Odhin & Odhin's Dad (& Santa) wish you all a Merry, merry, merry ...merry.....

A Post-Thanksgiving Observation:

Think Truth about Root Vegetables

James Staples

                For most of my life, I have been secretly obsessed by an awareness, something I realized as a child that, apparently, no one else realized.  Either that or everyone else was told to accept a complete lie that I have always known was a lie. 

                Yams and sweet potatoes are the same thing.  …Shut up!  They are, too!  All that taxonomy and botany and green grocers being very smug and clever only serves to show me how deep and pervasive the conspiracy is.  Someone, somewhere decided, long ago, that people must believe this vegetable to be two different things, as if the bottom would fall out of the produce market were someone to dispel the charade. 

                Show me a Granny Smith and a Red Delicious, two fruits that look almost nothing alike – one is small, green and round; the other is large, red and a shape that geometricians have yet to name.  Those are supposedly the same.  They’re both apples.  Show me a Roma and a Beefsteak – same situation: two totally different things and with a straight face you tell me they are the same; both tomatoes.  That’s all fine and dandy, just like Chihuahuas and Great Danes, sparrows and eagles, chimpanzees and republicans.  But then you have the audacity to hold up two of the same thing and tell me one is a yam and the other is a sweet potato?  Who hired you?  Where’s the camera?    

                In my youth, I quickly learned that, whenever I pointed out the identical nature of these “two different” root crops, I would be made to feel foolish.  In the condescending tones people use when talking to foreigners and Jehovah’s Witnesses, I was told, “Oh, honey, of course they’re not the same.  It’s easy to tell the difference.  See? The yams are in a bin marked, “Yams,” and the sweet potatoes are in a whole different bin!  See?  They’re not together; they’re next to each other!”  So, naturally, I stopped mentioning it out loud, and acted like I had drunk the Kool-Aid and was on board with the rest of the cult.  Every time I heard someone say (as someone does every Thanksgiving), “Oh, well, I like yams, but I don’t care for sweet potatoes (or vice versa),” I would turn the tables of condescension, smile, and say something meaningless like, “Yeah, I know what you mean.”  Still, in my three-a.m.-secret-heart, I promised myself I would never let Big Brother win, even if I had to wrap my head in foil to keep out the bad brainwaves of the fools who believe there’s a difference.  Look at them on a plate, for God’s sake!  Taste them!  They’re the same!

                Well, this year, HAH!  I am vindicated!  I could have seen it long ago, but my cynicism and disappointment with American consumerism blinded me to it (either that, or the foil had come down over my eyes).  It was right there, right under my nose, all along.  On the day before Thanksgiving, my wife asked me to go to the store to get the last couple of things we had forgotten.  She finished the list by saying, “Oh!  And yams!”  I raised a sarcastic eyebrow and retorted, “Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer sweet potatoes?”  She said she would settle for “either one.”  I let it pass and headed off to the store.  Looking back on it, I’m surprised I could not sense that I was on the verge of a fateful breakthrough.  Had you been there, you might have heard a slow surge of suspenseful music (audible only to spectators).  The big moment was nearly upon me.

                There were only about eight other people in the store, all men and all obviously there for the same reason as I.  When I got to the weird-ass aisle that has everything from condensed milk to canned bread, I found three other middle-aged men, all looking aimlessly around, just in case the Cajun-flavored French onions or authentic New England fruitcake molds were about to jump off the shelves at us.  I searched, I narrowed my scope, I looked, and I saw it.  Or rather, I saw them.  When I saw them, I let out a cry of triumph that probably knocked the winter-ale high right out of the other guys.  There were the canned yams and next to them were the sweet potatoes.  That was nothing new.  I decided to get whichever was cheaper-per-ounce so I picked up one can of each and looked at them more closely…

                …And there it was, right on the two labels: THE ANSWER TO MY PRAYERS!

