Physical Graffiti And Me

  

The universe works in strange ways.  Decades ago, I became the owner of some abandoned beat-up albums.  They still played, so I was happy enough.  Among them were some albums by Led Zeppelin.  Living near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania USA at the time, Zep was shoved down everyone's throat by the local radio stations ("Get the Led out on WDVE!"), and I wasn't a fan.  Still, my pal DeeDee liked them, so I figured I'd give them a listen.  The first album was the best.  Stuff like "Communication Breakdown" sounded like punk rock a few years early.  In any case, Zep won me over.  The early albums were the best.  Some of the later ones were boring.  The songs were too long, and none too good to begin with.  One of those records was Physical Graffiti.  In my case, the album I got only had the second record of a two-record set.  The album was one of their most popular but not one of my favorites, I figured maybe because I didn't have the first record.  Anyhoo, years later, I had too many records, so I shed some.  Graffiti was one of them.  I don't recall what happened to it.  It might have been sold at a garage sale with the warning it was missing a record.  Maybe I gave it away to somebody.  I doubt I threw it in the trash because the album sleeves were awesome.  You could arrange them in different ways, so different images appeared in the tenement windows (the cd version is nowhere near as much fun).

In any case, years pass, and I'm at the public library.  The friends of the library have a little bookshop and always stick a little cart out with rejects of stuff they think they can't sell but apparently don't have the heart to just chuck, so they leave it out for anyone who wants it.  In any case, I'm looking at this cart, and I spot Physical Graffiti on cd.  I know I don't have that album, so I take it, apparently having forgotten I used to own half of it.  I take it home and find out the reason it was on the free cart, which I did think was odd that even the seventysomethings who staff the bookshop wouldn't know Led Zep, was that it was missing a disc.

Which disc?  The second one.  So decades later I finally got to hear the first half of the album, which is better than the second half but still not too good ("Kashmir" which I already had on MP3 is on it and the highlight of either record in the set).  So it took decades and it was out of order, but I finally did get to hear all of Physical Graffiti (I also later listened to it all in order on Spotify, which didn't change my opinion of it).

It's just strange that I got two free copies of the same mutilated Led Zep double album in my life and between the two I got the whole album.  I didn't keep the cd one.  I kept the case for when one of my double cd cases break.  The booklet, liner tray, and disc went in an envelope, which I'm currently looking for a good home for.  If you have a copy of Physical Graffiti that's missing the first disc, get in touch.  I might be able to help you out.

If you want to listen to music made since 1975, then please give my latest latest album a listen or download at your favorite digital music site such as Soundcloud, Spotify, or Bandcamp!

If Resumes Were Truthful . . .

This is another refugee from Frighty #5.  It's a silly thing about how resumes often spin the truth for job candidates, just like job ads spin the truth for companies.

Job Applicant

Why do we still put addresses on resumes?

It's not like you're going to mail me anything!

719-266-2837 * myemailaddressIonlyuseforjobapplicationssoIdonotgetspamfromyouon myrealemailaccount@gmail.com

CAREER SUMMARY

Unfortunately, not being born independently wealthy, I've had to have a series of shitty jobs which have left me skilled in bullshitting, pretending to work, making fun of my incompetent bosses, waiting for private equity to buy the company so they can run into the ground and lay me off before selling it to an even worse private equity, drinking free company coffee no matter how awful, and pretending to give a shit about the slack motherfuckers I inevitably have as coworkers. I look forward to another horrendous and humiliating experience at your company.

EXPERIENCE

Drug Dealer, Self-Employed: Cleveland, Ohio, 2002-2025.

*Sold the best dope in the tri-state area.

*Never got arrested.

Reason For Leaving:  Fuck you, anyone who voted for legal marijuana!

Pre-Arrangement Advisor, Some Awful Cremation Company Named After A Mythological God: Some awful little strip mall in Parma next to the nail salon, I think I lasted a month in 2023.

*Put up with the boss's stupid ideas.

*Tolerated the British bitch that pretended to be the receptionist.

*Sold overpriced cremation plans.

*Laughed when the funeral director quit a week after I started.

*Endured the failed preacher who didn't know anything about sales but somehow was the regional manager.

Reason For Leaving:  It was commission only and they had me calling people who died a decade earlier for leads.

Corporate Jobs I've Successfully Repressed In My Subconscious, Various: Ohio, 2002-2022.

*I don't even remember my bosses' names so if you ask me to list some contact info for references I'm just going to Google stuff randomly and make shit up.

Reason For Leaving:  Typically because I hit my breaking point but sometimes for more money.

If you want to read more workplace funnies, then please read my novel Edna's Employment Agency.

