Die 2007! Die!

"I think watching 2007 go out is gonna be like watching a burning ship squeal and writhe as it sinks into the ocean and dies." - Mike Marcyes

Well Happy Freakin Nude Year!
I tell you what, 2007 sure as shit sucked ass.
So BRING IT ON!
Come on, 2008! Pay up!
You owe me some back rent!
I hold you personally responsible for all damages and debts wailed on me by 2007.
So kick down! I gotta get my drink on! Yeah.
Right. Okay. That's right. Whatever.
Just watch this video.
VIDEO HAHA!
I dunno, but somehow as I sit here 90 minutes from the click of the Crazy Clock on over into some new and promising reality, all I can think of to write is.. well, NUTHIN!
Thank God then for little drunk people and subtitles.
This video that I stumbled onto and pilfered off of YouTube today says everything I wanna say about last year AND THE NEXT! Enjoy.
I'm gonna go get in a morphine coma and have kudzu vines tattooed all over my face.
See you next..
Whatever.
Ugh.

A Very Merry from me and the new wife

A Very Joyous Junkie Christmas To All, & To All A Good High!
No, seriously folks.
Happy Holidaze from your favorite miscreant poet and scribbler,
Dr. Oznog Jigglethwarp Hayduke, the One & Only.

And special thanks to and prayers for my friend Bianca
(the model for this MOST SCANDALOUS shot!), to Bianca
and to her sister Angelina fighting this holiday season with
something to humble us all in our holiday battles:
cervical cancer.

Our prayers are with you, Angelina.

Love,
RSM

Review my book! Pretty please?

Today's Photo is of my friend Diane Bombshelter's bookshelf. The baby head was a gift to her from Lord Duke the art car. I have another picture of Diane, a big gonzo fan, standing outside the Woody Creek Tavern in full gonzo attire. Alas, I want to use it somewhere where it won't be rapidly buried by tomorrow's and tomorrow's and the following tomorrow's postings. So, stay tuned on that one.

First off, in the news: (not one to point fingers, for indeed I have was silent as the grave here in Jiggle Blog Flog da Paris Box-ville for half a frikken year) but my cousin Justino has FINALLY blogged again. Yes, I'm Sirius. Check it out. It's a good little story complete with forgotten native Americans, total loss of motor control on black ice & other snow storm hell, road rage, AM radio fuzz, and good Italian that he is he even got his mother in there, too. Click The Burning Mind to crawl inside my cousin's mind.

Secondly, whoever sent me the package to POB 32352, Oakland 94604, that's my address. I'm totally sorry they returned it to you. Postal swine. Seems they have this policy about not holding packages for more than ten daze. Something about lack of space. I remember tiny little post offices along the Appalachians that were stuffed to the ceiling with hiker packages that the local postmasters would dutifully hold onto for months and months w/o complaint. My post office in downtown Oakland is so mammoth it could house an indoor Nascar track. Ridiculous. Well, I bike everywhere these days (no car). Between that and the fact that I exercise my right as a bat-crazy writer to stay up all night writing (and doing my best to promote Dead Men in anyway I can online, as you'll see below), well, I don't get to the box very often. So I missed a package. It arrived around my birthday. I can only imagine it was something very nice, a heartfelt gift. Forgive me kind sender, whoever you are.

So, finally, the promotional crap. Amazon.com has this thing where you can enter in keywords to go with your book. Then they take it a step further and invite you to express in a short paragraph WHY the keyword (or author or book) you've tagged to relates to your book. So I pissed away a few hours tonight plugging my own damn book. I gotta tell you, there's nothing worse than tooting your own horn. I HATE it when people do it to me, and I have never expected any agent or publisher or ANYONE to listen to my own promotion of my work. To my mind, the best recommendations are those that come from other people, two or three steps removed from the source.

