Red Ivy, on me
disgusting, invisible
blood, splatters, body

~m

During my lunch hour today I wanted to drop off a fountain pen for repair.
This meant a walk to Downtown Crossing in the shopping district,
an area swarming with people today due to the warm summer weather.

The Bromfield Pen Shop is a place I have dreams about with all their pens, cool ink and exotic paper.
It’s the only place in Boston to take a sick pen; the patient of the day: a Mont Blanc fountain pen.
As I walked down Washington Street, grilled sausages, onions and red and green peppers assaulted my olfactory senses.
I was hungry and had multiple thoughts of mustard.
Spicy, brown mustard.

I was limited on time so I dropped off the pen and didn’t chance a look at the new inks
that had undoubtedly come in.
I am a big-time sucker for creatively colored inks.
Thank my lucky stars I didn’t have the time to spend money I don’t have on inks I really don’t need.
And ink is sooooo cool.
You have no idea.

I left the pen shop and walked up Bromfield Street when I saw a sign for a tres cool sandwich shop.
I walked in and saw a line longer than the bank on payday.
I would settle for a grilled chicken sandwich from Burger King. (yummy, right?)
I sat down to eat and noticed an older black man panhandling right outside the front door.
This guy was a bit different though.
He wasn’t asking for money, though he did hold a large BK cup in his hand.
I watched through the glass as he mouthed ‘hello’ and ‘have a nice day, now’ to the many people walking by.
He was polite and generally unobtrusive for a needy guy.

And he was needy.

He stood about my height (5’8”) and had on ratty clothes, the overall effect topped off
with a weathered Boston Red Sox hat.
His toothless smile seemed almost innocuous. . . inviting.
You almost wanted to forgive him though he’d done no wrong, if that makes any sense.

As a rule, I don’t give money to street people.
I might offer a piece of fruit or a bottle of water if I have an extra.

I reached into my BK bag and took out an order of French Fries that I hadn’t ordered.
I brought them up to the register and told the woman that waited on me that I hadn’t ordered them. She waved her hand in a ‘no comprende’ way and said ‘keep them’.

I haven’t been eating fries lately and decided my windfall would be a snack for the man outside ‘working the street’.

I ate my lunch and continued to watch this man smile, say hello, give directions and take whatever this unblinking society would give him.
I finished my sandwich and grabbed the bag with the fries (still sufficiently hot) and left.
I walked up and handed him the bag and said, “Here, eat these. You do eat fries, don’t ya’?”

You would have thought I’d just given him a winning lottery ticket.

He smiled and said, “Bless you, my brother. Bless your heart.”

I walked across Tremont Street and through a warm, sunny Boston Common back to work,
oddly happy to have been sincerely blessed.

~m

I recently began teaching piano to someone that’s been asking me about some lessons for several years.
This ‘student’ of mine is currently working on many things but mainly pop tunes.
She takes on these artist tribute gigs like it’s her job and generally has 30-40 tunes on her plate.
She comes to me with the ones she’s having issues with and we go from there.
A bit avant-garde but it seems to work.
Although many things I say are met with that ‘deer-in-the-headlights’ stare,
there are moments when the light goes on and the aha moment presents itself.
This week we were going through several songs: I’m in you by Peter Frampton,
Yesterday Once More by the Carpenters and
Mandy by Barry Manilow.
No cheap-shot Manilow comments, okay?
Jeepers.
(and my student kind of gags when she plays these)
She generally goes to the web and finds a chord chart for a given song
and prints it out hoping to get a head start before she has her lesson.
I easily figured out why she’s been having so much trouble.
The chord charts suck.
Bad, appalling, ridiculous, shitty, WRONG are all adjectives that describe these
toilet paper-like charts that I wouldn’t even wipe a strangers ass with never mind my own keester.
These charts were written by someone that #1, has no ears (literally & figuratively),
#2, has little to no natural musical talent and #3, wouldn’t know what a minor seven flat five chord was unless it bit them is the ass.
I could not believe what I was seeing.
They should come with a *disclaimer:

“These chord charts are guaranteed to raise your suck factor
to levels beyond your wildest dreams.
They’re so poorly written you won’t even be able to play the song!”

Or

“Musically illogical chord charts. Yeah, they do sound like shit, don’t they?
Hell, we don’t think we got one chord right!”

Jesus Krispies.

Figuring out chord changes to a song is not brain surgery
but for the bonehead that put some of this crap on the web I really have to wonder.
Bottom line?
It you’re trying to learn a song, stay the hell away from the web.
It will musically scare the hell out of you.
I am still shaking my head.

For your edification, THIS is one of the URL’s in question.

And not to totally diss this site (which I have done) this is a chord chart from someone
that doesn’t have their head up their ass.
Deacon Blues

This post is somewhat repulsive.
Just my own silly little observation…

I do believe I’ve found a job that I would never want, even if it paid some incredible cash, I still couldn’t do it.
I could never be a tattoo artist.
It’s a short story but it starts with a large woman that I saw standing in line at the Coldstone Ice Cream place one hot summer afternoon.
Judging from the shaking of the ground beneath her feet I’d say she tipped the scales at 300 or so.
This was one big, hunk of a woman.
To get by her on a sidewalk would probably require a city variance of some sort.
I’m rambling.
Sorry.
She was wearing a teeny-tiny pink shirt that showed off her impressive midriff.
Her t-shirt said “You can’t touch this.”
I’m thinking, ‘why would I want to?’
The overall effect was—how shall I say it, globe-like?
Ohhbese? (bigger than obese)
Palatial?
I was unfortunately behind her which is where the thought of never being a tattoo artist came to mind.
I could see the small of her back (a contradiction if ever there was one)
and the unsightly crack of her heiny, a good 2” worth.
Plumbers crack on a woman.
Nice.
Real nice.
Rising up out of the murky depths of her posterior was a tattoo of some kind.
I didn’t want to stare for fear of going stark raving mad so I never found out just what it was.
I have a few ideas as to what it could have been but I really don’t want to go there.
She ordered a mountainous vat of 5 or so flavors mixed together with Butterfinger’s and M & M’s and Jimmies and God knows what else; a reasonable caloric addition to her vast temple of flesh.
Maybe they need to implement some type of weight scale in front of the Coldstone register and if you
happen to “pin the needle” you can only have fat-free yogurt in a kid’s cup.
Hey, life’s a bitch sometimes.
I guess I came away from the experience #1) wondering why some people dress the way they do and
#2) wondering who the lucky son of a bitch was that had to spend 4 hours looking at this woman’s vast backside.
I bet his story is really something to chew on.

