That Instant

you see who they're still in touch with after you had a running fight for three months about them literally sexting them and staying out after hours way too late and magically happening to run into each other and finding out they're a known rapist and telling her and still they're just firing away ... you get the "ewwwwwwww gross, what the fuck?!?!?" feeling of surprise instead of a an "oh yeah, makes sense, why am I shocked at all that her behavior hasn't changed" feeling.

On The Revocation Of Passports

I understand times do change.  I understand that I do exist in a space that is not attuned to the normal speeds and distances of the governing dark star at the center of the Milky Way.  I understand the difficulties this presents, trickling down to our branch, our neighborhood, our star, our system, our section, our planet, our hemisphere, our continent, our nation, our state, our city, our block, our ship inside that soup (the governance bubble reaching out only that far to offer resistance).

I understand times do change around us and the space in which we exist has a fixed passport system.  Once granted entry into the time lapsed/corrupted/flexed/shifted bubble speeding along with the rest of the system around it, the passport will not be revoked.  Granted access, you can come and go as you please.  There are rules.  Those rules can be tailored to you.  I will never revoke your passport out of spite.  I will never revoke your passport out of anger.  I will never revoke your passport because your times have changed.  I will never revoke your passport because my time has changed.  Once gifted, your passport is set for as long as you live and nontransferable.

We don't give them out like Halloween candy.

If you ever need to borrow a cup of sugar.

If you ever need a box of nails or a snowblower.

If you ever need a lift somewhere.

If I can help, I will.  Just ring before you cross the boundary into controlled space and attempt to buzz the flight deck.  The weapons net surrounding the ship is live.  Don't be converted to light and dust.




///Nightmares On Wax - "Passion"

Do not forget there are rules.  Break them enough times and the immune system that keeps the bubble afloat in the interstellar sea will have some very pointed questions for you.

I Know It's Going To Be A Rough Day and That's Okay

I've been trying to arrest my emotions for two days and here we are at day three.  I can't allow life to seize up and die.  This morning, poking the tines of my work into the middle of a sunny side up egg on a piece of medium tough toast with a shake of a salt and a dollop of syrup beside it, I am afraid.  I used to call Annie, I used to call Alexis, I used to call my psychiatrist, my therapist, myself, when fear gripped me.  I haven't been able to eat willingly so I am preparing to chop up an egg into a little toast and see where it goes.  Maybe we will cut up a clementine into quarters and have that in lieu of juice.

My emotions are still all over the place.  Stitched together with some will and a little self motivational glue and a little music.  I know I am going to cry today and I won't be able to stop it, but I will make myself go to work as best I can.  There will be a lot of difficult exchanges of conversations today.  "You look awful."  "Are you okay?"  I know and no.  Walking through hardware stores and to the bank and to the grocery to buy more food to force myself to eat.  I cannot allow myself to curl up and die.  I cannot allow myself to see people.  I have to turn everything inward to generate enough power to keep my sun from collapsing into a singularity.

Hysterical laughter tearing through my lungs and tears staining the floor between my boots while I stand in lines.  Eyes red and sunken and lips cracked from grinning and grimacing.  Doubling over in hacking coughs and dry heaves that will not stop.  Questioning, screaming, begging the snowy sky why there is no magic pill, but there is a magic bullet.  It's not going to be easy.   Please don't talk to me.  I know I am a mess and nothing will help more than time alone.  Thank you for understanding.




///Philip Selway - "Coming Up For Air"

That Instant

the question "what's he got that I don't have" trails off mid bloom into: "what's he got that I do-" and its hang is so withering in its hot brilliance you have to check to make sure your eyebrows aren't singed stubble.

Hanging Up the Suit

It's an unfortunate, necessary, and beautiful time.  The time is the one to hang up the space suit.  The time to hang orbits closer than circumstance demands.  It's okay.  It's just Spring.  We'll get through it and to the dead and live wires of Summer.  It will be pleasant.

People will travel far and wide and countries will entertain them and landscapes you may never see will splatter across pages and it will be pleasant because they went there for themselves, but they cared enough to go there for you too and that's a neat thing.

Don't say proxy.  It isn't.  Don't get down on yourself for traveling that way though.  There is no shame in approximations.  Never forget that.  You'll have your chance for wanderlust, be it given or taken.  Wait, but in the middle times allow yourself to enjoy.

Laugh as often as possible.  Regardless of what you perceive, it is important.  Do not hesitate.  Explain later.  You'll thank me some day.  Or never.  Regardless, don't waste your time taking things too seriously.  Don't be a naysayer.  Be a slight naysayer.  Half of what is suggested is worth pursuing logically.  Half of that is worth pursuing purely rationally.  Half of that is worth pursuit in dreams and half of that is worth pursuing at the edges of plausible.  Half of that is worth pursuing in extrema and half of that is worth pursuing light out.  What's left is worth an idle thought, and half of that is worth creating in dreamland.

Dreamland is another story.  100% of dreamland is worth dreamland's pursuits, but what manifests inside dreamland,trickled down from perception is worth all dreamland can give.

I guess part of what I'm finding hard to believe is that I am able to be loved.  I am able to love, but I am not familiar with being able to be loved and am distanced enough from the lack of rationale to understand that there may be no actual actionable item or series of actions or stockade behind the signal.  No response found. None adequate to the task.

Formed structures of understanding maybe.  On top of that is the implied threat of compromising integrity.  How far am I, are we, supposed to go into the contract without a full understanding of implied risks?  I dunno.  I have no idea.  Can I be faulted for extreme reluctance, knowing possible outcomes?  It's not like jumping out of a window or spitting into the wind or pissing in an alleyway between two homes I have no part of.  Those variables are known.

It's tremendously difficult to hang up the suit.  I could've watched the last real snow fall for days instead of hours.  It ended.  So many questions.  So many tirades.  So much unrealized fuel and no where to burn it safely.

Are you really happy?

"Happier than I've ever been."

God fucking damnit, just tell me straight.

I still have the kill list (the capable list) for when I've gone as far as I can and I know that I can go no farther, freedom wise.  I look forward to its execution.  I look forward to my own progress too.  As far as it can be taken too.  I am sure, though not limitless, that's foolish, it is farther than I know now.



///Unkle - "The Answer"   days without headache.  I am trying very hard to make up and down of junk experience and important existence and meaningful relationships rendered dead outside of my hands for reasons I don't fucking know and do know and all the time all I really want is to leap from the tallest cliff I could find myself on some run and live to tell you about what it was like to hit the ground and survive.  We're hanging up the space suit for a while.  Not happy about it.  At all.

A Definition for Addiction

Searching for a definition of addiction, I came to an impasse.

If you think about it every day, are you addicted?

If you think about it sometimes, maybe once a week, are you addicted?

If you run into your dealer and have an exceptionally awkward conversation, are you addicted?

Does it really matter what it is that you're talking about?

If you run into the son of a bitch that sold you crack at the dollar store are you less for not having talked to him while you were buying cereal?

I don't know what the rules are.   I don't pretend to.
Sometimes, however, I do wonder though.  It's not a matter of being clean or dirty or anything along those lines.  It's just a matter of defining what is.

Are you addicted to television?  Are you addicted to the thrill of the mainline, no matter what is?   The surprise of what you get versus what you paid for?   Are you addicted to the cliffhanger of a t.v. show?  Are you addicted to crossing words with people?  Are you addicted to waking up?  Are you addicted to waking up fuzzy?  Are you addicted to waking up next to another body?  Are you addicted to waking up to a body, live or not?

I dunno.  Spending a few days thinking about addiction and definition and words, and most importantly, trying not to try to mimic voice sounds from other people while they're in earshot.  that's all.  a life without definition is no life at all, right?  said a wise someone to a soon to be wise soandso.  Right?


///Ellie Goulding - "Only You"   This one goes out to you McCourghty.  I miss you.  I hope you're not dead. Haven't seen you around in a long ass time, but whatever.  For what it's worth, you were a project to find and a handful to corral and I had an easier time keeping a glass of water in my hand sans glass than it was to keep track of you.  I feel awful cuz I still can't spell your last name right.  Anyway.  Miss you, bro.  Thanks for everything.

The Year End Look (part two)

Two thousand twelve was a banger.  A lot of truly excellent things happened.  Some truly awful things happened.  Mistakes were made and successes enjoyed.  I thought after the debacle of 2010 I would not be surprised by whatever could come next and 2011 actually ended up being fairly swell.  2012 was jam packed with more change than I could see coming.  I'm pretty sure I didn't write any fiction in 2012.  I don't know why.  2012 was a war with the clock.  I think that's why.  I did sort of rediscover a pair of old friendships that I thought were pretty much blown to flaming kingdom come and that was nice.  My memory fails me pretty regularly.  Too many blows to the head (chemical and otherwise).  Speaking of chemicals, I still haven't gone to get help.  I don't know that I ever will.  I don't know that I'll ever be able to on my own.

I'm trying to think of what the overarching lesson of 2012 was.  Nothing particular comes up.  2012 was very much a blur.  I became a car owner.  That's nice.  I also became quite broke keeping that car on the road and functioning.  I became a paper towel owner.  That was pretty huge.  Do you know how hard it is to justify paper towels?  Pretty damn hard.  Mostly I was using my dirty laundry to clean up floor spills.  Dish rags to clean up counter top spills.  Worked perfectly, really.  It's not like I was going to wipe up spilled floor milk and then put the shirt right back on.  I also became a soap and toilet paper stockpiler.  I used to buy it in four packs and then string it out as far as it would go and then find alternatives already in my apartment when they ran out.  That's not what grown ups do.  I got car insurance for the first time.  My car is better insured than I am now.  I think I did that one wrong.

