The United States of Just Piss Anywhere and The United States of What’s Going On? What’s Going On?

The United States of Taffy and T-shirts
The United States of Pamper Yourself, You Deserve It
The United States of Pizza Night, Taco Night, Hamburgers
The United States of Where’s the Beef?
The United States of All You Can Eat
The United States of Who Wants Pancakes?
The United States of Great Big Fat People
The United States of Vegan People Who Do Yoga and Stuff
The United States of Mall Walkers
The United States of Wheelchair Access
The United States of Paper or Plastic
The United States of What Price Bananas? Who Killed the Pork Chops? Are You my Angel?
The United States of Yes, We Have No Bananas Today
The United Straits of Brother Can You Spare a Gallon?
The United States of B.Y.O. Body Armor
The United States of What, Me Worry?
The United States of Just Say No
The United States of No, Not In My Name
The United States of Ask Not and Don’t Ask
The Untitled States of It Can’t Happen Here
The United States of (I Sorry for What I Done) Here Your $600 Back
The United States of Rock n’ Roll
The United States of “Hell Yeah, I’m for Revolution. Let’s Have a Light Beer!”
The United States of Yee Haw!
The United States of Intelligent Design
Some United States of Celebrity Governors
The United States of Places Named for Dead Indians
The United States of Real Live Indians!
The United States of Ospreys, Diving
The United States of Glossy Paperbacks by Tan Millionaires
The United States of Snow at 10,000 Feet
The United States of Fridges with Ice Machines
The United States of Halftime Shows
The United States of Smoke Detectors and Car Alarms
The United States of Cops: Atlanta
The United States of Precocious Technologies
The United States of Everyone’s Packin’
The Wireless States of Business Networking Solutions
The United States of Home, Auto, Health, Fire, Flood
www.myunitedstates.lol/whatev
The United States of Cell Phone Cameras
The United States of Summer Sales
The United States of Tie a Yellow Ribbon
The United States of Turn out Your Pockets and Remove Your Shoes
The United States with Two Small Children on a Seesaw
The United States of Free Ipods, Free Puppies, Free Lunch
The United States of Little Boxes and Big Boxes
The United States of Chaparral and Pinion Pines
The United States of Pawn Shops and Thrift Stores
The United States of Six More Superhero Movies…

this morning, you pull into the nearest
national park and find yourself suddenly
surrounded and overwhelmed by the high
whining feedback: hundreds of hearing aids.

and we’re all listening for the same thing.

wooden cars and the pedestrian vehicles of summer

for the last couple weeks we’ve been house(chicken, horse, dog)sitting for some friends. this, as you know, has some clear advantages and disadvantages. one unforeseen disadvantage has been that at least once a day the who let the dogs out? song gets into my head and causes me and my family all kinds of minor torment. it’s probably not even so much the song itself as all the crappy movie trailers and other slapstick that it calls to mind.

I think we’re now at a point in history where one can reasonably ask for a comprehensive list of movies that used who let the dogs out?, whether in the soundtracks or just in the previews. you might say it’s time for a retrospective.

I think we’re also at a point in history where it’s safe to begin looking at mobile homes as artifacts. I’m not talking about prefabs and trailers; I’m talking about Winnesotas and other RV motorhomes, the kind you see -always from behind when there’s no passing lane- tagged with incongruent mascot names like prowler, cougar (mraaawr), freedom and jazz, rendered in whimsical magenta and teal cursive. btw, about here is where you recognize this post as a poorly-camouflaged rant about the soaring cost of gasoline and our lack of solutions. so far our most brilliant ideas are, in order: 1.) Saudi Arabia, 2.) ANWR, 3.) nuclear. this is seriously the best we’ve come up with. so until someone figures out cars that run on telluric currents, a little nostalgia seems appropriate.

anyway, here are some great examples of the best in lovingly home-built vehicles, mostly from housetruck and housebus websites. I think you’ll find these gypsy/hippie/lumberjack variations on the theme at least as earnest and beatific as the typical aluminum ones.

