Learn to draw Texino!

Hi Tomas Texino here with a valuable offer for the new year!  Be an artist! That's right.  You can live a wacky life style and make big money while your at it.

Now if you are like me, you will spend this Christmas all depressed wracking your brains trying to figure out when it all went South for you in the first place.  Then come New Years, you will become a raging drunk screaming at the sky about how THIS YEAR you'll show the fuckers!

Well show them dammit by becoming an artist like me.  Think about it for a minute.  You just do exactly what you want under the aegis (Magical Shield) of artistic license and people will be dying to hang out with you and be your friend or lover for all the wrong reasons.  Thanks OK because you WILL NEED TO GROW so once those bothersome romances come to a grinding halt because the "other" has figured out you are just like any standard issue slug on the street, except possibly more self centered and sloppy, there will be someone else who wants a bit of your magic and, if you play your cards right, your former fool will throw your keys at you and storm out and you will not have change the first lock!  There are many different types of art.  OK?

Well since drawing pictures is one common artistic genre, why not test you talent with the Texi-Test of Artistic potential and draw the "Cartoon Texino" boxcar tag. The very same "tag" that Texino left hundreds of places along the rails crisscrossing this great land as  he traveled here and there just doing things for "Kicks"  So lets start out with a nice clean piece of paper.  The kind of paper that a computer printer uses is just fine now take a pencil and draw a nice  flat figure 8 sign lying on its side.  Make it long too.  You can turn the paper sideways to make it easier.  In real life you would tag with a piece of chalk standing up so drawing that 8 would be very easy.  OK?  Fine. Now the next thing is draw an egg standing with its pointy end up and make sure the place where the 8 crosses it self is right about the middle.  Now you have Texino's head wearing a hat!  Pretty cool, but that's art for you.  All that is left to make old Texi come alive is draw some lines for his eyes, nose and mouth then make a line at the crown of his hat, put a smoke in his mouth and some smoke rings rising up and HEY NOW! It's Texino!

Are you an artist now?  Well, yes.  In fact you were an artist before you even took the test.

 il faut d'abord durer  Now go on and figure that bit of French out.  It's probably good advice artist or no artist, even if it did come from Ernest Hemingway

Silly-Ill give you Silly

You know me. T. Texino, funny fellow with a word or a goofy idea. If you have heard my radio gig then you know that I do little morality plays for Canadian College Radio.
If you have to be around me for any amount of time, I would not blame you if you thought that I was kind of queer, like silly. I know that is true because there is a certain type of woman and some men who just don't like me. The women are the sort who like to egg men on to fight each other and who sometime go really far to pick the sort of fight with a boyfriend where the poor slob gets so tied up with the mixed signals he may just smack her upside the head. There really are some women like that and the can't stand me because I see right through their act, so they try and get to me by saying I'm goofy or queer. That doesn't happen too often anymore. Why?
Well, it suddenly occurred to me that guys my age are  running the world and I doubt if they are making up very many cute stories or acting fey around the sort of gal whose Bf might be doing a stretch for the state. Take Marxist revolutionary Earnesto "Che" Guvera as portrayed here by master painter Micaelangelo Sciotto.
I doubt if "Che" had too many silly sessions in his short life. Unless you think going from the promising career of medical student to "Grand Prosecutor" of Castro's Cuban Revolution as silly. I mean sure the inequity between the rich and the poor is a bummer, but as a doctor a guy could help out more directly than say being an executioner for a dictator who had just deposed a dictator for being a dictator. Seems that the ricochet romance of the revolution seems to go over big with the offspring of the well to do. They end up being the bosses and getting the cool hats.

The peasants are still peasants. Revolution may give them a place to live and free medicine. But peaseants usually have a place to live to start with and medical reform is less traumatic than a civil upheaval to get universal care. You know what I'm sayin?

See I have governing skills and am not silly all the time. And if tough women don't like my less than macho approach, well fuck them.  I sort of think sex is behind that whole domestic violence deal anyway.  So watch out who you call what because you never know when the object of your wise-ass remarks might be all Blogged up and ready to bust a revolution on your head.

Figure it out!

