A Shitty Little Southern Jail

Saturday, our local government held an open house at the Loudoun County Adult Correctional Facility (better known to the euphemistically uninclined as the County Jail). This august building in the center of Leesburg is about to be razed for a parking lot -- one suspects that having such a remnant of Jim Crow (built in the 1950s) lowering over what has now come to be known as Old Town Leesburg, a place of tony law offices, brewpubs and antique shops, may have had a slightly depressing effect on tourism. The new jail stands at the edge of town by the airport, well out of sight of those with Mad Money to spend on restaurants and tchotchkes.

Of course, we Jingos couldn't possibly stay away.

Here's the view of the back of the jail taken from the monumentally depressing Exercise Ground. The picture doesn't show it, but it's surrounded by chain-link fence and razor wire and signs that warned of dire consequences for that inmate so bold as to try to speak to passersby in the street. (Freddie impressed me mightily with his observation that the chain-link was so tight that you couldn't get a foothold if you tried.)

Sadness just drips from the walls of this place. I'm not a religious person, but I am a firm believer in Karma, and this place was just rancid with it. I couldn't help running Prison Movie Scenarios around in my head as I wandered the halls -- Cool Hand Luke, The Shawshank Redemption, Sullivan's Travels -- and realizing that even those gritty movies failed completely to convey the banal, routine moral squalor of this place.

Clearly, the Authorities had invited us in -- make it a family affair! -- to give parents the opportunity to impress on their children the horrors that await them if they stray from the Straight and Narrow. And indeed, many families with impressionable youngsters were there for that very purpose. I believe my own brood, being well beyond that age where they could possibly be (or, indeed, need to be) Scared Straight, took a rather different lesson from the day.

Here's the first sight inside the prison walls. It's an old church pew, modified for drunks. Yes, those are seat-belts built into the structure of the seats. I can't help but wonder if the attending gendarmes weren't just a little amused by the thought of a church-pew so modified.

Here's what they call a day-room. There were about eight of them through the building. The cells to the right remained open during sunlight hours to allow about 14 prisoners to mill about aimlessly, talking tough and, fuck, I don't know, raping each other. We found checker-boards, Monopoly boards, and the like still stored stuffed between the bars.

Although the Authorities had done their best to sluice away the unpleasantness for the guests, these rooms still emitted a fairly strong smell of urine and desperation.

I began to be fascinated by the remnants still left on the cell walls, unstripped by the cleaning crews. The object below appears to be some kind of scorekeeping system, but for what game I'm mystified. Still, you can see from the date at the top of the scoresheet how recently these cells had been occupied.

Oh: The glue used to hold the paper to the wall?

Toothpaste.

What the hell else are you going to use?

The everyday workings of the jail being described by the tour guides (deputies on overtime, chests puffing with pride at the the ennobling work they undertook) quickly lost any fascination for me. But what really begin to capture my imagination was the graffiti on the walls of the cells.

Here's one from the womens' section of the jail...

Much of the graffiti was rather unprepossessing -- lots of Bible verses, poorly executed religious iconography: Yeah, Sparky, tell Jesus how sorry you are you got hammered and smacked your (probably richly deserving) sister-in-law with a tire iron. That'll help.

But in among the dross there were some seriously affecting bits of work. At first I thought the author of the following was a Captain Beefheart aficionado in durance vile: Titled Spandex Enormity, this one had some real punch and drive:

I Googled "Spandex Enormity" and was disappointed to find it was actually a heavy-metal lyric the poor goober had scribbled on the wall in his boredom and desperation. (A lyric from a band who took Rage Against the Machine to task for selling out, but still...) There were scores of others in the same hand in that cell. I was disappointed to find I hadn't actually discovered a really-o, truly-o Prison Poet. Damn you, Norman Mailer!

Toothpaste seemed to be the medium of choice among the Displaced Latino School:

Lots of Gang Sign. Oh, lots of Gang Sign. But this one stood out for it care in execution. Somebody had a lot of time on his hands:

Don't ask me what the Star of David means. You'll have to ask somebody else.

Here's a particularly ingenious bit of improvisation:


A prisoner, staring at the same bit of peeled plaster for eighteen hours a day, sees a duck -- and pounces!

As I said, the religious iconography was mostly amateurish and mundane, but this one showed some real artistic moxie:

Careful grayscale fading done probably with saliva and a fingertip. Over hours. Beautiful.

Wonder Woman (a studio art major and no mean critic of art) and I both agreed that this one was the prize-winner. If you had to describe it for a catalog, under "Medium" it would say, "Fingernail on Latex Paint." It's simply scratched into the jamb of a cell. But for composition, rendering skill and emotional affect, I give this one a major rave:

After this discovery, we got the fuck out of there as fast as we could, vowing never to drink alcohol, smoke crack, open a meth lab or beat each other with found objects ever again.

And you know what? So far, we've kept our word.

Deer Hunting with Jesus

Tuesday, I had an opportunity to sit for a good long spell in a desolate, Nowheresville parking lot on Leesburg, Virginia's south end. The lot was shared by a plumbing-supply shop and a gas station, and the only comfortable spot to sit was atop a pile of gravel under a tree.

Luckily, I had a brand-spanking-fresh copy of Joe Bageant's new book, Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War, to occupy my time. I was only a couple of pages into it, Joe's lucid, funny, and immeasurably passionate voice beginning to convince me once again that I'm not insane for thinking that the United States is headed for Fecal Matter Creek in a leaky Rubbermaid shitbucket from Winchester.

(Well, first, I checked to see if my name was in the Acknowledgments, as Joe'd promised it would be -- a-yep, right there, listed along with King of Zembla as a "plain intelligent and aware soul out there on the Net who took the time to connect with a curmudgeon writer because, well, similar minds run in the same gutter," stroke stroke...)

I am lucky enough to have Joe's home number in my cellphone contacts. I don't bug him much, just the occasional howdy when he's not in Belize fomenting class warfare. But I decided there on Page Two, somewhere around "[Winchester, Va.] is solidly fundamentalist Christian and conservative, steeped in the gloomy ultra-Protestant notion that man is an evil, worthless thing from birth and goes downhill from there," that Joe needed a good bothering at exactly that minute.

