Slackjaw's Forum

How are you? I am fine. I have a list of things that I would like for Christmas. I have been a decent person this year and though I could have done more, I could not have done more and maintained my sanity. The list is long because I thought you could perhaps just pick and choose. They are in no special order; each one would be just as great as the next. So without further ado, here it is. I want it to snow so I can have a snowball fight with the oldest boy and his friends. I want to build a snowman as big as my self and watch it be attacked and brought down to a pile small enough to fill sno-cone cups. I want a morning so cold and the sun shining so brightly that the moisture in my breath sparkles. I want windows that defrost themselves, and immediate hot air out of the vents in my car. I want to drink wine that leaves no headache, eat food that leaves no indigestion. I want to hear laughter, the kind that lasts a long time, makes ones side’s hurt and leaves tears in ones ...

It rained all weekend. Heavy cold rain that is so typical for this time of year. Sunday when Sweetie got home from work we made tomato chutney from the tomatoes we harvested from our garden at the end of the summer. I had three plants that produced about fifty pounds of the little red buggers most of which I skinned, cored and put into freezer bags for later use. Sweet tomato chutney is basically sugar, vinegar, garlic and ginger that you simmer on the stove for most of the day until your eye’s water, the lining in your sinuses has been eaten away and your skin has a tacky feel when touched. You cook it down until it makes a thick paste and put it into jars. It takes forever and even when you quadruple the recipe like we did, having to use both soup pots, you wind up with considerably less than your delicate sinus system thinks is fair and equitable considering all the abuse it suffered. But the end result is spectacular. It’s a taste that just explodes in your mouth, all...

Well the Prairie Dogs are playing again this weekend. Seems that we’ve found a nice place to play here in Tacoma called Shakabrah Java, a little coffee house that’s part of 6th Avenues resurrection. Since we’re so close to Christmas we’ve been working on a few holiday songs to put in the set. Not a lot happening this week. The fog, for the most part, has lifted, leaving in its wake the start of the winter rains. The oldest boy brought home his first report card, which to neither Sweeties nor my surprise, states unequivocally that our boy is not only a genius, but darned nice to boot. Something we’ve thought for years. Midwest Minnie has been helping me do a redesign of the site and I’m working on getting that up and running. I’ve had this design for a year and a half and the brown is starting to wear me down. Last month was also a new high in readership, so thanks to everybody that’s been coming by lately and spreading the word. All the trailers in our part of the park ...

The fog stuck around most of the week. By Friday night it rendered the air fairly unbreathable, causing the back of my throat to ache and my eyes to itch. During the week I’d find myself waking up in the middle of the night clearing my throat, coughing, or blowing my nose. By Friday night the unlifting fog started having a claustrophobic weight to it: a damp heavy blanket of choking smog that seemed to hold me pinned down, leaving me lethargic and motionless. That night I didn’t feel like cooking and neither did Sweetie. We sat in the kitchen looking out into the eerie light of the sodium vapor street lamps, thinking and wondering what might sound good for dinner. Sweetie said Le Le’s and I thought that sounded fine. Le Le’s is a little Vietnamese restaurant that makes a great bowl of Pho’, just the sort of soup to chase away the damp chill of a foggy northwest night. Sweetie called it in and I went to get it. Though it was only six o’clock, the streets on and around M. ...

The first frost of the year arrived this morning, heavy and hard to scrape due to the fog that had settled under the Cedar branches. For some reason the only ice scraper I can ever find is the one so badly warped that it only clears two small half-inch strips at a go. Takes a long time to clear the window that way. The fog made for a dramatic sunrise this morning on my way to work though. Hanging low over the bay making the whole sky the color of peach sherbet. The fog was so thick that you could look straight into the sun without squinting. The mill is barely humming this morning, which is just fine with me. I spent every night this weekend staying up far later that anyone with kids should. I did manage to get the garden cleaned out finally, picked up the remaining bricks that the older boy left in the yard and did some raking. Ike hung out in his stroller watching and laughing every time I put another sunflower stalk in the yard waste container. Afterwards, when our ha...

