Blame it on REO

Singing in the car near Asheville, North Carolina. POintless, extremely pointless video... you're warned. One has to sing quite quietly so as not to overpower the wee lil' camera. Luckily this song is wimpy enough to make girlish falsetto and strained "malesetto" very very appropriate.

I could write "enjoy" but I don't think that's the right word... perhaps...

Experience.

Oh Blarney

Oh Blarney Stone
Sitting on high

Blarney Stoned
By angry mobs

Blarney Groaned
Under the strain

Blarney Phoned
Just to say hi

Blarney Cloned
Just to say hi
again

This poetry break was brought to you by Blarney, the Blarneyest stone in all of Ireland. Blarney - giver of the gift of sweet tongue, not the gift of sweet poet's pen. Clearly.

You see what watching Syracuse play so badly does to me? You see?

yikes.

As the sheets dried

I wait with great anticipation. The sheets toss and turn as heat rushes in, warming and drying to a predetermined moisture content. The bed has no sheets. It has two wadded up blankets and one wadded up cat. Of the three wads, two are silent and one gently snores. Moe. Chairman Moe. Do not cross the Chairman.

---

Knoxville's northwest side fades into mountains as you go north up I-75. But that's not important to the story. What's important to the story is that Wayne Gibbous was being stalked by a sausage man. When the driver of the sausage van saw that Wayne had seen him, he pulled around to the opposite side of the McDonald's parking lot and continued his spying.

Back in his hotel room, still with an eye on the sausage surveillance, Wayne called a cab. He had to follow this van and try to figure out how deep all this went and who was taking the lead in doing whatever it was that was being done to him. The cab showed up in about 15 minutes. Wayne went outside and gave the driver his credit card.

"Wait here, I'm not sure when I'll be going, but please wait."
"Alright, meter's running. It's your dime, brother."
"Fine."

Back inside behind the curtain he kept watch on the sausage.

"Keep your eye on the sausage."

After a few hours, at about 4:30, the van started to pull out. Wayne rushed outside and jumped in the cab.

"Follow that white truck, or van, or whatever. The one with sausage on the side."
"10-4."

They wound through some intricate streets near the University of Tennessee. The sunsphere occasionally popped into view, but only briefly. They soon were heading west to a small industrial park. Some buildings looked pretty bombed out, others were new. New like they'd never been used. The old ones looked like they'd never be used again. Each vacant in their own way. Vacant stairs. Shadows of their former selves and shadows of their future selves. For some reason there was a good bit of traffic back in this otherwise strange and empty scene. Sausage was a few hundred feet ahead. Its brake lights blinked a couple times as it turned into a fenced area.

"Stop here and wait, I'll be back in a minute."
"10-4."

Walking along, the sun was quietly dipping in the sky and a light breeze blew into his face. Wayne became more timid the closer he got to the gate. He wanted to know more, but at the same time he wanted to turn around and try to escape whatever he had gotten himself into. Jump on a Greyhound bus and go to Reno. Why Reno? Why not.

In his last few steps he saw a sign at the gate. It was old and rusty and surely wasn't the current business. Surely not. Plus, the name was too ridiculous to be real. But too fantastic not to be. After being suckered by a quarter and a milkman, nothing would really surprise him. But this... this?

"O'Ryan's Belt and Conveyor."

"O'Ryan's Belt and Conveyor?"
"What about it?"
"That truck pulled in there. What was that place?"
"Not sure, I don't get too many fares out this way. Where to now?"
"Back to the hotel."
"10-4."

mas video

Please humor me as I do another video experiment.

Have not yet found the sweet spot, either in sound or song quality, but it's here and you can watch it. C# and G# are especially flarpy - quite obviously video operator error.

There are great possibilities with this new camera, all thanks to the fine folks at Verona Trail and Verizon DSL.

Disjointed

I'm working on a new song, the main theme is that everyone in airports is ugly. It's based on my somewhat limited air travel experiences. I'm a savvy traveler mind you, but the frequency of said travels can best be described as, well, infrequent. I expect this to be my breakthrough single. Or another breakthrough single. Wait, I'm not famous. Breakthrough single will do just fine.

All this talk of airports makes me think of train stations. It also makes me wish that more people could interchange names comfortably depending on mood. Maybe I want to go to the plane station to catch my flight. I should be allowed to do so. And if I choose to go the railport, no one should judge me harshly for that.

