The song “King” on the new Weezer album is the reason I proudly fly the Flying W on the back of my pickup truck.

Although the fact that that song (and three others) are bonus tracks on the deluxe version of the Red album, and it was just sheer chance that said version of the album was in stock when I was at the store, leaves me wondering why the band would risk depriving their fans of what is one of the best songs they ever recorded.  It’s like the sheer donkey perversity of ignoring your fanbase that led the Melvins to put out the Prick album.  Not that tweaking the fans is a bad thing, but don’t be a jerk about it.

I’ve been listening to the Vandals this morning, and so am reminded of some other names for the mullet:

Ape Drape

Hockey Hair

Forbidden Hair

Achey-Breaky Hair

For some reason this reminds me of a dream I had last night, where I was out doing some serious shopping for a pair of cowboy boots I needed for work.  This doesn’t seem like the kind of dream one should ignore.

Recent books read:

We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin

The Warden, by Anthony Trollope

Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires, by Selwyn Raab

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume II (Modern Library Edition), by Edward Gibbon

Today is muggy and I am logy but I still took the dogs (both the Resident Dogs and the Guest Dogs, in two shifts) for a walk earlier this afternoon.  Seeing as how it is Sunday I attempted to keep them from urinating on church walls and landscaping.  There are a lot of churches in the neighborhood, however, so one must be  ever vigilant.  The following is a sampling of houses of worship in the area.

In honor of my cultural and ethnic background, the local Catholic church: 

Church, no steeple

This church, despite the Korean writing, is now used by a Romanian congregation:

A Coptic Church reminds one of how old the religion is:

There are far more churches we walk past, but I’ll save them for future posts, so as not to clutter up your browsers.  

They say diversity is vital to cultural understanding, and it is true.  Our Sunday walks have led me to understand that Russian and Ukrainian young women dress, when they are going to church, like really classy, high-class hookers.

I can’t roll up the sidewalk outside my house and take it indoors, and the city considers it part of the street system, and outside of my property.  Yet I am legally responsible for its upkeep and repair.  I suppose it’s a more direct form of taxation for infrastructure maintenance than we normally see, and I’m not opposed to it.  The section at the base of our sidewalk is cracked and tilted and I certainly don’t want someone to trip there.

The city sidewalk inspectors have been all through our neighborhood and the result can be seen in the outbreak of sidewalk repair contractors following behind.  In our case I think it’s the linden tree just over our property line that’s caused our damage, but that doesn’t seem to be a valid reason for appeal.  I guess we’ll lose this particular memento of the earliest days of our neighborhood:

Thank you, S Card, for installing sidewalks that have lasted most of a century.  It would be interesting to find a picture of our street from 1908, or better yet from 1915, when our house was built.

My neighborhood may not be a walker’s paradise, but it is at least rated very walkable.  Which makes sense, given how many street walkers there are.

I went for a bike ride yesterday evening.  Luckily nobody attacked me, nor did I find it necessary to use my AK.  Nobody screamed “Faggot!” at me from their huge black pickup truck, no carload of yoots made barking noises at me, no crackers blared their horns at me for daring to ride in the bike lane.  I did have one little gangsta wannabe try to block me as he weaved his BMX all over the road, but that was no big thing.  The only really interesting part of the ride was when I was almost home, coasting along, when what sounded like a bike dragging six feet of chain along the road passed me.  It turned out to be a guy with a Christian fish tambourine like this, if you scroll down, duct-taped to his back fender.  He also had a small guitar amp on the bike rack, with a portable CD player connected to it.  He wasn’t playing anything at that moment, but I wondered if he normally rode the streets playing amplified Jebus music.  I would have liked to hear it.

People of Southeast Portland!  If you post a “free stuff” ad on craigslist offering free bricks, and if I have been refreshing the free stuff page every fifteen seconds because I want me some free bricks, and if I call your number three seconds after the ad posts, and if I leave a voicemail swearing I want the bricks and will pick them all up, oh every last one, then please, if someone else managed to get to the bricks first because you left them out on the street and posted on craiglist just to cover your bases, or they left a voicemail one second before me, at least update your post to point out that the bricks are no longer available.  Fucking wally.

In other news, my favorable first impression of the new Weezer album has turned insensibly into deep, passionate, wet-kissing love. 

It’s too hot to think today.  Instead, here’s a list of books I’ve read recently, before my brain was melted: Coltrane, The Story of a Sound by Ben Ratliff.

The Simple Art of Murder by Raymond Chandler.

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac.

The Birth of the Republic 1763-89 by Edmund S. Morgan.

Reaping the Whirlwind by Nigel Cawthorne.

Ladies and Gentleman, The Bronx is Burning by Jonathan Mahler.

The Other Greeks by Victor Davis Hanson.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans.

The Year’s Best Science Fiction, 24th Annual Collection edited by Gardner Dozois.

Blood Engines by T.A. Pratt.

The Early Stories 1953 – 1975 by John Updike.

The Analysis and Use of  Financial Statements by Gerald I. White, Ashwinpaul C. Sondhi and Dov Fried.

Please excuse the crap formatting.  It is too hot to format. 

I have no idea why someone would enter the phrase “eamon smells of poo” into a search engine, but someone evidently has, because that phrase has shown up in the list of search queries used to find this site.  I assume it’s not me who smells so, given the alternate spelling of the name.

Another, more specific query is “golden retriever cocker spaniel mix in portland oregon”.  Crikey.  “Stick this in your fuse box” has turned up twice, and “kitchen sponge syndrome” eight times.  “When was jebus born” is in there only once, as is “liz phair ipod engraving”.

The second most popular phrase, however, is “roxanne dunning”.  Roxanne is the fabulous artist responsible for the picture of the fishes that graces this site.  She is currently working on a painting for myself and Mrs The Fyd; a detail of the work-in-process can be seen here.  It may not be seemly to publicise that we are to be the recipients of such great creative largesse, but a mitigating purpose is that there are pictures of some of Roxanne’s other work there, and I think everybody should go admire them.

One of the advantages of walking dogs is the chance to explore the neighborhood.  I’ve probably been on every street in a forty-five minute walk radius of our house.  Still there are a few routes we walk regularly, and even there I am always seeing things I never noticed before.  Yesterday evening I was walking the Short-Term Dog and I noticed in a parking strip a wooden sign.  It was short, only about six inches off the ground, and small, about as big as  paper napkin.  It was set close to the curb and angled away from the sidewalk.  So I walked around it and read

DO NOT THROW CONDOMS HERE! 

That street is just one block closer to 82nd than ours, and maybe prostitution in Montavilla is more of an issue there.  Then again, I have seen used condoms on the sidewalk on our street, but not yet directly in front of our house.  Then again, I leave my truck parked right there so no one else can take the space.I would be just so happy if one of the dogs picked up one of those used condoms.  I wouldn’t be reaching in to get it.