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.