Grannie's Dark Cellar

It was scary....it looked like a door to hell. I was five years old. Grannie was VERY old. In fact she was the oldest person I knew. She actually was only 90 years old. She lived on Haldeman Avenue, off Frankfort Ave. The street was very hilly and was paved with brick cobblestones. I thought that was cool and a bit weird.










She lived alone in a little "shotgun house," which was immaculate, as she cleaned maniacally daily. She had very few modern appliances. She had a television, which was very strange because it was round--looked like a porthole on a boat. To my dismay, it did not work and probably had not functioned for some time. So, I would go outside and play whenever we visited Grannie.









There was a small back porch with shade where I would sit and play with Hot Wheels cars. In back of that, a tiny backyard existed. Grannie, whose actual name was Carrie Graves, had a beautiful rose garden on the side of the house and a larger one with other flowers in the back yard. She worked on pruning , weeding, harvesting the flowers nearly every day. She also, at 90 years old, cut her own oawn with a push mower (non-electric, non-gasoline powered!). I had never seen such a contraption, and she let me try it and it was hard work. You had to push it and then pull it back and forth, etc. I told Grannie she ought to get a gasoline powered mower so it would be easier--she just said , "naw."









There was one weird thing in the back yard......a big metal door-looking thing that in the ground near the back of the house. She had it locked always. I wondered what it was and what was in there and multiple hypotheses came and went in my little brain. I never asked about it or told her about my hypotheses.









Finally, one day, I asked her what it was. "It's the storm shelter, honey, " she replied. She unlocked it for me one day. To my surprise, it opened like the cellar thing in the Wizard Of Oz. We descended the creaky old stairs together. The only light was that which came in from the entrance....it smelled nice and woody, like cedar.









When we reached the concrete floor she pulled a string and a single hanging light bulb came on. Finally I could see. It was very cool and nice down there compared to the blistering horrible Louisville heat and heinous humidity.









Grannie said this was where we go if there is a tornado. Tornadoes are very common in Kentucky. This cellar was still quite scary...it was full of spider webs, and I sure did not want to go into the corners, which were dark. I stayed close to Grannie's side. There were many homemade wood shelves with lots of glass jars arrayed on them. I was fascinated. I asked what was in all the jars.









She explained that those were vegetables and fruit and jams she made and keeps there in case of emergency. These things, I thought in my little head, must be 40 years old or more! Then I peered at the faded yellow newspapers under the jars (lining the shelves.) Headlines were from 1945. I read some of the news from the paper. If I touched it it turned to dust--it was so old! I started to like the place because it was so nice and cool and dark and special down there in the horrific Summer. When she would let me, I would go down there from time to time, just to look around.









Whatever evil lurked behind the stairs sans light...I did not venture there because I was afraid. One reason I was afraid was that there were several GIANT spider webs (the round kind that radiate out from the center about 2.5 feet in diameter!) hanging dangerously low. At first I thought "holy shit! I better run!" Then I saw one of the spiders in a web. It was very very large! I was afraid to move. Remember, I was only 3 feet tall--give me a break!









I sprinted upstairs quickly, just narrowly avoiding another nasty huge web hitting my head. After that, I did not ever ask Grannie to go down into the cellar again (unless SHE came with me to fetch some vegetables or jam.) I preferred to sit on the porch in the shade, read a book, look at the beautiful rose garden and catch small the smallish greenish-bluish lizards and play with them a bit. Some would shed their tail, but I knew they grew new ones.









Occasionally the lizards bit me. It hurt a little, but then I realized I could squish the biting lizard simply by squeezing the lizard's belly. Lizard then realized it too! Lizard stopped biting me. I looked him in the eyes. I then put him down and let him go. He instead stayed a while then then finally a noise spooked him and he ran off into the tulip garden near the cellar door. I loved those visits to Grannie's house. She would go on to live to be 102 years old. I wrote to the president, Jimmy Carter and asked him to send her a birthday card on her 100th birthday, which he did! He and Rosalynn both actually signed it.

Memories of Zeus In New Orleans

This is (finally) another snippet of my book, Apeshit. I hope you dig it. Andre

When I was 14 years old, a freshman in high school, my father, as was his wont, decided to take me and my little brother on a vacation to New Orleans. We had never been there before (Timothy and I.) I don't know if my dad had been there before, I can't recall. It was a road trip, and that was great...got to see a lot of the country that way. We went in his 1978 Chevy Monte Carlo, which had a bitchin V8 engine, but enclosed in a small hood. In other words, it did not look like a fast car, but it was quite powerful. And my dad always drove fast. I liked that about him.

As the older brother, I got to rode shotgun. But, being kind and gracious, I did switch off from time to time on the trip with my brother, Timothy.  My dad, Bob, planning with excellent forethought, had a large plastic (insert name brand here) cooler full of iced-down sodas for Timothy and I and beer for him. Of course, that was back in the day, when drinking and driving was not such a mortal sin and capital offense. Dad was a bourbon salesman in those days anyway, and had a fairly high alcohol tolerance. Not that he was a drunk, he could just hold his booze quite proficiently. He was required, in the course of his job, to call on liquor stores and bars of all types, and schmooze with the owners and, of course, let them sample the product. And, to show them it wasn't hemlock, he of course, had a couple belts himself.

The scenery was greenery passing through Kentucky and Tennesee. As my future ex-mother-in-law would say, "verde con avaricio!" I should have taken that phrase, and her intonation, as a dire warning, but I was clueless, and naive and in love, so I chalked it up to some weird Madrilenyo saying...Flashin' past the windows were mainly cows, horses and beautiful pastures. But in those days, I was more interested in what was on the radio....incidently, my father, Bob, was (on the weekends, and at night) a rock and roll singer in a band. So, he kept up with all music, just like me, a teenager. He was a cool dad. That was wonderful, as most kids' dads were complete squares or red-necks where we grew up, in Okolona, Kentucky. Okolona, like Amsterdam, was actually below sea-level. In other words, it was a frikkin' recently-drained former swamp! In the outskirts of the incredible metropolis of Louisville, Kentucky. As I recall, as we were passing through Nashville we were groovin to "Takin' It To The Streets," by the

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Doobie Brothers. Bob was a big fan of the

Doobie Bros, and eventually would take Timmy and I to see them in our first "real" rock concert later that same year, but lest I digress.....I, as per my duties as first officer (when riding shotgun, we were first officer, like Spock on Star Trek!), had to multitask. Of course, these were in the days when only rich people owned 8-track Quad stereos in their rods, so fm radio was king. "No static at all, man!" I took very seriously the job of tuning out country music and finding the local rock and roll stations. Other duties included opening and passing my dad a beer, so he could chill, while driving. Then, in an extraordinary gesture of trust, Bob would take a catnap, and order me to drive while sitting in the middle seat of the car (actually where the arm-rest could fold up or be lowered). I would drive with my left hand, although I am right handed. This I did for as long as I could stand, usually 15-27 minutes, then I would wake the captain and politely ask him to resume at the con.

He'd splash his face with the icy water from the cooler and resume, singing all the way down the highway. I was a shy boy and played percussion on my legs and hard surfaces of the car interior. Since Bob was a powerful and professional singer, I felt my crummy voice would only disrupt the music. My brother would sing occasionally from the back seat, and also add hoots, claps and vocally-imitated guitar solos. Bob always amazed me, as he knew the words to EVERY song, even ones that had just come out! He told Timothy and I how his band, the Monarchs, had cut several records at RCA and Mercury studios in Nashville, as we passed fifty-seven signs advertising the Grand Ole Opry. Daddy was a friend of Glen Campbell, as the band had toured with the Beach Boys in the early sixties, and it was one of those periods where Brian was having an episode of spiritual emergence. So, Glen was filling in as the lead singer on that tour. At that very moment, daddy was doing his best John Fogerhty as he wailed thru "Travellin' Band." "Won't you take me down to Memphis on a midnight ride--I wanna move! Playin' in a travellin' band--yeah! We were flyin' cross the land, tryin' to get a hand, playing in a travellin' band!" And we were.

