Bing Bang Blog . . .

STOP THE COUNT! . . . STOP THE COUNT! . . .

STOP the STEAL!

WHAT THE FUCK America?! The “flat earth” sewage has bubbled to the surface across the RED states spreading its stench . . .

The ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE is upon us!

What is baffling is, how can people become so gullible?

Well, it’s not really a mystery . . . I watched a sci-fi movie some years back titled “5 Million Years to Earth” . . . British movie . . . starring Prof. Quatermass. British version was “Quatermass and the Pit.”

Cut to the chase . . . turns out that the people in London were genetically descended from Martians who had come to earth many years ago and started a colony . . . got jiggy jiggy with the local ladies and voila! . . . Anyway some electronic vibration triggers the Martian genes and everything goes to shit . . . Martians hopping about wreaking havoc on the humans generally fucking up London . . . kinda like what’s happening to the U.S.

Got the “no-maskers” sounding like NAZIS . . . chanting “STOP THE COUNT” . . . FRAUD!

If you say ZEIG HEIL it sounds a bit like STOP the COUNT . . .

Whenever I see “protesters” on the telly I see the insect Martian mobs hopping. . . . hopping and destroying . . . disrupting . . . mindless shit.

This ain’t my country anymore . . . NO ONE wants to follow rules . . . too busy with TIK TOK Instagram Facebook trying to become a YouTube star . . . you’ve gone “viral” America . . . and the virus is killing you.

‘Nuff said . . . wear yer “face diaper” . . . ciao.

Bringing It All Home

A Coyote Story (2020)

I’d better insert a disclaimer: The views, thoughts and opinions expressed herein belong solely to the author and are not to be construed as pertaining to any other group or individual, indigenous or otherwise. There, done.

LS, my dads father, was talking about the Coyote and how he’d mistakenly thought a song he heard one day was his “doctor” song coming to him. T.C. (The Coyote) was walking along talking to himself when he heard singing . . . faint . . . drifting on the breeze. He stopped so he could hear better . . . “Yes,” he said, “that must be my doctor song. I heard that when you get up in age you might become a doctor and that’s my doctor song coming to me. Yaa-pah!”

What he actually heard was the Cottontail singing, and if he’d listened carefully to the words, he would have known he wasn’t hearing a “doctor” song.

Let me clarify what’s meant when I’m say “doctor “ . . . I don’t be referring to a medical doctor M.D.

When the old people has something wrong with them they send for a “doctor” . . . Indian doctor. No medicine man shaman mumbo jumbo . . . the Indian doctor will “talk” to you find out what’s the problem. If you need some medicine they get the plants can fix you . . . if somebody’s talking witchery they will go and tell them “Stop talkin’ shit – you know what’s gonna happen you keep talkin’ that way.”

Anyway, to put an end to this . . . the Coyote wasn’t on no “vision quest”. . . he was just out doing things Coyotes do . . . up to no good most likely.

Where is this going?

Sometime around 2003 I co-authored a paper about the possible use/purpose of petroglyph panels in Lower Renegade Canyon (Little Petroglyph Canyon, NAWS China Lake).

If you be familiar with petroglyphs you’ll know that they are abstract representations of humans, animals, birds, etcetera . . . then you also have pecked geometric shapes and patterns curvilinear lines dots all sorts of nonobjective detritus . . . early Juan Miro without color.

Well . . . after the gathered rock art cognoscenti heard the paper, they was rolling on floor laughing . . . cos we dint have no track record no PhD . . . in other words no rhetorical paper bullshit gathering dust in some obscure file cabinet corner. Not only did we lack academic “credibility” . . . but we also lacked anthropological “visibility” . . .

That’s just the “exposition” of the theme . . . the variations followed. O.K. Now where was I?

So some years later (in the past 2 weeks) I built a MOC . . . a figure made up of miscellaneous bits and pieces of old Bionicle snap together figures that I had in my collection of stuff from the past. MOC is an acronym for My Own Creation.

So what did I build?

