I've decided to take a break from writing this blog. Please check back December 1st, to see if I decide to go on with it.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Monday, October 10, 2011
Adventures In Band
Posted this to Craiglist today. Got Stand up Bass & accordion player interested same day.
Now I'm Scared. Told my wife: I'm creating band that will not want me as a member
Old Folks Folk/Bluegrass Band Looking (West LA)
Date: 2011-10-10, 4:02PM PDT
Reply to: comm-evkxr-2643017368@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]
We have a folk/bluegrass band that has been playing no money gigs around West LA. Usually play once or twice a month. Currently at Fairfax High Swap Meet and Brentwood Art Fair this month. Generally rehearse once a month at private home near LAX. We're looking for a stand up bass, a squeeze box or accordian player and maybe keyboard. Must be willing to show up and play for free. No prima donnas please. We all have input on material. Average age of group is 60.
PostingID: 2643017368- Location: West LA
- it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
She marched with these guys
The Road to The Bear
Daydee- nearing the end of what I've written
She took the lunch out to the cemetery and found Jack’s truck parked before the office. There was a hammering noise coming from the shed. She thought he must be having trouble with the mower. She turned the corner and found that he had moved the cemetery’s backhoe near the shed and was hammering away at its bucket, or at least at the bolts that held it in place.
“Hey,” she hollered.
He jumped and then stood up slowly to face her. He had a sheepish look on his face.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“Well, I’ve been having problems with the back hoe, so I thought I’d move the bucket to my hoe to make the opening and closing go easier.”
She looked him up and down. There was something wrong with this picture.
“You were going to ask me?” she asked.
“Well, it’s not like you even know how to operate it.”
“If I did learn, how was I going to use it or hire somebody else to use it if it has no bucket?”
“Well, I can’t even it off. The bolts are rusted permanent,” he said.
“So you are going to try to break it so no one can use it.”
“Why on earth would you say that?” he asked. “Haven’t I been doing a good job for you>”
“Jack, I overheard you and Edward and Winston in the parking lot behind the restaurant the other day. None of you saw me.”
Jack turned crimson.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?’ she asked.
He looked a lot like Winston did. Lightening had struck.
“Well? This was getting a little scary.
“I guess I’m out of line,” he said without looking up. “Maybe you should find someone else to work the grounds for you. I’ll stay on until you can get someone.”
“That’s not even what we’re talking about. If I described the conversation to Susan, would she know what it was about?”
“You leave her out of this!”
“Tell you what. You’re fired. Get the hell out of here. “ Daydee told him.
He picked up his hammer and screwdriver and started toward his truck. He turned back and stared at her.
“You-“
“I fucking know, asshole! I gotta get out of town! Take a flying leap!”
He turned and climbed in the truck and drove off like a robot. And this was the fucking minster! What the hell was she going to do now? She could cut the grass herself and water- how hard would that be? It was a riding mower anyway. And it’d be good exercise for the baby. It was running the backhoe that was the problem. She remembered her father’s lunch still sitting in her truck.
She walked it out and didn’t find a trace of him other than the shopping cart. She left it and walked back trying to figure this one out. Maybe there was a manual in the office for the thing. She went back and searched and finally found it. She sat down in the office to look at it. It told you what all the parts were and what levers did what, but nothing about what sequence to do it in. It was still early afternoon, so she took the book and went out to the machine. They had just left the key in the ignition. That was going to change. What would stop them from coming out here and driving it away? This was getting real scary, And the women she had gotten to know didn’t seem to have a clue about whatever it was that was going on about her and the goddamn football team. That was the connection! They had all played for Winston at the same time! Back just before she ran away. There had to be something valuable about the estate that she didn’t know about that they did. What other reason would they have?