~m

I run into many interesting people during the course of my day in Boston.
This morning a customer took me by surprise with a true story that was just too damn funny not to share. I am not making this up folks.
May not be suitable for reading the kids before bed either.
I made mention of the fact that I had made chili on Wednesday when BLH said, “I gotta good chili story for ya.”

In the (somewhat) paraphrased words of BLH:

“This was several years ago when I was living next to two gay guys.
Great guys, too.
They did their thing, I did mine, ya know?
Live and let live, I say.
Anyway, my kitchen window looked right into theirs as it was less than 15 feet away.
So this one summer day, I’m making chili.
Beautiful day, windows open, music on and I’m chopping up onions and garlic and Habanero peppers for my chili.
I leave the kitchen for a minute to go and take a piss and resume my cooking.
It’s not even 2 minutes later that  ‘Mr. Willy’ starts to heat up.
Like really heating up.
I look at the Habanero peppers now nicely chopped and look down at my crotch and think, “Dear God, no.”
Within 5 minutes, I realize that ‘Mr. Willy’ needs some serious medical attention.
This is getting painful.
And really hot.
I get a facecloth, soak it in cold water and drop my pants right there in the middle of the kitchen.
It didn’t take long to realize that all the wet facecloth did was move all the hot stuff down to my
two soon-to-be ‘Hot Mexican jumping beans’.
I was in too much pain and making too many oohs and ahhs to realize that I was also gathering something of an audience 15 feet across the way.
With my crotch turning into a smoking Mojave desert, I was getting desperate.
(Is that steam?)
Christ, I’m on fire down there!
I suddenly remembered buying a big container of sour cream for the chili and
waddled like a penguin over to the fridge.
I ripped open the container like a madman, took a fistful of the cool white stuff
and began rubbing it in gobs into the raging fire down below.
My oohs, ahhs and general sounds of relief were obviously misinterpreted by my now smiling neighbors across the way.
There I am with my pants down, breathing heavy, and sour cream smeared all over my crotch.
Beautiful.
A proud Kodak moment for me, ya know?
I’m close to my mother so I told her the story, and man, did she laugh.
Two weeks later, I’m out to breakfast with her at a place she frequently goes.
The waitress brings my breakfast of fried eggs, home fries and bacon
but on the side of the plate is a small tub of sour cream.
I asked the waitress, “What’s up with the sour cream?”
She winked and said, “Your mother says you really like it.”
(I am laughing hysterically now)
You’ll be thinking about this every time you make chili now, right?”

Yeah, BLH, you are sooo right.
Was it a funny Thursday morning for me?
You betcha schweet bippie.
Thanks for a great tale, BLH
You have total attribution.
I just hope I did you some justice.
(BLH’s version is much funnier but has a different rating)
Hopefully ’Mr. Willy’ has found some cooler climes by now.
And, BLH, I hope you were using low-fat sour cream.
That regular stuff is just plain nasty . . .

I need the sharpest of knives to slice this
epidermal anomaly from the trappings of my weak and aging body
Deep slices to the elbows, slow and tender slices to the knees
please scratch my legs until they bleed, thank you please
this betrayal of skin, the most hideous part of me
is a possession of the worst kind,
an internal itch I will never be physically able to touch
the P takes over my body, the quintessential tired host
it will never be free . . . as the crimson spreads far above the blood that boils deep within me
People will continue to stare,
invisibly pointing to my sprawling scarlet letter ‘P’
just another ugly ducking,
just another ugly waiting stranger hiding deep inside of me . . .
I hate this

Poverty.
In two words, it sucks.
I was quite moved by this picture.

It is that time of year.
This short story by Ray Bradbury was written in 1948.
Oddly enough, it seems like something you would see gracing the front pages of today’s morning paper.
I’ve decided to re-post this perennial favorite simply because it is horrifying.
Just to warn you, it’s a fairly gruesome tale.
Bradbury was so far ahead of his time.
If you haven’t read The October Game and would like to,
click on the picture above.
(or HERE)

It’s Malarkey Monday once again.
Where in God’s name did the week go?
Saddle up and let’s ride into this week with one of my all time favorite beer ads.

Nothing like a lawyer with a sense of humor . . .

If you’ve haven’t visited peopleofwalmart.com
check it out.
It is hysterical, scary and often quite disturbing.
Create your own caption for the blistering image below.
I’m in the middle of pouring bleach into my eyes.

Have a great week, peeples!
Please visit my fellow Malarkers for more Monday hijinx:

Moe
Morky
Muffy

The following is a Public Service Announcement that was done in the UK.
It is graphic, violent and bloody.
I post this for anyone with children driving these days.
I have three daughters and they will undoubtedly watch this.
If it saves one life, it will have been well worth the post.
And if you think for one minute that this isn’t happening, you are KIDDING yourself.
Talk to your children.
God only knows how much I love mine.
Technology giveth and technology taketh away.
Please don’t let it be the latter.
Please view this video with caution.