Different kinds of Jabbas

My pal Scott and I sure do like our iced tea.

We drink it every time we eat our lunches at Le Madeline.

The cashier gives us our paper cups...

AND THERE'S A DAMN TEA-JABBA CLOGGING UP THE DRINK LINE!

I'm not sexist or anything, but statistically, a tea jabba is a woman. She's usually O-beast, and fusses around trying to get just the right amount of ice, and after she finally tops off her tea, she picks up the tongs and carefully plucks 3 of the lemons with the least seeds. TEA-JABBA!!!

I try to control my frustration.

In the big picture, I should celebrate our mutual love of iced tea and free refills...

Rather than condemn the jabba for her thoughtless oblivion of those behind her.

It reminds me of a quote by Harry Kemp.

"I see the pokey TEA-JABBA and boast, I'd be so outta there with MY tea...

Perhapse someone somewhere, sees a tea-jabba in me..."

THERE BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD GO I.

There's also bread-jabbas.
You can get all the free bread you want at Le Madeline.
All you have to do is... pick... up.. the...tongs. and... a...dish...and...put...the...bread...on...the...dish...
There's free butter and jam also.
As a demographic, the different kinds of jabbas tend to overlap.
Sometimes we mutter "hey jabbajabbajabbajabba..." to dissipate some of the nervous energy of waiting.

concealed weapons

Back in the day I was digging post holes down the property line  for my old boss in Connecticut.

About 2 feet down I dug up a handgun, a mass of rust.

I dug 2 more holes, before I dug up a derringer, which was more cool, since it was part brass and more intact.

It's hard to dig up guns with post holes, because they are so small, and it's hard to know where the guns are.

My boss kept the guns. I felt like one of those truffle rooting hogs.

Bad dog!

There's a bunch of dog hysteria all over the internets, like that sleeping in the same bed with your dog is going to kill you.

http://www.aolnews.com/2011/01/20/letting-sleeping-dogs-lie-in-your-bed-can-kill-you/

It's not a big whoop to me!

Every time my dog gives me meningitis, I swat her on the nose with a newspaper and say "NO!"

boring miracle

I was looking for a nut, and it magically appeared...
that's my story, in a nutshell.

Here's the drawn out version.

I have a flip video camera, which is really hard to hold steady, so I made a "steadicam", by welding a cast iron weight to one end of a 15 inch rod, and welding a bolt on the other end, so I could thread it into the bottom of my camera, and lock it tight with a nut. Works great.

So, when I made it, I bought a spare nut, which I lost under my table in my metal shop, and haven't seen it for weeks.

No big whoop, till I decided to superglue the missing nut to the bottom of my other cheap camera, so I could attach the steadicam to it. I went down to my metal shop and hunted all over the place, but couldn't find it.

I gave up, went upstairs, sat down, and Amy says, "what's the dog eating?"

She was eating the missing nut.

I know it was THE nut because it had certain distinct markings that could only occur in my metal shop, during the last time I interacted with this particular nut.

NOT MY NUT

NOPE

THAT'S MY NUT!

But it really did have a mark.

Special fish

I just finished a cat catfish dinner from a take-out establishment that will remain anonymous.
The food is good, the portions are big, and I like the owner, if you catch my drift.

So I hope this doesn't come off negatively.

I ordered the "cat catfish" dinner, because I like catfish, and I thought it was a typo.

When I opened the styrofoam container, I had to pick little tufts of fluffy cat fur off of my food before I could eat it.

Next time I should ask for the cat-fur on the side.

Every time I eat there, there is some kind of hitch with my order, like they forget the coleslaw or something, but this was weirder.

Hepatitis monkey.

I was once gripped by urban flight.  I moved to the promised land on the north shore of lake Ponchartrain and got an apt in a cute town a short walk from the water. I met a medium sized angry monkey with hepatitis who lived in a decaying misshapen cage made of 2x4s and wire fence. It lived in someone's back yard.

Oh, and the reason these people had a hepatitis monkey in a cage in the back yard was because it was given hepatitis in a laboratory experiment, and they didn't want it to get put down.

Fool's gold

I was cleaning out my truck the other day and hauled out a pair of roller blades that were given to me, that I haven't worn in I don't know how long.

But they were in decent shape, so I lay them on the sidewalk in case anyone wanted them.

This old toothless nut came by and asked if he could have them, and I said sure.