You know what?  I've got it.  Twenty twelve was about taking steps toward being an adult.  Meshing with other adults.  Not that I succeeded with the meshing at all.  I tried to pay for cat litter with sex. That didn't work out too well.  Especially when I found out there was no cat litter to begin with.  I have to stop being so easily convinced in twenty thirteen.  I am on the tail end of my twenty seventh iteration.  Can't make rookie mistakes like that or I'll end up smoking bath salts and living in the woods.  Which doesn't sound particularly bad on the surface, but try finding a hot shower off of an interstate and you'll end up with a hobo pissing on your back while you sing Disney anthems in the pre dawn light of another Thursday, wondering if the pair of pants you named after your dead dog will ever find their way back to your cardboard shanty town.  That's what 2012 was.  A lot of learning how to do grown up things.

Not just that.  My literary voice changed so much through 2012.  My whimsical spirit did not die well and I think I want to make the effort to rediscover it.  So much of my life became brutally concrete.  There was no time to write down extensive dream logs and what explorations I could do and enjoy across the dream bridge were lost.  There was a massive task lock.  Huge gridlock between where I was and where I was going mentally that suffocated and snuffed out so much of what I wanted to achieve.  Obviously, everyone wants to be loved.  On some level.  A lot of that need was torn out of me.  It's still there, latent and active by turns and expressed and expressible and not in different forms.

I had a final falling out with my birth parents.  Good riddance.  Things were going quite well until they demanded a response and I gave them the one I'd been holding back for years (which was a fairly simple death threat).  Which spiraled out of control and had to be reigned back in to an even simpler "Hi, you've hurt me for the last time and I'm not going to give you the opportunity to ever hurt me again."  Which went over slightly better.  So I do have that peace of mind to look forward to.  The emails have stopped and that's what I wanted.  BKB (bitches know better) than to ever try to contact me again.  Some things can be forgiven.  Some things can only be atoned for.  Some things can only be paid for, and the checks they wrote on my skin in bruises and welts and blood and on my mind in so many lines of unforgettable screams and shouts can only be paid for.  It was good though.  A link so thoroughly destroyed that I will never have to worry about it threading itself around my neck again.

I did find love again, briefly, in twenty twelve.  Online.  I also found that most of the people in BDSM chat rooms are full of themselves and fake.  But I don't even have to go to any other online dating sites to know that it's probably not unique to my bag.  Back to love and friendships.  I'm fairly certain I may have lost a friend I really wanted to keep, but who knows, maybe it'll come back around in thirteen.  2012 saw a pretty severe drop in production in general.  Adult problems.  Remember that three banger I put out of its misery early last year?  That came back to haunt me when one of them got a job at a store I used to frequent (they had good prices, can't argue with that).  Well, that cut my neighborhood in half.  Can't go to that side of town anymore without looking over my shoulder, or occasionally ducking down in my car at red lights.  Like I said, mistakes were made.

My only new years resolution this year is to not get concussed.  I think that might be aiming too high.  Too many bar fights happened last year.  Between the life drama and tracking myself down rage blew off me like sunspot flares.  Yes, you can punch anything with a face, but can and should are two very different things.  I'm not saying I'm going to be a saint, but I am saying the world is only so big and eventually someone is going to recognize you when you least expect it and remember that thing you did the weekend before to one of their friends and they'll even the score and then it's all bad news bears from there.

Style wise, I was lost as 2012 tailed out.  Spun out.  Ate the guardrail and burned it's way to the bottom of a ravine.  Shifting identity.  Events and exchanges, human exchanges external to my brain pan, brought up so many questions I hope to answer to myself in the coming year.  The identity I believed I had was drastically revised.  Am I still a writer?  Am I a poet?  Am I a songstress?  Maybe just a bard?  I don't know.  I've given up on trying to calculate how many hours I've gone in and what mastery means.  Mastery means nothing.  Exposure means nothing.  The new foundation is framed quite simply as passion.  I have a passion for words on paper.  Whatever that makes me to you, I'm down.  To me, I'm a kid with a pen.  That's all.  Calling yourself a writer or not, calling someone else by the same, is like having embossed ink on a business card.  Doesn't mean a damn thing beyond image.  Do I still want a house in the middle of nowhere to invite people to that I might cut them up, eat the good parts, and burn the rest of their remains?  Yeah.  That's kind of the ultimate goal.  That and having a place to write that I only have to pay taxes on.  That'll work.  A wonderful desert compound.  Somewhere near the border.

Twenty twelve taught me that I'm nowhere close to where a lot of my peers are fiscally, mentally, and emotionally.  My concerns are still fringe.  My furniture still sparse.  My needs are still fairly small and my dreams equal and as difficult to access.   I always thought I'd die in Pittsburgh, but maybe that's not good enough.  Last year made me question my capabilities, but not in the way some people down grade themselves.  I'm not a smart cookie.  I'm not brilliant.  I'm not particularly resourceful.  I can, however, create to no end, my only limitation being the cards I have to play with..

It was a strange year.  There were many tears in 2012.  Some earned, many not.  Many involuntary and inappropriate to the subject.  That's not going to change.  I'm crying right now typing this and it's silly.  My weight keeps fluctuating wildly between 155 and 185.  Every month.  It makes no sense.

Gather.  Fads go out of style.  I've had a few of my own.  I realized through the year that they were constructs to help me express concepts that come to me and help me live from week to week and month to month, but also help me relate.  Junior psychologist over here.  There was some real damage in 2012 and I don't know that 2013 will be that much better, but I like to believe it will be.  Maybe we'll get back on the pills this year.  Just to see.  Just to see and stop talking about talking about doing it.  Twelve was also a year of addictions.  I don't know how to fix that.  They were all, largely, necessary.  But at least I know the side effects will or won't do what they do.  Maybe that's the big thing standing guard these days.  This turned pretty dark in a flash.  I used to think I would be a great candidate for surviving the zombie apocalypse, and then I realized I would probably risk everything for a pack of smokes and dozen cans of spray paint.  Unless I have my desert compound by then (I'll pass the time writing poetry and taking head shot breaks with a .50 cal and whiskey on the rocks).

The major issue I want to resolve this year, given last year, is my writing.  Let's do better.  Let's be better for us.  Shooting for late forties.  I want to at least make it to being a weird uncle.

What did 2012 teach me?  What was the takeaway?  Christmas lights are awesome.  People can't be programmed.  My morals and principles don't translate by default and no one else's do either.  God is still a work of fiction.  I am still figuring myself out and trying not to implode.  At least not completely.  Still so far away, only because I have to be.  I am my own best company and my own worst friend.  The things I don't own are things I should not have yet.  The relationships I don't have are relationships I'm not and may never be ready for.  The spaces I occupy, I am grateful for and will continue to be.  The spaces I do not are spaces I have given back to the ones who belong there and will use beyond my ability to and that's okay.  Twenty twelve was strange.  Twenty thirteen is a big old bag of TBD, but I wish it was a big old bag of LSD.  You can't go through life asleep, but a boy can dream.


///TRACK NOT FOUND - year end playlist up next
defining moments of a finest hour?  yeah, something like that.

Stand Up Act 7 (the sex chapter part deux)

Stand Up Act 6

I'll start this off by saying sometimes you just have to not listen to yourself. In fact there are a lot of times you have to not listen to yourself. It's probably the one thing that stands out the most, if there is such a thing, that tells you that you do in fact live in a society with rules and that those rules keep things civilized and that the reason this is called a civilized society is because these rules are in place to keep you from killing people and that you are not as civilized as you want to be, but not because you could, as Dov put it, kill someone if they were close to the couch, because you could on most days, but that these rules are in place to keep you in your place and let a very small fraction of the population do whatever the hell they want. And so that you can't off people that serve an essential function without repercussions. American Idol would not exist in a society without well thought out murder rules. You have to remind yourself that you can't kill everybody. Don't listen to yourself.

At most you get one. If you're crafty you get several dozen. If your religious you get several thousand. Civilization is nice though. You can go to the corner store and buy Wise potato chips. You get internet access and a toilet that flushes and a shower that can put out two kinds of water. Two kinds! Which is always good, because life is hard for most people and the stink of work definitely needs to be washed off on a regular basis or everyone will know just how hard everyone else is working. But you get one, and you have to spend it wisely. So don't waste it on a union rep.

I went to my union rep and asked about health benefits. A natural course of action. I haven't had health insurance since 2007. Or was it '06. I can't remember. When you're in college you go to the hospital only when going to the on campus nurse yields the kind of results where you are pretty sure you've been shitting blood and their best answer is not even a note that will excuse you from missing class, but is instead a baggie with a Popsicle stick and a list of instructions for getting your poo on it, as though you don't know that shitting black is probably a bad thing and that pain in your intestines that feels like pac man driving around on razor blade tipped twenty twos inside you is something you would totally fake to postpone turning in a paper you already finished. But anyway, my job is killing me, and I've gotten to a point where I feel entitled enough to ask that I not have to pay for the repairs, so I don't feel like my body is coming apart every morning, because I've been told several times by various upper management folk that I am a "good worker".

"Good" meaning malleable, I think. Easy to force. At any rate, I quit that job. Partially because I realized that I didn't need that job to be able to buy deluxe toilet paper. It was an insurance policy for a different time. And after I quit I went out and bought toilet paper that's like four sheets thick and still fits on the standard toilet paper roll bar. If that's not the joy of science I don't know what is. I mean, you're telling me that this thing has twice as many individual squares with four times the thickness and that engineers spent years finding ways to make every square centimeter of it feel like wiping my ass with a frostingless cupcake? You're telling me that every single time I have to use the toilet for an extended, and embarrassingly so, period of time, the upside is I get to wipe my ass with a slice of three layer wedding cake? Hell yes.

