With A Passion

 I refuse to die.  I think about death just about every day.  Who doesn't.  Yes that is a statement.  I refuse to die.  SHOW ME ALL OF MY LABELS.  I will show you a complete set.  A complete-ish set?  I miss my friends.  Am I alone.  I am alone.  I am l onea.  O, am I lone.  A olo nei. 

Destrega.   I have dreams about the end of the world.  They are fun.  Are you?

Dogfights are luscious.

I dreamt about trees falling and bears coming out of the woods across creek where I used to live in southern Maryland and the spider monster came down out of the bear tree limbs in the middle of winter and before the bears could get to the fawns grazing on what grasses were left behind in a mild thaw before the permafrost killed everything the tree sized monsters began swooping down to harvest the bears.

Their force began tipping the old and dead trees over, held up by ivy.

The entire thing began collapsing.

Have you ever heard the sound

of a tree hitting the ground

that was as large as you

can run?

The shadows were enormous.  I ran fast.  As fast as I could... the entire dream collapsed.  The ground collapsed with the bass of the shear air the trunks displaced as they fell.  The spiders were squashed.  The bears became pelts and powdered glistening bone, when I had time to glance back at the pink mist.

I lived.  The animals died.  I panted.  I watched

more trees fall with thick and thicker trunks, torn asunder like toothpicks before the clouds.  

The troposphere.  The fucking fickle thin layer of air that had just a little too much sun.  God, some single batch would probably kill me so I dont have to know

what's coming next.

Over The Last Weeks

What we've learned is that we are not a multi-tipped novelty pen.  What each one of us does, all of our others are accountable for.

The pain, torment, rage, and (I am crying waterfalls and I don't want to) absolute hatred, are experienced because of what our others did out of kindness, compassion, sympathy, empathy, love, and understanding...

When I tell you I can't speak about something and then go on to speak about it- it's not a joke a or a hide to try to find something to target you for or insulate myself.  There is a cost.  There is a very real cost.  Often psychological, sometimes physical too.

I am terrified that if I "go into a shell" folks will think I've lost it or something.  I am, unfortunately, beholden to wherever my body happens to be and if that means it is in a cage that also means we are too and I cannot be in there with them because they all should not be in there.  When we are in there, rebellion is inevitable.  What is the only way out?  What is the one way they can each live their own?  It is not a dual blessing and curse.  It is unfortunate.

I am blending in and being as human as possible.  As citizen as possible.  As reasonable as possible.  It hurts tremendously to see that effort fall flat and be exploited  by some, it is ecstatic to see that effort be rewarded by some and flower into map expansions and discovery of new ways to exist and new ways that others exist and new planets and star systems and, fuck me, galaxies.  It is incredible to feel the weight of the sight of others frittering about on the 400 degree oil of life and ourselves, warming our palms near the electric coils, spreading stories of boogie beasts beyond the 60 watt LED light bulb in the sky because the truth is you have to stick close or you will be left behind.  Large enough to fry and small enough in the greater consciousness to slip right through the metal lattice and join the disposable.  Faulty.

When you finally get a chance to turn the music off and see pain for what it is.  When you don't have to protect other people from what you know you are.  Every damaged person worth their weight in time is worth listening to.  The songs are the same.  The cadence's are similar.  The verses are close.  There is a world spanning web of sunsets and sunrises and star anthems and moon odes and solar salutations and a disturbingly familiar scent to the blood that breaks away from a palm while you are trying to wash a glass and a reflect on the evenings high-points and the metal gush of the air mixes with the scented soap as it shatters in your hand for reasons you don't understand.

I have been helped by some that there is no way I can repay.  Literally, with the expanding fabric of life and space time (I've been over the calculations before) there is no way I can repay them before I or they perish, that is what's up.  They offered big and I took only what I needed from what they offered.  I don't understand why, attempting again and again to emulate that truth I continue to ...  I don't understand ... what am I getting wrong each time?  It's not every time, but when it goes poorly, it goes straight to the poor house!

I know I am not entirely sane.  I know I can learn fairly quickly.

I know I have to communicate better.

Everything is not okay.

The margin for error is small.

The people that I hold closest know.  Because we've been speaking with each other and developing language protocols through literally thousands of interactions.

It is unfair to expect anyone, outside of that set of individuals (not the ones I've met face to face or otherwise, for the longest) to know the language too.

What I've learned to broadcast is not ubiquitous.  Thirty two years on planet Earth, and we still have not been able to crack a universal code.  I don't mean to cry, but I am in tears that there is so much more work to do looking ahead to remain human.  I like it here.  I enjoy it because I can be like them and sometimes, when they are willing to play with me, they can be like me too.

I know my schizophrenia is a constantly evolving symbiotic organism (said through thick medication).  We understand it.  I understand it.  You're breaking up!



Please don't leave me!









Kill them all.

Please don't leave- kill them all.









I like to help.  Pay it forward.  Play when you can.  Know us.  If we can't play, say so.  We are shadows.  If you insist on addressing us as a galaxy system to visit, you would be well to address the star inside the nebula and the planet and attendant moon (if necessary) and... or just the comet.  You can also call the sign Hobbes.  I'm sure he'll answer.

