Year of the Ox 4707
28 January 2009 AD
Wednesday, 2145 hrs CST
Stormcrow Ranch
Boone, IA
USA
"Squirrel Corn Capital of The World"
"'Charles Kyle Brown
1971 - 2009
Charlie Brown, age 37, of Boone, died at his home in Boone last week. Visitation is Wednesday evening from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at Becker Funeral Home in Jewell. Cremation will follow visitation with memorial services at 2:00 p.m. Friday, January 30, 2009 at the United Church of Christ in Jewell. A memorial fund has been established, gifts may be sent to Charlie's mother: Mrs. Karen Hill at 1003 Elm Ave. in Story City, Iowa 50248. Becker Funeral and Cremation Service is caring for Charlie and his family.
Charles Kyle Brown was born in Lansing, Michigan on May 4, 1971 to Charles C. and Karen L. (Shuck) Brown. Charlie was a conductor for the Union Pacific Railroad.
Charlie is survived by his mother, Karen Hill of Story City; three daughters, Berhana Brown of Williams, and twins, Fiona and Onika Brown of Ellsworth; brother, Chad LeBert of Clearwater, Florida; three sisters, Katrina Hart of Sinton, Texas, Dawn R. Caudle of Ellsworth, and Annie Martin of Portland, Texas; nieces and nephews, Natasha, Tatianna, Dawn, Chandra, Jayson, Carissa, Sherri, Malori, Savanna, Lauren, and Bryce; and 15 great nieces and nephews. Charlie was preceded in death by his father."'
~~From The Boone News Republican, Boone, IA, 26 January 2009
My friend Charlie died last week, and my world is suddenly a darker place. There is an absence of color in a voice stilled.
I am not the first to suffer a loss, nor the first to grieve and lament. Even with my beliefs of the complete failure in the concept death, I still find it hard to realize that Charlie is gone. I know he is not.
This is not denial. I’ve been down that road through hard-fought paths—the introspection, the doubt of self, the quest for something better and something I might have changed.
No.
E. Kubler-Ross wrote a great book on the five stages of death. One would think this would provide some solace, the understanding of such things, but this book speaks of those in the throes, not to those of us who still stalk the Earth, who live on this side of the Veil, of those of us who still have unanswered questions.
Charlie was always about the silver lining—there just happened to be clouds around it; that’s the way he looked at life. Ye gods, he stormed the Earth, a man so much alive it almost hurt to be in his presence.
When we were housemates, when he would get off the road and come home, he would shout ‘Craig-ford’ every time he came in the front door. Day or night, dawn or dusk, and all the hours in between. He never could get that my true friends call me Hob. Anyway, he’d shout and talk and pretend like I wasn’t there, like it was his house, slapping pans on the stove, pouring himself a drink, and all the while giggling with a fiendish glee, knowing I would have to do the dishes.
Sigh.
What can I say about my friend Charlie?
Well, he owes me money—I know that; he owes me cigarettes—I know that too. To some, these thoughts may seem callous; perhaps even ghoulish and/or disrespectful. They are not. If you knew Charlie, you would understand that he would be laughing at the above comments. Besides, what is more important is what I owe him—a debt I may not ever be able to repay: a lust for life so great it casts its own shadow.
I have tried to find words within myself to complete this eulogy, and I find there are none. So I will rely on the words of others, far greater and better than I:
"Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality."
~~Emily Dickinson
But perhaps the best words written about Charlie are from the Declaration of Independence:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
~~Thomas Jefferson
It was and is that last bit which speaks of my friend Charlie the most. He always pursued; he sought things beyond ken.
And now, he knows The Answer, that One Thing.
In this, I am almost envious. I face a world largely alone with questions that have no answers.
My final words on this are ancient, the battle cry of the Knights Templar:
Beauseant! Beauseant, Mon ami!
Indeed, ‘be glorious. Be glorious, my friend.’
And always, always,
Rage, rage,...
~~Hob
Year of The Rat 4706
18 January 2009 AD
Sunday, 0507 hrs. CST
Stormcrow Ranch
Boone, IA
USA
"Squirrel Corn Capital of The World"
My friend, Chef, comes over on Saturday mornings--mostly for the free coffee, I think.
He travels a lot in his job--which is not cheffing--he does some kind of thingy with water. But he knows I am most always here, and almost always awake. We talk and laugh, sharing the past week and the days yet to come, two friends who have grown comfortable with each other. About two months ago he started a new idea--food in our private coffee klatch.
Now, Chef is a world-class, um, well,... chef. Me, I'm mostly a cook, helluva rank. So things that come from our respective kitchens tend to astound and draw crowds from miles around. But on our Saturdays, we go with simple and plain elegance. We have Spam sandwiches, or fried baloney or bacon-n-onion sandwiches on paper towels. I gotta tell ya, there ain't nothing like it in the world.