I watched another installment of "Weeds." That show is crazy. Crazy good!

I haven't been reading as much recently due to fatigue and television watching and possibly poor book choice. I'm not engaged. However, I don't want to give up on my current book by your friend and mine, Tom DeLillo (not sure if that's spelled right, pretty sure it doesn't matter). It's not doing much for me, which is a shame, because if it could do a lot for me, I'd have less to do and could pen multitudes of rambling inanities for preselected groups of devout bloglas mcblogland readers.

But, Alice, it's not to be.

I'm once again sporting some dope Fox gear - the red hoodie with extreme graphic makes me look 15 rather than my usual 17.

Wrote the blogger: I considered writing something that would make you sad, but decided against it. You're welcome. I'll save it for my novel.

Getting disjointed and losing focus. Time to pack it in.

Sausage

Wayne Gibbous makes it to Knoxville by dawn. A Red Roof Inn will be home for a couple days. He reeks of sour milk. Soaking in white dampness for most of the night will lead to such a stench. A quick shower and a change of clothes will erase the physical marks of the previous night, but emotionally, he's a mess. It's one thing to get taken by a scam or bested by an equal competitor, but last night, Gibbous took it on the chin from loose change. Wayne finds himself in a bizarre, cosmic game of heads or tails. This quarter has him over a barrel - a barrel lacking any monkeys, or perhaps chock full o' monkeys - angry monkeys. Heads or Tails. Heads or Tails. Call it in the air. Wayne just needs to regroup. Tails or Heads. Tails or Heads. It's all up in the air and the outcome's not certain, but if he doesn't get on some firmer ground, and soon, El Cuarto will surely some out on top. Heads or Tails. Tails or Heads or Tails.

But the Quarter is not the only issue... there's a whole cast of characters in on the plot, and Wayne has yet to get any backup. But first, a shower. The water drowns out the world beyond the shower walls. A half hour later, pruny and clean, he steps out.

Outside, he hears the dogs. Too tired to towel, he falls onto the bed and falls fast asleep and falls out of favor with the waking world that is stirring to life. (A portion of this short paragraph is credited to American of great repute, John Clemens)

He wakes up a little after noon. The sun is streaming through the window like a window stream of sunlight. He turns on the TV and sees "Rudy" on some movie channel. Watching the last fifteen minutes makes him glad he slept through the rest of the movie. Unmoved by the inspirational Notre Dame football story, he heads to the vending machine to get a drink and a snack. Right, right right right... he's only got enough change for either/or. Mountain Dew it is. On his way back he pauses in the sunshine and takes in the hotel view. Parking lot with of a few parked cars. Trash can full of trash. Ash tray on top full of ash. Sky with no clouds. Then he sees it.

Across the street in the McDonald's parking lot a pair of binoculars are pointed right at him from the driver's seat of a big refrigerated delivery van. It has a big blue outline on the side that once must have had a logo in it, but now is empty. The word "Sausage" is in small blue letters below the big blue box. Why is someone in the sausage van spying on him? Why is there a sausage van? What is a sausage van? Who is the sausage man? What is sausage? There's so much Wayne Gibbous doesn't quite get and, being a vegetarian from birth, sausage is one of them.

Gravy, too.

Some days

New strings for my guitar. It had been at least a year. Sad, I know. There were spots on the wound strings warn down flat, the top of the strings had a bump at each fret. I've never had this before, never let strings stay on this long. But these Elixir strings still sounded pretty good. Anyhow, it seemed like it was time to spend the 15 bucks and slap a new set on there. That's the backdrop. Out of love for playing and guitar, I treated it and myself to an upgrade. Mistake.

Some days I pick up my guitar and it sounds good. Some days I pick up my guitar and it sounds bad. Some days I can sit and strum and sing, merrily. Some days I can play a bunch of fingerstyle instrumentals and it sounds pretty good. Tonight was a bad night. Ready to play... plug it in and flaaaarp. Nothing sounded good. Too shrill and tinny, adjust tone... too dark and muted. Unplug it. Still ---- bad. In tune? No. Impossible. There's always some give and take on tuning where if you get 75% of your chords to sound perfect you take your lumps on the other 25%. Tonight was more like a 25-75 split. I've had this Guild Acoustic for about 14 years... it has served me well. It's not the most playable, never has been, but it has songs in it. Good ones. I like to believe it has already pushed out the bad ones and only the most choice selections of musical genius, man/instrument synergy remain. But nights like tonight make me want to put it out to pasture in the gently falling spring rain. Make it a big dog chew toy.

