Death Valley

This was written (in part and in long-hand) on February 20th.  That was three days before my birthday.  And not only was I going to wear my birthday-suit all day, I was gonna turn 67.  I know, I can’t believe it either.  And to celebrate my advanced age, The Wife and I were going to Death Valley.  How appropriate.

But why go to DEATH Valley?  Isn’t that grim, a touch morbid?  Hell no!   Death Valley is 100 miles east of Lone Pine California – my favorite Eastern Sierra fishing spot, and four hours away from the coastal town I live in north of Los Angeles.  Thing is, fishing season doesn’t open till March 1st.  But we needed to get the heck outta Ventura where it’s been cold and foggy, and enjoy some desert warmth.  The California deserts are spectacular during late February – early March, with moderate temperatures and wildflowers (when we’re not suffering through a drought like this year).

So here’s some photos we took of our little trip.  Above is the type of rig they used to haul borax out of the valley, drawn by a team of twenty mules.  You’ll remember borax as the laundry detergent; 20 Mule Team Borax, that sponsored the TV show “Death Valley Days”, hosted by Ronald Reagan before he went insane and became President of the United States, and took on the Evil Empire.  They made Chinese laborers dig up this stuff in 120 degree heat.  A nice introduction to capitalism, to which they’ve grown very fond of in recent years.

This is a shot taken on Artists Drive (had to do that one).  Interesting colors.  It’s kinda like having nature to your hallucinating for ya.

Here’s a picture of yours truly standing on the lowest point in North America.  How low can you go?  Not much lower than this.  I’m used to living at sea level, and you can tell the effect being 282 feet below that is takin’ on me.  No wonder I look like an old fart who’s falling apart (tore-up, from the floor up).  I look nothing like that in real life, and don’t need a sign to lean on to stand erect.

What would a trip to Lone Pine be without a stop in Mojave at the Chronically Inclined medical marijuana dispensary.  It’s right on the way, and you never know when some ailment or another might flare up on ya when out in the wilderness, and some herbal relief could come in handy.  A must for every hikers first-aide kit.

Sick

I sure hope that everyone who stops by here at Hansi’s Hallucinations is healthy and feeling well; even euphoric on occasion.  No illnesses here.  Maybe a little queasiness in your stomach or bad taste in your mouth, but sick?  No way.

I got sick in mid January, when I wrote this.  Normally I’m fairly healthy for a 67 year old guy.  I watch my diet, eat natural foods, workout four times a week, and try to live an eco-friendly, whole wheat, organic gardening, grow your own, granola eating type of lifestyle.  But something was going around in January, and it kicked my ancient ass.  I was “in bed”  sick, with coughing, chills, aches and a fever, and generally feelin’ like shit.

The worst part about being sick is, you can’t do all the stuff ya usually do and enjoy.  You’re too busy focusing on your body, and doing whatever it takes to feel better.  Your body is all of a sudden driving you, instead of the other way around.  All I wanted to do was alleviate symptoms: take naps, cough drops, stay warm and take more naps.

I had no interest in working out, gardening or even eating granola.  I was solely focused on my body, and how it felt, was how I felt.  Which is also true of good health.  When your body is feeling good and functioning properly, so do you.  I always feel better when I’m feelin’ good.

And speaking of feelin’ good, I started to recover, bounce back, but not as quickly as I used to.  It seemed like there were two beings inside of me.  My mind, and my body.  These two guys are often at odds with each other: “Hey I’m in control”.  “No, I’m in control”.  Sometimes my body get sneaky, and start to screw with my mind, by shutting down a few systems, just to show who’s in control.  But knowing my body has a proclivity to cheap thrills, it can easily be duped, and brought back into control with some good food and exercise.  What a fool.

On Feeling Good

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think everybody (and every thing) wants to feel good, and does whatever it takes to feel that way. Nobody wants to feel angry or pissed-off, grumpy and uncomfortable.  Although one might think otherwise by the number of people out there, just unhappy as hell, pissed-off about something or another, and loving it, transfixed to Fox news.

Well – and this may come as no surprise – I’m in the feel good camp.  And when I’m not there, I’m in the feeling better camp.  Feeling good sure is good, but feeling better is even better!  Funny how that works.

I’m all for people feeling as good as they can.  By whatever means they so choose.  Just so long as it doesn’t destroy them in the process, but then again, self destruction is an option everyone should have.  I just don’t wanna pay for it.  [Feeling like shit, is just a few steps on the other side of  feeling better, so ya gotta what how much better you want to feel].  A lot of folks who feel bad are slowly destroying themselves with negative thinking.  Good stuff doesn’t destroy you, it only makes ya feel better.

