You can't have a bad day in bellbottoms

That's my new motto and these past days have proven me correct. It's like an Amish barn raising where everyone is contributing something to the expedition. the van may ultimately break down but this bit of community coming together to put me right is nice. Parts, time, advice. Even the bell bottom pants came from San Fran courtesy of the junk prince of Sunset.
Then I got some expensive stainless steel flex pipe. That's 6 feet of stainless steel and that's pricey. But it's going to work. Cut a hole in the roof and stick the pipe in, add some custom flanges and put the stove on top of a nice steel platform that I tracked down at wentworth scrap and salvage along with some other scrap metal. Man, what a day of dumpster diving and it reminds me that for 12 hours of arduous hole filing in my van passes by effortlessly as I am engaged and focused while five minutes of making harnesses or mailing hockey equipment caused me to have a stroke from anxiety and depression. I problem solve with the best of them but the first thing I ask is if the problem has to be solved. That takes a long time because unlike the engineers who developed the microchip I pondered for more than ten seconds the effects of vast amounts of mercury bombarding the water table. I guess the nitwits at MIT don't teach that in their classes.

All of this leads me to washing my rugs in Bell Bottom pants and playing piano at the clipper home. Man, there's only one way to get out of that place. All the joys and pains will fade into a foldout table and batting a balloon with a fly swatter while a kid in bell bottom pants plays The Entertainer. Maybe holding your grandchild for a few minutes. A woman there once played piano but her right hand was crippled by arthritis or stroke and the rest of her was due for a trade in too. So I played what I know. I was there to visit the mother of the lovely lady in the picture...


Note the plaid bell bottom pants and their proximity to a pretty woman. Coincidence?

I don't know if it is better to deny that we all eventually get too old to dress ourselves or if it is a good thing to embrace our final destination. Does it make me appreciate the life I have now? Maybe. I guess your ability to tend to your parents as they age and fall down and forget who you are depends on your personality and situation. They did give us life even if they were really just having unprotected sex, and they put up with incredible bullshit when we were running around and refusing to listen and cutting our foreheads and fussing about how the broccoli touched the macaroni and cheese and they fought bitterly with each other over who would take full responsibility of us when their ability to tolerate each other evaporated. They did love us at some level and after we could feed ourselves they didn't vanish but instead grew frail and ended up at the Clipper Home with a fly swatter in their hand as a balloon floats slowly toward a sippy cup.

Oh, I don't understand this fickle life, this long line of cars and music and arguments that all must end with death. Our damn culture makes visiting our own elderly family almost impossible due to space and time. I swear we should all just adopt another person's elderly parents that are close to our house and visit them and treat them like they were our mother or father. Like, it makes no difference to someone who can't hardly remember or move or see. They don't want to be forgotten but they have also forgotten how seldom they saw their own parents when they were 40 and had kids demanding socks and shots. There's a line in Rabbit is Rich, where Rabbit is reflecting on his age and place in life: "Rabbit can't believe he will ever be as dead as his mother in law."
And I interpret this to mean that Rabbit can barely remember her existing...and I guess outside of Rabbit's son and ex wife, he will be exactly as dead as his mother in law...just a ghost on a mantle in a black and white picture looking young and handsome, someone's whose effects will be cursed over, "Why did he save this?"

It's overwhelming to me in a hospice/elderly house with the frailty and decrepitude. One man was fumbling with one of those foldable cartons of milk we used to drink at school. His thumbs were working the opening and no one was around and his skin was paper white and green veins bulged on his glossy hairless back. There were remains of some kind of porridge in front of him and the milk carton had green substance on it from his lips. He wasn't completely helpless as he managed to open the carton but he couldn't leave the table without help. Where do you begin? He was probably a naval officer or a reliable mechanic or a jazz guitarist and now he fumbles with milk cartons. Makes me cry a bit.

I got a glass of water for the woman I was visiting and she held it in her bony hands and put a finger in the water so she could tell the depth of it before she drank it. That's a technique used by blind people so I figure her vision is fading though she did recognize me and even had a nice anecdote about walking downstairs in 1987 to find me sleeping on the couch with my eyes open. She raised like 6 kids and maybe the best way to honor her is to keep living.

At one point she said, "Look at those pants!"

Agism

You know you are your father when you abhor pop music. I think the chances that someone would choose to read Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse instead of getting stoned on crystal meth with your horny girlfriend and dancing in a glitter filled pool are zero. Hesse is going to be like the dead sea scrolls one day in a land of all night raves and drug wars.

Ke$ha is basically Madonna, whom I loved in 1985, so it is my prejudice that fills me with dread about the content of this video..in another song she rhymes "Famous" with "Anus"


Katy Perry had a tune covered on Glee (teenage visual crack) and this is the video for that...pure softcore porn. Something I would hesitate to allow my kid to watch but secretly jerk off my withered penis while watching. Keeping your music old is as likely as keeping your parents young.



But it must be modernized our pop culture and it is only good if a 40 year old balks at it. I want to embrace it but am horrified by it. If the climate is destroyed at least people will be stimulated and sex will be honored and humanity will blunder onward, leaving a wake of destruction, in pursuit of a teenage dream.
I do wonder how much of it is pure market manipulation by music production companies and how much of it is natural youth rebellion.
And for those who prefer to see us all succumb to the temptations I should point out that a puritan resistance/separtist movement IS ALSO HISTORICALLY NATURAL. So go screw yourself. You pick your side and roll with it.
Note: these songs may be stuck in your head for a day so proceed with caution.

I see your red label and raise you one more

Call of the wild

I realize that the earth will find its own balance and the fittest will survive and that if I do nothing but eat potato chips and solve crossword puzzles there will not be any medals handed out at the gates of heaven either way.

And yet, some things are valuable in spite of the nihilist vacuum we use to justify our sloth. The Arctic Wolf is one of those things. I'd say that our nobility is measured by the autonomy/sanctity of the wolf. Here's Slim Whitman with a theme song...

Stove Pipe madness

the problem with putting a stove in your van is that it will not be the same van after you are done. I'm trying to change the least amount of the layout as possible and this is not feasible. Everything has to change to put a stove in your van. That's a lesson I'm stubbornly refusing to acknowledge. No matter where I put the stove it has to vent and the easiest way to vent it is by putting it next to a window and going through the window. But that means one door can't open. ANd if I put it through the roof then there will be a stove pipe zig zagging around over my bed and also a 2 ft piece of pipe sticking out of the roof waiting to snag on a bridge or a dunkin donuts drive thru arch or a toll booth sign. And that will tear a huge hole in my roof if not tear the whole bubble top off the roof and leave me with a convertible van in a labrador snow storm. Now, that would make a funny story and I'm sure you'd all laugh but I'd be the one with a shitload of trouble to deal with and my projections give me trouble. It has to be done but I want it done in a way that will not tempt disaster. Maybe that isn't possible. Maybe I should tempt as much disaster as possible to get it over with. No matter what I do it will look like the yellow submarine. Run with the devil.