They’re dead to us. They kill each other in the streets. They wander comatose in shopping malls. They’re paralyzed in front of televisions. Something terrible has happened that’s taken our children away. It’s too late. They’re gone.
—-from The Sweet Hereafter
Artwork in window, Waxahachie, Texas
The Emperor Has No Clothes
The meeting room is windowless, situated deep in the bowels of the workplace (it is a designated tornado shelter). Long, narrow, glossy wood meeting table. TV/VCR at one end. A computer hooked up to an overhead projector and LCD panel at the other. A scanner is connected to this PC also, this is where he comes to after hours to scan pictures. Of the most interest to him in this room is a small refrigerator, kept stocked with soft drinks. His rule – you make him sit through a meeting, he gets a Diet Dr. Pepper.
Eight men, all with identical Franklin Planners in front of them. They are going over some of next year’s plans, each looking at a sheaf of papers with projects and responsibilities listed, due dates, key items. Four pages of this. He can feel it in the air, nobody thinks they can get all this stuff done, in addition to their own daily duties. There are simply too few people and too much bullshit. Everybody thinks it, knows it, sighs almost inaudibly, but nobody says anything. That would be pointing out the emperor has no clothes.
What does a car made in Wolfsburg, Germany, have to do with a novelty hit from 1961? It’s a strange tale, with musical connections to Dolly Parton, the Mamas and Papas, a children’s cartoon and an iconic scene from a famous 1980s movie. It’s about a boy from Brooklyn.
It really is all about the sauce. How can you not love anything that has both Sriracha and Wasabi in squirt bottles?
American culture is as brilliant, stimulating and creative as it has ever been.
That statement goes against the talk of decline that is heard regularly among journalists and philosophers, especially on the Right. Yet it’s not American culture that has failed. It’s our cultural gatekeepers.
Recently on a hot mic during his visit to Florida, President Joe Biden told Fort Myers Mayor Ray Murphy, “Nobody F***s with a Biden.” As PJ Media’s Kevin Downey Jr. pointed out, even inanimate objects f*** with Joe Biden. Now, Saudi Arabia is taking their shot.
Mouth Mask Probably Depicting the Head of a Rooster
Indonesia: Southeast Moluccas, Leti, Luhuleli
19th Century
Wood, Boar Tusks, Clam Shell, Mother-of-Pearl, buffalo horn, resinous material, and pigment
Dallas Museum of Art
It’s been over a year since “two weeks to slow the spread,” and the pandemic is finally dragging to a finish. Cases are down, herd immunity has more or less arrived, and even in deep-blue Boston, Stop & Shop has announced it will end mask requirements before the month’s out.
A major survey into the accuracy of climate models has found that almost all the past temperature forecasts between 1980-2021 were excessive compared with accurate satellite measurements.
“Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.” ― Cormac McCarthy, The Road
My family likes to… in the winter months… have a little fire going in back of the house. A place to sit and wind down at the end of the day. Over the years we have bought these metal fire pit things – they last a year or two and then rust out.
This summer I thought we might up our fire pit game. There was some time – the backyard is not where you want to be during the killer months here in Texas – but from, say mid-October on through the winter it’s pretty nice. Also, we had an extra large flat-screen TV leaning in a closet, so I bought a swivel mount and set it up outside under our patio roof. That worked a lot better than I anticipated and as the days shortened and the nights cooled everyone began to get antsy for a place to burn some wood, hang out, and watch TV.
I went to YouTube for ideas and quickly stumbled across the idea of a “smokeless fire pit.” There are hundreds of videos on that subject. I watched a few and learned the basic principle.
You start with a perforated metal ring. Most DIY pits use a 36″ metal ring from a big box agricultural supply store and then you drill a row of holes. Next you surround this with some sort of masonry – bricks or cement – leaving a gap between the stone and the metal ring and vent spaces along the bottom row. Then you cap the assembly with a flat row on top.
The idea, what makes it “smokeless” is that the metal ring gets hot and as air comes in the bottom, it rises along the ring and heats up, entering the fire area through the ring of holes – which then burns off any smoke.
Sounded good to me. Easy enough and not too expensive. So off to the local hardware store for supplies.
I did change the usual design in one way. Instead of a solid 36″ ring, I chose an already-perforated 30″ lattice-type one. Three feet seemed a little big and the smaller ring was less expensive. The hardest part was lugging all the masonry to the car and into the back yard. The stones were held together only by weight – no cement or mortar. If I want to move the thing I can (though I don’t want to).
Starting to assemble the fire pit. You can see the lattice-cut center ring and the first rows of the walls. Notice the gaps between the bottom stones – to let air in.
The finished fire pit.
The fire pit at night.
Well, does it work? I was surprised, but it does. There is very little smoke once the thing heats up. I remember the old, cheap fire pits, you had to move around depending on which way the wind blew. I’m not sure it works exactly like it is claimed – I think that actually the fire is simply well-fed with oxygen – but it works.
