“Humanity is an ongoing parade of relentless motherfuckers.” — Dirty Howie

Years ago, back when I was still married to my second wife, we entered a video/movie memorabilia store at Hulen Mall to check out their shit. We found ourselves near the back of the place when I noticed a guy performing karate moves in front of the Kung Fu section. I nudged Crista’s shoulder and whispered to her, “Look at that nut over there.” She stealthfully turned her head in his direction right as he twisted from one karate stance into another. Crista looked back at me and said, in a low voice, “Oh, my God.” To make matters even more unnerving, perplexing and outright fictional — even though it was true and happening right before our eyes — this maniac looked like, and was dressed up as, your stereotypical serial killer. He was white and in his early 30s. Short. Maybe 5-foot-7, at the most. Acne scarred face. We’re talking craters. Aviator sunglasses obscuring his more than likely devilishly intense blue eyes. Tight fitting, worn-in black leather jacket. Think ’60s biker movies. Black, heavy duty boots. He was a movie character inside a movie store. The scene couldn’t have been more ironic. His alarming antics continued. I told Crista we needed to get a closer look at this freak. “Let’s go down the aisle next to his and act like we’re checking out the Disney movies.” In between 101 DALMATIONS and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST we watched in disbelief and wonder as the Bruce Lee wannabe again moved slowly, yet expertly, from one kung fu attacking position to the next, as he stood in front of Jeff Speakman, Don “The Dragon” Wilson, David Carradine, Sonny Chiba, Cynthia Rothrock and Sammo Hung videos. “Jesus,” I said almost silently to Crista. “Doesn’t this dude realize he’s acting very strangely in a public place?” “Obviously not.” I kept expecting him to start quoting TAXI DRIVER’s Travis Bickle. “You talkin’ ta me? You must be talkin’ ta me because there ain’t no one else around here for you to talk to but me. So, ya talkin’ ta me?” But all he did was continue to make like a Ninja mime. Human beings are my favorite animal to watch and this guy was, at that moment, the perfect example. I tell my friend Bryan that watching the human zoo is better than watching anything on t.v., especially so-called ‘reality’ shows. Bryan’s rode the city bus for a good 15 years now so he knows exactly what I’m talking about. He sees the wretched, the obtuse, the refuse and more each time he walks onto a modern day slave ship. And, after observing people all my life, this is how I sum them all up, “Humanity is an ongoing parade of relentless motherfuckers, like your co-workers and the Iraqi looters.” The insane street population of America, in fact, will yell at you, “JESUS LOVES YOU, YOU SON OF A BITCH!” The insane street population have wonderful conversations with all the other people living inside their chemically imbalanced heads. You can hear these intense gabfests at most any downtown street corner, post office lobby, bus stop or even inside fast food joints. The insane street population walk the landscape of the United States like the zombies who walked the earth in George Romero’s classic horror B-movie movie NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. You’ve probably passed by a couple of these zanies on your way to wherever you’re going, to work, the grocery store, etc. You’ll probably see them again on your way back home. You see them on the street 24-7-365 doing their crazy as a loon thing. Then you suddenly realize they’re more visible than the police are. Now that’s some fucking reality for you. While Jane Goodall went to the rain forest to study up on gorillas, your humble correspondent has traversed the concrete jungle of urban America to study up on humanity. Every city, town and village has their share of “not all there” citizens. Here in Fort Worth, Texas, we got plenty of the freaked out infamous. And you can bet your ass I’ve tracked them, like some motherfucker trying to find Bigfoot, and documented their movements and lifestyles. For starters, there’s Wolf Boy (a.k.a. Beehive, The Walking Dude, Trash Can Charlie). I first saw him in 1980. He keeps to the west side of town, continuously walking up and down Camp Bowie Boulevard, University Drive, Montgomery Street, Hulen Street and West Vickery Boulevard. He looks a lot like the psycho killer Charles Manson. If Manson’s got a long lost twin brother Wolf Boy is him. They’ve got the same build. The same facial features. Same whacky hair style. Just put an “X” in the middle of Wolf Boy’s forehead and you’d have a clone. The resemblance is quite uncanny. Just look at the picture here I took of him a few years ago while he was walking down Magnolia Street picking through trash bags left on the sidewalk. He found himself a Coke to drink. If you look at the picture closely you can see the top of the plastic bottle he confiscated. God damn looter. The last time I spotted Wolf Boy was a couple of months ago. As usual, he was walking hurriedly to wherever the fuck it is he walks to. I’ve honked at him and rolled down my car window and asked him questions but at no time has he ever reacted to anything I’ve done to get a reaction out of him. I think he might have turned his head to get a look at the jerk (me) taunting him but nothing ever more than that.

