Driving Stick (Fairlady 280Z)

I think my pops saw a spark in me and didn't know how to feed it.

I think, faced with something completely different from his first two children, he hit a language wall.  This one has the design eye, this second one does too.  "This third one has an eye, but why is it obsessed with physics and manipulating form and space instead of creating on a canvas?"

Learning to drive stick was a massive challenge.  Enter the F-250 1996 V8 5.8 Liters of displacement in a breath.  Stupid torque and no horsepower.

The thing was, you never knew if he was taking you for a ride to explain to you why you had a beating coming or not.  Sometimes it was Billy Graham, sometimes it was the guy who always had that quotable audio clip at the beginning of his radio show "lay up treasure in heaven" (it always made me laugh inside thinking about how does suffering now get you a v.i.p. pass to heaven and how dumb it felt watching years spin by and thinking 'the forsaken are now!')

There was this one day, he may have been driving me to work at Six Flags Great America or some shit, but we were in his 280 ZX that myself, my younger sister, and I don't remember if my older brother was there or not, but we washed and detailed that car.  Cleaned from the floor mats to the spots where you put your fingers on the sill to push the passenger door open to the stock rims and the corners of the chrome trim around the rear window to the toe kicks along the foot of the door sills.

I can't remember what day it was specifically; Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday.  We drove.

I may have missed the bus for the umpteenth time and he happened to be off work that day and heard me come back into the house absentee.

At any rate, what I do remember was this:

Before I took on driving school and getting licensed proper, he took his hand off of the stick shift and began calling out gears to me.  I didn't know what to do.  In the empty space he would shift and calmly call the next position the shiftknob was supposed to be in.

I didn't know he was speaking to me.  I thought it was another one of his exercises to keep me on my toes so I would always be aware of my surroundings.  One of those "what street is that?!" spot quizzes.  I think it may have been one of his best attempts to connect with his kid who was not into the "arts" as he was.

In fear, I placed my hand on the shift knob with my fingers spread so I could see the 1 2 3 4 5 R grid, do not break his possession.  Be good.  If you do good, he will not be disappointed.

Understanding that he wanted me to move the shifter while he worked the pedals and the wheel, I was incredibly hesitant.  Before that day I'd only read about it in magazines, Road & Track and Car & Driver and Model Builder and the RC aero rag on my stints at the library in the periodicals instead of going to school when I missed the bus because you can't get to Greenbelt from Bowie without missing have the damn day anyway, might as well go to the library on your bike and make sure you're back home before he is and no one is the wiser (fuck it and fuck Eleanor Roosevelt H.S.).

I shifted with my left hand for close to five minutes before he took over again.  And that was my first taste.  The second was driving school in a powder blue Chevy Cavalier with a stick that was way too long for the shitbox that it was.  And the standard minted was the Falcor that I drive now.  That was when I learned and am still learning.

Every time that I hold that stick, my dad does cross my mind.  My dad and where my love affair with the Fairlady line of sporting two doors began.  The way that he would cut through traffic and move through the shift gates was impressive to my young mind.  He wouldn't be able to drive my F250 for shit and it makes me laugh.  It makes me laugh because if you can pilot a junker with finesse, imagine what you can do with a coupe.

There are times I wish he'd taken the leap to see me outside of the framework of his knowns.  We have much in common.  I would love to be able to speak to someone who understands the rage and fire inside as much as he knows it and hides it and clamps it and eats it and focuses it and the ways it eats you alive.

I'm never going back to him.  He is as welcome in me as he has said I am in him.  Big ol' bag o' nopes and it does make me laugh to understand that happy endings are for stories- not history.  Consolation prize: he tried and it planted a seed and a passion for Nissan coupes and the design philosophy throughout their years.

My artistes' eye is still there.  The lines are classical music if you see its shape.  When you think salon coupe GT as comfortable cutting into the wind as whipping around corners, steady as the shaft of an arrow and fickle if you tease it, from its stance to the cut of the A pillar to busy tail lights and sloop nose that can accommodate aero headlight glass or no.

I think back to that day and how I must have looked in the passenger seat with frightened eyes looking at the digital gauges and being thrilled and awed and stupefied at a tachometer that wasn't a dial.  In the years following, I was disgusted at the tach that wasn't analog.  And then I was enlightened to the tune that dashboards can be removed and replaced with whatever the pilot finds most useful.  And then I went away to college and the car disappeared and I remembered that he didn't actually give a shit.  For a moment I was his son and for a moment he was a dad.  And then he was confused as to why I was upset that the car I cleaned for the better part of a year and got to touch and fell in love with was shipped off for who knows what.

It just... it pains me... he has no idea who I am.  He had no idea then and he has no idea now.

I used to think he was just crazy.  I still do.  I am.  I am a functioning adult from his loins so....   it kinda fucking follows.  Also why I'm not waiting in line for progeny.  Some things should stop.  Accidents don't happen without a breath of agency and this time around I can be the eyes he didn't have then.  The discerning he absolved himself of.

Do I want to make him pay for what he's cost me: of course.  Can I?   Yes.  Will I?  No.  He will die in his bubble on his own time.  My life is worth more than enlightening a grown child, talented though it may be.  Do not attempt to turn a mountain, it will return to the sea on its own time.

Driving the truck, blasting music that is foreign to his circuits, with the windows down... ...he could have enjoyed himself and his child.  Us both now in a solitary confinement.  I hope he is pushing a standard, but we all know "it ain't that damn likely."  With age also goes the tooth for sporting.




///Noname - (Diddy Bop) ~ driving music

The Shadowman and the Irrationality of Humans

The common understanding is that humans are irrational.  You can leave off the "beings" part.  Instinctual?  Sure, yes.  Emotional?  Mhm.  Logical?  Ehhhhh... sometimes?  Reasonable?  By turns.  The common understanding is that humans are rational.  It's unfortunate that the base assumption is so.  Where it is born, who knows.  My thought is that the seed of the assumption is formed in the assumption that you are a human and you're decisions and behaviors are rational to you and have furthered your survival and existence so if another human exists their behaviors and decisions must be rational too because they are also surviving.  Something along those lines.  It gets reinforced all over the place from every angle and channel of input.  You get it.  You are rational.  Why would you choose to do something that would jeopardize your very existence?  You don't have a death wish.  You are alive!

Humans are irrational.  Please stop building arguments and drawing lines in the sand from the standpoint of echos reverberating from advertisements and observed actions sculpted into frameworks and canned calls and responses and your pasts and your futures.  We are not rational.  Beings?  Sure.  Yes.  Rational?  No.  Rational some of the time?  Sure, yes.  If you want to make it absolute, one or zero, then we are one.  No being or thing is rational all of the time.  Okay, some things are.  Coins are rational.  Geometry is rational.  Math is rational and even when it's irrational it's rational (I think... I knew mathematicians existed and played at the fringes... pretty sure that foggy math is still relatively...  okay, maybe not... you get the point).  Alright, everything is irrational!

In all seriousness, life has been very frustrating trying to understand why events bring out expressions of concern for well being and continued survival in strange ways.  The most recent shooting is not a tipping point, but mumbling to myself while I worked through the day and the following day was telling.  Enter vice and criminality.

When the argument is made that laws have to stay the way they are because the criminal element will find a way to get what they want regardless of what laws are or are not in place and the citizenry must be able to protect itself from this shadow force, I cringe.  That shadow is being cast from the rational mind inside.

Is there a criminal element in the human population?  Yes.  Is that criminal element rational?  Of course not.  The percentage of the human population that makes up that criminal element is extremely visible and equally small.  It skews perception.  How much of that perceived element is gratified and punched up by the echoed reinforcement of  "I am a rational human being and criminals are humans and therefore also rational."  It is incredibly basic.  If you make laws to prevent something from happening or encourage something to happen to promote survival, a lot of humans will see the outcomes, understand mutual survival, and continue to be.  Those same communal laws will be ignored by some humans for all sorts of reasons and interactions and protein chains and chemical reactions.  We are not rational!  As much as you want to believe it.

Let's bring it to weapons. I need to be able to purchase a weapon capable of defending my life against the criminal element.  The rational criminal will find a way to get the weapon they want.  I need to be able to get one capable of answering whatever challenge that may be and limiting my options is sending me to certain harm.  You're flinching away from your own shadow.  Life is insecure.  Life is irrational.  The penalty for your crime is twenty years in prison.  I'm still going to do it.  The penalty for your crime is 40 years in prison.  I'm still going to do it.  The penalty for your crime is 80 years in prison.  I'm still going to do it.  The penalty for your crime is consecutive life sentences.  It's the principle!  The penalty for your crime is death.  You don't understand how much I've been through!  The penalty for your crime - will never be able to influence some humans actions.  That population is a lot smaller than advertised.

So you have to carry a gun because if you were them you would have a gun and you are rational, unlike them, and you follow the law because the law keeps everyone alive and well and they'd have one anyway because that's what you would do.  You have to protect yourself against the irrational ones.  Sometimes it makes me giggle the way people perceive laws because we see their statements about them and wonder how much of their conviction comes from what they've observed and how much comes from the little voices inside their own heads that they mash and thumb down and keep inside because they are reasonable humans doing what's best for human survival instead of slamming the door shut on who they are only to have it pop open a slip with a loud screeeeeeeeaak an inch or two because the bolt didn't quite seat to the strike plate, but the door's hinges are stout.