I'll let it sit for 24 hours and see what tomorrow brings.

I think it may be me more than the guitar. I'm unsatisfied by a pretty good Seinfeld episode right now. I should be laughing, but I'm not. Just checked out Andy Griffith, a color episode. Pretty much pissed me off... way too much Howard. The guitar can sense my negative vibrations and is reverberating back that same energy, and same goes for the TV.

Jackpot... Walker Texas Ranger with the little dude who played Spiderman as a young loner. They're eating chicken in a cave. My luck is changing. Urge to kill fading. fading. fading. gone. Walker just said, "so you see kid, you're not alone." now he's kicking ass. now he just got shot. now I'm changing the channel.

I hope Walker will be ok.

Brief Lee

I saw my first big car with an Obama sticker on it. It was a big black Hummer 3 with a "yes we did" decal in the back window. I'm guessing energy independence was not a key deciding factor for that voter. The driver did keep the SUV between the lines and that's all I care about. Just an observation, not a judgment.

Public Service Announcement:
Check your deadbolt locks. They need to have an inner strike plate with two big honkin' screws that tap into the wall. If it's not like that, your deadbolt may not be any stronger than the regular door latch. At least that's how mine is set up.

I've begun a Feng Shui rearrangement in my office. We'll see if it sparks outer genius and inner peace. Serenity now. I realized today that I've been staring at the same wall for way too long. It's time to stare at the other wall. Also, it will improve the look of my oovoo backdrop. What's oovoo? www.oovoo.com It's good free video conferencing for business, pleasure and pleasurable business.

I know I'm supposed to like Kanye West, but... no. I don't think so. And yes, I saw him on "Idol" briefly. Now I'm watching basketball.

I'm still watching basketball. Earlier, I washed dishes for the first time in several days.

sigh.

Short Pants Long Pants

I've disabled the Hindi translator on the title line, so no more squiggly unreadables.

Speaking of short pants. It's that time again. Up in the 80's and sunny. I went outside and read topless on Sunday afternoon. Needless to say, it was a wild ride. While I was only outside for about an hour, I managed to get a slight sunburn on my front. Monday afternoon before dinner I let my back see the sun for the first time in about a year and half to complete my spring base. My goal is not a coppertone tan, but albino pale has got to go.

The arrival of short pants means that any onesy/union suit wearing is done until late October. It's sad. I hate to move on like this. I'm not man enough for this. I'm not man enough for short pants. I am, however, man enough for wrist bands. Cool wrist bands from Fox. That's right, the cool Fox gear that all the kids are wearing - and all the extreme sports dudes. Crazy long shorts and extreeeme logos. All freebies and all good. Jealous? Thought so. Don't be hatin'. Do not be hating. You, please do not be hating upon me, hokay?

I also got some long pants.

विडियो अपडेट Video update

The video upload was a success. However, it did not download as fast as I thought. Upon further review, here's how it went down.

I uploaded video, then started typing on the blog page. While I was typing it was downloading... so I thought the download was superfast, but it probably wasn't. But, you're not stuck staring at a screen doing nothing while it downloads - you can move on to other things. Still cool. Definite upside. And the streamability on the published page is pretty good, in my opinion.

Also upon further review... it's time to clip my nails and go outside in the sun.

Again, Wayne Gibbous is pushed aside.

I'm out.

फ्रिद्गासौरुस एक्टिवेट! Fridgasaurus ACTIVATE!

Trying the video upload. We shall see what comes of it. As with other images here, not likely to be relevant to the blog at hand. Strange that it took no time to load this but takes some time to load pictures. No time vs Some time. No contest.

My apologies to those of you expecting (if not hoping for and being desirous of) a new segment in the pre-apocalyptic tales of Wayne Gibbous. The Moon Man. He has a child you know. A son, of course. They're estranged... the distance between son and Moon Man expands and contracts at regular intervals for reasons determined long ago by forces determined long before that. He may have a daughter... we're not sure yet. The reason? A daughter wouldn't lend herself to the easy wordplay necessary to make the story tick.

