the end of the line.

twenty-five.
falafels.
twenty-five falafels found their way to my bellyhole.
the last day of the fair has come and gone.
the greasy, manure-laced fried-food and leather-goods stank is done.
no more whiffing up on the cotton-candy and cigarettes perfume of the midway,
no more crafts, no more arts, no more digital-printed wizard t-shirts.
now it's just all fall days and nights.
my brooklyn duders, d&k, only stayed for 24 hours.
that's some woodsly goodness drive-by visitation.
nice.
they hit up some military surplus,
got a vintage ten-speed for thirteen bucks,
and ate falafels with their homeboys and girls up here.
jess's brother rob and his ladyfriend sharon are still here, though.
that means that the fun can continue 'til tuesday.
word.
what's a great way to cap off an eight-day odyssey into fryeburg, maine?
how about a rippin' outdoor fire and a raging indoor woodstove blaze?
yeah.
that did it.
as usual,
the convoluted confrontational cadence of my heartfelt heatstroke penstrokes,
my gratuitously graphic and garishly grateful regaled regalia;
the warrior poetry of my infinite nature,
isn't going over very well with the folks from connecticut.
i'm telling ya'll,
sometimes, some people just don't get it.
i mean,
i can't expect to bring down the house with my sovereign sauce every time,
but not even so much as an uncomfortable snicker?
nervous laughter is still laughter.
c'mon.
this isn't a bear attack, ninjas;
just laying still and hoping it will end just isn't going to work.
not on me, anyway.
i'm a belligerent berserker barbarian battle-beast,
and that type of when-to-say-when crapola isn't my field of interest.
it just isn't poppin'...
and here i thought the homemade waffles and fruit compote
would've softened 'em up.
had enough?
give 'em some more;
never quiet, never soft.....

ten ten.

falafel fever?
is there such a thing?
i mean,
i get hot, and sweaty, and i get the chills,
and nauseous, and the shakes.
either i'm on heroin and nobody told me about it,
or i have completely overdosed on chick peas.
is it possible i've gone too far?
c'mon.
you can never go too far.
after you redline at the borders of good taste and common sense,
it's just a hop, skip and jump to the great beyond of level eleven hottness.
i doo-doo that freaky sh!t.
literally.
more than ever,even,
especially after all of this shark gluttony.
***********
in no specific order,
with no regard for personal safety,
immerse yourself in the tahini-tainted terror of the last few days.
look ye upon the causes of my personal woe and ruin:

that's actually pretty gross,

all together like that.

i'm saying,

it's almost like p.t.s.d.;

reliving the trauma i've willfully inflicted on my whole life for a whole week.

i've actually had enough.

but,

there's still one more day of fryeburg fairness to endure.

i've already beaten my standing personal best.

it was double-deuce.

eleven, twice,

but thanks to jess's cautious consumption,

i've already scoopled up,

and shoveled down twenty-two.... and a half.

what?

yeah.

hardly the furious rout and demoralizing defeat of the old goals i'd hoped for,

but there's still time to pound on the final countdown,

and actually need hospitalization.

***********

the whole house is full as F*.

actually,

there's plenty of empty rooms we could still chock full of nuts.

but these nuts,

the one's who're here right now,

have definitely come to rock the party.

long nights,

good times,

hot fire,

falafels.

i am grateful for the spanners,

i'm grateful for the nuts.

tight, kids.

so tight.

(that's what SHE said?)

never quiet, never soft.....

the most beautiful.

a painterly pastel palette of pumpkins?

sugar maple leaves and apple boxes?

is that the latest cover of 'living' magazine?

naw,

it's my really-real life.

my front porch is so flippin' sexy.

that's just a little tiny bit more epic hottness in the mountainous marvelousness.

what a season! my ninjas.

i am grateful for all of this big burly berserker battle-beastly bardic business.

i'm slowing down to a snail's pace up here.