Having said that, can I throw a little Christmas request out there into the Universe? I don't want presents. I don't need anything tangible. But for all of you who read Dead Men but never went online to review it on Amazon, how about it, eh? Even if you hated the dang book, write that! Write anything. Just review it. And don't read the other reviews first. You'll taint your own view. Write how it made you feel, what it did for you, where it took you, etc. I know it's sold some 2000 copies, so it totally mystifies me as to why there are only 17 reviews on Amazon. Hell, as you'll see below, I just wrote four "reviews" myself.

Be my good little elves. Be my Santa Clauses and Rudolphs! Click this paragraph to be taken straight there and just write something. Your opinion matters! Thank you.

Amazon.com tag words for Dead Men Hike No Trails:

Appalachian Trail Thruhike:
Several readers of this book have found it inspiring enough to launch thruhikes of their own. I speak based on fact, not ego, when I say EVERY reader of this book has expressed only praise. If the author didn't continue to battle chemical depression, he'd have an agent, a publicist and a bestseller.

Bill Bryson:
When told I thruhiked the AT, people say: Bill Bryson. If you loved A Walk In The Woods for its humor, as I did, but are one who desires a more intimate relationship with your author, read my reviews. They say it all. I take you on an unforgettable journey in a book you'll never want to part with.

Into the Wild:
This is required reading for anyone who felt a personal connection to the whole McCandless epic freedom journey. Why? Because it ends not in death but in LIFE! Thousands head into the forests of the U.S. every year for the same reasons as Chris, and months later they come home alive. Buy this book.

Delays, delays & the death of James

This wonderfully demented Sebastian Kruger rendering of "Naked Lunch" author William Burroughs is/was for sale on eBay today. The going bid at 3 pm PST was $41. My friend Hunter Mann turned me on to it, and I responded to him saying that if my friend James hadn't run off and joined the choir invisible back in May, were he thus still alive this Christmas, I would have out bid anyone to make him a gift of it. Alas, he is gone, and I'm drawing a blank as to who else might like it in my several circles of friends (probably most any of them, the bloody freaks!). And I live on a sailboat. Not much room for a 2x3 foot leering portrait of a dog-icidle queer junkie genius.

Anyway, back to the new book. Although it hardly feels new anymore, interrupted in over two years of random scribbling by not one but TWO serious episodes of post-humous grief over loved ones lost, the death of four other art car friends, a string of tail-chasing publicity events for "Dead Men," the death and long-delayed replacement of two laptops, the purchase and resurrection of two neglected sailboats for the dual purposes of living aboard and moving toward the 36- 40 footer more suitable to open ocean sailing (read: escape out the Gate, or, I think it was Cypress Hill that said, "When the shit goes down, you better be ready."). Oh and moving from the asylum safe surrounds of small town Arizona to the big loud loco San Fran bay area, and just to really throw some terror in the mix: quitting anti-depressents after a decade on the shit. That's about it, I guess.

Yeah. So, back to the new book, which shall as-yet remain unnamed. For those of you who liked "Dead Men," which judging by every review and email I've seen is ALL OF YOU, you're gonna loooooooove this one. Speaking of Burroughs, I'll challenge any of you to find a linear story line in this one. It's working up to be a kind of Naked Lunch On the Road with Fear & Loathing and Civil Disobedience for All.

Make your holiday shopping easy! Buy everyone you love a copy of "Dead Men Hike No Trails," the life-affirming survival memoir that touches everyone and that no one can read just once. Grab 'em now at Booklocker.com!

Or Amazon.com, or Barnesandnoble.com, or Borders.com, you get the picture, although I highlight Booklocker because they're my publisher, a small press outa Maine. And not only is it good to support the little guy, but you double your good kharma by not buying from the big shits, who in all their giant corporate graciousness, pay authors less than a dollar a book.

God Bless America and bring the boys back home. - RSM

Tommy's Vivid Life

Gray San Francisco Wednesday. Humpday. Haydeen and Tom craft a hippo hump of clay to build a mold that will eventually be filled with epoxy resin, and, when hardened, affixed to a brand new Toyota Rav 4.