My luck was working. Joe was home, between publicity interviews for the book, and glad to hear from me. We chewed the fat for a bit (excellent fat, fresh-killed venison), talking of this and that.

The plumbing-supply shop door opened, and a man stepped out who could easily be one of Joe's working-poor subjects. Huge proletarian mustache, plastic gimme cap crowning wispy gray hair, hollow alcoholic's eyes, working-stiff clothes greasy with plumber's putty and machine oil. He took me in, long-haired yuppie in a white polo shirt and Frye boots (forgot the pants that day), and then he cracked a smile when he saw the book I was holding.

"Deer Hunting with Jesus! I like the idea!" he said with a phlegmy laugh. I smiled back, unable to come up with any rejoinder, whipsawed by the whistlingly weird circumstance of being on the phone with the author of that ironic title at that exact moment. Thinking back, I couldn't tell if the guy got the joke, or whether he was interpreting it literally as a religious deerstalker's guide. I have seen weirder things on the shelves at my local market. Well, see, there you go.

Kwitcher self-satisfied namedropping, you social-climbing cocksucker, how's the book?

If you're familiar with Joe's online essays, you'll know. It'll make you laugh, it'll make you cry. The subject is America's working poor, the "mutt people," the people who cause liberals to shake their heads in frustration and bewilderment because they so constantly and consistently vote against their own economic and political interests. Joe explains why this is, through a whole slew of real-life examples from his home town of Winchester. Their stories are both heartbreaking and viciously, ironically funny.

Just about every page evinces a righteous "right on!" Here's one of my favorite passages so far:

"The people" like cheap gas. They like chasing post-Thanksgiving Day Christmas sales. And if fascism comes, they will like that too if the cost of gas isn't too high and Comcast comes through with a twenty-four-hour NFL channel.

That is the American hologram. That is the peculiar illusion we live within, the illusion that holds us together, makes us alike, yet tells each of us that we are unique. And it will remain in force until the whole shiteree comes down around our heads. Working people do not deny reality. They create it from the depths of their perverse ignorance, even as the so-called left speaks in non-sequiturs and wonders why it cannot gain any political traction. Meanwhile, for the people, it is football and NASCAR and a republic free from married queers and trigger locks on guns. That's what they voted for -- an armed and moral republic. And that's what we get when we stand by and watch the humanity get hammered out of our fellow citizens, letting them be worked cheap and farmed like a human crop for profit.

The book is full of these powerful passages, genuine anger that dates back to a time when the Left actually stood for poor people, rather than aggrieved interest groups. This is what Joe drives at again and again: Liberalism must make itself stand for these people again, must defend their interests, and not, as I've seen time and time again among the very people I know, dismiss them as booger-eatin' sister-fuckers.

While I've Got You On the Line...

Won't you please let me introduce you to the newest addition to my Blogroll -- a superbly thoughtful blogger, Stoic's Delight, who also happens to be a Close Personal Friend of Mine?

I had worried that he'd throw the blogging thing into a cocked hat after a few tries, but he seems to have caught the bug and now seems to post fairly regularly.

Stoic's Delight, everyone! Post some comments! Encourage the man! He thrives on attention!

I Come From the Land of Ice and Snow

I find rather ineffably hilarious my most recent Pop-Culture Discovery -- namely, that Robert Planet's wordless howl at the outset of "The Immigrant Song" is exactly the same melodic phrase that adorns the theme-song of "Get Smart." The thought puts me in such a fabulous mood that I can fortitudinously bear your schadenfreude-laden giggles at my tale of woe with the Triumph....

I haven't yet named the thing yet, but I'm willing to entertain suggestions. Think of a capricious person who constantly squirts oil onto the floor and won't rise to a vigorous kicking....

I took the Oily Beast (© John Morrish) down to the local gas station, a distance of some five or six miles, to tank up in preparation for a practice run around Short Hill. Having filled the tank, I kicked to start (her?) up again.

And kicked.

And kicked.

Nothing would bring (her?) to life. Absolutely nothing. My right leg was absolutely knackered from the effort.

The headlamp wasn't shining, and the ammeter on (her?) headlamp showed an alarming nothingness. Quite clearly, something was desperately wrong with the electrical system. I asked the gas-station owner if it was OK to leave (her?) there for the night; luckily, our daughters are coevals at the local school, and we knew each other noddingly.

I went home and spent a very uncomfortable night, tossing and turning and wondering what kind of pig in a poke I'd just bought. The next morning, Wonder Woman and I drove my truck to the station with a stout length of rope. She towed me home -- an absolutely terr-o-fying bit of driving, if I may confess it.

I called the fellow who'd sold me the bike, Randy Creel, of Randy's Cycle Service and Restoration, who was superbly helpful in walking me through a set of diagnostics that isolated the problem to the battery, which was, simply, old. I bought a new battery, installed it -- a quite thrillingly dangerous procedure involving pouring extremely dangerous chemicals into a box and hooking a 2-amp trickle charger to it -- and now it starts like a sex kitten on roofies (JC? Any hints for a name?).

Twenty Flight Rock

Took the newly street-legal Triumph out on its shakedown cruise in the early evening yesterday. The length of Mountain Road and back, about 20 miles overall. Trepidacious and tentative at first, by about Mile 4 I was whooping with glee. Everything I'd been afraid of -- our dirt road, the bike's weight and power, cornering and handling -- was an absolute piece of cake. Today is too damned hot to ride, but maybe this evening I'll take another training run.

Apparently, and somewhat unwittingly, I have acquired an Identity with this '64 Triumph. I've been looking around the Net for info on it, and the most salient thing I'd found was that Steve McQueen rode the previous year's model in The Great Escape. Now I've discovered that this bike was popular with café racers in Britain, who chopped it for speed and handling. What I truly didn't know is that these guys were the Rockers, of Mods-and-Rockers fame. Teds. Quiffs. Sidies. Drainies. Leather.

They had a practice called "record racing." Gather at the transport caf'. Somebody puts Eddie Cochrane's "Twenty Flight Rock" on the juke. The instant the needle hits, you go. You have to complete a circuit and be back in the parking lot before the record is over.

Clearly, I have some Hairstyle Issues to deal with. And I suddenly find myself desperately in need to find a copy of The Girl Can't Help It...