It was a happy time. School had just let out, and the song "School's Out" by Alice Cooper came on the radio several times in the stretch of I-65 from Louisville to Alabama. Even Timothy and I would howl in every word to that song, overcoming shyness pretty-much involuntarily, because that song set our souls on fire! Alabama looked depressing, even at 110 miles per hour, as my dad would sometimes gun it to. The houses looked little more than shacks, like something out of the Grapes of Wrath, which I had just read for the first time that semester. What a great book! A frikkin' masterpiece! I didn't even know that there was a movie already made of it, with Henry Fonda as Tom Joad! But, hey, I am tripping forward in time, so I'll get back to the

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story...Timothy had gone to a yard sale and bought a wind-up Kodak Brownie (God, I am old now...) movie camera, and we had brought at least two cans of film for it. Timmy was always into photography, even as a little kid. He took a few shots at the landscape, but bein' as this was the first movie camera he and I ever used, they turned out very blurry and would nearly make you vomit from "movie-induced-motion-sickness." But again, I get ahead of myself. I felt bad and ashamed of our country when I saw that the people living in the shack-like houses in Alabama were all black. The black people I grew up with in Louisville had a house exactly like ours. So I was wondering, "what the hell?" Even at the advanced age of 14, I really did not understand how it was for colored people in "the South." Louisville was, in our minds, NOT part of the "South." It was really more like "the Mid-west." But, the "South" truly began about 10 minutes by car to the South of Louisville. When you hit Bullitt county you were in the South.

Returning to Alabama, we were tired (my brother and I) and began to ask dad if we were going to stop and spend the night at a motel, but he was hell-bent on driving straight through, all the way to New Orleans. So, I did my duty left-hand driving when he would tell me to. And, I must admit, I liked it, until my arm started getting stiff and sore...

We were going to stay at his girl-friend's house in Fat City, which I thought was a pretty funny name for a town. We had met Susan a few times before, and she was very pretty and nice. I could see why dad dug her. I got a rise in my Levi's a few times when she was staying at my dad's apartment in Louisville, before she moved down to New Orleans.

The radio blasting the entire trip-my father never, EVER, had silence in the car, and seldom at his apartment. I bless him for that..for he instilled in me a love of music and eventually an incredible knowledge of music, such that I would become an audiophile and a shower-singer. My dad, Bob, is now deceased. R.I.P.

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Shout out to Publishers

    




        A shout out to major publishers (Scribner's, Huffington Post Books, Viking, etc.) that my new book Apeshit is finished and ready to go to the highest bidder.  This is a major book with a wide audience that is certain to go to film quickly.  I have actress friends in mind for various parts already and they are ready!

        There is also much, much more Apeshit to read than the pieces put up here on the site, so tune in frequently and publishers, email me or contact me via this blog!  Lots of moola to be made people!  Prost!

When my sister-in-law Elena Vag fiched me

I was a young ameican.....and I was conversant in Spanish and went to Sopain.  Esplaya  i mean Espanya.......met a young higger there and she besuckled me away from the others.........we got married etc, yadda yadda yadda.

Misery ensued, after her sister Vag fiched me.  See, Elena Fernandez Leon de Cordoba y Bubion, was the HOT pattuttie of the family.........but she was too young when i met her sister........

Sje literally was like 11 yrs old when i met her and began to train her. I wanted to communicate to her how much I loved HER instead of her sister, whom I did love at fist....FIST   TO her memory, may she rot in Bad Stobokor,   KUNT!
Anyway, Elena turned out to be the smartest one in the family too!!!    that made it all the more worse for me.....every year for 10 years going b ack and forth between Spain and USA......each year /elene blossoming into such a magnificent beauty.  Seductive naturally.  Not trying to be super-sexy......just was.  Could not HELP it.

Them Damn Wild Catholics

     Now.  Catholics in okolona in those days, we were a tiny minority.  the KKK was more numerous.  They felt about as "mighty white" to US as to the "niggers."  They used to burn crosses in the area.  I saw hundreds with their stupid pointy Spanish insquisition sheet hats on marching like dumb white speed freak zombie nazis.  It scared me as a kid.  I hated them and identified with my black friends accross the street whom I had grown up with.  It helped that they joined the St Rita Church too.


    I learned not to trust Whitey.  then i found out weird shit from aunts and uncles.  We had slaves and bred with them in not so distant past.  We were also and still are heavily Cherokee on one side of family (mother's.)  So, I can identify since I come from Kaintuck.


andre

Fran's Death And My First Psychic Opening

       I was 24 years old.  I was a student in the second semester of my second year of Medical school at the University of Louisville,  in Louisville, Kentucky.  It was February, to be exact, Tuesday, Feb 16th, Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras.)

      I was on my bed listening to music as is my habit when I study.  I know I was studying something I did not enjoy too much, like Pathophysiology or somethinjg of that ilk.  The phone rings---I answer (this was before cellphones and "caller ID");  my friend Dan Anderson, voice sounding shaky, says "turn on the TV."  A bit rankled, I am like "what channel?  Why?  What is up?"  He was stuttering, which I had never heard him do before blurting out "any channel!"  I went over and turned on the small black and white TV I used in my room (hardly ever watch TV) and the news was on.  The big story was that a young man (our friend, high school and college classmate, Francisco Guerrero,) had been murdered, shot at point blank range between the eyes.  The killer, the ex-husband of Francisco's girlfriend, Rhonda, then shot himself through the head and died.  We later learned more grisly details.  He did this on Fran's front porch, in front of Rhonda and their son.

       But I knew why Dan was totally freaking out on the phone---I mean the news itself was horrible, tragic and inane, but it was weirder than most knew.  Dan, Fran (as he was called) and I had been out drinking two weeks earlier.  After sifting through some "pick-up bars" without success, we headed back toward the U of L main campus (Belknap Campus.)  There was a dive called Dino's Pizzeria, which served mediocre pizza but that night had some kind of special on "Little Kings Ale," which came in small bottles (hence "little")--we drank lots of them.  We were clinically drunk.  We, like many college, grad school, law school, med school students did this fairly often.  I cannot drink like I did back in school.  Now I can feel the next day's hangover looming after 2 drinks--the third often portends a hangover.

      We were going to be very hung over and it was about 1 a.m.  Fran was talking about his girlfriend, Rhonda, who was pretty and very nice (we'd all met a few times), but had a 3 year old son with her now ex-husband.  The ex-husband we'd seen, but none of us knew him.  When I did see him he always looked angry and a bit wild.  He had finished, like so many of us divorced fathers, "his weekend" with his son, and brought the child to Rhonda wherever she happened to be that night.  Francisco was the eldest male in his Filipino family.  He had a younger brother and a sister.  His family lived in one of the nicest neighborhoods in the South end of Louisville.  Both his parents were medical doctors.  When he was 16, his parents bought him a brand new red Chevy Z-28 Camaro.  A cool car to drive at 16--and we all liked to party in it--nice stereo etc.  Fran was naturally a bit flamboyant in his style.  I mean the way he did everything, he did it his own way.  I often admired the way he got to live (parents gave him money every weekend, gasoline card, etc) and felt a bit of jealousy.  But he suffered a lot as one of the few Asians in Louisville at that time, and children, even high-schoolers were quite nasty, racist and called him all sorts of names.  Usually he kept his cool and took the upper hand.  A few times he was forced to fight by bullies.  He was one of my all-time best friends.  He, Dan and I were all best friends, sharing most things, including women at times.

