R.I.P. Benazir Bhutto

I listened to an NPR interview a few weeks ago with Bhutto while she was under house arrest. Her defiant words toward the Pakistani regime and her insistence on the right of Pakistanis to hold democratic elections were remarkable, especially considering her position. Bhutto was one of the most courageous people in contemporary politics, and she will be missed.

NTD

We're heading to my Dad's today. I always wonder what gifts he will present us with - wonderful things which I imagine would have serious applications in an alternative universe. However, here on planet Earth, the usefulness of almost anything he has found in some obscure catalog is in serious doubt. The goodies usually involve being plugged into cigarette lighters or require batteries and include a large booklet of directions. And they're never the Hammacher-Schlemmer variety of gadgets - they're more like the knockoffs being closed out due to VERY GOOD REASONS.

We generally spend the next six months insisting to Daddy that the miniature electrobroom or the battery-operated tic tac toe game are indispensable to our everyday lives. Since the items are safely tucked away - frequently unopened - in the closet, we hope that he never asks for a demonstration.

But if love was the measure of a gift's worth, my father couldn't do better by us if he wrapped up a handful of diamonds.

NTD

A Quote for the Season

People can't concentrate properly on blowing other people to pieces if their minds are poisoned by thoughts suitable to the twenty-fifth of December. ~Ogden Nash

NTD

Merry Something To All

Although the agnostic fairies visited me years ago and took away any dogma surrounding This Special Season, my kneejerk reaction to sending customers from my shop remains those same two words I learned in my youth - Merry Christmas. However, in order to avoid unsmiling radical lesbian Wiccan shoppers who seem to enjoy nothing more than an overlong explanation of why those two words - M.C. - are a lingering symptom of my enslavement to the patriarchal system, I have learned to wish you and yours a mere Happy Holidays instead. Have a joyous KwanzHannukahful New Year too.

It was a long holiday retail month - kinda slow till the last week, which makes the season excruciating. Shop talk would have to include the following - an employee who belongs in Clerks 3: Revenge of the Bitter College Graduate, one flim flam artist, the usual shoplifters, timewasters, and the occasional kindly patron who actually buys assorted merchandise with great courtesy and wads of cash money. And I thank the retail gods for that last category.

NTD

It's Getting Sirius

I gave up and bought a pair of Sirius radio receivers yesterday. While I waxed on about the beauty of holiday music yesterday, I have my own limitations. For instance, an employee attempted to play the entire Christmas with the Chipmunks CD at my store the other day while there were living, breathing customers with credit cards present. Another clerk ratted her out to me. And this other clerk has been repeatedly caught blaring Euro-noise metal which is almost as effective as chipmunk tunes for encourage store patrons to proceed to the nearest exit empty-handed.

I blame myself. I have been allowing employees to use their own judgment in choosing the music for their shifts.

I should have nipped this in the bud months ago when I caught the chipmunk clerk playing Christian soft rock within earshot of my beloved stoner customer base. I said nothing, but found a copy of the Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil" and cranked it up. But I didn't forbid the God CDs. Or the relentless Jack Johnson album she is happy to play twelve times daily.

The other employee is not particularly fond of humanity. Therefore, angry industrial noise and hate-em-all metal are the logical choices in her universe.

But my store is neither a church or a nihilist brew pub. And because sales are generally down this holiday season, I can't afford to continue to humor my sensitive staff with their idiosyncratic musical tastes.

After all, just because I might enjoy the musical stylings of Mindless Self-Indulgence or a particular Loggins and Messina tune doesn't mean that I am going to force them on my customers at work.

From now on, it's either: Garage Rock (channel 25); First Wave Classic Alternative (channel 22); The Vault (channel 16); Pure Jazz (channel 72); or Blues (channel 74).

Circle/Slash Jack Johnson, German electronica and Jesus music.

NTD

I own so much Christmas music - CDs, vinyl, and cassettes - that friends hold this against me. They don't want to hear the Spice Girls singing "Sleigh Ride"... or anyone else, for that matter. My daughters implore me not to play any holiday CDs around them. I have Christmas tunes shredded by Steve Vai, rapped by Death Row Records artists, slammed by The Waitresses and rasped by The Opal Foxx Quartet; harmonized by the Beach Boys and jammed out by Widespread Panic; drag queened by RuPaul , funked up by James Brown, and run over by Elmo and Patsy. There's parodies like "Schlep the Halls with Loaves of Hallah" and there's soul remakes by Otis Redding.

The children seem to hate all of it.

I can find my inner Ebenezer pretty easily myself, and usually the only glimmer of Christmas spirit which can dissipate my grinchiness is found in music - whether it is Los Straitjackets' surf guitar on "Jingle Bell Rock" or "Santa Claus Wants Some Lovin' " by Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks. But I try to limit it work and automobile, and remind myself to mix it up with non-holiday music. And I sell a holiday CD on occasion, just to keep the music flowing elsewhere.

This morning I sold a rarity on Amazon - Christmas at Luke's Sex Shop (1993). For those a little younger or a little older than me, this was a musical offering by Luke Skyywalker, a member of 2 Live Crew. I tried to like this one, but Luke's Sex Shop was harder to listen to than Mitch Miller and the Gang's version of "Give Peace a Chance". I hope that the new owner, a Mr. Weaver from Tennessee, might enjoy this album more.

NTD (listening to Victoria Williams' "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas")

Last night I dreamed that I had hitched a moped to a bulldozer and was trying to haul the dozer on mere scooter power up a sandy country road.

Interpretation, anybody?

NTD

In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they're still beautiful. - Alice Walker

NTD

Thursday

In less than three hours (!) my Dad had one W-9 form and two standard contracts completed. Sometimes, you know, the internet doesn't make things easier. And yet, somehow we're supposed to be grateful.

Personally, I heart my snail mail.

So today I rewarded myself with a Christmas shopping trip to Savannah. Many decades ago, I lived there. I received my first kiss from a drunken preacher's son, graduated from high school, and managed to marry twice, all within the city limits of Savannah. These days I only venture over there occasionally. Maybe it was early Christmas traffic, but I kept wondering: where did these millions of cars come from? And where did the trees go?

But I got a great deal of shopping done in less than three hours, and got to eat at the favorite restaurant of my youth - Carey Hilliard's. I can't remember what was so good about it... the food is admittedly mediocre to my aging taste buds. But for years and years, it was the place to hang out with friends. It still feels like going to Grandma's house, but Grandma is gone.

I think that I'll start wrapping presents tonight.

NTD

Another Work Day with Daddy

My dad will be here any minute. My father is 75 and one of the most technologically unskilled men of this century. He has chosen me to become his official internet guide.

Today we are planning to create an e-mail address for him. Of course, I will be the one checking it since I have to re-train him to use the mouse every time we sit down in front of the computer.

I shouldn't complain. He has a sense of humor, and we try to use every computer hour logged as a time to joke together about modern society. The difficulty is that he is struggling to remain relevant in the insurance industry. At 75, I wonder whether he needs to keep this up. Unfortunately, he says that he cannot afford to retire.

So today we have to fill out several more insurance company forms online and hope that the magic works. We struggled for hours a couple of weeks ago, only to learn that Mozilla was not compatible with the company files and that Adobe 8 reader was not in the mood to download onto my aging Dell. But I think that I have it straightened out today. God, at least I hope so.

NTD

I ran out of coffee, so I am pretending that a steaming cup of hot tea can provide exactly the same jolt to get the words flowing.

So far, results are disappointing.

NTD

Jazz Wisdom

Do not fear mistakes. There are none. - Miles Davis

Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong. - Ella Fitzgerald

NTD

Quickie Mart Mafioso

I have been approached by convenience store operators who live nearby about my shop. They have a sudden interest in purchasing it. Here's the kicker: they want to pay me in cash for the bulk of a hypothetical purchase price. And they need to invest ASAP, as in before the first of January.

Number One: I am not really interested in selling my shop. But I was talking to them, mostly out of curiosity regarding what they could offer, along with their disinterest in hearing the words "no thanks".

Number Two: What the heck do they think a person like me would do with tens of thousands of dollars in cash which they implore me not to bother reporting to the IRS? Stash it under my mattress, so that they could continue to launder money in peace? I pay taxes annually and before April 15th, thank you. I feel waves of paranoia when I deduct mileage for a trip to Sam's Club because I might buy a boxful of groceries while I'm there. While the rest of the entrepreneurial universe might think this could be one honey of a deal, I'm seeing FBI badges and a decade in prison for some combination of helping Al Qaeda and receiving drug money from this trio of dudes I know nothing about besides their obsession with blingy gold chains and their flirtatious Wild and Crazy Foreign Guy mannerisms.

Although I complain about the ups and downs of business, I consider my store like a long-term marriage which is comfortable but not always exciting. The pace gives me time to write, to hang out with my children and friends, and there's always enough to pay the bills. I will probably eventually move on, but I want to have something else in the works before that decision is made.

I just wonder how long it will take the bling mafia to give up and go away.

NTD

R.I.P. Mayre Kurichi

My daughters' Aunt Mayre died last week. She was ninety four. My youngest daughter accompanied my ex-husband to the service today. There she learned a few startling things, such as this: an official grave-digging, even for the cremated remains of a person, cost two thousand dollars at this particular cemetery. The adults were grumbling about it. I thought that she heard wrong, but a quick online check confirmed that "opening/closing the gravesite" was indeed an expensive process.

Just put me in a coffee can, a la The Big Lebowski.

NTD

More Memories of Brad

I was at a Grateful Dead show, and there was Brad in the parking lot. It was around 1993, I think. Atlanta. The Omni. One hideous layer of asphalt after another. The city is beautiful in spots, but the lots surrounding this venue were particularly bleak. Like a Soviet-era postcard from eastern Europe.

Brad had a cheap Mexican blanket spread across a parking space. There were "just another lizard for peace" airbrushed t-shirts and his cholla cactus pipes. The red pipestone was carved at odd angles and mounted onto a metal rod with the cholla serving as a sleeve for the stem. I sat down and we shared a beer. I asked whether he was going to the show.

