The Year End Look

Starting at the end of 2015 the year end look was a little rough, but hopeful.  I know I said the year end playlist was up next.  It isn't.  The look back at 2016 and forward into 2017 is.  We'll get to the year end playlist soon, I wanted to hammer this out before I get lost trying to locate music and because it has been weighing on my brain for quite some time and in the throes of a calm and a quiet and thoughtful depression, it is easier to piece back together.  I do firmly believe still: if you want easy, kill yourself.  If 2016 taught me anything that was it.

I thought fracturing my jaw was the worst pain I would ever feel and be able to stand through and that something like that would never happen again.  And then I fried off 15% of my skin with 370 degree oil in second and deep second degree burns bad enough that I couldn't walk or use my hand for weeks.  That was the worst pain I have ever felt.  The first week or so it was a chilly feeling, like when air blows across your teeth very quickly and it feels like you've just bitten into a snowball at the same time.  As hair follicles and skin began to grow back in odd colors and scales the pain got worse and more intense, but I was happy because at least I knew some sort of skin would eventually be there to protect the naked weeping flesh eventually.  It was so many weeks I don't even remember exactly.  I think the last scales scraped away to serviceable skin some time in late December after it happened in September.  It was an eternity.

Definitely not what I intended when I said I wanted to work on my scarification sleeve at the beginning of the year.  Looking forward: I don't want to feel anything remotely close to that again.  Can we please go back to dealing with occasional week long bouts of lower lumbar nerve pain and the occasional lancing ice pick stab of hip joint nerve pinch.  That's fine, by comparison.  I laugh saying it, but I am pressing my palms together and pointing them at the sky: please universe, don't hurt me like that again, but if you do - make it a clean break.

I did finally get around to procuring a set of tattoo guns.  I also did not get around to using them.  A third of my year disappeared trying to heal up from the burns.  It wasn't even just the burns that broke me low, it was learning how to use my hand again and build strength back into it.  It was rebuilding the musculature in my hips and joints in learning how to walk longer and longer distances and stand for longer periods of time.  At one point I could walk, but I literally had to sit down and raise my heel above my heart every five or ten feet because the throbbing pressure of my veins trying to push blood down and back up to my heart felt like my leg was getting torn to the bone by a leather whip.

The year started off pretty grand.  All of the work was more or less finished.  I'd survived, what was to that point, the worst injury I'd suffered to date and if you can take ten weeks of pain and rehab from a fractured and dislocated jaw, you can take anything.  Music was on the horizon and I had a keyboard set up that I was diddling with.  I got a cool old motorcycle with part of my Christmas bonus, an old Honda that I still have sitting in the backyard that I want to eventually build into a cafe racer style bike you might see on an old pastel chalk poster advertisement if you lived in racing country back in the 70's.  I had a new basketball and had free time to exercise and hit the basketball courts now and then to indulge my sports fantasies.  I was really getting into the video game Minecraft and was seeing poetry from a little bit of a different angle.

Graphic design was coming along and my friendships were pretty free flowing as far as I could tell.  I was making big plans to create sculptures and designs for some of my friends that I wanted to show instead of just tell them that I cared about them.  Some projects were coming along nicely through planning sketches and rough practice designs and concept proofs.  With some of my free time I was able to visit people I normally could not make time for and with that little extra bit of money I was able to go out with them to places they wanted to go and eat and drink things I never would under usual circumstances.  Life was wheeling and dealing and possibilities were turning into realities.  The only real problem I had was making time to keep up with everything at a reasonable pace and I was making it work.

The Summer was hot and long and I did get into a funk wondering what was next.  Who doesn't feel some of that funk in the middle of Summer?  When everything feels okay it is natural to wonder if everything is supposed to feel that okay.  Are you supposed to feel happy, content?  It's normal to question.  I did get to thinking about other people I know and where they are in their lives and where I am in mine and I started to think about what more I would have to do to experience that kind of comfort and security.  I started to, after my birthday in April, start to believe that there could be a way that I could have that too if I kept at it and kept on trucking with high hopes and kept in touch with people and kept allowing them in to my lives.

The facts started to creep in.  Started to trickle in.  The realization broke in that nothing would change.  They're still drifting away faster than that distance can ever be closed.  They've only been kind enough not to tell you that you're messaging a part of their lives they don't have time for.  So I spent more of the Summer falling away into the night skies and fire pits and walks through the storm tunnels to sit by the river's edges and pull back the fabric of those nights to watch the bridge lights glimmer on the inch high breakers.  It was my time to love the air and sky and earth and whomever happened to pop by my backyard or asked me to hop in to theirs.  Touring star ships and space stations of all kinds.