Rzzzzzz!

The Time: 1999 or so.

The Place: Somewhere in the desolation of the Northern Virginia suburbs.

I was returning with Freddie from a Cub Scout camping trip. Bone-tired from not having slept at all in a miserable pup-tent on the torturous forest floor, disgusted with the company I'd been forced into for two days -- let's face it; I wouldn't have befriended most of the dullards who made up the Cub Scout troop parents if the choice had been up to me, and the kind of nitwit who enjoys leading a bunch of eight-year-olds through "On Top of Old Smokey" while toasting marshmallows can only be characterized as a complete twat -- I needed something Seriously Transgressive to chase away the anomie.

Freddie, who'd slept as little as me, was dossed in the back seat. I searched the CD carrier and found it: "Weasels Ripped My Flesh" by the Mothers of Invention. The perfect record! Take this, you boozhy cocksuckers!

Didja Get Any Onya... Prelude to the Afternoon of a Sexually Aroused Gas Mask... Toads of the Short Forest... Yes... yes...! This is doing the trick! I am not some goddamned Cub Scout Dad in khaki Dockers driving a fucking minivan through the 'burbs! No! I am a Zappa Fan!

I heard a stirring in the back seat. Freddie had been awake and listening.

"Dad?"

"Yes, my son? How may I help you?"

"Why's his guitar want to kill her mommy?"

Ah, life.

My first attempt at a GarageBand recording, back in, what, 2003? was My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama. I was experimenting with the loops that came with that marvelous program, found this neat-o N'Awlins kind of drum thing, and it just grew organically out of that. I sequenced the bass using an acoustic bass patch, laid down a rhythm guitar vamp, and then just played the shit out my Strat. Sometime when I'm at a loose end I may feed the original file into Logic to see if I can't give the recording a little more testicular fortitude, but I kinda like it the way it is.

My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama (pops)

My Only One-Sentence Post Ever

Apparently, this new purchase of mine poses more dangers than I thought.

The Cat and the Chorus Pedal

I know this is more than a week out of date, but here goes anyway...

A plot point in the last episode of "The Sopranos" revolved around a rather spooky cat, who gives Paulie dyspepsia by staring at a photo of the departed Christopher -- even after it's been moved to another place. "The abstract shapes, or something," Tony says unconvincingly.

Tell you, cats do bizarre stuff.

Our Paco, long departed now, had a truly weird affection for a piece of guitar equipment I owned. I didn't have a dedicated room for music in our old Takoma Park place, back in the Eighties, and I used to park my Strat in the dining room. My little Fender Eighty-Eight amp was there, and I had a Boss Stereo Chorus stompbox on the floor.

I'd come home to find the cat curled up around the chorus pedal. Sleeping right on top of it, huddled around it like it was a teddy bear. It couldn't possibly have been a comfortable thing -- it was a metal box, an inch-and-a-half high and maybe five inches by three. Twiddly-dials sticking out of the top surface.

This wasn't even close to a unique, one-time-only thing. The cat loved the goddamned chorus pedal. Every day I'd come home, and there'd be Paco, curled up around this thing, purring gently and probably dreaming about catching and devouring Andy Summers.

It ran on a nine-volt battery; it wasn't as it it was warm or anything. I can't imagine it was emitting any kind of pleasurable vibration -- it felt like a cold little steel box to me.

I'll never be able to explain it.

I'm Off Again

Up to Noo Yawk for an evening of fun & frolic with the NudeCritics crowd. In order to justify the trip to my employers, and blag a ride on the company shuttle plane, I have to do some (ecch!) work tomorrow, but until then it's Breakfast at Tiffany's on some rooftop on the Yupper West Side.

Meantime, try to talk me out of this thing, Go ahead: Try.


Just looking at it, a thin line of drool forms on my chin.

Buck Fees

While I was returning our lawn to bourgeois respectability yesterday, my mower annoyed some stinging insect, which manifested its displeasure by drilling me just over my left eyebrow. As it didn't hurt very much, I suspect the offending creature to have been a yellowjacket wasp, whose stings aren't particularly painful unless you piss off a whole hiveful of them and they attack en masse. (Personal experience talking, here.)

I didn't think any more of it until I began to notice some difficulty seeing out of my left eye. Taking a shower after the hot work, I glimpsed my face in the bathroom mirror to find that the eyelid was quite alarmingly swollen. As the day progressed, the swelling around the whole eye increased to the point where I couldn't see out of it at all.

Not a terribly vain man, I was nonetheless rather disturbed at my new Elephant-Man look. As common sense dictates, I took some of the antihistamine Benadryl, which had little effect save to put me in the absolute vilest mood. The constant pressure on my eyeball gave me a
blinder of a headache, too.

I woke up this morning to find that the eyelid was even more swollen than when I'd gone to bed. The swelling's gone down a bit now, mid-morning, but co-workers are still looking at me slantendicular and asking if I've been in a fight. And the headache's returned.

OK, you little yellow cocksucker: You win. I was wrong and you were right. I do not belong in your world, and I was trespassing with my big, loud, carbon-belching mower. I'm sorry! Uncle!

Can we call it quits now?

No Sandwiches, Now

I find the atmosphere just right to ask the following question, one that has bugged me for years:

If offered a Perfect Ideal World, where Tony would never find out and consign you to slumber with the finny denizens of the deep, and where your own spousal unit would be equally uninclined to vengeful wrath, who would you do?

Carmela Soprano, or Meadow Soprano?


Me: Carm. As long as she asked nicely. I have my own reasons.

But I'd love to hear your own rationale.

Paul Is Not Dead

(Crossposted at Nude Critics)

Well that was me
Royal Iris
On the river
Merseybeatin’
With the band
That was me

There will come a time -- distressingly soon, I have a feeling -- that the only Beatle who isn't dead is Paul McCartney. I don't say this because I have some inside track on the state of Ringo Starr's health -- I fondly wish him a long and happy existence -- but because the Gods of Irony work that way.