The book said to let the machine warm up. She turned it on and gave it gas. It purred. Now would be a good time for a cigarette, but she had quit for the baby’s sake. Or at least was trying to. She lit one. It was the first of the day. It was easier not to in the morning when she was sick. She rubbed it out on the side of her tennis shoe and stuck the butt in her shirt pocket. That was another reason to quit. It was getting unconvertible to bend over like that. And she couldn’t just flick the butt out on the grounds. She was afraid that she might mess up the grounds by hitting a lever wrong, so she drove it down the little lane to the back of the property where she had first found her father. A hole back here wouldn’t hurt anything. She played a little with the two big levers and figured out how to lift the bucket and stretch it out in front. But when she started it down the entire cab leaned forward dangerously. She stopped, the sweat dripping off her forehead. Jesus Christ! Now what? She studied the book closely, hoping that the whole thing wouldn’t pitch over before she got it figured out. The stabilizers! She worked the little levers in front and the two stabilizer legs went down and straightened the cab out and up so it was level. Trying again with the bucket, she kind of made a motion that looked like it would scoop the soil up, but she had somehow missed the ground, She tried again and scrapped up the weeds. The third try actually made a shallow trench in the ground, but she dumped the earth back before she could get it off to the side. She spent another half hour playing with, trying to make it work like she imagined it was supposed to. She’d have to come out and practice every day, before she was ready for a grave opening.
By the time she was actually scooping dirt out and laying it aside she was exhausted and wet with sweat. She took a break and climbed down to stretch her legs. Her back and arms were aching. This was hard work. She started with another cigarette, but talked herself out of it and put it back in her pocket. There was something in the dirt. She walked over and looked under the shadow of the arm, It was a human skeleton. The skull and ribs and backbone were all uncovered. Another scoop and she might have broken it apart. Down a couple of yards in her shallow trench was another skull.
She lit her cigarette now. Jesus Christ! What was her mother doing? Emptying out the graves and selling the plots again? Murdering people? Was this what Winston and his boys were scared that I might find? She walked back to the office as quickly as she could and called the sheriff.
The sheriff came out by himself. He looked exactly the same as last time. She wondered if he had only one uniform. There wasn’t a trace of a woman about him. His fringe of hair had been trimmed recently. She thought of the old men that had come across her live- not one of them had a women to tell them to clip their nose hair.
“What were you doing over here anyway?”
“I’m trying to learn how to use the back hoe. This looked like a good place to practice.”
“You had a falling out with Jack?”
“Jack no longer works for me.”
“What happened?”
“Maybe you can ask him.”
“I thought you were coming to church and all.”
“Well, to be honest sheriff, Jack and Edward and Winston seem to be hell bent on getting me to leave.”
“Why would they want to do that?”
“You really should ask them. They won’t tell me a thing.”
He wrote a note in his little notepad. Then he stepped down into the little trench and bent over the skeleton. It looked like was bending over was as hard for him as it was for her. He walked up to the skull.
“You’ll need a special heavy equipment license to drive that out on the street,“ he told her. “Well, I’m afraid I’ve got to ask you not to touch a thing until we can take a good look at all of this. I’m going to call in the request in a minute and we’ll have the forensic folks out here, but there’s no guarantee they will finish up today. You don’t need the back hoe right now?”
“No.”
“You have any knowledge about your mother’s activities that you haven’t told me about?”
“None. We hadn’t talked in twenty years. She only found me because I sent her a Christmas card a couple of years ago. We exchanged a couple of letters. That was about it.”
“You involved in any activities that you want to tell me about that might be against the law?’
“What?”
“You seem all right to me. I’m a pretty good judge of character, but there will have to be a trip to the office for you to make a statement and allow us to question you further.”
“Sure.”
“Nothing you want to say about anything?”
She shook her head.
“Nothing about that accountant of yours?”
“Mark?”
“He’s left town. There’s a bunch of gossip going around. “
“What kind of gossip?” Her heart sank.
“I’ll leave that up to you women. But the more I know, the better for everyone.”
“He was married, wasn’t he? What does his wife say?”
“I’ve not talked to her yet, but if I do, it becomes an official investigation. You understand that?”
Daydee nodded. Shit!
“So I can trust you not to touch anything?”
