Clean with alcohol only. Do not attempt to replace blown fuses. Do not remove access panels. Return to certified mechanic for regular maintenance. Made in the USA.
7/30/15
The Best Thing
about weighing yourself multiple times a day and writing the numbers down upstairs is that you can better track what is happening inside you by their footprint and raise a food militia/coup before it escalates to the colors of defense condition numbers.
7/29/15
Dear (_____)
Dear pet owners,
It's okay to feel a little guilty when your cat or dog is literally pushing your limbs out of your desk chair and off your computer keyboard and twisting your monitor every which way when they want attention, but you're in the middle of browsing an Instagram feed of baby goats frolicking through meadows. It's okay to feel a little bit like you're cheating on them. Who wouldn't want to own a successful goat farm full of cuteness and handsome and darling older goats? Just explain softly when you do close your laptop or your browser that what you want is not in spite of them, but including them. Your cats would look out for the little baby goats and your dogs will keep the old fellas and ladies in line so they don't wander too far off. It would be a family. Even if you have one cat or just one dog or one turtle, it is not a marriage so it's really not cheating anyway. It's okay to feel a little guilt, the other implication being they're not cute anymore and you are not allowed to say or think it, but the truth is they are.
I just wish I had a goat to raise too.
Sincerely,
an animal lover
It's okay to feel a little guilty when your cat or dog is literally pushing your limbs out of your desk chair and off your computer keyboard and twisting your monitor every which way when they want attention, but you're in the middle of browsing an Instagram feed of baby goats frolicking through meadows. It's okay to feel a little bit like you're cheating on them. Who wouldn't want to own a successful goat farm full of cuteness and handsome and darling older goats? Just explain softly when you do close your laptop or your browser that what you want is not in spite of them, but including them. Your cats would look out for the little baby goats and your dogs will keep the old fellas and ladies in line so they don't wander too far off. It would be a family. Even if you have one cat or just one dog or one turtle, it is not a marriage so it's really not cheating anyway. It's okay to feel a little guilt, the other implication being they're not cute anymore and you are not allowed to say or think it, but the truth is they are.
I just wish I had a goat to raise too.
Sincerely,
an animal lover
Summer Days Are Beautiful
Summer days are beautiful. Walk around in the grass that probably should have been cut yesterday and feel how fluffy and wet it is before the sun dries it out. Take time away from watering the garden to blow a bubble of mist around you and spin yourself around to see the rainbow halo around your waist. The birds are off on their errands. By now you do not hear their 5:30 A.M. alarm, but you will miss it a lot when it is gone and cold water chills instead of refreshes.
Sit in the wet grass and feel it soak through your shorts and underwear to the hairs and through to your skin. Wiggle down a little and lean back on your elbows and wait for the sun and the breeze to start drying your hair for you. Blowing kisses on the backs of your ears and neck and every few minutes a touch of lips to cheek and eyebrow, no more. A slip of hands around your wet hips and up your back until you cannot help a giggle, no more.
I am just like you, though we are different. Thinking about what my insides look like after patching things, jumping circuits, replacing parts, swapping connections, and fabricating new ones over and over again to keep on going, to function in place of everything that was torn out or never mounted or heavily damaged from the beginning. Thinking about the engineering and trial and error and discovery it took to get there, sitting in a backyard, watering a garden, and laughing at the sun, cooing in the palm of earth's hand, content.
Though we are different. The obstacles are unbelievable sometimes. Taking responsibility sometimes crosses into blaming myself for everything and hating myself and my make up more and more and more until all I can feel or think about is killing myself and it feels so good, so great, to remember the afternoon, even as obstacles to continued or increased or even maintained success close the horizon in every direction like the lips around an enormous crater.
It makes me smile wry: 30 years old, crippling social anxieties, manic depression, paranoid schizophrenia, anger management "problems," bringing in a whopping $12,000 a year, and ... what? I don't know. I don't know what is next. I've been lied to again and lost all confidence in what I thought I would do until I retired or never retired. That sweet sweet 12k paycheck. It is a joke. At 30? Is that really the best I am going to be able to do?
After I discovered that I had no job security whatsoever and a friend explained to me how my job has allowed me to stay in place and build a foundation for my life, but that the very nature of my job would not allow me to grow much further than that, she asked me about what I wanted to do.
I always want to write, but that's not a career for me for the foreseeable future. That's for fun. My passion and deep rooted connection to writing has its origins in my inabilities to communicate and express myself and my ideas through normal everyday means a lot, I would say most, people enjoy. It is a love and desire best described as an unexpected, exceptionally useful, child of the continuous process of patching and repairing and placing new equipment where normal/standard/necessary/"born with" equipment was never mounted to begin with or ripped away or smashed in. I don't love and pursue writing as a career, I have come to realize. I love and pursue writing because it is the best developed, low loss, way I know how to communicate like a normal person. When it works the way I need it to, it allows me to bridge myself to friends and people and know that I am not howling at my otherwise mashed, screwed, and missing communications centers and abilities with nothing coming across the interface at all in line with what is being spoken from inside.
The question was strange to me and it shouldn't have been. I had to think very hard. Being used to doing whatever I had to and was allowed to do for so many years after college flamed out against my will and things fell swiftly to pieces, taking whatever work would have me and clinging to what work would have me that I could also do and do well, the thought of what I wanted to do was foreign.
After an evening, I thought "master electrician" or "master plumber," since an MLS is completely unrealistic for the next decade or two at the least and I have loved the under the table work I've been able to do to help ends meet working on peoples homes for years. I thought "how great would it be to actually be paid the way you should for what you have in the skill files inside your head." After another day thinking about it, I knew it wasn't what I really wanted to do. It is something that I am good at that I like doing that fits well around my psyche, but not at all what I really want to do. Auto-mechanic.