Sure, we could do fiddle-neck ferns in smoked hazelnut butter, or steamed bok choy with garlic and shallots, or hash from a bacon-wrapped pot roast with green peppers, topped with a Cajun roux.
But it's just two friends, having coffee--one often lit like a Christmas tree, and the other waving cigarette smoke away from his face.
The thing that gets us most though, is the questions we field regarding our tastes. 'Why Spam? ' or 'You're great; you can make food laugh, dance, and sing; couldn't you make something better?'
Well, yeah; we could. But that's really not the point. We could pull out all the stops and break out our copper pans and cast iron skillets, and cook a breakfast that would give Henry VIII the gout.
It's simple: Spam tastes good, It is only bigotry and snobbishness which prevents it from being a premiere product. Many think it is like trailer-trash ham, or government cheese.
Look, ya think you have seen all of the Ver Meers, or Van Goghs? Ever see the rough drafts? The things they threw away? What would you pay to have one of those? Well, bacon and Spam are the same way. And you are wasting your taste buds if you don't just try.
Ah, well. It's your life.
But I hope you always,
Rage, rage,....
~~Hob
Post Script: Just as I was finishing this post, Chef showed up. He read over my shoulder, cup of coffee slopping on my sweatshirt, hoping I was surfing porn. He noted that I had left some things out in my blog; that it was almost the perfect blog but I hadn't mentioned salt, or butter or The Food Lover's Companion. And I have to agree with him. So, in the spirit of David Allen Coe and his friend Steve Goodman, I pen these words:
A big part of our mornings together is butter and salt. Suffice it to say, we do not adhere to any diet which limits these things. We both believe in moderation, but I drink moderately a lot, and Chef uses salt with reckless abandon. We both figure that if salt, smoke and alcohol are all preservitaves, then we will out-live you all(some people worry about donating organs. Me, I have oil companies bidding on my lungs for the coal-tar therein). Through this all, as we laugh and cook and talk, Chef and I rely on The Food-Lover's Companion by Sharon Tyler Herbst, as we foodies drink our coffee and slice red onions for our sandwiches. Ms. Herbst recently died, but word has come down the pike that her husband Ron will/is continuing her work, so the Fifth Edition may be available in a year or two.(Check Amazon for previous editions and/or copies) Anyway, we drag THE BOOK out when a question of food comes about. Me, being a hack, who just barely knows the recipe for ice, has to check it over and over again, but Chef almost always knows the answer(Truth to tell, I think he is still pissed about me beating him in the fried wonton throwdown, and takes a private glee in proving me wrong. Smart man, my friend and someone I admire and respect; too bad he has a memory like Swiss cheese--sodden and soft and full of holes).
Yeah. Whatever. Say what you will about me. It's all true. Just don't diss my friends. But I can look at myself in the mirror every morning and can laugh like a hyena at the face I face. Can you say the same?
Through it all, I always,
Rage, rage,...
~~H.
Post Script of the Post Script:
You are all invited to coffee and bacon sandwiches every Saturday; coffee is most always going by 0600. Hope to see you. Bring some bacon.
Year Of The Rat 4706
15 January 2009 AD
Thursday, 2134 hrs CST
Stormcrow Ranch
Boone, IA
USA
"Squirrel Corn Capital of The World."
Foremost, I have to apologize for that other post, the one before last. There about 500 words left out of the middle. They were written , but somehow in a flurry of copy/ paste/ paste special/spell-check/post/post now/save, they were lost. In fact, if you check the lone comment for that post, you will find that I apologized there too. Oddly enough, one sentence of ten words probably would have made the whole piece hang better and more tightly. But I am not one to un-do things, and if I spent my life re-doing things, well... things would never get done.
It is brutally cold here these last three days. It was -20 when I got up at 0400 this morning and had dipped to 22 below by 0600, when the cloud cover cleared. Still, snow has to be moved, so mail can be delivered and people can get to the Fareway grocery store to buy five of the six listed specials in the local shopper, so yours truly layered up, in clothes that would make a knight look light, and cleared multiple inches of frozen water for three hours. It's not all so bad--one account over north of here gives us cookies--but I am often reminded of the failed South Pole explorer Robert F. Scott, whose journal was found in his frozen hand: he had scrawled--'Great God. this is an awful place.'
Amen.
But the bars are open, here in Boone, as is the liquor store there in the 24 hour Hy-Vee. I laugh a lot when I see the shelves emptied of milk and bread and Spaghttioes and tuna and Hormel Deviled Ham and Van de Camps Pork and Beans, and I stalk through crowds of people who think they can't go without for three days. I worry about these morons sometimes. It's like the Donner Party, Revisited. Yeesch!
"The church is near, but the way is Icy;
The tavern is far, but I will walk carefully."
~from the Ukraine.
