Skewed View

Friday Cemetery Blogging

noreply@blogger.com (spookyrach) — Fri, 17 May 2013 13:49:00 +0000

...the white wagons creeping slowly along...

[Conversation at Subway, Earlier This Week]

noreply@blogger.com (spookyrach) — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 02:31:00 +0000

Dude: You are rocking the trench coat! You don't see those much any more.

Me: Thanks! I love trench coats.

Dude: I'd love to wear one but, you know, there's that whole 'black guy in a trench coat' thing.

Me: Yeah, I know what you mean. 'Run away! Run away!'

Dude: (laughing) Exactly.

Me: You should wear one anyway. Maybe just not a black one.

Dude: Good advice!

[Conversation From Yesterday]

noreply@blogger.com (spookyrach) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 18:37:00 +0000

Last night I was wondering around the back yard, watching Jackson work...

Me: Hey - did you see where I put the huge metal bat?

He: Yep.

Me: So, you know it's just sitting up there. I didn't wire it in.

He: mm-kay.

Me: And if the wind blows it out of the tree, it's going to totally decapitate anyone in proximity. You know that right? You cool with that?

He: Yep. That's what makes it exciting.

Me: See? That's why I like you.

Hellfire and Brimestone - But That's Just During Daylight Hours

noreply@blogger.com (spookyrach) — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 19:10:00 +0000

So.

Are you busy in July?

I'm thinking about hosting a blogger camp-out this summer. Maybe mid-July?

Spooky's Sleep-Away Camp for the Exceptionally Average. Maybe there will be t-shirts. Or something. There won't be planned activities. Except maybe for a trip to the local eatery on Slap-Yo-Grandma Fried Chicken Night. Otherwise, you'll probably have to make your own food. There won't be wi-fi or really even any cell phone service. And it'll be hot. Damn hot.

But it's a dry heat.

From the looks of the forecast map, we'll still be smack dab in the midst of flesh-crackling drought so chances are there will even be a burn ban which means no campfires.

So.

Who's in?

(I wonder if I still have that set of lawn darts...?)

The Midnight Rabbit

noreply@blogger.com (spookyrach) — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 19:51:00 +0000

Did you ever have a real live honest-to-God hallucination?

I did once.

It happened as I was walking around the track one night. The high school track is always open to the less than adventuresome perambulator, but the lighting is generally non-existent. There are two security lights, one at each end, but both are about to burn out, so they only wink on and off, mostly off.

As I rounded a curve and entered the far side straightaway, I saw a black house cat come tearing out of the darkness and down the tarmac, headed straight for me. It ran full tilt then suddenly launched itself at me. As it flew for my throat it changed in mid-air into a snarling beast, baring a maw of razor-sharp teeth dripping hot slime.

Then it disappeared.

The whole incident lasted less than a second, but it was really sort of amazing. The right side of my brain screamed for me to make peace with the creator because I was so going to die. At the same time, the left side of my brain was completely cognizant of the fact that this was a hallucination - a complete fabrication of my very own mind.

I can't think of another time when two sides of my head have been working completely independently of each other like that. Now I understand the allure of a good LSD trip.

A couple of months went by before I mentioned this to anyone. It's not the sort of thing you can tell someone without them suspecting that you've lost at least a wee bit of your ever-lovin' mind. I wracked my brain, trying to think of a reason why I'd suddenly start seeing things and wondering if it would happen again. I finally did some research and found out that none of the medications I was taking caused hallucination. However, if you took a combo of two medicines that I was briefly on, hallucination was a reported side effect.

This disappointingly plebeian discovery admittedly granted a bit of relief. It's generally good to learn that you are not a bit nuttier than you originally thought.

I remain hopeful, however, that I can still see things that aren't really there. I've had a little plaque in my office for years that says "Only those who can see the invisible can do the impossible." I want to see invisible things.

So, when I first saw the Midnight Rabbit, I thought maybe he wasn't real.

Two things you should know: First, when it's dark outside my house, then it's dark inside my house. Secondly, I never close the curtains.

A few weeks ago I couldn't sleep. I'd like you to think it was because my mind was churning with the possibilities for a final denouement to some epic murder mystery I was writing or perhaps I'd been dreaming of the exact chemical compound that would cure cancer, only to have the details stripped from my mind by dawning consciousness. Unfortunately, I couldn't sleep because my hip hurt. Like some old woman. So I got up to take some Advil.

The sliding glass door in the den gives one a full view of the back yard. As I walked past, the gawd-awful orange security light that the electric company repaired last month more or less illuminated the yard and alley. I noticed a big rock sitting exactly in the middle of the open space. I wondered - fleetingly - how it got there.

I took my drugs and trudged back towards the bedroom. I glanced out again. It wasn't a rock! It was a rabbit.

That hip gave me a lot of problems for a week or so. Each time I walked past the door, deep in the night, I could see the rabbit sitting in the same spot. Each time he ignored me and pretended to be a rock so I wouldn't be able to see him.

He was just an over-sized cotton tail, but he really started to creep me out because every night he sat in the same exact same spot, all through the wee hours. If he was a raven, I'd be worrying about the future of my immortal soul. If he was a wolf, I would've followed him into the great adventure beyond. If he was a unicorn, I'd lay off the Fruity Pebbles, for good. But a rabbit? What the hell does a rabbit portend? Bounciness?

It's like having a pair of fuzzy slippers for a patronus. Why is this rabbit appearing every night? And if he's got some sort of larger meaning for my life, why can't he at least be a bad-ass jack rabbit?

I saw him again a couple of days ago. For the last time it seems. I was walking around the track in the dark again. This time he was sitting in the grass on the inside curve. Still perfectly still. I watched him as I rounded the corner. When I made the turn and was facing away from him, he bolted. I kept turning and was walking backwards down the straightaway to watch him. He caught me staring and stopped in mid-mad-dash on the fourth lane of the track. I stopped as well.

We both waited - silent, wary, stationary.

Steadfast, torpid, somewhat petrified.

Then nothing happened.

The End.

It's a Small, Spooky World

noreply@blogger.com (spookyrach) — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 20:26:00 +0000

I have a thing for disaster. I'm a catastrophile.