June 18th will be Sir Paul's 65th birthday -- meaning (among other things) that his new solo album, Memory Almost Full, will have been written and recorded at that once unimaginably far-off age of 64. Far from having rented a cottage in the Isle of Wight (if it's not too dear), McCartney's last decade has been noteworthy for tumult and chaos. Of the record's title, he says,

The album title came after I had finished everything. For me, that’s when they normally come, with the exception of maybe Sgt. Peppers, otherwise I don’t think I have ever made an album with The Beatles, Wings or solo where I have thought of a title and a concept. I was thinking about what would sum the whole thing up and ‘Memory Almost Full’ sprung to mind. It’s a phrase that seemed to embrace modern life; in modern life our brains can get a bit overloaded.

I Am Not Now, Nor Have I Ever Been, Farmer MacGregor

It would take a cold heart indeed not to melt upon finding these li'l guys in the lawn:

Here's Flopsy:


An' here's Mopsy:


Wonder Woman wouldn't let the dogs out after she found these two this afternoon. She kept hoping that Mrs. Cottontail would come along, scold her charges for running off, and chivvy them back home for chamomile tea and biscuits. By my arrival home, she had not appeared, so I gathered them up gently in a tea-towel and carried them one by one into the rather overgrown blueberry patch and laid them carefully out of sight behind the milkweed. By the time I'd brought Mopsy up, Flopsy had already hippity-hopped off into the bushes, so I think they'll be safe.

Do You Need Anybody?

In Which I Forgive Kenyon College for Making a Man of Me

On the drive out to central Ohio for my 25th college reunion, it became rather urgent that I obtain a copy of Sergeant Pepper to play very loudly in my car -- my copy seemed to have taken a bunk from my CD shelves. The day of the drive was the fortieth anniversary of the release of that earthshaking album, and since the weekend was to be dedicated to wallowing in nostalgia, the proper musical accompaniment seemed incumbent.

On the way to a record store in a shopping mall in Martinsburg, West Virginia, I walked past a shop that catered to the fashion needs of the Urban Gentleman -- oversized baseball caps meant to be worn sideways, enormous throwback basketball jerseys -- you know the thing. In the window a rather raffish porkpie hat stopped me in my tracks. I must have that hat!

And have it I did. It occurred to me that the thing might occasion a nice little joke: I imagined my classmates whispering behind my back, Oh Jesus, look at poor Jingo -- he's gone bald as a billiard ball on top and he's wearing that ridiculous hat to disguise his shame; that's just pathetic! Cue me removing the thing to reveal my Crowning Glory, a full thatch of luxurious hair without a single streak of gray.

Old Kenyon, scene of most of my social and sexual humiliations

Arrived at Gambier, I ankled into the old bank, now the registration office for the returning alumni. I announced my name to an assistant at the desk, and was immediately floored when Rory Mach, registering at the next table over, cackled, "Neddie who?"

Rory is absolutely one of my favorite human beings in all of the world of space and time, with a marvelous, ever-ready great booming laugh that makes you feel glad to be alive. I had no idea he was coming -- and he likewise had no clue I was to be there. We were once so close that it's quite possible that our first children were conceived on the same night, after a bibulous dinner at a nice restaurant outside Washington. The kids were born within hours of each other. Time and distance and natural laziness on both our parts have drawn us apart, but after this weekend I will move heaven and earth to make sure that's no longer true.

Rory Mach and Offspring. No -- seriously. Her name is Offspring.

Rory and I got to yacking, and I mentioned my blog. He asked the name, and when I told him, he said, "You're Neddie Jingo?" Turns out the sumbitch was lurking at NewCritics, with no idea who I was. Now he's posting there as well, and has recently started a blog of his own. In a world of -- what are we up to now? eight billion people? -- and even given the self-selecting and self-referential nature of the Blogosphere, I'm calling this coincidence nothing short of a miracle.

People.

People. A congenital misanthrope, I don't like a lot of people. But Matt's comment on a recent post of mine was a perfect description of the weekend: "the connections I invariably make with people whom I hardly knew when we were in school together." While in the Old Days I knew most of the folks in that little kaffeeklatsch above (actually, it should probably be referred to as a wasserklatsch), it's really only been since graduation that I've come to know and feel affection for them as friends rather than classmates. I also met many new friends, and filled in some blanks with people I'd only ever met online -- Will Divide, for example, is as charming in person as he is in email, as is Axiomatic Apricot from the Chumps.

Ascension Hall, scene of most of my academic humiliations

My fraternity, the Peeps o' Kenyon (motto: "Purity and Accuracy" -- which should give you some idea) survives, if all its mural artwork does not. Some absolute gooberhead painted over the mural reproduction of the Grateful Dead Steal Your Face album cover that greeted visitors in the foyer of Old Kenyon. I really enjoyed the little two-inch-high graffito that replaced it, though:


Two nights of fairly hearty partying did take a bit of an emotional toll on your correspondent. Sunday morning, a twinge of melancholia already setting in, I regretfully packed up the effects and motored off homeward. Again, I thought it incumbent to leave campus with Sergeant Pepper blasting at top volume out of the windows of the car. I grinned a grinny grin and set my porkpie at a jaunty angle as the windshield rattled: "It was twenty years ago today..."

But wouldn't you know it -- I'd forgotten about the second song. That damned second song!

Do you need anybody?
I need somebody to love
Could it be anybody?
I just need someone to love...

Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm, gonna try with a little help from my friends
Oh, I get high with a little help from my friends
Yes, I get by with a little help from my friends
With a little help from my friends...

I'm afraid I blubbed a bit.

Rory, Nick, Abby Abigail, Chris, Tor, DeeDee, Chucker, Joe G., Kyle H., Elise B., and everybody else I forgot to mention -- next time, let's all do this:

Steve Gilliard

I've been out of the loop all weekend -- post on the Reunion is in the making -- so I hadn't heard the dreadful news that Steve Gilliard had died.

That's a terrible blow. He was one of the great ones. I really enjoyed his righteous passion; The News Blog was absolutely a daily must-read for me.

My condolences to Jen and the News Blog team.

"We Fight Back" indeed.

Before I set off on my eight-hour drive to Gambier, I just wanted to say a couple of things:

1. Eugene Robinson has the thing well in hand; and

2. It was forty years ago today.

I'm Off

Things may (or may not -- I'm bringing the MacBook) get a little quiet around here for a couple of days.