(minus the slime trail.)

this Folk Life magic is happening.

and i don't want to miss a minute of it.

today is the day.

but each miniscule moment is every bit as critical to the composition.

i'm not looking forward to anything.

because each an every right now is bangin' off the hinges.

all the lame parts just don't matter as much as the awesomeness;

of autumn,

of this house,

of the fair,

of all of it.

yeah,

it is cold and rainy outside,

and slower'n' sh!t at the studio.

but it's warm and (mostly) dry in the fortress,

and busy as a beehive all weekend long up here.

we'll have a full-to-bursting battle-stationed battalion

seeing how they fare at fair-ing,

and if it's really as good in the woods as it seems.

( it SO is)

existing. and abiding.

that's the pair of potent patricipatory particles that make the plan come together.

whatever's comin' down the pipe is just another test,

plied and tried a la' the emergency woodsly goodness system.

brought to you by the letters X and I,

and the number 11.

i've got a savage stormswept Folk Life saga in my head, heart, and hands.

all my senses are saluting the secret universal plan.

**********************

dear magical classified covert-ops confidential,

more of all of this,

please.

-love.

xoxoxox,

a.

**********************

come late tonight, we'll be elbows deep in active participants.

giant uncles, one-armed dads-to-be, babymakers,

fashionable designers, and brooklyn b-boy shooters.

sounds like a well-balanced blend of professional appreciators.

sorry, new neighbors,

but it sounds as if the Folk Life & Liberty Fortress is gonna bring the thunder;

never quiet, never soft.....

who's manly?

wayne morris.
wayne F*n' morris.
that's right.
my homeboy;
up-here pioneer,
rural loremaster,
and all around handy man.
he's got some talents in the homeowner's basic skills department.
that dude descended into my basement,
climbed over the crumbling granite battlements,
crawled through the native american burial grounds under my floorboards;
(the infamous and nefarious crawlspace.
that's exactly the right term for it, too.)
was he looking for a way to end a curse?
is there buried treasure under there?
did he flush his wedding ring into the underground plumbing-works?
nope.
none of those things is accurate.
he came over and helped me insure a warm, safe winter.
because he is a good friend.
and,
it was a chance to show off some of his manly skills, too.
yeah.
furnace, flue, and duct work.
imagine for a moment,
your favorite woodsly warrior poet
all into some sheet metal screwing, air duct pipe-fitting, burly home repair.
then,
imagine the amount of help i actually was,
while two bigger, burlier barbarians bore the brunt.
phase one:
furnace flue vent cleaning.
thirty feet of rusty tetanus, emphysema powder, and claustrophobic caverns.

i see uncle steven is wisely wearing his mask.
there's pure cancer-powder waiting to wonder-twin activate
the asbestos, radon, creosote, dust, and rust down there.
but where's wayne?
he's IN the creepy dry hole.
my camera ate it, hard,
well before i could capture him in his full filthy glory.
he crawled under there a few times,
and left my house looking like a full-figured indiana jones adventure.
word up, ya'll.
i'm sayin',
that duder works.

does that look like a three foot high dirty ledge,

full of archaic metal and wire?

yeah!

we put the power to it.

(again, mostly wayne)

and then headed upstairs to deal with the other other stovepipe.

in case you were wondering;
this old house's previous owners,

the ones who let the place languish into busted old bustedness,

instead of old busted hottness,
must've not shared my affinity for victorian chimbleymen.
how could i tell?
because we santa claus-type hard-styled that stuffed-stocking site.

cleaning my pipes, ya'll.
we brushed that baby-b!tch with my new steel sweeper,

and dislodged a truly heinous heap of hellish hardened hunkage.

disgusting?

uh-huh.
wayne, already filthy from his furnace furiousness down delow decks,
climbed up and at 'em on the dangerously wet roof,
and hollered down the hole,
as we tugged and tussled with a long, hard, dirty reaming.
(that IS what she said)

he topped to my bottom,

and i got covered in slag.

i was blacker than a moonless night an' that.

soot is really as black as they say.

and it really does look like a cartoon cloud exploding in your house,

when the stormswept thunderbrush blows it's way in.

i definitely had some big, bad, huffin', and puffin' werewolfen

brick house blowin' going on.