Getting what you want, when you want it, when you need it, if laws and community prohibit it, is not nearly as easy as television and hearsay and books and articles make it sound.  How many times have you followed an instruction manual to the letter and failed?  How many times have you gone to a holiday office party to be sociable and improve your image and come away exactly the same as you arrived?  How many times have you turned right on a red lit intersection with a dedicated right lane lamp because you were late and the lanes were clear?  How many times did you walk fifteen minutes away from the bar to get a pack of smokes and fire one up on the way back to the bar because they didn't sell them there and disallowed smoking on the premises?  The easy stuff.  The forgivable stuff.

Ramp it up.  Imagine that gas station is thirty miles away.  Imagine that intersection has five cameras pointed at it.  Imagine that party was organized by you and you showed up fashionably late too.  Imagine holding that instruction manual in your hand, closed, as you flipped the switch to "on" and the entire K'nex set whirred, wobbled, and cracked to pieces in seconds.  Getting what you want, when you want it is not an easy task, but it's fun to think hypothetically as a rational human.

"If I were them, I could do that.  I would do that!  If we are to survive we must make sure that if they do that (they are rational because that's what I would do and I am rational) we can stop them."  No, you couldn't.  It's hilarious and frustrating at once.  If I want to do drugs, I will find a way to do drugs!  No, not really.  If it's convenient, why not.  The feeling may pass.  The chemical programming may or may not.  The decision making is tied to the chemicals and past experiences hard coded upstairs.  It may take a while to shift.  It may never shift.  If it's not readily available, fifty one miles is just too damn long to go get it so I'll stew and grind on with my life without it.  The rational addict goes to get it, makes a way, finds someone who knows someone who heard about someone that was seen somewhere once and goes there to meet them for lunch.  The irrational human stumbles on through the next day and the next day and sits down some afternoons to cuss quietly or aloud and does something else with its time until it becomes a little more convenient and sometimes reflects on why its so upset in the first place.  Sometimes it kills itself, sometimes it hurts others, sometimes it decides to drive fifty one miles to ask a question.  Sometimes it decides now is now and another day is another day.

It's guffaw disappointing when the shadowman is invoked as a reason to do or not do something.  The shadowmen are arming themselves, laws be damned; do you want me to die?!  The shadowmen are circulating drugs all over the place; what of the children?  The shadowmen, the shadowmen, the shadowmen!  Without laws keeping step with the threat of the shadows no one is safe!

Yes, no one is safe.  No ones safety is ever guaranteed.  That goes back to when humans had to worry about giant nocturnal multi-legged hunters stealing away their curious young.  People die.  People will be killed.  Someone may murder you.  Someone you know.  Someone you know may murder someone you know.  People find ways to get what they want or need and laws don't stop them no matter how much they have to risk or harm themselves to get it.  The answer isn't lowering the threshold from irrational decision to action.  Raise it.  Otherwise you might as well be trying to fix a hole in a canoe by punching more holes so that everyone is treading water.  If everyone is under threat of drowning we are all safe, right?  Another terrible analogy.  Believing making something proven and observed to be extremely hazardous to other people readily available to everyone to level an imaginary playing field is just flat laughable.

Why are you so afraid of the shadowman?

Who's been whispering in your ear?

How do you not see the upside-down superimposed on what you advocate for and not pause?

We are not rational people.  Hearing arguments bounce back and forth with real ramifications, buoyed by this ghost echo of an assumption of reasonable behavior, it's stupefying.  The invocation of this evildoer for all seasons with no regard for law or just basic basic basic irrational humanness is disheartening.  But we are rational people.  We will survive.



///The Shadow

Fandom Changes With Age

Maybe there's less energy to go around in general as people age.  I think it has more to do with developing an identity.  Fandom is steadily fading year by year.  It will never go away entirely.  Football Sunday will still be football Sunday.  The Steelers will always be fun to watch and their games against the Ravens will always be my favorite games to watch and if they make the playoffs I'll watch those games too.  The Pirates are still the Pirates.  When I stumble across a game on the radio or on television I'll listen in or sit down for an hour or two to take them in.  The Penguins will still be the Penguins.  Their games will still be a lot of fun to listen to on the radio, especially on the radio.  Listening to hockey on the radio is one of those things that's actually more entertaining and exciting than watching it on television.

Fandom will not completely go away, but as I have more things to get done and have built a life in Pittsburgh I feel connected with the city without needing to feel like I have to embrace and demonstrate that connection through waving a sports flag.  Sitting in front of a computer screen, waiting for a fantasy draft to start, I had a moment where I heard a voice in my head say "what the hell am I doing" and I closed the screen.  No fantasy sports this year.  It's extraneous.  It's plastic.  I realized I didn't want to spend weekdays keeping an eye on waiver wires and fretting about teams I don't care about at all.  I follow the Steelers and that's good enough for me.

There's not much more to enjoy about your local teams besides watching them play once in a while and feeling a little civic pride when they win and a little let down if they lose.  However, as you grow into a person with your own loves and affections for the place that you live, your civic pride comes less and less from what happens to your sports teams and more and more from what you do within and around your town and city.

Two years ago, a Steelers loss could make the entire rest of my week until the next game absolutely miserable.  Three years ago, it was misery, screaming at the television and throwing things at the walls of my apartment.  The following year was screaming misery and jubilation and throwing things.  The following year, fandom faded to shouting at the television and occasionally jumping up and down.  This year, I'll probably still shout at the t.v. from time to time, but other than that, it'll just be a fun diversion once a week for the Fall and Winter.  I know some of the roster, but it's not encyclopedic knowledge the way it used to be.  I don't know when they play the Ravens, but I'll find out and probably mark the games on my calendar.

I'll still buy the occasional Black and Gold trinket as years go by.  I'll still go out of my way to hear about some sports news every day.  I'm going to be a fan for life.  As I get older, the fanatic in me fades away and I'm not unhappy to see it go.




/// Jimmy Pol - "Steelers Fight Song"

Stay Positive, Opposite Day, Detours, and Paper

How funny would it be to wake up in your own car in the middle of the early morning after accidentally blowing your steering wheel airbag into your face the night before tinkering with the switches and wiring around the wheel?

The thought crossed my mind, walking home from the local store to buy smokes and chips.  Almost as good as chips and ice cream.  When I feel horrible, I prefer cigarettes because they make me feel a little less horrible without making me wish I felt an unsustainable joy derived from ice creams sweet and cooling goodness.  If only anyone could always be that smooth, creamy, and soothing all the way down to the belly.  The thought crossed my mind after walking away from my truck to go buy some comfit after I noticed my fuel gauge was malfunctioning and realizing the problem's solution was going to cost me at least $120 and 10 to 20 hours of labor at worst and 20 to 40 hours of labor, learning, trial and error, and no dollars at best.

I kept chuckling thinking about how angry I felt.  I kept chuckling thinking about reaching under the seat for my hatchet, letting out a bloody war cry, and smashing the wheel to pieces.  Only then, ditching the hatchet, pulling and tearing wires out of it with my bare hands until the airbag exploded and shoved one of my closed fistful of wires straight into my face and I basically ended up knocking myself out cold with a rocket powered fist to the dome.  Then waking up the next day with a deployed airbag, swollen knuckles, one hell of a headache, and one hell of a fist shaped bruise between my eyes.

Part of the reason for the rage is that I finished fixing another small problem with a steep learning curve and dozens of hours of labor and learning rolled inside only days before.  The truck is not falling apart around me, though it feels that way sometimes.  The problems are routine problems and I wish I could take it in for routine maintenance instead of d.i.y. desperation weekends.  The other part of the reason for the anger is that if I were paid more in line with my actual skills and level of higher learning, I could shrug, say "okay", and rent a car tomorrow while my truck sat in a shop for an afternoon.

Living near the bottom of the middle class is deceptive.  Bottom of the middle class, top of the lower class.  Living in the region can be deceptive if you have some imagination, some confidence, some helpful friends, and some ingenuity.  I have a one bedroom apartment with a closet bath/shower and mini kitchen.  If I take away all of the furniture a friend gave, all of the furniture I built, and all of the furniture I found on curbs or being given away by strangers, I have cinder blocks, two folding chairs, one of those university lobby lounge chairs, a sheet of particle board, and an end table.  Remove every worldly possession, so to speak, and there'd be a truck parked outside, a few pots and pans and plates, a desktop and pair of monitors, a console, a found tv, a few books and magazines, some shoes and goodwill clothes and multipack tees, some mechanical gadgets, some home and auto repair tools, and a printer and phone.

Imagination allows me to see what can be and holds the hand of ingenuity to find ways to make it happen.  Call it humility or call it living within your means or call it mining gold or a hobby, thrift stores are one of the keys to forgetting that you are part of the working poor.  The cream of the lower class.  Keeping good friendships is a huge part of the puzzle.  Without them, my life easily fits inside a 10' by 10' cell with a hole in the ground to eliminate and a spigot somewhere to drink and bathe.  Part of the anger stems from those parameters.

I have been heavily detoured.  Charging along the roads as quickly as possible in an effort to get back on some kind of track while wasting as few years as possible is frightening.  I ask myself what will happen if I miss a black on orange florescent sign letting me know my next turn is coming three turns from now and the sign at the third turn was never erected so commit this one to memory.  First and final warning.  The reason why it does not feel fair to me is because it is not fair.