I made a fétiche, a physical manifestation derived from all the anthropomorphic petroglyphs that I had seen during my numerous archaeological survey field trips at NAWS China Lake . . . a 21st century relicant of a being from OVP mythology . . . the Coyote.

*fétiche – (religion) fetish, idol

Sculpture se limite à des fétiches et des représentations de dieux toujours de petites dimensions. (Claude Lévi-Strauss, Anthropologie 1958) trans. – sculpture is limited to fetishes and representations of gods always small.

This ain’t the “trickster” no, no . . . it’s the Coyote . . . “T.C.”

In Navajo mythology he is known as the Reckless Coyote.

The name “trickster” is like the word “Native American” . . . a generic term, politically incorrect . . . the latter coined by the Federal Gov’t to avoid having to comply with CFR 25 policy . . . and “trickster” by Academia . . . thank you Gerald Visenor et al, purveyors of the “trickster” mythos.

T.C. is a clown, not the present day psychotic Halloween freak, but what Tony Hillerman called a “sacred” clown . . . a persona there to remind you and me that we aren’t who we think ourselves to be, but rather mere mortals.

Mythologically, a double edged sword . . . supernatural, at the same time human.

I’ve seen the ceremonial clowns at Taos Pueblo during the San Geronimo Day festivities, and I’ve seen the Navajo Yeibichei “clown”. The Apache have a similar figure and the Puebloan people have the “koshare.”

And that’s the concept for the figure, the “why” . . . the Owens Valley Paiute (OVP) dint have no Geronimo no Crazy Horse no Emiliano Zapata no Caesar Chavez or Tony Stark . . . the OVP only have The Coyote.

My fétiche wags the proverbial finger at you if you get “too full a yo’sef” . . . he’s there to let you know that he sees through the sham, the artifice . . . because, in reality it’s you who’s the “trickster.“

The Coyote stories are the Aesop’s Fables of the OVP . . . there’s a moral in the Coyotes misadventures.

Anthropologists have tagged the Coyote stories “The Coyote Cycle” . . . . tricycle . . . bicycle . . . they don’t say.

But as Brer Rabbit said, “Please Brer Fox, don’t trow me in da briar patch, whatever youse do, jus’ don’t trow me in da briar patch.” Or something like that . . . you know the rest.

Y’all have a good day.

Recovering the Past

This is not about reliving the past, but about actually replacing and finding items that I thought lost . . . gone forever.

Recently acquired a copy of book that contains 6 of my poems written back in 1997 . . . from an unpublished collection of poems originally titled “36 Views of Manzanar”.

“The Dirt is Red Here” is the title of that book published by Heyday Press and now out of print.

I never really understood the title . . . was it an allusion to the blood of the tribal people killed during the colonization of California or was it referring to the actual color of the earth like you can see on I-80 west of Truckee CA.

Also found “Califlora,” a book that went up in flames about 11 years ago . . . it contains “Pear Orchard” a poem from the aforementioned 36 Views of Manzanar collection. One owner of Califlora said that he would have liked to see some illustrations accompany the text . . . the book was a literary field guide, no photos or drawings, just words. Also published by Heyday and still available on e-Bay.

Got the old Indian and his horse . . . hard plastic made by Homeland . . . cowboy boot bank . . . kitschy-koo. Things from when I was a kid. Still haven’t grown up.

Polaroid 35mm film processor . . . OMG! Really?!

This ain’t no sentimental journey . . . just time traveling, thumbing through the early pages of my life . . .

Here are 3 poems that have been published in the previously mentioned books.

“Dog Policy”

the reservation . . .

a cage for my soul?

NO!!

I am not a dog . . .

I am a bird,

a slight movement in the air.

“B” Street

One day, walking on “B” Street

I thought of drinking sake,

eating rice,

medaka,

Little Tokyo,

Boyle Heights.

Hideo said,

“You are an old Japanese

come back

as a Paiute Indian.”

We drank and talked

The far into the past.