I remember the days years ago when Tom Kennedy would dream aloud of one day making art cars for a living. Years hence, to my eyes, he's realized that dream. Today he and his new wife Haydeen work on a hippo car. At Burning Man just months ago, the couple delivered the Green Dream Machine to the man who conceived and commissioned the art piece, an ethereal, soothingly-lit floating lily pad of a car with a giant overhanging leaf canopy hovering, waving, bouncing lightly along, all its weight and umbrella girth held aloft by naught but "Kennedy magic," a beautifully woven steel "tree" rooted in the rear. It was a joy both to behold from afar and to ride inside along the rainbow, neon-lit playa night beneath the black, black northern Nevada night sky.

Tom Kennedy has created some 25 art vehicles in a dozen or so years since quitting the corporate world to dive in with all the colorful cars and artists he once could only watch out his office window in downtown Houston. Nearly half a dozen of all the cars he has created have been commissioned pieces.

A few years back, Tom created a Cheshire Cat car for Burning Man mogul Marian Goodell. It was sweet. But what was really sweet was swimming circles around the ever growing sea of what Burning Man now calls "mutant vehicles" in the whale. The Great White Whale. Moby Dick with a propane-pressurized blow-hole shooting 50-foot columns of fire into the night sky.

Sitting atop the whale's nose one night manning the propane cannon, I was delighted by a comment by longtime cacophonist and mad creative genius Chris Ratcliff who said, or rather asked, "How does it feel to be living one of the most vivid lives on the planet?"

There are no words to express how it felt, none perhaps except.. vivid.

That was atop the 72-foot long whale with Tom at the helm. Today it's tiny little hippo parts. Tomorrow perhaps a giant truck with fins over the rear wheels and a 20-foot missile that rises on hydraulics and screams and smokes as though to launch at any moment, an appropriately ironic "smile bomb" to jostle the complacent brain into critical thought in these strange dark days of our government's renewed war on peace.

But whatever he builds, it's all the same in my mind. Tom Kennedy is living his dream.

I'll bet it is a vivid one. - RSM

Dead Men Don't Like Work

My buddy Harrod Blank put a bug in my brain the other night about my book and it's popularity on the web. He said to plug "Dead Men Hike No Trails" in to Google image search and see how many hits it brought up. That, he said, should be my barometer of the books publicity, and the more sites I could get to pop up under the book's name, the better the book would sell. Hmm, I thought. Interesting.

I'd thrown my own name into Google's engines several times, but the name of the book? So I tried it.

I learned a long time ago that putting your title search in quote marks REALLY cuts out the fat and gives you a much more concise search result. I did this, and wasn't at all displeased with what I saw. Sure, I could do a lot better, and will. But for now the book's up there, here and there.

Here then, is one instance where, although the article doesn't include an image of the book's cover, it does mention the book, and thus it came up. It gave me a good little chuckle.

I remember the freelance writer, Ronald Ehrens. Nice guy. One beer together and he bought the book off me without batting an eye. And in writing about me later in his article, he more or less forgot to write about Bisbee. Read this clip and see what I mean. I'm not sure he quoted me quite right (I'd like to think I said "don't like real jobs) but he probably did, and he had to really reach to tie together a few totally disparate topics in so few words, no small feat. I was quite honored by it all, especially that he sent me a copy of the mag. Class act. Thank you, Ron!
"It was Saturday evening when we checked in at the Copper Queen Hotel in Bisbee, Arizona, said to be the nation's southernmost mile-high town. Bisbee, like Ajo, was built by the Phelps Dodge Mining Company. After a supper far surpassing lukewarm hot dogs, I sat at the bar and met writer Rick McKinney, who spoke sarcastically of the Minutemen. Whereas they had only patrolled a two-mile stretch of border, McKinney last summer had hiked to Hunter S. Thompson's memorial service, near Aspen, Colorado, when the gonzo doctor's ashes were fired from a cannon. In his new book, Dead Men Hike No Trails, McKinney writes of "a lifetime of swimming from one funky freak community to another . . ." So who lives in Bisbee? Retirees? Ski bums? "People who don't like to work," he said."

