Slackjaw's Forum

This is, for whatever reason, the one hundred and first forum I have written. I was thinking of what I would want to write here on the last day of the year and like one does, when counting down the minutes until the new year, I started counting down the stories to see what number I came up with. One hundred. In some ways I thought it would be more. I fool myself into thinking I update this site on a weekly basis so how could it only be one hundred? On the other hand, one hundred is a hundred more than I would have written if I didn’t have this page. I am not, like some people in this world, a person who otherwise keeps a journal and this page has been, if not a journal exactly, at least a point of reference for where I’ve been. I’ll be coming up on the third anniversary of this web site this April: From the humble beginning, as a free Yahoo Geocities site, up to the mighty web-publishing force that thetrailerpark.org is today. (if you think of “mighty” as being the ten...

We’re into the countdown. Into the final few days before the yuletide big bang explodes a certain blond haired boy I know into a whirling Christmas dervish. Into the last few days that though at first seemed miles away, now seem like tomorrow and all the deadline checks I’ve written to myself are cashing themselves in. It doesn’t help that the car is in the shop. It doesn’t help that the boys are sick. It doesn’t help that I’m broke. It doesn’t help that Sweetie’s mad at me. It doesn’t help that we have a lawsuit just around the corner. It doesn’t help that there’s no snow. It doesn’t help that I’m lacking Christmas spirit. And it really doesn’t help, I guess, to complain. Here on the eve of this great global holiday there is so much to be thankful for. In fact far more this year than any past year that comes to mind. In truth I am thankful for: My wife, who despite my great faults, really, truly loves me. For my oldest boy, whose kindness and generosity belies his si...

Well Sweetie the oldest boy and myself were on the radio this morning. Or at least the song I wrote, Christmas Heart and Soul was. The Mountain had been asking for home Christmas songs to play and so last week I sent one in. It was kind of a surreal morning…for the most part I press the snooze bar for the first half hour before I finally drag my ass outta bed. Sweetie hates it when I listen to the radio when she’s still in bed so she’s always wackin me to get me to push the snooze bar. I had already pushed it once and when the snooze was over the radio came on, there was my song! The funniest part was that Sweetie was all pissed off that I wasn’t pushing the button and I had to say “Hey! You’re one the RADIO!” The older boy who had crawled into bed with us sometime in the middle of the night sat up, Sweetie turned her radio on as well, and we sat there listening to the whole thing. At the end one of the DJ’s said “Well that’s how it’s done!” Which I took to mean he thoug...

THE PRAIRIE DOGS new CD Brand New Heart will be in next week! Right now I’ve got Mini working on updating the new Prairie Dog web site for us and I hope to have that up in the next day or two as well. We’ll be putting up some song files and other stuff and I really think it’s gonna look awesome. It’s been a crazy week and it looks like next week is gonna be even worse. Things are really starting to take off this holiday season and though it may look like I’ve got my hands on the reigns, that don’t mean I have any control over the sled. It just means I’m holding on for dear life! I wish I had time right now to reflect over this past year. There have been so many changes around the Park that it’s hard to keep track. But all that’s just gonna have to wait for another forum, cause right now I’m going as fast as I can. Have yourself a happy holiday season and keep checking back for the new changes.

She put her head right under my chin, near, but not on, my chest, as the few hairs there tickle her nose. It’s a perfect place, a place we both can fit comfortably. For the past few nights the rain and wind have picked up and when we’re lying still like that, you can hear the birch trees outside our window flutter and hiss. I can feel her breath on my skin and I’m guessing she can feel mine on her hair. I want to pull her to me as tight as I can. So tight that you can’t tell where my skin ends and hers begins. So tight that if I pulled any tighter it would hurt. Everything slows down in those moments right before drifting off. Her breathing, her kisses and the way she touches my arm; they all slow down until movement seems impossible. As if by moving, we would break. Out past the open windows the rain is forming puddles in the street and old leaves are turning into deep red mud. The wind makes one last push through the upper branches and we fall asleep.