I continue to consider the many branches not followed that have lead here, fighting for time to write.  I began to believe my father was trying to teach me a lesson about his pain all along and I am finally beginning to understand it, but I will not be able to understand until I am 48 or 50 or whatever his age was when I stopped talking to him.  Before that thought grew too large, I remembered he hasn't the subtlety or emotional imagination to allow him to pull that off.  I can see where some of his resentment stemmed from.  Losing all of the prime years of life and talent at the cutting edge of art, design, and martial arts bad-ass-ery to childcare.  Who wouldn't be a lot angry all of the time.  Though extremely dissimilar in their divination (did you see what I did there), the results are similar.  Cut away opportunities, trim an effective gesture here, clip a nudge there, ....

... I don't know.  I do not know why I never got the same support.  It would not have taken much.  Some days I am alright never knowing.  Some days it all comes to a head staring at your broken fuel gauge and doing the right thing and getting the hell out of the car without slamming the door and spinning 180 degrees to put your fist through the window and slash your own tires.  The world could've been miles from now.

I could be writing about my third year working as a librarian somewhere and moaning about coding database systems and dealing with angry patrons and making time for dates between writing short stories and working on my two part novel about warfare and keeping up to date on my space opera hopeful crown jewel I'm still searching out an editor for, however the third poetry anthology is going pretty great.  I'm tearing out the kitchen in parts on my down time when I get tired of writing and it should be finished in another week or two.

Today felt like opposite day.  Loading my truck up with bale after bale of carpet, a refridgerator door, water logged drywall, a cane and broken umbrella, armfuls of empty paint cans, a screen door, and three dozen other pieces of jetsam from the home I'm renovating's previous occupants, it was opposite day.  What I was doing should be my hobby.  I should be putting that sweat and blood and cuss into my own home, not someone else's.  When I go home I should be thinking about what I am going to tear down and visit the hardware store to work on next.  When I go home I should not be thinking about what I can write next that can be packed into the time it takes to shut my body down to hit the hammers and brushes and trash bags and saws again.

As much as I love working with my hands, I could find a way to work with my body in the face of an occupation that demanded I not.

"You're poor!  You're poor!  You're poor!  You're poor!  Do not be deceived; you're poor!"

Independent life is a horror show and funhouse of mirrors broken and whole.  I am staying positive.

What brought me back to a semblance of balance is remembering that the day is still young.  Independent life is 5 years old.  Five.  Five years ago you started stepping outside of your cell.  A year or two later you walked down a hallway and into a cafeteria.  A few months later you learned there was a yard and no time restrictions.  A few months later you found a gate into another yard.  It's getting larger and larger as long as you do not screw it all up and have your privileges revoked.  All of the time you lost will be compounded by the time you spent finding a way back out.

No one pays you what you're worth unless you have the paper to create the market.  Or the portfolio and charisma, in lieu of paper.  Portfolio and charisma is an absolute "and" statement.  The one and not the other turns into a luck base number system.  I will never know my actual value.  Maybe that is the worst of it?  I will never know if I am being over paid or under paid, valued appropriately or not.  The optimist inside, the petitioner, tells me that if and only if we suffer for as much time as we spent pursuing the degree, our penance will be met with paper if and only if we are gracious through our turbulent era.  The eros inside whispers about penance through joyful degradation,   The musician adds another kick drum, knocking over cymbal stands.  The child snaps crayons in half so both hands can draw at once inside the same lines.

It is difficult not to fantasize about getting my degree in the mail, tearing it in half, driving to their house, and suffocating them to death in turn, each by half, with a wad of paper.  That would be thoroughly satisfying.

What are you supposed to do when the toys you want to play with are above the grade you are licensed for?  What are you supposed to do when what you are allowed to do you can do very well, but the ceiling is opaque and the sounds coming through it are not in a language you can or maybe will ever understand?  Maybe I am paid exactly what I am worth.  If I have reached my ceiling and given no indication that I am prepared for or understand in the slightest or am equipped for beyond that ceiling, I am paid exactly what I am worth.

That's frightening.  Also true.  Harrowing.

Sometimes I understand that I'm getting too fixated on true freedom.  I get a taste of working something I can enjoy to support the writing habit and expect everything else to fall in line. There's a luck element to it, that I cannot unlock through work or optimism or faith or trust.  That operates on its own time table.  If I do win the lottery, I will take out full page ads in major cities for the hell of it, but only once.

Part of me continues to say it is not supposed to be this hard to make massive uncertainty and day to day, week to week, at best month to month living a thing of the past.  My state is, however, that fragile.  At the ripe old age of at least 1/3 dead the best I can do for myself is knowing I have at least a month to figure out a new lowline.  Fear the high lines because you know a low line is around the corner... ....what to do when you are following low lines?   High lines have to be engaged.  My spider sense is not tingling.  Shake the wrong tree and a warship mine may fall out of it, let alone a tank or soldier sized one.  The other story of America.  Every body wants to be a cat.  If you have enough money you can do whatever you want to.  Not that much money.  I mean enough money to swap cars, or pick up and move, or add and subtract clothing, or change lighting, or paint colors, flip what you walk on, change shoes when you feel like it, add and subtract channels, modify whatever you want to when the moment strikes you, eat out, order drinks for other people, pay for other peoples gas, buy extra fresh fruit.  It's nice.

I am still going to try to brew my own beer this summer.  Do not give me that horseshit "God works in mysterious ways" because chance does too.  The only thing better than chance is ingenuity, and the only thing more important and better than ingenuity is imagination.

I am trying to stay positive with some success.  Frustration and rage are part of being us.  Born here?  Sure.  From here?  No.  I've missed you.  Don't lose touch.  If you ever need to talk, do not forget my ear.                 I love you.                    I love you.       I love you.  I love you. I love you.I love you.Iluvu.Ilvu.Iu.U.I.

We'll get this thing sorted out.  We have a lot of time ahead of us, like it or not, we do.

Do not quit.

You have the rest of your life to make that decision.

It is opposite day, okay?

It is not wasted time.

Opposite day.

Time becomes more valuable as it accumulates.

Okay.  I am
with you.  Agreeing to never throw hands up in frustration.  Agreeing to ride it as long as there is still track in front.  Agreeing to dance as long as there is a beat to dance to, be it from within or without.  I am okay with you as long as your are
okay.  With me.





///Aesop Rock - (Gun for the Whole Family) ~ i've missed you for a very long time.  things got bad.  things were getting bad.  i had to remember that they weren't as bad as they'd been.  we're working toward a utopia of coexistence.  we're not there yet, but damn sure we're going to keep on trying while helping lay the ground works and maps and blue prints for the next iteration of our being.




/
//
///Alanis Morissette - (Thank You) ~ passive mobile adaptable armor.

Less Than Stellar Habits

I've developed the habit of not breathing while I'm driving.  Cruising down Allegheny boulevard beside the river with a ton of straightaways, I noticed it.  My right hand resting on the stick shift started to go numb.  That was when I realized I wasn't breathing.  That was also when I sucked a breath in at 45 miles per hour on a two lane with a rumble strip.  It's really hard not to process space and time as opportunities to wreck and die.  I'm trying to unlearn it.  Breathing is very important, especially while driving.  I'm not scared of many things.  I thought I'd conquered my fear of the road once I started whipping my horse, but I hadn't.  I have been holding my breath since all this time whenever situations got even remotely hairy.  It makes me a worse driver, not a more cautious one.  Constant silent panic that locks up a body.  The world is terrifying at speed.  But I love speed.  But it's terrifying.  But it's gorgeous.  Wrestling with circumfact.... am I going to die in a flaming ball of twisted metal?  Ignore the landing lights.  They are not landing lights!  Oooh tunnel vision.  Stick your head out of the window and suck it in.  Canyon run. Someday soon.  Don't go too heavy on the gas.  I want driving to be fun again.




///Hotchip - "You Ride, We Ride, In My Ride"

Dealing & Check In

Gotta change the motor oil now and then.  S'not the first time or the last.  I was concerned.  The panels were lighting up in not so good ways and it's kind of like changing your alarm because sometimes the tune you design to play goes doot doot doot and then you start dancing instead of waking up and that's no good, ya know?  It's no good.

Instead of waking up you get like "aw, this sounds great, who made this?  I can jam all day" and that's no good at all.  Time to change the motor oil.

An overactive imagination they said.  Spirits was put past me too.  Talking to angels got floated.  Talking to demons got floated too.  "Just pick which ones" got floated too.  Hawky talk.  All of it trash.  Waking up to the signals again.  The check engine light.  Sky zoe frania.   I hate that word so much.  I hate that word so fucking much.  I hate that word so fucking much!  I hate that word.  I hate that word.  I hate that word.  I hate that word.  I hate that word.  I hate that word.  I hate that fucking word.

Delusions of grandeur.  I don't understand!  I don't get it.  I'm very happy.  I'm working on a concussion free year and I think I'm gonna be able to get it this year.  The first one in five without one.  The first year in three that I haven't broken my nose.  I'm looking forward to it.  It is going to be a gold belt when I check off December.  I'm dealing.

Six years without a pain killer (minus alcohol but that only halfway counts.... a pain putter offer).  Nothing to the significance of a tylenol.  I'm not allowing myself to sniff anything near an edible.  It's good though.  It's a bad track to go down, plus pain lets you know where the line is.  There's nothing wrong with that.  I'm dealing and it's great and terrifying because I'm - not sure when the line happens, ya know?  When we click over and aren't talking to people anymore or are extremely unreasonable.