Geese On The Roof

  

Click on the image to make it bigger.  This is a little comic strip I drew for Frighty #5.  Yes, I was thinking of doing a fifth issue of Frighty and still might.  This issue would be all solo, so I wouldn't have to worry about disappointing any contributors if it never came out.  But all my freetime seemed to disappear with the spring, maybe because of gardening (only so many hours in a day), so the pieces I wrote, though not exactly timely, such as the article of the missing church peace pole, might be better off being run on the blog, before they seem retro.  So here's another one.  There are probably a couple of more coming up in subsequent posts.

You can still print out the first four issues of Frighty (check the Library page for download links), and if you still need something to read, then read The Front Yard War or one of my other novels!      

Peace Poles

At the church up the street, the peace pole ended up on the ground before vanishing entirely.  For those who don't know what a peace pole is, it is a pole that has the message "May Peace Prevail On Earth" in different languages.  One side might have English, another Russian, another Japanese, and so on.  The poles started in Japan, which is quite appropriate, since poor Japan is the only country to ever be nuked during wartime.  The idea caught on and even spread to the nuker country, which is us, the USA (yep, we're the only country to ever have attacked someone with a nuke--let's hope it remains that way and by remains that way, I mean 1945 should be the last and only time that someone gets nuked).  By the 1980s, peace poles were spreading across America, primarily in response to Reagan's saber-rattling as The Cold War wound down (there are those who will argue that Reagan's antics caused The Cold War to end, but it's more likely he prolonged it a bit since even by the 1970s the Soviet totalitarian system was breaking down, but we ignored those signs since that didn't fit the whole wartime planned obsolescence idea our economy was based on--and still is).  I remember the poles being controversial which tells you what a weird society we live in.  Some factory in Mentor, Ohio (and probably in every other Congressional district area) can be cranking out bombs and crap to blow people up with, and that's hunky-dory, but some church folks or other peaceniks stick up a piece of wood with a peace slogan on it and people get upset.  Despite the controversy, the poles spread across the country.  After The Cold War ended, the poles stuck around but seemed to not attract as much attention, which brings us to our photo above.  The pole had been on the ground for a few weeks at the time of the picture.  I'm not sure if it just fell over or it was taken down in solidarity with or protest to Trump doing insane shit such as kidnapping a world leader and launching missiles randomly or whatever the fuck he thinks he's doing in Iran (what he is doing is wasting a lot of our money and probably blowing up some nice folks along with the nasty folks he says he's attacking).  Some liberal churches exist in America but the majority of Christianity probably skews politically conservative to the extent that you could swap out Jesus for Zeus and most of them wouldn't notice.  This one's a Methodist church, and apparently a lot of right wing Methodists have left the mainstream church in recent years to form their own holy roller conservative versions (mainly, they seem to be mad that the mother church was accepting gay clergy).  So my guess is that this church didn't take down the peace pole to support Trump.  More likely, it just fell down.  I suppose I could ask them but I wouldn't want to hurt their feelings when I rebuff their invitations to stop by for a worship service.  They do seem like a nice church in that they have food pantries and whatnot, but still I tend to avoid adults with imaginary friends and that's ultimately what the superstitiousness of religion boils down to.  Actually, strike that, as a novelist, I probably have imaginary friends, but I avoid large groups of people who are organized around their imaginary friends.  Hmm . . . might have to strike that as well.  I do attend the occasional comic book convention, and that is a large group of people organized around imaginary friends.

Anyhow, back to the peace pole . . . it's still on the ground or was before it disappeared entirely.  Even before it was on the ground, it was basically obscured by the bushes you can see above it in the photo.  If one has a peace pole, one should really have it displayed, and this one was pretty covered up.  I don't know why it was just on the ground for weeks instead of being disposed of quickly.  It would take me about a half-hour to dig a hole, throw it in the hole, fill in the hole, and have it be back in business.  I was tempted to just go do it one night, but they have a nice garden, and I suspect I'd have probably put it somewhere that would irritate the gardener, plus it may be nice but it's probably not legal to go around fixing people's peace poles.  Maybe they ordered a new one (they cost about $275 or so, though I suppose you could make your own more cheaply), and they're waiting for it to arrive, but it's been months now and, as far as I can tell, no new peace pole has emerged to replace the old one.

Regardless, it's kind of a bummer to see that peace pole just on the ground or, at the time of this writing, vanished entirely, but it is fitting for the time of this writing, with Trump bombing Iran.  Of course, it's times like these when people do need to be reminded that peace is better than war.  It's cheaper as well (Trump's asking for another zillion dollars or whatever for his war currently).  I suppose if I get some free time, I ought to call the church and ask them if they still have the peace pole.  If they don't want it, then maybe I'll just stick it in my front yard.

For more reading on war and things people stick in their lawns, please read The Front Yard War.

drinkdrankdrunk: "I Met Brian Fugett" by Pat Simonelli

I met Brian Fugett.  I didn't know him but I met him.  We can start off this story in 2004 when I started my e-zine Literary Vision.  Back then I started at Yahoo.Com, paid the 30 bucks or whatever, and boom!  I was in business!

