Zipper Man

            I saw Bill the smog guru. He told me all about his experience in the hospital. He was there for twenty-five days. It hardly seemed pleasant. At one point he talked to a Chaplin. He thought it was over for him. He asked the Chaplin for an evocation of some sort.

            The doctors had no idea what was wrong with him until he vomited blood. Oh, so that’s where the blood we’ve been giving you is going? They put him under the knife and butter-flied him. They patched him up after cutting three feet of bad intestine and working on his stomach. He has a zipper now. He said it took him a few days to figure out that you had to ask for pain medication. He said it was posted on a sign and written in fine print. He named off the medication that he’s on, none of which I remember. One makes him drowsy, and one thins his blood.  I don’t know if the medication is a good thing, but at least he’s still alive.  

The Snake Won

            Yesterday was rot with plumbing problems. The mainline was backed up and it wasn’t pretty. A plumber showed up, but he didn’t have any luck unclogging it. He was quick to assume that the pipes were filled with roots and that they needed to be replaced. He said it would be expensive to fix unless I did the digging to save money. He was a problem solver and I appreciated that. The plumber had another call. He took off, but he said he’d come back later in the day. He gave me the plan of attack, which I quickly forgot.

            I started digging, but after an hour of digging, I realized that I didn’t want to be the digger, so I stopped and hashed out an idea that made more sense to me. I figured before we went crazy replacing pipes we should try once more to snake the pipes from a different access point. That’s what we did and after numerous attempts at snaking the pipes, the snake won.

The Man

            I did my Saturday gig in Venice. It was pretty much the same. I got paid and the money from the gig will soon be spent on studio time to finish recording Things Have Gone and Changed. It’s a hand to mouth existence, but it beats the alternative of working for the man. Working for the man in my experience has been a disappointment. The man doesn’t care about his labor. The man has nickel and dimed me. The man seldom has money for a raise. He’ll squeeze you dry if you let him. If I’m going to be dry it might as well be on my terms, and it might well be by playing music, and writing books. After all who needs the man anyways?