Everyone should get to enjoy that at some point in their life. "For just a few cents more, every child in the Congo can enjoy the runs in a way they never knew possible." Not that extreme though. I guess that's how you know you're kind of poor. When toilet paper and drinking too much milk because you're not getting enough protein through solid foods turns you way the fuck on and you're main thought throughout the day is "I am going to shit so good tonight, you have no idea." But that's beside the point. The simple pleasures in life should not be overlooked. Neither should the "everybody gets one" rule. Even with the everybody gets one rule, there's some flexibility. But anyway, let's get to the sex.

There should be another rule. Besides everyone getting to wipe their butts with cupcakes, and getting to off exactly one (sometimes more) people. There is another. That rule is this: if you are not at all athletic you are not allowed to propose threesomes. Ever. I'm just saying, three people engaging in sex at once is a difficult proposition to wrap a head around, mentally. It's a pretty huge burden. Especially when the three people already get along decently well to begin with and just like hanging out. When you throw the three banger on the table it's like placing a stack of unbanded 100 dollar bills on a table with a bunch of drunks and waiting to see who will move first.

Is someone going to try and sneeze and blow it off the coffee table and offer to pick the bills up and pocket a few. Is someone going to place their beer a little off and spill it and rush to be the first to clean it up. Is someone going to spill their beer and everyone just watch the liquid spread. Who's going to be the first to touch it? The answer is me. I am going to grab that stack, hold it up to my nose, and fan the bills, because it smells so damn good, but I'll put it back down, sans Criss Angel magic tricks. Because I don't have time for nonsense and staging and camera work. For instance, I know this trick called "is this your wallet" and in this trick you have to guess what I'm holding behind my back. If you guessed one standard red clay brick, you are correct. The illusion is complete when I come see you in the hospital two days later and ask you "is this your wallet?"

But that should be a rule. Have you ever tried having a three wide NASCAR race with cars that can't keep up? It's frustrating as hell. It's like trying to cross the street when you're six years old, on your way to school, and the crossing guard keeps shoving you back onto the sidewalk, saying "stop right there. no wait. not yet. hold on. Just sit still for a minute" and half of the hour is waiting for them to get back into the state of the moment and green light you while you do suicide sprints across the two feet of concrete before the black asphalt. It's insane. If you can't have effective sex with one person, you are not allowed to talk to a second party period. Because, believe it or not, masturbating on your knees on someone's coffee table while everyone else watches, gets old. Pretty quick.

It's like taking children out of remedial mathematics and believing they can somehow do differential equations. It's just not going to happen. What do you mean you need a smoke break? Are you insane? We're ten minutes in to this and you need a breather... to be able to breathe less effectively? What kind of sense does that even make? And then you're standing in the middle of the room with one person nodding off from too much alcohol and the other dry as a sandbox, but trying to fake their way through it like a job interview, so you wipe your spooge on their collection of tv remotes and pack up shop and leave expecting to be done with it and you go to bed and the first thing you wake up to is a text message asking what you're up to at 8 fucking A.M. when you just left their place at 5, didn't get home till 5:15 and didn't fall asleep til 7:30 A.M. because you had to yank it all over again except this time everything went the way it was supposed to the first time you schemed it up when they first asked you.

If you are not athletic enough to entertain one person you are not allowed, at all, at anytime, under any circumstances, to complicate, what is otherwise a healthy relationship by Rocco Siffredi's standards on a reserved day when he's not feeling it or otherwise coked out of his mind, a healthy friendship between persons. Let's face it, it's easier to hang out with people that meet your criteria of people you don't mind being seen with without people asking questions to the tune of "wow he/she must have a great personality because they're ugly as hell... I wonder what keeps them together", than it is to hang out with ugly folk with good hearts. The bonus being they're attractive and have good hearts to boot. If you physically can't keep up, you keep your Goddamn fantasizing mouth shut. Period. It's not that hard. Nothing worse than an orgy of one. Well, there are some things worse, but the list is thin.

Alls I'm saying is, there have to be rules. The rules that are in place are there for a reason and there need to be more rules to cover other basics. If you are grossly overweight, you do not get to propose anything. If you are not grossly overweight, but have exceedingly poor musculature you do not get to propose anything, because keeping yourself happy is sometimes a chore, and the last thing anyone needs is to have their hands full trying to do the jobs of two other bodies and yourself at the same time. It's like going out with friends and everyone says: yeah lets get the giant nacho boat. The truth of the matter being that the friends just want to watch you eat it. How is that fun, at all? Spoiler alert, it isn't.

Goddamn, people are retarded. But rules are important. You can't kill idiots. At least not all of them. Apparently you can't fuck 'em either. Life lessons. Just trying to pass on the knowledge with a smile. A bitter smile? Sure, why not. They both look the same if your toasted.

Strange Ways

I'm sorry I've been away. Life has been strange in many ways. Not really strange as much as just strange in the ways I've come to understand normal. Sea change and all of that. One thing that has been occupying a lot of my time is meeting a couple of people that see me as close to eye to eye as I have ever known any one person to see me. Which has been exciting and ridiculously time consuming. Hard to talk about. Because threesomes aren't exactly normal. Let alone threesomes cemented by violence. Let alone threesomes that are probably on their last legs.

I enjoy belonging to people. That's no secret. I like to know that someone is holding my leash, and I had to revoke that privilege from one member of the threesome so now it's a twosome with occasional benefits for the odd man out. What are you going to do? I mean, I don't particularly enjoy fucking her, but I do enjoy the opportunity to be close to her psychologically so it's like doing dirty work to get the golden egg of her brain and personality because I'm pretty sure she likes fucking me more than what I have to say so it's a perfect fit in terms of what I want and what she wants and the odd piece out is the guy who refuses to kiss me, but wants my dick and nothing else, hence the revocation of leash privileges because if you want to fuck, you better be up for everything that comes with in my book, and I damn near revoked her privileges because she insisted on wearing socks at all times and that's just... ...what?! Seriously? Who does that?

And then there was the conversation where they both referred to me repeatedly as their toy, which is fine. I can accept and appreciate that role, but to then assert that I was worthless without sex, that was the line they crossed and things got violent, but have since settled down. Things and ways were explained to me in the simple terms I understand best and then stabilized into something enjoyable again. We saw fairly close to on the level. Everything since has been delicious. And time consuming. Time oft reserved for writing has been burned in sexual play which is not terrible, but not great either. Lost time in the run up to play and time lost in the run down from play, let alone the play time itself. I dunno. Fucking older people definitely presents problems and issues I never thought about, or even had to think about, before now. It is incredible the difference between older men and older women. Fascinating. It grows frightening sometimes, the potential for breaking their bodies with my own carelessness. At the same time it is deliriously appealing. Being the most capable thing they will likely ever know before they die. Being their first and probably last. I think I love that more than the sex itself. The making of a name. And they are just so adorable together. That's part of it too. The basking in dual praise. The lack of rejection. The fact that they have seen so many people that they can recognize you from one hundred yards out and see right through you and there's nothing to hide because they've seen it all.

I know it's not going to last because he won't fuck unless he's drunk and she won't take her socks off ever and that's just weird and he won't kiss me ever no matter how drunk he gets and she doesn't have a dick and his dick is too small to be anything more than an idle coffee table curiosity and her youngest kid is older than me and she insists that she is the only one allowed to fuck his ass, but until we break up I think this is the best thing to happen to me in a long time. But I also think the strangeness of it is what has been keeping me from talking about it and progressing. Or maybe understanding what kind of flash in the pan it is.

It's been zero to sixty in 2.5 seconds for me. Unbelievable speed. Fuck warp 9, this whole relationship has been warp 12. Engine room ablaze the whole way. More give and take than I've been privy too for better than two years. And yes, I have no idea how to deal with it or any idea of where it's going beyond failure. To top it off I met his daughter and apparently she wants me too. And I don't want sex nearly as much as I want to be useful and used. I play into that more often than I should. It makes me feel like a sociopath, which I don't like. I just enjoy making people feel good. It's a badge of honor. I entertain whatever it is you want to entertain because your happiness and bliss is a kiss upon my heart.

So I want to fuck her. Not because I enjoy women. Not even close. I have been able to love one woman my entire short life. And that is my ex. The rest aren't jetsam, they're just friends at best and confidants when closer. It's just a very odd situation. A very very odd and slowly unraveling situation between a boy a woman and a man who hurts her who wants to use the boy. Sounds like family.

I've been telling people I'm half Scott and half Irish, alternately, because I'm still not sure which. I'm pretty sure it's not half. I'm pretty sure it's a lot less than half. Probably less than quarter. It's fun to be exotic. It's more fun to know exactly where you're from. I always wish to have that, more than anything else. Not just for cheering purposes during the World Cup, but also for tattoo ideas. And also because everyone talks about their extended families on a first name basis and I have never been able to do that. That would be nice. The knowing. The belonging. Life has been strange. The dreams have been stranger and more real than anything else. I slept for 18 hours. It was unbelievably good to do so. I don't know when I'll be able to be awake for more than 13 and not feel like killing myself. An odd pile of ideas. Goodbye for now. Levity to come.


/// The Cardigans - "Heartbreaker" ...no, not again...

Stand Up Act 4

Act 3

So speaking of sex, I am, like the fraction of people on the face of the Earth that is left when you subtract the fraction of people having sex and the people required for them to be having sex with and the people having sex with inanimate objects and the people having sex with animated objects that are not human, not having any. Not in the sense of Madea, prototypical, big body, big attitude, possibly half black half hispanic chick who is for some reason also part Italian and who speaks just enough Spanish to half mast men between the ages of 15 and 15 at heart "ain't havin that", but more like it's something that just doesn't happen to me. Which is of course not at all my fault.

It's out there. If I could walk around with my fly down all day and not get immediately arrested and or tackled by angry citizens and patriots of so called decency, I probably would. When I was a kid, I've been told I once spent a day naked. Just a-walkin around doin my thing sans robes. I don't remember that at all, but I wish I could because it sounds like the most awesome summer day imaginable. Nothing but deluxe jumbo sidewalk chalk, empty chalk boards, water guns, and G.I. Joes. Or maybe that was just a dream. I may very well have dreamt that.