Maybe I just like to dance

So I have become a whirling dervish.  So what?  No harm in giving it a whirl I always say.  I mean back in the sex days I had my fun.  I got no partner for that sort of playtime now, so I figure this whirling dervish gig wight give me some release or place me into some sort of jolly trance.  Those Dervish fellows over there seem pretty happy and even though I have noticed that certain christians seem sort of blissed out, you never here much about that Jesus fellow laughing.  I mean your average Dr.'s office religious story book might show the Aryan Savior smiling at Dick and Jane or Mary's little lamb but you never here of him telling any knee slapping jokes although he does show up in a couple about golf.  Now yes I know that the whirling dervishes are some kind of Muslins, but I do not think they are the ones who would order your death for calling your kitty cat Mohammed.  They might be, however, so please don't send me any overt religious presents while I'm away at whirling dervish boot camp.  Also, since this dervish outfit is in Turkey, I have figured it out that the chances of decent and cheap opiates are a foregone conclusion so what else could a guy like me want?  Precious little folks and that's a fact.  I'll stay in touch.  And remember, when life gets tough, take a little spin.

TT

All Y'all immigrants Come on down!

Last night I had me this dream.  I was either a dial phone or the cylender of a revolver and when all the numbers get dialed or the bullets got shot, I was going to die.  I kept waking up alive, so I must have had the wrong number or nothing to shoot at.  Or perhaps the dream meant something else; Like a grocery list or a pachinko machine.  No matter, because I've decided that I want to give up my place in this great society to some foreign immigrant family and get the fuck out of here.  How come?  Well the season Political advertisements is a good time to plant a foot.  If that isn't a good enough reason to beat it, give public radio a listen; you are sure to get a hint that this country is running on empty.  Point?  You want proof? OK today I was listening to Mrs. Francis Ford Coppola who since she had that job in 1992 can't possibly still be hitched up to the famous filmster.  Anyway, Mrs. C. was going on about how Mr. C.  while making the giant movie Apocalypse Now which is a film adaptation of the novel Heart of Darkness by Mr. J. Conrad except set against the American adventure of Vietnam.  Now, I don't think the movie was really supposed to be about what it turned out to be about, it just got that way because certain actors like Mr. Marlon Brando and M. Dennis Hopper were so messed up on either being too fat or too fucked up on dope to do the job of work they had been hired to do, that Mr. F.F.C.  just had to write in new parts and change the whole idea of the film thereby spending millions of dollars or I should say wasting millions of dollars making a film that I could never watch which probably means it was pretty good theatre but also means it is so wastefully American that it makes a guy like me who is down to his last dime want to bail out of this pit of paranoia and hit the dusty roads of the established third world with my pension paid in gold  a  rifle made from brown wood and blue steel, a sharp knife and a local dog.  Do I sound too conservative?  No.  I'm not conservative.  I'm just not blind to the fact that I don't belong here anymore and I just as soon spend my days in a bear free zone.  That's my desire, so you know some nice Africans or Chinamen or Chicanos who want to buy a house near a beach, a couple of cars some American clothes and a guitar collection.  Tell them to wire texino@gmail.com  I ready to deal.

TT

Quoth The Spaniel, Buy a Ford!

Sam Marley here. Does anyone remember trying to figure out just what Mad Magazine was all about?  Today, as I was painting my front door red ––I do this each year on the 29th off November––and I don't want to talk about it, my inner Hi Fi system, you know the one that plays the songs that get stuck in your head, started reciting a famous poem by Baltimore's own Edgar A. Poe.  Before I talk about that, I'd like to mention that I have a real issue with people whose last names fit what they do too closely.  Like I knew a Doctor Foot who did feet, and there is a well know guitarist in Germany called Peter Finger and there was a baseball pitcher called Raleigh Fingers.  So you got Poe and he is a poet and I think that's just creepy and I'm painting the door at the bodega here and my inner HI FI doing The Raven, by Poe.  We this wakes up an old Mad  bit where they get this talking spaniel shows up at an ad agency on Madison Avenue (of course) and starts giving sales pitches in perfect voice without sounding the least bid bored or insincere.  The joke is the story is told in rhyme like the "Raven" except instead or saying "Never more" the dog rhymes  "insincere" with "Drink Schlitz Beer" and "slightly bored" with "by a Ford"  and there was one where he says "Eat Kraft Cheese" but I can't remember the rhyme.  I don't even remember what happened in the gag.  Like I was saying it was kind of hard to figure Mad Magazine out and it wasn't until many years later when I came to be working at a studio in NYC and chanced to spend a few days with a friend's parents out on Long Island that I got the joke.  It was about Jewish people who lived on Long Island and worked in the city.  Gentiles as well  But all those comics by Dave Berg were spot on.  Of course, I could have lived on the Don Martin cartoons  with those crazy looking guys whose feet would bend when they walked.  I can still go hysterical at the thought of some of those.  Go here and click on "the don martin shrine"   

http://humor.about.com/cs/cartoonscomics/a/ds030104.htm  You might think its funny.

