Boston Baked Farts

"The Four Voyages" by Christopher Columbus, J.M. Cohen

2012-01-27T12:32:00.000-08:00

Whiny.

"Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" by Steam

2012-01-21T09:30:00.000-08:00

I don't usually filthy my hands with comments about pop culture, but this was such an oppressive song to me growing up. I had just turned 16. I'd gone through puberty a couple years before and didn't have a clue about how to relate to the opposite sex. Still don't, come to think of it.

Anyway, the singer in this song was just overwhelming to me. He sounded like such a hot little androgynous nubile little love weasel. So hot, so sweet. The whole song is so sweet and cloying.

Now I see this video and see that the singer was this fat, balding, pig-faced turd thrusting his hips constantly at the viewer in a disgustingly masturbatory way.

I hate this song, I hate all pop music.

The Discovery of the Oregon Trail: Robert Stuart's Narratives of His Overland Trip Eastward from Astoria in 1812-13

2012-01-19T10:16:00.000-08:00

Rat shit.

Samantha Falcon

2012-01-18T08:28:00.000-08:00

Is she still working at the Blue Moose?

She had her boyfriend, Big Steve, threaten me with violence if I didn't leave her alone. It can be such a harsh world.

Before I learned her real name I used to think of her as Patty Pudenda, the Ultra-Vixen.

I hope her boyfriend doesn't kill me for posting this. That would be bad.

"The Buccaneers of America" by John Esquemeling & Basil Ringrose

2012-01-15T08:02:00.000-08:00

The first half by Esquemeling is stiff and boring. He lays it on pretty thick about the famous pirates like L'Ollonais and Morgan being totally vicious sadists. Esquemeling claims to have been an eye-witness but he uses the third person virtually throughout.

The second half is very fluid and engaging. Actually made me sad that Ringrose met his end so prematurely a few years later whilst on a plundering mission with William Dampier.

"Travels in the Interior of Africa" by Mungo Park

2012-01-03T12:51:00.000-08:00

Amazing! Outstanding! The tits!

"My Life As An Explorer" by Sven Hedin

2011-12-28T04:41:00.001-08:00

Errant rubbish.

"Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent: Abridged Edition" by Alexander von Humboldt

2011-12-17T11:02:00.000-08:00

More fun that I expected. Lots of anti-civ sentiments expressed. It was very well edited, which helped since apparently Humboldt is very prone to lengthy digressions.

"Railroad Semanitics #1" by Aaron Dactyl

2011-12-15T09:06:00.000-08:00

After devouring #2-#4, I e-mailed Aaron a while ago and asked him why #1 wasn't available and he said it was "a hold back", which I took to mean that it revealed sensitive info. I guess this edition has been sanitized. And they published 5,000! The kids in America must be starving for freedom and adventure.

The stories are good as usual. His rhapsodic/poetic descriptions of the scenery are kind of painful, though. You look at the pictures and everything looks pretty sterile and barren most of the time.

He's kind of off-base in the intro saying that freight-hopping is an "off-the-grid" activity. Having to cover huge expanses in a fairly short amount of time using the country's railroad infrastructure seems pretty on-grid to me. Doing it dangerously and illegally is pretty cool, but saying it's "off-the-grid" is silly. He does get to travel through some totally empty and desolate terrain, which is getting away from the "madding crowd", for sure. It's also kind of creepy and sci-fi, too.

One of the stories about being caught in the bathroom of a DPU and the railroad worker telling Dactyl that "he didn't see him", is exactly like one of the stories in one of the other zines in this series. I no longer own the other ones so I can't check.

There's a few editing glitches, as well, where two words are run together. And a small photo of a crew change is inexplicably repeated on two successive pages.

The kinds of info included are:
1) Freight-hopping anecdote
2) Scenic, people, or graffiti photos
3) tabular info
4) Newspaper stories
5) Handwritten letters from "Coaltrain" to "Joe"

The first two items are good but the rest are boring and useless filler. The newspaper stories would be OK if he just included the photos and headlines and maybe a brief caption of his own. But he includes the whole text and they tend to be a real headache to read and not worth the effort.

This one cost 8 fuckin' smackers. Another bougie little item for safe little suburban armchair adventure nerds.

And if you know how to get food stamps and shoplift CLIF bars you'll never have to work a steady job.

This stuff is seriously tantalizing. But I think I'd like to read about people navigating around on foot (or canoe) through wilderness or thinly-settled areas. At the end of the day, freights are just pieces of huge dangerous machinery. I guess it helps to have a sort of fetish for them, which Aaron and his friends clearly do.

I went on-line recently to watch some freight-hopping videos on YouTube and I didn't realize how fuckin' noisy it is. I guess it helps to be partly deaf or wear earplugs.

This zine is listed on Amazon.com and has an ISBN. Doesn't seem right, somehow, for a zine to have an ISBN.

"let's get lost" by victoria yee howe

2011-12-15T08:51:00.000-08:00

Pretty engaging freight-hopping stories by a short young Chinese woman. Kind of bougie, too. But all this freight-hopping stuff is becoming just another bougie 'extreme' sport. She's an ex-sex worker, too, which is sort of hot, I suppose. Both the freight-hopping and the sex work seem to stem from some kind of Chinese macho thing.

She says a couple catty things about her freight-hopping buddy, Cameron, which is kind of sickening; it's like she's just using him.

She's into making artistic/artisan cakes these days. What is it about Asians and super sweet desserts? I used to go to a cyber cafe in Allston, MA, that was run by Koreans and frequented by Asians college students and they were always having these big social get-togethers where each kid would have a big goey dessert in front of them. They were very loud and really enjoyed themselves. I admired that and was jealous.

The 2 or 3 photos in this zine weren't that interesting, and $6 seems kind of steep. Just the kind of thing for a bougie old man like me to piss money away on, eh? And they ought to change the name of Microcosm to Bougiecosm.

"Voyages and Discoveries" by Richard Hakluyt

2011-12-04T08:18:00.000-08:00

Some real rip-snortin' yarns!

Life and adventures of A--no. 1, America's most celebrated tramp

2011-11-29T10:45:00.000-08:00

Took me a while to read this because it was in PDF.

Sporadically entertaining. Some of it seemed a little farfetched. Whatever.

Ben Sea's Plump Oyster Comics

2011-11-21T12:47:00.000-08:00

Really nice, sweet stuff. Total eye candy.

It's a pity his older stuff isn't available in zine form. This website will have to do.

On second thought, maybe it's just a load of Muppet jizz.

"My Life on the Plains: Or, Personal Experiences with Indians" by Gen. George Armstrong Custer

2011-11-20T12:11:00.001-08:00

Fuckin' godawful! Why did I read this?!?!

"The Voyage of the Beagle" by Charles Darwin

2011-11-11T05:35:00.001-08:00

Snotty dickhead; unpleasant chore of a read.

"Education of a Felon" by Edward Bunker

2011-11-03T08:10:00.000-07:00

Boring, I'm-such-a-bad-ass stuff.

"Memoirs of a Buccaneer: Dampier's New Voyage Round the World, 1697" by William Dampier

2011-10-27T11:04:00.000-07:00

Pretty cool but a real chore to read. Well worth it, though, if only for the offhand criminality of the buccaneers.

No really a memoir. More of a handbook on how to get around these areas at that time.

"The Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allan Poe

2011-10-25T10:12:00.000-07:00

My favorite Poe story. It's what I think of whenever I pass a sports bar or when I look around at the smug patrons of the cafes I patronize. Course, I'm pretty smug, too.

Cherise Gracie of Plymouth, England

2011-10-15T07:18:00.000-07:00

Whatever happened to ol' Cher? Is she still hanging 'round the bars downtown?

Barry Willenbring of Somerville, MA

2011-10-15T07:17:00.000-07:00

I guess ol' Barry's got no use for me.