The realization dawned on me. All of the schematics books I used to take from the library diagramming aircraft and race cars and automobiles. The perfect mix of tinkering and testing and results and giving life to machines and mechanisms. The smiles on folks faces. The tools and machines that allow the systems to be manipulated and molded to various functions. The solitude. All there. After so many years of being forced or trying to force so many paths in an effort to put food in my mouth and stay connected to life and society and have enough to sit in a backyard and smile at a garden, I forgot that I've wanted to be a mechanic for decades. I've only been alive for three, but I'm pretty sure I knew after decade one.
Thirty years old and getting no younger. A foundation finally established in this life, though shaky at times, an undeniable starting point. I am starting to see it as leaving a dying world. You have finally broken gravity's hold, do not concern yourself with trying to undo everything and erase everyone on the world's surface that brought it to its demise. Worry about what comes next in the stars. I have to try to find some security while there is a foundation. With no real job security, what was built could go away at a moments notice, a flash, a bang, some confetti, and a "thanks for playing, best of luck." So what? One more step through the yards to the next fence further away from the cell than you have ever been. Slip your fingers through the diamond wire links. Squeeze them until your fingers hurt and sniff the air on the other side.
It tastes different doesn't it. Oh it does! When the answer to the question "what do you want to do" is longer than "live another month." I cannot be happy living in the shadow of annihilation. I do not know if I will ever escape its reach entirely the way my insides are wired, dealing with, fighting, embracing, irreparable mental dysfunction. Will I ever make living money? Money that allows me to keep growing instead of treading water? Hold a standard 40 hour a week job without exploding into fragments or medicating? I have to find out.
Summer days are so beautiful. Even with warships of uncertainty hovering in orbit and peace negotiations fraying, feeling the tiny cool pricks of water landing on every inch of exposed skin feels absolutely wonderful. Chew a dandelion stem. As far back as can be remembered, love for the outdoors. The mysteriousness of the shadows infecting the gaps in the greens of the tree canopy smothering a hill across the river. Walk fingertips through blades of grass and poke a beetle's glimmering carapace. It is pretending to sleep. T-shirts almost dry. The garden dirt probably is too. One more go 'round. It is going to be a hot one today.
///The Future Sound of London - "Among Myselves"
Sit in the wet grass and feel it soak through your shorts and underwear to the hairs and through to your skin. Wiggle down a little and lean back on your elbows and wait for the sun and the breeze to start drying your hair for you. Blowing kisses on the backs of your ears and neck and every few minutes a touch of lips to cheek and eyebrow, no more. A slip of hands around your wet hips and up your back until you cannot help a giggle, no more.
I am just like you, though we are different. Thinking about what my insides look like after patching things, jumping circuits, replacing parts, swapping connections, and fabricating new ones over and over again to keep on going, to function in place of everything that was torn out or never mounted or heavily damaged from the beginning. Thinking about the engineering and trial and error and discovery it took to get there, sitting in a backyard, watering a garden, and laughing at the sun, cooing in the palm of earth's hand, content.
Though we are different. The obstacles are unbelievable sometimes. Taking responsibility sometimes crosses into blaming myself for everything and hating myself and my make up more and more and more until all I can feel or think about is killing myself and it feels so good, so great, to remember the afternoon, even as obstacles to continued or increased or even maintained success close the horizon in every direction like the lips around an enormous crater.
It makes me smile wry: 30 years old, crippling social anxieties, manic depression, paranoid schizophrenia, anger management "problems," bringing in a whopping $12,000 a year, and ... what? I don't know. I don't know what is next. I've been lied to again and lost all confidence in what I thought I would do until I retired or never retired. That sweet sweet 12k paycheck. It is a joke. At 30? Is that really the best I am going to be able to do?
After I discovered that I had no job security whatsoever and a friend explained to me how my job has allowed me to stay in place and build a foundation for my life, but that the very nature of my job would not allow me to grow much further than that, she asked me about what I wanted to do.
I always want to write, but that's not a career for me for the foreseeable future. That's for fun. My passion and deep rooted connection to writing has its origins in my inabilities to communicate and express myself and my ideas through normal everyday means a lot, I would say most, people enjoy. It is a love and desire best described as an unexpected, exceptionally useful, child of the continuous process of patching and repairing and placing new equipment where normal/standard/necessary/"born with" equipment was never mounted to begin with or ripped away or smashed in. I don't love and pursue writing as a career, I have come to realize. I love and pursue writing because it is the best developed, low loss, way I know how to communicate like a normal person. When it works the way I need it to, it allows me to bridge myself to friends and people and know that I am not howling at my otherwise mashed, screwed, and missing communications centers and abilities with nothing coming across the interface at all in line with what is being spoken from inside.
The question was strange to me and it shouldn't have been. I had to think very hard. Being used to doing whatever I had to and was allowed to do for so many years after college flamed out against my will and things fell swiftly to pieces, taking whatever work would have me and clinging to what work would have me that I could also do and do well, the thought of what I wanted to do was foreign.
After an evening, I thought "master electrician" or "master plumber," since an MLS is completely unrealistic for the next decade or two at the least and I have loved the under the table work I've been able to do to help ends meet working on peoples homes for years. I thought "how great would it be to actually be paid the way you should for what you have in the skill files inside your head." After another day thinking about it, I knew it wasn't what I really wanted to do. It is something that I am good at that I like doing that fits well around my psyche, but not at all what I really want to do. Auto-mechanic.
The realization dawned on me. All of the schematics books I used to take from the library diagramming aircraft and race cars and automobiles. The perfect mix of tinkering and testing and results and giving life to machines and mechanisms. The smiles on folks faces. The tools and machines that allow the systems to be manipulated and molded to various functions. The solitude. All there. After so many years of being forced or trying to force so many paths in an effort to put food in my mouth and stay connected to life and society and have enough to sit in a backyard and smile at a garden, I forgot that I've wanted to be a mechanic for decades. I've only been alive for three, but I'm pretty sure I knew after decade one.