I don’t kid myself about being the sort of craftsman who could put a carapace like this on my car. no, not even with my "economic stimulus" cheque that came last week. but as for me and my house, this summer we’re taking the wagon on as many road trips as possible. within our lifetime, the mythos of the American highway is on its way out. smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.

a picnic

solstice

the first day of summer and there is this
family of landscapers, just deployed
from a box trailer, riding lawnmowers
into the sun, all in white cowboy hats.

maybe you've heard this one

one morning a man was rescued, having been shipwrecked and alone on a remote island for 20 years. the rescuers were impressed with the three buildings he had built and asked him about them.

"well," the man said, "this here’s my house, and that building over there is the church I go to."

"and what's that third building over yonder?" one rescuer asked.

"oh, that's the church I used to go to," the man replied.


for the last few years, this is the church I have gone to. last Thursday morning I went by there and it was standing; I took these pictures on Thursday evening.

one palindrome, three absurdities and one obscenity

sapling sprouting from inside a burnt out sofa at the base of a green volcano,


an ashtray/Zen garden in a steel pylon, leaving the Naranjo ferry port,


soft mosses, ferns and bromelias sprout up from concrete fence posts on the road up to Cerro Chato,


a nest built in the crotch of an advertisement for canopy tours, suspended over the Rio Balsa highway,


punto.

a framed and well-lit microwave full of salt shakers

Costa Rica bird list: May 15 - June 4, 2008

smooth-billed ani
immaculate antbird
barred antshrike
great antshrike
collared araçari
bananaquit
rose-throated becard
melodious blackbird
red-winged blackbird
green-crowned brilliant
stripe-headed brush-finch
common bush-tanager
yellow-billed cacique
gray-headed chachalaca
squirrel cuckoo
great curassow
inca dove
white-tipped dove
white-winged dove
cattle egret
great egret
yellow-bellied elaenia
yellow-throated euphonia
social flycatcher
magnificent frigatebird
tropical gnatcatcher
long-billed gnatwren
great-tailed grackle
blue-black grassquit
yellow-faced grassquit
blue-black grosbeak
crested guan
novelas alemanes
long-billed hermit
green heron
green honeycreeper (rey del mar)
red-legged honeycreeper
rufous-tailed hummingbird
steely-vented hummingbird
white ibis
rufous-tailed jacamar
brown jay
tropical kingbird
ringed kingfisher
great kiskadee
swallow-tailed kite
white-tailed kite
white-throated magpie-jay
long-tailed manakin (toledo)
white-collared manakin
volcano-worshiping mannequins
blue-crowned motmot (bobo)
rufous motmot (guardabarranco)
dusty-milk dindon
black-cowled oriole
montezuma oropendola
orange-chinned parakeet
red-lored parrot
white-crowned parrot
brown pelican
red-billed pigeon
bronze-tailed plumeleteer
clay-colored robin (yigüirro)
white-throated robin
violet sabrewing
black-headed saltator
buff-throated saltator
grayish saltator
white-collared seedeater
orange-billed sparrow
rufous-collared sparrow
long-billed starthroat
blue-gray tanager
crimson-collared tanager
palm tanager
passerini's tanager
little tinamou
masked tityra
chestnut-mandibled toucan
keel-billed toucan
orange-bellied trogon
black vulture
turkey vulture
rufous-capped warbler
black-bellied whistling-duck
pink-pint terror bird
streak-headed woodcreeper
black-cheeked woodpecker
hoffman's woodpecker
lineated woodpecker
pale-billed woodpecker
rufous-winged woodpecker
bay wren
house wren
rufous-naped wren
plain xenops

yesterday evening we went on a walk a few blocks east of our house. heading out past the edge of town there are several hectares of pinion, juniper and brush that are a patchwork of private ranches, BLM and Forest Service land. haphazard farm roads and 4 wheeler tracks wind through informal public middens where people pile carpet, home appliances yard waste, and the bodies of game, domestic and farm animals. there is also a shooting range where you see the cops parked once in a while.

the runoff that flows through here is channeled through town in irrigation ditches. can you spot the rotting coyotes in the charred sallows?