"Among the Indians: Four Years on the Upper Missouri, 1858-1862" by Henry A. Boller

2011-10-13T07:08:00.000-07:00

Fair amount of good detail about living with the Indians but the style is often flowery and over-written.

Autobiography of Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard

2011-10-08T17:52:00.000-07:00

Excellent! Lots of gritty, down-to-earth detail about being a fur trader on the Illinois frontier. Excellent Citadel press edition, too.

"Voyages and Discoveries in the South Seas 1792-1832" by Edmund Fanning

2011-10-06T12:49:00.000-07:00

Easy, but boring, reading.

"The Explorations of Captain James Cook in the Pacific" by Capt. James Cook and Grenfell Price

2011-10-02T14:33:00.000-07:00

The journal entries were intermittently interesting but the remarks by the editor were frequently irritating in their slavish adoration of this supposedly great man. The best journal entries were those dealing with the encounters with the various south sea aborigines.

God loves us, he gives us donuts

2011-09-30T14:21:00.000-07:00

Ray's Pastries, Sabraton, WV.

Re-gain, re-claim, re-cycle, re-wild, re-fart

2011-09-30T14:11:00.000-07:00

Cut a wicked one!

Middle-class cocksuckers

2011-09-30T14:02:00.000-07:00

Cocksuckers, sons of cocksuckers, grandsons of cocksuckers, great-grandsons of cocksuckers, great-great-grandsons of cocksuckers, etc.

Kevin "Peregrine Species Traitor" Tucker

2011-09-29T13:08:00.000-07:00

No friend of mine. His mentor, John Zerzan, was a kind of friend to me for a while and it's a pity we couldn't have stayed friends. Such are the wages of idealism.

"Travels in the Interior of America in the Years 1809, 1810, and 1811" by John Bradbury

2011-09-22T13:47:00.001-07:00

This is a short one if you don't include the appendixes, and the appendixes are mostly useless.

The main text is pretty good, describing a trip way up the Missouri. It's always refreshing to read a non-fur-trader's perspective.

The appendixes are, with one exception, deadly boring descriptions of the geology of some frontier regions. The one exception was the newspaper story about the other Astorians' travels over the Rockies and down the Columbia.

Luckily, I was able to read it for free via a PDF I got on-line.

"Adventures of the First Settlers on the Oregon or Columbia River, 1810-1813" by Alexander Ross

2011-09-19T13:53:00.000-07:00

A good 'un. Drags in spots, but so what, the guy was really there.

At one point Ross is left all alone for some months at a new trading post at Okanagan while the others went on to explore more of the country. All alone in the wilderness, surround by wild Indians. Just Ross and a small Spanish dog named Weasel! TOO FUCKIN' MUCH!!!

"The Fur Hunters of the Far West" by Alexander Ross

2011-09-14T10:08:00.000-07:00

Pretty excellent, full of lots of drama and incident. It's also got quite a lot of excess verbosity, too. It's still an amazing read by a guy who was really there. And the part where he's leading a huge party of men, women, children and horses and decides to try and force his way through a mountain pass that's 18 miles long and is covered with snow 7 feet deep for much of the way is mind-boggling.

"Women's Indian Captivity Narratives"

2011-08-28T16:48:00.000-07:00

Painful but sporadically illuminating. I don't really know women very well, so this book helped me understand them a little better. This book certainly shows how much women have always been prime carriers, or vehicles, or mediums, for religion and morality.

The Indians treated their white female and child captives well for a number of reasons, one of them being ransom. They could be incredibly cruel to their Indian enemies, however.

The next to last narrative, the one by Sarah Wakefield, was exceptionally painful to read. She was so whiny, and the narrative was so disjointed and incoherent it was hard to follow. It also included a couple typos, which was shocking to me since Penguin books almost never have any.

"Harmon's Journal, 1810-1819" by Daniel Williams Harmon

2011-08-18T09:09:00.000-07:00

Way too pious, priggish and self-absorbed.

"Five Indian Tribes of the Upper Missouri: Sioux, Arickaras, Assiniboines, Crees, Crows" by Thomas Edwin Denig

2011-08-08T08:14:00.000-07:00

Not that bad considering it's straight exposition. Since the info is all derived from either first-hand observation or from talking to the Indians and traders as peers it's free from academic stodginess. There's also a fair amount of anecdote which livens things somewhat. I'm a little disappointed that the author omitted certain material because it was too filthy and disgusting. Nothing's too filthy or disgusting for me. There was, however, a couple juicy items in the section about the Crows. For one thing, the young bucks were totally shameless about having sex in full view of others. And the other was a footnote that said the Crows were so horny they'd have sex with their mares and freshly killed animals! Wow! Cool!

But you really gotta be a die hard frontier narrative fan to slog through this.

"Journey to the Polar Sea" by John Franklin

2011-07-29T11:08:00.000-07:00

Only two thirds through. Got at least 2 OCR-introduced typos per page. There's a real bad one in Chapter 8. Eights words are omitted rendering the sentence gibberish: "Being overtaken by some of the North-West company's canoes, he had insisted on their taking half of his charge since it was intended for the service of government". The italicized words are the ones that were dropped. Since in this narrative there is a constant struggle for adequate supplies for the expedition this error is particularly galling.

The general tone of the narrative is very dry, stiff and formal which makes for an unpleasant read. There's a fair amount of repetition, too, as they follow the endless water routes through the wilderness.

"Selected Journals and Other Writings (Penguin Nature Classics)" by John James Audubon

2011-07-28T12:51:00.000-07:00

Miserable fuckin' asshole.

The "Episodes" section was the most stomach-churning crap I've read in quite some time.

Who needs wildlife when you got pretty pictures of 'em?

"A Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America" by Gabriel Franchère

2011-07-16T07:36:00.000-07:00

Not so hot. Too bogged down in business details. Ross Cox's account's much better. And I'm sure not going to bother with Irving's Astoria.

"Anti-Civ Dictums" listed on Last Earth distro!

2011-07-01T12:17:00.000-07:00

Hurrah! I'm pleased as Punch to be listed on a distro that includes much of the Loompanics back catalogue, The Turner Diaries, The Gas and Dave Drexler's, Out of Control, zine!

Speaking of The Turner Diaries, it's a shame there aren't more rabid ethnic-chauvinism novels for other ethnicities, e.g., African, Chinese, East Indian, Latino, Russian, Jewish, etc. You know, ones that really get their respective people's blood boiling. There very well may be, I'm just not aware of them. I'm loyal to my own Anglo roots, but I don't think that Anglos, or whites, have the right to rule the planet. It's be nice if everyone has their own territory and were basically content to stay in it, like back in the olden days.

"Narrative of a Journey across the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River" by John Kirk Townsend

2011-07-01T12:08:00.000-07:00

Pretty good. It's got lots of nice, simple, down-to-earth detail that really gives you a feel for the experience. This is an interesting travelogue with no great drama or incident. Townsend is kind of a sanctimonious prig, however, which can be irritating.

This edition omits his brief travels to Hawaii and Chili, which is a bummer. I wished I'd looked into it more closely before ordering. Now I'll have to order a whole new book just to get the omitted material.

Magic 106.7 webmaster

2011-06-29T09:31:00.000-07:00

According to on-line information, someone called Denis Prindeville is the current Magic 106.7 webmaster. So there is some reason to believe that he is the self-same "Jupiter" who harassed me mercilessly, a couple years ago, with rude, semi-anonymous comments on my, now defunct, Earnest Sludge blog, telling me I was full of "piss and vinegar", that my life was a "train wreck", and repeatedly advising me to "seek professional help". All because I, a private individual, dared to criticize the huge corporation, Magic 106.7/Greater Media.

I've sent two e-mails to this Prindeville character, one at wklb.com and one at greatermediaboston.com, and received no reply.