And then my body was scorched to hell and back and here we are.

Letting them go was ... you know how when you are discussing something over a hot cup of tea, and you stop to blow the steam away for a minute and touch the cup's edge to your lips to see if it's still too hot to drink and you set the cup down and look up and realize you've been talking to an empty saucer with a dry tea bag on it.  Letting them go was ... you know how when a video cassette finishes it's run time and the credits have finished and it goes black for a few minutes and then snaps to static and you realize you are still holding the remote and peering into the static waiting for the television to turn itself off, but there is another several minutes of static instead and you find yourself watching the blue input screen while the player labors, hitches, and then begins to rewind itself.  Letting them go was like that.

Part of me is angry that I didn't realize it sooner.  Part of me is angry that I let myself trot along, tail wagging, tongue out and teeth yip yapping away, not understanding the hands waving were from the insides of car windows, not the other side of the road on the side walk, a couple of paw skips away to pat my nose, scratch my ear, and let me lick their palms.

Part of me is a little lost.  So what now?  The business of being an adult?  The business of being single?  Thirty two is around the corner.  Some people I know will be retiring at fifty.  Fifty five.  Some people I know will be thinking about second kids, third cars, vacation homes, second marriages... my life expectancy is somewhere out there in the high sixties, low seventies.  So what now?  The game is halfway over and what?

Am I ever going to write anything of significance.  I do write for myself first and foremost.  I used to do it with the hopes of being recognized somewhere or paraded around like something special.  Am I special?  No, just a little weird.  Okay, a bit weird.  I will.  Not yet.  At least not in my mind.  Thirty years to go and many more times to keep trying to set the type just the way I want it.  Thirty years to make the words hit other ears the way they hit my own.  I don't know if it will ever work.  It would certainly help if I could go one year without some cataclysmic injury eating up a third of a year to heal.

Will I be single forever?  Yeah, probably.  I've been torn up and spit out enough times, unrequited enough times, blissfully lulled to nothing, cut off and scorched enough times, left behind enough times, pushed away enough, to where I simply don't want to feel that again.  Much like having your skin cooked off, the scars are forever.  Maybe in ten years I'll think about it seriously again.  Maybe I'll quit smoking too.  Maybe I'll just croak off quietly long before then from some odd organ failure I can't see coming.

There is, oddly enough, a dent in all of the fingernails of my right hand, from the burn where all of the cuticles were traumatized and cooked, that has been slowly growing it's way toward the finger tips to be clipped.  Consistent along each finger.  I now know exactly how long it takes for my fingernails to grow on my right hand.  Look on the bright side.

So what now for 2017?  I don't know.  I was, as I wrap this up, thinking about going to buy a pouch of tobacco to roll some cigarettes.  I might.  I stopped enjoying smoking five years ago.  It's a way to mark time, nothing more.  Thirty some odd years to go.  I'll probably have to start some kind of heart medication in my 40's if I don't fix what I put into my body and stretch food stamps more effectively... maybe cut out the beef and pork, more frozen vegetables and dried beans (fruit never keeps long enough).  What's the use?  An extra ten, maybe twenty, years for what?  May as well, push on, I suppose.  I still can't grow a full beard or shave my face to bare skin.  I'm not getting any taller.  I'm not exactly waiting around for anyone.  Might as well go for a walk, come home and burn a couple.  Get some good sleep.  Wake up and do it again.  We'll have time for music, 2017.  Time for more poetry and stories too.  Short ones, long ones, whatever strikes your fancy you scruffy little rascal.  Whatever happens, I'll be there for you, never forget that.  We'll forge some aluminum and keep exploring.  Do it for the love the art and the unknown.  There are worlds I've only begun to map.  The star fields are massive.  Time is not.




///Daedelus- "Perchance A Bit"

Stand Up Act 8 (stoneissuers, night work, handouts and nickle go)

(Stand Up Act 7)

Goddamn stoners.  God fucking damn stoners.  I don't have a problem with them for the most part.  I really don't.  Pot is legal in more states than anyone could have imagined three years ago.  Not even a decade, just three years.  Unless I'm completely off and time has been moving faster than I thought.  Or slower than I thought.  I'm not good with time.  It has nothing to do with drugs, just alcohol.  And college.  In college everything is oriented to due dates and when you need to wash your clothes because you're going home to your parents and they reek of the actual world instead of the bubble they built for themselves wherever.  I'm not good with time, but pot is legal and it's great.  It should be legal.  There is nothing wrong with it at all.