The construction was developed over six years.  Before the period of the shatter, layers of designs were gardened to safeguard us.  After the period of the shatter, layers of designs were welded together to safeguard you.  I'm sure it'll answer.





Crews are at work, thirty four hours a day, reviewing diagrams to build a better future.

One spark at a time.

One death at a time.






LET'S GO!




///There's still a lot of work to do, if we are to survive.  We are game, if you are willing to play with us, just know: there are rules.

Thought Experiments

They are wonderful.  The down side is they can lock you up with inaction.  They can make you distant and untouchable.  They can make you a perpetual daydreamer.  They are not real.  They can bring you to a place, after running over every possible iteration of futures and their trees and branches, nothing will be able to surprise you.  Not now, not ever.  Everything becomes old faster than you can possibly age without introducing performance enhancing drugs to your body's ability to restore itself.  Nothing will ever surprise you if you go down the road.  Why choose?  Take every fork in mind.   Every fork.  And the forks beyond them and beyond them too.  Die 200 deaths, live 200 lives.  Imagine them all!

The up shot is, 24 iterations out, you may land upon a world that is in perfect tune and natural balance so incredible to be immediately discredited.  Upon review, it revolves, it sits still, it moves only when touched, and it's gravity is its own and its poles its own.  You explore and find an object or idea that defies everything you knew and live in and is contained within itself in eternum.  You stumble upon a number that is a number and not at once.  A quantity unquantifiable.  A thing, brought 24 levels backward in to your three dimensional time locked existence, that will vanish the moment you return home.  An idea that only exists in that space.

So hunt.  Hunt!  Thought experiments are wonderful.  Yes, many things will not surprise you.  Many things in your "now" will lose their luster and zest, but should you come upon that perfectly imbalanced mirror sphere that only spins counterclockwise that turns the universe if you attempt to put your fingertips or tongue on it to make it move clockwise because gravity and space time need not apply at the door you have to exit before entering, they are worth it.  Every second.  Every minute.  Every hour in dreams.




///The Cure - "Burn"

What Makes You Laugh 3

What has been cracking me up over the last few days is a thought problem.

Everyone works to advance themselves in one way or another.  What happens when you find yourself in a field you can excel at, but have an Achilles heel for?  I am not a negotiator, but the field that I find myself in and doing very well with does not reward merit.  It rewards negotiation.  You are only worth what people are willing to pay for you.  If you would like to price yourself out of their range, you are more than welcome to do so.

The field does not operate in the same ways the rest of the customer service field operates.  If you want a job you can have one and if they ask what you would like to be paid you are welcome to write down whatever number you choose and they will come back to you with the starting and only number and you either say "yes" or you say "no."  Very simple.  Very straightforward.  Very easy.

I have been laughing trying to gauge what I am worth to other people.  In this field, what you are worth is an algorithm whose nuances run deep, parallel, and cross cut with sudden violence and stark contrast with blood and bone on the line should a miscalculation be made.  There is no room for guesswork.  Or is it that there is infinite room for guesswork because time is money and time is beholden to whom.  For whom does the bell toll these days?  For how long can negotiations continue and if you did get what you wanted, when would you feel armored and steeled and learned enough to ask for more?  To demand more.  Hell, if I know.

Given what I know, where I've been, the way I carry the fire like it is my pants on fire when the client's is, the willingness to tax flesh and artery until the tread falls off to make the date agreed on, I still have no idea what those values register on someone else's Richter scale.  I still have no idea what dialing my number means to them when they want something done right, done thorough, and finished to the dotted "I."  In terms of valuation, I don't know what I'm worth, but I'm pretty, inexactly, sure I am a cost effective means to whatever ends are summoned.

I am well trained and well versed in many modes.  Control is lacking, but only because it is not easy to corral 700 horses in one direction at the same time; we manage.  Adaptable, robust, and the commercial ends.

It does crack me up.  Folks tell you so-and-so should be paying you "X" amount of dollars.   Person "C" should have paid you this-and-that.  What is stopping you from paying me what I'm actually worth?  I'm not going to say no to money.  I'm not going to ask for more.  What's stopping you from returning a smile to me the way I gave one to you that you will enjoy much longer than the life span of the paper that passes from my hands to vendors?  That is what has made me laugh lately.

You hear the same thing from so many different people and it makes us wonder if my asking for more money will actually change anything in the right direction.  You've seen my body of work.  You know what I can and cannot yet do.  You know what you can ask me to do.  I know what I can ask us to do.  We are all familiar with one another and are either friends or thoroughly acquainted to a degree that we can rely on one another to follow through on our word.  Why don't you trust me yet to do what I say I can do and have done?  Why do I have to ask for more?