Not just any old tragedy will do. Instead, I'm all agog about cataclysm on a truly epic scale - hurricanes and earthquakes and such. Sappy 'how I survived' movies on the Hallmark Channel and that sort of ilk are not my thing, but I love to learn about the actual history of big bad stuff and how people and cultures endured and rebuilt.

The first time I became aware of my inclination towards mishap, misfortune and misadventure was on my very first visit to Galveston. The 1900 hurricane and resulting super-human recovery effort absolutely fascinated me. Immediately upon returning home, I went to the library and read everything I could about it. (The notes from the weather service employee the night the storm hit are really cool.)

This past weekend I got to indulge the allure of the macabre once again while hanging out with Janet, my best friend from college. (Now you have totally the wrong picture in your head and you'd never, ever be able to pick us out in a crowd.) Curiosity in tow, we took a mini road trip to New London, Texas.

Anyone know why? Know what happened there?

New London was the richest school district in America in 1937 due to a massive influx of oil company tax money. They built an immense stone and steel Elizabethan school building. The county was populated by depression-era immigrants from all over the US, coming in search of oil field work. They lived in company camps and sent their children to the local school.

At that time, natural gas was odorless, colorless and free for the taking. The rotten-egg smell is an additive, which wasn't used until later, to make leaks easier to detect. Oil companies gave the gas away for free to anyone that would run a pipe for it. The school and most every other building in town was heated with gas radiators.

You can see where this is going, right? March 18, 1937 was the occasion of the largest school disaster in the history of the United States. Between 400 and 600 people died, wiping out an entire generation of children. To this day they don't have an accurate count of the dead because parents were the ones wrenching the bodies out of the rubble. When they found their children, they often put the bodies in the back of the family truck and took them, along with the rest of the family, back home - wherever that was - for burial. Many never returned to East Texas. When school eventually reconvened, it was unknown how many of the missing were siblings of the dead who'd left the area with their family.

Janet and I spent a couple of hours on a private tour of the museum. Judy, a spit-fire volunteer, (whose picture on the website does not begin to do her justice) told us the story. (Janet calls her my new BFF, which is probably true. She'd be a hoot to hang out with.)

What really hooked me in this story is the fact that the parents and townspeople completed the super-human task of clearing away 4 millions tons of debris, much of it by hand and peach basket, and processed 500 or so bits and pieces of dead children in only a few days. Then, they closed the book.

On the first anniversary of the explosion, a memorial service was planned. It was cancelled because the grief was still too fresh - the families weren't ready for to reopen the wounds. They closed the book more tightly.

It stayed closed for 40 years.

I could go on and on about this. In the 1970's, when the long-delayed memorial service was finally held, the survivors began to tell their stories. The stories - the coincidences that saved lives and took them - will suck you in. That's what I love about these events. The real stories of how people cope just fascinated the hell out of me. Sometimes they react just like they would in the Lifetime movie of the week. Sometimes they don't.

Real people aren't movie characters, but they are always amazing.

Did I mention that you should read the website? You should. Then pack your bags and go. See with your own eyes and listen to real people tell you the stories.

And then eat lunch in the museum's "tea room".

Oh my god, was that ever a misnomer. The "tea room" is a bad-ass soda fountain with a killer soup and sandwich menu. The only paid employee is the cook. Even the tips are donated back to running the museum. The tea room's main customers are the kids from the rebuilt school who cross the street every day for lunch, and the elderly citizens who are there for the memories. And there are a few folks like Janet and I who never pass up a good chunk of the macabre or a ham sandwich. Seriously - eat there. It was so good I thought long and hard about licking my bowl. I'm salivating while writing this.

And that wasn't the most interesting part of my weekend.

Neither was going to "Storage Wars: Texas" star Victor Rjesnjansky's store in Tyler and buying an itty-bitty Wonder Woman. (He gave me the autographed 8 x 10 for free.)

No, the really interesting part involved going to First Monday Trade Days in Canton. Perhaps you've heard of it? With the 28 miles of aisles? I bought stuff - a big, metal, scowl-y vulture, a huge (big, big, big) metal bat, an alligator topiary frame and some other stuff. Cool stuff, but we found the real prize when we went searching for lunch again.

Lunch was good to us on this trip.

While I stood in an interminable line at one of the food booths, Janet saved us a couple of chairs at a communal dining table. She struck up a conversation with the guy sitting across from her. His wife was in line and he was warming the seats. Janet asked where they were from.

Antlers, Oklahoma.

When I returned with the comestibles, she introduced us. Being a good southerner, I immediately began to think of people we might know in common. We can't help it - it's all about who you know around here and we are taught from birth to find mutual acquaintances with strangers.

"My brother used to live in Antlers," was my opening gambit in the I-know-people-you-might-know game. "He was the newspaper editor there for a couple of years."

We determined that although they didn't remember my brother, they were friends with the paper's publisher, my brother's boss, whom I'd met while visiting there. Connection achieved!

Then I had to tell them about my all time favorite photo. It was my very first Christmas card photo.

While visiting said same brother and newly acquired sister-in-law in the eastern Oklahoma mountain town of Antlers (Yes. Mountains. And gorgeous mountains they are, too.) my brother's scanner erupted with news of a fire. We grabbed our cameras and headed to the scene - he to get pictures for the newspaper and me to just mess around.

The burning building turned out to be an old two-story Victorian mansion converted into an antique store and it was enraged with flames when we got there. We stood a half block away and could still feel the heat. As I watched, the roof of the lower floor fell in and the resulting flash illuminated something in the window. I snapped a photo. My all-time favorite photo as it turned out.

While I told this story, tears started to form in the woman's eyes. I quit talking, wondering at the intensity of her reaction and thinking maybe she wouldn't appreciate that the Christmas card caption was "Keep the Home Fires Burning".

Turns out, she was the store's owner.

She and her husband sold real estate and the antique business was her hobby. She told me about the fabulous treasures that were lost, including the beautiful porcelain stove that melted in the blaze. She'd been there that afternoon to drop off a new load of inventory and then left to spend the rest of the day with family. The call from the fire department came late that evening and she made it the eight miles into town in less than five minutes. A neighbor had to physically restrain her from running inside the burning building to try to salvage those things she loved so dearly.

I worried that she would be appalled by my picture taking, but I needn't have. She thought the idea was fabulous and by the time we finished lunch we'd exchanged addresses and a promise for me to send her a copy of the photo.