Not to stray too far, but I just remembered I kissed someone in a dream I had the other night. That's kind of fucked up. Who the hell was it that I kissed? What if they show up in another dream and they're pissed off because I don't remember them from the first one and they try to stab me to death with a snapped off tea cup handle, because we were for some reason having tea on top of an 18 wheeler barreling down a train barreling up the train tracks in the middle of one of those stupid riddles where the answer is that the entire premise is false and you'd know it if you paid attention with more brain cells than you can muster for just about anything at 5 in the afternoon without having to be asked long winded questions about bullshit scenarios you'll never actually have to deal with in real life unless you became a train conducting mad scientist sociopath with a taste for apples, pizzas, and buckets of multicolored marbles.

At any rate, it's not my fault, but if I never had sex again I don't think I would be particularly ticked off. Don't get me wrong. This is not a complaint at all. It is an observation that if I were to offer myself up to women on say death row I would probably get passed over by the entire starting rotation twice before getting picked up by the bench warmer still running her case through the appellate courts because I do not understand how that interaction is supposed to work on a pretty basic level. If however I were to offer myself up to the men on say death row I would probably get passed over by the entire line up too, but probably not twice, because let's face it, when you're staring down the barrel of a death sentence in solitary confinement every person you meet is basically the last man or woman on Earth as far as you'll ever know and "if you give a dog a bone" and so forth... ...I don't know what the chick half of that is... Unless they have tv in there. Then all bets are off. If I watched more television specials about how bad ass the bad asses in Federal "holy fuck that prison is hard core compared to my life" on the Discovery channel I would know the answer to that. But I don't. Life is full of mysteries. I think I do live in a magical and fucked up time. Here's why: by the time I reach a point where I will be desperate to get laid and/or lay someone technology will in all likelihood have created an affordable artificial human being that I can purchase to satisfy my every whim and thus complete the compartmentalization of myself into the American technological socio strata and finally make me utterly oblivious to the larger issues of human existence and thus quite happy. You remember in the Matrix when the humans were all hooked up to that machine? What if the machines found it much easier on processing power to stimulate the body instead of the mind directly with a feed of images through the eyes and attendant nose and mouth nonsense. I bet the crotch uplink to the matrix would be the most awesome piece of technology ever. Go to the future and steal one. Is what I would do. Screw finding the machine city. I was just go steal one of those and go nuts until my brain stroked off from a lack of oxygenated blood.

Like the mystery of why any woman on the face of the Earth would ever complain at any age that no one wants her. I personally do not believe that there is a special one person out there for anyone. I won't say that I know it for a fact, but I will say that I'm pretty damn sure just about every relationship that was a sure fire thing that I've seen up close for an extended period of time has basically become either a business agreement, a perpetual fire drill, or has been blown apart with more permanence and finality than a gross analogy about female plumbing and giving birth to triplets. Or maybe I'm just cynical.

Sad ladies out there who believe for one reason or another that you will never be loved, answer the following two questions: Do you have a vagina? Can you work it? If the answers to either of those questions is "yes" then fear not (knowledge of what "working it" is need not bear particular significance). Someone will take an interest in you to gain access to your vagina and perhaps discover along the way that you're a pretty swell person too. Or maybe the other way around. They might think you're an awesome person and hang out with you for a while and get to know you because you really are great company and then one day they might walk in on you while you're in the bathroom and discover that you have a vagina completely by accident and then stumble backward in disbelief before screaming for the deliverance of Jesus himself and go into shock because their best buddy has been a transvestite all along, but then they'll come out of their coma a few weeks later and have wonderful relations or something equally romantic. So don't sweat it. No need to fret. No need to write brutally long entries in your diaries with the daisies scribbled on them next to the balloons and other squiggly shapes your hands draw because your forearms are about as strong as damp marshmallows wrapped around found twigs. Someone out there in this big world wants to stare deeply into your eyes and whisper those magic words "I want to plow you" when they're fifteen beers in and haven't noticed that you've been sipping the same one for the last four hours.

Kidding. That was pretty harsh. But not as harsh as listening to women bitch about not getting laid or being unlovable. Not my fualt. But seriously, ladies, you're all wonderful most of the time. Some of you are awful all of the time, and some of you I wish were guys so we could hang out all the fucking time, get drunk and play football and videogames and fistfight and get into shit with other people at bars and basically piss excellence 24/7. And some of you are wonderful all the time. Or at least all of the times that I get to interact with you, because human interaction is really not my ultimate forte. At any rate I'm gay anyway so not only am I not interested in hearing about it from a logical standpoint, I'm not interested in hearing about it from a physiological stand point, and that means I'm way serious because the word I just used to expound upon my previous standpoint is twice as big. So it's twice as serious. It's the rules of English. Can't be helped and even if I could change them I wouldn't because changing them that drastically again would be like changing a clown's outfit so many times that he ends up wearing a three piece suit to a children's party, painted in white face, with the red nose and rainbow hair and that would scare the shit out of kids. Imagine if they thought that when they grew up they would have to work with clowns. Never knowing if their stapler had a joy buzzer attached to it. Never knowing if the next filing cabinet they opened would fire spring loaded snakes into their eyeballs or if their boss would mandate the entire office carpool in Fred's Huyndai accent with the seats in the back that aren't large enough to fit a baby folded up into a briefcase. That would be a nightmare for them. Not far from the truth, but a nightmare nonetheless. so I'm not going to do that to you with language. Encouraging irresponsibility is a shameful and hilarious thing that is to be, if anything, encouraged.

So what do I do instead of sex? I punch walls sometimes. Relieves stress in that same way and they both eventually end in tears and sore muscles. The only difference is after punching walls I don't need to take a shower. That and I can punch walls in public. Can't use sex toys in public. They will either lock you up or... ...throw money at you? Life lessons don't mix well with logic. Moving on though, I want to keep this light hearted as I have a habit of falling into myself like a cat into a toilet.

I'm still getting used to living alone. It's not a bad thing, but I was just thinking about it before I got sidetracked. For the majority of my life prior to age 25 I was either forced to live with other people, opted to live with other people, or had a space of my own in which to isolate myself, but could at any point choose to come out of that space and join a close knit public space of human beings. Since I've gotten too old to comfortably hang out in that space without freaking people the fuck out eventually and since I can't force myself to live with other people or force other people to live with me if I wanted to I am in the strange territory of lone man's land. It's been a learning experience.

The biggest thing you have to get used to is having no one around to tell you when you've got an exceptionally terrible idea that should not be pursued any further than it's inception, but much like when you were little and thought maybe if you watched where that little white puff of tree pollen went and followed it to its destination it would help you figure out where it could have come from and why it had the power to catalyze wish making, simply glimpsing the idea is enough to demand a second look. And then a third look. And then a fourth look, but it's drifting out of sight so if you want to make out its details you're going to have to pursue it, but only just a little. Just enough to get a better look. And then before you know it you're building a system of tubes to enable you to water the plants in your bathroom with your urine instead of getting sleep before you have to be at work in four hours.

The second biggest thing you have to get used to, well I should say, the second biggest indicator that you're probably not ready or used to living truly alone yet is when you realize you try to talk your way around the messes you made so that you don't have to clean them up. I don't mean like you tell yourself you'll clean it up later, I mean you hit the full blown "I didn't spill that so I shouldn't have to clean it up" argument. With yourself. Right after you the milk you were pouring on your cereal got a little too enthusiastic and did it's milk dance right over the edge of your bowl. When you're standing in your kitchen on Sunday morning bargaining with yourself and telling yourself that you'll take out the trash, but if you do you'll have to treat yourself with a beer and doggie biscuit for helping out because most of that trash isn't yours anyway and you've been taking out the trash and washing dishes all your life to earn a place to sleep and you shouldn't have to do it here and now in a place you are paying for outright. But you both know there's no chamber boy to lay out your formal shorts and take out the trash so what the fuck have you just been blathering about for the last hour. Just wipe up the milk and get on with your day. And that's when it hits you. You're still not used to getting up in the morning and having a sink full of dirty dishes with no one to blame but yourself and even then the understanding of your culpability escapes in the face of the simple and ridiculously sound reasoning that "maybe someone else did it".

Did I say sound? I meant unsound. About as sound as sex jokes in an STD clinic. Laughing yet? Me neither, but I do feel slightly better about myself so maybe you should too, if it works that way. I don't really know how that rule works.

One, Two, Three, Four-

Gone for a minute. Task locked again. I wish there was a way to make progress across the board. Sometimes I feel like I'm on that first frustrating and seemingly never ending series of levels in a role playing game where the experience points to level up are far between simply because the power needed to earn them is severely constricted by the lack of experience. You can wander around all you want. Your actual experience has nothing to do with your point registered experience. In fact you've been wandering around so long that you know the game pretty much inside and out, but because you don't have the power to advance you can't earn the power to advance. Well, not can't, but it's the least you can do to keep running around the periphery of the real game performing the time intensive little things to keep earning the game's recognized experience points and stacking up your little levels until you come across a monster and suddenly find that you've actually accumulated enough attack points to make it more than facing imminent destruction and instant death.

Not that writing is instant death. Or working a bad job that cuts your hours down to next to nothing even though you are the best at what you do there. I guess what I'm saying is I've had very few points to spend and I wish sometimes there was a way to get more other than slugging it out every day and for me there isn't. Everything's not okay, but I deal with it and try to move anyway. Move on, sometimes. Other times, just focusing on moving somewhere. Anything besides staying put and curling up into an ass ball.

