fish without faces

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Hallelujah, Bum Again

I
Oh, why don’t I work like the other men do?
How the hell can I work when the skies are so blue?

Chorus:
Hallelujah, I’m a bum!
Hallelujah, bum again,
Hallelujah! Bum a handout,
Revive me again.

If I was to work and save all I earn,
I could buy me a bar and have whiskey to burn.

Oh, I love Jim Hill, he’s an old friend of mine,
Up North I ride rattlers all over his line.

Oh, I ride box cars and I ride fast mails,
When it’s cold in the winter I sleep in the jails.

I passed by a saloon and I hear someone snore,
And I found the bartender asleep on the floor.

I stayed there and drank till a fly-mug came in,
And he put me to sleep with a sap on the chin.

Next morning in court I was still in a haze,
When the judge looked at me, he said, “Thirty days!”

Some day a long train will run over my head,
And the sawbones will say, “old One-Finger’s dead!”

II
When the springtime does come,
Oh, won’t we have fun!
We’ll all throw up our jobs
And we’ll go on the bum.

Chorus:
Hallelujah, I’m a bum,
Hallelujah, bum again,
Hallelujah, give us a handout,
To revive us again.

Oh, Springtime has come,
And I’m just out of jail,
Ain’t got no money,
It all went for bail.

I went up to a house
And I knocked on the door.
A lady came out, says,
“You been here before!”

I went up to a house
Asked for some bread;
A lady came out, says,
“The baker is dead.”

I went up to a house
Asked for a pair of pants;
A lady came out, says,
“I don’t clothe no tramps!”

I went into a saloon,
And I bummed him for a drink;
He give me a glass
And he showed me the sink.

Oh, I love my boss,
And my boss loves me;
That is the reason
I’m so hun-ga-ree!

“Why don’t you go to work
Like all the other men do?”
“How the hell we going to work
When there ain’t no work to do?”

From The Hobo’s Hornbook, A Repertory for a Gutter Jongleur, collected and annotated by George Milburn, pp. 97-101. Copyright, 1930, by George Milburn. New York: Ives Washburn.
It is hardly safe to classify the following widely-sung ballad as a Wobbly song. There is some dispute as to its origin. Budd L. McKillips, who has himself written some first-rate hobo poetry, has given me the following notes on “Hallelujah, Bum Again’s” history:
“A member of the I.W.W. is credited with having written the words to ‘Hallelujah, I’m a Bum.’ The question of authorship isn’t worth an argument, but if anybody will take the trouble to do some investigating, he will find that ‘Hallelujah, I’m a Bum’ was a lilting, carefree song at least eight years before the I.W.W. came squalling into the industrial world….The song was found scribbled on the wall of a Kansas City jail cell where an old hobo, known as ‘One-Finger Ellis,’ had spent the night, recovering from an overdose of rotgut whiskey.”
The first version is that of One-Finger Ellis, as well as McKillips can recall it, and the second version is the song that the Wobblies sing today. Both songs are sung to the hymn tune, "Hallelujah, Thine the Glory.”—G.M.

from A Treasury of American Folklore, edited by B. A. Botkin, 1944

related post: hoboclowns & coelacanths

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

East of Ephraim: amid hard economic times, secret gardeners put entrpeneuring shoulder to the wheel

last Saturday a friend called to make sure we were ok. on the news a family that sounded kind of like us had wrecked a car kind of like ours. "wow, no. thank God. that's not us. we're alright. everything's fine."

then yesterday afternoon another friend called to check up on us.
"Hey man, we heard about the bust. everything ok?
"yeah, fine. what?"
"I was just worried 'cause, you know."
"what?"
"you seriously didn't hear?"

it turns out that over the weekend a grove of around 20,000 marijuana plants was found in the foothills east of town. how had I not heard about this? and what have I been doing wasting my time with carrots and corn? actually, I have some serious questions about irrigation, climatic zones and frost tolerance for these guys. nothing on this in the Farmer's Almanac. nothing at the local library, IFA, county archives.

from the photos in the paper those little stalks of pot are looking pretty sad by the time the DEA agents make the scene.

how about it? other suggestions for a viable cash crop for central Utah? turkeys are out. kudzu too. also, I'm gonna say no poppies.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

thank you card to a knot of blowflies caught screwing in midair

With all your sliding rules and abaci,
accounts you’ve been keeping so charily
I guess you weren’t exactly counting on
the pop of the flashbulb and all that would
follow: cottages, industries and so on.

You should know, a neighbor called the other
night to arrange a meeting in our home
for the discussion of our signing on
with their new “health drink”, which I may
owe to you and the convenience of my
name printed near the top of the ward list.

Oh, and thanks a bundle for your reps who
at even’s end, when all was awash in
peanut shells and stubbed-out smokes, still rolled
their sleeves to scoop vanilla, pop corks
and pass wine floats to the last ones standing.

But seriously, for real, thank you for
the apostle-ex-retailer who last week
came tottering up on a pulpit of slow
retracting walnut to kick everything
off with a review of Walden before
a congregation of ten million.