For one year back in 1972 my family moved to Grand Forks, North Dakota. We had been living as bohemian ex-patriots in The Hague, with both my father and mother teaching at the American school there, but after three years of that, my father decided that he’d had enough of teaching for one life and after some searching decided upon coming home and getting his doctorate. He had heard great things about the U of ND through a friend of the family. Apparently they offered the exact program he was looking for and so after school was over for the year, we packed our things and headed straight into the middle of the Great Plains. Straight into the never ending prairies and the cold teeth of winter. My mother and sister and I arrived at night after taking the train from Chicago. I don’t remember how we found a house but we did. My brother, father and our dog Toby drove the U-haul and came a day or two later. That year we lived in a duplex where I don’t remember the neighbors, but r...

I have a large box…It's an old beer case really, from back when they were still made out of hard cardboard and you had to open them from the top. It's a Miller case that I have lugged around with me since I moved to Olympia back in 1980. In it I used to throw the mail I would get from friends I left behind overseas, letters from Sweetie, who loves me still, old birthday cards, bad song lyrics, pictures and other assorted odds and ends. Today it's full, as it has been for about the last ten or fifteen years, sitting in a back closet minding it's own business and gathering dust. You may not believe me but I am not a person who usually holds on to things like that. Having moved around a lot in my life, I've become more than adept at throwing things out. I am not the kind of manic hoarder you no doubt envision me, having held on to a box of letters from over twenty years ago. Nor am I much of a sentimentalist. I don't take them out periodically like old...

Sweetie found a purse in the garbage can last night. With the exception of a few cough drops, some gum, three cigarettes one floppy disk and a few bank receipts it was empty. Of course the first thought was that the purse might have been stolen and simply discarded after it had been cleaned out. The only real clue we had to go on is the fact that there is a name in one of the word documents on the floppy disk. Unfortunately the trail kind of ends there as there is no same name in the phone book or on line. We have an orphaned purse that right now it’s sitting on the table in the kitchen. Or we don’t…we might have an abandoned purse sitting on the table in the kitchen. There’s a small difference in those two sentences I think. As an orphaned purse, the purse holds no blame for its predicament, but as an abandoned purse, though still technically not to blame, one gets suspicious that maybe the purse did something to bring this abandonment upon itself. Perhaps it was a purse...

Well it’s been a few days since I last posted, I know, I know. What with Sweetie being out of town this past weekend and the calendar being all stuffed full, there just hasn’t been all that much time to write. Not that there hasn’t been things to talk about. Both boys had their first ride on a pony, I got in an argument with another parent dropping the older boy off at school after she had a fit that I had parked to close to her car. The older boy got to hold his new cousin and we all got a good meal out of the deal. Met with Colin Saturday morning and got the artwork back (finally!) for the Prairie Dogs upcoming CD, Brand New Heart, It looks GREAT, now I just need to find out how to pay to get them made up. Started working on a switch-activated Lazy-Susan for Ike so he can sit and spin himself in his chair. Called the paramedics to come and rescue my mom after she fell off the last step leaving the trailer Sunday morning. We all wound up in the emergency room commiserating...

Last Saturday we packed up the boys and headed out to a pumpkin patch. Every year we set out in the same basic direction; I-5 to River Road and then head east. This year we found a farm with a corn maze, and due to some unexplained planning on our part we managed to bring Ike’s jogging stroller along with us. It was raining pretty hard when we pulled up, and along that long stretch of road we were the only car I could see for miles. The woman at the stand seemed genuinely shocked that we had decided to brave the rains this early in October just for a few pumpkins, but Saturday was the only day this past weekend that Sweetie didn’t have to work, and since next weekend we were all going to the Seahawks game and the weekend after that Ike is back in the hospital for a bit and then it's Halloween, well I guess it just seemed like either we go now or wind up getting them mid week at some grocery store somewhere. The corn maze was fun. They turned it into a scavenger hunt of...

Has it really been more than a week since I last posted? Where do the days go? More than a month since I last played music with the boys. Two weeks since I got back on the diet. One week since I broke that diet on homemade deserts at a birthday party. Four days since I got back on the diet once again. Two days since the rain began. One day since I cleaned. Twelve hours since I went to bed. Six hours since the youngest woke up with a leaky diaper. Three hours since I woke up again. One and a half hours since I brought Ike’s stroller home after it had been left in the work car. Fourty-five minutes since my last cup of coffee. Twenty-two minutes since I used the bathroom. Eleven minutes since I started this update. Five and a half minutes since I wrote “the rain began”. Two minutes forty-five seconds since I had a sip of water. One minute twenty two seconds since I paused to think. Forty-one seconds since I ran out of ideas. Twenty seconds to write thi...

