Pushed

All I wanted was a front row seat in what feels like a war and looks nothing like it.  I keep reciting the procedure and double and triple checking equipment, and in the mean seconds ticking by the pilot is sweating marbles trying to keep our helicopter away from flak and small arms fire and the occasional rocket, circling where I need to land once I jump off of the side.  I'm sweating too fearful of what happens after I step out into thin air, but I know what happens.  There's nothing to be afraid of.

Walking into my apartment after getting groceries the long fingered man with the reading glasses glances up and turns around and taps the only skin on his arm not flayed away where a watch was.  Time is of the essence.  I know.  There is not much time to waste.  I know, I know, I know.  Where are you going?  Out, don't follow me.  You forgot your wallet.  Thank you.

I suppose, a sort of writer's block for persons who don't get writer's block?

Consider this your gentle, two palmed, straight armed shove.  You know what has to be done.  Pull the trigger.

I worry sometimes that it won't make sense.  I worry now if it's not good.  If the entire pursuit has been a waste.  Why poetry?  What is locking up inside you?  It's nothing.  Absolutely nothing and you know it.  Don't be afraid, you've just had your eyes closed for a few months.  Listening to the air and the land and space and people eating each other alive and giving birth and dying and sleeping and breathing and talking and talking and it's not so bad if you'd only open your eyes standing on the ledge of the gunship.  Make sense out of chaos.  Or chaos out of chaos.  Make sense of it later.  Every thought lost to time is one less beacon, one less point of reference, one less story, one less epic, one less chapter, one less relationship you could have brought into this world from your travels.  One less love.  Do it for you.  Do it because you can love you and that's where it all starts.  Come clapping toward the bright pink smoke flare while the shells fly.  I'll be back to pick you up sooner than you have time to think to ask "where did you go?"




///Sylvan Esso - "Hey Mami"    higher resolution

The Silliest Part About Dealing With Parents

You cut ties.  Awesome.  You had to cut ties because they gave you no other recourse.  Not so awesome.  The greatest thing though, the silliest, giggliest, thing about it is that you didn't have to burn their house down to make your own.  One step at a time, sugar sugar.  You're getting old, but you're doing it.  You're doing it.

I still remember winning the spelling bee when no fourth grader at P.S. 19 had beaten a fifth grader and all I got was the apple Ms. Smith gave me after.  I watched my little sister lose her spelling bee bid and they took her to toys r us to buy a doll, batman with the belt buckle that extended out and wrapped around foes and you pushed the button on his back and it would reel them in for a beatdown or snatch him up.  I saw knife bob and wanted it so hard, but she got her batman based on the first movie, was that Tim Burton?, and loved it and every time I saw her playing with hers it made me wonder if I did good enough.

Ain't no thing now.  It is.  I still think about that apple and wonder what they were trying to teach me in not taking me to Toys R Us.  I threw out the medal.  The pewter stunk up my nose and I got sick of looking at it.

P.S. 19, my favorite school.  Kickball and wallball, the two best games ever invented.


///Tom Vek - "If I Had Changed My Mind"    would I be here?  I think that's missing from work, official recess times.

The Fall and Collective Effort and No Cussing This Time and Craigslist (Again)

Do you ever get the feeling that you're falling and then it changes to a feeling of being pulled into the jet wash of a landing airliner feet first and then you realize that the ground isn't moving, but the sky is and you get sick anyway and you fall face first onto your front lawn and dry heave for ten minutes and then realize that you probably should have just stayed inside to begin with?

I get that feeling sometimes.

So tell me, would you tell me if I had a really bad idea? No? Great. So I was thinking about writing MF Doom a letter and including in that letter a proposal to become his intern. Would that be crazy? I think so. What if I wrote a letter to every artist and writer I admire with a similar proposal. I don't really want to make money as much as I want the opportunity for exposure and guidance.

I was also thinking about using craiglist to find friends. I think I mentioned that before. Maybe I'll meet a murderer. That would be interesting. Probably bad news, but interesting. I mean, I wouldn't be going out specifically to get murdered, but I'm not entirely sure I'd be completely opposed to it either. Maybe I'll try and use it to move my wares.

A friend of mine is kicking my ass to write a novel. I started one. I'm about 8000 words in. I'm not sure I'm going to finish it. No, scratch that. I am going to finish it. The problem is that I don't particularly care about the characters. It doesn't make it that much more difficult to write. It just doesn't make it that much more interesting.