Some people call him ‘Beehive’ because, when his hair is really messed up and grimy like a car engine, it rises HIGH above his skull and stays stuck there (apparently, fleas, mosquitoes and maggots make good hair gel) like Marge in The Simpson’s And, of course, ‘The Walking Dude’ moniker comes from this guy’s non-stop, self-propelled motoring. A few years ago, as he wallowed in all of his disgusting glory — soiled pants, uncombed, matted hair, insect-riddled beard, stained shirt and psychotic stare — I eyed him freaking out smack dab in the middle of West Vickery near the Charter Communications cable t.v. company building. I had to slow down and veer my car to the right to keep from hitting him. I wasn’t about to take out one of Fort Worth’s greatest treasures. He was standing there waving his arms all over the place. I was pretty sure he wasn’t trying to hitch a ride. His mouth was enthusiastically opening and shutting. He was shouting at each car that whizzed by him. As I went by I read his lips. He was screaming, “YOU’RE CHOKING ME!! YOU’RE CHOKING ME!!” I’ve heard stories that Wolf Boy is from a wealthy family. At least that’s the rumor. Occasionally, the cops, or even a limo hired by the family, will pick him up and take him to the county nut house at John Peter Smith Hospital where they clean him up. But he always ends up back on the street where he apparently belongs, again falling into disrepair due to his rough and tumble outdoor existence. I’d like to stop and talk to him but he always seems in such a hurry to get somewhere. Unlike most insane street people, who rest in the shade when they can find some, Wolf Boy never stops motoring. It’s always the March Of Dimes for him. Every time I see Wolf Boy I suddenly feel at ease among all the hustle and bustle knowing there’s at least one soul on the planet who is absolutely the almost exact embodiment of Jesus Christ, a freak wandering around the countryside like he’s lost and without friends but who is actually more powerful — in body odor, at least — than the rest of us combined. Then there’s Old Woman (see pic). She and her grocery cart were a long time site on Berry Street between University Drive and Hemphill Street. She must have been 70-plus years old with bright white hair. She always wore coats. Coats over coats, even during the middle of the summer. One time I saw her at a Jack In The Box sitting by herself in a corner booth. Her belongings — rags and clothes she carried with her everywhere — were in a neat pile outside the fast food joint’s door. As I ordered a Philly Cheese steak sandwich, I overheard her talking to herself. But, between the intercom’s country music and the workers’ banter, I couldn’t understand a word she was saying. Even if I could have listened to her clearly, I probably wouldn’t have made sense out of any of it. As you might have noticed yourself while encountering one of these wackos, all they do is mumble incoherently. I’m sure I didn’t miss any monumental statements full of powerful profundity. Whereas Wolf Boy gets around town on is own two stinking filthy feet, another Fort Worth street freak moves his crazy ass to and fro via peddling a 10-speed bicycle. Introducing, the loony as a loon, Bike Man. He don’t run. He don’t fly. He rides, man. He takes his bicycle all over southwest Fort Worth, sticking mostly to Hulen Street and South Loop 820. Me and Bryan encountered him one day inside a thrift store on McCart Avenue. He left his bike outside and came into the store and grabbed a shopping cart and started riding it through the aisles. We walked over to the register and asked the checkout clerk about him. “He’s not stupid,” she said. “He knows what’s going on. I hope he doesn’t drive a car because he’s crazy.” Just then the guy ran the cart he had hard into the back of the other carts. The crashing of metal on metal made everyone in the store look at him. Before walking out of the store, he said something that made no sense. “Genius spelled backwards is suineg!” Me and Bryan followed him outside to get pictures. Then he noticed us watching him and immediately said something to try to throw us off. “Caucasian. Is that what Vanilla Ice is?” Then he got onto his bike and took off. We got into my car and followed him up the exit ramp leading to the freeway. I pulled up right next to him and Bryan rolled down his window snapped the shot of him you see here at left. We both talked to him but he never looked at us or acknowledged our existence. “He all of a sudden became a frozen statue,” Bryan remarked. The next time we spotted him he was making like Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France down Hulen Street, near Borders Books & Music. Apparently, he had visited a Taco Bell earlier in the day to get a bite to eat because on the top of his ball cap he had one of those ‘Yo quiero Taco Bell’ chihuahua puppet dogs strapped onto it. He was also wearing headphones — even though he didn’t have a CD player/radio to hook them up to. I told Bryan, “Those headphones probably make it easier for him to hear the voices in his head.” He was, as all the mentally fucked up are, lost in his own little weird world. We drove off and left him to it. Since I do a lot of city driving I see these weirdos quite often. Just the other day, at lunchtime near downtown’s Fire Station No. 1 on Texas Street, I saw a bum suddenly stop walking down the sidewalk and drop to his knees. He started praying. With his hands clasped together and his head bowed, he shouted, as loud as hell, “YOU ARE SACRED, JESUS!!” I rolled down my car’s window and yelled at him, “BLAH! BLAH! BLAH!” I’ve given some of these street cancers my pocket change, usually whenever I go into a 7-Eleven, which is where a lot of them like to hang out and scare off little old ladies and white people. They’ll stand outside the 7-Eleven’s and go, “Yo, man, u gots a quota eye cane bar-rah?” “Sure, motherfucker! In fact, I’ll buy your monkey ass a six-pack of Schlitz if you let me interview you and take your picture.” “Who want my picture?” “A fellow fuck up like me.” “O-tay. Sense u put it dat ways.” The normals look at these borderline people and think, “Why are they so fucked up?” It’s pretty easy to explain, really. Lose your job and self worth. Have your family desert you. Suffer a disabling closed-head brain injury. Do drugs and alter the constitution of your biological makeup. Be born insane. Those are just some of ways to end up on the street. I saw this disgusting fruitcake — we’ll politely call him ‘All Nasty ‘N Shit’ — strolling slowly down Pennsylvania Avenue near the hospital district one bright day. I happened to be doing some business at an Omni American federal credit union office and as I drove off I spotted this ol’ dirty bastard just one block north of Trimble Technical High School. My, oh, my, I thought. Parents really don’t know how much danger their children are in in the blackboard jungle. It was a super hot summer day in Texas and this jangled-up-in-the-head joker had himself all covered up from head-to-toe in heavy cotton shirts, undercoats and a filthy old blanket drapped over his thick, grungy, grey-speckled afro. His facial hair was in no better shape. To get pictures of this amazing marvel I slowed my car down and pulled over to the sidewalk and grabbed my trusty 35mm camera from under my car seat. I kept it there at all times because you just never knew when a Kodak moment was gonna come up from behind your ass and catch you by surprise.