So where's the progress? Where have the precious points disappeared too? Arts and crafts mostly. Some were spent on getting better at baseball and bike riding. A lot of them were spent on control. Just white knuckle gripping the control panel behind my eyes and making it go. Reorganization is a pretty difficult thing, but worth it. It's sort of sticking. The whole eating three times a day thing has been a huge hassle, but necessary as I learned through the worst pain I've ever felt that not eating and not drinking will send your body into shock and you will die. And I don't want to die alone. Especially not alone and convulsing in a bath tub some random Tuesday afternoon. I just have to deal with the rest of the bullshit attendant with putting food stuffs in my face. There's no patch or workaround for that. It's sticking and slipping. I've already slipped back to two a day. Because of the task locking.

That's what happens when mighty efforts make few gains, I guess. You try to force more effort into the same, largely fixed spans of time and eventually the only way to "make the most" out of your day is to make the least out of routine necessities. Strip it down to the bones and then shave the bones down to filaments. I'm pressing myself into a pure circuit of function. Solid state being. That's not possible yet though. So I have to not do that.

I have phone calls to make that I haven't made. Landing has been harder than I anticipated. I thought I could do it in three weeks, but the the process is in the first few days of what is looking to take better than a month. Not helping is that I'm trying to find more work so I can afford some less than necessary human peripherals and possibly move out of the periphery and closer to the heart of Pittsburgh. That alone would make life easier. Would make progress easier. It would be a definite level up that would increase my ability to earn more commonly accepted experience points. Game recognized points. But if I did start on meds, meds that are, let's face it, necessary if I plan on staying alive (and I do for the foreseeable future), that would require at least 10 days of adjustment and who knows how many days after that of learning to live with the side effects. Last time I tried I ended up throwing up every other day for almost two months which was just a whole big bag of laughs and the last thing I want is to be in a situation where I'm trying to nail down and learn a new job while adjusting to pills.

I guess it's a little funny. How easy it is to set ones self up for failure. I'm managing now through effort, but effort only goes so far when you try to out howl the wind. So I'm choosing. We've a target destination. We're in a decaying orbit that will take us into the atmosphere and ultimate to solid ground, but we can't simply make attitude adjustments and punch it just yet. One: we will break up into a thousand burning pieces if we did that. Two: we are task locked. Three: we haven't made the necessary progress through the shut down sequence to make that even start to be feasible. That's what I've been working through these last weeks. Reorganization. Cataloging of processes and species. Reconnection with the mission. Re-engagement with the real. Human maintenance.

Remember when I said my job was great because it engaged the machine side of my being. Well I've divorced my eating cycle from my workplace and I've divorced machine engagement from it too. I'm cutting my selves free from any critical ties to that place because it really is not. Forcing myself into that breed or reliance has not been helping me in the ways I thought it was. Set up for failure. I wish sometimes I was not such a believer in all things. I am gullible. Tremendously disposed to wonder. I've yet to understand how it will ever be a good thing.

I spent about twenty hours on this:



It's a gift for an old friend that was supposed to be a christmas gift. But we all know how winter made good and basically ate up every free moment I had getting set up for autonomous life. It's turning out good though. Another forty hours and it should be done and mailed. I hope it is enjoyed and loved. Probably shelved and boxed and collecting dust at some point in its future, but I hope when the box is first opened it produces awe and a smile. I don't really know why I am pursuing its completion so doggedly. I think, if there is a reason, that reason would have to be because I said I would. And God damn it I make good to my friends because my word is just about all I've got these days in the way of common currency.

So curtain up. One, two, three, four... Let's make more things happen. Let's take showers and brush our teefs, and go outside, and work ourselves over at our gyms till we get nose bleeds, and let's treat work like the shit job it is and nothing more, and let's eat at home and sleep less than ten hours, and watch the ghosts with careful eyes, and listen not too close, and smile a little harder, and frown with conviction, and be honest, and medicate as necessary, and things aren't going to work out, but that's no reason to... ...to what? What happens when things keep not working out? Dream revision? No. Yes? I guess I just have to remind myself that I do other things. Metajail is real. But, even prisons have libraries. I think. I can't remember. Probably.

I am building a life outside of a life to save my life. That's it! That's what's been eating up my time! HAH! wow. It only took me how many hundreds of words to reach that realization. I'm actually laughing. I think that is what the last three weeks have been. Let's get back to it. Sorry I've been away. But you know I'll never be gone too long- visiting hours in metajail are worth sticking around for almost by themselves.


///Boards of Canada - "Aquarius" Music has the right to children. Sometimes I think every year you are born. You are the child of your previous year in the same way that you are the child of your parents material and experiences and equations. I'm on my twenty sixth iteration. I guess I'm raising my own child now for the teen years of summer and the maturation of fall and the adulthood of another winter. I owe myself a birthday wishlist for next year. Maybe this year will be the year I buy that square of land in North Dakota. I think that's a reasonably lofty and approachable goal. I wonder if I have to go there to buy it or if I can do it from here. Maybe I'll see what's available here first and go from there. Either way I'm glad I'm still alive and closer to touching down. Shit's been turbulent.

Touching One Half of the Interface, Old Contacts, and Still Making Fire

Well, I finally got up the parts and pieces to contact him. Now I just have to work myself toward opening the response. I'm sure it's nothing. Well nothing more serious than a rejection of any one thing can be.

I found rechargeable batteries for my camera. It's nice to have to use again. It's funny how the good days bleed away like sand. I need an extra set of hands to collect them and keep throwing them in my hair till it get's stuck that way permanent like.



I made a portrait. My head is tired again, but I'm working it somewhat relentlessly. I have a bad personality tick of punishing myself for everything. It's part of what motivates me to operate. I should switch that maybe. I'm not entirely sure how. I should probably get some sleep before I go to work. It's strange. The feeling approaching the punishment breaker. Artifacting. Ridiculous. I'm still and learning. I was discussing the idea of normal. It struck me that there are people who like the burning half baked you because it is. Normal isn't good enough. Or maybe. I just need a little more sleep. I'm not just telling myself that. My self is telling me.

I miss the people I've never met and the people I can never really meet because my head comes apart so easily. It's been raining today. It's been nice. I remember hearing about the water cycle in fifth grade and thinking about how awesome it would be to ride with those molecules through aquifers to the sea. That's not an occupation. It's a preoccupation? I'm thinking about finally giving in to it. I think I've already missed. I'll find out soon enough once I talk to him. We will see if it's the last thing these pupils do. And add it to the blueprint.


///Autechre - "Kalpol Introl"

The fire is still being made and the forge is still powered on, but it's starting to feel like pulling the guts out of the underside of a fish by hauling on it's jawbone. What I'm getting out I can't eat. Still gonna try though. Today is a mess. Was a mess. No vision. No visibility. I've gotta fix these road signs before I get lost again. Must get dressed and put on my face and skins. We ride for dawn. Or some place else as warm.

The Fringeness of Earnesty and High Cycles

I'm sort of coming to realize, well first of all I think I've been talking too much again, but I'm sort of coming to realize that I am a fringe personality. I was pretty delusional back in 2004. I thought I was cooler than the other side of the pillow beneath the boss cat's hipster transformers cartoon printed footie pajamas. Then I started to see the full Lawrence of Arabia letterbox landscape of who I was. Then even seeing that I started to believe again. Then I thought maybe the strangeness was the strangeness of perhaps a Kramer and desirable for the sake of its own quirks and prats. Now I'm beginning to understand that what it is really is the quality of fringe. I was beginning to think about what I could do to tear that away and assume a lower charge. No clue. My charge is way too high. By the time I get near to people I'm ravenous for company and traveling at speeds that break bones and all of me wants to talk at once. Not that quiet is a bad thing. I'm a fantastically introverted extrovert. I couldn't live with me. I shouldn't expect other people to. Right?

Well anyway, I'm going to try and keep these shorter. There's no lightness to being. There's no likeness to seeing. I'm camping at the edges of some things I shouldn't be near. Not that they keep calling me, but it's more like a landmark that lets me navigate the rest of the solid world. Or not even that. I have a hard time keeping track of progression. The importance of cause and effect is. I suspect the problem might be that I am difficult to relate to, but with slight effort able to be comprehended and possessing sightlines worth following when I am close to my best, and I am violent, obscure, unpredictable, melancholy, intensely introspective, restless, and largely inchoate and impossible to relate to when I am not near my best. Problematic. But at least I'm starting to understand how or at least why it seems I'm regularly fallen into Kuiper radial movements. I'll stop calling them every weekend. They'll get out the telescopes and rovers and years of planning and clean rooms and staffs of scientists and damage controllers when they're ready to see me blow by along the edges of the perceivable solar system.

I've also realized that my head is most active when I'm turning my motor at work. So now I take notes on my phone. Good. A fine start. Because by the time I'm ready to leave work and I get to my door at home I can't remember half of the things I started in my head while I was there. I'm losing lines. Each object in is another out. So now I can chase the high cycles like dust motes. I don't know why it didn't occur to me sooner. I guess I thought they'd think I was texting people. Just texting myself. Tracking my information. Taching my spin. My head always seems to run the hottest when I can forget my body or perhaps simply push in the clutch linking it to. Corporeal fault lay line.

Some advances were made at Bits. Not many. I like the layout, but I need to learn how to manipulate the blogger gadgets so I can create my own with proper attribution. Still waiting for the end of the world, but I'm happy to be doing so in a city I love. Let's dance till the sun comes up. I'll bring the scissors. Sometimes they tell me things I don't know.

///Juno Reactor - "Las Vegas Future Past" She runs great. Good idle. Clean title. Half the miles were done a quarter at a time too. Been to Vegas a couple times in it. You ever see one of these wide open on the interstate? It's got a sound like you wouldn't believe.