                The label of the yams said “YAMS” in big capital letters, then underneath, in much smaller letters, it said, and I quote, “canned sweet potatoes in syrup.”   The other can had an equally big legend: “SWEET POTATOES.”  Under that was the small line, “canned yams in syrup.”

                According to the MANUFACTURERS, yams are sweet potatoes and sweet potatoes are yams.  Therefore, yams and sweet potatoes are the same thing.  Thank you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury.  I rest my case.

                Now I just have to sort out this whole business about turnips and rutabagas.

                …Shut up!  They are, too!

-THINK TRUTH-

Tell Me (Holy Fool)

Robert J. Walsh

I know there's something happening here.

I know there's something happening here.

Do my eyes deceive my mind?

Can you feel that, man?  Can you feel that, man?

(I sure as hell can) …Can you feel it now?

Two thousand years I've reigned as the King of Man,

And every morning you felt my guiding hand, yeah.

What'd you do to deserve me?  I spread my wings and my minions sing.

I know you heard it, man, yet my sun still shines on your back,

Your mountains; your sins.

You gotta come to me.  You gotta come to me.

With your arms outstretched, baby

(You better come to me), and on your knees.

'Cause I'm your holy (holy), your holy fool (I am your holy fool).

Yes, I'm your holy (holy), your holy fool (I am your holy fool).

Power hath descended forth from my hand.

I know you felt it, man, yet my sun still shines on your back,

Your mountains; your sins.

Yes, I know that you fear me.  I call upon you from my holy hill.

Sometimes I ask you to live; sometimes to kill.

Oh, yeah, sometimes I ask you to kill.

You gotta come to me.  You gotta come to me.

With your arms outstretched, baby (you better come to me),

And on your knees.

'Cause I'm your holy (holy), your holy fool (I am your holy fool).

Yes, I'm your holy (holy), your holy fool (I am your holy fool).

Yes I'm your holy (holy), your holy fool (I am your holy fool).

Yes I'm your holy (holy), your holy fool, fool! Fool! Fool! Fool! Fool! Fool!

. "He's got a tiny little surf board mounted on wheels...!" Are you getting all of this, PAULIE? .

Rock

James Staples

T Rex knew about dirty-sweet,

But kicking your can all over the street

Is Freddie’s lesson for hanging out,

So shake it up, baby. Twist and shout.

That shit you write up in your bedroom

Didn’t just come from out of a vacuum,

And before you trade your tears for fears

That you have to go back over fifty years,

Consider the ways and whys and hows and

Some of the stuff that goes back thousands,

Like, “Bup de-Bup de-Bup, de-BUP BUP!”

Think Bo Diddley made that shit up?

All your gothic doom and gloom and

Anger’s part of being human.

Murray the K said “Rock ‘n’ Roll” cuz

You can fuck and still have a soul.

Elvis didn’t work that out.

That’s just what he sang about.

Eddie Cochrane didn’t invent it;

Just passed it on from whoever sent it.

The beat goes back to that first Big Bang.

Ev’rything since is “just a thang,”

It’s just a gig.  It’s just the scene.

You know exactly what I mean.

The music biz is just a racket

For any fool in a leather jacket.

Corporate chumps got no juice with ‘em;

Got the bread, but got no rhythm.

Fuck that shit. You want to fly?

You have to make it D.I.Y.

The beat was yours when you were born,

But since that day they’ve had you torn

Between parents, duty, country, church,

And each one left you in the lurch.

They said they’d help you find your way

And everything would be okay

As long as you obey the ley

And don’t question author-i-tay.

Well, enter: My g-g-generation,

Custom Les Paul liberation,

Crazy, fucked-up mosh-pit nation:

Fucking punk rock infestation.

Fuck that other shit!  Rock ‘n’ Roll:

The only thing to save your soul.

3

James Staples

It’s called witches’ midnight: three a.m.

            A lot of people die

            Right about three a.m.

Around the world,

From time-zone to time-zone

            …three a.m.

It’s almost dawn, but not quite.

Are they looking for the light?

            The new light?

            Right after three?

In my time-zone, in my town,

            I got myself born

            Right about three p.m.