Fall has finally come to the trailer park. Though we spent the better part of two days this past weekend basking in what was no doubt the last 80-degree days of the year, there’s been a shift in the wind and damp fall is now upon us. Not that I mind all that much. To tell the truth I find myself starting to miss the cool damp mornings come mid August so I’ve spent the past month and a half pining for this change to come. I guess I miss the fields covered in fog and dew so heavy it looks like overnight rain. Earl and Heather have started on a remodel of their kitchen and back porch. Right now it’s in the garbage pile phase of reconstruction, where what used to be is gone, replaced by what seems to be an outsized pile of insulation and particleboard. They’ve hired a friend of Corlis’ who’s done a number of singlewide remodels and is certified by the Manufactured Home Association of America and the American Trailer Craftsmen League. Personally, I think he drinks too much, bu...

Well this morning was a first for me. It’s the first time my pictures appeared on the cover of the entertainment section of the newspaper. Yeah that’s me, furthest person on the right hand side, back in the days when I used to run power and lights for the film industry. The picture in the paper was a lot bigger…no really it was, I swear. There is not much I miss about that kind of work. Mostly it’s a lot of heavy equipment, heavy cables, heavy distribution boxes, and unbelievable boredom followed by spurts of panic. But there are also days when the sun is out in the fall or spring and the shooting schedule is light. The kind of day when you look at every car that passes by, and think “poor bastards, having to work inside on a day like today” and for a brief moment you forget the fact that you still have 14 hours to work and that at the end of the night, you’ll have to pick up all that cable and put away all those lights and instead just think about how you must have one o...

Sweetie and I packed up the boys and headed off to the fair last night. For some reason or another we didn’t make it out there last year. I always think that with a 19 day window finding the time would be a snap, but truth lies and the devil is in the details. However, I was not about to miss it two years in a row. We met up with my brother's family and in that chaotic way the under 6 crowd can spin you, spent the next few hours struggling for balance on that edge of happiness and stress. Ike, the youngest boy, wasn’t all that much interested in sitting in the stroller after a bit. I’m guessing peoples belt buckles all start to look the same after a while and if any of you know Ike, he’s more of a faces kind of guy. So Sweetie and I just took turns carrying that laughing, kicking, sack of ‘taters, and though we did just fine, I can feel it in my arms this morning I tell you what. We’re gonna have to work on some sort of papoose for next time. Come to think of it, we b...

Well it’s done! After spending this whole past weekend and all of Tuesday night, I have in my hands the new Prairie Dogs CD: Brand New Heart. Dave and I went down to Pacific Studios and together with Tony manning the board, mixed down all 15 songs. I gotta tell you, I really couldn’t be happier with the results. I’m just glad that we were able to get all of these songs down before Mike left for Portland, glad that we did the tracking ourselves and took it someplace else to mix it down. Glad that Dave was around to put in his input and stick to his guns. Glad that the tracks we brought in were clean and sounded good. Oh…and did I mention I’m glad? Cause, yeah…I am. So now I wait for the artwork to come back and once that’s done we’ll have to figure out how to pay for the printing and manufacture. If there are any rich readers out there looking to finance a CD, well just click on the email link below and drop me a line! We need to talk. I’ll try to get back to some writ...

What’s the word? I’ll tell ya in rhyme: My butt’s dragging, My legs are tired, Dogs are barkin, My date’s expired, My tank is empty, I’m outta gas, My back is aching And I’ve kicked my ass. But then again, isn’t that what the Labor Day weekend is all about? It’s the late summer equivalent of a spring clean. It’s that one last weekend to get what items you can off the honey-do list before the rains and the wind and the dark come home. The older boy starts kindergarten tomorrow; going back to the same teacher he had last year for pre-school. He’s ready, I’m ready, and for damn sure the cats are ready and could use the rest. Ike doesn’t start for another week yet so, so it’ll be one week of keeping him from being bored because his brother’s not there and then we’re all done. This Saturday and Sunday I’ll be in the studio mixing down The Prairie Dogs upcoming CD. Dave will be there to help but I’m thinking that Michael won’t be able to make it. I’ll try to get at least one so...