Me, I am going into the inside outside bodega and read a book.  Take care.

Sam

Time Bomb Tomas

Got a paper letter yesterday from a fellow called Steve representing a "Bank" that was more than willing to loan me $3000 in cash if I would consent to repay the loan or "nut" at the rate of $284 per month each month for two years. Now the interest or "Vig" as I believe it is called in the loan shark business works out to a 96% APR.  A person in big financial trouble might easily read that as 9.6% because there are laws against charging folks over 100% interest on a loan which, if you do your sums, you will see that you will pay Steves bank $6816 in return for the use of using his 3k for two years or about $9.30 each and every day.  Talk about putting your money to work for you.  Well I got to say that I saw Red (as in Communism) and I'm going to do something about it as soon as I figure where T-Time has hidden that paperwork.  She is a good care taker and does not wish to see me explode. 

We don't have a traditional thanksgiving here in Panama.  Instead it is called Retribution Thursday or Danger Day, and basically if you are Spanish, Los Indios will try to kill you and if you are from Estados Unitos everyone will try for a piece.  The best thing would be stay inside and devise games of martial skill using turkey parts.  That's the deal.

My resolution for this coming year is to find this criminal bank and fuck them up.  You want to help?  Fine.

Texino

Turn your radio on.

That's right folks.  In the approaching darkness of the dark hours and minutes that will soon blanket the great Canadian Prairies in the all night of winter there will be a sparky little spark floating in the windy ether of Manatoba. What do you mean Texino? ask the small but important group of full fledged citizens who make up the blog readers of the blog.  Well here's the scoop gang.  Texino, that's me, is appearing on a radio broadcast aimed at your ears every Tuesday at 11 AM on CKUW  Real Music-Real Ideas- Real people (+Texino) : 95.5 on your FM dial or www.ckuw.caon the internet.   The show is titled "Chicken Fried Lunch" with your host William W. Western and he plays some decent music as well.  This week I will be discussing the disgraced dinning society, The Cannibals O' The Glen and we will listen to their pipe band play the 1967 hit "Downtown." Next week? I don't know.  Possibly a thing to do with bears.  Tune in and see.

Thanks

Down the down stairs

Do you realize that all your life you are climbing some kind of step.  You make it to a landing and it may be a while before you have go up another; you know, a lot to learn before the next level.  I guess some people sprint up life's stairs while others take their time and look around, but if your mind is sound, you will probably end up at the same level as your peer group and be swimming along with the general flow exchanging the latest strokes and slick moves and happening ideas with your schoolmates as it were.  It's a big class so the dropouts are not missed and to stretch the fish metaphor just bit longer there will come a time where you can't overlook the fact that some folks are just getting the hook and being yanked right out of the world you know.

Well when we reach an age where we can't overlook the sudden disappearances, we have to step away from the mad stream of life and find a comfortable level where we can relax, regain some leftover vim and come to grips with the fact that the worm has turned.  Step down a floor or two maybe?  It should be easy, after all we climbed all these yearly steps, even having the audacity to skip one or two back in the early years and whether we knew it or not, we had a great deal of support while climbing.  You really don't hear of someone falling up or off the stairs do you?  No, you don't.  What you may come to know the hard way, if you are not a careful stepper, is when you start to fail, as it were, you may find that you have climbed higher than you realized and getting yourself down to a reasonable point in life may require some help.  Help?  Well yes, because maybe your mind's eye has tricked you into believing it's just an easy step down to safety when it is not such a thing at all.  Now here is the rub.  Who you going to call?  You would hope to have younger friends who can still scamper up and down these little levels of conscious comfort and maybe give you a hand over a rough spot.  But heck, that's not always going to be the case.  Hardly seems a lot to ask really, only looking for a hand to hold or a shoulder to touch. These people make the trip all the time, so what's the big deal?  Age is the big deal. You are done to a turn and now you are on your own.  You are heading into that decline and for all our lives we have watched the old people bump and bruise themselves down into the misty gray until they become a fog  bound island with a beach head of musty possessions.  They continue to rise with the tide and dress in the dawn and wait for whatever it is that calls out to them at the end and hopefully, by that time, is just a few small strokes from shore.  If you turn that corner and get bushwhacked by some old age type illness or situation whatever, all you can do is watch your step and get a strong stick.  Some will have friends and family.  Some won't. Not the most pleasant observation, but it's a solid call and if you want to keep it from turning out wrong for you, get to work on building a small fort, gather up some food and make some friends. When I say "make" I'm probably talking about a different type of "friend" than you have.  I kind of "roll my own", as it were.  There is no lack of lightning here and the grave yards never close. (hint hint)  Can you hear me now?    Good.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