P.S.- And I’ll thank you for telling me of the last time we lathered and rinsed
with actual shampoo, and what to do now with all these bubblewands.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

a virtual fridge door for Ash

Monday, September 15, 2008

Paul "Moose" Curtis

who all saw the big September moon last night? it is manifestly –if not yet officially- fall and the wild sunflowers on the highway seem to be feeling it too. I don’t know if it was the wet winter we had last year or what but lately there have been a lot of tattoo removal billboards sprouting up along the freeway as well. what has been conspicuously absent, however, is any measurable uptick in billboard removal tattoos. now if we could put some kind of index on the latter then we might effectively gauge our progress. a voluntary exit poll at the ink studios; I don’t know.

in the mean time Soundclash DJ Paul Curtis has got your back. last spring he went out and did this with San Francisco’s Broadway Tunnel. all the towering florae that once covered the Pacific northwest and where now 20,000 cars pass daily.

since beginning in his hometown of Leeds with a sock and a bucket of water, Moose has gone on to using wire brushes, stencils and high-pressure sprayers to clean his reverse graffiti into the walls and sidewalks of Manchester, London, Edinburgh. apparently you don’t even need a can of paint to be charged under the UK’s Anti-Social Behaviour Act. just scrub the image into the already existing surface filth of modernity.

as you can see, Curtis is not above working with lichens either, and he's fearlessly taken on NYC’s the Splasher, cutting this whole sucker down to the bricks so the big beetles can crawl out. (I think that’s one of Banksy’s under it all.)

also check out:
Brazil’s own Alexandre Orion and his hundreds of skulls
Brooklyn’s Edina Tokodi
Scott Wade, who’s doing it in Texas, sort of
and the whole Ancestral Puebloan Massive. aww yeah, APM in the house!

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

one foot in the fishtank: Gene Hathorn has a posse

last Saturday afternoon I lost a perfectly good breakfast; toast, juice, everything went seeping into the lupine and dry needles while I knelt retching. and if that weren’t bad enough, I missed out on what Amy was saying on the other side of the road about this arrangement between a shock artist and a Texan. luckily for all of us, she outlined the details again for me later that day.

here’s the gist:
“I don’t think his appeal will work, so if he is executed, we will ship the body to Germany, deep freeze it there and turn it into fish food.”

Monday, August 25, 2008

back to school: some simple equations

think of a number, any positive whole number.
(you can also open your desktop calculator while you’re thinking.)

now multiply that number by 3.

now multiply the resulting number by itself.

add the digits repeatedly until you have a single digit.
(for example: 5432 becomes 14, which becomes 5)

place a “1” in front of the digit you found.
place a “2” in front of the same digit.
multiply these two numbers together, please.
(for example: the digit 5 becomes 15 x 25)

then multiply the resulting number by 5.

now multiply each digit of this number together.

you probably came up with something like 350, right?
as in 350ppm

Monday, August 11, 2008

clothesline

“here’s what I’m eating these days. where I drink coffee. what I’m reading. this is a picture of my hand petting my pets. my pets sleeping. my roomba. my pets’ fearsome jealousy thereof. and the ongoing account of how I am reconciling all these petty crises, on a post by post basis…”

who are we trying to kid? let’s just put ‘er there and agree that all this blogging business is about narcissism and exhibitionism. and the shortest distance between a narcissist and his own exhibition is a clothesline. so here’s my laundry.

I’m even showing you my ankle socks here, and those are some things I’ve never been proud of. altogether pretty humiliating. but look how easy line drying clothes can be. we just loaf around all day like this! my rashes have all vanished and I’ve added cubits to my stature! and then there’s this website where you can learn other things like about how electric clothes driers use 5-10% of the household electricity in the US and how, yes, it looks like it’s become a movement.

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Wasatch Plateau Marathononon

I’m planning this again and you should really think about it this time because it’s tremendous. look over the details from last year; it’s all right there. the main difference here though is 30 miles (instead of 28). but again, you’re welcome to do it on your bike instead. and do as much or little of it as you like: 5k, 5 miles, 10k, half marathon, relay, anyone interested, whatever.

here's a good map of the route from USATF. you can zoom in for detail and look around.
(thanks for the tip Erin!)

and here are some photos of the area

when: Saturday, September 6, 2008, AM

I repeat, this is for anyone interested - friends, family, strangers. let me know if you’re in or have questions. and to address any FAQ’s here is a very legal event disclaimer (a la Gil Scott-Heron) for you to sign off on.

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

say, speaking of just piss anywhere…

our quarterly complimentary copy of the Sanpete Messenger (w/ County Fair supplement) showed up in the mailbox last week. the front page featured this convergence of two earlier posts in a head-on small-time scandal:

informal public middens
&
mychurchdemolition.com

these are just a couple of the stories we've (um, I've) been following here at fish without faces. see. this is the sort of quality journalism you can expect from this blog. stories with texture and a long term commitment and follow through and stick-to-itiveness and tractors and traction. here’s the gist: “The second dumping case took place in Ephraim with the demolition and, Bringhurst said, the illegal dumping of the red-brick LDS church that once stood on Main Street.”

Friday, July 04, 2008

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.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

a picnic

Friday, June 20, 2008

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.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

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.