"You know, Debra, I'm just parking lot scum. Don't tell anyone, but I don't even like the Grateful Dead."

This didn't entirely surprise me. I knew that he and I shared obsessive love for his friend Dexter Romweber's band, the Flat Duo Jets. At the time Brad liked Athens bands, harder punkier sounding stuff.

"Besides, I need the money. I'm broke."

I asked if he had a place to stay. Here in Atlanta, he had to know people. But he had other plans.

"You know, I saw a big piece of plastic over there by the railroad track." He pointed to his left, but I didn't see any train track. "I'm planning to pick that up after the show and head over to a warehouse to sleep."

I never could tell whether Brad's hardscrabble ways were motivated by a flair for dramatic detail or because of his disinterest in imposing on friends. If he had simply driven to a buddy's house that night, it wouldn't have been nearly as memorable as my concern for Brad hunkering beneath industrial polyvinyl among the home bums.

I stood up and headed to the show. After the encore I left and saw Brad in his best Shakedown Street form, talking up the college students and Deadheads, offering trades for some good weed. He looked so happy whenever he had an audience and a pipeful of smoke. Money seemed uninteresting, except for the endless need for automotive repairs, gasoline and intoxicants. Brad was a simple man.

Brad eventually came to love the Grateful Dead and many other bands. I reminded him of his remark about the Dead in the early nineties awhile back. He said something like this:

"I started getting into them that last year or two. And after Jerry Garcia died, I missed them so much. Maybe everything seems better after it's gone. So I try to see more music now."

And this was true. Although Brad could still work straight through a festival at times, he did take some time to see some bands. I saw him dancing across from me at the Sun Ray Festival near Athens, at the disastrous Fire Lake Festival in Gaffney, and at Down On The Farm in northern Florida. Berlin, Devo, the Drive-By Truckers, Steve Earle, War - Brad was an awkward white dancer, much like me, but we laughed and danced and drank through it all.

In fact, Brad got a computer and became an ardent fan of music files. He burned wonderful mix CDs for me with names like "Songs About Guns and Death" and "Start Chopping: Another Great CD by Brad". There were tunes by Johnny Cash, the Violent Femmes, Townes Van Zandt, Johnny Thunders, the Avett Brothers, Charlie Louvin. There were surprise tunes from mainstream country artists and seventies Eagles. I came to be quite impressed with Brad's wide musical spectrum.

There are songs I can't separate from thoughts of Brad. Joe Diffie, "Pickup Man". Violent Femmes, "Country Death Song". And these days, Johnny Cash's version of Trent Reznor's "Hurt".

NTD

From the Bradbury Quote File:

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things. - Ray Bradbury

and another:

Stuff your eyes with wonder . . . live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. – Ray Bradbury

NTD

My daughter is editor of her high school yearbook. In our town, many of the graduates' families purchase "dedication pages", which are really vanity spaces for our darling children/siblings/paramours. So far, my daughter has talked her father, her sister, her best friend, and me into buying a page for her. This is weird but typical here. In a way, I can see that if a kid is paying sixty bucks for a yearbook, he/she wants some decent photographs and dedications, rather than a half-assed senior shot and a short list of the clubs that the kids rarely went to a meeting for. My own yearbook was an embarrassing tome which pointed out that, no, I was not one of the popular girls. It's more like a slideshow that could have accompanied Janis Ian's anthem of misfit-ism, "At Seventeen". To make it worse, the most heartfelt notes in my yearbook were written by my teachers. The friendless teacher's pet, my yearbook cries out.

My teenaged years were not quite as bad as the yearbook indicates. Still, I cringe whenever I look at it. The best thing about it is the firm evidence that I never donned the seventies mullet. My daughter pointed this out admiringly, when she saw that every single person on my page had a version of feathered and layered hair except me.

I have to pick a good quote, a personal note, and a group of photos for my daughter's page. She e-mailed me from school the other day, suggesting that I look at the famous words of Barry Manilow. I can't quite figure what she means - "I made it through the rain"? "Music and fashion were always the passion at the Copa"? "I never realized how happy you made me, Oh Mandy"??? I was thinking more along the lines of my own quotable favorites - Dr. Suess, Einstein, Douglas Adams, Alice Walker. I'll dig a little deeper in the morning. All the pumpkin pie and butter beans have left me lethargic.

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all.

NTD

I don't believe in writer's block

"I don't believe in writer's block." - Grady Tripp, played by Michael Douglas, The Wonder Boys

Well, I generally don't either, Grady. Especially in my own writing, because it generally consists these days of producing, per month:

- two political columns for three newspapers.
- an average of ten blog entries.
- several personal e-mails in which I try to approximate wit.

This is hardly the prolific output of a Stephen King here. So it is frustrating when I have difficulty with my smallish, modest writing schedule.

Today I want to race ahead on my political column schedule so that I am not struggling three hours before deadline. About two good opening paragraphs on a half dozen subjects practically write themselves before the inevitable descent into bullshit reveals the hard truth: that I don't really have any grasp on a revelation, and lack the interest to make something happen here.

I suppose that the Great Truth is revealed: I need More Coffee. This isn't writer's block, damn it. This is a mild caffeine withdrawal symptom.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

NTD

Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity. – Christopher Morley

Top Southern Baptist Funeral Dessert of All Time:

Five-inch high Red Velvet Cake with Cream Cheese and Pecan Icing.

Thank you, Jesus.

NTD

The Lizard for Peace

One thing I know is this: the personal is political. This week I have tried to write something for my political column, and all I can think about is the death of my great friend Brad. In a world full of violence and political madness, there was Brad, selling his humble handmade "Just Another Lizard for Peace" t-shirts for twenty years in parking lots and at festivals.

Hunter S. Thompson said this about his character Dr. Gonzo in Fear and Loathing: "There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high-powered mutant never even considered for mass production". Nothing truer could be said about Brad.

Six days before Thanksgiving 1996: Brad owed me a hundred dollars, so I picked him up at the Athens house he shared with two roommates. The idea here was to do some of the man-work around my house down in Statesboro in order to pay me back. We also conspired to make art. Brad was a visionary artist who could fill a K-Mart shopping cart with house paint, fishing line, glue, and the kind of poster board used in a million elementary school projects, and turn this into the creatures which lived inside his brain. Little men with short legs and long torsos who drummed and banged on guitars. Fish and weird lizards with mismatched appendages, butterflies with menacing sharp wings. That week we hunkered over his snake stencil, its head triangulated and the long body curling across the cardboard. He painted several snakes that evening. I chose a forest green and royal purple snake for myself. It has sat in a makeshift frame on the mantel in my bedroom ever since.

Brad jumped on my daughters' trampoline that week and managed to sprain his ankle. He needed copious amounts of whiskey and beer for the pain. That painting is the only payment I recall toward the original debt.

It was my ex-husband's turn to have the daughters for Thanksgiving, so Brad and I found ourselves without proper food options by lunchtime. We drove around Statesboro and found nothing open. When we passed Boyd's BBQ, we saw an open door and went in.

There were a group of Baptist men preparing box lunches for the poor. I spotted my ex-brother-in-law among them.

"Robert... do you think that you could spare a couple of meals for us? I'll pay whatever." I was embarrassed, realizing that the World of Brad had rendered me a little hungover and thoughtless, much like him.

Robert appeared to enjoy my helplessness. But he handed me a pair of turkey dinners, and I gave him a ten dollar bill.

Robert died last year unexpectedly, a complication of diabetes. And now Brad is dead too.

When I recently re-read Jack Kerouac's On the Road, almost every description of the character of Dean Moriarty/Neal Cassady made me think of Brad. The reckless enthusiasm for what Kerouac calls "kicks"- whether having another adventure on the highway or hearing a great piece of music - was so much like my memories of Brad. Brad loved the desert, good books, the road, making art, taking drugs, and seeing live music. He had traveled with the Flat Duo Jets and kept talking about writing a book about those days. He sat on my porch last year listening to Gram Parsons' Return of the Grievous Angel over and over, crying and whispering along to the music. He called me last winter from a remote desert hot spring, raving about how happy he was and how perfect the stars looked in the open sky. He talked me into buying screenprinting equipment in order to start a sticker business this spring, and then promptly fell behind in paying me back for it. He hated the rise in gasoline prices, which made it difficult for him to afford more adventures. But he had fallen madly in love with a girl we all admired for her calm demeanor and grace a few months ago and the feeling had been mutual. So Brad was trying to reconstruct his life over the past weeks in order to be worthy of this next phase of life: a middle-aged husband with the beautiful woman who had accepted his proposal of marriage which had been blurted out in a wild-eyed state in the dusty field that was the Bonnaroo Music Festival last June.

I last saw Brad in a convenience store parking lot in Lexington, Georgia. He wore crazy yellow sunglasses and lumbered around our vehicles, showing me his latest idea - airbrushed canvas bags with his artwork. He had done well at the Philly Folk Festival with his t-shirts and canvas concert chairs, and was hoping that he could get out of Widespread Panic parking lots and aim for an older, middle-class market. He seemed simultaneously happy in love and worried about money. He gave me one of the bags with a smiling orange sun painted on the front. We hugged and I told him that I would see him down the road. I always counted on that.

But Brad drove to Birmingham in order to make some Widespread money on Friday. And although details are sketchy, I know that his heart stopped while he was parked beneath a highway overpass in his truck.

It is hard to believe that there will be no more stories from Brad - no late night pass-around-the-bottle visitations sharing tales of gathering stones from the sea at Big Sur, sleeping in a hammock in a cabana in Mexico, the transvestite hooker's kitchen near Times Square, the various felonies and misdemeanors committed with rock stars and starlets in bathrooms and back alleys, the constant leaking of transmission fluid, oil, money, and dreams while on the road... Brad was the greatest storyteller I ever got to sit at a campfire with. I miss him so much already, but so does everyone who knew him.

Brad was the son of a Baptist preacher. I used to play piano at the Baptist church. During the week that Brad sprained his ankle and painted snakes, we got to spend an evening at my piano with the Broadman Hymnal. We drank Budweiser and sang every hymn we both knew. He frequently told me that we would have to sing hymns again one day.