      Back to the point, I dropped the receiver of the phone and turned pale white as every hair on my arms and chest suddenly "stood up" at the heinous news.  My heart began to thump hard, and as I picked up the phone again, I could hear the blood pumping in my ears loudly.  I could not speak coherently, making grunts in between "fuck!" and "god-dammit!"
      Dan sputtered out---"remember Dino's with him 2 weeks ago?"  I was silent for a while, until, in sotto voce I  mumbled, "uh, yeah."  I was sitting in a booth that night looking across the table at Dan and Fran. I asked how it was going with Rhonda.  Fran said "great, she is wonderful and accepting regarding different racial stuff--even likes Filipino food."  (Translation: Lots of women in Louisville at that time, mainly white women like Rhonda, would never date "outside their race.")  So Fran had a tougher time sometimes finding nice women to date, and I was very thankful that he had met Rhonda.  I asked when he saw her last.  He said on Sunday night, the ex-husband, having used up his time with his son, brought him over and delivered him to Rhonda, at Fran's house.  I heard this and said, "hey man, that is not a very good idea Fran."  Oblivious, he said, "what?"  I said, "you (your parents) have a very nice elegant house, you drive a sports car, and now you are dating his ex-wife.  Making him bring the boy over to your house is like "rubbing his nose in it,"--dude, that guy is a red-necked hothead and you are really pushing it with him."  Fran considered this, apparently for the first time.  "Fran it is a good way to get your head blown off, man!" I said.  He characteristically laughed off my worries and continued to take Rhonda to his parents' house for the drop-offs of the little boy.

      Holy motherfucker.  Now I saw why Dan could not talk right and was totally freaked.  He reminded me of what I had drunkenly said.  I remembered looking at Fran while I was saying it.  At the time, I had no inkling this statement was prophetic.

      I felt confused, a bit scared, anxious and extremely sad all at once.  Dan and I agreed to meet after work/school the next day to talk about this.  Once together, we downed a couple of beers and slowly began to rehash that night at Dino's.  I let him first tell me all he remembered, so as not to color it with my memories.  He and I both had also seen Fran once (me, at a distance, in a parking lot--we mutually waved) since that night.  We both remembered the same things.  We both remembered my comment about "a good way to get your head blown off."
Strangely, since to my knowledge, this was the first instance of precognition I had ever had, and it felt simultaneously like "an accident" or a "coincidence" but also, the most wretched feeling that somehow, by saying it, maybe "I caused it."

       I felt an inner anxiety that would not go away.  I had trouble sleeping.  Over and over in my mind, the scene at Dino's played non-stop.  I shuddered when it got to the memory of looking him in the eyes and warning him about getting killed.  A female friend of mine in med school, who had dated Fran in high school, "found out" about his death in an "only-in-med-school-way," when during our Pathology class we had to attend a few autopsies.  Just in case someone might know the deceased they tell the students the names of the dead just before walking into the pathology lab/dissection area.  "Jerline" heard the name and froze.  She asked the professor to repeat the names.  This was how Jerline heard about his death (she was about to participate in his autopsy!)  She began to cry and ran out of the room, into the hall way.

      I talked to several other friends, hearing their stories about, "when they found out."  I kept my information to myself and Dan, and because I still felt so different, so "out of myself," I asked him not to talk about it to people, and he did not.  We went to the funeral and were pall-bearers.  Fran's family all wore little black pieces of jewelry, something like onyx on, as a sign of mourning.  They wore these every day for the next year.  I wore mine that day only.

       The next two weeks were unbelievable.  It was "as if" I were "accelerated" in time.  Not by much.  About ten minutes "ahead of reality."  Dan was with me much of the time in the next 2 weeks because he was the only person who knew about the "precognition" I had regarding Fran's impending death.  I slept very little and my mind was churning non-stop, wondering what this all meant.  Meanwhile, I'd say something out loud to Dan, and 10-15 minutes later, it would transpire in front of us.  It was kind of fun, but very weird feeling, like I was a "visitor from somewhere ELSE" and already knew what was going to happen.  I went through Catholic theological dogma in my head, physics, laws of chance, anything and everything I could think of to try and come up with an answer to what was happening to me (or had already happened.)  There was no easy answer to be found.
     
       Then everyday, everything started to seem to be "this is your life."  I would watch TV in the pool hall where we had gone to try to calm down.  When I listened to the news being read, my mind connected everything said to me and the recent strange events.  I asked Dan if he heard the same things.  He said he did, but his mind just accepted what was said at face value and did not feel it was somehow, "about me."  When I told him of all the constant "coincidences" I saw and heard, he indicated he understood.  (I now know I was seeing synchronicity as it constantly happens, but I had no clue then.)  It was easy to see Dan was very troubled by this, and was totally freaked out that I would say something, then in a few minutes, it would happen!  I began to worry about really watching what I was saying.  
      Then I began to feel Fran's presence when I was praying about this late at night.  It was as if his soul was actually contacting me.  Noises would occur strangely in my bedroom.  I asked God, to let the noises reflect a "yes" or a "no" depending on the noise.  I began to rehash the whole thing for the 99th time with God, and the sounds gave answers consistent with what occurred.  I felt a bit of relief, but since the sounds only did "yes" or "no" answers, I could not get an answer as to what this process was that had happened to me or what it meant.  Or whether it would ever go away.


      A bit of info about me at the time.  I was a believer in Christ, yet was an empiricist, using the "scientific method" to understand and test my world.  I had never gone to a "psychic" or "fortune teller," because everything I was taught said that kind of stuff was complete bullshit.  Up until that point, I saw life as normal "cause and event."  I believed God could do miracles, but what the hell was this about?  It was some kind of miracle (a BAD one) what occurred--exactly as I said it, and now, feeling like I was communing with his soul, etc, I was kinda freaking out.  I did not believe or know that I could do miracles.  But why this?  Why my best friend?  Shit, I cried hard for many nights.  I could not sleep so I studied all night many nights and would collapse asleep in the lecture hall when they turned down the lights for slides.  This was nothing new.  Medical school taxed you and challenged you more than anything I'd yet experienced.

       But I was changing--my mind was on overdrive.  I found I could do all sorts of new things with my mind that I could not do before.  I could read, study, remember, write out/draw out multiple complex ideas/theories simultaneously.  Studying, which I usually dreaded and hated, became a joy.  I could rip through books and retain the info faster and more efficiently than ever.  Also, I could "see into" people differently, by looking deeper in their faces/eyes.  I caught much more subtle messages, and developed "gaydar."  I realized a certain surgery student wanted me.  She was a beautiful Italian woman with bright blue eyes.  I had just gotten married Dec 26th 1987 to a woman I met while studying Spanish language and culture just before my second year started.  We honeymooned and she returned to Madrid to finish her last semester of her degree from La Universidad Complutense and I returned to medical school at Louisville.  I called her every day and we rung up huge long distance bills. She would get her visa and finish school and move over in six months.  Oh my God, six months of raging change, in the abilities of my mind.  I could tell who was coming around corners at school (hundreds of people moving about), before they made the turn.  Naturally, except for my friend Dan, who was there when it started, I did not tell anyone about this, as it was so weird it might scare them.  I noticed subtle movements in "inanimate objects," and I could watch flowers breathe.  [It was as if I were on, say, 300 micrograms of LSD, ALL THE TIME, without having taken any.  That last line, I say with many years of experience since those days (retrospectively speaking.)]  Everything was becoming more simple, more understandable to me.  I wondered why I had not understood it the first time.  The loneliness (missing my new wife, who was in Europe) and my horniness would drive me to give "the look" back to my Italian classmate. I do not mean to justify my actions, as what I did I feel was wrong, but I was on a roll and nothing could stop it.  I became a lot funnier--people got my jokes, and I began to finish people's sentences (which I now know is irritating.) La Italiana was an enigma, an exercise maniac who did 200 sit-ups a day.  Really.  We quickly became lovers, though she knew I was married, and I was certain this was a sin, according to the Church, since I knew I was married.  But it felt so good, so right, I did not see how it could be morally wrong.  It also helped de-focus my raging mind that had never slowed down since the phone call on mardi gras, as my mind doing all these things that later I would learn (15 or so YEARS later) were siddhis and what I was going through was actually my first psychic opening or "spiritual emergence."  By June, I had rented a small house and my brother Tim, and I moved from our apartment to this little house in the South end.  The plan was that Ana (my ex-wife) and I would have the back larger bedroom and Tim had his water bed in the front bedroom.