I quickly took a couple of snapshots and, before driving off, I told the guy, “Hey, man. You look like you need some help. Since I don’t have a cell phone you’ll have to call 9-1-1 yourself. Have a nice day.” His tennis shoes (see pic) were both seeing separation from his arches back to his heel. I bet a lot of pebbles and little rocks plopped onto those open souls and when his foot went back down — OUCH! — he clenches in sharp, piercing shards of atomic bomb-like pain. It goes up his foot and into his ankle and passes there on its way up to his knee joint. His knee, being attacked by the burning nerve damage, buckles. He falls and is down for the count. Oh, the fucking inhumanity! Crista, who got a psychology degree from Texas Christian University, spent six months at the Homeless Outreach Day Haven on El Paso Street (a couple of blocks off of East Lancaster in the middle of the city’s hardcore homeless district) as an intern. While there, she observed and worked directly with all sorts of lunatics and crazies. The Day Haven, Crista told me, is a place for the mentally ill homeless to stay during the day, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., and get medical treatment, their clothes washed, take showers and watch t.v. In other words, to keep them off the street and away from assholes like me who take their pictures and write about them on the Internet. She saw a whole bunch of messed up humans there and came to know a slew of them on a first name basis. Tommy, she said, was a 30-year-old schizophrenic black man. “He always made up stories about playing for teams in the NBA. He has very beautiful eyes and wore a torn up winter jacket everyday and carried around a big duffel bag. He used to draw these real intricate pictures with numbers and maps of the constellations and was always carrying a bible.” “Maybe,” I told her, “he could play basketball for the Mars All-Stars.” She said Billy, a white guy in his mid-30s, was sentenced to a life on the streets after being involved in a terrible car accident that left his speech all fucked up. “The only words he could say clearly were ‘Hell, yeah’, ‘Fuck’ and ‘Wow.’ He was a lot like Crackhead Bob on The Howard Stern Show. He communicated by drawing pictures. He’d draw a car wreck and a wheelchair. I think his wife took all the insurance money and left him with nothing. He’d yell at me when I’d light a cigarette. He didn’t like me smoking.” I told Crista, “He’s an ‘anti-smoking’ homeless dude? Jesus Christ, what in the fuck is the world coming to when the homeless are into politically correct bullshit just like soccer moms?” The funniest one, Crista said, was a 60-something black woman named Evelyn. “She was obviously a schizophrenic but she could look anyone straight in the eye and say, ‘I own this place. I’m your supervisor.’ One time the cops came to the Day Haven for some reason and she started talking to them. She was telling them, ‘Yeah, I run this place and there was a disturbance. I have it all taken care of. Don’t worry about it.’ The cops believed she was really in charge of the place because she dressed pretty normal and was an attractive woman. They were about to leave when one of the staff members caught up to them and said, ‘Don’t listen to her. She’s one of them.’ Sometimes she’d make you call her ‘Your Majesty.’” I told Crista that Evelyn had missed her calling. “If she’d gone to Hollywood instead of the Day Haven she’d probably have won an Oscar by now.” Then there was Ernestine, a 50-something black woman with a big afro and several missing teeth. “She’d accuse all of the women of being lesbians,” Crista said. “One time she peed her pants and my supervisor, Michelle, told me to help her change her pants. But I told her I wouldn’t do that.” Oh, the incontinence! A paranoid schizophrenic religious freak, Joe Paul Me, a white guy in his 20s with a shaved head, would sit at the Day Haven screaming at the top of his lungs, Crista said. “He’d shout out, ‘FORGIVE ME, GOD! I’M SORRY FOR ALL MY SINS!’ He would just yell this over and over again and you couldn’t get him to stop. Everybody would get pissed at him because they couldn’t watch t.v. with him going on like that.” “What was he doing?” I asked Crista. “His Jimmy Swaggart impression? ‘Forgive me, Lord, for I have sinned! Boo hoo hoo.’ What an asshole, making people miss their t.v. shows so he can confess his sins. Fuckin’ retard. Go to church for that shit, motherfucker.” As for these people’s low life existences, Crista opined, “It’s not a bad life. These people have no responsibilities and absolute freedom. If you’re one of them you can get wasted everyday and never lose your job. Plus, they could never assimilate into a mainstream, 8-to-5 lifestyle. They’re too busy drinking. It’s not that they want to live that way. They’re on the streets because their families can’t afford 1-800-Charter. But they are comfortable.” Crista’s observation reminded me of what the bum-like character, Henry Chinaski, complained about in Charles Bukowski’s 1987 autobiographical film, BARFLY. “This is a world where everybody’s gotta do something,” laments Chinaski while drinking a scotch and water in a crummy bar. “Y’know, somebody laid down this rule that everybody’s gotta do something, they gotta be something. You know, a dentist, a glider pilot, a narc, a janitor, a preacher, all that. Sometimes I just get tired of thinking of all the things that I don’t wanna do. All the things that I don’t wanna be. Places I don’t wanna go, like India, like getting my teeth cleaned. Save the whale, all that. I don’t understand it.” I imagine a lot of the whacky homeless feel the same way Chinaski does. Since they don’t fit in with the mainstream why should they be like the mainstream, getting overpriced educations so that they can land a degrading job where their boss treats them like a piece of shit? Why should they follow the rest of the sheep instead of their own instincts? The wackos don’t want to put up with people, bosses or the government, and all the rules and regulations and codes and laws you gotta follow just to satisfy those motherfuckers and keep them out of your business. It’s a life that sucks, sure, but in their chemically mixed up state of mind the hardships are a comfort to them. It’s where they’re supposed to be and they accept it gladly. It is their own imaginary world, their own matrix, if you will. A world where they can find a warped happiness. I’ve never heard of a street person complaining about life on the street. So I’m assuming it must not bother them that that’s where they’ve ended up for whatever reason. Their place in that world is secure as long as they avoid the rest of the human race (i.e., any normals). That’s why you see them talking to only themselves on street corners and at bus stops. If they spoke their nonsense to a normal it would break the code of silence to the world outside of theirs. A slip up like that could get them banished from the whacko world they inhabit. And they wouldn’t want that and neither would we. The Crazy Lady of Granbury Road, before someone got sick of her angry antics and did a drive-by shooting on her mean ass, used to sit on the top of her backyard fence, which faced the four-lane road, and shout obscenities at every passing car. She did this because, as she told Mark Lowry, formerly of the FW WEEKLY, she was trying to alert folks to all the “evil doings” going on across the street at steel manufacturer Texas Industries. She claimed T.I. was setting demons on her and her house. She told Lowry that “planes are dropping demons into my yard and devil worshipers in city vehicles are making loud noises as they drive through my neighborhood.” She told Lowry she heard voices and groans coming from her walls. In response to this attack of evil, the 61-year-old woman, who is a native of Athens, Greece, put signs up on her fence with lots of religious icons and biblical sayings. Lowry reported that “she keeps the ‘demons’ distracted by playing music and putting things like rocking chairs, Pink Panthers and Santa Clauses on her roof.” Soon thereafter interested passersby started slowly driving by her house (the front of it faces Winfield Avenue) with the “occupants pointing and laughing and turning around and doing it again.” Agnes Latrace (her real name) calls these curious folks “devil worshipers.” In fact, a co-worker of mine, who takes Granbury Road to work, said Agnes “flipped everybody the bird.” One of the times I was driving down Granbury Road she was out there sitting on top of her fence with a video camera. She was filming all the cars passing by. As I drove past I flipped her off and yelled out, “Take a picture of that you crazy bitch!” She flipped me off right back. One thing you gotta love about her is her spirit, as fucked up as it may be. Crista and I have driven by her house to take pictures (see one of her religious signs here) of one of Fort Worth’s most infamous citizens, right up there with Lee Harvey Oswald, Machine Gun Kelly, Bonnie & Clyde, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and their Hole In The Wall Gang, among others. Kids in the neighborhood, she told Lowry, throw rocks, eggs, water balloons, bottles and firecrackers at her and her house. The cops keep a close eye on her. Fort Worth police officer Matt Welch told Lowry, “She has done some pretty eccentric things. One day she was vacuuming her roof.” Agnes claims she’s perfectly sane. She told Lowry, “They say I’m crazy. But who are ‘they’? Do ‘they’ have a doctor’s degree? Now, tell me, who is the one who’s crazy?” Well, Agnes, you’re crazy, you stupid nutty bee-yaaaatch. Me and Crista, after getting bored with Mr. Kung Fu Fighting since he wasn’t going to apparently do anything more maniacal than what he was already doing, left the psychopath to himself and walked over to The movie rental place’s cash register where I handed the checkout clerk our rental choice. “ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST, eh? That’s a good choice.” “Dude, you don’t know the half of it.”