The article in its entirety can be read at: http://www.automobilemag.com/reviews/suvs/0604_2007_toyota_fj_cruiser/index.html

I Got's DIY in my DNA

I finally tired of my techno-impotence the other day. I yanked out my 6-month dead Mac laptop, the one on which I edited "Dead Men" (thus dearly hated to part with), and pulled off a massive DIY (do it yourself) coup involving about a hundred micro-screws and snap-plug connectors so small an infants' finger would be hard-pressed to manipulate them. Of all the laptops ever made by Mac, this one, I was told, was the one not even Mac geeks liked to touch, its innards all foil-wrapped and densely packed, a virtual impossibility for the novice.

I'd already paid one such geek $100 to go in and pry into my private files and suck what he could out of a synapticly-mangled hard drive and onto a backup DVD before the thing totally died. Had I waited any longer, I was sure the 20 gig HD, no bigger than 1/4 of a deck of playing cards, would have imploded in upon itself like a white dwarf star, then back out again, blowing up me, my boat, San Francisco Bay and leaving a hole in the western hemisphere large enough to park the moon, as white dwarfs are known to do.

Anyway, said geek wasn't the first to tell me how hard it was to do surgery on a G3 iBook, but he was the first to give me a glimmer of hope that I, Rick McKinney, recipient of the Half Off For Jesus Lifetime Unemployability Grant Award, could possibly perform said surgery MYSELF.

He didn't say it in those terms. What he did say was, "Yeah, the screens on those will sometimes short out, and to go in and find the short you gotta take apart everything to get to this tiny bundle of wires and unwrap the foil and tape, and ugh!" To which I said, "Oh, yeah, I had that problem once. I fixed that." At this point he looked at me like I had three heads and exclaimed, "You did what?"

So I took a crack at it. I dissected more of the computer than necessary (what did I know?) when I thought, "Hmm, I wonder?" and went online and sure enough there was this site iFixit.com that laid it all out for you. With ease, I found hard drive removal directions for my exact model, paged through 1, 2, 3.. over twenty pages of instructions and said, "Hot damn! I did all right!" I was so impressed and grateful for their step-by-step instructions that I ordered the part from them, right then and there, badda-bing badda-bang! And for half the cost of the recovery DVD I'd paid the geek to make me.

That was three days ago. I got the new hard drive in the mail today. I'd like to say I got it reinstalled successfully, but it's still sitting here wrapped in bubble wrap on the galley table of my floating home awaiting my attention. And as it's currently 4:45 a.m. and this vampire's insomnia is giving way to the greater threat of dawn, I'm going to leave you with this thought: it WILL be successfully reinstalled.

And if Sir Bats-in-the-Belfry ducky slippers and a beach bucket on his head (picture above) can do that, JUST IMAGINE what great things you NORMAL PEOPLE are capable of!

- RSM

I stole a bag of weed because I love to snort cocaine

I enjoy the occasional funky "chain" email like the one I just got, the meat of which is below. What I DON'T DIG is the little voodoo curse threats they put at the end of these things that say if you don't send this to everyone you know you will, A: die of aggravated ingrown toe nails and consequent gangrene, or B: your whole world will collapse and in your sodden sorrow you will feed yourself to a wood chipper (ala Steve Buscemi). And I absolutely refuse to forward these fuckers on both despite and because of their heinous Haitian hubris. So, while we're on H-words then, HERE is the funny little word game minus the onus of you needing to pass it on.

