It seems as though Mr. Seibold is once again incorrect in his assertion that the aliens can’t exceed the FTL barrier…..Poppycock!!! As a matter of fact he once described in detail the appropriate Cauchy-Euler transformation to the relatavistic denominator that prevented the zero from appearing. ……No…wait….they did tell us that was “bad math”. Nevermind, Seibold is right. &@*# Institue of Physica Submaxima…….

I digress, the entire aim here is to test my blog linkage skills at posting a bit of artwork (Actually score another point for Chris – he posted this sketch for quick link access elsewhere in cyberworld) Hopefully I can scrawl out some more quick sketches in the in the future….
Enough babble, let’s see how magically I can make this picture NOT appear……

Saddim v.935

At least this is what the attorney for John Hinckley Jr. had to say about his client the other day. What a difference over twenty years of heavy sedation can make!! Certain political figureheads could possibly benefit from a similar course of medication…but I digress.

Now John Warnock Hinckley Jr. has won unsupervised visits at his parents home. Wonderful for Warnock. Although he has to continue gulping the meds, stay away from the press, and most certainly NOT touch a weapon of any variety. Presidents everywhere can breathe a good ‘ole sigh of relief over that last one.

And of course we all know the two magic words forbidden from this conundrum….JODIE FOSTER. My words to Warnock: When the parents digs become a drag and ya just HAVE to duck out in a D.C. dive for a brew, DO NOT discuss movies (especially with the likes of say..Frothy the Snowfiend) and DO NOT take your eye off the saloon door cause the Secret Service will be on you with atavistic FURY.

Whew – a day in the life….

Indeed, as is typical for Jan. 2 , I will lament the fact that I must be at work. No matter that yesterday I was “allowed” the pleasure of a Thursday hiatus, just close enough to Saturday to completely distort my segue into the weekend. Now it’s Friday, but not a REAL Friday…enter stage right: Rod Serling….key theme music….you get the picture…i am at work.

The New Year has kicked off in grand fashion; let’s begin with the politicking that will (un)necessarily start the absolute demise of college football’s BCS systematics. Of course the BCS garnered a stable of detractors from its inception – you can guarantee that the USC win of yesterday will start BCS toppling talk en masse. Or at least this is the catalytic theory. Most fans of the football americano were too afraid to tackle the BCS logic at first. The semaphoric mass of mathematics behind the ratings deflected all but those with the grit to deeply inspect the intricacies (NOT I said me…football is for gambling and alcohol consumption, chiefly, not for numerical mind-numbing).

But now, as with so many systems, the mighty BCS has fallen. The Sugar Bowl will be all but a meaningless formality, no Championship mystique this time ’round.
For a university having a split National Title is probably like the histrionics of the 2000 presidential election – “No we REALLY are the champs, we WON the pollsters top vote…NO we are the TRUE Champs, the NUMBERS are the inviolate absolute….” ….ad infinitum….

Yes, it’s going to be a long day……where is tennis when i need It???????

Several years back I vowed to never again waste even a quick doodle on the foulness of politicos. Nevertheless, election years do happen, and the neverending slur of political BS kicks into a frenzy, and then the pencil hits the ye olde drawring pad, so I will waste just a FEW seconds to rejoin an age old tradition of skewering those inveterate few that will make our headlines burst with enough ranting and politicking to burn blackness into the soul…..

So Dean’s worried they’re calling him a “pin cushion”. what the hell does he expect? The Big General is ready to stick it to him then fo sho……

Ahhh these two will make for some pathetic scrawlings Dr. Jones……..

Here we go again…throw some more scat into the election year cauldron…. Dubya is looking to bust out hardcore Kennedy-style into the “infinite & beyond” (or whatever that cartoon guy says) – and hurl a few human encased probes at Mars now. Indeed, the public need for all thing Mars was certainly sparked with the fun & enchanting 3-d images received from the most recent visit only a few weeks back.

Well here goes a few more BILLION dollars to commit to some grandiose astral cause while the very land beneath our feet is tainted and dying. Dubya could use that seed money to aid the environment (as it decays before our eyes) but he’ll just propose a few more environmental “rollbacks” and attempt to log National Forests and find loopholes in dismantling the Clean Water Acts or something else.

Naaaah, why bother to heal the earth? Dubs can just terraform Mars, grow a pristine terrestrial environment there and cap it off by invoking some half-assed vision of Manifest Destiny and start building strip malls and parking lots across the whole red planet for generations of Bush descendants to rule over…..

Whoaaa…. this is turning into some evil rant, which it’s not supposed to be….Yes, it IS about Mars, good god I wanted to be the first man on Mars & all when I was in fifth grade -it’s not that such a goal is fruitless, but now is not the time in human history for such things. Our technological development has been in hyperdrive for well over a century now. Humankind has moved so fast that it is ill prepared to deal with the repercussions of its own zeal, and there are PLENTY of demons to deal with. Instead of pushing so hard to define ourselves as a great nation that is determined to conquer space, let’s stop taking giant steps so quickly and deem it best to conquer our human foibles first.

best observed to the tune of Eddie Grant’s “Electric Avenue”

Iowa 2004 is in the books, write that one down. And out of the dust and haze of a few trampled cornfields all that is left standing akimbo on the prairies is the lanky effigy of the latest self-annointed politico, the one, the solamente – “Comeback Kerry.”