It's also instructive to note how easy it was for this so-called person to call my mental health into question. This clearly shows how totalitarian mass culture is, just like in the old Soviet Union when someone was a critic of the current regime and didn't believe in Communism, they were often sent to mental institutions. Just as Communism and the Soviet Regime were shown to be sick systems, the behavior of the Magic 106.7 webmaster shows what a sick piece of crap Magic 106.7/Greater Media is.

"Wanderings of an Artist Among the Indians of North America" by Paul Kane

2011-06-17T10:01:00.000-07:00

Kick-ass!

Lee Whipple at Montford Books and More

2011-06-10T11:35:00.000-07:00

I see the odious Mr. Whipple recently performed at Montford Books and More. He greatly contributed to making my life a misery when I lived above him at 346 Montford Ave. by playing his TV and Stereo at top volume from 10am to 10pm every day for 4 months. Truly the hallmark of a self-styled genius: completely oblivious to the pathetic 'normals' around him.

I remember walking past Montford Books and More numerous times and I was never tempted to enter, it looked so depressingly dull and dusty and dead. I suppose that describes all bookstores, but Montford Books etc. was just more so. They always had crappy old used magazines laying out front for free, which made it even more depressing.

There was an old guy who lived a block or so further down from Montford Books etc. who had to use an oxygen tank and push his wheeled walker around. He was a lovely, lively man compared to Lee Whipple and Montford Books etc.

I see genius-boy Whipple's played at Firestorm Cafe, too. They make a good pair. I despise Firestorm and all who are involved, but let's skip the details.

I see that the lead Firestorm guy, Scott Evans, will be attending the upcoming TED (Technology, Entertainment & Design) conference. Asheville's the perfect place for a TED conference, and Scott Evans is a perfect candidate for attendance and even speaking at it. O brave new world, to have such conferences in it! And such creative geniuses as Lee "big noise" Whipple.

Love to go back to Asheville sometime and give Mr. Whipple a piece of my... mind. Wonder what his day job is. Car salesman is my guess.

Wonder what happened to that old guy with the oxygen tank and the wheeled walker. Wonder if he's still hanging in there. Life's sweet, impossible to let it go.

"Anti-Civ Dictums" by Sid Clark

2011-05-29T10:21:00.000-07:00

My pamphlet got reviewed. Hurrah!

Darlene Altschul did the layout and printing.

And what's with those fucking frogs in the background of the "Here Have A Turd" painting? Looks like they're wearing gold/orange chain-mail tunics and holding staffs/pikes in one hand and a green shield in front of them with the other. Is this a take off of a famous painting?

"Three years among the Indians and Mexicans" by Thomas James (The Lakeside classics)

2011-04-01T11:55:00.000-07:00

Whiny crap.

I saw an original Lakeside Classics edition for sale, cheap, and I couldn't resist. I'd never owned one. They're nice. The text of the book itself sucks, though.

"Travels & adventures in Canada and the Indian territories between the years 1760 and 1776" Alexander Henry, James Bain (editor)

2011-03-21T21:22:00.000-07:00

Pretty sweet. Worth reading. Lots of Indians and wilderness and canoeing and wildlife from the olden days. Pity it all had to be at the expense of the beaver population of Canada.

Fun fact: the Indians would take their wives on journeys of hundreds of miles just so they could have sex with Hudson's Bay traders.

"Journal of the Voyage to the Pacific" by Alexander MacKenzie (Author), Walter Sheppe (Author, Editor)

2011-03-17T00:00:00.000-07:00

Very readable and fascinating version of this great journal. The editor provides useful clarifications right in-line in the text and he puts all the tedious navigational minutia in a reduced font, making it easy to skip over. Excellent book.

"Chardon's Journal at Fort Clark, 1834-1839 ]" F. A. Chardon (Author), Annie Heloise Abel (Editor)

2011-03-16T23:37:00.000-07:00

What a fuckin' historical-endnoted-to-death ball buster! And the journal itself is so dry and perfunctory. But if you have the patience and stamina to wade through all the minute historical documentation drivel this book really does make the occupation of fur trading in the Upper Missouri come alive. Those fur traders weren't fuckin' around. They went up into those prairies and put the whole area through their fuckin' mill. They were true emissaries of civilization, ruthless dominators and exploiters.

The use of "perfunctory" above reminds me of an asshole I used to have to work with at MITRE, Jon Millen: preemptive, perfunctory, reductive and dismissive.

Parker Hill library (re-post 10/06)

2011-03-09T23:35:00.000-08:00

Finally got sick of that place. It was a real sweet place, at first. Hardly anyone there, no wait for the free one-hour Internet PCs. But then there was this old derelict guy, very clean and well spoken, maybe an Harvard grad back in the day, anyway, he starts coming in in the middle of the winter and going down into the men's bathroom and sitting in the stall for hours getting drunk. And apparently he'd take the top off the toilet tank so he could keep his vodka cold. Well, instead of talking to the guy and telling him to cut the crap, these bureaucratic cunts that run the place decide to lock it up, which makes it a major hassle to use. I'm not happy having to beg people to allow me to use their fuckin' public toilets. I lived with that sucky situation for the past 8-9 months. But then this over-sized asshole librarian, who looks like some throwback to the 1950's Donna fuckin' Reed show, keeps getting in my face. I didn't even realize she was the Head fuckin' Honcho until a couple weeks ago. Well, apparently she decided that her and I are obviously both big cheeses so we need to do some kind of a mutual ego-stroking big cheese ritual with each other on a regular basis. Well fuck that! If I think someone signifies or has some degree of class (in the Hunter S. Thompson Hell's Angels sense) then I may decide to talk to 'em. But nobody's jumping up into my face and jerking me around just because they're the fucking head librarian. I'm old, I'm tired, I'm harmless, I just want to be left alone. If someone starts to put a gun to my fucking head and telling me I gotta jump through retarded protocol hoops for them just so I can use the fuckin' Internet, then fuck 'em!!!

Guess I'll start hanging out at the South End branch from now on. It's noisy and busy, and one of the ladies working there has a major hard-on for Israel, but at least they don't wear their fuckin' neurotic need on their sleeves. That oversize asshole at Parker Hill was probably given the post just because the place is never used, i.e., she was purposely sidelined. She's probably Irish, too. What a fuckin' obnoxious race the Irish are. And I'm one quarter Irish myself, so I can say that.

In brief, I guess I'm saying that the advantages of the Parker Hill branch aren't worth having to kiss that librarian's ass for. Also, the South End branch's bathrooms are gloriously wide open!

But that's civilization for ya, or at least for me: jerking off and holding my piss. I don't know about anyone else, or about women, but that's what it is in a nutshell, for me.

Claustrophobic Copley outbound T station (re-post 4/08)

2011-03-07T23:02:00.000-08:00

I've gotten on the wrong train down there at least 8 or 9 times because it is just so claustrophobic down there. The ceilings are low, the platform is narrow and short and it's almost always crowded with impatient people. It's under construction, which is one reason it's so narrow. Half the width is lost to construction stuff, and a lot of the length, too. Supposedly they'll have it done by 2009. They sure don't seem to be in much of a hurry. I never see much progress there.

Cut-throat in the Internet room at the main library today (re-post 4/08)

2011-03-07T12:17:00.000-08:00

72 PCs and the place is totally full 10 minutes after opening the front doors. The library's only open for 4 hours on Sunday, so that's one reason. Everybody reserves the next available hour, as I did. I had to screw around for an hour, waiting for my 2:15 reservation for PC #37. Hard to believe that there are so many people that can't afford Internet in their homes. I can afford it, I just don't want it.

Takes me a fuckin' hour to get from the Fenway to Allston (re-post 4/08)

2011-03-07T12:05:00.000-08:00

Ridiculous. Fuckin' Red Sox shit slows everything down. Heard 'em just now as I was waiting for the bus, the Fenway park stadium attendees, singing what sounded like a hymn. A real fuckin' religious experience for 'em, no doubt.

And I got 6 fuckin' more months of this shit to put up with. I gotta get out of that shit-ass neighborhood.