In the end, all she wanted was to get the chair through the door. In the end, comfort was a new place in the sun. In the end, she realized that Miles Davis didn’t speak to her through his horn. In the end, which was worse, peace or war? In the end, the cat forgave her for trying a new cat food. In the end, it was the butler who did it after all. In the end, fact was not stranger than fiction. In the end she found a sunny disposition as her new attitude. In the end, what’s one more bite of pie? In the end, it was the leak and not the rain that caused the rot. In the end, the teacher’s right/wrong record was no greater than her own. In the end all she wanted was all she hadn’t got. In the end, life was no more fair than death. In the end, his kiss was no more deadly than is eyes. In the end, the destruction of his youth coincided exactly with is failing memory. In the end, she didn’t hesitate before she told him yes.

I started off the day by blubbering like a little girl in front of everyone at the Humane Society when I discovered that they knew who had my sixteen-year-old blind cat, Zane. I was completely out of control. Bought more than a hundred dollars worth of meat at Costco. Picked up the cat from the nice lady who found her without making a scene and found out that we owe her more than a hundred dollars for taking our cat to the vet. Got into a snit with Key bank because they were trying to charge me five dollars to cash a check because I didn’t have an account with them. The check I was trying to cash was drawn from a Key Bank account, but that didn’t seem to matter. I asked them when I deposit this check at my own bank would they also charge me five bucks? They said no, that this was a teller fee. I told them with all my righteous indignation what they could do with their fee and left. Found out that the baby sitter we had been counting on to sit the kids on our anniversary celebra...

Spent the better part of the weekend beating myself up in the studio. I’m trying to get as all the grunt work done here in my own studio so when I take it in to be mixed down, we’re not spending time doing things like “cleaning tracks” “track lists” and the like. It’s slow tedious work but I’m hoping that I’ll save time (i.e. money) in the long run. Colin from Colin Magnuson Creative has said that he would like to work on the CD art part of this project so that’s going to be a big help. He’s the one responsible for the colorization of the picture of my Grampa. He’s got a great eye for design and I’m looking forward to seeing what he comes up with for the rest of it. Right now I’m looking at getting into the studio for the final mix sometime in the beginning of September. Though Mike came over last Monday night to finish up the last of the tracking, somehow that entire session didn’t get saved and got blown away, so now he’s going to have to come over on Wednesday to do it...

Corlis’ wife left him last week. They’d been on rocky ground for the past few years anyway, what with her being so quick to anger and all. Course truth be told, I imagine Corlis isn’t the easiest guy to be married to either, he’s obsessed with his car and Christopher Walken movies. In fact it was his bidding on an original script of the Dead Zone on ebay that was the straw that broke the camels back. He tells me that he wasn’t serious about getting it, he just wanted that feeling that for a brief moment, he was owner of a small part of Christopher Walken’s life. I feel bad for him really. Not that Trish left him; She didn’t like any of his friends and I never much cared for her either. It’s just that in the long run, he’ll be better off with out her, but in the now, he’s feeling all like it’s his fault and he’s running around town buying chocolates and roses in some romantic notion that if he can just buy her enough crap, she’ll come back to him and that can start from wh...

The Prairie Dogs played their last gig Saturday night. We had a nice turnout, playing both in front of old friends and people who had never seen us before. Doug, who had been out of commission for the past few weeks, came out to bang on the drums, and though the tempos were all over the place, the energy was good and we pulled out some nice stuff. We brought the list of every song we've ever played and did kind of a hunt and choose to make up the set. Pulling out songs we haven’t done in a long while and even slopping through a new one of mine. My one regret with this band is that we were never able to practice enough to get down all the new songs we were writing, and though it was great that the music seemed to keep moving and producing, it just felt like were never able to keep up with it to see where it might take us. Dave and I went out for beers after, since neither of us was all that interested in going home. We talked about a lot of things but not about the band ...