At least this is how I understood what the TV was beaming my way last night.

My perch in the Ruby Tuesday bar is a rickety cocktail table wedged in the far corner – the kind of table, mind you, that takes a good drink coaster folded firmly in half and placed under one of the legs to provide the proper stability for vigorous sketching, otherwise the table rocks back and forth with the slightest touch of an elbow.

I tried to maintain the balance further with a well placed highball glass directly in front of my sketchpad – filled to capacity with the remains of squeezed lime wedges. This was when I spied the news. The TVs at Ruby’s blare no sound but rely on the constant stream of closed-captioning to convey their message. And then I saw it – Kerry did the deed, victory in Iowa, the over -hyped and mostly useless proving ground of Iowa and now he is the “comeback kid” of 2004: Bubba eat-yer-heart-out.

The news took some time to sink in; my mental processing facilities often take a few extra seconds to interpret anything read via closed-captioning, a tragic, yet necessary mechanism to getting it all CORRECT amidst the ceaseless chatter and visual clutter of bar-room information gathering. (AKA “gettin a buzz on” in Tennessee parlance)

But I read on, and laughed aloud maybe once. This is frigging ridiculous I thought while trying to scrawl in the slowly rocking page of my sketchbook. Suddenly my pencil lurched across the paper, its metal tip ripping into the smeared surface, taking out a damn fine chunk. The bartender (“Red” as we called him, swarthy ex pro-wrestler that had once partied and trained with Jimmy “Super-fly” Snooka) had SLAMMED down a highball full of Jack D. Single Barrel whiskey that quickly soaked into the paper fabric of my current rendering. I could only glare in horror….

The news continued to stream in, making a story out of any vagary that might bear relation to the caucas. Then the New Hampshire projections began: Kerry pulling tight towards second there, neck-in-neck with Clark. On the TV adjacent to the one I was trained on Mola Ram and Indiana Jones were trying to rip each others hearts out as they clung to the swinging bridge. A portent, it seems, for the General. We’ll know soon enough.

Across the room I noticed a man in a frayed rattan golf hat, a close cropped beard, and no moustache. I am not sure but I think I heard Red call him Ray. Immediately I closed the pad and scrunched several loose sheets inside. Time to go. I slurped down the rest of a warm brew and scurried my way through the double doors. No time for glory Dr. Jones…….

This freakish ghost has nothing else to wear
But some cheap crown he picked up at a fair
Grotesquely perched atop his bony corpse.
Without a whip or spur he drives his horse…

Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers Of Evil

Sunday night in Knox Vegas was full of rainy drizzle and lukewarm chill – lucky enough for the denizens of the East Tennessee valley; the Smoky Mountains of lower Appalachia were the only barrier keeping us from a certain death by ice. The weather reports streaming in via my pocket sized NOAA weather alert tranceiver told tale of an entire East coast ravaged by some hellish icestorm of the Furies, replete with requisite madness, mayhem and shortages of skim milk and white bread.

Atmospheric considerations aside this evening had already kickstarted with overtones of savagery. The usual late Sunday round table grew violent amidst the bleary eyed cacklings of an overly boozed Ruby Tuesday bar crowd. Discussions started tame along with casual beer sipping but fell stiilborn with the rise of one poor fools mention of the State of The Union address. Simple enough I bleated, It was NOTHING, zip, zilch, donut…a mere annunciation of Dubyas Republican candidacy – an election year schpeel. This answer was not to the liking of Mr. aforementioned “Me Republican, You NoT, You-Against-Society-as-we-know-It.” I tried mending this bipartisan fracture with a few ramblings of democracy and free-speech-for-all-style aphorisms – but too late, I was getting the evil eye, that evil red eye of the Terminator Ahh yoo Sarah Connah horrible pre-violent shooting scowl.

Fueled by half drunk self preservation instincts and coupled with my inherent disdain for these bastards, I snatched up my sketchpad and made haste triple quick time for the exitway bouncing a wad of cash and change all along the top of the bar, tossing my hat on my head, and dodging the the remainder of the addled horde – all in one cuestroke motion.

Out the door my feet made wet slaps on the pavement as I scampered toward my auto – a 1968 Ford LTD 390 – or as referred to by terrified locals “The Beast.” I tapped the accelerator smoothly as I drove past the building front, catching a couple of silhouettes in the rearview though the rain and glaring crimson neon made it difficult to tell who they were. With consciousness directed sternward I almost smashed the Beast painfully into some muted form staggering roadside – a little precision brake slamming slid the LTD within three inches of the figure before clicking the gears into Park.

Immediately I recognized him: Kimble, a local crackpot fixated with the notion of hardcore term limit applicability especially in terms of local mayoral politicking but certainly not excluding the national scene. He was called Kimble, I was told, as a result of some severe neurosis causing him to relate to the world around him as one continuing ungodly episode of the old show The Fugitive. Hell he even had the mannerisms of a David Janssen symbiote (perhaps one on Crystal Meth). Get In Fool.. I bawled his way, Better get your dumb ass off the road before you end up in a ditch.