In closing I'd just like to say:

Red Sox sux
Baseball sux
Boston sux
America sux

Couple down the hall moved out (re-post 4/08)

2011-03-06T21:36:00.000-08:00

Good for them. Been there since I moved in. Handsome pair, mid-30s. The man was a tall guy with premature salt-and-pepper hair, the girl was small and dark and feline. They owned a Siamese. The guy made too many trips to the liquor store. Their radio alarm went on, and stayed on, at a deafening volume a few times when they weren't there. Nice friendly people, though. I hope they moved to a better neighborhood that the fuckin' shit-ass, slime ball Fenway.

4/10: first shirt sleeve day (re-post 4/08)

2011-03-06T21:23:00.000-08:00

Went to the Fells again yesterday. Tried the Goodyear St. route and it was at least half as short as the Glenwood Ave. I'd been taking.

Climbed Black Rock and got a great view out to sea. I'd like to climb White Rock, too. Did a little impromptu rock climbing to get up there, too. It was only a 45-55 degree slope, but scary nonetheless for me.

Walked due west, crossed Fellsway East and made it over to Woodland Rd., crossed it and saw gorgeous Spot pond for the first time. Heavenly. I think that swimming is disallowed and that's a real crime.

Fells seems kinda like a candy-ass place to me. You can't hardly turn around without hitting a road, a reservoir, a pond, suburban houses, skating rinks, bunches of buildings or a trail so wide you could drive a small car up it.

Bet the place is absolutely mobbed in the summer. People and their everlasting dogs.

Ended up having to walk back along East Border Road, and then Fellsway East and then Glenwood. Man am I sick of Glenwood! Then I got a quart of Poland Spring water at the Oak Grove variety store and drank the whole fuckin' thing before I was halfway back to Ruggles on the Orange Line. All in all a totally lovely day.

Camp Abenaki on North Hero island

2011-03-06T21:11:00.000-08:00

Best time of my life, by far. Bed, board and buddies. And freshwater swimming. And campfires.

The midnight faucet serenade (re-post 4/08)

2011-03-06T21:02:00.000-08:00

The lady with the horrible skin disease who lives in the apartment below me always takes a long bath at the end of the night. I hear her running the very noisy faucet repeatedly, topping the tub up with hot water. At least that's what I think she's doing. And it could be someone on the first floor. Fuck it. Sure is distracting when I'm trying to read.
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I subsequently went down stairs and tiptoed up to her door when she started up with this. It sounded like she was filling a bunch of large tins with water. For what reason I know not.

Paul the dishwasher (re-post 4/08)

2011-03-06T15:55:00.000-08:00

I worked with Paul at Lander's Restaurant on Rt. 120 in Lebanon, NH (it was torn down some years ago). He was tall, lanky and had a shock of black hair and some hillybilly-lookin' teeth problems, i.e., discolored and/or missing. He was also illiterate, he could only read signs like "exit" and "men". He was a fairly happy guy. He was only a kid, same as me, 18-20. He took me out and showed me where he lived. It was in a big packing crate out in a field, out towards the public swimming pool in Lebanon, NH. It was a small hike to get to it, over a railroad tracks and through a lightly wooded field. He had it quite well set up. Lots of shallow shelves on the sides. It was mounted up on something, too, I forget what, maybe another crate. But it was plenty deep enough for him to sleep in. I think he drew a heavy curtain when he went to bed. No rent! He also had a 50 gallon drum full of water that he kept crayfish in that he caught. I also remember him telling me about his first girlfriend and what a marvel she was. How mind-boggling it was to have her sitting on top of him, straddling him, naked, a real vision. Reminds me of a scene in the movie Reckless with Darryl Hannah. He also told me the reason he had been forced to move out of his family home and thence to the crate. His step father had gotten drunk and was beating his mother, which is something he did fairly frequently. Paul called the police. Big no-no. Domestic squabbles are pretty delicate things. Last time I saw Paul was in Coburn Park in Lebanon. He was carrying a plastic double-liter bottle of cola. He told me, confidentially, that he has poured out half the soda and filled it up with vodka. So now he could walk around and get loaded and no one would know. He was quite proud of having thought up that trick.

Johnny Carson cynicism (re-post 4/08)

2011-03-06T15:51:00.000-08:00

Starting watching this when I was 13. Had to be hip, you know. Not a good idea, both because of the disgusting showbiz world-weariness and cynicism, but also because it was on from 11:30 to 1:00 at night and I had to get up at 7:00 for school. The school days were just torture, I used to drag my ass through them. Then I'd come home at 3:00 and fall asleep for 2-3 hours and then start watching TV all evening. And eating through much of it. My parents should have discouraged much of this. But they even got me my own TV to watch up in my room (I was a spoiled kid). They acted like they were just a couple of instrumental robots, robots that ran from tackling one task after another, and my requests were viewed as just another task in their endless task stream.

Man is genetically defective (re-post 4/08)

2011-03-06T15:18:00.000-08:00

Given the ease with which he (or she) is socialized and kept that way, it would seem that man has always been destined to destroy his world and himself.

Too smart for his own good. And the rest of the Living World is just too dumb. A real pushover.

What is the "chief end of Man"? Maximum human population, just like every other organism, except Man has the prodigious capacity for reproduction at the expense of the rest of the Living World.

The planet will eventually become a huge ball of human maggots feeding on their own shit. And good enough for 'em.

"The Young Poisoner's Handbook" video (re-post 4/08)

2011-03-06T15:12:00.000-08:00

Excellent movie. Shows the connection between crystal worship and science. Based on a true story. I see now it's been released on DVD. Wonder if there's any cool extras.

"Robinson Crusoe on Mars" DVD (re-post 11/07)

2011-03-06T14:47:00.000-08:00

Disgusting techno propaganda.

But Robinson Crusoe stories are always engaging, aren't they? I must say that this film really captured my experience of growing up as a young boy in Lebanon, NH, a child of a crazy money-and-status-obsessed family. Also, later on, in my forties, working on software down south I felt like I was stranded on one of the moons of Jupiter. Sitting motionless in a chair on a semi-dark, endless, cratered plain, with the sun shining dimly to my upper left and the huge orange ball of Jupiter filling the sky up on my right. Poor baby, eh?

Jury duty yesterday at Suffolk County Superior Courthouse (re-post 12/07)

2011-03-06T12:31:00.000-08:00

Infuriating.

The Little Engine That Said Fuck It

2011-03-05T19:35:00.000-08:00

Pics from June '05, right before moving to Fenway

2011-03-05T17:58:00.000-08:00

The Asheville Arthaus Hostel (re-post)

2011-03-05T13:21:00.000-08:00

The mighty BJ.

Their website should really have a warning posted on it that the proprietor has psychopathic tendencies. So much for truth in advertising.

I've had some experience with psychopaths and the proprietor, a Mr. BJ Decker, is definitely one. I should have known something was wrong when I first checked in, what with his weird, twitchy-quirky behavior and not being able to make eye contact or look me in the face.

Mr. Decker likes to spy on the hostel guests with his many video surveillance cameras. He doesn't run the hostel to provide a service he does it so he can play god. It's a safe bet he used to torture small animals when he was a kid.

The last night I was there Decker threatened me with violence, twice, forcing me to leave two days early, thereby robbing me of $75. Just another psychopath power trip. I'm sure Decker was very satisfied his ability to terrorize me. It must have made him feel like a very big, powerful, intelligent man.

Decker isn't fit to be the proprietor of a lemonade stand.

The mighty BJ. None mightier.
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This is the 3rd lengthy posting devoted to my traumatic experience with this asshole. Maybe I should combine them all into one long saga.

