Officer P. Keer

You know what never ceases to amaze me?

The kind of gigantically dumb questions cops ask.

Like the one time I got pulled over by a Vermont State Trooper because my truck was too loud after the muffler fell off. He had me in the front seat of his cruiser. I wasn’t under arrest. But it’s State Police policy to be forced to search you for weapons & contraband for their own protection before they seat you next to them while they radio in to see if your papers are in order.

It takes a few minutes of course. Which gives them plenty of time to think of some gigantically dumb question to ask.

The cop glared at me as if to say:
Alright kid.

Then he asked “When was the last time you smoked any pot?”

Yeah…Like 3 to 5 minutes ago, officer – thanks for asking!

Rolled me up big old honker joint. I did. A fatty. Man, that joint was fatter than Jerry Garcia’s coffin. Fatter than the ugly little pecker that grows straight out of a certain someone’s forehead.

Mr. Vermont State Police man, sir.

Fatter than yo’ momma! That’s right. And yo’mommaz so fat her ass fell off.

Fatty Fatty. Yeah. The mother of all joints! I sparked her up. Got so stoned I fell flat on my ass.
So it seemed.

Turns out I just thought I got so baked that I fell on my ass. In actuality I got so cooked that I fell flat on my elbow. A honest mistake; my brain was all fucked up from the doobage. That, plus my fastastic & chronic lifelong disdain for reality.

Ass? Elbow? For all I knew I’d just rocketed wildly around the cosmos with the convertable top dropped down in a stolen & souped up flying pinball machine. Open container of XXXmake-believe in one hand; the mother of all fat joints in my other. Both corners of my lips jolted toward heaven & rolled around my perpetually lit American Spirit menthol cigarrette & curled into an unlawfully wild grin. I steered with one knee.

Vroomage!

Like a streaming red-scarf Snoopy flying on his dog house. Homer Simpson on peyote. Hunter E Vonnegut, Jrr. gone mad on make believe.

I ground my right heel into the pinball machine’s speed pedal & skillfully piloted my new ride toward a fancy hotel swimming pool in what appeared to be Atlantic City.

A parking ticket flapped beneath the driver-side windshield wiper but I was too cool for it. It bored me. Why bother with tickets when we can take the ride for free?

It’s amazing how much easier it is taking private planes. Just avoiding the bullshit of the airport and all that. Airports are such an amazing burnout for some reason: really just the effort it takes to be around Straight People. You know I swear to God, man – the amount of effort you have to have just to keep yourself Controlled…
>>Jerry Garcia, 1981

How long ‘till we’re cleared for landing? The Captain has turned off the No Money light. You are now free to win the Kentucky Derby.

Yeah. So FICA – whoever you are: you can kiss my motherfucking ass!

As long as I stay unemployed you can’t have my money.

You BASTARDS!!

*shakes fist at sky*

I have no idea what I just said dudes – but Right On.

A roll of spring mudwater splashed in through a cracked-open side window and skipped & tickled across my cheek. My eyes sprung open. I felt freshly awakened from one niftily concocted torpedo of a dream. Though I deemed it equally likely that I’d just now fallen to sleep.

Either way the surety that my red Nissan pickup truck was in actuality a rocket-propelled pinball machine remained intact.

Sweet.

Still I couldn’t help but wonder: Was I going around in circles? Ah. Yes. Naturally.

In a busy-sky holding pattern above Atlantic City.

That explains my sense that I’d gone around the exact same circle – circumferentially & by appearance quite like a traffic circle – for an indeterminate length of time. A nice long spin around a make-believe cul de sac from which all exits lead to reality.

Can anyone tell me how to get to the dark side of Titan?

I need directions! Maybe…ah? Nope. Of course not.

There’s never a cop around when you need one.

Just then I heard I siren. Pulled over. The cop walked to my window. I rolled the window the rest of the way down. The cop looked like he wanted to ask me something.

“Dude!” I exclaimed before he got a chance. “Are you from Titan? That is so excellent.”

“Step out of the vehicle.” He answered – I thought a touch indirectly. “And empty your pockets. Do you have any guns, knives or contraband?”

I got his meaning. Not from Titan?

“Bogus!”