Ages ago Man became the acting supervisor over planet Earth for God — He had other worlds to create — and that’s the day when Man’s worst came out, all mad hungry with unlimited power and everlasting hate, an arrogant, dirty beast running amok, testosterone-fuelled and ready to stick his dick into anything and everything he came upon. Man, after all his strutting and thrusting, engaged his mind’s kill switch and started mutilating, starving, smashing, destroying, gassing, polluting, raping and pillaging the masses worldwide. He obliterated an enormous multitude of the obvious for crowd control purposes: the deviants, the poor, the forgotten, the indigent, the ill, the benign, the putrid, the crippled, the drinkers, the users, the abusers, the different and indifferent, the wise and wisest, the best and the brightest, the liberated and, most of all, the writers, the artists, the intrigued, the interested, the thinking and, very, very rarely, the ones who really deserved it. When, and if, God ever decides to come back here and take over His job duties as supervisor over this world Man, the arrogant, nasty, and unapologetic bastard that he is, will surely be sitting in God’s office chair, feet on the desk, loosening the $500 designer tie, kept tight around his blood thirsty throat, so he can rub his neck to exorcise the tension built up from the endless, vacant, pitiful centuries where he led Mankind into a stinking pile of shit from which he cannot emerge. He’ll calmly flip off the waxed and polished to a bright shine $2000 Italian leather dress shoes and gently remove the $50 French silk socks and wiggle his toes before he tells God what a motherfucking great job he’s done in His absence and — with a big smile across his face since Man is an abhorrent, utterly useless prick who overvalues himself — promptly ask for a raise and an office with a better view.

