On The Home Front
Home is where the soup is made. The Wife is in the kitchen making chicken soup with The Kid providing accompaniment. They seem to be performing some crazy sort of musical production number. "All I want is chicken soup, and you to eat it with me", The Wife sings. Well, it must be—it has to be a tribute to the old David Soul seventies album sleeper "All I Want Is Black Bean Soup (And You To Eat It With Me)". Yes, it has the same melody...a David Soul kitchen tribute, soup, a ceramic heater and a raw March saturday: who can ask for anything more?
Now she has modulated to a homage to Pat Benatar's "Heartbreaker".
I'm a soup-maker, brownie-baker
salt-shaker, dontchu mess-around-with-me
The juxtapositional shift from David Soulian smooth-rock giddyness to Benataresque swivel-hipped defiance in a span of seconds and all within the context of the making of chicken soup leaves me in silent, bewildered awe of her performance art mastery. Could there not be an NEA grant for this sort of daring brilliance?
We survive. I have found work, such as it is. We have signed a new lease and are surrounded by boxes preparing a move.
Things go on.
I haven't been blogging. I haven't been playing music. There is rumor of a possible Zeus gig, but I haven't chased it down. I haven't tried writing any new songs. I have just been trying to get by and keep on the sunny side.
I have been wanting to say something about "The Loan Shark Protection Act of 2005", but others are saying what I'd say ably—albeit with futility. I have been wanting to comment on the resurgence of spirit in the Left to counter the feral greed of the Right. But there is nothing but uniform, facile complacency.
The other day I was downtown and there was a demonstration against the Social Security dismemberment plan in front of the offices of Charles Schwabb on Wacker Drive. There were about fifty people and two riot cops. I walked four blocks east to the Federal Building and there were five topless PETA demonstrators in the plaza holding little signs over their chilled, goosepimpled chests. There were about 50 people and a whole lotta cops. I was a world away from Haymarket Square. It is just over the river, but lost to history. The robber barons have won.
I have been trying not to hate. I have grown tired of hating the President, his purposeless war, his wrongheaded fealty to the corporatists who are eating the seed corn of the nation. We are on our way to a dark place, but I don't want to hate anyone or anything.
Life is too short, right?
Last night I hated the alarm going off at four in the morning. It has happened before. Just this past week the same alarm went off at 3:00AM and went strong until shutting off precisely at 3:35AM. It had gone off before that on occasion and woken me up as well, but there is nothing you can do except get dressed, go out in the dead cold of night, and track down the simple, inane device that is shrieking, and BWEEP-BWEEP-ING and destroying the neighborhood's peace. I hadn't done so. I simply stayed up and paced the floor, shaking my fist at my nameless, faceless enemy.
Today the alarm went off midday. I grabbed my coat and RAN. I had imagined the thing was a car alarm, but it was on a building over by the park OVER TWO BLOCKS AWAY. On the door it said:
Vital Products, Ltd.
Home Health Care Devices
773.463.4455
4332 N. California
Protected by Security Link
Ameritech
There it is! A black box under the eave sounding an alarm as loud as a Civil Defense air raid warning. O the nights this thing has kept me up. O the souless bastard who thinks that home health care devices are somehow so vital they deserve such protection as to impair my sleep. O the lack of humanity!
There's a guy in the entrance of the building punching numbly at a keypad on the wall holding a cell phone to his ear, listening to instructions. I step inside.
"Is that your alarm?" I shout above the alarm.
"Yes, it's the building's", he replies.
"It's been going off nights"
"I know, I've been getting calls. It's on a motion sensor."
"Have you gotten any tickets?"
"Yeah, just now", he says.
"Good", I say.
"Can I help you?", he adds disgustedly.
"People live in this neighborhood and try to sleep," I offer.
"Listen, if I can't help you, I am a little busy", he says.
"You could junk your little alarm system", I suggest.
Oh, how I hate this guy. What is it that he sells that is so precious? Old lady bed pans? I wander off dejectedly, kicking slush and snow out of my path, vowing to come back the next time the thing goes off at three in the morning with a baseball bat and finally do all the damage the security system is designed to ward off.
I tell my wife my plan, but she is against the idea. She doesn't like insurrection generally. If it wasn't for her, I would be actively participating in open rebellion of our government and getting jailed regularly.
