Meeting of the Marked 2005

There was a booth selling kilts at this years tattoo convention and in the last hour of the last day I saw one of the kilt salesman following a tattoo artist down the hall with a green kilt in his hand.
As they went out of sight I heard a frustrated voice say,
"Dude you definitely sold me a kilt...I just ain't buying it!"

White Courtesy Phone

Last night at the tattoo convention the $10 fortune teller told me to "never ever answer the white courtesy phone."

This freaked me out. You see I have never met this bangled behemoth before. So how she knows there is a white courtesy phone tucked away in my kitchen that has been there since the day I moved in ten years ago, is a complete mystery to me. Almost as mysterious as the phone itself. The landlord told me that the phone came with the apartment and there was no extra charge. I told him I was glad there was no extra charge because the phone had no dial or buttons to place a call with. He told me it was just for incoming calls and that it would probably never ring and it was "no extra charge so what do you want?"

Last week after ten years of silence the phone started to ring. At first it would just ring once and by the time I got there it would stop and I would pick it up and there would be a deadline. Then it started ringing two or three times and stop just as I was about to pick it up as if it had eyes and could see me approaching. I called my landlord yesterday and told him I wanted the white courtesy phone fixed or I want it taken out. He said he tried to take it out after he bought the building. And then he said "there is nothing I can do."

The phone started ringing this morning. The cats are freaked because I am. I have pillows and blankets covering the phone but somehow I can still hear it.

Sooner or later. I will.

Jarhead

I am seeing movie previews for a film called Jarhead which is based on a book I read recently called Jarhead, which is a soldier's first person narrative of his time in Iraq.

It absolutely sickens me that Hollywood has begun to make movies about Iraq.

2000 dead. 16000 wounded and ruined. And a man wearing a pink shirt with his collar up and a cigar in his hand is going to teach us the meaning of sin while he tightens up the second act and casts pretty boys.

Please leave it alone. You have nothing useful to say.

Potato Boy

His mother sent him out trick or treating dressed as a baked potato. The yellow square hat was a pat of butter.

It happened 40 years ago when he was 7.

He begged to go as a pirate. And then he begged to stay at home.

He didn't even really look like a potato.

"Morty there's a little Turd Boy at the door. And he's wearing a pat of butter on his head. Come see"

The nickname lasted until he joined the Coast Guard and then things got really bad.

Everyone knows potatoes can't swim.

Jody Foster Blues

A friend of mine gave the Dresden Dolls a massage today before they played Mr Smalls. I hope this isn't my fifteen minutes of fame.

Wait a second. I just remembered. Another friend of mine intercepted a Joe Montana pass in high school.

That's probably going to be it.

I think maybe an absurd gesture of international note is in order.

Something to do with Niagra Falls or Jodie Foster.

If only that Banjo Opera hadn't flopped.

Frankenkitty

I have created a cat that does not poop! Oddly the subject cat has not moved in four days. But that's a small detail that's sure to work itself out when I get some "real" scientists involved. I don't want to go into the details to much but you do start out with a "normal" cat. Then you apply my soon to be patented technique and....maybe I have said to much already.

Long Live The Quickliest Ones

I was driving on the PA Turnpike today and I spotted a speed trap set by the MAN to catch speeders coming towards me in the opposite lane.

Sadly I didn't flash my lights at the on coming traffic.

I felt so guilty for betraying my fellow TRAVELERS I got off at the next exit and raced back towards the hidden trap at maximum Nissan Sentra speed. (74mph)

"Scotty is that all she's got?"

"Aye Captain your car would lose to a bottle of ketchup!"

When I got pulled over I told the officer that I was speeding on purpose because I felt ashamed for not warning the quickliest ones about his scabrous approach to law enforcement. I told him that the PEOPLE should know there was a big-eared King Dong eating speed trap sneak hiding in the bushes up ahead and if they continued to speed....well fair enough.

"Did your Mother raise you to be a speed trap rooster?"

"How does your wife feel being married to a speed know-it-all?"

"How do you sleep at night knowing how late you made everyone?"

Speaking of sleep. I dreamt last night that my Giant Invisible Cow Experiment went horribly wrong and when the neighbors gardens started to disappear I said nothing.

I should have flashed. And I should have warned the neighbors.

Exaggoman Circus Update

As you all know I am putting together an Exaggoman Circus that I hope to have on the road in the Spring of 2006. Maybe you can help me. I have one position left open in the sideshow. Unfortunately I have two acts that are just killer and I cannot decide who to sign. Who would you rather see?

