afrojet

Mooking
The Good Doctor weighs in with his definition of ‘Mook’, ruminates on the reasons we mook, and delivers a brief story about collegiate mooking in a Colorado Walgreens.

mook (mook) vt. (from mooke) 1 to use hands or fingers
to covertly smash or squish soft grocery items or
packaged foodstuffs so as to cause them to change
shape and form within packaging. 2 to make a small
“mook” sound with the mouth while smashing or
squishing soft grocery items and packaged foodstuffs.
3 any combination of 1 and 2 above – mook*ing,
-mook*

For me the pure joy of mooking is threefold:

1. The Dada ridiculousness of being an adult and doing
something nonsensical and mildly rebellious.

2. The tactile satisfaction of squishing and breaking
things.

3. A way to strike back in a small way against giant
faceless chain store corporations.

(My) friend and I used to play a game at
stores in college called “mooking” where one person
would say “mook” in this weird high voice and then we
would try to squish or smash more soft merchandise
than the other person. It was a verb as in: “Dude,
did you see those generic fruit pies that I mooked?”
It was almost impossible to not laugh out loud when a
mooked item would suddenly burst from its package and
gush sauce or filling all over your hand or coat
sleeve. Some things like Wonder Bread or marshmallows
could be mooked slowly and tenderly while terrible
pecan pies in the checkout line were brutally and
quickly smashed to bits. It was definitely a “one up”
type of contest where the most ridiculous or terrible
products were the first victims and one tried to mook
larger and larger items before collapsing with
laughter or getting caught. Once a clerk saw my
friend D. with both hands in a bin of Peeps but it
was as if he had the force and she could’t process the
reality of a grown man smashing colored marshmallow birds
out of spite so she just didn’t react at all.

Winter Garden
These three crippled heroes are the last tomatoes and represent all that’s left from what was once a glorious summer garden. I wonder what they taste like…

Walgreens
So there I was at Walgreens, breaking my promise for the hundredth time that I would never, never ever ever go into a Walgreens again. But the household needed Ice Melt and an extension cord and shit maybe some gum drops, the kind with little sugar crystals on the outside. Such a motley crew of items can only be purchased at a few unique locations. Walgreens being the closest and most consistently open. But damn, Walgreens, especially on cold winter nights, is a lunatic hangout, an open door asylum for zombies and the unattractive, unwanted and unwelcomed banshees that haunt the stores isles with their dried apricot faces and pickled postures. It’s like having a haunted house open in your neighborhood 365 days a year.

Unfortunately, I have a neighbor who is one of these people. She lives alone in the second story of a house owned by a sweet old women who watches television all day with headphones in her ears. I can see the old woman right now from my second story home-office window. My window looks right down into her living room. I can see the back of her silver head. She’s watching a morning news program. She’s there all day, just like I’m up here almost all day looking into my machine. The crazy lady who lives upstairs from the old woman takes her cigarette breaks outside and I swear she tries to time them at exactly the same time that I take mine. She mumbles things to herself and occasionally will break out in hysterical cackling laughter. It’s truly terrifying when she does this. She also spends an alarming amount of time grazing at Walgreens. The few times I’ve seen her there she is always transfixed on one thing. One product. I’ve witnessed her browsing an end cap forever. She’ll pick up and inspect one of the dozens, put it back and then move surgically to the next one. Repeating this until all have been inspected. Every so often she’ll cackle with excitement. It gives me chills just writing about it.

There are two places where standing in line as a costumer seem like time vortexes to me. One is the post office and the other is Walgreens. When in line at either of these places, I am overwhelmed with a sense of dread and am quickly filled with the urgency of my own existence. Sometimes the feeling is so strong that I simply drop all my goods and leave the store. Sometimes, I find it helps if I squish one of those candy bars in the check out lane or find anything else that I can break by simply crushing it in my hand and put it back without anyone noticing. Extremely therapeutic. We all have our coping strategies. And strategies you need for these checkout lines. You could be behind two people at Walgreens, each with two items to buy and it would still take you 20 minutes before it’s your turn to check out. Every conceivable problem that could go wrong between clerk and consumer does. It’s like the two are speaking entirely different languages to one another. Then there’s the transaction: expired coupons, coupon arguments, product too expensive, product undesired (‘Actually I don’t think I want that’), undesired product taken away and hence becomes desirable again (!?!), unknown cigarette brand, check writing, price check, price doesn’t exist. The list is infinite and the customer gets creative especially when they combine five or six of these in one seesion. The shit is just epic.