I promise, Brad, that I'll get that hymnal out again soon.

NTD

R.I.P. Brad Bishop

I got the call around 2:30 a.m... Brad died in Birmingham. He was one of my closest friends.

NTD

Respectable

I have all kinds of friends. By that, I mean that there's a wide variety of age groups, educational levels, and economic success. Some of them have outstanding warrants in multiple states, and some have plaques hanging on their walls touting their various civic accomplishments. Sometimes I loosely group the warranted buddies and the convicted felons among what I call my "bad" friends. I have bailed out my share over the years. But many of my so-called "bad" friends are among the best - and I would likely phone up some of them when I have troubles long before I would tell the more respectable ones about the darker details of my life.

Today I am having lunch with a couple of the Respectables. I don't fault them for their excess of virtue - I consider all people capable of misdemeanors and rebellion. It's just that some people have had a lack of drama, whether it is the luck of their non-addictive genetics or their ability to balance a checkbook, or their great good fortune in falling in love with a kind, reliable spouse at an early age. I consider my own spotless legal record to be largely a matter of my adolescent fear of hell, combined with mathematical prowess which helps me to stay financially afloat.

In the case of the lunch date, I happen to know that in the very early seventies, my wealthy friend had an FBI file regarding her anti-war activities. She once showed me an underground publication which featured a photograph of her younger, skinnier self leading a protest march. My other friend I'll see today has told me of growing marijuana on the balcony back in the day, sometimes travelling with grocery bags full of the stuff.

My warranted friends are a little younger, and some still wander the country with their weed and their untagged vehicles. It's hard to get to your court date when you're broke and five states west of the courthouse. Besides, it's mostly misdemeanor stuff - simple possession, minor speeding, no proof of insurance, vending in a concert parking lot without a license.

It's hard to blame anybody for their vices. Or for their troubles. They're still trying to live the Kerouac life, and somehow haven't noticed that it's 2007. And it's hard for me to condemn anyone for their dreamy love of the road, no matter how impractical. I have a perverse respect for the idealistic road warriors.

But I also respect the folks who keep the home fires burning, the gardens growing, and the children tucked safely in their beds. I feel the gravity myself more and more.

One definition of "respect" is this: esteem for or a sense of the worth or excellence of a person, a personal quality or ability. "Respectability", on the other hand, can mean "respectable social standing, character, or reputation". As for me, I can respect the respectable some of the time, respect the disreputable some of the time; but I can't respect the respectable OR the disreputable All of the Time.

NTD

Even in my quiet neighborhood...

... the evening/nighttime/early morning sounds have increased lately. There is a cat in heat who prefers to make love in the privacy of my back yard, just below my bedroom window. At 3:30 a.m., the city hall alarm goes off every morning. Sometimes it lasts 30 seconds, sometimes 30 minutes. During a ferocious migraine I called the police department and demanded an explanation. "The cleaning crew sets it off", she explained without offering any future relief. All I can think, is that this town better have the most germ-free government in the history of the world.

The train which runs across a mile or so of track delivering something - raw peanuts or bricks, I think - has a conductor who sits on the air horn with a vengeance. This begins around 7 a.m. And now somebody has a sad puppy who barks relentlessly when night falls. The same dog has also learned to howl along with the morning train, as well as to police and ambulance sirens.

And then there are the squirrels who recently moved back into my attic for the season. In the evening I believe that they jog in place just above my bed, perhaps to keep in shape after eating too many pecans, the same nuts which have been bouncing off my metal roof for weeks now.

Then the neighborhood chicken usually starts scratching around the grass at dawn.

Other than the air horn enthusiast and the janitors who can't figure out how to switch off an alarm, I usually don't mind the other sounds. At least they are Evidence of Nature, if you can count the house pets.

I only write this down because I couldn't sleep last night. And all I can seem to think of are all the little disturbances which remind me that the universe is alive and well and there's a bunch of living, breathing creatures happy to make a racket whenever they feel like it. And, whether or not I am in the mood to listen, nature's cacophony is good.

NTD

I read the news about the Federal Reserve Board's survey on U.S. median income and median net worth this morning. My income is a reasonable Level 3, and my net worth is up there, thanks mainly to various real estate agents' insistence that each of my houses are worth about twice what I am paying for them. It's all so hypothetical unless you cash it in - the house, the inventory of my shop, the vehicles. In the meantime, there's still rot and old carpet and fading paint.

The scary thing is the fragility of the Level 1 families - little income, and credit card debt eating up whatever they might have counted in their meager assets. I have numerous friends who require credit cards or unfavorable second mortgages to simply exist month after month.

I have been very fortunate - although I have lived through a bad divorce agreement, invasive house mold, and the usual adult issues. It was probably very educational to have a grouchy, introverted mother who raised me on her tiny Sears and Roebuck paycheck. Mama was plagued by migraines and was largely unpleasant - we haven't spoken in years, sadly - and she never seemed to muster a single promotion that might have made growing up more comfortable for us. My father, meanwhile, struggled back in Claxton with a fledgling insurance business and made custody payments faithfully. But it wasn't really enough. Our neighbors sent us homemade chili on Fridays and made their son mow our grass when it needed it. But my mother was proud, and would never stoop to sign my sister and I up for the free lunch program or anything else which might have helped. However, she farmed me out as a babysitter starting at age ten, and by fourteen I spent summers working with Laura Da Vinci, a wonderfully eccentric Italian woman who terrorized Savannah highways with her Laura's Pizza on Wheels RV. Laura could cook a mean rigatoni, and we traveled from construction site to factory serving the finest of Savannah's blue-collar workers. But when I turned sixteen my friend Debbie called from Shoney's and offered me a job. The next morning I told Laura that I was leaving.

I hated Shoney's. I also hated selling Olan Mills portrait plans over the telephone, my next job. But I continued to babysit, and over the college years I cleaned houses, played piano for a kindergarten, worked at an Ace Hardware, Dunkin' Donuts, the school cafeteria, a Chinese restaurant, a motel, a vegetarian restaurant... and what I lacked in work consistency, I made up for in tenacity. I learned to live off of day-old bread stores and thrift shops. I had no car for a year. I learned to like the city bus. I made mistakes - an early marriage, for one thing - but like my mother, I learned frugality by necessity. Most of all, I learned to enjoy the challenge of living within my means. It wasn't really a burden for me.

The hardest thing about the post-divorce years was carrying some credit card debt just to get by. My unfavorable divorce deal left me walking away with little more than an aging Honda Accord, a futon, and my upright piano. But I got to buy my ex-husband's share of our store - although it cost me more than the entire shop was worth at the time. Also, I bought an old house one block from my ex, so that the children could walk back and forth between them. It took thirteen years to crawl out of the debt, between the selling price of The Emporium and the need to provide all the things that children require - braces, clothing, college, etc. But I remained endlessly optimistic (except for a few bouts of dark depression) that everything was possible. And between the shop, festival vending, flea markets, Ebay, Amazon, incense making, bead stringing, and the occasional desperate yard sale - the credit debt is gone and I allegedly have a decent net worth. I was also lucky. And, like my mother, I can be very cheap.

My mother's birthday is this week. I send her a lengthy message on birthday cards every November, but she has refused to speak to me for years. It took a lot of therapy to accept the current limitations, and hopefully things will improve one day. But I suppose that this rambling blog entry is, in its own way, a tribute to my mom. My memories of her crying at the kitchen table over the month's budget, all the eggs and toast and rice and other cheap food, the old Plymouth Valiant, her unwillingness to simply find another husband to rescue her from the dire household finances - I really do appreciate her perseverance, and hope that she knows that her influence has made me a decent money manager and a stronger parent for my own two daughters (both of whom know their way around a Goodwill).

Thanks, mom.

NTD

I go to one of those ladies' gyms where the median age is, like, sixty. There's a few college girls showing off their workout spandex on the treadmills, but The Rack is the university gym/pickup joint on campus where most students go. So I sweat among the older and softer females of my town. And other than the annoying scriptures posted on every machine and the occasional Christian workout CD, I kind of like the matronly air about the place. It's like exercising among a passel of kindly aunts.

Sometimes we talk, but it's generally limited to discussions about everyone's children and grandchildren. I can talk about my daughters all day long, so this is easy enough. Otherwise, I spend a half hour on the elliptical trainer, reading the guilty pleasure magazines like Self and Shape, and speculate about the level of photoshopping required before any abdominal muscles are published. When those are all read, I move on to Prevention and wonder why Dr. Andrew Weil apparently refuses to be photographed below the chin. Finally, I have recently succumbed to the gym's supply of Suzanne Somers books, which advocate her "Somersize!" program - that Suzanne seems to never run out of exclamation marks.

If you had sat beside me on a city bus back when I was a skinny nineteen year old college student and revealed my future - a little overweight, middle-aged and looking for guidance from a cast member of Three's Company - I would have moved immediately to another seat.

But here I am, seeking Miss Somers' advice about nutrition and hormones. Strange days indeed.

I was struggling with some sort of abdominal torture machine this morning while a neighboring woman flexed her calves on something I like to call the Singer sewing machine. I pride myself in renaming the equipment to suit myself - there's the sex machine, the birthing chair, the ass-master, the pretty hate machine (which I usually skip). So the ab torture device was hurting, and I hurried through it so as not to give up altogether. And Ms. Singer Calves smiled at me with what I perceived as abundant self-righteousness and stated flatly "You're doing that wrong". She proceeded to explain the problem of rushing through it, but without an ounce of compassion. She had just hula-hooped for five minutes, then gone around asking everyone how she looked, beaming. I decided that I hated her before she had even looked my way.

And look - the evil ab machine is not going to hurt my back or damage a tendon if I do it wrong. It just won't do as much good as the slow, painful, correct way. It's not like twirling a freeweight during your Downward Dog.

This is the way that I raised my children: I tended to watch them while they made mistakes and learned from their errors. And if Anna wasn't running out on the highway and Sarah wasn't hurting herself, I kind of sat back and watched. I never cared to discourage them by giving excessive directions and demanding proper procedures. Children don't seem to like that sort of invasive attention.