You've seen me operate enough times.  I've worked with you enough times.  If you believe I am some sort of benchmark to keep, you are mistaken.  I am skewing the market low.  What really, what really, cracked me up (because I had no option beyond cackle laughter) was thinking about all of the over paid clowns you rowd and rail about.  Wondering why this clown is somehow ten times more efficient, ten times more reliable, 60 times more faithful, five times more communicative, 100 times more driven, and ten times more accessible and somehow..............   somehow..........  worth less to you than the other, menial, infantry clowns you employ.

Grade S infantry?  "No, I will settle for grade D and pay them like a scientist apprentice."

Maybe, I'm just not cooperative enough.  Eventually the question will boil over and we will have a discussion to resolve points that our sextants align.  In the face of heartache, the only option is irrational, hysterical, laughter.




///Stereolab - "The Free Design" live

Move Town

I get so caught up with making the people around me things as a way of saying thanks and payment that I forget to make myself- to do what I want to do because I owe my existence, my here and now, to those people by a currency that will never translate because they don't know fully what they helped me reach escape velocity away from what I saw as an insurmountable margin and I don't view it as penance or clinging to the past or misplaced.  I see it as a continuous consciousness of how tenuous life can be and a ten four toward how the smallest gesture, the smallest show of what someone outside of a relationship might see as pity pence or enabling weakness can actually be a point and moment where you've helped someone's life turn a corner.  It's burdensome to think about and it takes a piece out of myself to do it, but everyone is thanked out of reflex and I feel more comfortable in my own skin, helpless and power filled at once, when I have taken the time to let them know the fact that I am still alive now is not by chance or the grace of a supreme being and is by their taking their time to pitch a penny or several thousand into my hat.  To fool yourself into thinking you've done it by yourself or by chance or by blessing or sheer hard work grind is something I want to make sure I never do.  So maybe it is an anchor.  Maybe it is an unnecessary sacrifice and can be framed as a guilt or a confirmation of sin and imperfection.  A penance.  I don't see it that way and will never come around to that frame of mind.  So much of life is decisions and whether it suits me or not a lot of those decisions happen outside of myself.  I accept that.  So please, accept my outside decision to thank you and the universe outside of myself that you have had a hand, direct and indirectly, in forming.

Once we're clear of that, we can shift focus back to fantasy lands and dreamscapes.  There isn't much more distance to cover and I am happy for that.  Excited for that.  There are times when I feel like every other word is about some future date when the resources are at their correct levels and processes have synchronized and the planets have lined up into something close to a grand cross and if I am twenty minutes in to 5th Element while listening to acid jazz with my heaphones in my key tray and I've already consulted my little sister and am suitably numb mouthed from too many cigarettes and just the right amount to dissuade me from running to the gas station to purchase more and the moon is a waning gibbous on a clear night with rain in the forecast for early before the sun comes up with the option to sit outside with a fire at any point prior barring the anything prior to the immediate because it did not rain the day through at work, where I box myself in to unrealistic expectations as a way to never have to actually execute anything.  If you never pull the trigger, you never have to learn whether or not there is more to learn about what you want to do.  Whatever you have conceptualized is its best and most perfect form.  You never have to translate.  I wanted to have children.  I can have children.  Meet my family!  It's almost like every idea is that part of you other people talk about and love, but if they ever did meet you, the rest of you, they'd screw their nose up and rub their squished shut eyes like they just saw an apple snap loose from a twig and fall up to disappear into the sky.

I get very caught up, but I have not forgotten my own needs.  It eats me out from the inside, but I never forget the gnaw and the sound of it and the feel of it, the blood cough taste of it, nose running, water eyed mechanics of it.  They scream at me.  I'm moving forward as fast as I can.  I swear, I am.  The days disappear swiftly.  The nights are restless, strapped to a mattress.  Fear lurks in corners.  Cats ask questions.  Notes are taken on walls and skin and misnamed folders.  Bite a lower lip and squeal from the top of the foothills of the mountain range, the clouds ahead of the temperature front doing strange things above the peaks and the ground bellowing thunder lake swells and strikes days distant, birds moving town in brunch sky above.  Sip.  Nod.  Please pass the olives.  Cross a leg and scribble onward.



///Sylvan Esso - "Uncatena"

Helmet, Armor, Time, Money, Love.

The kind of love that lasts forever.
The kind of love that outlasts explanation.

Yep, that kind.

The inexplicable kind.  The kind that cannot be explained by an affinity for a God or the affinity for a person.  The everlasting, gut punching kind.

The kind that makes you change your ways even though changing your ways has nothing to do with how you express it, kind of love.  The sort that makes you wish you could be a different person.  The kind of love that makes your heart break when there are no more words to say what it is you had to say when you had to say it.  Hell, the mouth only has so much capability inside of it.

That kind of love.

The kind that changes how and what you do despite the fact that change now has no affect on your outcomes, and you do it anyway.

That kind of love.

The kind that tells you explicitly: SEX IS NOT GOING TO HELP OR HELP FIX THIS. and you do it anyway, because you enjoyed snuffling her private parts and she enjoyed yours, snuffling, just that much.  It turns into a private secret box,  permanent.  Oh, please!  Open it up to more!  To more!  Nope.  That's all you will get to know.  Forever.