I took that photo sixteen years ago. It was another of those amazing coincidences that make life so interesting.

"Coincidence is logical." - Johan Cruijff

"I am not Spock." - Leonard Nimoy

To bad this week's verb wasn't "surreal".

noreply@blogger.com (spookyrach) — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 03:02:00 +0000

After chomping my way through the lunch special at the Turn Around Cafe in Spur last week, I drove down a road not yet taken and found the abandoned prison. (Here are a couple of articles about how the prison came to be abandoned. The first one gets really interesting towards the end. The second one explains some of the reasons why the first one got so interesting.) I expected to drive up to a fence, a hundred or so yards from the facility and stare at it briefly before turning around to leave.

Not so.

This week when I went back, I packed my camera.

The privately run prison, which closed in late 2010, sits atop a vague knoll, not really a hill, about two miles south of town, hiding behind a field of mesquite. The low-profile sign, simple even by prison standards, announced the presence of the facility in plain block letters. The prison itself lies at the end of a half-mile paved driveway. There are no fences. No barriers. Nothing but the sign by the side of the road.

Nothing had changed from last week as I entered the main parking lot at the end of the driveway. I debated whether or not to park in the empty warden's spot, as if I owned the freakin' place and had every right to be there. Sneakiness trumped brashness and I parked along the far side of the lot, hoping the electric blue Dodge Avenger I was driving would blend in with, well, the sky and not be quite so obvious should anyone venture down the driveway from the highway.

The seasonably cold air put a sharp edge on the wind. I didn't have a jacket, but hoped that walking around the place might keep me warm.

Reaching over the back of the seat, I grabbed the camera from the back and got out of the car. I looked around for No Trespassing signs. There weren't any. The gravel crunching under my boots sounded unnaturally loud as I crossed the deserted parking lot.

The place was abandoned, but not forsaken, if that makes sense. It's like some sort of Satanic rapture had occurred, maybe ten minutes earlier, taking only the bad guys. Whoosh! At first glance, everything appeared exactly the same as it must have at the close of business on the last day of operation, two years previously. At second glance, I noticed the tumbleweeds. At third - the unlocked gate.

One of the main gates to the prison yard was unlocked and open. Just a foot or so. Just wide enough for me to slide through sideways or to grasp the edge and pull it wide. If I wanted too. No one was around... No one would see...

Through a feat of super-human resistance that King David himself would have been jealous of, I bested the temptation and managed not to go through the gate to the interior spaces.

This prison - a privately run, for-profit, institution - was big into razor wire. It's everywhere - roll upon roll of it. The state prisons I've visited use the same concertina-type stuff, but sparingly. This place looked cheap -like an over-sized dog run, home to really bad dogs. Low tech security with all the soft, pleasing architecture of Auschwitz.

The main buildings up front are painted in a vague flag motif. Blocks of blue with bits of red and white striping at the edges. It lends a concentration camp carnival feel to the place. The administration buildings at the front of the unit were bright and clean. In the back a long row of barracks type buildings comprised the inmate housing. They were dingy, low slung cinder block buildings - chalky white with tiny windows.

An omnipresent, continual high pitched whine permeated the area. As I circled the property, I finally located the source - a large metal box, about the size on an industrial refrigerator. Or two. The hunk of metal was painted orange and black with no markings that would identify it to the uninitiated. It sat on a concrete pad next to the electric meters. And whined - a single toneless note, on and on and on to extremely creepy effect. It reminded me of something...

(Anyone else watch The Avengers? Anyone remember this episode?)

I continued my circuit around the property. Past the electric meters, I saw that the gas meters were gone. But the sewage grinder remained.

More than once as I swept my camera lens past the guard towers, I thought I caught a glimpse of men inside. Only a trick of the light and closer inspection revealed nothing, of course, but it remained disconcerting. I seldom see men who aren't there.

Still I didn't see any "No Trespassing" signs. No, not one. I was surprised by this, but I supposed no one really wants to break INTO prison, so trespassing isn't really an issue. There were, however, a couple of "STOP - Entering Restricted Area" signs. As they were obviously left-overs from the facility's functioning days, and since they barely made any effort with them - small signs tacked to telephone poles on the sides of the path/road leading to the back of the location - I ignored them with impunity and no small amount of disdain.

I didn't spend much time in the back of the prison. The wind blew harder there and my shirt, albeit long-sleeved, was woefully inadequate.

As I made my way back around to the front I stopped. Dead.

The gates were still open. But now they were open wide. Beckoning. Yawning. Tempting.

It was dodgy for a bit. I reeeeaallly wanted to go inside. They were practically begging me to enter! I texted the Judge's assistant and asked her what the district's policy is on posting bail for employees. She didn't answer. I decided not to chance it. Besides, it was damn creepy. The wind wasn't blowing hard enough to move those chain-link monstrosities. And it almost certainly wouldn't have moved the gates in opposite directions!

I made my way back to the car, glancing back over my shoulder a time or two. The only sign, other than the empty parking lot, that this place wasn't ready and waiting for business, were the few small tumble weeds gathered at the main entrance.

That, and the open, viciously welcoming, prison gate.

As I drove back towards the highway, I was startled to see a FedEx van turn onto the short road and head out towards the prison parking lot. I made a half-hearted attempt to stop him - to tell him his GPS was obviously misguided. He didn't see me. I was sort of glad. I felt sure that if I did see him up close, he'd have no eyeballs. Or maybe vampire fangs. Or stink of death like a zombie. Yep, pretty sure.

(Do you see 'em? The guards that aren't there?)

Spur is one of numerous small towns in West Texas that attempted urban renewal via the prison-industrial complex, profit-driven or governmental. For a few short years it seemed to be a real economic savior. But we're all learning we can't sustain, economically or otherwise, a prison system that has a higher incarceration rate than China.

This month it was reported that the Texas Association of Business, one of the most powerful lobbies in the state, is making reform of criminal justice funding a priority. Why?

Bill Hammond, president of the Texas Association of Business, said the group plans to push to expand successful rehabilitation and community-based corrections programs; to change Texas’ drug-sentencing laws to put more low-level offenders in local treatment programs and reduce penalties for small amounts of drugs; and to modify state licensing laws that keep some ex-convicts from ever becoming certified for various trades.