Now that I'm back together I was expecting sunshine to come flooding back in, but it hasn't. I'm not really sure if anything else is really missing. I was thinking about emailing my old professors to show them my work and ask for pointers. I emailed them once before and they basically unanimously panned my plea for assistance. It was shocking. I don't think I've really recovered from that. What lesson could they possibly be trying to teach me by not responding at all? Well, there was one response. The response was essentially a non-response, but a statement of non-response. I can respect that. I think.

I've noticed a warmth in my skin. I can't tell if it's just the sensation of my blood flowing against the temperature difference of my cold muscles or if it's just feeling warm. I can see why they wanted to put me on medication. It's not like I don't need it. I also wonder if 30 will be any different. One thing that has stood out over the last few days is that I've been living in a situation where everyone tells me to do something other than what it is I know I am built to do and do well. I think I will still make the suicide diary and the music hit list. I'm thinking about moving north and the ways in which I can make that happen. I want to order sex toys. Actually, so I was considering posting to craigslist about my thoughts on a cross country migration. I don't want to move to Pittsburgh until I'm completely ready to die there.

I keep talking about craigslist, but I haven't done anything about it have I? Well I will. I did some drawing today. Do you like it? I kind of do. I cleaned up my language today too. I miss the hospital. They were so constructive there. And I earned the right to stay up past 9:30 to watch the video of soothing sounds and star fields by going to start your day group everyday for two weeks. I even put together a jigsaw puzzle. I got a sticker for that. Not even joking, it was a pretty awesome feeling. What day is it? Remember that song that was all about little things the narrator learned through his life? That song got played so much it became sickening.

I sent an accidental email. No response on that either. Maybe I'll shoot an email to my old therapist. He always knows when to shut the hell up. Pardon. Sometimes I wonder if I'm dragging my feet about writing because I know when I have nothing left to say I'll very likely not put up with the hassle of occupying my body. I ran through a handle in 4 days. I'm going to make a terrible father. Well, maybe not. I slept with the lights off after I stiff night of drinking. It was the first time in a while. I've been thinking about winning a writing fellowship for some time. There's a certain validation of efforts that comes from winning. There's a certain confirmation in other people telling you "yes, go forth and do this thing because you've earned it". What I've come to realize is that I'm in one. It's not ideal. It's not glamorous. It's full of distractions. The desk is terrible but, it's my desk, and it's glamor enough, and distractions are inevitable. It's my fellowship.

In my dream last night I got into an argument with someone about the word 'suiterate'. It's not a word, but the guy made a very good case. The odd thing was as we were arguing and for some reason smoking cigars while we walked the streets at midnight near the el trains, a cat, a Tabby, came tearing down the street in a motorized shopping cart that couldn't have been more than a foot tall. The little guy was really moving and the man I was talking to about the possible uses of a word like 'suiterate' had to jump out of the way as this thing came screaming past us and took a hard left. We both stood there for a while and then went on arguing as we walked down the middle of a street. It wasn't all that strange.



At any rate, I should go to sleep and try to eat in the morning. I don't know when I started to hate eating food, but I've lost a ton of weight. Used to be 189 and now I'm 170. It blows and I hate doing it, but I have to make myself eat so I can wake up and do things. I love dreaming. I hate being awake. I love you. That's why I keep on. Hoping for some hokey conclusion to whatever this thing has been.


///Way Out West - "The Fall" I don't know if I listed this track already, but it is close to my heart. "And I miss you most of all, my darling, when Autumn leaves start to fall." To my ex, I do miss you most of all though I realize it was as realistic an expectation for success as gunning for snow in mid August. The lyrics are actually from some other older song, but they play well with the, in my opinion, conservative engineering effort. No deafening use of reverbs. No auto-tones. No wind chimes. It gets a little mundane in the mid stretch, but in the end it rewards the listener with a beautiful vocal break. I look forward so much to the taste of winter air and this song in my headphones and melancholy that is so much sweeter, so much more palatable, than the bitterness of the real and present nothing.

Where the Lost Things Go

Is sort of where I've been. In and out of dreams and stuff. I literally woke up in the middle of the night and there were kittens all over the floor so I did what any reasonable person waking up in the middle of the night to find balls of kitty cuteness everywhere: I started flailing around the floor trying to get them off of me. Turns out they weren't real. And it turns out I sleep on the floor. Hopefully that'll change soon.

In other news, the world is a fascinating and gross and scary fun place. I've sort of been in a project gridlock again. Turns out the answer to the gridlock was... I completely missed that. The source of the gridlock was that I've been looking for a place where I can simply spew information and I haven't been able to find one. I feel like my head is so pressurized with stuff that if I were to sneeze I would blow my fucking brains out.