Grannie's Dark Cellar

It was scary....it looked like a door to hell. I was five years old.  Grannie was VERY old.  In fact she was the oldest person I knew.  She actually was only 90 years old. She lived on Haldeman Avenue, off Frankfort Ave.  The street was very hilly and was paved with brick cobblestones.  I thought that was cool and a bit weird.

She lived alone in a little "shotgun house," which was immaculate, as she cleaned maniacally daily.  She had very few modern appliances.  She had a television, which was very strange because it was round--looked like a porthole on a boat.  To my dismay, it did not work and probably had not functioned for some time.  So, I would go outside and play whenever we visited Grannie.

There was a small back porch with shade where I would sit and play with Hot Wheels cars.  In back of that, a tiny backyard existed.  Grannie, whose actual name was Carrie Graves, had a beautiful rose garden on the side of the house and a larger one with other flowers in the back yard.  She worked on pruning , weeding, harvesting the flowers nearly every day.  She also, at 90 years old, cut her own oawn with a push mower (non-electric, non-gasoline powered!).   I had never seen such a contraption, and she let me try it and it was hard work. You had to push it and then pull it back and forth, etc.  I told Grannie she ought to get a gasoline powered mower so it would be easier--she just said , "naw."

There was one weird thing in the back yard......a big metal door-looking thing that in the ground near the back of the house.  She had it locked  always.  I wondered what it was and what was in there and multiple hypotheses came and went in my little brain.  I never asked about it or told her about my hypotheses.

Finally, one day, I asked her what it was.  "It's the storm shelter, honey, " she replied.  She unlocked it for me one day.  To my surprise, it opened like the cellar thing in the Wizard Of Oz.  We descended the creaky old stairs together. The only light was that which came in from the entrance....it smelled nice and woody, like cedar.

When we reached the concrete floor she pulled a string and a single hanging light bulb came on.  Finally I could see. It was very cool and nice down there compared to the blistering horrible Louisville heat and heinous humidity.

Grannie said this was where we go if there is a tornado.  Tornadoes are very common in Kentucky.  This cellar was still quite scary...it was full of spider webs, and I sure did not want to go into  the corners, which were dark.  I stayed close to Grannie's side.  There were many homemade wood shelves with lots of glass jars arrayed on them.  I was fascinated.  I asked what was in all the jars.

She explained that those were vegetables and fruit and jams she made and keeps there in case of emergency.  These things, I thought in my little head, must be 40 years old or more!  Then I peered at the faded yellow newspapers under the jars (lining the shelves.) Headlines were from 1945.  I read some of the news from the paper.  If I touched it it turned to dust--it was so old! I started to like the place because it was so nice and cool and dark and special down there in the horrific Summer.  When she would let me, I would go down there from time to time, just to look around.

Whatever evil lurked behind the stairs sans light...I did not venture there because I was afraid.  One reason I was afraid was that there were several GIANT spider webs (the round kind that radiate out from the center about 2.5 feet in diameter!) hanging dangerously low.  At first I thought "holy shit! I better run!"  Then I saw one of the spiders in a web.  It was very very large!  I was afraid to move.  Remember, I was only 3 feet tall--give me a break!

I sprinted upstairs quickly, just narrowly avoiding another nasty huge web hitting my head.  After that, I did not ever ask Grannie to go down into the cellar again (unless SHE came with me to fetch some vegetables or jam.)  I preferred to sit on the porch in the shade, read a book, look at the beautiful rose garden and catch small the smallish greenish-bluish lizards and play with them a bit.  Some would shed their tail, but I knew they grew new ones.

Occasionally the lizards bit me. It hurt a little, but then I realized I could squish the biting lizard simply by squeezing the lizard's belly.  Lizard then realized it too!  Lizard stopped biting me.  I looked him in the eyes.  I then put him down and let him go.  He instead stayed a while then then finally a noise spooked him and he ran off into the tulip garden near the cellar door.  I loved those visits to Grannie's house.  She would go on to live to be 102 years old. I wrote to the president, Jimmy Carter and asked him to send her a birthday card on her 100th birthday, which he did! He and Rosalynn both actually signed it.

Beginning of Chapter Six, Apeshit!

At the pool hall by the railroad tracks on Preston street, just past the viaduct. The viaduct crosses Preston street and is painted a nasty blue-greenish combo, with lots of spraypainted graffitti. "REAGAN SUCKS!" people's names, names of their girlfriends, schools. John and I turned into Benny's poolhall, a grungy "guy-dive" if I ever saw one. I was extremely nervous. Glad he was driving, as I was going to try to calm down with a few bad beers. But, Benny's was the absolute CHEAPEST place to play pool and there were many (like 20) tables, so you could always get one for yourselves without having to "play someone for the table(a male macho ritual where ante is sometimes upped to buying alcohol). It cost two dollars per person, per hour to get a table. The only choice in alcohol was beer because in Kentucky there are beer licenses and liquor licenses and the beer ones only are much cheaper and easier to obtain. Benny's must have been there for 40-50 years at least. Tons on people had lost all their money due to the pool sharks who'd come in dressed scruffy, posing as a "nobody." Then you'd watch them chat someone up, and eventually say, hey mister, I got that table, you want to hit a few? The friendly stranger to the newcomer (read "sucker") insists on "buying the first round." Two Blatz Lights are retrieved and slurped in between breaks and calling pockets. I watch them occasionally from my table as does John because we know the one guy is a professional--we have seen him in action before and at other pool halls. We go to the bar and order the best beer they carried, Miller High Life. All the beers only came in cans at Benny's. Glass encouraged violence he said. He was likely correct.

This was the strangest day of my life. Playing pool was a way to focus the mind and calm the nerves. I broke; two ball went into the corner pocket. I kinda chugged my Miller, drinking about one half the 12 ounce can. I never do that. My hands trembled a bit and I was sweating even though it was not cold.

I was a medical student at the University Of Louisville (Kentucky) and John studied physics there as a grad student. We had gone to the same high school, St. Francisco de Sales....off Newburg road.  

A different Burroughs

The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It's not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work.

AUGUSTEN BURROUGHS

THE PIGS AND "THE SECURITY STATE"

sunday, september 26, 2010

The Pigs And The Security State

Well. What a way to spend 30 minutes of an otherwise pleasant Sunday afternoon...

Two hotshot young piss ant pigs just HAD to pull me over after I made a perfect turn.

They claimed they pulled me over for not having a license plate in front. I told them that in the state it is registered in, you don't need one. They then asked me "all the questions" intended for one to incriminate oneself on anything.

I was not cuffed, but made to "spread 'em" while they took everything out of my pockets. Did it rough too, so I'd make a move of "resisting." I did not. I wanted to rip their lungs out. I did not.

Put in the back of the hot squad car. While they ransack my car.

Finally, they said, you are free to go.

I said nothing and left.

Now, I SAY-----

"Die Hard AND WITHOUT HONOR, MEANINGLESS

DEATHS!!!! PAINFUL TOO! YOU CAPITALIST SCUM

SWEINHUNDS!" "DIE!"

ANDRE S LANGE MD

The Pain Exchange

Lately my mind has been like a "phone bank," or whatever they used to call those places in the old days, where if you wanted to place a long-distance call, you got connected to an operator who'd talk to you, then plug your wire into a hole that connected you to either the person you were trying to call or to another such operator, who'd then connect you. Except, instead of connecting a call, it is like a phone bank of pain. I think a thought--that leads to a memory trace or to a group of associations to that idea. Those inevitably are plugged into the associated pain server. A massive feedback flood of pain rushes to my thalamus.