As for me, I'm pretty independent. Simply joining a gym and showing up several times a week is a Very Big Deal for me. And if I'm not in imminent danger, I don't want unsolicited advice from know-it-alls. I get my Chicken Soup for the Cellulite from Suzanne Somers, thank you very much.

NTD

Yard Sale Finds of the Morning:

1. A 1953 diary for a nickel, with only a few entries including the odd "I drove Pop's truck had a good time. Jack Jr. got killed". And did he really mean this: "I comed in the bathtub tonight" which was wedged between "Carol got mad because I think she talks to much" and "Tried out telescope works pretty good". This is not quite as good as the stack of sad postcards my daughter Anna and I read a few weeks ago with the tragic lovelife of Lulu and her friends from the early seventies.

2. The Rhythm of Sterility and Fertility in Women: Hygienic and Ethical, from the thirties. Priests and Catholic doctors argue against condoms as ungodly, and generally make nookie sound like something very un-fun. Lots of drawings of cute babies on the cover.

3. Las Vegas Cooks! Even Vegas cookbooks sound exciting, although the recipes are too complicated for a basic cook like me. The Joys of Jello also looks pretty cool, but I only eat jello if I'm sick or it's spiked with vodka in a nifty shot form.

I think that the 21st century is so weird that I find myself retreating to other eras via the old stuff found at thrift stores and yard sales. Sometimes the simplicity of an earlier time is comforting (although the diary is a little disturbing).

It's all nifty stuff, but sleeping late would have been wonderful. I've been waking up so early, I wonder whether the time change tonight might help or hurt.

NTD

Quote of the Day

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn. - Henry David Thoreau

(I have noticed how I yo-yo between pretty silly and overly strident. This is when I usually give up and defer to the wisdom of others until the dust in my head settles.)

NTD

Biography: Not the A&E Kind

While reading the UK's Daily Mail online - because of course I only read serious news - there was an item about Heather Mills planning a biopic of her life. She is intent on getting Reese Witherspoon to play her in this film. Well, hell, Heather, who wouldn't want to be portrayed by an actress as adorable and talented (and a decade younger) as Ms. Witherspoon? And if I were a man - as in say, Jared the Subway dieter - I would insist that only Johnny Depp would have the finesse to capture my sensitive soul.

Mills has had quite a life, and at 39 there is plenty of material to develop a script around while still sparing us from viewing all that jiggy sex that Sir McCartney and his wife allegedly enjoyed during the early days of love. I believe I'd rather watch her leg being amputated.

I think to myself... if I had a film made about my life until age 39, it might be more of a seventies-style TV movie of the week. Let's call it Debra: Shopkeeping, Children's Birthday Parties, and the Peter Pans She Loved. Okay, I'll have to work on the title. Maybe it's more like Debra: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Learned to Love Dancing with my Peter Pan Boyfriends to the Tune of Spice Girls Anthems Played at My Daughters' Birthday Parties While Hoping the Store Was Not Shoplifted Blind Because My Employees Were On The Phone While I Was Throwing Said Party.

God, I'm suddenly glad that I'm 47.

Okay, so of course my love interests will be played by Johnny Depp and Gael Garcia Bernal and Jake Gyllenhaal. And although I have always looked to Woody Allen-era Diane Keaton as my guiding force, a woman just doesn't choose a much-older actress to play her part. So I'm thinking Kate Winslet or Cate Blanchett, since both are so great that they could take the sometimes mundane details of an ordinary life and turn those suckers into Oscar-worthy High Drama. I sort of fancy the idea of either an Aussie or a Brit trying to approximate my Georgia-but-fighting-the-drawl accent. Also, they'd need to gain X number of pounds ASAP, because there is "More Of Me To Love" or "A Few Extra Pounds", depending on which personals websites a person such as I could use (if I weren't "In A Relationship", as I indicated on MySpace).

And the director? Let's call it an ensemble work featuring the Spikes: Jonze and Lee. I think that Jonze is a good chaos director, which is a plus, but I love Spike Lee so much that maybe he could direct a fantasy sequence of me as a black woman - Halle Berry, perhaps, but not like her amazing Jungle Fever performance as the crack whore. A dream sequence, with a cameo by Denzel or Djimon, of course. And an ice cube.

It might not be a successful concept, but it would be a different sort of Hollywood movie. And it would be less predictable than seeing the dirty laundry of a Beatle as viewed by his golddigging ex-wife.

Hey, I'd like to watch it.

NTD

Feeling cookbookish

I bought 150 used cookbooks on Saturday, then went out to eat with Anna.

Everyone gets a cookbook for Christmas this year. I listed perhaps 100 on Amazon, and have spent the last couple of evenings lying in bed reading everything from The Shirelles' favorite recipes ("I Met Him on a Sundae") to Pearl Jam's ("Thai Peanut Curry Thang"), both found in The Rock&Roll Cookbook, to Tuskegee Institute's African American Heritage Cookbook ("Smothered Yardbird" and "Mrs. Vera Foster's Southern Gumbo"); to "Erogenous Scones" and "Incredible Oedible Pie" in a mock Freudian cookbook; and "Lowrider Beef Picadillo" from The Biker Cookbook (surprisingly, a collection of reasonable recipes).

I suppose that the next step is a trip to the grocery store.

NTD

I really should consider taking a shower or washing dishes - wait, I'm not being a filthy lazyass, I'm just CONSERVING WATER IN THIS TIME OF SEVERE DROUGHT IN GEORGIA. That's it - my newest excuse in the fine art of slackery. And vacuuming? Well, I'm just saving electricity so that Georgia Power can cancel those proposed additional nukes. I won't need additional wattage in these times of critical environmental crisis. I might wear the same pair of jeans for seven days straight, but Al Gore is causing me to rethink my relationship to the washing machine.

I love sitting around and persuading myself that laziness is a virtue.

NTD

I turned 47 yesterday. And today, my lovely daughter Sarah is celebrating her 22nd birthday.

Happy birthday, Sarah! Please do not damage yourself during today's rugby game.

NTD

Favorite things which I obtained this week:

- Free. A fistful of Chick Publications gospel tracts, including the classic anti-evolutionary "There Go The Dinosaurs"; Dial-the-Truth Ministries fun little pamphlet "Rock Music - The Devil's Advocate"; and, just for balance, "Who Are The Baha'is?". Results of reading all of these are pending.

- Seventy five cents each. Now on VHS: Will Vinton's Claymation Easter and Magic Star Traveler Volume 2, "starring Jerry and the Puppets - meet Solar the space captain and his friends Luster, Moonshine and Imagination as they explore those tall, tall, tall friendly Giraffes and the mysterious Camel". Also, a 1986 Dokken video.

- $1.50 plus tax. An autographed Margaret Thatcher memoir, signed and numbered.

- Eight dollars and change. Four pounds of green peanuts which are currently boiling, a small bag of sweet potatoes, and a slice of red velvet cake made by the holy hands of the ladies of the local A.M.E. church.

- Two bucks. The Duran Duran Tribute Album.

So maybe my room didn't get exactly cleaned up, but, hey, look at my trinket collection!

NTD

I must clean up my room.
I must clean up my room.
I must clean up my room.
I must clean up my room.
I must clean up my room.

NTD

The weekend entertainment was especially rich up in Asheville. The Yard Dogs Road Show on Friday, then Mad Tea Party/Luminescent Orchestrii on Sunday - I feel that the cultural challenge for the month has been well met. I am suddenly sorry that in my misspent youth I neglected the opportunity to demand that my family enroll me in violin/ukelele and/or trombone lessons, all of which suddenly appear to be The Road to Cool.

Check out some of this music during the day:

www.myspace.com/luminescentorchestrii

www.myspace.com/themadteaparty

www.myspace.com/yarddogsroadshow

NTD

The Orange Peel Social Aid and Pleasure Club - a premiere nightspot in Asheville - has slowly begun tearing down their self-imposed wall of adults-only entertainment no matter who might be interested, and lowered the age limit for certain shows. For instance, several years ago, when the great Tell Us The Truth Tour made its stop in Asheville, there were many high schoolers who had been bussed in from points around the south, only to find that they had to wait outside while their adult chaperones got in to see Steve Earle and company talk and sing about this insane war that the Bush administration had recently entered. It was a great event, but I felt a little guilty since I was on the inside, and so many were leaning against the other side of the brick wall. I have always believed that, whenever possible, a venue should accommodate younger people - because music is powerful and should be shared with all ages (unless you're talking the late G.G. Allin, or the Genitorturers, or GWAR).

So tonight my seventeen year old daughter is in tow with Stewart and me to watch the Yard Dogs Road Show at the Orange Peel. After seeing several partial performances at Bonnaroo, I'm expecting great stuff in the full show.

NTD

Quote of the Day

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. – E.B. White

NTD

not-so-funny girl

I had determined to go for humor in my newspaper column this week, although the subject was to be named later. I read and read, taking too many breaks to check on Britney and my favorite bloggers and generally investing many hours yesterday on favorite movie trivia (I love you imdb.com!) and the usual Wikipedia fact-checking, which included Very Important Stuff like how many years older Paul Simon is than his wife Edie Brickell (25!). Then there were YouTube viewings of vintage Steve Earle and recent Ray Wylie Hubbard videos and, you know, I realize that it's a good thing I'm self-employed because any office cubicle co-worker could be led to believe that I am Wasting Time when in actuality I am doing RESEARCH.

But at 7 a.m. this morning I got up and wrote 958 very sober words on Blackwater shootouts and how much we pay the families of dead Iraqi civilians. The column turned out very well, but is a little short on humor. For some reason I regard myself as a funny person, but tend to gravitate toward the most serious subjects when it's time to publish.

Looking forward to turning my giggle box over again sometime soon...

NTD

God bless massage therapists. I have been prone to make fun of my second city - Asheville - and its endless proliferation of massage therapists, psychics, glass blowers and belly dancers. Add the trust fundies, the couch surfers and the pot dealers to the mix, and hardly anyone seems to have the sort of employment suggested by high school guidance counselors.

But for a full week my lower back has felt pretty good, and I owe it all to Evaa, the massage goddess who graciously bartered Indian tapestries for an hour of hands-on miracle working.