All kinds of legal things turn people into worthless sacks of shit all of the time and they're fine.  Weed doesn't even do that to people on a consistent basis.  If you smoke a pound of weed a month you will be in much better shape than the person who eats ten pounds of candy a month.  To the point though, I don't hate smokers or pot smokers, but stoners are a bit different.  Stoners are that one shade further beyond the smoker, for better and for worse.

Some stoners need that extra nudge to push and motivate and inspire them to operate and create and shove work through and enjoy other people and enjoy the chase of life in general.  Some stoners like that extra nudge to mooch and coast, but not just coast, but accelerate, and entertain and smooth their own course through the path of least resistance, not as a way of escape or relaxation, but as a way to live.

Everything takes on the slight pale of life and death once they enter the circle.  A routine trip to the gas station becomes a twenty minute conversation on the meaning of life and how hard it is to survive in the real world and if God hadn't created the man who created the coldcut sandwich the world as we know it would be horribly altered and disfigured to the point where walking out of your front door would be suicide.  Jesus christ, calm down.  We're gonna get food.  I know you couldn't bring yourself to leave your front door without someone walking with you, but for fucks sake, it's not the end of the world.  Not by a long shot.

I'm even okay with adventurous stoners.  The kind that get really high and then want to operate.  I'm a little bit of an adventure stoner streaker myself from time to time.  I know it's obnoxious in some ways.  It doesn't mean that I don't do it and want to push other people to, but I am that, and I'm never really all that sad when people shoot me down.  When I'm smoking, "I just had the absolute greatest idea ever" is the last thing you want to hear out of my mouth.  For one: it's probably a way too elaborate or distant quest to achieve a goal unique to me that I couldn't do without other people there (everything from playing some sort of multiplayer only game to crossing some distance to see or buy something much better crossed in a car).  For two: there's probably a good chance someone might actually get hurt (adds to the allure of the adventure.  When you have bad credit all you have is yourself, so while you gamble with imaginary numbers and scores, I gamble with my body...  because I have no credit).  And for three: by the time the idea comes out of my mouth, no one feels like moving.  I'm okay with that.

The stoner I can no longer stand is the stoneissuer.  The girl or guy who always wants to know what you have and then compares it to other high end "brands" they've had.  No one asked you.  Literally, no one asked you for your opinion on how this stacks up to Phonecase White Palidin (insert semi-obscure flower phylum here).

Yes, that's why I invited you over: to stick your nose into my bag and not shake your head, but give me the "weird" eye and ask the admonishing question of  "how much did you pay for this."   I'm begging the question in offering it, aren't I.  I needed your expertise.  I wasn't just bored the fuck out of my mind and out of videos to jerk off to and thought it might be fun to have someone else to talk to for an evening.  No, I wanted your sharp nose and your ten point critique of what is essentially free weed for you.  I'm not basically paying for your company like a truck driver picking up some fawn eyed drifter for a few hours of bullshitting til the next stop.

You asked to drop by and what I wanted you to do was pull out your pocket scale and shake your head and tell me I was lied to and it was almost a gram light and repeat over and over again that back home you wouldn't have paid over X amount of dollars for what I had while you ground up your Panda Blue Light Special shipped in from the west coast.

The stoneissuer is particularly distasteful because as soon as theirs runs out you are the first one they call.  You are the first one they try to buddy up with and then they come over and try to be modest about how much they are taking and go out of their way to point it out that they are somehow doing you a favor because what they usually get is more pure and they're not used to smoking a gentler high and the taste is way off but they can get accustomed to it.   Meanwhile the baseball bat in the corner keeps chirping in your ear "come on, just do it," but I love company more than my own sometimes and know better than to act out and act out of rage.   Most of the time.

The stoneissuer will trash talk you sideways.  The kind of person who, in a race, would nudge your back end out and force you off the road to get ahead and then say "well, I was holding my same racing line, but you were diverting from your own to hold me back, so it's kind of your fault you spun out into sand on your last lap."  They will passive attack in attempts to try to insure and assert their value to the group as the token expert, without realizing that no one really cares as long as they get something out of experience.

Stoneissuers are usually descended from higher, no pun intended, echelons of the hierarchy of smokers.  Rich folks all too often, trying to distance themselves, but be included in, the experience.  The thing that makes them the most distasteful is that, if they aren't already motivated to stay away from the lower grades for the fact that moving up is sort of a socioeconomic graduation and going backward implies some sort of failure in tastes or earning power or status, as soon as their shit runs out and they go enough days without it, they're right back with you.  Suddenly what made them curl their lips and flare their nostrils and roll their eyes like you just said One Direction is the greatest band to grace the face of the Earth, becomes "hey, that's not so bad.  I kind of feel it."  Suddenly "how much did you pay for that" and "you got ripped off" turns into "that's pretty good" and "is it alright if I steal some more?"

