These are the continuing adventures of a typical resident 
 of the self-proclaimed center of the Pugetopolis universe - 
 Seattle. Most are true stories but some are made of whole-
 cloth. I ain't the Mayor, the Governor or a Big Shot. Just 
 another Working Stiff with a Bad Attitude.

    ------------------------------------------------
    WARNING: This is not a Child-Proof Neighborhood.
    If you're a kid - scram!, beat it! you little
    punk before your Old Lady catches you and calls
    the cops. They'll throw you in the Big House in
    Walla Walla and won't let you out until you're
    89 years old. There. Don't say I didn't warn you.
    -------------------------------------------------

		           - 113 -

 While the nation morns and neurotically obsesses over recent
 events in New York and President Yellowbelly attempts to whip
 up an epidemic of War Fever, the Husky Marching Band had other
 fish to fry. They made their first neighborhood tour of the 
 Frats and Sororities this past Friday night, profanely drowning 
 out the faux tears and sonorous moanings of our TV sets with 
 a mighty and rude blast accompanied by laschivious, suggestive, 
 pagan antics from their cheerleaders. Enough is enough. We're 
 really sorry about what happened in New York City but there's
 nothing more we can do about it and NYC is not the center of our
 universe. What more powerful Mojo could we invoke in the fight 
 against terrorism than to openly flaunt our Constitutional 
 Imperative of 'the pursuit of happiness' and whoop it up? Time 
 to wag that tail, Get Down and Howl with the Dawgs. What the 
 hell, it's not like we have any control or say in what is
 about to transpire. They don't give a damn about us. If we're
 doomed we might as well go down dancing eh. They had a larger 
 than usual crowd following them.

                               *

 Mayor Paulie keeps setting new records practically every day.
 Unfortunately for him, the one he set last Tuesday will among
 his last: first incumbant mayor to lose in the primaries since
 the Dirty Thirties. But lets have none of that Hang Dog, butt-
 dragging around here. He's still got a month and half to Total
 the place and finish the job he started. Can he do it? Name one
 other person who so finely personifies that 'Can Do' American
 spirit. Name one other person who has greater incentive for
 revenge. If George Bush, Sr. could dump Somalia on America in
 revenge for turfing his useless butt, I'm sure Paulie can come
 up with the civic equivalent.

 The Human Prune, Mark Sidran, won the News Nazis' Mayor Auction.
 Outbid all the other canidates. KOMO will name the flag pole on
 top of their new "Election 2000 Tower" after him. That's the 
 one going up right next to the "Election 1996 Tower" in front 
 of the "Maria Cantwell Memorial Pavilion". Sidran vs. Nickles - 
 our great Hooterville tradition of Mayoral Lusers will continue.
 Whatever. Paul Allen will have no problem buying either one of 
 those whores.

 Screw 'em all. I voted for Charlie - the only honest man in the
 bunch. I got a bottle of absinthe riding on the Real Thing in
 November. Real absinthe too. Not that cheap watered down crap they
 sell up in B.C. The Greek showed it to me. He picked up a case
 on a recent trip to England. It's figured prominently in my dreams
 ever since. He's got my vote for Mayor fer sure.

                                 *

 Our Senators and Congressional reps in The Other Washington were
 right on top of the situation yet again. Not a cent of help in
 that $15 billion airlines bail-out to deal with the hordes of
 Boeing people here who are getting laid off soon. Governor Stinky
 didn't even bother pulling on his buddy Monkey Boy's ear. Sigh.

........................................................................

				GLENN

 Tomorrow is Glenn Gould's 69th birthday. Being dead, he's missed the
 last 20 or so parties. He's usually remembered as a classical pianist.
 Yeah, I know - yawn. Not Glenn, pal. He was in fact a brilliant and
 delightfully eccentric polymath - musician, composer, actor, comedian,
 writer, playwright - to name a few of his tricks. And, to some of us
 anyways, the greatest pianist of at least the past century if not
 all-time.

 He arose out of the obscure suburbs of Toronto, Canada in the mid-50s
 at the age of 18. Invited to take part in a youth concert at one of
 our great east-coast halls, he made such an impression that a record
 producer in the audience who heard his performance offered him a
 recording contract on the spot. Unheard of for classical musicians
 let alone a snot-nose kid from the Boondocks of the Great White
 North.