Just Drawing

Right now I’m just drawing and not trying to dream up a bunch of narrative.  Feels good.  It used to be the other way around.  Dream up some mindless B S, and then illustrate it.  That works for me a lot of the time, but takes up a lot of my time and is reminiscent of work.

Sometimes I just like to draw, and then dream up something to go along with it.  But what I really like best, is to just draw something.  Then, having put it aside and out of my mind, write whatever comes to mind.  And after fully recovering from that, just slap the two together and see what I got.  I find that a lot of my drawings fit quite well, metaphorically, with all the metaphors I’ve just written.

Life Without The Internet

Have you ever thought about what life would be like without the Internet?  No computer, no social media, not being privy to what’s going ‘viral’ at the moment.   Well, I have.  Not because I’m having some kind of big Luddite born again experience, but because my Internet service jumped from $19.95 a month to $41.  Got me to thinkin’, “fuck that shit”, that’s way too much to pay just to have a wealth of bullshit at my fingertips.

I can live without email.  Most of which are one line messages to my  buddies asking if they wanna go to the $3 movie, or a bunch of geezer-laden nasty-ass jokes and dirty pictures I’d hate The Wife to see.  And if you were to look at my Spam, you’d think that I’m nothing more than some horny bastard with a small dick who likes Russian women, and who’s head over heels in debt.  Blogging is fun, but sometimes seems like work;  I can get all the news I can stand on TV.

So why the big increase?  I sorta knew it was coming when I decided to “bundle” my phone, TV and Internet into one neat little inexpensive package a year ago.  It was great the first year, but now my “bundling” has turned into a “buggering”, and I’m on the receiving end of a big slice of corporate intercourse.

Forty one bucks a month?  I wasn’t gonna take that laying down (doggie style maybe), so I got on the phone and called AT&T.  After talking to a shit-load of friendly machines, I finally got to a human being, who even worked in America, and gave them a song and dance about how I was a senior citizen living on Social Security, and couldn’t afford $41 a month. [That was mostly true except for the parts I left out; guess it was a sin of omission, instead of commission.  I prefer sins of emission].  Well no problem, a nice young man offered me a reduced deal for $29.95 a month.  Same service, same speed, he’d just have to get his supervisor’s approval.  That took a nano second, and I jumped on it.  Nothing like a little K-Y Jelly to sweeten the deal.

What a bunch of bullshit!  Worse than common dope dealers from whom the first fix is always free, Corporate America wants to lure us into their net with all these wonderful enticements, and then slowly suck us dry once we’re hooked.

I pity the poor fools who just accept this crap and say, “Oh Well.”   Or, don’t even realize they’re getting screwed.  If I had half the testosterone my Spam claims I need, I’d just say “Fuck em”.  Quit their service, for a few days , and then come back to get the $13.95 U-verse special they’re offering all over the place, and start all over again.

Who foolin’ who here?

Listening To Black Sabbath

Right now, I’m listening to Black Sabbath, their first album “Black Sabbath”. Catchy name for a group and their first album. I got a copy on vinyl from my son for Xmas.  I’m not a big Black Sabbath fan, although I did by their second album “Paranoid” when it came out in the early 70’s.  That was very trippy stuff.  But the problem was, if you’d been doing a little herb, songs about  War Pigs, Electric Funerals and Hands of Doom, well they had a profound effect on ya, and you tend to get overly paranoid [What else was I expecting when you buy a record titled “Paranoid”.]

What I do like is the ‘heavy blues’ sound of groups like Cream, Jethro Tull, and of course, Led Zeppelin.  And, the San Fransisco Psychedelic sounds of Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Country Joe and the Fish.  Being an L A boy, Los Angeles groups like the Doors and Buffalo Springfield where favorites too.

Enough of Ozzie and his madness.  I just put on Hendrix’, “Band Of Gypsies”.  Talk about a power trio.  A beautiful live album capturing Jimi at his best.  My vinyl version lets ya feel what it must of been like to have been there. [My versions featured great light-shows].

Machine Gun is about to start….see ya later.

Watching Colorado

I’ve noticed lately, actually since the beginning of this year, that there’s more and more Colorado marijuana stories being featured on my Yahoo home page.  I love Yahoo, because it lets me know everything I need to know.  News, finance,weather, maps and dating (The Wife doesn’t like me using that service).  I know what’s trending now, what’s going viral, and what’s blowing peoples minds.  It changes hourly, and results in my attention span becoming shorter and shorter.  I can barely focus.  That’s why a lot of my stuff is a little scattered, and sometimes doesn’t work together as a whole, but rather a hole, into which my thoughts are sucked and forever lost.