I'm going to attend my 25th class reunion at Kenyon Kollege, traveling tomorrow, coming home Sunday. I'm going alone; when I broached the topic of attendance with Wonder Woman (an alumna; we met and fell in love there), she pointed out that the kiddoes have their final exams this week, and that somebody needs to crack the whip on that. With no detectable malice in her voice, she waved and said, "Have a good time!"

Fellow Chump of Choice Will Divide (hey! Guess what! That's not his real name!) is a fraternity brother, although I've never met him -- he graduated the year I matriculated. He'll be there, and I'm very much looking forward to finally meeting him.

I checked the list of my classmates who've registered. One name in particular stood out -- somebody I've always wished I'd smashed his lights out back in 1978, '79, and again in 1981. I will have a very hard time being in the same room with him, having relived the memory over and again of the casual assholery he was wont to display. (JC, remember TW?)

As an adult, I've become rather less fearless than I was as a callow youth. I'm now far more willing to call an asshole an asshole. I do hope our paths don't cross.

Other than that, I'm rather looking forward to this. I may post some photos of the campus -- it is unspeakably pretty.

That photo above is of Old Kenyon, a building I was privileged to occupy for two years. There is an acoustic tile ceiling in the third-floor bathroom that, if pushed, affords access to the ordinarily locked bell-tower. A tale that still makes me laugh 26 years later is inherent in that fact. There are two people in the world who will laugh with me at that observation, and at least one of them is registered for this reunion.

That's why I'm looking forward to this.

Chicken of the Sea for Horses of the Meadow

A haymeadow near my home (click photo to enlarge). I think it's a wonderfully surreal sight, all these cans of tuna strewn higgledy-piggledy about this bucolic landscape.

I've never been able to take a photo of Short Hill that makes it look as big as it actually is.

One

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Why We Always Keep Our Shovel Collection Up to Date

Been a bit of a deathy year chez Jingo.

Not only did we lose Wonder Woman's dad, but BB the budgie and Zippy the guinea pig also went the way of all flesh, within a few weeks of each other this winter.

The deaths of these pets were not exactly earth-shattering. You don't get much love back from a guinea pig or a caged bird. Zippy lost most of my affection when he bit me repeatedly years ago while I was holding him and trying to make friends. The kids, whose pets these originally were, didn't take care of them, and the task of feeding them and changing their cages fell to Wonder Woman, who, I think, mainly regarded them as a minor pain in the ass.

BB was the first to go. He'd had a tumor under his wing, and it was only a matter of time. Now, when a budgie shuffles off this mortal coil, custom dictates that one gather the family at the graveside, say a few words of remembrance, perhaps a few (in our case) secular ceremonial words, and shovel the dirt back into the hole. This is, I suppose, in aid of attaining what the funeral industry is pleased to call closure.

Now, I think that if one of our dogs had died, we -- and the surviving dog -- would have been absolutely gutted. I'm typing this now on our bed, Wondie is napping next to me, and both pups are curled up between us. They are without question beloved members of our family, as much our children as our human offspring.

But BB and Zippy -- not so much. So these burial rituals were, how to put it, deferred. It was cold out, the ground was hard, and we had more pressing things to attend to. Wonder Woman respectfully wrapped their corpses in old towels, and preserved the mortal remains as they do at any morgue -- she put them in the freezer, to be taken out and buried with full honors when the weather warmed.

Now it's not our kitchen freezer she put them in. Please understand this. That would be gross. No, she put them in our second freezer, which we have in the garage. We keep no food in there, only extra ice and a bottle or two of medicinal vodka. I do use the freezer to store the summer's crop of fruits, but it's all bagged and sealed shut. No corpse/cherry contact took place.

In the lower part of the unit, the refrigerator section, we keep bottled water, extra milk, and beer. Last week, I noticed that a beer (a Sam Adams Summer Ale for those keeping score) that I'd brought in to have with dinner was not nearly as cold as I'd like it to be. Semi-tepid, 's what it was. Next I noticed that the cherries, which I'd pitted and frozen with sugar-syrup for use in pies and the like, had begun to show signs of thawing. A few days ago, when I opened the freezer to consult that bottle of vodka (I had a bad case of the dropsy, accompanied with the blistering marthambles, and any practitioner of medicine would have prescribed the very same thing), I noticed...a smell.

Oh. Dear. God.

Now you remember that broken shovel from earlier this week? That was my only tool for breaking ground; the next best thing I have is a gardening trowel, and it would be like trying to pole-vault with a toothpick to try to dig a grave with it. So today found me at the hardware store replacing that shovel. The instant I returned home, I raced with the new shovel to the orchard, picked a nice shady spot, and dug two holes a foot or two deep. Then I donned latex gloves, took the soggy packages out of the now nearly completely moribund freezer, walked quickly but calmly to the graves, and performed the Sacred Ritual: "GoodbyeBBandZippyyouwerenicefriends and I'M REALLY SORRY!"

So that's why, when your shovel breaks, you replace it immediately. One of life's lessons.

We're also shopping for a new fridge. Anybody know where I can get a flamethrower to sterilize the old one?

A Moral Dilemma Presents Itself

Weirdest thing happened this afternoon.

I'm sitting at my desk, squirreling away at some technical documentation. My cell phone rings.

This pretty much never happens. The cell is for emergencies and for telling Wonder Woman
I'm going to be late for dinner. I've given my cell number to about four people outside my immediate family. I've always detested the idea that I can be immediately reachable at any moment. One values one's privacy.

The display shows an unfamiliar but local number. I answer.

A recording begins:

"You have a collect call from [at this point a burst of unintelligible static is played] at the Loudoun County Jail. To accept this call, press one. To hear the fee for accepting this call, press two."

Whaaa...?

Somebody who has my cell phone number is in jail?

I ran down the list of people who know my number. The likelihood of any of them being in chokey at two o'clock on a Thursday afternoon is vanishingly small.

What to do? What to do? If the caller had been a little more clear in identifying himself (the voice was, if garbled, at least definitely male), I might have been able to make an informed decision.

I pressed two, to hear what accepting the call would set me back. Fifty cents, according to the recording.

So I was faced with the dilemma: Four bits to tell some hapless miscreant he'd called the wrong number -- perhaps even wasted the one phone call Hollywood has convinced us is all you get when you're busted? Or hang up?