Thirty years old and getting no younger. A foundation finally established in this life, though shaky at times, an undeniable starting point. I am starting to see it as leaving a dying world. You have finally broken gravity's hold, do not concern yourself with trying to undo everything and erase everyone on the world's surface that brought it to its demise. Worry about what comes next in the stars. I have to try to find some security while there is a foundation. With no real job security, what was built could go away at a moments notice, a flash, a bang, some confetti, and a "thanks for playing, best of luck." So what? One more step through the yards to the next fence further away from the cell than you have ever been. Slip your fingers through the diamond wire links. Squeeze them until your fingers hurt and sniff the air on the other side.
It tastes different doesn't it. Oh it does! When the answer to the question "what do you want to do" is longer than "live another month." I cannot be happy living in the shadow of annihilation. I do not know if I will ever escape its reach entirely the way my insides are wired, dealing with, fighting, embracing, irreparable mental dysfunction. Will I ever make living money? Money that allows me to keep growing instead of treading water? Hold a standard 40 hour a week job without exploding into fragments or medicating? I have to find out.
Summer days are so beautiful. Even with warships of uncertainty hovering in orbit and peace negotiations fraying, feeling the tiny cool pricks of water landing on every inch of exposed skin feels absolutely wonderful. Chew a dandelion stem. As far back as can be remembered, love for the outdoors. The mysteriousness of the shadows infecting the gaps in the greens of the tree canopy smothering a hill across the river. Walk fingertips through blades of grass and poke a beetle's glimmering carapace. It is pretending to sleep. T-shirts almost dry. The garden dirt probably is too. One more go 'round. It is going to be a hot one today.
///The Future Sound of London - "Among Myselves"
7/24/15
Hook
I've already exceeded him. I've already ... I laugh thinking about Star Wars and Hook and Peter Pan. Thinking about Robbin Hood and Evangelion. I laugh thinking about 0083 and Char and the Endless Waltz and Memories. I laugh thinking about MOAB and dropping concrete bombs because "why spend the money when blocks can and do what we want?" I laugh considering what Thomas said to me that night walking to a gas station to get smokes. You're going to be just like your father.
I am. And I am better. I remember doing his homework for him when I was farting around back home and searching for any sort of feeler to find a job before I took off again. I remember him hovering over my shoulder and him recognizing that I wasn't afraid of him anymore and he could stand behind me as long as he wanted to and I did not give a rip. I think, at that stand off, he realized he wasn't Hook anymore.
If he still thought he was Hook, he knew I was the clock. Do I still want to fight him? No. Do I still want to run him down with my truck? Yes. How dare you tell anyone they are not a person. Who gives you the authority? Who gave you the hook? You never told me about your father. The first I heard was second hand from people I thought you were close to. Burping gasoline puffs. I know you hear me. I know you fucking hear me. What is it going to take to get some fucking answers out of you, silver back? I am going gray and I refuse to repeat the fault line.
I will snuffle the low line. Give us the Hook. Give us the Hook! Give us the Hook! You trained me, you shit. You dog dog dog dog dog! I do not have to fight you now. I am not scared. I have tools. Tools for days. Allow me to take you to my shed. MY shed! Allow me to close the windows so the neighbors do not hear.
I know you know something of cutting up. Did you want a globe trotter? Is that why junior got his name. I almost want to adopt a child to spite you and name it after Andre, but not yours. Where the hell did Malcolm come from in this family to begin with. You never took the time to talk about it and I'm old enough to wonder about and you're lock jawed enough to never speak about it so ... I don't wish hell upon you.
Junior is just like you, yeah? Given the hook. Thinking about washing dishes in Brighton and trying to focus on the soap bubbles while you two argued and hearing your voice again saying "yeah he's listening" while I am looking at the bubbles and their popping and doing my best to twitch my ears as hard as I can so you know that I know I can fucking hear you and hoping you can understand that YES I am hearing everything you say. You fuck.
Yeah, you fucked up. Unfortunately, I am one of the results of your misstep. I would be happy to play roulette with you though. With that turn coat cow of a wife you brainwashed. Good job. Yep, I am firing on 98% of my cylinders. You do the math. She bailed. She bailed. Vicious. We talked about it. Call me crazy. We spoke about it. I did not want to fuck her, I wanted her to be happy and protect her. Fail. Good job, buddy.
WHY DID YOU CUT ME DOWN. I do not understand it. I never will. I cry and I hurt myself to try to make it right. I have and I do and I have and I will not stop until you die. If I could kill you, I would. ......................................... I want to taste your blood so badly. Take a Louisville to you. You might too. As much as I want to take the teeth out of you, I want you to see my teeth before I bite your eyeball out of your head.
I want to blow paint straight through your nostrils.
Get up, get down!
Normal. Hah!
Eventually a person get's tired of getting skull fucked. Tired of being leashed. What else is out there?
Malcolm junior is reaping all of the blessings. Red too. Little one too. I am getting scraps.
If I could get away with it.................................................end the dance. I hate being associated with you with a vigor you do not and never will understand!
Make a bet. You can pop one of my eyeballs if I can pop one of yours. Standing bet.
Wrech.
Hack.... yack......
I am not going to let you fuck this up, pop.
Enjoy.
enjoy enjoy enjoy
///no music selection. Thinking about the satisfaction of strangling my father while my mother watches and makes ape faces
I am. And I am better. I remember doing his homework for him when I was farting around back home and searching for any sort of feeler to find a job before I took off again. I remember him hovering over my shoulder and him recognizing that I wasn't afraid of him anymore and he could stand behind me as long as he wanted to and I did not give a rip. I think, at that stand off, he realized he wasn't Hook anymore.
If he still thought he was Hook, he knew I was the clock. Do I still want to fight him? No. Do I still want to run him down with my truck? Yes. How dare you tell anyone they are not a person. Who gives you the authority? Who gave you the hook? You never told me about your father. The first I heard was second hand from people I thought you were close to. Burping gasoline puffs. I know you hear me. I know you fucking hear me. What is it going to take to get some fucking answers out of you, silver back? I am going gray and I refuse to repeat the fault line.
