Here's a damned lie

Sometimes, I get to a point where I say, Texino you should really put an end to some nonsense or other that has been bugging you because if you don't no one else will.  Well that's what brings me to Lagos Nigeria this evening.  Lagos as you may or may not know is the internet scam capitol of the world.  I'm not talking about the big prosperity hoaxes like the Dotson Project or the Omega Fund, no these are by and large the crazy letters you get where someone wants you to stand as next of kin in order for them to get their hands on some unclaimed cash some of which you will get.  People do fall for this and before they know it they have either given the scammer their banking info, so he can deposit their cash, but he has instead withdrawn their savings, or they have entered into an endless round of nickel and dime hold ups where this person or that official must be paid.  Either way, you will only loose.  No comes some stuff with a little more sophistication.  Take that document on the left.  Comes right from the IRS and says you have a refund of $147.59  so just click here and we will pop it right in the bank. OK?  We no it is not because they are asking you for debit information which means they (whoever they may be) may debit you account for how much they want (or you have)  Pretty slick, Huh?  Sort of.  It's the same thing you see with phony PayPal and other bogus sites.  They look real enough but you don't notice they direct you to some separate place where they harvest your identity information in an effort to clean out your accounts for you.  How do they do it?  Look so real?  Well, you can look at HTML source code right in your browser for one, plus there are programs that will allow you to copy websites and edit them for your own use.  That's what has been done here.  Just copy a standard IRS site with it's links and all and then add your own bit in there that says something about finding this refund.  Of course the real IRS would send you a letter and call you by name. Plus they would only respond to a refund from a tax return and not just come up with some number out of the blue.  Also the IRS rounds off to the nearest dollar amount and they know your SS# etc.  Still some poor Bosco out there who needs a buck forty seven is going to fall for this and that's why I'm risking my butt in Marly's temporal velocipede to get over here to Africa and put the brakes on this mess.  My plan?  Oh that.  Well, I have brought the Cannibals O' The Glen with me from Panama.  For those who may not recall, The CO'TG are a Scottish dinning society who were run off from Scotland for refusing  eat a ceremonial Haggis with England's Prince Philip  citing an ancient rule that "No Man will taste of The Haggis that The Haggis might best in a trial of wit."  Well  while the notoriously thick headed Prince was no stranger to smart aleck snubs, he vowed not to be bested by the likes of a stuffed sheep's gut, so while The Clan snickered into their single malts the Prince had The Haggis proclaimed "The Living Symbol of Highland Cuisine" and therefore it's ritual consumption became the highly illegal crime of Cannibalism.   This under publicized event was what brought former "Consumers" now "Cannibals" of The Glen in to our Panamanian precincts.  I must admit, however, that we actually thought they had come to the jungle to practice lunching on "Long Pig" and since we live and let alone down here it was a while before we got that bit sorted out.

Anyhow, the COTG have become an integral part of our happy hoedown society and I'm certain they will do yeoman duty over here. 

Now I don't suppose I can just go around Lagos with a small army of Scots (in full tilt kilt) shouting "alright you scammers meet me at the main train station and bring the money or we'll

eat you alive!"  Maybe, I could get Sam to start putting shipments of those big black pots through the portals.  You know leave pallets of them stacked all around town to show that we're looking to render down the situation as it were.  At least we are trying which is more than I can say for your secret polices.

This is Texino and I'll be back with some tips on revolutionary police work and possibly some recipes.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

A bit about magic

Sam Marly here.  I've got Bob doing  bit of labor in the Bodega and that's working out OK so long as he doesn't start talking his "Ja Love" rap.  We don't get many outsiders down the alley in the day light but it would not do to have the word go out to Jump Street that Bob Marly was pouring coffee down here. 

