Fingernails, New Mexico - A Remote Location

I envy your location S'tan.

Last September I was up the Gila River canyon. About 75 miles from the nearest stoplight. Only saw rattlers, wolves, bear and plenty lizards. Not to mention the truly magic surroundings. Had to run off a 7,000 foot high ridge in the middle of a wild lightening storm with hits blasting trees apart on the left and the right of me. I kind of wanted to just stop and turn on a video camera but thought a hand held electric device might make me a little too tempting for those bolts.

Did you have any luck scoping out spaces on 28th Street before you left?

Have a great time in magicland.

Where is the Gila River Canyon?

Don't ever mention West 28th or any location in midtown to me. They are Hells straight out of Swedenborg. But then Hell is everywhere, acc. to him -- as is Heaven.

http://swedenborg.newearth.org/hh/hh61.html

"Some hells present an appearance like the ruins of houses and cities after conflagrations, in which infernal spirits dwell and hide themselves. In the milder hells there is an appearance of rude huts, in some cases contiguous in the form of a city with lanes and streets, and within the houses are infernal spirits engaged in unceasing quarrels, enmities, fightings, and brutalities; while in the streets and lanes robberies and depredations are committed. In some of the hells there are nothing but brothels, disgusting to the sight and filled with every kind of filth and excrement. Again, there are dark forests, in which infernal spirits roam like wild beasts and where, too, there are underground dens into which those flee who are pursued by others.

"There are also deserts, where all is barren and sandy, and where in some places there are ragged rocks in which there are caverns, and in some places huts. Into these desert places those are cast out from the hells who have suffered every extremity of punishment, especially those who in the world have been more cunning than others in undertaking and contriving intrigues and deceits. Such a life is their final lot."

So proud of you S'tan for gettin out.....
Due to my baby daddy being here am sort of stuck but believe me a day doesn't go by without my thinking how shite NYC is these days... really... you can always visit but live here full time I think is 'over' unless u have bottle service $ and even then u must be some vacant kinda stupid cunt to pay $600 for a bottle of $12 gin! so ... all power to ya... really...

The river is north west of Silver City. Down near the Arizona/Mexico/Texas border.

I like the Swede's take on Manhelltan. Very medieval flavor.

I think your just about right about Manhattan Anna. The only thing that will turn it around is whatever is going to happen to empty it out all of a sudden. Then it will be like New Orleans is now, just waiting for the fatalistic to move back in.

I'm a big believer in making your own fun, wherever you live. The southwest will no doubt be a livelier place with you in it, Stan. And rumor has it they're much more partial to titty bars, seedy saloons and back room what nots in those parts, even if it is "red country". Enjoy, my black flower of the desert and stay connected online.

Lexxy hons -- and Anna! -- thanks for the notations!

There is a very cute Japanese spa on a mountainside called "Ten Thousand Waves" that I've heard tell
is cruisy as hell, but mostly for the guys. Jackie Bigelow was enjoying herself there...
her friend works there and he is trying to help me get a job.

My hearing in my left ear just went "boink" on the trip cross-country with Father Paul. I've had massage, acupuncture, meridian channeling, heavy-metal flushing -- in short everything Santa Fe has to offer. I even went in for some AMA bullshit... I am still deaf.

Father Paul had a Harvest Moon party at the Hell Hotel last night. I warned him that the Madroids -- that is the indigenous hippy-folk of Madrid -- would stay until the last drop had been drunk and the last scrap eaten. After my acupuncture in the Apfelschnitt Chapel at midnight, I went out to see what the denizens were up to. They were literally gnawing on the ham-bone and drinking up the last of the cheapest tequila in chrissendom. Told him so.

We woke up to weirdly carved pumpkins that looked like the handiwork of a serial killer. Father Paul was almost crying realizing all the pies he's gonna have to make.

The smoke is fantastic this season. Father Paul's in-house pharmacologist made magic mini-muffins for the party, lands' sake.

In the meantime I am getting broke, broker, brokest by the minute, so let me answer a couple of Santa Fe slaves' petitions.

LOVE!

PS: Jackie Bigelow should be scooting through here early November if you have any messages. She says she doesn't come on these Boards no more for whatever reason.

Tonight in Fingernails New Mexico

M.Madison lets me know the 26th Street
Whipshack is getting boarded up ready
for demolition I'm just laughing
to think of the rats trapped

this cat escaped.

Jackie Bigelow just flew into town
on her broom
and is dancing the road map off her butt in some boite in
Santa Fe with other travellin' Faeries.

I was unable to interface with said gal as I was
holed up in the Pojoaque Pueblo Casino
escorting drunks to their hotel rooms, no not what it sounds like...
I'm working for an Indian Security Firm...
the 11 PM to 5 AM shift

Bigelow's unloading the primo somewhere in town
Will she stay for Thanksgiving or will I be
one of the lonely people
professionally thanking
the sad drunks to take to their rented beds

and drive home drug-tested and injun-dominated
the rx7 rotary engine climbing the mesa roaring
with the lions
baby lions
Binky Pearl and Beauregarde send you
Meow, Mew and Mrrow
wish you could see them now glowing white running wild
under moonlight

momma can still make the catfood cash
Driving home in absolute darkness climbing the mesa in the frenetic li'l rx7
rotary engine tearing along a dirt road,
gasping at rosy fingered dawn
over black cutout mountain next door.

That's my neighbor.

I'm dancing over the edge into a free life
Making nine dollars an hour feels like
heaven
in heaven

Beautiful S'tan, so so beautiful.

stan, is your car prepped for such high promintories? my father once pulled a trailer cross country with an old 1957 Fordfairlane station wagan and had so much trouble with the engine's water temperature valve at differing altitudes, we almost didn't make it over the Rockies.

gawd, just love the land out there stan. almost stayed meself, once, had an adobe with a walless roofless outhouse out back and all the lamp oil merlin could use. just me and the coyotes up north of las vega new mexico, much greener over there compared to Santa Fe.

am sure you are having fun...... did you find this job on craigslist?

Were you with the Donners, Merlin?

Oh... station wagon!

yes, hatches, a station wagon to carry a seven piece matching '57 Samsonite set of luguage set Mother bought for the trip from Central France to Anchorage alaska with three children and husband with several uniforms. Mother got it all - the perfect sized top handled makeup box with interior mirro, the undies satchel, the pant/suit hanging case, and one large and several small cases. all in that matching pleathera brownish blond scuff finished plastic to popular in the mid fifties.

I have always thought that airplanes ruined travel and made it less grand-- the basic carry-on just doesn't hold a candle to those Samsonite sets or the steamer trunk.

Ugh, travelling!
If I ever set eyes on a piece of luggage or a brown cardboard box again I will just scream.

... Jackie Bigelow hijinx report coming up!

'LOCAL FAERIES GO WILD AT HELL HOTEL --
PEE ALL OVER STAGE"

More later ... I am really pissed, I have to drink this hideous shit called "STRIP"
to beat a
drug test in the morning.

Hie gorgie! So glad to hear you got that job. Details, please. Steam shovels have now moved in over on W 26th. Oh, and Anthony is back at the Food Hole! That's today's Chelsea report.
smooches

YEAH Madge! mushy grayshes for the shining review of her many sterling qualities. *Dominatrix* as rent-a-cop, *Dominatrix* as nurse for the mentally challenged. She's over-qualified to say the least.

My old neighbors on West 26th are beseiged by construction types checking the basement daily for signs of imminent cave-in. I wish to hell my favorite lady would move out, fuck the buy-out, I feel she is a sitting duck for a real-estate grab-disaster...

Miss Marti sent me NY Post clippings about Western Beef disappearing (I know you will be happy about that Madge.) But that place fed alot of poor folk! The developers were oozing, "We're sorry we didn't buy the whole place when we had the chance..." that is, the entire Meat Packing District. Oh just go cover the world in steel and glass, assholes!

I feel bad for my friends being in a place where money rules everything.

Meanwhile back at this'ere ranch, after several glasses of local Gruet Rose Champagne, Jackie Bigelow got back on her broom and is flying under moonlight under the radar to Tennessee with multiple Faeries in her glittering wake. All the Love Weed was dispersed, she will be safe through Texas.
Father Paul is still picking the shards of Fiestaware out of her hairs, in the wake of the Hell Hotel blowout on Monday.

Daddy, I picked up a (hot pink) flyer for you at the Madrid General Store:

FREE
Green Couch
9 foot long
sits five folks
YOU COME AND GET IT
505-473-1052

for when y'all open a nightclub out here.

PS: MERLIN! honey you are invited with all the vintage Samsonite you can lug. I've got plenty of pasture to put y'all out in.
YOU COME AND GET IT.