Or not. I don't really know anymore. Is there such a thing as an opposition anymore? I can never tell. Besides, there are probably more important things to worry about. From now on I will simply not "hear" any alarms; that way it will not be troubling whatsoever.
Read more!
Now she has modulated to a homage to Pat Benatar's "Heartbreaker".
I'm a soup-maker, brownie-baker
salt-shaker, dontchu mess-around-with-me
The juxtapositional shift from David Soulian smooth-rock giddyness to Benataresque swivel-hipped defiance in a span of seconds and all within the context of the making of chicken soup leaves me in silent, bewildered awe of her performance art mastery. Could there not be an NEA grant for this sort of daring brilliance?
We survive. I have found work, such as it is. We have signed a new lease and are surrounded by boxes preparing a move.
Things go on.
I haven't been blogging. I haven't been playing music. There is rumor of a possible Zeus gig, but I haven't chased it down. I haven't tried writing any new songs. I have just been trying to get by and keep on the sunny side.
I have been wanting to say something about "The Loan Shark Protection Act of 2005", but others are saying what I'd say ably—albeit with futility. I have been wanting to comment on the resurgence of spirit in the Left to counter the feral greed of the Right. But there is nothing but uniform, facile complacency.
The other day I was downtown and there was a demonstration against the Social Security dismemberment plan in front of the offices of Charles Schwabb on Wacker Drive. There were about fifty people and two riot cops. I walked four blocks east to the Federal Building and there were five topless PETA demonstrators in the plaza holding little signs over their chilled, goosepimpled chests. There were about 50 people and a whole lotta cops. I was a world away from Haymarket Square. It is just over the river, but lost to history. The robber barons have won.
I have been trying not to hate. I have grown tired of hating the President, his purposeless war, his wrongheaded fealty to the corporatists who are eating the seed corn of the nation. We are on our way to a dark place, but I don't want to hate anyone or anything.
Life is too short, right?
Last night I hated the alarm going off at four in the morning. It has happened before. Just this past week the same alarm went off at 3:00AM and went strong until shutting off precisely at 3:35AM. It had gone off before that on occasion and woken me up as well, but there is nothing you can do except get dressed, go out in the dead cold of night, and track down the simple, inane device that is shrieking, and BWEEP-BWEEP-ING and destroying the neighborhood's peace. I hadn't done so. I simply stayed up and paced the floor, shaking my fist at my nameless, faceless enemy.
Today the alarm went off midday. I grabbed my coat and RAN. I had imagined the thing was a car alarm, but it was on a building over by the park OVER TWO BLOCKS AWAY. On the door it said:
Vital Products, Ltd.
Home Health Care Devices
773.463.4455
4332 N. California
Protected by Security Link
Ameritech
There it is! A black box under the eave sounding an alarm as loud as a Civil Defense air raid warning. O the nights this thing has kept me up. O the souless bastard who thinks that home health care devices are somehow so vital they deserve such protection as to impair my sleep. O the lack of humanity!
There's a guy in the entrance of the building punching numbly at a keypad on the wall holding a cell phone to his ear, listening to instructions. I step inside.
"Is that your alarm?" I shout above the alarm.
"Yes, it's the building's", he replies.
"It's been going off nights"
"I know, I've been getting calls. It's on a motion sensor."
"Have you gotten any tickets?"
"Yeah, just now", he says.
"Good", I say.
"Can I help you?", he adds disgustedly.
"People live in this neighborhood and try to sleep," I offer.
"Listen, if I can't help you, I am a little busy", he says.
"You could junk your little alarm system", I suggest.
Oh, how I hate this guy. What is it that he sells that is so precious? Old lady bed pans? I wander off dejectedly, kicking slush and snow out of my path, vowing to come back the next time the thing goes off at three in the morning with a baseball bat and finally do all the damage the security system is designed to ward off.
I tell my wife my plan, but she is against the idea. She doesn't like insurrection generally. If it wasn't for her, I would be actively participating in open rebellion of our government and getting jailed regularly.
Or not. I don't really know anymore. Is there such a thing as an opposition anymore? I can never tell. Besides, there are probably more important things to worry about. From now on I will simply not "hear" any alarms; that way it will not be troubling whatsoever.
Read more!
posted by obelus at 3/12/2005 06:13:00 PM
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