Bye-bye PC (re-post 4/09)

2011-03-05T08:06:00.001-08:00

Finally got rid of my PC after 15 years of being saddled with the beast. Only got it to begin with to do some follow on work for the Vista project I was doing for TDS in Charleston, SC. Owned 3 in all. Never own another, not even a lap top. Got to be more to life that this shit. Gave it to some grabby little prick from Craigslist. A young Japanese prick that called himself "John C", misrepresenting his ethnicity. I wouldn't have given it to him if I knew he was Asian. Fuck it anyway.It was just trash. If I'd had the strength of my convictions I would have smashed it with a big hammer.
-------------------------
Here I am, almost 2 years later, sitting at an Acer Netbook. Not only is it a hated computer, it's also connected to the Internet. I haven't had an Internet connection in my home since I moved out of my Cambridge apartment in June of 2005. I've had this Netbook for over 3 months and it's really taken over my life. I'm back addicted to it, again. The WiFi in the motel where I'm living was broken the past two weeks and it felt like a part of my brain had been lopped off. A real crippling dependency, for sure.

John Endecott statue, Boston (re-post)

2011-03-05T08:01:00.000-08:00

Don't neglect to stop and spit on this whenever you're passing by. Feels good, believe me. Fuckin' Puritan scum.

"Gunfighters In Hell" by Joe Vigil and David Barbour, comic (re-post)

2011-03-05T07:57:00.000-08:00

Excellent lurid and ultra-violent entertainment. Westerns were ubiquitous on TV when I was a kid and I hated them with a passion. This comic helps get some of that hostility out. Pity it couldn't have also had some x-rated sex in it, too, but that would have killed the mass market appeal.

This is similar to S. Clay Wilson, but crisper, colder, harder, more satisfying in terms of vicarious white-hot hate and violence.

All five issues are now available in one volume from Broken Halos.

I'm a bad-ass armed robber (re-post 12/08)

2011-03-05T07:50:00.001-08:00

Two police officers stopped me around noon, yesterday, while I was waiting for a bus. Turns out they thought I had just robbed the Fenway CVS. I suppose I should feel flattered.

Went to the Boston Medical Center yesterday (re-post)

2011-03-04T16:42:00.000-08:00

Was having problems with an earache. I'd been staring at their "We got you covered, Boston" on the subway for a few months now. It was interesting being around all those poor scumbags. Felt totally natural. They gave me a prescription for amoxicillin. Still hasn't kicked in yet. I've been a bad boy and have been drinking coffee, so that's making it harder. I'm already half deaf in my right ear because of earaches over the years. Lost another bit of my hearing in September because I didn't have it together enough to go seek help. Really depressing.

One thing they got you covered with is paperwork and bureaucratic procedures, for sure.

The little room they put me in, ultimately, to wait for the nurse practitioner, had a a motion detector mounted up on the ceiling near the door. What's up with that?

Came down with a bad cold last Saturday (re-post 9/08)

2011-03-04T16:40:00.000-08:00

Started as a real bad sore throat. It's still lingering mostly in my chest and I get coughing fits from time to time that frustratingly dry. Had the added benefit of getting me off my coffee/pastry sluggish merry-go-round and stimulating my to straighten up my apartment, junking a lot of stuff, in preparation for my upcoming move. My apartment is starting to finally look livable. Nice a bare and open and spacious. Living in the Fenway really makes you realize just how weighed down you are with your accumulation of material possessions. Practically makes you want to pack a change of clothes in a big bandanna, tie it to a bindle stick and hop a freight the fuck out of this loser burg.

Kilt a mouse yestiday (re-post from 9/08)

2011-03-04T16:31:00.001-08:00

Very satisfying. Bastard mice had been runnin' wild in my apartment for 3 years. The fuckers even scaled my fridge to get at my bread.

Anyway, used peanut butter for bait. A big glob. Mousey ate most of it a couple days ago and got away with impunity. Not yesterday, though. He/she tried to get the last little bits off and the trap snapped. I was in the other room at the time and heard it. He/she managed to get away from the trap, but not before it had dealt him/her a mortal blow. He/she bled quite a bit out his/her nose and onto the floor and onto the back of the trap which had flipped over. He/she was a big fat one. Looks like he/she was really livin' off the fat of the land in the Fenway. King/Queen of the Queensberry St. apartments.

I put a fresh trap out. I'm gonna try some cheeses, too. I tried that string cheese stuff and they weren't interested in the slightest.

Neil Diamond in Fenway statium (re-post from 8/08)

2011-03-04T16:21:00.000-08:00

Heard about this at the local Starbucks early yesterday evening. Resolved not to hear a note of it.

Got a big dinner at Wendy's on Mass. Ave. (near Berklee school) first: classic triple and a baked potato with butter. Washed it down with some Tropicana Pure 100% Juice Pomegranate Blueberry. The one liter bottle kept me company throughout most of the rest of the night.

Started riding the trains. Rode out to Riverside (Green line), Oak Grove (Orange line) and was on my way out to Alewife (Red line) when I got off at Porter Square to piss in a back alley. Decided to walk around and visit some of the old neighborhoods a little. Got the call of nature pretty strong whilst going in the door of the Star Market on Beacon St. and had to beat a hasty retreat back to the Shaws up at Porter Sq. It was 10:30. The bastards had already locked up the bathroom for the evening. Couldn't believe it. Then lucked out to find a bathroom in the Porter Square T station. Took a big satisfying dump.

Took the Red Line down to Harvard Sq. and quickly got impatient with waiting for the #1 bus. Walked all the way to the first Mass. Ave. stop after the junction of Mt. Auburn and Mass. Ave. (opposite Dana St.) Caught the bus, got off and waddled down Wasteland (Westland) Ave. home.

It's nice getting a little out of town on the T trains. It's cooler, quieter, has quite a bit more trees.

Excellent words from John Holt (re-post)

2011-03-04T16:09:00.000-08:00

"Next to the right to life itself, the most fundamental of all human rights is the right to control our own minds and thoughts. That means, the right to decide for ourselves how we will explore the world around us, think about our own and other persons' experiences, and find and make the meaning of our own lives. Whoever takes that right away from us, as the educators do, attacks the very center of our being and does us a most profound and lasting injury. He tells us, in effect, that we cannot be trusted even to think, that for all our lives we must depend on others to tell us the meaning of our world and our lives, and that any meaning we may make for ourselves, out of our own experience, has no value.

Education, with its supporting system of compulsory and competitive schooling, all its carrots and sticks, its grades, diplomas, and credentials, now seems to me perhaps the most authoritarian and dangerous of all social inventions of mankind. It is the deepest foundation of the modern and worldwide slave state, in which most people feel themselves to be nothing but producers, consumers, spectators, and "fans", driven more and more, in all parts of their lives, by greed, envy, and fear. My concern is not to improve "education" but to do away with it, to end the ugly and anti-human business of people-shaping and let people shape themselves."
--------------------

How such lucidity can be uttered and nothing done just shows what a vast, hopeless stream of anesthetizing bullshit is modern discourse.

Jet fighters flying low over Boylston (re-post)

2011-03-04T16:07:00.000-08:00

Two of these goddamn fuckers terrorized the fuck out of me yesterday walking to the supermarket. I staggered forward, looking for something to lean onto, to brace myself for the explosion that seemed inevitable. The air sounded and felt like it was being ripped apart with great violence. The fabric of the world seemed like it was being ripped apart with great violence. This is meant to make us feel proud of our country? I felt totally terrorized and menaced. This is the true evil black soul of the modern world and a perfect expression of America's supreme arrogance. Madness. "Those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad."

Is Math the handmaiden of Science, or is Science the brown-nosing ass-licker of Math?

2011-03-03T20:54:00.000-08:00

How wonderful life would be if we were all disembodied mathematical abstractions.

Skyline Trail at the Middlesex Fells (re-post)

2011-03-03T20:51:00.000-08:00

Spent about 7 hours on that yesterday. Boy am I stiff and sore today. Made it over most of it except the very last part that goes over the hill that Wright's Tower's on. It was about 7:45 at that point, the sun was setting and I'd pretty much reached the end of my endurance.