“I usually just go for a long walk this time of day.” She suddenly thought of her father down the hill. What if they found him? “I’m going for that walk if you don’t need me.”
“Ok.”
He went back to his patrol car. She started off in a slightly different direction and planned to circle back to her father’s shopping cart as soon as she was out of the sheriff’s sight. And now Mark! She hoped it wasn’t about what she figured it was.
There was no trace of him. The lunch she had left earlier was untouched. She pushed the cart down further into the trees until she was certain it wouldn’t be seen unless you were right on top of it. She dragged a couple dead branches over and propped them up against the side of the cart. It was getting harder and harder to do anything physical now. She was sweaty and out of breath. It was really like carrying a bowling ball around with you.
She walked further into the woods, thinking she might spot him. What the hell was she going to do with if she did find him. It’s not like she could make him understand to stay away from the cemetery. Or would she be able to entice him out and away. She thought a trail of French fries might get him to follow her a little way, but even if she got him as far as the truck, there was no way he was going to get in. She wasn’t sure why it was important to protect him from the cops. They would just hassle him and shoot him if he gave them trouble, or if he didn’t, they would take him in and then let him go the next day downtown. She wasn’t sure he would be able to find his way back out here.
How long had he been out here? How had he lived before she appeared? She sat down on a log. This was pretty pointless. This whole thing was turning into the biggest mess anyone could imagine. It was too overwhelming. Now the cemetery was going to be investigated. And they’ll book her for whoring even though it was just a little make-believe tea party. And she had this goddamn baby that she hadn’t even been to the doctor about yet. What if was going to just be a lump or worst, some kind of monster? She thought she could do this. She thought she could handle anything. So why was she sitting here bawling her eyes out? She drew her knees in and rocked herself. She was trembling.
“Deedee making babies.” Her father said from behind her. “It’s hard hard work.”
She jumped and then laughed.
“You’re damn right its hard!”
He patted her head. She was afraid to turn and spook him.
“Did you see the sheriff?” she asked.
“Sheriff invibable. He see ghosts and not ghosts. Lots of nots. Nots and nots. He doesn’t like.”
“So you stay away?”
“I stay at home.”
“Sure,” she smiled, drying her tears with the backs of her hands. “It’s too bad you don’t make sense. “
“Deedee stay home.”
“Sure.”
He withdrew his hand. She missed it already.
She stood and turned. He was standing right there. She put out her arms. He came to hug her ever so gently, as if she were made of brittle twigs which might snap if squeezed. Then he backed away.
“Thank you,” she said. Was this really her father?
He was nodding his head as he moved off into the brush. He was gone quickly.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Up In Smoke
Believe it or Not
We are just in time for this:
Jetan
The recent explorations on Mars have not yet uncovered a chess variant that is played on this planet. While it seems unlikely that the Pathfinder will discover such a game, author Edgar Rice Burroughs (well known for his Tarzan books) describes a form of Martian Chess.Burroughs wrote a series of adventure (science fiction) books that play on the planet Mars. In the fifth of these books, called The Chessmen of Mars, a game is played, and the rules are given. This `Martian Chess' is Jetan, the game whose rules are described below. The game is very playable and entertaining according to Gollon.
The game represents a war between a yellow and a black race of Martians.
Here you see the cover of the book where the game appears. You can also view the cover in more detail (file of size 221K.)
Jetan has been described in several books and many places on the web. However, the given rules suffer from different interpretation of the somewhat minimalist text from Burroughs. Even worst, some wrong interpretations have been re-taken by other authors with more errors. The rules given hereafter are the results of going back to the original source (that you can check yourself). Play-testing with Zillions software has also been very useful since it has definitively shown that the end-game rules had to be revised.
See also
- The Rules of Jetan. By Larry Lynn Smith.
- The Rules of Jetan: link2.dir/jetanrules.html. By Larry Lynn Smith.
- Tommy's Toys has a shareware program that plays Jetan. (Link.)
- The complete text of the "Chessmen Of Mars" from E.R.Burroughs .