>Pick the month you were born

1 (Jan) - I ate
2 (Feb) - I needed
3 (Mar) - I ran naked with
4 (Apr) - I ran shirtless with
5 (May) - I jumped
6 (June)- I smoked with
7 (July) - I killed
8 (Aug) - I banged
9 (Sept) - I shot
10 (Oct) - I robbed
11 (Nov) - I stabbed
12 (Dec) - I cuddled with

Pick the day (number) you were born on

01 - the trojan man
02 - a homeless guy
03 -a mop**
04 - A homo
05 - a dog
06 - A toothbrush
07 - my boyfriend
08 - my lover
09 - a rock star
10 - Paris Hilton
11 - a glass of milk
12 - a teletubby
13 - the kool-aid man
14 - a drunk
15 - a whore
16 - a pot head
17 - a bum
18 - a crack head
19 - a condom
20 - a stripper
21 - a porn star
22 - Barney the dinosaur
23 - the cookie monster
24 - a easter egg
25 -a hottie
26 - jezzy the snowman
27 - a bag of weed
28 - a french fry
29 - your mom
30 - a bowl of cereal
31 - your grandma

Pick the color of shirt you are wearing

White - because that Bitch stole my taco
Black - because I love marijuana
Pink - because I'm good in bed
Red - because I have AMAZING boobs
Brown- because I had to
Polka Dots - because I hate my life
Purple - because I'm gay
Grey - because I'm sexy like that
Other - because I have double D's
Green - because I love to snort cocaine.
Orange - because I smoked crack
Turquoise - because I have a noodle in my nose
Blue - because im the sexiest beast alive
Tye dye- because I didn't like the way they looked at me

Chelsea's Ode

Dear Friends,
Last week my friend Marilyn Dreampeace died. She left our world a few decades shy of what is generally considered old age. Her family, and we in the Art Car Family, indeed the whole of the living world, we all lost a person who, when pressed for words to describe her, this writer could only come up with Lovelovelovelovelovelovelovelovelove. I wrote a few more words than that in an attempted eulogy the day after she died, but not much before I gave up and buckled over my computer keyboard crying. Then a few days later, the most lovely words about Marilyn written by her granddaughter came my way via friends. I asked permission to post them here. Permission granted, I give you Chelsea's ode to Marilyn. (The "forward" is from Marilyn's husband, Shalom)



Marilyn (left) & her sister Sunshine

From: Compost@aol.com
I got permission from Chelsea to pass on what she wrote in the minutes
after she was told her Grandmother had died.
No finer obituary has ever been written.
(I put Marilyn's final completed needlepoint into the mail to our
youngest great-nephew just 2 hours before Marilyn died.)
-- Shalom



hello family
tonight's date is november 25, 2007
at five thirty tonight we lost a loved one.
marilyn nelson. (dreampeace, compost)
she was my grandma and still is in heart,
she loved anyone she met
sure there were people she didn't necessarily agree with
but she had a huge heart
she taught me as well as others so much
marilyn worked for the people and with the people
in her off time she was attending peace rallies
and tending to her family life
i remember her smile and voice from last time i saw her
two weeks ago i arrived in santa cruz to visit her in the hospital
she was trying her best to remain calm and happy
the whole family had their concerns and thoughts
(i apologize right now for this email being so scrambled
but as many of you know i write in order to release me feelings)
some of us lost a sister, a wife, an aunt, a mother, a grandma,
a co-worker, a cousin, an anything
but we all lost a friend
a kind young hearted friend
she always put others before herself in acts of kindness
her actions consisted of honest from the heart things
such as letting me be the first to
paint the "come play with me" beemer
or supporting her three children with their life choices
marilyn took me under her wing for years
putting me through school and putting clothes on my back
when my own mother wasn't able to be there for me, marilyn was
when shalom had long stressful days at work
she would be there to talk to and give great advice
all these things from one woman
she wasn't just my grandma but my best friend, and the family knot.
every holiday we could count on going to marilyn's, everyone could
no matter if you were related by blood or not
she would welcome you with open arms
it's as if our family and her life were one of her needle point projects
every stitch so carefully thought out
and every color selected for a reason
but once she felt she had done her job well, the needle point stocking
would rest safely
not on a couch
not in a chair
not in the car
but in someones caring hands
to be forever treasured
that's what she did
she patched our family together
and once she trusted we could takeover
she left it in our hands
to be caring and responsible
so it is our job, as a family, to watch over this gift of love,
to not let it tear away
but to keep it and treasure it
not to mourn over the stitcher's hands being let off
but to have joy in what cradled us for so long.