In using google reader I feel there is an obligation to only share the things that you think other people may find interesting or helpful or possess some sort of value to them, be it comedic or otherwise. Therefore, if I am sharing things there, I am basically saying to people who follow me: I think you might like this. I ran into a similar jam when I found myself clicking the "like" button for every single thing I came across. The thing is, I do sincerely like the things that other people are sharing, but is the "like" button supposed to be reserved for the things I cherish?

For the most part it seems a fallout of the amplification syndrome for text based communication. I only type in "lol" when I do laugh out loud. I laugh a lot. Other people don't laugh so much. Am I obligated to adjust my own inputs to help people feel less patronized. I'm not trying to be creepy, but somehow I feel like others might misunderstand that I laugh easily as me buttering them up for ulterior motives. Not true. I just love to laugh and I love to like and I love to share.

To solve this problem I joined twitter. However in joining twitter, where I hoped I would find a fantastic outlet for the bits of things that keep firing off in my head that eventually stifle my ability to focus on anything, I ran into the same problem pretty much instantly. Am I just the guy with no filter? No. At least I don't think so. I filter a lot, it's just that so much more is generated that is interesting to me to say and hear aloud and hear other people say. I don't really want attention or specific responses or responses at all. I just want to see it outside of my head to remind me that my brain is still working and that I am not talking to myself. But therein lies another problem. Is it not okay to talk to myself. I hate talking to myself actually. I prefer to spit it out and then read it somewhere else so that it at least feels like I'm not talking to myself and that way I can sort out who is who upstairs. It keeps things organized. My major concern then, in this rambling analysis is that in being myself I will distance everyone because there is so much chatter and not all of it is important or relevant to them. In fact, probably twenty percent is relevant to other people. You people. The rest is important to me. None of it is garbage. I just don't have enough storage space to keep my mouth shut. And I am a little sorry for being so. A lot sorry.

Well, to help curb the rush I've decided to start a comic:



I have no idea what it will be about specifically, but mostly it'll just be where I talk to myself about all of the things that I don't talk about here (because I want this to be interesting to other people).

Life is full of so many questions and very few easily digestible answers.

with some exceptions. Mainly I was thinking about the whole "when is an artist an artist" question. That's when it struck me just how obnoxious a question that is. To ask for a definite quantitative boundary between the artist and the non-artist is to ask the question of if you cut a distance in half an infinite number of times, when do they touch? People have asked me if they were writers before and I've always said "you're a writer when you know there's nothing else you really want to do." I think a better answer, now that I've mulled it hard over the last few weeks is that you're an artist when you can solve art problems to your own satisfaction. You're a writer when you can solve writing problems to your own satisfaction. Same thing goes for photography.

What I'm saying is, if you wake up one day and you say to yourself "I want to paint a portrait" and then you sit down and paint a portrait and you finish it, if the thing you have when you are done makes you happy and satisfied that it is a portrait then you are a portrait artist. If, when you finish, you look at the thing and you say to yourself "it is like a portrait, but not what I would call a portrait" then you are not an artist yet. If you sit down to write a story and when you are done you yourself cannot without a doubt call it a story of whatever length or genre then you are not a writer yet. If you sit down to write a program or perform some chemical solution or diagram some molecule and when you are finished you are not satisfied with the result then you are not whatever it is you set out to be just yet. Maybe satisfied is the wrong word there. If you are not contented with the fullness of the work, allowing for individual levels of mastery, then you are not whatever it was you set out to be that day.

So now I know. I am an artist, but I am not a photographer. I am a writer, but I am not a scientist or an accountant or a manager. I am an athlete, but I am not in great physical condition. It's made life a lot easier to understand and has helped take the hesitation and judgement out of things. The community be damned, and I mean that in the nicest way, when it comes to personal qualitative judgments. I finally understand that if I keep looking to the community for approval I will never get a defacto answer until I'm dead and gone, and quite frankly I can't really wait all that long.

Anywho, where the lost things go is where I've been. I didn't bring anything back, but hopefully next time I'll spear myself a fine trophy to prove I was there.

///Luke Slater - "Stars and Heroes"

Something has just occurred to me as I close this entry; if I have no followers on twitter I have an infinite jar to pour the excess in. Maybe that's an answer. The funny thing is we're talking this over right now and there's an argument happening and I really just wish I could have a moment of quiet at an hour as late as this.

progress without masturbation

is no progress at all. said somebody at some point in history. or maybe not. sometimes it bothers me that i cant draw as well as other people



and sometimes i dont really care. and sometimes its depressing. and sometimes i dont really care. would being able to illustrate and paint and do graphic design make my life easier? sure. so would being able to drive a race car or fly a plane or having tits. its just one of those things you gotta learn to get along with without. thats an odd construction. i guess i meant to say get along without.

i dunno. im tired. i have little to say. the week of industry is behind schedule thanks to a design issue and a general lack of code writing acumen. fuck you college. thanks for taking money i still dont have. i shoulda been a mechanic.

whatever. i can always tell when im tired because chewing gum makes my head hurt.

alright well enough whining. thanks for listening to me bitch. heres something for the road if you've got a minute between fap sessions....