Carl The Man That Can Smell The Future

"Well it's pretty stinky over all, but madam your yet to be born granddaughter wears a wonderful perfume to her high school prom."

The crowd gasps.

"Can you tell me her name?"

"No mam I can only smell the future. But I can tell you that your granddaughter's grandson doesn't like to shower all that much."

More gasps. Thunderous applause. Lots of sniffing.


This next act is very conceptual. The tent is completely dark. A spotlight comes on. The light falls on a man in dark clothes sitting sideways on a wooden chair.

"Ladies and Gentleman The Exaggoman Circus is proud to present The Man That Always Sits Sideways!"

You guessed it. Gasps. A little fearful murmuring too. People looking at each other shaking their heads.

"Ladies and Gentleman for your safety and the safety of The Man That Always Sits Sideways we would like to request that you all remain seated during the performance and that you all face forward. The Man That Always Sits Sideways grew up in a circus family of sideway sitters. He knows what he's doing. Enjoy the show."

I know what you are thinking. I should look for an act where the man sitting sideways can smell the future. Believe me I tried. Talent like this just doesn't grow on trees. Just ask The Man That Grows On Trees!

The Goose Bumps Have Wet Eyes.

The car crash girl on ER woke up after being in a coma for 6 years.

Goose Bumps. Wet eyes.

How do these guys think this stuff up?

She said where am I?

ER had been on for five years before she even went into a coma. She missed 6 years of ER episodes and then she woke up on the show.

Dude that is ironic.

She said where's George Clooney? They had to tell her he didn't work in the ER anymore. He was now a big movie star.

Then she said how's my mother?

The Goose Bumps have Wet Eyes.

$800

M.R. has been selling my images for the last ten years. She called me last week and told me she had sold the last couple of prints I had given her. And she wanted to know what I was working on.

I haven't put a negative in an enlarger for four years. I have nothing to sell.

I told her I was making a DVD of my photos that she could show potential buyers and they could shop with the pause control on their player but I honestly don't think people buy photographs without seeing the actual print.

20 years worth of negatives in boxes and no one to love them but me...and I am such a bad parent. If my negatives were children I wouldn't know any of their names. I was always too busy making more. My negatives are like dried snakeskins to me. The interesting part is somewhere else. And therefore some of those negatives have not seen the light of day or an enlarger light in 20 years.

All I want to do is direct...somebody slap me.

And now the Canon 5D is out with a 13 million pixel sensor which is definitely film quality and the Epson 2400 printer is making "spectacular, archival" black and white prints. I could shoot images to sell to collectors. It isn't too hard to figure out what they want. (Nudes. Solemn Children. Moving Water. Lonely Trees) Can I bring a dispassionate, clinical, commercial approach to something I always did for the...I don't know how to finish that sentence. I have no idea why I have been throwing film in a camera for over twenty years. I picked some subjects, threw it in gear and never looked back.

Slap me again for living a life without a single second of introspection.

I don't even know what those last images were.

Boy I hope skiing starts soon. This is painful.

Forbidden Love Weekend

I spent the weekend with G. She is an unbelievable beauty. Red hair. Bottomless brown eyes.

Saturday was our courtship. Shy sideways glances. Questioning eyes. Growing confidence. Growing comfort. Your joy is my joy.
"Don't move! I'll go get that tennis ball."
"Do you like it when I scratch you there?"

Saturday night was the Wedding. When I saw G. coming down the aisle with her wedding dress in her mouth my heart burst with Joy. After the wedding we journeyed to a place that was Mysterious...Beautiful... and Private.

On Sunday the shy glances were back but for an entirely different reason. We spent the morning in bed reading the Sunday Times and chasing the finger under the blanket. It was wonderful. Later we decided to take a blanket out to North Park and just laze the day away. Maybe toss a frisbee. Have a picnic....

And then it happened. We were on a blanket in a field. G. was snuggled in beside me. It was later in the day. I was half asleep. Drowsy...dreamy...content. When suddenly G. sprang up letting out a strange noise. She was running across the field when I started to rise and as my eyes slowly came into focus I saw something that broke my heart.

G. sniffing a Golden Retrievers bum.

Sunday night was the divorce.

Chipmunks In My Pants

I was looking forward to this weekend as the first weekend since May when I would not be paddling, traveling or shooting, or a combination of the three.