[End]

Marilyn stumping for my new book at book signing in Houston
Photo by Frank Synopsis of the Flickr photo pool in Marilyn's memory

Indy! May I call you Dad?

My friend Beatgirl put me up to this. Uh, okay. I should say she put me "on" to this. I just couldn't resist. Gee! Since replacing my 6-month deceased laptop a few weeks ago, I'm finding soooo many neato ways to piss away my time online! I LOVE IT! Who cares if I never finish "Dead Men" the sequel?

Seriously though, thank you, T. And for the record, I think you're a fine writer (anyone who reads as much as you couldn't help but be) and very lucky to live amongst the coho, the eagles, the Cascades and the Klingons. Also thanks to you, since I'm having such a hard time separating my online time from work on my next book, I think from now on I'm gonna limit my blog subject matter to the reading and spinning off of other people's blogs. There are soooooo many!

Here then are MY CELEBRITY LOOKALIKES!



Harrison Ford!! Can you believe it? All these years I've been getting "Doc" from "Back to the Future," aka Christopher Lloyd. But now, thanks to MyHeritage.com, that curse is lifted. It's official! I am the secret love-child of Indiana Jones! (Probably from that one Nazi chick that both he and Sean Connery banged, remember?)

Can you believe Dad's putting out YET ANOTHER SEQUEL due out in late May 2008?



Oh, Dad, you rock!

Weeeeeeeeeeeee!

Out of desire to lighten things up a bit after my foray into dark conspiratorial thought yesterday, I give you this, a fun little short video probably already posted somewhere on my website, but EVEN I CAN'T find my way through the Jigglebox.com labyrinth. This is a moment of fun in Steamboat Springs, a short break from my Continental Divide "Suicide Awareness Hot Hike" to Hunter S. Thompson's funeral in 2005. Thompson's funeral was the "high water mark" that became the opening chapter of my book "Dead Men Hike No Trails," my tale of survival over some 2700 miles hiking in the last vestiges of America's once-great and wild forests. Enjoy the video clip and read on!

NO BRAKES!

Now if you thought that was fun, and you just happen to be one of them old fashioned type people who still read books in print, waste not a moment and get yourself a copy of "Dead Men Hike No Trails." Click to read all about it on Jigglebox.com, or go to Amazon.com if you prefer. Most of the same reviews are there.

"Dead Men" is about a hike, a really long hike inspired by suicidal behavior of another, less jovial kind than I demonstrated above with my no-brakes roar down the mountain. Does that scare you? Hmm. I have that effect on people sometimes on account of I don't b.s. around about subjects like depression and suicide, and I pretty much eviscerate myself with my harrowing confessional style of writing. And maybe you're not one of the 75 million Americans that suffer from one form of mental illness or another. Or maybe you are, and that's why the D-word and the S-word scare you. But don't be scared! With 75 million friends, you're in great company! And with all the crap being done to the forests of our country and of our minds, our natural and physical and social environments, our air, our water, our workplaces, our economy, no worries. You'll have a lot more friends over the coming years.

But hey! I promised to be light today. I don't mean to get heavy on you. I'm just having a deep, sardonic belly laugh at the state of the state of the State. Ha-HAAAAA! But seriously. It's a good book. Don't take my word for it. Read the reviews. Not ONE person has expressed anything but praise with the book after some 2000 copies sold. Check out this review I just got from a seasoned hiker in his late sixties or early seventies. I didn't think an old time hiker of the Appalachian Trail would dig my take on the trail and on life in America in general, but, well, here it is:

"Hey, GREAT book. I read it in one week, couldn't put it down. It's the BEST A.T. account of trail life I've ever read! Kudos to you! You really touched chords in me. I found I cried along with oyu at certain points; found I agreed with you with a RIGHT ON at other points; and I really dug the SURVIVE theme." - Red Wolf o' da Smokys

[Is their an Agent in the house? The author has collapsed onto the floor. Someone call an Agent! Quick! This man needs immediate medica.. er, representation!]

-RSM