i wore a mask, and goggles, and put up barriers,

and still i've somehow got black boogers this morning.

the well-earned, well-appreciated rewards?

first off,

we three worthy workers each enjoyed

nine inches of fourth-year cedar aged brazilian stank-stick.

and after our smoke-screened tour of the fortress grounds,

and expounding on the virtues of rural woodsly goodness,

we stoked up the verrrry sexy woodsly goodstove.

what could rock it more than a mutha-flippin',

roasty-toasty, damp-destroying,

fresh, freaky doo-doo blaze?

nothin'.

recognize.

the first one we've had in the pad,

and it was just what i needed.

blistery, blustery, haunted graveyard of a day that it was,

a cozy, comforting, intimate, inviting incendiary oven hit it up proper.

nice, kid, nice....

oh, yeah;

after dark, me and uncle s. hit up the fair for some supper.

three more utha-flippin' falafels,

directly down my gullet.

it hurts so good.

but, seriously, it really hurts;

never quiet, never soft.....

eleven.

falafels!!!!!

yes.
another day at the fair.
i bet you're turbo jealous.
no?
then you're dumb.
the fair is awesome.
affirmative. positive. positively affirmative. etc.
the sounds, the smells, the sights, the works....
we spent a lot of time milling about,
observing the awesome, the excellent, the righteous, and the radical.

there's so much elite hottness to experience;
like a whole entire booth of stuff made out of antlers.
yep.
baskets, pens, mirrors, magnifying glasses, buttons, lamps, eagles.
what?
yeah, antler eagles.
i tried to get a snappy shot,
but mr. mcoy, the utilitarian antler-art guy,

wasn't having any of that.

he's got interests to protect, after all.

apparently,
antlers are the answer,
but that answer is NO.

the fair has it's share of not-dopeness, too.

i choose not to focus on the dirty doo-doo buttery downside, though.

what the heck, in the interest of real-life documentation;

you wanna know the absolute gayest thing about the fair?:

this guy.
steve drove all the way up from faroff salem, 'assachusetts,

to eat dead bird bits and drink sodas.
he didn't have any falafels.

his sauce is weak,

he lives in mass.

no one is shocked.

still and all,

it's always good to see my friends.

not a whole lot to say about this sandwich.

...except that it was flippin' delicious.

i think that there's as much garlic as chickpeas in the brown blops,

and there's easily double that amount in the tahini.

is there garlic in the pickled veggies?

uh-huh.

how about the v.h.s.?

oh yeah.

cloves of damnation are roiling and boiling inside my bellyhole.
you'd better believe i'm glad i think vampires are dumb,

because there is no freakin' way that i'd have an interview with one...

not with this dragonmouth hot fire spit blasting out of my breathbellows.

wolfen warrior poets, however,

are not adverse to tarnished tongues and blarney blisters,

so i should have no trouble competently communicating with my peers.

whaaaaaaat?

yeah.

another 'nother 'nother falafel.

i'm as surprised as you are.

be easy,

i was there all day,

and all that walking around makes a man develop a healthy appetite.
therefore, it makes a real man develop an unhealthy appetite.

that's number eleven,

in case you're counting.

you'll have to excuse me,

but i've got to attend to the science project in my stomach;

never quiet, never soft.....

cupcakes?

yeeeeeeeeeeah!!!!
i'm flippin' in love with the g-darn fair, kids.
but,
before i could bury myself balls-deep in falafel balls,
i had to work it for all it was worth first.
those big brown balls aren't going to pay for themselves, y'heard?
(that's what she said)
on the brighter side of having to go and zap it up,
i had some kickass clients pop in and pay me,
and i even got to do some fresh tatty-o activities.
that's almost always a welcome event...
what?
no,
i didn't take a picture of the cute-as-a-cupcake tattster i zapped up.
no,
i didn't snap off any snappies of the dual, dueling now-laughing, later-crying
forearm comedy/tragedy 'hood goodness, either.
i just can't be expected to devote a single micromegagiga-what
of digital bobotronic memory card tardedness to stuff like that.
y'wanna know what i DID get a glamour shot of though?
F* yes, my ninjas:

do you flippin' see that gooey goodness?
it's like they get better somehow, with each and every day.
and when you tune 'em up with mixed pickled veggies, ya'll,
it can rearrange your entire culinary perspective.
two more wood-fired wraparound middle-eastern masterworks,
right down the hatch.
nice.

