HI BLOG HOW R U

Inspired by the delectable content and steady updatesmanship of my Silver Jews fan blog contemporaries The Dust Congress and In Oak, In Elm, I have noted the barometer, checked the seven-day forecast, tasted the air, consulted with my spiritual advisor and come to the conclusion that NOW IS THE TIME for me to launch my very first personal blog. It is my desire that the blog will be nestled up to like a Yuletide log by my friends and cowered from like a radioactive spill by my enemies.

Just kidding, I don't have enemies.

Well, maybe one. I don't think my boss at the art gallery/frame shop I'm a laborer for is my #1 fan since last Friday. I picked up a sheet of glass that broke in my clutches and stabbed the base of my middle finger with the resulting shard. In went the pointed end, out came some blood, and, depending on what the surgeon I'm scheduled to meet with this coming Friday tells me, the flexor tendon controlling the movement of the finger got either nicked or severed completely. Worker's comp has provided me with free medical appointments at the Occupational Medicine clinic, and complimentary surgery care of the gallery's insurance.

Anyway, the boss has put me on temporary leave despite my protests. I want to work; I did so the day immediately following the injury and was able to do quite a bit, too. Only thing I can't do is use the mat cutter, but there's plenty more chores I could be doing. But he insists I stay away from work and instead stay home and not get paid. Unfortunate, because getting paid is how I accumlate the precious lifesblood of today's modern economy: money. Need that money. Can't get it not working, and free surgery doesn't pay the bills. So we'll see what unfolds.

The blog is titled HIGH PLAINS BUSINESS LOOP after a poem I wrote a few years ago with the same title. Why don't I post it now:

High Plains Business Loop

The most automatic teller in the west
worked under a two karat guise of expired craftsmanship
with credentials from the continent house.

Minnesota Gas and Air came to reposess our breath,
working from the back seat of a true compression pick-up,
with minimal retaliation from the squad cars.

We were told to walk a metric mile
over polymer floors of phillips head allen wrenches.
We were perceived as snakes making oxbows in the flax fields.

At the clubhouse, I was ordered through
the dusty guantlet of minimum wage asphalt mix
before even contemplating calling shotgun.

I soaked my head in the Bay of Troubled Conquistador
where the skies operated like electric ovens
showcasing birds with Texas-sized wingspans.

You could feel the autoparks tremble like starched rayon
ironed into Indian clay as the chief of staff tore out a page
from his dog-eared copy of Sunset Magazine.

My well-being had become a conversational centerpiece
for a guest group of eagles and emigrants,
flanked by a trans-continental chamber of commerce.

Much of it made me think about Precambrian tennis matches
except with rattles mistaken for whistles
and a treaty declaring applause an Amazonian morse code.

It was the part of our minds reserved to study physics of
the feline lung, and verify the weeknight romances
constantly submerging beneath everyone's broken ideas.

These limited instances of casual health
diagrammed by the pectorals of an outdated mannequin
found floating in salted lakes and peppered oceans.

While Florida remains the soggy and stagnant denominator
conceded to the oversimplified fraction
that our ingrown union refuses to not become,

The golden numerator named California rises,
an effulgent nexus of charity nestled into
a blooming forest of surfboards and a bed of mestizo kelp.

So, there's a poem. I plan on sticking a few in this blog from time to time (mine or anyone else's I might find arresting enough). It'll be a revolving circus of music news and reviews and musings, current events and my complaints about them, criticisms and exaltations of the frightfully strange and dull world of mass media, art, clippings from the headlines of my personal life, stories, intoxicated observations, pictures of funny lookin' shit I come across, bold and beautiful things and reports of native or exotic plants I've spotted alongside the highway.