The concern comes from knowing that an existence without you is doable, highly doable, but not nearly as ... well, not that far.  I won't go that far.  Within the framework of citizenship, yes, absolutely.  An existence without you is by a landslide far more favorable and speaks to my heart in ways I don't always and can sometimes not do at all.  A self starter to a degree; turn the dial far enough and hydrolock blows the push rods to bits and reduces the engine block to a 300 lb paperweight.

Does that make me dependent?  I hope not.  I guess, what I'm saying is if I was the last man on Earth, my reign would be fairly brief.  We laugh saying it out loud, but it's true.  Maybe a decade or two, if that.  I hope I am doing a reasonable job of it.  I know I slip sometimes and the clutch engages and I am two gears off of first and I don't always know whose driving the damn thing to begin with and sometimes ... talking out of school.  Nope nope nope.  None of that.  Enough of that.

I want a fucking present.  I want a parade and a band and a fucking float.  I want the parade, the band, the float, and a present.  I tore after my pap paps for talking to me in snippets of things he's seen and not actually talking and here I am doing it too.  Anger management was neither of our strong suits.  I wonder who talks to him.  Who did he have to talk down.  Did he?  It would certainly explain a lot of a few things.  It really fucking would.  He's not talking though so I guess I'll grill him in heaven or hell.  Chaa!  Have the rest of eternity to exchange phone books.  Wouldn't that be the fucking cats.

I'm dealing though.  The committee deals back and we play our cards and try to beat the dealer sometimes.  Sometimes we just fill the house coffers and call it.

It's a juggling act with a little bit of severed limbs when the chainsaw comes down two seconds earlier than expected or turns a rotation before it was supposed to or hangs in the air a tad bit longer for no god damn reason whatsoever and control goes out like a tungsten bulb and its tomorrow already and you're talking to people in daylight and how the hell what the fuck am i doing here happens and you have to review your notes.  I really hope it's not like this when I'm fifty.  I'm afraid it might be, or worse.  Da fuck is paranoia anyways?  Why can't I sleep in the dark?  What is out there?  What the hell is out there???  I've been looking for you.  I've been searching for you.  Come out!  I know you're there.  I can fucking smell you, you fuck.  I can fucking hear you!  Why can no one else hear you!  It's not fair.  It's not fair.  You know what, 'ats fine.  We're fine with that.  For fucks sake, just once, speak to someone else too.  I dunno.  It's tiring and very difficult to explain how energy is expended without losing traction altogether and paying for it in a big way because I am just like you.  I want to be.  Let's trade.  S'not a grift if it's an even trade.  Keep routine.  Stay alert.  Routine will rescue you.  I don't like change.  I'm not stubborn.  I'm not antisocial.  I just have to maintain parameters and readings and locations to the "t" and to the dot.  Please don't be offended if I whip donuts and drive like a madman when designated play time comes about.  It's the only time I have to spend when high alert can be tuned down to "we are all present and accounted for."  Why won't you fucking die!?  Time to change the oil.

My tracking is suffering again on certain very important things.  We are not enthused.  It is unacceptable.




///Nancy Sinatra - (Bang Bang)

You Need To Vibrate Higher and The Good News (and the bad news)

I want to get the bad news out of the way first, but the bad news is also the good news.  Let's do that first.  The good news is we've made some changes, but they will not stick.  Self doubt.  The results were not at all to expectation.  The expectation was, through dropping metaphor, there could be achieved a clearer stage of communication between people, but it only introduced severe complications.  We're going to go ahead and burn that solution so hard it leaves shadows against the walls of my head.

It was a spirited effort and executed to the best of our abilities, but ultimately a failure.  Well intentioned though.  It introduced an incredible amount of doubt in meaning and second guessing, even more so than the use of extended metaphor.  "Is now the time to be blunt?"  "Are you being blunt enough?"  "Who are you speaking for because I know for damn sure you are not speaking for me."  There was an excessive amount of hate and miscommunication circulating because of the effort and action to connect A to D effectively.  It was a worthy pursuit.  Always diagnose actionable thoroughfares.  ADAT.

ADAT is a friendly reminder to carry with you.  When confusion eats in, the best way back toward organization is through ADAT.  Understand, however, there is only so much to be gained in terms of growth through deviation from the path best traveled.  It's not about volume or trail blazing.  Select what will allow you to travel and utilize your abilities to the best of their purpose.  What good is the path less traveled if you're not equipped to attack it?  What good is the path most traveled if you're not equipped to attack it?  Destruction.

I'm not going to put on my sage hat because I don't have one.  Mostly, I could really go for some coke right now.  I think I already told you, but every time I hear the Coca Cola commercial that ends with "smile because it's coke" I snicker a little because I know other people have caught it too.  We're all people.  Some of us are more people than others.

I have to remind myself that I am not spinning my wheels.  If I was it would be, easily, the show stopper of all burn outs at the muscle car convention.  I am not marking time (I am).   I am side tracking myself, but still tracking.

Anyway, the good news is we are making some changes.  The bad news is we are making some changes.  What has been added cannot be subtracted because it will tirelessly and quietly shred my insides with abandon.  There's is no doubling back.  There is, but I will not forgive myself if I do.  I am not looking forward to changes.  I will still ask questions because I have the memory capacity of a goldfish when it comes to current events that do not scar hard enough to wake up the following day and demand investigation.  Which is fine.  That, we can do.  You don't have to punch me in the brain pan, you just have to make sure I will ask myself about it later and get some answers.  The latter half of that being key.

You need to vibrate higher.  As unpleasant as it sounds, it must be done.  Not in the spirit of further development or outside tracking or productivity or any multi-syllabic word.  In terms of exorcising the engine.  The engine has been well breathed of late, but needs exorcised.  Far too many misfires.  What was accomplished recently could have been accomplished four weeks ago if not for the misfires.  Those should be remedied.

Remediation through vibration.  Knocking and being quiet enough to hear the knock back.  It's not easy.  It is very easy to allow distraction.  It's not easy to be quiet enough to hear the knock back loud enough to know whereabouts to knock next.  That's the hard part.  I think that's where I've been dropping the ball.  Forgotten how to navigate silence.  Not entirely forgotten, but locked the skill away for reasons I do not clearly remember, but looking at it from the outside I suspect it had something to do with trying to actively connect with people.  A holdover from a submission that failed or succeeded (hell if I know) that was still being invoked to the detriment of the rest of us.

There is nothing in the desert.  And no man needs nothing.  Aberrations, hallucinations, and oasis's and dry docks aside... that was a mistake.  Actually, not aside, but in hand.  It was a mistake and poorly executed operation.  S'ok though, don't mug yourself.  Mistakes are made to learn repair.  You're going to jam it up again.  We both know this.

The good news is we're going to make changes.  The bad news is we're going to make changes.  We will vibrate higher.  Hibernation is not an option.  Do not convince yourself otherwise.  Get mad.  You know what you are.  Stop talking yourself out of it.  Stop fighting it.

Things have been a bit upside down.  It's very difficult to connect with people and continue to maintain the routine that is so desperately needed.  I have not been so outwardly frustrated with how clearly against the grain of normal I am than I have been through this last month.  It's like getting hit in the teeth with a metal ruler on full spring.  My head keeps screaming "GET AWAY FROM ME OR I WILL RUN!" and I don't know what to do about it.

I think that's why I cherish and despise free time at once.  Free time is too much time to think and work is too much work to create.  It would be different if it was a mixture of the two.  It would be different if I could handle a tincture of the two.  I cannot.  It has to be one or the other.  And still, atop that, is the difficulty, the pain of emotion that keeps coming stamped "on pain of death" if not exercised.  I want to feel, as much as you do.  I want to feel and not force.  I do not understand why they must force me.  Sometimes the forcing is enjoyable.  It wakes me up where I would otherwise fall dead, emotionless.  I cannot take it all of the time though.  Why can they not understand that?  I want to say no.  My body tells me no.  My head tells me no.  My heart tells me no.  So where is this motor coming from?

Am I an extension of you?  Not again.  Not again.  Not again!  Yes, again.  I'm not.  I don't love many people.  Not in terms of justifying existences or anything near that cosmic in scale.  More important, I don't trust many people.  I'm not sure where I'm going with it.

Collecting.

I wish we spoke the same language instead of crying.

Crying being universal and cross dimensioned, but all too simple to express the depths to which we go.




///Massive Attack & David Bowie - "Nature Boy"

Gun Barrel

It's hard to play it off.  I'm trying to.  There's only so much research that can be done.  After that it's active study.  Games.  It's not about mercing.  Very much emulation.  That will never cease to be important.  It's very difficult to know though.  Unfortunate maybe.

To see the difference between emulation and actual love the way that I know how.  I have gotten better than a parrot.  A yak bak.  Sometimes I have to force conversation to get a response that is not in the library.

When I get that response, that cherished one, I can take it straight to the cpu and analyze it and that little click where the trap snaps shut and before I burp out some human garbage are the words where I was just me again.  It happens very quickly.  Running down the library of what you're supposed to says and the lists of what you did says and running the numbers between and all the other variables.  I'm trying not to cuss on this one.  Cussing keeps you honest, but it keeps you too blunt.

Long story short, it's hard to play it off and hard to not calls it like I sees it without completely seizing up.  It's hard to play it off and I think people can notice and do not ever give me a flyer on the game.  Please do once in a while.  Whether I admit it or not I need them.  I'm no dummy.  I'm no barrel sucker.  I'm a fighter and a lover.  The two can be combined.  Just know that whatever you try I am trying three times as hard to keep up.