It is unbelievable to know that I could get a discounted bottle of painkillers through Blue Cross, but not a massage.

NTD

Sixties Flashback

My father had a heart catheterization and stent insertion this morning. I was the designated family member for all possible things - driver to the hospital, caller to the relatives, sitter in the waiting room, bringer of sugar-free liquids, et cetera. He seems to be fine, and tomorrow I'll do the same things, but in reverse.

The sweetest part of late afternoon was sitting together watching TV Land, which had back-to-back episodes of Bonanza and Gunsmoke. He no longer seemed seventy five and ill.It was a serious flashback to the sixties I well remember, when I was a little girl with a cap gun and cowgirl hat, watching westerns with Daddy. I hadn't seen Matt Dillon and Festus and Miss Kitty in decades, but everything was familiar like it was yesterday.

Sweet dreams, Daddy. I'll see you in the morning.

NTD

I picked up this week's copy of my local newspaper on Saturday. I like to get a print copy of my political column for the archive -aka the bottom shelf of my bookcase. And there it was: the ugliest stereotype of a cartoon hippie, which has apparently become my avatar for the newspaper column. Sunglasses, a headband - the very caricature of a late sixties radical as filtered by some artist raised on Family Circus. I have never, ever worn a headband, and I was nine years old when Woodstock was held. I rarely wear sunglasses, although the optometrist encourages me to do so. This dreadful image seems designed to reduce my opinion pieces to a viewpoint written by some burned-out flakey monster-woman.

I spoke to the editor this morning. He was surprised, of course, by my rant. The worst part is when he informed me that this was not his design; he was simply using the same artwork that another paper runs on my page in every issue up in Macon.

Good Lord. Apparently I need to drive through Macon more often and watch what the folks are doing with my column elsewhere.

On today's to-do list: a) finish this week's column; and b) give up, take a photo of myself, and replace that awful hippie cartoon.

NTD

I'm having a restful morning, reviewing 9/11 conspiracy theories on the Web. This is what happens when I:

-hear George Bush's unsettling voice via NPR before 7 a.m.

-drink too much coffee

-get agitated

-start surfing online and find that a Bush brother was on the board of directors for the security agency which guarded, among other things, the World Trade Center

I try to ignore the filthy, rotten system called the federal government as much as possible. I write my bi-weekly political column, of course, but this is not so much because I love politics, but rather that I disdain it. 9/11 theories are depressing, and make me feel more helpless. But Caffeine + George is still the drug which can induce a bad trip into... reality???

NTD

R.I.P. Steve Harris

Steve Harris was one of my first customers. He dared to harangue me for being a capitalist even as he bought used books and Steal Your Face stickers from my teeny shop, which was barely making a profit. I generally shot back with a defense: Yeah, but at least I'm a NICE capitalist! This was 1987, and I had opened The Emporium with only a cloudy idea of what I wanted to do with the place. Twenty years later with a different shop name in a different town, I'm still not sure what I'm doing, but the proceeds of this entrepreneurial endeavor keeps the family fed. And so it goes on.

Statesboro, Georgia is the home of Georgia Southern University, which means that our culture rotates around cheap beer, football, and Jesus - generally in that order. The town didn't get liquor by the drink until 1995, so back in the glorious eighties we all drank Budweiser and Michelob Light at house parties which drew dozens and - at the infamous annual Hat Party - hundreds of revelers. There were usually roaring fires, frosty kegs, college radio blaring Violent Femmes and classic Pylon, drunken students mating behind azalea bushes, mushrooms fresh from a midnight harvest in nearby cow pastures, swimming in muddy ponds, hooting and hollering, a stray professor leaning over cute co-eds, and guys like Steve who would ride up from Brunswick in order to visit old friends from his alma mater. He might take in a football game or watch the Chickasaw Mud Puppies stomp and sing at the Rockin' Eagle. He would invariably stop in first thing at The Emporium and catch up on local gossip with me. Later on I might see him and the rest of the league of post-grad bachelors out at Dave's or Eric's. Dave might be holding a raise-the-rent party with a couple of bands on a makeshift stage. Eric would fish from his porch, sitting on a mildewing outdoor sofa and holding court with students, bikers from other counties, and his best friend Steve Harris.

Eric called me today and told me that Steve died last night from leukemia. He was 49.

I can still remember Steve at a mid-nineties Grateful Dead concert at the Atlanta Omni. We had abandoned the tents at Stone Mountain and I had a hundred dollar hotel room that night. Steve and Don had paid us twenty bucks to hang out afterward until they felt sober enough to drive. And as I tried to sleep, I kept hearing Steve laugh and laugh while he sat in a chair, high as a kite. There was no television on, no conversation. Just the cosmic giggle which had grabbed ahold of Steve and wouldn't let go. I finally fell asleep to the sound of him laughing.

I hope that Steve is having a great cosmic belly laugh today, wherever he is.

R.I.P. Steve Harris

NTD

Highlights of my life since I last posted:

- Stewart and Susan singing "Total Eclipse of the Heart" while I banged away on piano
- Playing with a pair of sixties Mr. Potato Heads, purchased at an elderly couple's basement sale
- Selling a rare Bob Gibson Sings Shel Silverstein CD on Amazon for $32.00
- Spending a couple of hours with my old friend Jill who was a bridesmaid in my first wedding back in the late seventies
- Encouraging Goth-y employee Jessica to put on a tie-dye and sarong while at work, which she finally did
- Singing/hollering "That's Life" along with Frank Sinatra on the radio
- Picking (even more) tomatoes from the garden

It's been crazy busy at the shop - hence the lack of blogging - but it's the small things that make for memories. When a customer who has been in AA for decades mentioned his gratitude list the other day, I thought that was a good idea to change the prevailing mental activity from hardship/pain/sucky stuff to Moments That Made Me Happy.

NTD

Queen of Pain

You can tell it's PMS time when I sink to the depths of paraphrasing Sting. After the Department of Revenue, the office nurse, the insurance adjustor, and a host of others have delivered worrisome news about the state of my union - middle-class American that I am - I decided, what the hell, let's call the exterminator for a termite inspection.

He's due to arrive any minute, and suddenly I feel fragile. It's been three years, maybe four, since a professional bug man has crawled under my house.

Oh God, he's here. This is worse than a gynecological exam.

NTD

So the insurance guy came by this morning and informed me that removal of the large tree dangling precariously on the fenceline will NOT be covered by my home insurance policy. So, along with my health insurance not paying for a mammogram, the limitations of other aspects of the insurance industry continue to disappoint.

Michael Moore, are you listening?


NTD

I am officially falling apart

The trifecta of high cholesterol counts - LDL, triglycerides, and overall number - are depressing enough. But it's what is referred to in every single annoying-ass femme-advert rag as my "wake-up call" - and I read this stuff religiously on the elliptical trainer because what else is there to read in a gym. So I can deny reality here, or else I can lose some weight.

Damn, I hate it when I have to behave by the rules and obsess about my body like the rest of America.

Here's a shout-out to some of my nearest and dearest junk foods:

poptarts/pizza/coconut curry/cheesecake/fried chicken/macaroni and cheese/shrimp...

... I just can't go on thinking about it.

And here's to a future filled with flax seed and steel-cut oats -

NTD

Pages loading, please wait

More and more of the suppliers whom I buy from are shifting their catalog pages to an online format. The positive thing about this is that I am notoriously under-organized (note that this is not quite the same as being utterly disorganized; for instance, of course I know where the Ferne Sales loose catalog sheets from 2003 are - they're in that pile beside the 1975 Mother Earth News collection, next to my daughter's crayon drawings, circa 1995. Some folks actually disparage this system, which is admittedly not very Dewey Decimal or Microsoft or politically correct or whatever. But the universe was created out of chaos, and if that principle somehow translates to The Lives of Middle-Aged American Women, then one day I just might emerge as the f**king genius I always hoped I was, the key to my brilliance simply lodged beneath a mountain of vintage Rolling Stone magazines and a cache of photographs of an old boyfriend).

It could happen.

So online catalogs for my shop is probably a good thing. But this morning I was sifting through the company pages of a particularly cumbersome inventory, and saw that it was over 200 pages. And every page, full of photographs and graphics, takes some time to load. So it used to take me twenty minutes to order; today it might be three hours.

Since I love to avoid cleaning bathrooms and scrubbing floors, I will forever have the perfect excuse to never find time to properly clean - gotta get my orders together.

Hey, I have to go, I have SERIOUS WORK to do.

NTD

It's difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a home-grown tomato. - Lewis Grizzard

I was right with you, Mister Grizzard, through the first few dozen from my overgrown bitty garden. But as I look at the green monsters ripening on my windowsill this morning, I have to admit that those 'maters are becoming a might tiresome.

At least Stewart and I grew something edible - meanwhile, most of the squashes are a) fun to arrange and photograph; b) nice to put in a bowl with other vegetables; but c) sort of dry and woody to attempt to eat. The bell peppers are promising but sort of small; while the cucumbers are positively pornographic and delicious.

We are not quite slow-food homesteaders. But it's a start.

NTD

Overheard at the pawn shop...

"C'mon, dude, let me off work early. The bachelor party is tonight, and I got to get things together."

"That ain't no bachelor party. Y'all's just gonna be driving four-wheelers through the woods all night, drinking beer."

"Yeah, but we're doing it for __, and there's naked women involved."

I'm with Dude #1. Naked women make it a bachelor party.

Hope no one gets hurt in the woods, particularly the naked women.

NTD

Bat Boy Flies Away, Confirming End Times Prophesy

Move over Nostradamus -

The announcement that the Weekly World News is ceasing publication is all the evidence I need.

The end is near.

NTD

If you don't think drugs have done good things for us, then take all of your records, tapes and CD's and burn them. – Bill Hicks

Happy Soundtrack of the Day

1. Daniel Johnston - True Love Will Find You In The End

2. Kimya Dawson - I Like Giants

3. 8 Track Gorilla - Make It With You

4. Andrae Crouch - Soon and Very Soon

5. Woody Wood - The Gardendemocopyright

NTD

File under: Mothers Against Dumbass Drivers

Funniest?? Weirdest?? twelve-inch letters affixed across the windshield of an SUV in the Wendy's parking lot:

"MILF"

There is a big-ass truck in this town that has "WELL-HUNG" displayed on the tinted glass, but we're used to that one after a couple of years. So yesterday the daughters and I had to check out the woman in the milf-mobile driver's seat in order to discern whether there is truth in the advertising.

