July 28, 2003 Ticking away Better take a picture. It got weird quite some time ago, and it's still weird, but it's going by like a bat-crazy glue-sniffing Ford outa Hell. Went and popped my name, duke's, some friends' names into the google image search engine and this little baby surfaced. Gotta love it. A photo of Harrod Blank shooting outa Duke's passenger window at freeway speed and friend Philo Northrup snapped the snapper. I highly recommend the google image search. Great fun. Under my name, I came up Number #1, closely followed by this archer dude, my brother in name. Rick, if you're reading this, we gotta get together for some drunken arching some night. We'll get the Celestial Sluts to join us upstairs in Duke, naked of course, while a dwarf unick takes us on a languid cruise along Pacific Lumber logging roads in the old growth redwood groves up by Garberville. Naturally, we'll all have eaten a fistful of silicybin at the last gas stop and, now thoroughly twisted and in-tune with Gaia the Earth Mother, we'll all copulate madly and take turns shooting loggers out of treetops and shouting "Die you flapjack drone, you paper-towel abusing pawn of evil Lord Horowitz!" And Duke, sweet bulbous sea-worthy schooner Duke will loll gently to and fro, sliding in soft slalom ballet through the forest and rocking, swaying like a treetop in the wind. And Gollum will be there, darting from tree-trunk to tree-trunk amid the brilliant green ferns and the neon yellow banana slugs, always just out of sight, now a forest friend, now a fright in the night as he schizoid switches, sucking in all that rich earthy air that is the divine perfume of passing on, of death and decay and all the new life that springs from that spongy forest grave that is the Earth. Ah, what fun!! And who knows, maybe Glover will join us on our forest romp. Crispin, that gothic narrow-nosed superfreak once-McFly, now Willard, forever weird a man after my own heart. And just last week signing autographs in the city he signed a headshot for me, and later upon closer inspection I saw, with some disbelief, this number scrawled all snarly within his craggy script: 310-391-4154 and I thought, What celebrity in his right mind would give out his number to.. just anyone? And then a flash of long-lost ego, Well, maybe I'm different. Maybe I'm not just anyone? and Crispin in his Willard Wisdom wealized this? But no. I called the number and got a recording informing me of Glover's latest, limited edition book, get yours today! Hell, I just might buy it. Treat myself. Me, Mr. Consumer Black Hole, never buys anything, selling every last personal belonging on eBay so's I can eat another impoverished-poet day, so's I can rattle off a few more query letters and spill some more stamp seed on the Big New York Literary Agent Floor of Dead Dreams. What the hell. Crispin Glover appears to be a twisted fuck. I'll give up meat next month, save up the spare change drippings from Duke's donation can and splurge on a fellow writer's cranial concoctions. Live a little. Sniff more glue! I gotta do something for myself. Alice is gone, over me she was in a New York minute and Zang! Down the rabbit hole and away and yes she will be missed. But a hooka-smoking Crystal-pillar and other beloved beat poet family from New Orleans dropped in for a visit and put a little wild back in our idyll desiccated pine forest lives. Swami, ever the sage and open-armed, big-hearted host said Hell Yeah and so the Stocks did come. And good it was to see Jules and Chris and Devon and Crystal and Daphne, my Big Easy brothers and sisters that dun made my bad break bearable with beads and bourbon and barbecues and love last year, Mardi Gras 2002 when I started this whole rant thang to keep from crying over spilled Karen and Matilda dying and all the safety and warmth I'd grown accustomed to vanishing in the wake of attempted suicide and the never-in-sober-hours spoken imperative that it was over, that it was over and don't believe me when I tell you otherwise in the morning mourning. And Swami wants to build Mardi Gras floats and Jules says come on down, so hot damn howdy! we might just be back in NOLA before Christmas. And though my trapeze artist net is as yet anything but safe again, we are on our way. With special thanks to Bruce the Swami who has taken me on as Writer in Residence here at Music House Studio. With his generosity and sanity and good company I am finding my footing again. And to prove it, just finished a new 50 page poetry chapbook! And I'm still doing this, this ranting thing. Hit that Paypal button and I'll send you the book. It's a beauty. Bukowski would be proud. Send homemade cookies, Kinkos copy cards, klonipin, Trader Joes gift certificates, chicory coffee, licorice, Swedish fish, and leftover vicodan from your dentist to: Rick McK, POB 82, Idyllwild, CA 92549. -RSM the Duke of Arrows for the Ancients RANTS! Write Me! ©2003 Rick McKinney ALL RIGHTS RESERVED