Yesterday, Sweetie got it into her head to start counting Ike’s scars. Though he’s only a little more than two, in a lot of ways he’s more the grizzled veteran who, though haven gotten his lions share of Purple Hearts, has not let this affect his overall outlook on the world. In fact he seemed more than happy to be on the receiving end of Sweetie’s epidermal version of connect-the-dots: laying on his back at the far end of the couch, trying to both watch the fire in the fireplace, and pay close attention to Sweetie, to make sure that she wasn’t putting any undue pressure on his latest scars, the ones that live on both sides of his left leg. His body reads like the pages of a diary annotated and footnoted for that little added kick, when the reading gets too dry. “Remember his first scar?” She says and I can honestly say I don’t. But Sweetie knows that if you put your fingers on his soft skin the scars act like a roadmap back in time. Like returning to any house you’ve eve...

It’s been a mostly wet weekend these past few days, and though I spent a good part of them in the older boys room painting and putting in carpet, it was really more the weather to spend in front of the fireplace drinking hot coffee and playing cards. Weather for reclusion not inclusion. I finished mixing down The Prairie Dogs show I recorded when we played last month at Shakabrah Java. I’ve put one of the songs up right below the notes area so if you want to hear it, feel free to download it. Sometimes this causes me to exceed my data exchange limit (whatever that means) and they shut down my site for an hour. I’m hoping that doesn’t happen but all they’ve done so far is to send me a nasty letter. If it happens to you just come back after a bit and try again. I don’t think we’ll be releasing the whole recording for public consumption. It turned out ok, but the performance on some of the songs leaves a bit to be desired, so I think I’ll just put a few of the better songs...

I have won the battle. Though there were many skirmishes along the baseboard line that he won, in the end the battle was mine. He was an inventive mouse: Capable of infiltrating the dishwasher to eat un-scraped dishes and still-dirty silver. He eluded the mousetrap more than once, by painstakingly licking off the peanut butter until the trigger was bone dry. It was sharp Cheddar that got him in the end. Cheddar that I pressed tightly against the triggering mechanism so that he would have his work cut out just to free a few bites. I haven’t killed many mice in my life. I’ve killed an enormous rat that lived in the basement of our old house, but not, I think, a mouse. Unlike rats, mice are rather delicate creatures. One can’t help but think themselves a cartoon cat, full of evil and death. Hating them not so much as carriers of disease but for their independence and cunning. But the mouse had to go. My friend Michael sent me this poem by Alan Dugan as conciliation and I thought I...

The Prairie Dogs played at Shakabrah Java last Friday night. In some ways I felt unfocused throughout most of it, perhaps due in some part to working with a new sound person, or the group of three men sitting at a table near the front who were talking louder than the PA system, or the fact that I was recording the whole thing onto an eight-track deck I borrowed from a friend and any type of engineering tends to put the other half of my brain to work, kicking the ass of the delicate musician area already under heavy attack by the left beer lobe. But I wouldn’t say this was the case throughout the whole gig. The men eventually shut their pie holes after one of them left. Right near the second third of the set we seemed to hit our stride and pulled off some really nice stuff. Dave brought his stand up double bass, which he played a few songs with and I thought it really added something to the whole affair. We had a nice turnout, getting a number of our friends who hadn’t seen ...

Ike is in the hospital for the next few days. It’s not like it’s something that we didn’t know was gonna happen or anything. In fact we’ve been putting it off for the past few months, not wanting to have to spend the required 48 hours that is needed for this particular test. Didn’t want to watch him get his head all dressed up like a lab rat with wires, confined to his bed for two days as a computer monitors all brain activity and checks for seizures. We’re two doors down from the room we stayed in August. Outside his window now is a crane and construction crew working to add three floors to the roof next door. This will block the views of all rooms on this side of the hospital. Mt. Rainier, downtown Tacoma and Wright’s park will all just look like gray-brown cement with dark tinted windows for added accent. We’re ready for the stay this time. Seems that every time we come back here we’re a little more together, a little more prepared. We got toys, stuffed animals, CD playe...

The sun came up all hazy this morning. It was bright enough and turned the sky all pink and orange as it came up over the stand of cedars at the end of the drive. Next door, Heather and Earl’s place is all quiet and dark, due to the fact that they’re away to bury Heathers mother who passed this last weekend. On the other side, Dewy and Ham took their mobile home down to Oregon City to the end of the Oregon Trail. Ham was meeting up with her brother’s family from Missouri who had spent the month of September following the trail from beginning to the end. So that just leaves us on our little spur, for the most part. Spent the past weekend getting the last of the tomatoes off of the vine and putting the garden to rest. I must have harvested around forty or fifty pounds of them this season and that was just off of three plants. I guess I found a good place to grow them around here, near the back of the garage away from the wind where they sit in the sun all day. I’ve been giving...