======================

Pear Orchard

I carry no tape recorder,

no pen no notebook.

I talk, I listen, talk . . . listen

in endless round.

the crows have eaten most of the pears . .

The following 3 pieces have been edited/rewritten because I didn’t like the published versions.

No-thought

near the old bamboo

there is only one stone

that fits my ass just so.

=================

Pilgrimage

pottery shards

cobalt blue and white

fragments of history

scattered

on the ground . . .

An occasional marble,

the odd button . . .

I pass “go” pieces several times

but don’t collect $200.00 . . .

======================

kami

peering over

wild rose thicket,

a young coyote

watches me

as I listen

to the wind

spilling through the leaves.

My prose/poetry is like jazz, I have a mental score sheet or “chart” on which I arrange words based on the number of syllables to create a rhythm when read. If the rhythm is wrong, I change the words.

Today is Thursday . . . trash day . . . just emptying the bins.

See you next week . . . Ciao.

They Call It America

As I approach my 76th birthday, I feel like it’s time to do something with my life.

I’ve just finished doing some research on Fritz Scholder . . . kinda did a rewinding of the memory tape, hitting the stop button around 1964-65 and then punching “start” to relive or recall the days spent at IAIA.

It was only natural that I would hit the pause button at my first meeting with Fritz . . . Why? Because that’s when I started my journey . . .

I got off the bus with literally nothing more than the clothes on my back and my Gibson acoustic. My luggage (1 suitcase) got lost somewhere between Lancaster CA and Santa Fe NM. Thank you Greyhound bus company.

A Californio stranded in the middle of old Spanish adobe town elegance . . . Indians sitting the Plaza selling trinkets and such . . . Sangre de Christo Mountains to the east Pacific Rim somewhere out west toward setting sun.

I got rousted by the border patrol when I got off the Greyhound in Needles CA to take a leak.

Border Patrol: “You got some I.D.?”

I pulled out my Cali drivers license . . . didn’t have photos on them back in ‘64.

Border Patrol: “Where you going?”

Santa Fe.

Border Patrol: “What’s in Santa Fe?”

Going to art school.

Fortunately the bus driver got back and started the bus and I had to get back aboard . . . ironically, the fucking BP man was a Mexican, Latino or some brown skinned Hispanic person, and I guess he thought I was an illegal countryman sneaking out of California with a guitar case full of weed heading for parts unknown. Couldn’t he tell that I was peau rouge?

“Profiled” before before the term became a part of the urban vocabulary . . . by a member of a south of the border minority population no less! WTF?!

I was wearing Levi’s, plaid Pendleton wool shirt, t-shirt and Purcells . . . high SoCal fashion straight out of Surfer Magazine . . . IAIA dress code at that time was Levi’s cowboy boots (Tony Lama) western cowboy shirt with round white shell top metal snaps not buttons and a black Stetson cowboy hat . . .

Oh SHIT! They were “lndians” . . .

Now I’d been to a few rodeos back when I was growing up in Owens Valley, there were a few “cattle” ranches scattered through out the area, so I was aware of cowboy fashion, but to see honest-to-god Indian “cowboys” was almost too much for my soul. Talk about culture shock!

Remember this was back in 1964 and as far as I was concerned the earth was still flat . . . only other transport I’d had was via train from Mojave CA to the City by the Bay . . . then sometime later I flew to Mexico and saw the curvature of the earth and realized why most everyone back in 14th Century thought the earth was like a map laid out on a table . . . flat . . . no AeroMexico or Lufthansa, they only had paper hot air balloons and you didn’t want to get too crazy in those cos they might catch afire and parachutes were only in DaVinci”s sketch books . . . somewhere.

Where was I . . . oh yeh, stuck in Santa Fe NM with all them Indian cowboys and a hundred years of Catholicism, penitentes and the blood of Christ . . . and Fritz Scholder . . .

When I was a student at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), Fritz was my 2D Design instructor, and then later I was tapped to be in his studio painting class.

