Travel day.  On the go since 06:00.  Didn’t write shit.
Eight days until Halloween.

N.P.: “Down to the Bottom” – Dorothy

Well, shit, dear reader…9 days until Halloween and I haven’t done a damn thing to prepare.  Not sure what I need to prepare for…I don’t do anything on Halloween anymore.  I just like Halloween.  I’ve never thrown a party, but if I was going to, I kind of assume it would be a Halloween party.  With my almost perverse affinity to the cold and the dark, Halloween is more like my New Years.

My schedule for the rest of this fetid year has no room for parties.  Alas.  But I do love Halloween.

N.P.: “Double Lucifer” – TVAM

Tonight, dear reader, we pour some out for Kerouac.  October 21 marks the anniversary of the passing of one Jack Kerouac, a literary rebel whose words still almost pulsate with the restless energy of the Beat generation.  I spent a lot of the early 90s reading Kerouac while drinking port.  I think I was trying to channel him.  He struck me more as a force of nature than a writer, which was what I was looking to become.  The port did nothing to advance that cause.  It killed Kerouac, and did me no favors.  I even tried to get into jazz.  I took pride that Jack Kerouac and I were both alive on the same planet for a few months. It was a weird time.

Kerouac’s journey began with what would become his manifesto: “On the Road.”  For those of you in the “it’s not about the destination, it’s about the chaotic, poetic journey, this is your jam.  On the road was (as far as I know) the first American road trip novel, and was the third such novel that I encountered, and the one that cemented the genre as one of my favorites.

Kerouac wrote the draft of “On the Road” on one continuous long scroll of teletype paper so as not to disturb his flow.  The other day I was imagining Jack being alive now and having literally endless digital paper at his disposal, leaving no reason (except for a power outage) to ever stop typing.

He once said, “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved…”  This was Kerouac’s ethos – a torrid love affair wild, the untamed, and the beautifully chaotic.

I’m not sure if the new generation is even capable of appreciating Kerouac.  They seem completely detached from The Past and seem remarkably inept at perspective taking.  And so much for them.

Here’s to Kerouac, a true literary badass.

N.P.: “Desolation Angels” – Jack Kerouac

This time of year is always weird and somewhat confusing for the landed gentry of Fecal Creek: the nights are appropriately Fall-like…with a bit of a chill in the air, but the days are still cruelly summer-like, with highs in the 80s and 90s.  People don’t know what the hell to do: it’s clearly too hot during the day to have the heater on or bust out fall clothes, but then they freeze their balls at night.  These people haven’t yet figured out California’s climate confusion: while the entire rest of the country enjoys four distinct seasons, California sports only two: Summer, and Not Summer.  Which is more like one season with a privation.  But never mind that.  Summer here is preposterous: this last July, the temperature soared to well over 110F every day, with the nighttime lows only dropping to maybe 85.  It’s so brutally hot, people die.  Usually the old and infirm, but you never know.  Most species of insects have died from the heat and lack of water by August 1.  Birds explode mid-flight, making a light “poof” sound, and leaving nothing but a chaotic spray of feathers gently floating down.  It’s awful.  The only things that seem to thrive in this climate are the lizards and snakes.  Fortunately we don’t have scorpions or tarantulas this far north, but give it time: they will be here soon enough.

From Cinco de Mayo until Halloween, yrs. truly generally doesn’t leave the house, preferring instead to spend my waking hours sitting naked on the cool tile floor in front of my open deep-freezer, sipping whiskey and loudly cursing whomever’s stupid idea it was to originally settle in this egregiously inhospitable place.  I’ve always assumed that everybody that lives here pretty much operated the same way.  But I’m starting to think I’m alone in my suffering.

Fecal Creek, CA is a banal suburbia where the grass is always green on the other side of the septic tank. Sundays here are like Groundhog Day on acid, but instead of a lovable rodent predicting the end of winter, we have gangs of vicious turkeys that roam the neighborhoods like terrorists, menacing anything that isn’t part of their flock.  Until, of course, they start high-tailing it for their lives from the local animal control officer who seems perpetually tanked on Sterno.

I’ve never been a big fan of Sundays.  But Sundays in Fecal Creek defy logic and sanity, when time seems to dilate, and the absurd becomes the norm. The sun rises reluctantly, casting a jaundiced glow over the town as if even it is too hungover to shine properly. It’s the kind of place where the turkeys’ godawful gobbling is replaced by the tubercular cough and mucous-spitting of Mr. Shitbag (I know that that’s not his real name…but that’s what I call him), the street’s unofficial alarm clock, bellowing from his porch as he sips a questionable brew from a thermos labeled “NOT COFFEE.”

Today happens to be the Fecal Creek Pancake Derby, a chaotic spectacle of culinary and vehicular misadventure. Picture this: a gaggle of local eccentrics armed with spatulas and a suicidal lack of fear, racing on modified lawnmowers while flipping pancakes into the mouths of unsuspecting spectators. The rules are simple—there are none. It’s a syrupy, flour-dusted free-for-all that ends when the last pancake hits the pavement or when someone finally breaks a hip.

