Bosch's Occasional Journal

Lost and Found 5-19-09

2009-05-10T12:51:00.000-07:00

Six empty soda cans, small empty bag of Funyuns, unitentifiable piece of paper, three copies of Watchtower, three copies of Awake, a cardboard box, and a flyer for a hip hop dance party that's already happened. If any of these things belongs to you, please contact us.

Summary of The Star Spangled Banner by Francis Scott Key

2008-11-22T09:42:00.000-08:00

Last night, somebody was flying a really nice flag. Is that thing still up?

Advice For Undecided Voters

2008-10-30T07:44:00.000-07:00

Hey, everyone! I have some helpful advice for you undecided voters out there. Yes, I know there's no end of information out there targeting you undecideds, but not many are offering this valuable advice:

If it isn't crystal clear to you by now which candidate should be president, Do Not Fucking Vote. Morons like you are the ones that gave GW Bush a second term. Don't buy into the conventional wisdom that voting is a civic responsibility that all citizens should participate in. If you don't know who to vote for by now, you aren't informed enough to vote. You risk fucking up the entire world with eenie miney moe bullshit. Are you just going to vote for whoever the TV last tells you to, as you're walking out the door to the polls? Seriously, stay home. Don't bother. Or think about this: should you walk out the front door or the back door? It's not such an easy choice as you might think. Maybe you should give it a few months, and THEN go vote.

And while I'm talking about 'conventional wisdom' about voting, let me clear up another fiction: "If you don't vote, you don't get to complain." Bullshit. The First Amendment isn't just for voters. Are people under 18 not allowed to complain? Are you allowed to complain if you voted, but it was for the guy you're complaining about? Does that mean that if you vote for the wrong guy, I can complain about him, and also blame you too?

I hope this helps your difficult decision! Get out there and vote like it's the last election you'll ever get to vote in!

An apology, and a parable for our time.

2008-09-24T10:42:00.000-07:00

I would like to use this public forum to apologize for all that naked shortselling i've been doing. I didn't know so much harm would come from it. I was all telling Darrin about it and I got to the naked part and he said "Ew, that's gross." And I said, "I know, but it's so profitable." And he said with his Darrin Voice, "Well, that's the financial indu$try for you," and he said it with the dollar sign in it, so it came out like "induh-dollar-tree". Weird, I know. So anyway the shit all went down and I was kickin it with my man GW Bush out on the Wall Streets, like literally on the street. Were losing badly at a nice man's three-card monte stand. Of course he was in a disguise, and of course I was all naked cause i'd been shortsellin all day, and G said, "Did I really deregerlate (sic) everything just so you could walk around here naked?" And I was sort of surprised that he asked that, because the answer was a really obvious "yes" so that's what I said to him. He was all acting like I did something wrong for shortselling, even though he was totally cool with it a month ago. It wasn't just me; everybody was naked because they all have been shortsellin, and all the others had at least lost their shirts, and were trying to find buyers for their pants. But no takers, cause who wants pants? Then I point to Gdub's car. "Oh lordy mama, looks like someone's stealing your car!" And somebody was, but it wasn't really stealing because I had sold that car that I didn't own to some guy a few days ago when that car was more valuable. Not really stealing. I was pointing at GWB and laffin and ROTSLing. I sez to him "Free marketplace mutherfuckah! The shit all works out, right?" So anyway, sorry if I sold any of your cars. The moral of this story is to watch out for disguised presidents, naked people, and invisible hands. And don't sell your shorts and your pants at the same time, or they won't let you into the Waffle House.

A Jimmy Action-Adventure Comedy!

2008-06-11T08:48:00.001-07:00

Jimmy was certainly a poor excuse for a human. There wasn't really much worth in him at all, except maybe a mercury filling in a tooth. The only things going for him was a love of TV sitcoms and a driving hunger for wallpaper paste. Usually when a child isn't loved by his own mother, that's a sign of a problem with the mother. In this case, this was all Jimmy's fault, not hers. She deserved pity just for having to look at him every day, and a less perfect mother would have killed him in his sleep long ago.

This one day, Jimmy was just hanging out, depleting the oxygen supply and chewing on a ball of fibreglass insulation. He had a Hall and Oates song stuck in his head, just like he always did. He had been staring at the television for several hours by the time his mom decided to turn it on because the plumber was going to be coming over to fix the sink. She was embarassed that Jimmy existed, but she would be extra embarassed if the plumber showed up and saw him watching a blank television. She thought the plumber was really dreamy and also steamy, so she wanted to make a good impression. Don't laugh; it's not unheard of for a plumber to be steamy. Sometimes it's just part of the job. Jimmy's mom was in the shower, taking a nice hot steamy shower in preparation for the plumber and his tools.

On the television, Superman jumped right out the window of the office building and took off flying. His mom loved when Jimmy would watch these kinds of shows, hoping it might give him ideas.

The plumber was a smelly man with a big bald spot atop his head, which was a very sensitive subject to him. He would proudly show off his ass while fixing your sink, but don't insult his bald spot. He had a handicapped tag in his truck that allowed him access to all the best parking spaces, but the tag wasn't really his. He stole it from some guy's car on the assumption that the owner wouldn't be able to catch him. The plumber was such a stereotypical plumber that nobody like him could exist in real life, which is why he shows up in this fictional story instead. He also had a heart shaped tatoo on his ass that said "Mom", which is also kind of funny, but highly unlikely in real life.

So he had his head most of the way under the sink with a pipewrench or something in hand, and his ass drooping over his belt like you'd expect from a stereotypical plumber. So wisely, Jimmy pointed out, "Your ass is stickin out of your pants, sir." To which the plumber, head still under the sink, retorted, "Oh yeah? Is that right? Fuck off, kid." Then, with drool dripping from the mouth, Jimmy said, "You're bald on the top of your head." Jimmy meant no harm, but this statement rattled the plumber enough that he screwed up something in the sink in such a way that water started squirting him in the face, and reflexively he jumped back, hitting his head under the sink. This struck Jimmy so much like a sitcom that he started laughing, like you're supposed to at sitcoms. In this case, no 'applause' sign or laugh track was necessary. The plumber, uninterested in the insult/injury combo, took after Jimmy with this pipe wrench he was holding. Of course this was even better than a sitcom, more like Benny Hill, so Jimmy was laffing uncontrolably and running away, out the front door and around the neighborhood. Eventually dogs gave chase, people carrying large stacks of dishes were startled and dropped them, other people just happened to be carrying large plate glass windows across the street which were hit by cars. Flower pots fell from third story windows, and even a piano. Someone, fully clothed, fell into a swimming pool. Oh yeah, and the Keystone Kops showed up too. If you've ever seen the 3 Stooges, it was about like that, except in color. Then all the cars jumped into the air and everything exploded.

It was really funny. You should have been there.

Dear Bosch's:
How do you manage to write such a long, rambling pointless story with absolutely no character development, plot, visual description or uplifting moral?

A: I write from the heart. It strikes such a strong chord with you because, deep down, you can relate. Did something like this happen to you when you were a child?

Re-reincarnation of Bosch's again.

2008-06-07T14:48:00.000-07:00

Bosch's Occasional Journal began as a small-run xerox'd zine back in the Old Days, maybe 1993, back when Kinko's was a fun place to be at night, and before the internet destroyed the print medium, zines and all. I drew that old Bosch's logo by hand, with what design skills I had, and no computer. The articles were printed out for free at the library (Wordperfect 5.1), and the pages manually pasted together. Gradually the technology improved until maybe 1996 when the first all-electronic web Bosch's was available. It was sort of a proto-blog, but with longish articles. The last print Bosch's was in 1999, and the web-based version stagnated for years as all of us started on other projects.

Long boring story. Anyway, Bosch's as a blog has been on my mind for years, and the other day I noticed the last Bosch's site was broken. That was all the excuse I needed to scrap the old heap, and make this nice new blog.

I guess 'nice' might not be the right word for it. I'm not sure what it will turn into, but I suspect most of the posts will be me ranting on whatever subject is pissing me off at that moment. It's my thing. But I'll try to keep it as least as humorous as venomous, and be at least slightly insightful, once in a while. "Slightly insightful" might actually be a good goal/tagline/mission statement. Bosch's Occasionally Slightly Insightful Journal.

I also hope to get most or all of the old material back online soon too, if Blogger allows backdating to 1993.

Missing Items Found

2006-02-13T23:43:00.000-08:00

If anyone is missing a pair of high-heeled relfective gold shoes and a Holy Bible, I saw these items on the sidewalk near the Pita Pit on Main St. today.

Fired!

2005-12-02T06:29:00.000-08:00

Sometimes people go crazy, write up a hasty rant and make as many copies of it as they have money in their pocket to afford. If they're lucky, the alcohol wears off before they cover the town with 'em. Nothing wrong with that, but we obscured the name just in case.

GOODBYE CRUEL WORLD?

2005-09-30T06:44:00.000-07:00

Here's the most counterintuitive idea in the world: a device that you fill with water, put you feet in the water, and plug it into the goddamn wall! Am I the only person in the world who thinks this is crazy? They've been selling these things for years, and each year around Xmastime they hit the shelves again, and each year I'm surprised to see that they're still on the market.

This particular beauty was given to me by a friend as some sort of 'gag gift' or something, maybe about 10 years ago. I never had the courage to try it out until today. You know, it was one of those days. Those days, that is, that sucked. And all I wanted was to either relax in a big way, or end it all. This seemed like a good way to accomplish either or both of those goals.

It's a heavy blue "Foot Fixer by Clairol". It offers "massage", "heat", or "massage and heat". It also features "off". It was probably bought from a thrift store, may or may not be functioning correctly, and the ten years since couldn't have made it any safer. There was no manual, no safety recall information, no instruction at all, aside from a sticker that said "Water Fill Level". I might be safer using a 1940's orgone accumulator than a 1980's Foot Fixer.

Since I was alone at the time, the first thing I figured I should do is leave some sort of suicide note in case things went horribly wrong. I couldn't do something this stupid and have everybody thinking it was an accident, right? How embarrassing that would be! It turns out that my house is the paperless office of the future, so I couldn't find any paper to write on. I typed the suicide note in Windows Notepad instead. I didn't really think about it at the time, but I was plugging it into the same power strip as my computer, and if I had been electrocuted, it might have taken my computer (and the suicide note) out with it. But obviously I wasn't killed, so it didn't end up mattering.

The stereo was playing "The Devil is Dope" by the Dramatics. I filled it with water, plugged it into the power strip, put my feet in, turned it on, and didn't die. I didn't really expect the thing to work at all, but I really didn't expect the "massage" feature to rattle the entire house. I found that if I pressed my feet down on the little massage pads than the deafening rattling would quiet to a tolerable level, and the "massage" effect would be going straight through my entire body. It was incredibly unpleasant, like driving fast on dirt roads, and if it wasn't for my dedication to you wonderful Bosch readers I would have stopped it right then. But I had to keep going, so I could report back to Bosch's HQ whether my feet were 'fixed' or not.

I guess this might be a good time to describe my feet. There's nothing particularly wrong with them, and maybe that's the problem: the didn't need any fixing. They didn't get any more tanned, and that's probably the biggest problem with them. However, after about five minutes of this inconvenience, I couldn't really feel them anymore. Had my feet been covered with scales or extra toes or painful sores, I might consider this numbing action an asset, but I realized before long I'd be more likely to acquire blisters if I kept it up. I shut it off. Before the Foot Fixer, my feet were just feet. Now they were numb, wet feet. Whee.

How old do you have to be to enjoy one of these things? What kind of laboratory did they use to develop it? Was it the attic of a spooky old mansion during a violent rainstorm? Did Clairol team up with Doc Kevorkian to develop a final solution to the octogenarian problem? I don't think I can recommend this device to anyone except extreme sports enthusiasts and very old people.

The Postum Challenge (by Gus Mellobar)

2005-09-13T23:22:00.000-07:00

Where to begin? As I recall it, I was either staring down the barrel of the BBQ sauce challenge (with it ahead of me) or giddy with the results (having just completed it). Whatever the case, it happened very much like these things usually do. Bonefish and I were discussing various foodstuffs and I ended up making a casual remark/half hearted boast about whatever it was we were talking about. In this particular case, it happened to be Postum. As we were both quite familiar with this horrible non caffienated coffee "substitute", we had a lengthy discussion about its (de)merits. The discussion finally came to a head with me saying that I thought I would rather eat a can dry than drink the equivalent amount in its prepared liquid form. Just as with the BBQ sauce, this resulted in Bonefish's reply of "you're on". A pact was sealed. I had sold my soul to the devil for the third time (the first being for a stack of comic books when I was about twelve...).

With the official Bosch release party looming in the immediate future, what better time than that to "reel out the Gus"? "Rules" for the event were established, as always, beforehand. They went something like this: I would attempt to consume an entire "standard" sized can of Postum in it's natural dry state, I was to be assisted by only one glass of beer (this being the choice over cold water due to the fact that old George Post, the creator of Postum, was something of a health nut...), and that there was no set time during which I was to consume the stuff; only that I should try to do it as quickly as possible.

While there wasn't an official theme song for the Postum Challenge, it seemed quite clear that I would be attempting to "Get Right Back" (to where I started from) just like the Maxine Nightingale song. By this I refer to the earliest origins of all this Food Challenge business; an origin which my older brother was kind enough to remind me of. It seems that when Ole Gus was but a wee lad, he and his big bro had a peculiar sort of game. This involved each brother taking turns mixing up a horrible concoction (usually involving ingredients such as garlic, milk, orange juice, chocolate syrup, raw eggs, various spices, and even Postum) for the other guy to drink. The whole idea was to mix up something so awful as to make the other person puke. Why would anyone do this willingly? Well, as I see it, it was for many of the same reasons that young boys play football, ride motorcyles, or force each other to drink large amounts of alcohol. To wit: to prove to all that you are indeed BAD ASS!!! But unlike the aforementioned physical bad ass activities, this particular challenge was intended to demonstrate a certain internal strength. "Mind over matter" much more than "kick ass". Only standing to add intrigue to the hype surrounding Postum was young Gus's continuos marvelling at his older sister and mothers love of the stuff. Many a night was spent watching them drink it and lip smack at it's yummy molassesness. All that the perplexed Gusling could think was that Postum was just a horrible tasting coffee substitute which contained none of the caffiene essential to the enjoyment of any hot beverage.

All the factors had been building for many years and it finally came time to show my stuff on Saturday July ??. This time instead of a local coffee shop, the challenge went down at a local wateringhole on the eve of the Bosch newspaper print version's release. There were to be many essential B's in effect that evening including (but not limited to) booze,broads,beer,bands,barfing,bragging,boasting,boogeying, bogarting. After a bit of preshow MCing by the Tuna Can Man, the first of several bands hit the stage. Tuna Can dispensed more of the love and wisdom he is highly regarded for and introduced yours truly as a between bands attraction. Nothing can be more boring than watching someone eat, so I enlisted my good pal Wonderboy to whoop up the crowd with his patented crowd pleasin' banter while I dug in to my Postum. As the band that was set to follow the challenge was through setting up and I wasn't anywhere close to being "done", it was decided (through the good graces of those in the band) that Ol' Gus would be sharing the stage with the members of Clock. With this, the challenge continued.

So what is EATING the stuff actually like? Let me just say that it was considerably more of a physical challenge than a mental. The flavor was horrible, of course, much like eating dry coffee grounds. Unappealing flavor being something that I consider easy to get past (an issue of mind over matter), the REAL issue here was in the physical properties of the stuff. With the issue (or non issue as far as I was concerned) of taste out of the way, let me ask this: Even if dirt or sand tasted like chocolate, would they be any easier to eat? That would be no. I could no sooner take just a spoonful of dry Postum into my mouth then to have it physically gummed shut once it mixed with the saliva in my mouth. It stuck to front and back of teeth, lips, roof of mouth, and tongue like the unholy roofing tar of "Ol' Scratch" himself. Needless to say my original one glass of beer was three quarters gone by the time I got to the second or third gritty spoonful of granular hell. It was clear early on that it would be physically impossible to proceed without further liquid aid. Quite fortunately for me, my improbable plight must have been quite apparent to several fearful onlookers who blessed me with more liquid beverage before I could choke down a fourth spoonful. Had this not happened, it certainly would have been somewhat less than likely that I could have proceeded. Sure, I guess if I wanted to stick to the original rules regarding beverage restriction I could have downed maybe another spoonful or two before blowing clumpy black icor all over an otherwise peaceful crowd. But what kind of fun is that, I ask you? Much better to get some water and beer in me to mix with the predigested goo!!! In anticipation of a much higher projectile rate as a result of a higher liquid ratio, I proceeded.

As Clock continued through a fine set of tunes, I continued to stuff tablespoon after tablespoon of Postum into my gummy black Gushole. About two thirds to three quarters of the Postum was actually making its way down my throat at this point (aided in large part by beveridge assistance). The rest was being gleefully and unceremoniously scraped off the roof of my mouth and flicked at random either off to the side of the stage or directly at those sitting near the front. Occasionally some globules would break loose and proceed to mix with saliva and/or water or beer and be spat “chewin’ ‘tubbaccer” style onto a nearby copy of Bosch. The crowd seemed to become more and more disgusted and/or sympathetic to my plight as the spectacle continued.

By the time Clock had finished their set, I still had not consumed the entire container of Postum. While I COULD have continued on my quest, I considered a few factors: The next band playing may not be as willing to soil their performance with the residue of my antics, the waitstaff of the Neurolux were seemingly annoyed with the mess that I was making, and finally it WAS becoming increasingly physically impossible to continue. So I decided to cash it in. After it was all said and done, I had made my way through nine of the jar’s twelve ounces of dry Postum.

As I ambled from the stage to the bathroom to squeeze more Postum from both ends of me (I had to make room for further liquid refreshment and lessen the odds of “blessing” others with the after effects of copious Postum consumption), many people expressed their repulsion and curiosity at my blackened, seemingly toothless mouth. The staff of the Neurolux also responded in two distinct and opposing ways. While one waitress was concerned that I was feeling o.k., a second gave me a scowl and asked: “So, you’ll be cleaning up the mess, right?” “Of course,” I replied and then proceeded to mosey first to the bar and then directly off into the sunset of another Gus challenge.

Post Script/Author’s note: The first three quarters of the previous article were written immediately after the events described (i.e. several years ago). The remaining portion was fresh yesterday.

Gus is like Peach Schnapps; stomach-turningly sweet and fruity, yet ultimately weak and ineffective.

Gardening With the Tuna Can Man. (by the Tuna Can Man)

2002-11-24T12:41:00.000-08:00

My friend Steve back in New York, his parents owned a beach house on the Jersey shore, and every summer we'd take off and go down for a couple of weeks and just hang out, me and him. You know, a total party house, beer, booze, pizza every other night.

Well, one summer, Steve was going to go down there and spend the whole summer, and I said, "Hey, I'll go with you." He said, "Well, how are you going to get off work." At the time I was working for the EMS, and I told them, "You know, if you don't let me outta this job I'm going to go crazy." I was losing my mind because I was a paramedic, and we had a pretty comprehensive union disability, like if you felt mentally ill. So I told 'em I was going nuts and they gave me the whole summer off.

So I go down there, and it was really cool. Unlike most summers, his parents never showed up until the end of summer, so we had the place to ourselves the whole time. Sometimes maybe his brother would come by and visit us from time to time, but his brothers were older than us and just as wild.

I got a job selling sea shells by the sea shore. It was off the books, because I couldn't work a job while I was collecting pension from New York City so it had to be something off the books. So I'm raking in all this money. And neither of us really worked, we just ate pizza and drank beer and smoked pot that entire summer.

So I guess what happened is that one of the first couple of weeks we were there we bought like a whole eighth of weed, or a half-ounce or something. And I was cleaning it, picking the seeds and stems out, and I was swallowing the seeds. I didn't think much of it. Well, a few days later, you know, I gotta go to the bathroom. There were two bathrooms in the house, so I go to the one downstairs and I get done with my business, and I go to flush the toilet and the whole thing clogs up. A big long turd is sticking out of the water, and all this toilet paper. So I'm like, "Oh, man." And all stoned and drunk I go outside and say, "Steve, man, I think I clogged up the toilet. You got a plunger?" Steve, all stoned and drunk, responds, "Ahh, don't worry about it. Just shut the door and I'll get it later."

