Thurber Gets New Street Lights (From the Wyola County Gazette and Penny Saver)

Several Wyola county towns including Thurber, have installed new street lights on a Montana State Dept of Transportation grant.   “They long overdue,” said longtime Thurber resident Kyle Turlley,  “Downtown could look really dark if you weren’t near the Food Giant” he said referring to the Food Giant grocery store, which is locally known for being well lit.”I’m sure it was a safety thing.” The new lights cost just over $26,000.00 and are state of the art LED energy saving units, partially designed by engineering students at our own Montana State University in Bozeman. Not every one is excited about the new lighting, Johnny “The Boot” Pai, owner and manager of the Manchurian Dragon Chinese American Steak House and Jazz Club says he misses the town’s old look. “It’s too bright! I miss the jet black, bottomless, narcotic American night that a man could get lost in. Where the blue neon of a cafe sign was your only fixed point in an empty universe.  The seductive, throaty wail of a saxophone calling the wandering soul inside to warm himself with a medium rare sirloin and two fingers of Johnny Walker Black, served by a beautiful woman with lonely eyes and curves that just don’t quit. The darkness of Thurber was where we would retreat at day’s end, where we would dissipate into a soft cloud of knowing and wonder. Deep in my soul, I will miss that.” When asked to elaborate, Pai added, “These lights kind of suck. I mean the fucking Food Giant was already lit up like a god damn casino”  

Also receiving new street lighting are the towns of Wralley, Sour Bend, and Gerd.

Something Wicked This Way Comes.

 I have this overwhelming feeling that the midterms bring ruin. The Mango Antichrist will declare martial law after an October surprise of some mango-tude (see what I did there). It will mostly fail but it will destroy our democracy and any trust we have in each other. Bad things follow. Buy canned food. Stock up on ammo.  Buy heroin.

AI : Why even try?

I have been writing a screenplay. It's an okay idea, a film noir based around older door dash/ Uber drivers, manageable to shoot myself with my cadre of old film workers. It's a goal, and something to give my life some tentative meaning in the short term. I am writing it old school: screenplay from my own head, typed into a laptop. It's a slog. A first draft isn't really that fun. I have daydreamed about having CHAT/GPT or some such abomination do a first draft. In my head. I have not said this aloud or written it in an email or text.  BOOM, I have multiple ads on Facebook, offering AI Film Production classes. Do they read your innermost thoughts now? Multiple, pitched directly at people over 40 years old. The idea being is, anybody can do it! The AI does all the work. Writes the screenplay, casts AI Actors, Animate/shoots and edits the end product, while you apparently watch helplessly. Why do you exist? It's incredibly depressing. Why should I even try? The AI show will be a certain level but probably good enough. My whole life seems suddenly superfluous to the sweatless output of an AI data vomit. The paintings I am working on could be shucked out in seconds, it will take me weeks. Demoralizing, degrading and shitty. Makes me want to start drinking again.

No Atheists in Orchards

 

I have an accidental orchard. On the 7500 square foot city lot that my house sits on, there are no less than 13 Italian Prune trees. I did not plant them, they are the volunteers , spread from Italian immigrant's trees some hundred and twenty years ago. Local legend has it that Italians lived at the bottom of the hill. Scandinavians lived at the top. The Italians had wine and song and the Scandinavians in their taciturn solemnity, loved their neighbor's plums and the trees migrated to the Nordic elevations of Pigeon Hill. These trees produce delicious, sweet, delights that make you stop and contemplate the universe. I do almost nothing to these crazy trees that spread like weeds. I occasionally cut water spouts, suckers and try to keep the trees from growing too tall. Other than that I watch them grow. In late August I pick hundreds of pounds of amazing fruit. Picking is usually haphazard and the trees are strange shaped and everything feels like chaos while you are doing it. Something happens while reaching up and grabbing a handful of perfect plums, that feels ethereal. I am not by nature a very spiritual person, I like to know things for certain, but during the harvest, it's impossible not to feel grateful and in awe of a universe that gifts such abundance in the face of human indifference and apathy. We give them all away to neighbors, food banks and one neighbor works with Afghan refugees, who apparently love them. I think of all the people who will enjoy these bags of plums and the simple fact that I love seeing these gifts enjoyed. The black dog is ascendant in my life, and it's easy to get tightly wrapped in my personal depression, and the destructive spiral of politics but this insane bounty of the weird weed trees, is my cure that also tastes great.

637

 I am a man with hardened arteries. I received a calcium score on a heart CT scan of 637.  Dead man walking? Not quite but a serious wake up call. It's hard to understand how I got here, except to admit to myself that I have always relied on my good looks and sparkling personality to skate by on the minimum of effort and on good luck and all that has run out like a melted ice cream cone on the sidewalk of life. 637 is my new epitaph on my headstone. 637. New outlook is here. I will try to make a positive moves but this 637 is irreversible

Once we were the beautiful people.

 

Damn. Yeah, looking backwards will always make you feel old.

The story of this picture: It was my ex-girlfriend, and still friend, Cindy's wedding reception. The beautiful girl next to me (and my spoonful of....something) is my revenge plus one,- the gorgeous, knockout you bring to your ex's wedding. Of course, by then, she was realized as my soulmate; the ethereal Laurie. Rob Ryan, who would eventually be my best man at Laurie and my wedding wears inexplicable pink sunglasses. It was 1986 or 1987. We were all young. We would never grow old. Nothing boring or stupid would ever happen to us. The world had great potential and was just getting started. Well, that was not the case. Now I resemble a grey big toe with glasses and I bitterly review my younger years with outrage that I didn't travel more, I didn't make more films or even money. However, I did get to live these days with good friends and someone wonderful to love. I am a rich man.

Black Dog Ascendant.

Absolute fucking chaos. This country is quickly dissolving into a thick, rubbery stew of ungovernable mayhem and AI supported gaslighting falsehood. ICE killing the "wrong suspects", disappearing senators, election suppression incoming. Terrible candidates. My beloved has cancer and Parkinson's. And most of the time, I just want a giant meteor to end it all while I drown it out with cheap Trader Joe's wine. Joy seems to be gone from our lives. It is a hole  that is deep with unscalable walls.  Everything costs 10 times as much as five years ago. As the world grinds on, of course, the Mariners suck again. 

Fuck this shit