Madness and Survival, the Continuing Drama

Relief Is Just a Swallow Away
I saw a swallow this morning. I kid you not. On the top of the water tank on the roof of the building I look across when I look out my bay window toward downtown Manhattan, the New York Harbor, and on a clear day all the way out into the pelagic of the mountainous Atlantic O'Cean, ridin' high in the ocean sky. A damn swallow. I lived in California once and I don't ever remember seeing any swallows, not even around Capistrano, and I went there once half-bombed on Burgermeisters, ah those little Burgies, wonderful moments in highway beer drinking, heading down the Ortega Highway to lovely Tijuana mia, for some fiesta tiempo--I was into bullfights in those days (remember, I once was a Hemingway idolizer) and the Tijuana Plaza del Toros was an old beauty from back in the revolutionary days of Mexico Viejo, which we learned to call it in Tejas because of New Mexico being just across a desert prairie from my hometown, closer to us than Mexico Viejo, which was 500 miles south of me then and existed mostly in my "one day I'll go to Mexico" dreams.

So I saw a swallow, OK, it could have been a damn swift, I'm not a birder--my only ornithological knowledge is of the Yardbird, a Bird of marvelous flights of virtuosic high grooves whose song swings a mood from down to the upward mobility of a crescendo-ing right through the big pearly gates of Utter Chaos, my fabulous Heaven. Chaos makes me special, don't you see? So I saw a swallow and then I got a phone call from a woman with a thick Chinese accent who informed me I was going to receive a lump-sum check in about two weeks I had no idea was coming my way. Praise the Lard, I hollered in my best glory hallelujah voice--Hot damn, I was saved from the pits of eating scrapple in the Apple and selling lead pencils and rotten Hunt's Point fruit at subway entrances, maybe doing my one-man band thing, too--BUT NOT NOW! I throw the BIRD at the hellhounds--and I love the NOW,`like old Mose Allison once sang, "I love the NOW I'm in and like the NOW I love," and don't worry Mose fans (are there any?), to me the NOW is LIFE, so Mose and I are singing about the same thing. It's the only time for me. Right NOW. Right this second. Boom, did you feel it? Time is so much fun when you're saved by a Messiah, mine was Timothy Leary, who was yours? Like this phone call I got from this Asian swallow this morning--she could have been a Moonie, or she could have been Timothy calling from outer space disguising his voice to sound Asian to throw off the CIA who were prone to capture Timothy, throw him in an open pen after they lobotomized him, like the US Army and then his own government did Ezra Pound in Italy after WWII, 'cause old crazy opiated Ez had called old aristocrat Roosevelt Jewsevelt, and ah come on, it's so silly NOW especially with Georgie Porgie, our "president," doing all the murderous inhuman shit he's doing in the name of Capitalist Greed and acting like one of Ez's poem characters. OK, so Ez was bullhorning all this shit over his Italian Mussolini Network radio show, otherwise a jolly show of many weird Ezraisms; so old Ez was a Fascist when it came to money, except he had a different kind of industry in mind in his ABCs of Economics. So, hell, I said, "Tim, is that you, you bastard, calling me on the Royal Telephone? How's the LSD in the Heavens? How's Baba Ram Dass? You seen Abbie around in space? Hell no, I don't know what happened to his kid. The kid and the wife turned American on us and disappeared into the woodwork, Timothy. Remember when you used to trash people's apartments--but you weren't involved in that East Village shit--though you were when you sent that LSD to Ginsberg"--and "trashing" was Abby and Mrs. Abby, wadding up paper, or emptying garbage cans, maybe full of wadded up Yippie manifestos, stuffing some schnook's apartment full of trash while you're high as hell on marijuana and red wine, compacted into the room by human force. And the schnook comes home, open his/her front door and...SHIT, they face a wall of packed trash. [I once knew a writer who was also an artist, hell, he did every damn thing, like me, quite a guy, but one of his best-loved pieces consisted of his collection of Sunday New York Times, about 10,000 of them, and I may not be exaggerating, spread out all over the floor of a gallery, pyramiding up from a solid floor of them to a sun temple-like strange place made out of those damn Sunday Times.]