In a desperate move the other day, I bought an ice scraper for the car at Walgreens. It made four scrapes and then snapped in half like a dry twig. Gracefully, I swiveled Northwest on the ball of my right foot, then, in the direction of Walgreens, I did hurl one half of that piece of shit scraper as far as I could. I swear I will never, never ever ever go to Walgreens again.

Keepin’ It Alive in ’05

Hope everyone had a nice little vacation. It’s been a time of good relaxation here. Books have been crushed. Good movies watched. Took in the new year with Bill Murray. The Life Aquatic is a fine film. Got to get me a pair of those limited edition “Steve Zissou” Adidas sneakers. Starting the new year with Mr. Bill Murray brings hope and happiness to the coming year. Watched two other fine flicks: Napoleon Dynamite (finally), and Fishing with John. If you haven’t seen fishing with John, put it on your list. My favorite episode was John Lurie and William DaFoe braving the elements during a tragic ice fishing adventure in Maine.

The last few days have found me in a frantic state of purging and archiving. My trash man is going to earn his money this week. Huge drops at the Goodwill. The shredder whines and pleads for mercy from all the pulp that I demand it rip. Photos get organized. Correspondences get categorized. New shelving systems get built. Systems get backed up. Staplers get reloaded. Dust and clutter are the enemies of ’04. They have both been fought and destroyed. Tabula Rasa on the horizon. Move up. Move on.

All For Me Grog, Me Jolly Jolly Grog

Here’s to you and yours this holiday season. May your shores be calm and your ships sturdy and strong. As the new year creeps up on us, I find myself looking for a Midwestern pub to celebrate and stomp out some old time sea shanties.
I want huge iron tankards of mead to slam down on worn mahogany bars. I want to chant out dusted maritime disaster songs and sing wild tales of nautical adventure men and their women whom they long to come home to.

I found this wonderful site that has a huge index of sea shanties, many of the songs have MIDI files to give you the basic melody of the song. A complimentary site is found here and offers a bit more historical background on the songs. There’s lyrics and MIDI files as well. Favorite song today is The Bonny Ship The Diamond – “O she was lost to the ice in 1819, a finer boat you never have seen”. Another one of my favorites is Whiskey Johnnie. Turns out my name is not just the generic term for toilets and folks who buy prostitutes but also the generic term for a merchant seaman. Thus many songs are composed about me. Could be that ‘Sea Shanties’ are the best genre of folk songs ever.

Make sure you’re singing the right shanty for the right occasion. From the index of Sea Shanties we learn the shanty types:

Short Drag Shanty
Short drag or short haul shanties were for tasks requiring quick pulls over a relatively short time, such as shortening or unfurling sails.

Long Drag Shanty
Long drag or halyard shanties were for heavier work requiring more setup time between pulls. For example, to get a heavy sail up to the mast, a shanty that gave the men a rest in between the hauls was what was required. The same shanty could also be used to lower the sails. This type of shanty usually has a chorus at the end of each line. These songs were used for long, heavy periods of labor.

Capstan Shanty
Capstan (or windlass) shanties were used for long repetitive tasks, that simply need a sustained rhythm. Raising or lowering the anchor while winding up the heavy anchor chain was their prime use. This winding was done by pushing round and round at the capstan bars, which required a long and continuous effort. These are the most devloped of the work shanties.

Forecastle Shanties
In the evening, when the work was done, it was time to relax. Singing was a favored method of relaxation. The songs sung could come from places visited, either at home or in some foreign land. Naturally, songs of love, adventure, pathos, and famous men, battles, or just plain funny songs topped the list.

Whaling Shanties
Life on a whaler was worse than any other type of vessel, except maybe that of a pirate ship (in the sense of surviving). Voyages typically lasted from two to three years, and you also had the ever-present stench of whale oil. Chasing a whale could lead to the ship being smashed by the whale’s tail. Many sailors were maimed or killed by the tail.


So for this New Years Eve, with the work of the year behind us let’s raise our glasses and sing a few Forecastle Shanties and sing ourselves into relaxation.

Also, books about sea shanties and recordings of sea shanties.

Just Say No
Oh boy. Minus 25 degree wind chill outside this morning but no real snow to speak of. This is fucked up. If it’s going to be this goddamn cold out, well then there better be some snow because people around here take their ‘White Christmas’ very seriously and it’s hard to get swept up in the romantic nostalgia of Christmas when you look outside and all you see is your dead brown lawn and frozen squirrels dropping lifeless from the skeletal branches of your backyard apple tree. Come on. Indiana’s got like 25 inches of the fluffy white stuff, even New Mexico has snow – but we got shit. We’re Minnesota for christsakes! I got my gear and my shovel in hand, now put me to work moving S.N.O.W.