This is the story of a boy on his first day of school. He had spent the second half of his life at Apple-A-Day-Care where he was quite happy. Learning his letters and a number of silly songs. Where he learned that using the toilet would allow him to go on field trips and where, when he turned four, was finally able to go up on the big toy. He turned out kind and caring, willing to give out hugs and kisses easily. He learned to share and take turns and hold hands crossing the street. Say please and thank you. Deal with conflict without (for the most part) using his fists. When starting school this year there were only two students who knew more letters than he did in his class and they were both kindergarteners. He’s the only preschooler in the reading group that starts next week. He’s very excited about the whole thing. The parents of this boy would like to take credit for what they feel like is a fine and upstanding citizen. (Even though he is only now just turning five) They would li...

Well the house seems to be back on the mend. Sweeties eye is doing better and the cold that had taken hold of the rest of us seems to have finally run its course. The weekend was spent rambling around in the yard, giving the flowerbeds that final rake of the year before the rains come sticking the leaves to the ground. I spent some time writing songs and cleaning the house. Sweetie’s taken the last two weeks off to give her eye time to heal. It’s been fun having the weekends to putter about together, though for us getting the dinning room table cleaned off was about the extent of it. It’s the end of the quarter here at the mill so I’ve been a little lax in updating my site this past week. The days have a way of just slipping by and before you know it another week has passed. The Prairie Dogs have a gig at Shakabrah at the end of the month. We’re going to be recording it for possible use on an upcoming CD we want to put out this winter. We’ll be recording onto digital 8-trac...

We’re having eye problems. Well not “we” exactly, Sweetie is, to be more exact. She had laser surgery last Tuesday evening to repair torn retina in her eye. On the last night of the final day of Ike’s cast, Sweetie was having trouble getting his pants up over his butt and in one swift motion, she lost hold of his waistband and smacked herself full on her eyeball with her knuckle. I recommend not trying this at home. The surgery seemed to go well and her vision was just starting to clear when Saturday morning it all went south again. A blood vessel had started to leak into her eye, obscuring her vision. Imagine a big black goober everywhere you look and you kind of get the idea. Saturday things got a little bit scary. Not much they could do about it. There was too much blood to try and use the laser to cauterize the bleeding. Things just kept getting worse and by Sunday morning she couldn’t see anything. This issue is compounded by the fact that she has no central vision in h...

My cat was peeing blood around the kitchen floor while we were out Saturday afternoon. Little drops the size of a silver dollar. We were at a bon voyage party for Sweetie's niece before she and her new beau set off for sea trials on the ship he captains. From there it’s on to San Francisco and then to Mexico. Our cat, Zane, is an old girl, a little over fifteen and blind. She had been missing the litter box as of late and most mornings this past week I woke up to find a puddle of urine on the kitchen linoleum. I packed her up and took her to the 24-hour animal hospital down off South Tacoma Way. They did the check up, gave her a shot and some medicine to take home and said to call our vet on Monday. So far in the last few years I have taken both of my sons, both my cats and my neighbor to the emergency room. I told Sweetie that I’d had just about enough of being the crisis chauffer and have no interest in making it a clean sweep with her being the last to go. Not that I ...

Throughout most of the nineties I worked as a film electrician, running lights and power for a number of forgettable films, movies of the week, TV pilots and commercials. There was a small band of us, maybe 15 in all that would vie for the few positions available when a new movie would come to town. I was not on the A list. Not that I was a bad electrician. I could hold my own with most of them, even working as a Best Boy on a few low budget films, but I just never managed to get that one connection that would catapult me to the you’re-my-first-call-when-I-get-to-town kind of spot on the list. In truth I didn’t mind so much. There was, for a while, plenty of work up here in the Northwest and I even managed to make a decent living at it for a time. But I think down deep I knew that my heart was not set on lugging 90 pound coils of 4/0 around a soccer field at two a.m. to establish a “ring of fire” because we had no real idea of what they were going to shoot, or where, or wha...