Thankfully, Yahoo does a lot of my thinking for me and helps me in making choices. [Don’t know what to choose if ya don’t know what’s out there.]  Right now, Yahoo wants us to think about marijuana legalization, and how it’s going in “The Mile High State’.  My conclusion is:  there’s a lot of folks out there that wanna get high.   Maybe that’s not so bad.  Folks get to lighten their loads a bit, and the State gets to tax the shit outta them, just for the pleasure of getting a little relief.  Along with Truth and Justice, that’s The American Way.

Sounds like a win-win situation to me.

Stats

You know what I like about Word Press blogging is: it’s the perfect vehicle for obsessive/compulsive behavior.  Not only can you write and re-write everything to death, and organize it just how ya want it, you can keep track of the number of people who’ve seen your blog, and respond to those who make comments (who are a touch OCD themselves).

Well, I was looking over my recent Hansi stats, and discovered that I was getting more hits on this blog while it sat inactive for two months, than I was on The Blithering Idiot which I was actively (but not up to Hansi standards) working.  A lot of the hits where on old posts about Triphoria, the personal vibrator, the Genie Bra, Poontang, and the like (bunch of horny bastards out there).  But still, I was getting twice the traffic from being inactive than I was being active.  Go figure.

This got me thinking, and is a big part of the reason I’m doing my Hansi blog again, If I’m getting all that traffic by doing nothing at all.  What if I just did a minimal amount more.  A tiny bit of effort. Why I’d reap fantastic results.  Flawless logic, and what worked for me as a civil servant:  Your minimum standard, is my maximum goal.

So there you have it, and there it is.

Playfulness

If I were given the choice: Would I like to work, or, would I like to play.  I’d choose play just about every time.  I like to play.  Have since I was a kid.  Then, playing meant doing whatever came to mind with the toys or materials available.  When ya stop by here, it’s kinda like going out to play.  I’ll share my toys, if you share yours.

The one kind of play I don’t like, is when people play with your mind.  Maybe I’m a little guilty of that sometimes.  But it’s not an invasive procedure that could leave ya scared for life, only some candy to tweek your mind a bit.  The Super Bowl with all its commercials sure was some heavy-duty mind play.  Millions spent to convince, cajole and talk folks into buying something they seem to think you just can’t live without.  As mind blowingly groovy as some of them were (Bob Dylan pushing Chrysler? – seems like he went back to work on Maggie’s Farm), I didn’t jump outta my seat and yell, “I gotta get some of that!”.  Maybe I was so spaced-out, I missed some messages entirely, waiting for another ‘wardrobe malfunction’.

Nice try Super Bowl, but no thanks.  I got all the toys I need.  And if I don’t, I’ll run out to the thrift store and get some more.  I did however recently purchase three vinyl record albums at the local record shop.  They were having a 50% off sale on all their dollar albums.  I’m not a math wiz, but that’s almost fifty cents a record.  I bought three.  Some 80’s stuff in good condition  And speaking of playfulness, I’m playing them right now.

The Food Channel

Right now, I’m watching the Food Channel’s “Chopped’ show while listening to Southern Culture On The Skids on earphones.  I figure, if I can’t smell what they’re cooking, I don’t wanna hear what they’re saying.  It’s not easy describing what this is like, watching TV, but with a totally different sound track.  Sure gives cause to a lot of unintended scenarios to evolve; especially if you’re a bit spaced-out.  I wonder if I’m the only one who does that (I doubt it).

Sometimes, the only way I can tolerate the ‘media’ is with the sound turned off and my eyes shut.  [Don’t wanna just turn the TV off – I might miss something].  Maybe the thing of it is: the fear of missing out on something really important.  And who wants to miss-out on anything important?  So, although I’m trying to keep away from as much ‘media’ as I can, I always keep one eye open to it…ust to stay grounded.  Don’t wanna miss-out.

Hey, I’m Back

One of the coolest things I’ve done lately is quit my Hansi blog, and almost immediately, do basically the same thing on my Blithering Idiot blog.  It was like quitting something, but not really stop doin’ it.  Kinda like smoking.  I quit years ago, but still occasionally sneak a cigarette.  [I know, it’s a disgusting filthy habit,  bad for your health, and stinks to high heaven].  Knowing it’s destructive though, I only do it once in a great while – sure hits the spot.

Right now, I’m thinking of resuming my Hansi blog for things like music and social issues, and my Idiot blog for darker, more far-out stuff.  It would be like having two vehicles for my split personality, so I wouldn’t have big conflicts over who’s driving.  But that’s a little crazy, especially in the Blog-o-sphere, and would only result in a lot of confusion ( and a lot of work for me keepin’ track of two guys).

Perhaps I should condense my two blogs into one.  I could call it Blithering Hansi’s Idiotic Hallucinations; a running of the mouth and pen whist totally blithered.

That sound so ridiculous, I think I’m gonna do it.