 A short while later he recorded Bach's "Goldberg Variations" at a
 studio in New York. Nobody in their right mind played the Variations.
 They were obscure and difficult. But the recording went through the
 proverbial roof when it hit the music stores. No one knew who in the
 hell this kid was but, Jump'n Jesus on a Pogo-Stick, his piano work
 and brilliantly creative interpretation Blew Their Minds. It's still
 amongst the most popular of the many recordings he made. He never
 looked back from there. Soon everybody and their dog was playing the 
 Variations. 
 [BTW - Glenn had a deep affection for dogs and other critters. He
 willed his entire multi-million-dollar fortune to the Toronto
 Animal Shelter.]

 He was a little different from your general run of classical musicians
 in a few other ways as well. As crusty old George Szell of the Cleveland
 Symphony Orchestra put it: "The nut's a genius." While Glenn wasn't
 crazy, he was definitely a bit eccentric. He always brought along his
 own chair to concerts. It was a rickity little fold-up job his dad
 gave him years before. It had a back on it early-on but it soon broke
 off. No matter. Glenn used it anways. He also cut the legs down so
 that when he sat before the piano, his nose was almost level with the
 keyboard. It looked a little strange seeing this tall, string-bean of
 a man perched precariously atop this rediculous little chair, hunched
 over with his face only a few inches from the keys. It didn't look
 properly dignified. But it worked.

 He also grunted and sang-along as he played. This embarassed him 
 deeply and he did try to stop doing it but it screwed up his playing. 
 He just shrugged his big shoulders, apologized and positioned the 
 mics during recording sessions to minimize this aspect of his
 performance. 

 There was no telling how he might make his appearance on-stage. 
 Sometimes he showed up in a tieless shirt and came sliding across 
 the boards in his stocking feet with a muffler wrapped around his 
 throat. Other times he'd show up in a long winter coat, fingerless
 gloves, his cheap department-store Old Duffer's hat and, at least 
 a couple times, with a hot-water-bottle to sit on. He wasn't trying 
 to be goofy or show-off. He was just trying to be comfortable. He
 couldn't have cared less about the sensibilities of the Posers in
 his audiences. Once the lights went down and he started playing, 
 nobody noticed anything but the lovely music he made. 

 He said he played more by tactile sense than sound. He was noted for
 his exceptionally soft, delicate touch at the keyboard. When prepping
 for a new piece, he did so by completely memorizing it note-by-note,
 then playing it in his head until he had it exactly the way he wanted
 it. Only then did he sit down at the piano. It reminded me of stories
 about the eccentric genius Nicola Tesla and how he designed his
 electronic marvels - completely in his head, no blueprints. Instead of
 working to perfect the sound, Glenn trained his fingers to play the 
 piece by touch. Often he'd have a radio blasting away with whatever
 happened to be on, while he did this. It was to drown out his piano so 
 he could concentrate on the feel of the piece. He was trying to make 
 his fingers play the perfect version he had in his head. Which isn't 
 to say that he didn't give a hoot about how his piano sounded. He was
 very picky about his piano. He only used one for concerts and most of 
 his practices. When movers dropped and damaged it years later, he never
 really found an acceptable replacement. It was literally like an
 extention of his body.

 His mother introduced him to the piano at a very young age. As an
 only-child, he took to it like a duck to water. It's tempting to
 imagine his piano became like a surrogate brother or sister. His
 mother's gentle but persistant insistance on perfection challenged
 him to do something more than just play-around with it. He was more
 than up to it. He obviously developed a deep fascination with the
 magic it allowed him to create. But it was a pretty solitary childhood
 and, in later years, he was often characterized as being a hermit.
 More like a Music Geek actually. He never married and, though he liked
 girls, he didn't like them as much as he liked pianos and music. He
 wasn't anti-social, he was just deeply obsessed with his 'machine' 
 much as programmers and mechanics become. He wanted to see what that 
 baby could REALLY do when you put the pedal to the metal. He wanted 
 to push the envelope. None-the-less, he had a wide range of friends 
 from all walks of life and often drove them crazy with 3 a.m. chats
 over the phone during breaks from his practicing. He wasn't an early
 riser. He wasn't interested in catching worms and had no idea what 
 a 9 to 5 job was like.

