---

HERNIA REPORT

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2010

DOWN AND OUT

I was splitting wood a week or so ago and suddenly had a pain in my right nut so I thought I better get it checked out. First thing the doc said was, "It's not cancer, you're too old for that." He took one look and said, "Hernia."

It was an iguana hernia, a protuberance along the right side of my groin. Got more painful as time went on so I decided to get it taken care of. It's an hermaphodyte. He's Henry when he's a boy. When she nags she's Henrietta. Piece of cake to repair, according to the surgeon. In and out in one day. One long day in hell.

No one said it would hurt so bad for so long afterwards. And try to get real Percodan and not some half ass generic. Oh well, better that than nothing. And it's getting better every day. I got to admit it's getting better. Getting so much better all the time. Take another pill, Ken. Thankee, think I will.

Stay attuned.

--KapnKen

Here it is, a week after the operation, and still recovering. Up and on my feet with some help. They didn't tell me beforehand how bad the pain would be afterwards, nor how swoled up my balls and dick would be nor about the bright red color that scared even me, yeah, I know, I shoulda took a pic so everyone could see, but I was too down and out and besides I asked for Percodan for pain and the drugstore would only give me a generic brand which didn't do shit but luckily I had some Oxycodone left over from a back mishap, and I took those until I was in happy happy dreamland for a few days then eased off and lived with the situation, getting a little bit better every day, until yesterday I was good enough or so I thought, to drive into town and visit the doc for a post op checkup and he assured me I was doing fine so I came home and hit the couch and the pain pill for that trip plum wore me out, but I'm not going to let this thing get me down, no it's out into the corn field and chase away those crows who think they own the place since they haven't seen me prowling around peeing in the corners to establish my ownership, they can crow all they want, I still got the persuader, the old twelve guage, you betcha.

---

MORE QUESTIONS QUESTIONS QUESTIONS

 

Got a good email from Jeffrey Newman. Here's some of what he said with my responses.

Jeff: I am a35 year old guy, been a member of whatever the "movement" is called now-a-days, since I first heard the Grateful Dead on a Memorex tape in the summer of 1987... I hold to the rather non-humble note that I still remain true to the spirit of what the Pranksters were about.

KapnKen: I still listen to cassette tapes and have a radio cassette deck and tape songs off of the radio, over and over on a cassetted. No, not the same cassette, whatever one is in the deck at the time, so I get different songs when I play the tapes.

Jeff: The Pranksters are the closest to coming into what I believe, live, try to be... They represent the bridge between the Beats and the Hippies and are the best (and sometimes the worst) of both of the worlds.

KapnKen: Ha ha. Bestest and worstest. Kesey and I fell in the crack between the beats and hippies. Too young for one, too old for the other. Neal Cassady was the bridge. He also drove the bus as we careened into Beatdom and then Hippiedom, carrying the prankster banner.

Jeff: At times, I still feel like a failure cause I do work the white collar 9-5 and yet, and yet, my heart is still free.

KapnKen: Hey, everyone has to work the daytime job to do the offjob play but you must realize the real work takes place all the time, both at the daytime job and during the night time play and the real work is to be a force for love peace and happiness even while going under from sex drugs and rock and roll.

Jeff: I wonder what might have been... What happened? Nothing is Black and White, everything is a shade of Grey, and I still wonder... What happened?

KapnKen: Lots of people do. Leary says if you can remember what happened then you weren't there. Ha Ha, more humor which is good, keeps your mind straight. What happened is what always happens. The pendulum swings one way for a while then the other way, it's like breathing in and out. You breathe in, store the oxygen, breath out, do some work. Same is true on the big scale. We had a great run in the sixites and are still enjoying the results. Forces of greed came in and battered everyone but now more people are wising up.

Jeff: You can't ever change the world, you can just change the world around you. So I do that as best I can.

KapnKen: There you go. You are doing the work. Know that others are too. I get lots of emails from people saying the same things you are and they lament they are all alone but I tell them, no, we are many but we have learned the secret of invisibility so we don't call attention to ourselves. That way we can work unimpeded.

KAPN'S LOG

pilotdate 10-3-10

George Walker, my car on the tow truck, gas door stuck open

George came to my rescue past Sunday when the starter on my car went kaput in Albertson's parking lot. We banged on it but no good so used George's triple A card to get my car towed to Zilkowlski's. George and I followed in his truck, then came home for supper and football and baseball on the tube. George took a short nap, then went back to town.

Got the car back yesterday. I took the bus from Dexter to LCC to Springfield Station to Zilkowski's. Thre different buses. I have a senior citizen pass, ride free. Great fun.