'Kay. Focusing again. the value of measure. This statement is an oxymoronic double entendre, an inverse reciprical of itself. Look again. If a value is the measure of something, and the measure is a value of the same something. then a loop is created.
Where is this going?
This the world we live in. It is not puns, or clever word games, or Soduku, or observing things that tickle our curiousity. We live in a hard-assed world of problems. Period. The onus is upon us to solve some long-standing issues. If one pays any attention to the clock I posted, that is the time one has left (personally, I think no. Did the world stop on December 31, 2008; 12:59:59? No. It rolled over to January 1, 2009. See?)
O' course, I've been long reknowned for my insanity, for some twenty odd years now.
But I am never wrong.
I hope you can look at the world the same way, and always,
Rage, rage,...
~~Hob
Year Of The Rat 4706
8 January 2009 AD
Thursday, 2036 hrs CST
Stormcrow Ranch
Boone, IA
USA
"Squirrel Corn Capital of The World."
At the moment, silence reigns in the house.
Now, when I say 'silence,' I mean there are noises in the background--the furnace laboring against 6 degrees F; the creak of a 35 year-old house still settling after the floods of spring and early summer 2008 here in Iowa, a bit of looping commercials every twelve minutes on the TV in the near-great room, a tumbled rack of crescent ice in the kitchen...
But, at the moment, no music.
And, for once, no long thoughts in my head.
I can fix one.... (Mozart; no, wait! Here: Beethoven! Yes. Perfect. 'My beloved Ludwig Van.') But often not the other. The thoughts just are/will come/may be.
My days are mostly like this: Go to bed, thrash in bed till before dawn, get up, make coffee, blink to wash away dreams and get to seeing in color again, step onto the deck to watch dawn approach(though, truth to tell not long during winter in Iowa) with a cigarette; back into the house to check 'The Jukebox.'
Once all the e-mails are blinked, and sometimes answered, I sign off and play Solitaire.
This, to me, is often more accurate than any horoscope or Chinese Zodiac. Though the odds are static, my choices are not. The odds of winning straight solitaire are 11%, or roughly, one time in ten. So, I figure, if I win, something great is coming my way.
I won three times straight this morning. I took this as a sign and waited all day for Publisher's Clearing House to show up, running to the windows like an abandoned senior-citizen every time I heard a car on the street, smoothing my hair, picking up newspapers and half-eaten bowls of Raman noodles, wondering... dreaming... hoping.
By the the time it got dark, the house was clean and I had finished three crossword puzzles in ink, written about 4,000 words, and dealt with a small-claims court server, as well as watching the Unsolved Mysteries marathon on Spike.
Now, I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I do have a little bit of moxie on my curve....
Wait. Some back story here: the average IQ is just under 120. Genius is considered to be 140. This scale goes both higher and lower, but those are the only two numbers I know for sure(you'll have to do your own research to check my veracity). I was curious as to where I rated.
So, I took one of those on-line IQ tests. This was Second Ex-Wife era(circa 1994(?)-1998), back when Windows was still listed as 3.5. Somehow, I took the test in German the first time, but the test seemed simple enough even though I didn't speak the language--match patterns, choose from four choices, finish this math--the usual stuff. It was sorta like the minor league baseball play-offs for Mensa. Well, in German, I scored a 126. I figured out the mouse click error, re-took the test in English and scored 123.
Back to the story:
But, as we all have, we have dealt with people both greater and lesser than what we perceive ourselves to be. There are some people whose charm intimidates us, there are some people whose intelligence intimidates us, and, truth to tell, there are some people whose luck intimidates us. Admit it.
I do not want to be any of these persons.
Thomas Jefferson once said, "I believe in luck because I create it myself.' Well, no he didn't say that, but you almost bought it, but he is quoted as saying something like that. But I far prefer Dr. Hunter S. Thompson's quote which I can quote verbatim and by heart:
"Who then is the better man: he who battled the storm at sea and lived, or he who stood on the shore and merely watched?"
(I have a sudden and troubling memory that I've written this quote before in this venue; never mind, It bears repeating, but please find me an editor who watches these things. I prefer new words).
So, I are smart. Just 14 points off Genius. I can name all the parts of a mushroom, I can 'do the math for stairs.' I know about a hundred thousand words, I know the capital of South Dakota, I know chemical difference between sodium chloride and potassium chloride.
But can I balance a check book, can I keep a job without getting bored, can I make love last? No. These things are beyond me, and my intellect, and my intelligence.
Through it all, I strive, and I always,
'Rage, rage,...'
~Hob
Post Script: Upon re-reading this entry, and the ones prior, I have noticed a certain positivity, a 'glass half-full' option. Sorry. I will be more balanced in the future.