Of course Kimble was drenched and seeping into the seats. In his lap was a muddied trash bag, wrapped tightly around something the size of a small raccoon. OK, whatever that is it better not be RABID. Kimble emits a slavering laugh before revealing a smallish boom box. He acknowledged my dumbstruck gaze by jamming a finger on the PLAY button. Instantly a pterydactlyian YEEEAHHH YEEEAAAHHH YEEEAAHHH shrilled from the speakers, I almost swerve from the rainslick highway. The blast persevered: …and then CALifornia, and then TEXAS, and then WASHINGTON, and MICHIGAN, and SOUTH DAKOTA all the way to the gawddim WHITE HOUSE….YEEEEAAAAHHHHH!!!! YEEEEAAAAHHHHH!!! Then I knew – Kimble had some slice and dice remix of the Howard Dean Iowa outburst speech, a grinding reloop of Dean’s garrulous yell, this was blasting at 800 decibels and all in my ear.

Soon enough the fetishism subsided and the ranting began; Kimble’s New Hampshire analysis: why Kerry can’t hold, why Dean NEEDS to feed on “the yell”–push it to its philosophical limits, why Clark will resurge in the South, why……but the tirade bounces off my torpor and I jam the pedal down and assume the grin of the parking lot attendants from ‘Ferris Buehler’s Day Off’ as they go skyrocketing down the freeway…..

I don’t know what’s gonna happen man, but I wanna have my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames…
– Jim Morrison

Post-Super Bowl daze. Backroads and moonlit silence. A clear night for fast driving down twisty gravel byways, kicking dark clouds of rocky dust into a sky waxing gibbous. But in the forest through which I drove the rutted road was hardly visible and darkended by the layered shadows of trees; the old LTD shook violently on shocks hardly able to withstand the tumult of soft grass, yet majestically keeping control at fifty mile an hour while hanging branches of rhododhendron slapped the windows around the tightest hairpin turns I’ve ever encountered.

Ten minutes later this jagged tour ended in the flat bottomlands of Shuckstack Hollow (or “Holler” as we say in the East TN backwoods) where I immediately found a roadside pull-off that seemed suitable for masking The Beast in furtive thickets of leafless undergrowth. With telekinetic timing the small Motorola Walkabout Supra two-way radio I had buried in my pocket crackled an obscene litany of garbled communique full of Breaker, Breaker repeated 10-4s, and Talk to Teddy Bear, Over…All obvious reminders that dealing with lunatics must bespeak an undiagnosed aspect of idiocy brought about by repeated bottles of Dos Equis and quarts of rum. I gripped the two-way and droned a reply, Kimble you better have something here and it needs to pique my interest a helluva lot more than Janet Jackson’s tasseled boob tried to three hours ago… Static, Crackle, Beep You know it man, keep quiet and slink down the road to where that huge sycamore tree fell over. I’ll be there. This is Kimble and I approve this message, over and OUT…

I crept from the car doing zig zags patterns down the road, crouching low by the roadside every twenty feet or so and pausing to look about while taking quick sips from a small flask. This was no stealth mission in Tikrit but something about the deep woods on a frigid February night at three in the morning hit the fire alarm of paranoia, Good God, what am I DOING here?!?. The rendezvous point was near and I could see the dark mass of the tree if I strained my eyes open as wide as possible without them freezing in the sockets – a method far too unreliable. Instead I plopped on all fours and made the blind death crawl along a course that I dead reckoned should smack my forehead right into the treetrunk.

Within thirty three seconds or so I was enveloped in a thatch of branches, and rocked with a gripping fear that some vagrant moonshiner was close, deadly close, obscured in darkness, pointing the rusted barrel of a sawed-off twelve gage tenderly at my forehead – close enough to spit a rancid plug of Redman all over the side of my face, close enough to…. I couldn’t complete the thought – the two-way in my pocket snapped a ferociously loud CRACK of static through the chilly air; apparently I had notched the volume level up to full while crawling around like a fool. Cause and effect: I launched vertical with the ferocity of an exploding toilet, smashing ye olde cranium into a limb with the circumference of a telephone pole, and then PLOP… dizzyingly into the void.

Some time later I awoke in the backseat of the Ford wrapped in my goosedown jacket, face rigid with cold, racked with a skullsplitingly dense headache and the driest mouth I’d ever known. I could tell it was barely dawn, far lighter than the arctic dark I’d just survived, and there was Kimble in the front seat, bent low, eyes peering out the driverside window. He moved cautiously to look me over when he heard my movements; belying a smirk of concern he started shaking his head.

Jesus man that was nuts…. I must have looked dim What the hell? I glotted out What was nuts? I had no clues, some craggy, partial amnesia and now I wake up to some lost chapter of Finnegan’s Wake. Listen man, best I can tell is I scared you shitless when I tried to call you on the radio. I was sitt’in up on the tree and I hit the button to find out where you were and then the whole gawddam tree shakes like a bolt of lightn’in hit it. I continued to listen, completely immobile. Then I find you down on the ground and you was out cold, but you had a flask of ‘skey in your pocket so I poured some down your throat – to try and revive ye and all.