Just a week ago I was gloating I wasn't going to get on a plane for a year...
But, then, my Daddy came home from his eightieth birthday party...
and who knows what he went through that night,
but he was found the next day on the floor.

"He went out partying."

So I will be flying to DC for more parties in his honor.
Then driving to New York next week (the 12th) to
ravage my hairdresser and chiropractor and all those guys I miss so much!
And some of y'all too.

Quit/got fired? not sure from
the Security job after being chastised for being Too Authoritative.
I guess with my "Superiors" I should be cowed. A corrupt as hell job anyhow,
everyone fucks off and sleeps but I didn't...
I guess my work ethic did not go over. They just keep saying they don't need me this week.

The Daddy "Bob" says Hie from Hell.
He says it's HOT.

See you soon

Bless beams to your Daddy.....
Hope we see you for a swift ales in the Rotten Apple...
Keep fighting!

Many condolences S'tan.

It sounds like he went out in a far better way than the majority do.

I hope you will be able to celebrate his life in a way he would be gratified to see done. And, perhaps, he really wanted to give you an excuse to travel to the East again.

My mum's 80th was in October. I said I had to ask her what it felt like to live to be 80. She did this huge laugh, AT me, like to say, "Let's see if you even get this far and then you'll find out."

I am back in Fingernails alot worse for wear. Thank you Anna and Seven for the notes and Bobby too. I got up to NY for one day to see my chiropractor and cry and the hairdresser and cry and see the Goodie girls and laugh... Romy and I had similar Daddies, bad boys who drank and were literary. It did me well to talk to her and get the news about the end of things.

I hate it when things are over, isn't there anything that lasts forever in this damned world?

Daddy wrote for the little newspaper called "The Georgetowner" in DC and his pal wrote him a beautiful eulogy. I would put it here except my damned dialup is still downloading it for the next 1/2 hour it looks like.


I am writing about Daddy, here is something in his spirit --


I visit Daddy's grave at Walker Chapel twice more before I leave Virginia, for perhaps years... I have to go to see the pompous ass sedulous minister whom I rather deplored, but anyhow submissively avail myself of his function to rave against my sister and mother who hated Daddy and who have been hypocritical/awful... He does help a little, basically by saying that their problems are not mine.

When I go to the grave that afternoon, I notice they haven't even filled in the little rectangular hole fully, which I think is a bit much! As I stand there muttering like a baby, "Daddy.... Daddy... Daddy..."
I realize the hole is exactly the size of his enormous, ratty, moldy Oxford English dictionary, which I had been wondering what to do with... did not want to throw it away. I decide I'm going to put the dictionary on top of the urn and fill in the damned hole.

I creep into the cemetery, naturally this operation takes place under the full moon, to drop the big old
well-worn beloved thing he probably had all his life right on top of him. I light up one of his Parliaments and sit there talking to him. I tell him I am pissed off about death in general. I can't stand things to be over.
I pop open a Budweiser, take a few sips, then
sprinkle some into the grave. I don't forget to give his Daddy Chase next door a few sips too. Then I drink the last of the Nuits St. Georges I carried all the way from Burgundy country. We always did that when we were in Paris.
He'd have a beer, I'd have a glass of red wine.

With the help of Gar's shovel-andiron, I steal some dirt from another
fresh grave and fill in around the dictionary, the pack of Parliaments , and Daddy's hopes and dreams of being a famous novelist. Goddammit. The earth is red, wet, sticky and awful heavy. It's the only moment I feel like a crazy, digging dirt off of another person's grave, stealing for my Daddy...
I've got mud all over my long leather coat I forgot the flashlight and I can't see jackshit, the moon is all fogged up. I pack the dirt in around the dictionary which comes up exactly to the level of the ground. A more perfect fill could not have been designated.

I spread the leaves over and wonder when the
cemetery man's probe will hit this big old pile of words
that is all that is left of my family. He used to read the dictionary for amusement and I still do too.
Well anyhow I know that big old book will keep him warm.
Nothing much else did.

Bless you S'tan. You did all the right things and now he and you sholud both be free. Sending you beams of love

S'tan, many beams from me too. And the ritual of the dictionary and the grave is just about the most beautful thing I have ever heard. Somewhere your Daddy must be smiling with joy.

My mother passed away also just this past summer... and one of the (many) things that struck me was that when a parent goes-- no matter what the state of your relationship with him or her has been-- one of the two people that have known you absolutely the longest in your entire life... from the very moment of your conception, in fact... is no longer there anymore. It's a very strange and sad feeling of loneliness. And one that is a rite of passage-- especially for those of our age.

But I am glad that your Daddy went out partying. I think if all of us were given a choice, that would be the way we would want to exit the world-- with beer and ciggie and laughter!

Darling ol' Hatch,
It does make one feel pretty ancient I have to say, and every emotion is back again, relived and active, that you ever felt all those years.

Though I feel neither merry or bright and my tiny tot eyes are not aglow, there was
Hairdresser Wisdom at hand, when I was in NYC -- Mario told me, Go ahead and make a big old Xmas for Daddy. So I went out (with the flu) got a live tree and dragged out all the decorations. Made Daddy a little altar too with his gloves and cigarettes and other imperishables. The spirits must be fed.
Wouldn't you know it now bloodie Budweiser is holy essence to me...

Merry Xmas to the Ancestors!!!
Love to all a youse.

S'tan Claus,
Yes there is something in the Eastern worship of the ancestors. The Romans did it too around their home hearth altar.
They do live on in us, you know. It used to horrify me when I was younger, but now I revel in it!
I would send you a dusty bauble from my old family tree to add to the beauty, but it would arrive much after XXXmas, and might not make it to you before you cast yours into the ritual bonfire on the Feast Of the Magi.

Happy all, and especially Happy St. Stephen's Day!

S'tan thank you so much for posting the recounting of your visit to your father's resting place. It reminds me of how important it is at times to feel the aloneness of having been put here on the earth and the tangible reach that manifests within one when those who brought you here have departed to the very 'place' out of which they brought you giving one the truely sensed expansiveness of what being alive is -that your physical location is such a finite reference -I don't know if I am conveying this acurately or well- but when you stand at the piece of ground feeling like a physical trace of the person that ground commemorates, following that life in to time, whatever else you had done in your own existence has such a clarified measure there, then, in a kind of proximity to the person whose purpose for you only becomes clarified with each year of your own life.

When I visit the grave of my father my senses are all in opposition. Below is only a box I know that he has left. What I say could be rain or wind. I am listening to the earth. Stone, metal, wood, bone, I would hold you to all my empty parts; future, fulfillment, final thought.

marker designed by me! at age 17.

Thinkin' about you Stan...
and Daddy.

Oh, and give Brown Paul a big New Years kiss for me.

Happy New Year from Fingernails!
Staying put with Bob's ashes.
But thanks for the beer and ciggies Daddy, we needed that!

Brown Paul is moping tonight, but I don't wanna drive 2 1/2 hrs. to his Madroid Hellhole. DWI stops are all over the place too. I hope the herd is well-culled after tonight.

lots of love coming up for the '06
S'tan

I feel like such an idiot. I haven't read this topic in weeks and had no idea what you were going through Stan ("my black rose of the desert"). My deepest sympathies are with you at this tough, life-defining moment and may your Daddy rest in pease. Thoughts and love are with you.
Lexxy

quote:

Thinkin' about you Stan...

hmmm the above was in the box when I clicked "Reply!"
Are there ghosts in the machine? Who is thinkin' of me!?! How did you get in my box!?!

Well anyhow "Hello from Fingernails,"
I am feeling VERY culturally challenged. I missed the big opening of the "Downtown Show" which I am sure was insanely gorgey, I was told 1500 people were there. I was so anticipating that Proustian moment: a roomful of people who meant so much to you 25 years ago, all of you together again, and all of you oh-so-OLD!
Well, I was sent the book, and look forward to reading Chi Chi's essay in it... but the book is still... NOT THE OPENING!!!!! grrrr

Go see it at NYU's Grey Gallery through April 1. I gotta get back before then!

I look out my window onto a pristine landscape: gorgeous red and white desert with patches of snow a week old... that are still WHITE! The cats are living outside, splendid in enormous fluffy winter coats. There isn't a sound around, except the music of the spheres. It's beautiful, calm and perfect.
And I know Manhattan this time of year is ugly, chilled, grey and dead. My life there wasn't the greatest... But DAMN I miss getting in a cab at midnight and going to a warm and raucous nightclub.

Bitch bitch bitch...
I'm going to miss the Schiele show.
The Peter Berln movie will never come
to Santa Fe
(wait, hey, they say this town is the highest per capita of gay households in the country? ... we'll see.)