“We’re sending too many people to the slammer,” Hammond said. “The taxpayers and the business community are both being harmed.”

I think this is a good thing. But then, I would, what with being all "community-based corrections program"-y and stuff.

All I really know is those damn gates didn't open by themselves.

I Should Be Working

noreply@blogger.com (spookyrach) — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 17:48:00 +0000

...but no one else is.

So, in between filling of kleenexes, I am doing a bit of web surfing. A few weeks ago I bought a stack of wooden cabinet doors at the Habitat for Humanity thrift store. They are great for painting signs. I've been checking out my woefully incomplete collection of quotes on Pinterest in hopes of finding one to paint this week.

I found the one I want, but it is super long for fitting on a cabinet door. And the source is one that's never been a particular favorite. And yet...

"I am old now: gray, wrinkled, tired, and bloated, and my joints ache, too. But I am ready to come into my full destiny - as my childhood dreams predicted - as a Neo-Amazonian Pirate Queen of my own vessel: firing cannonballs at the worldwide culture of patriarchy in the name of all that does not suck." - Roseanne Barr

So. I think I will have to practice and find a way to make it fit. And I will brandish my paint brush in a sword-like fashion while proclaiming various nonsense loudly "in the name of all that does not suck".

And thankfully, no one else will be around to hear me, thus preventing an unplanned side trip to the loony bin.

Therefore, in honor of piloting my own Neo-Amazonian pirate vessel, I think I will leave early for lunch.

We Have Good Fences

noreply@blogger.com (spookyrach) — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 04:09:00 +0000

We have neighbors.

On the one side is an elderly couple who are much better gardeners than I. They eat out only on Thursdays, after the Mrs. has her appointment at the beauty shop and on Sundays after church, both times at the Dairy Queen. They have a little dog who is yappy and whose name may or may not be Max. Either the dog or the man is named Max, but I'm at a loss to recall which. They are only seen during the spring, summer and early fall. There is no sign of their existence in the winter months. And that's all I know about that.

Oh, and they have a cat whose name is definitely Molly.

On the other side we have Tom and Sue. They are very nice, as well. They are quiet - no wild parties or raucous family gatherings. They are just nice. Very nice.

And we drive them nuts.

That's not entirely accurate. Specifically, I drive Tom nuts. He's got ideas. About stuff. I seldom greet his ideas with the reverence they are due.

We'd only lived here for about 2 hours when we pretty much had Tom figured out. He came over just as soon as we finished unloading the big furniture and said he was sorry he'd not been over sooner to help out. He commandeered Randy for a long "get to know you" discussion while Katie and I continued to haul boxes into the house. Katie and I kept walking right past them and sometimes right between them while Tom commiserated about how sorry he about not getting there sooner to help out. Finally, I hollered for help from inside the moving van claiming to have a box that was far too heavy for poor little me to lift on my own. Tom excused himself and went back home so Randy could help me.

Thanks, Tom.

A few months later, Randy and I were outside doing some Saturday afternoon yard work. Sue, who is a very sweet lady, came over to say hi. We were chatting neighborly while Tom continued to wash his car on the other side of their yard. He looked up, saw us, and began gesturing wildly and calling Sue's name. She looked over at him, slightly exasperated, and asked what he wanted.

"Sue! Did you forget? You haven't done your hair or put on makeup today!"

Stunned silence. Stunned.

Finally, I yelled back, "Well, hell, Tom! Randy hasn't even taken a shower yet! And he doesn't even have any hair!"

Tom grumbles a lot when I'm around.

To his credit, Tom really likes the holidays. He likes to decorate for them, anyway. Every year he adds to his wintery white-bread wonderland. More lights, more trees, more grazing reindeer. And music. This year the whole thing blinks in sync with music.

We put up a wreath. This year, there are lights on it.

Last night, I was walking home from the track, across the school parking lot. Tom was out in the front yard tweaking his trees. He looked up. I waved.

"Hey!" he said. "You wanna borrow some decorations?" He does sort of a benevolent glower so that you are sure not to miss the oh-so-subtle hints he drops.

I made a big show of removing my ear buds. "It looks great!" I said, giving him a goofy grin and a big thumbs up, pretending to totally misunderstand his meaning. "You're doing a great job!" As if he lived for my approval.

Tom grumbled and went back into the garage.

Good ol' Tom.

BBQ. That's the title. Just BBQ.

noreply@blogger.com (spookyrach) — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 03:03:00 +0000

Today has been a comedy of errors. Bits and pieces of which include flat-ish tires, computer repairs that, after texting and calling two different techie types, were accomplished by merely unplugging the modem and plugging it back in, a schedule mix up that had me hauling ass across the country side, only to be brought up short eight miles from my destination by the news that the whole thing had been pushed back four hours, and, most recently, a soaked shirt and drenched pants because I removed the water bottle from my mouth without first disengaging my righteous squeeze grip thereby spraying water aallll over myself.

It's been a day.

However, in the midst of all of that - and more - I received a really great text message. It said:

"In order to get back in your good graces, the judge, on behalf of this office, would like to extend a warm invitation to lunch at the beer store in Dickens."

It was good.

Mixed Metaphors, Maybe.

noreply@blogger.com (spookyrach) — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 00:45:00 +0000

I just got off the phone with my predecessor.He just casually mentioned that the office is closed on Fridays. Just like that.

Closed. Fridays.

1. Windows
2. Jeans
3. 4 day work week

I am seriously unnerved. There must be another shoe of Damocles hanging over my head, suspended by a single shoestring, waiting to drop. It's enough to make me feel guilty about convincing them I needed three weeks vacation instead of just two. Almost.

~whispers: "closed Fridays"~

So, Saturday I took a little road trip and went to check out my new 'satellite office' in Dickens County. Dickens is one of four counties that I'll be working for.

Dickens County is a rustic, old-west type of a place, just off the Caprock. In fact, all four of the counties in my new judicial district border the edge of the escarpment, which gives them a beauty sorely lacking from the counties that make up the land on top of the raised plains. These are ranch lands, sparsley populated and thinly patroled.

My parents lived in the town of Dickens when I was born. It was my dad's first preaching gig and he was still finishing up college. I've never spent much time there since becoming fully sentient, so I went for a drive to see what I could see.