///johnny cash - "sam hall" my name it is sam hall, and i hate you one and all; and i hate you one and all. damn your eyes.

gotta love the cash. the man was a musician and a master story teller to boot. and its not even the language that was particularly masterful as much as it is his ability to touch meaning without needing a step ladder and a reacher grabber.

explanations excuses and

sometimes people complain about being alone. sometimes i complain about being alone. but the truth of the matter is that my mind is crowded, and sometimes its a good thing and sometimes its a thing that threatens to destroy.

ive missed you. i write songs about you. i never sing myself to sleep, but sometimes i like it when you sing to us.

im sorry i didnt give you a song last time. id be lying if i said it wouldnt happen again.

today i was wondering where people go when they die, but then i figured it didn't really matter. where do people go when they live. i dont think that question really matters either.

the downside of thought is that the things really worth expending the energy to think about are the most difficult to crack for their density, but also the easiest to hold and so as they sink to the bottom of oceanic discourse they get picked up and tossed about and litter the landscape and become cliche'd as horseshoe crabs littering a beach. and when someone does pick it up and start to take it apart it becomes silly. i guess a better analogy would be the tool set of things a person needs to situate themselves in time and space. every tool box has a hammer. everyone knows what the hammer is for. but learning to use it well is ... is what.

religion is a tent and a propane grill in the wilderness.

i think i should explain something. there's so much that begs to be explored. i didnt mean to be away for so long. hopefully next time ill be able to bring something back with me.

///fear factory - "21st century jesus (pisschrist)" not on the obsolete album, but still sometimes i listen to albums and hear a story and fear factory's remanufacture is one of those beautifully apocalyptic albums that makes hot sex with the gothic romantic in me.

no more excuses

alright i am and sick to death of hearing this. you know what im talking about. youve probably heard it before. the age old adage "kids dont come with instructions."

i am sick and fucking tired of hearing it as a rationalization. i, personally, am not going to have kids. i am way too screwed up in the head to raise another human being who is 100% impressionable for up to 18 years. i mean, i can barely get through 24 hours without engaging in something a normal person should probably not be doing. just a few weeks ago i crashed a borrowed bicycle and bent the rim taking unnecessary risks. every example of child rearing i am familiar with has lead up to the mess of loose parts that sometimes function as a unit known as me so how in the world am i supposed to turn around and be able to say okay here's the plan.

aint gonna happen. but, in the meantime, for everyone else who is going to take that step. that magical whimsical leap into the unknown of raising a spitting image who will somehow simultaneously be an individual and will also somehow be friends while also somehow subordinating themself to you. here's the manual.

child rearing manual:

1)do not beat your kids so hard that they miss school.

2)do not beat your kids so hard that when they go to school they have to explain whats wrong with them without mentioning you.

3)do not drill religion into their heads once they are old enough to decide if they want to be religious or not.

4)beyond initial introductions, do not force them into subjects and pursuits that clearly interest only you.

5)do not beat your kids more than once a day.

6)do not beat your kids more than once a year.

7)do not have kids before you're 30.

8)let your kids have friends.

9)let your kids take risks.

10)do not beat your kids for failing.

11)dont pretend to celebrate birthdays.

12)do not give them hallmark cards after beating them.

14)support everything they take it upon themselves to do and reserve judgement. theyll be judged plenty every time they leave the front door.

15)dont abuse your kids ever. mentally. or physically.

thats it. just that simple. or complex. whatever. im not going to make a good dad. thats why im not going to be one. but if you take it upon yourself to sire a brood of your own, dont fuck it up. america is fucked up enough as it is.



and for the love of christ, kids may not come with instructions, but how about people? if you are not old enough to understand the value of treating people how you would want to be treated you are disqualified from having kids. if you will likely set a consistently awful example for children then you are also disqualified. end of story. find some other way to live vicariously. or just focus on living your life to the best of your ability. thats okay too.

///evol intent - "the curtain falls" i originally got turned onto them when i heard the track 5.30 pm while watching adult swim after going on an acucrack binge. as dark DnB goes you might be hard pressed to find an artist more compelling. well lets not go too far. lets say an artist more consistently listenable.