Notebook dump!

It's been way too long since I did one of these. I jot things down in my Blackberry (yes, I am the Last Man in America with a Blackberry), and I need to capture the ideas here (hell, anywhere) before said phone gets lost or croaks.

So here are the phrases, names, and images that rattle around in my walnut-sized brain occasionally. If you have trouble figuring out what they mean, imagine how I feel.

• Serious as an Amarillo barfight.
• Actual name: LeRoy Hoikkala, childhood friend of Bob Dylan.
• Fair-weather optimist.
• Like the Tin Man at a limbo contest (how Conway Sax feels in a suit).
• Forgive me all my anger; forgive me all my faults/There's no need to forgive me for thinkin' what I thought. - Guy Clark, "Dublin Blues"
• German male name: Nico.
• Women make up "bar names" to tell dudes.
• Lockstep nonconformist.
• Smells like a barbershop in a barbecue joint - not bad, but not right.
• Create a character who used to work for the NSA reconstructing shredded documents.
• Name: Oskar.
• Saddest color: burnt orange.
• Carmelina (Matisse).
• Surname: Kilroy.
• Tahoe conscience.
• Copperhead.
• Framingham Housing Authority projects off Concord Ave., near Mass. Bay Community College.
• Hollis St, Framingham. Great run of Brazilian businesses: moneygram/fax/check-cashing place, salon, restaurant, convenience store. All signage in Portuguese.
• "Just As I Am, Without One Plea" (hymn).
• A cloud of witnesses (scripture).
• Moline Blues/Moline Hustle.
• Actual name: Robert Hoxie.
• Create a Barnburner who owns and operates a car wash.
• Hey bartender - I think I'll hit the throttle (Dwight Yoakam).
• Torque shear.
• Create a character who watched twin drown in a pool at age 4 or 5.
• "Tennessee Plates" (Commander Cody song).
• Iron Lords (actual hotrod club, Concord, NC).
• Surname: Dent.
• New Hampshire: a state without lips.
• Like reasoning with a pack mule.
• Name: Brixton Bragg (British sports-car guy).
• Square Del: nickname for a politician named Delbert.
• Sophie riding her bike down the steep embankment that backs the reservoir at Hopkinton State Park.
• Civil War names: Patrick Cleburne, Emory Upton.
• Rebel River Blues.
• Urban Moody.
• Civil War note: some men in Sherman's Army of the Tennessee marched 7,000 miles.
• William D. "Pig Iron" Kelley.
• Surname: Hartline.
• Strip Mall Hero.
• Echo Bravo (East Boston).
• 8-Ball Deluxe (pinball game).
• Parnell.
• Suicide Serenade.
• Create a Barnburner who's a mall cop at the Natick Collection. Retired, unselfconscious, loves his job.
• Two junkies bust into a car and find a filled-out form for an X-ray at the local hospital. One of them takes the form and gets an X-ray. Just for something to do.
• Conway line: Show me somebody working harder than a Brazilian and I'll show you another Brazilian.
• Weathermen and stock analysts: they're good at predicting what happened this morning.
• Wide Open Throttle.
• Foul I fly.
• Wild blue yonder.
• Konrad Zuse: German inventor.
• Kotikov: Russian surname.
• Hotshoe.
• Whip City Shakedown.
• LeMay Coal & Feed Co.: stenciled on Berlin Airlift planes.