So I close the door, and two and a half months go by. We never went back in that bathroom, we just closed the door and used the bathroom upstairs. We even forgot why we closed the bathroom. We knew something was wrong, but we just never went back in there.

Well, the summer was just filled with crazy shit. We bought an African killer frog at a pet store, and we let this thing loose in the house. We'd dangle raw meat on a string and it would attack it. We'd be sitting watching Beavis and Butthead and a grasshopper would go hopping by, and a second or two later the frog would be in hot persuit chasing the grasshopper. We'd be all stoned, and it was just like watching Beavis and Butthead. We'd go, "Huh huh, you see that? He's going to eat the grasshopper."

After about two and a half months of this, Steve's sister calls up. "Steve, our parents are going to be down there this weekend, and if I know you guys you better start cleaning that house up now! I'll bet it's just destroyed. Get on it before they get down there!"

So it was this mad frenzy. We had a week to sober up and clean the house. I mean, between the both of us it was amazing what was coming out of that house. Garbage bags full of shit were coming out of the house. Huge huge bags of garbage. Plates with ketchup so hard I had to chisel it off there with a knife and a spoon. It was terrible. So finally I'm like, "Hey, I guess I need to go in there and clean that bathroom." And Steve's like, "Yeah, you better get in there." So I go in the bathroom with some Comet and a plunger and some glass cleaner. And I walk in, and I'm not kidding you, I've had horticulturists say it's impossible, I've had scientists say there's no way it could happen, but I looked down at my turd that's still sticking up out of the water, and there is a little sprout, or branch, and two little leaves growing out of the side of it. I was like, "Holy shit, wow!" And I guess it was perfect because it had the water, and there was a bit of sunlight coming in the window shining right on the toilet bowl. So I'm like, "Hey Steve, come check this shit out!"

So Steve comes running inside and says, "Holy shit, what is that?"

"Um, I don't know."

"Well, what did you eat?"

So I tried to think, and I said, "I think it's a pot plant, 'cause I was eating the seeds around the time that this happened."

And he says, "I'll bet that's some of the best bud we'd ever smoke"

I said, "Maybe we should get a pot and try to plant it. Are you going in there to get it?"

And he said, "Hell, no, I'm going in there to get it."

And I said, "Well, it's a part of me. That came from me."

He said, "I don't give a shit." And he just starts taking tons of Comet and dumps it in there, swishes it around with a coathanger, and then plunges and flushes it.

The Tuna Can Man is a former New York EMS turned Mountain Home Idaho redneck with the ugliest dog in town. His lifelong dream is to be a grocer in Alaska.

Jimmy and his Noise.

2001-11-25T12:00:00.000-08:00

Jimmy was pretty dumb in the head, but one day he thought he had come up with an idea. He figured out how to make this really funny noise with his mouth, and he'd keep himself amused for hours making this sound. Sometimes he'd do it in front of a mirror so he could watch how funny looking he was when he made this funny sound (he was very funny looking), and sometimes he'd just make this sound while he was laying in bed at night trying to fall asleep. But this one day he got an idea of how to put this really funny noise to good use. He figured that if he could get on Color Television and make that noise (which Jimmy called "The Noise"), it would amuse the whole world. People all over would hear it and maybe even learn how to make The Noise themselves and teach it to others that weren't watching Television at the time, and this would bring about World Peace. Who could fight when they're amused and making funny noises with their mouths, while their "enemies" are doing the same thing? Jimmy was an idealist.

Now Jimmy was dumb, but he wasn't stupid. At least not really really really stupid. When he wasn't sniffing glue. So he went right out and hired a lawyer to patent the mouth noise process (US Pat. No. 38464537839), and trademarked the phrase The Noise® and World Peace®, and then set out to find a Color Television camera to get in front of.

The first camera he found was in an alleyway near his house. The camera had a big 7 on the side of it, and a Television newsreading `personality' in front of it. They were shooting a made-for-Television-news documentary about the dangers of sniffing wallpaper paste and drinking BBQ sauce. Jimmy leaped in front of the camera and made The Noise. Everybody laughed hysterically, even the Television `personality', who was demonstrating how to drink BBQ sauce at the time. She was laffing so hard that she shot BBQ sauce out of her nose and mouth. And her ears too. The camera man fell over with his camera, whereupon it exploded and burst into flames, burning and scarring his face permanently, but still he kept laffing. To this day, he can't even tell the story about how his face became horribly disfigured without laughing uncontrollably. Tragically, however, the videotape didn't survive the explosion, so The Noise never aired.

The next day Jimmy was sniffing glue and watching Color Television, and he saw a live segment being aired from a local bingo hall. For some reason that was the most exciting thing going on in town at that time, so that's what they had to put on Television. It wasn't too far away so Jimmy walked over there, ready to thrust World Peace® on the world. He asked the camera people if he could make a funny noise on Color Television, and they said yes, but he'd have to wait until a commercial for cream corn had finished. Jimmy decided to spend this extra time warming up the important muscles of the body. He let loose with a practice Noise, and out of nowhere a tiger that had escaped from the zoo jumped on Jimmy and was about to eat him alive, except that it was frightened away by the sound of the entire bingo hall laughing. Eventually somebody got enough composure to call the police. By the time the cop showed up, the tiger was long gone, so he shot some woman in the leg instead. They had to cancel bingo because the guy who reads off the pingpong balls couldn't stop laffing. After all that, they decided they didn't want Jimmy to make his Noise anymore, lest it attract more angry tigers. Jimmy left unhurt, but saddened.

A couple of days later it was Halloween, and Jimmy dressed up as the Devil and went trick or treating alone, because he had no friends. Eventually he ended up at a weird church that was open because it was also Sunday, in addition to being Halloween. It was the First Church of Televangelism. There was a preacherman with a gold suit and a solid gold bow tie, and they had television cameras so they could broadcast his ramblings and tongue-speakings to all the backward people of the world on UHF. The preacherman, who's name also happened to be Jimmy, was the most popular fanatical nutcase in the world, and there he was preaching to an audience and the Color Television cameras, for broadcast the next week. Now was Jimmy's chance.

As Jimmy walked up to the pulpit in his Devil costume, people gasped. For some reason they thought he was the real Devil because they didn't notice the rubberband that held the mask on his face, and they'd forgotten that it was Halloween. Jimmy jumped in front of the cameras and made The Noise.

There was a shocked few seconds, and then everyone started laughing and cheering, falling in the aisles and crying with joy. The cameras had caught it all on videotape. Before long, the entire congregation was jumping on the stage, pledging their allegiance to the Devil and promising their souls and children to the Dark Side. When the show went to air the next week, they had edited out the part with Jimmy in the Devil costume. They didn't feel it fit the format of the show.

On his way home he walked through the alleyway where they had been shooting the wallpaper paste and BBQ sauce documentary, and saw they had discarded the tub of wallpaper paste there. So he took it home and had eaten all of it by the time the sun came up.

He stayed in bed a week after that, and by then the president, who was named Big Brother, was coming to town to make a speech about how we need to have a big war to help his upcoming re-election. Jimmy had realized a few things during his wallpaper paste induced coma. One of those things was that he needed to get his Noise on Color Television before a war broke out, because The Noise was the only thing that could stop it. He also had decided that he would have to spread the word on live Television so that they couldn't edit it out. So how better to spread the word than to steal the limelight from the President?

He took the bus to where the President was going to be talking. He got there early so he hung around, thinking about how great it was going to be. How he would show the world that war wasn't necessary, and how he would single-handedly usher in a new era of peace and all that kind of crap. But he must have been thinking these things too hard, because the Secret Service's mind reading machine detected too much thinking about peace and love, and Jimmy was quickly apprehended, tortured and shot to death. It was reported in the media that he was really there to assassinate the President, and so nobody cried at his funeral.

Bonefish Sam has won countless awards for literature.

Jimmy Plays the Piano.

2001-11-25T11:55:00.000-08:00

"Jimmy, just what are you doing?" his mom said.

"Guh, uh, I'm just playin' the piano, that's all." Jimmy said.

"Jimmy," his mother repied, "that ain't no piano!"

"I... I guess you're right."

Bonefish Sam has won countless awards for literature.

Dinosaurs Still Rule the Earth (by Ben Kline)

2001-07-06T06:42:00.000-07:00

Simply by noticing the sheer amount of fermented dinosaur blood involved in the everyday processes of so-called-civilization, you can begin to hear my argument. The miracle of Miracle Whip, the twinkle in a Twinkie, wall to wall carpeting and the Lycra in your undies, Tupperware and/or lipstick, asphalt and/or condoms.

Okay so it was mostly all the ferns, bacterium, seaweed an' shit that composted into our trinity of crude, coal and "natural" gas, but evidently it's only the top of the food chain that matters, so whenever I see an S.U.V. barreling by the neighborhood cul-de-sac, it's a snortin' stompin' brontosaurus eatin' T-rex that I envision. Ice ages of pressure and heat that only magma from the center of the earth could produce, transmogrifying blood, bones and bryophytes into rich Texas tea.

Seemingly endless stretches of black asphalt akin to rivers of coagulated blood. Plastic, oh glorious plastic, you are skin. Coal is petrified bone; the natural gas was passed from their ass. Insects gather in the halo of wasted light, shining bright into a deserted night, a sacrifice. Praise Ford, Lee Iacocca for President, please let the car take me there. Steel cages envelope the flesh, solid sliding ka-chunk of a mini-van door slammed shut by the shin guard clad youth, who aspires to own his own someday. Strapping his strapping wee ass into the Naugahyde enveloped pew with a nylon seatbelt at the command of his mother, who is comforted by the sounds of automatic locks. A feeling of security is achieved with two thousand pounds of steel between her and all those other damned people on the road. Sixty-Five miles an hour on a highway maintained by our government and we'll buy whatever the hell we can to feel assured of life after driving. Who the hell cares about a little warming of the globe anyway, I gotta git my kid to soccer.

Gasoline is cheaper than milk. The radio commercial is telling you not to worry, to ignore the fire in your kitchen, to gaze upon the glorious silicone breast that is Pepsi, history is on your side; progress.

There was a time in between the Jurassic and this, the second coming where mammals of the sapiens sort lived without the aid of fire from beneath the ground, but right around the birth of queen-to-be Victoria, machines first made their presence known, and from corn combine to the computer their march has hitherto run ceaselessly, unendingly. John Henry died; the steam drill ran on. Assuredly as coal churned in its belly, Dick Cheney's new pacemaker ensures the mile long trains of the cold black coal mined from train lengths beneath the deepest tree root will continue to choo-choo along to the blazing power plants, power plants that measure their consumption with the t.l.a. (three letter acronym) t.p.h. (tons per hour). Dick Cheney is from Wyoming; Wyoming is one big-ass cube of coal.

With, at last I heard, thirty years left to assuage environmental catastrophe of the planetary level, it might be time to start riding your bike to soccer, but since, at the other last hearing, you only have to accept some Christ fella into your pacemaker in order to hop the bandwagon offa this merry-go-round, why worry about 110 degree weather? I mean really, I'll be as dead as the stegosaurus that provided the electricity for this essay by the time anything really bad happens. I have a creepy feeling that heaven is just right up there on the dark side of the moon. All the rich popular pretty people who went to seminary class before the sun rose get to go when they're around 80 or whatever, they get an angel pill that keeps `em alive forever. The whole bit: virgins, ambrosia, harp music and Elvis, all under pressurized geodesic domes. The conspiracy isn't that we didn't go to the moon at all, it's that we quit going after like, 15 missions. Don't worry; everything that the rich guys decide to do over golf or in some secret society is part of the plan. God made dinosaurs, right? On purpose even...

The sheer insanity of painted lines and flashing colored lights guiding this chimpanzee with a handgun. Piloting all that inertia with a rack and pinion steering wheel and friction brakes. "Hands at ten and two, defensive driving now people!" Fuckin' glorified go-karts lumbering through the urban jungle. Power lines draped like vines and canyon walls of concrete. The sheer flatulent waste of the terrible lizards married to the unthinking hegemony of an ant colony.

Dinosaurs rule the earth. In spirit, as we pilot steel shells of their armor plated ghosts, running off the actual molecules of their blood. Politically, progress is the same to a modern republican as it was to Queen Victoria, apparently to not change our wasteful culture at all. Like a CD in a microwave, humanity is burning up its terrarium from the inside out. Geologically three seconds is all the time humans have been here, let's see if we can't let the dinosaurs continued rule wipe us out as well.

Ben Kline has the nicest garden in town.

A Cigar, In Japan, With You (by Scott VanDusen)

2001-07-01T23:38:00.000-07:00

WHoo! What at time to be around I must declare.

Whew.

So hey goddamn this is Scott and what do you know here I am again sitting on my blue chair I stole from the sodaigomi (large general garbage pile) facing my computer on a saturday night again. (I do believe we can perceive a pattern here, capn). I've spent almost the entire day playing old school video games (Blockout to be exact) and listening to internet radio (destroyradio.com! Oh yeah you CAN be 14 years old twice!). But now it is time to actually do something PRODUCTIVE and all that.

You know, ever since the previous magazine that I used to write these cigar reviews for evaporated, I always thought, well, that's it you know. Over and out the end of an era so long thanks for everything yadayadayada but LIKE THE PHOENIX I RISE. Yeah right. More like the Millennium Falcon which never quite seems to make that jump into hyperspace, just that wa wa waaaaaaa sound....

Ok ok ok ok enough of this TALK. Entirely too academic. For I am certain that ears such as yours are burning with the past and the future now you know more now you know less and everything in motion making you a little bit ill but hell it will. Outside the evening light has stained the sky with powder burns and mascara laden cotton balls. After 5 days of continual rain, the air blankets the city heavy and still. The sparrows are silent, fluorescent lights flicker across the street, the city settles down to shows about eating, shows about cooking- I swear the ONLY thing on Japanese TV these days are these culinary programs which make me want to turn bulemic. You know, I never really noticed the parallel between food and sex, but they certainly are related, are they not? What could be more frustrating than watching these rich skinny Japanese robots consume expensive and impossible dishes, while my sink is filled with garbage the fridge is filled with garbage even the garbage can... well you know.... and all the flirting and double edged sentences flying back and forth, it's no wonder it's no surprise that we are so impossibly hungry.

Well let's skip the stone and gnaw the bone and allow me to introduce myself. Wait, already did that. Ok HEY I KNOW I'LL TALK ABOUT THE FAT CIGAR I AM ABOUT TO SHOVE IN MY FACE. How about that? Ha ha ha ha ha ah goddamn sometimes I make myself chortle. CHORTLE CHORTLE. Yeah ok anyway here is the Cigar; It's a "Cabanas". That's all that I know! And the fucking thing has got to be the John Holmes of cigars. I don't know WHO chose this thing for me to review (Mr. Stivers, paging Mr. Stivers...) but FUCKINGHELL this thing is WAY more than any NORMAL person needs. In fact, you may consider me to be a bit of a WUSS, but I have decided to CUT the thing in half! Save some for later. After all, it is my LAST cigar until I head off to the states in a couple of weeks, and you know I'm going to want SOMETHING to smoke on the shinkansen...

So before you can say "nuclear missile defense strategy is fucking DUMB AS FUCK but HEY it's more money for LOCKHEED", this cigar has been snipped and lit and I'm a puffin daddy. It's allright. Considering that this thing cost 5 bucks, but I get to smoke it TWICE as it were, it's gotta be the BARGAIN of the century. Actually, I wonder how big the biggest cigar on earth ever made is/was? If anyone knows, EMAIL me at scott@waveofwords.com and I will MENTION you in the next issue! HEy Look at ME! WHoo deeee doooooooo!!!

Alright it's burning and the wine the WINE children the WINE is, who coulda guessed, FROM CALIFORNIA!! I hear that california's annual GDP exceeds that of FRANCE, BTW. And the wine ain't that bad. Too bad California is such a shitty place. No offense, mom. But CHEAP WINE is sometimes the only option, and as I have no money at all, Franzia californian red is a o k.

While I was hacking out that last sentence, it started POURING again outside. "Fall rain fall rain beautiful rain don't disturb me beautiful rain ohhh come (never come) ohhh come to me beautiful rain" Checkitout the night before last, at about 4:30 in the morning, it was THUNDERIN And a LIGHTNINTINININN and I coulda swore one of those explosions happened RIGHT OVER MY APARTMENT. Shook the whole building, left my hair standing on end, and was really erotic! LOVE those thunderstorms! Like cross tops for the soul. Maybe I should move to the desert, Arizona or something and build a teepee and wait for the rain! But hang on, do they have cable modem access in the Air-uh-zona desert yet? Maybe my friendly TIME WARNER AT&T CNN sales rep can help me out! HERE's MY MONEY just KEEP me away from those NASTY pornograffers and those SCARY hackers and CONTROVERSIAL sites! Yep! Walled Garden where NOBODY can see out but EVERYONE ELSE can see in HANG ON WAIT WHAT THE GODDAMN!

So this cigar is right on. It sure makes me wish that I could be at a Pavement show though. You know. Maybe sing along with boys that are dying on these streets or something. Or on a road trip to see Neil Young in the Gorge high on mushrooms under a full moon with THIS VERY CIGAR. But that's a million miles away, for time is the greatest distance between two places. Maybe instead I'll put on some TS Elliot reading TS ELLIOT and take a bath with this very bottle of wine... I dunno though. Smoking a cigar in the bathtub would kinda suck, wouldn't it. Aww fuckit maybe I'll just talk about Japan for those that are listening:

And Here's The News In Japan; I'm sure everyone heard about that guy that went into an elementary school in Osaka a couple of weeks ago with two cutting knives, slashed up more than 20 1st and 2nd graders. Sad sad sad. Evidently, the guy that did it was whacked out on 20 times the normal dosage of antipsychotic drugs and had a history of schizophrenia. The guy's father was interviewed, he said something like "I have no son. I disowned him 25 years ago" Hmmmm. Notice any connection? So many of these mass murderers had shitty relationships with their parents. I say, put the parents on trial WITH the kids. Now There's an Idea. That way we could have BOTH Bush Jr. AND Senior fry for failing to comply with the Kyoto accord, failure to EVER pardon anyone on death row no matter HOW fucked up the actual trial was, failure to do ANYTHING but bend the people of America OVER for the Military Industrial Complex. (whoo there horse slow it down! Jeez I think I got a little bit of pent up HOSTILITY going on over here... sorry about that. Its just that I am so sick of BUSH and the fact that all I can do to change anything is sit around and bitch and smoke and drink and listen to old school punk rock. Hmmmm depressing.

Oh yeah. The cigar. Keen.

Lessee what else is going on over here in Japan? Well, a guy I know is getting extradited for taking "voyeuristic" photos. He got caught trying to snap a photo of a 13 year old girl in the little girls room. Thing is, I never thought of this guy as being THAT fucked in the head, you know? I mean, I had helped him fix his computer and he seemed like an allright guy and all that, but I guess you never know, do you...

Here's more fun. My girlfriend lives down in Tokyo, on the second story of an apartment. The other night she calls me at 2 in the morning because someone is trying to CLIMB UP onto her balcony. She hears this racket, looks out the back window and there is this arm and head visible through the hanging laundry. She screams and slams the window shut and calls the police, who upon arriving, cannot BELIEVE that anyone could actually CLIMB that wall (something like 15 feet up!). They attributed the attempt to some pervert after her underwear.

Her best friend, this girl from Australia, has similar stories of sexual harassment. Allegedly, since she came to Japan 4 months ago, she has had no less than 3 guys flash her in public. One was masturbating behind her as she was walking home. I mean, what the fuck? I'm beginning to become one of those reverse misogynists. As In, MEN are SHIT. The more I think about it, the more I am forced to conclude that the MAJORITY of these murders and assaults and wars and shit are all perpetrated by men. What do you think? I mean, come on do you think that the desert storm trading card "carpet bombing" would have ever gone to the press if a woman was in charge? I dunno. Maybe. But I doubt it.