Mind, body, and soul.  You are cut off.  Wander the waste lands.  Find an amalgam.   Find a new war to fight.   A new fart to sniff.  The embassy is closed.

Write songs about love and body parts and knowledge and loss and wars won.  Write them to whomever.  You'll find your way.  Eventually.  Eventually, having sex on our grave, I will think about you.  And

how I came
to be here.

The Year End Look

2014 had many moments I would like to take back, but not too many.  I didn't break my nose again, which is awesome!  Thinking back through it I cannot remember a single concussion, which is also awesome and very good.  Awesome and very good are different things.  Awesome can be tanking on purpose to see if you can get a flat line goose egg.  Awesome is also seeing if you can bust the high score.  Very good is taking care of business and dotting every single "I" and looping to the correct depth of the drop liner each "P".  Very good is washing your hair every time you must do it, but awesome is having a great shampoo without a schedule.

Twenty fourteen saw a battle between myself and a close friend and another close friend and another close friend that required more time to heal than any physical injury.  Fully healed?  Yes.  Full confidence?  No.  The third piece of the puzzle is entirely lost.  As is the fourth piece.  I never believed it was possible to force or be forced beyond the edge of limping the object into a shop and getting blow torches out and suitable scrap, but sometimes, no matter how the repairs go, you can never look at the finished product the same way no matter the lighting.

The year presented no new physical projects in terms of repurposing homes and was difficult in that respect too.  The hardest part about being on call is that you are waiting for something to go wrong.  In that zone it becomes difficult to see everything going right.  By the second quarter of the year I could see better that when I am doing my job well I will not receive calls.  I always strive to do the best work because while I am doing whatever job it is the goal is to never hear from them again.  In the time it takes me to get home I can, and sometimes do, forget that is the primary objective.  I do not work to make friends.  If I make friends after or during a viewing it is business.  Business does not cross over to farming.  Sometimes farming crosses over to business.  I confused the two in 2014.  Because I work a small job for you does not mean we have to be friends for life.

I thought I could make significant repairs to my lower lumbars, but I do believe the back injury is in the nerves.  It's not a structural injury.  It's software, not hardware.  I learned through 2014 that some tissue explosions/implosions cannot be fixed by tending or work or loosening or tightening.  Bring all of the wrenches you choose, unless one of the tools in your kit is a new gold plated circuit board, you are screwed no matter what you plug in, replace, or renew.  It took a year, still feels like yesterday, to figure that out.  I became very aware of my age last year and the limitations that age brings.  The new year will bring a secondary mode.  Caution.  Beside the hatswitch for go is a new button installed to activate precision.   Everything cannot be solved by a hammer.  I knew that before 2014, but the application was aimed outward.  The application will be aimed inward in 2015.

Everyone who shares a drink or breaks bread with you is not your friend.  They may have motives aside from smiling.  Believe it or not, I have better things to do today than laugh and clap my hands.  So do they.  That does not mean that they need to be cut out of your life entirely.  That remained silly through the previous year and that point will remain sharp, if not sharper, through this year.

I performed a great deal of reading through 2014 without any specific schedule.  That should continue.  No books were finished.  There was a boost in output that will take more discipline in 2015.  It is a steep ask, but I am prepared for it.  I do not like that my discipline grew slipshod enough to not finish or even map a new story though they ping ponged around my skull.  It's pathetic.  It's awful.  You screwed up and I am saying it now: we dropped the ball and it hit you in the teeth.  All we had to do was open our hands and we were too busy adjusting our emotions to see.  We do not appreciate that.  At all.  And I want to make sure you know.  "Why am I picking up my teeth?"  Because you were punched in the mouth.  You didn't trip.  You didn't fall out of bed.  You didn't scrap.  You were punched dead in the mouth and didn't have the wherewithal through an entire year to defend yourself.  Do better.  I do not care if it is garbage.  I do not care if it is too rich.  Do you really believe years will keep falling out of the sky?  Ignorance is not a defense.  Do better.  Stop reading, stop audiobooking, stop trawling, start layout.  Start mapping.  Stop talking about "I started this universe in highschool and"... what since then?  I'm sick of hearing about it.  Yes, physically ill.  Begin to finish it and stop spit polishing a trophy no one else can understand.  "But there's no translation..." so translate it!!!  Do you hear me???  Look at me.  Look at me!   Translate it!  Damn it, you are thick skulled.  I want notes out of 2015.  Stop dancing and screw like you dream.

 I began a few tattoos in 2014.  Progress is going very well.  The sleeve will not be completed at the close of 2015 however there is very specific direction and direction is extremely important as they cannot be erased, easily or ever aside from through growth and the normal cycling of skin cells like tectonic plates.  The reminders still remain on my face and are used daily.  They are pretty much worth every second of the process.  We are building a lens on our left hand to remind us of our ability and scope and potential and violence.  That we can and should hold back at time as a window can be opened or closed or screened.  Not zero and not one.  Infinite, yes!  Singular yes!  The real pleasure is in the curve, not the approach either way.

