Cake Walking Babies

There was nothing interesting about the bars. Never was. Never will be. The men were horrible. What they said about women, it was always awful and degrading. The ugliest men said the ugliest things about women. What they’d do to them. And the women came in all dolled up and sometimes left with these disgusting human beings. And then I got to hear all about it the next night. From the men. Not to me directly. I never spoke to anyone in bars. I used to bring books to try to cover up all the bullshit. I once tried to get through Proust’s “A la Recherche du Temps Perdu” at a small hole in the wall in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Jesus Christ, what a fight that was. Every sentence was a struggle to finish over the top of two construction workers debating whether it was better to use condoms during anal sex with their wives. I took in Bukowski and Hunter S. Thompson and Céline and a slew of poetry which I couldn’t read. Odes by John Keats, Sonnets by Shakespeare, Yeates, Ted Hughes, T.S. Eliot, Wordsworth, you name them, I tried them. Poetry doesn’t work in bars. This isn’t going anywhere, and it’s all right. It’s not meant to. The nicest thing about Arkansas was a little restaurant off highway 40. The woman in charge served the best fried chicken I’d ever tasted in my life and she played Sidney Bechet’s “Cake Walking Babies From Home.” She had a small record player on top of the counter and she played old jazz.
–Eva Taylor sings on this, she said. –And Louis Armstrong blows the horn.
I didn’t know who Eva Taylor was but I knew Bechet and Armstrong.
–From 1925, she said.
Four pieces of fried chicken cost me a dollar seventy-five. I asked what the secret was.
–Buttermilk, sweetie. You gotta soak it overnight, is all.
She called me sweetie and somehow it was all right. When you’re travelling across the country by yourself, looking for work and haven’t spoken to anyone in weeks, sometimes you want to be called that. I broke my thermos of coffee just outside this place. I dropped it in the parking lot just before getting on the bus. I don’t know why that stands out now. The thermos. I remember feeling it was a huge loss for me. Maybe the coffee was good or something.

Rant O’The Day

No, no, don’t get me wrong. I’m not super-pissed that they’ve shut down practically all services here at my place of work. I’m fuming because they’ve shut them down in favo(u)r of security for one lady politician, making a last-hour, surprise decision to come and give yet another regurgitated speech to the energized suckers voters who actually believe they can make a difference in this election. I will try to compose myself (and this rant), after having waited twenty-odd minutes to just get into the parking lot at my office, only to be scrutinized and frisked and almost prodded by a handful of Secret Service goons with tailor-made earpieces and Men’s Wearhouse semi-cheap suits, driving gas-guzzling, black SUVs. My disclaimer: I am all in favo(u)r of supporting striking workers, even at the expense of services being cut off. Say what you will about the French and the snootiness, but those frogs have bigger bollix and more intestinal fortitude than a zillion Americanos put together. Here is a country full of purported paté eating snobs willing to go without mass transit, amenable to let the garbage pile up, in support of working-class strikers. In Toronto, over the past weekend, mass transit went on a short-lived work stoppage (two days) and the populace almost revolted in the streets, calling the walkouts slackers and lazy scum. Imagine that; Canadians being less than civil to one another! Our influence has rubbed off. Will we ever realize that the effects or, rather, resolution to these protests can actually positively impact and improve our lives? Apparently the French have. Not so the Gringos. Cut off water for more than two hours and see what happens. Better yet, cut off CABLE unexpectedly.

And so back to the wanna-be-lady-prez. In order for me to get to work this morning, I had to walk a venerable gauntlet of security detail. These are people that I truly despise–law enforcement in general, really. I felt like Hunter Thompson walking into the middle of that cop convention in Fear and Loathing. True, the massive hangover didn’t help, but the hyperactive, shifty-eyed gorillas brandishing many a concealed firearm outright ruined my mood and demeanor. I loathe politics. I don’t trust any of these nouveau automaton Manchurian Candidates, no matter what “fresh” ideas they bring to the table. That other bozo marionette claims he will effect “change we can believe in.” The geezer POW says “everything is possible in America.” I’ve been around for too long to swallow it. These weird freaks of nurture have been promising the same old rubbish for decades. Save the cow manure and let me get to work in peace. I’ve got a newsletter to put out to illiterate educators by the first of the month.

Quick, but related tangent here. Señor Darth Vader was also in town recently. He flew in yesterday for a few hours to meet with a group of other stormtroopers at a private residence here in the capital of this great state. His motorcade consisted of no less than 17 vehicles, most of them gas-guzzling SUVs. Following his fortified limo was an ambulance–presumably to offer assistance in case either our man’s pacemaker went off-beat, or he somehow managed to clip someone else with his buckshot-laden, duck-hunting musket. In any case, a stretch of 20 miles of highway was closed for more than two hours, so this neocon swine could make his meeting on time (whoa, that rhymes Tonto!). You can just imagine the traffic jam lined up, waiting for our man to make his graceless entrance. Bull in a china shop, y’all. Bull in a china shop.

In closing (thank Feck) my point is: I will suffer the lack of services in support of a good, social cause, but I will not tolerate enforced shortages and restrictions in favo(u)r of bottom dweller politicians peddling outdated ideas and beating dead horses. Remember kiddos, our vote most certainly does not count. Corporations have long ago become the Teacher’s Pet and any breadcrumbs that actually do reach us, have been properly funneled and processed with preservatives, anti-caking agents, enhancers, emulsifiers, stabilizers, and all kinds of acidity regulators and buffers.

I’ll leave you with some good news. Seems like the French influence is working. This is great news despite the corporate sponsorship.