I took photos of these two lizards — the pics merged together using PhotoFiltre — after getting home from work. I noticed them holding tight to a stair railing after getting out of my car and walking around the corner from my place to pick up my mail. Since they didn’t run off as soon as they saw me I went back to my car and grabbed my Nikon D50, which I carry to and from work everyday, and walked back to where the lizards were. I think the lizard on the left is a male and the one on the right is a female, as it seemed to me that they were getting to know each other before I showed up. Usually, these fast as hell fuckers run like crazy when they see me — hence, no pics have ever been taken of them by me and posted on Flickr. But those other lizards, and there’s all kinds living in and around my apartment complex, I’ve seen have been by themselves. So I’m thinking for these two love birds the thoughts of sex and fucking in their lizard minds kept them where they were, despite my presence. They patiently allowed my intrusion, somehow realizing I wasn’t a threat and merely an annoyance (especially with my flash going off) and stayed where they were to wait me out before they went on with their Love Potion No. 9 business.Let me tell you. That male lizard was one lucky bastard. He got laid and all I got was to show you a picture of the hot babe, with the long, lean tail that goes all the way up, he was about to get down with. Meanwhile, I go back up to my one bedroom apartment, process the photos of the horny lizards in Nikon’s Capture NX digital darkroom software, write this shit up, post some of it to my Flickr page, along with the above photo, and then spend the next 2 hours answering all the god damn e-mails I get, feed my cat, Bukey, clean out her cat box, and, while doing all of this, in the background I half-watch the Texas Rangers lose to the Seattle Mariners, 5-2, on opening day. Then, unlike the lucky lizards above, I go to bed alone (as always). I’m a negative creep malcontent who hates his life, drives a 17-year-old Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera with a non-working AC (trust me, not a good thing if you live in Texas like me), a guy no woman on the planet wants to be around (I’m quite fucking ugly in attitude and appearance), a 48-year old nice guy loser with a suicidal personality who despises his job and who hates being alive and wished he’d be killed by something, anything, as long as it happens soon so I won’t have to keep suffering with all this fucking shit.