The Prairie Dogs have been playing a lot lately. More than I’m used to at any rate. Played last Thursday night up in Seattle at the Rendezvous Jewel Box Theater, a bar that is run by my sister-in-law’s sister and husband. We had played the Friday before that at Kings Coffee here in town and this Friday we’ll be playing at Shakabrah Java up on 6th avenue filling in for a last minute cancellation they had. Our oldest boy starts school tomorrow. There’s a full time Montessori preschool program here in town that looks really great so we signed him up. He turns five in November so he’s too young for kindergarten, but really too old to just do daycare two times a week. We’ve been crossing off the days on the calendar and he’s raring to go. Sweetie, Ike and myself are taking him tomorrow morning where they have something called “Coffee and Kleenex”. I imagine it’ll be hard to see him go. Speaking of Ike, he got his cast off Friday and he’s none to pleased about the whole thing let...

In my dream, I could hear the sound of a policeman’s radio. I just couldn’t remember the context, if it was in the middle of a bust or watching “America’s Worst Drivers” or some other FOX network program. You know, the kind where they recreate all the sounds of car crashes and the dispatcher says little things like “They’re heading southbound on Madison” in the background. I woke up when our oldest boy came into our bed at around four this morning. Sweetie had to work late last night and so I was left with the duty of putting them to bed. It’s not that hard to do, both boys go to bed real easy for the most part, but you can always tell that it’s not the way they’d prefer. So anyway, after everyone gets re-settled and I’m just starting to drift off, I think I hear the police radio again. So I sit up and listen real hard to see if I can hear it or if I’m just doing some sort of post-REM hallucination due to the hours I’ve been keeping. Silence… Then from the quiet of our sing...

I thought for some reason I would talk today about how much I like the band The Vulgar Boatmen . Sure my littlest boy has a cast on his leg for the next three weeks and my other boy is bored out of his skull because his friend from across the way is in Main visiting for the next two. Sure that means a lot more stress in our little singlewide. Heck Sweetie and I haven’t hardly even found the time to give each other a peck on the cheek before our heads hit the pillow lately. Our life is such a jumble right now that opening a can of Chicken Noodle Soup seems like a hard cooked meal. Like we’ve been slaving over the stove all afternoon. So why waste my web breath on talking about an obscure band that only a hand full of people have ever heard of? Um…so I don’t have to re-read the paragraph I just wrote again? The older boy and I went to a birthday party the other weekend. Corlis’ daughter was turning four and since we were looking for distraction we bought some art supplies and...

Well, Ike did just fine last Friday with his surgery. It wound up being a little more complicated than we had originally thought it would. Turns out they had to break the bone in his leg as well as just lengthening the tendon. Our neighbors showed up with a little breakfast for us to eat in the waiting room. We had to be at the hospital at 6 a.m. so we were feeling a little groggy and in need of a cup of coffee. Made for a welcome site at any rate. We were checked into our room before they came to get us and out the window we watched the rain on the foothills of the Cascades. The Mountain was hiding in a bank of clouds and way off in the distance someone was riding in a hot air balloon. The view from his room overlooks Wright’s Park and most of Tacoma’s downtown. Later that night, after we were back in the room and had both taken naps, Rainier came out from it’s hiding place and we watched it turn from a soft pink to a deep red as the setting sun did its thing. Ike had visitors through...

A while back I received two cassette tapes from an old friend and band-mate of mine. He’d found them in his attic a while back and thought I might get a kick out of them. The tapes are from 1980 when I was fourteen and had been playing guitar for a year or so. As you can see in the picture, the band was called Sorcerer and consisted of me on bass, Barry on guitar, Alan, who had the tapes, on keyboards and Don on drums. We played all our own music and the two tapes are of us playing live, once at a spring rock festival we put on in the schools multi-purpose room called “Up-chuck” and the other at a coffee shop downtown. Though it’s hard to listen to both tapes from start to finish, so far the highlights have been my truly awful bass solo, Don’s drum solo, the sound of the poor mans Farfesia keyboard Alan played and the titles of all the songs. Love Bites, Vanishing Breed, Going away for a while, Rockin’ The Neighbors, Don’t Worry About The Morning among others. Like anytime you ...