Sweetie and I spent the weekend looking back at old times with about one or two hundred of the people we graduated from high school with. Twenty years can go by pretty fast when your not looking, and though I thought I was, I can honestly tell you I must have had my head in a book or something. As to how many pages that is that fills up twenty years of time, or how many episodes of Seinfeld one must have watched, well now that’s hard to say. I have a theory that time doesn’t seem all that fast in the present because this is the closest moment it comes to being stationary. Time’s movement isn’t constant like one would think; it accelerates the further it gets from the now. Down on the waterfront, past where the Top Of The Ocean used to sit, past the Harbor Lights and the fire station, lies most of the new construction from the past twenty years of Commencement bay. The dusty costume necklace that was the old Tacoma waterfront has been spun and recast to catch the eyes of a...

I have two questions for you Slackjaw: First when do we get to open up that bottle and do some drinking? You can count me in. Second, I don't know if you are familiar with Chuck Norris or not, but he is the greatest actor/kung-fu fighter there is. I actually think the song was done about him. But to the question: are you aware that he will no longer be with us for to much longer because of his last episode? with that happening i see no more reason to keep my 50ft antenna. Any ideas of what I can do with it? Ignatius O'Harra Dear Ignatius, Before the boys were born, Sweetie and I made a pilgrimage to Graceland. We fired up the 65 Dart loaded up the cooler and in three fun filled days drove across the country. We had saved enough for gas, a bottle of Jack, tickets in and not much else. The trip, like most road trips, had its share of boredom and adventure. But there is one moment that has always stuck with me and your letter brought it all back. Sweetie and ...

Dear Slackjaw, A few years back a couple a fellas bought the Sturgess property up the hill from our place. They rebuilt from the foundation, did a damn fine job. Anyway, we've all gotten to be pretty good friends over the years. Recently it dawned on me that neither of these guys ever have dates. Never in going on 3 years. I don't guess they're ugly or anything, I can't be judge that anyway. Isn't it harmful to a fella to go that long without sex? Do you think something's wrong with them? Thanks for your help, Seth Dear Seth, I had a friend once, Carl Brinier, who used to take his '62 AMC American out to S.I.R. and enter it into the time-trials down there. He had done some modification to the suspension and had put headers, Clifford intake and a 390 Holley under the hood. He used to think it was the fastest thing out there but it wasn't. He'd get blown out just about every time he went. Used to drive him up the wall. See what Ca...

Well the boy had his first T-ball practice last night. He and 15 other 4-to-6 year-olds took to the field at Jefferson Park to start what undoubtedly will become an every summer occurrence. It was a lot of fun watching the masses of kids chase down every ball hit from the T into the infield. The older boy got a chance to bat as well and did great. If there’s one thing he knows how to do, that’s hit. Out past the outfield a group of young men were playing Ultimate Frizbie in the grass. For a while I wrestled with contemplating which do I hate more, the sport or the people who play the sport, but decided against it. I can get far to easily distracted by my likes and dislikes, loosing focus on what brings me out there in the first place. Last night it was to witness another passing milestone: First hit in a uniform. On the way home he says from the back seat all excited. “The coach called me a natural.” Long pause. “…I don’t even know what that is!” You know, come to think of it, he does ...

Well the Prairie Dogs got themselves into the studio this past weekend and started working on their upcoming CD. All in all it went very smoothly and by 4pm Saturday we had the basic tracks to seven songs in the bag, so to speak. We’ll go in again on Wednesday and see if we can hammer out another four or so, leaving maybe one or two more songs to try and get somehow. Doug and I spend the better part of Friday night getting everything ready so’s all we’d have to do Saturday morning is just plug in and start recording. Quite surprisingly, that’s just about how easy it went. I spent a good part of Sunday putting in a new hard drive in my computer, because the old one’s all full, and being frustrated because nothing I ever do to my computer is an easy project. There is always that little twist that makes things take twice as long to do and twice as complicated as I though it would be. But the good news is I won, got the new hard drive in, and dumped the stuff we recorded on S...

I don’t understand Christianity. In fact, as I get older I find myself further and further away from unraveling the mystery of what people find so comforting in this belief system. After the funeral today, the second this week, I was left with the lingering question; “what do Christians think we’re doing here?” And when I say “here” I mean here on earth, here in the right now. Are we all just hanging around to see if we can get into heaven? Is this reality that we’re living in just some sort of cattle pen, a conveyor belt sorting system, designed to weed out those of us worthy of the great beyond? If God created this, us, and Heaven and everything then why this unnecessary step? Why would He put us in this unforgiving world? Is it that God is just a mass producer, where quantity is the goal, leaving the weeding out of the undesirable broken toys until a later time? Has He created some sort of quality control slaughterhouse where, when He’s seen enough, the souls get divid...