A few days later I was going into my house and he saw my bicycle parked in there, and he asked if he could have that...  When I said no, he asked why, so I explained why. (I wanted it)

Today he asked me if I had anything to give him.

I said no, not really, nothing except a bunch of gold I had been trying to find a way to get rid of.

He got all excited, "Gold! What kind of gold!?"
I said, "Gold bars! gold bullion! all kinds of gold!"
Then he asked if he could see it and tried to follow me inside.

When I broke the news to him he was a good sport...
"Awww, that's too bad, I thought I was gonna be rich..."

Then he asked if he could have my bike... which I still wanted.

I kind of want to start carrying magic beans, so I don't have to be such a stingy bastard.

Strike!

I was worming my way into a secret sealed off stairwell under my bathroom to check on a leaking drain.
While squeezing back through I found this thing. It's not a button. It's the same on each side. It is awesome.

Tortoise, turtle, I love them both, each in their own way.

Sunflower the tortoise is a real mensch, and a patron of the arts to boot.
He'd love it if you'd check out my project at  http://walletportrait.blogspot.com/2011/01/on-nose.html

Anyhow, I've always had good times with turtles/tortoises, I've gone out on a limb for them before, and it's touching that a tortoise would do the same for me.

As any faithful Thoughts and feelings follower knows, I once saved a turtle from Michael Jackson.
http://adamernestfarrington.blogspot.com/2010/10/set-my-blanket-free.html

Another time I was rowing my boat in city park, and freed a turtle who had swallowed a fish hook, and was tangled in a dead tree.

And there was the time I rowed up on a turtle who had wedged himself between 2 cypress knees.
His head was in the water, and his ass was in the air, he was obviously dead, as he'd been there so long he had grown green slime on the submerged part of his shell.

It was really sad.

I don't know why I even bothered to poke him with my paddle...
He sucked all his parts up into his shell!
So I saved him also.

I learned my lesson, and vowed never to give up on a turtle, without taking his pulse first.

One day I rowed all the way from lake Ponchartrain, up the canal, all the way to the pumping station, and discovered another stranded turtle on top of some pipes over the water.

I poked him, and he fell into my boat, broke open, I almost had to bail out, the stench was so bad.
I almost threw up, Then after that, I almost threw up. I flipped him overboard with my oar.
There was rancid turtle matter on the floor of the boat. I almost threw up.
I had to row to the shore and scrub out with water and weeds. Grosssssssssssssssssssssssss!!!

Damn right I'd do it again!
Anything for the turtles.

Broken bottles and rusty nails.

If you go to the shore, you could hurt your feet by stepping on broken bottles and rusty nails.

Broken bottles come from drunks and kids who can't resist breaking bottles.

People who's main contribution is a beach front obstacle course of curly green glass shards.

Every day drunks and kids, come out and bust up a new batch of bottles for the rest of us to pick our way through.

And since it's been happening forever, you wonder why the planet isn't a glass carpet by now.

And how is it that we can confidently stride out into the surf, barefoot.

Nature is always knocking stuff around, and pretty soon the glass rolls over and plants the sharp side in the ground, and then it gets busted into smaller and smaller pieces.

Thank you mother nature, someone's got to clean up after these drunks and kids.

But What's the deal with mother nature and rusty nails?

A person lays out the cash and sweat to build the best dock they can, and then mother nature thrashes it all over the shore in the next storm. All these rusty nails poking up through planks, and if they ever flip over, they just flip back again because of the nail. WTF? 

Luckily the drunks and kids burn up the naily wood in their camp fires. 

Drunks, kids, and mother nature working together in harmony.

Like me?

The other day I told Brother Love's neighbor that Love had been killed.
Then she told me what happened to the kids in the squat.
I think we both had thought the other already knew, but we hadn't.
It was kind of like boxing, the double knockout...

We each went on our way, a whole new headful of  death.

I'm not sure where the squat was, but it was near-bye and I'd heard of it before.

The thing is, I probably didn't know any of the 8 people who died in the squat fire.
But I might, I might be like, oh, yeah, that guy, I've seen him on the corner.
And I sure don't know to what extent the chain leads back to me, friends of friends...
Obviously things like this ripple.

There was this night I had my head out the window, jabbering with and throwing oranges to this banjo player and his 2 pals. We were not friends, but it was fun, and they could be burned up, or more likely, just elsewhere, or not, since I probably wouldn't recognize them if I saw them again.