Just after I came down off the Cap, I passed this:

You probably can't read the small print on that official looking Cattlemen's Association No Trespassing sign. Basically it says "We Will Shoot You For Being Out Past This Gate. No One Will Ask Any Questions and The Coyotes Will Eat Your Remains". More or less.

Don't trespass there. They's serious.

A little further down the road, I looked off to the side and saw this:

I moved in for a closer look:

And finally:

It's a catfish. In a chef's uniform. Holding a rolling pin. Pointing south-ish. With American flags skewering its nostrils.

Any ideas? Anyone?

I asked one of the locals, but she wasn't talkin'.

She Might Be A Princess, But Why Make Her Disney'd?

noreply@blogger.com (spookyrach) — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 03:13:00 +0000

So, you know I'm a fan of Wonder Woman. And, like any self-respecting geek, I loves me some Wonder Woman stuff - t-shirts, mugs, jewelry, stationary, etc. But I have a question.

Why is it all WW merchandise uses the older versions of the Amazon? You know, the one that looks like Betty Crocker in a swimsuit and tiara?

Why isn't there stuff with the more current version? You know, the bad-ass warrior woman?

There really was an altar. And what else would you use it for?

noreply@blogger.com (spookyrach) — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 02:45:00 +0000

Internet dating gets such a bad rap, but every time I've tried it, it's been fantastic! I've met, like, eleventeen friends from teh internets and I've thoroughly enjoyed it each time.

Granted, it wasn't THAT kind of a date. Mine are exclusively the "you're a friend I've known for years, just haven't met you yet" variety. It gets said a lot, but the people I've gotten to know, both personally and virtually, through this internet writin' bidness have made my life way more interesting.

A couple of weeks ago I was in Galveston for a family vacation. My profile pic was taken years ago at a cemetery there and I was dying to go back and retake it. (You can see the new, improved shot on the right.) annie lives somewhere in the not too distant vicinity and I was determined to meet up with her and a real life friend of her's that I'd connected with as well. annie and, uh, "Amy" met me at the cemetery and we had a great time exploring and taking photos.

It took maybe 30 seconds to get past the intrinsic awkwardness that is to be expected when you put a pack of introverts into a social situation. Almost immediately we fell into the same banter and commentary that we've traded for years online. It was so much fun. Even their voices seemed familiar, although we'd never spoken to each other before. I'd give up introversion if I could connect that quickly and completely with everyone I meet.

We snarked about the mafia burials, the headless angels, the altar where the virgins were sacrificed, fence climbing, and mildly freaked out strangers who were reassured by our congenital cuddliness, among other things. The only thing I'd do differently is to bring water next time! However, had I passed out from heat stroke, I feel pretty sure annie and Amy would have dragged my senseless body into the shade of a gravestone to fester unmolested while they continued their photographic survey of the surrounding stones.

We made some fun memories and I was thinking about it a few days after we returned home. While shopping and running errands, Jackson had to go finagle something with his cell phone account at the Verison store. As we walked in the door, I was hit with the perfect thought to sum up the whole experience. It was a sparkling piece of literary concision.

I found a bench in a corner and whipped out my Moleskine and commenced to feel horribly smug because I was actually writing, in an actual notebook, with an actual pen in the cell phone/computer store. I started filling in some background drivel before recording my actual point. And suddenly Jackson was done and ready to go. What? Who spends mere moments arguing with customer service before more or less getting their way? And, of course, the gods of karma wiped that perfect thought completely out of my mind before I'd managed to record it. I've spent a week trying to remember it. No luck.

So. Come up with something on your own.

I had fun. I think they did too. It rocked.

Wordless Wednesday

noreply@blogger.com (spookyrach) — Thu, 03 May 2012 03:13:00 +0000

The Ennis Menace

noreply@blogger.com (spookyrach) — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 18:26:00 +0000

Pardon me for a moment while I indulge in a bit of wanton geekery.

Garth Ennis is writing the new Shadow comic!

~does the dance of joy~

This is epicly thrilling. It is beyond cool. Garth Ennis is the writer/creator of one of my favorite comic characters - The Preacher. I sorta recommend him with trepadation. If you are not into blood, guts, vampires, the ghost of John Wayne, fallen dieties, drunken clergy, congregations oblitereated by fireballs from the heavens, renegade angels, prolific profanity, in-bred cycloptic children, pistol-packin' hit-woman girlfriends and cats in toilets, don't read his stuff.

I freakin' love it.

And now he's writing The Shadow. Damn, I loves me some Shadow. From the pulp novels of Maxwell Grant to the radio program, to the movie versions and the various comic book incarnations, I can't get enough of it. My senior ring when I was in high school? I picked one that looked similar to the ring the shadow's agents wore. (Next time I come across it in some forgotten drawer, I'm having the school insignia ground off of it so I can start wearing it again. Because I, by God, know what evil lurks in the hearts of men. More or less.) I have sketched books full of that character. I had Shadow action figures in my bathroom of my former house. (I don't know why the bathroom - there was just a shelf there that needed something on it.) I think I need me a couple of nickle-plated .45s. Just because.

Garth Ennis. And The Shadow. It's a match made in an incredibly entertaining level of hell that we like to visit as long as we don't have to live there. ~more happy dancing and a possible squee~

Yep. Garth Ennis.

And tomorrow I'm going to Ennis, Texas to look at some bad-ass bluebonnets. It's like the whole universe is doing some sort of karma-applause thing. Oh, hell yeah.

Prattle and Prognistications

noreply@blogger.com (spookyrach) — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 18:51:00 +0000

There is an emergency room doctor who comes across the street to the fitness center sometimes at o'dark-thirty when things are slow. There are only about 2,000 people in the whole town, so early mornings at the emergency room are slow more often than not.

This morning was the first time he'd come since my unfortunate 'booting', and he asked what was wrong with my foot. I told him I have a stress fracture. He shook his head, motioned towards the treadmills and excercise bikes and said "I'm not surprised."

Which made me feel like a total bad-ass.

However, given his slightly misogynistic leanings and somewhat caustic personality, he probably didn't mean it as a compliment. He's one of those vaguely grouchy people that you can't help but like, whether they want you to or not.

One morning he was attacking the exercise bike and riding like he was trying to outrun the devi. We asked what he wanted us to do if he passed out or had a heart attack. We volunteered to go get a gurney and wheel him across the street, cause we're helpful like that. He just glared and said "Don't do anything. Just call 911!"