Dead Men Walking

The woman thought of The Four Horsemen, she had met War;

a fat man with an inappropriate sense of humor, tended to repeat himself...Terry Pratchett

On my way home from Russia I stopped down in the Fat Alley to see Sam.  Baltimore's on the way home from just about any place, so its an easy stop for a day or two.  Plus if you happen to have a buddy who owns an open air bodega and news kiosk thats

much larger on the inside than is possibly possible, something cool is bound to come up.  Well usually.  Today, however is the day after the famous "11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month" when we celebrate the end of the War to end all of the wars.  Well that 11th hour was way back in 1918 which when we do our sums, comes out at 90 years ago, so you can sort of figure

the average "Dough Boy" doing his part and all that, may well have come 'round on the big wheel and be doing it again.  It's a bit of a tug for a guy like myself you see, as there were quite a goodly number of those WWI Veterans  marching around in my 

childhood and it was not too far since the last Rebel had been laid to rest and no doubt there were still a few Yankees and former Slaves posted around as well.  Yeah, that World War surely could have been the last one if people had any sense at all.  Of course people do not have the sense the God gave a goose bump, so they keep at this war thing like it was a game and could be won in some honorable way.  Well that's about the farthest from the truth that can be gotten and still be on the same planet.  If you look at the way that wars are fought  in a modern sense, your going to see that the same mistakes are made over and over again by arrogant general officers who are by and large clueless about how to prosecute a fight with the weapons at hand.  Take your WWI.  The British had a really cool machine gun called a Vickers but it was not very good in an attack and since the English Generals had decided that infantry charges were "the thing" they only give out like two vickers guns per battalion and they kept them behind the lines in a pure defensive position.  OK?  Well the Germans decided that since the Brits were so all fired hot to charge across no man's land; "Follow me boys over the top" and all that, they put a lot of machine guns out in front of their trenches and when ever the Brits or French or the Americans went "over the top" they calmly shot the shit right out of them. Time after time after time until there was not a single family in the english aristocracy who did not lose an heir in that war.  Not one. And they might still be fighting if not for #1 the invention of the Tank and #2 the invention of that inexhaustible alliance of money and manpower, the USA.   That second situation was so unbelievable to the bad guys on the Continent, that they just had to try it out again in 1941 with the same results.   Of course this gave the US the mistaken idea that "They" could go out and win wars on their own and we all know what happened then.  Or, I should say, maybe we do now.  If you look at the picture I have put up, you will see a pretty extreme show of foolishness.  Those boys walking through that "portal" are  getting ready to go home from Vietnam.  I know this because I walked through that same gate twice. Of course my "two tours" worked out to a year and a half.  Something a lot of Vietnam guys forget to mention is the second tour or extension was six months and for a guy like me who was not out in the field fighting for his life day after day, it was better than finishing my obligation in some stateside soldier town  where every crook saw you coming before you left your rack.   Can't say that my part of the war was all cake but guys had it worse, lots worse.  What I mean about the "foolishness" is these kids did 11 -13 months in country and then went back to the "world."  There was stuff for them to do but they felt funny because the war had made so little sense and you were there and then back on the block with half the people you came up with giving you the evil eye and you starting to get the notion that you may have done something too wrong to make right.  It's like while you were gone, someone came around and took all the 45 rpm records and melted them into those plastic M16 rifles you used, or something like that because those singles sure as hell went some place and got exchanged for LPs with Arty covers and songs that fit together so well that people would just lie around on the floor like pieces of a big puzzle and just become one with the music.  I could see the attraction, but they obviously couldn't see the danger in grouping up like that in the dark; hell a kid with a grenade could just...   Well they couldn't and we could, and even if we hadn't seen the worst we knew someone who had, so we became the universal Vet.  An army of Michael Moore looking fellows in patched up uniforms with funny hats.  See my picture up there?  Those are soldiers in Vietnam.  You see any "Vets" dress like that?  Those boys may have killed some guys a few days ago but you know what they are thinking about?  You really want to know?  OK. They are thinking about soft white bread in the form of a hamburger roll and maybe a stack of 45s  playing on a teal and white record player sitting on the redwood picnic table out on the patio, and "the kids" hanging out  just like--just like before they went away.  Was it this time last year?   What month is it in Virginia anyway?   Those poor fuckers, once they get through that portal it's too late to get shot and they never lost a plane.   In the moment those boys are so happy, but that portal is a phony as a Vegas Wedding and that is so sad for as much as I know and with all the power of my years, I can't raise my voice loud enough to reach them.