Of course it's always proximity that determines how much impact a tragedy has.

Even if you don't know the victims, you ask yourself, were these people "like" me?
Which is kind of an offensive concept, even if it's pretty universal.

I asked myself if I'm stupid enough to light a fire indoors...
It didn't take long to tally up a list of equally stupid things I've done that good luck saved me from.

Would I choose that lifestyle?
I'd take that before anything that resembled 9-5.
It's pretty much how I was living my first week in New Orleans.

Like me?

Who isn't like me?

One, two, look at my watch.

Ron was loading the smoker with Chicken and stoking the fire with wood chips, while brother Love taught me "one two look at my watch".  It's a deceptively simple greeting.
"How does that go again?"
"One, two, look at my watch"
The one and two are accompanied by sort of, sideways high fives, not really a handshake...
So by the time I get my rhythm right, and I'm able to connect on the slaps, I've forgotten to look at my watch, which is hard to remember cause it doesn't even rhyme or make any sense.

But this kind of stuff can seem really important when you're eating barbecue under a huge faded rainbow mural, in the doorway of a derelict warehouse which was supposedly part of the scenery in "confederacy of dunces".
Pretty soon I'd mastered "one, two, look at my watch", and was fake checking the time like an old pro.

Speaking of old pros, Brother Love was a 50-something golf genius.
I don't know golf, and I'd never seen him play, but the way he and Ron were talking, I believe that Love could put a ball anywhere he wanted from absurd distances.

Brother Love had aspirations of joining the senior golf tour. He and Ron were always talking about it, and I said I'd make a demo video of him driving balls to the edge of the earth.

Brother Love lived in the warehouse, which is weird, because he was a smart talented guy who wasn't crazy or addicted, and he had a nice truck, if that's significant. It was a really leaky damp warehouse.
Anyway, the warehouse is going to be renovated, so he had to move out, and while he was staying temporarily at a friends house, he died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
I got the call from Ron over the holidays.

So I guess no golf video.
It's a little shocking.

The thing about city living, is the friends you make "by accident" people who you get to know, because they are around, more than they are the "type" of person you would get to know.
I'd seen Brother Love around, on and off while I'd been renovating the house across the street, but I'd only recently begun to get to know him, and I was a little disappointed that he was moving.

He was a really good guy. I'm lucky to have known him.

RIP

The dog cleaner.

When I was growing up, and someone dropped some food on the floor, instead of wiping it up, we'd get the "dog cleaner". Kind of like a vacuum  cleaner, except a dog cleaner laps up the mess, no fuss no muss.

I still use a dog cleaner.

I'm blowing my cover with this post. I don't think my wife knows how portable this dog cleaner is.
Sometimes when I spill food on the table or the stove, I pick up the dog cleaner point its nozzle in the right direction and start cleaning.

Like the Dyson Ball, A dog cleaner never loses suction.

HEAD TO HEAD!

I'm a comma comma comma comma comma chameleon

That's right, I'm a ,,,,,chameleon, because my wife's always criticizing me for using commas in the wrong place.

I always thought that you could put a comma any place that you wanted the reader to take a pause, especially in creative writing, but my wife swears it's not so.

Why can't the Americans teach their children how to write?
I feel like I'm married to Henrietta Higgins.
It's comma, and comma, that keep me in my place, not my wretched clothes and dirty face...

Just you wait Henrietta!

Cause I'm a comma chameleon. I put my commas where I want to, not where the tyranny of grammar dictates.

Like I said, I'm a ,,,,,chameleon.

But then I looked up the real words to the song, to see if they put commas between the list of karmas.
It turns out that sometimes they don't, and sometimes they do...
So I don't know if I'm a ,,,,,chameleon, or a ,,,,,,,,,,chameleon.
Sorry Henrietta, if you want lingual stability, there's always Latin.

Ahm jist sellin' me sculptchas ah am!

Red alert!

Red alert! My wallet portrait project has broken off from "Thoughts and feelings" and formed a subsidiary blog called walletportrait.blogspot.com .

I feel that it is the only way for me to do justice to my conceptual art project, and the most effective way to cultivate a more participatory audience.

Meanwhile, It will be my pleasure to bring to you, more of my thoughts and feelings.
As always, it is a pleasure to serve.
-Adam

Lunches with Farrington episode 8.

