The Zog Blog

Time to change despair tire, it's been running flat for too long. Time to move along, nothing to see here, move along. But move along where?
Sometimes I feel like finding a cheap trailer, a single-wide even, way out in the country and just holing up. Take some impenetrable literature that takes forever to wade through, just to have something to do. Hack my through some literary jungle. Or not.

So I'm selling my house, or so it seems. No biggie, I never really got into the right groove here anyway. But I will be leaving DC, even if it's just for the burbs. I hated it back in the late 60s when my parents packed us all up and moved out of the city, and I moved back as soon as I could. The idea that I'm leaving on my own, and not toes up, seems so wrong on so many levels. Every time I've left -- twice for jobs in the midwest -- I've felt the energy swell through my soles when I set foot back on home turf. I can feel this place, its rhythyms, its breathing, its life and death, everything. Sure Greenbelt -- my current favored landing spot -- isn't far away, especially by current commuter standards with people coming from West By God Virginia and halfway to Richmond into DC everyday for cubicle jobs. And Greenbelt is chock full of interesting, creative peeps, there's no junkies across the street, there's stuff going on all the time at the library, at the New Deal Cafe, the movie house. There's probably little or no gunfire, cars are relatively safe and the surly level is way down. What's not to like?

I can;t really answer that. Hell, I wouldn't be all that thrilled living west of Rock Creek Park or up on the Gold Coast of upper 16th Street either. Jazz and blues both out of place over there and up there, that's what it is. Maybe it's the homogenous nature of those places -- all well off -- that I don't like. No laundromats featuring razor and bleach fights, everybody's got a washer and dryer in the house. Just too damned safe, that might be it. Aren't all the cool and ultrahip movie and TV soundtracks playing in the city? The suburbs are Muzak (trademark). Yeh, I'm a friggin' snob that way.

In the city I can walk across the street for bread and milk and have as much privacy as I please. The door works both ways. Out in the country I could have space and privacy, but the inconvenience of a car trip for victuals. In the suburbs you have the cheek-by-jowl living with all the convenience of Green Acres.

And the bitch of all this, I'll probably get a decent job downtown as soon as I move to the 'burbs. Thanks, Murphy.

Time to change despair tire, it's been running flat for too long. Time to move along, nothing to see here, move along. But move along where?
Sometimes I feel like finding a cheap trailer, a single-wide even, way out in the country and just holing up. Take some impenetrable literature that takes forever to wade through, just to have something to do. Hack my my through some literary jungle. Or not.

So I'm selling my house, or so it seems. No biggie, I never really got into the right groove here anyway. But I will be leaving DC, even if it's just for the burbs. I hated it back in the late 60s when my parents packed us all up and moved out of the city, and I moved back as soon as I could. The idea that I'm leaving on my own, and not toes up, seems so wrong on so many levels. Every time I've left -- twice for jobs in the midwest -- I've felt the energy swell through my soles when I set foot back on home turf. I can feel this place, its rhythyms, its breathing, its life and death, everything. Sure Greenbelt -- my current favored landing spot -- isn't far away, especially by current commuter standards with people coming from West By God Virginia and halfway to Richmond into DC everyday for cubicle jobs. And Greenbelt is chock full of interesting, creative peeps, there's no junkies across the street, there's stuff going on all the time at the library, at the New Deal Cafe, the movie house. There's probably little or no gunfire, cars are relatively safe and the surly level is way down. What's not to like?

I can;t really answer that. Hell, I wouldn't be all that thrilled living west of Rock Creek Park or up on the Gold Coast of upper 16th Street either. Jazz and blues both out of place over there and up there, that's what it is. Maybe it's the homogenous nature of those places -- all well off -- that I don't like. No laundromats featuring razor and bleach fights, everybody's got a washer and dryer in the house. Just too damned safe, that might be it. Aren't all the cool and ultrahip movie and TV soundtracks playing in the city? The suburbs are Muzak (trademark). Yeh, I'm a friggin' snob that way.

In the city I can walk across the street for bread and milk and have as much privacy as I please. The door works both ways. Out in the country I could have space and privacy, but the inconvenience of a car trip for victuals. In the suburbs you have the cheek-by-jowl living with all the convenience of Green Acres.

And the bitch of all this, I'll probably get a decent job downtown as soon as I move to the 'burbs. Thanks, Murphy.

wschelt@aol.com

Mondays suck, even if you don't have to go to work. Trust me on this. Sunday's paper had less than a plethora of jobs, and the Post has changed its Help Wanted section so you have to run all about hither and yon to find stuff. I'll get used to it after awhile, but for the time being it's a pain in the gluteus maximus. The usual suspects among the job boards also were bereft of decent leads. Hey, at least I got a form letter from NASA today saying they'd hired someone else for a writing job I applied for five months ago.

A chill in the air replaced weekend's warm glow. I hope y'all followed my advice from last week and didn't run out and get tomato plants. And for those of you who either have no yard to speak of or don't feel like commiting to a real vegetable garden, there's some tomato plants that do well in containers, and herbs grow well in pots too. I hope I can find a place in Greenbelt that gets some sun. Hell, I hope I can find a place out there, with or without sun. It's what I'll be able to afford after the flight from the inner city.