God damn it, I thought, this is the usual negative shit I always write but what the hell else is there?

George Carlin was correct when he said, “Life is worth losing.”And it’s also correct when my buddy over at Meatlights39 writes, “Being a loner is a great gift except when it’s not.”

“Almost nothing makes any sense to me.”

— Gary Goude

I don’t think anything is supposed to make sense. It’s really all senseless considering this planet is headed, slowly, into a black hole, or, I should say, the Milky Way galaxy our planet is located in is being slowly sucked into one. And, maybe, long before that scenario plays itself out, the sun might boil us to a crisp. So no living creatures in this vast universe of unknown will ever know Man existed anyways, unless those space aliens are real and have been documenting us for centuries on end and have, on their planets, libraries full of shit found on Earth. So, to me, life is senseless, which is why we should just party and have fun and enjoy our short stay on Earth with drugs, booze and fucking. But, nooooooo, there’s this rule, and no one remembers what asshat made it up, that says you have to work a shit job to make barely enough money to house and feed yourself and live an existence that is worse than death itself.

Now, does that make any sense?

on DVD, at least. While looking at a friend’s videos on YouTube I saw a video for a DVD about Gypsy Lou Webb, who partnered with her husband, Jon, to publish a poetry mag called THE OUTSIDER in the ’60s while living in New Orleans’ French Quarter and, later, they put out a couple of books of poetry by Bukowski. Well, as I dug more into the info on this DVD I ended up discovering two new DVDs with Bukowski in them. Both are of readings he performed in front of wild, drunk audiences — one in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and the other in Redondo Beach, California.

I ordered both DVDs ($45 bucks total, including shipping) and got them in the mail within five days.

“I’ve come here from San Pedro to put Redondo Beach on the map,” Buk joked before starting his reading there.

I’ve watched THE LAST STRAW and will begin watching THERE’S GONNA BE A GOD DAMN RIOT IN HERE! soon.

In THE LAST STRAW, Bukowski’s last poetry reading, he drinks red wine, chain smokes tiny cigarettes from India called beedis, banters constantly with the audience, reads some really great poems, laughs about how he got in free while everyone else had to pay a $6 cover charge, claimed poetry readings weren’t much different than factory work, asked for some real hatred from the crowd, finally getting it when some guy yelled out “FUCK YOU!” and Buk responding with, “Now that’s more like it,” introduced his soon-to-be-wife Linda after reading the poem “Competition”, offered to sell a snot rag he’d just blown his nose into for $21.76, saying, “But I’m not gonna autograph it,” drank more red wine, fumbled around with his poems, all typed up on sheets of white paper, got annoyed with one guy and asked him to come up to the stage and duke it out and was plastered drunk by the end of it all, and finished with the poem, “Giving A Poetry Reading,” which was hilarious and a fitting end to his public performances.

If you’re a Bukhead like me then you’ve got to get your hands on these two DVDs. These films had been “lost” for a quarter century and now they’re here for us to enjoy, placing us right there when Buk read his shit and gave his audience of fans and detractors pure hell.

Hell, yeah.

Life is a big fucking boring waste of time if you’re a nobody.

You get a job, work it for almost half of your life in complete anonymity — that’s if you’re lucky enough and don’t get laid off, fired or outsourced — and then, when you’re too old to do the shit you’d have done when younger but couldn’t since you had to occupy that cubicle instead, you finally fucking retire and, yes, sit at home all day watching t.v. or surfin’ the Internet. The same fucking thing you do now, except for spending half your day at work.

I can’t say it any better than Charles Bukowski did about life in general for the 99.9 percent of us who’re regular and insignificant Joes and Janes. Here’s a few lines from his poem Born Into This:

We are
Born like this
Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes
Born into this
Walking and living through this
Dying because of this

And here’s some lines from Cause & Effect:

the best often die by their own hand
just to get away,
and those left behind
can never quite understand
why anybody
would ever want to
get away
from
them

I can’t wait for the Big Sleep. This living shit is wearing me out, especially after almost 48 years of it, and with over half of those l o n g years spent as a working stiff. I’m bored. I don’t sleep well. I’m going grey. I got a big, disgusting gut. The hair on the top of my head is thinning. And, if not for my right hand, I would never get laid.

If I ever won the lotto I’d probably just lay in bed all day saying “Fuck all y’all” over and over and do nothing, just like I do nothing now. But with money at least I wouldn’t have to worry about bills. I think that alone would relieve a lot of my drug-controlled stress (thank the Gods for Effexor XR) and teeth grinding at night. I could get laid, too, with that kinda cash. And get really good drugs, like coke and some of that pot grown from Amsterdam seeds, the kind that is an extremely light shade of green, contains no seeds, no stems and is very soft and fluffy, melting away quickly as you fire it up and suck on your bong.

Then, and only then, would life be worth living.

Right now, however, if a car or truck runs me over and I’m deader than a doornail I’d be very happy ’cause my life sucks, has sucked, never didn’t suck and probably will continue to suck. So suck on it, mothersuckers.

A friend of mine, who just retired after almost 30 years at the same god damn job site, wrote me this e-mail the other day, “I am now a non-productive, useless drunk old fuck on a pension. I got Jane (his cat) some little plastic balls with a bell inside each one. She loves to chase them all over the house then bring each one back to me and then I throw each one out for her to catch again and bring back to me. That’s about all I do now. Soon, I’ll die, probably in bed, and will be rotting away when someone from the county hauls away what is left of my carcass.”