While we walked to his cruiser the state cop informed that he pulled me over because my muffler was too loud. We sat in his car. He radioed my identity in for verification.

“So.” The cop asked in a smugly rhetorical tone while we waited. “Why did I just watch you drive around that traffic circle eleven times?”

“Dunno.” I conjectured. “Maybe because my truck looked groovy with your blue lights on while you followed me?”

The ugly little pecker that grew from the State Cop’s forehead wiggled. It was for me a moment of gargantuan unpleasantry. My skin crawled & blood screeched like rusty wheels on a second-hand rollercoaster with Fear.

The cop eyed me rudely; the pecker on his forehead was getting a boner because it thought he would take me to jail.

My muscles tensed.

He asked when was the last time I smoked any pot.

I wondered what that had to do with my loud muffler. Got confused. Until I realied that’s just what happens when you try to answer some of the gigantically dumb questions cops ask.

That’s how they try to get you; ask really dumb question and hope you trip over one.

Well. One dumb question deserves another. Why not?

“When was the last time you smoked any pot??” I incredulously asked right back.

“Don’t get smart with me.” He snarled. “Now. I’m going to search your vehicle. So why don’t you just tell me where to look for your pot?”

“I wish I knew!” I forlornly confessed. “It was stashed in my muffler – and I plumb can’t remember where it fell off. ”

The cop laughed.

The veins in his forehead riled blood-full with anger. But the pecker flopped down & bounced between VT State Trooper P. Keer’s eyes.

“Get out of my face.” He ordered limply.

Ordered me? Don’t know.

I was too guilty to bother to ask.

*poof+

the Last Word On Vonnegut

Before It Gets Better

They say It Has To Get Worse Before It Gets Better.

I aim to challenge the notion.

It has to get worse before it gets better.

Do you think so? Good chance; lots of my smartest friends do. Why?

They say it has to.

First off: What is “it?” Life on Planet Earth. You know? The Future. The future of the human species; specifically related to our embarrassing little self-extermination problem.

It must get worse before it gets better.

10 years ago, a Rwandan with enough money could buy a bullet in the head — from the genocidal mob who would otherwise beat & hack them to death with clubs & machetes.

Yesterday a car bomb turned a Baghdad food market into what one witness described as a “Swimming pool of blood.”

Early this week two friends of mine checked on the well-being of their close friend — who was distraught over a damaging legal situation. They found their friend hung by his neck from the ceiling.

Death don’t take a vacation in this land.

I’m not sure how it turns out for the dead folk. But people who live through this terrible shit? We need a little rest & peace.

But peace & rest are as rare as honeybees these days.

Beekeepers Across The US Report Losses Of Up To 95%

“It may be that the honeybee has become the victim of insecticides that are meant for other pests,” One beekeeper suggests. “If we don’t figure this out real quick, it’s going to wipe out our food supply.”

“The squash crops that we grow have a male and female bloom, and the bee has to visit…to make it pollinate and produce,” An American commercial farmer agreed. “We’re going to have a hard time finding rental bees to aid in this pollination and if it’s as critical as it looks like it will be, I probably won’t even plant anything this spring.”
>>BBC 3.11.2007

Worse before it gets better? I hear it! Of the two possibilities — worse or better — Worse has all the momentum. It’s heretofore unimaginably bad. And coming to your town.

If we learn one thing from Virgina Tech here it is: Senseless slaughters have a Fat & Happy Future in America.

Unless it gets better.

But it must get worse before it gets better.

Know what? That’s about dumb as saying you need a pay cut before you can afford the rent.

Look: before it gets better it must simply get better. That’s the one possible way.

It can happen.

Underdogs win. The End Is Weird. And most days it seems like a miracle that we’ve not blown the world to chunks already.

Schools Out Forever?

George W. Bush took the time to visit Virginia Tech today — yet flew right by New Orleans the day after that city was swallowed whole by a neighboring lake.

Why? Natural disasters are no fun. But George W. Bush feasts on deliberate bloodbaths.

That’s obvious to anyone who knows how to think.

Therein lies the Problem; one They seek to solve with the uniquely American, school shoot ’em up phenomenon.

People who know how to think are a problem. School shootings are one way to keep everyone dumb.