I sold a pair of really strong binoculars over the weekend. To show you what we've become in this Bush/Ashcroft-inspired paranoia party, I was a tad worried when the Arab-looking guy bought the glasses that can really reach out and take a look wayyyyy downrange. Maybe he's scoping out a place to blow up or some such lunacy. Or there might be a woman across the street who leaves her curtains open. Which kind of creepy do I assume of a foreign type, 1-each?

I did get a call from a temp agency today, but I don't remember sending anything their way. The woman called and asked for Greg, now how's that for a confidence builder? No Greg here, sorry. Then she called back and said, "Sorry, it was Greg who gave me your number. Who are you?" Ego boost No. 2. So I e-mailed her a resume and waited for her to call back "in a couple of minutes." An hour-and-a-half later I punched up the number on caller ID and called her back; she hadn't even looked at the resume, but would "inna cuppla minutes" and call me back. That was at 4 o'clock and it's a quarter til 8. I bet she's not calling me today. She said she had some editing jobs, but I saw no indication they even did any editorial type stuff when I checked their website. Ego boosters #3 and #4 in there somewhere.

The highlight of the day was a non-productive attempt at napping with the cat. Big Guy zonked right out, but not me. That's what I get for getting some sleep last night, finally. And I bought a book on the Internet for next month's book club, wowee zowee. Seventy-five sents for the book, $2.78 to ship it. That doesn't seem right somehow, but what's a muthuh to do?

Unless something drastic happens, Virginia will go for Bush this fall. But I'll be in either DC or Maryland, so I can feel smug whether he wins or loses, cuz those bastardly bastions of pinkos will go for Kerry. Thinking of fall-back plans, it's too bad it gets so damned cold in Canada. I even have kin and friends up that way, even if they do drink sweet beer, worship hockey and talk funny, eh. I've always wanted to see moose and grizzly bears in the wild, and lay back and watch the Northern Lights -- LSD without the side effects.

You can probably tell I'm forcing this too much. Sorry, there's just not too much inspiring me to literary greatness on this Monday so I'm just gonna have to make do with a boring quasi travelogue of my so-called day. Anyone know any jokes?

Monday muhallos to all y'all.

So much for possible brief showers predicted by the weather gnomes. An all-day rain has settled in for Saturday. Not that Saturdays are all that special to someone who's not working, but there's some sympathy from the peanut gallery for all the folks who had to work through yesterday's glory. March showers bring April flowers or something like that.

Exactly zero sleep last night. Went to book club Friday night -- good eats etc. and Robertson Davies chez Denise -- and never was able to get to sleep afterward. Big Guy came to bed and left several times, rather intolerant of the tossing and turning. And now I'm propping my eyes open during a 2-hour dowload so I can get my printer working; at some point I'm supposed to plug in the damned BUS cable so the printer and computer can talk. INTERFACE THIS!

The alleged fan club has implied that I might ought to address some issues o' the day rather than dwell on my bellybutton. I'll do it, but I'll keep the rant posts distinct from the internal meanderings. It's probably easier to skip over the maudlin detritus that way, and cut straight to the chase of the multipartisan ravings of a political eunuch (Living in DC does that to a soul.). Ayn Randians may want to avoid the political stuff, there's already a near-epidemic problem with Americans' blood pressure as it is. Bush fans be afraid. Be VERY afriad. Kerry fans, too, but probably less so. I'm pondering my manifesto, it involves benevolent dictatorship prominently featuring your humble correspondent, big black cars with running boards, and flags on the fenders, and cool background music accompanying my travels hither and yon. All hail Zog! Blackeyes and greens in every pot! Every man a queen! (That means all the wimmins will be mine mine mine.).

Cool, I've figured out how to muck about with the type.

Belated natal felicitations to Diana Ross, who shared a birthday with Ella and Matty. She's 60. But then, Mick Jagger is in his 60s, Keith Richards was born 110 years old and still going strong despite the odds, and who the hell knows how old Wavy Gravy is these days. Or where and what and who and how he is. I had planned a long riff on aging icons but I think I'll pass, it's too depressing.

By the way, Etta James still rocks. Tell momma all about it. Her band cooks, with a honking growl of a low-register tenor sax driving the high horns. Elemental, my dear what's-his-name.

Pictures at 11.

Comments appreciated. wschelt@aol.com

If I move the Greenbelt, it opens up the Baltimore job market. It's a reverse commute most of the way and probably shouldn't be too bad. Can't be as bad as the poor schlubs who drive to DC from Frederick, Stafford County, or Harper's Ferry. And they do, crawling lemmings of the highways. I even applied for an editing job in Bawlmer, in the Mount Vernon Square area. Probably parking hell, but I might be able to get a train in anyway. But that's if I get the job.

I've been beating my head against the wall of unemployment for too long. I will feel ssooooo good when I get a job and can stop the insanity. I actually like working with words, those little bits and bytes don't intimidate me. Editing appears to be where the work is, but it pays the bills so we can write on our own time. I've got some great dialogue -- think Elmore Leonard -- and some great descriptives -- think Jim Thompson -- but I need a plot. Anybody got one for me?

