FRIDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2002
You all know that Iran Contra character Poindicker is now in charge of national espionage investigation with the powers to check out everything about everybody, and Kissassinger has been called back to service to dirty trick everyone except . . . Yes! The dirtiest Dick of them all! Tricky Dick. The secret is out. His body was frozen, waiting for rethaw when the time is ripe and from the rotten smell wafting this way the time is past ripe and the orders have been given, carried out and the past master of deception and underhanded dealings is now thoroughly flawed out and occupying the seat next to the right hand of War Frenzy hisself. So look out, or as they say in power central, you ain't seen nodding yet.
Meanwhile on the mellower home front, skypilots have been roaming far and farther in search of the answers to those questions always popping in at the oddest hours of night when sleep is out of the question. Here's the first, from John Swan, making the bold step to re-invent himself, having fulfilled to some extent his incarnation as front man of the blues group, the Revelators. Take it away John, from Costa Rica, grammatical imperfections and all. That's Swan on the right, with his daughters, Claudia on the left and Cassady on the right.
Hola!
hey guess what I got a job as a guide on a canapoy tour company. I'm living on the beach in a round hut and it's great!!! They want me to stay or go get my kids and come back. I had a gig on a huge hill overlooking the ocean and they had matress's on the dance floor this place is layed back. it's about ninety degrees now and the beer is cold and the bugs are huge. I'm staying with a
family and they have been so nice to me it's wonderfull. I finally found a computer to send U a email. I stayed a couple days with Arzinia, old prankster musician pal who picked me up at the airport. That's him in the picture. I'm now staying at a beach called Samara with a very nice family I tried to go surfing but it is very hard and takes lots of practice and strenght. The family has three boys ages 18, 21, and 24. They are all great surfers. There mom and dad have been very kind and the food is nutricious and delicious. Today I bought 14 avacados for about 7 dollars and they are HUGE! This morning on the tour we took two people from colorado and a man from new york. There was a great big Iguanna hanging out up in the trees. They are going extinct at a very scary rate and I'm glad I got to see one. The water in the ocean is very warm and there are sea shells for miles and miles.
Love swani
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2002 From Alabama comes the following:
Garbage disposal can queer your deal. Garbage supervisors dearly love to bring the heat down on your fanny. Keep the front door locked. Work out of the back. Dispose of garbage at the appropriate time at other people's construction sites, stadium dumpsters and friend's apartments or businesses. Be sure to avoid the $500+ fine for illegal dumping.
Inneresting. Dump lore is always good.
Out in the sticks where I live the dump is just up the road a ways and I haul my three cans there about once a month. It is also a recycling center and I have more recyclable stuff than trash. Once the dump was a hole dug in the ground and there'd be more people picking through stuff in the hole than there would be people throwing stuff in the hole. It was also fun to plink the rats with the .22 and shoot out the TVs. Those days are long gone. Now the dump is a bunch of huge dumpsters that are hauled away to a big hole in the ground somewhere else. As a result the dump isn't free as it used to be, nor open twenty four hours a day any more. And guns are archaic, too. But it is better than dealing with trash haulers and even trash haulers are better than throwing your garbage out in vacant lots or up in the woods.
Tha-tha-that's all, folks.
-- Capn Skyp
Here's something from the Capn Beafheart Radar Station:
The Blimp (mousetrapreplica)
Originally appeared on Trout Mask Replica
Master masterThis is recorded thru uh flies ear
'n you have t' have uh flies eye t' see it
It's the thing that's gonna make Captain Beefheart
And his magic band fat
Frank it's the big hit
It's the blimp
It's the blimp Frank
It's the blimp
When I see you floatin' down the gutter
I'll give you uh bottle uh wine
Put me on the white hook
Back in the fat rack
Shad rack ee shack
The sumptin' hoop the sumptin' hoop
The blimp the blimp
The drazy hoops the drazy hoops
They're camp they're camp
Tits tits the blimp the blimp
The mother ship the mother ship
The brothers hid under their hood
From the blimp the blimp
Children stop yer nursin' unless yer renderin' fun
The mother ship the mother ship
The mother ship's the one
The blimp the blimp
The tapes uh trip it's uh trailin' tail
It's traipse'n along behind the blimp the blimp
The nose has uh crimp
The nose is the blimp the blimp
It blows the air the snoot isn't fair
Look up in the sky there's uh dirigible there
The drazy hoops whir
You can see them just as they were
All the people stir
'n the girls knees trembles
'n run 'n wave their hands
'n run their hands over the blimp the blimp
Daughter don't yuh dare
Oh momma who cares
It's the blimp it's the blimp.Based on a newsreel of the Hindenburg airship crash.
The vocals were performed by Jeff Cotton, recorded by Frank Zappa over the telephone.
This vocal track was then dubbed onto the backing track for the Mothers' "Charles Ives"
which Frank happened to be working on at the time.
A Play On Words
My daughter says we have to go to town to get a birthday present for her friend.
"Where shall we go?"
"That French boutique store, Tar Jay."
Tar Jay. Ha ha. Reminds me of the time in high school we were playing basketball against Tracey Love, the star of our league and before the game I got into a fight with my girl friend and fouled out in the first half and Tracey Love scored 48 points and the coach afterwards said, "Nothing like love, huh Babbs?"