Humbaba, cherubim, chainlink

until about 150 years ago, the steppes of the Wasatch Plateau were tall grasslands. so tall that they supposedly "would completely hide the sheep and in some places cows were difficult to see." that’s about when the area caught the interest of sheep ranchers. since then, a lot of this grassland has been replaced by sage, pinion and juniper (or “cedar” in local vernacular).
these pinion-juniper forests are what I’m used to seeing around here. so when I was out in Kane Valley this week I was a little surprised to see heaps of newly chainsawed junipers covering several square miles along the base of the plateau. I asked some forest service friends about this who said it was a part of an effort to restore some of the original grasses and habitat. the idea sounds pretty good, but I have to say it’s not looking all that angelic just yet.

I’ve also heard that most of Britain’s Lake District, Yorkshire Dales and peat bogs used to be pretty densely forested. but, this being a blog of especially tenuous reliability, I don’t have any primary sources for you. you’re on your own. all the same, whenever we bring in someone new, someone else always gets evicted.

in our case this year it was a monoculture of lawngrass. we’ve got the vegetables basically all planted now at our new place. our old garden plot on the other side of town was about twice as big and, in tilling it over, we used to turn up all kinds of great junk: horseshoes, golf balls, a truck bumper, yards and yards of baling twine. nothing so remarkable here, mostly the usuals: candy wrappers, bottle-glass, old nails, a small paleolithic wheel?!
except that in digging a pit for compost, I disturbed the rest of this armless porcelain cherub, severing his little ankle with the blade of my shovel.

3 grand keys

mother & child in an orbit of flaming armadillos

Mike Libby & insect lab

“Insect Lab is an artist studio that customizes real insects with antique watch parts and mechanical components. Offering specimens that come in many shapes, sizes and colors; each insect is individually adorned, each is one of a kind and unique”
-from the website

Brian Burkhardt

…makes these.

his website

toward a new geology of snirt heaps

the specters of winter, every bit
as much as robins, they are the harbingers of spring.
behind the north sides of buildings and sedimentary cars
on lawns, and where the streetplow leaves its mounds
doggish and sheepish, they emerge
like Moses freed from his marble,

precocial: fully formed,
and slowly shrinking away.

diunrnal: running wet at noon,
and freezing still every night.

trashy: sweating gravel, soot, leaf bits,
shopping bags and the paste of paper,

until not much else remains.
and we walk past, trying to ignore them
where they lie, hoping they disappear soon.
but in the afternoon, a bell will ring,
releasing an infantry of nine-year-olds to scatter
and kick them to pieces on their way home.

nowadays, if you say “cacti,” everyone thinks you’re some kind of prick

lookit!

T.R. & Mediocre Gatsby, you guys are my base, my regulars. but I feel like I need to round up more readership. I guess I'm not sure why; something about performance, numbers, ego, accountability, results. yesterday I was over at Via Negativa where Dave talks about all of this in terms of phoebes, Leadbelly and how now, in Japan, people are reading novels on their cell phones. so what’s a carnival barker to do?

actually, there are a few tactics I’m weighing. for example, I know a guy who changes blogs like I change pants. this has worked really well for him, and his readership now spans the commonwealth. but I'm afraid I couldn't keep this up without neglecting things like flossing, washing the dishes, watering the plants, and changing my own actual pants on a regular basis.

here are some other things I have tried or could try. of course, I am also open to your suggestions here.

• I’ve been trying the Reader’s Digest approach and I’m not sure it’s taking so well.

• I could pay a high school kid to dress up like a fishstick, a wookie, or a statue of liberty and stand out on the boulevard holding a sign for me.

• strive for "excellence"

• promotional t-shirts. promotional bottled water. promotional tote bags and chap sticks.