Heavy heavy falls the night and at least the internet radio person has decided to put on that sleepy dreamy version of yo la tengo's sugarcube. Maybe I should relax more, you know ENJOY this cigar these wisps and fragments of truth before they disappear like socks, unnoticed and simple. "And in evenings in spring the windows and doors were open and the music came outdoors. Sometimes, all the lights would go out, except for a large chandelier they hung from the ceiling. Couples would come outside, to the relative privacy of the alleyway. You could see them, kissing behind ash pits and telephone poles. Such was the compensation for lives that passed like mine, without any change or adventure..." Aw shit I guess all I really need is Tennessee Williams, Raymond Carver, and a pesto pizza with roasted garlic...

So HEY kids, I'm going to wrap this up and torch it. Dig? I hope that my ramblings were somewhat coherent. So hard to drink the coffee through the 'stash, as someone said.

Optic Nerve #7 by Adrian Tomine - Review (by Khris Soden)

2001-07-01T23:29:00.000-07:00

Adrian Tomine, only in his mid-twenties, has solidly established himself as one of the best comics storytellers to come out of the last decade with his issues of Optic Nerve. Anyone familiar with his work, however, will note that he really isn't a storyteller, per se, but rather an elaborate illustrator of segments in time. Tomine's strongest talent has always been in his ability to represent a character in a brief segment of their lives, expressing complex emotions or providing a voyeuristic view of an episode from the days of trendy men and women. At their best, these "slice of life" stories mimic our own lives, in the sense that events flow into one another, and nothing carries the beginning-middle-and-ending structure of most fiction. However, over the course of the past two issues, Tomine has tried to evolve and diversify his story-telling style by expanding his pieces to full comic book length and incorporating more traditional story-telling elements, such as the aforementioned plot structuring, as well as a greater reliance on themes. These two most recent issues, typical of most works of artists in experimental stages, have been a bit of a mix between success and failure. This brings us to his most recent issue, a whole issue devoted to the story "Summer Blonde".

(Here, I feel it's necessary to point out that this issue was first printed in June of 2000. Sadly, in the world of so-called "alternative comics", this still qualifies it as "new".)

"Summer Blonde" is the story of a very un-Hollywood love triangle, involving a passive-aggressive introvert named Neil, a player named Carlo, and their interest, the 20-year-old Vanessa. The story begins with Carlo introducing himself as the new tenant in Neil's apartment building. Even in this opening theme, Tomine is playing with themes, visually and metaphorically; Carlo and Neil, complete opposites in personality, live in apartments on the opposite sides of the building's plaza, and while Carlo stands in the open sunlight, Neil stays inside the seclusion of his doorway. Subtlety like this is one of Tomine's strong points, but in this story, as opposed to previous ones, Tomine doesn't take the time to develop his characters into complex personalities. Through a succession of scenes that feel a little rushed, we learn that Neil works in the personals section of a weekly paper, doing layout for the "hooker ads"; that he frequents the greeting card store where Vanessa works, solely for the brief conversation that occurs between them during retail transactions; and we learn that he has trouble feeling comfortable around members of the opposite sex because his psychologist mentions it during a visit. Nothing at all is subtle about these scenes, and sadly, this is about the most development we see in Neil's character. Worse still, Neil is the most fully-fleshed character, somewhat coming off as a more realistically rendered Jimmy Corrigan (there's even a scene of Neil calling a personals ad, then halfway through apologizing for leaving the message in the first place, and requesting that the listener disregard the call entirely). Shortly after these scenes, Carlo and Vanessa meet, and Neil, being the neighbor across the way, is privy to most of the events that ensue after that, sometimes even acting as a catalyst.

The most interesting aspect of the story, to me, is Tomine's explorations on the different aspects of lust and desire. Carlo is an extrovert and a ladies' man who, it seems, can find the ways and means to fulfill any of his desires, but constantly suffers from the boredom of obtainability. Neil is, as mentioned before, the exact opposite, filled with lust and loneliness but completely unable to make any headway in the direction of what he wants. Vanessa, who comes across almost as a token placeholder, embodies the middle ground: open to any whims, and wanting to fulfill them all, but being unable to have everything she wants. The interplay between the mores of the characters is interesting, but static. By the end, everyone has changed or embodied their outlook in one way or another, but typical of Tomine's work, nothing feels fully resolved. The lack of resolution may come off as a fault to those unfamiliar with his pieces, but, as with his earlier work, it remains true to the way in which life unfolds.

Visually, Tomine is still amazing. His obvious strength lies in his rendering of figures and faces, although any portrayal of action is disturbingly stiff. Backgrounds convey the exact amount of sense of place that is needed, without miring the layout with too much detail. Although the story is paced too fast, jumping from scene to scene, visually the transitions are smooth and consistently well-planned. When it comes to the pictures, the gentleman knows exactly what he's doing.

In short, it seems that Tomine is still experimenting, and trying to push out farther in his attempts to convey and organically dissect experiences. Compared to other pieces he's done, this is flawed (especially when held against "Hawaiian Vacation"), but still worth reading. However, this is probably one of the best single issues of a comic to pick up if you've never read an intelligently written comic before.

Grade: 10^th and older.

Khris is a real comic artist.

Kids Vs. The Ice Cream Man. (by the Tuna Can Man)

2001-07-01T11:39:00.000-07:00

Well, back in White Plains, New York we had an ice cream man who used to come around the neighborhood for years. We bought ice cream from him when I was a kid and my mom bought ice cream from him when she was a kid. His name was Joe. Joe the Good Humor Ice Cream man. And we just loved him, the whole projects just loved him. He was a great guy.

I remember one particular afternoon when we were all hanging out. It was kind of a hot summer day, and out of nowhere we hear the ice cream truck jingle, but it was a different type of jingle than Joe's ice cream truck. We looked and here came a totally different ice cream truck coming up the road in front of my building, 11 Fisher. We all looked at one another. There was about 20 or 30 of us guys, all about 10, 11, 12, 13 years old, and we all said, "What the hell is this, some sort of fake ice cream man?" So they pull up and we say "Well, let's go check this shit out." So really skeptically we all go walking up to this ice cream truck and it was two white guys in it, and apparently they were brothers. They were pretty young, maybe in their mid-20's. They were like, "Hey boys and girls! Wanna buy some ice cream?" And instantly we just start giving them shit. We're like, "You're not Joe." And they say, "No, we're not Joe, but we're going to start coming around too. Here, we'll even give you some sample ice cream." And we're like, "Aw, fuck you. Get outta here. You're a fake ice cream man! This is Joe's turf." And the guys were saying, "Oh, come on, we're going to give you some free ice cream. We'll come through here along with Joe, there's no problem with it."

We didn't let up on them, "Fuck you, get the hell outta here fake ice cream man. Fake ice cream man!" Everyone starts joining in yelling and harassing these guys. Well, one of the brothers gets pretty pissed off and says, "Alright, you don't need to get rude about it." We're just not letting up. "Get outta here fake ice cream man! Get outta here! Fuck you!" And the guy swings the door open on his ice cream truck and he's like, "I've had about enough of you kids, y'all shut up!" And right at that time there was a girl named Felicia. She was only about 12 or 13 years old, but for a girl she stood about six feet tall and she was about 200 pounds, and she snatched this white guy straight out of the ice cream truck and pinned him up against it. Timothy, who was also about 12 but again stood about 5' 11 and was strong as an ox, runs up and jaws the guy, punches him right in the jaw. Just knocks him out, boom. The guy had enough sense to crawl back to the door he opened and up the steps leading up into the truck and he passed out instantly. And we all start rocking the ice cream truck, and we're still screaming, "Get outta here, fake ice cream man! This is Joe's turf! Get outta here!"

The one brother grabbed the other brother and was trying to drag him into the truck while we're throwing things at them, bottles and rocks. He manages to get the truck started and starts to drive off, and there's a little hill outside the projects, you have to go up a slight incline to get out from the front of my building. So we start chasing the truck, and same thing, still yelling, "Fuck you fake ice cream man! Get outta here!" And I picked up a brick and I launched it at the truck's back window, and cracked it in a spiderweb pattern. We chased it up the hill and the truck blew the red light and just took off out of our neighborhood, and within minutes we heard the police cars approaching, so we all ran and hid, ran back upstairs.

Once we got upstairs after about an hour or so everyone changed their clothes, and even I came back outside, and we were hanging out. "Yeah, we beat up the fake ice cream man! Alright! Fuck him! If he comes back we're gonna give him some more!" So about 40 minutes later, Joe actually pulls up. Feeling all proud of ourselves, we all go down to Joe's truck and say, "Hey, Joe, we beat up this fake ice cream man that came around." Joe, he's an elderly white guy at this time. He's like, "Yeah, I heard fellas. Listen, thanks but next time let me handle it." And we're like, "Ah hell, Joe, we're just looking out for you, this is your turf, you've been coming around here for years, we ain't letting nobody else come around the hood and take away your business." And he said, "Well, I appreciate it but next time just let me take care of it."

Sure enough, we never did see those guys again, they never came back down there obviously. In fact I never saw them anywhere in White Plains after that. Kinda funny, it was like they gave up the ice cream business after one day thanks to us. Not even the hardest criminal probably ever beat up the ice cream man, but sure enough, my buddies and I did.

The Tuna Can Man is a crazy backwoods isolationist from White Plains, NY.

Play This Funky Music, White Boys! Part 1: To The Extreme (by Shannon L. Grisso)

2001-06-01T23:14:00.000-07:00

I know something about you.

It doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter where you're from. It doesn't matter if you are out of touch with today's music scene. It doesn't even really matter if you are out of touch with reality, even. No matter your background; no matter your current situation; no matter whoever, whatever, whenever, wherever, whyever or however you are, I know for sure that you know who Vanilla Ice is.

I mean, let's face it - celebrities come and go, most just flickering in the public eye for their allotted fifteen minutes before they disappear. But every once in a while, a certain celeb comes along who so captivates all aspects of pop culture that they are instantly - and eternally - enshrined in our culture's collective unconscious. We as a society know such people, and that is how I know that you know Ice. We all know Vanilla Ice!

Or should I say, we all think we know Vanilla Ice? Because for all the people who know the man, a disappointing lack of people actually know anything about his art. So you may know Ice, but I'm guessing you don't know Ice, you know? And what better way to get to know a true artist, then by studying his art?

By taking a closer look at Vanilla Ice's music, I think you will be just as surprised as I was at some of the insights into his particularly singular personality. We'll start by studying his debut album, the appropriately titled "To the Extreme" (and I say appropriate because this album is quintessential, pure, 100%, extreme Ice!).

"To the Extreme" is actually Ice's 1990 major label 're-packaging' of "Hooked", an album he released earlier that same year on a minor label. We will study "Extreme" instead of "Hooked", though, because "Extreme" is basically cleaner, crisper remixes of all the songs on "Hooked". "Extreme" also features a few more tracks than "Hooked" had, and is therefore a more complete document. ("Hooked" does in fact have one song not on "Extreme", a pseudo-remake of the Stones' classic "Satisfaction", but it popped up later on Ice's live album, so don't you Ice completists fret!)

Ice, Ice, Baby

If you have never heard this song, I now know 2 more items about you: 1) you must be part of the generation after mine (I often forget I'm becoming an old bastard); and 2) you've apparently never heard the Queen/Bowie song, Under Pressure.

With a melody stolen directly from that classic, but with a liberal dose of Ice's own original 'tude (that's white boy gangsta talk for 'attitude', by the way), this song is pretty much the best way to start our study. It was a monstrous hit in its day, and is still rather fascinating listening today.

As for what it tells us about Ice, well, feast your eyes on these little tidbits:

Ice is radioactive
Yes, in this song he tells us that if you turn off the lights, he will give off a glow, and unless he's just got that beaming, pregnant shine, then I'm sticking with my first guess.

Ice prefers his fans to be brain dead
At one point, Ice informs the listener that he is "killing [our] brain like a poisonous mushroom." Although this sounds a bit frightening at first, I'm proof positive that it's an idle threat at best! I've been listening to Ice for years, but my brain's as good as ever (granted, my brain started as mush, but that's not the point here)!

Ice has psychic powers
In one verse he announces that he 'slices like a Ninja blade', a surprisingly prophetic glimpse at his future contribution to the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2" soundtrack. Impressive, to say the least; he's no phony like that Madame Cleo broad on TV.

Anyway, I could go on forever about this song. We'd better move on to track #2.

Yo Vanilla

This is not a song per se, just a chipmunk-sounding idiot saying "Yo Vanilla! Kick it one time, boy!"

That's it. It's a four second track, but it is noteworthy that this is Ice's first solo writing credit. Good job, Ice!

Stop That Train

There's a lot of weird stuff going on in this one. We do learn that Ice is a little afraid of kinky sex (he bemoans the fact that his 'crew' is not with him when a girl pulls out handcuffs and chains, a game Ice just don't play), but I feel this song raises more questions than it ultimately answers.

For instance, he tells us that the girl "moans and groans like she could take on the A-Team". I've heard lots of people groan (not too many women, unfortunately), and I think you really can sometimes interpret those groans to mean strange things, but I have never, EVER heard anyone groan like that! Perhaps the girl was imagining Ice was a member of the A-Team, which is to say she was fantasizing Ice was Mr. T.

But okay, I can chalk that one up to my lack of experience with groaning women, but later he says: "Back to the story of a one night stand/I thought I was strong, but she was He-Man."

HUH?

"SHE was He-Man"? Did I hear that right?

There is one question I can answer, though. Towards the end of the song, Ice is in misery and regret about this crazy girl's bedroom antics, and he asks, "Why did I ever tell her to 'Pump it, hottie?'"

Simple, Ice. It's because you're such a gentleman.

Hooked

This song basically reveals that Ice cannot respect any man who is pussy whipped. That very fact reveals to me that Ice did not have a significant other when he wrote this song, because we all know the only people who make fun of guys for being whipped are guys who don't have a girl at all.

On a more specific level, the one true highlight of this song comes when Vanilla takes his 'whipped' friend to the side to counsel him. His friend, whose voice reminds me of a slightly subdued Urkel, says he needs to buy a bunch of expensive stuff for his girl, and Ice gets so worried that he runs after his friend, from the middle of your stereo, to the right speaker, and then off in that direction. Cool!

I have two major problems with this track that I should address, however. First off, Ice's friend - you know, the weak 'whipped' boy - is named Randy, and his girl is named Candy.

Hell, Ice, relax! Randy's not 'hooked' on this girl, he's just pretending to be so that you'll have a convenient rhyme to open the song with!

And second, we all know that you're talking about Randy being pussy whipped, but when you explain it, you say Randy's "hooked on that S-S-S-Y."

S-S-S-Y?

Early in the song, Ice, you say, "You understand what I'm saying?" but aat this point in the song, I say, "Uh ... nope."

Life Is A Fantasy

Wow.

Another wild tale of wildman Ice's wild night with a wild gal, and one that gives even more insight into what makes the Iceman tick. Granted, this one has its share of out and out nonsense that has me stumped ("... you know I flow as cold as an ice cube" - exactly what fluid are you referring to there, Ice?), but this answers many questions about what Ice must be like in bed.

We learn that Ice does not mind being objectified as a sex object ("Come on baby, and let me be your toy"); although we already know he's not kinky, this song reveals he's not only into that boring ol' missionary position exclusively ("Let's do it like a train, and I'll be the caboose" - a line which also reveals he's brushed up on his Freud, and makes me want to yell "All aboard!" for some strange reason); and he seems to have a good opinion of his sexual prowess ("... you know Vanilla is the best.")

Despite these enlightening glimpses of Ice, one aspect of this song really disappoints me. See, at one point Ice offers to tell us what it's like to make love on an inner tube, which is of course a question we've all pondered from time to time. Unfortunately, this is how he describes it: "Floatin' on water while splashin' waves on your body/Flowin' and goin'; now pump it, hottie."

Gee, thanks, Ice. Now I'm going to have to find out for myself what it's like! Dammit!

By the way, Ice, I think I can help you with something here. Towards the end of this song, when you're giving us a blow-by-blow account of your wild night, you tell us that the girl says "Ooh, ah, ooh, ah", and you go on to add that you're not sure what that means.

I don't know; kinda sounds like to me she could take on the whole A-Team, dontcha think?

Play That Funky Music

Go white boy, go white boy, go! Yes! This rather chipper track was also a hit single, and in addition to being fun listening, it is also very educational.

Ice really cops a 'tude in this one, and by doing so, we learn that he can make any fly girl wet (although I doubt he'd choose just any fly girl - she'd have to be a hottie, I'm thinking), he's not afraid of anyone (since he challenges everyone to battle him), and he apparently doesn't like Kid'n'Play too much (as he throws a dis' their way).

Despite the abundant 'tude on display here, this track does show glimpses of self-awareness. When he says "I control the stage/There's no dissin' here - I'm in my own phase" I think what he is telling us is that the Ice we're hearing is just one of many phases he will ultimately go through (and thus far we've also seen the bluntcentric phase of Ice with 1994's 'Mind Blowin' and the hardcore Adidas rocker of '98's 'Hard to Swallow'). I think this then was Ice's subversive way of warning us what we could expect in the future. He also exclaims at one point that "'89 was my time; '90 is my year!" This is meant to signal that 1990 was the year of his arrival on the scene, but since he refers to 1990 and 1990 only, with absolutely no mention of the future, I think perhaps even Ice realized that his fifteen minutes of fame were rapidly counting down. Remember my earlier gripe about some of Ice's forced rhymes? Well, I can't accuse the man of being a bad sport about it. In this song he admits, "I like my rhymes atrocious" and then further proves that point by rhyming it to "Supercalifragilistigexpialidocious." Brilliant!

However, Ice really drops the ball at one point when he makes fun of some random homeboy by accusing him of eating spaghetti with a spoon. This is quite possibly the strangest (not to mention weakest) dis I've ever heard. For one thing, it's kinda hard to eat spaghetti with a spoon, so I figure that's more an accomplishment than an insult to have that talent! Still, that's my only real beef with this song, and I agree with Ice's other advice throughout, so yes - I will, in fact, play this funky music 'til I die.

Dancin

Although it's about one of Ice's favorite subjects, this song is filler material all the way. It's obvious that even Ice can't get into this one. What a wasted opportunity, too; I mean, you'd think this song would be all about how Ice is a better dancer than all these other sucka MC's, but the only time Ice cops a 'tude in this one is when he disses non-dancers by sneering "Unless of course, you can't hang" in a taunting tone.

He also shows some age discrimination when he promised to come to all our home towns so that "People under 40 [can] get down." He then shows audience participation discrimination, when he invites the listeners to shout out the names of their home towns. However, before we can shout out a goddamned thing, Ice starts yelling out the names of big cities, and a dubbed in 'audience' shouts out "Catch the groove" after each city is announced. Sure, it is audience participation, but not quite the audience participation Ice promised us!

The most perplexing lyric in this one comes as Ice describes his dance style as "Kickin' like the chicken that you just ate." Now, unless you like them raw, the chicken that you just ate was probably dead and cooked, not live and kickin'. Thus the chicken was probably just sitting there on your plate, not even moving. This of course sounds like a very boring dance, but one which people over 40 could probably manage too. I mean, not moving is a dance pretty near everybody can do, no matter what their age group, and this just makes Ice's age discrimination sound even less fair.

Go Ill

Okay, this is more like it! None of that time wastin', disc fillin' crap about youngsters dancing like dead poultry here! This is pure, funky, white boy rap at its very best, and I ain't ashamed to admit I like it! But "Go Ill" is more than just some funky sound to get down to; this is essential listening for all you Ice students.