And if I hung up, would the goober at the other end think that whoever he thought he was dialing wouldn't even accept the piddling charge it took to inform the Outside World that he'd been nabbed by John Law?

After a moment's consideration, I hung up. I reckoned that if the Hapless M. really needed to talk to me, he'd call back.

The phone didn't ring again.

Later edit: Scam. Thanks, J.

Why Yes, I Am Checking Out Your Ass, Part II

Weekend Fashion Advice for the Ladies from the Heterosexual Male

As we steam into Memorial Day Weekend and the official start of summer, it's time to make the following pronouncement, as an act of Public Service:

No woman -- that's no woman in all of human history -- has ever looked bad in a flouncy knee-length flower-print skirt and strappy wedge-heeled rope-soled sandals.

Not a single one. You can look it up.

There She Goes

This is the image I have set as my desktop on my monitor in my little recording studio. When you're working on a particularly tricky guitar part, or trying sing something in tune, it's great to look up and find Johnny Cash expressing his admiration for your efforts right in your face.

Johnny's digit was particularly erect last night as I was putting the finishing touches on a new recording. I've mentioned having borrowed a Rickenbacker 360-12 from a neighbor, and I'd wanted to do some serious jangling in a hurry. I wasted a couple of weeks on a version of XTC's "Mayor of Simpleton," but became unimpressed with my bass playing and knocked it on the head. Maybe I'll pick it back up again, maybe not.

A few days ago in the grocery store, the house PA squirted out a favorite old chestnut that I hadn't heard in eons. (Yes, I get most of my music-appreciation done while shopping for milk and bread these days.) It immediately became blisteringly self-evident that this was the perfect Tribute to the 12-String Rick and decided then and there to work it up.

A few years ago I was in a band, Scooby Don't, that covered this song. The drummer (who occasionally pops his head in here as Xtcfan) sang the lead part, and it will become apparent why -- the melody rather sadistically concentrates itself at exactly that point where a natural baritone such as myself has to break and go into head-voice. On the first pass, I tried to simply sing it an octave lower, but the result made Johnny especially affectionate. I looked up while mixing it and said, "Johnny, you couldn't be righter."

You're gonna hear a wobble or two in there. You snickering baritones -- you try singing it!

Another amusing thing: I discovered that I'd been playing the riff wrong in Scooby Don't. Sorry, former bandmates.

Ladies and gentlemen, from those glorious Late Eighties, the Era of Jangle and Wonderment, I give you the incomparable La's There She Goes!

Slightly later edit: Next up, The Monkees' "What Am I Doing Hanging 'Round?" That'd be a great jangle number.

Tagged? What's That?

One finds oneself tagged.

1. What's in your pocket?

Why don't you just reach on in there and find out?

2. Is the pork ready?

Why don't you just reach on in there and find out?

3. Have you ever had to rock to and fro to make your poopie go?

Make my poopie go what? Bang? Home? Vroom-vroom? Honestly, the question is shamefully vague.

4. Do you like onions?

Better than getting smacked in the face with a garden rake, but not as well as breaking shovels over peoples' heads.

5. So, how big is it?

Why don't you just reach on in there and find out?

6. Budweiser or real beer?

I prefer imaginary beer, made from virgins' milk and the hops that grow on the banks of the River Alph. Lightly hopped, with an unpretentious nose, an insouciant aftertaste, and a redolence of summer afternoons spent playing croquet on professionally sun-dappled lawns.

7. What do you feel about your nose?

It's pretentious as hell. With a souciant aftertaste.

8. Children: Baked or broiled?

They're very good braised with shallots and a white-wine sauce.

9. Do you like it when I do this?

Why don't you just reach on in there and find out?

10. Do you like the sound of chickens?

Cluckity-cluckity-cluck, all the livelong day. How do they amuse themselves so?

11. Would Beyonce clip her own toenails?

Izzat some kind of filthy euphemism the kids are using these days? 'Cos if it is, I'd like to watch.

12. Do you like pork?

I refuse to answer on the grounds that it may tend to discriminate me.

13. If the butter is soft, does the bus arrive on time?

Another euphemism, I make me no doubt. Let's see -- butter, bus... Yep. Euphemism.

14. When do you get up?

Why don't you just reach on in there and find out?

15. How did you survive childhood?

By reaching on in there and finding out.

16. What do you do before bed?

I reach on in there and find out.

17. What are your hidden charges?

Well, if I told you, they wouldn't be hidden, now, would they? You'll find out soon enough.

18. Who's behind you?

That's a bit of a paranoid question, isn't it? Oh, all right: The Bavarian Illuminati. Happy now?

19. Why don't people go to the bathroom on TV?

Because of the hideous expense of replacing your set all the time.

20. What's a soylent green popsicle?

Why don't you just reach on in there and find out?

21. What does it taste like?

Why don't you just reach on in there and find out?

22. Why doesn't Consumer Reports rate hookers?

Apparently you missed last month's ish: "We Test 14 Women Willing to Reach On In There and Find Out for $300."

23. Does George Bush replace the toilet paper tube?

Does a ripping good job of it, too -- only thing he's ever done right. He's a little bulky in the wall-sconce, but once you get all the paper wrapped around him he rotates real nice.

One finds oneself wondering how Bobby Lightfoot would respond to the questionnaire. And GlueBirl.

This, My Friends...

I stand before you a motherfucking gardener!

Those goddamned tomatoes never knew what hit 'em.

The fine print on that shovel's handle sez "Safety Sleeve^TM is guaranteed to prevent fiberglass from splitting."

Guess Safety Sleeve^TM never came up against Short Hill rocks and Neddie Jingo willpower.

You talkin' to me, shovel? You talkin' to me? Well I'm the only one here. Who the fuck do you think you're talking to?

The Assault on Reason

I tried to read this excerpt from Al Gore's upcoming book, but I got bored and gave up.

(Kidding! -- I devoured it like a starveling given a croque-monsieur.)

In describing the empty chamber the way he did, [Sen. Robert] Byrd invited a specific version of the same general question millions of us have been asking: "Why do reason, logic and truth seem to play a sharply diminished role in the way America now makes important decisions?" The persistent and sustained reliance on falsehoods as the basis of policy, even in the face of massive and well-understood evidence to the contrary, seems to many Americans to have reached levels that were previously unimaginable....