Well ONE THING did happen to make me feel connected... I'm a Goodie!

http://www.goodie.org/goodiemag/currentissue.html

and Angel Stern also got interviewed online, for the delectation of the FBI ...

http://www.allstardoms.com/messageboard/showflat.php?Ca...Main=53380#Post53471

I have to find out where the freaks are, who live here... And I'm not talking about the Rainbow People either, thanks. I need pals!
Brown Paul is great, but he never leaves his hidey-hole. He's always renovating that big old piece of junk we call the Hell Hotel. He's replacing the floor in the attic, so my clients won't fall through into the crawl space when they crawl around. Nice Brown Paul!

He is Brown as ever, Johnny, and sends you a big fat one too.

Sick in the head as ever and loving you all'ins, S'tan

S'tan..LOVED the interview with Mistress Calico.

xoxoxoxooxox thenkyew

a few folk complained I wasn't darned serious enough, but hey how can you be serious about
a sexual soap-opera you've been watching for 30 years.

My Daddy's best friend dreamed about The Dictionary last night. It was sitting up on the sidewalk in front of my Dad's office, like -- LOOKING at him!!!

brrrrr

The interview was SO choice. You need someone to get you to do some book-length thing or on film.

Hie, thanks,
bring your camera I will be in New York
on March 26 for a week, the Goodie Girls are planning a party for me and Armen Ra then!
Possibly at Le Petit Versailles.

You better post the details or else Bobby will come to Fingernails and pull some of yours.

Why I oughta... I would NEVER pull S'tan's fingernails but if I get a hold of Seven's seven I'll pull on THAT!

Kids kids no fighting. I will post info when the Goodies get it together.

I just saw Seven's Dad! or rather his Spiritual Father at the Fingernails post office.

This wretched rusty Toyota truck on jacked-up big wheels pulls up ...
it's dotted all over its ass with spray-paint color.
A long lanky man gets out... with a shaved head,
but that long strip in the back intact. Couldn't see if it was a cross... he's wearing a black leather hat adorned with both silver and esoteric bony regalia. He's also got a gorgey Van Dyke in salt and pepper... earrings, nose ring, a beautiful freak.

I follow him into the PO and note with pleasure the custom leathers, black, pierced and decorated with bone and silver... stylishly ragged but clean, precise, very nouveau hippie.

I walk by him and he is absolutely redolent of powerful indica. I'm stoned just sniffing him.
I look at this long, oversensitive face, pale and sunglassed. The nervous jaw... and I'm just about to say HELLO, I mean I'm believing this is some hipster for me, at last...
when he bursts out in gibberish, staring into space...

"Heyay hiya weeya golly wolly moogla alla ..."

Poetic consternation? Visionary syllabics?

I see him opening one of the older PO boxes. He's a low number like me.
Never saw him before!
People crawl out of these mountains looking, and sounding like you don't know what... Once I stayed home for a week and when I got to the general store, I couldn't even say Hello.

Maybe that's what's got into your Dad there seven. Permanently.
Maybe he was telling me his life story. Wish I could tranlate him... I followed him out of the PO... when he got outside he went
WHOOP WHOOP OONAMOOONNNA ZOOOOO! gave a few little jumps and got into his shitass truck. I checked out the front seat -- it was full of
what looked like nesting materials. I hope I have conveyed how much
he looked just like your paternal reality, seven.
He was pretty prosperous in the costuming --
the Fingernails version of the trust-funder possibly. Definitely one of the poetic unemployables.

YIP YIP WIGGA MAMMA WOOMA ZOOMBA

by Rene Ricard from "God With Revolver"
Poems 1979-82
copyright 1989 Hanuman Books & Rene Ricard



GINGER ROGERS

In the movies we can be young and clever
With stylish wit. In 'Swingtime' unemployed
and down and out there were still flowers in all the
vases
And poverty an art deco suite. We manufactured
our lives
In this New York. Not knowing when our
Next meal would come we knew it would be in a
Fancy restaurant if we just wore the right clothes
And trusted our wisecracks. And beauty we knew
Was just a matter of the right angle and lighting
We had the gift of improvisation. They would love
our
Cleverness. Didn't Holly Golightly end up alright in
The Movie? We would be that kind of sparkling
Mischievous queen.
Now we know Melville's New York in 'Pierre'
Scrounging beers when the champagne ran out
The New York where brilliant salons are closed to us
Dirty feet and busted heels. We claw where we
Once sat up and begged.
Our makeup following the same outlines
The features shrunken and hard beneath
Loved only when our eyes are shut
Hands sticky afterwards
If only
We're been cynical at the beginning
We could've turned out ok
If only we'd believed the book
Where Holly Golightly disappears from the
face of the
Earth at the end.

That post office apparition sounds a lot like some of my relatives from Vermont. Isolationist eccentrics with their own language too. Kind of a cross between animal language and emotional invocations to the elements.

It will be you, Seven. In another twenty years.

Stan obviously you must meet this person you encountered at the post office. He is a kindred spirit, whether he speaks gobaldy-gook or not. Your mystery versus his.

Perhaps he is one of your relatives, seven who floated down here for the divine spirals. I am curious about the invented languages... I checked at the PO and it turns out he is a high number, recent vintage arrival.

When I first got here in 1986 we had less than 300 folk, now it's over a thousand. Not that Fingernails is the perfect place to squat. But the breeding frenzy drives the herd into the furthest corners now.

Well it's balmy and bright here today. I'm watering the dust in hopes of a blade or two of grass. At night the air is rich with a scent of wood incense and peaches, indefinable freshness of mysterious tiny things pushing forth into life.

In twenty years, Lex, I will be dust.

Seen any coyote lately, S'tan? I hear there is an overabundance out there recently.

All the coyote have moved to Provincetown.

Yes, Bobby, but they all tell me that is because of your resemblance to a tasty rabbit.

Binky, Pearl and Beauregard scare the coyotes away. Esp. Binky he is turning feral and vicious!!! He will do badly in the kennel as I'm travelling...

There isn't a Goodie party. Foxy got pneumonia and the schedule went off... and now Romy had to leave town for family things.

Oh well I'll go see all the doctors and hairdressers and fancy restaurants though not knowing where my next meal would come from...

We manufactured our lives
In this New York. Not knowing when our
Next meal would come we knew it would be in a
Fancy restaurant if we just wore the right clothes
And trusted our wisecracks. And beauty we knew
Was just a matter of the right angle and lighting

No Goodie party at the garden on 2nd Street?!
Boo. Better to do it sooner rather than later. The hideous building that took five years to build right across the street from the garden is now open for 'Luxury Rentals'. That means any party that is thrown at the garden will run in to noise complaints by people who shouldn't even be living on 2nd Street. Or else they will all be walking across the street to be voyeurs.

Anyway, the old town could use an influx of your energy.

I am safely now back in FIngernails after gritting my teeth through my entire bloodie stay in the olde shitasse towne.

Did more people move to NYC or what in the last six months. I could barely walk down the sidewalks... completely unacclimated now to being in crowds, and suffering humanity walking on my heels and bellowing at each other over the traffic or into cell-phones...

I had fun for about 3 days shopping, then I started imagining I'd never get out, red alert and the bridges and tunnels shut down like on 9/11/2001.... and what was I thinking, is my house safe and I kept thinking --
WHAT AM I DOING>>> WHY AM I HERE>>>>
WHY BOTHER>>>

Everyone I spoke to is having landlord meltdown stories. Sad but ultimately boring: WHY FALL FOR THE CON? The real estate maket there is DEMONIC.
As in banal and stupid money-grubbing, not the interesting iconoclasm of S'tan Demonic.

I'm having a solar hot water system put in...
Turns out the Federal Gov't has woken up and will subsidize the job at 33% rebate!... The plumber today told me everyone he knows is doing it... with the price of gas and propane going up
up up and no end in sight.
There's nothing like being "off the grid!"

That's another thing about NY ... the hideous interconnectivity of services. Too much out-of-control-reality there for me anymore.

Sorry guys if I missed seeing you.
Now you'll just have to come see me.

The Goodie girls will be out here I think this summer, and we'll have a party then...
with We, Ourselves and Thee online.

Love,
S'tan

Bravo! You got it right honey. I don't miss all those things about NYC. I love living somewhere else or is that " elsewhere" ?

Or maybe we just grew up and realized that city life is for the kids.

Like 7 said, NY can use an influx of my energy. Exactly. Key words being: USE -- MY -- ENERGY.
Of course it can USE USE USE, and what does one get back. The specious pleasure/status of 'making it' in Hell.

NY was always an uphill struggle but there was always MORE fun and moments of success... always new creative interesting people gravitating there. But now I don't even think it's for kids anymore Bobby. Unless they are rich rich rich.