How that came about I’m not sure, because not too many people were in his “studio” class . . . when my girlfriend found out that I was moving into Scholder’s “studio”, she said, “He asked for you to be moved to his studio?” Surprise, shock? I don’t know . . .

Anyway, after my one year stint at IAIA I went back to California.

I saw Fritz again in Beverly Hills where he was having a gallery exhibition of his paintings and prints after his rise to “fame” around 1970. At the time I was working for the U.S. Postal Service married and studying printmaking at UCLA.

I won’t say that we were friends, more like associates, peers based on our common knowledge of painting beyond the Bambi School genre and kitschy curio shop souvenirs. Fritz was my mentor . . . in Japanese I would have referred to him as my senpai, my senior.

Fritz came into the studio one day and stood by me, he said, “Are those your brushes in that coffee can?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Which ones do use the most?” I picked out two . . . He said, “Give me the can.” Fritz took the can, walked to the trash bin and dumped the remaining brushes in, then walked back to where I stoop and handed me the empty can. “Learn to use them.” And with that, turned and walked out leaving me holding two brushes and the empty can.

Hmmm . . . reminded me of Katsushika Hokusai, who when asked why he only had one brush, responded that he was still learning to use it.

Fritz and I had a lot in common . . . the two of us were Indian/Not Indian . . . We both knew we were Indians, but were both well integrated into the dominant Euro-American society. I say “society” because there is no American culture, Euro-American or otherwise.

Well, time to wheel the trash bins out to the curb . . . Ciao.

How-to-Make $$

I been thinking . . . about how to make money without violating some law.

I watched this video . . . a video . . . yesterday . . . about how to make money on YouTube.

The keywords are “How-to” . . . How-to-make . . . How-to-get. . . etc., so on and so forth.

I posted a blurb titled “MorBang 4 yer Buck” awhile back, about tags, keywords and thumbnails . . . hinted at SEO.

I’m still pondering . . . “to be or not to be” . . . a maker of videos for a YouTube channel . . .

Quoth the raven , “Nevermore . . .”

When I was teaching, a parent said to me, “Drugs . . . Mr. S, . . . drugs . . . you’re not going to get rich teaching school.”

So . . . this Aussie chap has a channel that I’m subscribed to, a travel channel, and recently he’s started a new channel as a result of the travel lockdown . . . it’s a “How-To-Make Money” channel.

O-o-o-o-h k-a-ay . . . So I decided to have a look.

Lots of ppl doing the same thing . . . thinking about making money . . . there’s a lot of people looking for an opportunity to make money cos they lost their job or they just be tired of the SOS j-o-b.

And that’s where the “How-to” niche opens up . . . lots of potential for making YouTube ad money in the YouTube niche market . . . depending on what yer going to show the viewing community “How-to-Do” . . . you can generate a substantial income from ads.

But there IS a METHOD to the madness.

Buckminster Fuller said it best, “The MEDIUM is the message.”

A video simply documents a process . . . yer not creating anything . . . just documenting a process, the method for doing something.

For example: I can post mundane shit about finding toys from my childhood that I thought were gone forever, and not too many people are going to give a rats ass about some sentimental drivel other than me;, or, I can post a “How-to-Repair” a broken toy video, and there will beaucoup viewers clicking the thumbnail because they too want to know How-to-Do-It.. . .

No “talking head” because it’s not about you . . . remember, it’s NOT about YOU!

So there you have it . . . adapt . . . innovate . . . overcome . . . or is it innovate adapt and overcome . . . I know overcome is last.

You been taking notes?

p,s, TubeBuddy . . . Audacity . . ClipConverter . . . and fivrr.

Tuber

So you want to be a YouTuber . . .

WaaaOW!

“There’s a sucker born every minute.”

Now whether the quote sometimes attributed to P.T. Barnum was actually said by David Hannum or Chicago saloon owner Michael Cassius McDonald, it really doesn’t matter, what’s important is that as a result of the “pandemic” panic, there’s been a glut of YouTube channels popping up.