---------------------------------------------

Sundays seems to be my car repair day. Saturday while cutting firewood I ran over a sharp wooden stob or staub or however it is is spelled. Pssssssst, heard the back tire go flat. Was in the woods with a load of firewood in the back of the pickup. No spare no jack. Called my wife on my cell and she drove up and took me home and I went to the tire shop and bought a used rim and tire. Too late in the day to deal with the pickup, Ducks were on TV, so on Sunday I drove back to the woods, crawled under the truck, got the jack in place, tough time getting the lug nuts off but successful, then the wheel wouldn't come off, it was rusted to the end of the axle where the rim sits snug.

I called for help. My neighbor Steve, who lives across the street, knows the tricks of the car biz. He brought over his big floor jack so we could get the truck up higher, we whanged on that wheel with a sledge hammer, hit the inside of the wheel with a four by four from the other side of the truck, nothing worked. I said to hell with the flat tire, it's probably already ruined, put the lugs nuts on and drove the truck, flat tire and all, up out of the place where I was cutting, onto the gravel road where it was level.

Here's the neighbor's trick. Loosen the lug nuts so there is a space between the lug and the hole. Gun the engine with the foot on the brake. Let off the brake, spin ahead, slam on the brake. Steve, watching the wheel, said, it worked, it loosened the wheel. We jacked the truck up, banged again with the sledge against the four by four against the inside rim and the wheel came loose and we replaced the flat with the spare and I drove home.

Now I have to take the flat to the tire store, get a new tire. Yes, the flat was ruined, big tear in it.

----------------------------------------------------------

Yesterday afternoon, gotta take advantage of sunny days, back to the woodsy fernstrewn forest floor to chainsaw and split, oak mostly, tough fellers, dull the chain quickly, require sledge and wedge to split too tough for the maul. Equipped now with spare tire and jack aboard, ahoy mateys, seen the whale?

Greg Webb, also known as China Greg, because he worked for some years in China, first showed up at Forta 06, a motorcycle guy, this year he rebuilt the engine of his Suzuki and to test drive it, drove from New York state to Oregon and holed up here for a while waiting for a part to arrive so he could work on the bike then continue his trip, south then back east. He is blogging the whole thing and you can read it on:

http://webbsjournal.blogspot.com/

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2010

tree hugger.
ever really hugged a tree ?
he showed us the right way
arms outstretched around an old growth fir.
blackberries over run the mountains
good berries make good neighbors
pickin' and eatin' and grinnin'
a natural berrier between us and the cows
he speaks cow
mooo
or so we over herd.
we split logs and we split hairs
and then we just split
worked us like Tom Sawyer on a whitewashed fence
prank's on us ?
remains to be seen
here
under the crawlspace
jack cornered a coon
let me get the pistol
run
here it comes
can you pass the revolution test?
yes, as soon as I stop spinning.
we saw the final drafts of the novel of a lifetime,
he read us his neal poem
used one of my lines too
-- shotgun effect
then we talked about what is psychedelic
truly psychedelic
and shared the holy rope

DYLAN IN BEND, OREGON, OUTSIDE

Bob? I couldn't understand all his words. Maybe one out of three. Band was good but I thought too loud. Still, real good show. I was surprised at the size of the crowd. Four times as big as the last time we were there. Because of Mellencamp. Lots of people left when he finished. We stood right next to the fence separating the peons from the elite, ha ha.

One song he sang toward the end I never heard before, must be one of his new ones. He was really belting out the lines one after another and the band was tearing it up. I liked it a lot.

Of course his old standards were great. Rocked on Hwy 61. Must have realized he was in Oregon when he started the show with Everyone Must Get Stoned, or whatever it is called.

---

Hi Ken,

I wonder if you could advise me. I am writing the script for our film and I have it mind that psychedelic lights were invented by the Merry Pranksters and were first used at the Can You Pass The Acid Test gigs. Am I correct?

Cheers

Bill Treharne
BBC TV

 

Hi Bill, good to hear from you.

As for the psychedelic lights, yes, the Pranksters started that in the acid tests, fall of 1965. One of the pranksters, Roy Segbern, had an old big clunky overhead projector where you put stuff on a glass platform and the projector picked up the image and projected it onto a screen or a wall, or a sheet taped to the wall.

Roy would put small dishes on the glass plate, fill the dishes with cooking oil and dribble in food coloring and then swirl the dishes around and the images on the screen were wonderful swirling colors.

One time when the glass plate was empty, a bug crawled up on it and the bug appeared on the screen, a giant science fiction bug, a product of nuclear radiation or something. That was an overpowering image in itself, but then another bug crawled up on the glass plate and they began fighting, a long drawn out violent struggle with the prankster raging on their musical instruments, until one bug applied the coup de grace and dragged the dead bug off of the glass plate. A light show never duplicated, one not planned nor performed by man. Or woman.

The light shows, similar and gradually more involved, were done by many others in the San Francisco area as the music performances by the various bands became more popular and the audiences bigger.

Today the light shows are mostly computer driven, but occasionally you will see at a small place, the old time mixing colors and oils to provide the human touch of the psychedelic swirls.

-- KapnKen

---

GO TO OLD PAGES 54