C_. died Monday. He had lived in the trailer park longer than anyone else, having moved here right after it opened in 1947. He was a kind old man who lived into his nineties and raised begonias in the little space he called his back yard. I told the older boy about it last night. He had grown kind of fond of C_. and enjoyed giving him hugs when he saw him. He didn't say much at first, then after a bit, asked if he had died because he was so old. Later on when we were reading books he told me he didn't really like it when people say someone died. I didn't take it personally in fact in a way I agreed with him. One of the stories we read used the phrase that someone "croaked" and after a slight pause the boy asked if C_. had croaked. I think I told him that you can use that word, but it seems a little crass to use slang to describe death, or something like that. I think the boy and I silently agreed that no death of a kind old man deserved that. It too...

Last year around this time I set out a small list of things that I wanted to accomplish in my 37th year. I thought I’d take a narcissistic moment to explore the results of that list and perhaps start a new one. 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. Success. I’ve lost 30 pounds since this time last year. VTo write more music and spend more time recording. Total failure on this one. To kiss my Sweetie more often, whether she wants me to or not. I did ok. To play with the boys more often. I did ok To eat better tasting food. Could do better To remember the mantra, though love and beauty are everywhere, they are found in the strangest of places. That I know is true. To get to bed earlier. Dismal To realize that watching the Styx “Behind the music” for the fifth time is probably enough even though it’s still just as funny as it was the first time. I didn’t watch it once. To ea...

We have a ghost. Sweeties been hearing little footsteps at night come down the hall, come into our room and stop at the side of our bed. I've never heard it until night before last. Ike, our littlest, was crying and I was half trying to wake up and half hoping he'd get himself back to sleep when I heard a little kids voice quietly say "Don't cry baby, it's ok". I sat up and went in expecting to find the older boy comforting his baby brother, but he was in his own bed sound asleep. It's a little kid. I don't know if it's a boy or girl, though if I had to guess I'd say a girl younger than six. My friend from Indy says we should set up the camcorder in the hallway to see if we can get it on film. I'm just not so sure I want to see evidence. Right now I can kind of convince myself that it's all in my head and that helps me get to sleep at night. Evidence...that might just be a little too freaky.

Tomorrow is Ike’s third birthday. That’s a hard number to wrap my head around. Three years old. Ever time around his birthday I start thinking about the first year of his life how it sucked and how it’s such a pleasant surprise that he’s here with us today. When you’re in the midst of a crisis like his first year, it’s hard to even see into next week, much less three years down the road, so when Sweetie went and got him from his crib this morning and he sat on his mom’s lap with that smile of his so wide and whole-hearted, the whole third-birthday tomorrow thing just gave it that extra kick. Were heading out to the ocean to celebrate the whole affair. Last year around this time , I made a list of things I wanted to accomplish in the next three hundred and sixty five days, and going to the ocean was one of them. More than three hundred days later and we’re just going for the first time this weekend. Oh well, better late than never. Sweetie’s taking the weekend off work so we’ll h...

It was just a week ago that we found ourselves at each other’s throat. Our country at the brink of war left a lot of thinking to do. It started innocently enough as an invitation to a peace march, and one vicious replay later, became an increasingly interesting document on the benefits of war and peace. Over the period of about three days emails flew back and forth, and for the first time in a long time we were having a discussion about this country and this world and where we see our place in it. I saved all the emails, patched them up and compiled them here. I have no idea what else to do with them but put them up on my site. Hope you enjoy the read.

In his controversial autobiography, Fisted Full of Dollars, (Harper and Row) Lambchop, the lovable children’s character-turned-activist, talked a lot about the constant threat of being replaced. There were always rumors of cats and bears being called in to read and at the end of the sixties there was even talk that Snoopy had been offered the job. In the end Lambchop and the show died it’s normal death like all children’s TV shows do, living for a while in that hazy land of syndication and Christmas specials before dropping of the radar, appearing only in the occasional PBS fundraising special and strip-mall openings. I bring this up because in Volume II chapter 13 he kind of goes off on a tangent about Shari Lewis spitting all of her lines, and how, especially near the end of their run, when the crew wrapped, he would have to be toweled off before being put down for the night. You can really tell he’s in a lot of pain recalling those days, there’s a lot of anger, hurt a...