But soon thereafter he wrote me again. This time he was full of life, the sort of full of life feeling you get when one is in horrid, non-stop pain, especially the kind that one could have avoided if one had been a little more careful instead of carefree. His e-mail:

“THE HABANERO PEPPER IS ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL THINGS ON EARTH. I’VE GOT A SINGLE PLANT GROWING OUT IN MY NOW DEFUNCT SQUASH GARDEN, AMONG THE DEAD PLANTS OF LAST SUMMER. THE LEAVES OF THE HABANERO BUSH I HAVE ARE SHINY AND GREEN AND HEALTHY AND THERE ARE PROBABLY 40 BRIGHT ORANGE HABANERO PEPPERS DANGLING FROM THE BUSH. I DECIDED TO MAKE UP SOME HOMEMADE CHILI THIS MORNING AND I CLIPPED TWO TINY ORANGE HABANERO PEPPERS FROM THE BRIGHT GREEN BUSH. WHILE I FRIED UP A POUND OF HAMBURGER I CHOPPED UP THE PEPPERS AND THREW THEM IN THE MIX WITH ONIONS, PINTO BEANS, TOMATOES, ETC. I DO NOT RECALL RUBBING MY EYES, LIPS, OR ESPECIALLY, MY BALLS. BUT RIGHT NOW, I WILL TELL YOU, MY EYES ARE TEARING UP, AND I AM NOT SAD, MY LIPS FEEL LIKE I PUT GASOLINE ON THEM AND SET THEM ON FIRE AND MY BALL SACK FEELS LIKE A COLONY OF ARMY ANTS HAVE TAKEN UP CAMP UPON IT. THE MORAL TO THIS TALE IS THIS: RESPECT THE HABANERO PEPPER, EVEN IF YOU ARE PISSED OFF AT MEXICANS INVADING US, NEVER TURN YOUR BACK ON A HABANERO PEPPER. EVER.”

I don’t know the point of this, what I’ve said here. I don’t really care. It’s just your typical bitching from a guy who knows the score of his one life and that score is a big fat ZERO.

Whilst out shopping at a Half-Price Books store in southwest Fort Worth several years ago I spotted this word graffiti on a back driveway loading dock door. I have to agree with the writer of these three short but powerful words.

I hate Christmas too. All it is is a corporate fund raiser. Remember, Jesus hated the money-changers.

I’m already sick of it. In fact, even more so, because I spent over two hours at work last week helping the ladies, who care about Christmas as if it’s more important than life itself, erect Christmas trees and dangle garland all around the rooms the trees were in and then I helped put up that other crap you hang on the fake, plastic, metal-based “tree”, the lights, angels, colored balls, shiny strings, etc., on two different floors. Now I have to spend everyday at work, until AFTER Christmas because they never take the shit down until AFTER New Year’s Day, looking at this shit.

And don’t to forget to buy shit for the annual Toys For Tots drives you’re e-mailed about at least three times a day at work unless you want to be looked upon worse than Mr. Scrooge. And, yes, I did that non-paid duty by buying poisonous Made In China (is anything made anywhere else?) hand-held games and Hot Wheels cars at the Dollar General store on Granbury Road and Hulen Street.

I’m such a Christmas grump I actually kept the coolest looking one of the Hot Wheels cars I purchased.

Yes, I will go to your so-called Hell but I will find people there like myself and we will have a blast for eternity while the rest of you fools swirl around in the clouds in white gowns forever listening to Perry Como and Johnny Mathis tunes.

Oh, I have a buddy who hates Christmas maybe more than I do. Read his X-mas sucks rant here: Meatlights 39

My doctor told me, after checking my prostate and confirming what I had told him that it was inflamed, “Are you having sex?”

I said, “Shit, man. What white guy at the age of 46 is having sex?”

He then asked me if I was masturbating. He asked because masturbation is necessary for good prostate health. In other words, a man has got to come to keep from getting prostate cancer, which kills more men over the age of 50 than any other cancer. Meaning, most men in their 50s aren’t masturbating and aren’t getting laid. See, ladies, you’re literally killing us by not letting us fuck you silly.

“Shit, what white guy at the age of 46 is masturbating? Besides, when I come home after working 10 fucking hours a day the only thing on my mind is alcohol and t-fucking-v. I’m trying to get my mind-numbing on not a hard-on, motherfucker.”

He prescribed me some medication for my inflamed prostate and asked me if I had a girlfriend.

“What white guy at the age of 46, with grey hairs spreading out all over his beer belly body, and the hair on top of his head dying, workin’ full-time and lives with a cat, has a motherfuckin’ girlfriend? If you could prescribe me a whore, and if my insurance covered it, I’d gladly go down to the nearest titty bar and fill that prescription, niggo. But, you see, doc, this is America. And America don’t like people having sex, especially our President, who thinks abstinence is the Holy Grail. So I am fucked beyond all reason, if you want my opinion on the matter.”
Here’s a pic of Lex Ann from when I went to Fred’s Texas Cafe a few weeks ago. She waitresses there and Quincy, the night manager, got her to put my “Fred Burger w/Cheese” women’s t-shirt on and model it.

She said she used to work at The Smoke Pit, a bar-b-q joint on Belknap Street east of downtown, where the waitresses all wear bikini tops and on Mondays and Tuesdays they wear bikini tops and bottoms. I asked her if she got propositioned while working there.