 The magic that keeps us on the rails around here is good old stuff from Old Africa.  Nevertheless, magic is like other forms of medicine; it works by directing (tricking) the brain down one of the many pathways of possibility, but its outcome ultimately lies within a solid matrix of belief.  It's like the roadbed of rocks and gravel needed to keep our metaphorical rails in place.  If you can find a way to comfortably balance that real/unreal ideal then the magic train of thought will cruise right into the station and your Inside Out Bodega will remain open for business 24/7 or rabbits will continue to populate your hat and Zombies will wash your socks.  As I said, the magic is very high quality.  My worry lies with the foundation of the belief system.  Used to be your everyday African around these parts was totally flooded with the stuff from birth.  Modern African Americans are a dead end.  At least when they taught religion in schools you had some prewired folks out there who were quite ready to swallow all manner of spell binders.  No, it's getting tough to find the folk we need to keep our magic batteries charged, so to speak.  Good thing we have Texino!  When he's around with his Panama Posse, the old bodega just hums, and at night it glows like alabaster with little green worms of lightning  sliding all over the dome.  Pretty impressive for a back alley drug store in Baltimore.

Do we sell drugs? We are a  news shack with a few outside tables at the bottom of a seemingly blind alley in the midst of a dying US port city, so yeah you can score drugs; be too suspicious if you couldn't.  We leave the dealing to the gangsters though.  All you can get here is an aspirin  with codeine and paregoric.  Traditional Bodega stuff the wide world round.  Now the thing I do with famous jerk-wads  is a whole other thing.  I love to lure those fat assed hypocrites down here with the promise of some miracle anti-aging drug or sex enhancing potion.  I can't really tell you what the whole deal is other than who they are and what their flavor of life-style is.  You see some of these "Magic Drugs" well, they are magic, and how do I know who might want to get in here and cause me grief.  Of course that would be a big mistake since there are always some of Texino's people passing through the temporal terminal and they move in real time and space, as in tear off your  arms real.  So don't get any big ideas about getting rich with your own Inside Out Franchise.  OK? Fine.   Now I'll be around to let you know who's into what and when it's safe to come out and elect a leader who is really not crazy.   Take care.  Bob say Yo yoy yo.

The time ain't now buddy how it used to be

Yeah, that's the Republican Religious Right Jesus H. Christ I've been talking about.  Maybe His name should be H. Jesus Christ to sort of bring back that odd initial for your name thing that was so popular the last time we had a King/Figurehead administration.  You know back in the days of the former century.  Water Gate and all that jazz.  Was a lot of praying going along back then too, but I think they still looked up to their hero or savior or what ever you want to call him.  In other words, He wasn't on the team.  It is not like we have not had a Jesus freak for president before either.  President Carter was one and still is I think, yet the Republican Jesus guys are all over Jimmy like he was never even the president at all.  It's like all the good things he did were bad.  Those Republican bastards have been getting away with this for a little too long for my taste and the whole matter of co-opting Christ is really pushing my buttons.

It's hard to remember exactly when this mess got going, but if you are hip to changes, you will remember back when oh maybe Mr Ford was the president, all of a sudden there were these odd commercials popping up with men like Tom Landry the coach of The Dallas Cowboys football club and Roger Staubach his famous quarterback plus some other fellows of an obvious no nonsense Republican bent and all they really said was something about having a "Personal relationship with God " and that was about it.  Nothing about call this number or give money to the Mormons or anyone else.  So if you were thinking like a normal american, you KNEW that these men are better than you are in the first place and now they have this matter of fact smug attitude that suggests they have access with His Honor The Lord.  We are not talking mere Jesus here, we are talking The Creator; the all seeing all knowing Holy Ghost in physical form if you will.  Once you lay that jazz down and get the hoi thinking , it's pretty damn easy to bring Jesus in as an honorary member of the board or just a greeter for the high rollers .  You know like they used to do in Vegas, get Old Joe Louis- "The Brown Bomber" AKA "The colored fighter" -to hang around the casino and pretend to slip a few punches with every sleaze ticket gambler who drops 100k.  Now you got your corporate Jesus you need some disciples to set the tone.  Who better than Rush Limbaugh , a man with "talent on loan from God!" and  ideals straight from  former German Chancellor A. Hitler.  Limbaugh  a fellow who used his God like talent to probe the fears of the impotent middle aged white man ( no big trick since it turns out he WAS the quintessential impotent middle-aged white man)  Sent his legions out not to confront their fears, but to gang up in "Rush Rooms"- mostly pizza joints empty during the post lunch to early bird dinner time when Limbaugh ruled the roost with his bad puns and bully boy ideals; Feminazis, let's pick on the homeless and finally just lie about Democrats eating babies or something.  So there.  If you are wondering how the fuck G. W. Bush got to be president of the USA.  That's it in a nut shell.  Throw them off balance with some vague talk about being one on one with God;  Make Jesus into some everyday flunky who would support out right lies and hate and then control the media to spread the lies and hate while yelling that you don't control the media.  People wonder what's wrong?  Well there is very little that is right at the moment, still so long as we don't mandate a Homeland Religion or Language and there are more people in the world who are able to keep their own council when it comes to faith than there are nutty evangelicals trying  pigeon hole everyone's dollar bill, there is a chance for a peaceful life to break out someplace.   It might not be here though, so take my advice and always keep a bag packed .                                                                                                                       