I will snuffle the low line. Give us the Hook. Give us the Hook! Give us the Hook! You trained me, you shit. You dog dog dog dog dog! I do not have to fight you now. I am not scared. I have tools. Tools for days. Allow me to take you to my shed. MY shed! Allow me to close the windows so the neighbors do not hear.
I know you know something of cutting up. Did you want a globe trotter? Is that why junior got his name. I almost want to adopt a child to spite you and name it after Andre, but not yours. Where the hell did Malcolm come from in this family to begin with. You never took the time to talk about it and I'm old enough to wonder about and you're lock jawed enough to never speak about it so ... I don't wish hell upon you.
Junior is just like you, yeah? Given the hook. Thinking about washing dishes in Brighton and trying to focus on the soap bubbles while you two argued and hearing your voice again saying "yeah he's listening" while I am looking at the bubbles and their popping and doing my best to twitch my ears as hard as I can so you know that I know I can fucking hear you and hoping you can understand that YES I am hearing everything you say. You fuck.
Yeah, you fucked up. Unfortunately, I am one of the results of your misstep. I would be happy to play roulette with you though. With that turn coat cow of a wife you brainwashed. Good job. Yep, I am firing on 98% of my cylinders. You do the math. She bailed. She bailed. Vicious. We talked about it. Call me crazy. We spoke about it. I did not want to fuck her, I wanted her to be happy and protect her. Fail. Good job, buddy.
WHY DID YOU CUT ME DOWN. I do not understand it. I never will. I cry and I hurt myself to try to make it right. I have and I do and I have and I will not stop until you die. If I could kill you, I would. ......................................... I want to taste your blood so badly. Take a Louisville to you. You might too. As much as I want to take the teeth out of you, I want you to see my teeth before I bite your eyeball out of your head.
I want to blow paint straight through your nostrils.
Get up, get down!
Normal. Hah!
Eventually a person get's tired of getting skull fucked. Tired of being leashed. What else is out there?
Malcolm junior is reaping all of the blessings. Red too. Little one too. I am getting scraps.
If I could get away with it.................................................end the dance. I hate being associated with you with a vigor you do not and never will understand!
Make a bet. You can pop one of my eyeballs if I can pop one of yours. Standing bet.
Wrech.
Hack.... yack......
I am not going to let you fuck this up, pop.
Enjoy.
enjoy enjoy enjoy
///no music selection. Thinking about the satisfaction of strangling my father while my mother watches and makes ape faces
7/23/15
That Instant
you realize the act of imagining touches emotion far and away more sweetly and delicious than the act of remembering imagining or forecasting a time to exercise imagination.
7/22/15
Dear (_____)
Dear exhaustion,
I meant to meet up with you later today, but sleepy stopped by this afternoon and we're still playing cards at the moment. I think he's spending the night. Don't wait up for me. Love you!
muah,
;P I'll tell you all about it tomorrow
I meant to meet up with you later today, but sleepy stopped by this afternoon and we're still playing cards at the moment. I think he's spending the night. Don't wait up for me. Love you!
muah,
;P I'll tell you all about it tomorrow
7/21/15
Maybe I'm Missing Something
Enough with the ridiculous headlights, please. Pretty please? Can someone please step in as a voice of reason and say something? Anything? Can we appeal to logic? How about safety? How about simple decency? The idea that hurting other people because "whatever, they can go to hell" is a not good thing.
Yes, we get it. They're very pretty when you're taking pictures of them, or sketching them in a design lab, or walking around them in your garage or someone else's garage or at a car show. Sparkly, shiny, shifting through the spectrum of visible light subtly or standing bold and stark and sudden, so alert and commanding or brilliant, smoldering, and devilish, double daring you to put the key in or press the engine on button. We understand that aspect. That bending and twisting and running of the finger's tips along that silk membrane between machine and animal, animal and man, man and near sentient machine. We understand and we are not asking to tamper with that experience or dull it or snatch it away from you, person driving the car with the tremendously intricate, unreasonably high powered headlights.
Remember when you could replace a headlight bulb yourself for $15? I still can. Is my car less attractive because it runs $15 headlamps? I don't care. I don't love my automobile any less because it doesn't have black bedded lenses that look like a unicorn sneezed a rainbow around the fringes of the beams.
Can we stop with the ultra bright, surface of the sun, "just like driving at noon", lamps? I'm sure you probably need to see six football fields ahead of you when you are blazing down the straightaway portions of LeMans at 220 miles per hour never, can we tone it down a little bit when the longest straight portion of highway in your city is maybe half a mile and the safest speed you can average on it without killing yourself or someone else in your suv is a brisk 80. Not to mention, inside the highway ringing that city, with stoplights, you're probably crushing it a blistering 30 miles per hour. Stop it already.
Every time that chassis hits a bump or a pothole or manhole cover or gentle dip in the road, the angle of that ultra bright, kaleidoscope changes for a split second and my rear view mirror turns into a camera's flash two feet away from my face. It's so pretty. It's so pretty. What could the reason possibly be? Is it just rich people wanting people to know that their car, their status symbol, is out on the road and people had better take notice. It's not the standard model either. The standard model has the LEDs with the white lighthouse grade bulbs. It's the S model so the white lighthouse grade bulbs have been replaced with omni directional plasma discharge tubes powered by nuclear cold fusion. Everyone will know what I drive is better than what they drive because they'll see my headlight's coming from beyond the curvature of the Earth.
Jesus, get over yourself. No one cares. What they will know is that whoever is driving the car behind them deserves to have their headlights caved in with a hatchet for every other motorists sake. I'm not against getting creative or embracing the art of lighting, crystals, lenses, and advancing the technology. I am against taking it way too far. All of the light is practically false security too. It only illuminates, but so far, and if you're a bad driver guess what? You're still going to screw up. You'll have an extra 500 feet though to make the same dumb decision.
Things are seriously getting out of hand out there.
