a fairy story

Mystery of the phantom turds solved.

Everyday, dog mess appeared in a local yard. 

Surveillance ensued. Nothing electronic, this was good old fashioned 5 am stakeout. The culprit: The neighbor three doors down lets his dog poop in the yard during the "wee hours" of the morning. 

Luckily the homeowner knows a clown who is easy to bribe and owns a pneumatic canon. 

These things are capable of sending a load over the house next door and right on it's perp-rooftop target.

 If you ever need this service I'm happy to oblige. My stick is on loan right now but when it's in my grubby hands I can make it sing (poop/fire/ski poles). 

I'm cheap too, I think I did this for a roll of dimes and a box of tampons (that I also shot out of the canon). 

Good times.

not usually how it goes.

An employee at a place we were busking came, put $5 in the hat and asked for this excavator through tears. That's not usually how it goes.
Usually an O&D encounter is full of laughs.
What it was is that it was the second anniversary of the passing of her 4 y.o. grandson.
The family is finally in a place to cope in a positive way and represent the child with this balloon at the family gatherings. I'm so honored that she came to us for this. Great job Olive!

happy dingo

my gear

Gear. I pull my guitar. street cube amp, cables, books and mic stand on my tallbike (the behemoth)'
 We do punk rock clown gigs all over Portland OR. My wife carries a ton of stuff too.
I think this is the way to gig since gas being part of the overhead kills your living as a musician.
All my stuff gets wet, cold, banged around a lot but I have whittled it down to the toughest gear possible.
That cube amp is still trucking since 2010.
It runs on 6 AAs, we can do a little kid show with it in the morning and then plug it into the house system at a nightclub and that little amp becomes our mixer for the adult show.
I highly recommend the street cube. I wish Craftsman made a guitar. That said I once heard my banjo fall off a friend's tallbike.
I knew it was my banjo because it sounded great even falling to the street.
I was shocked that it hardly had a scratch.
 I been playing 30 years but this was the decade I came to understand that the most expensive guitar isn't the toughest, it's often the case that expensive guitars are far more delicate.

 pic a friend sent from "Somewhere-elsistan"

what it look like tonight. wet and cold on the way to the burrito stand.

Dingo Dizmal DRIVE I recorded this by myself circa 2004

Clown Power!

eversdropper

I was riding down the street in a residential neighborhood. 
A lady I didn't know was standing in her yard talking on the phone. 
As I passed I hear her say "Wait a sec,, Dingo the clown is passing by.", 
As I went, she stood there looking at the ground. 
Then the last thing I picked up was "Ok he's gone..anyway.."
 WTF? I don't know you, what makes you think I care about your conversation. It's not like I'm going to post on Facebook about it or anything. Sheesh.(file photo)

painted mah hoopty

our current weekly shows

get the Portland experience

We live in a house that rents out rooms. Just now I met a couple from the Midwest who walked into the kitchen and presented us with a bucket of doughnuts. I say "Did you two go dumpster diving? My you did get the Portland experience. " Turns out they intercepted the loot before it hit the dumpster (like a champ, we should dress as tourists when we go dumpster diving).

They plan to give em away downtown in the morning (sounds so familiar to me for some reason). They say they got their scrappy scroungy skills from being college kids. I was impressed. These donuts are in good shape, they should go over well. Now that my new friends have contributed to our community, I'm going to give them the true authentic Portland experience by gentrifying them out of their rooms while they sleep. :) Keep Portland weird heehee

My Darling wife woke me up with a deep massage. That

 isn't uncommon. Over the last decade, we worked out that I put her to sleep and she wakes me every day. It can be pretty spectacular all around. Anyhoo. 
What was special this time was that she was doing it for her not me. It was about maintenance of her band equipment. 
She depends on me to play guitar as we sing for our supper every day. 
No matter what guitar i use (this anything but ergonomic beast is called The Stump) I end up over and under working several muscle groups. Back of fret hand gets one workout, strum bicep gets another. That isn't good to be all wonky.
She found all the guitar related stress parts (and had me hollering) and then prescribed exercises to even out the tone.
I never knew that was a thing. I didn't realize I was even hurting in those spots until it suddenly stopped.
Now I recommend it to ax grinders who sling those things around all the time. My first guitar was an SG copy.
That thing was heavy as a manhole cover. Rock on Donkey Kongs.

plumb out of ideas.