Ran into about 3 people per hour, on average. A few were on mountain bikes. Almost all were men.

I had to wait at least 40 minutes for the motherfuckin' 100 bus to get the hell out of there. Hardly anyone on the bus at that hour so I can see why they don't run it that often. Still, that bus was the first hourly run of the afternoon. Shit luck.

Started out pretty early, early for me anyway, and didn't eat anything. But I didn't get hungry at all. Even when I made it back into town and ordered a big Indonesian fried rice at Pad Thai I had to force the last third of it down. Anyway, yesterday was the first time I took a crap in the woods since I was a little kid. Used some of those travel Kleenex to wipe with, so I didn't have to use the dry maple (looked like maple) leaves. Felt pretty good. It enjoyed it. I definitely felt relieved. Anyway, Skyline Trail: breakfast of champions.

Seems like the senses sharpen in the woods. The eyes, weakened by years of reading, start to get back a little of their sharpness. They start to pull back out towards the world instead of recoiling from the unnatural mess of the printed page.

Here's one of the more colorful trail names: Nanepashemet. The western half of the Fells is a pretty fascinating place. I'd like to learn more about it. I got to send away for the fuckin' map. It's a real tangle of paths in there.

I was pretty disappointed by the trail markings towards the end. I think somebody put them in the wrong places as a prank because I followed it down into an area by a ditch by the highway and they just stopped and there was no trail, and the trail down the hill I'd just come down was covered with leaves and hadn't been traveled for quite a while. An unmarked path did appear after a little bit and it lead to Quarry Road and that took me out of the motherfuckin' Fells.

According to the hiking books I got, the trail is between 6.8 and 7.4 miles and should take between 5 and 5 and a half hours. And I had read a hiking book about the a Skyline Trail hike in the Blue Hills and it had said it was only a 4 mile hike. That's where I got mixed up. I didn't realize the Fells hike was almost twice that.

Didn't meet that many dogs. Only once did I have to meet a pair of them head-on. It's obvious that the dog owners stick to more flat and easy trails.

Fell flat on my face into a bed of moss at one point. Tripped over a branch stub sticking up from a pale gray, long dead, naked, barkless log. By that time I was so tired I wasn't lifing my feet up too high anymore. I almost tripped going down one of the steep, rocky slopes for the same reason. I'd have been in real bad shape if that'd happened. And I went out there without telling anyone and I wasn't carrying my cell phone. I like living on the edge.

My clothes: long pants, long sleeve shirt with sleeves rolled up, Converse All-Star sneakers. I also had a wind breaker, but I carried it in my hand all the way through the hike. I needed it when I was waiting for the bus but not while hiking. And I only remember cracking a sweat a couple times going up fair sized hills during the second half of the hike.

It's funny but the part of my body that ached the most during the hike were my shoulders and upper arms! Weird. I wish I could find a good way to exercise them, too. Thinkin' pretty seriously of doin' some canoein' this summer on Spot pond and Ponkapoag pond. That should help the old shoulders and arms. Hope I'm not too fat to canoe.

Saw at least 2 joggers on this trail, which is something. I guess flat, level ground isn't challenging enough for them. One thing for sure, the ground is a lot easier to walk on in the woods than sidewalk concrete.

One thing this excursion proved is that I've got more stamina than I credit myself with. The 'system' likes to encourage everyone to baby themselves. Either that or it's some kind of 'extreme' sport they can sell you equipment for if you're a foolhardy kid.

By the time I rolled into Queensberry St. I started belting out "Hooray For Hollywood" and it's accompanying music. Seemed to perfectly encapsulate how I felt coming back to my rented cube after being relatively free in the woods.

Heard someone joke about an incident that had "more emotions than a fat farm". That's a good observation. Most fat people repress their emotions by eating comfort food and they naturally come to the surface when they are put in a situation where they have to actually physically exert themselves. But I didn't have much of that yesterday, strangely enough. I did mutter to myself a bit, as is my habit when I'm alone, which is most of the time. But I didn't show any particularly big emotions, but I was really stifling myself quite a bit due to dog fear, I was afraid of alerting and exciting a dog on the trail up ahead of me. I do get pissed off and verbalize a bit, however, when I'm near the end of my endurance in the city walking down the painful sidewalk with cars and strangers wizzing by.

When I got up to the northern-most tip of the loop I was ready to give up. I even stopped a passing mountain biker and asked his advice on how to get back south on a more level trail but he wasn't much use. Unfortunately for me the Skyline Trail was all I felt comfortable about and felt sure would lead me back to where I could take a bus out. That last half, the eastern half was pretty painful, and not much fun. I definitely bit off more than I could chew. My legs were definitely getting rubbery towards the end.

I kept looking up at the sun during the last third of the hike. Watching it get lower and lower. When it started lighting up the tops of the trees I knew I might possibly be in trouble. Every hill I climbed (and it's just one hill after another on that trail), I kept saying to myself, "maybe this's the last one". But I made it in the end, so all's well that ends well, as they say.

I got pretty dehydrated out there and had to drink a lot of water when I got home. And I almost cramped a couple times last night after I got home. So I just kept drinking liquids and stayed up with my feet up on a stool and watched DVDs until I started to piss again. I didn't have any problems with cramping after that.

Didn't end up being able to get to sleep until fuckin' dawn. That might have been because I drank some coffee while waiting for the Orange line on the way back. It also might be because the walk had sped up my metabolism. Anyway, lying in bed, trying to sleep, every time I closed my eyes I saw different parts of the trail through the woods, like a kinda jerky slide show. Not bad. Nice pics.

After yesterday I can really say that "Today, I am a man!" My dad used to say that the day after he'd fucked my mom (took me years to realize what he meant by saying that. It only really dawned on me after he'd died). Dirty old shit. A real crude dude.

Skipped the Internet entirely that day. Felt good. Like to do that more often.

I definitely don't feel that the Fells is candy-ass any more.

In many ways it was a perfect day out.

Frontier justice on Peterborough St. (re-post 4/08)

2011-03-03T19:57:00.000-08:00

Went to get some Indonesian fried rice at the Rod Dee II and nearly got my head torn off by a vicious little black dog in a black SUV. Scared the shit out of me. I had no idea there was a dog in the vehicle until I was right along side the SUV and it launched itself at me against the mostly rolled up window snarling and growling for all it was worth. I was half way through my meal and had written a nasty note to put under the windshield-wipers of the black SUV when the two miserable little dykes came up to get into their SUV. I a came out on the street and berated them for their dog's bad behavior and one of them had the gall to follow me back into the Rod Dee II and threaten to have me arrested if I didn't "watch my public display". And she ended that threat with twice-tapping the table with her walky-talky looking back thing, I guess it might have been. Real hard-ass little dyke bitch. Guess those little assholes found out what it's like to have someone jump out of nowhere and harsh on their fuckin' mellow, though. Serves 'em right. Fuckin' vermin.

Ultimately, I feel that that miserable little butch dyke was highly pleased with this little dramatic incident. It really tickled her. Too bad they haven't got some kind of amniocentesis test for dykes so they could be aborted before they come to term, like fetuses with Downs Syndrome. What a negative contribution to humanity these slimy vermin make.
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And you can imagine my great joy and delight when the following January, after a heavy overnight snowfall, all the restaurants (and a dry cleaners) on Peterborough burned to the fuckin' ground!!! Well, their facades were still standing. Anyway, I laughed my ass off!!! And now, a few years later, I hear they're finally being rebuilt. I hope those same two nasty little dykes go back and hang out there and choke to death on their food.

I seethe and fume and gnash and bite and spit and rage when I think of this. I wish they were here right now so I could... get some real physical revenge.

For American To Live, Europe Must Die

2011-03-03T18:19:00.000-08:00

Fuck Europe.

Iron law of oligarchy

2011-03-03T18:14:00.000-08:00

Who says organization, says oligarchy.