My eyes widened, Fool I croaked That was a hundred and eight proof whiskey man. ONE HUNDRED and EIGHT. Kimble appeared contemplative yet wholly unconcerned, Well, after ’bout five minutes you jumped up and started screaming like a damn banshee, bust’in outta those branches, runn’in up the road, and echoing all down that holler. Took me twenty minutes to round you up, scream’in about vultures and Republicans and gawddim cinnamon Altoids…

At this point I felt ready to lapse into a coma, but managed to get out: So this suffering was all so you could show me….. Kimble breaks in quickly, Oh hell, nothing really I just wanted to drive into the valley and set those John Kerry For President signs on fire in people’s yards is all….

I stare at car roof with the twisted agony of The Living Dead. Kimble’s scrupulous silence confirms his growing embarassment. Well…. he said Hell…let’s hit the Sonic fer some Breakfist Burritas!!!!

My eyes roll………merciful….darkness.

Trouble No Set Like Rain

Jamaican Proverb

It’s Crunch Time in Tennessee. Actually it is Tuesday and voting time, moments of hand-rubbing bliss and false glory; hanging chads and haggard attendants sulking to and fro the rows of voting booths helping the uninitiated behind hanging curtains of some vile fabric grown mildewed since the Eisenhower years learn the subtleties of making certain their vote REALLY counts.

Or at least they think it counts….
Which is the “theory” Red keeps jabbering about while at the same time viciously whittling down a poplar sapling to a fine, deadly point using his favorite replica survival knife from the movie First Blood.

Dammit Red for the fiftieth time, EVERY vote counts and it’s your preordained duty to make sure YOU cast it… I screeched –all the while tottering dangerously on a rusted oil barrel that I’d been sitting on so long my legs were numb, cadaver numb I realized, leagues past any soothing, tingling numb. And suddenly the denatured epiphany: I’m now paralyzed from the thighs down in a cold foul-smelling moonshine shack in the backwoods with a local bartending hooch-brewer that can’t hold his liquor better than most small waterfowl and has become trancingly obsessed with some deranged political conspiracy he just formulated within the past twelve minutes.

My eyes kept to the wood spike that he arced with frenetic aerial sweeps – a deranged conductor of a solipsistic symphony.

I grackle: Ok Red we’ve checked your still and it’s fine. Let’s hop on outta here before my legs fall off.

He squints his eyes, Clint-style I think – the bastard loves The Outlaw Josey Wales, I hafta whittle s’more spikes fer the damm boobie trap awright..

Hopeless. Reasoning is defunct now. I felt a slight dizziness induced via the sourmash fumes; a rising miasma from the large copper pot, and Red flashbacking to jungle combat and primitive deathlust. I considered a furtive radio call to Kimble begging for a little assistance here, but self-preservation dictated otherwise: Red might see and that would be messy, ex-pro wrestlers build anger to explosive heights and lash like silverback gorillas from the greenery – very sudden and very very violent. And with the amount of moonshine he’d been nippin’ at it was distinctly a matter of time.

Listen Boy, it’s the Bonesmen, they got us by the balls. That’s what ol’ Kerry is, just like Bush, a Skull n Bones brethren and they done conspired ‘gainst us awl in some basement up at Yale college, sealed the deal for the fate of mankind years ago. It’s over – a staged spectacle, jus’ you wait, you’re gonna see…

He was sitting on the dirt floor, cross-legged now, eyes down, a tatter of drool was seeping slowly from his lips in one sickening strand. Passed out? I wondered, but unintentionally aloud as well. Red struggled to look up in a series of looping staccato movements and I feared more garbled rhetoric. I hated to tell him that his theories were almost correct, but in reality it’s the Bohemian Society that has us by the cojones, far more sinister than he expected. Red bobbled a few more times but suddenly eased static. Out for sure… I supposed.

I pawed for the two-way radio to make that call to Kimble, rile him from the barstool at the Torpid Toadstool – his regular beer slugging haven.

A few clicks later I admitted to myself that the radio battery was dead. No signal. No static. No nada.

From the rusted hole in the tin roof I could tell it was near dusk. Not many choices left – the legs were immobile. Only option would be to rock the barrel over and smash into the sod, then makes the long crawl homeward until the appendages gain bloodflow. Not another two seconds I’m spending in this godawful shanty.

I pull the ye olde trusty flask from my jacket pocket and take a long pull from it before I commence the barrel-rockin’.

This is gonna be one of those Noches de infierno – I’m sure of it.

The psychological rape has now ended, and in the hazy aftermath I have gained intimate access to the innerworkings of my psyche.

What the hell is he blathering about, you ask?

Very simply: The Personality Test.

I remain confused on exactly why the HR type folks have become obsessed, in a worrisome Branch Davidian sort of OBSESSED manner, with administering these tests. I was minding my own business, and it was slapped upon me: the foulness, asking you to rate yourself on abstract qualities using one of those one to five scales: 1being the LEAST or Strongly disagree, FIVE being the MOST or strongly agree sort of fuzzy logic mumbo jumbo.

I decided that my duty here required a little data skewing. Easy enough. Method to the madness – Fill in the first little circle with honest-to-god truthfullness. Then fill in the next four questions in each block to create little patterns, zig-zags, parallel lines, whatever.

End result: They generated some kind of 20-page garbled report that cross-referenced the interpersonal dynamics for EVERY person in our division. I don’t think so much has been made of so little initial information since the days of Stalingrad.