 Aside from being a hypochonriac who popped pills like other people
 munch on peanuts, he also hated to be touched by strangers. It was
 partly a germ thing and also a concern about injuring his fingers. 
 Needless to say, his hands were heavily insured. He never shook hands
 with strangers. Who in the hell knew where those hands were recently -
 scratching butts, picking noses, cleaning out ears, etc. etc.? And
 those macho buttheads who try to intimidate others with a bone-
 crushing grip were always a danger. When a piano engineer during a 
 factory tour exhuberantly slapped him on the back, Glenn slapped him 
 back with a Phat lawsuit for buggering up his shoulder. Hands off. 
 No touchee.

 In classical music, he didn't care much for most of what Beethovan 
 and Mozart produced. He considered them uninteresting light-weights.
 The sort of Yuppie Dinner Music so much beloved by Classic KING
 FM. He preferred the delicacy and complexity of Bach and often 
 included many contemporary composers in his program. But his all-
 time fav was Orlando Gibbons. He said the simplicity and elegance 
 of Gibbons reminded him of the church music he grew up with. He 
 liked William Byrd for many of the same reasons. He listened to 
 popular music too. He thought the Beatles were funny but musically 
 shallow. He liked Petula Clark much more though he was kind of vague 
 as to why. He just liked her sound. Or maybe he had the Hots for her. 
 Far as I know, they never met.
 
 At the peak of his career when any of his concerts were a guaranteed
 SRO sell-out and the Dough was just rolling in in waves, he declared 
 concert-halls passe' and old-fashioned - little more than medieval
 torture-chambers in which musicians were forced to be 'entertaining' 
 as opposed to 'excellent'. Only in the recording studio could an
 artist do their very best. He never gave a live concert again for the
 rest of his life. Instead, he became a Media Whiz and dove into the
 technology to learn how to use it to his advantage. He was as active
 at the mixing board afterwards as he had been during the taping and
 was liked to play around mic-positioning and various other details
 to see how they affected the sound. His records went platinum as fast 
 as they were released. And despite its source being gone for nearly 
 2 decades, his music remains very popular as classical musicians go.

 He produced a number of radio and TV programs for Canada's CBC over
 the years and wrote a lot. Most was about classical music but much
 of it wasn't. He had a terrifically sharp wit and sense of humor for
 a hermit. He did a number of one-man comedy sketches for TV in which 
 he assumed various characters. One of my favorites was his New York 
 cab driver - Teddy Slutz. He probably interviewed himself more than 
 any other famous celebrity in history. Unhappy with the mediocrity of
 most of his interviews and the interviewers unnerving habit of just 
 using him as a podium for their own pet theories, he decided to 'roll 
 his own' and did very well at it. They were parodies for the most part 
 but they also gave him a chance to talk about things interviewers would
 often miss. He also produced a series on The Great Canadian Solitude 
 for CBC. They weren't straight forward documentaries. He wove the 
 voices into an unusual and unique vocal fugue unlike anything anyone 
 had done before or since. 

 Solitude was a subject that really captured his imagination. He 
 tripped up to the Canadian Arctic and near-Arctic on a number of
 occasions to feel its physical presence and get to know some of the
 people who chose it as the stage for their lives. One of the voices 
 in the CBC series was a mining-engineer named Wally he met in the 
 dining car of the "Muskeg Express" between Winnipeg and Churchill. 
 Wally not only recognized Glenn right off, he was also very well 
 read in the classics. People up there got lots of time and few
 distractions. Many of them naturally fall into pondering The Human
 Condition.

 When the world closed in on him, Glenn would often jump in his car
 and cruise Ontario's 2-lane blacktop all night alone, listening to
 the car radio and occasionally dropping off at small-town, all-night
 cafes for a coffee and a chat with whoever was hanging around. From
 the Grand Halls of Europe to Ma's Coffeeshop, Glenn was comfortable
 in many different worlds. He passed freely and lightly through them
 all - eyes and ears wide open.