Minnie and Otto few in for Sweeties birthday party first week of July. We strung clothesline all about the yard and had people make birthday-wish-flags to hang from them. I think she was definitely surprised. They stayed for the week, or at least Minnie did, Otto had to go back to his job manning the sprinklers at the Buffer Park Golf Course in Indy. Yeah, it’s hotter than hell out there, as he will tell you every chance he gets if you let him. Our youngest boy, Ike, has to go back into the hospital here beginning of August. Seems they need to lengthen one of his tendons before his hip gets pulled out of his socket or becomes deformed or something like that. I guess he’ll be in a cast for about a month after that and then it’s right back into the hospital for another surgery dealing with his un-descended testicles. There’ll be plenty of time to give hospital updates in the weeks to come, so stay tuned if that’s your ball of wax. Me, I could do without the drama for a little bit, but t...

Well now, happy summer solstice to you all out there. Hope your weekend was even a quarter as good as ours turned out to be. In fact even if yours was just about an eighth as good as ours was I’d still wish it on you. That’s what a nice time we had. My sister-in-law’s family has a place up near Arlington and most years around the solstice they play host to a party of family and friends and let all of us stay up late and camp out under the stars. They live on some leased forestry land that has just the right amount of old trees and clearing. We try to go up every year and bring instruments and beer, spending the evening around the campfire trying to remember any song we know more than the first line to. It’s a fun cast of characters, some of whom we only see once a year at this party. The party goes well into the night and if you bring your kids, rises early in the morning as well. We set out close to noon on Saturday, packing what seemed like a weeks worth of stuff for our one-d...

It was a great weekend by any account. There were birthday parties attended, fathers day gifts unwraped and strange stew-like meals et. The weather was fair and what rain there was, was light and soon turned to sun. Friday afternoon I took the oldest boy to a party at Owen Beach in Point Defiance Park. Though the sound is freezing cold, the boys didn’t seem to mind and spent most of the time splashing about in the water. Saturday night The Prairie Dogs played a show at Kings Coffee to about 30 or so people. It’s actually a good amount to come see you play at that place. It’s not very big and it makes for a nice cozy atmosphere but also one where everyone has a place to sit down. Doug brought his whole band to open up for us. Not sure that’s really what I had in mind when he asked if he could open up for us but there they all were. His band is good but they don’t really mesh with what we’re trying to do so it made for a rather disjointed gig. They brought a lot of their own people with...

Well this weekend The Prairie Dogs are playing another show at Kings Coffee . I’m not sure how this is gonna work out because we haven’t had a chance to play together for almost three weeks due to the fact that one of our members has been in England on vacation. I imagine that it’ll be the fine sloppy mess that it always is. I had a great idea for a post last night amidst the crying children and being kicked in the kidneys all night. The funny thing is I knew that I would forget it even as I was thinking about it, but having no pen or piece of paper handy, I just had to let it go. I keep thinking if I leave my mind open today it’ll pop in there but so far no go. The littlest boy is scheduled to go into the hospital at the end of next month. The doctor wants to lengthen the tendons in his left hip. I really don’t want to see him go through this but I can’t really see that we have much of a choice. The best part of it is that we can do the surgery here in Tacoma and not have to travel u...

Well it’s looking like the littlest one is gonna have to go into the hospital again and have some surgery on his left hip. Guess they need to lengthen some tendons in there so he isn’t so crooked. I feel bad for the little guy cause he’s already spent way more time in the hospital than any two year old I know and it just doesn’t seem right. Still…if we’re gonna get him walking I suppose that this has to be the first step. Straighten him out so he can stand tall. Speaking of the boy, he’s been doing very well in therapy lately. He’s just starting to figure out how to use his hands to push buttons and his head and neck control gets a little bit better every day. We planted a bit of a garden in the back yard last month and all the seeds are sprouting. Last year when the tomatos were green, the older boy and his friend picked every last one for some game they were playing. This year we have an understanding that they’re not to be picked until dad says it’s ok. Guess we’ll just have to see...