Yeah, it's fine, but nightwork is great.  I think I realized one of the reasons why I like working night shifts so much, and it's nothing profound.  It comes down to the fact that I don't give all that much of a shit when it comes to my clothes.  It's not a complete abandon fueled by the functionality of homeless people.  Nothing close to that.  I have no one to impress so it makes no sense to impress people.

Sometimes it's a matter of detailing.  Everyone likes a well detailed car or house, why not clothing.  I am sometimes gripped by the thrill of matching.  It's real.  I am aware of my body and I ride in my body all the time.  Everyone does.  When things match, it's easier to not notice it and when you do notice it, you have color cues to make that understanding zip through your brain that much faster and then, that much faster, you can carry on being yourself.  For the same reason I don't read too much into people obsessed with matching.  It really is a matter of cutting down variables and freeing up much more, or at least that much more, free time and better yet, uninterrupted thought and brain space.  That's pretty damn valuable for the small price of picking out clothing beforehand.

Consider when you're deep in thought after work, pulling the day in front of your eyes like that choppy 8mm film on the two spools that burns up if you leave it in front of the lens too long.  That stuff your parents parents watched home videos of themselves on in dusty attics or family renunion Wonder Times grainy video project screen things or whatever it was they did kind of things.

That spool is running and you're trying to figure out ways to do that again, but without that 45 seconds of frames in the lunch break room where you put the pack of coffee filters you didn't pay for in your locker and that 72 second stretch of frames where you could've and also would've done your job better because you actually do care, but come off wrong sometimes over the phone.  That spool is running and right in the middle of it.  When you are beginning to build some understanding, it switches to a high definition video of rally cross for an hour compressed into ten seconds and switches back.  Bad news.

That's what makes night work so great.  It takes the work out of work.  You can up and go with pants with their crotch completely ripped out and no one gives a shit and it already blends in with rest of the night because the lighting is so poor so even if you did look down it wouldn't matter because you can't see anything.  It's a near perfect situation.  Everything is dark and everything follows that dark pattern so even if someone did think they could see something, they wouldn't be able to really know beyond what's inside their own head and everyone knows as much as half of what's in their is bullshit anyway.

Nobody wants handouts.  Sometimes you have to help your dealers, because some of them do it for a living and are subject to market forces same as any kind of investor.  The truth is there are two sorts of dealers.  There are the shorters and the careers.  The shorters are on a temporary schedule.  Volatile products and volatile prices.  They're on the get wealthy very quickly and retire permanently track or supplementary income (McDonalds) track.

Sometimes you have to help folks out.

"Do you want some gas money?  I can just bring you some money for gas.  I don't want anything right now."

"You might as well take it though.  You can use it for something is all I'm saying."

"I know, but I would rather have the money for later, 'cause there isn't a bank I can go to is what I mean.  That's you're issue right now."

"If you just take this right now, I'm fine with that.  I just need to put gas in my car because I had to push it off the street when the engine stopped."

Pineapple Express backwards.  I always feel a little bad when my parting words are "hey, take care of yourself."  Even when nothing is given, the sentiment itself implies the person it's directed to is completely incapable of and must be reminded to do better by their machinery.  Nobody wants hand outs.  Ever.

Happiness is contagious.  I'll give you a nickle both to go down either road A or road B.  Whichever makes me happy as I go is the one I'm taking.

Cycling, Greyhounds, Inherited Vision and Home

Walking home from the Greyhound station downtown I was sincerely struck by the beauty of the river and my new home town. I haven't really felt homesick for a place as much as I feel homesick for Pittsburgh whenever I'm gone for a long time. It's not like I miss the people. I can count the number of people that I see and know on one hand that's gone through a meat grinder and lost two digits. I get homesick for the atmosphere. The lack of pomp and circumstance. Of course there's the college town part of Pittsburgh, but the part plays a lot bigger than it is. I don't miss that scene or the people that frequent it religiously all that much.

Sure it was great to play drinking games and have laughs and dress up on halloween and all that shit. Sure it was great to get anxious on Sunday when you know papers are due and oh so many tests next week and I haven't studied at all but you know you'll do well enough to get a decent grade, but you need something to worry about so you don't feel like a waste of life and loan money, or trust fund money, or whatever the fuck money has gotten you in there. I do miss the drinking games and the general camaraderie largely absent in life after age twenty two when people decide what they really want to do and the doing of that thing does not include meeting you every weekend to exchange war stories and play fighting and choruses of the songs you have in common and hitting on the birds. Everyone grows up eventually and it makes me sad, because my investment schedule definitely does not include the things people my age are supposed to value which puts me at direct odds with what those people want to do. Not by choice. Everyone inherits vision to some degree and I was fortunate or unfortunate enough to inherit a vision of the future that is not worlds apart, but different enough to make common ground a scratch and tumble affair at best. I don't know where to find the people that share my vision, because I spent all of my time with people who didn't share that vision, but shared temporary past times that I thought would last forever.