in other news:
do you know what israelis like even less than palestinians?
hot hands.
yep.
the Louderhorn hebrank-types sent us a fresh housewarming present.
a little somethin' somethin' to handle the hottness with,
apparently imported from israel,
if the accompanying card is to be believed.
autumn earthy quilted Folk Life kitchen accoutrements.
they definitely know the style we represent on.
thanks, my duders.

and if we actually felt we needed a reason to fryeburg it up,

instead of stayin' home and cooking;
here's a glimpse into what's poppin'.
debris and destruction in the kitchen of the woodsly goodness.
the Folk Life & Liberty Fortress is closed for renovations.
what's cookin?
not much right now,
but we've got enough clamps and cutters and counterspace to prepare a
berserker barbarian banquet buffet.
damn, but that's a long length of wood.
butcher block burliness,
courtesy of uncle steven.
the new hottness promises to be even hotter than the original old bustedness.
trust uncle steven.
it's the right thing to do.

ohhhhhhh sh!t!!

psych!, mutha-humpers.....

and you thought i was done for today?

shame on you.

that's lucky number seven.

i mean, were you expecting less?

sorry, i'm just not prepared to pour on the weak sauce;

i'm sayin',

see those dotty dots of burnt orange blops on top?

that's the 'very hot sauce'

a little dab will doo-doo ya, for sure,

but that's nothing compared to the thai chili relish underneath.

i sh!t hot fire.

word.

we met up with some of our buddies, the Barnes, and their friends,

and twirled a tour or two through the twists and turns of fairground fun.

it's always good to see our peoples,

although my full-moon frenzy and fury and fervor

doesn't always play well with new acquaintances.

i was informed later that the new friends had been forewarned.

i'm not sure if i'm flattered or flummoxed,

since i just do what i do,

and let the chaff get blasted back from the worthy wheat.

that's just that pure wu-tang, yo.

jess says regular people need to get ready to be around me...

but, i mean,

a muthalicking warning label?,

and nc-17 rating?!

c'mon, ya'll.

fortune favors the bold.

but average joe-type duders can't always take it to eleven,

or even comprehend that kind of crucial kickassery;

therefore,

i guess i'm fortunate to have the few friends who can hang tough.

i'm grateful for meet-ups and meanderings,

and for minutes and moments that matter most.

real life, documented,

one sumptuous sandwich at a time;

never quiet, never soft.....

full, fuller, fullest.