I had/have rich friends and poor friends there. Everyone had landlord issues, but nothing like now. The poor get poorer... I even have a friend who IS a landlord, and she's depressed about it. Faced with raising rents on people, friends she know can't afford it. Facing $1700 a month for a place 9 stops out on the L train. Because of taxes, insurance, bullshit all through the roof.

I can't blame my last landlord for selling that little old cute loft dump on 26th Street for $5 million and moving permanently to
Aspen. He got free and now I realize,
so did I.

xoxoxoxo LOVE!!!!

I wonder what artists living and working in London, a city far more expensive than NYC, would think of this thread. What would Justin Bond say? I've been having the "New York is too expensive to survive as an artist" discussion since 1988. Granted the scale is much bigger now, and the Guiliani years stole things that may never return. Yet I am still here after all this time, striving to carve out my own little niche in the creative landscape. Listening to the sound of crickets in some peaceful country abode is a necessary now-and-then. But as an artist my muse still lies in the towers of this stinky, unnatural concrete Hell. So, for better or for worse, here I stay.

At the center of it all is the love affair one has with Manhattan. Are you still in love or not? Once the romance leaves your heart, the marriage is over. But as you sign the divorce papers remember that it takes two to tango. I guess I'm just not over having Sweeney Todd on Broadway or the latest Martin McDonough play or The Armory opening or the Westminster Dog Show Finals or Antony & the Johnsons at Town Hall or Happy Valley or the World Famous BOB's shaking tits all just a 5-minute cab ride away. Or the ocean a short train ride away in summer. Hell, I still get flutters hearing traffic outside my window and seeing the Empire State Building lit up in the night sky while watching my dog play. Maybe it's fantasy. Maybe it's addiction. Either way I still dig it.

I kept thinking Bobby was writing me but it's you!
I am glad for you and there is no doubt NY is Fun City.
But when circumstances force you out there is something else at work that you see.
Bobby and I both had to go because there were too many factors working against us there.
Living in an apartment all your life can be a drag... I almost left ten times and planned for this so I am done, its imperatives seem immaterial and a relief to ignore.

You also have to ask yourself, how much work do you get done every day on art. How often do you write. I'm just saying think about it and add it up.

Survival is tough, always was, and as you say yes now it is worse. Every day another strata of people can;t make it there. The middle class leaves,which includes most working artists.
But! f you are rich you do not haveto consider survival. Surviving in NY is another kind of life.
When you are a freelancer and suddenly you can't make it -- what are you going to do, have a roommate at 40?

I have been reading Hunter Thompson on the death of culture and he calls them "greedheads." The rule of Moloch started in the 80s and this is the grand denouement, for me anyhow. I came I saw I conquered. Then I got fucked.

Bobby has been 'out' longer than I have. He and I came to NY at exactly the same time. We are the same age and fled under the force of deleterious circumstance. Now we both are out -- it feels great, expansive. Being a consumer of culture in other ways. Reading... For me, it is really something powerful to have Bobby be supportive.

The town just makes me paranoid, the last months there were a nightmare of greedhead landlording... That film, "The War of the Worlds" is an apt metaphor. Something inhuman you can't communicate with that sucks your life blood. For 30 years I could find inexpensive commercial rent. Now you have to buy @ 1/4 Mil.

Yeah, it's an addiction baby and a good one: The Con That Is New York.
I love the past I had there.
I hope you are able to survive there a while longer, not be driven off
by the greedheads, can choose to go (if ever).

love xoxoxox S'tan

My darling S'tan, you know it so well. I agree with eveything you say. When I return there now, it seems like a slow motion dream to me. The New York City that I live in in my memory is better than the real version now. But it thrills me to think about the new young kids that succeed in coming to the city and finding a safe niche to survive in. It means there is hope. I don't want to think that it's over for Manhattan, just that it's tranforming itself into another great period of exciting artistic expression, which may take awhile, with a lot of sand papering until it's smooth and beautiful once again.
But I also think the entire planet is going through the fire too.
As Bowie said " Changes.."

Working on this new solar installation I am talking to alot of salt-of-the-earth guys, plumbers, propane gas guys, etc. Everyone is talking Apocalypse. No-one can believe the prices being thrown at us... Copper pipes are up 300% for example. All resources are becoming scarce and very expensive. Yes Bobby, the whole planet IS under the fire.... One guy diatribed about bombing Iran, and NO he wasn't for it... It is really something to see these types going liberal... AND solar! They all congratulate me on getting solar electric 16 years ago, though back then they would have been smirking and calling me a nut. The electric company used to come to my house every few months and try to *talk me into* going on the grid. Dumasses, now they are all trying to get up to speed.

Solar water heating is so easy and efficient it is a no-brainer. There is no reason at all to use oil-based products to heat water!

http://www.omega2000group.com/product_info.php?products_id=54

Some people will tell you i"  costs $10K to start up, but I've googled and got the figures down to $3K with install. Plus the State now gives you the 30% tax rebate.

http://www.emnrd.state.nm.us/emnrd/ecmd/SolarTaxCredits/SolarTaxCredits.htm

This is for N.Mex., but I think every state has something like this now.

When working people are paying a week's salary for their monthly gasoline use, they *suddenly* realize something is deeply fucked and wake up " o the real world... We have to stop raping the planet, she can't and won't take it anymore.

The sun on the other hand is Appollonian, detached, generous, inexhaustible.

"He Struck and Missed"

Storms lingering over the mesa, all my desert flowers getting a soaking
to wake at dawn unnaturally lush and brilliant... Drive 20 miles south and it's wind-blowing dusty-storming, rain-clouds skitter off to head north and linger over the dammed lake, and suck up bucketfuls to drench my mesa.

When it blows too violently or rains torrentially, my phone is full of static, or dies. I'd had no telephone service for two days.
One and a half miles of line just to service my house, I don't think they bothered to bury it too deep. Just in case a few more folk move up here. Well it took eight years for them to get the phone up here, and it's been another eight and not another soul's shown up... so bury the damned lines already.

For repair I call "Valor Telecom" -- really one of the worse phone companies in the USA.
When Garrett and I accidentally overused the dial-up, and a bill came for $1300., they only reduced it to $700. This was after about twenty screaming cursing phone calls and they still cut off the long distance. Who cared anyhow, because ha ha we discovered Zaptel.com and their 1.9 cent a minute thank you deal...

But Valor's servicemen are totally great pioneer-like dudes, roaming the hills and mesa and arroyos, seeking out the little stranded wires that bring the lonesome freaks back into civil-eye-zation. How many times has Eduardo come up here and found the spot where the road-grader slashed the line - again. Or once dug up a quarter mile of line, looking for the spot a packrat or jackrabbit gnawed.
Today he spent at least 6 hours stomping up and down the mesa and wouldn't take a soda or a beer.

He told me lightning had struck the switching box down at the end, where my line branches off solo from the other folks. He fixed that charred box, but still I'm not getting a tone.
He checks out the box on the side of my house, and calls me out to show me its black charcoaled interior.
"Someone's been barbecuin'," he laughed. I was stunned...
lightning had danced all around the mesa two nights ago, but nary a flash by the house. Or so I dreamed.

Even worse, when we check all the phones in the house, two extensions are working... but the third, my pretty retro wall-phone next to the pink bathtub... there's a faint fan of black charcoal all around it.
I lift it off the wall... the back of the phone is melted and burnt.

I felt like I did the time the enormous Penitente crucifix I'd placed on
the altar in Stephen's church flung itself at me, and I ducked it by a hair.
Once more had the Wrath taken aim at me - and missed.

I could have been luxuriously wallowing in the tub - just about my only luxury lately - a nightly big tubful of spring water from the aquifer - chatting away nonsensically on the deadly phone. Been fried in an instant. Probably blown up the gas hot water heater too.
And the cats astonished. And my friends going,
Oh S'tan, she loves to be alone... doesn't matter if we don't hear from her for three months. Meanwhile the cats would go truly feral and finish up eating me before taking over the mesa.

S'tan my darling, it all sounds so amazing and powerful out there. I keep you in my thoughts and rituals to the Goddess. You sound clear and sharp and fully awake I must say. It is my birthday and I am sizzling like hot wire myself. And Neptune has gone retrograde...uh oh!

sending you love and kisses. xoxox B.

Lightening, I think, is the state flower. When I was there last September I was caught on a 7,000 foot elevation ridge in one of those storms. Spent one hour running down it with lightening exploding the mesquite on either side of me. I was hoping it didn't have a taste for the electrically charged video cam in my pack. Devilland. And I laughed with that just-escaped-death-again exhaustion at the bottom of the ridge. I think that lightening just likes being close to the spark in your heart S'tan.

eeeehhhhwwww cher fantasiste distingue, let's not get hit by lightning.
Sometimes you don't die but sizzle on in a hideous state, paralyzed, etc...
I heard of a woman who got struck out in the desert and crawled out
2 miles and cannot speak a full sentence anymore.
I am sure it's the State Flower for her... grave.

Walter de Maria's "Lightning Field" sculpture--

http://www.lightningfield.org/

$250. to sit in a little room and see the 400 aluminum poles go zip-zap...

Happy Birthday Bobby! Sizzle badizzle and razzle dazzle on!

Being alone on the mesa is fantastique but once you get off, this place is not that great. Many of its denizens are nightmarish. You cannot believe how they drive.

Today I counted TEN ROADKILL
in the half-hour drive to work. Gore every three minutes. Cat, dog, rabbit, raccoon, skunk, rabbit, jackrabbit, cat, dog, dog...
Once I actually saw some charmer SWERVE TO HIT A SQUIRREL.
Apparently they consider it a sport... and unmacho to tie up their pets.

Yesterday one idiot in a F-150 pulls out onto the highway with his dog happily leaping all around... Cars are careening and screeching and trying to avoid the dancing dog...
the guy just drives away and leaves
his pet wagging his tail in the middle of the road.

The other thing N.Mex. dickhead drivers like to do is play chicken.
You're zipping along and up ahead you see someone waiting to pull out onto the highway.
They wait until you get close to them, THEN they start pulling out at fucking
TEN MILES AN HOUR so you have to deaccelerate from 70 to 30.
Look at their faces, they're grinning with sadism as you shriek and curse and honk.
They want you to hit their shabby car so they can sue you for a new one.

My last 18-mile stretch of road before home is nicknamed "Blood Alley"... decorated with roadkill, and those cute flowery crosses
that show where human gore prevailed, and a fanciful cop or two going 90 and ignoring
the other Corona-crazed speeders.

Blood Alley has again earned its illustrious name --
at 10 PM last Monday evening a young State Trooper came round a blind bend without his seat-belt on, and flew through the windshield as his black-and-white plowed into a DEAD COW lying on the roadway -- that some thoughtful previous traveller had left behind. Not that you can call anyone from Blood Alley. It's a cell-phone dead zone.

"Though the officer tried to avoid the cow, his State Police car struck it and rolled over several times, ejecting him onto the roadway.

"A northbound Nissan Ultima then struck him, and the driver of that vehicle remained on the scene. He told investigators that within five minutes another northbound vehicle, a Jeep SUV, came on at high speed and struck the officer again, dragging him some distance, and then fled the scene."

The officer had served a tour of duty in Iraq and was still in local active duty reserves in the Marines.

Brought down by errant beef on the hoof and a pair of out-of-control gas-guzzlers.

Adjunct article: "Loose livestock on highways cause 700-900 accidents per year in New Mexico -- primarily mule deer, pronghorn elk, black bear and mountain lion cause fatalities."

This article was embellished with a horrific image of the hind legs of a deer sticking out of
a windshield, at just such an angle you knew it was face to face with a defunct motorist.

Let us not forget however a sometimes greater terror: WHITE PLASTIC SHOPPING BAGS...
those small flimsy things fly across the road constantly and stick in the cactus and
trees everywhere... and send me into a swivet when I'm driving late at night.

I had just watched "CRASH" again, twice, on a Cronenberg kick -- when this accident was in the news.
Violent choreography well-visualized, a seat-beltless victim cannonballing through a windshield. We all have this fetishism for the car, speed, traffic accidents...
but can't admit it. The car cannot be given up. No matter how much gas costs, we
have to speed at 70 MPH to go wherever...
"the modification of the human body by technology," seems how cool --
as long as you end up just modified.

Just to consider this 27-year old Dad of two, handsome young Hispanic shot out of
his primo vehicle...tangling with beef, battered twice by crazed gasoline engines...
after surviving the blood-for-oil nightmare. Shot out onto the haunted maelstrom made of the curves of Blood Alley's free American roadway.

The next day there are chalk lines and arrows and encircled shapes on the death-spot...
here's where the cow was, another shape, a leg? a circle for a head...
the asphalt glittering broken glass spectacular in the morning sun.
Already the pathetic cross is up, covered with flowers.

Two days later I'm driving out of town around 5 PM, there's what looks like 100s of cops in full dress blacks standing out on that bloody bend. As I head south I pass dozens more cop cars, all heading for the next-to-the-road memorial service, as it turns out.

So this week the Police Blotter is full of reports of calls made to police on that day that were never answered.
Well what the hell, just another bunch of the same overdoses, same wives beating the same old husbands, crank calls about people smoking pot, and needles in the shrubs at Long John Silver's. And Espanola's "Foremost Drunk" hassling people again at Lowe's SuperSave.
Was anyone going to speed to save their sorry asses

ah real life, merlin remembers. no fashion news? no gossip about who is dating whom? no art news? just the local police blotter?

you are in the middle of no where.

Oops - this is Chi Chi posting, daddy must have been logged on to my laptop....

Hi S'tan-

We are in Ptown - I have to get this far away to catch up on the Motherboards - that's a statement about NY right there!

But I love your dispatches from Fingernails, it was such a beautiful dreamlike place when we visited and your posts bring it back. Remember the Native American Rocky Horror event we were invited to? I've always regretted missing it!

Smooches from Ptown

ah yes, new mexico, after college merlin had the chance to move to Sapello just north of Las Vegas just an hour east of Santa Fe, in the mountains with a mix of green and upper/lower plains where the desert meets the mountains. and was given the chance to stay, and turned it down for the lack of funds and the range wars that were heating up between the local mexicans and the hippies. saw more than one pickup full of locals each caring a rifle driving by the place.

the house was rustic and gorgeous, only one room had wood floors with a big cooking stove in the middle for heat and food. there were small windows in each wall with drippy glass. the other rooms were used for storage as they had dirt floors. there was no electric so we burned kerosene lanterns on the porch in the evenings. the out house was behind this ancient adobe house with walls built up about three feet, so one would have a view of the whole valley while on the throne in the cold with snow comming down sometimes in the winter.

new mexico was extremely poor and i would have had to have gone on welfare to stay and knew very few people and didn't have a lover at the time. so merlin moved on. later when visiting an X in Santa Fe, merlin got to a clearer view of the local poverty and the disjointed wealthy part time imigrants from Texas and the celebrity-hood of California. most of my friends were working three part-time full time jobs just to make ends meet. it is a hard life for the locals and everywhere people would be walking in the heat to get somewhere for lack of transport.

when tourists ignore the local poverty it's a great place to visit. when you see the lack of education that comes with the poverty and see the life styles of the locals its both ancient beautiful and very difficult. the tourists help the economy very much, they also help with the economic rivalry between them for land to live on. there is no feeling that anyone is going hungry, just living very hard lives.

in love,

merlin

Hi Chi,oooh wish I could jump in the ocean! It's 98 - 105 here every day...

Merly, I have to disagree about police blotters and nowhere. Though the place is yes still poor as dirt and it was reported recently that Santa Fe was a "Indian Theme Park..." Hardly though it is pathetically overpriced. A friend has been house-sitting a $7M mansion for five years, and not ONE rich asshole has come to look at it to buy.

Anyhow, the NY Post's "Police Blotter" has nothing on the Rio Grande Sun's for depth of content and style.

Some of my recent favorites -- All entries are verbatim:



Wednesday June 7th

8:45 am -- A caller reported a marijuana plant growing on the north side of Espanola Hospital.

5:24 pm -- A Calle Vigil woman said her cousin was fighting with her mother and that her mother was hitting the cousin with a belt.

5:29 pm -- A caller reported Espanola's "Foremost Drunk" was panhandling at Lowe's Super Save. Police went to the scene but this time he wasn't drunk.

7:42 pm -- A Pajarito woman called to say her white Buick Le Grand had been stolen. She did not know the license plate number. She called later with the number but when the police checked it was registered to a man with a different last name.

10:46 pm -- A caller reported people throwing rocks at cars on Riverside Drive from the Walgreen's parking lot.

11:54 PM -- A caller said a man was not letting his girlfriend leave. The girlfriend had hurt her finger and did not know how. The boyfriend was arrested for false imprisonment.



Thursday June 8th

4:49 am -- A caller said people were throwing furniture off the roof of El Paragua Restaurant.

10:46 am -- An Apple Valley woman called to say her neighbors were throwing rocks at her house.

12:36 PM -- A Las Lomas woman called to say a man who goes by the name "Mushy" called and threatened her life.

2:41 pm - A caller reported a man passed out, not breathing with blue lips in front of Big Dawg's restaurant. He was taken to the jail for detox.
[Must have been the Dawg Burger.]

2:52 pm -- A woman was caught shoplifting from Walgreens when she locked herself out of her car.

