I’m such a shit writer, I didn’t even write the post title. M. came up with it when I was telling how much of a fraudulent failure-type person I am.

I set aside time to write. I planned to write. I had my notebook, my computer and time. Twice today.

I did fuck all. Why? Because obviously I don’t have enough heart, soul and gray matter. Yup, just drool and lack of discipline.

No one to blame but my pathetic self. And, the programmers who built all sorts of stupid boring solitaire games. I can click and type and produce nothing.

In order to embrace, revist and swallow my former glories, I acted today as I did 20 years ago.

I paid a few bucks for a trim at SuperCuts and bought some hair dye at the drugstore, donned plastic gloves and went to town.

Nothing says rockstar rawness like cheap hair.

I recently had a couple of conversations that mock troubled me. The gist is my life is rather blandly calm. Suburban, contented, if you will.

Shit that I am, and warped to boot, I can’t really wrap the old brain pan around simple and quiet and comfortable. Like some lizard point inside my skull would prefer that M. took a swing every now and again, because that would be so fucking punk rock.

The problem with being in your 40s is you start to make choices. Cost benefit analyses like the reality that mopping vomit chunks out of the metal teeth of your leather jacket clearly loses out to the clarity of never letting the Jager burn your throat in the first fucking place.

Boozing, drugs and unbridled sex are fun and all, in their respective times and places, and whilst hewing to the Aristotleian Golden Mean, of course. But, eventually, you learn a Sunday morning discovered and awoken to without pain is a fine fucking day. Seriously, the recovery now sucks the fun out of the night before.

I mean plain old vanilla intercourse is just easier without stumbling, insensitive numbness and the hydration issues of imbibing. I’m going die eventually, I don’t have the hours to waste trying to resucitate a whiskey dick.

All of this info is prologue to the real point of my writing. Some of the coolest folks I know from Boston comedy, the ones I truly call friends, who were denizens and main players of my two favorite comedy haunts, the Lizard Lounge and the Great and Secret Show, are taking it onto the ultimate comedy road. They’re heading to the Edinburgh Fringe Fest

This is them (or themself):

I seriously love these people. I mean a nice friend love, not the kind where I let them touch the flowering labia of my womanhood.

So, in my stable life, my happy life, my peaceful life, I’m conflicted. I have the means, and with a little cajoling action and hard work with some co-workers to smooth the demands of the day job, I have the time to make a week’s vacation visit to their month-long entertaining. But, with comfort comes complacency, so I’m having trouble embracing the 14-hour flight with a backpack and the floor-sleeping adventure.

If I can swing it, I’ll go. Alone, because M. has a far higher commitment to his career.

Feeling old and feeling distinctly not punk rock is worrying about creature comforts in place of adventure.

When did I become so fucking lazy and so fucking wimpy.

But, when I show up, it will be totally kick ass. Even if I end up baring all to the Scots and making them laugh.

Thanks, Dot, for spreading the rumor that I was rolling the idea of a trip around in my head.

Maybe we should all feel bad for Harriet Miers. I mean, she’s a hard working chick, working in the weasely field of juris prudence, as the mouthpiece for that fucking idiot chimp, the president.

And, think about the pride. One day, you are shooting for the Supreme Court. Sure, not fully qualified and living the ultimate Peter Principle bullshit kind of possible promotion, but Harriet could’ve tasted the glory.

Now, she very well may be getting some paperwork from the House Judiciary Committee about being in contempt. Hee hee hee. Sorry Harriet, but some friends of GW really deserve the thrill by the rest of us for the possibility that just maybe some parts of our three branches of government are still working.

In the same spirit of malfeasance, how evil is Dick Cheney? Looks like in addition to hating on our own species, he doesn’t mind interfering with the lives of other living things.

Oh, and in an unrelated Public Service Announcement — You might want to write a note to a local Senator or Congress folk. Looks like there’s a chance that the Farm Bill is about to get legislatively fucked. Good news if you are a heartless conglomerate living off the fat of the public trust in the heartland. Sucks if you like good food and not beating down the rural poor, here and in the world.

Leastways, it won’t be on CNN.

We watched the “historic” YouTube debate tonight. My first take, wow, this is only a bit less irritating than a “town hall.” There’s something about the regular joe public voice, or the pre-selected version anyway, getting tossed up there and then reworded, clarified, whatever the fuck by the TV personality host that always kind of kills me.

Are we really getting closer to democracy and people and populism and all sorts of shit? I doubt it. Although, before Cooper Anderson stepped in a couple tims or so, some of the questions were interesting. Here’s Salon’s take.

Toss up on my favorite moments — But right now Mike Gravel is leading in the poll inside my head. CNN’s transcript misses the tag line, but the Democrat from Alaska apparently didn’t just take a train to get there, he also grabbed the bus. Overall, he won on the I’m-an-old-man-I-can-be-cantankerous fun ticket.

Gotta love his cajones for standing firm on the troops dying in vain in Vietnam and doing it all over again in Iraq.