So we have been collecting wood from around the neighborhood – some recent severe storms have left piles of downed limbs set out on the curb before the city can pick them up – we try and scoop up what we can.
“I was so thin I could slice bread with my shoulderblades, only I seldom had bread” ― Charles Bukowski, The Last Night of the Earth Poems
Cali Saigon Mall, Garland, Texas
One of the goals that I set, years ago, as I started working on my fitness and freedom from automobiles, was I decided never to drive to the grocery store. I pretty much have kept that up. It doesn’t hurt that I have about five grocery stores, of various types, within two miles of my house. I needed some shirataki noodles and tofu, so I rode my bike down to the Cali Saigon mall (I rode my vintage Cannondale – I have put racks and panniers on it to keep my new Poseidon X light).
On the way out of the house, Candy asked me to pick up some baguettes. So after I bought my groceries I stopped by Lee’s Sandwiches for a couple of fresh-out-of-the-oven loaves.
I always feel European riding my bike through my neighborhood with a couple of baguettes sticking up out of my panniers.
“A man called Berg, who changed his name to Greb, came to a seaside town intending to kill his father.”
—-Berg, by Ann Quin, opening line
Clarence Street Art Collective, The Cedars, Dallas, Texas
Ok, a while back I put together a reading plan. Next up on the list, decided by the roll of the die, wasBerg, by Ann Quin (I’m skipping the next Zola novel for a while). I started it a few days ago and stalled a bit – it’s a short novel, but dense and difficult.
But then I received notice that the Difficult Reading Book Club is starting back up and tomorrow, Wednesday will be our first get-together of the current round. In the past I have read with this group Gravity’s Rainbow, 1Q84, The Brother’s Karamazov, and Foucault’s Pendulum – difficult, but rewarding books all – I don’t know if I could have dug through all these alone. This time we are reading two books, both by William Faulkner – The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom! I read The Sound and the Fury in college – about all I remember is how hard is was to get through and/because its unique structure and language. So I’m excited to read it again – with my accumulated decades and the help of the other readers.
However, that put pressure on my reading of Berg. I thought about abandoning it, but I had a few hours this afternoon, so I shut myself up with my Kindle and knocked it off.
Berg is an interesting book – very well written – with a very unique and difficult voice. Is it a good book? It’s right on the edge. With a book as idiosyncratic as this one – to me the ultimate test if if you care, if you give a damn about the characters. Otherwise all the literary gymnastics are just showing off.
In this case, I guess I ended up caring. Nobody is likeable. Everybody is crazy. The author struggled with mental health – she had a breakdown when she finished the novel and needed extensive treatment before she published it – and, sadly, she eventually committed suicide by drowning herself in a setting terribly similar to the novel.
The novel is not very long – I should re-read it and probably will after we finish with Faulkner. It’s worth it if you are looking for an idiosyncratic voice in literature. It is the kind of thing you will like if you like that sort of thing.
One side note I found. There actually is a film version of Berg, called Killing Dad – starring Richard E Grant as the son, Denholm Elliott as the father, and Julie Walters as the mistress, Judith. I have no idea how they would make a movie out of the words on the page. I’m not sure if I want to see it – it may spoil the images I have in my noggin from the text. It is available for free on Tubi if I change my mind.
“The landscape is best described as ‘pedestrian hostile.’ It’s pointless to try to take a walk, so I generally just stay in the room and think about shooting myself in the head.” ― David Sedaris, When You Are Engulfed in Flames
Magnolia Hotel (Pegasus) and Joule Hotel (pool)
Dallas, Texas
Hotel World, by Bill Chance
There are many worlds right under our noses. Worlds separated not by time, nor by space, but mostly by point of view. We move alongside, drive right by, back and forth flowing, unaware of each other, lost in our own perspective.
Today I entered
Hotel World
Not the Bates Motel No single line of cheap rooms and faint smell of mold, tired truckers and travelers and clandestine passionate meetings. no, this is the Business Hotel World
Fighting dawn traffic to the
Tarmac Sea ,
parking lot landscaped with islands of flowers, shredded bark, popup sprinklers. Uncomfortable Clothing Tour Busses Parking lot walk – looking around, briefcases and shoulder bags Hispanic maids with beige skirts Staff in Maroon Sweater Vests Drones in Blue Suits with Big Plastic ID Badges Perfect Strangers going the same place as me.
I enter, come closer to the heart, smell that
Lobby Smell
A hodgepodge of art, Copies of Oriental vases next to huge Faux Impressionist Landscapes next to chunks of Fake Aztec Friezes Colors green gold navy, mottled patterns, mixed chairs couches marble coffee tables. What focus group picked these fabrics, combinations? What corporate meeting spawned this look? Banks of pay phones – most empty nowadays – replaced by groups of men talking on cell phones, pacing back and forth.
The tall lobby giddies overhead Rows of identical rooms fronted by identical balconies identical planters of plastic ivy a demonstration of perspective an expensive frame to a huge hexagonal skylight high overhead.