Nevertheless, here I be typified; I’m told that this sums me up in one tiny ziplock baggie, so here’s all you need to know to see how I tick:

Of course, during the explanation sermon conducted by the polite and ultra-happy HR staff (for about an hour methinks) I decided that it’s my profile, so it’s MY blessed right to decipher this jibberish. But instead I only sketched out this:

There must be a DEEPER meaning here, I can smell it.

Be nice…until it’s time, to not be nice.
Dalton, bouncer at the Double Deuce

Silence. The wall-embedded TV finally ceased the constant drone that had provided an ambiance of cerebral numbness for several hours; usurped now with low mumbling voices and clinking glasses spaced between a few tittering laughs and squeaking barstools. An ungauged silence, dispatched quickly with the rising sound of placated drunks regaining their savage inclinations behind the mountainous crescendo of the self-aware.

Once again, stencil me in the center of this putrid vortex, sitting as low key as possible at the usual cocktail table, trying to make a few careful notitas in the sketchpad. CNN had been tumbling out an excessive flow of violence and rebellion news from Haiti; seemingly for hours on end – or at least I perceived it that way; maybe it was just the “regular” CNN Barnum and Bailey-style news banter, or perhaps it was wholly psychological. It didn’t matter, the bar-talk had writhed rapidly from discussion of the what-in-the-fuck-kind-of-forgotton-meds mindset is ex-Green boy Nader a part of to who wanted to charter a twin-prop party plane for a quick jaunt to the airfield at Port-au-Prince.

…And they’re SERIOUS, I muttered to Kimble who sat leaning against the wall. These mean drunks would do it too; yellin’, screamin’ and chuggin’ whiskey even if their tiny plane took a nosedive into the friggin’ Caribbean Sea.

Hellfire man, then why in the shit ain’t we signin’ up fer a ride like that, Kimble retorted mutely while sipping a beer. We could be down there in Haiti stormin’ the gates and raisin’ some pure H-E-DOUBLE hockey sticks!I can seez it! A nation of endless Mardi Gras, all day boozin’ and boob flashin’, beads around everyone’s necks so thick all ye could see would be their eyeballs!

Wonderful, I thought. Might as well toss another drone onto the infected heap. Now he’s in cahoots with the swarm, guess I should join up too, but not without excessive “antifreeze” or maybe I should call it “sunblock”– it is the Caribbean after all… I took a hefty drink from a tall glass of George Dickel on ice and began the mental preparation. Yo!!!!, I screamed, hoarse-throated above the clamor, Anyone got any peyote!!???!!

Before I could bay out the next word a commotion at the far end of the bar reeled my attention toward an almost sobering scene. Another of the local batch of mentally unstable, known commonly as Pony Boy for reasons vague and unclear, began slinging around a large flag emblazoned with feverish streaks of cobalt blue and rust red paint. He was off the stool at this point snapping it into the faces of startled patrons and breaking into a garbled chant.

That bastard thinks he’s a one uv them voodoo priests, a houngan or something like that. He told me so once, Kimble said in a low voice from somewhere over my shoulder. Look near the stage over yonder, a few more’s gettin’ in the mood, possesed by the voodoo loa spirits.

Indeed. And for obvious reasons. There was a booming sound of drumbeat, perhaps bongo, I was unsure, but it was echoing from the speakers and I saw the jukebox cracked pouring out flashy CDs in a waterfall over the floor, glass splinters gleaming like diamond shards. Someone had smashed the juke and spun in a disc of their own – tribal tempos building up the speed of a panicked cheetah.

I kept my stool as person after person began the wild thrashings, passing it around like the scabies. They think they’re at some damn voodoo ceremony?! I wondered and assereted simultaneously. Pony Boy was doing wild 360′s near the open part of the floor; his sinister drapeau wrapped around him like a serpent. Red was behind the bar slamming down with one hand bottles of clairin, some kind of pure grain Haitian rum that’s steeped with red hot peppers, and shaking what looked like a dirty bone rattle in the other. Drunks were dancing to the bar and swigging bucket-sized shots while the bongo beat continued to mush my brains.

What felt like an elbow jabbed me hard in the spine and trounced my entire frame into the floor. Amidst the tattered napkins and mixer straws I strained to look up for the bastard that had given me the ye olde blindside. All I saw rushing past was Kimble, or who I was pretty damn sure was Kimble, but remotely Abe Lincoln. He wore a thirty inch ivory black tophat and sucked two lit cigarettes from the corner of his mouth, embers sparking the haze.

Immediately he jived and whirred to the bar, snatching up a bottle of clairin and dropping the smokes to the floor. My view from behind only allowed me to see the bottle go vertical – where he held it as the liquid level sloshed lower and lower. His arm thudded to his side and I could see it clutching an empty bottle that was quickly dropped to the floor. He turned to me, still on the ground I was, and it was obviously Kimble, his face painted with black and white paint seemed to resemble a skull – he gazed down at me with a maddening grin.

AWRIGHT Hoss, you next!!!, he laughed with maniacal ease. The crowd hit heavy into a chant of PAPA GEDE! PAPA GEDE!! over and over. Before I could even think to bolt from my grounded position a few of the minions had me pinned tight. I heard feet smacking from the sticky floor all around. The drum-beat bounced louder than ever. Kimble approached with what looked like a siphon and a bottle of clairin. Jeebus Chrikes!! I yelled. You’ll pay for this bastard. I know where you live!! Everyone laughed at my paltry futility. Kimble stooped over, siphon in hand.