No, Im not kidding.... really". " I'm Him!"

Hi this is Texino. We will get to that man's difficulty in a minute.  First, let me ask you a personal question.  Is it just me, or sometimes when you see the name "Jesus Christ" does it just make you feel a little sick?  Now I can see some people peeling off from my gymnasium to do a bit of window shopping as we stroll along having this little talk.  That's OK they'll be back.  The Jesus thing has naught to do with the nice boy from Bethlehem Him Self.  No, it's just about the smug way that the wrong crowd has taken a concept which was supposed to light the world with a simple message that could see you through the most complex of situations and twisted it to their own sleazy advantage.  That sleazy advantage would be the vacuous world of politics where nothing is sacred except power, and now every tag a long piece of garbage out in the world is tacking "Christian" on as a modifier for what ever scam is hot for the week.  Christian debt relief, Christian mortgage and Christian credit at usurious rates.  Is nothing sacred?  Apparently not folks.  Hell, I get emails all the time telling me about these great gospel concerts and then the same people send me clumsy coded messages about the dangers of Senators Clinton and Obama along with just about any other hate filled bullshit the Christian right can be wrong about.  You think that Jesus fellow let Himself get tortured to death for the likes of that?  Well yeah, I guess he did, but the idea was to rise above it, not set one's self up as a fat bottomed child molester in a silk suit and a gold car.  By now you should be hip to the fact that today's graphic represents the "Historical Jesus" far better than the Aryan who posses for the Bible Story books in the Dr.'s office.  "Big honey blond guy, officer!" "Last seen with two Hitler Youth and a lamb."  Yeah, check it out.  Jesus was a Jew and most likely some sort of Darky and He got his modern looks from Gay painters working for highly corrupt Popes.  In other words, everything your so-called christian "Hates" Gay people, Catholics, "inferior races" and what have you are exactly the mix that gave them the Idol of their cult.  I don't know about the rest of you folks on the Iron Curtain Commission of Solid Iron Irony, but I think it's time to get the brasso back out and  "Put On The Shine One More Time"  Yeah I know we just did the big deal for Steve Fossett but I'd say the Late Rev Falwell and the Kicking Rev. Robertson deserve a double dose of Ironic Iron.  I'm Looking at December 25th.  Seems about right.