Yesterday, I secured the remaining bounty that will be handed out over the next couple of days. On these frigid mornings, I give high praise to the online e-tailers and the inventor of the indoor mall. God bless you. Next year however, I will be making a t-shirt that says, “I am not interested in any of your up-selling, so please don’t even ask.” Or just a little 5 by 7 hand card that simply says ‘No!’, which I can flash at will.

Can I help you find something sir? No!
Are you interested in a pair of sox with that? No!
You qualify for a free magazine subscription. No!
Would you like to sign up for our rewards bonus card that gives you an additional 15% off a whole bunch of garbage you really don’t need but because you invested now in this card you will be compelled to buy in the future? No!

What really pisses me off is when I’m greeted at the check out line by the phrase, “Just this for you today?”. What? I’ve got like five items here totaling $150 bucks. That’s not enough? What do you people want from me? Blood? Charity? You can’t have it.

Everything that comes out of the retail workers mouth is delivered in this tired scripted language that makes them all sound like broken repeating robots. For some fun, try interjecting a line that’s not on the holiday shopping script, something like, “Where does this green bus deliver the oatmeal pancakes? I hear they’re quite tasty.” Bam! You can watch there tiny brains explode right before your eyes. Careful though, because as soon as you paralyze one of the checkout people, you will incur the wrath of all the other shoppers for gumming up the machinery. Things can turn ugly fast.

One thing I’m actually enjoying this holiday season is rediscovering old mix tapes from high school and college. Especially anything with Anthrax (the band not the poison) on it. The iPod is abandoned for old black Maxell tapes that are dirty and crusted with cola stains and other deposits accumulated from being kicked around on the bottom of some past vehicle’s floor. What I really want for Christmas is my old yellow Sony ‘Sports’ Walkman, before I accidentally took it camping and placed it in a backpack with an unsecured bottle of 100% DEET mosquito repellant. When I removed it from the pack there was nothing left but a melted and disfigured hunk of plastic.

Currently my favorite Christmas song is ‘Xmas for the Skins’ by Crucial Youth.

Popsicle Salad

Finally some snow here this morning to go along with our uncomfortably cold temperatures. The weather guy is predicting a high of 1 for Thursday. That should be fun. Yesterday the town was decorated by thin sheets of ice, which left me in a very uncomfortable spot with my mailman as I hadn’t any salt to put down. If I don’t put some down today, he’s sure to write me a nasty note or worse, lose my christmas packages in some dumpster as he curses our house. He probably wouldn’t think twice about smashing our packages, “Sorry about your smashed package sir, but you see, I SLIPPED ON YOUR ICE!!”

Yesterday, I came out of a meeting downtown to my car that was parked at a meter. There was a car parked in front of mine and car parked in back. Then there was a huge delivery truck parked on the side of my car, effectively boxing me in. If this was summer, I probably would have shrugged my shoulders and wandered up to a coffee house, returning later without incident. But this is not summer and that’s not what happened. I was cold and livid. I finally saw the delivery guy trying to come out of a building. He was carrying a huge box covered in big bold face ‘fragile’ stickers. I put aside my scrooge face for a second and tried to give him a hand with the door. He just looked at me with a devil face, pushed the cart out the door and then took a sharp turn. And then this is where the box falls off the cart and all you hear is this this awful sound like a crystal chandelier falling thirty feet onto a marble floor. Oh man it was awful. I cringed for like a minute. But the delivery guy doesn’t even seem to notice. Just shoves the box back on the cart and gets it ready to put in his truck. Reminded me of that Jim Carry movie where he’s a UPS guy playing soccer with someone’s fragile package. Takes the guy about another five minutes to move his truck. Oh Merry Merry – I need to go buy some salt.

Skelton: Ale Wiues Downe
This jacket design from A Selection of Poems by John Skelton contains a contemporary woodcut depicting Skelton’s famous character, Elenor Rumming the alewife. Apparently, Skelton wasn’t very fond of Elenor, for an ‘alewife’ is a foul smelling and awful looking fish that is native to the Atlantic and is listed on most invasive species lists. I believe at the time (1523), John Skelton was king of the poetry slam. Here is a sample form ‘The Tunning of Elenor Rumming‘:

Her eyen gowndy
Are full unsowndy,
For they are blered;
And she gray hered;
Jawed lyke a jetty;
A man would have pytty
To se how she is gumbed,
Fyngered and thumbed,
Gently joynted,
Gresed and annoynted
Up to the knockles;
The bones of her huckels
Lyke as they were with buckels
Togyther made fast:
Her youth is farre past:
Foted lyke a plane,
Legged lyke a crane;
And yet she wyll jet,
Lyke a jollyvet,
In her furred flocket,
And gray russet rocket,
With symper the cocket.