“All the time.”

I asked her what was one of the more outrageous offers.

“To go with this guy to Germany for $5,000. I asked him if that amount of money meant I had to fuck him and he said, ‘Well, yeah.’ Then I told him, ‘Only if you gave me enough drugs so I could stand to fuck your ugly ass and I really don’t think there’s enough drugs in the world for that to ever happen.’ He didn’t appreciate that. I gave it back to him. I’m kind of a smartass.”

I told her I liked that in a woman.

After taking the pics and bidding adieu, she hugged Fred’s kitchen manager and head cook, William Bryan Massey III, who was also leaving because his shift was over, and then, just as we’re about to walk out of the patio area and into the parking lot to our cars, she tells me, “I guess I’ll give you a hug, too.”

Oh, thanks, sweetie. Glad to get something back for giving you a free fucking t-shirt and having all the guys standing around gettin’ hard-ons lookin’ at you with it on.

God, women find me disgusting. Well, I am. But, who fucking cares anyway? I finally got a pic of a hot chick thanks to Quincy and his smooth talkin’ manner.

The subject of the t-shirt came up when I told Patrick, another Fred’s waiter, if he wanted one of the “Fred Burger w/Cheese” t-shirts since he saw me wearing mine and said how cool it looked. So I told him I’d give him one for free.

His face brightened up and he said, “Really? COOL!”

I said, “Yeah, man. Be right back with it.”

So, as me and Bryan walked out to my car to get Patrick his shirt, he mentioned the new waitress, Ms. Lex Ann, and that she was formerly working at The Smoke Pit, which Lex Ann referred to as, “basically a strip joint.” It is but they don’t do table dances. So I asked Bryan if he thought Lex Ann would want one of the small-sized women’s “Fred Burger w/Cheese” t-shirts.

His eyes got big and he said, “Hell, yeah!”

When we brought her the t-shirt Quincy was standing there, this was out on Fred’s patio, and he asked her if she’d model it for us guys.

“Sure,” she said and disappeared behind the patio area to change shirts.

And the rest, as they say, is herstory.

Lex Ann said some guy at Fred’s had asked her what her name was the other night and, after telling him what it was, he asked if that was her ’stage’ name. She asked him, “Is this a titty bar?”

“No.”

“Then it ain’t my stage name, honey.”

She’s got spark to her, a real sassy lassy.

Charles Bukowski described life as non-stop burning down of your soul. Down, he said, “to the nub.” Just like when you smoke a cigarette and finish it. Look at what’s left. That is your life. He said what drove a man mad wasn’t the big catastrophes in his life but the little tragedies, the shoelace breaking when you’re late for work, the boss on your ass for not selling enough used cars during the end-of-the-year close out, the blank faces on fellow humans you see during the day, the lack of humanity and compassion throughout the world, these things, all of them together, over much time, yes, Bukowski felt, that is what makes a man finally go insane.

In fact, Bukowski said, the reason the slasher flicks are so popular is because human beings identify with the the murderous killers, the psychos, the freaks, in those movies because they viewed them as being free from society’s grasp. They did whatever they wanted to do. If Freddy Krueger wanted to invade your dreams in order to kill you he could. If Leatherface wanted to slice you up with his Texas chainsaw he could. The audience saw that freedom of the beast and envied the beast and not the hero. The hero was there to keep things status quo. But the film’s viewers, secretly, wanted to also take out their frustrations and extract revenge in the same way Michael Myers did on Halloween night.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we ARE in hell. We don’t have to wait and see IF we’ll be going to hell because we’re already there. We’ve died and ended up here, on a toxic coated ball of dirt spinning endlessly in space, the dark chasm were nothing escapes, that is lit daily by a flaming mass of cosmic guts that shows its face to us everyday, like an eye, an eye of brilliant luminance, a shine so bright that it clearly let’s us all see the death and deceit and destruction all around us. Scientifically, if what my high school education taught me, that means we, quite literally, are being burned every day of our existence. Therefore, any questions of life after death have already been answered for you.

Just like me you went straight to Hell.

And Satan welcomes you to the party.

Dildo Misanthrope’s Motel Todd, my good buddy who comes over each Friday night to get FUCKED UP like only white trash mofos can and watch MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann’s COUNTDOWN and, later, HBO’s REAL TIME with Bill Maher skewer King George and his buffoons and just generally shoot the shit otherwise, is shown here in a pose I commissioned in order to test my new Nikon Speedlight SB-600 (it rocks) and my new Nikkor 24-120mm VR zoom lens (RULES!) using my Nikon D80 (ROCKS!).

Unfortunately, the camera and it’s accessories worked so well it recorded a flaw in Todd’s looks (click on the photo and hit ‘all sizes’).

After I e-mailed the photo of MT to my near 70-year-old mother she wrote back and said, “Todd needs to see a dentist. His teeth are YELLOW.”

Ouch.

Sorry, Todd.