Think about it: the US Government uses behavior control drugs (one wonders: was this latest kid on Prozac?) to viciously transmogrify young misfits into young gunmen. They shoot up a few schools. Next thing you know every school in the country is closed for the sake of Public Safety.

And the government reaps the reward of a populace kept even dumber than they already was.

Welcome To The Monkey On My Back.

For speedWay readers who wonder how they can bet on the next Spun Cookie Race; or for that matter aren’t yet clear on what a Spun Cookie is…Here’s a good rule of thumb: the cookie has nothing to do with it. In fact I think that cookie has out-lived its’ usefulness.

Fuck cookies.

From now on: It’s 24/7 Spun Kookie races on the world famous open container speedWay!

Spread the word.

The question then is what is Spun?

Spun is like a perma-tilted pinball machine. Though the Game Over light keeps flashing the Credit counter, clearly malfunctioned, registers enough credits to provide free pinball until the 2010 mid-term elections. After that it plans to run for President.

Ever hear of a pinball game called Strange Torpedo? Me neither. I called the manufacturer to inquire about the machine’s origins. They told me that it was the only one of its kind.

Weird thing is even when the machine is unplugged the lights keep on a-flashing. It claims to pick up the extra credits in dimensions parallel to and equally as ‘real’ as our own. Quantum physisits insist these mathematical necessities — called Elsewheres — exist in realms flung so far through time & space we will never encounter them.

Strange Torpedo disagrees. Says those Elsewheres — far from flung — are really so close to our own Reality Assumption that without the right kind of eyes we don’t see them.

Strange Torpedo never shuts off for a more obvious reason — the pinball machine somehow convinced some psychiatrist to prescribe him mix-salt amphetamines for a bogus case of A.D.D.

Strange Torpedo — the sleepless extraterrestrial multi-dimension leaning orphan pinball machine — is one good example of Spun.

“Yo those Spun Cookies on your blog are pretty stale.” A friend pointed out recently. “Can we smoke ’em?”

Pippi: can you smoke a Spun Cookie?

Heads Up: To The Youth! You can take Pippi at her word. She is not just an expert. Pippi is long gone Pro.

She writes a weekly column for the successful fiber-craft web rag Knitty; a column Pippi sneakily & bravely named Get Spun.

Wicked frikkin funny. No shit.

Not the column itself — though it’s no doubt speckled liberally with cult knitter inside jokes. The title though is all-time classic art by itself; it will live brilliantly on. The joke not only identifies Pippi’s allegiance — on our side — it also spews chuckles aplenty out of every old-time drug user I tell.

“Hey my friend Pippi calls her column in a knitting magazine Get Spun!”

“Do the knitters know?” One friend asked.

Only the knitters who know shit about anything.

“Man I am Spun.” A friend once proclaimed.

“Hard Spun.” I assured him.

And that is all ye need to know.

Unless you still can’t figure out what Spun means.

One time in the passenger seat of a parked car I got so wasted on drugs — quality psychedelics — that I actually thought I was flying a spaceship.

It is the uncontested pinnacle of my personal far&wide drug experience. To this day I still swell some with pride at the accomplishment. Just you go an imagine the amount of drugs required. Plenty of people have taken enough drugs to forget momentarily which exact planet they are on.

But who here has borrowed & taken the actual spaceship out for a joy spin?

Truth told: The spaceship was not lent so much as conjured from brain resin — strange hypothalamic crystalline wash-off (reputedly the most potent drug concoction in the cosmos) — which lay sludge-puddled & stuck in the bottom of my skull. This residue of a 10-year plus drug binge is the leftover drugs that, for various unavoidable reasons, never made it to the hypothalamus; the part of the brain responsible for converting drugs into the neurotransmitter proteins — ie dopamine & seretonin –which rule so total-way awesomely.

Normally these sludge pools lie dormant but under special conditions — when the bottom-skull reservoirs are full, a feat accomplished at maximum on 2 or 3 occasions per lifetime — erupt. Back into the brain. And settle. Thinly & invisibly blanket the hypothalamus. Then seep slowly if with pronounced efficacy over the course of the ensuing decade into the various synapses.

WAY! Free drugs dudez!