- Everything about Barsoom you don't know yet
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
More and More
So she would go out every day at lunch time with a bag from McDonald’s. She bought him two lunches and that way she wouldn’t feel guilty about not bringing him dinner as well. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be out at the cemetery at night with a crazy man and a tagger than was still out there and had some kind of axe to grind. He seldom came up to the office and she would go down into the pasture to find him. For a few days she didn’t see him at all. But she left the bag on his shopping cart and the next day it would be eaten. She carried the trash out if she could spot it. Other days he would be sitting there waiting. He never looked at her, but did keep on mentioning Deedee from time to time. Did he even realize who she was? The tears on the first day made her think he did, but there wasn’t any way to really know. There was troubling talk about people snipping him or poisoning him. He seemed to like popping about, that was the only was she could explain it. He would just leap up and then settle down in a different place. She never went very close. He would move off if she did. She would tell him things about her life. None of it sunk in,
She was stymied about what to do with him. She could have him committed somewhere, she supposed, but she didn’t think that was a great option. Somehow that would make him hate her, she thought. She kept thinking that perhaps she could coax him into her car, take him home and give him a bath. That once he was inside and cleaned up, he might settle down and be lazy about being schizophrenic. She knew that would never happen, but if he was willing to follow her, she might give it try. He wouldn’t follow her. So she was going to just him be until something changed. The winter was still far off. He was surviving, as he had done for the last twenty years, without her help. And now it was probably easier because she was at least feeding him. She was going to go to thrift store and bring him back some better clothes by the end of the week. This could go on for a while. At least until the owner of the pasture realized he was here and the sheriff would probably show up and run him off. She needed to find the owner and head that off.
Her lunches were her rambling on about New Orleans. She had grown to love the city, and all of its excesses. She left out the trade, the way she made money. She talked about the Saturday afternoon strolls through humid run down neighborhoods. The old black men that were all forever gentle and kind. The food. The rain that came for just an half an hour every summer day right after lunch. Mardi Gras. The church bells, the streetcars and the music. The way everyone talked so slow and patiently. The alcohol that could make an evening glow like real romance. The snails on the sidewalk after the rain. The big porches and big windows that you could walk through. The way leather would turn green if you left it in a drawer too long. The Hurricanes that always seem to miss the city. The antiques you could find everywhere. The odd little places you could live that were sheltered by moss covered trees. And you could be a lady 24 hours a day and that was fine because it was the south. The old while men with their moustaches and white hair and suits the color of ice cream. And canes. And they might even call you missy, if they were sweet on you. She wasn’t sure what had started this pouring forth of the things she missed, but he seemed to sit and witness her while he ate, even if he didn’t hear what she was saying.
She knew it couldn’t go on forever.
The morning sickness didn’t go away. And it got worse.
The day of the shower came quickly. Her new friends seemed to rejoice in putting this on. Susan came early with a couple of trays of hors d'oeuvres. She helped tidy up the place and arrange chairs out in the living room. She had even brought a bag of fold-up cardboard baby shower decorations, which she proceeded to tape up on her walls and across the front window. Everything was pastel yellow, pink and blue. Another lady came with a cake and baby shower paper plates. Sarah brought a couple bottles of Champaign. The other women she didn’t know, but it soon became apparent that they were from the same church. The wife of her sharecropper came, who she hadn’t seen since that first night when they had laid claim to furniture and knickknacks that had belonged to father and mother. One even brought her three month old baby. And they all brought presents for her. They ended up with ten women coming. Daydee was lost at sea.
“So how did it go with the bank?” Sarah asked her as they were arranging the food out on the coffee table.
“They gave me a three month grace period. No payments, nothing.” Daydee told. “I didn’t think banks acted that way.”
“John said that night that he hadn’t Edward that mad in a long time. He stormed out and slammed the door.” A woman said, that Daydee guessed was Sarah’s friend whose husband was on the board.
“Thanks everyone, for everything,” Daydee told them.
They opened the Champaign. Susan passed out pieces of yarn to everyone including to Daydee.