 Shortly after his mother died, Glenn took sick, had a stroke and,
 much to everyone's surprise, died at the age of 50. Not particularily
 a Mommy's Boy, his mother had none-the-less been the single constant
 and anchor of his entire life. Constantly surrounded by scheisters 
 and impressarios out to make a fast buck off him, she was the one
 person he knew he could trust and rely upon. The one person he knew
 for sure loved him not for his fame but simply because he was her
 son. And it was her own love of music that gave his own life much of 
 its meaning. Her loss broke his heart. He couldn't bear being truely 
 alone and, from all appearances, simply willed himself to die. No way 
 of knowing for sure, but that's what it looks like.

........................................................................

                     'OL YELLER GOES TO WAR

 Fresh from his relaxing break in an obscure Nebraska bunker where he
 enjoyed "Beverly Hillbillies" reruns while tens of thousands of New
 Yorkers were getting buried in the rubble of the World Trade Center
 and hundreds of Pentagon employees were literally getting toasted,
 President Yellowbelly got his feet under him again this week.

 "Look Ma! I'm invisible!", he said to The First Darl'n as he stood
 stark naked in the Oval Office. "Weeel Doggies! If that don't beat
 all!  Duhbya, put your dang drawers on before somebody sees you. You
 ain't no more invisible than I am.", replied his shocked wife. "YES 
 I AM! YES I AM! Nobody can see me except those I choose to see me - 
 like you right now fer instance. That's what that nice Mr. Rumsfeld 
 told me when he sold me this 'er Magic Invisible Cream so I wouldn't 
 have to go run'n off to Nebraska everytime I get nervous about the
 airplanes", 'Ol Yeller replied. "I thought I caught a mighty whiff 
 of Old Spice", sniffed Mizzuz B. "So Rumsfeld is up to his old tricks
 again is he? Sorry to have to be the one to tell you Sugar Pie, but 
 you been Hornschwaggeled again." "GOL DANG!", whimpered our embarassed
 Chief Executive. "I bought a whole case off him too."

 As our First Lady helped Duhbya get dressed, she laid out the Battle
 Plan, "Let's get a move on Buckeroo. You got them damn Yankees in
 New York begging for more money and help; thanks to that Putz you
 picked for Secretary of Transportation, the airlines are going down
 the tubes and demanding barrels full of money; you got the stock
 market near collapse; Boeing's going to lay-off a third of their
 workforce; and none of your daughters can scrape up enough between
 them for a 6-pack. Where in the hell did that General Powell go?
 He keeps running off at the strangest times. President Cheney says 
 enough is enough. From here on out, leave the President'n to him 
 and you take care of the dang Pentagon and Taliban. He figgers 
 they're more your intellectual and moral speed."

 "Hot Diggity!", declared the Commander In Chief, "Next to being a
 fireman I always wanted to be a general. It'll be just like my 
 Vietnam Vet days Honey Pie. I got top prize in brass-polishing
 three consecutive months when I was with the Air National Guard.
 Those cry-babies who went over there to fight had it easy compared
 to folks like me and Dan Quayle who had to stay behind guarding the
 Homefront from the Viet Cong. The horror! I still get nightmares
 about the grub. IT'S WAR! IT'S WAR! That's what I'll tell them 
 Dune Coons. Just like Daddy did. Nukes and all. HERE WE COME! HERE
 WE COME! Why? Because they're EVIL! EVIL! And cuz they're an easy,
 defenceless target perfect for Cheap Revenge. We need a dang
 Scapegoat and they're the daily special on the menu. Just to show 
 we aren't a bunch of narrow-minded fanatics like them Muslim fellers, 
 I'll give the rest of the world a fair choice: if you ain't 100% 
 with us, you're 100% 'agin us far as we're concerned. Can't get no 
 fairer than that. It'll be a CRUSADE! CRUSADE! I'll tell 'em to hand 
 over that Sammy Bing Alladin feller pronto DEAD OR ALIVE! DEAD OR 
 ALIVE! or we're a-come'n in there take'n down names and a-kick'n 
 butt. 

 "How's that sound my cute little Armadillo?" "Except for the 'war' 
 part, it sounds wonderful dear. Only Congress can declare war. Now 
 run along and play soldier with the boys at the Pentagon while us 
 adults try to sort out your mess. Go on! Git! you big rascal 'for 
 I polish your cute little bee-hind with my hickory switch. Oh. And 
 Duhbya? Don't say Dune Coon in public. People'll think your Trailer
 Trash. Diaper-Head is much more sophisticated and cosmopolitan."

 You want to pretend Duhbya can whoop them dang A-rabs if we all
 get behind him and push hard enough, be my guest. Just don't be
 surprised when the lead flies, he ducks and you eat it. This Luser
 has screwed up everything he's ever touched. And his grip on reality
 has never been what you would call 'firm'. If it weren't for his
 Daddy's money, he'd be shoveling horse manure in some Texas barn
 right now. Literally, since the moment the Supreme Court handed 
 this Boob the Presidency, our nation's fortunes have taken a major 
 nosedive. He's a regular one-man disaster. Maybe he's Osama bin 
 Ladin's "Afghanistan Candidate" - a Stealth President programmed 
 to destroy America. Sort of like that Manchurian Canidate feller. 
 Must have slipped a Secret Ingredient into his Nose Candy back in 
 the Good Old Days.

 It's worth remembering that the FBI still doesn't know who actually
 highjacked those planes. They are assuming all the Arabic names on
 the passenger rosters were terrorists. It's an assumption that has
 already been proven false in a number of cases - like the guys in
 Algeria and Morocco. No matter. They aren't looking for any other
 leads. Since they missed the entire plot from the get-go, it's 
 reasonable to assume they aren't going to be able to catch-up on it 
 in a couple weeks. It's questionable if they're competent to even
 figure it out in the long-run. They're pretty sloppy.

 The President has presented no evidence that Osama bin Ladin is 
 behind it. And for good reason: because there likely isn't any. 
 At least nothing a traffic court would accept as valid. Yeller 
 name Osama right from the get-go, even before the FBI had the names
 of the suspects. How probable is that? They didn't know about the
 plot beforehand, didn't know the names of Perps but Yellowbelly
 immediately fingers the culprit. Yeah sure. The BS he was 
 slinging before Congress wasn't even up to high-school essay 
 standards.

 The real danger here is that the actual culprits can walk away
 scot free while Yeller and the Boyz are chasing A-rabs all over
 hell's half-acre. Now that would be scary.

 War ain't exactly our Thing:
	Korean War (stalemate)
        War on Poverty (lost)
        Vietnam War (lost)
        War on Cancer (30+ years and still no cure)
        War on AIDS (10+ years and losing)
        Gulf War (Saddam's still there)
        Panama (billions of dollars to throw one guy in jail)
        Somalia (lost)
        Haiti (we still there?)
        Bosnia (they're waiting for us to leave)
        Communism (China & Cuba still there, Soviets bled to
                   death by the Afghanis)
 Our sole clean win was at the tiny Caribbean island-nation of Grenada
 where we accidently blew up the Nuthouse (full of patients at the time)
 by mistake when military 'intelligence' goofed thinking it was the
 national capital building. With a track record like that you'd think 
 we'd know enough to steer clear of the concept. Unh unh. Not us. We
 truely enjoy humiliating ourselves. If we want to send over covert
 commando teams to hide in the mountains for months, I'm sure the Afghanis
 are game. Yum! Yum! Eat 'em up! Send more Marines - they need the meat.
 Tender young Americans are a delicacy. Much tastier than those stringy,
 scrawny Russian boys. And far more sexually-gratifying than dogs and
 camels. 

 The recent events have made two things abundantly clear:
 (1) terrorism has become a fact of American life, and
 (2) Uncle Sammy isn't going to lift a finger to protect us.
 The main reason we have a freak'n military is to protect and 
 defend America. Not Taiwan; not Kuwait; not Columbia; but the 
 good 'ol U.S.A. That's their Prime Directive. Not a single one
 of our military services stepped up to do their job during the
 recent attack. The Air Force put in a belated, token effort 
 but the Army, Navy, Marines and Coast Guard didn't do a damn 
 thing. Just sat there with their thumbs up their fat butts. 
 Afterwards, their only concern was with their own protection - 
 screw us. We don't count. They even grounded that mercy flight 
 from Alaska carrying a human heart for transplant, instead of 
 escourting it. Like a Cessna has a hope in hell against an 
 F-16 eh. Tough luck for the sick bastard who needed that heart. 
 The military's needs come first. 

 What a profound and shocking failure by our Paycheck Patriots. 
 The present version bears little or no resemblance to the 
 citizen armies of the past who never failed to give it their
 best shot. This time, when the chips were down, they were 
 nowhere to be found. Just left us twisting in the wind. Thanks 
 for frik'n nothin jerks.

                               *

 An early victim of the New York City attack was Howard Stern -
 America's funniest jerk-off artist and oldest Swing-ger - host
 of the Alte Kocher Kibbitzer Klub of the Air aka The Howard
 Stern Show. Whenever Howie wanders away from the general topic
 of Tits & Ass, he's on pretty shaky ground. He usually chokes
 on his own vomit. T&A is all he knows. When he stays on-topic, 
 he's fun, he's funny. When he wanders off, he gets real boring, 
 real fast. He's been off-topic ever since the attack. No midgets, 
 no weird homeless guys, no stripping porn stars - nut'n. The 
 first week was understandable enough: NYC is the center of his 
 universe and they got that great gapping hole in their skyline 
 to remind them of what happened. Who wouldn't be pissed? But by 
 the second week a real pro would have picked up the pieces and 
 gotten back on track. He didn't. He's turned into one of his own 
 clones. Maybe he'll be interesting again in a year or so. Maybe 
 I'll give a damn enough to listen and find out. Probably not.

                               *

 While Catholics tripped on a bogus/phony 'Third Secret of
 Fatima', the Nostradamus Heads with their bogus prediction and
 the Christian Fundamentalists blubbered about God's chastisment
 of America for Bubba-Jay's loose zipper/abortions/etc in the wake 
 of the terrorist attacks, there is someone keeping a level head 
 about themselves - the Raelians. They're heavy into human cloning 
 and see it as the ultimate weapon against terrorism. Simply rattle 
 off replacement copies of all the people who got killed. Then just
 download the back-up of their personalities (they would have kept 
 a copy on their home computers) and Bob's Your Uncle - no more dead 
 victims. The only part missing from their memories would be the 
 nastiness that got them killed. 

 The personality thing is still in the research stages and, to that 
 end, they're hitting on Uncle Sammy for some Dough to speed things 
 up. Probably flogging the idea to Microsoft too so they can crank 
 out some generic personalities for people like Governor Stinky who 
 lost theirs or never got one. Just jab a couple electrodes into your
 cranium and hitch up the the other end to your computer's parallel 
 port, then start downloading. The Raelians see the attacks as a 
 perfect opportunity to strike while the iron's hot. You gotta like 
 people who got a nose for opportunity.
   
........................................................................

 		         MONDO VATICANO

 A phony Third Secret of Fatima made the rounds in the wake of the
 WTC destruction. It warned that 'We are close to the last minute
 of the last day and the catastrophe is near', adding that the Pope
 and bishops are now awaiting further instructions. From who? Their
 tax lawyers?
			+	+	+
 Father Jean-Marie Benjamin of France who heads up a humanitarian
 relief organization aiding Iraqui citizens suffering from our 
 embargo, predicted the WTC attack 4 days before it occurred. He
 said it '...was my personal deduction and was not based on specific
 information.' Hope the FBI passed along their Tip Line phone number
 to him in case he gets any other brain-storms like that.
			+	+	+
 The Bishop of Vancouver (BC) was whooping it up celebrating after
 the Candian Supreme Court declared that the Catholic Church wasn't
 a legal entity and therefore couldn't be sued by victims of the
 horrendous sexual-abuse many Native kids faced in their residential
 schools. But just as the party was hitting high-gear Bad News came
 in from the BC Court of Appeals - they ruled that 2 schools, St.
 Thomas More and Vancouver College, could be liquidated to compensate
 victims of east-coast abuse. With his predecessor convicted of 
 sexually assaulting young girls while a chaplain in the schools,
 the present Bishop showed his compassion for the victims and 
 sense of responsibility by refusing to say anything more than that
 he would be appealing. What a buck-sucking jerk! Real Christian eh.

-------------------------------------------------- 
 The above is copyright material. You want to use it, 
 ask. You want to make money off it, gimme some first. 
 I'll let you know if it's enough. You want to steal it, 
 I'll sic my lawyer Yoshi 'The Proctologist' Rasmussen 
 on you baby. He'll teriyaki your sorry butt and turn 
 it into Lutefisk.
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