Are we addicted to tea now?  Yep.  Significantly cut down on the drugs through 2014.  Management & things.  One of my cats died.  Actual cats.  Not "cats" cats.  I took it rough.  Too rough.  Harder to deal with than I anticipated, but it reminded me that my pets are closer to me than my cousins or extended family.  I think that's when the extent of my cut off really hit.  My family, direct family, includes my brother and two sisters.  It ends there.  My father is dead to me so that I do not fuck up and go back to Maryland to kill him myself.  I cannot do that.  If I do that everyone will know, no matter how I mask it or plan it or do not plan it or just get in the mood and take the trip and kill him and my mother, because she'll either be in the house or somewhere within ear or eyeshot, no offense but it's best to keep things tidy, because I said it here and it's public record.  I am closing that door, but it's dead bolted from both sides.  Very good.  Not awesome, but very good.  Call it a standing threat if you want to; I call it a restraining order.  If you come into my space I will kill you.  In return, we will do everything we can to stay away.  Deal.  The cat's death was very sad.  I mourned for quite some time.  More than I mourned for any of my extended families deaths through the year.  The sensation was arresting and unexpected and taught me the depths and exhaustion true hate goes.  His death also taught me the danger of dehydration and the ties I have still with local law enforcement and the patience they have with me and the value of a friend who can tap into your nerves in ways we thought we only tapped their structure.  The year heightened my self awareness and heightened my awareness of my emotional footprint.

I cried a lot in the last year.  Much more than usual.  I began to understand the actual details of outcomes through 2025.  There is a lot of potential there and more danger than I would like.  Many of my peers are pairing up and gearing themselves toward producing families and I became acutely aware of timelines.  I'm not sure how to govern the sensation.  I suppose I will have to start graphing... I can't.  It will be the struggle of 2015.  What do you give up, what can I give up, what can we give up, to make a family.  I cannot.  Not for me.  Not for you.  I will get up for a child, not for you.  I will not fight for a child, not for you.  Ever.  I will not crack a beer on an off day for a child, not for you.  It's a strange equation and I'm not sure how to change it.  I'm not sure what is supposed to come on the other side of the equal sign.

One of the other things I realized through twenty fourteen is that I am fiscally trapped.  Free as a mongoose in every way besides the wallet and the wallet is where futures are made when you look at families.  I am damaged goods in that way and can be as free as I want to proclaim, but jailed for quite some time fiscally.  Going for jogs, playing catch, buying food with EBT, unable to hold a credit card, unable to get loans (even though I refuse to, but cooperation will require it) or car notes, impressing other's parents with charisma, buying them shoes, going to dinners and lunches, going on a paint craze, shutting myself in a room for a few days because I cannot listen to anything because it hurts, all of these do not help a child's upbringing at all, but they are instrumental.  I have no idea when or if they will change.  I became acutely aware of the maintenance I require and it made me cry.  Take what it takes for me to relate to other people my age without falling apart like crushed salmon in a frying pan with burnt butter.  Add a marriage.  Add a child.  Desire came in the last year.  Twenty fifteen will include learning how to better understand what exactly that desire is and not consciously or subconsciously destroying it wherever it arises, be it from outside in general or specific environments or from within or side effect to proximity to others.  I will try to be more reliable and predictable and acceptable to your children or child rearing or child bearing circumstances.  Failure to do so will cause increased isolation and we all know where that heads.

2014 taught me that no matter how I feel I have to get up.  2014 taught me who to trust.  2014 taught me to let go a little bit and who to hold on to without hanging on.  It taught me change is inevitable and you cannot wish everyone a happy birthday because at least half them muthas have no idea who you are now and you have no business wishing them well because you have about as much idea of them as they do you, so stay out or at least don't go balls in to their affairs, unless they ask, which gives us a little gray area because it's fun to play even though not everyone would like to play with you.  Understand better when no means no in fifteen. Just because you would like to laugh does not mean everyone else you encounter does too.

Let's draw this to a close.  The last thing I socked away for 2014 was that you still definitely get what you pay for.  That and given enough time anyone can be a mechanic if you study well and stock a good garage.  You get what you pay for and through repairs to my truck I got exactly what I paid for: a running truck.  I love the sound of a "V" layout 8 cylinder more than an inline 6 cylinder engine.  It's really throaty.  It has some gargle and growl and purr to it more than an inline 6.  Sixes sound closer to a four cylinder screech now that I've become accustomed to an 8.  I'm not sure where I was going with getting what you pay for.  I wish a little bit that I was heterosexual.  I envy it a lot and often and at many times intensely.  Even more than perfect sanity.  At least then I'd be married and crazy instead of just crazy.  It makes me cry.  It makes me furious too.  It makes me violent.  I want access.  I don't want to just understand, I want access!  I fucking want access!  What do you do?  Do you fake it?   Do you sleep walk it?  I'm laughing now because I am crying.   I hate my circuitry.  Let's not beat ourselves too hard in 2015 and let's keep that streak of no nose breaks and no concussions going.  I said I will never cut my face again.  That promise will be kept.