5:49pm-- A Wal-Mart manager reported some of his cashiers were being harassed by a man who was threatening to come back and shoot them.

6:10 PM -- A caller reported that one of the car hops at Sonic was $100 short.



Friday June 10th

12:00 am -- An officer reported that gang members were planning to intercept the transport of a homicide suspect.

2:01 am -- A caller said a man was walking north on Onate yelling and not making any sense.

10:43 am -- A Calle del Pajarito woman called to say people were harrassing her. She said she didn't know if thy wanted sex or drugs or both. According to police she was inventing the incident and advised her to call Housing if she has further problems. The woman called back later to complain about the responding officer.

12;01 PM -- A man called to say someone stole his cowboy hat. The purported thief was found wearing it behind Lowe's Super Save and was taken to jail for detox.

2:44 PM -- A Chili's manager said a woman was drunk and left without paying her check. Police found the woman in the Wal-Mart parking lot and drove her back to Chili's to pay her tab.


Saturday June 11th

12:50 AM -- A caller said a man and a woman pushing a baby carriage along Riverside Drive were flagging down cars and asking for money.
[This is reported almost every week.]

7:53am -- A Bellas Lane woman called to say an unknown male was calling her to say he was watching her, and loves her, and other strange things.
[It's probably "Mushy" calling.]

5:48 am -- A woman called to say a man driving a red Ford F-150 with a Virgen de Guadalupe on the rear window was driving drunk. Police located the vehicle and arrested the driver for driving under the influence. a passenger as also taken to jail for detox.

8:21 am -- A caller said a fight was being planned for the Kleen World Car Wash parking lot and kids were collecting rocks to throw.

8:20 AM -- A woman called for the second time to report that Mexicans were stalking her. Police were advised that the woman was off her meds and not to answer her phone summons.

7:03 pm -- A caller reported a man passed out in a booth at McDonald's. He was taken to jail for detox.

9:47 pm -- A Rio Vista woman called to say she was in the middle of fighting with her boyfriend and he hadn't checked in with his probation officer for two months.

11:45 pm -- A woman called to say she had taken some pills and she had no idea who or where she was.



Sunday June 12th --

7:55 am - A Calle Loma man said another man was assaulting his grandmother and asking for money. He also said the other man had a marijuana plant growing in his backyard.

9:20 am -- A caller said a man who goes by the name "Scrappy" was tagging the walls of the Lovin Oven Bakery.

12:08 PM -- A woman called to say she woke up to see that someone had egged her house.

12:49 PM -- A man called to say he was in the process of driving to the police station with his ex-girlfriend's father giving chase. The caller said his mother called him to say she was following the ex-girlfriend's father in another car and that she would "take care of it" if the police didn't.

2:50P PM -- A woman called to say her husband was in a room at Super 8 Motel with another woman.

5:52 PM -- A caller reported that her two brothers were "at it again." Police took them to jail for detox.

6:29 PM -- Police retrieved hypodermic needles from the flower bed in front of Long John Silver's.

8:01 PM -- A woman called to say her son was beaten up in the back of Pizza Hut where he works.

10:30 PM -- A caller from the Senior Center said an event was finishing up and they wanted extra patrols to come over in case of a fight.

I guess if you were downwind from town you'd hear a lot of incoherent yammering and be bowled over by the smell of boozy upchuck.

Just like weekends in the East Village except
they have a plentitude of rocks to hurl.

btw that last item excluded the fact that several octogenerians were caught amassing pebbles and were promptly taken to jail for detox.

The not-so-funny-haha thing is -- there is NO JAIL in Espanola.
It was closed down for being a shithole.
Santa Fe won't take the overlfow of cases anymore. Neither will Tierra Amarilla, 60 miles away. So the wastrels are being hauled four hours away to Grants. This leaves fewer cops on the streets for the 8-hour drive, etc. ... the town is overrun with Mexican heroin and every kind of pill... it's in an uproar. I even saw teenage hookers cruising the avenue outside Sonic one memorable 5 AM! Oooooh.

Tomorrow I am going down to see what has become of the Hell Hotel. Disney has taken over Madrid, planted artificial flowers all over the town, invented a diner on someone's porch and in their living room, repainted many houses pretty pastel shades over the divine negligence.... grrrr. Also parked 50 motorcycles in Brown Pauls' gay-rage to the tune of $10K the fucker, and tried to pass out mouse-ears to the stoner denizens, who promptly began to decorate them with obscene slogans and MJ iconography, and wear them to the Mineshaft. (Yes that is the name of the local bar.)

The movie is called "Hog Heaven" about middle aged bikers. Stars John Travolta. The Brown One tells me he swishes and is real gay. yawn.

Later!~

Yes I did notice the recurring theme of the hurling of stones. Very biblical out there in the desert, no. I eagerly await the appearance of this trend in NYC.

I was also rivetted by the fact that most of the trouble tends to occur in and around these large national (and even global) chain corporations-- Lowes, Chili's, Pizza Hut, etc. Perhaps concerned citizens should band together and have these places closed as disorderly premises and bad influeneces, the way block associations in Manhattan go for the nightclubs. But then, there may not be any other businesses in Fingernails that haven't been run out of town by these giants that send their huge profits out of the area and benifit no one but the Sam Walls of the world.
As far as the incident at Wal-Mart goes, who of us hasn't threatened to shoot the cashiers there? Laziness and stupidity are required traits for their employees.

Well yes but S'tan, the boozy upchuck smell of the EV is leavened with, like, patchouli and bad designer brand perfumes.

I like what hatches mentions about the mega-chain outlets being magnets for lawbreakers and contributing to the general social breakdown. Some city official (despite the obligatory Wall Mart and Chilli's payola they must have taken) should really start a protest and re-zoning referendum. I think Fingernails could be a great negative example other communities could use at town council meetings where it is being decided to accept these omnivorous retail developments. Just show the police blotter and some basic statistics about the rate of arrests outside these establishments, the tax-dollar cost for police, the cost to incarcerate and prosecute the offenders. I've always said the Wall Marts and Costcos are the north-of-the-border maquilladoras -endocolonizing the U.S. with lower than low wage-paying businesses to create the ascendant lower-lower class that is being manufactured by the Little Bush regime.

And speaking of the idiocracy, what's happening around town with respect to the shrill rhetoric frying up the illegal immigrant 'flood' the national politicians are so shamedly playing ping pong with now? I was recently in southern Arizona and Nogales Mexico and on the US side there were large scale traffic stops with cop dogs and big guns out up and down the freeway. The cops have actually plopped down trailer house office compounds on the shoulder of the freeway as semi-permanent check points. It felt like wartime.

Correction: The police blotter action is in Espanola, the biggest town near Fingernails. Fingernails is happily 50 miles from there, sparsely populated, with one measly general store.

There are many stores besides chains - for example, the famous "Saints & Sinners" Liquor Store with its flashing pink and blue neon of a devil and an angel. The Lovin Oven Bakery, tagged by Scrappy. Various little restaurants like the Big Dawg and El Paragua for killer chile. Many are run down and wretched looking, still they warm the heart, versus the massive chains.

EVERYONE gravitates to the chains, because they are new and shiny and cheap. That would include the down and outers, drunks and crazies. The parking lots are so huge it's easy to do a drug deal there, while security is tootling around the other side. Not to mention your second cousin, aunt, or brother-in-law is probably working in one of these places, and will pass a rib eye steak or two through the register undetected.

NOBODY cares about trade deficits or Sam Walt or the politics behind these big stores. They are just glad to have cheap food to eat, and new clothes to wear, so what if they are made in China.

Let's face it the dumbell consumer rules this country, and probably the earth.

Post Scriptum --
The immigration issue is a red herring like gay marriage. Torment some 'peripheral' folk, attract the ire of the masses, so they are distracted from considering why the gas prices, why the body counts & how come Someone's listening in on your phone calls and checking your bank accounts.

I think the immigrant thing is something the politicians really want to hide away and the real cause of the problem is based on the large capitalists like the Marriott corp whose owner was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying his business could not exist without the underpaid illegal workers -in effect admitting his corporation, despite all its massive properties, was a marginal business made possible by being illegal. The national politicians ride along on the millions these business owners fork over to finance election campaigns. That is why practically nothing at all has been done about it even after all the huge marches and media attention in the last four or five months. I agree the red herring is the actual illegals themselves but I don't think it is very easy to fault someone if they want to net $50 a week at a Denver hotel as opposed to nothing in Sonora. The real problem is why the US businesses won't find a way to pay a real liveable wage to legal residents to work, and why the politicians could not care at all about it.