Time ta join the fold bruther, time ta join..

The drum-beat raged supersonic.

I don’t know what my fascination is with the unrest in Haiti as of late, but I ain’t gonna let it bog down all avenues of rational sensibility.Therefore I need to evolve an unquestionable IRrational unsensibility. This will alleviate the onset of any pesky social anxiety disorders.

Anyone remember The Serpent and The Rainbow. It was both a book and a movie starring, I think, Bill Pullman. Anyhow, that movie was about Voodoo in Haiti, and more specifically about groovilicious old-fashioned Zombies.

Let’s just say it;s not a good movie for eight year olds with sneak-into-the-living-room-during-the-wee-hours-of-the-morning-tendencies and clandestine desires to watch HBO. Not that I EVER acted that damn covertly or anything.

This movie solves the initial problem though, and rectifies the Nader scenario. It must be that Ralph Nader is now a zombie; controlled by “outside” sources using a psycho-toxinous poison made chiefly from rendered chunks of powdered blowfish. This toxin allows his handlers to maintain Ralph in an emotionless state bereft of memory and rationality.

Now the “unknown” handlers have lit off the insurrection in Haiti. Aristide must have known the secret dealings and was about to blather to the National Enquirer for exclusive rights to all Bat Boy paraphernalia. This seems so clear now – thanks Mr. Pullman? & company!

The scene has likely played out like so:
A blurred figure is seen racing through the streets of Port-au-Prince

Cache of neurotoxin in case, he bolts for the nearest heliport

Unable to remember his whereabouts, figure commandeers vehicle for purported sinister purposes

Figure eludes further observation vanishes into soggy rainforest

In the end the unknown figure is reportedly seeking candidacy under United States election guidlines – Zombie Nation prepare…

This weekend past a sliver of spring fell upon the valley of East Tennessee flicking away the shroud of winter for a moment – a temptation of early March that could end up cascading days of mild temperatures and soothing sunlight or launch headlong into drenching days of cold rain or even some snow. It is unpredictability at the maximal level.

I always opt for the ‘shine (sun that is) it makes my frequent jaunts into the wilderness a slight more soothing; although walking the highcountry in a gentle rain is equally enviable.

In any event I’m finding a minor obsession (evolving major in triple-quick-time) with burdening around a digital camera I received during Christmas festivities. I have never owned even a cheap variety of such instrumentation and thought initially it would be a psychological difficulty to tend for the care of some fancy camera while scratching my body bloody through backwoods thickets of sawbriar while attempting to secure a fragile piece of electronics from being smashed by a bent branch snapping back into equilibrium.

But the excursions I’ve been on since December have caused no damage at all to the sucker, and lemme tell you things have been rough a few times. On lengthy hiking trips cameras are best kept tucked deep in the folds of a wool sweater and summarily buried down in the ye olde backpack until one is struck by such a peculiarity that it is impossible to quell the urge to sling off a fifty pound backpack, undo the secure lashings, and throw out all manner of gear until the scratchy wool sweater is fished out and unfurled and the maniacally protected camera is called to duty to snap a pic of what better be a Yeti foraging down by the creek.

Alas, my father and I tend to wander, sometimes for days, up and down remote slopes of the mountains exploring watersheds far off the dotted markings of the trails on our soiled maps. Much of the time we travel light; small backpacks with essential gear, packs of parched-corn for food, and a poncho to keep off the cold rain. A camera has no safe haven on a trip like this; it is just as susceptible as my fly rod to some Murphy’s Law-style of untimely death. All I can do is keep it in a ziplock bag and cinch it tight with a few rubber bands, but mostly I keep it in a cargo pocket. It helps to have it an arm’s-reach away – things in the woods happen fast and can slip away without your mind even marking it.

So it’s a classic trade-off, but I am no longer worried. If the digital must befall some tragedy in the pursuits of capturing one of those damn wish-I’d-had-a-camera-to-snag-that-shot moments, then it will be a worthy fate.

Enough BS. Here are some slices from last Saturday’s scramble up House Mountain. (Not much scrambling though, the forest was warming on the south side and coming slowly alive, perfect for SLOW-going), The trail along the top is dense with virginia pitch pine and table mountain pine, like so:

The mountaintop has a few good views if you can snake out of the scrub. Here I was facing west from a rock outcropping. The expanse of the Tennessee valley is visible; the Cumberland Mountains are visible on the horizon some fifty miles away:

On the same rocks I saw this friggin’ duck with a metal rod shoved up his arse. It left me with feelings of conspiracy, much like the overabundance of governmental surveillance cameras hanging from traffic lights back in town:

Finally, here is a view to the northeast of Clinch Mountain (starts here and runs through to Virginia) I’d say at about two-and-a-half miles away. The far left knob is known as Signal Point and was an observation camp for the Union Army during the Civil War; from a vantage over there you can see straight southwest to Knoxville and on a smog-less day all the way to the outlines of Lookout Mountain some one hundred and fifty miles away near Chattanooga, TN:

Yup, the addiction is manifest, sure beats the 35mm for ease of use – now I need one of the 256 Meg cards – NOT…. I can’t spend all of my time behind the lense….