Is that witches’ noon?

Are a lot of us born then?

            …three p.m.

Around the world (love or hate)?

Time-zone to time-zone (give or take)?

            …three p.m.

It’s almost dark, but not quite.

Are we born looking for the night?

            The old night?

            Right after three…

…times three…

            …times three….

What the fuck’s it gonna be?

Counting Ravens

James Staples

Shiny black ravens: one, two, three….

How man ravens can you see?

One for sorrow, two for mirth,

Three for a funeral; four for a birth.

Five is for sunshine, six is for rain.

Seven is pleasure, eight is pain.

Nine means sickness, ten bodes well.

Eleven’s Heaven.  Twelve is Hell.

Thirteen’s old age.  Fourteen’s youth.

Fifteen lies to sixteen’s truth.

Seventeen feet to eighteen’s head….

Nineteen – you're living.

Twenty – you're dead.

THREE RULES FOR A HAPPY LIFE

James Staples

(1) ‘RED OCTAGON’ MEANS ‘STOP.’

(2)  YOU ARE NOT FROM THE PLANET KRYPTON.

(3)  DO NOT BE AN ASSHOLE.

Thank you, that is all.

It’s a Spot/Here I Am

James A. Staples

April, 1983-

            Slovenly Bureau-Pigs, masturbating in the darkness like they’re the only ones:  It’s like that stuff you find on the floors of movie theatres, ‘cause it’s nasty, but it’s still a control factor.  These are the same “people” who would confiscate your goods and then keep ‘em.  After all, what difference does it make, if you’re up against a self-perpetuating madness whose entire purpose is to thrive?  The Monster was built with no other reason than to be.  It thrusts its all-powerful, neo-plastic, surreal semi-thoughts about religion-and-politics on the masses of subconsciously anarchistic souls, whose drive is more genuine than genocidal, because we want comfort instead of power …although neither ideal is a very likely end to the system of Neolithic, infra-stone-age events, which play themselves out on the rotty, spotty canvas of a grey creation that’s loosely based on a chaotic interplay of heretofore seemingly unrelated factors.

            Let’s face the ultimate Truth of truths:  The basis of the knackered and worn society is greed (in the form of the aforementioned administrational Bureau-Pigs), playing off the mental starvation of the working-class/learning-class lonely-only children of a grey day in the cold sun.  We wander aimlessly and shamelessly through the garbage, which was the food of our forefathers (a rude bunch, that), and we squint through the quasi-mist (i.e. smog) with a vacant hope of spotting a salvation that’s more genuine than what the TV-and-pamphlet people ram down our throats.  What do we find?  A man …chewing gum …with a stick in his hand …and grey hair; a man who’s preach-teaching the dictates of boredom and confusion.  What we learned instead was a definition of contempt that they and their last ten thousand ancestors never understood. 

[May, 1983 – 17]

June, 1983 –

…So, here I am, looking out through my dirty, semi-boarded-up window, like third-world stained glass, into the slum-Chicago streets.  It is dawn and I have not slept.  Instead, I have sat and sung silently to the neon light, wondering why, in the vastness of Chi-town, there is not one person with the quality of consciousness required to …understand …at least, no one I’m aware of as I stare at the decades of carnage in the labyrinth below.

            You see, reality, for me, is what I perceive.  As drunk as I am, it’s hard to perceive anything, least of all compassion.  So, it’s my fault, then, isn’t it?  Well, fuck it.  Maybe that’s what I wanted.  We all wallow selfishly in our own problems, afraid to get help; afraid that help (rescue?) might ruin some tragic martyr’s delusion.

            Okay …another big swallow and I’m cool again.  So, staring out into the street, I’m trying to figure out why I love this shitty little cold-water flat so much.  …Because it’s mine, that’s why?  And why do I love to get so fucked up that I puke, pass out and feel like hell for two days?  …Because that’s mine, too, and even after they take my money and my life, I’ll still have my personal, wretched ways to my very own.