I’m tired of the whole troop supporting thang that makes quagmires honorable. I get it, don’t get me wrong you can’t blame some punk kid from Mo-Town or wherever the fuck getting his nuts blown off in the desert. But the bullshit of the Whitehouse and the Pentagon and all does smear the soldiers.

Best falling all over themselves to appeal to the common man moment was watching everyone talk about their public-schooled children. Or fucking Biden, playing the “hey my wife was killed” non sequitur card, mixed with the I loves me some one holy and apostolic church Catholic cred, so yeah, parochial school for his kids.

Dude, my dad died, and I did alright at the public high school.

Or, maybe it was the would you work for the minimum wage pandering? Can’t decide what inspired me more in my love/hate of American democracy.

Good old Barack Obama, though, got in a couple of good reality checks on both questions. He might as well have said, “Who the hell we fooling, we’re goddamn rich and priveleged?”

He’ll never be president, but every debates needs a bit more of the little Kucinich. Text P*E*A*C*E everybody. It won’t send a message to anyone, but Dennis will keep you posted on the war still going on.

Before I write any other blather, I have a bulletin. I just ate the best peach I have ever put in my mouth, fresh from the farmer’s market and sweet in that sticky wonderfulness that makes you overlook a peach’s, well, peach fuzz.

Also, a prayer for Tammy Faye to rest in peace. I don’t know about all the heaven and hell, Jesus stuff, but she had a sense of humor and earthiness that more uber-Christian TV evangelists should adopt.

Dancing with Ron Jeremy. Priceless.

I may have become thoroughly sated for a bit on street fairs. Although, my appetite is vast. Two days a scant half mile from our home is pretty fucking sweet, though. We can hear the music from the concert space in the park on our balcony.

Here’s some of my photos of the big day yesterday, which ended with a concert in the park by a cover band.

M. seemed quite enamored of this performers musical prowess.

You know what you get when you mix affluence, high end street fairing, maybe some wine and beer (served in actual souvenir glasses, made of glass) and cover songs from the 60s, 70s and 80s?

Y M C A!

Here M. sings along with “Sweet Home Alabama.” I’m not lying. Beating inside his outwardly melanin rich person is a whiter than white redneck.

I was actually, and unusually for me, digging watching happy people having fun. Even when M. claimed concern that I was photographing strange children.

These are the kind of folks I think you only see in California. Seriously. The hair, the accessorizing, it’s how the west was won.

Then, there’s this guy. I decided to hate him. I mean how can you not? You just know he’d want hassle Ponyboy and Johnny.

Finally, here’s a reality check. I am neither this obese or lesbian-leaning.

At the end of the Spring beginning of Summer time frame, there was some kind of artsy craftsy thang going on in the main drag of our little community. A street festival, if you will. Only thing is they didn’t actually close the streets, they just cluttered up the sidewalks.

I concluded, these folks know dick about a proper street fair.

I continued to miss the huge multi-city block affairs clogging up Mass. Ave. in Cambridge, Mass. There you got all of the arts and crafts you could possible want, ethnic food, normal food (you know, like non-ethnic), bands, frivolity and awesome people watching.

Last night, though, as M. and I walked to and back from dinner, we knew something was a foot. All sorts of tent action being hammered up, including a monstrosity the width of the street.

We walked further down the street and came across a rocking bit of festivity a day early for the apparently due street fair, but right on time for the release of some book or another about a certain wizard boy.

I have some crappy pics of all the wizarding crossing into the Muggle world for the night, here: http://dee-rob.com/zenphoto/iPhone.

Unfortunately, they mostly prove that the iPhone, like every other crappy cell phone takes shitty night photos. But, there were throngs and costumes and vendors and bands and jugglers and more people than I have ever seen out past the street lights coming on in our sleepy little burg.

A couple of random thoughts on the Harry Potter party. One, I was surprised at the number of teenagers in costume, as I would have thought that dressing like a Hogwarts character excruciatingly uncool. Two, nonetheless and regardless of the nerdiness, a certain subset of teenage girls will let the English school girl look bring out their inner reserve of major sluttiness. Nothing like a short skirt and a tie to telegraph underage porno.

Finally, I wonder if I were a parent, whether I would have brought my children along for the midnight madness or just handed them a bucketful of sedatives and let them sleep through it. If I were to indulge the brood and enjoy the party, I wonder if I would mortify them and dress up like a character from the book. I hope not for their imaginary selves’ sake.

Already today, though, I have gotten a frozen lemonade and a whole slew of free junk from fair booths, like Naked and Burt’s Bees. Soon, we’re going back for some street vendor dinner.

Oh, and one thing they gots in California street fairs that they ain’t got in Cambridge. Booze in the street. Margaritas, beer and wine served in festive glassware for a couple bucks more.

Why can I know longer hold my head up and stay awake come an evening? I eat dinner, I fire up the ‘puter fully intending to write. And, then, I realize my neck is snapping back from dropping low and I’m wiping drool from my chin.

Once I was robust and full of life and able to remain conscious. Now, I just fucking need a nap.