I have lunch with my pals and conceptual art patrons in the Lower 9th ward.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lonKmrk7Fs

The data base of concept art patrons.

My deepest gratitude to the following people, who have agreed to carry a wallet portrait of myself, in perpetuity, as part of my conceptual art project.   http://adamernestfarrington.blogspot.com/2010/12/personal-space.html

Blake
other Blake
Laura
Mary Ellen
Kurtiss
and... drum roll...(your name here)

Concessions in concept art.

It has come to my attention that some of you deem your wallet space to be to be too VALUABLE for you to donate a measly wallet-portrait sized portion of it for my concept art, as explained in my post, "personal space".  http://adamernestfarrington.blogspot.com/2010/12/personal-space.html
Because I am a very accommodating concept artist, I have printed some 1/8 of an inch wallet portraits, that you can carry with very little imposition.

If you tend to lose things, the way I do, a dab of glue should keep it from migrating.

How can you resist this face?

Personal space

Some jerks tagged my alley gate.

They're probably getting off on this media coverage.

While it's a universal human urge to say, "See me, I exist", I resent having my personal space commandeered.

It's not as if I wouldn't like to be out there with a can of paint, spraying my identity all over everyone's everything.         In my gut, it's very appealing, but I am hobbled by my respect for private property, and my fear of the law.

Maybe at it's core, existence is one big psychic land grab. Everyone jockeying for position in other people's personal space.

As an artist, I am acutely aware of this possibility, the need for the individual to stake their claim in the collective awareness.

Facebook is evidence of this universal human need to be present in another human beings personal space, even if it is only digital.

This is my Facebook profile picture.

Times 48

I would like for my profile picture to expand beyond these digital horizons. I would be extremely grateful to any of you who would lend some of their personal space, and assist me with this conceptual artwork, by carrying a tiny portrait of myself in their wallet in perpetuity, or until it no longer becomes feasible to do so.

I will mail to anyone who is willing to help me, a grid of 4 wallet pictures. 1 for your wallet, and 3 to pass along to potential collaborators in the future. (makes a great gift)

space tight? don't worry...     http://adamernestfarrington.blogspot.com/2010/12/concessions-in-concept-art.html

It is important that at some point you pull out the wallet portrait and say something about me. 

That we are friends. That we were in the service together. That you found this is in your girlfriends glove compartment, and you feel awkward about asking her about it.

It doesn't matter what you say or if it's true, as long as it fits the template of wallet portrait banter.

Part of the motivation behind this conceptual art piece, is that nobody has ever carried a portrait of me in their wallet before, and I think it is high time for me to rectify this situation.

Please email me your mailing address, so that you can be included in this work of art.

adammetal3@yahoo.com

Interesting accounts of the wallet portrait project are welcome, but not necessary.
Participators in the wallet picture project will have their first names listed in a special data-base.

A mousse in the house.

My mother is a "no frills" kind of woman. She doesn't put on airs,
and she sure doesn't need no high  falutin' mousse,
 for fluffing up her hairs.

I was in high school when my father discovered hair mousse. My father was a cheapskate, so he brought home this can of generic mousse. It came in a plain white can, with thin red white and blue stripes at the top, and the label read, "No Frills generic hair mousse".  Which is kind of funny, since mousse is a frill.

My father didn't use mousse, my mother was disgusted to even have the stuff in her whole wheat household. My sister may have used it sparingly, if at all.

My father bought another can of No Frills mousse.
My father bought another can of No Frills mousse.

We always had multiple cans of mousse in the bathroom, but nothing in there to read, so while I was having my function, I got in the habit of putting mousse in my hair. It was really low quality mousse, with barely any active ingredients, so I could absorb quite a lot of it with my thick brown hair. I would also put my finger over the nozzle, and spray white foamy ribbons of mousse around the bathroom, while I was on the toilet.
The stuff was all water, so it would just evaporate in a little while.

It seemed like every time my father came home from the grocery store, another can of mousse would come out of the bag.

I kind of felt like it was my responsibility to mousse myself as often as possible, just to get rid of the stuff.
I moussed myself several times a day, combed away what little crunchiness it left behind, and moussed again.

My father must have felt some kind of patriarchal responsibility to keep up with the household mousse demands, because he would just ramp up supplies, and I could never gain on the mousse situation.
I had the silkiest hair.

I have used more mousse than you.