Yes, we get it. They're very pretty when you're taking pictures of them, or sketching them in a design lab, or walking around them in your garage or someone else's garage or at a car show. Sparkly, shiny, shifting through the spectrum of visible light subtly or standing bold and stark and sudden, so alert and commanding or brilliant, smoldering, and devilish, double daring you to put the key in or press the engine on button. We understand that aspect. That bending and twisting and running of the finger's tips along that silk membrane between machine and animal, animal and man, man and near sentient machine. We understand and we are not asking to tamper with that experience or dull it or snatch it away from you, person driving the car with the tremendously intricate, unreasonably high powered headlights.
Remember when you could replace a headlight bulb yourself for $15? I still can. Is my car less attractive because it runs $15 headlamps? I don't care. I don't love my automobile any less because it doesn't have black bedded lenses that look like a unicorn sneezed a rainbow around the fringes of the beams.
Can we stop with the ultra bright, surface of the sun, "just like driving at noon", lamps? I'm sure you probably need to see six football fields ahead of you when you are blazing down the straightaway portions of LeMans at 220 miles per hour never, can we tone it down a little bit when the longest straight portion of highway in your city is maybe half a mile and the safest speed you can average on it without killing yourself or someone else in your suv is a brisk 80. Not to mention, inside the highway ringing that city, with stoplights, you're probably crushing it a blistering 30 miles per hour. Stop it already.
Every time that chassis hits a bump or a pothole or manhole cover or gentle dip in the road, the angle of that ultra bright, kaleidoscope changes for a split second and my rear view mirror turns into a camera's flash two feet away from my face. It's so pretty. It's so pretty. What could the reason possibly be? Is it just rich people wanting people to know that their car, their status symbol, is out on the road and people had better take notice. It's not the standard model either. The standard model has the LEDs with the white lighthouse grade bulbs. It's the S model so the white lighthouse grade bulbs have been replaced with omni directional plasma discharge tubes powered by nuclear cold fusion. Everyone will know what I drive is better than what they drive because they'll see my headlight's coming from beyond the curvature of the Earth.
Jesus, get over yourself. No one cares. What they will know is that whoever is driving the car behind them deserves to have their headlights caved in with a hatchet for every other motorists sake. I'm not against getting creative or embracing the art of lighting, crystals, lenses, and advancing the technology. I am against taking it way too far. All of the light is practically false security too. It only illuminates, but so far, and if you're a bad driver guess what? You're still going to screw up. You'll have an extra 500 feet though to make the same dumb decision.
Things are seriously getting out of hand out there.
7/11/15
Dear (_____)
Dear Cannabis,
You got me through my spine and discs healing in a way I could not have imagined because I cannot remember the last time my lower lumbars gave me trouble. I can with some effort, but I do not want to jinx it. I don't know if it was you or if it was time, but two years and change to the day, I remember how badly and how violently the pain stabbed and since then my mechanical workings have become an afterthought.
No big. I know you helped me through the days when it was raining knives. That is what matters. If the rest is cake, I support it and I'm only there because you made the worst days a little less worse.
Graciously yours,
Tin Man
You got me through my spine and discs healing in a way I could not have imagined because I cannot remember the last time my lower lumbars gave me trouble. I can with some effort, but I do not want to jinx it. I don't know if it was you or if it was time, but two years and change to the day, I remember how badly and how violently the pain stabbed and since then my mechanical workings have become an afterthought.
No big. I know you helped me through the days when it was raining knives. That is what matters. If the rest is cake, I support it and I'm only there because you made the worst days a little less worse.
Graciously yours,
Tin Man
Dear (_____)
Dear Girl,
Dear little girl in your tutu practicing your movements while a poodle and a chihuahua yipped at each other on the side of your porch in Millvale while your mother, maybe a guardian only, looked on clapping: you made my day, driving home from the landfill yesterday. You turned my entire outlook upside down and I thank you for it.
Sincerely,
Dreamer
Dear little girl in your tutu practicing your movements while a poodle and a chihuahua yipped at each other on the side of your porch in Millvale while your mother, maybe a guardian only, looked on clapping: you made my day, driving home from the landfill yesterday. You turned my entire outlook upside down and I thank you for it.
Sincerely,
Dreamer
7/10/15
Stay Positive, Opposite Day, Detours, and Paper
How funny would it be to wake up in your own car in the middle of the early morning after accidentally blowing your steering wheel airbag into your face the night before tinkering with the switches and wiring around the wheel?
The thought crossed my mind, walking home from the local store to buy smokes and chips. Almost as good as chips and ice cream. When I feel horrible, I prefer cigarettes because they make me feel a little less horrible without making me wish I felt an unsustainable joy derived from ice creams sweet and cooling goodness. If only anyone could always be that smooth, creamy, and soothing all the way down to the belly. The thought crossed my mind after walking away from my truck to go buy some comfit after I noticed my fuel gauge was malfunctioning and realizing the problem's solution was going to cost me at least $120 and 10 to 20 hours of labor at worst and 20 to 40 hours of labor, learning, trial and error, and no dollars at best.
I kept chuckling thinking about how angry I felt. I kept chuckling thinking about reaching under the seat for my hatchet, letting out a bloody war cry, and smashing the wheel to pieces. Only then, ditching the hatchet, pulling and tearing wires out of it with my bare hands until the airbag exploded and shoved one of my closed fistful of wires straight into my face and I basically ended up knocking myself out cold with a rocket powered fist to the dome. Then waking up the next day with a deployed airbag, swollen knuckles, one hell of a headache, and one hell of a fist shaped bruise between my eyes.
Part of the reason for the rage is that I finished fixing another small problem with a steep learning curve and dozens of hours of labor and learning rolled inside only days before. The truck is not falling apart around me, though it feels that way sometimes. The problems are routine problems and I wish I could take it in for routine maintenance instead of d.i.y. desperation weekends. The other part of the reason for the anger is that if I were paid more in line with my actual skills and level of higher learning, I could shrug, say "okay", and rent a car tomorrow while my truck sat in a shop for an afternoon.