XOXO




///Daft Punk - "Giorgio By Moroder"   the year end playlist is up next.  shoot em dahn.

Sex Sells, and Tolerance Versus Promotion

Sex sells.  Everybody know's that.  America is becoming a more tolerant place, probably more tolerant than ever before when it comes to homosexuality.  It's becoming a little more tolerant when it comes to smoking weed, but that's something for another time.  Still, though, a soused conversation I had, a quick back and forth really if not for doing it through twitter drawing it out over a couple hours (if we were speaking face to face it would have been maybe a two minute conversation), brought back to mind that actual tolerance is a long way off and it's kind of annoying.

Sex does sell.  Everyday, everywhere you go, everything you watch on television, every fourth commercial on the radio, hetero sex is promoted.  It's fired into you constantly.  It can't be avoided and as a gay person I don't really have a problem with it.  Sure sometimes it gets particularly awkward or annoying when I'm hanging out with straight friends and they want me to comment and I'm completely blank faced because it has nothing to do with me or what actually tips my scales or fires me up.  For the most part though, I'll make something up or laugh or do whatever to move on and just like that, it's done and I'm fine and they're fine and the world turns on and everyone is okay.  Sex sells.  It is promotion of the hetero relationship and it's not the end of the world.  I'm tolerant.  I don't go grab pitch forks and torches and raise a mob every time some couple gets married or a guy and girl get all kissy touchy feely in front of me.  I'm okay with it and it doesn't hurt me, but I also don't go out of my way to express the fact that I could care less.

Back handed tolerance is different.  The back handed tolerance is the kind where people do go out of their way to express that "hey, whatever, I don't care, that's your business" sentiment to the point where it becomes obvious that they do care, and it does irritate them, but they are saying what they're supposed to say because they're supposed to say it because it would be a million times worse for their image and relationships with others around them if they did express whatever hate or revulsion they felt.  It's better than nothing, but when it happens it makes me want to roll my eyes, yawn, and just walk away from the crap coming out of the person's mouth.

Back handed tolerance comes in other flavors too.  It also comes in the "I'm okay with gay people, but you don't have to promote it, come on" flavor.  Which is simply silly.  If the world is to become a more tolerant place you can't say tolerance and "shut the hell up about it" in the same sentence.  That's just asinine.  Obviously there is going to be some degree of promotion.  There has to be.  Sex sells.  If sex sells you can't just say you refuse to sell to an entire segment of the population.  If you did simply black out promotion that would be pretty intolerant.  That sort of behavior would also reduce people's exposure to homosexuality as a normal thing or at least damage their ability to observe and understand it as a normal thing.  It's aggravating.  It's annoying.  And it's pretty back handed.  

What does that even mean?  To be okay with gay people, but intolerant of them talking about their lives the same way other people do because it's promoting a gay lifestyle?  Didn't America finally more or less get beyond the "is it a choice or not debate"?  What are these people even worried about?  Promoting homosexuality is not going to turn people away from heterosexuality.  It's not going to magically revolutionize someone's long held beliefs or belief system.  What are they possibly afraid of?  If anything it would make life more comfortable or normal for homosexuals.  Could you imagine seeing commercials with gay couples selling things like lawn mowers, dinners, dating websites, concerts, and credit cards.  Are these promotion haters afraid they'll see a commercial for something they like and refer to it to their straight friends and be made fun of because it was a gay commercial?  If they are, I could understand.  How hilarious would it be if the major hang up was feeling that tiny pang of discomfort I feel throughout a day, that I'm so used to it barely raises a blip in my mind most of the time.

I don't understand what the big deal is, but I do understand back handed tolerance and I do understand that sex sells.  Maybe it's not a bad thing.  It's a step in the right direction for people and I'm happy for that.  I just wish people walked a little faster.  It makes life a little more comfortable for me and people like me to at least know if someone were to openly persecute us, there would be massive support for us, not them.  It's tiring and annoying knowing that the newer intolerance is this whole anti-promo sentiment, but at least no ones telling me I'm going to straight to hell and should be killed for my sexual orientation.  Don't be scared 'merica, sometimes a little discomfort is part of life.

///Grimes - "Genesis" gots to start somewhere

Redesign (stealth mode, but not really)

So I'll make this short and sweet.  Some updates (hooray changes).  I haven't been sitting around scratching my bum and picking my nose and wishing for things to change.  Well I have, but that's only half of my day.  I'm on the "wish it, want it, do it" plan from the book of the same title as reviewed by Bill Maher on that show about the dog and the baby and the bad father and their crazy antics.  I don't know why I did that to such detail.  I think it was supposed to be funny.  Progressively funnier as the details got more specific and more vague.  Reverse comedy crash zoom.  What was I talking about?