okay,
it's Falafel Week.
that's the dopeness, obviously.
but what i didn't know was...
it was a totally flickin' full moon werewolfen howling mad harvest night!
my inner hirsute horrorshow definitely popped right out of my skin.
and insisted on some seawolf shark gluttony.
right to eleven, right off the starting line,
i doo-doo that freaky sh!t...
and man-o-man did i wolf down some treats!!
uh-huh.
and they taste even F*n better than they look.
and they look so mouth-wateringly good.
daaamn.
them jauns hit SO many spots,
it was like an accupressure massage
...on the inside of my body.
look closely,
because like a truly true connoisseur of consumption,
i get 'em different each and every time.
and then,
because there is rarely such a thing as too much of a good thing:
boo-ya!, duders.
in super-short order i'd plowed through a triple threat of tahini-beany hottness.
look at those voluptuous brown blops under that sesame butter.
i even slowed it down and managed to chew this one a little tiny bit.
then we walked around awhile.
jess ate all kinds of crapola.
jim ate all kinds of crapola.
we had maple-sugar cotton candy.
what?
you heard that right.
never mind about that everyday pink and blue b!tch-fluff;
it's beige, mutha-licker,
and it is also bangin'!
we half-heartedly talked to about a billion semi-local yokels about tattoos,
and whole-heartedly drooled over the rustic shaker furniture.
we found uncle steven towering above the crowds,
and looked at quilts and pumpkins and all of that good stuff.
my stomach was distended disturbingly far.
i'm talking about tight-stretched skin and everything.
my whole digestive tract was communicating loud and clear.
it was even kind of funny,
me joking that i was so full i would burst.
hahahaha, and that.
it was all well nice, but by then the sun had gone down,
and then the clouds parted,
and i think 'thriller' was playing in the distance
...and it was right at that moment that sh!t got real:
this falafel has a name.
and that name is the wrench.
yep.
somehow, i had it worked out that including a double-dose of cucumbers
would cool off the furnace of fury in my foodbox.
in retrospect, i could well've predicted the obvious outcome.
i went well past the limits of good sense, good taste,
prudence, practicality, and pleasure.
you can never go too far, but you may be able to go too fat.
i led an unsanctioned incursion beyond the borders of epic obesity.
let it be known, on record,
i suffer the consequences of my infinite nature for YOU, my ninjas.
warrior poetry is only partially art,
the other part is pain.
there was a long moment,
after i chased down the delicious dopeness with a bucket of sweet cool apple cider,
when i was sure i'd see an encore of this guy's palate-plummet,
in reverse.
some folks aren't susceptible to full-moon fever.
some people don't like falafels.
not me, my ninjas.
i've got that berserker barbarian battle-beastliness,
and lunar lunacy and sharkbite werewolf powers are how i get busy.

...of course i did.

they told me about how it was organic.

they told me how it had specially-selected scotch bonnet bombs,

the told me about how it was homemade, and with love.

all i saw was the handwritten label,

and that's all i needed to know.

and yeah.

it is.

did i end up groaning and bloated?

wallowing and wiggling?

sleepless and overfull with indigestive nightmares?

hell yes i did.....after all, what am i?

apparently, an A*-hole.

i should've known.

if i was lamer, i might have known.

do ya'll know about those terrible lunar calender charts?

they're always in purple or blue ink on cream paper, yeah?

and inspire wiccany 'buffy' fan-types to talk about lunar goddess weak-sorcery-sauce?

yeah.

those.

well, i'm pretty much predisposed to hating that kind of stuff.

hard.

but no foolin',

it just might have come in handy.

an ounce of prevention against a secret universal predestiny?

it honestly wasn't until i espied a glimmer of the dominant disk of doom,

the luminous lantern of lycanthropy,

that i figured out why i've been positively off-my-t!ts crazy for a few days.

obvious enough now, innit?

tell that to my battered-wife bellyhole.

poor thing,

it won't leave me,

even though i'm gonna subject it to even more domestic abuse tonight.

oh c'mon.

i know.

Falafel Week;

never quiet, never soft....

ten-four.

roger that, good buddy.
it's here.
yep.
you know what i'm talking about.
and conditions are perfect:
the sun has made it's big reappearance,
right on schedule.
the tourists have all left because of the rain.
and we've got special dispensation for early dismissal from zapblasting this afternoon.
today is the day.
and for the next eight more,
in a row,
so is every day...
the very best thing about maine is poppin' off,
in crisp, autumnal new englandy fashion.
the party is started,
the battle has been joined,
and the spirits and the memories of the woodsly goodness are rejoicing.
loud, hard, and greasy.
it's happening even as i'm typing...
there's even been talk of a falafel mafia tattoo.
we'll see about that;
it's gonna take a ton of tahini to persuade me
to indelibly depict the delicious dopeness on my body.
in my bellyhole is one thing, (and that's a sure mutha-F*n' thing at that)
ON my bellyhole is a whole other 'nother one.