~H
Year Of The Rat 4706
4 January 2009 AD
Sunday, 1706 hrs CST
Stormcrow Ranch
Boone, IA
USA
"Squirrel Corn Capital of The World."
Listening to 'A Batch of Spotted Paint' this evening. It's a compilation of songs from my hard-drive. Some blues, some rag-time, some big band swing,.... that kind of stuff. At the moment, 'Strutter's Ball' is playing. Man, oh man, gotta have some Dixieland Jazz to spice up the mix.
It's been a long holiday season for your favorite bachelor. Not 'long' as in 'hard to do,' but rather as in,... well, long. Mebbee, 'never-ending,' or 'interminable.' I haven't counted the days, but it seems The Holidays of 2008 took longer than the Election. Dunno. Probably because there were brief moments of frivolity seperated by yawning chasms of solitude. It seems my life is destined to be one of one apart. Not so bad: I get to keep my own hours, and the boss is a pretty cool guy, though according to eHarmony.com, Match.com, and Chemistry.com he lives just two percentage points outside the category of The Bounds of Common Decency. Hmm. Thinking on that now, I happened to see a private note posted on his computer that said: "Do not contact us again!" (Big letters; all caps. some kind of siren thingy going off). I wonder what that's all about. I mean, he seems likable enough and all--quiet, polite, self-deprecating, he keeps to himself....( 'Course they said that too about Jeffery Dahmer). Oh well, none of my business.
I've started some new projects that occupy a lot of head-work and sketching, one new refinishing commission, as well as some short-story writing. There's a new WishBox design coming out soon, and Chef will get his bowling-alley wood cutting board by March( nice piece, this thing. It may be said it looks good on paper, but it looks great in my head. Now, we'll just have to wait and see if it fits in this physical world. My fingers know the work; I just have to match the hardware to the software, i.e. hand to brain.
I'll let you know.
I promised in my last post that I would address the Bailout: I gotta tell you, this 'creative financing' bothers me. The numbers just do not exist. Period. I think Douglas Adams said it best: 'A number so impossible it can be only be something other than itself.' I paraphrase, and may have butchered his wonderful prose, but the gist is there.
We all know what a dollar looks like numerically: $1.00. And the latest Powerball Lottery prize is this: $105,000,000.00. 'Kay, that's 'one hundred five million dollars and zero cents'. Now, a billion is nine zeros, one zero higher than eight place-markers after the one, just before the decimal point (1,000,000,000.00). And a trillion? Follow along, and count as I go: 1,000,000,000,000.00. Looks big, don't it? Almost daunting. That's the projected price of saving the global economy just here in the United States!
Umm, I know I've been busy, but aren't there some other countries and people in the world? These people who have lives and economies and groceries to buy and that one perfect thing for your wife on her birthday, right?
The math is simple: 300 million people in the USA divided into One Trillion dollars= X. Solve for X. That's the money you owe. Please ignore the national debt we already have; it makes the long division easier. And you don't have to show your math.
Ooba. I'm ranting, and if I die in 'a mattress fire of mysterious origin', you'll know that I asked too many questions.
Onward,...
And now we face the Year 2009 AD, three years from where we have been foretold to die as a race and a species. The 2012 Predictions. Lordy, I'd like that, a respite from the morons who populate this Earth. Since I am a red-head, I am largely exempt, but I'd miss some of the hotties, and all my friends. The thing about this is that you are not getting the whole story. Sure, the Mayan calender ends, and even Newton did some calculations (he ciphered it out as 2021. Please note the transposition of those trailing numbers), but Nostradamas wrote TWO quatrains regarding the end of life, and it is the second which is often ignored.
And, damn me, I can't pull it up right now. Something about 'forty thousand years,' 'and when the sun ends.' I hope someone can set me right about this, but anyway 2012 is NOT the end of the world, but rather a change, and a choice. To be sure, there will be uphevels on the global scale, but not so much as the doom-mongers predict. Personally, I think they fear for their own lives.
But I digress, and as PT Barnum put it: 'This way to the Egress."
Blair Gorman is a numerologist down in New Zealand. Perhaps one of the best in the world. For those of you joining us late, numerology is the study of numbers to decipher the code of Life, something akin to the Fibinachi Number Sequence which Nature tends to favor(0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21...), and the Zodiac, combined. Anyway, in my melon-headed way, I've been studying Mr. Gorman's work, and the year 2009 adds up to 11(2+0+0+9). By all rune-casting, 11 is a good number; actually one great number. Should be a great year, then.
Let's make it so.
~~Hob
Post Script:
See Numerologist.com
See also The Montauk Project/The Philadelphia Experiment
~H.
PPS:
A private note to my daughter, that Tiny Angel: please know that you are loved, and loved greatly. Learn everything, Fair-Born. And understand that it will always be 'your' world. Your assigned reading is Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins. Also, Another Roadside Attraction by the same author.
~Dad