We told him we'd call, but we're still threatening him with CPR.

And speaking of misogyney...

I've often observed that the snidly racist remarks and dirty little racist jokes that used to be relegated to talk out behind the barn have made there way to the forefront even in so-called polite company since President Obama's election. It's disheartening. Especially when I'd always thought better than that of a lot of these people who are snickering and waggling their eyebrows, pretending it's all in good fun.

Now the sexist attitudes and speech that I thought we had all agreed to at least not speak aloud are resurfacing as well. You can hear it can hear it and it's getting louder.

My prediction? If our next election goes red, the handicapped are next on the chopping block. Mark my words - unless the current War on The Majority of The Constituency doesn't result in a pretty hard slap in the face, you'll start to hear rumblings about the Americans With Disabilities Act and how it is not really helping the less fortunate among us, but is just another series of unfunded mandates engineered to increase the size and scope of our federal government.

I'd bet money on it.

Remember that Dietrich Bonhoeffer quote?

“First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.”

First they came for the "abortionists" and the homosexuals...

I just flew in from Detroit...

noreply@blogger.com (spookyrach) — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 21:55:00 +0000

One down, seven to go.

Seven weeks of wearing a gargantuan medical walking boot because I have and teensy-eensy tiny li'l stress fracture on the top of my foot. Prior to seeking medical help, my foot hurt only when I exercised. And for a little while after I exercised. Other than that, no problems.

I'm trying to lower my cholesterol and live slightly healthier. Towards that end, the only lifestyle change I've managed to embrace is exercise. I actually like it. Even looked forward to it, vaguely. (Actually, what I enjoy is listening to audio books while I'm walking. Before the boot I was in the middle of the first Dexter novel. Luckily I have a long drive coming up in April and I'll be able to finish it off. So to speak.)

Every morning for years I have worked out for at least half an hour. Lately I added a three mile walk in the evenings. That was all well and good until I added in a bit of jogging. Quite honestly, Baptists should have foregone the anti-dance crusade and gone with an anti-jog crusade. Jogging has to be a more devilish form of movement than dancing. I, for one, feel certain that people are closer to hellfire and damnation when jogging than when dancing. Joggers are Satan's bobble-heads.

So, anyway, I wanted to keep exercising, so I figured I should get my injury treated.

And now I'm stuck in this boot for two months. The boot makes my foot hurt worse. I've finally figured out the reasoning behind the treatment. It's not that the boot is beneficial per se, it's that it is so cumbersome and uncomfortable that you'd just as soon sit as walk, so you stay off your foot and that gives it time to heal.

I hope.

As you can imagine, this has played hell with my cardio plan. I still go to the "gym" in the mornings. It's actually the physical therapy department at the surprisingly vibrant little local hospital. Since I can't walk, run, flail about on the elliptical machine or wedgie myself with the stationary bike, I have been lifting weights - mostly dumbbells.

This morning I graduated from the sissy weights (color coordinated, rubber coated rods which only went up to 9 pounds) to the bad-ass weights (grimy iron dumbbells on a steel rack that make your palms smell funny and have a minimum heft of 15 pounds). I managed to do all the same exercises with the heavier free weights.

And now I think I am going to die.

However, despite the moans and groans, my morning workout compadres all agreed that they would not want to take me on in a fist fight. They were also nice enough not to point out that all they'd have to do to win the fight is step out of arm's reach. Regardless, that was the encouragement I needed to get me back there tomorrow.

Even if I can't lift my arms and have to just sit there and stare at the barbells.

Billy Idol Makes My Head Feel Funny

noreply@blogger.com (spookyrach) — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 21:38:00 +0000

It's a gorgeous day, even though the sun is shining and there are no clouds. One can't always have a day of dreary perfection, so I've learned to look for the beauty in even the sunny places and spaces. The park was calling my name, so that's where I spent most of the lunch hour. I sat in the car with the radio tuned to the 1st Wave station on Sirius. I kept it quiet so I could hear the birds squawk.

It rained some this week, so there was actual water in the faux creek with the ugly little bridge that was built by a strictly utilitarian crew of city workers. The bridge is very uniform. I like uniformity in design, but it doesn't work for me if the design is all squarish and straight. Art Deco is my favorite design style and it is all about uniformity. But it also flows and curves and sweeps and spreads out in gracefully controlled falls. Lines are good when curved. Curves are almost always more interesting.

I love it here after a rain. You can pretend that the water in the ditch is actually a charmingly natural little brook and that the scraggly, barely mower-high, dandelions are West Texas' answer to the bluebonnet fields.

The ravens like it too. They dance around on the edge of the tiny stream. They aren't actually ravens, just common grackles, but they are still pretty cool. And they do an awesome Hitchcock tribute on houses and yards all over town.

I get a kick out of all the solitary people who come to park their trucks along the edges of the park and eat their lunch in the shade of the elm trees that manage to over-hang the pavement a bit. The draw - an organically occurring ditch - that runs through here allows to the trees to get enough water to gain some decent height.

The cemetery has some good trees too, and you can find some of these same people and more eating lunch out there every day. Whichever place they choose, they stay in their car, keep the radios quiet and don't feel the need to engage in cell phone conversations. I love it. It's like we're all attending an introvert's convention together.

Collected introverts, dancing blackbirds and faux-creeks.

It's what's for lunch.

I just like to say "Casper Weinberger".

noreply@blogger.com (spookyrach) — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 02:09:00 +0000

Words are powerful. Names are important.

Remember the old Bloom County cartoon where Opus muses that he and Caspar Weinberger have had to work hard to overcome the hardship of their less than stellar nomenclature?

For the most part, I contend that courtesy titles are a form of self-perpetuating discrimination.  I ain't sayin' it's right, I'm just sayin' it is. I like titles that tell what you've done (Doctor, President) as opposed to those that give your marital status. I am 41 years old and I cannot remember a single incident in my entire life in which it was ever necessary to use the title Miss or Mrs.

Words like chairwoman or policewoman discriminate because the very sound of the word tells you this person is somehow different from the norm. Why not just be the chairman? Or the officer? Why do you need a different title to do the same job?