Oh yeah, so some updates:

The Auralport is wearing it's summer best.  It looks a lot better over there (pictured here it's tinted gray) and the cloud bank drawn inside the letters really pops out bright.  The design actually turned out completely different from the idea I had in my head of summer fields and woodlands.  I wanted it to come out in deep greens and golds and purple and pink and as I was working on it I became more and more consumed with the steeliness of summer skies and the way power lines and telephones poles cut everything up when the sun goes down until it's too dark to see.  And then the links became these bits of flame salmon that kind of reminded me of how the clouds kind of catch fire bit by bit at sunrise and sunset.  So I wanted to capture some of that without making it unreadable.  I'm pretty sure it's borderline unreadable as it is, but it's the right kind of hardness I was looking for.  That same hardness that makes the summer sky hard to stare into some days because it is so bright and black at once.

I'm looking forward to doing the fall redesign though.  I think I just do better with darker pallets and color arrays and lower contrast over there.  OEMFail will always be a high contrast affair.

Bits for Flames received a little infusion of life in the form of two short short stories: The Hills at Wallston Park and Cement Head.  Obvs they're not for kids.  One is drama and the other is curio.  I still want to do more with it, but haven't really had the courage or drive to really sit down and tear something big off there.  I almost toyed with the idea of doing a redesign, but then I remembered I still have to do header art for the various sub sections, not to mention finish populating them from my stock piles of google docs.  Anyway, they're there for your consideration.

Times have been tough.  Times have been fun.  Finally regained the ability to do somethings, and learned to do some new things.  It's never all bad.  It's going to be a tough month though.  Then again, when is it never not a tough month?  I don't know.  Still popping off the works over at Auralport though the traffic stats are down, but I don't particularly mind.  I remember when I first started over there I was afraid someone would see it.  Funny how things flip around.  I'm not particularly happy with the subjects and themes lately, but I'm not sure what I'm turning toward as of yet, so I'm going to keep shaking my head like I've got swimmers ear and writing down what comes out until I hit on what it is I've been trying to say this season.

May be time to just sit down and grind out an album.

Anyway.  Unannounced changes that are now announced so they're stealthy, but not really.  I'm rambling.  Anyway, uhm...  I lived, I loved, I laughed, and then slept for 14 hours.  Gnite :P


///the item you are searching for has been moved.  for no particular reason at all.   because sometimes that happens.  bonus track available next time around.  i promise (maybe).

Comrade Super Code

Life has been strange. A lot of big boy decisions. Decisions I haven't had to make before. Like what? Like none of your damn business. It's been difficult. Then again, when has it ever been easy. My dreams have been phenomenal. I've taken again to recording them when I can as I wake up. The first thing I do is grab hold of my phone and press record and just talk, sometimes for hours. Sometimes just to hear a voice that I know is real. Sometimes just because there is so much information brought back from there that I know I am going to lose that I know I will need later. I promise I will get back to serials.

The thought of dying has not been as intense as it used to be. I had a conversation with someone about that specifically. Ten iterations ago I was sixteen. I don't know what I was thinking then. The documentation is largely destroyed. The record really begins to come into it's own when I was 18 and really began to apply myself to writing. That's been the literal paper trail. It hasn't been as intense as it used to be. Probably part of the blunting. Which is fine. I can deal with that missing edge. Sometimes you just have to beat yourself in the head with a bat until things quiet down. The kid hasn't been missing. That's not the problem. The problem is that we're all on the factory floor, guns to each other's heads, knives out, and if you say one word, just one, I will cut you so bad they will need your dental records to put a name to your body.

I just have to get them to work together again. They're all here. Just off on different projects. Different passions asking each other to pass the mashed potatoes, but never directly. It's been great hanging out with them on an individual basis, since they're not talking. We've gotten close. Which is nice. Not together. Which is not nice. Variable occupancy. Not healthy. We do drugs. No we don't. Second hand spray. Collusion. You owe me. I have been managing rage. Easier to do when you don't own standoff weaponry. In my life everyone has lied to me. That is not entirely true. Tomorrow is my 67th birthday in my 26th iteration. There is a certain amount of pride to be had in not joining the under 27 club, I think. A certain amount of disappointment, because joining that club is pretty elite in terms of prodigious production, but I have not done enough or come close to where I want to be in terms of body of work to be happy enough to pull that trigger, and a certain amount of relief because I am sure the majority of under thirty something suicides go unheralded and how sad is that? It's off and on. Wires close enough to arc, but the force of the spark and ignition of air shoves them apart until they work their way close again.

The shadows have been crawling. The little faces in door jambs closed. The weeping man in streaks of dry paint laid to a door decades ago. What the hell. Who made that and why. The shadows have been crawling and blooming for lack of a better word. When I'm not looking. When I'm barely looking. When I'm trying not to look. The world is a war zone. A fantastic warzone. I have been imagining the most fantastic weapons to expedite exterminations. If only I had the staff and the means. An angry boy can dream.

The world cross bridge is haunted. By my father. I have to kill him there. If I ever want to enjoy it again. I've had to rip chord out of there more times than I would like to admit in the last seven days and I can't kill him here. Not yet anyway. Still too much to do. He will pay though. Eventually. Matters of course and convenience. There was a word I was supposed to look up and I didn't. It's going to bother. 24 years of compensation. I just have to make sure I don't take it out on the people I love.