It is funny that people are so attracted to a shiney mega chain store. It is a perfect example of what Max Weber called a prestation -a feeling of obligation to an irrational mode of social conduct. As for employee theft, that is actually how I got my first job ever. A friend of mine working at a Sears shoe department was apprehended lifting merchandise, so I knew there was a job opening there. Unfortunately, I quit three days after being hired as the (ex-preacher, ex-marine, ex-cop department manager) boss didn't like the hickey I sported and wanted to fire me despite the intervention of the African American director of personnel who told me flat out, "You are being discriminated against for seeking pleasure."!

-Anyway, I think someone should organize a Gutterfestival in the WalMart parking lot. Just have piles of beer, perscription drugs, trade exhibits by Sonoran heroin cartels and human smugglers wanting to market their products and services, demonstrations of the latest law enforcement techniques by the local constabulary, an 'Adopt a Cactus' outreach program, snake oil salesmen pushing hangover tonics and sunscreen lotions, a Misfit Talent Contest, Miss Teenage Hooker Pageant, Scirhosis Sideshow, and capped off with The Irrelevance of Having Actually Been Born Revival Meeting. You know, a general feel-good, civic boosterism event where everyone gets to practice their highly adapted interpersonal skills and all round self-abnigating talents. Alls you would have to do is just keep away from it, and you'd have a great, peaceful, relaxing day in Fingernails.

As a distorted, inaccurate shadow. And because I am feeling particularly nonlinear here.

This whole dizzied acceleration of reality has of course lowered its standards considerably just by allowing my almost
real recipe for a personality to even
dodge its denial of all objective reality.

But that is what being remote is all about. Disappearance.

The Gutter Festival would totally work in Madrid. There is a dearth of ironic sophistication in other burgs...the Espanolitos would not know what the fuck we were doing -- although the free drug samples would be a big hit with Scrappy and Mushy.

I am going to present your outline to Brown Paul for his next party. This Saturday he is having one, and the whole film crew from Disney is invited. I would love to go, to try to get Val Kilmer to agree to being my slave, but a flying ant bit me on the nose and I look hideous!!! Should I try wearing a veil?

The main drag of town during filming was a deconstructive fantasy. We were walking around and I was going "Nice cactus!" "It's fake." "Are those daisies real?" "Yes." "What a cool biker!" "He's the local speed merchant."
"What about that black biker with the dreads?" "He's French, from LA."

I'm telling you seven Your People definitely dwell in Madrid. I recommend you retire as a Madroid ASAP.

Miz GenGen and Shecky Domination are making another foray out here in August to see if they really want to buy their thousand acres and hide themselves well. Miz GenGen's lungs are expiring in NYC air pollution.

Tell Val I said hi..used to do his hair before he became a big obnoxious star. Plus he is a Christian Scientist.

HEW! Xian Scientist... he gets a free whipping for that.

Farewell Charming Old Dirt Road!
We had a deluge
tonight and Shirley Maclaine's well-groomed 7 miles of well-behaved dirt road be GONE!
I barely made it along the 2 miles I enjoy.
We're back to bedrock, rubble and ruts.
I love it.

I'm listening to the thunder of the rocks tumbling over each other in the rushing arroyos.

Thunderstorms continue, each day around 2 PM the sky clouds over and the 'New Mexico State Flower -- Lightning' (thank you seven) starts to bloom... sometimes rain falls, sometimes not. Shirleyville's worker ants are every week out on the road shoring it up. It's like I don't even live in the country, what service. The RX7 can maneuver it now, her clearance is about 3 inches!

I've been going to the Ojo Caliente hot springs every week at the end of my work week (Thursday through Monday.) The arsenic baths (Hail Stan!) seem to penetrate you to the core... any ache or pain just melts away. The Iron Pool is nice too, though I prefer the super-hot dip for a shocker. The damage for this total rejuvenation is $12.

Their massage therapists are incredible... one lady, Laurien, is going to teach me Reiki. I think I left my body about ten times during the massage she gave me! I don't even remember her doing my lower half. Where was I and just what was she doing???

I caught a baby rabbit from the Beasts Beauregarde, Binky and Pearl, they must have found a nest because I also found 2 deads ones! Wah. I've got the survivor in a hutch. She is about 3 inches long and likes broccoli.

Sorry about your bad weather guys! I hope you don't have a blackout.

Love
The Solar-Powered Bitch

Ojo "Hot Eye" sounds divine, S'tan, and of course very Victorian-- bathing in those heavy metals...
In fact, I love the desert... and the badlands. I have been to Santa Fe and Taos-- very briefly during the first "brown" explosion, but most of my desert visits have been to the Mojave and part of the Sonora. Perhaps someday I will make it to Fingernails.
I hope your rescue rabbit has a lot of room in her hutch, as they tend to balloon without exercize! And watch out for those back "fingernails" when she gets older-- sharp as knives. They do use 'em to dig their holes, after all. Does she have a name yet?

Ahhh those baths sound fantastic... arsenic! wow! LOL I don't suppose they have a web site or anything am interested ...
I go to a fab place in Jamaica, up in the Blue Mountains.... course the place is called "BATH" (ha ha ha very fuckin original the Jamaicans are)... the waters are supposed to have magical healing properties... i don't know if that is what rejeuvenates me of the many young local muscle boys in their tidy whiteys that work there (who knows why they don't wear swim trunks but somehow always manage to be in their undies).
Reiki i think can be so hit and miss, like psychics. But when u find a good un its shockin... this woman sounds amazing.
I think we need to hire a bus and take a 'Jackie' vacation to Fingernails!

Wow, arsnic water.
Very you S'tanly!
The Ojo Caliente experience sounds amazing. Does it stink? The Empress and I went to these hot springs in Oregon (or Washington?). They were great but the smell! I guess it was sulpher.

The lightning and clouds must be incredible over your "backyard". The colors!

For the lurkers:
S'tan lives on the edge (obviously) of a huge cliff. Her "backyard" is about 6 inches then it's like a 10 story drop to a BEAUTIFUL canyon.

Hie,
No none of the waters are smelly ...

http://www.ojocalientespa.com/

There's arsenic, iron, soda, and lithia waters.

You have to go to the Hell Hotel for nice sulphurous stench, and now and then a gush of real black COAL!

Anna here is another incredible place...
Ten Thousand Waves, a Japanese spa that now offers fancy Japanese-styled rooms to stay in overnight:

http://www.tenthousandwaves.com/

One of Garrett's friends works there, and they told me it's very cruisy there at night. There's a hetero communal pool, but I think it gets overtaken by homo after dark. There is also a women's only communal pool... as well as private.

I've just GOT to try the nightingale-poop facial...

http://www.tenthousandwaves.com/SKIN/nightingale_facials.php

Kid you not

If anyone thinks they will be taking a trip out here please let me know! You can stay at the house
at Edge o'Cliff, Fingernails, on the Mesa Marquesa... or any number of fantastic places. Not to mention plenty of acreage for camping.

Thanks for the info about the fat bunnies, Hatches. She's so bitty I'm not worrying yet. I have to grate up her carrots for her.

Binky, Beauregarde and Pearl I think wiped out her family. FERAL CATS!!!

quote:

If anyone thinks they will be taking a trip out here please let me know!

Hey sounds good.
I might take a month or two off and come stay at your house.
Thanks S'tan!

Oh goodie I've got
about a thousand rocks I need moved from one end of the acreage to the other.
Hurry on out!

Some choice Police Blotter moments this week:

Wed. July 19
2:38 PM: A child dialling 911 from a Wal-mart pay-phone called the dispatcher "stupid." Dispatch received the same call three more times within the hour.

Thursday July 20
8:52 PM: A Los Lomas woman called to say she could hear a young child screaming its head off for her mother not to hit her. When the police arrived on the scene, the family was having a cookout.

Friday July 21
3:01 PM: A woman reported several males dressed as "Goths" were mooning cars from the parking lot of the Espanola Recreation Center.

Sunday July 23
11:35 PM: A Kicks 66 clerk said a woman was screaming and talking to herself and running through the car wash.

Monday July 24
12:26 AM: Caller reported a soaking wet woman walking on Highway 84 [Blood Alley] talking to herself. Police could not locate the woman.

8:03 AM: Walmart Security reported a car parked overnight contained a Smith & Wesson revolver and a shotgun and shells.

10:06 AM: A Saiz Lane man called to say that a stray cat had been caught in a cat trap. When police responded, a white dog went after them.

...Speaking of white dogs going after you...
the big venue here is the "Casanova Night Club."
Every time I drive by I think of the puppy, Daddy, and start laughing!
It is so not Casanova, it's a falling down barn with big plastic Budweiser signs all over it, and is right next door to a some kind of Sump Pump thing.
F-150s back out of it nice and slow into the 80- MPH oncoming traffic on the highway, around one AM when it closes. It's a pit.