Just my Job 5 days a week

Hello this is Texino.  You may remember that recently while hanging out in Cuba with Russian portrait painter Miguel "MIG" Sciotto I fell in with some friendly folks from Georgia.  Well these Georgians were not from Atlanta, GA but from Georgia, Russia and I must say there is a certain similarity in the two personality types although it would be more pronounced if Russia had a Texas.  Also, while the American Georgians might put on a sort of show about

"Y'all come see us again real soon!" there would be several ways to take that. i. e. I have friends from GA. USA who having expressed such sentiments have been silent for over 10 years.  On the other hand not only did the Georgia, RU. crowd invite me to visit the Mir space station "sometime real soon" they literally showed up at my door, so to speak, here in Panama arriving in  nuclear submarine the SMS Cosmo which is fitted out as a semi luxurious yacht for the use of the various Russian Cosmonaughts to fool around on when they are not in space.  This does make sense when you think about it.  First, the Russians are not nearly so safety conscious os the US services plus living in a submarine is similar to living in a space station in that you just cant go outside any old time, and when you do, you gear up quite like you do in space, so even though the guys are larking around the world in a former fast attack-sub they get some training in and don't totally lose the edge of living in a can.  It's pretty cheap travel as well since those boats are gassed up with enough Pluto to run for, well, a good long time and they make air and water and power plus wash the clothes and flush the heads.

So one day I'm back from Cuba sharing a cigar with Mr. Brooks the head Boogie Man and talking about the situation in general and next thing Jock "The Sticker" Strickland of TCOTG comes rushing in going on about a "wee boat ta rubber in da river an the un mistakable vibratin o steam power turbine power gettin the lads Ina mind t wrassle surh!'  Well that would be a member of the Cannibals O The Glen, The rogue Scots dinning society and my permanent guests in the compound and and like all Scots these fellows are keen for engineering in ships and would seem to have not only spied the approach of a rigid dingy but picked up the vibration of a ships power plant in the area and that's how I learned that the Ruskies had indeed come to take me to space.

Well soon they were about the compound and almost as soon I was packed aboard that crazy submarine and hauling ass right under the Atlantic at around 60 miles per hour and the way things are shaping up we will be blasting off for outer space in about three days.  Right now the mood on the sub is all open and happy; just like the start of that movie "Gone with The Wind"

when everyone is happy as clams and everyone give a damn.  I guess we will be seeing what things are really like in a day or two.  I'll tell you what I know, deal?  OK? Fine.

Castro's a nut

Hi it is Texino in Havana Cuba for a friendly visit with the Island Nation's first and only President.  Fidel Castro. As you see, we are admiring a painting of El Presidente by the Russian painter Miguel Sciotto.  Sciotto was chosen for the job not only for his skill with the human form but also his unique ability to suggest Christ like qualities in his subjects.  As a point of interest Sciotto's Grandfather, the designer of the famous Russian fighter aircraft, is said to have taken the name MIG from his grandson's first name.  That's pretty cool but not totally unique when you consider where they got the name Texas from.

Anyway here are some  parts of my interview with Castro.

Texino: ¿Sir cuál es los revestimientos ma's greastest Cuba del problema pues dirigimos en el nuevo siglo?

Castro: I would say our greatest problem is the continued embargo of necessary goods by your country.

Texino: ¿Embargo? ¿Panamá?

Castro: What do you mean?

Texino:¡Soy panamanian, nosotros no tengo ningún embargo!

Castro: Guards!  Turn this man over to the US, he's a Terrorist!