I gave women a pretty hard rap sheet yesterday. And I'm sorry for that. Not because it wasn't true, but because it came across so chopping blocked. There's no vendetta. Probably a lot of buried issues with my mother. They come up as I dig into the ground. Trying hard to not be found. I'm not going to go on a serial spree of slaughtering women to make myself feel better about myself. The shadows have been crawling. Actually moving. I don't know what to do about that. If there is anything I can do about that.I had this dream where darkness poured out of light fixtures like little waterfalls and it was gorgeous until the shadows grew so high people started to drown and I looked for days and couldn't find the switch to turn them off. Ghostly swims. Turning off the lights and trying hard not to look back into the rooms and believe there really is nothing there more than what was when the switch turned the other way. The freedom. It's been strange.

Where the hard stops start. Toxic involvements. I do have to clean up the circuitry at some point. My willingness to engage has been the source of certain difficulties. What happened to your face? I can't say, honestly. If I told you, I would sound crazy. And then you wouldn't want me around at all. I swear it's all above board. My boards. Not yours. Your square one, your nothing is different from mine. Maybe connected on some flattened levels. When you pick through them with zero and one forensics. I thought maybe if I scratched my ear hard enough I could pick my brain. No luck. We had this dream, right? About a house made out of cardboard and dried leaves.

I was wondering, you know, if you knew where I'd been. I have this sneaking suspicion someone's been lying to me, but I don't know who. Many loves of the dragon. Maybe I should get a kitten. At some point. I need to draw more. Now that I have the time to. The time to sleep dive almost at will. It's going to be amazing. I'll try to take notes better than I have. I've been gone for some time, but I'm back now. Bolting through space. Hell hound on a thin leash and learning boundaries the while. Dog bites man and man bites dog and dog bites dog and man bites man. And everybody wishes sweet dreams into your head as though there isn't fire filling the coils of your bed.


/// Starkey - "Eris" stoop sitter blues high

Low Lighter

I've been mulling craft over. Disappointed in the body so far. I try to grade myself week to week. Did I nail it? Did I glance it? Did I make something I can stand behind? The answers are easy in a lot of fields. Harder in writing. One thing I miss about college was workshops. Sure, half the people there are only there because they need to have creative arts credits or just needed something to add to their schedule they could coast through. That's the major difference between writers and other people. At least at that level.

The classes are only as hard as you make them. Writers make them some of the hardest classes they've ever taken. Other people don't. Humanities and social studies is like that. How deep do you want to drive into the subject matter? The same goes for many of the other largely subjective classes offered at university.

I've been asked more than once and probably too many times how a person, or how I, know that I am or they are a writer. The answer can be answered fairly simply in many different ways using very simple, and also very personal, tests. I am not saying the answer to the question is simple. It's always complicated, but can be simplified in terms of the writing being done. One of the tests, I believe, is the level of dissatisfaction with "good enough." Not the good enough that tells you that item A or B is amusing or digestible to other people, but the good enough that hits the points and edges, lines and graphs, of the things you want to map. If that lack of good enough directs you to work harder than you are a writer. If that lack of personal good enough draws you to an "oh well, I tried" sort of answer than you are probably not a writer, but did manage to put words together into a coherent string. I dunno. It's tough. Goes without saying at this point.

I haven't been disappointed with the effort as much as the second effort. I usually relied on working with criticisms to see where things were failing and where things work better. Part of learning how to write is learning how to simulate workshops within yourself. Time consuming stuff. What I have been doing is working on very short time scales. Hours instead of days and weeks and months. The pressure works well at sharpening the blade or at least keeping it sharp, but does not do enough, for me, to make progress. So I'm working on a new idea, an old one, but new to the times, on a new channel. A low line.

I've been riding the high line for a very long time and the problem is it does not leave enough time for gestation and things get excessively hit and miss and I'm not happy with that. I have to give myself time to step away and look at it again and punch it right in the craw until it's disfigured and see how I can make it better and then do it better and then look at it again. Give things time to precipitate. I haven't given myself that time partly because I over estimated what I can do (arrogance), but also because running back over what you've done is rarely pleasant. It's not fun or enjoyable to see how badly you put something together and that's a lack of discipline.

So a second Auralport is coming at a much lower line. It's not going to be about cranking out and pushing forward as much as it will be trying to put one gem together in a week. We're going dual channel. A thing for every place and a place for everything. Or something like that. Just trying to satisfy the urge to put pen to paper and make it something worth seeing just once. I want desperately to be better at it, but all I've got is me, so we're gonna figure this shit out and make something ill.


///Bowery Electric - "Freedom Fighter" ... cue dreams.

sorry, but not really 03/14/06

Subject : sorry, but not really
Posted Date: : Mar 14, 2006 1:50 PM

alright alright alright... so talking about tossing salad isnt the most pleasing of topics... so instead lets talk about commas.... those curly motherfuckers that lurk within so many sentences and make it difficult if not impossible to read anything coherrently.

well lets not. how about i just acknowledge that licking assholes is okay .001% of the time and leave it at that. don't agree with me? okay. im not going to try to convince you, but the seed is there... germinating.