That’s the real reason I seemed to handle a strange and blistering fast spacecraft — my first solo flight — with the greatest of ease. Because my reservoirs erupted. YEAH!! So I wasn’t just high on the drugs I took that night but on a semblance of all the drugs I — or anyone else — had barreled into my brain ever in my life.

Expensive little spaceship ride! I tell you.

But it was awesome.

That’s why Pippi says Get Spun.

Hard Spun.

Off to the Monkey House — gone. Gone far & hard enough to never come back.

Spun.

Spun Kookie.

Round & round & round & round
Round & round & round
& Round.

And Round!

Singing Thank You!!
For a real good time.
>>Grateful Dead

Any questions?

Yeah! Got one:

Who is going to win the 2007 Kentucky Derby (hint: my new favorite racehorse)?

I will place a complimentary $5 Kentucky Derby bet on behalf of the first reader to email me the correct answer. Get Spun. Spin It Like You Stole It. Good Luck.

Ice 9

A mid April blizzard-load of snow flew in the face of Global Warming here in southern Vermont today. Kurt Vonnegut died. At times like these we can’t help but fret somewhat about the Ice 9. Is that why there’s no spring this year in America? Perhaps. It seems likely that by now human self-extermination, by one method or another, is intractably a foregone conclusion.

How embarrassing.

But there may be hope yet — thanks in no small part to weirdos like Kurt Vonnegut.

I particularly admire what this guy does with make believe & science & doom.

11.11.22 — 04.11.07

I will say that [@ age 74] I still can’t get over how women are shaped, and that I will go to my grave wanting to pet their butts and boobs. I will say, too, that lovemaking, if sincere, is one of the best ideas Satan put in the apple she gave to the serpent to give to Eve.

The best idea in that apple, though, is making Jazz.

>>Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Butts? Boobs?

Jazz!

Woo-Hoo.

Yo Vonnegut — see you in Hell!!

Quick Question:

Who here hates White People?

Perhaps hate is too strong a word. Who then is wholesale prejudiced against Europeans and persons of their descent?

I’m talking about white Americans mainly, of course, but — to be fair, or prejudiced in an unbiased fashion — let’s go on & lump their ethnic forbearers (the French & English mainly) in with them.

There’s reason to hate us. We are the worst people in the world. Fools.

The root cause of all of Planet Earth’s problems.

Plus I don’t like our attitudes. The way we plunder around and act like we own the place. Like we’re somehow better than everyone.

I’m not saying that you should hate white people. I mean we’re not completely without merit. Let’s be fair: White People do buy a lot of things!

But…let’s just say you were excusably prejudiced against my race. It happens; lot’s of people are prejudiced against someone. Shit I for one am equal opportunity prejudiced — against everybody.

Myself none the least.

So if you hate white people — go for it dudes.

Right on.

But what shall we call these deviants?

Every other ethnicity has one — often hugely controversial — word that bigots use to rudely describe them. You know what they are. But there is no across-the-board one word smack-down for white people. And I think that’s wrong.

Honky? Cracker? Seriously. What about those words lend the user a sense of incontestable superiority? What does it say about the inherent worthlessness of my race?

C’mon!

I say white people are just a little worse than all that — don’t you think? Of course you do. Everyone does.

I feel sold short.

I think my race deserves a genuine, universally recognized insult.

How About:

Custiez.

That is Custie as in short for customer. But it’s derisively more than that. It says something about the god-given Worth of all white people.

We’re tools.

Kind of fits don’t it?

Yeah. But don’t all you Chinese folk out there go and start calling us that!

We’re sensitive.

So only white people get to call each other Custiez.

I’ve Insulted Georgie W!

Pippi:

I done figgered it out!

Tell you what I say: So-called President George W. Bush is the precise reason why America’s Founding Fathers provided We The People with the Articles of Impeachment. For goodnesses sake — use them!

Give him & Dick Cheney both the fair trial which is their Constitutional due.

Subpeona Colin Powell. He’ll tell the truth. Under the power of a Congressional subpoena General Powell will be duty-bound to. Much like he felt bound to lie treacherously, at the Commander in Sleaze’s behest, to the peaceful inhabitants of Earth.