• “just be myself” :)

• voodoo

also, I want to reach out to you (“dear reader”/“my friend”/“folks”) with what we’ll call this blog’s new sunshine policy. yes, that’s right. in a move for truth and reconciliation, I’m putting a moratorium on the keyword verification for anyone who wants to leave a comment on fish without faces. this includes everyone: “anonymous” comments, dealers of fen fen, ephedra, ephemera and viagra, the botox spambot, you tired, poor, huddled masses, this blog's for you. I am embracing you with pale, low-humming monitor light.

the bird and the machine

“…the most beautiful sight in the world might be the birds taking over New York after the last man has run away to the hills. I will never live to see it, of course, but I know just how it will sound because I’ve lived up high and I know the sort of watch birds keep on us. I’ve listened to sparrows tapping tentatively on the outside of air conditioners when they thought no one was listening, and I know how other birds test the vibrations that come up to them through the television aerials.
‘Is he gone?’ they ask, and the vibrations come up from below, ‘ Not yet, not yet.’”

-Loren Eiseley
The Immense Journey

the judgment of the birds

“…I once saw this happen to a crow. This crow lives near my house, and…his world begins at about at the limit of my eyesight.
On the particular morning when this episode occurred, the whole countryside was buried in one of the thickest fogs in years. The ceiling was absolutely zero. All planes were grounded, and even a pedestrian could hardly see his outstretched hand before him.
I was groping across a field in the general direction of the railroad station, following a dimly outlined path. Suddenly out of the fog, at about the level of my eyes, and so closely that I flinched, there flashed a pair of immense black wings and a huge beak. The whole bird rushed over my head with a frantic cawing outcry of such hideous terror as I have never heard in a crow’s voice before, and never expect to hear again.
…All afternoon that great awkward cry rang in my head. Merely being lost in a fog seemed scarcely to account for it…The borders of our worlds had shifted. It was the fog that had done it…He had been lost all right, but it was more than that. He had thought he was high up, and when he encountered me looming gigantically through he fog, he had perceived a ghastly and, to the crow mind, unnatural sight. He had seen a man walking on air, desecrating the very heart of the crow kingdom, a harbinger of the most profound evil a crow could conceive of—air-walking man.”

-Loren Eiseley
The Immense Journey

the snout

“I have long been an admirer of the octopus. The cephalopods are very old, and they have slipped, protean, through many shapes. They are the wisest of the mollusks, and I have always felt it to be just as well for us that they never came ashore, but—there are other things that have…
“The world is fixed, we say: fish in the sea, birds in the air. But in the mangrove swamps by the Niger, fish climb trees and ogle uneasy naturalists who try unsuccessfully to chase them back to the water. There are things still coming ashore.”

-Loren Eiseley
The Immense Journey

yeaster

today Kelly & I went through our cabinets, cupboards and crisper drawers with an ostrich feather and a wooden spoon, clearing out all things sweetened. to give a little background, over the last year of too much hog knuckles and milk gravy I’ve gained at least 20 lbs.

to be more specific, my legs are making corduroy noises when I walk and, more and more, I feel my undershirt tuck and pleat between new skin folds. this is a problem. so tonight we say goodbye to sugar for a month, the final extravagance being some fancy little xocolates from this shop that will be closed and gone by the time we’re eating sugar again. I’ll leave out all the details of exactly what’s in and what’s out. it's not real scientific or even all that well thought out. but, like a wise guy said a few years back, "you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want." junkies can't be choosers.

thanks TR for demonstrating such fortitude and, um, stick-to-itiveness. we’re following your lead on this. solidarity forever, right?

the skylark

"the skylark was born before all beings and before the earth itself. its father died of illness when the earth did not yet exist. he remained unburied for five days, until the skylark, ingenious of necessity, buried its father in its own head."

-Aristophanes
the Birds

the yoga of the supreme person

"I enter into each planet, and by My energy these stay in orbit. I become the moon and thereby supply the juice of life to all vegetables. I am the fire of digestion in every living body, and I am the air of life, outgoing and incoming, by which I digest the four kinds of foods."