With dishes backed up for days I had tried every natural remedy for clogged drain, boiling water, baking sode/vinegar, enzymes. Nothing worked, something drastic had to happen. I bought a huge drain snake and went to town. 

Unfortunately, after successfully snaking the glitter dreads out of the sink (no idea where those came from.), the most important drain, parts didn't go back together somuch.

It leaked from both sides of what is called

"The P Trap".

 I went back to the hardware store and bought a new slip nut and screw for the sink side. Installed it and it leaked, took it apart, it leaked again. Soon both sides couldn't hold water. 

This stuff is made to work without teflon tape but even with the tape it's still slow leaking.

i thought the ptrap was for catching wedding rings. Nope. Turns out it's for preventing gasses from entering your house. Keep those P traps wet Ya'll.

Ptrap sounds like a way to blackmail the president in Russia.

4th times a charm. Every time I go back to the hardware store, I look less like a clown and more like a soggy person who sleeps in drains. 

I was all chipper and crisp after work, Now I'm going back in wet sweats with runny makeup and an itchy stinkeye finger.

I built a lot of PVC pneumatic canon, I know my way around this stuff. and if this was the Clown House we would have all dug into this build. The thing is, this is a 1922 hotel/house thingee. I just don't have the confidence that everything will line up to the standard of the house.

I'm good at stucco, drywall, plastering, painting, couple kinds of roofing, couple kinds of welding, I can take an entire house apart and save every stick...but when it comes to plumbing I guess now it's clear... I'm total shite. 　 for now.

This one beat me. My only recourse is to greet the plumber in the morning. I don't have a gig but I will be dressed as a clown (not Dingo, think Bozo). I need to get to the bottom of this by sitting at the kitchen table while the plumber works, telling him all about how I would do it (if I knew what I was doing) They love that.
"Slip Joint Nut" is my next band name b.t.w.

                                 oliveanddingo.com/donate

Korean boarder

 I was washing dishes when a young woman walks into the kitchen and timidly says hi.
 She  and told me she loved the room and asked if I was the host (no).
She introduced herself and shyly asked that the heat be turned up. 
I'm all alone and I still haven't taken any clown drag off. 
I tell her I'm just one of the clowns that live in the attic but I'm also helpful to travelers as a condition of my clown order. 
I turn the heat up. 
I ask her where she is from. She says Korea. I greet her in Korean. 
That moment changed the mood. 
Her face lights right up. She smiles big, snaps her heels and hands together and rocks a proper bow (like in the movies). I made it clear that I didn't know her language by my body language and it worked a charm. 
She clearly still dug the effort. 
I will be asking her for other phrases if she hangs around awhile. 
I went back to dishwashing and then soon, she surprised me by coming back. 
She had a wine bottle and two glasses. 
Would you like to drink some wine?" 
I was like "Um, I'm not on vacation, i don't drink alcohol and my wife is miles away so I'm gonna take a pass but thanks! " I bid her good evening and then tended the clogged drain I just created so I could be doing anything but that. Good times.. lol

Monkeying with my friend's childhood.

We love breakfast at Slappy Cakes.

Making Invisible tacos

Olive likes essential oils and has a huge collection.

Every little vial in her apothecary corner comes with instructions and warnings. I always have stupid questions like "What would happen if I filled an eyedropper with Wintergreen oil and used it to wash my eyes? What would happen?

Yesterday a woman spent 20 min in her room and then stormed out.