I instantly try to "hang-up," to disconnect literally, the thought that led to so much pain, way too much to stand. But it won't let me hang up! It won't let me disconnect. I am STUCK literally and figuratively with all this pain. So, then my mind goes on a logic-search--how to stop this process?--how to short-circuit this crappy pattern? First--how long has pattern been occurring? Well--at least since 2004...no wait, likely since ~1998. In some form, since 1998 it has been going on, but it has grown much worse, much more intense since 2004, and likely worse since 2009.

To make matters more complicatedly agonizing, when it connects to the "pain-association cortex" areas, it also runs just a few side wires into holes that lead to.....of all things-----------pleasure. So, the things that bring pleasure also bring pain. But I am thinking these thoughts first and foremost to feel the associated good feelings--like the pleasure, the laughter, the happiness. What has happened to the associated emotional charges that are/were connected to my memories? How has it happened that memories that used to provoke only great positive associated emotions now--the same memories---when I try to cheer myself up--lead me further down the rabbit hole of agony?

It is like someone has gotten into my memory like a computer virus does to one's hard drive, and mucked with my thought/memory---feeling-associations and changed the ratios of good to bad and pleasure to pain.

How does one change these back? Any neurohackers out there know a way to put right the associations and feelings that are supposed to be matched with the thoughts?(PM me.) Do you have to know how to write "emotico-java?" The thing my mind naturally starts doing is to avoid the thoughts all-together--that is, its one and only log of what used to be known as "happy thoughts." It is avoiding all of those (its only source of pleasure) because they are now INCREASING pain instead of alleviating it. So, then the mind kicks back in and says "if happy thoughts-files have been corrupted, then you are fucked!----the best you can do is meditate. Have no thoughts." Thank God for it coming up with this idea. It appears now to be the only solace.

Life Vs Art

Somewhere, it is said, in some movie titled I-can't-recall (and certainly in a book, prior to that I am sure....)

That life imitates art.....or, or was it, art APES life...well goddamimmit, it was one or the other............and I pretty sure it was conceivably not the former.

Cue music now (Phil Collins "Sue sue psuedio!" rolls with credits.....)

Jan 2010 (the year the HAL-9000 redeems himself)

Argument With Self

I am posting an argument I have been having with myself,

not really for public consumption, but just maybe to help me

figure what to do or not.

it regard the 'appropriateness" or 'inappropriateness"

of posting a chapter of Apeshit that i wrote a long time

ago, about events that occurred in 1986 in Italy.

It is a very difficult subject, and is exquisitely

personal. But, memoirs tend to be that way.

Nevertheless, the content of the story is well

unsettling to say the least.

I am Not afraid about pissing off someone else

involved in the memory/incidents, but the

general reader may (wrongly) jump to the

conclusion that what is related is "just too

far out to be real," then dismiss the rest of

the book that is nowhere near THAT weird.

So, one argument is--well you already wrote it

and it helped YOU to purge the scary difficult

memories and WRITE it up.....so you might

as well put it out there.

The other counter argument is that folks

of limited or conventional knowledge will conclude

that the writer is a nut.

It is always very dangerous to be perceived

as crazy.

It is very dangerous and nearly certainly

leads to persecution, even torture.

So, you see why this particular episode of my

life that occurred in Italy one night, might

be a hard thing to consider really putting

into print.

Yet, a recent movie was made about the

very same subject matter,

which was very accurate,

and maybe THAT indicates that the

general public COULD accept reading

such a thing. (?)

the movie I refer to is, the new

Milla Jovovich film

"The Fourth Kind."

I plan to put up a review of that,

likely on my other website,

News, Rants, Reviews, Etc.

Unsure what to do about the

Padua chapter.

Will meditate more on it...

he says as the flame on the candle

grows to three times its

previous size and height.

Long Seduction

A coupla years ago, right around this time of year, yeah, almost exactly--some really weird shit was going on in my world. My personal world. I was at a loss to explain it at the time.

But since I have had two long years to think it over, I have concluded that it was not a devious Machiavellian mind-fuck done at my expense for kicks. I have also concluded that it was not completely illogical the way this being went about "meeting" me and "studying" me. It was like "stalking" but it never went over the line--you know, just showing up frequently in places I frequented, often amazingly in a hotel room down just down the hall from mine (this part was nearly constant for 2 and 1/2 months--the hotel deal), trying to get access to our hotel's security camera tapes (video) to make a copy for herself, especially when we were both in the picture. No doubt the latter thing reflects her years of "Hollywood" brainwashing and she wanted those tapes to make some sordid film to masturbate to. I take that back, it was devious and it was a mind-fuck.

But, I repeat, it was not Machiavellian. It was a mind-fuck in a literal sense. And it was devious in that only a bedeviled woman like Judith could have come up with this incredible complexity--like an obsessive witch who likes to work puzzles! But it was not done with malice or ill-will.

There is a link to a bunch of photos where the great majority of the antics occurred--I don't want to name the hotel, as I promised I would not, except for the plug I will give them in a book. You may have to become my Facebook friend to see the pictures, I am unsure of that.

It is well-documented from several xenobiological expert sources that the courting rituals and mating rituals of her species are exceedingly bizarre, prolonged (at times painfully) and complex, especially for other humanoid species to understand, much less tolerate.

It often involves vile language use, even hate-speech or threatening terms, and obscene words (what ever those are.) It involves metaphor exquisitely, and these must be interpreted exactly, lest horrible attrition result. Let's not leave out the ESPionage and technological cluster-fuck. It appears to involve hacking. At least, on Gaia, that is what it is called in 2007-2009. Hacking--unauthorized entry into private computer systems.

It involves or has involved HORRIFIC PERIODS OF WAITING. To males not of her genetic origin, or only partly sharing that lineage, these periods of waiting are EXCRUCIATINGLY painful and are obviously totally unnecessary and undesirable. So, in essence, part of the "courting/mating" behaviour of these freakazoids is to "turn off" the very person you are trying to "turn on!" Go figure. If I had only found that V/K dictionary I needed in A'dam it would have all been much less painful and more logical. But after searching 6 bookstores with extensive foreign/alien clientele, I found my search for such a book in vain. I just had to gut it out.

They (several non-Earth natives) say the human today is the monkey of the year 2012, but if I were the turtle, I would say to the rabbit, "corre corre tia!" Apeshit!

Finally, another bit of Apeshit!

This is, finally, another actual chapter from my memoir, Apeshit.

Red lightning flashed, arcing in the sky over the Prinsengracht, making cosmic reflections for us all, as I took a huge lungfull of Nederweed Dutch Superpolm #47. My green glass hookah gurgled with all the gorgeous intonations of the borborygmi of the spheres. Strumming my ukulele, I sang "And the band played on." It was 3 A.M. At last, I was feeling no pain (finally!)

The black and white cat that hung out in the back courtyard of the Hotel Prinsen mewed melodically, as if, perhaps, he liked the song. Meanwhile, back in the jungle (of my hotel room) I was busy writing a screenplay for a bunch of rich, spoiled, silly-assed actresses and actors that will not be named here. They will, however be named in another chapter. The regen lovingly pelted the Japanese miniature oak trees and the pines in the terrace. I was fortunate enough to have a room on the ground floor (which is, like, the basement, in Europe)--my windows opened out onto the patio of the terrace. Windows slightly ajar, so I could smell the rain and the perfume of the jasmine flowers that were about 8 meters from the room. The fragrance, combined with the lovely taste and smell of the kif was ecstatically orgasmic. Truly. By this point I was getting pretty mellow and relaxed, feelin' good. The words were coming easily to my hand as I re-wrote the screenplay in longhand. My computer was too unreliable and "weirdly glitchy"--unpredictable in a predictable unfunny pattern, if you get my drift. I had just had fantastic sex with an alien-themed duo of beautiful escorts, and earlier that day I had a surprise visit from my Dutch girlfriend, who only had fifteen minutes, literally. She was being held against-her-will by a bunch of "Romulan"-sympathizer fascist assholes at a place called "Mentrum" on Tweede Constantijn Huygenstraat.