People aside I get homesick for the fabric of where it is that I am. The smell of it. The starry sky that just won't quit. The bridges and hills and the chopped sidewalks. The bad architecture and the good and the fact that the people there make it work and shut the fuck up about it. The low rent, maybe low brow, of it all. The fact that I don't have to make 20,000 dollars to live a life with amenities and enough security to know that I won't be ass out on the street living out of bus station rest rooms if I don't pull in 32,000 dollars a year, much less 18,000. I miss that I can go do just about anything I want a couple times a month if it's expensive and most everything else I can do at will when I'm there and working.

As I'm walking home and crossing the last bridge across the river to my town I can see the stars sitting in the water like giants blue white lilly pads looking for frogs and it's the calmest I've seen it in a while and, yeah, it made me misty. No neon lights, no car clogged Saturday night streets. Just hills rising on either side dotted with orange street lights and a few windows and an empty bridge. The moon on my shoulder, the river at my feet. It was beautiful. It is beautiful. I could walk out to that bridge every day and it would never get old. The only thing I wanted more was a joint, a cooler with a couple 40s, and a fishing rod to pass the time til sunrise. I love Pittsburgh. She makes me wicked homesick.

The only downside was the Greyhound ride from Philadelphia. I took the fools gold. I grabbed the open seat with a few open seats around it and sure enough a family sat around me. A couple of fat mothers and their snotty kid and baby and dazed and confused husband. Not a problem. I had headphones. So I thought. Immune to crying stinky children being changed in the aisle. The real problem was the extremely portly mother. Nothing against big girls, but if you can't sleep on a red eye without falling over on the person next to you and wedging your purse into my hip and lolling your arms against my ribs, I will have a problem with you.

The worst part wasn't that she baby talked to the baby for two hours. My problem wasn't that the baby kept smacking my arms and kicking my thighs while I tried to make myself as small as possible. My problem wasn't even that she refused to acknoledge that allowing her baby to run rough shod over a complete stranger was probably a bad idea, as I had to continuously repeat aloud "do not strangle them" to keep myself in my seat and facing away. Verbal reminders keep me in line. My problem was that she kept leaning herself on me with enough perfume to hide a skunk in her vagina and have the world none the wiser.

Honestly, I would rather people smelled like people. People stink. It's part of being human. Everybody has their odor. I can deal with it. Hell, I wrestled in highschool. Ever been in a practically air tight, pad walled, wrestling room for three sweaty, teen funked, hours with unwashed knee pads, shoes, singlets and sweats everywhere? Hell, ever been locked in a 90 degree house with elephantine parents spending entire days sweating into a couch with the windows locked tight and you on the top floor where all the heat and stench gathers regardless of what you do? People stink. I would rather smell your feet after a twenty mile run than stomach whatever essence of flower musk from some far off land synthesized in a lab and sprayed on rabbits. It was hard enough to breath. I had to get out on the rest stop and smoke just to get the odor out of my nostrils for ten minutes before diving back into the air freshened nightmare.

Eventually, between the run amok children, the lolling woman leaning me so hard into the wall I thought I would pop through the emergency window like a turd through a clenched bum hours away from a stall, and the perfume I took the passive aggressive route. I read a book. I was the only one on the bus reading. Got the book out and hit that light switch and within an hour the seat next to me was vacant. Had to pat myself on the back for that act of cunning. And then I put the arm rest down for good measure. I can sleep sitting stock still. Doesn't bother me. Luckily enough it bothered them enough to get every last one of them to piss off.

But anyway, wanted to mention cycling. I almost high sided the other day. A low side fall is alright. You take the shortest path from your seat to the ground. Not terrible usually. High siding is a different story. High siding is flipping over the top of your cycle. Not laying it down and going down with it, but hitting something or wrenching it in such a way that you come over the top and land. Hard.

I was coming down a nice winder. Nice tight sweeps in heavy traffic. It's usually not a problem, but I was coming to a tight sidewinder that I flirted with about a dozen times. I pushed it hard and it took it softer on rainy days, but I felt comfortable enough to give the old all or nothing pass. The pace setter. The pass that would define how I judged my future success or failure navigating it in coming months.