I tried to take a picture. It was there right in front of me on the glass as clear as a bell, wings splayed out with its head clearly defined. But like a ghost it seemed to disappear when the lens was pointed in its direction. A seagull had crashed into our front window while we were away at work and left a perfect dusty imprint of its outline right smack dab in the center. Out on the lawn was a ring of feathers where, what I suppose was a crow, had attacked it’s dead or maimed body and plucked out it’s feathers before finally devouring its meal. I wanted to preserve it somehow, maybe take the glass out of the window or transfer the impression onto something. Surely this would be great art if I could just find a way to save it. This had everything I thought great art to be; imagery both beautiful and horrid at the same time. The great drama of life and death’s circle, unwrapped in a single moment using feathers no less. All this captured in a gossamer imprint that seemed to get fainte...

I thought this week I would put up a shameless plug for the movie Kennewick Man: an Epic Drama of the West for this week’s forum. It’s hard to believe that it was all the way back in October when it had it’s premier at the Seattle Art Museum . Where does all the time go? The movie was accepted into the Seattle International Film Festival and will be showing on Sunday the 26th and Tuesday the 28th. If you get a chance to see it, go. I say this not because it’s my brothers first feature documentary, nor do I say this because he was kind enough to ask me to do the soundtrack. I say this because I truly think this is a very good movie. It’s a complex story told through interviews and presented in a way that makes you think about it long after the movie is over. Speaking of my brother, he and his wife and new baby just got back from a month in Europe. We got together last night for dinner and heard all the stories and saw all the pictures. Made me want to pack up the family and head out o...

Well now happy mothers day to all you mothers out there. This is a picture of me and the boys taken by my good friend Corlis. We gave it to Sweetie in a nice frame so’s she can take it to work or do whatever with. Me and the older boy made her waffles for breakfast and tried to let her sleep in as long as we could but it was pretty exciting for the boys and try as we did, she didn’t get to sleep past nine. The older boy somehow got it in his mind that he wanted to get mom some purple lipstick as a gift and made sure that on Saturday we went out and got her some. Fortunately we met a nice sales lady who managed to talk him into something not too purple and on Sunday, Sweetie seemed to even like it. I thought it looked pretty nice myself though by the end of the morning, Sweetie had marked just about everything with a lip imprint. It was a beautiful day, with the sun all hot and shiny and hardly a cloud in the sky. Sweetie got to take a nap in the afternoon as me and the boys...

I’m feeling particularly un-inspired this week. But I also feel that I should be updating this web page, so there lays the conundrum. Is it worth my time to post a boring update? Ever since Minnie fixed my web page it has made it a lot easier to update so it’s really not a big deal to do any more. It’s really just a matter of preference or aesthete I suppose. Also is it worth it for you to even read this? If you read this lousy uninspired update and have never visited this web page before you might blow it off and never read any thing else I’ve written. Of course you might just blow this off anyway regardless of the quality of today’s update. You might hate my name, or the fact that I live in a trailer park, or any number of things. But since this page is free, both to me and to anyone who comes into my little web world, how do I quantify worth? Worth in this case, has nothing to do with money and everything to do with everything else. Is it worth Time, or Effort, or The Stress of writ...

It was a low mournful howl that woke me up. Not all that loud, just mournful in a hungry lonesome way that lost hungry dogs have when they’re lost and hungry. I haven’t been sleeping all that well lately anyway, what with Swearing Man and the boys both having colds. But it did wake me right up out of a dream in which I was trying to find a train station. I found him over at the Adler’s place rooting though the garbage cans, just as rail thin and mangy as any dog you’ve ever seen. The Adler’s live in Arizona during the winter months and they had yet to come back to Tacoma and open things up. So needless to say this pup wasn’t finding much to eat. He came right up to me when he saw me. Most stray dogs are a little skittish at first, but not this one. I don’t know if it was the hunger or the cold or if he was just to damn tired to put up any resistance, but the moment he saw me he came right up with his tail between his legs and wouldn’t leave me alone. He followed me back up the road to...

There was a Russian sub in the Thea Foss waterway. It wasn’t a commissioned sub or anything. It was built in 1973 and a Canadian entrepreneur had recently salvaged it from the scrap heap. He had had the brilliant idea to fix up the insides with some cans of paint, decorate the state cabins and galley and charge people an entrance fee. Now for a few crisp tourist dollars, one can take a tour of the submarine and see firsthand how 70 men could live in a little Russian metal tube no larger than an elementary school bus. It’s also testament to Russian use of old technology as there is nothing at all modern in this little trap and if I had been told it was built 50 years ago I would not have been surprised. My understanding is that this pissed off the Russians who had thought it was to be used as scrap metal and not as a tourist trap but by that time there wasn’t really anything that they could do about it. In some roundabout way we are friends of friends of the port commissioner in Tacoma....