She had a 45-minute "pass" to go outside. I visited her there at the concentration camp ("Mentrum") as often as I was permitted and always smuggled her shaggies that I had previously rolled with good Lebanese hash inside. Back to the moment in the rainstorm, yours truly was doing the 97th re-write of the Star Trek screenplay for the ungrateful infidels (at Paramount Pictures.) Thunder erupted with a powerful magnitude (I estimated about 110 decibels--really,)---the sound, via my delightful cocktail of kif and shots of Bessenjenever, morphed into a thundercast of "Shut-The-Fuck-Up!", (a pop-song I heard in a disco on Leidseplein.) I was nearly nude, wearing nothing but my Georgio Armani silk underwear that I bought for 35 Euros at Magna Plaza. Nee, I also had the Japanese yukata I had just bought that very day in Zeedijk, on as well.

The sweet woman at the counter in the Asian store in the Zeedijk area told me "you have a green and orange penis," whatever that meant. To which, I replied, "whatever" and "bedankt." I had done my usual re-wiring of the hotel room, turning off/disabling all the usual moron-supervision devices. The sconce lighting fluorescent bulbs were still a bit too bright due to the 5 grams of Copelandia cyanescens I had for breakfast earlier that day. So, I put my purple "Eat It Raw" tee-shirt (from the Silver Bucket Oyster Bar that I had saved since I was 15 years old) over the top of the sconce. It added a nice hue to the visuals that were still playfully lingering. The bed was still wet and reeked of pussy and cum. The cool welcome humidity of this soaked though the yukata. Incidentally, FYI, these visuals were not kaleidoscopic fractal imagery, rather, strange black and white elfin-looking two-dimensional creatures that scurried playfully around the room, touching nothing. Re-starting the re-write of the third section of the screenplay, wherein I tissue-interview Seven-Of-Nine, with a cat-o-nine-tails, I, Andre, was startled suddenly (very suddenly!) from my reverie and peaceful oasis on my Amstel river of tranquility by a female moaning in Taiwanese-dialect Mandarin---loudly.

She was obviously orgasming and involuntarily howled this wonderful sound--which simultaneously struck me as beautiful and also caused me to do one of those cartoon-like "hybeea-hybeeah" double-takes, and quickly realize that I recognized that voice. It was Sabrina Lee, my former psychiatrist from California. I was dumbstruck! For once!

I had been living in Amsterdam for about three months and was currently experiencing "european cashflow problems." Sitting cross-legged, in the lotus position three earth-days prior to this, I had been meditating (literally) on a lovely bridge over a canal at Zeedijk. Tour buses had disgorged their loads of Asian tourists and they proceeded, led by a young woman holding little red flag, in a herd, to parade in front of me. Deep into meditation, I was not looking carefully at the people as they went by. De pronto, out of my right-eye peripheral vision I saw Sabrina Lee and her friend Huoung Ho moving to my right at a fairly quick pace. My head nearly exploded. I tried to yell, but I could not speak, and the din of the crowd chattering in 19 different languages along with the outboard motors of the boats passing beneath me under the bridge contributed to the impossibility of my being heard anyway. Quickly, attempting to get up and go chase after her, I found my legs were stiff and would not move fast enough, due to sitting in the lotus position for 1/2 hour. By the time I got to my feet, and regained speech, I ran in their direction, faster than most people move. But there were hundreds of faces, hundreds of Asian faces, hundreds of pretty and ugly Asian faces, but I could not find my lover. I searched in that direction and about the Chinatown area of Zeedijk for another forty-five minutes or so for my former psychiatrist, in vain. I was "barbecued." That really hurt.

Jumping back to three days in the future, I had just heard the "di'"(beautiful in Mandarin)--~sixty-second orgasm-moan-song. Then I instantly recognized the voice--because she and I had seen each other weekly from 1998 to 2004. I at that time was also a psychiatrist, and was seeing her for psychotherapy. Strangely enough, in June of 2004 we became lovers, but that is not in this book. However, hearing her wail, I was flabbergasted! And she had the frikkin' audacity and ovaries to track me (somehow) and rent the room above me and be fucking someone that I later learned through covert channels "allegedly" was Robert Kennedy, Jr! I stopped my writing project dead in my tracks and laid back in bed. I began to meditate and focus on the couple upstairs. I began to use some of Russell Targ's techniques. I got a vision of Sabrina's smiling face.

At first, I was homicidally angry! Then, I thought about her (and him.) Then, I just wanted to kill HIM. Then I laughed out loud. Because I always liked Robert Kennedy (his dad, except for his heinous decision in the Senate illegalizing LSD-25.) And, I had kept up with Robert Kennedy, Jr.'s legal work on the environment and liked what he had done. So, the progression of feeling-thoughts is: at first a strong urge to kill both of them with a "Klingon" Ba'Le'th, then just kill him, then maybe just slap her, but ultimately I decided to say what the hell and vowed I would never send RKF, Jr. any more money.

To this day I haven't given any more money to his organization, but I still admire his work, and I was happy that, at least Sabrina was fucking Democrats! That was a good sign. I took it as a Buddhist good sign. I may have been the first Democrat she ever fucked.....and I am glad I helped her see the light.

Comments on the Left and Obama

These are some comments I posted on Yahoo's Buzz Up regarding an article in the US News and World Report--see article below:

Obama's Battle With the Liberal Wing of the Democratic Party

U.S. News & World Report 

    By Kenneth T. Walsh Kenneth T. Walsh – Fri May 29, 11:32 am ET

Four decades ago, the liberal, antiwar wing of the Democratic Party helped to force President Lyndon B. Johnson from office. Specifically, Johnson decided not to run for re-election in 1968 in large part because of rising primary challenges and increasingly vitriolic demonstrations against him. One chant that was heard often at anti-Vietnam War rallies was "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?"

The level of anger now is nowhere close to that level, but there are warning signs that President Obama is starting to generate serious opposition on the fiery left. There is increasing unease about his sending 21,000 more troops into Afghanistan, which some compare to the early escalations in Vietnam. [Read about Obama's 12 most important decisions]

There is disquiet that Obama has abandoned his promise to release photos showing brutal interrogations of suspected terrorists.[Read about Obama's torture problem]

There is consternation that he is moving toward using military tribunals to prosecute some terrorists, that he has not banned assault weapons, and that he has not acted aggressively enough to protect a woman's right to have an abortion.

Many liberals are also unhappy that Obama shows no interest in a "single payer" healthcare system in which the government would take the lead in guaranteeing adequate medical treatment. [Read about Obama's uphill battle to reform healthcare]

Among the groups that have been ratcheting up their criticism of Obama are the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, Public Citizen, and members of the 77-member congressional Progressive Caucus. [Read about Obama's journey from charismatic to polarizing]

But despite the disappointment in some quarters, most liberal Democrats have been giving President Obama a pass on his centrist policies, and he still enjoys high approval ratings from the public. The question is whether the overall patience of leaders and voters on the left will last much longer. [Read about why Obama's job rating stays so high]

White House strategists express confidence that they can keep most liberals in line for the foreseeable future. One reason is that Americans on the left have such lengthy wish lists on issues ranging from healthcare reform to legalizing gay marriage. They don't want to create any permanent break with Obama.

And White House officials say this core of the Democratic Party, with some exceptions, will continue to give its president the benefit of the doubt. They point to a meeting that Obama held with the Progressive Caucus in late April. "It was very cordial," recalls one attendee. "The sense I got from that meeting was that there was a clear desire to work through their differences and try to find compromises. There were no flash points."

