happy easter and pagan associations everyone… was just reading how Ouspensky says that the Christ passion, the events of the crucifixion etc. were like unto a kind of living version of the ancient Greek and Egyptian “Mystery” plays wherein the god died and was re-born, the difference being that of course with Jesus and friends the event was ‘played out’ in reality, and not on a stage with actors, im just getting up to the part where he addresses who he thinks the “director” was… ***************** TAH DAH!!! ***************** as some of you are by now aware Barbara and myself are having an actual baby in july (mostly her)… this has been going on for a while now and is kind of in the home stretch… i think its time to announce etc as the arrival will curtail some of my band activities during the summer and early fall, word is coming of our getting to australia and japan and i dont think im going to be able to get to australia this time much as i love it there, i just couldnt be away from Barb and baby for this period for more than a few days, the japanese dates are just 2or3 in early aug. and i think ill be able to do those if it only means being away for five days or so… thats just the way everything has come down and im trying not to be conflicted, [[as i might have mentioned our dear friend and mentor VALI MYERS died recently in Melbourne Australia and though i was lucky enough to have spoken to her a few times while she was in the hospital (“well love, I’m fine except for dying…” actual quote) i hadnt seen her too much for the last number of years and though im looking forward to getting a little closer to who she was with and where she wound up its gonna have to wait for now… VALI was one of the most extraordinary people alive in the 20th century and the fact that she wasnt more well known is part of her whole mystique, a long story id just suggest that anyone interested look around on google or whatever, theres a lot of stuff http://geekgirl.com.au/geekgirl/009dogs/vali.html is a quick look, seems to be a lot of things available about her]] so the baby situation has of course quickly educated us to the insanity that surrounds baby production in the united states… this is the usual kind of madness that one encounters when dealing with the american medical establishment, familiar territory, so we have one in four births done as what is cheerfully referred to as a c-section which kind of downplays the major surgery aspect, it seems that women are encouraged to take epidural anesthetics which produce all kinds of complications; prolonging labor, reducing fetal heartrates etc etc… that like many other aspects of life in america, childbirth is treated like some kind of crisis situation that needs to be ‘taken over’ by someone other than the one having the experience… i was gonna write actually about related topics, about how i feel things are different now from when i grew up and if they really are or if its just my own perception… but ill save that we dont need anything for the baby ( oh yeah Barb had ultrascans and we werent disinclined to find out the babys gender but it just wouldnt let us see… i did get to see lips and yawning which was amazing, and a little face pressed up against “the glass” as it looked, the scan looks through the skin of the babys head as well as the stomach wall so one sees layers of eyes and skull, it looks like a cheerful little alien) i mean anyone that can afford it can make large cash donations of course, but if you cant afford more than 10 or twenty thousand then i must insist that you stick to just sending good wishes for the baby to come through ok… beyond that…. oh another story is about these two crazy fucking dogs that we got… i hadnt mentioned it earlier cause i was waiting to ‘announce’ about the baby which the dog story relates to somewhat; barb of course always drawn to animals, we were walking in the west village around the time of the last NY area shows and she lured me into a pet store to “just look” at dogs… the window of course filled with crawling squirming cute puppies… she asked the people if they had any older dogs and the girl said ‘yes we have these that are too big for the window’ and proceeded to bring up a little white manic dog, an american eskimo, which proceeded to run frantically around the store… so maybe we should actually get it cause flapjack would like to have a playmate, the cats dont play with him etc… but wait… it seems this little dog has spent its entire life with another little white dog, so here comes another larger little white dog much less crazy…so theyre discounted cause they are bigger than little and cute like the ones in the window, and we wonder how the hell anyone would have ever seen them without asking and how weird it is that after a certain time they get ‘kicked downstairs’ into the cages in the basement etc etc, and we couldnt seperate them cause they are a total team and kind of single personality between the two of them… now these guys totally missed getting any kind of complete training during their important formative puppy (pupa) months and as a result are fairly wacked… also theyd been stuck in a cage most of the time… we were staying at the chelsea hotel at the time (see DEE DEE RAMONE “Chelsea Horror Hotel”) and so the dogs came back there with us and the VERY NEXT DAY we found out that Barbara was having a baby (was pregnant)… one day she was in a little room with them and she heard a tinkling sound coming from under the bed and it was the littler dog playing with a used crack pipe… so the dogs are named Sydny and Nubis… all winter long we suffered through the horrors of dented doggy training and constantly fluctuated as to give them away/kill them etc but they have finally settled down to a respectable kind of life style and now we have three dogs and six cats and almost a baby… (actually the dog door saved us, the biggest problem was that sydny and nubis would start barking furiously at six in the morning every day and would have to be let out manually,) ok thats the dog story ill try to be writing more regularly love to all chris