It was a nice slow quiet week this week. No car bombs or drunken fistfights going on down the road. No police chases thought our park, no new car stereos tested at two in the morning. No parties down at the sandbar or by the quarry. Sometimes that kind of quiet is all about peace and tranquility, and sometimes the quiet is in a weird light like the sky before a thunderstorm. Last night Swearing Man was back. He only seems to come by in the summer months. I don’t know if this is because he doesn’t have a good raincoat or if he has use of a car from November to April or what. But when the nights get warmer Swearing Man takes walks down our road. “GOD DAMM YOU MOTHERFUCKERS!” “You fucking motherfuckers!” He screams at the top of his lungs. “You fucking bastard cocksuckers! You fucking bitches can go FUCK yourselves!” He yells as he walks off down the street. This is almost always between one and three in the morning, when usually nothing short of a bottle-rocket breaking your kitchen...

Well this week marks the one-year anniversary of my web site. I’ve written 31 forums in 365 days. I’ve re-done the site two or three times, writing close to 13,000 words and unknown amounts of html code to get to where I am today. I’m averaging around 300 hits per month which considering I have neither naked pictures, nor a particularly funny writing style, seems pretty good to me. This week the site reached the 3000 hit mark. I’m trying to remember what caused me to start this web page in the first place. I think I was reading a story about blogging and I thought I would look into it. At any rate, I’ve longs since dropped the blog part of my web page as I found it too lightweight and fleeting than the style I was interested in creating. Besides I need spell check otherwise I get cranky and use small words. I can honestly say that I haven’t written this much since high school, being that I chose a fine liberal arts education where large amounts of writing weren’t a prerequisite to grad...

Today starts my birthday week. Since my birthday is on a Friday this week, I thought I would wait until Monday of the week proceeding before I would start it. This would avoid the post birthday letdown occurring over the weekend: a common occurrence when planning for a whole week celebration of the date of my birth. Narcissistic? Undoubtedly. But it’s only once a year and I don’t think one week of narcissism out of a possible 52 is all that bad. I don’t harbor any beliefs that I deserve it more than other people who only celebrate one day out of the year, but as Clint Eastwood said to Gene Hackman in “The Unforgiven” right before he shot him, “Deservings got nothing to do with it.” My goals this year include there being less of me at next years birthday week. I simply must get my lazy fat ass under control. To write more music and spend more time recording. To kiss my Sweetie more often, whether she wants me to or not. To play with the boys more often. To eat better tasting food. To re...

I’m outside in my bare feet. It’s really too cold for that but I’m out here anyway. The sun has just come up and my coffee cup poised at my lips has me looking past the stand of cedars that mark our property line. The grass is still wet from last night’s rain, but there’s also a touch of warm sun on my toes and that’s what’s making the difference I guess. The difference of me standing here versus going back inside and forgetting the whole damn thing. The paperboy is back to playing the game of Hide the Paper and I’ve decided that on this morning I’m going to accept the challenge. “Bring it on,” I said in my most Sly Stalone Rocky II tone of voice. (Or was that Rocky IV, with the Russian?) No mater, because coffee cup in hand, I am determined to bare footedly battle the elements to read the morning headlines. Where could it have gone? I have, in the past, found its tattered remains strewn amongst the woodpile or in a far off corner under the cinderblock supports that shore up t...

An exchange of  letters to my good friend the Reverend Trotter. Dear Reverend: There was this article in today’s paper on the front page, the mental health issue, and I thought of you over coffee this morning. I didn't read it or anything...just saw it and said, "hmm, another article about the crazy people in Washington that the good Reverend Trotter works with." I like the fact that the articles in regard to your livelihood find their way on the front page of the newspaper from time to time. That seems to happen less frequently with my livelihood; likely due to the fact that we have our own section I suppose. The fact that we do should make me feel proud about the profession that I've chosen, but somehow it doesn't really. My section seems out of the way and cold, buried near the K-Mart inserts and the classifieds. After the comics but before the junk. And here is where you say..."What about Enron, Bill Gates, NASDAQ's decline, Pioneer closing...