Those Old Prison Tablet Technological Issue Email Blues

After innumerable glitches throughout March, Moore (my incarcerated best friend) finally got his prison tablet fixed. Not only is he able to stream music, listen to podcasts, and read the news on said device—Prison 2.0 is what’s up, my friends—he can also connect to an app that allows him to send and receive email. It costs twenty cents per “stamp” (around fifteen hundred characters) and he can typically view replies, which must first be read by the one correctional officer whose job I envy, the same day I send them (except after hours or on weekends). Having swapped snail (trail) mail for two years plus the duration of his previous stint, this is the closest we’ve come to reuniting our never-ending AIM/Gchat dialogue box while one of us is incarcerated. [Note: While I have no plans to don tans, life sometimes comes at you fast, or so my great aunt says.] May you enjoy the highlights from a month Nobel Prize-winning, makeup-sporting idiot T.S. Eliot regarded with derision typical of idiots like himself. 

BWM, 4/7:
DL'ed Roma String Quartet Performs TOOL! *****

BWM, 4/9:
Prince Philip Gon’ Give It To Ya!

BWM, 4/13:
Well, I just reached for my cup of water and grabbed my cup of eight hot dogs, which I proceeded to dump all over my face. Cellie looks up, and without missing a beat says, “Reminiscing about the Hartford County Bullpen?”

AHF, 4/15:
Did you watch the Burns doc about Papa? Recorded/saved for a zany day. Gotta make it a point to read all of his novels. Have The Sun Also Rises, which I read years ago, in the basement pile by my bike. Figured you’d check it out b/c Burns was involved. I bought the soundtrack on 720-gram vinyl! Choice cuts: My Morning Jacket’s “Hills Like White Elephants,” The Flaming Lips’ “The Short Happy Life of Frances Macomber,” and Alicia Keys’s “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place.” Was a brilliant choice to have DJ Khaled produce it methinks. Burns’s guest verse on Conor Oberst’s rendition of “A Canary for One,” especially the stretch rhyming canary w/ hail mary, raspberry, & contrary, would’ve beaten Rabbit in 8 Mile. Fuck this paragraph. 

BWM, 4/20:
A moment of silence for Walter Mondale will only be held during the Twins game and during the Nationals game.  

BWM, 4/22:
I may write full reviews later on. For simple pentatonic minor scale teen-oriented pop-rock, these dudes got it done. The cheesy lyrics and simple, catchy melodies work in their own way, and it is all incredibly fun. The heavier “dark” tracks have the exaggerated, almost comedic snarl of classic comic book villainy rather than the portent of heavy metal. No single track (45 seconds of the album version of “Black Diamond” being forgiven) is too inflated (like 40%-60% of songs by Metallica, Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Dio, Sabbath, etc.) and no album tops 45 minutes until 1990, so it all flies by and the weaker tracks don’t become a major trudge. I will update more as I listen. 

BWM, 4/23:
For the most prison thing I’ve heard in a while… A dude got transferred out a few weeks ago—nice guy, total doofus, with probably the developmental level of a 12-year-old. Someone at the library today initiates this conversation:

“Yeah, I miss (inmate)’s diapers.”

“Huh?”

“I miss his diapers!”

“WHAT?!”

“He needed diapers, so I used to buy them from him. I have, like, 200 under my mattress. It’s like sleeping on a Sealy Posturepedic.”

“Are you fucking SERIOUS?!” 

“Yeah, I sleep on a cloud, man!”

Gotta start working on my tampon hammock.

AHF, 4/25:
Out of context exchange:

Sue: That place was called Albino Market.

Me: How weird. Let’s start Cunnilingus Airlines.

Sue: Our planes will get you there lickety-split! 

AHF, 4/26:
10,000 Days is definitely good! The guitar solo on “Jambi” may not be that technically difficult but the (distortion pedal) sound of it blows my mind every time. “Vicarious” is another keeper. Lateralus is fucking great. So many jams on there: “The Grudge,” “Schism,” “Parabol” > “Parabola,” “Reflection” (one of their great deep cuts), & the title song, which is probably their most beloved tune due to the Fibonacci Sequence usage (1-1-2-3-5-8-5-3 plus it’s in a 9-8-7 time signature & 987 is the 16th number of the Sequence). Yes, that did sound like a Cox Guide descriptor for an upcoming conspiracy theory show debuting on the History Channel. Nice to hear that you’re going behind Tha Shedd—Drooq’s joke for when someone goes on a Tool listening bender—& digging them.  

BWM, 4/26:
What movie or show or other pop culture happening used the intro to Piano Sonata No. 8 , Op. 13 “Pathétique” in C Minor: II. Adagio cantabile? It is on one of my classical albums as a piano sonata, but I KNOW that tune well, yet cannot place it and it is driving me nuttier than Ben and Jerry’s “Creature from the Blue Legume,” a blueberry schnapps-infused Sumatran vanilla ice cream blended to perfection with swirls of peanut butter creme and crunchy, blue-dyed Godiva white chocolate-coated Georgia peanuts. (You can’t tell me you would not try that!)  

AHF, 4/27:
Brock dared me to try the George Floyd Sandwich—white bread, banana, mayo (I sprinkled some nutmeg on too)—& it was (unsurprisingly/to me anyway) DELICIOUS! Try one if you can/never have. 

AHF, 4/29:
Watched the first episode of the Hemingway doc. Enjoyable but lacking enough great talking heads (Edna O’Brien’s brogue began driving me mad & Buck O’Neil or Marty Stuart Tobias Wolff is not).  Don’t you hate reading enjambment? Excited for Papa punching out Wallace Stevens in Key West in volume deux. Wally said Ernesto was “pleasant like cholera.” Was tough to get punched for worse in 1936. “Cholera ain't as bad as letting a woman drive” was actually Alf Landon’s campaign slogan when he lost 523-8 to FDR that same year.

Testing out triggers, widgets, portals, & proactive assignations. How fulfilling. Customer Success (Service is likely now the industry’s N-word) lingo is beyond the pale. Favorite chat alias? Chat Chatterson, natch. 

BWM, 4/30:
DIED today at my partner giving this genuinely awesome review of a former prison dentist at another facility years ago. He’s lovingly recounting the “most official” root canal he ever got, how thorough the guy was at his job, and how much better he was than any other DoC dentist, despite being gay. At the end, he stops for like 10 seconds, gets thoughtful, nods reflectively and says: “Homes was gay as fuck, but that nigga LOVED teeth!“

Fucking lost it! Called that the best unwritten Yelp review or tombstone epithet ever.

AHF, in summary:
Yes, friends, our country’s inmates are teeming with culinary innovation, correctly identifying obscenely long Beethoven sonata titles, and using natural casing pork products as moisturizers, but I’ll be god-damned if they know what a fucking epitaph is. Goodbye, April, you beautiful bitch.