In this track, Ice reveals quite a lot about himself, including (but not limited to):

Ice invented his very own alphabet: According to Ice, his name is spelled with "The V, the A, the N, and the ILLA". The ILLA? That was never in my A-B-C's (unfortunately).
Ice does not like 'loose' women: He says "If you're a ho, get off my lap!" to which I say, "Bravo, Ice! Don't give in to her low morals! (By the way, where'd the ho go? I got a lap too, you know...)"
Ice does not need to swear like most of those other, dirty rappers: According to Ice, his "Rhymes are clean/There's no need to be ill." I really respect that attitude, in this day and age; I mean, shit! It'd be fucking tough to express yourself without getting a little 'ill' here and there! Then again, the name of this song is "Go Ill", so why say "There's no need to be ill"? Is going ill different then being ill? Hmm ... this stuff's complex.
Ice likes real coffee: Toward the end of the song, he says "I like my coffee, but I can't stand Sanka." There really isn't much I can add to that one.
Ice is a doctor: "I'm the rhyme doctor, always on call!" says Ice. And they say health care is a problem in this country? (On an interesting sidenote, Deezer D. and Kristen Minter, two of Ice's co-star's from his film, "Cool As Ice"(which the AFI left off their list of the 100 best movies ever, so to hell with them!), are regulars on the show "E.R.". So I'm thinking, why not a Vanilla guest spot? He could show up at the hospital as a consulting expert, a rhyme doctor come to help Noah Wylie get ill. Then, when Noah's ill, the other doctors could cure him! Yeah! What's that I smell? I think it's Mr. Emmy...)
Ice kicks ass: He doesn't really say anything in this song specifically about this subject; I just wanted to point it out.

In other words, you just can't go wrong when you "Go Ill".

It's a Party

This song is about how when Ice grabs a mic and he's in the mood to dance, the whole world's a party. He makes one unfortunate reference right off the top, though, when he says he's "Sparklin' like a towering inferno". Is he saying he's some kind of a disaster? I also get a little scared when he admits "I'm in the mood to dance/I'm in the mood to prance." Okay - I'm all cool with Ice dancing - his dance style is like some kind of epileptic kung fu, so it rules - but prancing, Ice? I hear that and all of a sudden I see Ice primping and preening in front of a stand-up mirror, with a gaudy red feathered boa ... I shudder.

Another notable aspect of this song is his repeated insistence that his music is his "dope", which means Ice is in effect a 'pusher' of sorts - a pusher of music, not drugs. This makes a lot of sense to me, as I'm all strung out on Ice, and will go berserk if I haven't had a fix.

There are 2 other real disturbing moments in this one, though. At one point, Ice announces he's "into a new phase." Already? Geez, Ice, we know you like to re-invent yourself, but damn, man, your last phase wasn't even 15 minutes ago (back in "Play That Funky Music", if you were wondering). Plus, Ice also says "shit" in this song, which pretty much blows his whole "Rhymes are clean" vow right out of the water. And to think, Ice, we trusted you....

The Juice to Get Loose, Boy

Another one of those nine second, chipmunk sounding gangsta talking tracks, which pretty much just serves as an intro to the next track. With that in mind, if your dirty mind was dreaming up sexually connotative meanings for the 'juice' he's referring to, you were absolutely correct!

Ice Cold

Short of reprinting the entire song here, there's really no way to catalogue this song's many greatnesses, so trust me on this one. You need to hear this for yourself, but I'll do what I can.

This song is all about the Iceman's sexual prowess, which automatically qualifies it as one of the greatest songs ever recorded. And as far as getting to know who Ice really is, well, this is a treasure trove! We learn that Ice likes his women to beg and plead, that he'll never put a woman above him (unless you're referring to "riding his saddle", of course), that he is apparently a rapist (I'm not being mean here; Ice himself admits he's "robbing virgins of their virginity" and I don't know about you, but the choice of the word 'robbing' tells me a lot), that you can't trust your girl around Ice (he admits that he "freaked" my girl in the back of my car! My girl! Damn! Well, to be honest, I should have seen it coming ... Brandy always did like Ice; it's one of the reasons I loved her....), and he reiterates that he is not satisfied with straightforward, missionary position sex (since he says "I made you work 'till your butt got sore!").

Plus, the most shocking, jaw-droppingly astonishing, soiling yourself moment on the entire album comes in this song, when he follows up the "Robbin' virgins of their virginity" with "Like Robin Hood gave to the poor." Uh ... I don't know; I guess Ice gives the virginity of his robbery victims to poor ho's who need virginity again? Maybe? Oh, well, at least it's for a charitable cause....

Rosta Man

This is kind of a weird song, but I give it points because it actually sounds like Ice is acknowledging an influence, and I think that's big of him (especially since he claimed the melody to "Ice, Ice, Baby" was totally original....).

Now, I think the Rosta Man of the title is a sort of mentor to Ice, some rhythmic dude who showed Ice the basics of reggae rhyming so Ice could adapt it to his own hip hop style. I see it as an old kung-fu scenario, with Ice the student and the reggae dude his old, stern master. It's a pleasant enough tune, I suppose, although ultimately it sounds more like it's trying to be Blondie's "The Tide Is High" than Jimmy Cliff's "The Harder They Come."

I guess since he slipped up with the four letter word during "It's a Party", Ice felt he should be extra special careful here, because at one point he leaves a sentence open-ended, and the only word I can think of that would fit is 'tits'. (The line goes: "Shake your arms and move your hips/All you females out there let me shake your -"

Other than that, it's a pretty unremarkable tune. The most perplexing line is "And just get down like you're making love/All you people who believe in God above!" That sounds like to me he's saying "Hey all you decent, God fearing folk! Go out and sin for me!" Then again, he says "like you're making love" and not telling them to actually go out and rut, so I guess it's okay after all.

I Love You

After a whole album full of thinly veiled misogyny - dissin' gals for being ho's while at the same time not wanting a good girl who would just waste his time, not to mention his admission that he'd never put a woman ahead of himself - we are treated to this lovely song, a slow, gentle, innocent, simple and optimistic love song.

In fact, it's so one sided in its innocent viewpoint that it just has to be bullshit, no matter who sings it! Of course, with Ice singing, it becomes a different kind of bullshit altogether; an awful, phony, embarrassing track (which I plan to serenade every girl I'm ever interested in with, but that's beside the point).

Luckily, the next - and final - track sets things to right again, and also wraps up this amazing album in a fittingly amazing way.

Havin' a Roni

I admit, I'm even whiter a white boy than Vanilla himself, but as far as can tell, 'Roni' is 'ghetto-lingo' for a female. However, it's like bad slang for a girl, in the way that the word 'chick' is used for a cool girl, but 'broad' is used for a bad girl. 'Roni' is ghetto for 'broad', then (so I guess I should call my ex, who Ice freaked in my car, a 'Roni').

Anyways, I'm guessing even Ice himself was pissed at how sappy "I Love You" sounded, so he came back stronger than ever with this track, a barely over a minute long song with no music, just Ice's human beat-box making seriously strange sounds, pausing now and then to sing "What it's like; Havin' a Roni!" before continuing on to more strange sounds. Even though there is a bit of a cheat here - Ice never actually describes or explains what it's like to have a roni, and I never freaked Brandy, so I'd kinda like to know - this song is guaranteed to put a smile on your face!

By the way, back when I was in college I knew a guy who could mimic all the sounds and beats and everything in this song. You may laugh at that, but he got all the chicks (probably even that Roni Brandy), so go figure.

And there we have it: "To The Extreme", one of the most amazing debut albums of its time. Or any time. I hope that this in-depth, track by track study has helped you along your Ice path, no matter where you find yourself on that path.

To all you Ice Virgins out there, I hope this has made you want to get that Vanilla Ice virginity robbed like Robin Hood.

To all you ex-fans who are ashamed to admit you ever liked him, I hope it reminded you why you liked him in the first place, and showed you that it's okay to come out the VIC (Vanilla Ice Closet).

To all you old time, way-back-when fans, I just wanna say word up, my brothers! You are not alone!

And to all you people who wonder if I'm serious about all this, or just having a laugh and the Ice-Man's expense, I tell you what: On October 31st of any year, you come on over to my house, where precisely at midnight, I throw my annual VIP (Vanilla Ice Party). We spin all the discs, watch the videos, read from the biographies and autobiography, watch the movie "Cool as Ice", and we have an all-out blast doing it.

And you tell me if I'm joking or not.

I'll be playing this funky music till I die....

Shannon L. Grisso is a freelance television computer graphics artist who lives in Boise, Idaho. His favorite color is red, and he has numerous allergies and personality disorders. He purchased his CD copy of "To the Extreme" at a store in Bozeman, Montana, and still swears it was the best 49 cents he ever spent. He has not had a date in over four years, and most nights finds himself feeling a little lonely. If invited back for a follow-up, Shannon's next article will cover Vanilla Ice's contributions to the world of cinema. Stay tuned....

Bran Flakes or Sugar Cereal? (by Petranella)

2000-11-16T12:39:00.000-08:00

The information age is upon us. It is more an age of buzzwords related to information than a time of universal scholarship. The word "information" itself has lost some meaning through overuse. It is associated with both useless bits of commercial nonsense and the image of high-brow intellectual endeavors, apparently executed everyday in the great corporations of America. A litany of otherwise useful words are now nothing more than pseudo-intellectual neon lights in advertising for these same companies. "Different." "Information." "Solution." "Clarity." "Decision." "Yes! Yes! Yeeeeess! I love it when you talk business."

In the past, businesses were your friends. (Like a good neighbor, State Farm was there.) Now they are also the smart kid who knew all the answers in math. Rite Aid is not just a store, by the way. It’s a solution. To lipstick. This example is appropriate. Businesses present problems (You have the wrong color lipstick a ghastly Eternally Eucalyptus instead of that smashing Candy Apple Parade) with an urgency that necessitates immediate action on these cosmetic, superficial crises. You can solve your lipstick problem at Rite Aid because they are so clever, and so are you, dear buyer. One online business (I refuse to use the prefix "e-") claims: "It’s time for clarity." What does that mean? Hollow phrases are the hallmark of advertising campaigns. This is old news. What has cookware ever had in common with sex? Patience with the right ketchup? Intelligence with a small bean grown primarily in third world countries?? Does your marriage counselor recommend All-Clad cookware? Of course not.

This twentieth century advertising strategy of associating products with the ideals, values, and identities of consumers created a mythology around consumerism. Imagine the Mount Olympus associated with our need to give spiritual meaning to purchases. The god of Whimsy would be a Mentos package. This is beyond charlatanism. This is a package of product, hope, and a reflection of the buyer that we all get suckered into. We, as individuals in a consumer society, associate possessions with personality. Big business is there to aid this expression of personal ideals. Do you identify more with sugar cereal or bran flakes?

Sincerely sick of it all,

Petranella

Petranella is an activist for the genocide of "Screen Beans".

Tell My Story

2000-11-16T12:36:00.000-08:00

[One of our contributors was in a local grocery store and spotted a man wearing a T-shirt with a URL handwritten on it. We stopped at the nearest wi-fi spot we could find to look it up. It was crazy in ways we'd never imagined before. We searched the web looking for any clarifying information, and there was nothing. Nothing linked to this one-page marvel of a website. It was an island on the web, until Bosch's became the first to link to it. Sadly, the page is now gone. But we knew this would happen eventually so here is our backup copy.]

WHAT HAVE WE BECOME

Do I live in a society were a homosexual can follow a man around and
try to force him to give up his religion and have sex for him? I wonder
how many Americans feel that I should be forced to give up God and have
sex for this homosexual. Are they not shocked at this homosexual's
obsession with my penis, but seem to support it and think that this
homosexual has the right to ex ray my penis and demand that I have sex
for him. It is this homosexual who wants me to perform a sexual show for
him. He is very; very rich so the price is right that is why all these
people are so eager to support him. That is why all these women are out
hounding me for sex CHEAP PEOPLE. In my religion women are not cheap
drugs that you take like a cup of coffee. I believe that women are
people. You don't pass them out like bottles of pop for fun. This is all
part of the moral decline of our civilization. Both Black and whites are
supporting this sickness. They have some kind of ex-ray device to look
under my clothing and see my penis. This is mental illness! This
homosexual is leading them in this. They think sex is God! It is moral
decline. When grown men start knowingly working for a homosexual
watching another mans penis we are in bad shape. They know there is one
homosexual man behind this whole thing. THEY STILL SUPPORT IT! GOD HELPS
US! I feel sorry for your children. Is this the world you are making
for them! SHAME! If blacks support this homosexual what does that mean?
It means that they are just as sick as he is. This could be the start of
something big! How is it possible that you are supporting a gay man, who
likes to follow another man around and watch his penis? Bad culture. I
am shocked! Have we lost all trace of human decency?

TRICK PHOTOGRAPHY

I think we all know these photos are fake just ask your self what do
they want the person in these photos to do. What do they want this
pervert to do? Are they telling you to keep your daughters away from
this animal? No it turns out that what this is all about is that they
are following this pervert around for sex! If these photos are real,
then tell me what good is more sex going to do a sick animal like that
anyway. But these people tell you that the man in the photos needs more
sex. That is garbage! Why would anyone in his or her right mind follow a
nut like that around for sex? You should run away from someone like
that. These pictures are false. We all know that. If I were the man in
the photos sex would not be the problem. These photos are a way of
making you share someone else's sickness. This homosexual's sickness!
These photos can be made very easily with adobe Photoshop or Adobe
primer filmmaker, on a computer; will make a picture or film of anyone
doing anything. I have always asked that these photos be officially
tested that means I get a copy of the results. They are forged, that can
be proven.

THE GAY PEEP SHOW

These backs & whites are all sitting up all night with a gay white man
watching my penis. They have some kind of x-ray penis detector, this
device allows them to see through my clothing and see my penis. They
claim they are watching my penis to get me out! How does that work? If I
wanted to get the guy out of the room next door should I drill a hole
the through the wall and bring a homosexual and watch the guys penis?
That is ridiculous! That is sick! They know that a homosexual likes to
watch another mans penis? Don't they know this! This will make the
homosexual hot!

These people are helping a gay white man freak off watching another
mans penises. They are providing pornographic entertainment for this gay
white man! They claim this guy is so sweet that they all like to watch
his penis all night! Sick nuts! This is a gay peep show! They all get
money from this gay white man to do this! They claim they don't need
him! Why would you go watch a guy's penis if you do not want him? They
don't want to get him out. I can leave but they all claim that everybody
all over the world does not want me! Pretty silly! They are not trying
to get him out are they! People could think that you're all screwing
around with this queer for money! How many other guys' penises have you
all been watching? I'll bet you did not need then ether!

CHEAP PEOPLE

What is really going on here? There is one homosexual who is a very
rich person who is using his money to generate this whole situation. It
is all generated by one man who pays people to do and act out these
things. This person is about 5' 7 and weighs about 168 lb. has light
brown curly hair and is medium build. His most distinctive feature is
his legs there is something wrong with his knees. He is from a very rich
family. His family would be very shocked if they knew what he was doing
with his trust fund. I see this person in every town I go to. He is
always there manipulating people with his money. He literally has
millions of dollars to use just to follow me around. HE IS INSANE! This
is his whole life. People here all know him. He has admitted to people
that he is simply obsessed with me sexually. He pays people as much as
three hundred dollars to lie on me. All the people who come to you and
say that I am some sick sexual pervert are nothing but paid puppets. It
is only money that makes these people say these things. They are paid
big money to do this. If you could take away the money this whole thing
would stop. It would stop. Do you really think that I am that
interesting? That grown men sit up all night and watch my penis? No body
sits up all night and watches someone's penis for nothing. If they do
they are crazy, they get money

YOU'RE SON

Imagine that some very wealthy homosexual meet your 25 year old son and
just fell totally in love with him at first sight, and your son said,
Yuk No way I am not like that. This wealthy homosexual man leaves but he
is still thrilled by your son. After this, everywhere your son goes he
starts to have problems. Ugly rumors start to fly and everyone starts to
treat him strangely. Slowly he finds out that this wealth homosexual is
following him around and pumping money in to the situation. This is
really what is going on. THIS COULD BE THE START OF SOMETHING BIG? There
is one very wealthy homosexual who is completely obsessed with me. He
follows me twenty-four hours a day. He is insane! But he literally has
millions of dollars, so he can pay all these people to act out his
sickness. All these people both Blacks & Whites, are simply paid money
to do and say these things. And all they have to say is we don't like
him! About your son or me how convenient. This is all one twisted
homosexual on a power trip. This is not every body. This is one man!
This is not all homosexuals this is one man doing it all. My problem is
not his homosexuality that is his life. My problem is that I don't want
him in my life. This obsessed homosexual is behind this whole thing. It
is not everybody! It is only this one very wealthy homosexual pumping
money in to this and making it all happen. One man! He has got the
Marlboro man & Ice Tea on a leash a money leash.

GOD WROTE THE SOFTWARE

I believe that the genetic code of the universe is set in the DNA
nature! Nature fixes man and women in the genetic code. God wrote the
software! This is GODS doing in all creatures. All deviation from that
format is perversion. Nature meant for man to be with women! Now, you
have the right to have sex with anyone that you want to, some people
even have sex with animals; some people have orgies with many people.
This is not nature's design. Nevertheless, you have the right to drink a
gallon of whisky everyday and smoke three packs of cigarettes a day.
That does not mean that you should do it! This is why it is called a
sin. It is self-destructive. I do not knock the whisky out of the next
guy's glass but I will not let him put it in my glass. I feel that
homosexuality is immoral not only immoral for sweet men but for all
people! You don't find the male lion going after the other male lion do
you. They go after only the female lion this is natural! All other
animals are the same they follow natures source code! Only wacky humans
do such strange sick things! How could we even be talking about
something like some queers wanting to force their homosexuality on
someone else! I knew this is what this gay liberation stuff would lead
to. Gays going after other men and trying to force their life style on
other men who don't want it! This is homophobia comes true!

HERETICS & TRAITORS

I think that it is outrageous that these people can come here and tell
us that they are Christian and conservative, tell us that they are
fighting homosexuality. Then these same people will tell us that they
support this homosexual watching this mans penis all night. That does
not work. Why would they be getting with any homosexual watching any
ones penis! That is a contradiction of everything that you claim to be.
That you don't want this guy that is not the problem. For us it is not
about this guy. It is about this homosexual. We don't want that kind of
sick stuff going on in the community. It is the principle! It is sad
that you would get with a homosexual and watch the guy's penis, then
tell us that you are watching his penis because you don't want him! Is
this a joke? _That you killed some other homosexual means nothing, if
you now get with this homosexual and support him watching this mans
penis. You cannot walk on both sides of the street at the same time_.
We don't care that you don't want this guy. We don't care if you never
speak to this guy in your life. Tell us why you like this homosexual?
That is the question. You will find out that they don't want to talk
about this homosexual. They simply refuse to even talk about him at all!
They get money from this queer! It has got to be the puppy chow? CHEAP
PEOPLE!

CHEAP BLACKS

To tell me that I must support homosexuality and racism because these
blacks or these interracial couples do. That is real racism! I do not
have to do what these blacks or these interracial couples do. This is a
free country. These blacks admit that they support racism. They admit
that they support this homosexual white man watching other men's penis.
Ask them they will not deny it. This is why I don't like these blacks
and these interracial couples, not because they black, and I just
worship white people! I feel the same way about whites that support this
queer! As to these black who claim to be my relatives I have no
relatives in this state they are all in Ohio! These people are sick
liars! I deeply resent the slur on my family name to say that my father
is watching his Owen son's penis with a queer is deeply offensive to! Do
you people really believe that you are watching my penis with my father
and a homosexual Do you really think this! This is hell bound! This is
too ugly! You don't see anything wrong with that? What kind of mind you
got! You could be molesting your kids if you don't see what is wrong
with that!

CHILD MOLESTER QUEER

These blacks and some of these other people here are selling their kids
to this homosexual white man for sex! The mother and the father will
sell a young 10-year-old child to this gay white man for $300. Per. Hour
for sex! These people are sick. They don't even know that it is wrong.
They think this is normal they think that I am sweet because I hate
child molesters. I think these people should be sent to the bottom of
hell. They should at least at least be put in jail! They can get 25year
for child abuse, contributing to the delinquency of a minor! This is
trafficking in kiddy prostitution!

Ask these people a direct question are you selling any of these minor
kids to this homosexual white man for sex? We need a yes or a no answer.
Don't duck the question. We need a clear no! We don't care if your kid
needs this guy or not. It doesn't matter! Are you selling these kids to
this gay man for sex yes or no? IT IS TRUE!