Tick like my refrigerator. Which as it turns out, was not really cooling things. It would tick trying to get the compressor fan motor started and initiate cooling. Tick tick tick tick. No dice. Julian came by and checked it out, complete with Volt-Ohm-Meter and concluded that the compressor fan motor was bad. Julian, famous for his calendar, his Caesar era calendar. And now even more so for his refrigerator troubleshooting. Now, if you give the fan blade a quick spin (like an old airplane propeller start up) it will whirr to life and run. Run and cool and run some more. Then, eventually, click. And click some more. Slowly warming. So the motor works, but can't start. I don't get it either. But 30 dollars and 30 minutes should fix the problem if the problem is as advertised.

This writer's head hurts and the very same head is interested in the success or failure of the video upload. So we'll make this a quickie and git-r-done.

An aside: The Liberty Tax Service mascot guy was rocking in sub freezing temps earlier this week and now enjoys a sunny 70 degree afternoon. We're all enjoying it.

a'ight

Fridgasaurus ACTIVATE!

प्रेलुदे तो चंगे Prelude to Change

Knee deep in vitamin D is a bit of an overstatement. Ankle deep is more accurate. Wayne Gibbous was knee deep only at first, when he was on his knees. Not praying, mind you. Rather, he was down on all fours looking for the quarter that just fell from his hand. As the reader longs for specifics, a more detailed account follows, to include gently blossoming character development and slow, steady swells of rising action.

The rest area is mostly empty. A handful of eighteen wheelers are idling in the dark as their drivers lay idle, sleeping for a few hours before continuing on to wherever it is that trucks go. Everywhere I suppose. It is a bitterly cold night. This stretch of the West Virginia Turnpike goes through some pretty remote mountains. The frigid air and biting wind makes the place seem all the more desolate. The humming tractor-trailers help, but it remains a lonely place. During the day there is free coffee available, which would certainly feel great right now, but it's well past midnight and the only options are cold drinks and stale snacks. Wayne Gibbous would be deeply disappointed in his late night snacking options if he ever got to the vending machines.

He pulls his 85 Honda Prelude into a space right by the bathrooms to avoid a long walk through the cold. Reaching into his pockets to determine his food budget he remembers he has to keep another buck and a quarter for the last toll booth. Placing that money aside he counts up the rest of his change. He's got a couple dollars. He's also got some lint and few sticks of doublemint gum (unnecessary details, but details nonetheless). If he's lucky, he can get a drink and a bag of pretzels, or maybe cheetos. That will be enough to get him through to morning. By then he'll be near Knoxville and can grab some breakfast.

Ready to brave the cold, he opens his door and stands up. Shutting the door behind him he drops one of his quarters. Wayne would normally not go looking for a dropped coin, but this quarter is the difference between a full drink/snack combo or an either or. This one is vital. It's a nicely lit rest stop, but not lit well enough to find a coin from 6 feet away. High above, a sliver of moon offers no help whatsoever.

He crouches down on the cold pavement and quickly spots it. It's tucked behind the tire. He gets on his knees to balance himself and reaches. Just a little out of his reach, he repositions himself, then back to his knees. A big tanker truck slowly pulls behind his car - not in the designated truck parking and not even in a space. It stops directly behind him him. The driver gets out.

"Do you mind? It's kind of an emergency."
"What?"
"I've got to park here for a minute, maybe two. My truck's acting up and I need to take a leak."
"No problem."

He can maneuver his Prelude out of the spot even with the truck blocking him. Plus, Wayne is focused on his quarter. He still can't reach it, it's as if it moves farther out of reach each time he lunges at it. Just a little further.

"Thanks."

The trucker runs into the bathroom and out of sight. Out of mind. Out of body, in fact. But Wayne is focused on his quarter. He hears a drip, then a piddle, then a giggle (a giggle?) then a tidal wave smacks the pavement behind him.

"Jesus!"

The tanker is spilling its contents of 2% pasteurized, homogenized, vitamin D fortified milk all over the parking lot, and Wayne is covered in it. A bath of cold milk on a cold night in the middle of cold mountains with no change of clothes (cold or warm). Fantastic. And let's not forget, a quarter buried beneath hundreds of gallons of cow juice.

A long night just got a lot longer, a bad day just got started and a quarter that jumped ship moments ago set up the whole chain of events. It was years in the making and required too many conspirators to count. Make no mistake, two bits just stuck it to Wayne Gibbous, and Gibbous knew it. He also had a feeling there was more to come. More change that he couldn't handle.

G'night.