In the meantime it's probably one of the better days we'll have all year in the great outdoors. A day like this two weeks from now would top it; nature will be busting out all over by then, sorry about that all y'all hay fever folks. Meanwhile back at the raunch, I'm sitting inside flailing away at the keyboard. I've got a great big window -- 4 feet x 5 feet -- open behind my right shoulder. Big Guy has been straddling the sill and glaring moral inferiority into any and all denizens of the alley, with breaks for food and tummy scratching. No salmon will get through him to attack me, that's for sure. I hope I can get a place with a sunny window, for both me and Big Guy.

AP needs a news editor in Montgomery, Alabama. Housing is impossibly cheap down there: A three-bedroom and study, 1,800+ square feet, fireplace, hardwood floors, washer dryer, gas heat and stove blah blah blah can be had for less than $50K. How bad can a neighborhood be? The old pilloried? mansions with acreage run in the $300s -- a moderate townhouse in this neck of the woods. But talk about a hellish commute to DC ... and there's the Limbaugh factor. I suspect folks drive around midday snapping their fingers to that rant-wing radio beat. Ahh, my hair is short these days anyway, what the hell.

The doc tore me a semi new one yesterday and she's not even a proctologist. She's mostly a psychopharmocologist for me, but apparently I just don't say enough to her about what's going on. Yeh, I'm alive, suicidal ideation not too bad, etc., but not much more than that. Friends have complained to her about that too; I won't let the real me out. Oh well. We'll get to that, in dribs and drabs, I just don't want to unload and scare the living urine out of my peeps. Or myself. (Mice Elf, as Sly and the Family Stone say).

I've got to start gathering and filling boxes, selling off/giving away/throwing out lots of stuff. One way or another I've got to lighten the load and get out of here. It's not like being a yung 'un anymore, just cram the clothes and records in the car and go. There's actual stuff. The house here faces east-west, something I didn't consider enough when I bought it. The old apartment faced south so the one room where I spent lots of time had lots of sunlight, even in the dredges of winter, and the garden got more sun. Veggies LIKE sun.

Hang in ther folks. The moveable feast will need your help at some point so we can relocate the blackeyes and greens to a new venue.

Chow.

Natal day update.

This is a list of great recordings the Library of Congress announced on March 19. I'm in good company. That was my birthday. Thanks to Susan for digging this up. More proof that the Internet rocks.


2003 National Recording Registry (In chronological order)

1. Emile Berliner. "The Lord's Prayer" and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." (ca. 1888)
2. Vess Ossman. "Honolulu Cake Walk." (1898)
3. Bert Williams and George Walker. Victor Releases. (1901)
4. Billy Murray. "You're a Grand Old Rag [Flag]." (1906)
5. Frances Densmore Chippewa/Ojibwe Cylinder Collection. (1907-1910)
6. The first Bubble Book. (1917)
7. William Jennings Bryan. "Cross of Gold." Speech re-enactment by Bryan. (1921)
8. Guy B. Johnson Cylinder Recordings of African American Music. (1920s)
9. Okeh Laughing Record. (1922)
10. Associated Glee Clubs of America. "Adeste Fideles." (1925)
11. Amade Ardoin and Dennis McGee. Cajun-Creole Columbia releases. (1929)
12. Leadbelly. "Goodnight Irene." (1933)
13. Huey P. Long. "Every Man a King" speech. (1935)
14. Marian Anderson. "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands." (1936)
15. Robert Johnson. The Complete Recordings. (1936-1937)
16. Jelly Roll Morton. Interviews conducted by Alan Lomax. (1938)
17. Benny Goodman. Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert. (1938) 18. WJSV (Washington, D.C.) Complete Day of Radio Broadcasting. (September 21, 1939)
19. Bob Wills & his Texas Playboys. "New San Antonio Rose." (1940)
20. 1941 World Series Game Four - New York Yankees vs Brooklyn Dodgers
21. Robert Shaw Chorale. Bach B-Minor Mass. (1947)
22. Budapest Quartet. Beethoven String Quartets. (1940-1950)
23. George Gershwin. Porgy and Bess. Original Cast. (1940, 1942)
24. Rodgers and Hammerstein. Oklahoma! Original Cast. (1943)
25. Paul Robeson, Uta Hagen, Jose Férrer and others. Othello. (1943)
26. Louis Kaufman and the Concert Hall String Orchestra. Vivaldi Four Seasons. (1947)
27. John Kirkpatrick. Ives Piano Sonata No. 2, "Concord." (1948)
28. O. Winston Link. Steam Locomotive Recordings. (6 vol.: 1957-1977)
29. Rafael Kubelik conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Modest Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition. (1951)
30. Billy Graham. Problems of the American Home. (1954)
31. Glenn Gould. Bach Goldberg Variations. (1955)
32. Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book. (1956)
33. Chuck Berry. "Roll Over Beethoven." (1956)
34. Thelonius Monk. Brilliant Corners. (1956)
35. Georg Solti and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. Richard Wagner Complete Ring Cycle. (1958-1965)
36. Eastman Wind Ensemble with Frederick Fennell. Winds in Hi-Fi. (1958)
37. Charles Mingus. Mingus Ah-Um. (1959)
38. Tony Schwartz. New York Taxi Driver. (1959)
39. Patsy Cline. "Crazy." (1961)
40. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Robert Frost and others. Kennedy Inaugural Ceremony. (1961)
41. Judy Garland. Judy at Carnegie Hall. (1961)
42. Otis Redding. "I've Been Loving You Too Long. (To Stop Now)" (1965)
43. The Beatles. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. (1967)
44. Johnny Cash. At Folsom Prison. (1968)
45. Ali Akbar College of Music Archive Selections. (1960s-1970s)
46. Marvin Gaye. What's Goin' On. (1971)
47. Carole King. Tapestry. (1971)
48. Garrison Keillor. A Prairie Home Companion. (First broadcast of the variety show, July 6, 1974)
49. Bruce Springsteen. Born to Run. (1975)
50. Fania All-Stars. Live at Yankee Stadium. (1975)