Why do we need separate Oscar categories for male and female actors? Why can't all actors compete against one another? I do understand, given our currently regressing caveman culture, that this might result in a dearth of female recipients, but it just chaps that women compete only against women and vice-versa. As if women need some sort of separate arena? We don't.

We do need separate bathrooms, but that's about it.

I worked with a court administrator once who preferred the term administratrix.  Thankfully, no one would actually call her that. The called her some other things, though. Administratrix - what century is that from? It sounds like what you'd call the receptionist at a S&M club.

And then there are the sports teams. I realize that there probably ought to be some way of differentiating men's and women's sports teams. And honestly, I've got no idea of how to do it, really. I just know the current system sucks. (Isn't this how these things normally go? Someone gets all smart ass and bashes the situation without having thought through any sort of a way of improving things.) I don't have the answer, I'm just complaining.

Bulldogs are always a popular mascot around here. And every school that uses it calls their girls teams the Lady Dogs. Yet "Go Bitches!" is frowned upon when shouted from the cheap seats.

The little town just north of here uses the admirably unusual mascot of the Kangaroo. The women's teams? Lady Roos. Lady Roo sounds like a ripoff of Lady Gaga.

While writing this I am wearing a t-shirt that has "Lady Horn Softball" emblazoned across my chest. Granted, the boys don't play softball, so they could have used Longhorn Softball. But, no.

The Lady Horn might well be an implement of male destruction hidden away from sight and perhaps the culprit behind all the anti-feminism pervading our legislative bodies these days.

Lady Horn. Watch for it.

It was all fun and games until someone put an eye out. With the Lady Horn.

You gotta say it like Peter Griffin says "Roadhouse":    Lady Horn.

Worse yet? The reason I'm wearing the shirt is because my kid's team was playing the Sundown Roughnecks. (A roughneck is a type of oil field worker/job.) Of course they don't call their team the Lady Roughnecks. Nah.

The Roughettes!

Kid. you. not.

The Roughettes. Appearing nightly at the Emasculation Lounge with Lady Roo! They'll be here all week.

Comic Books–Tool of the Devil

noreply@blogger.com (spookyrach) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 02:07:00 +0000

Someone in my household started wearing reading glasses. It wasn’t me.

But one day when I was straining through an evidently tiny copy of The Watchmen, I saw them lying on the end table. I picked them up. No one was home, no one would see me… I slipped them on and tried squinting.

It didn’t help.

The squinting, that is. The reading glasses eliminated all need for it! Amazing! I finished the book in record time.

Thanks to the Kindle and it’s easily adjusted text size, I contend that I shall never need reading glasses. Provided I give up reading comic books.

But I don’t want to do that. In fact, I ordered a new one that came in the mail today. It’s the first volume of The Preacher series. I’ve read some later volumes and I just love it. It’s about a minister from west Texas. It is chock full of bloody, gory violence, explicit and sometimes extraneous sex, and more vulgarity than you can shake a collection plate at.

I love it!

So, I ordered the first volume from some anonymous internet seller on Amazon. It came in the mail today and I have either had a brush with fundamentalist sickos who had no idea what they had on their hands, or I have just met my new best friends.

For reals.

They sent along a free gift. The free gift included a kitty-rap decal (I guess that’s what it is), a cross-shaped sucker (which is just horribly, horribly wrong in my twisted mind) and a choose-your-own-adventure book entitled “You Are The Messiah”. I can’t wait to read it. (I wonder how it works if you’re female? Does that take you down some alternately subservient path?) And then there is a post-card for “The House That Drips Blood on Alex” playing at Megaphone Comedy club.

Isn’t that insane?!! It’s like Christmas in the asylum, all over again!

Cemetery Blogging - Dead Trek, The Wrath of Gone

noreply@blogger.com (spookyrach) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 03:23:00 +0000

Cemetery Blogging–It’s been a while.

noreply@blogger.com (spookyrach) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 06:06:00 +0000

Our Lady of Perpetual Prosaicism is all “meh” about your recent demise.

Horror-scope

noreply@blogger.com (spookyrach) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 15:01:00 +0000

Yesterday started out as a quiet day in the office. More people were missing than present. We've all worked here so damn long that about half the folks have trouble getting all their vacation time used before the end of the year. There is a mad scramble to get in some extra days off before they get swept off the books.

Personally, I've never had that problem. Which is why I was one of only two officers in the office. Mindy was the other. It was her first day back after a freakin' 6 day Thanksgiving break. As if there were that many leftovers that had to be dealt with!

When the clock struck eight, she was already down in the waiting room, herding people, one at a time, down the hall to her office. The first guy sequestered with her was prepared to kill himself in a quietly self-effacing fashion in the rather immediate future. The quiet ones are generally the ones you really have to worry about. It didn't take long for Mindy to recognize how serious he was about achieving that particular goal.

She called the mental health agency where the guy already had a caseworker. They referred her to the crisis team and said the team would high tail it over to our office as soon as they could get out the door and navigate the seven blocks between there and here. The State, she was informed, prefers that they handle crises, with expediency on site, rather than burdening the sufferer with making a trip to their office.

Mindy called the crisis team, fully expecting the Mental Health Hero on duty to hit the big button that flashed the Nut Signal across the morning sky. This would assemble the team for swift transport to our building, bringing with them assessment tools, passive restraint techniques and a plethora of pleasant voices.

Instead she got Seth. Seth yawned a couple of times, stretched in his desk chair and asked if the guy couldn't just walk on over to their office so they could deal with him there.

Whatever.

In the middle of that crisis, the boss knocked on her door and asked her if she could get in touch with another of her people - Brian. Interestingly enough, Brian happened to be sitting in the waiting room. He does that every morning because he is unemployed. If you are able-bodied and not completely addle-brained, yet insist on a life of leisure rather than more gainful pursuits, we make you come and visit us each morning - teeth brushed, hair combed and pajamas at least tucked underneath sweat clothes, if not removed altogether and replaced with more employment-appropriate clothing. Then you set out for a day of job hunting.

Brian was here to show Mindy his list of applications from the previous day, before being sent out to complete more. Brian doesn't want to work.

According to the boss, he'd received an anonymous call stating that 20-year-old Brian had perhaps misrepresented the truth regarding his current living arrangements. When he told Mindy he lived at home with his parents, what he meant was he lived at his girlfriend's home, with his girlfriend's parents. His fourteen-year-old girlfriend.