It appears that after eight years of a Republican in the White House, liberals are willing to muffle their dissent. "There is such an overriding sense of relief that it's Obama and not George W. Bush in the White House," says Geoff Garin, a veteran Democratic pollster. "There is a pretty strong inclination to cut him a lot of slack." Garin also says that liberals "may say he is not tough enough on the banks or that he's keeping the troops in [Iraq] too long and not delivering quickly enough on 'don't ask, don't tell' [to change policy and allow gays to serve openly in the military]. But they are still delighted and thrilled that he is president of the United States." It also helps in muting opposition that Obama and White House officials are reaching out regularly to inform liberal leaders of what Obama is doing and to get feedback. The president's speech Thursday defending his plans to close the Guantánamo Bay prison--a move that is widely supported on the left--was part of that outreach. [Read about the members of Obama's inner circle]

White House advisers add that Obama will be pushed only so far to the left, and with good reason. Only 19 percent of Americans, after all, identify themselves as liberal, compared with 36 percent who say they are moderate and 41 percent who say they are conservative, according to the latest poll by Democracy Corps, a Democratic think tank.

Still, the next few months will be a time of testing. How many compromises will Obama accept on healthcare and on legislation designed to limit global warming and reduce U.S. reliance on foreign oil? How far will he go in courting conservatives on issues ranging from national security to abortion? Is he sliding ever deeper into a morass in Afghanistan, as LBJ did in Vietnam early in his presidency? [Read about Obama's challenges in Afghanistan]

The looming fight over Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court should ingratiate him to some critics for the time being, since she has strong support among liberals. But the overall uneasiness on the left is real and will remain a serious long-term problem for the new president.

My comments, also posted on Yahoo's Buzz Up:

Well,as I see it, IN OUR HUMBLE OPINION, we, the ultra-left of the Democratic Party must be RELENTLESS...that is, we have to keep track of each and everything President Obama is saying, doing and thinking, as well as all his advisors, cabinet, etc.  I made the mistake during the Clinton years of getting complacent, and figuring Bill would just do "the left thing"....but, shiest!  He increased the Drug War, screwed up equality for gays/lesbians, and did not significantly help the health-care debacle.  Granted, he did a lot of good things, such as not starting wars, balancing the budget, producing a surplus, etc.

But we lefties must be on Barack's ass about everything, and be unremitting and uncompromising.  The two fascist wars that Bush et al started, along with the attempted right wing coup of 9/11, gives us a clear starting point.  We must take our righteous anger to the streets and channel it in positive directions to teach Joe six-pack and Soccer-mom Sally that the "liberal agenda" is IN THEIR FAVOR!  We also need to seize control of the mainstream media and maginalize fascist monopolies, like FOX, MSNBC etc.  We must get the truth to the people (to be cynical, "the unwashed masses") and make the truth simple, understandable and palatable to them.  

The pressure is on US, and no other group can do as much good for ourselves (the USA) and the world.  It is due to the left and the union movement that we have weekends off, that we have any sort of national health-care (crappy and the world-wide disgrace that it is), and basically freedom of expression in general.

Time has come today!  Let us join together and organize, increase unions, march in the street (and not just in San Fran!), demand change, sign countless petitions, personally lobby the president and Congresspeople.  They WILL do what we DEMAND that they do.  It is our responsibility to make these changes a reality.  One last note, regarding something that needs MAJOR reform is the PRISON-INDUSTRIAL-COMPLEX-----there are FAR too many ways to get arrested in the USA.  It is, and I am not exaggerating, now like the old Soviet Union at its worst!  We MUST dismantle this Machiavellian horrific travesty--and it starts by dismantling the root of it all---The Drug War.  Adults must be allowed to put what ever plant, chemical, object or whatever into their own bodies.  Without this, we are little more than slaves, clearly indicating that we are OWNED by the State, rather than the State being for the people, of the people, by the people.  We must take BACK Cognitive Liberty!  It is the root of all other rights.

Memories of Zeus in New Orleans

This is finally another snippet from my forthcoming book, Apeshit.


Memories of Zeus in New Orleans


When I was 14 years old, a freshman in high school, my father, as was his wont, decided to take me and my little brother on a vacation to New Orleans. We had never been there before (Mengele and I.) I don't know if my dad had been there before, I can't recall. It was a road trip, and that was great...got to see a lot of the country that way. We went in his 1978 Chevy Monte Carlo, which had a bitchin V8 engine, but enclosed in a small hood. In other words, it did not look like a fast car, but it was quite powerful. And my dad always drove fast. I liked that about him.

As the older brother, I got to rode shotgun. But, being kind and gracious, I did switch off from time to time on the trip with my brother, Mengele. Why my parents chose to name him (that is his first name) after one of the most notorious inhumane torture-doctors, I have no idea. But, that's likely in another chapter and had to do with his destiny. My dad, Zeus, planning with excellent forethought, had a large plastic (insert name brand here) cooler full of iced-down sodas for Mengele and I and beer for him. Of course, that was back in the day, when drinking and driving was not such a mortal sin and capital offense. Dad was a bourbon salesman in those days anyway, and had a fairly high alcohol tolerance. Not that he was a drunk, he could just hold his booze quite proficiently. He was required, in the course of his job, to call on liquor stores and bars of all types, and schmooze with the owners and, of course, let them sample the product. And, to show them it wasn't hemlock, he of course, had a couple belts himself.

The scenery was greenery passing througgh Kentucky and Tennesee. As my future ex-mother-in-law would say, "verde con avaricio!" I should have taken that phrase, and her intonation, as a dire warning, but I was clueless, and naive and in love, so I chalked it up to some weird Madrilenyo saying...Flashin' past the windows were mainly cows, horses and beautiful pastures. But in those days, I was more interested in what was on the radio....incidently, my father, Zeus, was (on the weekends, and at night) a rock and roll singer in a band. So, he kept up with all music, just like me, a teenager. He was a cool dad. That was wonderful, as most kids' dads were complete squares or red-necks where we grew up, in Okolona, Kentucky. Okolona, like Amsterdam, was actually below sea-level. In other words, it was a frikkin' recently-drained former swamp! In the outskirts of the incredible metropolis of Loiusville, Kentucky. As I recall, as we were passing through Nashville we were grooviin to "Takin' It To The Streets," by the Doobie Brothers.

Zeus was a big fan of the
Doobie Bros, and eventually would take Mengy and I to see them in our first "real" rock concert later that same year, but lest I digress.....I, as per my duties as first officer (when riding shotgun, we were first officer, like Spock on Star Trek!), had to multitask. Of course, these were in the days when only rich people owned 8-track Quad stereos in their rods, so fm radio was king. "No static at all, man!" I took very seriously the job of tuning out country music and finding the local rock and roll stations. Other duties included opening and passing my dad a beer, so he could chill, while driving. Then, in an extraordinary gesture of trust, Zeus would take a catnap, and order me to drive while sitting in the middle seat of the car (actually where the arm-rest could fold up or be lowered). I would drive with my left hand, although I am right handed. This I did for as long as I could stand, usually 15-27 minutes, then I would wake the captain and politely ask him to resume at the con.

He'd splash his face with the icy water from the cooler and resume, singing all the way down the highway. I was a shy boy and played percussion on my legs and hard surfaces of the car interior. Since Zeus was a powerful and professional singer, I felt my crummy voice would only disrupt the music. My brother would sing occasionally from the back seat, and also add hoots, claps and vocally-imitated guitar solos. Zeus always amazed me, as he knew the words to EVERY song, even ones that had just come out! He told Mengele and I how his band, the Monarchs, had cut several records at RCA and Mercury studios in Nashville, as we passed fifty-seven signs advertizing the Grand Ole Opry. Daddy was a friend of Glen Campbell, as the band had toured with the Beach Boys in the early sixties, and it was one of those periods where Brian was having an "episode" (and I loathe that word, but I can't think of any otherword to describe it) of spiritual emergence. So, Glen was filling in as the lead singer on that tour. At that very moment, daddy was doing his best John Fogerhty as he wailed thru "Travellin' Band." "Won't you take me down to Memphis on a midnight ride--I wanna move! Playin' in a travellin' band--yeah! We were flyin' cross the land, tryin' to get a hand, playing in a travellin' band!" And we were.