"Nope."
"Not me."
"No way."
We agreed - my seventeen year old, my twenty one year old, and myself - aged 46 - that none of us would care to f**k the big-haired mother whose cigarette dangled precariously from a downturned mouth. But then we decided to analyze this.

What sort of mother would claim that she is a "Mother I'd Like to F**k" to the general driving audience in this conservative Christian town? Does this claim suggest that she believes that everyone would like to f**k her? Or, wait... does that mean that she wishes that she could f**k herself, since the term is first person? Otherwise, wouldn't it be more accurate to call herself a MYLF... "mother you'd like to f**k"? But something about "mylf" sounds sort of like the extreme feminist term "womyn", hinting at unshaved legs and goddess worship. And if an ardent lover put these vinyl letters on her SUV - well, is this a bragging right, or is this mother perhaps a part-time hooker? If so, why isn't there a phone number or at least an e-mail address so that the milf fantasy can commence?

And good Lord, what about the children? I can't think of anything more embarrassing than riding in THAT vehicle.

Suddenly, the faded paint and dented front-end of my '93 Isuzu pickup I was driving (and especially the mildewing Grateful Dead sticker we affixed to the window back in '95 when Jerry Garcia died) seems positively tasteful.

NTD

P.S. Although I reported the death of my Isuzu back in the winter, I am happy to tell you that you can't keep a good truck down. Even an ugly one.

Slow News Day...

... but in today's world, what the heck is wrong with that?

I'm trying to let the coffee think for me, since in four hours I have scheduled an interview with a local first-time novelist. I didn't receive a copy of the book but I'm trying to work around that fact.

NTD

Quote of the Day

There is only one journey. Going inside yourself. – Rainer Maria Rilke

NTD

Almost five hours assisting my elderly father study for and subsequently ace an insurance certification test online - thank Jesus for the blessed Happy Hour at our local watering hole a mere block from home. My now-legal eldest daughter, recently returned from across the pond in Spain, was amazed to learn that we can purchase TWO liquor drinks for $3.88 total around the corner.

God Bless the USA.

NTD

It's supposed to hit 103 today here in my so-called Sun Belt town. I'm hiding in my cave, testing the limits of central air conditioning.

It was Stewart who used the term "Sun Belt" in a conversation last week, which brought out my southern girl ire. No true southerner would ever use that term, coined by northerner Kevin Phillips during his tenure as Richard Nixon strategist. Stewart pointed out that it was not just a Deep South word, as it includes New Mexico and other states known for their heat. As usual, he's right. But I don't cotton to the branding of my ancestral home by folks who don't even live here.

Unfortunately it's the miracle of air conditioning which I cling to today that made all this dang progress possible.

I can't adequately explain why I go all Scarlett O'Hara on everyone's ass at unexpected moments. Sometimes it seems justified, and other times it just feels like PMS.

NTD

I'm back in hot hot hot south Georgia trying my best not to step outside. I have a fasting blood test at 9 a.m. so of course I was wide awake at 7 o'clock, unable to stay in bed. All I can think about is coffee and orange juice, but my coping mechanisms are 1) staring at the internet and 2) watching a smoking live eighties VHS of Tina Turner's world tour. I don't care so much about her music from Private Dancer, but Tina is The Shit. She's duetting with David Bowie, but he's pretty milquetoast in comparison to her legs, her hips, her facial expressions which fall somewhere between a beatific smile and a good orgasm.

But I'm still thirsty.

NTD

Good Lord, has it been THAT long since I posted? It appears here as if Tammy Faye's demise left me stricken with typing paralysis and some serious ennui... but really, things have just been busy busy busy.

The street festival/shopkeeping weekend was a bit much. Bele Chere, allegedly the largest free festival in the southeast or something like that, took over my town and nothing was left by late evening except for swollen ankles and an aching back. Gosh, I used to just love festivals, and now they make me feel mostly tired and old. But we made mad money via the sale of stickers and buttons, so I am envisioning a nice hot tub somewhere, somehow, sometime in the near future.

The top-selling bumper stickers for 2007 are:

Coexist. Coexisting is hot, in case you didn't know.

The Peace Sign. We had a white peace sign on black, a black peace sign on white, a white peace sign on blue, and the classic peace sign flanked by the slogan "Back by Popular Demand". World peace might never happen, but you can buy a little piece of peace from me.

Namaste. But I am very very tired of explaining that one to folks.

Stewart/Colbert in 2008. The fantasy ticket.

Impeach Bush, Impeach Cheney First, Impeach 'Em All, Impeach the Bastards, and just plain Impeach. I think that we're getting a message here.

Treehugging Dirt Worshipper and Treehugger. Lots of enviro-friendly tourists here.

But now I need to get some sleep...

NTD

R.I.P. Tammy Faye.

NTD

Paging Miss Manners

I sell a few CDs, videos and books on Amazon, as all three of my loyal readers know. I only occasionally e-mail to inform customers that a shipment is coming; it seems pretty obvious, doesn't it? You order, and the seller delivers. I have never felt that the etiquette requirements extend beyond this, unless the customer inquires about a purchase.

Obviously, I need a lesson in customer care. I got one today.

I ordered a Dexter Romweber CD (of indie southern rock duo Flat Duo Jets fame)from an Amazon Marketplace seller last night. And a few minutes ago, I received this e-mail:

Hi, thanks for your order. Nibbles and his bunny brothers have taken your CD from our shelves, inspected and polished it with their whiskers to make sure it was in the best condition. They packed it with hay and they hopped on down the street to the post office to send off your package on this very day. Nibbles and his brothers can't wait for you to come back shop with us again some time. Thank you once again.

This is cute, right? Almost Kute with a capital "K", right? And if I was buying children's lit, or a Wiggles DVD, I'd be all about it. But I bought a Dexter Romweber CD, a badass motherf**cking indie guitar god who inspired the White Stripes... I'm not so sure that the bunnies really wanted to polish a CD that begins with "Rockin' Dead Man" and ends with "Prison Called Life".

But maybe Miss Manners wants us to send little notes to our customers. I'll have to think about this.

NTD

Who's Harry Potter?

There. I said it.

I'm not anti-Harry... I have just chosen to live outside of Potterville.

NTD

Night of the Bloodsuckers aka Vampire Hookers aka Cemetery Girls aka Sensuous Vampires (1978)

Dear God, I should have watched this name-challenged trash film before I sold it on Amazon this morning. It would still be mine.

I rewound the video to test it before packing it up and was hooked by the hookers... it's just too funny, with John Carradine spouting poetry while Charlie's Angels-type fanged bimbos complain about never getting to go to the beach since they died 134 years ago.

Although it seems pointlessly indulgent to speak out in favor of out-of-print movies, you never know who might google this post up - last year someone e-mailed me and was heartened by my review of Curt-Hiss the Drug-Free Snake, which had been one of her perverse childhood favorites.

Sooooo... thumbs up for Night of the Bloodsuckers!

NTD

I love spending a day or two entirely absent from the online life. When the cell phone is useless, my world gets even better. It's hard to BE HERE NOW when I am worrying about what is happening OVER THERE, for instance.

Last week Stewart and I stayed at a cabin bordering the Cherokee National Forest for about twenty hours of being here now-ness. No other humans, no television, no radio, no computer, no phone... just trees, stars, knotty pine, and a hot tub. And boiled peanuts and a bottle of champagne.

One distressing thing about 21st century life is our constant access to everything via the internet and the telephone. I miss attending a festival in a field in which no one is on a cell phone yakking it up or whipping out their laptop, high on wi-fi. In the good old days, one just had to talk to one's neighbors and create community where one happened to be standing.

I have to pay attention to the network I have created with myspace and e-mail, of course. And it has been wonderful this year while my daughter Sarah is Spain to have her talk to me via Skype. And sometimes, contacting a person via myspace is the only way to get an interview for the newspaper. And I can be as obsessive as anybody on a slow day, checking my e-mail fifty times and reading every story on salon.com (or gofugyourself.typepad.com, or the Onion). But when I drive away, I appreciate the vacation from everylittlegoddamnirresistabledetail.

Trying my best to get up offa this thing and be here now -
NTD

Tobacco

I hate cigarettes. However, tobacco has become an integral part of my retail business (this is the post in which I once again shamelessly try to rationalize my ugly hypocrisy). Back when I bought this wee little fledgling store and I foolishly believed that it would be easy to own TWO stores 300 miles apart (my original store was alive and well in south Georgia) AND
raise two daughters with a minimum of effort - hahahahahaha - well, anyway, the newly-purchased shop sold cigarettes. And I've sold them ever since.

I bought the second store way back in my thirties, when everything seemed possible. I think that there's something about having small children which amps up the adrenaline 24/7 and the delusions of grandeur only grind to a halt when one day you're fortysomething and feel like lying down on the couch for, say, about six months. And suddenly - well, in my case, anyway - the idea of sitting on one's ass for two hours a day and daring to call one's self A WRITER becomes the perfect excuse to practice one's true passion. Not writing, of course, but SITTING ON ONE'S ASS. I suspect this is why many people become meditators or barflies too - just to sit still and not feel guilty about it. Devote a few years to sitting, and before you know it, you have a column in a newspaper. Or you're a meditation instructor. Or an alcoholic. Sitting still can be a beautiful thing which can become A Way.

But that's all a digression which maybe I'll one day turn into a book like The Secret and get a piece of that self-help action. I was meaning to focus on cigarettes here.

So every year the Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company holds a display contest, aka their Retailer of the Year Contest. The first year I was looking for something to amuse my children and employees with, so we taped a whole bunch of cigarette packs onto a board and made - ta dah! - a flag out of American Spirit packs. Then we made a bikini out of cartons and we photographed my friend Heather wearing it next to the flag and, next thing you know, we took second place and were sent a big prize.