///The White Stripes - "Conquest"

Concepts and Compulsions (the third star on the right)

There was a definite shift from the factory perspective to the machine level perspective.  I'm not sure exactly when it happened and I do think it was a shift in the correct direction.  It was a shift that granted more personhood, more agency, more personality to what is continuing.  Obviously the factory still exists and maybe not as obviously the dreaming door is still there near it's basement and used frequently, but not documented as thoroughly as I would like, but that's a matter of preference and amplitude.

The idea of them being up in an office having meetings without me and being forced to listen in to get news of what direction the committee was going grated on me pretty hard and I was getting very upset about not being included on their decisions so I am taking some agency back because I have to live here too and what they make affects me immediately as soon as it leaves the factory doors because I am the consumer primary and the keeper and owner.  The deed's in my name.  Just saying.  I can't have them wrecking up the place and deciding when and where they want to work inside the building and the child is going to do what he will, and I can't keep stopping everything to go look for him (which is easy to say because he's right in front of me now and he won't hold my hand, but I've got his pinky and his pain tolerance is nowhere near mine and it doesn't need fixing or adjustment, it just needs held), but I will because I can't keep watch all of the time and he knows when to sneak out better than I know when to check on him.

I took the map of the warehouse and exploded it.  Took the map of the iron works and exploded it into pieces and came up with a better way to organize and run diagnostics on its ability to function on it's own.  Not off any grid, but function as a thing properly connected and fed by mainlines.  The concept was lurking in the back of my mind and took a back seat to the foundry, the assembly line, but the stock house allowed far too much space for engineering weapons and tools that built better tools for building war machines.  I'm still trying to get the spacing right.  Getting to a point where we know what all of the parts are doing at all times is very difficult and throws error messages and blows out the lights sometimes.  I would like to believe I am getting close to a master approach.

I've adopted a more mechanical concept.  The electric layer and the machine layer.  All into a sandwich.  It's like a massive circuit board with steam punk getting the outside layer to talk to the inside layer. Communications are still a little bit shoddy, but I think I'm getting the response times right.  Or at least more correct and that's more steps in a direction so I'm comfortable with not drowning.  Control itself has not been an issue except in extreme cases or cases that I would call extreme sensory nodes.  Times and instances of overwhelming input from the outside surface that over powered the gears ability to translate it into valid input to the inside surface.  And then it just goes harmonic spitting back weird settings to the machine layer that does not know how to place it in three dimensions that makes sense to the surface and then the surface burps up colors and lights and structures and the entire layout of the city is completely off and the gps sends some bastard down a sidewalk that ends at a cornfield because that road was paved over fifteen years ago and broken up ten years ago and filled in and sodded and there've been 9 annual fairs there and the whole thing smells like carnies and animal poop vaguely to this day.

So now it's all a circuit and machine.  Taking Occam to it to a degree.  Keep it simple, stupid.  It's not a committee, it's a group of parts, pieces, and controllers and they work together at all times.  Yes, not all on the same page, but they are in constant communication despite what I thought before.  They are in constant communication and the child is a hardware addition with poor pin alignment so as he comes and goes and is present or not, he may not always be detected by the system proper, but he cannot be confirmed or denied.  I still do wonder where he goes when he does not register.  I wonder if he is listening or not.  Prick. WHERE ARE YOU?

Anyway, I can't allow myself to be consumed with his location.  I can, but I would prefer not to.  I do.  We love it when he's around.  God, what is he doing now?  WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU, I KNOW YOU'RE LISTENING.  I'll wait.  It's all I can do.  All any of us can do.  I'll hunt him down.  'S'cool.  But basically I took the time to rearrange components into a different, not necessarily new, configuration that allows for greater mobility and flexibility and diminishes destructive passion.  Never again.  Not yet, anyway.  That plan is under double keyed authentication, minimum.

I've gotten away from paper again.  I don't know how to feel about it because it's not pure laziness.  It's a distaste for the purity to an extant and a feeling of reversion to another extant.  I'm not sure where or if the two can be balanced or with what.  You must commit to one or the other or both will suffer?  No.  There is dual dedication.  I believe it is a problem of efficiencies and developing a left hand where the right hand has become the left and the left the right and I am partially consumed with teaching the right to do the things the off hand was forced to do.  I am okay with that.  That is a matter of more practice only, not malfunction.  Or to put it another way, no abandonment of duties inside the factory.  No idle mills, simply users unaccustomed to their new devices and methods.

I thought back to when I knew something was off with my upbringing.  It happened back in elementary school when Mrs. Hymenlokuvar was rubbing my back in kindergarten when I ran from the station wagon, when I was sure it was okay to run after my mom and pop pulled away, all the way to my seat in the classroom.  It is one of the few childhood (childhood referencing 2nd grade to birth) memories I can recall that did not end in violence.  She rubbed my back for what felt like minutes, but was probably seconds.  I remember her being very weirded out that I could show up for class at table three with a healthy sweat going.  That was when I began to feel something was off.  I liked it though, I remember that.  I remember the soothing nature to it and how her hand felt like it was sucking heat off of me so I could run at a much better temperature and it felt terrific.

When I was sure something was off was when I ... was washing dishes at the sink on Taylor street and my parents were going at it about something I cannot remember.  Something about Barnabus.  Or was his name Barnaby.  I don't know.  He was the upstairs neighbor and we weren't allowed to play with his kids or something, what I do know, regardless of the details is hearing my dad say "he's listening to us" and then them two leaving the room.  It was strange.  I wanted to leave the kitchen too, but I had my assignment.  Learning all of the creaks in the floor so you could get to the bathroom without disrupting them when you had to pee at night and couldn't hold it or when you wanted to talk to your sisters and you had a whole house to navigate in the dark without bumping into anything too loud.

There is some humor thinking back to how hard I idolized kids when I first broke in to college.  "Oh my God, you assholes know everything!"  It's a little bit of time compression helping that out.  They didn't know everything.  Not even close.  Well traveled, well heeled?  Sure.  Capable, adaptable, thorough, and finicky?  Sure.  Closed and open minded by turns?  Also, yes.  As time grows longer and leaps of experience compress, it becomes increasingly clear that my peers are just that and no more.  No apotheosis necessary. Appreciation yes.  I am not just like you, but I will tell you what I fucking am.  Closer to your know how than I have any business being given what we are and what you are and where we came from.  Fuck you, that's "swagger" and tooth.  What's four years to you?  I know what it is to me.  I wish I knew what it would be to me now eight years ago, though.

I'm a fine pilot, if I may say.  I was considering running someone down walking on the side of Will Flynn motorway, but I didn't.  Mostly because I was too far from home to be sure I could get home without being pulled over for questioning about the dent in my windshield and the spritz on my hood.  Sometimes you have to make business decisions.  Plus, I don't have money to get my windshield fixed.  That's just silly money management policy!

I embraced metaphor with all my heart through highschool.  I think that's when communication fault lines could not be written off anymore as being shy or quiet.  I just didn't know how to say it.  Didn't know an effective agent to be my stand in for the person between the person that says what I want to say for me.  That position was vacant for so long.

Don't mind me if I get weak kneed with words.  It's a joy I couldn't experience for a very long time and I am suspect to abuse it.

I wonder sometimes how my Myspace friend DCScompton is doing in Australia.  I loved talking to him.  Since the migration several years ago we lost touch and I look for him now and then to see if he's still kicking.  I would love to move to Canberra.  I don't think I would adjust well or I would slot in perfectly.  America is not overrated at all, but I think we would have made excellent dual adventurers.  I remember asking him about what the compton in his screen name was about and I've been miffed for years because I can't remember.  He was a blast to read, but he jumped ship too and somewhere in migrating computers I lost the note that had the address of his page in it, among other things.

Wonder what my therapist is doing?  I do too.  Jeff is a good guy.  He meant well.  I do wonder how much of it was general altruism and how much was actual understanding.  I never asked him how he was doing or about his family, but I think it was a lot of unspoken understanding that it was none of my business and absolutely off limits for reasons we both knew.

I don't worry about him, but I do wonder about what he kept off the table and why.  Why didn't he offer too?  Was it because I had to be there?  And why did he turn me in that day?  Was it concern or was it a matter more akin to protecting job security.  I don't think he ever really trusted us.  Which is fine.  Understandable.  I have to understand that we didn't really know each other know each other.  He could have, though.  I wouldn't have rejected it.

The tracking signal cuts both ways.  A ping back is a ping back.  Until the signal cuts out.  The keys jingling on your pant loop let you know you are traversing reality and they also let reality know that you are crossing space and you have to be prepared to accept that your recognition is also the key not only to an ignition, but to a gate.

It's the third star on the right, straight on 'til morning, can't miss it.




///Steve Miller Band - "The Joker"  some people call me a lot of things.  there's power in knowing your own name.

Stand Up Act 9 (dialogues)

Stand Up Act 8


I don't want to go fishing today.

Why not, I was just putting on pants after you called?!

I changed my mind.

Why?

It's gross out.

Seriously?  A little rain??  It's got damn Pittsburgh in Autumn.  It's a perfect day.

Nope, its not.

You're from Pittsburgh!  What the hell is wrong with you?

You're being unreasonable!

It's beautiful outside!

You're being unreasonable!!