By noon, the town shifts gears. The Fecal Creek Farmers’ Market opens its gates, offering an array of goods no sane person would ever need or want.  Some hippy chick seems to be selling artisanal mud pies.  She sits proudly next to some dude’s collection of slightly sinister garden gnomes. The air is thick with the aroma of deep-fried everything and the faint whiff of existential dread as cash exchanges hands for items destined to clutter garages and provoke marital disputes.  I generally try to avoid the Farmers’ Market.

As do most of the folks on my street: Sunday’s are evidently for lawn care.

I awakened this fine (or not so fine, as it were) Sunday morning to the cacophony of church bells and lawnmowers, my head throbbing in time with the frequencies of a thousand dying angels. I stumble to my window, naked as Diogenes but with less philosophical intent, and witness the terrifying tableau below: the air is thick with the aroma of overcooked potatoes and regret as families emerge from their cookie-cutter homes, still dressed in their Walmart-bought pajamas.

I gag and retreat indoors, desperate for solace from this Dantean landscape.

Inside, my sanctuary is no better.  The television offers nothing but golf, football re-runs, and “inspirational” biopics starring those Hallmark channel actors who sleep with the light on to avoid their own mediocrity. My so-called “smart” phone, which I might add has a Ph.D. in Failure Studies, only offers me “fun day” suggestions: brunches with saccharine mimosas, hiking trails to nowhere, and worse, fucking arts and crafts!

I try to escape this madness by venturing out into the world, hoping to find safety in numbers. Alas, the streets are littered with the slack-jawed zombies I feared most: families ambling along sidewalks four abreast, oblivious to the anguished honking of cars behind them. Dogs in humiliating costumes trotting obediently behind their mindless masters, their eyes begging for a swift end to this likely feline-conspired nightmare. And the children—oh, the fucking children! Hordes of them, stained with the remnants of their Easy Mac Last Supper, wailing for attention like some horrific game of “Pin the Screaming Brat on the Impatient Uncle.”

As the day already seems to be dragging on like a sloth with a broken metronome, I return to my lair, defeated and demoralized. Trudging back, I see driveways filled with the lifeless husks of automobiles, their owners hypnotized by the alien hum of their infernal lawn implements. The air is thick with the acrid stench of burnt gasoline and freshly mown grass clippings.  Back in the house, I check on some marijuana I left in the garage, then go to my window again.

Lunch!  The men don their “World’s Greatest Dad” aprons, which last saw use on Father’s Day ’98, and fire up their charcoal grills to prove their manhood to an audience of one: the neighbor’s cat, Dildo. I doubt that that’s the cats actual assigned moniker, but that’s what I call it.  Because it fits.  That’s a story for another time.  Burgers sizzle and beer cans hiss, and soon enough, the smell of charred meat and sweat permeates the air.  They desperately cling to the dying vestiges of Summer, before Not Summer starts.

The ladies of the street gather ’round someone’s plastic kiddie pool, discussing the latest gossip about nonsense. Their kids run amok, their shrill laughter competing with the sounds of Blink-182 from one of their idiot kids’ bedroom.  As their neighbors peek through their weed-covered blinds, sipping on their cheap Chardonnay and adjusting their polyester drawers, Fecal Creek braces itself for another week of the same old shit – literally, figuratively, and metaphorically.

I have concluded simply that Sundays suck. And like an ageless vampire, they will rise again next week to feast upon our sanity and grace us with their idiotic influence.

Until then, I leave you with this bittersweet advice: stock up on booze and ammo, barricade your doors, and pray for the End Times. For while the sun may rise on another Sunday, at least there’s a 50/50 shot it’s the end of the world as we know it. And I, for one, won’t be mowing my goddamn lawn.

N.P.: “Skin City” – Robert Rodriguez, Rebecca Rodriguez, Rick Del Castillo, Steven Tyler

Happy Saturday, dear reader.  On my new ridiculous schedule with the audacious goals, Saturday is just the sixth Monday of the week.  And I’m still behind schedule!  But I’ve got a good feeling about catching up reasonably soon.

An unfortunate side-effect of this pre-dawn-til-after sunset schedule is the losing track of time and days.  It was just over 100 degrees and September, next thing I know, it’s the last half of October, and Halloween is suddenly right around the corner.  It seems like a couple weeks ago I was cursing the fireworks stands that had popped up like patriotic acne all over the parking lots of local strip malls, and suddenly, there are pop-up Halloween costume stores in the same strip malls.  I’m not sure how this temporal chaos happened, but it is obviously high time to get into the Halloween spirit.

Here, then, is the first of what I suspect will be a steady stream of bad Halloween poems and maybe short stories between now and Halloween:

In the shadowed woods where whispers creep,
A forgotten path the night fog keeps.
Beneath a sky of ink and lace,
The moon’s frail glow hides its face.

Branches twist like gnarled claws,
Scratching secrets, breaking laws.
The air is thick with ancient dread,
Where once the lost and lonesome fled.

A rustle, a sigh, a chilling breath,
A dance with shadows, a waltz with death.
Eyes unseen watch the wayward stray,
Luring souls to eternal gray.

Footsteps echo, then fall to hush,
In this realm where nightmares rush.
Dare you wander, dare you stay,
In the haunted where phantoms play?

N.P.: “Rigor Mortis” – The Hunger

Today is a fine day.  Yahya is in hell.  #FAFO

N.P.: “Adir Adirim (feat. Victoria Hanna)” – Balkan Beat Box