Living near the bottom of the middle class is deceptive. Bottom of the middle class, top of the lower class. Living in the region can be deceptive if you have some imagination, some confidence, some helpful friends, and some ingenuity. I have a one bedroom apartment with a closet bath/shower and mini kitchen. If I take away all of the furniture a friend gave, all of the furniture I built, and all of the furniture I found on curbs or being given away by strangers, I have cinder blocks, two folding chairs, one of those university lobby lounge chairs, a sheet of particle board, and an end table. Remove every worldly possession, so to speak, and there'd be a truck parked outside, a few pots and pans and plates, a desktop and pair of monitors, a console, a found tv, a few books and magazines, some shoes and goodwill clothes and multipack tees, some mechanical gadgets, some home and auto repair tools, and a printer and phone.
Imagination allows me to see what can be and holds the hand of ingenuity to find ways to make it happen. Call it humility or call it living within your means or call it mining gold or a hobby, thrift stores are one of the keys to forgetting that you are part of the working poor. The cream of the lower class. Keeping good friendships is a huge part of the puzzle. Without them, my life easily fits inside a 10' by 10' cell with a hole in the ground to eliminate and a spigot somewhere to drink and bathe. Part of the anger stems from those parameters.
I have been heavily detoured. Charging along the roads as quickly as possible in an effort to get back on some kind of track while wasting as few years as possible is frightening. I ask myself what will happen if I miss a black on orange florescent sign letting me know my next turn is coming three turns from now and the sign at the third turn was never erected so commit this one to memory. First and final warning. The reason why it does not feel fair to me is because it is not fair.
I continue to consider the many branches not followed that have lead here, fighting for time to write. I began to believe my father was trying to teach me a lesson about his pain all along and I am finally beginning to understand it, but I will not be able to understand until I am 48 or 50 or whatever his age was when I stopped talking to him. Before that thought grew too large, I remembered he hasn't the subtlety or emotional imagination to allow him to pull that off. I can see where some of his resentment stemmed from. Losing all of the prime years of life and talent at the cutting edge of art, design, and martial arts bad-ass-ery to childcare. Who wouldn't be a lot angry all of the time. Though extremely dissimilar in their divination (did you see what I did there), the results are similar. Cut away opportunities, trim an effective gesture here, clip a nudge there, ....
... I don't know. I do not know why I never got the same support. It would not have taken much. Some days I am alright never knowing. Some days it all comes to a head staring at your broken fuel gauge and doing the right thing and getting the hell out of the car without slamming the door and spinning 180 degrees to put your fist through the window and slash your own tires. The world could've been miles from now.
I could be writing about my third year working as a librarian somewhere and moaning about coding database systems and dealing with angry patrons and making time for dates between writing short stories and working on my two part novel about warfare and keeping up to date on my space opera hopeful crown jewel I'm still searching out an editor for, however the third poetry anthology is going pretty great. I'm tearing out the kitchen in parts on my down time when I get tired of writing and it should be finished in another week or two.
Today felt like opposite day. Loading my truck up with bale after bale of carpet, a refridgerator door, water logged drywall, a cane and broken umbrella, armfuls of empty paint cans, a screen door, and three dozen other pieces of jetsam from the home I'm renovating's previous occupants, it was opposite day. What I was doing should be my hobby. I should be putting that sweat and blood and cuss into my own home, not someone else's. When I go home I should be thinking about what I am going to tear down and visit the hardware store to work on next. When I go home I should not be thinking about what I can write next that can be packed into the time it takes to shut my body down to hit the hammers and brushes and trash bags and saws again.
As much as I love working with my hands, I could find a way to work with my body in the face of an occupation that demanded I not.
"You're poor! You're poor! You're poor! You're poor! Do not be deceived; you're poor!"
Independent life is a horror show and funhouse of mirrors broken and whole. I am staying positive.
What brought me back to a semblance of balance is remembering that the day is still young. Independent life is 5 years old. Five. Five years ago you started stepping outside of your cell. A year or two later you walked down a hallway and into a cafeteria. A few months later you learned there was a yard and no time restrictions. A few months later you found a gate into another yard. It's getting larger and larger as long as you do not screw it all up and have your privileges revoked. All of the time you lost will be compounded by the time you spent finding a way back out.
No one pays you what you're worth unless you have the paper to create the market. Or the portfolio and charisma, in lieu of paper. Portfolio and charisma is an absolute "and" statement. The one and not the other turns into a luck base number system. I will never know my actual value. Maybe that is the worst of it? I will never know if I am being over paid or under paid, valued appropriately or not. The optimist inside, the petitioner, tells me that if and only if we suffer for as much time as we spent pursuing the degree, our penance will be met with paper if and only if we are gracious through our turbulent era. The eros inside whispers about penance through joyful degradation, The musician adds another kick drum, knocking over cymbal stands. The child snaps crayons in half so both hands can draw at once inside the same lines.
It is difficult not to fantasize about getting my degree in the mail, tearing it in half, driving to their house, and suffocating them to death in turn, each by half, with a wad of paper. That would be thoroughly satisfying.
What are you supposed to do when the toys you want to play with are above the grade you are licensed for? What are you supposed to do when what you are allowed to do you can do very well, but the ceiling is opaque and the sounds coming through it are not in a language you can or maybe will ever understand? Maybe I am paid exactly what I am worth. If I have reached my ceiling and given no indication that I am prepared for or understand in the slightest or am equipped for beyond that ceiling, I am paid exactly what I am worth.
That's frightening. Also true. Harrowing.
Sometimes I understand that I'm getting too fixated on true freedom. I get a taste of working something I can enjoy to support the writing habit and expect everything else to fall in line. There's a luck element to it, that I cannot unlock through work or optimism or faith or trust. That operates on its own time table. If I do win the lottery, I will take out full page ads in major cities for the hell of it, but only once.