I myself am trying to work in some of these quotes of John Skelton’s into my daily language. I especially like, “There is nothynge that more dyspleaseth God, Than from theyr children to spare the rod.” Which roughly translates to ‘God wants you to beat your kids silly with a very big stick’.

All of this is good research for a book I’m working on called: “The Skeltons: A Heritage Soaked in the Ale of Savagery”.

I thought I would also include here a passage from Robert Graves‘s toast to John Skelton:

What could be dafter
Than John Skelton’s laughter?

What sound more tenderly
Than his pretty poetry?

So where to rank old Skelton?
He was no monstrous Milton,
Nor wrote no “Paradise Lost,”

So wondered at by most,

Phrased so disdainfully,

Composed so painfully.

He struck what Milton missed,

Milling an English grist

With homely turn and twist.

He was English through and through,

Not Greek, nor French, nor Jew,

Also, from a great article entitled John Skelton – Godfather of Rap, by Robert Skelton, we learn that Skelton gave us the phrases: “I Smell a Rat”, “By hook or by crook” and my all time favorite, “In spite of his teeth.” Robert also goes on to compare some of Skelton’s poetic stanzas with the some of the best hip hop moguls. Robert proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Beastie Boys sample all their good material from the Skeltons. Check this quote from Robert’s article:

Listen to these lines from his poem To Mistress Margaret Hussey:

Erst that ye can find

So courteous, so kind,

Of merry Margaret, as midsummer flower,

Gentle as falcon or hawk of the tower.

Whereas 500 years later the Beastie Boys tell us:

We’re giving you soul power

I like it sweet and sour

When it comes to rhymes and beat designs

I’m at the control tower

Pomp and Circumstance
Last night watched the Little Brother graduate from Metro State University. Congratulations to him. Whoop. Whoop. The new Saint Paul Chief of Police was the commencement speaker. He set out to break some sort of personal best by giving a speech in under seven minutes. He even had another cop time him. I don’t know if he was running late for something or just wanted to make it home in time to watch the final episode of The Apprentice, but it seemed like an odd thing to do. So he launches into this speech, talking extraordinarily fast and everyone in the auditorium looks over at the poor interpreter for the hard of hearing who has just crapped his pants because there’s no way he’s going to be able to keep up with The Chief. The Chief got him beat.

I got to hand it to The Chief, in his seven minutes he had some sapient sage butter to spread on the sober graduates, toasting in their robes. Learn from this hot tamale of balanced astuteness: “Success is the child of audacity”.

!!!!!-?-!-??

How about that? After being struck by that knowledge bomb, I now plan to follow those words to the letter! By being rude, cocky, and shameless, I’m’a gonna swagger my ass up your ladder and gnaw off your brass rings of decorum and courtesy. And I wont stop chewing until “you count your friends on a hand of amputated fingers”. I will stand at the top satiated by the curdle of blood.

Whoa. Too much coffee this morning?

I would like to know tho, if success is indeed the child of audacity, then one would assume that audacity is the mother, right? So then, who is the father of audacity or is success being raised by a single parent? Immaculate conception? Can’t rule it out. Or can we? To much to think about for a Friday. Must move on to simpler matters:

Wookie Christmas. Featuring Chewbacca’s little one’s Lumpy and Itchy.

Small Oranges.

You have bad taste in music.

Cool fridges.

Modern Bird Houses.

Today’s photo is from a book by German Photographer Robert Lebeck. The book is entitled Angeberpostkarten, which I think translates to something approximating ‘swanky postcards’.

Collateral
Rented the Michael Mann masterpiece Collateral (trailer) last night. A great movie that I wish I had seen in the theaters. Michael Mann is the king director in my book. His films are so focused and finely crafted with intense visual detail. I would love to see a feature on DVD’s that allows the viewer to remove all dialog, so that you’re just watching the visuals with the only sounds coming from the soundtrack and movie score. The low lighting and night photography in Collateral are arresting and beautiful and paint a picture of L.A. that I haven’t seen in any other movie. From Thief, which was shot in Chicago, to Miami Vice, it’s obvious that Mann knows how to celebrate and mystify a city all at once.

Tom Cruise’s performance is efficient and his delivery effortless. I’d like to see him in more roles like this. Roles where he’s understated, subtle and, well frankly, not a good guy. Mann does a great job of stripping the actor from the character in his films and Cruise is just one example. Mark Ruffalo is also very good in this film. Gotta keep an eye on his work too. Two thumbs way up.