Am I?

Yeah.

Okay.............when are you free next?  I'm looking at the ten day forecast right now.




Throwing a rager tonight?

Yeah.

What time?

Sixish.

Nine?

Sixish.

Sixish?

Yes, sixish.

Have you thought about nine?

No.  Well, I did.  For a while.  Then I remembered I had shit to do.  Before.   After I remembered.

Whatever, you know where I live.  Hit me up and we'll combine parties at nine.

Ninish?





We're going to ramble on, because we can, and also why not.  The longest set ever.

Cats have short memories.  They have learned behaviors, but I think it's fair to say they have short memories.  They're beings of routines.  That can make you functional.  If you have a short memory, but a solid routine, you can definitely get by alright.  No harm no foul.  What you have to keep in mind is what really defines getting by.  Do you want to get by as well as a human being does or as well as a cat does?  Granted, cats have it pretty good.

Defining work aside, not to say that it's easy to be a cat.  Can you imagine having to sleep so much?  Yeah, I need to eat lunch, but first I have to take this three hour siesta in this sun beam because it's really god damn warm right here.  Yes, I know your car died on the shoulder of interstate 376 and you cancelled your triple A because there was an order of 30 pounds of catnip you had to get in so that you could ensconce yourself in plant matter on demand for the year, but this sun beam is really really warm and if I get into my car right now I will fall asleep immediately if traffic stops for longer than five minutes and I'm not trying to get stopped by the police with my inspection sticker out of date.  I'll see you in a few hours.  Yes, I'm in the shower right now.  I just ate.  I'll be done when I'm done.  Whether or not I'll be jerking off for the next hour before I take this nap is frankly none of your business.  If you keep talking like an asshole we are definitely brawling when I get there.  What's it to you anyway?  We're not family.  If I could live without a housemate I would!  Well, I didn't touch your snack stash, I just ate all of the food you left after you took off after breakfast.  Yes, including the things you set aside for lunch.  No, I didn't touch your stash or your green.  If I did, I would be too busy not answering the damn phone.

It's a little bit alarming though when you look up from repairing a broken laptop or keeping up with email nonsense and see your cat dangling from the side of the fish tank you specifically perched on top of bookshelf because, the last time you checked, cats couldn't climb bookshelves.

From a purely physics standpoint, it shouldn't work.  There's a reason cat trees are covered with carpeting instead of smooth faced fake wood.  On top of that you've seen them try to climb it before close to forty times.  They jump in three shelves up, the earliest possible landing point and watched them look at and sniff at the fourth shelf like a hardcore dungeon crawling RPG player trying to find the secret entrance to the glitch cave.  As though, if they looked hard enough and poked around long enough, somehow the bookshelf programming would split apart and instantly teleport them to the next level up if they jabbed the right pixel with their nose.

Yet, there he is.  Climbing on top of the fish tank with no lid.  I'm scrambling to find my camera and trying to keep one eye on him to make sure he doesn't fall in, because the only thing worse than a cat soaked to the bone in fish poop filled water is washing that cat.  And somehow he figures out how to step from edge to edge and not fall in AND terrorize the fish dumb enough to come near the surface with a thing twenty times their size looming overhead and thrusting enormous claws through the surface of the water with the only thing in mind being poking one of those two foot long (by scale if fish were people) talons through their itty bitty eye holes.

How the hell did he get up there?  I took him down and watched him attempt it again and again for a good day and a half and he never managed to pull it off again.  Which was kind of disappointing.  It reminded me of how shitty my own memory was.  Not to harp on passwords, but I have made passwords and forgotten them not more than a handful of days later.  The security question is what was the make and model of your first car.  Two days removed, I'm asking myself "the make and model of the first car I ever drove or the first car I ever crashed?"  "The make and model of the first car I can remember riding in or the first car I ever drove myself."  "The make and model of the first car I fell in love with or the make and model of the first car I knew I wanted in my dream garage."  Ending with "your account is locked, please call customer service at 1-800-555" five five, five five.  How are achievements so forgettable?

I want to sit the cat down with translator boxes strapped to our throats so we can understand each other the way it happens in science fiction and go over what exactly went on.  Because maybe he just needs some coaching?  Maybe he did it once and it was a wild success and he got so caught up in the success that he forgot to make mental notes of how he actually got there and now he's broke and sitting on the floor, looking up at the fish tank angrier than ever, and clueless with how to actually deal with it.

I at least wish he had opposable thumbs and manners enough to ask me to pass him the sugar dish so we could sit down at the kitchen table and talk about our short comings.  Or at least sip tea and nod instead of stalking around the apartment in circles mad at things we can't discuss and counter mad at each other for being mad about things we can't talk about and madder that the atmosphere is so hostile when we both have nowhere else to be and nothing else to look at besides our counter counter madness.

So treat yourself.  Nothing cures unhappiness like a good nosh on something yummy.  It makes the world go pretty swell, when at the end of the day you go over the steps that got you to where you were the month before only to find utter soul crushing DMV line wait times to find you never filled out form H-09 and you can't forge the notary stamp in the bathroom anyway so there's no need to explain that you have explosive diarrhea from the fast food joint you never went to and will be back in a moment.

Get out the cat treats and their having pork sauteed with salmon juices and beans and rice so they poop good, and you have bleu cheese buffalo wing flavored butter crackers with nothing but mayonaise to dip them in (if you want to go so far as to dip them in to something).

There are some things, some foods, that have no business here on this green earth.  I don't know how they get passed beyond their developmental stages or who fell asleep at the wheel, but they do enter the realm of otherwise useful, palatable, strange and uncommonly tasty besides the fact, sometimes unassuming, palette expanding digestables.  If it's not broke, don't fix it holds true for most foods.  Sure, stick a turbo charger on there.  Put some bigger rims on there.  Maybe some slicker tires.  Change the paint scheme and put some tint on the windows.  Lower the suspension.  Make that vehicle of flavor crystals sexier to my tongue and I won't complain.

Maybe though, it would be a good idea to take the concept sketchers out of the room when you get down to the nitty gritty of actually putting together the deliverable?  Maybe, instead of a massive grille with chrome highlights, go with a slight variation and make it a few inches bigger instead of a foot and a half bigger with ten inch wings sticking out of the sides?  Consider the Ruffle potato chip.  Let's make the ridges bigger, but just by a few millimeters.  Sure: instantly better.  Let's take the barbecue flavor and make it a little more peppery and a little more salty and a little more savory.  Sure: instantly better.  Let's take the barbecue flavor and make it a million times sweeter and a thousand times more sour and paint it orange!  No.

Part of what makes these x-foods so ridiculously awful is the half commitment.  Case in point: parmesan garlic bread flavored anything.  That never works out.  In every essence lab there's probably some guy or team of people working on distilling the essence of a food that is an experience unto itself.  You will never be able to distill the experience of chomping into a piece of properly toasted, well seasoned, garlic bread.  Ain't gonna happen.  God bless you for trying, and enjoy the pay check in the meantime, but you are trying to get through a brick wall by poking it with a finger tip.  Chicken and waffle potato chips?  Nope.  Gimme the chicken and the waffle and some hot syrup please.  In a bag.  On a shelf.  That I can buy, take home, pull a tab and trigger an exothermic reaction that heats it all up, and then pour it out on a plate with a knife and fork and a little plastic baggie of syrup and a packet of salted butter to bust open on top of it.  I'll pay the extra ten dollars for rehydrated deep fried meat, science, and happiness instead of a $3.50 bag of sadness.

It's tiring.  I keep falling for it and it's tiring.  I imagine the woman at the gas station where these unspeakable abominations of food stuffs keep showing up (am I shopping at one of the test kitchens?  I DON'T KNOW, but I wish I did) sees me stumble in at five in the morning looking for something, nay anything, besides what is already in my pantry or my fridge and watches me walk up and down the aisles and sees my eyes light up at the latest new riff on an old classic and waits for my shoulders to fall.  Waits for the long sigh of defeat because she knows I'll try anything once because we had a long conversation three days after the first time I tried heroin and she eventually came up to me and asked me if she could help me with something and it scared the living daylights out of me to the point where I literally jumped backward from her because I was convinced I was there alone somehow at the time and my brain was still maladjusted to person to person contact in ways far worse than they are now.

I imagine her watching that long breath and knowing I'm going to come to the counter with some Island of Dr. Moreaux shit to put in my gut and she'll check me out and wish me the best of luck again and she knows I could just ask, because she's tried it before, but she knows I won't listen.  "You could've just called."  Instead of waiting to get hammered until two in the morning expecting people to show up and packing an entire evening of inebriation into the three hours before the sun comes up and having to deal with them already completely soused and begging you to slow down because they're already ready for sleep and you're just getting started and they are in no mood to field your thirteen text messages about the things you normally talk about when you party and collaborate and get drunk at the same pace together.

But that's when you know you can die happy.  Assuming your death isn't brought about by being fed feet first into a wood chipper while you're still conscious, you can definitely pass quietly and quite happy into death knowing you did call who you were supposed to, when you were supposed to, and remembered the things you were supposed to remember how to do along the way, and didn't fall for things like a taco shell made of doritos that tasted like hot vagina cheese vomit on the way down and nothing like an electro statically cheese powdered tortilla chip casing taco fixings at all, and everything you did or at least some of what you did was what you were supposed to do.