We were hooked. The next year we staged an elaborate Wizard of Oz photoshoot featuring a bunch of Dragon Con friends, a flying sock monkey, an evil cigarette additive Witch and a good Glinda who represented additive-free American Spirits, a garden trellis disguised as the American Spirit rainbow, a yellow brick road going into the store....

... surprisingly, this overbloated thing only took third place. But we cashed our check and decided that maybe the tobacco company considered the Wiz to be a little too child-friendly for a product which can, after all, give a person lung cancer.

The next year I created a giant Mona Lisa, a smaller Scream a la Edvard Munch, Picasso's Dove of Peace, and called our little gallery The Art of Smoking. I knew we had a winner - we took the Grand Prize and collected our five grand.

After that there was a South American theme with Spirit rolling tobacco tumbling out of Heather's Carmen Miranda headscarf. A Hurray for Hollywood wall piece with Heather as a tapdancing giant cigarette carton. A giant dreadie head, smiling and juggling cigarettes. And last year my friend Tadd mugged in black leather holding a guitar made of American Spirit cartons in front of a collage featuring a homemade Spirit indie band. All were runners-up, and along with the money the shop has collected a CD player, an iPod, a jacket, a television, two digital cameras - almost twelve grand in cash and prizes over the years.

Last night I downloaded the photos of this year's entry. And - ladies and gentlemen - I think that we have a winner. We'll know in September. They've doubled the grand prize to ten thousand dollars - and that's a lot of college tuition for my kids. Or several vacations, Mexican food, a bunch of concerts and a hot tub. Or a nice retirement fund (just kidding!!!).

I wish that there were other kinds of competitions - I'm not really proud of shilling for tobacco. But I appreciate the opportunity to be creative and to get paid for it. This part-time writing gig has not even hit the $5000 mark after dozens and dozens of political columns, interviews, music reviews and the occasional cover story. So I do the pragmatic mom thing, which is to provide for my children and myself the best way that I know how - running a shop, entering annual display contests, and writing (aka sitting on my ass).

Keeping my fingers crossed -
NTD

We are shaped and fashioned by what we love. - Goethe

NTD

The Double Feature from Seventies Hell

Grand Theft Auto (1977). Written, directed by and starring Ron Howard.

Memorable quote: Sparky, think you can hotwire this mother?

Monkey Hustle (1976). Featuring Rudy Ray Moore and a cast of one thousand afros.

Memorable quote: It ain't legal and it sure ain't safe...but it do seem worthwhile!

While my daughter is at the theatre with friends watching Transformers, I am sitting here editing an interview to the soothing disco sounds of Monkey Hustle and the jarring explosions of Grand Theft Auto. I'll take my low-budget seventies drive-in crap while wearing sweatpants and sipping on a gin&tonic over any other afternoon entertainment here in south Georgia.

But later on tonight I'll probably get cabin fever and look for friends to watch the fireworks with.

Happy 4th to all,
NTD

Call the White House

If you are outraged by President Bush's decision to commute Scooter Libby's prison sentence, call the White House and let them know.

(202) 456-6213
(202) 456-1111
(202) 456-1414

NTD

It's Official...

... I was reading the Emmy nominations, and I have never seen a single nominated television show. Not even the good ones which friends and my employees discuss while I stand around like a confused nursing home resident, oblivious to plots and characters.

I am officially out of touch.

NTD

Guilty Pleasure

It's the July version of my semi-annual Bad Film Festival. Tonight begins with the Johnny Depp classic Private Resort. It's an abysmal piece of filmmaking from 1985 about two teenagers... let's see, the box reads "They're looking for hot times. And they came to the right place". Rob Morrow co-stars, with appearances by Andrew Clay (pre-"Dice") and the fine actor Hector Elizondo.

But the important thing here is Johnny Depp's barely legal naked body. Am I a perverted middle-aged woman? I prefer to believe that the sight of JD's perfect ass - before 21 Jump Street, before Captain Jack Sparrow - is just an irresistible force in the universe.

Gotta go and finish watching this, uh, important moment in Depp history.

NTD

Fun Headline of the Day

Natalie Portman Joins Other Celebrities To Save Baby Guerillas

I clicked on this alternet.org headline hoping to see a photo of Portman clutching a baby sporting a Che onesie while held aloft by a pair of Zapatistas - but go back to spellcheck, you liberals, and change that to "gorillas". Instead I was reminded of how few gorillas are left, the problems in Rwanda, and I am feeling the white American guilt before my second cup of coffee.

Next time, Natalie, I want left-wing baby shots!

NTD

Don't Move Here

It's summertime, and the blogging has not been so easy. My shop is doing gangbusters - I hear numerous complaints by the locals about tourists taking over the town. My answer is along the lines of this: well, that's what happens when you relocate in a tourist town, honey. In fact, most of us decided to move here ourselves our being one of those annoying tourists. There's hardly a southern accent left in Asheville other than mine. And I'm not from here either.

However, when the dozen or so Birkenstocked camera-bagged newly-arrived squeal to me daily that they are thinking of moving here... I tell them that there are no jobs, real estate is sky-high, traffice sucks, and the air quality is declining. I wish that I was lying, but I'm not.

So Don't Move Here, y'all. But in the meantime, shop at my store all you want. I'll need the money when gentrification hits my block and the rent triples in order to make the street safe for Starbucks.

NTD

Bonnaroo 2007

For the sixth consecutive year, I packed up and headed to a large piece of hot farmland in central Tennessee where Bonnaroo is held. My daughter Anna and I spent almost six days of wandering in this musical dustbowl. And other than a lingering cough and a farmer's tan, I still feel high on the vibrations of the most diverse showcase of music in the Deep South.

Wednesday Quote: Avoid moonshine. -Dierks Bentley, asked about his advice concerning festivals.

We got in pretty easily except that the little security punk confiscated some of what I consider my personal property. I'm not talking drugs. I'm not talking liquor. I'm talking "Treehugging Dirt Worshipper" stickers. "Coexist" stickers. "Namaste" stickers. A single shoebox of positive vibrational energetic life force f**king stickers. What kind of festival is this in 2007?

The head lock threatening "fun" is tighter on the place every year. It was a peaceful anarchy back in the glory days, when security seemed content to amble around on horseback watching dreadies get high and dance. Renegade vending was always a natural extension of the post-Grateful Dead community, so a casual shakedown street would develop in the campground every year. Even legal vendors would frequently set up a secondary stand in the illegal vending section. No one complained.

But suddenly the promoters have taken the high road and pretend that they have never broken a law in their lives, and are intent upon making this a squeaky clean festival. This might be suitable for the buckle of the Bible Belt. But, my friends, Manchester, TN is a few notches from the buckle; the George Dickel Distillery is not too far down the road as well as the Jack Daniels Distillery - this place is far more Whiskeytown than Bibleland. Buford Pusser spent his sheriff career fighting local moonshiners a few miles east. This is a land of hard drinking and broken rules. I cannot understand how a rock festival can try so hard to remove the very activities which define a rock and roll lifestyle.

Security gets a little meaner every year. Two years ago I watched the drug dogs surround both the truck to my left and the car behind me. Confiscations of personal stashes along with stiff fines resulted. Have a nice festival, y'all. Welcome to Tennessee.

Thursday Quote: The interesting people I meet at festivals are not usually musicians. It’s the people selling jalapeno corn dogs, or painting faces. - Michael Franti

We find our buddies from Athens, GA. They had strapped their moonshine, their pot, and their renegade vending merch inside every part of a truck where people would never search. I was impressed. I can’t even get a stack of stickers in, but they are masters of sneaking contraband. They arrived drunk and victorious, trading rebel yells of hazy crazy joy.

Anna and I came to the festival as writers. We were given media passes, which makes us one step closer to being REAL JOURNALISTS (or at least on the real journalist list for the next free tickets we want). I thought that I’d just grab my media bracelet and go, but it got a little heady being around famous people in air-conditioned press conferences featuring Free Bottled Water, which is a far bigger perk than you think. It’s 90 degrees and we’re in a room of perhaps 100 reporters and photographers, making genuine eye contact with Bob Weir, Dierks Bentley and Ziggy Marley while sipping on water bottles which suddenly taste better than anything brewing at the George Dickel distillery which we toured a day ago. When Anna asks a question and receives a hug from Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips, I see the light - Being Media Rocks.

Thanks to being Small and Cute, my press partner Anna gets chatted up around the press tent. Women are a minority - it appears that rock journalism is dominated by heavy-set middle-aged males vying for the "who’s got the longest camera lens" award.

Later in the movie tent I got to hear documentarian D.A. Pennebaker speak about his classic film Monterey Pop in honor of its 40th anniversary. It feels strange to be watching a movie about a festival while attending a festival; the audience enthusiastically applauds Janis and Ravi Shankar as if they are performing live. But Pennebaker was eloquent as he humbly explained the story behind the movie, how he built five of the six cameras himself and described much of the film as a series of happy accidents.

I'm probably the first person to go to bed. The amazing Yard Dogs Road Show was the only musical act I saw on this short schedule day. A sword swallower, a belly dancer, fan dancing, a trombone, an accordion - like one of Tom Waits’ best dreams. But I'm already getting sunburned, and it's only Thursday.

Friday Quote: It’s not just music… it’s an adventure. - Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips

Bonnaroo press conferences were brief but beautifully surreal. Comedian Lewis Black and Ziggy Marley – together at last! Michael Franti and country star Dierks Bentley exchanging thoughts! Never mind that most musicians are less than eloquent ("Festivals have the best drugs." - Kings of Leon’s Nathan Followill). The press is getting the exclusive scoop on rock star ramblings about Bonnaroo drugs, heat, and the state of porta-potties.

I rush over to one of the main stages to catch Michael Franti - the Last Hippie in America. Everyone feels the love from the second he bounds barefoot onto the stage. As much as I personally hate audience participation, when Michael tells me to clap, to jump, and to sing along, I do it. The man tells us about directing prisoners at San Quentin to sing the theme from Sesame Street. They do it. The man sings anti-war songs to U.S. soldiers while in Iraq. They cry.