“Okey, the idea is to tie a knot at your guess at the length of Deidre’s tummy measurement. And Deidre, you get to do it too. You won’t win.”
They all were holding their yarn up, eyeing her waist. It had gotten larger in the last two weeks, but she had just been telling herself she was getting fat and it was too early to show. But now she realized that she was showing and they were all happy about it. So then she had to stand up as each woman got to try out their yarn around her waist. Daydee’s was way too short. There were two that were very close, so she had to be re-measured to decide on a winner. It was her sharecropper’s wife. She won a box of chocolates. This prompted stories about when they all started to show. One woman claimed she didn’t until the last three months. They all agreed that they didn’t like strangers walking up and touching their bellies. But they thought it was expected so they let people do it. Daydee had never seen anyone do that to a pregnant woman- maybe the culture was different in the south. It was a little worrying, knowing that she’d be expected to let people touch her. Maybe she wouldn’t.
The next game was sort of a ‘who’s got the needle’ with a diaper pin. Daydee had to go out of the room and when she returned all the women had their hands together up in front of them like it was a prayer circle. Daydee’s job was to go from one woman to the next and ask them by name if they had the safety pin. The answer was replying to her by name and telling her no. Daydee was supposed to find the safety pin by reading their faces. The hard part was remembering their names and being embarrassed by having to ask again. The ladies took it stride. There were a couple who tried to act as if they were lying when they said they didn’t have it. The rolling of eyes or the giggling was just silly. She knew before she got to Sarah that she was the one that had the pin between her hands. She tried not to let on that the game was too easy. The Champaign was being passed out freely and the group was definitely getting tipsy. They were having fun trying to tell her the truth.
The next game was where you tried to pass a cucumber held between your knees to the person next to without dropping it. The women were turning red and laughing hysterically. Only one who did it successfully was Susan, Jack’s wife. The women collapsed in their chairs, exhausted and flushed. Daydee hadn’t rubbed up against so many women ever in her life. She hated to see what else there was to come with this group. Over cake and drinks, they began to get sentimental and each had their own story to tell about childbirth and raising their children and the early times before the kids entered school. Daydee was feeling her age. They had all had children in their twenties and early thirties. By the time, she could trade stories like these she would be fifty. Most of the party was a little younger than she was right now. She doubted if she would be able to play the cucumber game at fifty. It turned out that this was as risqué as they got.
Then came opening the presents. There was an abundance of things. Clothes and a diaper bag and a bathing tub and bottles and diapers and more clothes. She found herself getting overwhelmed by their generosity. She tried to ooh and aah like she thought she was supposed to do, but soon found herself choking up and near to tears. This only seemed to endear herself to them more. She got hugs then with each present. She didn’t know how she would be able to come out of this.
There had been a time in her life (most of it actually) when she would have had to get up and walk out of the room and not come back. She had hated and mistrusted intimacy that much. How dare anyone give her anything. Only the johns were allowed to bribe her, because they were all so many blubbering idiots anyway. Friends, in the world she had come from, were only hardened cases like herself, who might loan an aspirin after a long hard night or distract a barfly for a minute so you could make your escape. But that was it. You didn’t ask for anything. They didn’t either. There were moments of kindness from total strangers- that was enough. A funny little bookstore clerk with an Amish beard who asked you if you were all right. A wino who winked and waved and hollered that you were as beautiful as always and never asked for change. The hotel security guard who called you ma’am. And the waitress that called you honey, even though she called everybody honey. And one old drunk printer who had ink stained fingers and who tried to make you laugh and paid you and could hardly ever get it up.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Perks of the Job
Sunday, October 2, 2011
The things I don't know
Got feedback from our new expert musician with the band tonight- Feel bad that I'm not better.
Went to jam at the old band expert's this afternoon. Glad I'm not a sixty year man who is playing songs I played when I was teenager. It's like spending your time looking at old photo albums, its cool to do occasionally, but I wouldn't want to live there.
I don't to live where any of my band mates live. I don't mind helping them out occasionally.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Hell of a Day
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