PILLARS OF THE COMMUNITY

I would like to ask these people a question? Suppose a homosexual were
after my son, and you did not need my son, would you help the homosexual
watch my son's penis? To get him out? My son is 25 years old he is a
very sweet kid! Would you help the homosexual if you did not need my
son? You are my son's people! They would do it, all it takes is money!
DO YOU SEE THE DANGER?

Look at these people who fight this sickness. They are not doing it for
me. They are fighting for there Owen children. They are fighting for
AMERICAN CULTURE. It is not about this guy, it is about this homosexual.
We don't want that kind of nut stalking other men around the community.
We don't want it! We don't want him stalking Greek or Hawaiian men sweet
men sour men or anyone. IT IS NOT ABOUT THIS GUY, IT IS ABOUT THIS
HOMOSEXUAL. YOU DON'T GET THAT DO YOU!

These people were offered the same money that you were. They need money
just like you do. They are just not willing to become cheap whores for
this queer to get it! These are pillars of the community. They are
holding up the building of our civilization.

THE DEATH OF MANHOOD!

So what they are really supporting is homosexuality! They are
supporting the right of a homosexual to go after your son. But only if
they don't need your son. I do mean your adult son over twenty-five. To
day me tomorrow your son. All it takes is money$$$$ CHEAP PEOPLE $$, In
the name of GOD! WHAT HAVE WE BECOME?

MORAL DECLINE

This is the first time that I know of in American history that a man we
all know is homosexual could go after another man sexually in the open
society. Were every one knows what he is doing. They all know he is a
MILLIONAIRE HOMOSEXUAL. They all know he is sexually obsessed with this
man and they still let it happen right in front of every one. This could
be the start of something big! This may be an historical moment! This
could change our history completely 8-18-1996 Ithaca N.Y.

TELL YOUR CHILDREN TWENTY YEARS FROM NOW YOU GOT THAT START

CHRISTIAN RIGHTNESS

Do some people really think that God supports this? You know that is
not the bible teachings! You are not a real Christian! The bible teaches
that homosexuality is a sin and an abomination! That you don't want me
is not a sin! But you're getting with any homosexual and supporting and
helping him watching anyone's penis is a major sin! If you don't want
me does that mean that I cannot serve God anymore and that I should give
up on God? I don't need you permission to serve God? Who do you think
that you are? You are not a real Christian? GOD WELCOMES ALL TO SERVE
HIM? You don't know God! Do you really think that God supports you
watching this mans penis with this homosexual child molester? Do you
really think that God supports that? You know that is not the bible
teachings! All Christians know it, even sinners know it! You are not a
Christian! Repent!

STALKING

This is wrong this is a threat to the whole culture! The problem is not
that you don't want this guy. The problem is how. They want to get with
a homosexual and watch this guy's penis all night, and call that hate.
That is not hate. It is impossible to hate someone buy watching there
penis with a homosexual. This homosexual is using these situations were
a bunch of guys are after someone because they don't like the guy as a
lunching pad for his sexual ambitions. This is a completely different
situation. This homosexual has admitted that he likes this guy sexually!
He has admitted it. I feel that changes everything! This is nothing but
stalking and sexual harassment! It is a HATE CRIME He is attacking the
dignity and the sexual orientation of this man. How should this be dealt
with? It should be dealt with just as if I were stalking your daughter
around town peeping in her house watching her take a shower! What would
you want to do to me? Any straight man doing something like that would
ether get him self killed or put in jail! Every man in town knows this.
I think the same thing should be true for gays as well. This is simply
stalking and sexual harassment! It is against the law!

The Making of Bosch (by Khris Soden)

2000-09-24T07:12:00.000-07:00

This was originally printed as part of Bosch's entry in the "1997 Idaho Zine Compilation".

Cleaning Tips for Bachelors Part Two

2000-09-19T23:45:00.000-07:00

Cleaning Floors

Really, does it matter if they're clean or not? You walk around on 'em! If it's really that big a problem, don't wear shoes in the house. Don't sit on the floor. Don't crawl around.

Cleaning Walls

Same deal. You can live a happy fulfilling life without ever touching the walls of your house. You could cover all the walls with Jimi Hendrix posters. My answer is to line all the walls with bookcases and records, and then you'll only see the walls when you move again. Ah, but it sounds like dusting nightmare, you say?

Dusting

Dusting is the pasttime of anal-retentives. Dust is going to get on stuff no matter what. You can't fight it. At worst, it's merely annoying to look at. Then you get used to it being there and it's no big deal. If you use something like a feather duster, you're not really getting rid of the dust, you're just displacing it -- prob'ly to the floor where it's less noticable. Then there are these people that get really hung up on the idea (true or not) that it's particles of Human Skin that are flying around in the air. Eeek! Human Skin! I think this is a fiction that was created to sell vacuum cleaners. How the hell does all that Human Skin get up in the attic? Even if it's true, you're a bachelor; you can be certain that it's your own skin. The only real tip I have about dust is to keep your records in their jackets.

Dishes

Why is doing the dishes such a chore? Simply because food tends to dry onto the dishes, needing to be sandpapered off later. The easy solution to this daily (or weekly) turmoil is to get yourself a dog. Doesn't matter when you eat dinner, the dog will always be happy to get the food off that plate before it has a chance to dry. And since it's your dog you know where it's tongue's been. Then, at your leisure, you can rinse off the dishes and call 'em clean. Of course, since chocolate is dangerous to dogs (see Bosch #3) this advice may not apply if you've had a full-on fondue party. Other cures to the dish problem include paper plates and fast food. That's right: the best solution to cleaning is prevention. If nothing gets dirty in the first place there will be nothing to clean up. Good advice for all types of cleaning, not just dishes.

Ev'rything Else

Anything that can't be cleaned with rubbing alcohol or WD-40 can be cleaned with Xerox Platen Glass Lens and Mirror Cleaner. It's hard stuff to find but it's worth it. It doesn't just dissolve stuff so it wipes away, it actually causes the stuff to cease existing. That's really what you look for in a cleaner anyway. It will clean anything, not just glass. It's also great to clean spotty photoreceptor belts without caking up the developer, if that's been a problem for you in the past.

Cat fur is cleaned with duct tape. Toilets are cleaned with a garden hose and a powerful spray nozzle. Bathtubs are cleaned with one of those razorblade scraper things. Tape machine heads are cleaned with isopropyl alcohol and cotton swabs, preferably before each use. Don't forget the capstan and pinch roller. Records cannot be cleaned, despite all the products that are available to do this. Just don't get them dirty in the first place. Clean CDs with carnauba wax. That's right, you heard me. And that pretty much covers all the things you should need to clean; everything else can be ignored unless you need your rent deposit back.

Wait, I don't think I'm done bitching about the pointless practice of dusting yet. What kind of lame-ass Martha Stewart is going to dance around the house dusting shit off every day? My god. Dusting doesn't keep the dust from coming back. Are you trying to convince visitors that, by some miraculous grace o' God, dust just doesn't exist in your house? No? Then how could it possibly be embarassing for them to find out otherwise? Are you worried that maybe dust doesn't exist in their house, and you might be abnormal? The only more anal thing I can think of are people who empty the trash, and get pissed when you put the first piece of trash in there. Now I'm not talking about anyone in particular, but sometimes you just don't want to stand around holding a chocolate macaroon wrapper, waiting for someone else to be the first to put something in the trash, if your lunch break is only half a fucking hour long!

Happy cleanin'.

Bonefish Sam is a practitioner of experimental music and experimental housecleaning.

The Gibbish Dictionary.

2000-07-09T12:45:00.000-07:00

alex n. the passenger seat of a car

amusement n. the smallest tangible measure of fun, equal to about one one-thousandth of a dollar. (see dollar and cirkus kid)

A-OK n. A method of writing, devised by the "Amerikan Ontologikal Kommittee" to reduce or eliminate the need for the letter "c", by replacing it with a"k" or "s". There are two schools of thought dealing with the "ch" anomaly--either using "c" to represent "ch", or using the "vx" combination. The method used depends on whether the writer's goal is to entirely replace the letter "c" or just to save letters.

august adj. sneakier than dearth

BeeGee n. any person whose last name starts with a 'B' or a 'G' (considered derogatory)

bigger adj. better

big top n. a gathering of Cirkus Kidz

blue stuff n.something that is good; the opposite of the pink stuff. (see the pink stuff)

Bolero n. sex

booty n. the organ in the body that controls the level of funkiness (only found in Cirkus Kidz)

breeze-trail n. something which is easy (see danger danger trail)

buddy n. 1. friend 2. enemy 3. person

interj. 1. a greeting 2. exclaimation denoting acceptance

adj. the opposite of grim

butt-shakin' place n. a lousy coffee shop [common usage: "One of them butt-shakin' places."]

Captain Zoom-Zoom n. 1. an overhead projector 2. a brave hero

Chef Hungry n. Chef Hungry

chief informal when used as a pronoun, the speaker is saying, "I'm an asshole."

cirkus fun n. the Cirkus Kidz method to having fun which exceeds all previously known methods of creating fun, including heroin.

cirkus kid n. Besides the obvious, a cirkus kid is a measure of fun equal to about 1,000,000 dollars (see dollar and amusement)

Cirkus Kidz New Year n. Official Cirkus Kidz holiday. It's a little known fact these days that the New Year occurs on April 1st, and the Cirkus Kidz still celebrate it on the proper day.

(the) cute noise n. the cute sound that all babies make in commercials

danger danger trail n. a difficult or foolish undertaking (see breeze-trail)

Day Without Pickles (also International Day Without Pickles) n. An official Cirkus Kidz holiday, a day when no Cirkus Kid eats any pickles, celebrated on January 2nd.

dearth adj. something sneaky

devil n. there is no devil, just a big jar of oatmeal cookies

dollar n. a standardized measure of fun. A given amount of fun is equal to the number of dollars one would have been willing to pay for it. (see cirkus kid and amusement)

Dollar-dollar n. another Cirkus Kidz-endorsed language, where dollar signs replace the letter 's' in words. When read, each '$' is pronounced as "dollar". The term "Dollar-dollar" comes from the pronunciation of the word "Dollar$", which is the most common Dollar-dollar word. The Dollar-dollar language is most commonly used by pawn shops and in a certain part of Springfield, Oregon where the letter 's' appears to have been outlawed.

donuts n., pl. a measure of wealth equal to 10 cents. Also, the phrase "donuts per hour" has come into usage, being a measure of wage. Someone making 75 donuts per hour is making $7.50US.

Evil Dead 2 n. 1. that which is bad. 2. a scale by which bad things are judged

facade n. a light pink color

fancy chef n. someone who makes more than $7.00 an hour (or 70 donuts)

folksinger n. lesbian

Fun Center n. The place in Boise, Idaho where all the fun for the entire world is created.

frabjuous adj. Old ladies' ideas of fashionable, i.e. glitter pens or puffy paint on fabric.

gagner (gon'yay), slang. "God made you to win"

Gator Hater n. Republican

Gatorism n. The main Cirkus Kidz' religion. For a complete description, writen by the 'Kidz themselves, see their Nu Gatorism page. Sometimes referred to as Nu Gatorism,they are virtually the same religion, separated only by about a week in their founding.

gay n./adj. homosexual

Gibbish n. The Cirkus Kidz' official supplemental dictionary. The word Gibbish is only part of Gibbish. Gibbish means Gibbish and then some.

gifford n. male sex organ (see regis)

(the) good hair sound n. the sound, "Aaawww!" that's made on shampoo commercials when the hair model swings her head, tossing her hair to one side

Good Lord n. or Good Lawrd, hard liquor

(the) good schtuff n. alcohol

gvidorekis n. the ability to move one's eyebrows indepentently

hail Satan interj. greeting for elderly or Christian

haulin' oats v. what a horse is doing when it's running fast

hip gland n. the organ that secretes the chemical that makes Cirkus Kidz so hip (found only in Cirkus Kidz)

hootinanny 1. n. any event involving one or more banjos, 2. interj. something to yell, especially at poker games

horse and buggy deeeeys 1. n., pl. the ol' days, 2. n. something to sing when drunk

hot bosch n. truth

hot lotto n. lies; misinformation

Horse On Snowshoes 1889 an important event in Idaho history

Ingrish n. 1. a language for the reading impaired 2. the Gibbish code language that involves swapping the meanings of English words

inspecting the plumbing 1. the Cirkus Kidz response to "what are you doing?" especially when Cirkus Kidz are up to no good. 2. using the bathroom

Jesus n. "One-Stop Shopping"

Jimmy (see Buddy)

joint n. the place in which someone is located or bends

juicemania n. A spooky cult of juice-drinking drones with hypno-spiralsin their eyes, led by the guy on the Juiceman infomercial with the hypnotizing bushy white eyebrows. He's an evil man who's poweris only kept in check by Jack LaLanne, our hero and friendly pusher of the Juice Tiger on T.V.'s Amazing Discoveries. (Among other things, such as, but not limited to, Jack LaLanne's Stepper, and Bonefish Sam's 1959 copy of "Jack LaLanne's Glamour Stretcher Time" blue vinyl record) Anyone happen to remember the Juiceman's name? Email it to bonefish@bonefish-sam.com please.

KitschNouveaux n. an art movement pioneered by Bonefish Sam and Admiral Kludge, that kitschifies their own valid art by way of cheesy gimmicks or unnecesary appropriation of kitsch subjects.

komeuppance n. a good tasting pastry

kösher adj. extra garlic

krajy adj. 1. something which is extremely annoying 2. describes a person who tries to act like a Cirkus Kid and isn't.

krunky adj. inconvenient; unusually or too large; unwieldy; rough; blocky; etc.

lexico n., pl. a group of rednecks "We stumbled upon a lexico of Texans..."

libido n. an organ in the body connected to the booty. Believed by some to be useless, it's the organ that controls the level of suaveness. (found only in Cirkus Kidz)

Love of Jesus n. "Love like my daddy never gave me"

Mike, Mike, whatcha doin? what one asks Mike to find out what he's doing.

muffin' v. being cute

(on a) nature hike having sex

Nu Gatorism n. See Gatorism.

nui-nui n. new, or nu (see yumma-yumma)

Ossifer Friendly n. any police officer

paradigm n. Kool-Ade

pink stuff n. something that is bad, as advertised by Equal (about Sweet 'n' Low) and Maalox (about Pepto-Bismol); the opposite of the blue stuff (see blue stuff, the)

playing the violin v. having sex

prizewinners n. pl. big, white hot dogs with strings dangling off the ends

psycho-ecclectic adj. describes media targeting certain audiences created by people unfamiliar with the target audience

puttin' people outta work something bad; what something that is bad does: This album by Foreskin 500 is puttin' people outta work!

qualité adj. describes something that is good

regis n. female sex organ (see gifford)

rizz off v. to masturbate (with vigor, as Admiral Kludge does)

Rogainebuddhism n. The world's second coolest religion, an off shootsect of Roggenbuddhism that is more interested in the guru's bald spot than in his clothes. They are seen with shaved heads in airports. (see Roggenbuddhism)

Roggenbuddhism n. The world's fourth coolest religion, which almost nobody knows anything about, including the Cirkus Kidz. It is known that Roggenbuddhism was started by a balding math teacher who wore goofy clothes at the Cirkus Kidz former High Skool, and that this church has since branched into a smaller yet cooler religion called Rogainebuddhism. (see Rogainebuddhism)

Room 101 n. a former band in Boise who sometimes got confused with Room 121

Room 121 n. bathroom

schlossberg n. penis

schweet! interj. a noise made by jocks

Somalia Day n. an official Cirkus Kidz holiday. On December 9th, Cirkus Kidz exchange completely useless gifts. The intention is to give such useless gifts that there are no hard feelings when they're thrown away.

smoke crack! interj. greeting for small children

stuh n./interj. Considered by Cirkus Kidz to be the stupidest-sounding pronouncible syllable. Used most commonly when talking about or impersonating stupid people (i.e. jocks). Also used as a replacement for the word "stuff" by stupid people. "I gonna go git me summa dat stuh!"

talvy adj. 1. moist 2. damp 3. warm and damp 4. cold and tacky 5. palatal

turkey jerky interj. something said by someone who is being scary

two treats in one n. blow job

(the) Ugly Corner n. the intersection of Orchard and Alpine in Boise, Idaho where everything is ugly and ev'rything that isn't ugly becomes so for the duration of the time it's there. It is believed that spending extended amounts of time at the Ugly Corner may have a permanant effect.

unix n. something that makes children

vallenaleks n. 1. the seat in the car used for sex the most often 2. an interesting relationship

wagon wheel n. a very large cinnamon roll

"walking the dog" v. urinating

wallets n. pl. often called "wallets" by the younger generation

wookies n. pl. treats for small dogs

Xmas n. the Cirkus Kidz' Christmas-like holiday where we don't celebrate the birth of Christ in any way. Celebrated on December 23rd.

yumma-yumma v. to like the taste of something. ["I yumma-yumma!" means "I like the taste of this!"] (see nui-nui)

zest n. a popular brand of soap

zoo v. to look at animals at a zoo

Cirkus Kidz are up to no good.

Johnsonville Vermont Maple Syrup Breakfast Sausage Review (by Gus Mellobar)

2000-06-18T23:31:00.000-07:00

Some things in life are sacred. Well, o.k., SOME things are SOMEWHAT sacred. That first kiss. A new bicycle. A Tater Pig near the bingo tent at the Twin Falls county fair and rodeo. We're getting into warm, fuzzy territory here. That list couldn't be complete without the frisky taste of red hot sausage links colliding unintentionally (and some would argue quite digustingly) with the sweet, tasty syrup run-off of a jumbo stack o' hot cakes. Did someone say "boy-scout, grange hall pancake feed"? Damn straight, monkey-nuts!

You can bet your sweet Corey Feldman that Ol' Gus was pleased as punch to score a fine product that promises to harness the twin goodness (or was that evil?) into one convenient package. Johnsonville Vermont Maple Syrup Breakfast Sausage offers just such a tantalizing claim. Of course I had to immediately question: "Just how much maple-riffic dopeness are we talkin about, here?" I mean is this for real, or is it simply an idle threat? My hopes continued to soar as I noticed that the fourth ingredient listed on the package was none other than maple syrup.

Only one thing to do here: heat up that frying pan. I guess that isn't entirely correct. As the links come frozen, you will probably need a microwave for thawing purposes. After thawing properly, heat ya'sef up some hog fat, bear greasy, or even your own oily, sweaty by-product and get ta fryin'! On high heat, a couple quick minutes is usually all that it takes to brown them babies up nice and to also whip up a horrific "scorched meat" stench! Along with this charming smell, as I cooked, I noticed a strange puddle of black, sickly ooze surrounding the links. Now we're talkin'! Of course, proper ambiance is always essential to eating enjoyment. Yes, friends, there are certain things that can greatly enhance the enjoyment of all food no matter how simple. A case in point would be Van Camp's pork and beans (to which I am religiously devoted). Conventional wisdom (and even the directions on the can) claims that one should heat the beans. Wrong, wrong, wrong. These fine little brothers are, in fact, best enjoyed at room temperature. Some chilling may be acceptable as well (like if you have to store them in a bowl in the refrigerator for some reason), but DO NOT heat them intentionally. Gus has but one simple rule for cookin' da "sass-age", though, and that is: cook whilst listening to country music recorded NO LATER THAN 1970!

Anywho, now that we are done scorchin' them boys up, it's time to chow down! How do the maple syrup links TASTE? In a word: disappointing. The sausage DID NOT induce vomiting. This is somewhat sad in and of itself, as the potential to do so is a main requirement in my consideration of a "foodstuff" for review. I found the flavor to be quite smoky, only lighty sweet (again, I had hoped for overpowering sugary maple induced brain seizure), and completely edible. I had my "hankerin'" so built up, in fact that I had to solve the problem immediately by reaching for a bottle of Log Cabin and soaking the links. That did the trick, alright. I recommend these guys only for the weakest of maple sausage lovers. In fact, I am sure that they would probable be considered perfectly edible and perhaps enjoyable by even those who were somewhat repulsed by the idea.

