findandy.com -- expired?

Even after he comes home Andy will never hang up his brushes! Probably he's been too busy and forgot to renew it. It is con season. Andy Lee, tooling down an interstate near you, caked in lipstick, watercolor and the peculiar grime found only on back issue bins.

I have the north pacific's first Andy Lee shrine. No, his dad does, but I have some great pieces decorating a room in my place. Peep these titles:

- Man That Lives in Bird Head
- Grrrrrl!
- Dragon Cycle Upside Down Skull
- D.A.N. [yrs truly]
- Hiro7ima
- Audry Hepbird
- Space Carrier of Ass
- Rolling Stone Bot (Special!! Brat-bread only 29 cents a loaf-link at Cubies.)
- Spermy
- Origin of Spermy
- Choke It Out Quick, You Sick Duck

If I ever get a camera I will post pics.

Supper

Frieda was the plain sort for whom clothing was strictly utilitarian. She wore big glasses and dressed herself like a 70s Jeopardy contestant. This did not stop her from having a successful career on the county school board. Under her stewdardship the board averted catastrophe in the 92 bus driver's strike, a move that the kept the big city unions from gaining a foothold in Carlton County.

Ten years later she stepped down as superintendent under rigorous protests to helm the Concerned Citizen's Airport Expansion Committee (CCAEC). The state was pressuring the local and county governments to construct a new runway at the airport. On the most desirable spot sat a couple of subdivisions, only six years old and within the bounds of a highly rated school district. The state urged citing emminent domain to acquire the land, and Frieda was tapped to lead the residents against it. They wanted their homes, and Frieda was ready for some big press.

While you can't fight city hall, you can get noticed by it. The CCAEC lost and the residents had to move, but not before they generated enough camera time to cost the developers millions more in delays. The following autumn Frieda won her district's seat in the state house. She was re-elected two times more by always voting the interests of the state over those of the individuals, and then using rhetoric to convince them of her choices after the fact. She was a politician, which is to say a person with a narrow-mindedness of direction, a healthy ego, and thumbs-up charm.

Film Noir, Right Before the Hero's Death Scene

--What do you remember?

--The same thing you do, what everyone always remembers. The laughter and the love.

--You sound funny.

--I can't possibly. I've hardly felt more ecstatic in my life. My spirit is incandescent, bright as a magnesium flair. I don't think my body can contain it.

--I've never seen you this way before.

--I know, and I'm so sorry my dear. You should not worry. There, come on. Let's see that smile. Ah. You've done enough to make me feel this way too you know.

--I can't let you go through with this. This revelation, you should forget it. It will only take you somewhere away from where you should be. Here.

--Don't worry. Don't worry. What happens next is not as important as that I made it to this point.

--Stay. I want you to.

--I always will, even when I'm not here.

Reconstruction

A bunch of them rode from out of the dusty plains into the hardened clay streets of Vicksburg. Their leader, Wesley, was a man whose biggest problem in life was his misanthropy. If he thought better of his fellow man, if he saw in them more than avarice and willful ignorance, he would have been a policy maker. As it was he found himself a leader of outlaws and fringe-type brigands. In town they kept to themselves, staying indoors most of the time in a converted sheep's pen two blocks from the riverfront. The mischief they made was harmless to others. It went on a few years, for some longer than others. They worked as porters, ranch hands, one became a printer, another had a small import shop. When they met a woman they moved from the pen. Wesley held out longest, but in the end he too settled down.

In a Soccerfield Parking Lot 3 Hours after Ragnarok

--I'm pretty certain Tad is short for Thaddeus. Jimmy is short for Thaddeus too. Can you believe it, Bob and Cindy's kids go by Thad and Jim.

--So that makes two kids named Thaddeus and a step-dad named Huelgo. Is Huelgo a real name? I don't even know. It may come from the Spanish root holgar, which means to vaccinate one's underlings.

--Hey that also describes the last few seasons of the X-Files!

--No one ever talks about the X-Files anymore.

--Might that not be... a conspiracy??

Memories of a French blanc this xmas past

San Grigio makes a wine that smells of eulogy. When snuffed from glassware the wine produces within the brain a state of tactile introspection whose closest cousin is grief. It is the grief whose scent runs down the cheek of the day lilies in wreaths posed neck into shoulder against one another. But this wine's scent lacks the sense of loss and longing that marks a viewing in state. Only the finality remains common to both, carried in garland bouquets and glass bottles to the consciousness with the immediacy of a loud clap outdoors and just behind. Before it touches the lips this wine, brought aware of life, steals a lily from the wreath and pins it your breast.

Beijing

There are two places to be when there's a row of burning trucks blocking your main city road: in front of the barricade or behind it. The men in front always are armed. The ones behind set their only protection alight. For these men their spirit is pulsing tense, a boxer dancing in the ring. The only surprise is not that they are mowed down, but that the brilliance shining through their ribs does not take the shape of wings.

Bogart

When I was little I wanted to drive a bogart to the cigar store. Vice kept us apart. The cause is hard to say: it was the stuffy morning room that smelled like a stable, or it was erosion ruining the arrowhead trail. It truth it was a look, nothing more. I stayed inside reading and the Indians sang strange songs from their birch bark canoes. The Indians had their myths, and I had mine.

weet-woo

I think of you this morning when you were slow to waken, pretty as a blooming tulip's slow yawn. The other moments are mine.

Who of the Last Will Come

The woman approaching Grigor wore a headscarf and dress trimmed in beads of opal. Her nose sloped between dusky eyes in a long gentle arc like the last quarter of a rainbow. She held a gilded bowl that on second glance was hollowed-out pumpkin spilling over its sides a goop like rotten cranberries.

"It's der-lishes," said the woman. The spilled mass at her feet was moving, festering. The woman was backlit and moved closer to him. Her body corked the vanishing point of the tube station's far-off end. She held it to his face.

"It is so godawfully foul, why can't I smell it?" he said in revulsion. He inhaled deeply, horrified, his face twisted.

Grigor opened his eyes, his vision draped in ochre red, the room filled with the faint scent of his own tussled bedsheets.

The Aloha Spirit

It's raining this afternoon, no surprise there, it's been raining since New Year's, and out my window I'm watching an old man walk around from car to car parked on the street and feed everyone's meter. He's dressed well and has an umbrella and doesn't seem to mind the bottoms of his slacks getting wet. His own vehicle is also parked there, a large pickup truck. He went into it for more spare change.