Lots of people who think their videos have some societal value are being fed a line of shit about how-to-become a YouTube celebrity by YouTube hustlers. . . OMG!

Bikini Fishing, Untold Secrets of Hollywood, 5 SECRETS to getting 1000 Subscribers in 30 Days . . . 5 TIPS on How to Shoot Cinematic Videos and a garbage truck load of similar crap videos.

The best hustle I’ve seen is a screenshot from a YouTube video that says “Be a YouTuber with 1.3M subscribers from today!” . . . that is IF you are chosen as the new m.c. . . . Well shit!

There’s one born every minute and I don’t mean a YouTube success story.

There’s also some crap line about the “2nd evolution” rebirth of a stagnant old YouTube channel in need of nothing more than having a cattle prod jammed against the “creator”/producer’s touch hole.

Let’s hop in the old time machine . . .

Some years ago Danny Choo started – Culture Japan – as a place where anime aficionados and otakus could read about and see photos of the latest trends or styles in Tokyo, specifically in Harajuku, Shibuya and Shinjuku . . . and the world for that matter.

Danny offered a site where anime figure collectors, gundam model builders, and the ball joint doll lovers could post up photos of their collections and builds . . . 10 freaking years ago.

So NOW, in 2020 . . . it’s all . . . LET’S GO TOTOKYO !! . . . and ride a fucking escalator!

Really? Anyway, what sort of person wants to be led around by the nose to every Tokyo tourist trap? . . . guided by some American? . . . a Japanese culture zombie host?

The new otaku zombie travel cult be scratching at airport doors, anxious to travel to Japan to experience . . . escalators . . . photo booths . . . get tips on Harajuku style-y makeup and try their luck at winning a prize with the mechanical claw machine.

We got claw mecha in local Denny’s . . . at least there was one there b’fore lockdown.

When they write in the history books now, they won’t be using A.D. anymore, it’s gonna be A.L.D. – After Lock Down! . . . 2020 A.L.D.

I saw this video about Wagyu beef . . . cows . . . and . . . A5 Wagyu meat is SO full of fat . . . makes USDA Prime beef look LEAN!

Gimme a good Philly cheesesteak sandwich and some fries – pome frits – with a side of catsup/ketchup.

Note: When you use catsup ya gotta hold yer pinky finger in the air.

Speaking of manners, when I was 10 or 12 years old, I learned to eat fried chicken with a knife and fork. I don’t remember the reason for the dinner, all I do recall is sitting next to this older woman who took me “under her wing” so to speak, and graciously taught me the etiquette of eating fried chicken . . . with a knife and fork. Emily Post woulda been proud . . . Even used my napkin.

Yakitori, karaage – fried chicken – Japanese Street food on a stick . . . brings to mind Vlad Tepes, the Impaler, he used to skewer his enemies.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I confess: yes, I still eat chicken with my fingers, but I wash my hands and face when I’m through indulging in such simple pleasures.

And where would I be without simple pleasures? . . . like riding a Japanese escalator or taking pictures in a photo booth in Tokyo . . .?

I’ll answer that question: . . . stuck in eastern California eating Maruchan yakisoba from Von’s, Korean style beef ribs from Trader Joe’s and drinking macha – green tea – from Amazon.

Oh, I guess I could hitch a ride to Los Angle-less and go to Little Tokyo where mochi ice cream, red bean paste treaties, soba noodles, and a Kinokunya bookstore can be found.

The moral to this rant is: Get to know yer own fucking country BEFORE you go traipsing off to some foreign land spreading yer culturally deprived wannabe disease.

Me? I don’t need Japan . . . besides, got no passport visa stamp or Real I.D. Besides . . . always got YouTube . . .

Y”all have a good one.

Time Traveler

All aboard . . . the Time Machine. No H.G. Wells style spinning disk drive . . . We will be time traveling ala Bill Burroughs . . . William S. Burroughs . . .

Burroughs said that time travel was a common thing . . . every time you reminisce you’re traveling back in time although not physically.