So I swallow my pride and give a period of grace to that swallow, or maybe it was a swift, I saw this morning; that little split-tailed bugger brought me LUCK, a wheel spun and, YEP, "Youl numbel, Sil, you hit jack's pot." Praise the Lard, or did I shout that already? A happy wolf is still a dangerous wolf.

Have you ever seen a happy wolf, like right after wolfing down several pounds of young female elk meat. I mean they are like children, frisky, full o'pep*, dancing about in glee, maybe stopping and suddenly just F-ing ululating into the cold sweet sky.

* (the second-ever Daily Growler footnote): There used to be an old cereal called Pep. It sponsored a lot of good kid radio dramas back in the yesteryears, like "Hop Harrigan," "Captain Midnight," or "Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy" (white as a white sheet, I might add). "Full O'Pep" was their brand tagline on their packaging and as tags to their spots on the radio. I don't remember Pep being around for television.]

That's the kind of wolf I am today thanks to my sacred swallow, my Asian Savior--oh my God, what if I owe allegiance now to the Reverend Moon? I don't give a damn; I'm like Jerry Foolwell and "Doctor" Billy Graham-Cracker, I'll take your damn money I don't give a shit who you are. It's kinda like Pappy Bush's old Big Daddy and Prescott Bush's Big Daddy, too; they took money from Adolph Hitler; they didn't give a shit. Just think, a part of our "president's" family inheritance is money made off Adolph Hitler. They even made money off the construction of concentration camps! Isn't that amazing that they are now almost domitrix-like trying to rule the world Masochistically? Hey, torture's a form of sexual gratification to these human animal hybrids. Ask that Lyndie stupid dumb hillbilly girl soldier who took the rap for all the Rumsfeld-approved torture at Abu Ghraib and is doing time with her boyfriend who knocked her up while they were on duty in Iraq. That's amazing, too. But to hell with all of that; to hell with politicians; to hell with global warming; to hell with whichever movie stars commited adultery today; to hell with whatever murders happened; to hell with my rent going up in a few months; to hell with the government spying on me--go ahead--my privacy says, "Bring 'em on"; and to hell with POVERTY.

If Warren Buffett and his suck buddy Little Billy Gates can pool their fortunes into tax-free foundations then why can't I pool mine into something?--OK, Bill and Melinda (is she the luckiest woman to ever succeed?) want to end disease in the world--which is caca and anybody knows that who has ever hung around really rich folks for a long time. These foundations are set up so they can shovel a hell of a lot of money into them and it sits there making more money for them, same as the old junk bond scheme that Warren Buffett, that crooked bastard, made his billions off of, and in the meantime they only have to spend a modicum of it on ridding the world of disease--I read where it would only take about 11 billion bucks to give everybody in the world at least basic health care. See what I'm saying? Seeing Bill and Melinda amongst those flies-flying-around-their-heads African children, acting so sweet and goody-goody two shoes, gives me the willies. I know they're full of shit, but it works; I criticized Bill the other day and boy did I get chastised back..."Hey, he's trying to stop disease in the world, man, how can you talk bad about a man who's that benevolent, you bastard?"

