Summer has unofficially arrived. Nearly 90 humid degrees yesterday (that's Fahrenheit, for those of you in Scandinavia). By late afternoon the house was hotter than a Coney Island hoochie dancer.
My knack for spontaneous imagery amazes me.
Irritable and exhausted from my usual lack of sleep, I opted for a nap just after dusk.
About an hour later, a gigantic clap of thunder jolted me out of Dreamland. Lightning flashed menacingly. My desktop computer (which was turned off) inexplicably beeped (yes, beeped) and turned on by itself. No lie.
The lights in the house blinked on, off, on......off.....
Bingo! Another power failure. I lit a few candles while stumbling over an annoying trio of wayward cats.
There's not much one can do in the dark (when one is alone). I couldn't read. Couldn't write. Couldn't mess with the computer. So I located a transistor radio and took it to bed.
It's tricky trying to get any decent radio reception here in the Daniel Boone boonies. In order to pick up the "local" station I have to conduct a complex series of strategic maneuvers:
Keep my left hand on the Volume dial, with index finger firmly pressed against the AM switch.
Hold the antenna with my right hand in order to generate reception.
Point the radio south-east in the exact direction of where the town is located.
And pray. Pray for reception to be generated - -
and pray that lightning won't strike the antenna while I'm holding it.
These maneuvers eventually allow me to pick up the "local" station, which is in the process of having a bluegrass fest. That's okay. I like bluegrass. Soon they switch to playing hymns.
Hell, I like hymns, too - but it's slightly unnerving listening to songs about dying and meeting my maker during a severe thunderstorm with intense lightning when you're holding an antenna.
Seems like everybody's going to heaven. It must be damn crowded up there. Kinda like Atlantic City on the 4th of July. I personally want no part of it.
After the hymns, they start reading the local obituaries.
I've mentioned this before and I'll say it again. These hillbillies are obsessed with death. Every time I turn on the radio, somebody's reading a casualty list. They must have more stiffs here than London did during the Black Plague. Or was it the Red Plague?
Heck, I can hardly remember my own name, let alone the colors of plagues.
Anyway, the power came back on around midnight.....
.......and went off again around 3:00 a.m.
I've never seen a darker night. The rain stopped. The storm was gone. It was completely quiet and still. The only discernable light came from a few random fireflies drifting in the dark.
Power was restored - again - this morning.
Change of subject:
I thought my previous post would generate more attention, but it fizzled like a damp firecracker. The title - Music From the Civil War - was probably a turn-off. Perhaps I should have called it Naked Civil War Soldiers.....
One of my old blog posts, entitled Elizabeth Taylor's Pussy, got over 7,000 hits. Don't panic. I merely posted some photos of Liz with her cats.
Another post entitled Gay Hollywood Hunks (on my other blog) got 5,000 hits.
So what's my point?
People don't want intelligent blog posts. They don't give a rat's ass about my piano music.
They want sleaze.