Has Ol' Gus been cooking up products long gone that are probably unsafe for human consumption pulled from the bomb shelter of a woman born in the early 1900's? Let me address that first part. Johnsonville products are still in business and, in fact, can be contacted at www.johnsonville.com. As for the second part, well...how hardcore are you? If you crave the "whack" as I do, then Johnsonville offers up several other savory alternatives. Beerbratwurst (yes, it contains "real beer"), Maple Sausage Patties, Low-fat Maple Links, Brown sugar and Honey Links, and finally, Apple Cinnamon Links ("made with chunks of real apple and a pinch of cinnamon spice " according to the Johnsonville site) are also offered for your fine dining pleasure. So hook Gus up with some o' them Apple Cinnamons and yer address, and you may just get some love in return. Until next time...

Gus wants a teenage girlfriend. Send those naked pictures (in or out of cheerleader uniform) care of this publication.

Fun With Electricity.

2000-05-28T12:51:00.000-07:00

I work at night, so obviously I was jacked when I got home and saw that heavy construction was about to be done right in front of my house. The day before I had to sleep through jackhammers about three houses down, and the usual chorus of dogs next door. The next door neighbor has about twice the number of dogs that the city of Boise allows without buying a kennel license, and if there's one thing that gets them barking more than just the sheer joy of doing it, it's jackhammers halfway down the block.

Just before bedtime I was using the computer, listening to my collection of Slim Whitman mp3's, about to send off an email to Radio Shack to ask them why the hell they decided to stop selling PZMs. (If you agree this was a stupid move on their part, be sure to send them email and demand that they bring the PZMs back.) Just before I was able to send this thing off, the power cut off for a moment and make my rig reset. Seemed like kind of a violent one, so I shut the computer down and decided it was time for bed. Then I noticed that the little heater/fan device that keeps my room warm was acting strangely. The fan wasn't working anymore, but the heater part was. It was quietly oozing heat out. If I switched it to 'fan', the heat would go off and the fan would work. Stranger yet, each time I'd turn it off or on, my answering machine would reset itself, and I could hear a printer in another room reset too. "Damn, my heater's broken. Maybe I can complain to the water company tomorrow and get some kind of reimbursement," sez I. Then I try to go to sleep.

About an hour and a half of barking dogs and heavy construction later, there's an explosion toward the living room. I get up, look outside, see nothing, go into the kitchen, see nothing, then hear another explosion toward the living room again. Another explosion and I see flashes of blue sparks behind the stereo. I hadn't even considered that these explosions were inside the house. I panic and start unplugging everything I can think of. The house is filling with the smell of burned-out circuitry.

The furnace is rumbing, like it's halfway running but not quite. The fridge is doing the same thing. I realize that it's a brownout, where the power isn't out, but isn't fully on either. This is worse for equipment than a blackout usually is. Some of the things in the house were functioning normally, some didn't work at all, and some were somewhere in between (like the little heater). As I'm on my way out the microwave turns itself on, with it's clock set at zero seconds. And if I turn the coffee maker on, the furnace goes from it's rumbling idle state to actually blowing cold air out the vents. Seems to me like a grounding problem. And who's fucking up the ground?

I run outside, still in a panic, toward about four water company employees in the front yard and say, "What the hell are you doing to my power?" One of them sez, "I don't know. Call Idaho Power. We're nowhere near the power." And I say, "What?! Shit's blowing up in my house! Alright, guess I'll go back in there and put all the fuckin' fires out." They must have been confused.

So I go back in the house, which is just reeking of blown electronics, unplug more stuff, and call Idaho Power. If you call their lifethreatening emergency hotline you get a recording and goes something like: "If you have a question about your bill press or say 'one' now. [long pause] If you would like to book a hayride with Reddi Killowatt, press or say 'two' now. [long pause] If you're experiencing a lifethreatening emergency, press or say..." So they tell me that someone will be on their way.

I go outside to wait, so I can flag them down when they show up and so I can avoid the horrible smell in the house. Hanging out with my cat. Some of the water guys come over and ask what's up and I tell them. They prob'ly thought I was making it all up. We shoot the shit for a while, and then they point out once again that they hadn't even seen an electrical wire the whole time they've been out there. I wait some more, once in a while going back in to make sure nothing else is on fire, and pondering whether it's dangerous to have a gas furnace running that doesn't seem to actually be burning any gas. I'm a bit too nervous to start pulling fuses out (this is an old house; no breakers). And I can't find anything like a main cutoff switch.

The power guy shows up. I tell him the story, figuring that he'll believe me. He sees this kind of stuff all the time. But all he can say is, "Wow. I've never seen anything like that before." He checks the power at the point it enters the house, and it's good. He suggests I call an electrician, becuase it's obviously something wrong inside the house. Then he seems to take off. But fortunately he stopped before he left and talked to the water company guys. After a little while of comparing notes they came to the conclusion that all the wiring in my house had been grounded to the water line. Apparently this was a normal practice back in the days of yore, and had prob'ly worked fine at the time. But over the years, as the pipe starts to rust, it loses conductivity with the ground it travels through. So the electricity keeps on going until it finds a ground. In the case of my house it wasn't grounding until at least somewhere on the other side of the street. And when they removed a section of pipe in the street, the extra electricity in my house had nowhere to go, except through a few choice appliances in my house. And they guy that removed that chunk of pipe would prob'ly be dead if he hadn't been wearing rubber gloves at the time.

They stick this thing that looked like half of a pair of jumper cables on the pipe ends and everything was back to something like normal.

The furnace wouldn't stop pumping out cold air, however. I didn't know enough about gas furnaces to feel safe with it doing that. I assumed the pilot light went out somewhere in that whole process, and didn't know if that meant that stray gas was building up in there or what. I called the gas company and they sent someone out to check on things. He said there was no pilot light; that the furnace ignites itself as needed, and there were no gas leaks, but he smelled a burned out motor in there. He couldn't figure out how to get the thing to stop running either. No switches on the furnace or thermostat, and turning down the thermostat didn't do anything useful. So I unscrewed the right fuse from the 1930's style fusebox.

The final body count: a stereo amplifier, a pair of computer speakers, a television, a computer monitor, a VCR, an outlet in the bathroom, and a fan in the furnace. I was awake for about 24 hours and got 3 hours of sleep. Tomorrow brings a day of hanging around the house waiting for inspectors, electricians, and heater repairers to decide to show up. Waiting for the electrician or someone like him.

Bonefish Sam's life has since returned to normal.

ER Horror Story. (by the Tuna Can Man)

2000-01-26T12:42:00.000-08:00

As you may know by now I'm from NY. Well, in NY I was a Paramedic for awhile. I've got tons of crazy stories but one that stands out is real funny and kinda sad at the same time. I was working one day, part time, for a transport company, basically just taking nursing home patients to and from the hospital. We got a call to go to some nursing home near Tarrytown, NY. When we arrived we found out it was a routine transport to a hospital nearby. Apperently the nursing home nurse said he was going in for a routine check up and they were waiting in the hospital for him.

I went to his room and began to examine him when I discovered he was having trouble breathing and his pulse was a little weak. I told the nurse and she said this was normal and he would be fine. His blood pressure was near normal and I read his file and he did have a history of heart problems. This is fairly normal of a transport but I kinda had a gut feeling that something was going to go wrong. Most nurses at nursing homes are burned out and understaffed. I again expressed my concern to the nurse who promptly told me to "take him and get the hell out of here." I said "fine, okay, whatever".

As we began to pull away from the home, I realized that already something was going wrong. His breathing became more labored and his blood pressure began to fall. Within minutes what we called "coffee grounds" (that's what they look like) began to appear from his mouth. Now bare with me, it's been a long time, but I think this is a condition called CHF. Basically heart failure. He began to choke. I screamed at my partner to go lights and siren and make it quick! I tried in vain to keep him from choking. Suction, clean, oxygen, suction, clean, oxygen. At this point I was assiting his breathing and actually began to stabilize him a bit.

My partner and I roar up to the hospital. We rush into the ER with the patient choking and these "coffee grounds" (blood, water, lung material) all over him. I'm "bagging him" (pumping extra oxygen into his lungs). He and us looked a mess. Now when a patient is this critical the procedure is to take him to the ER first. I run up to the nurse station and tell the nurse what's going on. Without even looking up from her desk, she tells me "oh yeah, he goes straight upstairs to a room on a floor" I said he's really critical, I don't even he'll make it up there. She yells at me, "Take him the fuck upstairs now." Now sometimes the ER is busy and a ER is one of the absolute wildest places, but they were not that busy!!! Like the nursing home nurse, most hospital nurses are just concerned about their paycheck and that's it!! Not all but a lot.

At this point we begin to argue but I was quickly losing. I turned to my partner and said, "Well, let's bring him upstairs." So here's where it gets funny. We begin making the trek to the elevator and again the patient begins to go "downhill". Everybody is looking at us like we're nuts! Doctors, hospital staff, random visitors are all commenting to us to go to the ER. I kinda told them what happened and also kinda ignored them to just concentrate on the patient. We get on the elevator, with regular people visiting and the patient pulls his airway out right there and starts to spit these coffee grounds everywhere. It was all kinda sureal, as we're fighting for this man's life on an elevator as everyone stared. People were shaking their heads and gasping at the site of this. The patient begins to go into some sort of seizure and begins to really spit all over everything and everyone on the elevator.

We get to the floor and I rush over to the nurse station and guess what?!? Without even looking up she says, "Oh yeah, put him into room 434." Again I tell her how critical he was and she says, "Okay fine, here I'll sign for him, just put him in the bed and go." When I reach my partner we just can't believe it. This patient was not that old, nor was he senile. He should be treated better than this. I asked my partner what to do and he said "Let's just go, it's their problem now." We stabilized for a few minutes more and left. Still no nurse came to even check him out. We figure we would get the hell out of here. Because as usually, somebody would check on him, see he was AFU and blame us. Shit rolls downhill in Hospitals! Paramedics are at the bottom. So as were going thru the ER a good few minutes later we here "code blue room 434" In other words, the patient was dying. As bad as this sounds, some nurse finally decided to see this guy and finally realized he was "Gacked" as we used to say.

As we barreled out of the ER ambulance bay, I turned around a gave the angry goodbye international sign (my middle finger) in general to the hospital and left. You know, I wonder if she even accepted the paperwork, now that I think about it the nurse may have thrown it out. They may have even known who he was! Now you may think this is the exception, but it's not! Doctors and nurses having sex in the closets. Doctors drunk on the golf course calling someone to forge their signature for a RX. Rats, roaches, stealing, and just general "burn out" feeling from the staff. Drug use, old boy network, and bitterness just run rampant among the personel. It sucks. I've been cussed out by more nurses for nothing more than asking them, "How long of a wait until a bed opens?" Do you ever wonder why we don't have a national health care? I'll tell you, doctors and nurses would lose their high paying jobs and have to do more work! That's it, nothing more. Hospitals (all employees, on all levels) fight it tooth and nail! Do you know a large percent of doctors never pay back their school loans? Now listen, not all are bad and some of this was due to the fact of working in a large Metro area but, when I went to EMS conventions, I'd ask other EMT's about this and they all admit, it was changing this way even in their small towns. I'll stop for now but I'll write another article soon about this BS system and tell you more and in more detail. Check out the web site and see that new movie with N. Cage it's very accurate!

The Tuna Can Man is a crazy New Yorker.

Cleaning Tips for Bachelors (by Admiral Bugsy Kludge)

2000-01-03T23:46:00.000-08:00

One thing that I love about the Internet is that if you're a writer, or consider yourself a writer, or even if you only consider yourself a vaguely half-assed writer, you don't have to come up with any great, lengthy amounts of prose to pad out a really half-assed idea into an article. Just so long as you're able to type enough bullshit to fill a browser window, the viewer's more than likely going to be happy, and go tell all of his friends about the goofy half-assed idea he just read on that thing called the Internet. Anyway, here's one of those half-assed ideas, and here I am padding it out with lengthy prose. So sue me. I'm about to give you an education here, and it's not even costing you college tuition, so just shut up and stop giving me lip, okay?

Anyway, I was about to school you on something that you might find useful in the future: house-cleaning. It's something you do when you can't find the floor through the mess of pizza boxes, beer bottles and porno mags. Not only does it enable you to find loose change on the floor, but it'll also impress all those girls you've heard about. House-cleaning is sanitary as well. Like you care, you slob. Some people, older people mostly, make house-cleaning their hobby. Others, mostly poor people, make house-cleaning their vocation. Rich people are usually not at all involved in the process of house-cleaning, but I'm not writing this with them in mind.

House-cleaning has a varied and fascinating history.

When you finally decide to start your house-cleaning, you'll find that you will need certain utensils. The first one, which should be at least vaguely familiar to you, is called a garbage bag. All the shit that you keep pushing out of your way when looking for your cigarettes goes in there. The next object is one of the most amazing objects I've run across in all of my travels; I don't know if I've seen a device with a larger variety of uses. A sponge. The sponge is the most important and diverse tool for the cleaning of the house, as it can be used to on almost any surface in the house: walls, floors, kitchen appliances, yourself, mirrors, computers, assorted foodstuffs, the list goes on. The final item that will be required for this house-cleaning thing is some sort of solvent. It really doesn't matter what type or brand, the products are all pretty much the same as far as I can tell. There is usually one aisle of the supermarket that sells only products of this nature. They'll slap different labels on them: glass cleaner, dishwashing soap, laundry detergent, abrasive cleanser, non-abrasive cleanser, laundry detergent. It doesn't matter. They all pretty much do the exact same thing once water gets mixed up with them. They make little bubbles and clean stuff. Oh, one thing I forgot to mention about sponges. Buy two of them. One for the toilet, and one for everything else. And keep 'em seperate, maybe even label them. You don't want the toilet sponge giving the general sponge any ideas. So anyway, garbage bags, sponges and solvent is what you need. There are other things if you want to get fancy, or technical, and maybe someday you'll want to look into these other items, such as vacuum cleaners, brooms, mops, toilet bowl cleaners, and dusters. I wouldn't necessarily recommend those now, though. You'll end up with some if you ever get married.

So now we'll assume you've made the trip to the store and have your house-cleaning utensils. Good. Now we can really get to the meat of this process. First, throw everything you don't use away. I find that a good rule of thumb is that if I haven't touched the object intentionally in the past week, then I don't need it. You'd be amazed at what sort of space you can free up in your house if you follow this process. Anyway, find the nearest garbage dumpster and deposit all of that stuff there. Now we're cooking! Next, put on some punk rock music if you have some at your disposal. I've found that punk rock is the best genre of music to listen to while cleaning house. I'm not sure why; I haven't been over to many clean punk rock houses, but this seems to work. Take your sponge (not the toilet sponge) and get it kind of wet. Now, apply some solvent to it, and start scrubbing a surface. After the surface has been appropriately scrubbed, or if you start getting sick of that particular surface, rinse out your sponge, and go over the surface once more. It is actually important to do this thing of giving the surface a good once over without the solvent, because otherwise it tends to eat through crap. Like paint, or wood. That sort of thing. So rinse it, and there's usually no permanent damage. So it's easy as that. Them's the basics. Just apply that routine to every surface (except the toilet! Hit the toilet with the toilet sponge.) in your house, and you're all set.

Now, some advanced maneuvers. Oh, but first let me explain something to you about toilet cleaning. I suppose you think that you don't need to clean the toilet because it's just going to get gross and dirty all over again. Well, that's certainly true, but the crux of the matter is that you never really know when the next time is that you're drunk and emptying the contents of your stomach directly into that thing. It might be tomorrow, it might be next week, but it's probably going to happen. And when it happens, it's best if you aren't being bothered by loose pubic hairs and dried pee while you're doing it. I think. Anyway, the advanced maneuvers. Okay, actually at this point, I've got to concede that I really don't know many advanced maneuvers myself, but I'll pass along the few I know. The main one is that if you're going to try and clean any surface that's been hit with wine, blood or both, don't even bother. That stuff just doesn't come out. Just paint over the area in question. That usually takes care of it. Also, you can usually clean off the majority of burns from fireworks and other sulfurous materials if you scrub hard enough with your sponge, but this will sometimes remove a portion of the surface along with it. Again, just paint over it. Those are the advanced techniques.

Do this, then take a look at your house! Amazing what a little "elbow grease" will do. The ladies will be over in no time flat. Just sit back, relax, and for God's sake, don't touch anything! You might get it dirty.

Admiral Bugsy Kludge is an Official Graffiti Inspector and a pirate. He has attempted to teach community classes on house-cleaning in the past.

Music is Obsolete

2000-01-03T23:44:00.000-08:00

When you go to a store that sells records, tapes and CD's, you find music. This doesn't surprise most people at all. But shouldn't it, considering all the audible things that could be recorded and enjoyed? More or less, the only thing available for listening recreation is music. (In the record store you may come across some subliminal weight-loss tapes, but these are generally not used for entertainment. And the artistic value someone might find in stand-up comedy or spoken-word albums can usually be argued to lie in the literary value of the material presented, not in the recording medium itself.) We propose non-musical organized sound as an equally enjoyable alternative to music, with even more artistic validity.

"What is This 'Music'," you ask?

As with any art, each person has his or her own definition. But music is usually recognized as organized sound that follows a particular rhythmic and harmonic structure. Fortunately, this definition is changing, but it's the one we'll use for right now.

Why Did Music Come About?

Organized sound can be enjoyable listening, that's why. But why does sound always have to be organized according to a standard rhythmic and harmonic structure?

Before audio recording, the only semi-practical way to preserve music was the standard musical notation, which assumed standardized instruments playing a standardized series of notes scattered amongst regular predictable beats. This way, music could be performed the same way every time from a standard recipe, using universally recognized instruments (a violin in Moscow will sound similar to a violin in London), and performed by musicians that may have never heard the piece before.

This is why music's standard "beats 'n' notes" format came about. It became necessary to pare down all the possibilities of the sonic spectrum in favor of those that could be easily reduced to standard music notation. Otherwise, a composer would have to perform all music by himself, and multiple instruments would be almost impossible.

Now that audio recording has been perfected, this isn't the case.

The Reasons Music Was Invented are Now Obsolete

Audio recording should be considered the ultimate form of musical notation. It captures all the things that standard music can't: all beats (regardless of how regular or irregular), all tones (whether they can be found on the piano or not) and the sounds created by non-musical instruments. You would have no trouble recording, say, drum sticks on a toaster. But if you were a composer and really enjoyed that sound, you would have no luck writing that on sheet music. And who's to say that your toaster in Boise is going to sound similar to another toaster-musician's toaster in Detroit? Toasters will vary in tone more than other musical instruments.

Which brings up another point. The composer's arch-enemy has always been the musician. Musicians make mistakes and are rarely able to express the "emotion" and other intangibles that the composer intended. Audio recording eliminates "bad performances" of works by doing away with pesky musicians as soon as the recording is finished (or eliminating musicians from the start, if the composer is taking full advantage of the recording medium and forgetting traditional music and traditional instruments entirely).

The composer really can play all the instruments at once now. This way, the recording becomes the best and only performance. And really, now that audio recordings exist, isn't watching a musical performance as absurd an idea as sitting in an audience watching some guy hired by Andy Warhol paint a soup can?

Organized Sound, A More Expressive, Less Limited Audio Art Form Than Music

When photography was invented, the more forward-looking visual artists were freed from their uncreative, robotic tasks, like portrait and landscape painting. It's unlikely that the modern arts of Abstract Expressionism, Surrealism or Cubism would exist if the visual artists hadn't given up competing with the camera, and embraced the new freedom it gave them. But it took some time for the artists to recognize that freedom and longer for their audiences to appreciate it.

Why has it turned out differently in the case of audio recording? Well, there's a massive Music Industry in place that has made audio recording their own. They use it as a product rather than a new artistic tool. Consumers won't go out of their way to find "music of noises" simply because they don't know it exists and therefore had never given a thought to such a thing. Also, there's sort of a negative connotation to the word 'noise', which is unfortunately the only single word that describes non-musical sounds, no matter how pleasant they may be.

What we're getting at is...

