I haven't heard this one in years, but I remember it. In the opening exchange between M&M they mention their forthcoming appearance on the Lux Theater program, a dramatic series that employed the talents of many stars of both radio & film, often playing parts against type. I'll have to see if I can get a download of their Lux program.

My song widget was somehow switched with someone else's. I don't know how long it was like that but when I logged in I discovered two songs playing, one by Alice in Chains and the other by Nine Inch Nails. I did not create that widget. Must be something screwy in the code. No, it can't be the code itself but the destination it points to. Well, on any other day I'd call that unusual, but today has been rather interesting.

I'll reply to comments in the morning, being on the run at the moment. But I'll be thinking about you.

Click above to hear me read The Cask of Amantillado by Edgar Allen Poe. You'll have to turn off the song widget below unless you're very good at distinguishing the spoken word from the kazoo rendition of Thus Spake Zarathustra. Reading further will take you to an ordinary White Lodge posting about this, that, and the other.

We went north to Bear Mountain, the three of us, or maybe we were four and I am not counting myself. Or maybe I am not counting the Squabbler. But, in any event there was a number of us over three who took my friend’s Dad’s Vista Cruiser north to Bear Mountain to spend a weekend hiking around and camping out. The car was a very unpleasant yellow. This was in the Fall, early Winter. The snow was occasional but the leaves were gone from the trees.

 

Did you know I used to bowl? I was pretty good at it, too. I don’t know what made me think of it, but before bowling I would stop at a Dunkin’ Donuts and order a large black coffee. I wanted to lighten and sweeten the coffee but I was now a man, and men are supposed to have their coffee black, or so I thought. Gone were the days of milk and sugar, of graham crackers and butter dunked into light and sweetened coffee at the kitchen table.

 

Black coffee on the Thruway, the flavor of adventure. The three – or maybe four – of us preparing for a cold few days of total freedom on the mountain, freedom to do anything we pleased.

 

Ah yes, but what might we be free to do? Our options were actually far more limited on top of a mountain in winter than they would be if we had just stayed home. We could not choose to go bowling, for instance, on top of a mountain in winter. We could not choose to prowl around the night spots and end up in Luka’s pizza place after hours. We could not choose to sit around, get stoned, and listen to music. Well, that is for the latter we would discover that we were capable of performing a revised activity which involved singing. True story: We sang, and our song attracted several girls who joined us, but only one of us had any idea what to do with them after the singing was done.

 

But I’m skipping ahead. First, we found the trail head and burdened ourselves with packs and gear. I must explain that it was by virtue of my experience that our parents allowed this trip, for it was known that I possessed wilderness survival skills, and I alone among my comrades had slept nights without number under stars and in every weather. Moreover, I knew how to read a map and compass.

 

The trail, though unknown to me, was designated moderate, which means it presented steep hand-over-rock sections perhaps but that would be the worst of it. Or best, depending on your point of view. There would be no rope needed. I knew it was prudent to bring mine anyway, but it was extremely lightweight.

 

Dad was all about this fellow who had written a book about hiking and mountaineering who took the paper tags off his teabags in order to cut down on the weight of his pack. I was reminded of this as I watched my friend roll a bottle of decent whiskey into his sleeping bag, but I acknowledged our priorities differed somewhat from the ideal that particular author expressed. We also carried with us an entire ounce of marijuana – well, minus whatever we smoked on the ride. Our food was Lipton soup and such. We each had a portion of chocolate – very important I told them.

 

It wasn’t much of a hike, really – just three or four High School kids trekking no more than 10 miles in. We had a good fire at night, attracting others – a couple of girls, as I’ve said, students at nearby New Paltz who were out doing the same sort of thing.

 

My friend explained afterwards that the girls were lesbians so I needn’t be jealous, but I was jealous anyway. A few years later, when I was in college, I went with my girlfriend to Boston to stay with her sister. I was in the kitchen of a large Victorian in Cambridge, a place so much like a safe house you could smell diesel fumes and oil as if a submarine had recently passed through it. I don’t believe any member of that large communal household ever bathed. My girlfriend’s sister, hanging over a French exchange student who spoke little English, exclaimed, “We’re lesbians!” very proudly. She might have said “We’re wearing yellow!” I was thinking So what? But saying, “Oh, OK.”

