"You Shouldn't Have..."

Raw Materials: Smells Better than Your Average Papermill as Well

I went round to Martin's house last night with the promise of scotch and traveller's tales. He and Tanja had just returned from a four-week trip to Thailand that they'd been planning for the best part of twelve months.
They showed me their photos, the bagain knock-off Oakleys and Ray Bans, the cheap Swiss Army watch, the hand-woven silk scarves they plan to hang on their sitting room wall; they showed me the tasteful wooden fruit bowl and the miniature Buddha. Then they gave me my gift - elephant dung writing paper. It doesn't smell of shit but I don't relish licking those envelopes.

Hank Vegas: The Saga Continues...

Hank Vegas & The White Lightnin'

Last weekend at the Rodenberry House in Juliette, GA, Hank Vegas & The White Lightnin' made another step in the direction of what will be most assuredly world domination by the end of the year. For all of the fans who have been asking for this stuff (and you know who you are) here's a little taste. More to come.

Driving (New Song) - MP3

Another Way to Lie Take 1 - MP3

Another Way to Lie Take 2 - MP3

Another Way to Lie Video Footage - 12.7MB (requires Quicktime)

Pat on the Back

Marines.com

Hey! Hey! all you little people. Marines.com won the Site of the Year Award from Favorite Website Awards, and aren't we proud?!?! That goes with our Communication Arts site of the week award (there's only 52 of them per year), and the Adweek article written about the site. Goes to show you how well an semi-ex-Marxist can lead a project to an end that he never foresaw. Now, let's get a few more boys to sign up for the futile war for the lustful crude. and to get revenge for ole papa Dubya!

Collateral Damage

These bombs do more in seconds than a team of dentists do in a full day.

Reporter: Can you explain the effect that a 100 pound bomb has on anyone who is nearby the explosion?

Colonel: Basically, the sheer force and shockwave of a 100 pound bomb will knock the teeth out of anyone in a half-mile radius.

Reporter: Can you describe the humanitarian efforts being made, specifically what types of food are we dropping for the people living in the area?

Colonel: [Chuckle] Various things like beef jerky and peanut brittle.

Hwy. 29

Time measured in dotted and solid yellow lines as we cross the Lone Star State.

Debris blows all around the highway tonight as assorted beer cans from assorted truck stops clank and roll under the seats of the 1970 Ford Sport Custom, 3 on the tree. We cruise through west Texas at the speed of sound, it seems, as the AM radio just loses the last remnants of a classic country station. Willie sings "grew up dreaming..." and then the fade to white noise.

White heat rises from a desert and we have an extra 5 gallon bucket full of gas which once held yard herbicide in the tail, and a large funnel, for we have heard that these trips can require such desparate measures. Beer gotten at various truck stops along the way leads me to doubt the commitment to the given clientele, or doubt the 18 wheelers, lorries, that move along the road beside us heading to points further in the southwest. Some even as far as the coast, packed with Texas crude oil and petroleum of varying grades.

Tonight we are running. Running from something 'larger than us', otherwise we should stay and fight, but we realize the feds or locals are gonna catch up with us quickly unless we get the jump on them, and that meant a departure from Georgia in the middle of the night.

I packed a guitar, three packs of beef jerky, and the tiny keychain license plate she gave me before she moved up north. You packed the leather jacket that you just got back out of hock, the picture of your college girlfriend that you have since lost contact with, and a Polaroid camera in case we were to forget.

The ham sandwiches from 180 miles back need to get us through Monday, at least according to my calculations and budget.

I think, and talk of, Jennifer Connely in Waking the Dead and you pass me another beer. We listen to your song Hwy. 29 (requires Quicktime) on the cassette player after the good country AM radio runs out. It was about Phoenix before we decided to stop and rest. A friend of mine had called on the cell phone to tell me she was there and we made dinner plans for a diner I had to look up the location of on a map that was 10 years too old. The desk clerk at the front desk told us where to go for "a good time" and that is where I dropped you with plans to return 3 hours later for retrieval.

The sky was dark and the stars shone for awhile unlike anything I had seen in the east. Especially at sundown when the stars were out and a brilliant blue approached from the same direction that we had come.

I never returned to the brothel as you probably know by now. Last I heard you had made it back to Georgia by way of bus and train. I'm sorry I took all the money, but we were bound northward by the end of the night. Through Portland where I knew I had friends who would put me up for a couple of nights. And then even further, sleeping in the car along the way, to Anchorage where they were about ready to have full days of sunlight which I had always heard of and wanted to see. Carl said we could stay with him as long as we needed to get on our feet, when I called him from Portland. I told him all about Emma and the man she was trying to get away from, and he said this was not the first social service work he had done.

I heard from Algin that you had come back and answered to the police and the DA. That you had plea bargained, but had taken responsibility for the whole thing. I appreciate that. You know I have been needing to get away for a long time now. I thought it would be to California, SF, and Kurt, but that just wasn't in the cards.