I'm writing in Michael Franti as a presidential candidate. He might be our last hope.

My favorite music tent was the one the legendary Richard Thompson joked about renaming "The Obscure Has-Beens" tent. The largest stage is reserved for Widespread Panic, The Police, Kings of Leon, Tool. But this smaller side tent – named The Other – was where I saw the magnificent soulstress Mavis Staples, jazz great Ornette Coleman, Hot Tuna, and singer-songwriter Richard Thompson.

Across from me in the media pit is Beatle Bob who manages to terrorize everyone around him with his crazy frenetic dancing. Glad I’m safely on the other side watching the endless sweat droplets fly from Thompson and his Brit band as he belts out his classic "Wall of Death".

Ravi Coltrane - son of John and Alice - sent chills up my spine. I mean, maybe it was the air conditioning in the Somethin' Else Jazz Tent, but I believe that it was Coltrane and his quartet. I was sitting next to Blue Note people who were exceptionally clean while I stunk to high heaven since I couldn't find my deoderant when I woke up. A little embarrassing, but hey, it's dark and they will never see me again. Anyway, the music soon overcame any thoughts good or bad. Jazz is the ultimate Mind Eraser.

I try to go see Tool, but it’s too crowded/crazy out there. I hear the whole set from camp, though.

Saturday Quote: Drop Acid, Not Bombs. - Fence Graffiti

My friend was sporting a hat with an LSD sticker and heading to Old Crow Medicine Show. He had abandoned all hope of vending and took to drinking bourbon and indulging in other classic Bonnaroo vices. This is a tough festival and everyone deals with it the best way they can. But for me, the music at Bonnaroo IS drugs.

Where is Simon Cowell when you need him?

Alexa Ray Joel, daughter of Billy, has an amazing physical resemblance to her father. She also has proper pitch. This is the best I can do in terms of positive comments. It's hard to believe that she has any right to sing the blues, coming from rock royalty/Berklee music school/wealthy upbringing. But here she is, pretending that she KNOWS HOW IT FEELS TO LIVE HARD AND FEEL LOW DOWN. Good God, the girl looks twelve years old and is gesturing wildly, like Mariah Carey on crystal meth. I'm walking away quickly.

Oh. My. God. Now she's singing a Dolly Parton cover.

Somebody kill me now.

Hot damn… Hot Tuna. The thumping bass might even be worth the hearing loss it is creating in my right ear after fighting for this plum viewing position. Jack Casady looks frailer than last year… but come to think of it, so do I.

When I was ten years old I bought a Song Hits magazine to find, I don’t know, maybe the lyrics to the Jackson 5’s "I’ll be There"? And there was an ad on the back page, showing then-Jefferson Airplane members Jack Casady and Jorma laughing and looking at a copy of Song Hits. Hippies! I thought back then, since I had rarely seen the like down in south Georgia. And here we are now, Jack and Jorma sweating down south with me and a thousand other fans listening to their seasoned set of plugged-in blues and ballads. Hippies? Not too many left, and the ones who come to Bonnaroo are residing in the back forty, too far for me to hike over to when so much music is calling me over here in Centeroo.

But this is a festival which owes its original success to the gypsy travelers who have always considered a gathering of music to be a sacred and worthwhile occasion – a time to be festive, imbibe in a variety of spirits and feel the positive energy of live performances. Bonnaroo has changed over the years in terms of target audiences – the population is largely clean and collegiate now, and several people ask "what happened"? I can name two things which diminish the gypsy band: price of gasoline and the harshness of the on-site searches.

The Police: the biggest headliner played the hits efficiently. We sang along and danced - it seemed that the full 80,000 arrived for that show. But it felt a little sterile. This is, after all, 80s pop music and I just fail to understand the endless hype surrounding the band. I owned Synchronicity just like everyone else twenty years ago. But Sting always seemed like a pompous ass to me, bragging about his general superiority. Sting and his Tantric Penis! Sting and his Bad Acting! Sting and his Thin Vocal Stylings! When an Esquire writer gushed for the umpteenth time about the Police at a press conference, I wanted to walk out. So, yes, The Police did their hits medley quite proficiently. But their songs do not grab my heart and give it a squeeze.

The Flaming Lips: They begin 45 minutes late, but that is not unusual. The space ship, the bubble, the confetti, the collection of costumes all take preparation. I’m no good at describing the hallucinogenic spectacle to Lips virgins - but curious readers should attend a Lips show at least once.

Sunday Quote: When you moan, the devil don’t know what you’re talking about. - Mavis Staples
It’s odd to hear Mavis Staples and her band belt out civil rights tunes and gospel songs to a hungover, virtually all-white audience. But Ms. Staples is as powerful a singer as I heard all weekend. She sings her Staple Singers standards to a crowd mostly too young to remember the hits - "Respect Yourself" and "I’ll Take You There".

I feel like an Oklahoma refugee today, covered in fine dust. The heat is relentless. The prevailing fashion is bandito - a scarf worn over the face, with sunglasses. But it’s Sunday, and there’s still toilet paper. Little miracles happen.

I just left the media center, where, sadly, there were no water bottles or ice left. Even the media has been abandoned to the elements. I'm wondering today as I once again bake in the sun... is Rock and Roll worth skin cancer, wrinkles, loss of hearing? But this might happen anyway - might as well have a good soundtrack to go with it.

Ornette Coleman is alternating between saxophone, trumpet and violin. It's hot as hell and he's wearing a sportcoat and pork pie hat, looking cool. I leave halfway through the set to catch the White Stripes (on Monday, I read that Coleman collapsed from the heat shortly afterward).

Indie director Jim Jarmusch holds a Q&A which captivates me almost as much as any performance. His humorous tales of working with Neil Young, Johnny Depp, Tom Waits and other notables are spellbinding.

It's beautiful here in the press area, away from the dusty hordes. I'm sitting on a golf cart listening to the White Stripes. There's only two of them, but Meg and Jack are tearing up the place. The Decemberists, Jeff Tweedy from Wilco, the Yard Dogs are here - everyone is sidestage to hear the White Stripes. And they are rocking the field.

I skip Widespread Panic, having seen them already this year, and go back to camp early.

Monday Quote: Is that religion-peddling queer still at it? - Camp Neighbor

The Krishna dude just won't give it up in my campground. How did he get in with an endless supply of Gitas? He's worse than a Jehovah's Witness during Saturday morning cartoons. I can't even go pee without him begging me to Give Krishna a Chance.

Anyway, the porta-potties are already gone by 9 a.m. Party's over, and we pack as quickly as possible. We pour the last of our bottled water on the dusty windshield, blast the A/C, and head back to Georgia.

waiting for the tree man

I always knew that one day an aging pecan tree would land on my house. The difficult thing will not be getting this one removed today. Rather, it will be the hard look I have to take at my yard and the other trees. I have a feeling that at least one other will have to go.

But I love all of my trees and hate to have any of them cut down.

God is the experience of looking at a tree. - Joseph Campbell

NTD

Bad Vibrations in Wisconsin

Here’s the news story: fifty-year old Linette Servais has sung in the choir for thirty five years. She played organ for the St. Joseph Catholic Church in New Franken, Wisconsin. She also organized the annual picnic and photographed children during their First Communion services. But Father Dean Dombroski discovered that Servais was also selling sex toys and other products at home parties. As a result, Dombroski relieved Servais of her church duties.

The Pure Romance website is pretty tame for a sex site. It’s more Avon than Penthouse, featuring smiling (and clothed) ladies who apparently look so relaxed and happy due to the reasonably-priced lotions and toys found in the catalog pages. There are items like “Coochy”, a shaving cream designed especially for “down there”. And buzzy toys with cute girly names like “Spring Fling” and “Pretty in Pink”. And Linette Servais was one of the Avon-style ladies who sold Pure Romance products in-home.

Linette Servais is a cancer survivor. A brain tumor left her sexually dysfunctional, and she credits sex toys as key in helping her get her mojo back after medical treatment. Servaise claims that she “prayed over this a long time” and “feel(s) that Pure Romance is my ministry.'' She wants to help other women who have experienced similar dysfunctional problems.

Get a tableful of women together for cocktails, and you will soon know that various sexual dysfunctions are as common as dirt. Linette’s so-called “ministry” certainly has a market out there.

Father Dombroski sent a letter to his parish regarding Servais stating that “Linette is a consultant for a firm which sells products of a sexual nature that are not consistent with Church teachings. Because parish leaders are expected to model the teaching of our faith ... she could stay on as the choir director/organist or she could continue to be a consultant but she could not do both.''

I am curious… is the female orgasm consistent with church teachings?

I can speak personally as a girl-person about this: Orgasms are good. Orgasms are mysterious. Orgasms are a desirable state. Orgasms are vibrational transcendental perfect ecstatic events which are practically religious in nature. They make us think about heavenly things. Maybe orgasms can bring us closer to God. Orgasms are about love and peace. I never feel like picking up a handgun after an orgasm. I am not angry with anybody after an orgasm. Peace and love and butterflies and fluffy little clouds and…

… oh, wait. Sorry, Father Dombroski, were you saying something about “not consistent with Church teachings”? I got a little distracted there, thinking about that Big O which is like birth and death and a roller coaster and a day at the beach all rolled up in one… big…

...screw it, Fr. D., I am not going to dig around the internet to find scholarly evidence to argue with you about the sweet goodness of the female orgasm. Of course it’s a good thing, and of course any God who created vaginas and clitorises and G spots would want His little creatures to know how they work. And if you think that this is the Devil’s Work, I’m sorry, but I think that you’re dead wrong. I don’t need Wikipedia and Masters and Johnson to back me up. I swear on Eve Ensler’s personal copy of The Vagina Monologues that orgasms are good, they’re darned good. And God bless Linette Servais for helping women on their paths to physical enlightenment.

There’s real problems out there for the Church to worry about: paying off all the victims of child molesting priests, for instance, and trying to keep the diminishing church members from abandoning Mass altogether. But dismissing a godly woman from her religious duties just because she has discovered the power and joy of her own body and endeavors to share that wonderful secret with others?

The Church should be ashamed of itself.

NTD