uncle steven did some serious berserking yesterday.
we came home to sliced and diced,
dismantled, dismembered, destroyed dopeness.
what's cookin'?
well,
for starters,
he shaolin sawzall master killered the kitchen.
it didn't stop me from simmering up my last non-falafel feast for a while,
but it didn't make the magic any easier to make, either.
i'm sayin',
he made like the bikini atoll and pretty much nuked the islands.
now they're all hacked up, stacked up, and bracketed up,
in the beginnings of a brutally barbarian bastion in the middle of the floor.
yeah!
old and busted and new and the hottness.
concentric overlapping circles, y'know?
uncle steven does manly, manly stuff.
we took him, and jim, to see zombieland.
that was our big treat for the evening,
and it was short, sweet, and seriously bloody.
it made me fall in love with firearms all over again.
but that's all in the past,
ancient history,
and it just isn't relevant to the sunny sunday stormclouds i'm brewing up.
is that thunder you're hearing?
kinda,
i am bringin' it,
but it's actually the ursa major grumbles of my foodbox.
i'm on the attack, my ninjas.
i've got a battle plan drawn up,
and it looks conspicuously like the Fryeburg Fair floorplan.
ironically,
i'm only targeting the middle-eastern enclave among the turkey-lickin',
blooming onion idiot patriotic 'necktards.
i'm a hottness-seeking smart bomb
and i'm about to cram my warhead full of ever-loving motherfunking falafel.
it's destined to be a fair fight,
and probably a food fight,
but i won't fight fair,
i'll fight fire with hot fire...
megatonnage, my ninjas;
never quiet, never soft.....

inclement.

it really eats a hot crusty one outside,
even though it's neither hot nor crusty.
it's actually cold and soggy.
and windy.
and muddy.
what the F* ever, though.
the weather can molest the mountainsides all it likes,
right up until roughly 4 p.m. tomorrow,
and then i expect that ma nature and the inestimable secret universal planagram
will dry up the meadowlands, fairways, and walking tracts
of the 159th consecutive northern maine blue ribbon classic,
the mutha-lickin' freaky-diki Fryeburg Fair.
just for me, even,
because i'm on a mission, ya'll.
a furious flagrant-foul-flaunting falafel eating mission.
and i am going to execute my directive in true shark-glutton fashion.
Falafel Week is waiting in the wings, my ninjas!
it's a caustic combination of 'shark week' and 'sandwich week',
and it is dope.

today is my sister's berfday!
miss mary grace turns 32 years of age.
in a row.
and it's sure to be a happy one,
old-ass b!tchslappin' battle bizzle that she is!
in true family tradition fashion,
she has already planned out practical practicing party points
for at least the next consecutive seven days.
nice.

the weiner guy popped in yesterday;
that's always an interesting event.
and as per usual,
there was a sausage explosion all over the studio.
that's how it should be, i guess.
y'know; letting it all hang out.
but not in a metaphorical way at all.
at all, at all, ya'll;
it was a real cocktoberfest.
i mean it,
there was even a jack o'lantern set of blumpkin balls involved.
no joke.
there are dull moments sometimes,
but not when fellow beehive humpers are present.
beehive humpers?
yep;
ask shawn,
he'll explain it....

i've got just 29 short hours to kill until i'm elbows-deep in deep-fried dopeness.
the clock is ticking;
never quiet, never soft....

chilly, chili, chile.

it's just the right temperature.
which is to say: marginal fractions above freezing.
and yet, until i can see my breath in the indoor airspace,
the heat stays OFF.
we keep it rough, rugged, and raw in the woodsly goodness.
as a result,
my fingers are like miniature pinkish flavor-ice pops.
i could almost wear some warm woolen mittens in the house.
almost.
however, socks and shod soles are a madated must-have.
i mean it,
we've got a really mutha-flippin' cold floor.
naturally,
my slippers are keeping my battle-damaged digits safe and sound.
(a fleece-filled cradle for crippled curlies is how it's done up here.)
....and if you happen upon a scorch-marked miniature hybrid jellyfish/elizabethan collar,
scoople it up in a tissue and call me;
i'm looking for my a-hole.
sometime during last night i seem to have blown it off my body.
like an outtake from 'backdraft', i assume.
it's possible that maybe two whole bulbs of garlic added in for extra hot fire,
in my already eleventh-level three-bean barbarian buttblasting spicy veggie chili
wasn't my very best idea ever.