It was a happy time. School had just let out, and the song "School's Out" by Alice Cooper came on the radio several times in the stretch of I-65 from Louisville to Alabama. Even Mengele and I would howl in every word to that song, overcoming shyness pretty-much involuntarily, because that song set our souls on fire! Alabama looked depressing, even at 110 miles per hour, as my dad would sometimes gun it to. The houses looked little more than shacks, like something out of the Grapes of Wrath, which I had just read for the first time that semester. What a great book! A frikkin' masterpiece! I didn't even know that there was a movie already made of it, with Henry Fonda as Tom Joad! But, hey, I am tripping forward in time, so I'll get back to the
story...Mengele had gone to a yard sale and bought a wind-up Kodak Brownie (God, I am old now...) movie camera, and we had brought at least two cans of film for it. Mengey was always into photography, even as a little kid. He took a few shots at the landscape, but bein' as this was the first movie camera he and I ever used, they turned out very blurry and would nearly make you vomit from "movie-induced-motion-sickness." But again, I get ahead of myself. I felt bad and ashamed of our country when I saw that the people living in the shack-like houses in Alabama were all black. The black people I grew up with in Louisville had a house exactly like ours. So I was wondering, "what the hell?" Even at the advanced age of 14, I really did not understand how it was for colored people in "the South." Louisville was, in our minds, NOT part of the "South." It was really more like "the Mid-west." But, the "South" truly began about 10 minutes by car to the South of Louisville. When you hit Bullitt county you were in the South.

Returning to Alabama, we were tired (my brother and I) and began to ask dad if we were going to stop and spend the night at a motel, but he was hell-bent on driving straight thru, all the way to New Orleans. So, I did my duty left-hand driving when he would tell me to. And, I must admit, I liked it, until my arm started getting stiff and sore...
We were going to stay at his girl-friend's house in Fat City, which I thought was a pretty funny name for a town. We had met Susan a few times before, and she was very pretty and nice. I could see why dad dug her. I got a rise in my Levi's a few times when she was staying at my dad's apartment in Louisville, before she moved down to New Orleans.

The radio blasting the entire trip-my father never, EVER, had silence in the car, and seldom at his apartment. I bless him for that..for he instilled in me a love of music and eventually an incredible knowledge of music, such that I would become an audiophile and a shower-singer. Zeus is now deceased. R.I.P.

Time For A Cool Change

I reflect on change and the concept of what it is, and how I react to it. Change can be ploddingly gradual, or lightning-quick, but it always elicits a reaction in one's psyche. And also, usually that reaction (or reactions) ends up influencing one's decisions and subsequent actions. For several years there seemed to be what I call a "Murphy's Law-times-(X)-Catch 22" process slamming me mercilessly in my face, to the point where I'd been flattened so many times that I'd "been down so goddamn long, that it looked like up to me," to quote Jim Morrison. What I mean is that everything that could have gone wrong DID, then it would recur over and over, until I finally thought I saw the light, then I would realize it was the light of another speeding train wreck hurtling towards me at warp speed, no less. Hit bottom motherfucker! Now again! !Sufre mamon! Now there, have you eaten enough crow, had to grovel enough just to live, had to take enough shit for forty lifetimes dealt out by hypocrites, blowhards and fascists? Yes, for God's sake, yes! Well have another, boy! You must keep apologizing continuously for the heinous offense of being who you really are! Know that it is the one thing the bastards will not tolerate at all. Just one more mission to fly, Yossarian. Shred, destroy all dreams and hope, lather and repeat. Have you, dear reader, ever experienced such a PAINFUL series of causation-waves?

I hope not, for your sake. It is bloody hell! Life becomes pointless. A bad "Groundhog Day" nightmare, where just when you think you'll be okay the damn alarm clock plays that same old song again, and you are back at square one. And don't feed me that standard new-age explanation for this phenomenon. "The universe was correcting me." God was showing me that I was on the wrong path, and kept knocking Saul off his frikkin' horse until he saw the light. Yet I stand unrepentant for my actions. I stand by them, live or die. Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees (Zapata.) I was not wrong--I was just being all that I am, and I'd be a liar, hypocrite or worse if I claimed otherwise.

Rage against the screwheads! Speaking of screwheads...several of my so-called "friends," "advisors" and "supervisors" turned out to be anything but helpful or supportive. It is astounding, but once you go down, it is hard to believe how many people you trusted pile on to get a few kicks in! I deal with that in my memoirs (Apeshit and two others) without naming the guilty or innocent. The folks I am speaking of have infinitesimally meager capacities to see themselves or to at least compare what they say with what they DO. And this despite Harvard educations, doctorates, Board-certifications in psychiatry and similar high "credentials!"
And I can speak frankly and clearly about these hypereducated folks because I was one of them too.

Yes, I was a Board-certified expert in psychiatry. I don't do that gig anymore. I don't know if I will ever go back to it. But the difference between me and the backstabbing weasels that I refer to above, is that I would not compromise my principles. And I was crucified for it. It hurt. It hurt so badly that eventually I quit the fight. I concluded it wasn't worth the misery. Eventually, all that ever mattered to me in my life was taken from me. At that point, I realized that the only logical thing to do was to "drop out" (as Dr. Leary put it) and give up the "game reality" the screwheads wanted to keep me trapped in, like a wolf with his foot clamped, bleeding in a steel trap.

I now am reinventing myself and being who I really choose to be. And, as Janis Joplin sang, "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." Exactly! Only after coming through the fire can the phoenix rise again to flight. I refuse to be anyone's whipping-boy, patsy or fool. To hell with those who would wish me to be. I choose to associate only with positive, real people--not phonies!

I close with a definition: Screwhead is a word coined by the late, great Hunter S. Thompson:
1) Anyone who has been down to the Crossroads (i.e. Faust) or 2) (modern) greedy, shameless, amoral corporate tools posing as compassionate conservatives…willing to do anything and speak Orwellian talking-points gibberish to seize and hold wealth and power.

Piece of Apeshit--"Dad gets young"

This is a small snippet from my book, "Apeshit."


When I was about 7 or 8 years old, I remember a day that my dad, who I believe was working for General Electric at that time, seemed to be around the house more for a couple of days, and was smiling more and more playful with me and my little brother.
He was about 28 or 29 years old at the time, played in a top-40 cover band on the weekends (see themonarchs.com), and was happily married to my mom at the time.
I was out on the front lawn and I heard the screen door close with a whoosh. My dad floated down the stairs and picked a dandelion. He walked over to me and said "do you know you can eat them?" Before I could say no, he popped it into his mouth and ate it, laughing. I laughed too! Then I ate one, and to my surprise, it was very good.

He then challenged me to a foot race. I loved it! I do not mean to imply that my father did not play with me regularly, (he did) it was just that he had so much more joy in his eyes this day. Back to the footrace...first I kept up with him (I liked to run the 100 yard dash at school)...then he blew by me like a rocket yelling "I'm the six-million-dollar-man!" He simultaneously made the "rah-eh-eh-eht-tah" noise that always happened when Lee Majors accelerated to bionic speed. I was like, "wow, maybe dad's bionic too!" Then we went to our back yard where he showed me that he was. He suddenly hit with the palm of his hand our steel fence post that was set in cement in the driveway. It immediately shattered the concrete and came out of the ground! Holy hell! Dad is bionic!