It's also creepy to think that Bill, Melinda, and Warren could personally save the whole city of New Orleans out of their pocket change. Bill's concerned about those poor Africans; "Hey, Bill, how about your own country's Africans, you bastard?" Nope, folks, Warren and Bill are simply keeping you and me from grabbing their excessive wealth through taxes and fees and tariffs--like in the old days when Bill's and Warren's fortunes would have been subjected to a 90% income tax on everything they made over a certain amount, say 1 million bucks. That's why Bush baby wants to do away with estate taxes and keeps lowering the capital gains taxes. Shit yeah. You better believe the Bush Family has plenty of foundations and hidden money all over the globe, especially in Dubai, I'll betcha anything. Think about this: if you are head of a nonprofit organization, like Bill and Melinda's Foundation, you get charity breaks on your personal fortune, which is set up outside of the foundations, trust me; plus you can legally give yourself and Melinda a salary out of that foundation money--plus you can buy properties in the name of the foundation...need I go on? Remember, I put in several years at the "accounting" firm involved in the BCCI scandal a few years back--totally forgotten by the media now--and I've worked on white papers explaining to billionaires how they can beat taxes all over the world and set up limited partnerships and pool their fortunes into foundations--it's all to protect their fortunes and has nothing to do with their humanitarian bent, I don't give a shit how sincere these trolley dodgers appear to be. Bill Gates is a master actor; he's cool for a man who controls more wealth than half the nations of the world. Sure, he can act low keyed, like one of us, but that's a scam. Trust me, a man that rich ain't concerned one damn pile of shit about you and me and not even really about those poor suffering souls not only in Africa but all over the world including right down there in the Ninth Ward in New Orleans, Louisiana. Maybe we should give Bill and Melinda all those worthless FEMA trailers...those wealthy assholes could build most of the Ninth Ward people new houses, do abstract and paper work for them to help them save their properties or help them pay up their mortgages...do something of true altruistic value like that. But, oh no, not rich people; they don't think further out than their on ego dimensions. God, rich people just chill my ass. Bill Gates has too much F-ing power and now even more that he's hooked up with Warren Buffett, the Jimmy Buffett of finance. Two Dumbo human beings with that much power have got to gloat more over their own good deeds than they really care about their fellow human beings, especially those starving, diseased, and unfairly punished, horribly mistreated African children, African women (mothers), African fathers, African grandparents, the African land. Hell, men, women, and children are being routinely butchered with machettes and brutally beaten with baseball bats just sometimes out of suddenly wanting to kill a whole family who you've otherwise lived peacefully with for years--that's what's going on in some of those African countries Bill, Melinda, and Warren are going to curb diseases in--so you stop tuberculosis in Africa, you still haven't solved the main problem with Africa, the fact that it's having its wealth stolen right out from under it even as Bill and Melinda are overthere photo-opting with the kids with the flies flying perpetually around their heads. Did anybody ever think Bill sees all those Africans he's saving from diseases as potential Windows users. I'm sorry; that's so unphilantropic of me.

But then, F Bill and Warren, hell, I'm more powerful than they are this morning. Aha, relief was just a swallow away.

thegrowlingHAPPYwolf
for The Daily Growler

The Daily Growler Sports Extra With Marv Backbiter
Shit, I'm not even a soccer lover and I loved the games I saw today. Especially France and Spain. Whew, that was some good soccer. France convinced me. Where the hell were they earlier--tying those slob teams? I'm confused, but I can't wait for Germany and Argentina coming up--Fatherland vs. Das Bruderland (Argentina) (I make a WWII jest; Argentina having a Swastika doormat there for awhile--I mean some of the great old Nazi characters ended up in tangoing Argentina. Also they lost to Britain in the Falkland Island fiasco--though the Argentinian Air Force did sink a big Brit ship didn't it? So hot damn, New Germany versus the New Argentina--and let 'em go at it; I can't wait.

Spain's problem: they're just too little. Now those Portugal dudes were hefty boys. So are the French up close. The Germans, too. The Brasilians are big dudes, too; that Raynaldo, or whatever his name is, he's a big Shaq-looking brute. Soccer's a weird game. I know a lot about it but I don't understand some of it. Like I don't understand some of the faltos [remember, I watch my soccer on Telemundo, the Mexico channel]. Like poor Ghana. Jesus, every block or steal they tried to make they got whistled. Great games today though.

Mets lost to the unbeatable Red Sox tonight. I don't get it. Boston? They were 12-1 against the National League--in fact, the American League mostly beat the shit out of the National League in interleague play so far this year--St. Louis has lost 7 in a row to the American League. Minnesota is 11-1 against the National teams. Only Cleveland can't beat the National League teams. American League announcers are having a ball. They hate the National League because of the DH, even though these two-faced announcers talk a different game when they broadcast for National League teams. But then, you ain't an American if you ain't a hypocrite.

marvbackbiter
for The Daily Growler