 

Well, it turns out they wanted to be homosexual, but the sexual activities of that evening involved several of the household’s men as well.

 

What did they want from me? They wanted acknowledgement, that’s all. Several years older they were, and yet extremely immature. Their pleasure preference – or pretended one – was the least relevant thing about who they were, their identity. Yet, in the absence of true character, they had elevated it to an absurd level of importance.

 

Acknowledgement is what we all want. To walk down a street and have a stranger nod towards us is acknowledgement. To be recognized, to be heard, to be understood; to be misunderstood, to be hated, to be loved. God save us from indifference! Oh Lord, let me not become invisible today!

 

And the fellowship – the three of us, or four of us, on the winter mountain: We created a little circle, a tiny city-state in the wilderness, our camp. Having freedom, albeit limited by our environment, we immediately set about the delegation of various tasks. One of us would gather wood, another would pitch the tent, and so on. Later on, when visitors arrived from another city-state, we invited them in. We all got high.

 

Someone spoke freely of the emergency treatment recommended for hypothermia, which in case you have lived in another dimension involves removing all of one’s clothing, and that of the victim (of course), and using one’s body heat to increase the core temperature of the afflicted person.

 

Alas, none of us were so afflicted.

 

And I made my friend carry that empty bottle down the mountain, and he resented me for that. Especially since it was I who had drunk most of it. But I was the expert when it came to woods and rocks, and trees, and tea bags, and such. I was the acknowledged leader – I, and whoever that fourth person may have been.

 

Many years later I would become hopelessly lost in the deep woods, despite my skills. There was not a soul to acknowledge me – except for Him. But that’s a story for another time. 

 

A lengthy introduction by Orson Wells begins this Mercury Theater redux of "The Hitchiker" for this "Suspense!" program, which originally aired in September of '42. Is that an homage to Alfred Hitchcock or is Wells providing a parody? You decide.

I used to hitchike home from school. I had to walk through the grounds of the Psychiatric Center to get to the road. No one would pick me up there for some odd reason.

I'll not interfere with the story any further - I promise. I do hope you enjoy it.  

 

The sound quality is no better on these “I-Home” gadgets than the old portable cassette recorder. Yes, and I knew a fellow in a wheelchair who wore rose colored glasses, sold drugs part time, loved to party. He carried one of those cassette recorders around in his lap, was always playing music, King Crimson, Genesis – that kind of thing. Carrying him into Midnight Madness movies was memorable, the Pink Floyd movie, the Led Zeppelin movie. I don’t think he was a fan of Eraserhead. I was.

 

Just plug in an extra pair of computer speakers. That does the trick. At least you can get something like bass with that boost of power. Must be we all have a couple sets of those. They appear regularly at garage sales. I have a set of Altecs. They worked pretty well just now while I was in the bath.

 

What are these? They’re awfully heavy. No brand name, just says “multi-media speaker system.” Not bad.

 

“Cirkus” right now.

 

I need music at least while I’m watching the house in the haunted hills.

 

My musical taste is much more eclectic than that fellow’s. And I despise Eclecticism. How does that work? Well, it’s simple really. Most of the music we listen to is derived from the exact same musical language. All these false genres of music are really not genres at all. They are simply marketing tags: “File Under Pop.” I don’t care where you want to file it, there is really no substantive difference between Johnny Cash and Pantera. Jazz is an actual genre. Classical is an actual genre. All these silly sub-genres of Pop music are just goofy grape. Music is so much more than the sound it makes. So I am eclectic in a narrow sense, but not in the manner of embracing Eclecticism.