“Tickets, please.” Wonky Golden tickets not valid on this ride.

We be traveling back to 2006 or thereabouts . . .

Holy sh . t! . . . a video camera that I can hold with one hand . . . and it don’t use tape! WTF?!

Talking about the Flip cam . . . I don’t remember how I found out about it, but I got one and that’s all that mattered. No more bulky VHS perched on yer shoulder, no more VHS tape player or cassette storage problems . . . store the videos on the laptop . . . Dick Tracy and Buck Rogers miniaturization . . . 25th Century . . . ARRIVED! . . . holding it in my hand!

Did some modifications as per usual . . . so ppl would think that it was just a toy.

It’s like when I was doing photography with my Leica CL (the “baby” Leica) . . . no one paid much attention to me cos they thought a camera that small was a joke.

Panasonic made a camera similar to the Leica CL, the LUMIX.

Y’all be familiar with this? Still being produced by Panasonic but gone through many iterations however. Saw one for around 280 USD at B&H.

Hmmm . . . maybe I was thinking about the Leica V-LUX 1 . . . one of the first Leica digital cameras.

Anyway, I still have remnants of my old Flip cams, and I’ve recently bought two of the old Flip video cams . . . a AA battery powered Flip by Pure Digital and an Mino HD made by Cisco. The Mino HD has a rechargeable internal battery that I bought an external charger to use with because I have no USB port on my iPad.

p.s. I just ordered a USB adapter from Apple.

The Mino HD has a rectangular screen whereas the Pure Digital Flip has an almost square landscape format.

Cost wise the Mino HD was the most expensive, around 90 USD and the Pure Digital about 50 USD. They both work fine . . . got “em both off Amazon.

Hope you enjoyed the trip . . .

Confesio (confession)

“So for confession let’s go to my house . . .”

a-a-ah Debbie Harry . . . Blonde . . .

“Bless me Father for I have sinned, these are my sins . . .”

When you went to confession you always said “sins”. . . plural not singular, always more, that way the priest felt like he was doing his job. More was better.

The problem was that after “Bless me Father . . .” the mind usually went blank . . . radio silence, and then from behind the screen would come the quiet soothing voice, “Did you think impure thoughts my son?”

And then the floodgates opened releasing a pent up torrent of adolescent phantasy, ” . . . yes, yes . . .impure thoughts, I coveted my neighbors wife and said bad words . . . looked at Playboy and didn’t read any articles.<”

I usually ended up with several Our Fathers “The Lord’s Prayer), 2 or 3 Hail Marys and an Act of Contrition as my penance, to be recited on a hard wooden kneeler . . . I was very contrite.

Where was I? Oh yeh, YouTube . . . confession.

I have a YouTube channel . . . Oh shit, yeh, for all the negativity about YouTube, I have a channel.

But . . . spoken with right index pointed up, shutting down any “but, you just said . . .” whimpering Facebook comments . . . but, it’s been languishing in the ether for about 10 years. I thought it had been shut down for lack of use . . . I posted videos I made with a Flip video camera . . . the >channel< was intended to be a storage space, an archive.

The only reason I found out that the ghost was still out there was because I was going to make a public comment on a YouTube video, and was asked if I would like to comment using my YouTube I.D. . . . “WTF?! ” says I, amazed that it was still around.

And that’s why it’s been blog vs vlog going mano a mano in my subconscious. If I do decide jumpstart the sleeping beast, I won’t be in the camera’s face doing FaceTime.

It’s like what was said on a YouTube vdo: “It’s not about you. It’s about what you have to say.”

Buckminster Fuller said it best, “The medium is the message.”

Outamyway . . . punk !!

Coyote Talk

Coyote Talk – A peek into the hood . . .

WTF? you say . . . is this some code talk like the Navajo used in WW 2 Pacific theatre? No.

Like my dads father explained back in 1967/1968 . . . Its what the old Indians called “talking to yourself” . . . when you were involved in some solo project and you were making “small talk” as you went about the task.