The obstacles that traditional music was created to overcome have been overcome by the invention of audio recording. Organized sound composition can take full advantage of the recording medium without the (now) arbitrary restrictions of music.

Commercial audio recording is dominated by a Music Industry that's making great money from a system that isn't broken, and they expect to make plenty of money in the future without the trouble and financial risk of advancing the quality of their product.

Bonefish Sam & his Power Orchestra will continue to provide healthy alternatives to traditional music.

Bonefish Sam is an experimental musician. If there was an experimental musician's union, he'd be in it.

Refrigerator Odor? (by Admiral Bugsy Kludge)

2000-01-03T23:35:00.000-08:00

hello.
would you have any tips for eliminating a stinky smell from the fridge? I have tried 3 boxes of baking soda and cleaning thoroughly and it still smells.

Please help!

Mike

Mike, I'm glad that you came to us with this problem, as I do believe that I can help you out with this one.

Now, my initial solution to this dilemna (one that at one time or another, all bachelors and pot-heads seem to face) is to unplug the refigerator, and empty it of all contents. Those two steps are very necessary, and, if you were to try this solution, the first one that comes to my mind, I would insist that you follow those instructions before reading any further. Good. Now, what I would do next, is take some gasoline or some lighter fluid, whichever you have on hand, and give the innards of the referigerator a good dousing with the stuff. Apply liberally. Once the cavity of the referigerator is thoroughly soaked, light the liquid, and give it a good minute or two to burn. If you're not an adult, by the way, make sure you've got some adult supervision. One very important aspect of this method is to make sure that the flames don't start burning into the plastic of the referigerator, because that's going to create a completely different order entirely. Also, given the economic condition currently present in this country, it seems more than likely that this refridgerator does not actually belong to you at all, and in that case, you really don't want to start burning the plastic, because that becomes money out of your pocket. In any case, do the following *just* before the inner plastic of the fridge starts getting mushy: close the refrigerator doors. This should cut-off the flame's supply of oxygen, and leave your fridge intact. The end result should be a fridge that smells faintly of gas fumes, an aroma than many people enjoy.

All of that said and done, though, I must concede that this was merely my initial reaction. I'd advise against doing it, due to the possibilities of destroying both the appliance and your apartment. I hope you didn't take my first thought without reading the rest of this, because that would show you to be an impatient, illiterate moron, Mike.

I spent the better part of the week sitting in my studio apartment with my two piss-ridden cats, drinking Pabst tall boys, and reflecting on your situation. Nothing was coming to me, until I made a rather serendipidous discovery, jumping up and proclaiming,"Why, I have unpleasant odors, myself, and I know just how to take care of them!" Here's the deal: my cats piss on every square inch of the cardboard box that passes for my studio apartment. Smells awful, like cat piss. Probably smells worse than your fridge. Here's how I deal with unpleasant odors in my small, confined spaces: burn lots of nag champa incense. Go on down to your local hippy store, or, if you're a Limp Bizkit-listening asshole, truck on over to the nearest Hot Topic, and buy yourself a box of nag champa ($1.50 at the hippy shop, $5 at Hot Topic). Now, go home, open the fridge, find something that looks like a really old block of cheese, stick about ten of the little nag champa sticks straight up in that "cheese", light 'em, and let them burn down right to their cheesy stand. In this case, you'll want to leave the referigerator door open, but you'll also want to turn off your apartment's fire alarm. I should point out that this method doesn't actually remove the smell of cat piss or rotting food, it simply makes it near impossible to smell anything *but* nag champa.

Wanting to make sure that I had all bases covered, I asked a girl I know what she would do regarding the situation. She had a solution, that to me, seems a little far-fetched, but what the hell, I'm throwing it in here for posterity. First, remove all food (especially the afore-mentionned rotting food) from the refrigerator. Then using a mixture of non-abrasive cleaner and water, wipe down the interior of the fridge with a sponge. Do this several times, until there's no random food pieces left. Scrub if necessary. Then, remove the metal racks and the "crisper" drawers, and place them in a sink full of hot water and bleach. Let 'em soak in it. Then rinse 'em off real good, in order to make sure that there's no residue bleach that can soak into your food. Then put 'em back in. That should take care of the smell pretty well, but it does seem like a pretty boring idea.

Anyway Mike, whatever method you choose, best of luck to you, pal. Let us know how it goes.

Admiral Bugsy Kludge is an Official Graffiti Inspector and a pirate. He has attempted to teach community classes on house-cleaning in the past

Jimmy Takes a Vocation.

1999-12-30T12:02:00.000-08:00

Jimmy was a fairly alright, upstanding boy; posture was okay, went to the Cirkus each year when his summer job allowed. Jimmy would work as Deputy Ditchscrubber for enough jingle to buy gas and airplane glue, but he didn't always have the right tools for a Licensed ditchscrubber, so it's that much more impressive that his posture was as good as all that.

Jimmy's task would have been worlds easier had he simply re-invested some of the jingle he earned into the ditchscrubber-on-a-stick industy rather than the inhalant industry, and his back would have thanked him for it. But despite this, the old back continued, at least for now, to provide wonderful support for Jimmy, the kind of support his daddy and even his personal supreme being could never provide.

This summer finds Jimmy, once again, on his hands and knees in a ditch, scrubbing it side-to-side (never longwise) and chanting to himself, "Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy, side-to-side, Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy, side-to-side..." Always chanting to himself in this fashion when jazzed up on inhalants, he's had to start chanting louder and louder in recent years to outvolume the evergrowing ringing in his ears. "Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy, scrub scrub scrub..." He's only had one tube of airplane glue today. Any more than that and he'd find himself scrubbing the same part of the ditch for hours, till it was gleaming, shiny white. Jimmy knew better than anyone that most ditchowners don't like their ditches clean enough to eat off of, clean enough to see their reflections in. In fact, many ditchowners were ugly enough to not even own a mirror, let alone a stainless steel sink or a sparkly shiny ditch.

Anyhow, J.P. Bahrnamus, famous owner of the Bahrnamus Bros & Stockhausen & Sons Combined Cirkus and Underworld Menagerie, was nearly screaming at Jimmy when Jimmy finally took notice.

"Whu...wuh..?"

"I said 'good day' my boy, and stop scrubbing that ditch for a moment."

"Buh..I get fired..."

"S'alright, son. I'm here to offer you a job promotion. You like that? Son, have you ever scrubbed a whaleopotamus?"

"Uh, uh... maybe. What that?"

"Wonderful! You have a job!"

Jimmy hadn't heard or understood half of what the worldfamous promoter and showman had said, nor had he grasped just who the man was, but he dropped his ditchbrush on the spot and never scrubbed another ditch again.

Jimmy died in 1937.

Bonefish Sam has won countless awards for literature.

Jimmy Eight/Nine Fingers.

1999-12-30T11:57:00.000-08:00

Jimmy had five days to save his dough.
Jimmy had six ways to play in snow.
Jimmy had nine fingers on one hand.
Jimmy makes castles and eats up the sand.

He picked up a hammer, and, alas
the hammer's weight kicked Jimmy's finger's ass.
He placed the blame of the event on a midget
who soon went to jail for the loss of the digit.

The midget was pissed and sat in his cell
thinking of Jimmy and his entrance to hell.
Revenge was in order, a scheme had been planned
for Jimmy who counts up to eight on a hand.

The midget has five days till he's out on parole.
Jimmy has six days to pray for his soul.
The midget has two knives covered with rust.
Jimmy eats sand and soon bites the dust.

Bonefish Sam is a retired Bahamas prize fighter.

Grass Jelly Drink Review (by Gus Mellobar)

1999-12-29T23:34:00.000-08:00

Well hello there, gentle Boschville readers! Who am I? Oh, you know me. I'm a friend of your mommy's. Sure......she sent me to give you a ride home from school. You shouldn't be afraid of li'l ol' Gus, now. You may even know me from other fine local publications that you were either too good for and/or never took the time to read. What am I doing here, you ask? Good question, young Boy Scout. I am here to bring you sporadic installments of an appetizing cooking related column that I am durn near certain will soon become your favorite. What? You say that you already have a favorite Bosch feature? "Ask the Tuna Can Man?" "Komics by Khris?" "Neighborly Advice from Bonefish?".....Screw that trash!!!! "Cookin' Wit Gus" is the only game for you now! Ah, yes, but why should it be so and (more importantly) just what are my qualifications? If you must know, it just so happens that I am cookin' up a particularly savory batch of Coconut Ginger Rice (complete with a few of Gus's special, secret in-greed-a-mints) as I write this. So enough with the questions already, monkeyboy!

For our first trip into the wiley world of semi-edible foodstuffs, we will be examining a fine product from the ever mysterious Orient. My first choice for this review was to subject myself to the twin wonder and horror of Texaco sushi. That's right, at one time, Texaco featured sushi nestled in amongst the deli sammiches and the like. However, that dream seems to have died with the availablity of that particular product. As a result, I soldier on and submit the following report on Mong Lee Shang Grass Jelly Drink.

Dark was the day that I heard the legends spoken by Bonefish (in a hushed whisper) of the Grass Jelly Drink. It was said that neither he nor Admiral Kludge had actually tasted this perplexing "beverage", but they could confirm that it appeared quite vile. As with many things (such as the Slim Goodbody record), I was instantly repulsed, yet strangely attracted. I knew that the gauntlet had been thrown.

After a bum lead or two as to where to purchase the substance in question, I finally managed to score what appeared to be the only can in a small Korean market and perhaps the whole city. One look at the picture on the can and I knew that I had to drink it immediately. The container pictured a wine glass of sorts filled to the brim with very evil looking brown, gelatinous cubes and a straw sticking out for extra "drink me, I taste good" appeal. The can was well refrigerated. I projected that the warmer this stuff got, the harder it would be to choke down. As it turns out, I was right. True to pictorial billing, the can did indeed contain brown jelly cubes with honest-to-golly blades of grass sandwiched in them. The only reassuring thing here was the ingredients listed: water, grass, jelly, cane sugar, corn starch, and honey. That can't be so bad, can it?

As for the taste itself; I was pleasantly surprised. As I had already vowed to consume the entire 11 ounce can, I was certainly prepared to become violently ill at some point. Thankfully, I found the actual flavor to be much like the delightful Thai Iced Tea served at the Bankok House. The texture of the drink, however, was enough to induce gagging. Imagine swallowing jellied spiders. You can feel the hairy legs tickling your throat as their lumpish bodies slide down coated in a thick, mucous like goo. Yes, there was actual blades of grass here. This drink was exactly as advertised. As I said, were it not for the somewhat pleasant flavor, I surely would have puked several times over. As I had suspected, the brew did indeed become less and less palatable as it warmed up. The last swallow was about room temperature and that was certainly hectic enough for me. Heat this soup up to nice and warm and it is surely nasty business. Even as I write this now (hours later) I can feel bits of grass lodged in my throat. Aaaaaaah, the drink that sticks with you!

Gus notes that any references (veiled or otherwise) that the reader suspects are for or about them probably are. Gus is a retired rodeo clown and currently lives in the state of Denial.

The Wonk Contest

1999-12-15T12:03:00.000-08:00

Jimmy holds the pipe wrench high,
swinging 'round his head.
Nearby a weighty candelabra,
a knife beneath the bed.

"I seen you once, I know you're there.
I'm counting from one to ten.
I knew you once, I know you're here."
He threatens once again.

"I'm aware of what you said
'bout how I couldn't wonk.
Next you'll speak of drowning fish
or geese that couldn't honk.

"Come out now, we'll have a showdown
right here in my room.
First you wonk and then I will
My wonk will be your doom.

Jimmy grabbed and turned the doorknob
ready for a duel,
but then he saw the room was empty.
So Jimmy played pocket pool.

THE END

The Artist's Comments on 'The Wonk Contest'

This was the first in a series of Zahnpasta poems I did in 1999.

The use of lowercase in the word "zahnpasta" and my name effectively reflected my lack of pretension and the lack of pretension inherent in Zahnpasta art at that time.

The concept of 'wonk' was intricate to the movement, and the word can be found throughout the diverse works of the Zahnpasta members. Being a word that would adapt to any situation, "wonk" was the obvious choice in this case. The fact that 'wonk' at the time was a verb of uncertain definition to most readers (until the short-lived Wonk Music fad of 2002), one is left with a slight feeling of uneasiness, in spite of the jovial tone of the piece. As "wonk" was a verb used by the Zahnpastists to adapt to any situation, "Jimmy" was the proper-noun equivelant.

So, should we be expected to find appeal in a short, childrens-book style poem about someone the reader doesn't know, getting angry over someone else's supposed opinion that he isn't good at doing something that the reader doesn't understand? And then, should we continue to be enthralled when it turns out that the second person isn't even there? The answer of course, is yes. Because this piece represents everything that Zahnpasta, circa 1998, was about. There was a decided lack of original Zahnpasta poetry (original as opposed to apporopriated) at that point, so I was faced with the challenge of packing the essence of Zahnpasta into a small enough area to be read in a casual sitting. Yet I had complete freedom; this being the first work of Zahnpasta poetry, I wasn't locked into following any guidelines of what Zahnpasta poetry was or was not. A full-length manifesto being out of the question for the average attention span, I chose poetry to convey the message, because I consider example, in most cases, to be much more effective than page after page of explaination.

But besides this piece's relevance to the movement, it has something for everyone to enjoy. Tension and mystery are found right in the first stanza. Who is this Jimmy? Why the references to all these objects that could be used as weapons? Without saying it outright, we assume that Jimmy is violent. One also finds humor throughout, from my stretch to use the only word that rhymes with 'wonk', to the bathroom humor of the surprise ending. Laughs abound for the perceptive reader, and yet no prior Zahnpasta education is necessary.

Given a time machine and the opportunity to use it, there is nothing in The Wonk Contest I would want to go back and change.

Bonefish Sam isn't really a "writer".

Jimmy Part Three.

1999-12-15T12:02:00.000-08:00

"How many times do I have to tell you, Jimmy?" she said. "How many times?"

Not knowing how many times it had been so far, and being unable to add one to the total if he had been able to figure it out, Jimmy said, "I don't know."

"Well, pick up these bones right now, and don't let this happen again."

Jimmy's head felt like it was in a vice. An airplane glue-depravation vice, to be exact. Before his mom had even left the room, Jimmy had forgotten all about the bones scattered around and was in the process of putting his bathrobe on so he could go shoplift another tube or two. If he had more jingle he'd go for the half-gallon tub of wallpaper paste, but he had lost his job at the circus when he'd overscrubbed the one-and-only oneofakind, see it here for the first and only time in your life Whaleopotamus. Once the ringing in his ears starts, he hears nothing else. He simply scrubs like a madman, off in his own world, and not even the horrible, tortured screams of an overscrubbed Whaleopotamus would shake him out of it.

So Jimmy was fired for animal overabrasion, and had been forced to give up his high-rolling wallpaper paste lifestyle.

Who knows how many times Jimmy had tried to fit a half-gallon of wallpaper paste under his bathrobe? Jimmy sure didn't know, even if he used his fingers to count. He'd try it every time, yet it always resulted in a telltale bulge that even a nearsighted hardware or hobby shop cashier couldn't miss. Best stick with the airplane glue, right Jimmy? You said it.

"Right behind the canvas you'll see the oneofakind Whaleopotamus. Never has there been, never will you see such a bizarre beast, a fluke of nature. God's most horrendous error, yet shined to mirrorlike perfection, the Whaleopotamus will make even the most Holy among you question the sobriety of the Creator. The line is now forming, don't get left out, this might be the last showing of the night. Hurry right up, or miss your first and only chance to see the Whaleopotamus. The shiny beast of the deep..."

Jimmy came to his sense once again on the floor of his toolshed bedroom with a half-full glue tube in a hand and a fully empty one clentched between some of his toes, and the pockets of his bathrobe stuffed of small animal bones. Not the same animal bones as before, but pretty close. He wrenched his hand free from the floor; it seemed to be stuck on there.

He could almost hear him mom now, saying, "How many times do I have to tell you, Jimmy?" But the ringing in his ears was too loud, so he had to read her lips. Then she left the room again. Right away, he couldn't remember if she had really been there, or if he was imagining things again. Sometimes he thought J.P. was around when he wasn't. Instinctively, he started picking up the bones and stashing them under the burlap bag of hay that he slept on so he could glue them together later.

"You do a fine job of scrubbing, my boy, " said J.P. Bahrnamus, world-famous showman. "But you're gonna strip that skin clean off if you keep at it like that. You trying to get at them bones too?" J.P. Bahrnamus laughed. "It's not too easy to build another one of these guys, you know. Don't get me wrong. I admire your dedication to your work. When I was your age, I was cleanin' up a Giant Ape's shitcage. And look at me now. One of these days, son, just you wait." J.P. paused for a moment, looked at Jimmy and frowned. "Godammit, quit scrubbing that guy! What I tell you? Yer gonna hurt him!" Jimmy rolled over on the hay, jabbing himself with an animal rib in his bathrobe pocket, hearing his mom's voice, J.P. Bahrnamus's voice, the voice of the cashier at the hardware store, and most loudly the ringing in his ears. He couldn't tell if he was hungry, thirsty or needed more glue. He pryed open his eyes and saw he was without food, and the rest of the glue seemed to be gone. There was a Mason jar on a bench nearby that was half full of either dirty water or kerosene. Had he not burned off all the smell-sensors in his nose he might have been able to tell the difference. Maybe it's water. Neither J.P. nor his mom was in sight, but the ever-loudening ringing almost seemed to be forming into words he couldn't make out, but the voices he almost could, and the rattling of bones as he rolled over, feeling them jabbing into his skin but it didn't hurt nearly as much as the ringing, which was nearly a screaming like the sound of an overscrubbed Whaleopotamus, thirsty and reaching out toward the Mason jar of dirty water.

Bonefish Sam is an ameteur vacuum cleaner salesman.

It needs to be stopped.

1999-12-05T12:49:00.000-08:00

Holidays are such an interruption to the routines I love so much. If you're a typical Amerikan with nothing to look forward to except retirement, I'm sure they're great. Or if you're a little kid, of course. But I personally would like to see it stopped. Grinch, huh? No, I don't think he would have been doing what he was doing if he fully understood it. Stopping Christmas would be in everyone's best interests. It's just gotten out of hand, and can only get worse.

The day after Thanxgiving, and the Self-Replicating Buying Machines are out in force, wandering around aimlessly, looking for things to buy or eat. Following each others' movements like cattle, and following the flashing lights like moths. They bitch about the crowds and the traffic, while they could have done the same shopping two days earlier and spared themselves the trouble. Do they really lower the price when they have a "sale"? Is the inconvenience of non-sale prices really that much worse than the inconvenience of crowds and traffic? Apparently ev'rybody and their fucking dog thinks so. They'll do this for a whole month.

They hit the roads in a bad mood, convinced that the only way they'll get where they're going is through offensive driving. It's a madhouse out here! I gotta show 'em who's bad! Give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile! I'm gonna be courteous to nobody! Then they decide that me and my bicycle are in their way. The way I see it, if I'm travelling the same route I take every day with relatively little resistance, and then all of a sudden it's Shopping Day, and you're crossing my path, then you are in my way. A point I had to prove to several motorists this season, by threatening to scratch their paint job with my bike and body.

Yeah, every shopper out there with an armload of Pokemon shit has complaints like I do, about the traffic and everyone else's bad attitudes. I have more of a problem with the level of Christmastime hate not because it impedes by shopping progress, but because I don't see a good reason for this holiday happening in the first place. How did this thing go from being a simple Christian holiday, to being an excuse for the owners of every local business to put on a Santa suit and say, "Ho ho ho, this is where Santa shops!"? How did people end up making themselves miserable and broke to participate in a holiday that, if they really thought about it, they would realize that they haven't enjoyed in years? The reason is guilt. Guilt engineered by the advertising departments of just about every retailer in the country.

There's a Fred Meyer commercial on for this x-mas season. Their motto for now is "The Joy of Giving". What, are they giving something away? Nope. They must mean, "The Joy of Giving Stuff You Bought From Us". Who can't see through this? People who watch TV for two or more hours a day in an Alpha state. Most of Amerika's population, that is.