"Hell, I'm two days and six hours late for work" is never a good feeling.  When you get that sensation that what you're on to is something you can fade out doing and never wake up from, you know it's something good.  Sure, you can get that feeling artificially (see Patton and the suicide drug), but when you've earned your way on to that path toward what you do better than anything else, don't get comfortably confused with doing best because there is very little comfortable about writing or art or whatever keeps the motor spinning when you'd rather have it idle or, better yet, shut down completely, you know you're on to something worth while and pursuing.  Perhaps in vain, but like I said before (not really) vanity is a poor man's occupation.

I can't wait to operate out of ego.  Vanity is sport.  Ego is conquest.The definition of poor being not within the scope of ... being too tired to masturbate.

You really do have to reevaluate your life if you reach a point where you are literally too tired to masturbate.  When you cross that line where the prospect of masturbation puts the same look on your face as when you want a nip of a candy bar, but can't decide which brand or make or model or if it should have ground effects on it, or if the candy bar just has speed holes punched in it or a new paint job, but it'll let you down in the end and even the piss amount of money you spent on it will lead to days of regret later when you are one dollar and 33 cents short of getting the one thing you actually needed later on in the month, you know it's time to make some changes.

No one should ever have to suffer being too tired to masturbate.  It's natures gift to the animal kingdom and as the king of the kingdom you should be and are entitled to, by the mandate of science and creation itself, masturbate.  That's one thing I will never understand about relationships.  The person that gets upset about your masturbating is so clearly in the wrong, it's practically insane.  In terms of pure practicality, absolutely insane.

I'm not cheating on you.  You're not having sex with me.  I need to feel sexually fulfilled nightly so I don't kill you and then all of our children and then my coworkers tomorrow morning and then myself.  What's the big deal?  You're happy, because I did not sexually assault you during the night when my dick got hard and I couldn't sleep for the third night in a row.  You're happy because I wake up in a good mood and feel rested and you feel rested and don't have to wash cum off of your ass and out of your cooter or off your dick and thighs.  I feel fulfilled because I slept well beside you and you feel good because I slept well beside you and enjoyed breathing in your sleep smells.  You feel good because you're not obligated to fuck me and I feel good because you feel good about that.  Who cares what I'm actually thinking about?  Brain space is brain space.  It's no ones property.  It's no man's land.  So it's okay to think about baseball and dismantling an engine block and nun's elbow fat to keep myself from cumming while we fuck, but it's not okay to think about fucking if we're not fucking?  Do you know how ridiculous you sound right now?  Can you see why this might not work for me?

If you're too stressed to masturbate you need to reevaluate your life choices.

I do think I am becoming a bit asexual.  It's getting close to the point where it is impossible to meet a good shag without the baggage.  I don't want to know your life story.  I'll listen.  I'll talk.  I won't ask, but if you ask I'll tell.  I think it comes with moving up the age bracket and getting to that point where everyone begins pairing off and eggs start to get few and far between and people either start to go more and more insane or more and more stable and there is less and less gray area between the extremes because it really does take a good portion of your life just to figure out who and what you are and what the hell you are projecting and how the hell it's actually being perceived.

That moment in middle school at the graduation dance when the dance floor cleared out and the chaperons were busy talking about futures and "oh my gawd, my son..." and "I know, my daughter..."s  and other bullshit parents talk about to stay sane around other parents and not sound weird or give any indication that their little bastards backwards tendencies have anything to do with what goes on after he/she gets home from school, and everyone is in a circle talking to someone or listening to someone and you realize you're looking up at the lights in the ceiling and listening to everyone listening and talking to each other and you're happy there,  happens all over again when you get older.  Except this time around you're fully aware of it.

And that's when you realize you should stop suggesting things to do with other people because they're flat not interested, no matter how enthusiastic about it you try to come across.  Maybe there was an inkling of interest when the topic first came up, but by the fourth phone call and the tenth text message over the course of a month with no success it's time to face facts: they don't want to hang out with you the same way you want to hang out with them and it's only going to get more pronounced as they continue to grow and you continue to grow and you're not growing apart, by no means.  You're just not roll dogs the way you used to be.

Eventually it's going to get creepy and they're going to cut you off entirely so simmer down.  That's hard to do though.  Especially when you get pity-vited to hang out.  That's always the worst.  A pity-vite followed by endless pursuit leads to call off after call off after call off, because, let's be honest, they're trying to let you down easy and if you think about it a little bit, had you met them outside of the circumstances in which you actually met, you never would have known they existed in the first place.  Your blip is over.  The good thing is though, if you do relax the pursuit a little bit, you might get to have a fun pop in/pop up later when you've had enough time away to have something interesting to relay to them and that's nothing to sneeze at.  Unless you sneeze when someone turns on the light.  Then it is something to sneeze at.  Something to sneeze at and explain while you run for some toilet paper and your clothes because finding people that fuck with the lights on is almost as hard as not forcing the issue.

It's kind of like coveralls.  You either understand their value or you don't.  There's a large age divide in understanding the coverall.  There's a large age divide and a large occupation divide too.  When it comes to occupations the idea of the coverall is pretty obvious.  You either have to stay really really clean or you have to get really really dirty.  Either way, any sort of regular clothing is not going to cut it, but whatever job you are doing at either end of the spectrum is absolutely essential to the furthering of civilization.  You're either working at the very top end of technology and physiology or you're working at the machine level where the rubber meets the road.  Either way, if you show up in regular clothes or a suit and tie someone is going to say "what the fuck were you thinking" and/or "go home and change or don't come back at all."

The other area is a little more finicky.  The other area is weather related.  If it's just that damn cold outside it makes sense to wear coveralls.  Plain and simple.  The children in snow suits will nod and nearly high five you up until you hit the tweens and teens and young adults.  That's when you run into the girl still wearing heels in an inch of snow and the guy in all leather skinny jeans and bubble jacket vest with the flat brimmed sports hat that still has its sticker on it.  That's when you have to share the sidewalk with the guy with the vintage belt buckle and man purse shivering at a bus stop and the mom in enormous sunglasses faux studded with diamonds with a stroller.  That is, however, also when you run into the gal in her early thirties who stops you and asks you where you bought those coveralls because waiting at the bus stop at 7 A.M. with a windchill of -5 has had the presence of mind to understand a skirt and leggings with knee high leather boots was a bad idea.

The logic gap from age 13 to 23 is a strange one.  Everything is very obvious after, I dunno, say 26.  After 26 it's just a matter of execution and can do, will do, won't do, can't do, on the books and ready to go, or still thinking it over indefinitely postponed.  It does make me laugh sometimes walking home from work in nice thick coveralls perfectly fine, the wind breaking in front of me and not feeling a thing knowing that I score a 0 on style points and 100% on no regrets or thoughts about "if I lived here, I'd be home already" because I know in coveralls I can walk for days.  Hell, I could curl up and take a nap, but we know how that usually ends (flashlights in the face and "where do you live"s and "this is a public park, you can't sleep here"s, but those days are behind us).

Growing up is a shame but necessary.  I got my first gray hair a few weeks ago.  Right in the middle of my chin.  A friend of mine said "you're going to be one of those creepy 40 year olds with gray hair all over," I told him it's not true.  The preferred term is silver fox.  It's a badge of honor.  I honestly didn't think I'd live long enough to see a gray hair on my head so it's actually a badge I am happy to wear.  I can run with it.  Chicks dig salt and pepper fellas right?  Even though I don't particularly dig chicks.  It's still nice to be prized a little bit.  Let's you know you're not a complete dumpster fire.  If you're not a shock jock, I'm pretty sure not being branded a dumpster fire is a good thing.

Unlike most people, I've been waiting for gray hair for a very long time.  It's welcome.  My hair will finally start catching up to the miles I've put on my brain.  If someone took me home they'd be calling up lawyers about lemon laws and scam artists even though there is still a heart beating 10 years old inside of me.  Flipping through channels you'd be well advised to skip cartoon network because I will start jumping up and down and shouting that we have to stop to watch All Dogs Go to Heaven and Up coming on right after and we can't miss Courage the Cowardly Dog marathon after; Law and Order and the NBA game be damned!

With the kid does come soap dodging.  I still don't shower enough.  Then again, as you get older, the value of washing tends to increase.  Aside from my own OCD showering because...  well... because!  If you shower six times in one day you've either done way too much coke, done something really bad, are absolutely breaking down mentally and can't stop touching your own skin to save your life (if someone pointed a gun at you and sad the next time you rub your forearm I am going to put a bullet inside your fucking brain and you actually had to think long and hard about whether or not that itch right at the crook of your elbow was worth investigating because technically it's not your forearm and besides you really really have gone way too long without checking to make sure you were still inside the skin wrapped around your muscles, veins, arteries, and bones), or you just really like showering.

If I could live in my shower I probably would, Seinfeld style.  It breaks my heart sometimes, making references to things kids have never seen.  By kids, I mean early 20 somethings.  I can live with it.  It still grates my nerves though.

I did realize I was soap dodging the other day.  After I realized my shower fetish was getting out of control I decided to shower as little as possible and went to visit a friend.  I sat down right beside their fan boosted space heater.  Terrible idea, I know, but there was nowhere else to sit.  Let's just say, I got comfortable sitting on the floor beside it and spread my legs a little bit to sit cross legged.  The temperature wasn't particularly high or particularly low, but the fan was boosting airflow continuously and, yeah, it felt great blowing through my paints and airing out my junk because I'd been at work all day and it's nice to get a breeze going when your sack is stuck to your thigh.

