Can't sleep - 4:15am

So I kiss at you, Mom. Love you guys. Miss you all.  Wish I were there. How old is Erica again? Some of those pictures are ridiculous. This whole superhot model niece thing is very disturbing, I must say.  Anyway...off to try and sleep.  Love, love, love.....

Pizza Hut, Pittsfield

Aside from their excruciatingly limited hours and their policy of anti-customer-satisfaction, the local Hut has inexplicably adopted captured serial killer Dennis ("BTK") Rader as its mascot.

Sure, the notes from the children are addressed to 'Mr. Prescott,' but I'd recognize that police sketch anywhere. That's BTK.

Beware of TW- shaped objects

I guess the picture would have been nice....

Mysterious Letters Plague the Idle Biker

Somewhere along the bike path between Lanesborough and Cheshire, are set two concrete posts like this, both inscribed with large, white 'W's.  To quell the obvious suggestion, they are on the east side of the north/south path.

The Ws are inscribed on the southern side of the posts, visible only to the northward-bound traveler.  They are a mile --maybe two-- apart, but seem to have no relationship to distance, which the path clearly has marked: both in miles and separately in kilometers. There seem to be no real associated objects or phenomenon.

Curious.

Also this...

Pittsfield once more

This beautiful purple lighthouse-adorned home makes one realize why gay marriage got such a toehold in Massachusetts.

Or would that be a ... 'mohold.

Heh.

Adams, MA

Another trip down the 10.8 mile bike trail. Round-trip, I should say, for a total of 21.6 miles. And not one of those miles would be possible without the giant scary trail toilets they put at either end. No water, no chemicals, no odor... Just hulking, silent commodes with terrifying and hypnotic yawning chasms that fill one with a sense of dread. There is a malignant, lurking quality to these beasts that give one pause. That combined with the notice coldly informing you your waste products are being, "...composted in the mechanism below...."  Mechanism? Now I feel like the whole scary bunker is some sort of craft that may take off at any second transporting me and my sad little piss stream all the way back to Antares or Betelgeuse or something. I ain't got time for no alien abduction....

Lenox, MA

And this is where you can get the cabinet fixtures of Dr. Caligari....

(rim shot)

Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week....

Somewhere on Elm St.

My GPS led me here this afternoon? Mistake? Or snotty edititorializing on the part of my GPS?

I probably would have gotten more compliments on my golfing...

...
But this video shows what was going on right behind me, so people were understandably distracted.

Damn you, Mother, for making tiny women irresistible to me!

At Ye Olde Driving Range

Yep. Hit golf balls today with Rich and Felicia. Not only that, was astoundingly good at it. Kept smashing towering shots straight down the middle almost to the farthest markers. Actual Old Golf Coots hitting balls next to us kept telling me, "Nice shot!" and asking what my handicap was.

I have to say I've never understood the whole handicap thing. Is that an officially issued number?  How is that figured, anyway? I claimed ignorance and hit another home run dead center.   Someone was kind enough to point out the tragic irony of discovering you are good at something that you cannot possibly afford to do on a regular basis.  Sour grapes I say!

You'll never guess what I'm doing...

Misty Moonlight Diner, Pittsfield, PA

There are lots of cool little diners in the area. Indeed, diners and Dunkin' Donuts seem to account for a disproportionately large percentage of local caloric intake. And yet the populace is --by and large-- slender. Curious.  Cheese, beer, and ice cream are also important local players, factors which could have --and HAVE, in the midwest-- led to a girthsome citizenry heaving to and fro like so many perambulatory manatees. Yet here, not so much.  They are liberal, by and large, perhaps they fret the pounds away over nonsense.   As opposed to retaining fat out of hubris.  The politics of lard!  :)

I haven't eaten at any of these cool little diners, by the way.  I'm being cheap and preparing alpo out of cans and ruining fruit pods and stuff to get my sustenance.