Amongst Myselves

Trying to parse so much conflict. There are only so many channels available. At work I have to deal with awful music being piped in through the ceiling, physical demands, emotional demands, mental demands, and managing inconsistencies and as the day rolls fatigue takes its toll on the number of channels available. That's an analogy that works sometimes. The problem with channel failure is that things connected and monitored and capped through the channel are left to grow and die on their own. Sometimes its all cross chatter and all I have to do is select and confer or revoke access rights to my mouth parts. Sometimes its active denial and that takes up a channel. It's always monitoring sound as my eyes aren't always trustworthy under physical stresses. Well my eyes are but my vision is not. Sometimes a channel gets eaten up entirely by the effort required to make sure I don't shred my skin on some incorrect call to a memorized movement. Often times a few are taken up by keeping track of how I'm spreading loads and pain responses and how often I'm lifting what and with which muscle group. Today was so long a day that I limped out of there with so many failures it was all I could do to pay attention to how I was placing my feet so not to re-aggravate an ankle rolled earlier in the day. I was thinking if I killed them all then they would all be my friends because if they're dead then they can't not be my friends. I was thinking a lot of other things too, but the rest is lost to the dust on the linoleum tiles. Maybe I'll remember it later. My spine is burning. I did too much again. I have a dysfunctional relationship with my job. I don't hate it. I just wish it could be better. I just wish I could be better. I dropped a case of two liter jugs of bleach today and it exploded. Wasted thirty seconds with conflicting courses of action. It's like everyone put their hands up at once and started talking before I could call on any particular one and half of them had nothing to contribute to the solution which ended up being 'clean it up, dumbass'. I don't know how I feel today. At the end of yesterday I was pretty fucking depressed and I still don't know why. Maybe trust issues? I went running yesterday and some fat sows were outside with their lye ruined hair wrapped up while they killed the afternoon attempting to grill (it smelled terrible) and they were making fun of me for jogging. I have no idea why. I want really badly to explain to the people that I work with the importance of their cooperation and the generation of well knit atmosphere of trust because I am struggling mightily to keep all my parts moving in one direction without the whole thing smashing itself to furious pieces, but I know they wouldn't understand and if anything it would probably end up costing me the job. Maybe that's what's got me blue this afternoon while I'm trying to sleep. There are lots of 'I's in this one and not many returns.

There's one. Because I care. If only everyone cared just a little more. If I were a dictator the options would be friendship or death. Then I thought maybe exile would make it easier for me to make friends or at least delay the assassination attempts that would inevitably come along. And the extermination of the families of the exiled I would have to pursue to end the cycle of retaliation. Because I just want to be friends.

There's two. Am I that fucking hard to get along with? I asked an old woman if she needed help finding anything. She said 'no, but there is something you can do to help me out, champ.' She was adorable. She couldn't reach the back of the top shelf so I grabbed her fruit cereal for her. I guess I'm rooting for the world's current format, or at least America's current format, to completely collapse. Partially so I can finally get to work on my list of people who need to end, and partially so I can travel freely, but also partly so everyone who's security is based on finances and bullshit jobs will be cut loose to die and I can pick their bones for good meat. I walk past a lot of nice homes on my way to work. Outside of a conspicuously wealthy complex of four shared homes was a pile of nice things interleaved with their trash pickup. Why would they not simply donate it to somewhere? Don't most places have a pickup service? Oh well. It was stuff I couldn't use, but I'm sure someone else could.

There's three. Maybe that's it. Maybe that's what I'm training for. That's why I run and work my body till it breaks and stitches and then I break it again. I'm working toward the end of the world. You can come hang out with me when it's over. I'll take care of you. We'll kill lots of zombies, smoke some doobies some afternoons and hike to South America for the winters (the douchebags of America will probably bloat and ruin Cali when it's over). Shit'll be ridiculous, I promise, but stupid fun. For us. Because we've already been to the end of the world. Twice. I guess that's what makes us different.

///El-P "Oxycotin"

Year End Retrospective 2009-2011

Somewhere in the middle of all the bullshit and heart break and fucked up bullshit heart break that filled the skies of 2010 like a flock of severely underfed ravens wheeling over a field hospital whose tents all blew away in a freak hurricane after the worst days of shelling the war saw since its start left a record number of open flesh wounds and completely overwhelmed the nursing staffs ability to even begin to sanitize them all, let alone beat the rats back... where was I going with that? Sort of lost track along the way in there. It's been a while since I've written any fiction and sometimes all I do is close my eyes and it comes bubbling up like gold oil in a blue toilet bowl.

2010 had its downs and its ups. I learned a lot of things about myself and about other people. I learned that most people are probably not my friends, but they are polite and a lot of times because they have to be. I come back to that a lot don't I? It feels like a lot. It's one of those things that I have to keep reminding myself because I'm not wired to accept it. In my head it's a circuit breaker that keeps opening and I have to keep going down to the basement to close it and it's a big hassle. Or is it the reverse? The reverse conditions being assigned to ... you get the point.

Back to 2010. 2009 was the break. The complete unraveling of the assumed and constructed reality. 2010 was the rabbit hole. More like the ocean. 2009 was the break from land. The acceptance that what I was leaving I will never return to because it is not only out of my control, but under the influence of things set in motion and built and conceived years in advance of my ever setting foot on the place I had the foolishness to plant a flag, however intensely the pole was thrust into the Earth and however proudly the wind took to my banner. The ground fell through as though my stupid ambition, well stupid is actually the wrong word there... my misinformed ambition were a fist and the dirt was the crust of a 99 cent store brand pot pie in a tinfoil bowl.

It's not to say that 2009 was fundamentally flawed well before it arrived. It is to say that through my and others efforts the collapse of 2009 was delayed for as long as it was because we didn't know just how thin and cheap and empty the ground beneath my feet was back in 2006. Or maybe I knew and I just did not want to believe. I think that's what it was. It was coming apart back then and I wanted to will it together and make it mine and not be the kid with a future and family so far out of line from everyone else he knew, but that kind of thinking is a recipe for catastrophe.

It wasn't all terrible. The collapse was, but there were things that happened apart from it and I tried to separate myself and compartmentalize the personal wildfire from the person I thought people enjoyed hanging out with. There was some success in that. I discovered the most intense smile is the smile mustered in the face of pains that refuse to be denied. Things burned off left and right in 2009 and then the descent to the ocean floor of 2010 was just as eye opening and faith demolishing. Not in faith in religion. That was long gone. There were still lingering faiths in parents that were systematically slaughtered, there was faith in decency that was blown away, then there was faith in systematic accountability that failed, followed by faith in language and reason, give and take, compassion, the senses, right on down to ... well, I don't know exactly where that fire ended or if it's still eating away inside of me.

Sorry I got distracted again. Just talking about it I sometimes think I can feel that fire touching the insides of my skin. It's comforting. That's all I have faith in now. The consuming flame of discovery that burns in the heat of destruction.

2010 was touching the void, but more than that it was my throat constricting and me screaming out, in a voice I wish I had 15 years ago, a simple no. 2010 was learning that I didn't have to take it. Learning that what I thought I needed and what I knew I needed were so far from what I was living and what I was living was so close to complete emotional rape mind fucking physical slavery was hard to deal with. Tracing the roots back to the abuse was even harder. Tracing the branches that grew from those roots was the hardest part. Right around there was when I finally found me. I guess I'm still the same, but I'm conscious in ways I didn't know I could be and it's made some things easier and some things harder, but it has also allowed me to move on. It was more than finally waking up to the actual dimensions of the cage. It was waking up to the universe outside of it, it's history, my history, how I got there, who put me there, what happened to me and because of me while I was inside of it, and who I was. It was like seeing for the first time with absolute clarity the person I was supposed to be, right there in the room with me, understanding that I could never be that person because of what came before, and finally being able to begin to let that go.

2010 was rage and heat. 2011 is going back to the soul that burned down to find the valuables left, if any, and started over again with free eyes. I still have a lot of letting go to do. There is still so much rage that still smolders, but I have the ability now to understand where it's come from and to direct it, at least partially, to where it must go. 2010 was also the discovery of who the people I could understand to be friends really are. One of the major reasons why I'm not dead in a basement in Queens is because of them.

The world is a fucked up place.

2011 I'm still on fire inside my head. I'm still learning to manage paranoid schizophrenia. I'm still trying to be human. The witticism of taking life one day at a time comes to mind. That's complete bullshit. Life is nothing without goals. I have some deaths to look forward to, but closer in I have the rest of Pittsburgh to look forward to and talking to you and with everything else burned to the ground I think that is finally enough to make sunrise so much less a spear through my heart.

///The Future Sound of London - "Among Myselves" I can hear myself. They were drowning me... your tracklist is up next. Three finger promise.

The (Implied) Conceited Sumbitch in us All and True Love

I had more to say ten minutes ago, but I lost it because I bled out my consciousness into a poem. I laughed out loud to that because it's true. For me, sometimes writing is like a keg that I fill every day and sometimes the keg explodes and the contents are disgusting to even me and sometimes it simply pours and fills glasses so neat and tidy and sometimes it pours one glass and sometimes it pours ten glasses. Consistency is a huge deal to most artists for one reason or another. Some people feel that consistency is next to Godliness or something like that. Some people feel that consistency is simply the mark of some kind of neurosis that does not permit full development of the creative orgasm. I know it's all unverified. Doesn't it grate you when you hear other people talk about what "some people" have said and think and do. It grates me. It grates me a helluva lot. I guess I was just trying to chap you as bad as I'm feeling chapped. I guess I'm just some kind of jaded. I grinned for a while. Jaded is such a lovely and fulsome word. I love that fucking word. There's something about that's a little sexy and rivered and disgusting as vice to a religious heart. I'm jaded. Not because of you though.

I guess I'm just wondering how far I'll have to go to find love. How dorky is that? Pretty God damn dorky I know. Would I go to hell if I knew I was "fuck everything else" loved on this Earth? Fuck yeah, man. I'll go to hell twice. Is it supposed to mean that much to anyone? I guess not. How can I put this to grow understanding instead of revulsion? I think the one thing that I've been since day one, more than anything else, is a romantic. That simply has not ever changed no matter what else has actually changed within me. I'm still looking for the right words. How about a picture instead?