I don't know what to make of it -- or myself. Two hours of e-mail dickering and I'm selling my house. I'll clear some serious coin, but I'll need someplace to live. Greenbelt looks good, I'd like one of those small two-bedroom GHI places: walk to everything, maybe more than across the street like here but exercise allegedly is a good thing; get into seances where they channel Eleanor Roosevelt, get an exclusive interview; no junkies down the street (even though are getting further away by the month and they pose no threat to me, it gets old); and this place never had the same feel as my apartment on G Street anyway; it will force me to pick up, pack up, etc, and unload a bunch of stuff.

But it's leaving DC. The only places I could afford (got no credit, this will be a cash purchase) are over in Deanwood, Marshall Heights, Randle Highlands, like that. I've been a pioneer, and anyway that's not just pioneer, that's Jeremiah F---ing Johnson. I have the size and can have the beard for it, but BTDT, got the t-shirt, thank you very much. Mount Rainier would be my style, it's got Glut Food Coop catering to the lesbian Muslims among us and is Takoma Park without the glitter -- or the Volvos. But it's been discovered as "funky" which translates into just barely out of reach. There's a 6-bedroom place over in Colmar Manor, but it's as-is and on a flood plain. Not a plan.

There's the Greenbelt Theater, known to show good movies, have fresh (not too chewy) popcorn, and a cuppla bucks less than the humongoplex theaters. There's the New Deal Cafe, hippies, coffee, veggie food, poets, pissants. There's the store on the corner where they sell 7-Eleven stuff and hand-dipped ice cream. There's trees. There's folks I know. Howdy neighbor!

There might be a better vibe. Can't be worse, this place never really "spoke to my condition" as Lady Susan would say. I hope there's a spot to do some gardening out there, I'm still eating off the collard greens I planted in the backyard last summer and I love homegrown tomatoes. And basil. And oregano. Had bumper crops of these last year. Well, not on the tomatoes, the funky weather made 'em a bit leggy and it was really hot for awhile and they didn't set fruit. Apparently word had gotten around; no rats dared pilfer from the crop. It was either the Battle of the Berries or the Big Guy and his glare that kept them away; the garden backs up on to an inner-city alley and they are out there, somewhere.

I won't miss the firetrucks hitting the damned airhorn as they draw even with my bedroom window on the way toward the intersection. I might miss Danny and his never-ending hustle but I've survived his recent sojourn as a guest of the city anyway. I might miss (now Bishop) Bynum and his never-ending hustle. And there's the Jesus is the Way storefront church, it won't be a font of open-door gospel singing for summer Sunday mornings on the stoop, not in Greenbelt. I hope I have some sunlight so I can grow another gigandor lavender patch and no I'm not gay, I'm straight but not narrow. And the white roses, I need some sun for them too. Bulbs? I can always plant more where I land, and there's some that will tolerate shade.

I won't miss the stranger hustlers. I wont miss the useless kitchen in this place. I'd like to have a washer and dryer closer than 12 blocks away. I'm tired of the bleach and razor fights and the junkie boosters coming straight from the drugstore across the street to try and sell me a bar of soap for more than it costs at the store and heybuddyhaveyagottacigaretteforaveteran.

It's probably a good thing. I must make it so.

Happy birthday Aretha Franklin and Matthew Solberg. Even Matty is getting too big to toss around anymore, and as for the Queen of Soul, well ....

Rumors of 70 degrees waft in the light breeze. And more of it tomorrow. Finally a little meteorological nurturing for the plants. You just know they've been waiting for this, like mice in a three-point stance as the cat heads outside. Weeds are the advance men in this campaign, but 'tis ever thus. Now don't get carried away folks, it's still too early for tomatoes and squash. Maybe some greens -- spinach, lettuce, those kinda things. Snow peas. A single packet of leaf lettuce holds like a kajillion seeds, just rub them into the soil and wait. It's OK to plant aurugula, radish and cress now. Thin 'em out a little after they come up (eat the tender little baby lettuce -- or is the plual letti?). And remember, you can eat the dandelion leaves, either in a salad like escarole or quickly sauteed in olive oil and garlic. Hmm, is there anything we wouldn't eat given enough olive oil and garlic? Besides what we have to eat working for THE MAN.

I predict Home Despot will shrug off winter this weekend. The fairer among us will want plants, the guys will head for Aisle 3 for the 5-gallon drum of testosterone. Stuff's sprouting all over. It's March Madness and the coeds on campus are shedding their down parkas about now if memory serves me.

All I'll say about baseball is that BOB SHORT MUST DIE OF A CASE OF RUNNING OOZING SORES. Not that I'm bitter or anything. He actually had the stones to run for U.S. Senate from I believe it was Minnesota. Like his car tires would stand a chance in this fair shire. Ratfucker.