It is 8:53 AM Saturday morning and I already have ants the size of chipmunks running around in my pants. Now having anything in my pants that isn't normally there is usually pretty exciting for me but if I am using the expression correctly I think I am trying to say I am bored senseless already and even the frolicsome
chipmunk/ants aren't going to be enough. What shall I do with myself? Normally I would rob a 7/11 if I was looking for some downtime thrills but that is so 90's. (Besides I can't find my Clinton mask and Monica is still locked up and mad as Hell!) Maybe I'll go to the Home Depot and ask the experts questions about plywood. "Comes from a tree? You don't say. Not really shaped like a tree though is it?"

The temperature in my place dipped below 65 degrees last night and the cats absolutely panicked. It was a Chinese fire drill as they ran around franticly looking for the warmest place to sleep. Now these cats are so fat they could easily spend the winter in Antarctica rolling Penguin eggs around between their legs and be fine. They just don't have any confidence in their life sustaining fat. Cover your eyes if you are not 18 but they usually wind up burrowing under the blankets for the night which looks somehow perverse to the occasional overnight guest..."They never did that before."

I saw the 14th worst movie ever made last night. Flight Plan with Jodie Foster is so absurd in its nonsensical plot turns that even the dopes in the audience that know the moon is made out of cheese were squirming. Now I use the "willing suspension of disbelief" quite a bit in this blog but you don't have to pay eight bucks and sit in a theater for two hours to read this. A movie that had a man wearing a Bill Clinton mask with chipmunks in his pants, roasting hunks of moon over a plywood fire, in Antarctica with two fat cats at his side hatching Penguin eggs, would make more sense than this movie.

I hope to live to a time when if something absurd happens in a movie I will be able push a giant red button on arm of my seat freezing the movie. A Man-Hologram will emerge from the middle of the movie screen and say "We have a question about plot from the man in the third row. It seems he doesn't believe lovable whales can fly." Of course, if they were really stuck for an explanation a sparkly go go dancer would come out of the screen for a little bit to take my mind off the lovable flying whale.

Look I just killed an hour. 47 to go.

Communication Breakdown

"The snake was found with the gator's hindquarters protruding from its midsection. Mazzotti said the alligator may have clawed at the python's stomach as the snake tried to digest it."


Here's the thing. Alligators are from Mars. Pythons are from Venus. I am sure it was all a horrible misunderstanding that cold-blooded reptiles playing the ME ME ME game so often fall victim to. After all they both should have been eating baby monkeys and those little Mexican dogs with the name that is impossible to spell. Chihauha...Chiwauha...Chiwowwa...Chihuahua.

But it's too late to play the blame game. Sure this looks like a bonehead move on the snakes part but to that I would say "slither a mile in my shoes."

Blind Date

A friend of mine told me today that "she had her eyes shut so hard they broke."

I presume her lids rolled up like window shades but I didn't ask.

The man sitting across the table from my friend said "I can see I broke your eyes. Sorry."

"That's all right I shouldn't of had them shut so hard. But you know you really don't look at all like your picture."

Blackberry Blues

The very, very, very, best reason to climb Mount Everest these days is to throw your Nextel Blackberry cell phone off the top. It is a well known fact that Sir Edmund Hillary climbed it first in 1950 with a bee-stung scowl on his face to get rid of a smoky toaster that only seemed to bother his bread. In fact, if you look closely at those famous photos you can see the "bloody thing" strapped to his oxygen tank. Of course the British government hushed it all up and paid the family of that poor toaster-dented Sherpa a small fortune in Yak butter to play dumb. But we know better...well I know better.

But I digress.

The fall climbing season has begun in Nepal and I am sure most of the climbing this year is being done to launch Blackberrys. To me the clearest evidence that the Human Race needs to be wiped off the face of the Earth with Extreme Prejudice is that one of us (was it you?) designed this hated Nextel cell phone. To put it bluntly it is not possible to successfully answer a Blackberry cell phone more than 38 per cent of the time. The button you push to accept a call on the N.B. is actually not a button at all but a rotating dial. And if you are one molecule to the left or right of perpendicular when you push this dial the call dies on the Cosmic-Call Vine...unpicked and rotten.

The damn thing is ringing now. I'm not even going to try to answer.
If it's "You" calling to confess that the dial was your idea don't bother. I'll be in the kitchen firing off my sixteen slice, 4 on the floor, I can see myself toaster. Than God something works right on this dumpy planet.

But I digress.