Elevators ding Breakfast dishes clank, a background hum of conversation my pager buzzing even though it’s barely seven, here sitting hear, I’ve heard at least five languages
Along the Perimeter
Rooms with odd British names: maybe meant to add at touch of class here on the blasted prairie Warwick, Churchill, Windsor I, Windsor II, Windsor III, Windsor IV Signs announce Mysterious Meetings: OMGI Training Formation Quality Systems Training TRII Sales Meeting Fortune Twelve Management
Inside the Room
The instructor says hello at the door, I can tell he wants to hear my name, “Bill” I say I know he has memorized it, he gets paid for this. Rows of long tables covered in white cloth Candy dishes, glasses arranged upside down, Steel pitchers of ice water Condensation Beading attractively on the curved flanks. Coffee Pitchers Piles of Danish I choose an apple and an unexpectedly stale bagel wait for the seminar to begin.
I choose a seat on the
Front Row
I’m the first one there Everyone else fills up the back The last late arrivals fill up my front row sit next to me Trade names, cards, tales of awful traffic, surprisingly friendly, genuine smiles it’s nice to talk to a real human here
To be able to eat, to move about, to have shelter, to be free from state or tribal coercion, to be secure abroad, and safe at home – only that allows cultures to be freed from the daily drudgery of mere survival.
My android tablet and portable keyboard, I stopped my bike ride on the Bridge Park over the Trinity River to get some writing done.
In what marks a glorious return to filmmaking after a nearly 20-year absence, John Waters (Baltimore’s favorite son and American cinema’s favorite degenerate) will write and direct an adaptation of his 2022 debut novel, Liarmouth: A Feel-Bad Romance.
“Past certain ages or certain wisdoms it is very difficult to look with wonder; it is best done when one is a child; after that, and if you are lucky, you will find a bridge of childhood and walk across it.” ― Truman Capote, Local Color
Tony Bones painting from the Kettle Gallery, For the Love of Kettle, Competitive Shopping Event
From my old online journal The Daily Epiphany – Sunday, November 15, 1998
Bowling alley
I spent the morning by going on into work. It is especially odd when I’m the only person at the huge factory. The parking lot empty except for my gold Taurus.
Tons and piles of paperwork I wanted to attack undisturbed, but I only chewed off a fraction of what I wanted to accomplish. Ambition and motivation were hard to find today.
Then I drove on down to meet Candy and the kids. Today was the Wildcat’s end-of-the-outdoor-season soccer party. We decided to hold it at a somewhat rundown bowling alley not too far from my work. We chose it because it was cheap.
I drive by this place often, you probably don’t. It has seen better days, the street it is on has seen better too. Displaced by newer roads it is now a backwater, a byway, only frequented by folks like myself that are constantly seeking back ways, shortcuts around the nearby railroad tracks.
The entrance to the lanes is flanked by two large plaster lions. They are often repainted in garish colors; today they were a tawny beige and shit brown. Between their outstretched paws each cradles a bowling ball, these were painted a bright blue. I rubbed one cerulean orb for luck as I passed by.
When I pushed the door open and entered the alley I was assaulted by the stench of cigarette smoke, some fresh, some echoes of ancient puffing. It didn’t take long to get used to it though, and the place was clean and well-run. And it was cheap. The neighborhood must be run down more than I thought, one feature was public surveillance cameras trained on the parking lot so you could keep an eye on your car while you bowled. The kids liked watching their friends arrive on the monitors.
Everyone seemed to have a good time. We rented four lanes for two hours. The kids played on three lanes and the adults on one. For those of you that don’t hang out in such places, there has been a big change in bowling to accommodate small children and recapture the family bowling market. There is a selection of lightweight balls for kids, with no holes in them. The kids simply heave these down the lane the best way they can. There are folding bumpers that are extended out to fill the gutters, so the kids will almost always be able to hit at least a few pins.
Lee really bowled well and had a blast. Nick did too, though he whined and griped the whole time. “I’ll never get the hang of this!” “I’ll never get a strike!” He had his premature teenager disease bad today; which is frustrating for everybody around him.
The adults had fun too. Candy bowled on one of the bumper lanes and ended up with a respectable score. For me, of course, the primary attraction of bowling is the thrill of wearing rented shoes.
We bowled, handed out trophies, ate cupcakes, the usual stuff. We found out that the team the Wildcats beat yesterday in indoor had never lost a game before.
As I was standing around I noticed a glass covered, framed letter mounted on the wall. It was from some bowling consulting firm congratulating the bowling alley owner on his modern, impressive facility. It went on gushing for several paragraphs before concluding with the sentence, “And we are confident in saying that your bowling facility is one of the top one or two percent of all bowling centers in the entire country.”
I looked closer and the yellowed letter was dated 1985.
“If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery–isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.” ― Charles Bukowski, Factotum
Nancy Best Fountain, Klyde Warren Park, Dallas, Texas
Bill Chance 