People Magazine will rate it in the top 5 most memorable events in television history.

Billions will watch the world over. Most important: Earth’s peaceful inhabitants will feel proud to watch America take responsibility for the cruel acts of our leaders.

There’ll be music in the cafes at night and wild dance bashes in the street. Peace will get the chance. America will have president Nancy.

It’ll be our first genuine victory since Georgie W. declared war on terror.

Georgie W. will lift off on Marine One from the white house lawn. The red presidential carpet is rolled & whisked off — never to be sullied by Georgie W’s crooked footsteps again.

Impeachment.

Eviction.

Humankind breathes a sigh of cosmic relief.

Yeah! All this — So easy a crackhead could do it!

Alas it’s in the hands of congressional Democrats. We best redouble efforts to force our representatives to act on behalf of the voters to whom they’re beholden. History will frown gravely on inaction. Impeachment is a life or death matter. Bush/Cheney are deeply & rightly suspected of High & murderous Crimes. They must be tried.

Meanwhile back at the White House…

Hmm. Isn’t that where the President lives? Yeah. But W. Bush is not a duly elected president.

“Well,” Pippi wondered in her blog some while back, “Should we call him the Resident?”

But Pippi is hardcore and Resident doesn’t verbally gouge that rude smirk right off his face. So she went with squatter. To which I objected on grounds of my belief in the essential goodness of squatters. I occasionally take up temporary residence in a building to which I’ve no claim. A place where, according to police, it was not my prerogative to sleep.

It was wrong, I commented, to lump the largely innocent squatter culture inadvertently in league with the murderous ilk of Bush/Cheney’s.

Pippi agreed. But how to formally address our nation’s unelected leader until he gets his ass kicked deservedly to the Pennsylvania Avenue curb?

Hmm. Bush deals crack cocaine. Shacks up at some digs which ain’t his. What does that make him?

The Crack Kingpin in Residence?

I was stumped as an under-ripe plumb. I promised Pippi I would take enough drugs — soon — to think up a moniker befitting that dumb hoser.

Historians may hope one day to learn whether Americans of conscience resisted the cruelty unloosed on an already weary Earth by Bush/Cheney. They’ll want to know what people thought about a president who assumed power granted by a Supreme Court facilitated internal coup. On the heels of an election he incontestably stole.

Every nefarious move the thieves made was captured on film. Minutest nuances were detailed & analyzed & glossed deceptively over. With assurances that a victory declared by the candidate who clearly scored fewer votes than his opponent would make Thomas Jefferson beam with pride to be American.

When I gamble money on a racehorse I must remember to learn — or pretend at least — to enjoy it when I lose.

Perhaps I should study the strategy Bush’s team used to propel their narrow loss into a two-term Oval Office stint.

With greatest ease for those who wish to not just enjoy but profit unnaturally from the spoils of their own defeat.

Yeah. Well I don’t care how splendidly defeat has treated him. Bush lost. And in the interest of historical accuracy — as requested by my old friend Pippi — I propose a title to befit the current White House occupant.

Nice & simple. Just the truth. One morsel for future historians who will want to know how smart people like my blog readers & I describe George W. Bush. I’m tempted to call him a dumb honkey slut & leave it at that. But whether he stole the election or won it fair & square W Bush would still be a dumb honkey slut in my book.

The point is he did not win. And what do we call people who do not win? We use one word. Which niftily encapsulates what George W. Bush is — a character description of sorts — in the eyes of a decisive majority of Americans.

Loser.

George W. Bush is a Loser.

Ooh! Better yet:

the Two Time Loser!

Yeah — and you know the rules Loser.

3 strikes & you are Out.

Chronic Unemployment: the Case For.

I did the weirdest darned thing tonight. I worked.

It happens. Not often. But very occasionally my friends who own the Weathervane Music Hall pay me $25 to wash glasses when the bar closes after an exceptionally busy night.

‘Seeing ya’ll cold lazily cocktail-drink kick it while I do your work fills my heart with joy.” I told them. “This makes me happy!”

Weathervane bartenders hate to wash glasses after a busy night. But I was pleased as punch to. Did it cheerfully!

And did one smash of a job I might add: evidenced by the most recent comment — left by the boss lady herself — on my mySpace page.

