Another Sunday

- October 07, 2018

I awoke in the cat's bedroom last night, upstairs and next to the good bedroom. The good bedroom is not that great for sleeping, it overlooks the intersection of two well traveled streets and has several large windows. This makes for early rising, anathema to me. Currently it is empty except for a few dead bugs and some books. Most of the house is now empty, my parents have moved out and I am there until I can get my house in Woodsboro electrified.

The cat's bedroom is the middle upstairs bedroom, still equipped with a double bed, bookshelves, and piles of cloth. Meemee likes to sleep there and there is a window overlooking the golf course that she watches the lizards from, a look of wonder on her murderous face. I adore cats, both as pets and as a liaison to the powers of darkness. Evil against evil. I refer, of course, to Pazuzu.

Jamie Hewlett, artist.

The Gorillaz version of Pazuzu, more in keeping with my obsession with cartooning than any still from The Exorcist, particularly those with Max von Sydow in the forground, a depressing combination.

See what I mean?

I made my way downstairs and breakfasted off of effervescent cold tablets and headache powders, 4 of them. Then I fed both cats and made coffee. I no longer have a morning paper to read, they are a waste of money and trees so I turned on the radio and looked out the window for a time. Jinjur, my 17 year old senior kitty, waited for me to give her treats. I did so and after eating them she ran for her guitar cave so that Meemee would not beat on her. Today she made it. Jinjur was named after the militant general in The Marvelous Land of Oz.

"Because the Emerald City has been ruled by men long enough, for one reason," said the girl.
"Moreover, the City glitters with beautiful gems, which might far better be used for rings, bracelets and necklaces; and there is enough money in the King's treasury to buy every girl in our Army a dozen new gowns. So we intend to conquer the City and run the government to suit ourselves."

Drawing by John Neill.

Yesterday Judge Kavanaugh was confirmed and his detractors, the entire other half of America, was talking just like this. I only mention this in passing. I trust no one.

In the last 3 months I have not eaten any bacon, sausage, pork, cake, fried anything except a late night hamburger frenzy that left me heartbroken and plump with oils. I ate nothing this morning and had more coffee, washed down with tobacco smoke. If I had access to pharmaceutical speed I would be taking that. The point of all this is that I am getting closer to my goal of 175 lbs, my fighting weight. In the Corps I weighed no more than 150 and I ate and ate and ate, drank gallons of beer and ate even more. However, this sort of thing will catch up to you.

The town I live in, Rockport Texas, is a huge fucking snooze. In my "drawings" I have started calling it 'scapeville, short for Escapeville. Everyone who had a pleasant vacation memory wants to escape to the coast, those of us who live here want to escape from the coast. There is nothing here but salt water, fish, and ambulatory old wealthy people playing golf and tottering around the grocery aisles in defiance of all laws of survival. Oh, there are plenty of poor old people here also, the salt, fish, and diesel miasma seems to have an effect on aging, just as the One Ring does to Bilbo. Having no children and having not gone to war I have worn out my biological welcome. Nature demands the male either take or give life, preferably both. All society abhors the rogue.

Rogue Male:

A conventionally masculine man who is a cold-hearted loner.

Where I first heard the term. When I was twenty I thought this the greatest book ever and just wonderfully good advice. That, of course, was folly. Here is the really greatest book ever, and just as profound as it can get-

"The abattoir was being used as a prison because the prison had become an abattoir".

You don't often find a writer who can turn a phrase like that. Oh, and this excellent dust jacket illustration has nothing, zero, to do with the story. Both of these books were written in 1938 by very good and successful authors who never topped their first book. There is a scene in Dimitrios where the foolish writer Latimer, who is trying to trace the career of a dead criminal he saw in an Istanbul morgue, has been introduced to a master spy who he has been told can help him. When asked what his motives were he says only curiosity, and that he can think of no reason why a certain third party is interested. The spy asked him why the other man was interested, and Latimer replies that he he has no explanation, it was only when he mentioned that he saw the body of Dimitrios in Istanbul the the other became excited. The spy stares at him, offers him a drink, and doubles up with laughter. Latimer has no idea why.

This is the laughter of Hell, and no writer has ever put it better.

Well, this is a standard morning for me. I have nothing to say but I did so anyway. Normally I would drive and get a Starbucks but the nearest one is 15 miles away in Portland and I am low on cash, again. As an Austin native I regard this in the manner that a Roman would who had been exiled to Hadrian's Wall.