It’s raining. Michigan rain is different than Oregon rain; at least the rain in the middle of the mitten is different than the North end of the Willamette valley. It’s heavier leaden like the bells in Poe’s poem, portent, doom. The gray is harsher too, in North Oregon the gray is soft like Seconal or Demerol, the sort of gray you lay your weary head on and the rain lulls you into an enveloping serene coma. It’s hard here and cold, the gray like a judge’s wig the rain like punishment. It’s supposed to snow by the end of the week.
My head and throat hurt this morning from my plumbing experiment gone horribly awry. Funny, I got a few private notes and a few live suggestions with the same home remedy, more or less. I appreciate that. I’m familiar with that. I wasn’t very clear on how the plumbing and electricity and such work in this house. It was built shortly after the war, America was coming into a new prosperity and if we ignore Eugene McCarthy altogether, America was coming into a new era of wholesomeness. However, the only improvement made to this house (two long police actions, two actively wars of American participation and god knows how many covert Ops and things like Grenada where we could have carpeted the entire country and bought everyone a vacuum cleaner for half the cost of a 24 hour war) have been by way of reaction to some major malfunction.
Some of you may never have seen lead leads to a 220 power sources, or cloth wrapped insulation for 110 wires. Even those Smithsonian archaic oddities are modern compared to the plumbing. Without tearing up the walls and a ceiling or two the upstairs plumbing is always going to a thorn in the paw of this old lion of a house. One of the cool amenities built in is a laundry chute. You know how in action TV shows and movies someone always has to climb through a ventilator shaft? That’s sort of what the laundry chute is like, a twist and a turn and clothing from the second floor makes it to the basement. As a kid I used to race hot wheels and Corgi’s down it (Corgi was a British made hot wheel. I had a little corgi jaguar XKE, the doors and the hood opened, under the hood in molded chrome colored plastic was a pretty faithful reproduction of a six cylinder British engineered 24 valve, I think, engine) .
Facebook seems to be my conduit to Oregon these days. I mean people I haven’t spoken to in a while and people I don’t really know (Facebook, whatregonnado?) have been cropping up in my little chat box. SB doesn’t seem to mean anything; it’s what I call it, a Shout Box. Among such strangers is this chick, I’m pretty sure mentally unstable, in, I think, Spokane. One of my Facebook but not real life buddies is this guy who was, and maybe still is, to recording in Portland what Berry Gordy was to Motown. We were Facebook friends, probably still are, because I never once asked him to listen to a demo. On that one Facebook persona of mine there are a lot of “friends” who figured if they were nice to me I’d get a demo to dude for them.
Although ‘Social Networking’ is completely integrated into the modern lifestyle I think there are still quite a few people who don’t understand the concept. Social Networking sites like Facebook, or my new favorite, Prosebox (heh, yes, I’m brown-nosing for no apparent reason whatsoever. It’s possible that I’m just sincere and appreciative. I guess we will never know. Heh, I say, heh.) are not dating sites, not market places, not where you’ll get discovered and launch a career involving fame and fortune. My apologies to some of y’all. I have seen success stories involving social networking and selling things by just flipping a blurb out that you have something and is anyone interested (oh, I meant on the marketplace side, not the dating side, I think “I have external primary mammalian sex organs, anyone know of a good place for temporary storage?” is probably not a good pick up line. Same holds true, I’m sure, for internal and secondary sex Characteristics. A photo would help. In that respect Facebook is rather prudish. I’m not sure if prosebox is or not, as far as I know it hasn’t come up. Yet.).
I haven’t even heard an urban legend of anyone being “discovered” on a social networking site. God knows YouTube is littered with home movies of people doing covers of familiar songs. You’d think a friend of a friend of someone’s Uncle once removed by marriage would know of a guy who knows a girl whose brother was discovered and now has a recording contract in Nashville or Athens or Rodeo beloved.
Ok, so only two people popped up, but it both in the last 24 hours and I could, of course, be suffering hallucinatory effects from mixing drain cleaners. One is actually a friend; I mean I know her in real life. The other inquired after my well-being (ok so it was “Hey dog breath, how’s life treating ya” but for her that’s downright an effluence of emotion and good will) (shit. I just like the word effluence and effluent. Should have used it referring to the drain. I could just edit. That’s just not how I do entries, how’m I spose ta get ‘scovered if I don’t stay true, for realz?). Among other catching up the friend asked if I was ever coming back to Portland. I sort of forgot what a different sort of life I lead there. The last time I lived here my friends expected me to go anywhere at the drop of a hat, like if they turned their back on me in the middle of a conversation their phone would ring and I’d be finishing the conversation from Eufaula Falls or Rapid City or Saskatoon. Sorry, that’s Eufaula Falls Alabama, I don’t recall whether it’s on a map or not. Remind me to tell you that tale sometime.
I was talking to my daughter a couple of months ago (I have talked to her since) and we were talking about my son, her brother, and him never going far from home and she said “Why would he? He lives in the most beautiful place on earth”. It was refreshing; she spends a lot of energy being excited about being here. I was glad to hear that she knows the difference. I guess I know a lot of Oregonians who have never been anything but Oregonians. My friend from Facebook is one of them. I mean I guess she lived in salt lake for a while, but it doesn’t dawn on her, or most people I know in Oregon, that with my thumb and beef jerky I’m seventy two hours from anywhere in the lower forty eight; Jacksonville FL to Seattle WA? 72 hours. I’ve done it. Might take longer now, I’m not quite as pretty and I don’t have my Buckskins, still … I haven’t ruled out a single place on earth that I’m not going back to or going to for the first time and then, at some later point, going back too.
Just rambling. Was hoping to type away the headache. Heads up; that doesn’t work.
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