Sunday in the Great Smoky Mountains started brilliantly with warm edges of fluid sunshine knifing calmly through the leafless canopy; heating patches of forest floor just long enough to beckon pale green shoots of trillium and other wildflowers from their winter slumbers – life emergent from a lifeless covering of decaying humus.

The early hours had been spent tediously off -trail hiking the steep upslope of a boulder-strewn mini valley between two massive ridges of the Bull Head Mountain. The time spooled achingly slow as we wound our way to the point where the purity of hiking transforms abruptly to the tenacity of climbing.

Climbing in the Smokies is more often than not a manageable endeavor; something that doesn’t have to involve talc-covered hands grasping at miniscule crevices in a vein-throbbing-in-the-forehead effort to hoist one’s full weight to the next ledge – all by the pinky and ring fingers. No, here there are plenty more ways than one to skin the mountain cat. You have to be prepared for a different kind of agony though – one that involes slithering through densely tight thickets of mountain laurel, a tough-as-nails shrub that thrives steadfastly in any space of soil it can grasp between the rocks.

I’ve been friends with the laurel for a long time; best friends really since it is also what thy sweaty palms grasp when making the climb from rock to rock; the laurel understands my need to give a hard tug before fastidiously committing a labored pulling of the whole body to the outcropping above – it’s sure as hell not fun if the roots aren’t anchored like steel traps and the branch tears from the trunk and you find yourself flailing like posseseed chimp for the nearest handhold (better hope there IS one.) The effort does bear fruit of satisfaction though, usually I find perch that offers an unblocked vista towering well above the lower canopy – except of course on Sunday I found such a locale, but well: no damn camera. Such is life. More reason to return on another warm breeze soon.

Eventually I squirmed to lower elevations and made my way to a well trodden path in hopes of heading out a very thin sliver of ridge near the Mt. Leconte trail. The sky remained cobalt clear hardly cold, although my blood was warm and pulsing from earlier. The stream up the trail gushed easily with its trancing gurgles. I had the camera this time:

The trail was smoothly sloping, but full of gnarled roots at the bases of hemlock growing trailside. The roots are worn smooth with an ancient sheen from the thousands of travelers up some of these more popular trails over the years. Ahead I see the spine of the ridge emerge over the rise:

It has been many a moon since the last time I crept over these rocks. This ridge is known as keyhole ridge for a small hole in the rock face that shoots straight through. You can just make it out if you can see the blue haze of the far ridge shining from beyond:

It took another twenty minutes to loop around to the point of entry to the scraggly trail over the keyhole. And what did I find? Park Service had closed off the section – Peregrine falcon nesting site. $20,000 smacker fine if you stick one toe past the sign; the peregrine is endangered and having a tough time recovering in the Blue Ridge region. I was glad though, at least they HAD the sense to close it off, although I pondered on the amount of fools that surely had transgressed the boundary. At that exact moment I heard the high screech in the distance of one of the Peregrines flowing smoothly in the (what was fast becoming heavy) wind.
The sky once so blue had turned instantly. This is the way in the mountains:

Not this time. But someday. The rain smacked in cold beads against the world as I pushed down the trail towards the roads of man. The temperature drop was quick and extreme, my hands belied warmth as I wriggled my stiffened digits. Somewhere high on the mountain I could just hear a falcon whispering to another…

Here is a quicksketch that seemed to go with a nugget of foresight received today via fortune cookie that reads: Happiness comes not to those who wait, but to those who make it.

Chris would call this: “Slight Perversion of Nature”

I on the other hand believe it gives me a very special knowledge of a pecuniary nature, namely for me to withdraw all $233.84 in my savings and play the market hardcore…..
or maybe it’s a subliminal message from Anheiser Busch? Who can say?

The plan seemed simple enough: leave early Saturday before dawnlight could spill into the dark-stained sky, crunch loose gravel beneath the coche’s balding tires as they weave several miles of potholed backroads in the Cherokee National Forest, reach the terminus of the long road and pull the car to the side, finally strap on the essential (and not-so-essential) gear for the plunge into the interminable thicket of rhododhendron blanketing the footpath that mirrors the course of Citico Creek.

Somewhere in the limitless predawn ether my design involved sweating up the steady slope of the footpath pace by careful pace under a hefty packload, breathing coolsweet air until arriving at the magic split in the creek: North Fork and South Fork (JR was NOT shot here). Magic because anywhere upstream of the confluence an angler is allowed the special priviledge of fishing with the standard (hardly cheap)fishing license free of the additional purchase of the “one day trout stamp” required for fishing in the watershed below.

Lemme stop the dreamin’ right here and cauterize the wound: my fly rod was to never leave its cylindrical case, and no hiking up Citico Creek this weekend…

The long stretch of road leading to the trailhead was essentially jammed with fisherfolk (mostly spincasters at that) in every sector that a car could be safely parked on the (extremely narrow, virtually one lane) roadside. Everywhere. Sliding down embankments in mossy-oak camo, standing in profile mere feet apart, casting to the same riffles and deep pools on the far shore. Chaos for one expectant of a morsel of seclusion.