TT

Dead men talking

Hi Sam Marly here.  Maybe you have inferred that we have a lot of truck with the dead here at The Inside Out Bodega and News Stop.  Well, I guess you are right, since we are a registered transit point along the main line of lost souls.  It's something that Texino set up in aid of moving his Zombie pals around without having to deal with the customs hassles that developed after the tragedy that no one talks about.  You know the one where we just sort of lost our civil rights over night, shortly after losing our voting rights over the course of a week or so.  Oh well what the... So yeah, if you go to our big back room (the one which doesn't seem possible but is, due to spatial distortion) you may run into any number of dead folk in transit.  I believe I have mentioned that my cousin, Reggae Bob, spends quite a bit of time in there, eating cheese sandwiches and giving out words of Island wisdom which sound suspiciously like the sayings of Popeye The Sailor. i.e. "I and I am what I and I am to be." sounds a lot like Popeye's " I am what I am" when you break it down.  Bob watches cartoons like every day is Saturday.  We have other regulars too.  Here's a shot of Ira Louvin of the "Louvin Bothers" goofing around in Hell.  Ira says that there is a highway through the earth that allows the dead, or anyone else who has the time, to visit places like Australia and China, or any place with caves really, without having to go by the highly dangerous means of air or sea travel. I should point out that the dead don't fly because pressurized cabins render them visible and therefore unwelcome.  As far as a sea cruise goes?  Well if the ship sinks, a dead person has little chance of being picked up from a piece of floating wreckage and a big chance of being buried at sea should he be discovered napping in a deck chair. (Literally dead to the world)  So all things considered "The Underworld Freeway is The Way!"   Now whether Ira is actually in Hell or just at a roadside attraction in the vicinity is not clear, however; given the pasteboard Devil and the fact Ira's sporting a clean white suit, I'd say he's at the Wall Drug/South of The Border  version of Hades.

  Please don't misunderstand.  We don't kid about death here and we don't ask a lot of obvious and embarrassing questions of our guests.  After all, my job is selling news papers, magazines and dangerous drugs to whoever travels across the  temporal zone to this alley and then negotiates his or her way toward the light at The Inside Out Side Bodega.  You might notice that I'm not mentioning your Aunt Harriet or Platoons of soldiers  and other obvious dead, but we just don't get a lot of those people.  Why?

Oh I guess their souls are not lost or otherwise in question and they just go and sit quietly like that bunch of people in the play "Our town"  I'm sure you read it or acted it out, so you get the idea.  No the dead folk who come by here, well they don't really want to be dead.  There is nothing for them to do in the great hear-after because they had too much exposure in the "there before" so they just keep going around to the old haunts, so to speak, and show up in joints like this one when the continuum is all out of whack and recharge for a day or so before heading out again on these tours of ghostly good will.   Te celebrated dead don't want too much really, they just want to be remembered for a decent amount of time.  It is just one of those insecurities that will come when your name gets tied to fame, plus there are no living agents for dead performers.  They come they go.  They have their own little "inside" jokes and they look pretty damn good, excepting Texino's Zombies who look like Zombies but they are clean and fairly well dressed.  Texino's into a lot of weird shit.  I don't even know where he is other than I heard he was going to Canada to aid the police in their inquiries.  Hey I got to go, Rush Limbaugh and Scooter Libby just showed up with a couple of "Twinks"  They're going to want poppers.  Like Sunday night in Baltimore is the best time to buy that kind of shit. (not)  Oh well, I got cases of that stuff over in the 4 1/2 dimension.  I'll have to get it myself.  The last time I sent Bob he found a case a silly string and tried to huff a can and got it all in his hair.  You may not even notice this, but Ziggy Marley of the Trench Town Marleys has been borrowing bob to do gigs and the people are too blissed out to get it. Speaking of which,  Bob Weir of The Grateful Dead has been snooping around buying up glandular extracts by the pound.  I guess he's going to try the same thing with Garcia.  Thing is Jerry never comes around.  Hell David Crosby comes around and he's not even dead.  Go figure.  Rush and Scooter are pissed off; can't get their limo to come down the alley.  Pretty much just Chevrolets can drive down here, or what ever else I want to let through.  Don't forget there is a Bodega going on outside.  It's a Texino thing.

 

The Big Sky

Well hi kids, hi ya hi ya!  It's O'l Texino back from a trip to the proving grounds of The whole American Way.  The Frontier.  Actually the frontier was considered pinched off and sewed up in the latter part of the 19th century, but I saw some signs of it as late as 1978 when traveling through Laramie WY. I spied a couple of cowboys hitching south in a golden afternoon; Each one with his saddle and bed roll and not a movie camera in sight.  That was cool.  I would have made a good cowboy.  I'm lonesome.