I flipped on the little windup-sun-powered radio by the computer and WPFW was playing a lot of Aretha. Since I'd heard yesterday she was in the hospital, I was worried about it all, radio homage and all. But the announcer came on and said it was her birthday and she was home after a bad reaction to antibiotics. Good. She's 62, she can start collecting Social Security early if she wants.

I'll give young-'un Matty a call later when he's home from school. I think he's 8, but I remember him as a lump in Yasemin's belly. And even before that. Eight years old as I head off to short-haired fogeydom. But then I'd never want to be 8 ever ever never again.

Be hip, holmes.

Pablo Neruda talks about seeing "the heavens unfastened and open" and Robert Frost was "acquainted with the night." William Blake strove for the moment when you could hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.

Me, I just want to sleep. Like a log. Like a baby.

There's times when I need a pharmaceutical mallet upside the head, sort of like in the cartoons where the hapless foil of the hero gets smacked and the tweety tweety birds and stars circle like a new age store mobile above his head.

But there's times when my subconscious is saving me from the horrors of sleep and the dreams it brings. My hair is ultra short these days, but when it was long I'd often wake up at 0-dark-thirty with my locks a stringy, sodden mass from the cold sweat. Oh joy. Stuff right out of Sam Peckinpaugh. I never can run quite fast enough, but the Catch-22 of it all is that I wake up before the worst happens so I can just go back to sleep, waiting waiting waiting for it to happen again.

Those are the times when my psycho/psychic cat tends to jump on the bed and stick his head out between the curtains, daring any and all denizens of the darkened street to approach. Laugh if you will, but this is the cat that chased a po-lees dawg out of the house. Burglars broke in through the basement window facing the alley and made off with my computer (bastards, it had Quark 4 loaded on it) and a bowl worth of quarters for the laundromat. Their booty (mine or theirs, I dunno) was too big to take out through the back window so they went out the front door. Miss Penny down at the corner, a professional porch-sitter, saw them and called the cops. The cops, as a matter of procedure, sent the dog in just in case the miscreants were still inside. The 120-lb Rottweiler made it as far as the bottom of the stairs about 10 feet inside the door, the handler later told me. The cat came flying down the stairs in full dudgeon (I've always wanted to use that word), claws a-flailin' fangs a-flashin'. The dog backed right up and out of the house. I wish the Big Guy had done that to the burglars, but I guess they posed no threat to his bowl of food.

So he's a good protector, in a very self-centered way. The junkies across the street certainly took note and were very timid when they knocked on my door for a handout. Too mad for them I don't smoke menthols, what junkies prefer. But they somehow managed.

After two nights with hardly any sleep, I feel like one of those bobblehead dolls. Just give me a football or batting helmet. Might not be a bad idea anyway, for when my head falls forward into something undoubtedly not quite as hard. "He never broke any mans head but his own, and that was against a post when he was drunk..." da Bard. Henry the V.

Check http://www.mcphee.com/bigindex/current/11093.html

Ain't the Internet grand? Along with useless meanderings you get bobblehead Jesus, yours for only $4.95 plus shipping and handling. This little bit of knowledge is proof enough that I need a job, both so I can afford one and because I obviously have too much time on my hands.

Good evening Miss Bloods and all the Crips at sea....

It's 2 a.m., another sleepless night with the radio is tuned to a far too cheerful oldies station. No smokey jazz to be found on the cusp of a Wednesday. It's all about innocent love, but I haven't had any innocence since I was three-and-a-half years old. I'll tell you about it sometime. Or not.

It's too cold and too hot at the same time. The blankets are too much and not enough. The pillows are too hard and too soft. Anything to keep sleep at bay. Where's the baby bear's oatmeal that's just right?

I'm too tired to sleep. I almost broke my jaw with the last yawn. In the Internet, nobody can hear you scream.

The same four chords plink out of the little music box again and again, then they add a new one for the bridge. It's the same for all pop music, even from the king of it all, Cole Porter. But he had better words. Irving Berlin lived to hear rap. I bet he was happy.

Let' try this sleep thing again.

I sold the first of the stuff a half-hour ago. The mahogany glass-front bookcase and the old bell are in the back of some testosterone-enhanced bigass pickup truck headed back toward Glen Burnie. An aging big-bellied old redneck hippie bought 'em. "MMMM, gonna have to refinish me that bookcase." No, the price already is way too cheap. Got cash? Cash is good.

The bell was the symbol of an era, the weekends and summers at my grandparents' place out in the country in Keymar, Maryland along Big Pipe Creek. My grandmother or whoever else was handy would use it to call us in from the garden or somewhere else for the fantastic meals we had there. You could hear it peal for neary a mile. It would get really interesting when wasps would take up residence in the bell hanging on the back porch. It seemed to be a favorite of both the paper wasps and the gun-metal blue and evil mud-daubers. They would tag-team homebuilding inside the bell until someone, usually my grandfather, would knock their nests to Kingdom Come. My grandfather was really subtle that way.