I thought I smelled alright.  Ten minutes in, the girl sitting next to me asks me if I want to turn the heater off.  The heater is in passive mode so my answer is no.  The temperature is fine.  Ten minutes later she asks me again and this time we make eye contact and her eyes have that "something is not going well" slit to them.  So I put two and two together and made four.  Whatever funk I thought was contained has been let loose like the dogs of war all up on her face.  It was the nicest way anyone has told me I reeked in a long time.

I respected that, switched to a kneeling pose to pin down the crotch sweat dragon, and turned off the blower.  It's one of those simple things you can do to help other people feel more comfortable without other people being too shame faced.  It's kind of like masturbating in that way.  If you ever masturbate to a particular person, they don't want to hear about so don't say anything about it.  The sentiment will be appreciated, but there's no reason to go as far as treading on graces and enjoying company.  Be easy, be tactful, and they'll respect you for it.  The thing is you won't know they respect you because you'll never bring it up, but understand that given the alternative to not knowing... yeah, they'll respect you for it and take the complement.  Play it out in your head.  Run the dialogues and the dialog trees and superimpose their characteristics on those dialogs to guide the decision forks and you'll always end up at the same conclusion: take more showers, take more time, die happy, and in the meantime don't eat shitty food and keep memories in tow better than a cat can.

The Takedown, Hold Overs, Creation, and Airlock to Spacewalk

"That time is now."  It's time to tear it all apart and restructure it.  The tags no longer make any sense in terms of what they are supposed to be pointers too.  They still point to the things they are supposed to point to, but there's no longer the sort of continuity between meanings that there was.  Over the years and iterations and expansion, a lot of the growth has been organic save for the bare bones items and the most common of common veins and themes.  I'm having a hard time following it and searching and reviewing.  I'm sure part of it is to do with my own electromigration and changing processing powers, up and down.  Things that used to make sense do not anymore, that which makes sense now does not fit cleanly into what came before.

The main problem is, because I enjoy writing so much, getting other things done becomes tedious and overly difficult.  Discouragingly difficult.  Task lock kicks in and nothing gets done at all because I have that loop constantly running with no way to put an end to it.  "What do you want to do tonight?"  Get some writing done, maybe do some doodling.  "Okay, go!"  Wait, I want to do that first and then- "Okay, go!"  But I don't know how what I'm thinking about writing is going to seat next to the last thing I did so I need to find out what I was planning on accomplishing last week that's still in proc- "Okay, go!"  You're not hearing me.  I'm still trying to lay out the sequence so that when I get to the part where I start to lay down tracks I'll be able to begin to set up the next step into- "Okay, go!"  God damn it!!  Forget it.  I'm going to go jerk off and try to sleep.  And sleep refuses to kick in because my mind is still circling a world light years away from planet sleep even though my body arrived days ago.  Ghost ship.

There are hold overs.  Artifacts.  A lot of what I am doing is cataloging artifacts.  The overall design, however, is a massive artifact of another time.  A thing I've fallen in love with deeply.  When the entire interface and blog structure updated to a new design structure a few years ago, was it years, I retained mine because what I wanted to express was inexpressible within the new structure available.  The only real issue with doing it, at the time, was being cut off from any possible further updates beyond my own.  I liked what I put together.  I liked looking at it.  I liked making small adjustments here and there and watching it completely change it's feel without losing it's theme.  It's time to let go of the tinkering.  Save the memory.

Fun in creation.  Unique pleasure in drawing resources together into a whole.  This piece of code and that drawing on that server together with a banner you put together and stored on another server and watching it all spin to life at the click of a button.  Part of the enjoyment in keeping the ship alive after this or that part died or stopped responding was the puzzle of rerouting connections, solving them, and kicking off into space again.  One of the reasons why I love writing is pulling the parts and pieces together, memories, fragments, dreams, real and unreal, and at one point I got that same buzz from design, but it's wearing me out trying to do it across multiple platforms.  Time to retool and tighten up creation.  Focus on what matters the most and let that drive what comes next instead of allowing the platform to drive production.  The factory and the caucus and everyone working within should be governing what comes out of the warehouse, not the shape and color and how many windows the warehouse has.  Flight inversion.

Airlock to spacewalk, it is.  Time to park it in an orbital bone yard and piece together a new ship.  Maybe not one that incorporates everything, but one that simplifies so we're not flipping sixteen switches and checking three different read outs before tuning dials to accomplish what could be done in one cycle.  I'm looking forward to it.  I don't know what I'm going to do about the tag situation.  A problem for another day.  We'll see what's out there.  Never forget the mission.  Never forget how beautiful the Earth looks from afar.  When you can't see past your own control panel, it's time.  "Next time you go out to space, how about leaving yourself a little free time?"


///Plaid - "Air Locked"

Bricking the Computer

All I want to do is fix a hit and I know that I can't.  That's the fast track to crack and it tastes so good.  People get all concerned about weight loss and image that it grows insane.  How about a powder that takes away the urge to snuffle?  That would be nice.  Get on it science!  Help me rewire my brain maps.  That's the pill conversation again though and that is looped over as many times as it can be without taking action.  In the meantime I have a good stable of Krylon calling my name.  I want to try the chrome, but my lungs are not having it.  In fact they're not having much of anything lately.  Just how it goes.  At least I'm not pulling knives on anybody.

I hope people feel safe.  Distance is its own thing.  It's not a buffer though.  As long as your legs work you can literally go anywhere to do anything.  Been trying to figure out alibis.  I could walk to New York or Virginia.  The hard part is gonna be explaining my absence.  That's also the easy part.  I have a habit of disappearing.  It happens.  Sometimes you just have to tag up.  If I disappeared for a week to walk to D.C. the only problem would be fueling myself along the way.  Then it's mission accomplished, duck out back home, and problem solved.  Still aggravating though.  A bad kind of hassle.

Shrinking the maps, it gets easier.  Shrinking the maps further, it's a day trip.  Further still, it's a nighter.  We don't do that anymore!  Jexel.  If you're going to accelerate, make it worth it.  The hardest part about burning down a house is sealing the exits.  Or at least making them difficult enough to dissuade navigation.  Then again, you have to take into account the body types you are trying to ash.  It's all math and I struggle with math a lot.  I've always been more geometric.  Visual spatial.  One of the best days I ever had was guessing how many jelly beans were in a jar to the nearest ten.

Sure I could have estimated the volume of a jelly bean, the volume of the jar, and gotten fairly close with a little error mixed in for air space, but it was so much easier to hold in my head if I took a cube slice from one corner and moved it around in my head to form a disc and then raised the disc up to reach the lid.  Same deal, I suppose, but different ways.  Screw math.  What have you done for me lately science?

I jerked off for twelve hours.  Twelve god damn hours.  Twelve gotdamn hours!  I need a boyfriend pretty hard.  Pretty sure I ran through half of my entire library between watching full length videos and skip tracking it to money shots.  I'm not shamed or ashamed by the activity.  At least I know my heart and my cock are still functional.  I'm just head hung cuz I know I'll never get those hours back and I want them.  The toughest thing about free time is figuring out where to spend it.  I want those twelve hours back to draw and sketch and explore the things I can't put into words but I know I can put into pictures if I used that hand to do something besides stroke my pud.  I'm pissed because it was supposed to be a fifteen minute quickie and I couldn't do it on my own that fast.  And I'm pissed because I'm horny so often that it's become a problem that needs solved.  Gotdamnit!

Melange.  I think I may peirce my own nipples today.  So much energy.  Throwing off U two thirty something, or maybe fifty.  Uranium all over the place.  I don't know how to shut it off.  Shoving carbon into the pile, but I can't undo Chernobyl no matter what I try.  Part of the issue is dealing with getting my body back.  I wanted it back so badly and now I have it and I can start building up from the foundation because I finally got back there, but the house that foundation wants only knows how to speak in terms of violence instead of the next step; love.  That misunderstanding and shadow and grift breaks my heart and hurts.  Does violence to me and I want to reverse it and I don't know how and if I could, a pure reversal, I do violence to everyone and everything within the radius.  It's a lose lose.

You're breaking my heart, sweatness.  Spill the bucket.  We are weak ends.  I need you.  I need you to explain to me how rain comes about and tell me the little squirrels running at the corners of my eye are just shadows and not black lizards doing a slow hat dance.

I'm trying to brick the computer.  I'm trying to reset it.  If I can't reset it, I would be happy to silence it.  Stop making noise you tire kicked fall out bumper bad doored dumb coded winkied rusted out piece of .... clawing at myself.  I want that soft tissue out of me.  I know a few ways to do it, but none of them are acceptable.  Rip.  Rip.  Get out of me.  Get out!  I want them out.  I want the caucus to end.  I want the factory to shut down.  I want there to be no more discussion.  I want to be normal.  I want to be you.  I'm tired of tears strolling down my fucking face unprovoked.  I want to love the idea of children.  I want to be married.  I want to be skilled.  I want to be able to do math.  I want to be able to be relied on.  I want honey shots.  I want more tree climbing.  I want to hear less and nose more.  I want shot for.  I want dap.  I want candy hahaahahahahahahahaha.  I want ... I want a lot of things.  I'm trying to brick the computer so I can start over again.  And wanting to start over again is sometimes hard to admit.


///Junkie XL - "War"  sunrise on Titan.  I got your pith.  I raise you 400 horse power at the brakes.  Eat me.