Part of me continues to say it is not supposed to be this hard to make massive uncertainty and day to day, week to week, at best month to month living a thing of the past. My state is, however, that fragile. At the ripe old age of at least 1/3 dead the best I can do for myself is knowing I have at least a month to figure out a new lowline. Fear the high lines because you know a low line is around the corner... ....what to do when you are following low lines? High lines have to be engaged. My spider sense is not tingling. Shake the wrong tree and a warship mine may fall out of it, let alone a tank or soldier sized one. The other story of America. Every body wants to be a cat. If you have enough money you can do whatever you want to. Not that much money. I mean enough money to swap cars, or pick up and move, or add and subtract clothing, or change lighting, or paint colors, flip what you walk on, change shoes when you feel like it, add and subtract channels, modify whatever you want to when the moment strikes you, eat out, order drinks for other people, pay for other peoples gas, buy extra fresh fruit. It's nice.
I am still going to try to brew my own beer this summer. Do not give me that horseshit "God works in mysterious ways" because chance does too. The only thing better than chance is ingenuity, and the only thing more important and better than ingenuity is imagination.
I am trying to stay positive with some success. Frustration and rage are part of being us. Born here? Sure. From here? No. I've missed you. Don't lose touch. If you ever need to talk, do not forget my ear. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.I love you.Iluvu.Ilvu.Iu.U.I.
We'll get this thing sorted out. We have a lot of time ahead of us, like it or not, we do.
Do not quit.
You have the rest of your life to make that decision.
It is opposite day, okay?
It is not wasted time.
Opposite day.
Time becomes more valuable as it accumulates.
Okay. I am
with you. Agreeing to never throw hands up in frustration. Agreeing to ride it as long as there is still track in front. Agreeing to dance as long as there is a beat to dance to, be it from within or without. I am okay with you as long as your are
okay. With me.
///Aesop Rock - (Gun for the Whole Family) ~ i've missed you for a very long time. things got bad. things were getting bad. i had to remember that they weren't as bad as they'd been. we're working toward a utopia of coexistence. we're not there yet, but damn sure we're going to keep on trying while helping lay the ground works and maps and blue prints for the next iteration of our being.
/
//
///Alanis Morissette - (Thank You) ~ passive mobile adaptable armor.
The thought crossed my mind, walking home from the local store to buy smokes and chips. Almost as good as chips and ice cream. When I feel horrible, I prefer cigarettes because they make me feel a little less horrible without making me wish I felt an unsustainable joy derived from ice creams sweet and cooling goodness. If only anyone could always be that smooth, creamy, and soothing all the way down to the belly. The thought crossed my mind after walking away from my truck to go buy some comfit after I noticed my fuel gauge was malfunctioning and realizing the problem's solution was going to cost me at least $120 and 10 to 20 hours of labor at worst and 20 to 40 hours of labor, learning, trial and error, and no dollars at best.
I kept chuckling thinking about how angry I felt. I kept chuckling thinking about reaching under the seat for my hatchet, letting out a bloody war cry, and smashing the wheel to pieces. Only then, ditching the hatchet, pulling and tearing wires out of it with my bare hands until the airbag exploded and shoved one of my closed fistful of wires straight into my face and I basically ended up knocking myself out cold with a rocket powered fist to the dome. Then waking up the next day with a deployed airbag, swollen knuckles, one hell of a headache, and one hell of a fist shaped bruise between my eyes.
Part of the reason for the rage is that I finished fixing another small problem with a steep learning curve and dozens of hours of labor and learning rolled inside only days before. The truck is not falling apart around me, though it feels that way sometimes. The problems are routine problems and I wish I could take it in for routine maintenance instead of d.i.y. desperation weekends. The other part of the reason for the anger is that if I were paid more in line with my actual skills and level of higher learning, I could shrug, say "okay", and rent a car tomorrow while my truck sat in a shop for an afternoon.
Living near the bottom of the middle class is deceptive. Bottom of the middle class, top of the lower class. Living in the region can be deceptive if you have some imagination, some confidence, some helpful friends, and some ingenuity. I have a one bedroom apartment with a closet bath/shower and mini kitchen. If I take away all of the furniture a friend gave, all of the furniture I built, and all of the furniture I found on curbs or being given away by strangers, I have cinder blocks, two folding chairs, one of those university lobby lounge chairs, a sheet of particle board, and an end table. Remove every worldly possession, so to speak, and there'd be a truck parked outside, a few pots and pans and plates, a desktop and pair of monitors, a console, a found tv, a few books and magazines, some shoes and goodwill clothes and multipack tees, some mechanical gadgets, some home and auto repair tools, and a printer and phone.
Imagination allows me to see what can be and holds the hand of ingenuity to find ways to make it happen. Call it humility or call it living within your means or call it mining gold or a hobby, thrift stores are one of the keys to forgetting that you are part of the working poor. The cream of the lower class. Keeping good friendships is a huge part of the puzzle. Without them, my life easily fits inside a 10' by 10' cell with a hole in the ground to eliminate and a spigot somewhere to drink and bathe. Part of the anger stems from those parameters.
I have been heavily detoured. Charging along the roads as quickly as possible in an effort to get back on some kind of track while wasting as few years as possible is frightening. I ask myself what will happen if I miss a black on orange florescent sign letting me know my next turn is coming three turns from now and the sign at the third turn was never erected so commit this one to memory. First and final warning. The reason why it does not feel fair to me is because it is not fair.
I continue to consider the many branches not followed that have lead here, fighting for time to write. I began to believe my father was trying to teach me a lesson about his pain all along and I am finally beginning to understand it, but I will not be able to understand until I am 48 or 50 or whatever his age was when I stopped talking to him. Before that thought grew too large, I remembered he hasn't the subtlety or emotional imagination to allow him to pull that off. I can see where some of his resentment stemmed from. Losing all of the prime years of life and talent at the cutting edge of art, design, and martial arts bad-ass-ery to childcare. Who wouldn't be a lot angry all of the time. Though extremely dissimilar in their divination (did you see what I did there), the results are similar. Cut away opportunities, trim an effective gesture here, clip a nudge there, ....