I’m really not so spectacular a dishwasher. But she was desperate for one. And really I wasn’t so giddy about it. But I am desperate for money.

Speaking relatively, then — it was way frikkin awesome!!

In a small town like this finding work is purely an inside job. No one hires some jerk of the street to schlep for nickles & scuffle for a dime. Jobs here are got by personal invitation – either from the boss or a worker who is your friend.

I am eager to work. I do have a few stipulations. It must be freelance. It must. It is in my blood to freelance for money. Beyond that I’m flexible. I’ll do about anything. As long as it is not permanent I am not picky.

And I am as local as they come around here. People like me. I know employees. A few bosses even. My grueling need for cash is no secret. But work is never – ever – offered to me.

Maybe you think I could find work if I really wanted it. Let me tell you a story. Once I walked into a restaurant where several friends worked. I asked who was washing the dishes that night. No one! So I grabbed an apron & put the swab to the suds & got my scrub on. No one asked me to. I just did. Because no one would hire me to work. So I jumped in and hired my damn self.

And the restaurant people went along with it! I was hired.

Only they didn’t want to pay me. They wanted me to wash dishes from 11PM to 4AM every Friday & Saturday. But not for money. So I worked an entire weekend for free.

“Well,” I thought to myself. “Of course they don’t want to pay – I’m Mike E!!”

I’m pretty sure people think there is something wrong with me.

There is. I am an incest survivor. You may not know why that matters. Can you take me at my word? Life for incest survivors is not easy. People kill themselves over this shit. All the time; for a reason.

Post Traumatic Stress. Happens to every rape victim. Especially the children. And suicide – like chronic homelessness – is one bell-clear symptom of a big old honker Post Traumatic Stress Injury.

I feel like I have no place in the human community. Do I? Shit I can’t tend to my own human needs.

Not here in Brattleboro. I’ve lived here 20 years. Yet I cannot earn the money I need to feed & shelter myself.

There is no place for me in my own damn community.

On the bright side:

It’s kind of like blind folk whose other senses sharpen to compensate for their lack of vision. Smoldering abject poverty has worked a wonder job on my imagination. I’ve become a fantastically wishful thinker. With unshakable faith in the potency of make believe.

These are the disco-bomb best things about being Mike E.

Plus on balance my adult life spent mostly jobless & homeless has provided me more energy for art. Just a little more than I would’ve had with some dumb job for the last 15 years.

I am in the terminal grip of a stress tizzy. It is very difficult to write under such stress. I can write better. I will. I want to. But this is not about how well I write. My blog is a tool I use to improve myself in my time of great peril & adversity.

If I didn’t write I’d want to die. When I write I want to live. Write to survive. Live or die.

They say every story has conflict. That’s mine.

Over time a job you hate fills the soul with pools of stagnant misery. Perhaps the soul knows it needs art to survive. But the job rewards with money. Covers what one basically needs to be human. Suppose I had these things.

Would I write anyway?

Sure. I’d write. For hope. Because I like how the keyboard makes my fingers move. Write to make words go. Love to make words go!

I say a lot of nonsensicle scribbles. No. I mean really. Like one I wrote way back at the beginning of my blog. It goes

Go GO! Go Mike E go go Go!!

Gonna get $200

e.z.

When I pass Go!

I call that a linguistic Digger. You wipe out sometimes when you write to make words go & go faster still. Hell I say a lot of stupid shit.

I’m a daredevil. What the hell?

My oracle is the reward to risk ratio. Think on this: Every year thousands of Americans die in their sleep. That’s right. Rest up! For what? You’ll never know. You died in your sleep & missed it.

No reward. Bad risk.

So what about that job? No thanks! People drown every day in those pools of stagnant long-term employment misery.

If I had a job I could still make words go. Yeah. But I want to take those words out for, like joy rides.

All the way out to the edge. To where you know it’s gonna get stranger. Where you can only go when words are your sole hope.

When you’re so poor that you haul out & steal yourself a rollercoaster. Because you can’t afford a car & sweet SHAZAM! You must have a fast way to blow town.

For fun mostly; that’s what happens when rollercoasters get left just kind of laying around.