 She was complaining that the house was filthy. 
At any other point in my life she would have been right, but these days our crib is spotless. 
Her room and our house is gorgeous as always. The house owner inspected right away (she lives in the basement). 
We were relieved that she wasn't sore at us. "Looks like we lucked out, we wouldn't have liked living with her anyways" lol. 
So here is my theory: The latest punter of the 1922 bungalow is having an affair and chickened out.
 People book these rooms way in advance. Maybe she was planning an extramarital adventure for weeks but aborted after she was racked with guilt. 
I never met her, this is just conjecture. As the days clicked by her excitement dulled to anxiety and then eventually terror. The time came. Maybe she lives in a nearby town. She takes the long drive to Portland listening to songs from her youth through tears. Then she gets here. Avoids everyone. Looks at the bed she plans to betray her partner with. 
She gets a text from the partner, then the lover. She lies to both and then loses it. 
She stamps out complaining the house is dirty and smells like too many cats.
 "We don't have any cats...just clowns with a conspiracy theory or two." 

http://oliveanddingo.com/donate/

Free punk band names.

Lots of great stuff about the town I come from in South Texas. One thing the good people of Corpus Christi are good at is naming punk bands. 
All these years and miles later I'm still keying into potential band names that pop out of the headlines. 
As I listen to the news sites reporting the ill deeds of our current goverment, I can't help but wonder. What good does it do for me to listen to this? I can interpret world events myself Yo.
Then those phrases come up and my tail starts wagging.
A lot of whats going on is ideal fodder for procuring punk band names.
Unfortunately Portland is too hip and happy to support a punk scene. You need angst from suppression for punk. Portland doesn't create that so much. I won't be starting any bands. 
That doesn't mean you can't. 
Here is my list of top ten punk band names I dreamed up from the current political headlines. 
Use one or all for your band if ya like, it's on me. 
Rock on Donkey Kong. 
1. The Manifartz I would name my band this.
2. Mueller probe electronica
3. Individual one emo gothic
4. The Oligarchs ska band
5. The Presidential tweets acapella 
6. Steel Dossier hair metal
7. The Dangle Pardons country, funk, punk
8. Existential threat Straight edge punk
9. Trade Wars Pop punk
and last but not least...
10. Thunderbolt and lightning adventure core
(The affectionate names Stormy Daniel's gave to her post op breasts...and future Jeopardy clue). 
I love that the porn star is the only person in the political turmoil that I don't think is gross. :) 
11. Hush payment (slow jazz)
There ya go Joe.
These names could date your band but that's not a bad thing. 
This mess needs to be remembered.
Good luck!
~Dingo

http://oliveanddingo.com/donate/

I just had a long, tedious (and enjoyable) conversation with this Japanese man on the porch.

He bore most of the burden of communication since I don't know any Japanese.
I guess he liked my willingness to learn his language so he went in and fetched one a them writing books to straighten me out. lol He is teaching me the days of the week.
He and his friend are here from Tokyo. Just a couple of buddies out exploring the world. It's been great having them around. They tell me they hear about Portland as "a model city of civilization."
They wanted to experience Portland culture...so they asked me to recommend a strip club. Right away "Lucky Devil, Kit Kat Club, Pirate's cove" fell out of my face. I realized how full of crap I can be.
I mentioned those places not recommending from experience (like with burgers) I never even been to all those places. I recommend them because I have stripper friends that I want to have customers. Odd to endorse something of witch I have no objective opinions.
They went to a strip club (couldn't tell where) and were amazed at what they saw. He said he wrote a brilliant rap song about his experience. I asked him if he usually writes the raps about tattooed nude ladies.
He said no. He said his tracks are about Peace and love, Flower Fridays, sun in his face and the unfortunate situation where young people leave the villages for the big city leaving only oldsters to fend for themselves.
Word Fellah, Good luck to you. Props also for kickin' it with me out in the cold while just rocking the flip flops. Does it ever get this cold in Japanistan?