I love you, did I mention that? I don't say it as a grasping for an intangible and thus perfect love. I know you suck. I know you suck because I suck. I know you're terrible and a shitty friend sometimes because I am. I know you steal more than 25$ in office supplies from your jobs every year because I do. But, I guess the point is only the douche bags are keeping score. When you really really put the rubber to the road the only reason to hate the religious right and the religious left and the religious center is because they offer resistance to what you want to do and what you are now with no regard for the nowness of who and what you are. Does that make sense? How about this: love fragments time.

I think we can both agree on that.

Or can't we. Well how about this, I will agree not to fight about that premise. Fair enough? Well fuck you, I think it's fair so I'm leaving it there. Hearts and kisses. Seriously. Maybe I'll draw a penis. Am I allowed to do that? Now I feel like flying off on an analysis of full frontal nudity in cinema, but I won't because I love you and know that you don't have all day to read this and I don't have all night to write it ( I do but God damn it [I use that a lot] I'm keeping to fucking schedule).

How about this. Next time I write I'll be twice as hammered and half as love sick. I think we can both smile about that. No? Yes? There was a time when I never questioned myself. There was a time when I didn't watch my hands type like two figure skaters on a board of ice composed of laminated squares of frictionless steel. There were times when the world didn't sing me to sleep through layer after layer of drywall and pink insulation packed to the gills with muffled screams and there were times when the creaking flooring was the sound of angels walking and not the burden of yearly abuses of the tactile senses. Remember when love was a flower? I want to say I don't but even that smacks of a romance I once knew that is somehow more romantic and honey sweet than the romance to come and I feel like I'm working this God damned keyboard harder than Ray Charles and Blues Traveler on a tour of the Gulf and the rest of the formerly slave supporting sates and I'm dreaming of lines of coke in hotels and two hour stands.

I suppose the end game is that I'm fantastically horny and too tired to proofread anything that involves anything besides penises and vaginas and bare skin and I'm thinking about the hours I've spent on subways trying not to imagine vaginas and floating disembodied breasts and penises surrounding me where bodies should be and the horrendous difficulty in squelching the beads of sweat on my brow and knowing that though my face doesnt sweat my testicles are weeping salty tears into underwear too loose to stop itself from tearing as I walk to another job interview and now I'm still fucking unemployed because some bitches vagina parked itself 6 inches from my god damn face... how the fuck could she be so cruel...

///Master and Commander - "La Musica Noctturna Delle Strade di Madrid No.6 Op.30" If I should die, both feet on the ground, upon foreign soil by the fruits of my own designs I shall have died happier than the richest domestic entrepreneur and more loved than the loveliest architect of words and emotions who ever saw the coast. And balked.

P.S. I wasn't too tired to proofread a smidge. Suck it Hillary Masters, you cock gobbling excuse for a tenured professor's dick.

P.P.S. Yes I know it's straw man slander. I don't care. I hate the man that much.

P.P.P.S. "Master and Commander was a phenomenal film. Please take the time to see it if you haven't. You won't regret it. Plus Russel Crowe is ridiculously hot and also ridiculously awesome. Watch it. While I finish this fifth.

Predictive Power of the Bible, Religious Cunts, and Cowboy Coffee

Being the coffee addict I am today, I've been trying to figure out ways to cut costs from making coffee and ensure that I will never be in a situation where I can't drink coffee if said substance is available in absolutely any form.  Having read Cormac McCarthy's Cities of the Plain I have ingested another serious dose of tough guy-dom the likes of which I haven't shot into my veins since I watched hard boiled noir where every ten minutes a cigarette was being rolled, a shot of whiskey downed, and a strong man got his lights put out with a "you'll find my appointment with your boss under 'screw you', sonny."

Which brings me to cowboy coffee.  Easily on par with "badass things that will probably kill you" that I love, such as Marlboro Red 100s and high proof whiskey on rocks, is cowboy coffee.  From what I've gathered from Cities of the Plain is that they don't use coffee filters at all.  Or at least, they seem to have to throw out the last of their coffee pretty often because of left over grounds, and that got me to thinking that cow hands and outdoorsmen in general probably don't carry coffee filters out into the field.  That's like throwing light bulbs in a ruck sack and somehow believing you'll make it to where you're going without breaking a single one.  At least I think keeping coffee filters dry while being outside in the elements for weeks would be something akin to that kind of challenge.  So it must be possible to drink coffee brewed from grounds with the grounds still in the water if you let them settle to the bottom of whatever you brewed it in.  So that's what I've started doing.  I've always liked the bitter bite of black as night coffee and I've found that throwing the grounds in a big ol' mug and brewing it straight in the mug and letting the grounds settle down to the bottom seems to work out just fine.  Coffee filters are officially for pansies.  Of course drinking it this way might turn my teeth black, but lets hope I have a job and never have to rely on the quality of my smile again long before that happens.  Sure the last sips are grainy and if you swish the mug around too much it takes on the consistency of a snow globe full of pine chips, but if you've got a steady hand, and an iron gut, and like things like whiskey and Marlboro Reds and Ice grade beer, I highly recommend giving it a try.

Plus if you ever find that your co-workers have bought coffee grounds instead of instant coffee and stuck them in the common break room knowing full well that the only coffee machine in the entire god damn building is behind the key coded doors of the administrative wing where lowly salesman and customer service associates are not allowed, you can go ahead and make yourself a cup anyway.  You may not come to work in a tie, or slacks, or a sport coat, but while they look at you from the corner of their eyes in the break room wondering if you're thinking about shanking them all with a hunting knife while you watch your mug spin around in the microwave and they try not to look directly at you and your cowboy coffee sitting at the table across from them, they'll know where the real power sits between them and you.  And they'll know that the only thing keeping them on top of the darwinian bureaucratic food chain is a sheet of paper from a business school and an economy that says you have to play nice if you want to keep your freedom.

I am sick of religious cunts.  I know you are too.  That idiot who is organizing the book burning for the sole purpose of doing unto others is a cunt.  A stupid, sad little man.  All of the people who will take personal religion fueled offense to what he is organizing and proposing to do are cunts.  In this case I am defining cunt as: reactionary imbecile far too pleased with causes to examine effects.  Cunts love cunts and their relatinship simply sucks for everybody, especially when they get together for date nights.  And for the last time, the Bible does not predict the future anymore than Nostradamus or that Chinese book whose name I can't remember.  For every person who raises their child based on precedents set by the Bible, proclaiming it as the ultimate authority on human behavior, can I just say will you please stop reading and start listening to and learning about the human beings in your house that for better and worse have to rely on you for whatever reason.  Stop holding up the Bible to life and looking for answers.  Spoiler Alert: They're not in there.  When you start holding up something you believe to be a map or a blueprint, but still attempt to find you're own way or allow free expression, guess what happens?  If you answered "a shit load of self fulfilling prophecies" you answered correctly.  If you answered "a shit load of pain and suffering for everyone who does not share your special insight from heaven" you also answered correctly.

Well, anyway, sorry I just had to let that go.  I heard about someone being lectured about how their parents believe the Bible says the youngest child will do everything the older children did except ten times worse and so their parents sat them down and gave them an earful for things they've never done and never intend to do and the sheer ridiculousness of it all just pissed me off.  If you spent half as much time taking an actual interest in your children as you did combing through the all knowing scriptures you might find that you actually had a family instead of a brood of complete strangers who don't talk to you because you've become a shell of a human being replaced by selected passages of a book that happened to be relevant to you as an adolescent that grew into a sick and warped crutch as you grew older and quietly refused to mature.  I think I'll still write my own Bible, just to prove a point about the power of that kind of story telling.  Maybe I'll save the project for my twilight years so I'll have a deeper catalog of crap to draw from and smear out into images that can applied to any and all ages that involve fallible people dealing with fallible people in a search for overarching meaning, an incorruptible truth, and the reason, their own tailored to fit reason, for being on this rock.  Maybe that's what my life's work really is.  I'll get back to you about that in 25 years when I'm on my death bed from smoking Reds and pounding cowboy coffee.

///DJ? Acucrack - "Thalidomide"  Our defects are inherited from the ignorance of those that walked before us and are incorporated into our character.  That's still no excuse.  For bringing darkness instead of light.  This song rolls and burns like staring directly into a halogen bulb till your brainstem goes numb with the over powering presence of particulate everything blowing your eyes to pieces.  Only minus the permanent blindness.

Cum, the Internet, Other Disappointments (Plus 200), and Friends

200th entry. Glad I got that announcement out of the way before I forgot. It's been five years with you. That ties the record for the longest relationship I've ever had. They've been pretty good years, but this isn't a retrospective so I won't dwell on it.

You should know I tried to write a poem with the title "Cum", but I couldn't create anything more charged than the title, so I didn't. Sometimes you run into words like that in the English language, words that command so much attention and make people perk up and look for context clues instead of actually reading the text and before you know it you've completely lost them because, for whatever reason,you're content doesn't line up with whatever expectations they've come to harbor in connection with your title. I'll write a retrospective for the next entry mainly because I'm pretty sure I won't have much else to say as I've been gripped by the past recently. Maybe I'll write that poem anyway and just make it light hearted. I think that's a good way to both combat the "must read for juicy bits" response and also reward both the readers and the flybys.