Of course there is a fucking minivan charging up my ass. I don't know what it is about drivers. It's like they feel they aren't driving as well as they can unless they can chase down a bicycle as though the bicycle is somehow superior in grip when in fact it is superior in dense traffic patterns and perhaps marginally more nimble, but on open roads all the advantages go to having more contact patches. And an engine. So I take the turn tight. Too tight. I have too much speed and my apex misses the ideal by several feet and I come wide toward the road's shoulder and I can see the early morning gravel from rain wash the night before not yet cleared by a day of traffic and I am coming straight for it with a big white van charging in behind me expecting me to hold the line.

The gravel and sand are two wheels mortal enemy next to ice which usually equals instant low sides, but I see it coming so I'm sliding and correcting and sliding and correcting trying to slow down enough without taking too much of my tires capacity to steer and grip by over braking and as I basically fish tail the curb is coming up and I feel that sick few seconds when you know someone is about to blind side check you straight into the hockey arena boards. As I'm trail braking and correcting I can see my wheels jamming the curb and me flipping into the fence in what would have been the worst accident I've had to date, but I pull it together and recover about six inches out and get up off my saddle and chug with everything I'm worth to keep the van from pasting me.

It sucked. I damn near shat myself with the effort and nerve racking tension. Why do I mention it? In short, certain turns don't care what you're driving or riding. I'm pretty sure part of the reason the van didn't cream me was because she had to slow down to take the bend too and I didn't think about that. The sharpness of it. Had I been riding or driving anything I'm pretty sure the fastest that hairpin could have been taken was probably ten or fifteen miles an hour without aero package grade downforce keeping you glued. And I need to keep that in mind when I'm riding too. I know I can't out maneuver most cars on open sweepers and pins, but I also need to remind myself not to push too hard, because when the turns get tight enough, they can't out maneuver me either. And I guess that's part of the human experience too. When things get tight enough the only thing that matters is how much downforce you can generate, not what drives you.


///Junkie XL - "War" on the road of life there are drivers and there are the driven

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

what we gonna do today

so what are we about today? i dunno. missing people mostly. missing friends. missing allies. missing the axis. missing the points of interest on the trip through life. when friends clear out and family is sort of worthless (well not worthless, but inaccessible and too far distant from you physically and personally to really have fun with) its just you and the universe staring at each other night after night after night.

for valentines day i beat off for an hour, watched 30 rock and ate a fat piece of pound cake, then had a cigarette and went to bed at 2 am. guess how fun that was. basically liz lemon got more action than i did. and i dont even mean sexually, cuz you'd have to be a lesbian to find liz lemon attractive (the combat boot, mustache wearing kind, not the hot blonde porno kind), i mean like she had more fun in her own miserable way than i did. which is a really really long aside.

but yeah, the universe is a very pessimistic, bastardly, thing. it has no friends. all it does is ruin peoples lives. with its infinite resources it tries to win at everything and you, with your carpet bag of tricks, try to win at anything. the universe will always win. so its never fun hanging out with just the universe. even when you try to exclude it, it finds a way to crash your private parties.

which in a seriously round about way brings me to my point. what the hell am i going to do today? i have nothing to do. well i have some things to do. actually ihave a ton of things to do.

first off, why ive been gone, again.

lots of shit. lots of anger. but some good has been made out of it. a tiny bubble of winningness that i will savor till the universe pops it and replaces it with a flaming bag of poo.

i formed a production company. bet you didnt do that over the past 30 days. what else... i wrote some stories. good ones i think. happy ones. sad ones. violent ones. i had some conversations. lots of good conversations. what else... nothing else. thats it. got some music. and beat off a lot. not that its bad or shameful. america wants people to be ashamed of all the wrong things. ill never understand that. im not sorry.

today im going to read and fall into worlds different from the one i cant otherwise get out of.


\\\chairlift - "bruises" caroline polachek, if you're reading this please send me a hug. but seriously. i think most of all i miss closeness. i hate talking to no one. thats probably the biggest reason why ive been gone. this song just reminds me of a person that i miss a lot, and we've been drifting apart and it sucks but its irreversible for the foreseeable future. hurray for human relationships and the weapons of heart destruction that are their constitution.

game time

best gaming moments ever, as i have experienced them and unranked within their appearance in the post of recognition:

super smash brother melee: the second hand appears

ace combat 3: entering the electrosphere

ace combat 3: the first automated craft appears after foolishly wasting all short and long range missles on inconsequential baddies

ace combat 4: rex tremendae plays as i finally come upon the missle base

gran turismo: realizing all i have to do is hit the final left hand chicane perfectly on Trial Mountain to lock up the international unlimited race and japan is breathing down my neck in his skyline .01 seconds off of my bumper to my immediate left.