Oops.

Mindy hissed his name at the waiting room door and marched him back into her office. His response to her questioning was "I don't know what you're so upset about. Her mother doesn't mind." That was not the smartest thing he'd ever said. Especially since his neck was decorated with more than a few hickies.

While we're on the subject, do you know about these?

Immediately after booting Brian out the door with a laundry list of life changes he'd be making in the next 24 hours, Mindy called the cops. She reported that her defendant was bedding a fourteen-year-old girl in her own home. Nightly.

The cops said, and I quote, "Eeew."

When Mindy told them the mother had condoned the situation, they said, "The mother may not have a problem with it, but the State of Texas sure does." The said they were starting an investigation and were here within 15 minutes to take Mindy's statement.

Child Protective Services also took a dim view of the state of affairs. Since the police are more than happy to charge Brian with statutory rape, they will be investigating the mother on a possible charge of negligent parenting.

All of this happened before 9:15 in the morning.

She took a break around 10:00 to catch her breath and snarf some popcorn. After a few minutes, I heard a peal of somewhat maniacal laughter, then my instant messenger beeped. It was Mindy. She said:

"My horoscope today says 'your interest in your fellow humans is piqued today.'"

"Piqued with a baseball bat!" I replied.

----------

Still no news from the Lazy Seth the Crises Manager. We're hoping that's good news.

Six Places - Just Spaces, Few Faces

noreply@blogger.com (spookyrach) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 20:46:00 +0000

This week's prompt: 6 Places. My six places are

all Dairy Queen.

1. The Dairy Queen in Lockney. It's the only restaurant open on Sundays. If we plan on eating out after church on Sunday, we have to go home and collapse on the couch for a couple of hours first. You can't wade through the blue-hairs to get a table until nearly 2:00 o'clock. They have blizzards and WiFi. They have the world's most polarific air conditioning system. There are huge vents along the top of the wall. The icy air they spew falls heavily on the chattering diners below. Even when it's 134 thousand degrees outside, my knees knock the whole time I'm choking down my chicken strips and tator tots. I don't yet know what happens in the winter. Is the heater just as boisterously over-effective? I'll soon find out.

If it weren't for the frigidity, I'd hang out there, drinking cherry-limes and drawing pictures.

2. The Dairy Queen in Post. You are probably not aware of this, but this little fast-food joint in that wobbly little West Texas town is the epicenter of the six degrees which separate us all. Everyone you've ever known will eventually have to stop there to use the bathroom. It's one of those places - plunked down in the middle of nowhere on a back road that is the only way to get to some places from other places. Everyone stops there. Eventually.

If I were going to write the great American novel, I'd do it sitting in a booth in this Dairy Queen. One great story after another walks in the door, heads for the ladies room then orders some tacos. It's got this accidental, unintentional apocalyptic feel to it that makes you think you're missing something. Something like the end of the world. In Technicolor.

3. The Dairy Queen in Plainview. This DQ was home to the Blizzard Boy. Blizzard Boy was our secret nemesis long ago and far away when we were young and could eat a cup of ice cream blended with Butterfinger bars on a pretty much daily basis without the dire consequences to our waist lines and cholesterol levels. He never got the order right or screwed up when trying to make change, or sometimes he just looked at us funny.

We toted the ice cream back to the office and sat around the conference table in the grand ballroom, dissing the Blizzard Boy and solving the county's problems. It was like a drawly, cowboy-booted version of the Algonquin Round Table. With soft serve instead of vodka.

4. The Dairy Queen in Brownfield. Brownfield was the closest town to the country church where I lived in the early 1980's. It was, to no one's surprise, dry and dusty and hot. It was dead then and it's deader now. At that church at the crossroads in the middle of Earth's armpit, the sand dunes piled high on the west side of the building and my brother and I tied towels around our necks for capes so we could jump off the roof of the sanctuary to practice flying. And landing. On our butts, mostly.

It was at this crossroads church that I learned to appreciate open flame and weeping willows. I learned to drive a tractor. I developed what would become a lifelong distaste for lantanas and a morbid fascination with premillennialist baptistry paintings. It was also a dark and destructive place that taught me to be spiteful towards family churches and suspicious of people who kept those religious malignancies alive.

My parents worked at that church because it was there. We'd moved back to Texas from Montana so my dad could care for his ailing father after his mother died. The church was a paycheck. It seemed like a god-send at first. But in the end, it wasn't.

On Sunday nights after a day full of all that my parents could stomach, we would escape to the Dairy Queen in Brownfield. A thirty-mile drive, one way, for nachos. It was pretty much the only place open then. It was a quiet place on Sunday nights. And a little bit dark.

I still love nachos.

5. The Ha-ta-ho in Roby. Roby was too small to have a Dairy Queen. I spent my high school years in Roby. There were two restaurants in town - the Silver Spur Cafe and the Ha-ta-ho drive in. They sat across from each other, separated by a rod-straight stretch of highway. Local lore told that the burger joint was opened by a farmer who wanted to get out of the field. He hated-to-hoe.

Yup.

If you were inclined, you could skip the Ha-ta-ho and come on down the road to the City Grocery and Deli where I worked. I would make you a chicken fried steak sandwich or a bbq sandwich. (Your choice of chopped or sliced. Take my advice - go with the chopped.) It was good enough food, but we didn't have fries. Or fountain drinks. Or chairs.

I can't remember if the Ha-ta-ho had nachos. They did have really good cokes, though.

6. The Dairy Queen in ? I don't know where I'm going from here, but I'm going somewhere. I bet wherever it is, they have a Dairy Queen. It might surprise you to know, but I don't even really like Dairy Queen. I hate soft-serve and only tolerate blizzards if they have something crunchy in them. The burgers are ok and The Dude is pretty good. The fries suck.

I do like the nachos, though.

Just for grins, because I don’t really know what this is.

noreply@blogger.com (spookyrach) — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 01:25:00 +0000

Tonight I made the holy pilgrimage and left home

At twilight.

At sunset.

At the end of the day.

I walked down the street, through the bad part of town

At twilight.

At sunset.

At the end of the day.

A three-legged pit bull dog barked at me. Only once.

At twilight.

At. sunset.

At the end of the day.

And I learned that those two lime green trailers really do glow

At twilight.

At sunset.

At the end of the day.