... I don't know. I do not know why I never got the same support. It would not have taken much. Some days I am alright never knowing. Some days it all comes to a head staring at your broken fuel gauge and doing the right thing and getting the hell out of the car without slamming the door and spinning 180 degrees to put your fist through the window and slash your own tires. The world could've been miles from now.
I could be writing about my third year working as a librarian somewhere and moaning about coding database systems and dealing with angry patrons and making time for dates between writing short stories and working on my two part novel about warfare and keeping up to date on my space opera hopeful crown jewel I'm still searching out an editor for, however the third poetry anthology is going pretty great. I'm tearing out the kitchen in parts on my down time when I get tired of writing and it should be finished in another week or two.
Today felt like opposite day. Loading my truck up with bale after bale of carpet, a refridgerator door, water logged drywall, a cane and broken umbrella, armfuls of empty paint cans, a screen door, and three dozen other pieces of jetsam from the home I'm renovating's previous occupants, it was opposite day. What I was doing should be my hobby. I should be putting that sweat and blood and cuss into my own home, not someone else's. When I go home I should be thinking about what I am going to tear down and visit the hardware store to work on next. When I go home I should not be thinking about what I can write next that can be packed into the time it takes to shut my body down to hit the hammers and brushes and trash bags and saws again.
As much as I love working with my hands, I could find a way to work with my body in the face of an occupation that demanded I not.
"You're poor! You're poor! You're poor! You're poor! Do not be deceived; you're poor!"
Independent life is a horror show and funhouse of mirrors broken and whole. I am staying positive.
What brought me back to a semblance of balance is remembering that the day is still young. Independent life is 5 years old. Five. Five years ago you started stepping outside of your cell. A year or two later you walked down a hallway and into a cafeteria. A few months later you learned there was a yard and no time restrictions. A few months later you found a gate into another yard. It's getting larger and larger as long as you do not screw it all up and have your privileges revoked. All of the time you lost will be compounded by the time you spent finding a way back out.
No one pays you what you're worth unless you have the paper to create the market. Or the portfolio and charisma, in lieu of paper. Portfolio and charisma is an absolute "and" statement. The one and not the other turns into a luck base number system. I will never know my actual value. Maybe that is the worst of it? I will never know if I am being over paid or under paid, valued appropriately or not. The optimist inside, the petitioner, tells me that if and only if we suffer for as much time as we spent pursuing the degree, our penance will be met with paper if and only if we are gracious through our turbulent era. The eros inside whispers about penance through joyful degradation, The musician adds another kick drum, knocking over cymbal stands. The child snaps crayons in half so both hands can draw at once inside the same lines.
It is difficult not to fantasize about getting my degree in the mail, tearing it in half, driving to their house, and suffocating them to death in turn, each by half, with a wad of paper. That would be thoroughly satisfying.
What are you supposed to do when the toys you want to play with are above the grade you are licensed for? What are you supposed to do when what you are allowed to do you can do very well, but the ceiling is opaque and the sounds coming through it are not in a language you can or maybe will ever understand? Maybe I am paid exactly what I am worth. If I have reached my ceiling and given no indication that I am prepared for or understand in the slightest or am equipped for beyond that ceiling, I am paid exactly what I am worth.
That's frightening. Also true. Harrowing.
Sometimes I understand that I'm getting too fixated on true freedom. I get a taste of working something I can enjoy to support the writing habit and expect everything else to fall in line. There's a luck element to it, that I cannot unlock through work or optimism or faith or trust. That operates on its own time table. If I do win the lottery, I will take out full page ads in major cities for the hell of it, but only once.
Part of me continues to say it is not supposed to be this hard to make massive uncertainty and day to day, week to week, at best month to month living a thing of the past. My state is, however, that fragile. At the ripe old age of at least 1/3 dead the best I can do for myself is knowing I have at least a month to figure out a new lowline. Fear the high lines because you know a low line is around the corner... ....what to do when you are following low lines? High lines have to be engaged. My spider sense is not tingling. Shake the wrong tree and a warship mine may fall out of it, let alone a tank or soldier sized one. The other story of America. Every body wants to be a cat. If you have enough money you can do whatever you want to. Not that much money. I mean enough money to swap cars, or pick up and move, or add and subtract clothing, or change lighting, or paint colors, flip what you walk on, change shoes when you feel like it, add and subtract channels, modify whatever you want to when the moment strikes you, eat out, order drinks for other people, pay for other peoples gas, buy extra fresh fruit. It's nice.
I am still going to try to brew my own beer this summer. Do not give me that horseshit "God works in mysterious ways" because chance does too. The only thing better than chance is ingenuity, and the only thing more important and better than ingenuity is imagination.
I am trying to stay positive with some success. Frustration and rage are part of being us. Born here? Sure. From here? No. I've missed you. Don't lose touch. If you ever need to talk, do not forget my ear. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.I love you.Iluvu.Ilvu.Iu.U.I.
We'll get this thing sorted out. We have a lot of time ahead of us, like it or not, we do.
Do not quit.
You have the rest of your life to make that decision.
It is opposite day, okay?
It is not wasted time.
Opposite day.
Time becomes more valuable as it accumulates.
Okay. I am
with you. Agreeing to never throw hands up in frustration. Agreeing to ride it as long as there is still track in front. Agreeing to dance as long as there is a beat to dance to, be it from within or without. I am okay with you as long as your are
okay. With me.
///Aesop Rock - (Gun for the Whole Family) ~ i've missed you for a very long time. things got bad. things were getting bad. i had to remember that they weren't as bad as they'd been. we're working toward a utopia of coexistence. we're not there yet, but damn sure we're going to keep on trying while helping lay the ground works and maps and blue prints for the next iteration of our being.
/
//
///Alanis Morissette - (Thank You) ~ passive mobile adaptable armor.
7/6/15
That Instant
you realize you scored exactly as many points as the current date down to the hours and minutes and there's no one around to see it.
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