I don’t know why it’s called “coyote talk” . . . well . . . maybe I do know . . .

The coyote, as a mythological character in Owens Valley Paiute culture was imbued with human characteristics and could speak . . .talk . . . so if a person was seen talking to him or herself it could be construed as that person was talking to the coyote simply because there was no one visibly participating in the conversation. It was not considered acceptable behavior by the old people . . . might mean that you were “possessed “ or a” witch”.

FAST FORWARD – – -> 21st Century . . . YouTube . . . YouTubers . . . it’s become the norm . . . SELFIES . . . Oh shit, everyone’s looking into their phone cam, talking to some unseen entity . . . aliens, the fourth wall, Queen Elisabeth . . . the coyote . . . OMFG!

If my dads father was still alive, I can see him sitting on the old sofa under the tree near the woodpile, talking that talk on his cell phone . . . he would have had one, a cell phone . . . doing selfies . . . singing songs and talking to the coyote in his hand.

My cuh-nu, my dads father . . . he was NOT a man behind the times . . .

In the Owens Valley Paiute (OVP) language, we differentiate verbally between maternal and paternal grandparents . . . my father’s father is my cuh-nu, my father’s mother is my huh-tsi; my mother’s father is my toh-go, and my mother’s mother is my mu-ah. Simple.

We never use the word “grandfather”, we say “your cuh-nu or your toh-go” so we know precisely who we’re referring to . . . none of this “grandfather “ bullshit.

Which brings me to the scene in “Little Big Man” when Dustin Hoffman accompanies the old Indian man as he walked out on the ridge behind their camp because “it was a good day to die” . . . Hoffman called the old man “grandfather” . . . I don’t know if the Plains tribes had a generic term for grandfather or grandmother, and Hoffman’s character had no blood affiliation with the old man (Anthropology 101). But it was just a movie . . .

In the OVP language we would have referred to him (Hoffman’s “grandfather “) as tsug-ah-tsi, “old man” . . . or if referring to someone other than the person you were with, you would say, tsug-ah-tsi-u, “that old man.”

Like I said, just a peek under the edge of my cultural blanket . . .

Y’all have a good day.

TBWNGU

TBWNGU

WTF!? Is that some kinda alien word?

Nah, it’s just the first letters of the phrase The Boy Who Never Grew Up . . .

Phonetically, it’s pronounced ta-bwun-gu . . . sounds a bit like it’s from the comic pages of Tarzan or the Congo darkness . . . Edgar Rice Burroughs, Joseph Conrad.

I’m TBWNGU . . .

Why? Simple, the last thing my wife said to me when we separated was,” You’ll never grow up!” I was 37 at the time. And 38 years later I’m still . . . a kid . . . still my own “man”, don’t take shit from no one . . . been around the block a few times as “they” say.

I was in that semiconscious state between sleep and being fully awake when I decided to write this . . .

When I was teaching school, there was a 5th grade student who said to me during class, “Mr. S, what do you want to be when you grow up?” I was 54 at the time. So I said without thinking, in all honesty, “I haven’t decided yet.” A girl who had been listening, said to the boy who asked the question, “He IS grown up.” The boy and I looked at each other . . . It was like time had hiccuped . . . reality check! Mr. S is a grownup! . . . uuh . . . WTF?!

Anyway we got over that sticky situation and life went back to normal.

And then some years later, my grandson said to me one day as we were driving, “Togo, let’s never grow up.” He was 5 or 6 years old and I was like 72!

“LETS NEVER GROW UP!!”

Why can’t we keep the naïveté we had when we were 8 or 9 years old?

If I look around the room, I’m surrounded by things that help to prolong never giving in to stagnation . . . action figures, Legos, plastic Japanese fighting armor suit models, books, cameras (mostly old) . . . all fragments of time . . . Gojira (Godzilla), Ironman, origami paper cranes and the tortoise.

Praise tha lord an’ pass the fucking ammanishun! And don’t forget, Keep yer tips up!