A few mournful sighs later I removed my blinders. Every passing year is a guarantee of increased people pressure in the National Forests – I’ve witnessed it firsthand since childhood. The forests are for us all; yet I’ve also seen a predictable increase in their abuse – especially in areas prone to the “car-camper” syndrome: where someone can pull their car into primitive campsite spots and proceed unflinchingly to cut down live flora pointlessly while simultaneously tossing cans in the creek and garbage into the canopy. Loads of fun I’m sure, except nobody ever bothers to pack the garbage out – and I’ve seen LOTS of it, even in backcountry campsites where so-called “enlightened” hikers feel that nature will cheerily envelop their slop. No, the caretaker is the conscientious. Those of us that try and carry an extra trashbag to remove the refuse of the others. And people can’t figure why Forest Service has shut down so many campsites.

Still I persevere. The Citico corridor is lost for now. The packed dirt spot at the end of the road was occupied by leery-eyed Skynard-types that seemed somewhat agitated at my approach. The road abruptly dead-ends here and I have to initiate the jagged dance of turning ’round the car with about two yards to work with at starboard and port. I could see the stick-on graphics slightly peeling from the grit-covered back window of their pickup reading: Tennessee Killin’ Krew I worked the wheel hard to get the hell outta Dodge.

Backup plan? Nahhh. The mental switch had now been flicked to Vagabond mode; an easy transition for me in this section of the forest, my peripatetic nature is familiar plenty with the scattered dusty backroads. I headed southwest over the mountain down to the Tellico River watershed. A beautiful waterfall in this neck of the woods is at Bald River; the obstreperous falls spill about one hundred and fifty feet or so:

Vagabonding continues: Higher within the adjacent hollows flows the North River (Sorry Chris, apparently the day we fished there was under illegal conditionals, a swarthy old fisherman told me I needed a one day pass to wet line in the NR as well….ignorance is bliss eh? ’till game warden comes a callin’…); cascading gently in stretches that quickly break into spewing waterfalls. This one I encounterd far from the trail, feeling its soft, cold spray on my face warm from exertion:

Traveling at a higher altitude I wrangled my path towards the headwaters of Bald River. Even here this stream is gigantico for one in the mountains, and my fly rod was in the car….damn the one day pass, pool after deep pool and wide calm shallow flats:

The sun of day evaporated as clouds thickened in breezy air that monotonously ripped my hat off my head. It was shelter time. A storm was bearing down from the northwest; clouds painted a rising fury against the darkening land. I made way to a lowland car-camp site (Camp in Officially Designated Locations Only) and pitched the Rock (my tent) and settled in for the ride. Efforts were rewarded at making a fire to cook what grub I had along: a few dried out tortilla shells and a half pack of hot dogs from the cooler were plenty to purge hunger from my body.
Just as I had the second dog on the stick I could hear it – the sheet of rain beating treetops miles away. The air was electric sweet and the sound of the charging clouds was a primal whisper from the horizon, a steady, unsettling skygroan.

Thunder clapping and lightening blanching bright whiteness inside the thin-walled confines of the tent. The sound of the pounding rain crackled fire-like against the tent and pushed me easily into the deep sleep of a fox in his winter burrow.

Morning again and skies pure. Bluer than I could remember, and colder too; the temperature had dropped at least twenty degrees– typical after a warm day and early-spring storm. It was time to vagabond again.

Later, on the dull roll townward I veered toward the signs pointing the way to a historic locale – the Tellico Blockhouse. A hodepodge of stonewall ruins pieced together from the archaeological remains of the original blockhouse structure that was used by the Tennessee settlers ca 1794-1806 as a frontier outpost and negotiating station with the Cherokee Indians (thus initiating a sad and depressive chain of history, alas another story). Spring flowers were a solemn counterpart to the old stone walls:

The blockhouse sits now above the highwater mark of Ft. Loudon Lake, fortunately in its original location. The lake itself the product of another dammed river in the Tennessee Valley (quite the habit ’round here). And across the channel the eclectic contours of million dollar houses rag the southerly view of the slate-blue Smoky Mountains soft in the distant haze. Quietly through the flowers I wound slowly through the ruins, feeling the cold and the wind and the voices of the dead murmuring old tales in the breeze through the stones – stories I tried hard to hear.

Fly fishing the big waters has become tedious of late. I have lost the battle of will in casting the huge and heavy bass flies over and over without a thrashing smash to the surface – I’ll keep to the trout -stalking in the mountains.

The warm rocks are form fitted for lounging in the sun, although not below the breeze enough to evade a slight chill.

The dense sunlight does griddle the cranium a slight bit without a shielding hat pulled down sideways for a quick nap. Stillness allows the mutant creatures to scuttle the lakeshore without notice of the rock-melded human frame, perhaps it was the fear of vultures or sinister striped bass or more latent sunstroke dissecting thought but I think this beast was skulking close:

The thought became extreme and too solid for reality. I left those rocks to the sun as it faded behind blue clouds. Delirium skewed fast to hebetude and the need for thought provoking elixir; this is my justification for the taproom and magic brew.

…even better than Boodles,,,,

sketched whilst imbibing “Honest Injun Stout”. Very delicate process, often some drinkard sees the sketchpad and demands a portrait immediately. Depending upon my average mood it’s hard to say how it will turn out. Not advised though; most often only a source of turmoil. Especially if a billiards challenge is involved, stay away from that scenario perpetually (unless the person is unsteady and blathering about how they beat the Black Widow and it’s Sunday and their motion is unsteady and speech is slurring – then by all means: Game On.)