Ted Kaczynski gives some personal motivations

2011-03-03T15:26:00.000-08:00

"As you know, I have no respect for law or morality. Why have I never commited any crime? (of course, I'm not talking about something like shooting a grouse out of season now and then. I mean felony type stuff -- burglary, arson, murder, etc.) Lack of motive? Hardly. As you know, I have a good deal of anger in me and there are lots of people I'd like to hurt. Risk? In some cases, yes. But there are other cases in which I can figure out ways of doing naughty things so that the risk would be insignificant. I am forced to the humiliating confession that the reason I've never committed any crime is that I have been successfully brainwashed by society. On an intellectual level I have only contempt for authority, but on an animal level I have all too much respect for it. My training has been quite successful in this regard and the strength of my conditoned inhibitions is such that I don't believe that I could ever commit a serious crime. Knowing my attitude toward psychological manipulation of the individual by society, you can immagine how humiliating it is for me to admit to myself that I have been successfully manipulated." -- from an early letter from Ted K. to his brother David.

"the arts, letters and sciences are spread like garlands of flowers round the iron chains by which [men] are weighed down" - J.J. Rousseau

2011-03-03T15:24:00.000-08:00

Or, as my father would say: Ignorance is bliss.

There must be something better than this

2011-03-03T15:02:00.000-08:00

There must be something better than this,
'Cos if there's nothing better than this, what is the point in carrying on?
And if you tell me there's a point,
Go on and tell me what it is,
If it's a something I will do it,
As long as it is better than this.

There must be something better than...
This is not what I was promised when I was a kid at school,
All the things I could have done if only life was not so cruel.

There must be something better than this.
There must be something better than this.
There must be something better than this!

Reclaim/Re-wild

2011-03-03T14:56:00.001-08:00

No Revolution, no War, no Struggle, just fighters

2011-03-03T14:43:00.000-08:00

You know who you are. You're been fighting for a long time. Probably since you were very young. Others have only started fighting after having seen the system for what it is, after you've been physically or spiritually maimed and crippled by it. You're the physically and mentally downtrodden, the imprisoned, the dispossessed, the homeless, the bereft, the marginalized, the isolated, the alcoholic, the addicted. And there are those who were born and raised outside the system and are fighting assimilation, absorption, digestion, excretion.What we fighters need is not theory. Theory is pacification. Theory is some new improved, sure-fire, miracle formula for mass society.What we need is:1) Deprogramming: Zerzan's essays are one excellent example.2) Moral support: personal testimonials are good examples.3) Practical info on how to be effective fighters: Self-explanatory.No theory or rational argument can convince someone to become a fighter. Either you feel it in your guts, in your heart, in your mind, everywhere in your being, or you don't. Once a person has become a fighter, the scars last for life, they can never go back, even though they'd like to.The system doesn't perpetuate itself primarily by coercion and the threat of force, but primarily by addicting people to the mindless creature comforts it provides. When the system can no longer satisfy those addictions, when a big proportion of the population has been caught squarely on the very shittiest end of the stick, then things will get really turbulent.
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an old post from bygone days

Asheville Arthaus Hostel

2011-03-02T21:23:00.000-08:00

Arthaus, outhaus, shithaus and pecker palace. BJ'll get his pecker in yer face one way or 'nother, ya better believe.

I needed to stay at the hostel for a week to ten days to find an apartment so I could re-locate to Asheville. I did everything I could to ingratiate myself with the proprietor, BJ. I listened with sympathy and respect to him while he told me a lot of gross stuff about his personal life, his marital, legal and financial problems. I was rewarded by BJ terrorizing the living shit out of me. (You can't ingratiate yourself with a psycho, they only take it as an admission of weakness and as an invitation to be victimized.) As it turned out it took 9 days to find a place. After being forced to leave the hostel I stayed at the Mountaineer Inn out on Tunnel Road. A very nice place run by decent, mature people.

I stayed in the bungalow out back for 5 and a half nights. It's got its own entrance that you need a key for. 2nd night I was there I had insomnia around 3am and went out for a long walk. Came back at 4:30am and found the bathroom window I'd left open had been cranked shut. Really creeped me out. Shoulda checked out the next day. Sure wish I had considering all the misery this psycho's put me through.

BJ's spent time working as an audio "engineer" (technician, really) in DC and he's had a surveillance camera mounted over the front door of the hostel for quite a while (the camera was so he could avoid being served with subpoenas by his estranged (common law) wife - told ya the guy had a lot of fucked up problems). Wouldn't be at all surprised if he had some kind of surveillance equipment installed in the individual rooms.

Apparently his estranged (common law) wife considered BJ to be a thievin', cheatin', connivin' son of a bitch who was trying to cheat her out of her fair share of the business (i.e., the hostel) she worked hard to establish.

Oh, and apparently a big part of the feud between himself and his estranged (common law) wife was that she had gone out and been "fucking around on him", cuckolding him, ya know? That must have been very upsetting.

BJ admitted to me he hates American Express cards because it makes it easy for the card holder to cancel the charge if they feel they haven't received value for what they paid for. To show him I trusted him I put the 2nd block of 4 nights on my debit card. Big mistake. Wouldn't ya know it he turned right around and screwed me out of 2 and half nights lodging. It was almost as if he went up to his room at 1am on the 2nd night and monitored his bank account on-line and as soon as the money transferred from my account to his he came down and threatened to kill me if I didn't leave by the next morning.

Oh, and BJ also got a real big sick-ass kick out of telling me I should go and check myself into the Vanderbilt apartment retirement home. Implying that my life was basically over and that I should just check into an old folks home and wait for death. Made a point of rubbing my face in this little joke of his on two separate occasions. Miserable fuckin' scumbag.

BJ's very close to his momma, Karen. First two times I saw him and his momma together I thought they were a couple. I thought, jeez, he likes 'em kinda old and dumpy; he looks like he's one of them that "marries his mom", so to speak.

Apparently, since BJ lives there, BJ's momma considers the hostel a family domicile first and a place of business second, so she feels free to talk whatever kind of shit she wants to the guests.

BJ's momma first ticked me off by laughing in my face and telling me Boston was a cool place, she knew a couple students who had lived there for a couple years and had a real groovy time. This was after I had said I had just come from spending 12 mostly miserable years living there and was hoping Asheville would be a lot nicer place. (Traveling around the country recently I discovered that people considering Boston a cool place is a common misapprehension).

BJ's momma ticked me off a second time when she and an older gay couple who were staying at the hostel barged in at 11pm (I finally got some time on the hostel's Internet computer) and interrupted my work looking for an apartment (there aren't that many available in Asheville). She and the two gays were talking a lot of squirrely tourist shit and I was expected to drop everything and join in. BJ's momma kept fluffing her hair the whole time because she had just washed it and she still wears it long and full like a school girl, even though she's pushing 50 pretty hard. She complained about me to BJ, and others, in front of me the next day because I had had a grumpy face the night before. I'm a real bad man, for sure.

Anyway, I subsequently made a point of talking to BJ's momma, sticking up for my right to have a negative opinion about Boston and the modern world in general. This was all the excuse BJ needed to pull one of his psycho numbers on me.

BJ forced me to concede, under threat of extreme violence, that he had a right to make a place for himself in the world and that he'd been struggling hard all his life and that he's had some tough breaks. Well no one has a "right" or is "entitled" to own two houses in the center of Asheville and run a hostel in them. As for his struggle, well we all have our own cross to bear, don't we. And as an example of one of his "tough breaks", he confessed to me that he had locked his young daughter in her room so he could go out partying with a friend and when his estranged (common law) wife came by the house and discovered what he'd done she called the cops on him. Poor BJ, so misunderstood.

Speaking of BJ's kids, the week I happened to be there was the first time he's been given visitation rights to see his daughters in a while. He told me that this was now "significantly less heartbreaking". It occurred to me later to think: "Less heartbreaking for who? Not you, ya greedy psycho bastard, you don't have a heart!"