The house has not been in the family for more than 15 years, but there always will be a piece of it in me. During my stay at the brain garage, in for a rebuild, they had us do some art therapy. Fun with crayons, but no scissors; we were suicidal, some of us. Draw a picture of something that made you feel safe, the shrink said. So we all did this and that and I drew a picture of the immense weeping willow tree that was the centerpiece of the property, neck and neck with the house for the heart and soul of the place. It was six- to eight-feet in diameter at its base and a rock provided a hideaway for Machiavelli, the resident big old black snake. It was strong and sturdy with its massive trunk, yet so gentle with its dangling branches. Its elbows were all gnarled with the nodules from the wasps laying eggs. It was safe. Now, the shrinklady said, draw a picture of a tree. Well fuck me, I just did. Thanks for the warning. Apparently there's some sort of study where they ask all burnouts to draw three pictures. Well the joke is on them, they got two of the same tree. Play with THAT symbolism, shrinkeroos. Sometimes a willow tree is just a willow tree.

Anyway, the bell was the last concrete (brass, actually) reminder I had of the place. The best I can do now is summon up what's inside.

Damn, a big galoot like me is crying. Let's not short-circuit the keyboard, shall we?

And I'm still short of mortgage and utilities.

I sold the first of the stuff a half-hour ago. The mahogany glass-front bookcase and the old bell are in the back of some testosterone-enhanced bigass pickup truck headed back toward Glen Burnie. An aging big-bellied old redneck hippie bought 'em. "MMMM, gonna have to refinish me that bookcase." No, the price already is way too cheap. Got cash? Cash is good.

The bell was the symbol of an era, the weekends and summers at my grandparents' place out in the country in Keymar, Maryland along Big Pipe Creek. My grandmother or whoever else was handy would use it to call us in from the garden or somewhere else for the fantastic meals we had there. You could hear it peal for neary a mile. It would get really interesting when wasps would take up residence in the bell hanging on the back porch. It seemed to be a favorite of both the paper wasps and the gun-metal blue and evil mud-daubers. They would tag-team homebuilding inside the bell until someone, usually my grandfather, would knock their nests to Kingdom Come. My grandfather was really subtle that way.

The house has not been in the family for more than 15 years, but there always will be a piece of it in me. During my stay at the brain garage, in for a rebuild, they had us do some art therapy. Fun with crayons, but no scissors; we were suicidal, some of us. Draw a picture of something that made you feel safe, the shrink said. So we all did this and that and I drew a picture of the immense weeping willow tree that was the centerpiece of the property, neck and neck with the house for the heart and soul of the place. It was six- to eight-feet in diameter at its base and a rock provided a hideaway for Machiavelli, the resident big old black snake. It was strong and sturdy with its massive trunk, yet so gentle with its dangling branches. Its elbows were all gnarled with the nodules from the wasps laying eggs. It was safe. Now, the shrinklady said, draw a picture of a tree. Well fuck me, I just did. Thanks for the warning. Apparently there's some sort of study where they ask all burnouts to draw three pictures. Well the joke is on them, they got two of the same tree. Play with THAT symbolism, shrinkeroos. Sometimes a willow tree is just a willow tree.

Anyway, the bell was the last concrete (brass, actually) reminder I had of the place. The best I can do now is summon up what's inside.

Damn, a big galoot like me is crying. Let's not short-circuit the keyboard, shall we?

And I'm still short of mortgage and utilities.

So it's March 23 and the buzzards in Hinckley, Ohio have settled in for the Spring and Summer seasons. They were scheduled to arrive on the 19th, you hap-hap-happy folks can have your swallows and San Juan Capistrano.

I've been trying to load the software so my HP all-in-one printer will work. But I just can't seem to get it going. Each time I figure out one thing, like taking the tape off the color cartridge (D'oh!), some fresh technohell rears its ugly head. Movin' to Montana soon, gonna be a Luddite tycoon. Sorry Frank, it doesn't quite scan. If this damnable thing would work, allegedly I'd be able to print, copy, scan and fax. Maybe it makes espresso too, I have to check the back of the manual for that. Looks like a call to India may be in order. In the meantime I guess it's still sending resumes into the god-knows-where of the Internet ether.

Mother Nature is beginning to piss me right off. Out the window it looks like a gorgeous, clear and sunny day. HAH! It's cold. Bitch. This winter is like THE GUEST WHO WOULD NOT LEAVE. Go away already, we're south of the Mason-Dixon line here but our desire for our deserved warm days easily outpaces our Suthun hospitality. It's putting a crimp on my urban farming. The North 40 (that's 40 square feet) remains unplanted.

But I am getting more meds, for those who know of my woes and travails and multiple layers of Catch-22. Would that be Catch-88? Those little blue pills and their burgundy brothers are a godsend, to hell with that holistic organic herbal stuff.

Some of you were entertained by the Battle of the Berries, wherin your faithful correspondent vanquished the rat. In a stream of conciousness kind of thing, it led my mind to the scene in the movie Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte where an evil Bette Davis serves wheelchair-bound Olivia de Havilland a rat on a plate. "Din-Din" Bette says. And Olivia lifts the cover over the plate (they once were fancy folk) and there lays King Rat. Yum. Bette should have put a crabapple in the rat's mouth, but somehow I don't think she was thinking of an appetizing repast. And then I drifted to thoughts of possum, even uglier than rats with their rows of tiny sharp teeth, huge rat-like tails and general pissy demeanor. They don't always play dead; I had one hold his ground and hiss at me one day out in Rock Creek Park. At least armadillos, also ugly, have that neato-torpedo armor, even if it doesn't help against them pick-em-up trucks down thar in Texas.