So what was I up to way out west?  Well, I was looking for Steve Fossett.  Or I should say Millionaire Steve Fossett.  At any rate, I was there in my official capacity as President of The Irony Club to certify the fact that "Millionaire" Steve who risked himself on many counted and documented occasions in order to set records just to set them, had succumbed to a common general aviation accident of the sort that happens with far greater frequency than the propeller head hobbyist would want a guy to believe.  (these are the same bunch who commonly say " a good landing is one you walk away from")  The general Aviation Fly-boys go in for pithy sayings with macho under currents and are famous for their ability to shift blame away from their cranky little kites to the skills or lack of same by the drivers.   So the common thought is Millionaire Steve is working on his Skeleton costume some place in the high desert and he gets the Ironic Emblem for 2007!

I had a little time on my hands between gigs so I highed over to "Tombstone" and did two weeks of law enforcement for the hell of it.  You know?  Gun fighting with outlaws.  I got 18 notches in the old 6 gun.  You all remember how Marshall Dillon used to start off Gun Smoke?

He would shoot a guy and then look real sorry? Well, when I nail an outlaw, I like grab a fist and cock my leg like people do when they score a hockey goal and say Yessssss!  Other wise, I'm stock lonesome.

Sam Marley

Hello. from the lowest point in the darkest part of Darktown.  A down hill alley; a cave with two exits but very good drainage.  We need the drain because, well, because it's wet down here, and dark too and nobody wants to do business in some stinking dark alley with little runs of night soil gurgling in the gutters.  As I said, we have good drainage and actually since an alley is not a cave, more than enough exits if you're good at ladders and stand pipes.  Me?  Oh, I come and I go as I need to.  It's my little spot of the world you see.  Sam's News Hut and Inverted Bodega-Sam Marley at your service.   Marley of The Delaware Marleys.  That's a picture of my 4th cousin Bob.  He lived in Delaware for a bit and worked for GM.  He used to go around telling people the the BMW motor car was named for his band, Bob Marley and the Wailers, but of course it wasn't.  I didn't hang with cousin Bob too much because he was set on being some sort of marijuana music messiah while I was more into dealing expensive drugs and periodicals to big shots from NYC and DC.  This meant one of us was headed for the tropics and the other for East Coast.  We shook hands and settled for Jamaica and Baltimore which is close enough what with the Metro-liner and Jet Planes.  I'd  say we have done OK too.

Bob's a tad better off in that he doesn't have to work any more.  Bob's dead?  Is not!  He's right here in the shop having a cheese sandwich and an RC-cola.  How can he, or anyone for that matter, be inside an inverted bodega?  Oh, I see you don't understand the basic business of The Magic . Well then, I had best explain it to you so we can get along.  I always try to do that anyway, so here goes.

You probably think that you are a petty smart piece of gingerbread, right?  I mean you are neither a mouse brain nor a cheese head, so you might even have a pretty solid idea about what life is all about.  I bet you keep it close to your under vest too and only think about it under the spells.  Am I right?  The spell times, you know;  Deep at night by the fire; In the false Summer dawn where stars melt in the dew;  Winter's gray days when soundless snow sticks in a matrix of dead grass. In other words, the times you are least likely to be in church and more likely to be loaded.  Well, if you recognize times like those as more than just time in flight, you will understand that magic is the stuff that forms the fabric of whatever life you choose to wear.  It also covers practical things too, like electricity and the sound barrier.  Given all that, It should not be so hard to believe that my open air news stand, bodega and recreational pharmacopia/dispensary is actually as large on the inside as it needs to be at any given time.   I got the idea from Dr. Who, and they used it for years on the BBC and PBS, both highly respected magical production outfits, so I figure I'm pretty well set up for a place to hide my secret life as well as the odd dead cousin or anyone else. Alright?  Good.

I'm not really sure how I come to be talking here, but in my long life I have learned not to question every little thing and also that people are often interested in hearing stories about unusual happenings and stuff.  I know plenty of those because hardly any time passes around here before some amusing event comes to pass.  Perhaps I'll be back