On a happier note, the bunny is doing very well. He lives in a pink cat carrier, eats fresh alfalafaflflfa growing right outside and will now crawl up under my chin and sit there. Yes he is happy, he will never get checked through baggage!

We haven't named him yet, mostly I call him Binky's Bunny
because Binky sits by his cage day and night.

ah, internet... "The Mystery Of Poop"

http://www.bio.miami.edu/hare/poop.html

Egads, cecotrophy!!!

I let the Bunny go last Wednesday.
Living in a cage was too sad... I kept the cats in the house for four days to give him a chance to find a hutch, or dig one.

I came home last night to a big frog on the portale, greeted him "Hey there!"
They like to come in the house and look around.
The cats usually don't bother them...

About a foot away from Frog though was a neatly coiled Rattlesnake --

Rattlesnake: Oh hell, it's one of those freaks walking on its split tail...

Frog: It's just The Creature who kept Bunny in a cage.

Snake: So where's Bunny, the cage? I smelled its poop and came up to snack.

Frog: It let the Bunny go. I saw him heading out towards the Pond.

Snake: Good eating at the pond.

Frog: You keep away from my kids.... Hey Creature has let The Three Decadents out!

Snake: 'Decadents' -- what's THAT all about.

Frog: They look like cats, but they're small, they stink like The Creature, and they're never hungry. They just claw you to death for a whim, to see a twitch.
I'm outta here.

[Snake and Frog are both suddenly buried in grey gravel studded with catshit.]

Snake: What the fuck...? I thought this was a cool place.

Frog: Naw, I told you, it's a madhouse. [Hops off.]

Smake: Cats stink like hell.... ptoi. [Slithers away studded with the cat litter.]

Creature: Sorry Froggie, that was for the snake.

Pearl & Beauregard: [Crashing in through the window] Ohmigod did you see that hideous thing!
Binky, don't go near it!

Binky: But nothing can hurt me!

[Binky jumps back into the house.]

Pearl: [To Creature] That's what happens when you lock us in for three days!
All kinds of trash tries to move into the neighborhood.


..... After recording these conversations, I went to bed, and woke up to find Bunny (or one of his relatives)
dead next to my bed. Binky slept blissfully next the corpse, his muzzle adorned with blood.

I have a feeling it is my Bunny, "Binky's Bunny" -- something about the intimacy of their respective sleeps.

There is also a tiny yellow bird by the door... it almost looks almost like a canary.

The appellation 'Decadent' is hereby revised because both victims have been partially eaten.

Bleh! My pal who is an organic farmer told me once I cage a rabbit, I gotta keep it.
No such thing as "releasing back into the wild." It got contaminated, confused,
I interrupted its natural education, or something.

Alas but human beings *suck*

Well this 'blog' started last year on 9/11
and I am thinking it will come to an end on the same day, soon. Reading Ms. Chi-V-T's promise of 'personal blogs', well I should have one!!! Tell me how.

Anyhow to complete this particular circle of hell, I'm going to go see "World Trade Center," but I don't know if I will be able to stand it. I heard it was "great." Ms.Helin sent me new Orangina, do I dare go there.

Love,
S'tan

S'tanly,
I just read Frog & Rattlesnake's conversation.
Frogs, rattlesnakes, cats, dead bunnies, dead birds...
It is much too real there.

White DOG!

Real... as opposed to the artificial society of the human being.
I agree.

I'm looking at Shirleyville's ponies galloping across the mesa...
I think they got out of the corral!

It's pouring rain again
off the cliffs waterfalls galore

'scuse me must go feed the ravens.

quote:

Reading Ms. Chi-V-T's promise of 'personal blogs', well I should have one!!! Tell me how.

And you shall, S'tan. As soon as they are available, you and Messy B shall be our first. Would be an honor.

Can you take pictures?

I would love to see that view over Shirleyville again.
Gorgeous!!!!!
This is how I remember your back yard.

This is what you remember... where you were jumping and playing as Miss Chivity shuddered...

View at dawn from the portale.

This stuff is owned by Shirleyville... plus 7,500 acres.

Bedroom window, and featuring the new blue
color-coat on the house...

Now THAT is a back yard!!!!

WOW Stan thats AMAZING! MORE pictures please and more blogs... haven't heard the latest police blotter in a while.. update please.
U ain't missing ANYTHING here.... nowt at all...

As more and more pieces of the sky that I can see from my windows are blocked out each week, I have little wonder why you relocated to Fingernails, S'tan.

It's totally gorgeous but if I had known there were rattlesnakes I would never have gotten out of the car!!!!!

You have rattlesnakes S'tan!!!!!!!!

rattlesnakes!!!!!!!!

Is this the right address? Or did I take a wrong turn at the Gila River?

Rattlesnake: What does a New Yorker taste like?

Frog: Bitter, I hear.

Rattlesnake: Couldn't be worse than one of those rank Los Angeles creatures. Ptoi, taste like gasoline.

Frog: Pardon me, creature's front door is left open. I'm gonna munch some cat chow.

Rattlesnake: Think I'll come along... it's so good for my ego to hear them scream.

PS to Anna: There was no Police Blotter for two weeks because the heavy rains destroyed the 911 station.
911 was then being run on a cell-phone, which number, of course, nobody had.

The town may have burned down in the interim for all I know. I have been taking the fast way past Espanola around lately, as now I have to drive to Santa Fe for work...

Daddy, I would have told you if it was snake season hons. They come out in June and go back into hiding when it gets cold. I think you all were here in the winter.

Tell me about losing the sky, hatches. Can't you see the river anymore?

Love
S'tan & Binky
Pearlina & Beau

This morning as usual I went outside to wake up. Stare into the mandala of the cliffs and shake bad dreams out of the blankets.

Cats leap across the mesa in search of a breakfast of sleepy critters... I start watering my patches of black-iris-to-come
for the Spring. Pearl is canoodling around me, then freezes...
as a deep, resounding ROAR comes up from the arroyos... birds fall out of the sky... a mountain lion is greeting us... Binky comes charging into the house and burrows under the blankets.

I mean I might be broke and lonely but having a lion say Good Morning to you somehow makes up for it.

http://www.brandens.net/files/Sounds/FX/Animals/MOUNTAIN.WAV



I just reread all of the "Farewell Charming Old New York" posts and copied them...
also this thread. Many thanks to Mommy and Daddy for letting this be a fantastic diary of my transition. I want to compile it with the photos, to go on http://www.terencesellers.com


PEARLINA ON THE PROWL

Pic by Foxy, October 2006







Later

Dearest S'tan -

You have our blessing on that, and as long as they are your own posts, you own them. I'm sure other authors would let you use theirs, though, just ask!

Acknowledging an important body of writing that has inspired us all -

Courtly bow and virtual blood red roses!

Chi,
At first I will just transcribe and read the whole thing through. Making it a narrative, but with commentary for the uninitiate.
When I decide to use others' comments I'll certainly ask if it is okay, and send them the finished thing before I post it. It's a little like what you thought about doing a while back in one of the first "Verbal Abuse" magazines. Remember you had some blogs and you wanted to publish them... but they were too long... and your submission(s) editor was clueless about blogging... Well anyhow it's an experiment.

I especially want to try it with the JT Leroy thread. Especially after what went down.

D I have to ask the Fluffernutter for permission or can I just rip him off.
Thanks.

Love,
S'tan

Dearest S'tan-

How wonderful..Yes, I remember that vaguely about Verbal, but it was USENET groups posts (the granddaddy of boards like these) as blogs weren't quite invented then..

Fluffernutter, like any registered user, should be asked to use his work. Look at the bottom of every page - its our credo!

quote:

All of our participants own their own words and ideas. Treat them with respect.

That said, I would be surprised if his profile email address still worked. If you can't find him, use the work with author citation, that is anyway the type of Creative Commons license we are taking out for the boards to cover just such grey areas.

Just Google Creative Commons to see what I am talking about..and best of luck with this S'tan, I am excited to read it...

S'tan,
Where are you? I haven't seen you on the boards for a long while. I hope this finds you well and happy. Life goes on here in PPTown. I went to Texas for basil's new puppet opera two weeks ago. Hideous republican women in fur coats with bad face lifts. I was happy to change my return ticket and stop by NYC for one night. What's going on out there your way. drop me a line. I am thinking about you Doll.

Love,
BM xoxo

My carpal tunnel is wrecking me I've been on practically all day!

I hate Texas.

Working on redacting the Fingernails thread in some new interesting form... also
Updated the site with some new pics...

http://www.terencesellers.com/photo03.html

Check out Brown Paul in Old Versace!!!

It was odd indeed to be the only person at a Halloween party dressed up. In the daytime.

Love you a bunch

OK kids, after five and a half thousand page views it's time for Fingernails Part 2.