I've got another batch of Anadama bread, courtesy of lady friend Susan who recently has ventured into the kitchen after a long absence. It's good, and it's even better with peanut butter (what isn't?). This is this third batch, and it's closer to the Real McCoy (what a bad black and white TV show that was, with Walter Brennan the head of a hillbilly clan before Jed and Ellie May hit the scene), but the dough needs some more leavening. Yeast, or maybe a touch of baking powder. More yeast probably would be easier to control.

Maybe soon I'l regale you with tales of Big Guy, the po-lees dawg-battling cat.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY
A friend suggested last night that I do some blogging. I don't have a website, but I do have e-mail, so here goes. If you want to be left off the list, let me know.

Birthdays are different now. They are just a mark on the calendar, a day when we must contemplate, even if biriefly, our mortality. Getting older isn't the celebration it was when we were kids. At our age, we have to watch the sugar and saturated fats, shouldn't drink so much, and look even sillier now than we did back in the day if we wear those silly spangled paper hats with the elastic thread keeping it atop our noggins. We disdain consumerism, so no toys (rats!). But getting older beats the alternative, on most days.

A friend I hadn't seen for eons except as a screen name om e-mail took my out to dinner last night on birthday's eve. I had a lamb shank the size of my forearm, a glass of mediocre red wine. He had moussaka and Greek beer. We nibbled at a baklava between us and worried about the caffeine jolt in the little cup of Greek coffee we had. We talked about our health -- a sure sign of getting older, but at least we're young enough that we left our bowels out of the discussion. I had on a clean shirt and pants, a leap forward for me since I hardly ever dress up anymore now that I'm nearly two years unemployed. The "Other Will" was decked out in a dark suit, insisting he hadn't gone over to the Dark Side and become a Republican. We were joined later for a drink by a mutual friend, and the talk was sometimes politics and oft times about her (really cool and cute) daughter, and mom and child's day. Lucinda Williams was on the jukebox, not Black Flag or the Slickee Boys, and we didn't feel out of place with any of this.

My burbling melancholia may have dampened things, or maybe it's that we all slow down with age. We talked of diet and exercise, not bands and dope. The evil herb wasn't mentioned at all (Which is fine; one thing I noticed about those days is that my generational cohort seemed to talk about nothing but as we passed through that "phase we were going through.")

Thanks, Will. Thanks, Sara.

Tonight the revelry continues. Should I double-down on the Paxil?

To be continued ....

P.S.: In the past, the Scheltawire was the subject of much amazement, some shock, occasional glee. I'll see what weirdness I can dig up. There's always something Zenfully wrong going on in Florida and Germany. In the meantime, I'm waiting for a call from those McArthur genius grant people and a winning Powerball ticket.


HAPPY BIRTHDAY REDUX
So yesterday it was official, I'm one year closer to the AARP demographic. Friends gathered at a Capitol Hill saloon, drowned out, crowded in by March Madness and Friday night's amateur drinkers. I did what I hardly ever do, had a few drinks. But it was the friends around me that warmed my cockles (What the hell is a cockle?). No toys (rats), but a book, Beowoulf the ultimate bad dude, a shirt to wear to Monday's job interview, and a pair of slippers with the Bard's head on the toe. Plus a warm feeling from the assembled, friends from several distinct parts of my life.

Today is a letdown. I'm still surrounded by my own sloth and wading through the junque shoppe of my life. I know what I have to do but I lack any sense of motivation. I just can't explain it. Others have tried to light a fire under me, but I just can't seem to stoke the flames past the immediate burst of flame. And I'm paying for the several drinks I had. Ugh. Well enough of that, I say yet again.

It's supposed to hit 60 today, the first day of Spring. Some of my daffodils are blooming, vibrant spots of yellow here and there. Maybe I'll start some herbs today, put the seeds in soil indoors. But then, maybe not. Fresh basil is supreme. The oregano I had last year was pretty good too. I've never done that well growing stuff from seed, except the lettuce and spinach back on G Street, what I could salvage from the Harlequin Beetles and the slugs. Harlequin Beetles are beautiful, and though lord only knows where they came from, they are attracted to crusifers -- your cabbages and such. They came that early summer to feast on broccoli and the moveable feast headed next door to the spinach. At least the raspberies were bug-free, and I usually could get the ripe ones every morning before the squirrels and the birds.

I did blow away a rat who was both eyeing the raspberries and mocking me one night. Got home from work and there he was up on his hind feet on the patio, taunting me. Then he scuttled over to the raspberries and tugged on one of the canes. Mother F--k this, punk. Went in and got the .22 out of the closet, jacked a round into the chamber, went back out to the porch and laid the forearm and barrel over the railing. Kneeled and sited down on the little puke about 40 feet away, still yanking. Make my day.

POP.

Drop.

The next morning, Beth's dog found the rat right where the damnable rodent breathed his last. Beth, the downstairs tenant, was quite upset but Harry the Lhasa Apso was strutting around like some newly molded hero. The little fraud. Me, I'm Sgt. Schultz. Taxidermy? Maybe I should have done the Vlad the Impaler trick with the rat and made a scarerat in the garden. Some of his brethren later gnawed some low-hanging tomatoes, so I guess we called it even.

Now how's that for a thread hijack?

Thanks go out to cruise director Jim and the crew: Susan, Debby and Joe, Adele, Lenny, Denise, Elizabeth and our Blessed Lady of the Cake, Christina. Hmm, that's more women than men. Good party.

MORE

Another day-after festivities. March 20, the first day of Spring. And before you anal retentive types say "AHA! Mais non! Spring doesn't arrive until March 21," that only counts in years without a February 29. So there. Anyway, first day of Spring, time for a jaunt to the National Arboretum. Susan wanted to see the woods plants, reminds her of her childhood (same for me), so off we went.

"I REFUSE to call it Fern Valley," she huffed, looking at the sign. We ambled down the path, stopping here and there, probably reading too much into the little bits of green on the woods' floor. The occasional teeny bloom brought cries of wonderment and excited pointing. I never was worth a damn at plant identification, all that Latin is Greek to me.

There's all kinds of stuff growing out there, stuff you wouldn't expect in this climate. Cypress trees? What's up with that? And without the hanging moss and seamy heat and humidity?
And there was the camellia blooming, in the chill. It's full of little nubs that will be more flowers, it's in it for the long haul. A two-year-old sapling magnolia had impossible-sized blooms ready to go. Various cherries were out in full pink and white, even some bees were doing their thing. Too bad it's going to get colder next week; but I like nature with some spunk.

The I'll-never-call-it-Fern Valley was alive with deer sign. At several spots you could see that four or five Bambi's had been through an area, and they'd been sniffing around a trillium that was protected by a cage. The litte burble of a stream that ran through the little valley looked to be prime hunting grounds for crawdads, but not yet.

The old Capitol columns out there bring up images of Druids and Wiccan priestesses. Been there, Sara?

I guess I should feel more uplifted by the natural sojourn. Communing and all that. OK, whatEVER. It was the most time I've spent outdoors in quite awhile. Really sucks, cuz I used to love beating about in the woods, sliming through swamps, all that stuff.

WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?? Oh, someone on my AOL buddy list has a really fake-sounding bird chirp effect. Click. Click. Hmmm, it's someone I don't even know, but they keep showing up anyway.

Where were we? Oh yeah, solopsistic(sp??) despair. It's really metadespair. Depressed about being depressed.. How many levels of that can we do? SHUTUP WITH THE BIRDS ALREADY! But there is some light in the tunnel I can't find. Interview Monday with the American Trucking Association (always wanted to be a dooh-dah man) for a job covering the Hill. Gonna wear that ultra-soft striped birthday shirt. It's vertical stripes, you think I'd wear a Rugby shirt to a job interview? And I'm getting some (ultra-cheap) freelance work from a newspaper in Queens. And a huge gas bill.

Enough feeling sorry for myself.

It's March 22. That means we had more sunlight than dark today. Sounds like a plan to me, but where is the warm that goes with the sun?

The machinations of the parking police struck close to home (well, actually it was in Adams Morgan at the other end of the city, but it was my lady friend Susan, that's close). Out she comes on a Monday that's just annoyingly sunny and clear, all that happy stuff. She plans to drive to work on this day, just so she can drop the car off with me at lunch so I can use it and PARK IT. Life for a car owner is so bad in parts of town that I take in refugees, I have plenty o' parking -- until the eventual scourge of what we used to call Yuppies (Yuppies get out, but leave us your wimmins -- but that's another tale) get here with two cars per house. Many houses here are unencumbered by automobiles, I moved in before the neighborhood was even "transitional: -- dont yopu just love Realtors[peak -- and junkies plied their trade in front of JESUS IS THE WAY right across the street. Nothing like that good ol' American entrepreneurial spirit, I say.

Anyway, to get to the point. Susan's car was gone. G-O-N-E. As a comfirmed city resident, she immediately assumed it had been towed for some alleged violation against G-d, man and the parking laws. She looked wher she'd parked Saturday night, thinking she'd had a brain (break wind, ladies don't fart). Nope. So hikes on down to work in Dupont Circle and after pitching a story idea about ravens threatening wolves when it comes to eating the kill -- she's a science writer, and hey, wolves make good art -- she starts calling various numbers in the city. She looks on the city's webpage and finds the link that tells you if you car's been towed. But first she had to rummahe through her desk (a good desk for rummaging, mine at home is much the same) and runs across her car's VIN number and license plate stuff. Do you know the tag number of your car? Didn't think so. So like the great explorer she wades through the jungle of phone trees. Every once in awhile she gets a real live human voice. Must have misdialed that one. She finally gets one after pressing lord only knows how many touchtone tones that instructs her to leave a message, we'll get back to you. "Yeh, right," as my cynical 13-year-old nephew told me. Finally, around 4 o'clock she gives up and calls the police to report the car as stolen. Well, it was, in a sense, but let's not quibble about the meaning of "is" stolen.

The cops had MOVED her car.

What's up with that?

Indeed, several blocks away from its orginal resting place sits the little red sled. Of course it's all the way down at the opposite end of the block they said it was on, and she got faked out by another same-colored Geo and was happy because there was no ticket on it, but there it was.

This whole escapade with the facist parking police brings up many questions of great social and moral and metaphysical import. But the most important?

How did the tow truck driver find a parking spot?