299 Words

I was driving and Rush came on the XM. Geddy Lee was screeching on about a salesman over the top of unnecessarily complicated drumming, and I imagined for a moment that I was driving through the Hollywood Hills.

The 'Hollywood' sign is dangling precariously on the edge of the Santa Monica mountain range. Instead of Geddy Lee wheezing through his pie hole into a microphone and calling it a song, Hope Sandoval is singing. I think it's 'Ghost Highway.' The song isn't important. It's the mood that I'm trying to set. Substitute your favorite Mazzy Star song. Just make sure the song you pick is suitably haunting.

My girl is in the passenger's seat. The top is down - it's a convertible. A black 1952 Cadillac. I'm not traveling very fast - maybe 35 - tops. The road is very curvy. You have to keep your eye on it. I am going fast enough to mess up her artificially red hair, though.

“I'm so hungry I could eat a horse.” I say.

She pulls her hair off her face and says, “I haven't been hungry in years.”

I keep driving west until I reach the Pacific ocean. I keep driving until I can't go any farther. She jumps out of the car and starts wading into the ocean. Her dress floats on the tops of the waves. It looks like a jellyfish that had come to the surface. The Sun is setting behind her and she is in silhouette. She keeps going as I stand there and watch.

At that moment Geddy Lee managed to infiltrate my imagination, warning me of a salesman. A drummer drums his way through a complex fill. An arm comes out of a window.

“Number one with a Coke. That's $4.97.”

I Pardon You

I've been under invasion by black ants this summer.  That's their color, anyways.  They're ants of color.  It's probably a statement on my kitchen and not a statement about the race of the ants.  I could have just as easily been under attack by white ants with scraggly beards, or Latino ants with teardrop tattoos under their eyes.  Probably not Asian ants, though.  Saturday is a school day in Asia - I believe.  Anyway, I just want to avoid any racially charged discussion about criminality in the ant population, and black vs white, blah, blah, blah.  It's not their fault that they have to resort to a life of crime.  It's something we can blame on our sick society.

My finger points at you, sick society!

I've been engaging in a slaughter of ants this summer.  My favorite trap has turned out to be a virtually empty can of Arizona iced tea.  They're attracted to the sugary drink and crawl (what else can ants do?  Hop?  Skip?  Stupid, but apparently necessary verb!) inside the can and meet their death.  Then I start filling the can with water and the ants go with it down the drain in the kitchen sink.  Where God drowns them to death.

God loves killing with water.  Ever read the Bible?  The Old Testament is filled with examples of God drowning people, sometimes for no good reason, other than they became a bit too slutty, or they became prideful.  By the way, those Olympic athletes are prime candidates for being killed by God (probably drowned - I presume (God is a one trick pony)) if they get too proud of their achievements.  I'd watch out.  That's why they point to the rafters and thank him.  "Please don't kill me.  I didn't mean to win.  It was an accident, I swear!"  Let's move on.

So, the ants meet their death with a torrent of water.  Yet some of them cling on to the inner workings of the garbage disposer and climb right back out, whereupon I send them back down the drain.  Sometimes they hold onto seemingly nothing and ride out the flood of water.

Today, this particular ant survived at least a half dozen counts of attempted murder.  I'd fill the sink halfway with water and let the deluge loose at once and it would crawl back out, time after time.  I turned on the disposer and it, miraculously, climbed out undamaged.  After murder attempt number 8, I let it climb onto a fork and released it outside.  I figured the ant's tenacity should be rewarded with clemency.

I pardon you.

Ghost in the Ruins

So, the vultures are picking at the corpse of what's left of my childhood home.  I lived there from 3rd grade up until my early 20s.  The estate sale is underway, and then later, the house will be sold.  I'm not sure how I feel about this.  I'm a minimalist so I only took a few things - shown below - but it's a shame because that place is was filled with treasures.  I took one more thing, a Heathkit digital clock that I built in the early 80s.  I didn't want to unplug it and reset the time.  But it still works perfectly.  So, it's not shown.

I put my mother on a plane in Detroit last Saturday, headed for Southern California, and resort-like living at a place near my sister.  She's got a realistic attitude about what's happening.  All this shit has to be sold to help pay for her resort-like living.  I'm a minimalist but I'm heavily sentimental.  I'm also heavily mental.  I also like Heavy Metal.  Okay, enough of the word games.

I took these stunning mid-century dishes.  The cane is engraved with Dragons.  It should compliment my grim reaper cane nicely.  There's a Mr. Peanut ashtray, which I think is cool.  I've always liked Mr. Peanut.  He's just a peanut but he comes accessorized with a top hat, walking stick, and a monocle.   He's high class.  There's the Jefferson Golden Hour glass clock.  It was a wedding gift to my folks in the early 50s.  It stopped working.  They built a billion of these clocks over the years.  The last item is a Soundesign calculator from the early 70s.  It survived a massive flood in 1975.  It takes 4 C batteries and still works, although, it works kind of gimpy.

 I'm not sure how I feel about this.

Old Shit - A Photo Tour

I went on a tour and snapped some pictures.  The commonality is that our road, named in tribute to a dead, black, civil rights leader, in my part of town, that is, runs straight through an urban area, it's renamed with a letter and a number, and proceeds south (where I'm sure they don't care much for this dead, black, civil rights leader) where a quaint suburban area sits beside it, and then it neatly dissects a cute, little, rural village - at the end of our tour.  By then I will have established commonality.  I could follow this road all the way to Ohio but I'm not going to.

Here's the old Ford dealer which was just around the corner from my original house.  We moved out in 1975 when I was eight.  It was within walking distance.  Actually, I was a little kid.  Kids never walk.  It was within running distance.  After another Ford dealer gave it a try, they closed permanently in the mid-to-late 90s.

The old house.  The neighborhood is reasonably well kept considering the houses aren't worth crap anymore.  These people don't have a pot to piss in but, as you can see, at least they have several windows to throw it out of.  Abigail DuPont's uncle lives here now.  Total coincidence.  He is estranged from the family.   He works at the Mammoth superstore warehouse and worships Jesus full-time.  The backyard backs up to what used to be a Burger King but now it's a crummy restaurant where you can get poisoned for only $5.99.

My original school.  I went there from 1972-1975.  I used to walk there and back with Derek.  Then I would stay at his Mom's house, down the road, until my Mom finished her job doing whatever.  In 2nd or 3rd grade I was slowly getting ahead of the other kids in Math and the teacher would give me different, more advanced assignments than the other kids.  It made me feel weird so I slacked off and let the rest of the class catch up.

Our Old Shit tour concludes with a visit to Abigail's grave.