When things settle down a bit, and the path seems safe, and your probation is over, I will try to send some money from the fishing gig to you so you can come up and we can drink like fish and howl at the moon again. Although there are not many women up here, the ones that are get prettier the longer I stay here. Emma left recently to go see her parents and niece back in NC. I don't expect her to return, as I have made things unbearable here for her lately.

I can't figure out if this is a story or letter as I started writing it 4 months ago when we were on the road, so I won't sign it, because you could have just as easily written most of it.

Bathroom

Scene in bathroom 3.36 hours after our protagonist's departure.

This is what she said: "Do you think I'm a sexual person?" I said: "I don't know, probably." She said: "Well, actually I'm not a very sexual person. What made you think I am?" I said: "Your lips."

This conversation took place in the downstairs bathroom just off the kitchen. She'd dragged me there to escape the raging New Year party that filled the rest of the house. We'd only just met - I sat on the edge of the bath while she locked the door.

New Year's Eve is, in my experience, one of the calendar's most disappointing events. There seems to me to be a counter-correlation between the anticipation of pleasure and actual pleasure that invariably reaches its peak on December 31st . So, in view of the fact that I rarely have anything like approaching a good time at such parties, I had decided to stay at home with a bottle of wine and watch television. When one of my housemates heard of my plan she insisted I went along to the pub and then a party where there would be people who's company I would enjoy. That is how I ended up locked in a bathroom with a beautiful, though sadly not very sexual, young woman.

She lifted the toilet lid; she lifted her skirt; she sat down; she pissed. We'd only just met.

When she'd finished she sat next to me and reached into the bath where cans of beer and cider lay cooling in icy water. She grabbed one, pulled back the ring, took a couple of swigs and handed the can to me.

She said: "What do you do?" I said: "I'm a waiter." She said: "My boyfriend's outside." There was a knock at the door and she got up and unlocked it. A guy I'd been talking to earlier poked his head around the corner. He was her boyfriend.

She left the party at around 7.30 a.m. While her boyfriend had been calling a taxi she'd given me her phone number. She said: "Text me."

E-mail

Subject line of email received today:

"Complimentary free gift at no charge!"

Happy New Year | Part 1

Greens for money.

It was the greens that made me want to kill her.
Well, the lack of really. She was from some suburb of
Chicago, something with a W in it, Winetco, or
Wilmont, something with a W. Like coming from Chicago
excused her from knowing about these things.

"You never heard of it?"

"Nope."

That's all she said the first time I asked her. Nope.
Just a simple nope while she kept on mashing the
potatoes.

"On New Year's Day you have black-eyed peas, greens
and pork." I said, still not believing she'd never
heard of this.

"Hmm."

I remember that first year her mashing those potatoes
kind of turned me on. And I wasn't too upset about
the greens then. So I went up behind her and wrapped
my arms around her. She liked it then too. I
whispered in her ear.

"Black-eyed peas for luck." I kissed a little bit on
her ear. "Greens for money," and kissed again. "And
pork . . ."
I couldn't ever remember what pork stood for so I
just slapped her on her tight ass. She jumped and
almost spilled the bowl full of potatoes. We stripped
and fucked right there on the floor before she could
finish mashing them. That was a while ago though. We
had cold potatoes and steak for our first New Year's
Day together. Steak and potatoes stands for nothing
that I can think of.

New Year

The Sky is Falling! The Sky is Falling!

It hasn't been the best new year so far. I've been in a funk and the walls that surround me seem to be tumbling, which could be freeing, but they also hold up the roof, and it is now falling on me. As we are building up the troops near Iraq, my troubles seem to coagulate as well. Dubya says he is doing all possible to avert while we continue to clog, and I seem to be ignoring my own little clot.

I can throw myself into work, into the charts and graphs, checklist, budgets and schedules and try to forget that the sky is falling. falling gently all over Georgia tonight. Skyfall is general all over the Southeast tonight. It is rain and hail, touches of snow in the higher altitudes, and chicken eggs across the coastal plains.

Ultimately I have become conflicted, some would say afflicted with confliction. The heart desires what the head does not. I am on a boat, or I am a boat, that will not sail. The captain is at the pub, drunk, and has yet to report for duty. All the mates are shacked up with one portside hooker or another, and the galley men are stuck inside locked cabins... cursing. There are barnacles resembling my mother attached to the starboard hull and black seabirds circle about scavenging for the leftover remains of fast-food wrappers, beer bottle tops, psychologically aborted babies.

I swash the deck for a while, until night fall. Make a snack of presbyterian wafers and cream cheese with chicken guts. A tisket, a tasket, dead babies in a basket. An oilslick carrying dead marine life stretches between me and the sun going down, and even farther, to the whalebone descending to the left and down the street, in the neighborhood where the billions of stars shone and used to seem real.