I have a couple of pictures of of the post-moribund, the eternal sleep, the nevermore.

The first got my nature-girl swerve going, when another chick on the beach and I tried to suss out the characteristics and identifying marks of a bird that would be forevermore flightless.

M. guessed penguin, before it got washed into the waves and a Vikings grave. Or someone else who floated the dead.

These pics, though, this gopher in rigor, I took witha deliberate story in mind. The story isn’t mine, it’s my buddy’s. Or her dad’s, rather.

Cliff L. was an honest to fucking god Yankee, capital Y, can’t get there from here (notice I didn’t use cheesy spelling like theyah or thar, but the sound was theyah, just like an ay-up in a Pepperidge Farm commercial). Fortunately, I got a chance to trek to his farm before his aging, never quite healthy body quit fighting.

From another generation, for sure, actually more like two, since my friend was definitely a late in life arrival for her folks, his farm was a bit of a time-warp voyage. He had electricity and running water and all that modern shit, but he put together a lot of the systems himself.

He walked his property confidently, curiously, amused, walking steady on leg braces from childhood polio. I think it was polio, since that would be part of the old-timey feel.

He knew about plants and growing and nature, so he farmed. During the WWII conflict, he welded nuclear subs, or some other kind of huge, specialty of war, needing good welded seams for the boys kind of ship. Somewhere in there in his life, he was also a professional cook.

Instead of who from history would you invite to dinner, I like to imagine people I know meeting other people I know, even though the overlap would be damn unlikely. By now, with Cliff L. gone almost a decade and Pat gone over a nickel’s worth of years, it ain’t gonna happen. Leastways, not on this planet in any kind of conventional, non-mystic way.

I think New England reserve and cantankerousness would have chilled the initial meeting, if Cliff L. and Pat were to meet. But, maybe, something would come up and they would figure out three real areas of concordance. A willingness and patience to explain things to youngsters simply and with real-world metaphor, reading and an unbreakable, unchallengeble (or some real world) belief in knowing about and exercising within the civics of our society.

Vote. Participate. Be responsible.

Liz, his daughter, is one friend who I would never, ever, ever have faced the apathetic argument that is our modern age, “why vote?” Nope, like Pat, she understands, you vote because you can. Because in other places, you can’t.

I’m Pat’s daughter. She’s Cliff’s. We both vote for everything, I think. (I miss not voting for the town tree surgeon in my home town. Especially, when it was the son of my art teacher.)

None of this explains my photos of the dead, though, and why I had to take them on the good, old iPhone and email them to Liz.

Cliff was an amateur naturalist. He walked and wandered the woods and meadows around his town and his own land, flipping rocks while plowing to spot fossils or maybe arrow heads, knowing the genus and species of the flora and flauna around him. One day, he came across an expired, elusive star-nosed mole.

Like Darwin hanging out in an archipelago, he picked it up and brought it home to show his kids and anyone else and to preserve it in his own little museum. OK, it wasn’t a museum, it was his freezer.

I don’t know how many days, month or years had passed since the specimen was collected, but I got to see the star-nosed mole popsicle myself.

Somehow, photos of a dead gopher seem a tad less gruesome to me. And, my specimen was hardly rare, particularly as I found it on the path next to a golf course, where doubtless many other gopher friends and relatives were frolicking.

I knew Liz would get the connection. And, to Cliff L., continue to RIP and know we are carrying on the nature-loving.

One of those weekends where it feels like only now am I a body at rest. But that’s OK. Got stuff done, had some fun and now sitting and waiting on some laundry spinning.

Yesterday, was the charity bike ride for Breathe California. To assuage the general liberal guilt of our double-income-no-kids, indulgent lifestyle, what with dining on organic, free-range tapas accompanied by a light, chilled California whites the night before, I ponied up a bit of cash.

With the do-gooder matching that my own not-for-profit employer kicks in, I was eligible for a biking jersey. The back story to my desire to own such an item is pure hypocrisy. I work and live near a stretch of road given to brightly colored, spandex clad bicyclists. You see enough douchebags with thousand-dollar bikes rocking hundred-dollar gear wrapped in bright colors you start noticing. Mostly, I’ve noticed among the well-heeled folk in my neighborhood, active but aging and softening around the middle, much like myself, that spandex is a fucking unforgiving fabric.

One ounce of fat in lycra is the appearance of one thousand pounds of jiggling, stretched chubbiness.

So, I have mine.

Here’s me sporting my new polyester colors yesterday, while walking through a Bastille Day celebration at the local French cafe.

The bike ride was fun. I have no sense of direction whatsoever, which is well-documented and astonishes those who know me as otherwise relatively not retarded, for M. and our buddy Bob, though, I expected better. One way or another we added a couple miles onto my odometer through a misturn or two, so we clocked a 20-mile ride rather than the mapped course of 18. I hope those little kids with asthma appreciate our extra effort.

Here’s a few photos of our not-quite-at-all epic journey by bicycle.

Nature:

Getting ready:

Riding:

Resting: