers called "So You've Decided To Take Up Cutting" and man, it was a lot of work. Especially since I don't know a gol-durned thing about cutting. Then I went on this kick where I decided to go digital and started switching everything in the house over. It was easy enough to find a digital TV, but a digital microwave oven, a digital refridgerator, these things are not easy to track down. I had a lot of fun asking clerks in stores "is this digital?" regardless of what it was I was buying. I learned a lot, too. Like, did you know your hands are digital? At least your fingers are anyway. When I couldn't get digital (like with tires, for example), I settled for virtual.
Then I saw a commercial for a chicken sandwich on the TV and the tagline was (no lie) "The only way to beat it...is to eat it!" I am still pondering this little nugget of post-modern op art, and will someday have a coherent post explaining my reaction. Meanwhile I must go take a spin on my virtual tires.

Suggestion

If you happen to be in the Whole Foods on Elliot Rd. in Chapel Hill anytime soon, check the bulletin board for my fake complaint. If I don't make the bulletin board, at least it will give the worker bees in the back a good chuckle:

The only thing more congested than the flow of chi in your establishment is the traffic flow in the parking lot. The electro-magnetic fields emanating from the automatic doors make me dizzy as I walk in and then things just go completely downhill. Most of the men in the meat department suffer from acute ego calcifications and need psycho/spiritual cleansing. One of the checkout ladies has an aura of such a lurid shade of pink that I often nearly keel over. Particularly upsetting are the times when I can not locate a current issue of “Living Without” magazine. I attribute these imbalances to your fetishistic reliance on linear and dimensional totemic modalities. I hope that soon you are able to establish cohesion and balance, both for my sake and the sake of the planet.

My personal information

I just heard something on the radio about how identity swipers are getting personal information from blogs. Well, if you are trolling blogs looking for personal information, let's go. You wanna piece of me, tech-boy? You wanna piece of this? Here's some information for you: my real name is Reginald Wilfer Reece, my D.O.B 5-14-71, I live at 2123 Hangdog Lane in Clayton, North Carolina and my social security number is 254-87-7602. My two boys are named Stephen and Michael and my wife is named Stephanie May Reece (maiden name Hazen). Will that do you? I must warn you, you come after me and I will put you in a world of pain. Let's see, what else...I like chicken, good coffee and my favorite flower is the daffodil. I had two credit cards but I shredded them last week in my new shredder I bought at Staples on Highgate Parkway in Raleigh (phone number 919 354-8954). I am a deep sleeper and arise early each morning without the aid of an alarm clock. I have never even seen metahamphetamine, nor have I ever hopped a train. I put 87 octane into a 1993 chevy pickup about once a week. I have a .22 rifle I like to shoot at mattresses in the woods but can't hit anything smaller than that. I am not afraid of anything, least of all you, creep. Take your best shot. I'm a-waitin for ya.

I'm getting some mixed signals here...

On the road in southern Guilford county. Never found the Dove of War.

New Toy

Well, it was time to go get a paper shredder, so I went to one of the big boxes and got the cheapest, smallest shredder I could find. Got her home and set her up on my desk, where I make all the magic happen. Let’s see what this baby can do. The opening was small, and a regular sheet of paper had to be folded thrice in order to fit. I put in a couple pages of one of those credit card solicitations I always get and they disappeared. Wow! Then I picked up the next closest thing, an old picture of my grandfather and general Patton in front of the sphinx during the Great War. Zing, it was gone! The box said it could shred cds and floppy disks, but was it true? I grabbed the nearest cd, an out-of-print Wilco album, and it was gone in seconds. What else could this baby handle? I wanted to try something a little thicker. Looking around I picked up my passport, shoved it in, zing, no problem. I grabbed my visa card from my wallet and it ate it up. But could it do two credit cards? I only had one left, which I doubled up with my driver’s license and library card and the machine shredded all three at once. Let’s see…here are some AAA batteries. With these, some encouragement was needed. With the aide of a plastic knife these were soon pulverized. Goodness me, will this thing not die? What about the box it came in, would that not give it a sense of liberation? No problem. Unfortunately I couldn’t get the Styrofoam packing to follow the path to enlightenment, but a laminated Father’s day card one of my son’s gave me last year went joyfully in to meet it’s true father somewhere in the great basket below.

Bedtime story

Personally I prefer "Sneetches" or "The Giant Jam Sandwich," but the boys insist on the disjointed narrative peregrinations of this volume of the Compson family saga. They never tire of hearing about Caddie, Dilsey, Quentin, Varsh, Roskus, and of course, the boys' favorite, the imbecilic manchild Benjy.