Ode to a Fruit Pod Event

(adagio)
I hopped into me car, and then I headed down the road,
It wasn't 'til I found the grocery store I even slowed,
I grabbed me up a cart and then I headed on within,
Glanced quickly at me little list and then I did begin:
.
(prestissimo)
There....were.....
Prices on spices and slicing devices
Which I was quite wise to consider;
Pans just for flans, ancient cans full of yams,
From which I just ran (way too bitter!)
Butter for batter, a cutter for cheddar,
But none of that mattered to me,
What I need to fix it: a tube full of biscuit!
And filling, how hard can that be!
.
.
(adagio)
I got me kitchen all prepared, with flour and aprons and such,
Me podmaker was by me side, quite near enough to touch,
Me biscuit can I took in hand, and through the air it swung.
And when it stopped, me can had popped, and through it, biscuit sprung
.
(prestissimo)
Soon....the....
Biscuits were drying and flour was flying,
It all was quite trying for me;
My goal was controlling the rolling pin's rolling
For holistic consistency;
The filler I'm eying, and soon am applying,
For baking, not frying, it's true;
And now they're completed, the oven is heated,
There's not much but eatin' to do....
.
.
(adagio)
And now I press me eye against the oven's roastin' glass
And takes a gander in to see if good has come to pass
The egg-washed tops of fruity pods seem very interestin',
And soon, I hopes, them pods'll cuddle with me small intestine....
.
(prestissimo)
Now.....they're....
Out of the heat and look ready to eat,
What a treat! Boy I hardly can wait!
All glossy and round and so perfectly browned,
I'm down with their finalized state,
While cooling and gelling, the air that I'm smelling
Is telling me tales of my youth,
Now I grab one with pride....now my mouth opens wide....
It's inside! Now the moment of truth...
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

(adagio)
Sometimes you get to hear the happy sound of sweet surprise
A noise folks make when something good has opened up their eyes,
When pleasure forces from their lips, a sound they must emit...
But you won't hear that sound from me; me fruit pods taste like shit.

Pittsfield, of all places...

It is a local town ordinance that you are required to think. This is the exact opposite of the rule that seems to be in force over much of the south and midwest, and the entire state of Texas.

Surely you remember these hellspawn...

...
Rich and I hit the mini-golf today.

Maybe Scalia can execute her!

$50 seems hardly a suitable punishment.

A brief non-usual tangent

Allow me to pause in my usual jocularity to post a quote from Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. You are aware of my reservations about the mind-set of law-enforcement personnel. I think Justice Scalia quite effectively illuminates just exactly what that mind-set is all about. It's better to kill an innocent person than admit that law enforcement made a mistake. This is from a dissenting opinion issued yesterday (along with his Siamese shithead - Clarence Thomas). The majority of the court decided that new evidence in a 20-year-old death-row case suggests the state convicted the wrong man of murder. They believe this warrants - not freedom, but a new trial. Scalia thinks 'innocence' is overrated as a concept, clearly.

"This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is "actually" innocent.  Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged "actual innocence" is constitutionally cognizable."

                     - Justice Antonin Scalia

My view out back...

I'm hoping to find the 'brick-n-dumpster' look inspirational.

What I love....

...about New England is that you're always rounding a corner to find some quaint and curious little local shoppe.  It's not like at home. Or...wait....?

Found a friend on the bike path.

A beautiful bike path nearby...

Janet said she would kill me if I put this on the web

So, if anything befalls me, you know who to blame...

Cranwell Resort, Lenox, MA

Our little performing space.

First day in Pittsfield

...
Well, at least it's cooler...

I think my video capability is back!

I can't believe I'm missing Perth Amboy...

An old friend...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM!

Our Intellectual Era

Out my window, San Antonio

On the left is the Alamodome, where daily the football Cowboys grunt through their martial pursuits; and on the?right, I dunno what the hell that is...

More San Antone....

Riverwalk by day; the Alamo; and, yes, the Dallas Cowboys are resident in our hotel during training camp. Boo!

The Actual San Antonio

...a statue of him, at any rate.

San Antonio, TX

Downtown: the Riverwalk...

Bike shop

Ok, I never want hear about having skinny legs ever again.

Arlington, VA

Papillon cycle: new tires for my trip up north.

Late Birthday Gift!

I forgot to mention that when I last saw TW, he presented me with the LP of Herb Alpert's 'Whipped Cream (and other delights)'.  An old personal favorite? Yes. An album I am intimately familiar with? Indeed. An album that --in my youth-- had a formative effect on my dawning musical sensibilities? Indubitably.

But that's not why he gave it to me. He told me he was giving me a picture of the girl that both he and I went steady with for a couple of years. I was puzzled....then he gave me this.

He's right!

Backstage at the Reagan

With Felicia, Dr. Marc, Elaina, and Brian.

Meat Pies II

Much better: your corn starch tip made the consistency perfect. Need to jazz up the flavor now.

Also, used a campfire cooking device to form the pies and they came out great; less popover looking, more rounded. Yum! Thanks, Mom!