 

It doesn’t all sound the same to me. I can appreciate how it is all the same, though it happens to sound different. Identifying in some cultural – or sub-cultural – way with a particular false sub-genre like “Country” or “Goth” indicates that you really don’t appreciate music, merely sounds. Take a song, any song, a good song like “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” for instance. Now play it on a church organ. Now play it on a zither. Now play it on an electric guitar with wah-wah and a fuzz box. Same bloody song, right? Add a little twang, make it Country. Or give it to Kiri te Kanawa and it becomes Opera as far as we’re concerned.

 

There she is in the picture above, by the way. I saw her as Cherubino (of course), but the pillars on the set began at one point to fall down on top of her. So, without faltering she continued her aria whilst kicking them off. It reminded me of the six inch Stonehenge in "Spinal Tap."

 

You don’t want to know all this rubbish. I’m wasting your time. What you want is a story about the White Tornado. I know you. I know what you think about when you think nobody is listening. Yes, she is adorable – I’ll give you that. I was rather hoping her people would come by yesterday to pick up the old Saturn. Her Mom needs a car. I happen to have a spare.

 

But Elizabeth protests. She wants to pay me for it. I said, “I don’t need money. What am I going to do with it?” You see if I have a purpose in mind for it, like buying something, then it comes – the money comes. But if I don’t have any particular use for it then it really wouldn’t be mine anyway. The way money works is a mystery to most of us, but it doesn’t work like things of real value because it doesn’t have any real value. It is true that people who have money don’t need money, but it is also true that people who always need it will never have enough of it.

 

Maybe today I’ll see her. But at last she agreed to take to take the car. Now there will be room in my driveway for another one when I need it.

 

One of the things I do for a living is start other people’s cars. Isn’t that interesting? Well, somebody has to do it. They don’t start themselves, you know. Already today I have started a PT Cruiser and an Audi. Later today I will start a Dodge Ram. I have many keys – car keys, house keys, alarm codes, spare batteries. I visit many different houses, but they are all really the same house: The White Lodge.

 

Today I visit the house with the slippery roof that I fell off last year. I will not go on the roof today. There hasn’t been enough snow to bother shoveling it off.

 

There is so much more I wish to say, and yet I cannot think of what it is.

 

“Suspense!” tonight.

 

I leave you now to plan your plans and scheme your schemes, while I water my plants and dream my dreams.

 

 

I don’t give a damn what I am doing with the 90% of my brain I don’t use. Well, if it is true that I am not using it then it is safe to say I am doing nothing with it, so it is better to begin this post with, “I don’t give a damn about what I could be doing with the 90% of my brain I don’t use if I were to use it for something.” OK, let’s do that.

 

I don’t give a damn about what I could be doing with the 90% of my brain I don’t use if I were to use it for something.

 

Where did we first begin hearing about the vast spaces of open brain we are supposed to have? An instrument was designed to read activity in the brain – whatever kind of activity it may be – and this activity is thought to be related to brain usage. According to this instrument, this machine, it appears we are using only about 10% of our brains because this particular kind of activity is only visible to the machine in about 10% of our brain’s mass.

 

We are the exact same people, mind you, who used to crack open holes in our skulls to let out evil spirits. And not so very long ago.

 

Obviously, the true statement – the only true statement that can be made based on the findings of our machine is this: “We are only capable of detecting 10% of the brain’s activity with our machine.”

 

Our machine is the same as the club with the sharp rock in the end of it that we once used to use to perform brain surgeries to let out the evil spirits. Just as we have no clue our thinking today may be measured in arrogance and ignorance, just so were we the same with our club in olden days.

 

Of course I am very grateful that our technology has advanced that tiny fraction of a little bit (as we say where I come from) because I would rather be hooked up to a brain activity machine than be smacked with a sharp club. I think we all would. Perhaps that’s what we’re doing with the 90% of our brains we aren’t doing anything with: hoping not to be struck in the head with a sharp club.

 

In conclusion, I would just like to say

 

No, I won’t say that. Instead, I will return tomorrow to say something else entirely. Off now to Chateau Creekside, my February sanctuary which is rather effectively cut off from the outside world.

 

Ta ta.