On to my terrible internet connection. It was so bad over the past two days that I literally was not even able to open my email. You know when you get so mad that actually mash your fist into your keyboard hard enough to break the fucking thing. That's how mad I was. If I was not head over heels in love with my computer monitor and also too poor to replace it I probably would have hurled it straight out of the window hard enough to lay a 22" square dent in the door of the shed behind my house. A friend commented that though the speed is slow I "have done a lot with it" and I wanted to say well "for fucks sake, just imagine what I could fucking do if I didn't have to settle for third rate everything in this fucking world." Seriously. I was enraged, not by his efforts to offer encouragement, but by the framing of what has become typical of my life. Ghetto rigs. McGuyver set ups. Pulling magic out of my ass hole. Call it what you will, but I cannot wait for a phase of my life when I actually have the god damn tools I want and need already at hand to do the things I want to fucking do. No more of this having to work a three mile solution out of a 100 yard walk because no one is willing to give me the god damn keys to the front gate.

I've had some really fucked up dreams lately. I'll curb the swear words from here on out, or at least try to.

So the original Cum poem was going to be about how self destruction creeps into life, but is a necessary element of life. Self destruction, I think, prevents wholesale destruction if the person purposefully destroying their self can be isolated or at least properly contained. I'm pretty sure if I left myself to its own devices it would turn into a thing bent on dismantling life and civilization as we know it. To prevent this from happening I have to actively dismantle its constructions through every means necessary. Think of it as an atom bomb. Every single day my brain is refining fissible materials and building detonators and stranding wires and explosive plates and turning bomb housings and working out the science of sending the world to its grave and every day I have to go in and turn out all the filing cabinets and shred the research and trash the labs and sabotage the refineries and explode the stockpiles. My self hasn't gotten it right yet and I'm happy for that, but also ashamed that its even become a necessity. Sometimes continued success is thanks to my own efforts and sometimes it's due to bomb range and laboratory accidents and machine malfunctions. The result is the same though. Furious action leading up to an explosive and small and temporary victory and phenomenally steep come down, because I've both succeeded and failed yet again. I suppose the easiest solution would be to simply have all of the technicians brought before a firing squad and kill them outright, but unfortunately the crew working the device committee and labor union are also responsible for the non-lethal non-destructive life sustaining committees. So when is the need to eliminate a threat greater than the need to preserve a life? I don't have an answer for that, but I'll let you know when I do.

I'm sad now. I don't know why. I do know why. Part of me just left. He was disgusted. I'm disgusted too and angry and now sad that I'm by myself again. He'll be back later. We can't really stay mad at each other. No, wait we can. I just realized that we're usually pretty mad at each other. It just so happens that we're also usually in agreement on most things, with the exception of this and some other stuff. I'm the optimist. He's the deterministic pessimist. The realist. The public relations manager is not in at the moment, but should be back shortly.
I sometimes wish my friends would tell me what they think and why they don't tell me when their visiting, but then I remember that they must have their reasons and that I don't know what those reasons are because no one has ever fucking told me. When I think about the spectrum of existence I get the feeling that there's nothing in the middle of mine and I think that hole is what makes people apprehensive. I don't have a hard time feeling. I have a hard time feeling by degrees.

I dream about things. About tiny rooms and lying in bed with someone and sadism and being awful and being loved regardless and making something, making anything, with another person and being naked and great and taking off the mask that hides the teeth and the showing the smile behind that stretches from ear to ear for all of the reasons that are on their face unacceptable for reasons I'll never agree with and I wake up from the dream and wonder if I will really be single. And then I wonder if the rest of me will allow that to change. I know the answer is no, but can you fault me for wanting it to. I tear myself apart, but they're there. The upside is I'm always in orgy. The downside is none of the attendees are there because they love each other. And I'm rambling so I'll go do something else because I already know I'm running straight for a dead end and I have an irrepressible fear of corners.

///30 Seconds to Mars - "From Yesterday" Sometimes when I fall asleep and wake up into dreaming the world is big and beautiful and unlike the life I left I am moved to a state of utter bliss and so thankful that a thing like sleep is a part of day to day life.

Fifth Grade Word Finds and (Sort of) Free Art

Remember fifth grade and the substitute teachers and their mountains of copies of crossword puzzles with subject themed words to keep all the kids busy and the game all of the smart kids played where they competed to see who could finish all of the copies and win their free time first? Remember the other game the smart kids who didn't give a shit about extra time to do their homework in class because having homework to do was a great excuse to get away from having to spend time around their shitty parents played where instead of finishing crosswords they tried to find legitimate instances of curse words, the more rank the better? That just came to mind as I was thinking about myself (as usual) and I was thinking about the things in me that are different, which led to thoughts about picture finds where you look at two pictures and try to find what's different between them and that lead to thinking about word finds and that led to all of the wonderful hours in fifth and sixth grade I spent doing word find puzzles and circling "ass" instead of being taught anything by anyone because the teacher called in sick again because the kids are a bunch of bastards. They were still passing out crosswords and word finds in 7th grade and 8th grade now that I think about it. I raced through the pile a few times, but it was bullshit. It was not uncommon to have a teacher say "put your head down and take a nap if you like" as though I didn't get sent to bed without dinner often enough. Napping wasn't high on my list of favorite things to work hard for.

There really was no satisfying conclusion to finishing all of the crosswords besides the pride of knowing that I beat the pants of Annette with her stupid times table finger counting trick that I didn't learn until last year and promptly forgot. Fuck you Annette. You looked like Meg Griffin five years before Seth McFarlane dreamt her up. Suck on that coaster thick glasses. I hated her when she beat me at anything because she was a total douche about it. To this day when I beat people at anything I can't help but feel that I should have been more encouraging or at least explain to them why they might have lost and how they could have won. That might be even more annoying than simply sticking a finger in their face and saying a hearty "booyah".

Where was I. Crosswords, check. Annette was really smart, but a total bitch, check. Oh yeah, what's different about me. So here's what's different about me now from the me of five years ago in order of importance to me (sorry, this is so me themed today, but I'm not really, but I'd feel guilty if I didn't say something to acknowledge the fact that I'm being really really narcissistic [sort of]):

1: I don't think of myself as a funny person anymore. I used to think I was funny, but I'm not. I'm easy to laugh at and I think I'm fine with that.

2: I'm weird. No two ways about it. I am one of the weird ones and will probably be thought of as one of the creepy ones when I get too old to be weird and when I'm too old to be creepy I'll be one of the pleasantly eccentric ones you try to ignore, but who somehow end up miles away from their home health aide at a highway rest stop asking you for change so they can buy a colostomy bag from the potato chip vending machine.

3: I will probably never be married or will not have kids of my own. This will happen because I've realized I am impossible to start a family with. No really. I dare you to try. My heart is fucking Thunderdome. Raising kids and being with me will be like trying to keep track of the lost kids of never never land. If you were to combine Bill Cosby's sagely aspects, Peter Griffin's story telling, Homer's scheming, Seinfeld's eye for human interaction, and a middle aged Golden Retriever's eagerness to do everything, with a Bull's eagerness to do nothing except watch the world go by and bone constantly you'd roughly have an approximation of day to day life with me. Throw in "unconventional" tastes in design and home decor and art and general errata and my home probably won't even be a safe place to raise a kid from one hour to the next.

4: I will never be a kept man. I'm too damn old. Missed that boat, but it was fun to imagine what could have been had I really stepped up the training back when I first starting writing this and my biggest concern was beards and whether or not to shave my nuts.

5: I share my work openly. In the past I sat on it because I was somewhat embarrassed by it. Now, even better than simply not giving a fuck what people think of it, I honestly feel that it is worth sharing. It's become worth more time and attention than my own. How much time and attention is absolutely up for debate (whether its 1.01 person's T&A or 100 it's still greater than 1). Why more time is needed is also up for debate. Dear universe: I am at a highly impressionable point in my writing career... send me mentors or something. Jesus does not count as a mentor.

6: I've sort of come to understand that the people I grew up with, by and large, did not grow up "with" me. That's taken a lot of getting used to. How the hell to I grow myself into their circles if, apparently, I didn't do it successfully when they were right next to me. Frustrating. It's like everybody I knew went into a hall of mirrors together and somehow I ended up outside of the building in the alley with the alley cats and half eaten funnel cakes and everyone else went out the exit proper and I have no fucking clue how I ended up on the outside of everything.

7: I don't think there's a seven, but it's there for balances sake.

I've got an idea. Send me your address and I'll send you a handwritten poem on heavy stock plain white paper. Seriously. No scheme. No game. No angle. Just some art that'll only cost you the time and effort it takes to shoot me an email. You're address won't get shared (not just because I have no one to share it with but because if I gave someone my address I would want it destroyed immediately after it was no longer in use by the specific person I loaned it to). You won't suddenly have spam roll into your mailbox. I won't randomly show up your door with a handle of Vodka and tell you to drink as you run out to go to work in the morning. You won't get signed up for... well shit I could go on for another thirty lines about what won't happen.

What will happen: I'll send you a poem. That's it. A new fresh from my mental presses poem and maybe a scribble too. Bam, done. inacinch@gmail.com. and actually, by putting that there I will probably get a ton of spam, but I'm not mad about it. I just like to send people art. It's fun.

Or don't. It's not like I'm going to kill myself or anything if no one does this. I'll just keep doing what I usually do: write poetry, whack off till I fall asleep, wake up in the middle of the night in tears, write a story, knock myself unconscious with five shots of whiskey, wake up at a reasonable hour and repeat. The question is: how much of that is true. The answer is: most of it. Lulz. Anyway. Don't forget to see if you can fill out the crossword puzzle with all expletives. What is life if not a challenge to be more awesome than you were yesterday.

///Cowboy Bebop OST - "Blue" I think my opinion still holds that some of the best music is written and heard and felt in languages that you can't understand specifically because the worst thing anyway can do to some art is make it readily understandable and take away the pleasure of dawning reason and the avenue of organic access each person has to make when no person can make an inroad for the masses. The idea of masslessness comes to mind, but I'm pretty sure that's just more errata and artifice and artifacting. Sometimes I need a good paint chipper for my brain.