Now I had never run a website before so I learned as I went.  Some Brit-based site led me to my co-editors Zeke Iddon (fiction) and Kelly Hallam (poetry).  I was the one to blame for non-fiction.

Fugett and I were both living in Northern California.  He was in San Francisco and I was in Sacramento.  His lit mag was called Zygote in My Coffee and was the hottest thing running.  Brian was a cartoonist.

I remember the poets flocking to get a poem in Zygote.  It struck me as annoying at first, then I thought--why wouldn't they?  They want to have their art shared with the same scene that I'm in.  So with age came respect.

I was a huge fan of one of Fugett's cartoons Danny's Big Banana.  A hilarious action figure sketch.  It still makes me laugh today, just thinking about Fugett taking the time to set up those shots!

One time he gave me the chance to write a Danny.  2005, if you're taking notes.  I don't have Internet this second but it's gotta be out there somewhere.

At the Collingwood Arts Center Toledo, Ohio--

Mike Grover was the inside guy at Collingwood.  He helped set up a big reading there.  It was a joint Zygote Red Fez reading.  I met Fugett there.  He waved hello in one of the ancient hallways.  He was--I think--shooting a film.

Leopold McGinnis was there--someday I will learn to spell that cat's name right.  I recently did that with Fugett--after the poor guy was already dead!  Tim Murray was there of Red Fez radio fame.  The lovely Michele McDannold attended as did the non-lovely Paul Corman Roberts.  Wred Fright was there.  JD Nelson came, Frankie Metro and his girl.  So many underground stars!

We had another fun reading in Danville, Illinois, home to Dick Van Dyke and Gene Hackman--I used to deliver newspapers to his kin!  It was outside at Kennekuk State Park.  Fugett read his "This is the damn poem".  It was another lifetime ago and I'm brain injured!  So I have an excuse!

Now that I'm "retired" and have been put out to pasture by the man, I miss my friend.  Yeah I call him that.  His spirit brings me closer to fellow travelers that might've known him better than just met him.

Read his Brian Fugett Poems book, he's alive in that.  Citizens For Decent Literature Press, ISBN 9798999707802 Edited by Aleathia Drehmer and Michele McDannold.

Pat Simonelli is a writer for Literary Vision Press.  Temp address as of May 2026 = 128 Osborne St., #403, Danbury CT 06810 USA.  We are happy to get the former Webmaster of The Underground Literary Alliance back online!

New Hoof & Antler!

The new Hoof & Antler is out.  In this issue of the Mickey Mart newspaper, I wrote an article about QR code scams.   It is an interesting topic, and I could have written more, but there's only so much space available.  One interesting fact that I didn't have time to get into was that the QR code invention was a two-man affair, but one of the pair seems to get a lot more credit, perhaps because the other one left the company where they worked.  Another interesting tidbit that didn't make the cut was that sometimes people get a little too paranoid about QR code scams.  One fellow got a surprise Christmas gift and thought it was a scam, even roping the local tv news into doing a story (not a surprise that tv news couldn't figure out the guy was likely wrong as tv news is usually pretty dumb).  As far as I can tell, no retraction of the story or admission of stupidity was ever released.  They probably just hoped the matter would go away with the passage of time (I hope the guy isn't dumb enough to still think his present was a scam).  Check out what did make the cut and read other fun stuff by stopping by a Mickey Mart.  It's free, though Mickey The Moose probably hopes you buy some gasoline or a cup of coffee or something.

If you want to read something else by me, then get my new novel, The Front Yard War!

New Pop Lit Book Review

  

King Karl Wenclas is revving up the review section of New Pop Lit, so I agreed to write a review for it.  It's hard for independent, underground, and self-published writers to get reviews these days, so any effort to help is great.  Unfortunately, all the indie writers were too lazy to send NPL a book (alas, many are flakes), I guess, but corporate lit swooped in and supplied me with a book, which unfortunately was, like most of the corporate books I see in the public library, not too interesting.  I much prefer to share enthusiasm, but in this case I had none, but a deal is a deal, so I wrote the review and gave my honest opinion.  You can read the review here:  https://newpoplitextra.com/2026/06/05/wheres-chthulu-when-we-need-him/ 

I have seen the book I reviewed at the public library and Barnes And Noble.  It also seems to be selling on eBay and Amazon, which is good for the author, but probably not too good for American literature.  There's much better stuff out there.  I hope the revved up review section helps to point folks to it.  So far, it looks like I'm the only one who's actually turned in a review (it also looks like I blew past the desired word limit and that was after I chopped the dang review in half--apparently, I had a lot to say), but I hope other contributors to NPL soon join in.  If you're an indie author, please get in touch with them to send a copy of your book.  I told the King I'll review a book a year, so I hope to review a book more to my liking next time.

If you want a book more to your liking, then perhaps one of mine will do.  My latest novel is The Front Yard War.