So what's this year's Cabbage Patch toy? I haven't actually heard yet. Must be Pokemon crap. Whatever it is, you can bet all the Good Little Boys' & Girls' moms are out beating the shit out of each other to get one. Christmas Spirit becomes a competition. People make themseves unhappy, form themselves into crowds and try to take out their frustrations on each other. Angry robots with credit cards.

I've been becoming interested in this concept of "Holiday Blues". I've seen list after list of ways to beat these "Holiday Blues", and not one of them offers the best suggestion: Quit celebrating Chrismas. Prob'ly one of the biggest reasons this happens is because of the Christmas celebration. The ideal dreamworld in the "Joy of Giving" commercial just doesn't happen. So you have your own life, and then you have a carpet-bombing of this commercial to compare it with. It's bound to be depressing. The realization that it's the Most Wonderful Time Of The Year, and it still sucks. It doesn't get any better than this. Heap on top of that the guilt factor, the fact that you're running out of money, your job that's prob'ly twice as hectic as usual, and that the weather isn't even worth leaving the house for. Then someone on TV news drags out the old Christmas filler story to remind you about the "Holiday Blues". You know, now that they mention it, I do seem to get depressed during the holidays. I wonder if it will happen this year. Well, it'll happen the first time you can't find a good parking space at the mall.

Christmas in Boise

It's that time of year again. A tree grows to its fullest potential; its height of glory. Then it gets chopped down and dumped in a landfill. But for about a month in between, it gets decorated, covered with plastic tinsel and maybe some plastic foam (rendering it un-recyclable) and placed in some human's living room for a few weeks.

In Boise, one of the larger of these trees gets placed in front of the Idaho capitol building for you to look at. Is that too far from where you live? For your convenience, three blocks away, in the area called the Grove, there's another similar one. As an added bonus, the Grove tree is always augmented with Plywood Presents. Maybe they look charming from a distance, but get close and brace yourself for knotholes, splinters, warping plywood and a sloppy paint job. Even the "bows" on the Plywood Presents are made of wood.

Not enough dead trees for you? Would you rather pay admission to look at trees? Well, since you're in the Grove already, the Festival of Trees is right through that door over there. If you're not from Boise it might sound like I'm making this up (or it could be a franchised event for all I know). This is real, and it seems like something that only a Boisean could fall for. Here's the general scheme: you pay money and you look at Christmas Trees. That's it. Pay money. Look at trees. It's a tree zoo, except that the trees are dead.

Instead of taking animals from their habitat, we take the trees from theirs. We take the habitat from the animals. Then we make these trees as un-tree-like as possible, show 'em off and throw 'em out. And if you can charge some money in there somewhere, all the better.

One year I remember walking through the Grove during the Festival of Trees, and seeing an ice sculpture in death throes. It was obviously a block of ice that had been shaped by humans, but had melted beyond recognition by unseasonably warm weather. We stood around, enjoying the way it looked, appreciating entropy's influence on the work, while Boise people of all varieties walked by. Each one that stopped long enough to look said something like, "Hmm. Must have been nice, whatever it was." Then they'd move on. Interesting that they'd stop in the first place.

Bonefish Sam has been referred to as a "grinch", yet has been unable to sucessfully steal Christmas. He rides a Schwinn.

From The Idaho Statehouse

1999-02-08T23:41:00.000-08:00

Apparently teachers all over the state were asked to force their students to write letters about how wonderful Idaho is to a relative or someone who lives out of state. Then copies of these letters were to be sent to the state capitol where they could be taped to the walls and people like me could read them. I copied this one down.

Feb. 8, 1999

Dear Sister,

Remember the time we tried to get the cookies at Grandma's and Grandpa's house? We ate a lot of sugar cookies and we were stuffed! We got no other dessert. SO we went outside to make a plan. We were so mad. I said, "Lets play a trick on them! We jumped in the mud we looked like brown, muddy, wet aliens. We said, "We are aliens." We got all the dessert we wanted!

Yours truly
Shannon

Bonefish Sam is a retired Bahamas prize fighter.

The Art of Noises Futurist Manifesto.

1996-06-15T06:38:00.000-07:00

Dear Balilla Pratella, Great Futurist Composer,

In Rome, at the very crowded Teatro Costanzi while I was listening to the orchestral performance of your revolutionary MUSICA FUTURISTA with my friends Marinetti, Boccioni, and Balla, I conceived a new art: The Art of Noises, the logical consequence of your marvelous innovations.

Ancient life was all silence. In the 19th Century with the invention of machines, Noise was born. Today, Noise is triumphant and reigns sovereign over the sensibility of men. Through many centuries life unfolded silently, or at least quietly. The loudest of noises that interrupted this silence was neither intense, nor prolonged nor varied. After all, if we overlook the exceptional movements of the earth's crust, hurricanes, storms, avalanches, and waterfalls, nature is silent.

In this scarcity of noises, the first sounds that men were able to draw from a pierced reed or a taut string were stupefying, something new and wonderful. Among primitive peoples, sound was attributed to the gods. It was considered sacred and reserved for priests, who used it to enrich their rites with mystery. Thus was born the idea of sound as something in itself, as different from and independent of life. And from it resulted music, a fantastic world superimposed on the real one, an inviolable and sacred world. The Greeks greatly restricted the field of music. Their musical theory, mathematically systematized by Pythagoras, admitted only a few consonant intervals. Thus, they knew nothing of harmony, which was impossible.

The Middle Ages, with the developments and modifications of the Greek tetrachord system, with Gregorian chant and popular songs, enriched the musical art. But they continued to regard sound in its unfolding in time, a narrow concept that lasted several centuries, and which we find again in the very complicated polyphony of the Flemish contrapuntalists. The chord did not exist. The development of the various parts was not subordinated to the chord that these parts produced in their totality. The conception of these parts, finally, was horizontal not vertical. The desire, the search, and the taste for the simultaneous union of different sounds, that is, for the chord (the complete sound) was manifested gradually, moving from the consonant triad to the consistent and complicated dissonances that characterize contemporary music. From the beginning, musical art sought out and obtained purity and sweetness of sound. Afterwards, it brought together different sounds, still preoccupying itself with caressing the ear with suave harmonies. As it grows ever more complicated today, musical art seeks out combinations more dissonant, stranger, and harsher for the ear. Thus, it comes ever closer to the noise-sound.

This evolution of music is comparable to the multiplication of machines, which everywhere collaborate with man. Not only in the noisy atmosphere of the great cities, but even in the country, which until yesterday was normally silent. Today, the machine has created such a variety and contention of noises that pure sound in its slightness and monotony no longer provokes emotion.

In order to excite and stir our sensibility, music has been developing toward the most complicated polyphony and toward the greatest variety of instrumental timbres and colors. It has searched out the most complex successions of dissonant chords, which have prepared in a vague way for the creation of MUSICAL NOISE. The ear of the Eighteenth Century man would not have been able to withstand the inharmonious intensity of certain chords produced by our orchestra (with three times as many performers as that of the orchestra of his time). But our ear takes pleasure in it, since it is already educated to modern life, so prodigal in different noises. Nevertheless, our ear is not satisfied and calls for ever greater acoustical emotions.

Musical sound is too limited in its variety of timbres. The most complicated orchestras can be reduced to four or five classes of instruments different in timbres of sound bowed instruments, metal winds, wood winds, and percussion. Thus, modern music flounders within this tiny circle, vainly striving to create new varieties of timbre.

We must break out of this limited circle of sounds and conquer the infinite variety of noise-sounds.

Everyone will recognize that each sound carries with it a tangle of sensations, already well-known and exhausted which predispose the listener to boredom, in spite of the efforts of all musical innovators. We futurists have all deeply loved and enjoyed the harmonies of the great masters. Beethoven and Wagner have stirred our nerves and hearts for many years. Now we have had enough of them, and we delight much more in combining in our thoughts the noises of trams, of automobile engines of carriages and brawling crowds, than in hearing again the "Eroica" or the "Pastorale."

We cannot see the enormous apparatus of forces that the modern orchestra represents without feeling the most profound disillusionment before its paltry acoustical results. Do you know of a more ridiculous sight than that of twenty men striving to redouble the mewling of a violin? Naturally, that statement will make the musicomaniacs scream and perhaps revive the sleepy atmosphere of the concert halls. Let us go together, like futurists, into one of these hospitals for anemic sounds. There the first beat brings to your ear the weariness of something heard before, and makes you anticipate the boredom of the beat that follows. So let us drink in, from beat to beat, these few qualities of obvious tedium, always waiting for that extraordinary sensation that never comes. Meanwhile, there is in progress a repugnant medley of monotonous impressions and of the cretinous religious emotion of the Buddha-like listeners, drunk with repeating for the thousandth time their more or less acquired and snobbish ecstasy. Away! Let us leave, since we cannot for long restrain ourselves from the desire to create finally a new musical reality by generously handing out some resounding slaps and stamping with both feet on violins, pianos, contrabasses, and organs. Let us go!

It cannot be objected that noise is only loud and disagreeable to the ear. It seems to me useless to enumerate all the subtle and delicate noises that produce pleasing sensations.

To be convinced of the surprising variety of noises, one need only think of the rumbling of thunder, the whistling of the wind the roaring of a waterfall the gurgling of a brook, the rustling of leaves, the trotting of a horse into the distance, the rattling jolt of a cart on the road and of the full, solemn, and white breath of a city at night. Think of all the noises made by wild and domestic animals, and of all those that a man can make, without either speaking or singing.

Let us cross a large modern capital with our ears more sensitive than our eyes. We will delight in distinguishing the eddying of water, of air or gas in metal pipes, the muttering of motors that breathe and pulse with an indisputable animality, the throbbing of valves, the bustle of pistons, the shrieks of mechanical saws, the starting of trams on the tracks, the cracking of whips, the flapping of awnings and flags. We will amuse ourselves by orchestrating together in our imagination the din of rolling shop shutters, the varied hubbub of train stations, iron works, thread mills, printing presses, electrical plants, and subways.

Nor should the newest noises of modern war be forgotten. Recently, the poet Marinetti in a letter from the trenches of Adrianopolis, described to me with marvelous free words the orchestra of a great battle:

"every 5 seconds siege cannons gutting space with a chord ZANG-TUMB-TUUUMB mutiny of 500 echos smashing scattering it to infinity. In the center of this hateful ZANG-TUMB-TUUUMB area 50 square kilometers leaping bursts lacerations fists rapid fire batteries. Violence ferocity regularity this deep bass scanning the strange shrill frantic crowds of the battle Fury breathless ears eyes nostrils open! load! fire! what a joy to hear to smell completely taratatata of the machine guns screaming a breathlessness under the stings slaps traak-traak whips pic-pac-pum-tumb weirdness leaps 200 meters range Far far in back of the orchestra pools muddying huffing goaded oxen wagons pluff-plaff horse action flic flac zing zing shaaack laughing whinnies the twinkling jiiingling tramping 3 Bulgarian battalions marching croooccraaac [slowly] Shumi Maritza or Karvavena ZANG-TUMB-TUUUMB toc-toc-toc-toc [fast] crooc-craaac [slowly] crys of officers slamming about like brass plates pan here paak there BUUUM ching chaak [very fast] cha-cha-cha-cha-chaak down there up there all around high up look out your head beautiful! Flashing flashing flashing flashing flashing flashing footlights of the forts down there behind that smoke Shukri Pasha communicates by phone with 27 forts in Turkish in German Allo! Ibrahim! Rudolf! allo! allo! actors parts echos of prompters scenery of smoke forests applause odor of hay mud dung I no longer feel my frozen feet odor of gunsmoke odor of rot Tympani flutes clarinets everywhere low high birds chirping blessed shadows cheep-cheep-cheep green breezes flocks don-dan-don-din-baaah Orchestra madmen pommel the performers they terribly beaten playing playing Great din not erasing clearing up cutting off slighter noises very small scraps of echos in the theater area 300 square kilometers Rivers Maritza Tungia stretched out Rodolpi Mountains rearing heights loges boxes 2000 shrapnels waving arms exploding very white handkerchiefs full of gold srrrrr-TUMB-TUMB 2000 raised grenades tearing out bursts of very black hair ZANG-srrrrr-TUMB-ZANG-TUMB-TUUUMB the orchestra of the noises of war swelling under a held note of silence in the high sky round golden balloon that observes the firing. . . "

We want to give pitches to these diverse noises, regulating them harmonically and rhythmically. Giving pitch to noises does not mean depriving them of all irregular movements and vibrations of time and intensity but rather assigning a degree or pitch to the strongest and most prominent of these vibrations. Noise differs from sound, in fact, only to the extent that the vibrations that produce it are confused and irregular. Every noise has a pitch, some even a chord, which predominates among the whole of its irregular vibrations. Now, from this predominant characteristic pitch derives the practical possibility of assigning pitches to the noise as a whole. That is, there may be imparted to a given noise not only a single pitch but even a variety of pitches without sacrificing its character, by which I mean the timbre that distinguishes it. Thus, some noises obtained through a rotary motion can offer an entire chromatic scale ascending or descending, if the speed of the motion is increased or decreased.

Every manifestation of life is accompanied by noise. Noise is thus familiar to our ear and has the power of immediately recalling life itself. Sound, estranged from life, always musical, something in itself an occasional not a necessary element, has become for our ear what for the eye is a too familiar sight. Noise instead, arriving confused and irregular from the irregular confusion of life, is never revealed to us entirely and always holds innumerable surprises. We are certain, then, that by selecting, coordinating, and controlling all the noises, we will enrich mankind with a new and unsuspected pleasure of the senses. Although the characteristic of noise is that of reminding us brutally of life, the Art of Noises should not limit itself to an imitative reproduction. It will achieve its greatest emotional power in acoustical enjoyment itself, which the inspiration of the artist will know how to draw from the combining of noises.

Here are the 6 families of noises of the futurist orchestra that we will soon realize mechanically:

1	2	3	4	5	6
Roars Thunderings Explosions Hissing roars Bangs Booms	Whistling Hissing Puffing	Whispers Murmurs Mumbling Muttering Gurgling	Screeching Creaking Rustling Humming Crackling Rubbing	Noises obtained by beating on metals woods skins stones pottery etc.	Voices of animals and people Shouts Screams Shrieks Wails Hoots Howls Death rattles Sobs

In this list we have included the most characteristic of the fundamental noises. The others are only associations and combinations of these.

The rhythmic motions of a noise are infinite. There always exists, as with a pitch, a predominant rhythm, but around this there can be heard numerous other, secondary rhythms.

Conclusions

Futurist composers should continue to enlarge and enrich the field of sound. This responds to a need of our sensibility. In fact, we notice in the talented composers of today a tendency toward the most complicated dissonances. Moving ever farther from pure sound, they have almost attained the noise-sound. This need and this tendency can be satisfied only with the addition and the substitution of noises for sounds.
Futurist musicians should substitute for the limited variety of timbres that the orchestra possesses today the infinite variety of timbres in noises, reproduced with appropriate mechanisms.
The sensibility of musicians, being freed from traditional and facile rhythms, must find in noise the means of expanding and renewing itself, given that every noise offers a union of the most diverse rhythms, in addition to that which predominates.
Every noise having in its irregular vibrations a predominant general pitch, a sufficiently extended variety of tones, semitones, and quartertones is easily attained in the construction of the instruments that imitate it. This variety of pitches will not deprive a single noise of the characteristics of its timbre but will only increase its tessitura or extension.
The practical difficulties involved in the construction of these instruments are not serious. Once the mechanical principle that produces a noise has been found, its pitch can be changed through the application of the same general laws of acoustics. It can be achieved, for example, through the decreasing or increasing of speed if the instrument has a rotary motion. If the instrument does not have a rotary motion, it can be achieved through differences of size or tension in the sounding parts.
It will not be through a succession of noises imitative of life but through a fantastic association of the different timbres and rhythms that the new orchestra will obtain the most complex and novel emotions of sound. Thus, every instrument will have to offer the possibility of changing pitches and will need a more or less extended range.
The variety of noises is infinite. If today, having perhaps a thousand different machines, we are able to distinguish a thousand different noises, tomorrow, with the multiplication of new machines, we will be able to distinguish ten, twenty, or thirty thousand different noises, not simply by imitation but by combining according to our fancy.
Therefore, we invite talented and audacious young musicians to observe all noises attentively, to understand the different rhythms that compose them, their principal pitch, and those which are secondary. Then, comparing the various timbres of noises to the timbres of sounds, they will be convinced that the first are much more numerous than the second. This will give them not only the understanding of but also the passion and the taste for noises. Our multiplied sensibility, having been conquered by futurist eyes, will finally have some futurist ears. Thus, the motors and machines of our industrial cities can one day be given pitches, so that every workshop will become an intoxicating orchestra of noises.

Dear Pratella, I submit to your futurist genius these propositions of mine, inviting your discussion. I am not a musician by profession and therefore, I have no acoustical prejudices, nor works to defend. I am a futurist painter who projects beyond himself, into an art much-beloved and studied, his desire to renew everything. Thus, bolder than a professional musician, not worried about my apparent incompetence, and convinced that audacity has all rights and all possibilities, I was able to divine the great renewal of music through the Art of Noises.

LUIGI RUSSOLO

Milan, March 11, 1913

Luigi Russolo is arguably the founder of noise-music.
The entire book, "The Art of Noises (Monographs in Musicology No. 6)" is available from Pendragon Press. Reprinted with permission.

Kut With A Kitchen Knife - the Musical! (by Khris Soden)

1994-01-01T07:07:00.000-08:00

"You're all a whirling h'ors derve fish when your mined gets at it," said the blindman who kept telephoning the Seamier One. "Yer girlfriend is a painted sock doll with a head full of saw dust." Seamy Citizen slams down certain said receiver with Blindman in tow, kwestions to self: "Head full of star dust, eh?"

Well everyone knows the true truth about him, and his head swimming in a sinkhole. Who cares? "Not I," said Mother Mary the Flying Nun of Media Moguls, Merchandising Mavens, and Mad Mating Matrons Martyred by Mussolini. "Furthermore, President Mister President doesn't care, Speaker of House Man don't care, Pope John Paul Ringo George Oldest Joke in the Holy Book the Second don't care. Drew Barrymore's a whore, and Frank Zappa's dead."

Well, thinks the Seamiest, I gotta go get me some get up and go. Maybe I'll take a walk and join the Stupid Assholes Club. Maybe I'll take a wok and a john down at the stooged All Hole Pub. Maybe even I could sit and swim sit and spin in my scathing skull steaming stewartly in hopes that haggard headed girl of many colours girl to be true shit-faced for brains will call. Or the Blindman might call again.

So our Hero of Heroics pulls on his boots and pulls on his socks and pulls on his sex and puts on his suit with creases as sharp as a knife. And dives out into the Great Outdoors which is something that none of the readers in our audience have ever done. Jumped into the sun, jumped into the sky, jumped into that hole into oblivion. Held in the oblivious. Walked from Main Street to that street to your street and did. And was. And felt because the seamier, and only the seamier, are into being real these days. Feet in the concrete, hands on the wool mittens. Head in atoms. Everyone else either watching teevee or drinking espresso.

Khris Soden is not allowed to play with knives, kitchen or otherwise.

Subject: frog, Message #35 - Misfit Lit (by J. Fish)

1993-11-05T07:04:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time there was a frog. he was a happy frog, and lived in a pond with a wife +2 kids. He had a small house (not too small) and a fun yard (not too fun) and a dog (not too dog). One day, he died. his family, being fairly distraught, went to coroner Buddy and said "can we have him stuffed? he has a lot of freinds, and whenever they come over we can set him up on the couch." The coroner said, "Sho' nuff" And so he was stuffed. The family was having a nice dinner at home when..

BANG! the storm started again!

there was a knock on the door. Knock KNock Knock! there was a ringing of the doorbell. Ring Ring Ring!

a stranger entered and said, "Is the man of the house around?"

"why yes, here he is."

just then the Dog, whose name is MISTER MISTER SALTY said," Arf, he's nude!" the stranger responded by tipping his hat up, and saying, "Well, at least he's got his rent paid!"

And then they all laughed.

J. Fish is a music theorist extraordinaire.