I’m done with pink. Finished with the little hearts that trail every word, and cover every boarder. This Sunday’s paper had more reds and pinks this year than any other year I can remember. Don’t get me wrong I have no real issues with Valentines Day. I have no trouble with this marketed holiday anymore than I have trouble with any other holiday. Christmas, Easter, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, I do just fine with them thank you. But I am sick to death of this pink. This year for some reason it’s that Barbie-pink color that’s everywhere. Yahoo has covered its home page with it. The sports section in this morning’s paper even had pink advertising. It’s like The Cat In The Hat has comeback more out of control than ever. Pink ring in the tub? Childs play. Pink snow? Amateur’s work. This year I’ll do that and even turn all Lingerie pink. All clothes, candy, storefronts and busses. I tell you one thing, I know of no quicker way to get smacked upside the head then by trying to...

It’s kinda quiet here today. The copiers are going off down the hall and though there is still the intermittent humming of the florescent ballasts no one seems to hear but me, overall I’d say it’s gonna be a slow sort of day. I tried to eat an orange this morning. I say I tried because I was unsuccessful and wound up throwing all but one slice away. If I have but one flaw (which would be a lie, I know I have many far worse than this) it’s my intolerance for lousy fruit. I have no patience for a dry orange or a mushy apple, no hunger for a green banana or a hard pear. For the most part fruit and I get along like my cats get along with my kids. We co-habitate and at times find each other’s company beneficial, but most of the time we just avoid each other. When I was younger, it used to be that it was only the deceptive fruits and vegetables I disliked. You know, the raisins that hide in chocolate-chip cookies pretending to be a toll-house morsel, or the jalapeno pepper hid...

Took the youngest boy off of Phenobarbital this weekend. It was the last step of a three-month plan to wean him off it, one that we started after our last stay in the hospital back in October. He had been in for a 24 hour EEG that showed his brain “background noise” was getting closer to normal and that most of the posturing he does were not a result of seizures, but a result of muscle spasms cause by his brain injury. Good news to us of course, and also to him, as his Neurologist thought we could start taking him off of Phenobarbital as he could see no medical need for it to continue. He hasn’t been completely off it long enough to see if it’s gonna make much difference in the day-to-day. So far, as we’ve been tapering down, the biggest change has been his frustration in his inability to move very much. Now this might be good in the long run. We’re all hoping that perhaps this frustration will be the motivation he needs to start doing more, that it’ll be the dissatisfact...

Welcome to the new and improved Trailer Park. We’re just about finished getting everyone to our new location at thetrailerpark.org. There are some new friends with web pages that are still in the process of moving in so be sure to take a look around at the park at the other trailers in the coming weeks. I hope you like the new look. Though the look of the page has completely changed, the biggest improvement has really been the inner-html-workings. A great big kudos goes out to my friend Minnie from Indianapolis who worked her ass off on this. I could not have come anywhere this close to cool without her know-how and hard effort. She totally rocks. Notice how you can hover over the trailers on the homepage and the trailers name pops up, totally cool. The writing, on the other hand, is the same old same old, not too much I can do about that I guess. I’ll continue to try to update the forum once a week and bring you a bit of what’s going on in my life and posting up new musi...

The Saturday night fishing club was not a club that met on a regular basis. It used to, before there were kids and wives and mortgage payments to make. Before Brian moved back home to Lethbridge and took his amazing box of tackles with him and before Hank stopped drinking and falling into the bay. In those days they would gather rain or clear summer or winter at the fishing pier next to where the old Top-Of-The-Pier used to be before it burned down. Back before the city turned it into a park, and Harbor lights was the only waterfront restaurant left that was worth a damn. For one summer back in 82, the club boasted 12 members, all Canadian. Although it didn’t start out that way on purpose, the Canadian only rule was quickly adopted and remained in effect ever since. There was no charter for the club, no set of rules per se, you just had to have your own reel, bucket and only drink Canadian beer. The fishing would start whenever you got there and go on through the night an...