super mario world: realizing i have to catch the bombs being thrown at me and use them on bowser.

silhouette mirage: reaching the final boss and feeling sadness for all the people ive killed, however hilariously.

gta vice city: killing a prostitute on purpose. i dunno. it was something id never done in a video game before. it was intense.

metal gear solid: meeting revolver ocelot for the first time

mario tennis: unlocking shyguy

test drive 5: hitting every shortcut perfectly and taking the win by a margin of 20 seconds.

need for speed underground: raping every race in a wrung out cobalt ss. tearing a benzo a new one in said cobalt.

gran turismo 2: taking my 300zx R body to the track for the first time and putting the pedal to the metal to hear that exhaust note. best in the game.

air attack 2: killing someone else in heads up combat using sound tactics for the first time. it was my first kill over the inter web.

gran turismo: winning my first 24 hour race at night. a ludicrous number of laps... and watching the sun come up in real life and on the game screen. beautiful. i almost teared up.

unreal tournament: entering the battle just as someone used that guided nuclear missle and getting clear just in time to have my entire team killed at once. lame, but awesome.

farcry: watching a friend play for the first time and being completely blown away by the levelof detail. the game was practically spotless.

gta san andreas: realizing the army helicopter has infinite missiles

armored core 2: successfully destroying the enemy from ridiculous range from behind enormous city skyscrapers with mortar missles. yessssssssssssssssssssssss.

star fox 64: destroying wolf.

sim city 4: n/a

///gotan project - "track 2": i am lazy and sipping guiness. and contemplating purchasing a fine pack of cigarettes. what are you doing?

wheeen was (regular dude things)

when was the last time you>>

listened to the fight club soundtrack

played the first gran turismo

smoked a cigarette more than three days after you quit

watched blade runner

played game cube

looked up the current price of a dreamcast

watched a kungfu movie made before 1990

ate two pieces of bacon and stopped

watched the towelie episode of southpark

saw the intro to futurama before it was on comedy central

played more than three consecutive games of pong

played more than ten consecutive games of any table top sport

debated the merits of 2001 versus apocalypse now

pointed out the retardedness of the majority of heath ledgers career

made pancakes and eggs and cheeseburgers for dinner

had a ghetto memosa(sp)

quoted that sci fi show without worrying about the pair of tits ten feet away

made fun of club rats, popped collars, chick foreheads, and broadzillas

told a dumb chick to shut up

discussed who would win in a fight between (old tv show hero A) versus (old tv show hero B)

played putt putt with someone who took it waay too seriously

imitated ultimate top spin challenge

stayed up to watch the adult swim reruns... all of them... friday, saturday, and sunday

watched food network from noon to three

technically had a sausage fest and honestly didnt care

enjoyed a natty before 3 pm

blasted led zepplin instead of a song featured on "now thats what i call music #'n'"

played ssbm for fun

watched sonny chiba rip someones throat out

enjoyed a GB

///the dust brothers - "homework" get started. due by two a.m. late submissions can be made for zero credit and correction notes only.

1976 10/17/07

Subject : 1976
Posted Date: : Oct 17, 2007 11:22 AM

1976 views. been gone for a while. dealing with depression and odd issues hither and thither. at the moment i feel like im biding my time in college. waiting for another year to end so i can finally get on with living my "real" life after graduation. but i mean, except for a handful of things that i know i am desparately wanting to do to advance my personal life to a new stage of stability, love, excitement, and rest what i am essentially looking forward to is going to be another time out session. just another pause along the road. i have to get a masters degree to command the pay i will need to live the kind of life i want to, and in order to do that im going to have to take a year off to study for gre's and find a school and all the rest. so its basically just time out part two.

im exhausted with school. i hate homework. i hate forced reading. i hate a lot of things but i love even more so im okay with that sensation i think. i started smoking again. im not really sure why. maybe its because my football team lost so i dont really have to be in peak condition. why the hell would anyone really need to be able to run five miles? so i dont really care about that. and if i have to hold my breath for a minute i guess ill be ass out in the cold on that count. and if i have to do thirty pull ups to save my life, well, same deal. too bad. its a nice pass time, i think. maybe ill get some pipe tobacco and smoke pipes in my white robe every saturday afternoon. make it a pleasant ritual of aromas and scotch. speaking of which i need to get a more plush robe. for my ass mostly. ill admit it. i like having really furry soft things to sit on and rub myself against. its fun. its relaxing. its flippin awesome is what it is.