texas pete AND sriracha? oh MAN!

it was delicious, but at a brutal, bass-boosted price.
talk about alchemical transmogrification, my ninjas.
i definitely activated some failsafe self-destruct balloon-knot popping powers.
i spit hot fire, indeed.
not surprisingly,
regardless of the northerly nuances of netherworldly temperatures outside,
it was damn warm in the bedroom last night.
somewhat surprisingly,
a fog horn sounded to help me navigate through the clouds i'd conjured.
ouch.
what's more,
the dog cooked herself to well-doneness like a clam-baked holland native,
in what amounted to a devasting double-boiled dutch oven.
that's a pretty hard style,
even for a dirty dog.
--------------------
it's friday.
that's supposed to be good news, yeah?
i've got a whole batch of not-much to look forward to at the shop.
spanning time at 'job' is not as good as spending time at work.

seems everybody else is saving up for the fair, too.

beat street cheapskates and broke-ass b!tches, yo.

those falafels aren't going to buy themselves y'know.

ah well,

48 hours left to languish in the losery lurch of lean times,

and then it's word to new england autumn harvest Folk Life hottness.

fair Fair fairy that i am,

all unabashed, unabated, and un-a-believable,

i am going to puke up a small mysterious serious syrian infant.

by the close of next week,

a phantom teentsy tahini/beany baby is bound to be bursting out of my bronchials.

somebody prep the foghorn;

never quiet, never soft.....

Rabbit, Rabbit!!

F*n' A-right, my ninjas,
it's october.
and that's so dope.hollering heartily from under the covers,
i gave a universal shout-out to good luck,
and ushered in the hottness that can only be cold, wet, haunted october.
the very best month of the year.
thirty one days of amazing,
culminating in the most elite and exciting holiday on the calendar.
believe it.

and that's not all;

sweaters!

woodstoves!

leaf piles!

burly beards!

hay bales!

purple kale!

it's all really ready to jump off.

keep your summer swimsuit season to yourselves, sun worshipers,

because the woodsly goodness is at it's most perfect right now.

a meticulously matched meter of poise and noise,

it's that time of year when even rainstorms are so rad.

go smell the air outside.

seriously.

open your window and take a snootful of sniffage.

that's cool, crisp uncut autumn you're inhaling.

woodsmoke, leaves, apples, hay, corn, rain and wind wafting at your noseholes...

delicious.

if you can't smell it,

you might have a cold,

but more likely than stuffed-up sinuses,

it's probably due to you living somewhere waaay less goodsly than the woods;

which, obviously, is everywhere else.

and if it smells like straight-up sh!tty doo-doo butter,

it's either the stank of the city,

or your upper lip.

that's butt nastiness, indeed.
olfactorily obdurate, kids.

we may be far of from function following form,

but we've got a decidedly better aroma as a result.

it's also our friend jim's twenty-somethingieth berfday!

he gets to work at his suckie job instead of celebrating,

but then again,

so do i....

happy day, ninja!

word up.

i made brownies, twice, to pave the way for octobery dopeness.

the first batch sucked the hardest, fullest set of crusty clankers of all time.

i really, truly should've known better,

but still i tried to hippie-veganize my reliable ol' recipe.

i may be an A-hole after all;

i mean, sunspire chips?!

why would i do that?

if you know anyone, vegan or not, who DOESN'T hate those suckie sucklets of suckiness,

punch 'em in the repros.

hard.

they definitely went to eleven

....on the awful batch-of-ass scale.

of course,

despite the completely precedented fallibility of my baked (not-so) goods,

i was up and at 'em, early shirley this morning,

re-doo-dooin' that brown-eyed brownie batch;

and the NEW hottness,

using my old recipe,

is true-dish delish.

i may not win 'em all, ya'll,

but i've got a chocolicious plate of berserker barbarian brownies

that says i'm willing to go double-or-nuthin';

never quiet, never soft.....