It is too easy—and too partisan—to simply place the blame on the policies of President George W. Bush. We are all responsible for the decisions our country makes. We have a Congress. We have an independent judiciary. We have checks and balances. We are a nation of laws. We have free speech. We have a free press. Have they all failed us? Why has America's public discourse become less focused and clear, less reasoned? Faith in the power of reason—the belief that free citizens can govern themselves wisely and fairly by resorting to logical debate on the basis of the best evidence available, instead of raw power—remains the central premise of American democracy. This premise is now under assault.

Jingo/Berlitz Industries translates for the attention-impaired: "We are rapidly drowning in our own loathsome bullshit." It's profoundly distressing, I suppose, that this needs to be said at all.

Run, Al, run!

In Which I Go All Sideshow Bob

Well, this is a new one for me.

Came home a little early to get the tomatoes, canteloupes and cukes into the ground. Brilliant day for it, sunny but not hot -- who's going to grudge me a couple of hours?

Did the work -- compost, mulch, water. Satisfied, I picked up my tools, dumped them into the wheelbarrow, humped the whole package to the shed. Inside, I was restoring the shovel to its customary place --

-- And stepped on the tines of a garden rake that leaned against the shed wall. Whack! the handle smacked me right across the eye. Glasses went flying, gloves, trowel and watering can hit the floor, and a single syllable of rage escaped my lips.


This is what we are reduced to, isn't it. You think it's pretty funny -- until it happens to you.

I can't tell yet if I'm going to get a shiner. The orbit of my right eye hurts pretty good. The floor of the shed is gravel, and I couldn't find my glasses for the longest time -- groping around on my hands and knees, muttering dark imprecations against an inanimate object that I myself had placed in ambush last week. Goddamned stupid rake.

Goddamned stupid gardener.

(Hey -- I can't remember who it was that suggested the Newspaper Method for keeping down weeds, but it's a peach. Reduced my workload enormously. Once I learned to put down four or five sheets instead of just one or two, not a single bit of unwanted vegetation dares to show its face.)

It's a Small World After All!

I don't quite know why this amuses me so much, but it does...

Ne Di Chin Go in Chinese!


Néddie J'ingo in French!


Nedwart von Jingo in German!


Neddolino Gingoni in Italian!


Neddie Jingão in Portugese!


Neddovich Jingonotovski in Russian!


Al-Ned bin Jingo in Arabic!


Nedro de Xingado in Spanish!

Those Who Get It Will Get It

Trust me to spend several days of studio time back in 2003 committing a musical joke that will be understood by approximately 3% of its listeners.

Low-Rent Nixon (The Lord Said Dammit) (pops).

Graphic designers will fall about. For the rest of you, here's a clue.

Apologizing in Advance..

I have absolutely no idea whatsoever what prompted this little thing to creep into my head this morning at Freddie's footie game. One minute you're all in the game, cheering your head off at the heroics being played out on the field of battle, the next you're thinking up rhymes for "uterine wall."

Dysmenorreah, it fails to enthrall
Water retention is casting its pall
That egg won't stick to the uterine wall
That's why the lady has a cramp!

She's got that bloa-ted fee-ling again!
Follicular phase --
Just one of those days!
Feels like her gut's in a toolmaker's clamp
That's why the lady has a cramp!

Take it, boys!

Think Facility's Not Reading Your Mail?

I have occasionally played around with paranoia as a subject for humor, but this one ain't very funny at all.

Barba de Chiva, who blogs at Phronesisiacal, wrote a post back in 2005 about being routinely stopped by the Border Patrol in Laredo, where he lives. The BP agents have actually mentioned knowing about the blog to him during these stops, although they seem to have said or done nothing overtly menacing about it.

Now, last night, an anonymous BP agent dropped a comment on the two-year-old post that, in its way, is as chilling a thing as you're likely to read:

Myself, I have spoken to you on several occasions, as you drive North to Encinal. In the red VW; as a passenger in a silver VW; in a small black convertible; an old Ford; and, and older tan Chevy, as well. I have a fantastic memory and recall to boot...

No shit.

Note how the aggrieved officer reads things into Barba de Chiva's post that were not originally there, in particular the perceived accusation that the BP agents are "knuckle-draggers." Chiva calls them "suspicious," "officious," and (sarcastically) "stalwart defenders of our nation's borders," but nowhere does he imply that they're stupid. That's their reading. Barba is a professor of English; the officer's purpose in his self-aggrandizing recitation of his own educational C.V. appears to be an attempt to legitimize his power, to justify his authority; in fact the effect is just menacing.

Duty Discharged

What an anticlimax. Got to the courthouse, spiffy in Bidness Casual. Went through the security checkpoint, setting off a metal-detector with my new bionic hip -- a new experience for me. Ankled up to the Jury Waiting Room, registered, got a badge. A woman gives a lecture -- no talking about the trial, even with fellow jurors, lunch is at noon, yadda yadda. They call out the jurors in alphabetical order; my meatspace surname is deep in the alphabet, so I'm not called. The first half of the alphabet troops out of the room, presumably for voir-dire, or perhaps it was estoppel, or tenure by serjaunty -- anyway, one of those comical Medieval French terms those lawyer johnnies throw around to earn the big bucks.

The rest of us, we superior souls with the good taste and discretion to have surnames beginning with N-Z, wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Two hours, we wait. Periodically, the woman in charge pops her head in to assure us we haven't been forgotten. Just a little while longer, thanks for your patience.

Then, at 10:30, she pops in again. The trial we'd been awaiting has been postponed. We are free to go, and our jury-duty obligations have been discharged, and we're regular citizens again.

Ah, well. Better than a day at the coal-face.

The Duty

I've got the Jury Duty tomorrow.

I will of course perform my civic duty to the best of my natural ability. That is to say, I will show up.

But as an enthusiastic and experienced sinner, I am deeply reluctant to sit in judgment of my fellow man. I understand there are strategies to, how you say, avoid being chosen for a jury (and thus get released from the Courthouse with perhaps something of the day to spare). I suppose I could show up dressed as Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lim-bus- stop-F'tang-F'tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel of the Silly Party and announce to a breathless courtroom that I'm a pinko atheist sheepfucker, but I would imagine there are less wardrobe-intensive tactics.