"No, he was great," I said, not copping to it.
But Tracy and his team got knocked out of the state tournament in the first game whereas we kept on winning and came up against the number one team and would have won except at the end of the game instead of feeding Dave Rose for a layup as he cut for the basket I wheeled left and got my shot jammed back in my face by Jefferson Gynn, their star center and we were out of the tourney and Gynn's team went on to win the state championship but in a strange twist of fate Gynn was killed in a car crash and I went on to running my own web site so you never know what's going to happen except one thing you can be sure of: packaging sucks.
Long as we were in Tar Jay I got some hand soap. Since it was a boutique, har har, the soap was in a big box and inside the big box were three packages, each wrapped in plastic and inside the three packages, four bars of soap, each wrapped in their individual packages. A long way from Mexico where I bought single bar of soap and the store lady wrapped it in an sheet of newspaper she ripped in half.
I got the soap open okay. Even I can unwrap newspaper but modern packaging takes more than fingers and fingernails and teeth. And they wonder at the airline security check why I carry a knife. Successful at last, I took the soap into the bathroom and put it on the sink. I heard my daughter in the other room, ripping at paper and plastic.
"Packaging," she said, familiar sound of disgust in her voice.
Where'd she pick that up?
Oops, gotta go, Dog is bugging me. He doesn't know we turned back the hands of time and thinks I've forgotten to go out and get the mail when I was supposed to. All right, can't lose for winning, we'll throw the ball until the mail comes.
Monday, October 28, 2000
The task was daunting, but screwing my face up to the determined place I plunged ahead, having made the fateful decision, yes, there was no other recourse: I would wipe the hard drive clean, would reformat, initialize, start anew with a clean slate.
Little did I know the agony, the anguish, the angst. All those precious files, built up over the aeons, languishing happily in their beds of bliss, in one foulf awful swoop, gone, vanished, sent to delete heaven. Was that a feeling of loss, or, inklings of joy, one of vast relief? Too soon to sell. No time to dwell, for now the real work must begin.
Reinstalling all the programs. A major major problem just finding the installation disks. Then, one slow program at a time. This was taking longer than I ever imagined. More coffee. Visine by the bottles. Preferences. Extensions. Email settings. Web browser. Okay, I'll go for Instant Messaging this time, but a blank buddy list. Matches my blank mind at this stage.
The lost weekend. Lost in the innards of the pooter. Football? Baseball? What matters the rankings, the world serious, for the website sits waiting, the clubsters are gnashing, I must finish this, hang the cost to the psyche, the stomach, the eyeballs, come Monday vee must be done! Vee must, vee must, vee must or vee vill all go bust.
Vee did eet. Halleeylooyah.
Here's Jeremiah Romero, come all the way from Texas to be inducted into the skypilotclub. Okay, so he's writing his history thesis while he's at it; good way to get a tax write off for expenses. Hell, I use it all the time. But being a website author is legitimate, as legitimate as it gets. But we were talking about Jeremiah. He is a senior in college, very friendly and not a bit pushy and comes equipped with a camcorder, two still cameras and an audio tape recorder. You can access him if you wish.
Having memorized the skypilotclub song, been given the secret handshake and the club word whispered in his ear, Jeremiah receives his offical T shirt bestowed by none other than our distinguished skypilotclub president, Capn Skyp hisself.
Jeremiah takes his rightful place amongst skypilotclub chapter One Oh Won members that memorable fall day when the sun did shine, the bellies rumbled with wine and the company was fine.
"Penetrating so many secrets we cease to believe in the unknowable. But
there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops." --H.L. Mencken
MONDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2002
Weekend is football rich, demanding we sprawl in front of the idiot box day and night ogling the bulked up beef and enduring the unending blither from the so-called announcers. To enliven the proceedings, the voice recognition software of the computer is programmed to keep track of the most common spoken cliches and a big money pool is established; person who has his money on the winning cliche wins the pot and is a happy camper.
Most used cliches are:
good field position
poor field position
athleticism
don't want to score too soonOh, look, the Bears and the Tigers are mauling one another. How cute. Halftime, go outside for some fresh air and a black blur goes whizzing past the porch. A big dog, I thought and called, "Jack, come get it, boy," and our big lab went racing out around the house and I followed, hearing whatever it was he was chasing go thrashing over the fence into the neighbor's field and up a tree. That was no dog. And too big for a coon. I went and stood by the fence and spotted it: a black bear. I yelled at Eileen and Elizabeth to come out. Bear Bear, I yelled. We watched a while and the bear, seeing we were no threat, shimmied down the tree and went loping off across the field. Looked like a young one, maybe two years old. I remembered we had seen bear poop out in the back field.
Very satisfying. Nature in the raw. Made me wonder if there were any mountain lions around. Now that would be scary. Maybe I ought to start packing my piece. Naw, I'll just keep saying my piece.
Easy to say, lounging in the easy chair, slippers on my feet, comfy sweats on my body, puffing my pipe, watching the lions beat up on the bears.
-- Capn Skyp SECOND WEEK IN OCTOBER, 2002
FIREWOOD, OREGON STYLE
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Oh my God, look at that machine!******Aw shucks, all in a day's work.
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You've heard of Jaws, now what . . .******do you think of Claws? Massive
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