Goddamn commie.  Fortunately, Sciotto the painter knows me from another gig and he and his Russian buddies got the old "tvarich" vodka thing going with my guards and I ended up getting to drive a real submarine and fly over to Europe in a giant jet plane and now I'm invited to go into space and write some poetry.  I tell you, them Russians know how to keep things moving if they like you.  I'm going to draw the line at the space thing if I can.  I'll say it's my ears or something.  I just don't want to be trapped up in a big can with that guy Steve "Record Breaker" Fossett.  I figure he is either up there or out west trying to set the record for being lost the longest and that guy gives me the willies.  

Oh yeah, I think we made an impression on those Nigerians, so you might see a drop off in your weird wind fall scams for a while.  I'll keep in touch on that.  Now I'm going to Marly's for a root beer float.                                                                                                                                                        

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

The Double Trey -The Triple Duce-The new Forty?

Oh hi there.  It's Texino hiding in a hotel at Callao, Peru down South America way.  How I come to be holed up in a hostile hostelry where the day to day seems to revolve around draping one's self in a flag, donning the silliest hat you can find, and marching off into the mountains  chomping a big chaw of coca, is a story for a different day.  Suffice to say here I am on the eve of my 60th year on the planet trying to make some sense of that pressing matter.

Now, if you are anything like me, and you must share some ideas or you would not be reading this, you probably thought you would never get as old as you are now.  That may be 30, 40, 50, 55, 60 or even higher.  Still those numbers are the milestones we tend to mark

as varying degrees of  age.  Of course you have 21 and 18 and 16 but those tend toward fun things like driving the car and buying the spirits and people rarely if ever say "God, 21 years, where did the time go?"   I  must say, however; that since not one of the male members on my father's side ever lived out his 50s, I honestly did not think I would make this date either and therefore, did not make any plans what so ever.  Looking back, I have had some nice birthdays and some normal birthdays. No really bad birthdays because I don't think much of holidays anyway so I don't put a lot of stock in making a huge deal over stuff like that.  I like giving presents to people for no particular reason other than they might enjoy the gift.  It's hard to buy me things anyway because my tastes run high.  I mean, I'd like a porsche automobile or a cruising sailboat.  I really have no trouble excepting the fact, I'll never get this stuff for my birthday.  I am a bit more concerned, however over my lack of getting anything published in book form or gaining further respect as a musician.  Of the two, the writing does seem to be the one where I might possibly gear up some success.  The trouble there is, owing to the discovery that the root of my melancholy has to do with Parkinson's Disease, the feel good medicine I am taking is, bit by bit, forcing the spontaneous entertainment that can be "Texino" back into the tin can that is Tommy.  What to do?  I just don't know at the moment.  Besides, I'm busy thinking about some stuff.  Like what?  Well, like the people who I love.  Some of them have been around for pretty much the whole ride.  Some of these people I love, I have not seen in years and years; maybe since we were little kids who grew into teenagers and went away to different schools.  But they were the first people outside of my family circle who I had feelings for and when we swore blood oaths of friendship forever, I believed them with all my heart.  There are others who for one reason or other couldn't make the trip. I mean they died.  I suppose Mother and Father could, in theory, still be around, but I told you no one in Dad's family lived to be 60 and though Mother's people were long lived, Mother herself ended up being forty forever.  I missed the old folks who brought me up and educated me away from school so much, that in the years after they had passed, I would work the sums of their ages wishing them back until, well if Granny were alive now, she would be 126 and that is just a little far fetched even for me.   Then in the last 10 years or so, those twin sharpshooters, Cancer and Heart disease have started sniping away at my generation and a couple of exotic diseases have drifted through the ranks like chemical warfare.  I guess life's like that.  "That" being analogous to just about any sort well known life ending situation.  I have also heard that "Life is what you make it" as well as "The Golden Years are Hell"  I got a great deal of this information hanging around in the back of ambulances chatting with older patients of and on over the past 30 years or so and I met some wonderful folks indeed.  If I learned anything at all there it was this.  Age is a sneaky bastard who will just  roar up on you like an express train.  (If you know what an express train is you are probably already old.)  Don't believe me?  Well just look back at those mile stone birthdays I listed.  See how many have come and gone and how quickly the time between has flown.  It just keeps getting faster too.  Why?  I just don't know.   

Well, as you can see by today's graphic, I'm being watched Los Indios de Fedoras and they have me pined down at he Hotel Columbus.  Guess that will be my birthday HQ.  If you find yourself in the neighborhood drop on by.  Knock three times and give the pass word.  The pass word is, "Swordfish."  Love you?  Yeah I mean it.