Oh, and the real kicker of a "tough break", the one that really entitled BJ to smack me down with "extreme prejudice", was that the hostel was due to be sold out from under him on July 27, 2009 (three weeks from the night he terrorized me). Well I can see where that would be very upsetting. Pity I couldn't have been there to share in his jubilation when the interested parties were prevailed upon to desist from their demands and to let the "cash cow" of a hostel to continue to operate. It's still going now, I believe. Just my bad luck to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, I suppose.

BJ's a real big time operator. Every little detail of his life is super-important. So it's only right and natural that I share his "story" with the world at large, or at least my view of it. Other hostel guests and citizens of Asheville at large should all do what they can to pitch in and try and make BJ's life a little easier, a little more perfect, like he so richly deserves.

This blog entry is just another one of those "tough breaks" BJ doesn't deserve.

If BJ needed me leave the hostel because I made his mother uncomfortable he could have made up some excuse such as the hostel being over-booked and then offered me a refund. There was no necessity for his to terrorize me.

The following 4 months I lived in Asheville I was frequently afraid at night that BJ was going to break into my apartment (the building had no outside door lock) and attack me. The guy's a fuckin' menace.

Oh, for some reason, BJ kept repeating to other people while in my presence that he had been the one that had introduced the Celtic music night at the Jack of the Woods pub. Go figure. Speaking of which, there isn't a real whole lot of artsy bohemian-ness to the hostel. Money-grubbing, junk-culture techno-ness is much more the spirit of the place. Just another bunch of fraudulent shit from this clown.

Too bad the other hotels in downtown Asheville don't get it together to offer cheapo rooms for the teenage crowd that come to Asheville and who stay at the hostel so they can go to a show at the Orange Peel and then go out partying. Last I knew, BJ's rates were $43/night. That's pretty steep considering how bare-bones the place is and that the only thing the place has going for it is the location.

Big swingin' dick BJ.

Don't forget to add the Arthaus Shithaus to your Facebook/MySpace friends list, kiddies.
----------------------------
My tribute to all the big, powerful, King-Kong ding-dong daddies of this world.

MITRE_lifers

2011-03-02T21:18:00.001-08:00

They nagged me to come to the monthly D75 department picnic.

I finally came on a Saturday in 1986, I think it was. There were two picnic tables full of my so-called colleagues. I brought my wife and my 5 year old son. They all gave me the cold shoulder. I was forced to leave and go back home without having been greeted by a single person. I guess they were trying to tell me something. Like, "Fuck off and die, fuckhead! Face it, you're not MITRE material!" Mani Daya was the main one I recall. I had been his offic emate for the first few months when I was hired. The rest? Tasker, Zuk, Williams, Monk, Drake, Duffy, Francis, Gagnon...? Probably. Don't know. No one ever mentioned the incident to me during the following week and no one ever mentioned the D75 picnic to me, again.

Decency prevents me from freely expressing how I feel about these people, about MITRE, about hi-tech, about middle-class people, about the Modern World. Francis and Daya are probably dead. I'd go and piss on their graves if I knew where they were.

"Judging Judges: A Few Pages from The Mirror of Justices (c. 1290)" By PETER LINEBAUGH

2011-02-08T17:07:00.000-08:00

I'm delighted that CounterPunch still hosts this article from October 2004. Pretty inspirational material. Nowadays, if a judge, due to his/her gross negligence, caused a wrongful death sentence to be given and carried out, he/she would just be removed from their position and dis-barred, I presume. Hardly seems fair. I guess that's what makes ours a more civilized age.

I initially read this article back when I was struggling through Leftism. This article is one of the good ones that still stays with me.

Life of Black Hawk, or Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak: Dictated by Himself

2011-02-05T22:14:00.001-08:00

Cool.

"Care Dog Meets Pee Bear" by Paul Mavrides

2011-02-05T15:55:00.000-08:00

Very funny.

"Yellow Dog" #17 cover showing a demon shitting out the modern world

2011-02-04T21:55:00.000-08:00

Drawn in 1970 by Larry "Cherry Poptart" Welz, who R. Crumb called an idiot in the Crumb movie. I read most of those Poptart comics back in the day, they were fairly entertaining, and a heck of a lot less pretentious and patronizing than Crumb's work.

"Wooden Leg: A Warrior Who Fought Custer" (Second Edition)

2011-01-31T13:23:00.000-08:00

Excellent. I enjoyed the tales of everyday Indian life more than the description of the battle with Custer, but the description of the Custer battle was interesting, too.

"Indian Boyhood" by Charles Eastman

2011-01-31T13:21:00.000-08:00

Too nicey-nicey.

"The Journals of Lewis and Clark" edited by John Edwin Bakeless

2011-01-31T13:17:00.000-08:00

Pretty gripping story, although it doesn't really take off until after a few months of dicking around with all the tribes they meet along the way, giving presents, making speeches, telling 'em their great white father's looking after them.

I like this edition, I found it very readable. I've taken a peek at the Bernard DeVoto edition, which preserves the original typography of the journals, and I don't regret not having had that challenge, although the DeVoto edition is regarded by many as the best one.

"The Oregon Trail" by Francis Parkman

2011-01-31T13:08:00.000-08:00

Brilliant sketches of plains life in the mid-19th century written by an insufferable Harvard/Beacon Hill twit. In other words, he makes the time and place come alive but his nasty attitude obtrudes into it a lot.

The Barnes & Noble edition I got was full of irritating OCR-introduced typos. Cheap fuckers.

"My Life as an Indian: The Story of a Red Woman and a White Man in the Lodges of the Blackfeet" by J.W. Schultz

2011-01-31T12:25:00.000-08:00

Half good, half bad. The half bad part was a lot of nicey-nice talk about his domestic arrangements and the romantic developments had by a rich guy that was hanging around, moping about his grand romantic disappointments. When the rich guy and is fairy-tale princess Indian bride ultimately perish on his yacht during a storm, all I could think was, "Good fuckin' riddance!!" The half good part was just the day-to-life in the Indian village.

"Tough Trip Through Paradise, 1878-1879" by Andrew Garcia

2011-01-31T09:11:00.000-08:00

Excellent 1st person story about frontier life. It gets kinda over-heated and melodramatic in the last quarter of the book when the author tries to re-create, from his imagination, an Indian attack on some prospectors.

"The Southwestern Journals of Zebulon Pike, 1806-1807" edited by Stephen Harding Hart, Archer Butler Hulbert

2011-01-29T21:11:00.000-08:00

Fuckin' gross-ass, fuckin' prima-donna prig.

"Nine Years Among the Indians, 1870-1879: The Story of the Captivity and Life of a Texan Among the Indians" Herman Lehmann

2011-01-26T19:52:00.001-08:00

Wicked cool. Too short. Wanted more.

"Memoirs of My Life and Times" John Fremont

2011-01-26T19:41:00.000-08:00

Jesus, the first 250 pages of this huge tome were boring! So dry and scientific. Fremont finally starts to loosen up after that and show a little feeling for the terrain he's traversing and for his men and horses.

He was pretty disgusted with the Indians he met, which makes perfect sense since he's such a prissy little tight-ass.

And you have to wonder why they called him a "pathfinder". Pretty much everywhere he goes there's already plenty of well-beaten roads to travel. He was more of a surveyor than a pathfinder. And the self-aggrandizing business towards the end about his role in the annexation of California was totally boring, I just skimmed over it. This was barely worth the effort to read. Someone should edit and abridge the fuck out it and release a more accessible edition. The introduction said the book didn't sell well when it was first released, back in then 19th century, and it's easy to see why.

"The Adventures of Captain Bonneville" by Washington Irving

2011-01-26T19:33:00.000-08:00

The single most boring frontier book I've read. Irving is so precious and patronizing. I had to fight to keep my eyes from glazing over on each page.