stealing. i havent stolen anything aside from digital properties in a long time. im trying to keep it that way. im also making minimum credit card payments. i know i shouldnt, but i dont have the money to pay it down so its better than nothing. and furthermore! nope.... thats it i guess. sorry ive been away so long. ive thought about you everyday and i missed your milestones (1666 view). but im back again. and i tentatively wager i will be writing in you more often than i have. <3

///boards of canada-"constants are changing" this song has helped me end more rough days than i can count. nothing like melting into blankets with blustery old man winter giving you chills and a delicate weave of synth fades and tonal scales washing over you like the tiniest, ever unique, crystals of ice.

zoetrope 05/29/07

Subject : zoetrope
Posted Date: : May 29, 2007 11:53 PM

here we are again. writing to you from my cave. i realized i enjoyed living in caves a while back. i built myself a den instead of a loft. it was great. i had a mattress that was bigger than a queen size. and christmas lights. everythings better with christmas lights. and fireflies.

so im a little docile. i ate a couple of mouthfulls of robitussin to help me sleep. so i can wake up rested you know. i was gonna go jog today but i ended up walking around in my flip flops for half an hour instead. im really looking forward to sleeping so early. its only 1am. the good thing about having so much energy during the day is that it feels so satisfying when its all gone.

what is not satisfying is that my paycheck is going to be delayed by about two weeks on top of the two week waiting period. im too tired to cuss and spit about it so i wont. i am really bushed. i miss sex. and smoking cigarettes.

i saw some children playing today. riding tricycles as hard as they could. i thought about how hard i tried to grow up so fast and i felt something stab through me that was probably regret. could've been disgust. or envy. but if i had to lay money on the table i would put my chips on 22 black. everything is wasted on everyone. whatever happend to contented living. its the one thing i think im going to really take away with me this summer. few things feel better than watching the sunlight slide down the window pane after work with the moon grasping for its tails.

i watched the first stars pop out tonight. they felt warm.

///boards of canada - "zoetrope" a song featuring all the shifty mixed feelings starlight can induce. but also a song that pulses and thins like sun streaks from an aperture that catches too much light... like dreaming at 3.33 in the afternoon.

bronchitis, herbs, and stories 02/27/07

Subject : bronchitis, herbs, and stories
Posted Date: : Feb 27, 2007 11:56 AM

ive decided im going to face my fears and watch brazil. the last time i saw this movie i was really young. it was back when mtv still had a space man logo as their chief advertising gimmick and nickelodeon still had a song to sing a long to. Rocko's modern life was still really popular and ren and stimpy was not all but forgotten by everyone except the casual stoner. The last time i saw this movie was like the first time i saw kafka... fucking frightening. I just remember a guy in a porcelain baby mask getting shot in the back of the head by some tall, dark, and blonde woman and his brains firing out through his forehead onto the camera. and i also vaguely remember another scene where there were two men in air tight suits that were filled with feces through tubes until they exploded. obviously not the best material for children.



which reminds me... i need to watch time bandits again sometime cuz that movie was really good even though it was unbelievably long and hard to follow for my 13 year old brain.

Anyway... in other news. I'm writing a parody of the emo dissillusionment black tragedy. I call it black tragedy because it is invariably laced with black comedy, despite its tragic content. Movies like the virgin suicides and american beauty (among others) really tick me off sometimes because they can get to be formulaic. So I realized that the problem isnt the formula, the problem is me. I don't like the formula, but a lot of other people love it... thus i will write a subtle parody, using the formula, to win acclaim. That way I and the other people, who hate that formulaic, unresolved ending, emotional crap, will have something to laugh to ourselves about, while the less narratively inclined readers will have something to say "oh, what a profound commentary on the humanity of adolescents and maturity impaired adults that was." a win-win and win situation.

also... having successfully gotten over bronchitis... well actually i should say having successfully begun to get over bronchitis i am considering alternatives to the occassional cigarette and i think i've found something interesting... herbs. not like pot herbs or potted herbs but like flower herbs that are smokable. they dont produce nicotine or tar when smoked and can be quite fragrant... which makes me wonder what the downside is. im pretty sure its bronchitis if smoked habitually... but if that's it then i simply wonder why people don't smoke more herbs all the time? it seems like fun. you even get a complimentary pipe with your first purchase. how bout them apples. so i think im gonna try it. im not looking for a marijuana high or anything close. I just want to see if its an enjoyable past time while I do other things like... blog... or ... read ... or something. we shall see.

///orb - "secrets" 'as we look at the weather map we see a forecast with sub-zero temperatures with tomorrows temperatures a continued mild- continued mild?' spring is coming. I can already feel it in the air. This is my favorite time of year... when it can still snow hard as all hell the first half of the week and then be light jacket and t-shirt weather for the other half. beauty.