Any of you lawyer types got better suggestions?

See, This Is Why I Have a Blog

Go check out the last comment on this post.

(And please, ya maroons, don't add a comment so your comment becomes the last comment. Duh.)

Ain't that neat? A person who actually saw The Bunny Man? Apparently, he'd Googled "Bunny Man Legend Fairfax County" and came chez moi.

This kind of thing keeps happening when you broadcast yourself on the Net. I've avoided talking about certain things, because, you know, from your lips to Google's ears. But the most marvelously serendipitous things keep popping up. Serendippity-doo. Sarah Ann Dippity-Doo.

SuperJoel Tornabene's brother. A guy who knew somebody in the Snobs.

I got an email some while ago from a guy who'd lived at the farm where John Mobberly was killed -- his ancestors were living there during the Civil War, had things stolen by him. The guy told me some family anecdotes about him. (All in good time, kids.)

All this interconnection. People I knew in college pop up. People from high-school. People from old jobs.

I'm going to try something. Guy I knew in college seems to have dropped off the face of the earth -- Googling his name produces only a few results, and they hint at a life about as weird as it gets. (Link arguably NSFW.) Seeing as how he appears to fancy himself something of a King Wizard, with this Aleister Crowley goober, I'm gonna try conjuring him up:

Pasq Wilson, I summon thee! I summon thee! I summon thee!

(Everybody from Kenyon is readin' this an' thinkin', Dude -- do you really want to do this? Cat was a mite . . . chaotic.)

I'll take my chances. See what happens. I'm betting he's here inside two weeks.

Next day edit:
Heh-heh-heh...

Please Kill Me

I have taken a radical step.

Last night, in a fog of rage at the wateriness of Porcupine Tree's Fear of a Blank Planet, I collected together every album and CD I possess by King Crimson, Marillion, Yes, The Mars Volta, Jethro Tull, Mike Keneally, Genesis, Can, the Soft Machine, and the Moody Blues, opened my second-story window, and heaved the whole stinking lot of them into the flowerbed below.

This event will henceforth be known at Jingo Acres as The Defenestration of Prog.

Why Yes, I Am Checking Out Your Ass

Weekend Fashion Advice for the Ladies

As the weather turns warm, won't it just be delightful to slip into a lovely pair of loose, cottony cargo capri pants? The kind with a drawstring top -- roomy and comfy, that lets cool air circulate deliciously around your skin? Not low-rise ones -- yuck! -- but the ones that cinch at the waist, flattering the derriere and emphasizing your delectable hourglass figure, making your every graceful step an encomium to the glory of the female body?

You'll do that, won't you?

Please?

With an Armed Guard Marching Ahead

God help me, I've been watching the first season of Deadwood on DVD again. Last night, I fell asleep in front of the TV just as Al Swearengen was busting the mercy-kill on the poor, mad Reverend Smith. I slept a troubled slumber, full of half-glimpsed visions of Wu's pigs and Alma Garret's graceful neck. When I awoke in the gray light of a joyless dawn, the room smelled of cat-piss and bourbon, and on the table in front of me I found a note scribbled in an unsteady hand....

Fuckin' Wolfowitz.

Fuckin' ethics committees' schoolmarmly fingerwagging notwithstanding, I can't leave go unsaid my envy of the brass balls on the cocksucker.

Your time is not particularly noteworthy for its Christly adherence to principles of personal accountability, is it. Second Fuckin' Gilded Age, is what you're living through. Fuckin' Attorney General sits like a pastry on a pillow, flinging offal at passersby in the thoroughfare as his piss-stained employer, stupid as mud, smiles like a seraph. Washington cocksuckers who planned your own disastrous war on the Dirt-Worshippers, what do they get? Corner offices on K Street, editorial space in the papers to declare the flawlessness of their wisdom, book contracts, regular visits from painted massage therapists.

(And when your own Joanie Stubbs opens her fuckin' yap, exposing the gorgeous hypocrisy of a hosannah-moaning Christer at State -- and potentially ten thousand other miserable hoopleheads -- the town lifts its skirts and emits a yowl of outraged propriety. I give even money that Deborah Jean Palfrey meets an untimely end before Friday.)

But this Wolfowitz. Fucked up right into the presidency of the World Bank -- a capital grifter's license. Cocksucker hits on the sovereign scheme of givin' the world's poor a helping hand -- one girlfriend at a time.

Gotta admire that. A bunco artist is nothing without a pair of ironclad balls, and Wolfie's clang together like churchbells when he walks. See something you want, you fuckin' take it -- let the rabblement wave their arms and gibber at your effrontery. Such exercise is capital for the fuckin' constitution. When the gentry look askance at your appropriation, you reply calmly and with clear-eyed honesty that the fault, dear Brutus, is not with us but with the cocksuckers who want to stand between your mighty office and blessed relief for the world's starving.

This is the awful genius of the grift: the World Bank's fuckin' charter is to spread the money around to the masses -- any fuckin' hooplehead in a blue suit could be its presiding Solon. Wolfie's spent his career conning bone-stupid cocksuckers into belief in his infallible wisdom, despite ample evidence to the contrary; it's how he got the fuckin' job in the first place. To claim that your intellectual endowments are so fuckin' magisterial that a casual con should be posthaste overlooked is an act of audacity that takes balls the size of fuckin' watermelons. He probably has to carry them around in a wheelbarrow, with an armed guard marching ahead to shoo away stunned onlookers.

Can't say that's a bad way to make a living.

May Day

The Internationale

Arise ye workers from your slumbers
Arise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant.
Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We'll change henceforth the old tradition
And spurn the dust to win the prize.

So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.

No more deluded by reaction
On tyrants only we'll make war
The soldiers too will take strike action
They'll break ranks and fight no more
And if those cannibals keep trying
To sacrifice us to their pride
They soon shall hear the bullets flying
We'll shoot the generals on our own side.

No savior from on high delivers
No faith have we in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear
E'er the thieves will out with their booty
And give to all a happier lot.
Each at the forge must do their duty
And we'll strike while the iron is hot!

(Love that rhyme in the first verse: "want/cant"... One of those words has to be mispronounced for it to work -- I vote for "cant.")