Good vs. Evil

I had an errand to run at lunch today (which was Wednesday, not actually today). I walked out to my car to find that it had two dents in the front right fender. They were pretty high up, I'd guess about four feet ( I own an SUV, and I don't care what you think of that. ), so whatever hit my car was fairly large. And painted white. I'm thinking some kind of delivery truck. It's an odd location for the car to be hit there because the fenders are flares and it was on *top* of the flare, but there was no damage to the front or side. So it was hit roughly from above. I'm having a hard time picturing exactly what that vehicle must look like. I've considered it may have been some sort of other object, but nothing comes to mind that makes any sense.

Now, these days nothing really phases me anymore. At least not something as trivial as this. I walked up to my car on the right side, and noticed these dents as I approached. My first thought was, hey, looks like I got a dent. I got to the car and touched the dents and checked out the paint mark, and thought, hmm, guess I'll have to get these fixed. It was as if I was detached in a way. This is not unusual for me, I can't really say why. In my past I would be much more upset, it's going to cost money, the car is only 8 months old, who did this to me, etcetera. Sort of a worry complex I suppose, although I can't really say what that would be as far as some kind of clinical diagnosis. Now my response is, "yeah, whatever." It's just going to cost money. Just like everything else. I'm guessing over a hundred, to have the dents popped out and the paint buffed. I'm lucky that the dents aren't on any creases in the shape of the body panel, as that kind of damage is much harder to work with. Which in itself is funny, because that area of the car is heavy with body creases. Like I said, lucky.

The other day, I parked in the parking lot at work, the main lot which has pretty narrow parking spots. The lot fills fast these days and there were only a couple spots left, so I had to park between two cars in this compact spot. I am not complaining, I own a large vehicle, it's my lot and I deal with it. As I was negotiating the spot, I tapped the car to my right on it's driver side mirror. I got it just on it's edge, just right, and popped off the shell that covers it's innards. The glass was fine, nothing was broke. But as I checked out my handy work I noticed that in popping off the shell, I had broken off the tabs that hold it on. So I was unable to simply snap it back on. Dilemma.

I wrote down the license plate number and the type of car. I was bummed I'd have to pay for this thing. Of course it did kinda just go back on right? Even though it wasn't secure. Could be it just broke right? All of it's own accord. I went to my desk and the old "shirk responsibility" monster reared its head. Most people in the world would just shine it on. Not their problem right? No witnesses, no guilt. I pondered for a moment just forgetting the whole thing. And it sat there in my mind after that. Like a spot of mold. It just sat there. I had planted it. Just by thinking about not owning up to what I had done, no matter how small.

This is the way I'm made. I was given a large helping of guilt when I was constructed. But this time, it wasn't really that bad. I didn't lose concentration when working, there was no stress or knot in my stomach. And after working for a little bit, I actually forgot to send email out to see who the car belonged to.

But that moldy spot remained.

I had some lunch at my desk, went for a walk, and later, saw the paper with the license and make of the car sitting next to my keyboard. So I popped open my email and sent the mail off, requesting the owner call my extension. Usually when you see emails like this go out to the company, it's understood there was some sort getting together of automobile parts. Well, I was sure to say there was nothing wrong with the car, but still to call.

I got the call at the end of the day, and explained the situation to her. I told her to see about getting a replacement part and I would take care of it. She ended up taking it to her mechanic and he said he could actually repair the part, and that a replacement was $100. I was surprised that it could be repaired, but if he could repair it, and do it well, then I guess that was fine too. I told her to let me know which she chose and I would pay for it.

She sent me an email later the next day thanking me greatly for being honest, and telling me how nice it was for me to do that. It felt good. It was as if I had just won. I don't know what contest I was in, what game I was competing in, but I had won. I thought of several things to say in return, mostly just the modest, 'well it's the only right thing to do' or whatever, which is true, but... I just said 'My pleasure.' Because it was.

It seems to me somewhere along the line, being bad, being tough, insensitive, arrogant even, has become de rigeur for being cool and independent, a kind of high water mark of personal evolution. Not caring about another's plight showing just how gloriously self-possessed a person is.

Seems kind of empty to me. Like taking a delicious steak and cooking it so much that it's just hard and burnt. Not very tasty at all.

So my mistake turned into my pleasure. And an inconvenience to one person. But also served to reinforce her faith in people around her. I was surprised at how much she responded to my simple honesty. She said several times how nice it was that I contacted her. Doing to right thing shouldn't be a surprise. It shouldn't be such a rarity. I didn't really do anything except try to fix what I had broken, but it obviously brought out some deep example of how we treat each other day after day, and one simple nicety contrasted the grey cloud of normal human interaction. I was seriously unprepared for her ingratiating response. I didn't really deserve to be praised for breaking her car. It's actually quite humorous on the one hand... and deeply satisfying on the other.

So the day after that I walked out to my car to run some errands, and there were two dents in the front right fender. I thought, well I'll have to get these fixed. Looks like I'm paying for two cars to get repaired... Sometimes it actually *is* funny. I chuckled to myself then.

Cover your ears !

FUCK!

Just had to let you know that. Don't ask why, because then you'll get one of my grouchiest blogs ever.



Rebecca, you horrible friend, you never read my blogs. So you won't read this. You were my best friend tonight. You buttressed a temple that tilts. You were unusually fair and objective, as much so as anyone put in your position could hope to be. Thank you.

*

You know, I don't put much stock in horoscopes, they're mostly a collection of vague platitudes, but I still enjoy reading them. Which in itself I find rather odd, insomuch as I never could stomach them before this past couple of months.

My Google front page has many custom widgets on it, such as the weather, various news sources, my stock ticker, my calender and to do list (I'm very organized), and a few other odds and ends, and one of them is a daily horoscope. When I set up my personalized Google page, it was one of the 4 or 6 default widgets that were already installed. I kept it, the weather, and the daily quotes. So now I read it almost everyday out of curiosity.

Now before you get all excited if you are a creationist, or get puffed up if you're not, please note that I don't have much faith in horoscopes. Never have. For those skeptics in the bunch, I propose that, unless you seriously subscribe to crystals and pyramid hats, any jumble of words could account for just about anything happening in your life, statistically speaking, just as the saying goes, "eventually a room full of monkeys bashing away randomly on typewriters can come up with the complete works of Shakespeare". On the other hand, for the God fearing in the crowd, how do you know that God himself does not inform those who write these silly paragraphs, for He does work in mysterious ways after all, and who am I to say how He will and will not communicate with his flock? Who are you, in fact, to do so?

At any rate, the point is moot, but I do enjoy the metaphysical argument. Especially when humans deign to know how God goes about His business, because I know for a fact *I* don't know. I'm sure He keeps his own council on the running of His affairs... just my humble guess though. I could be wrong. It's happened before, and it will happen again...

The thing is, more often than not I can ascribe what is in the horoscope to something in my life. To be expected. Often these things that are referenced build upon each other day after day. Less expected, but as I said before, you can make just about anything in a horoscope fit your life. Now, I've come across some observation from the horoscope about my life that I've encountered before.

Many weeks ago, it referred to a difficulty (forgive me for being vague myself here, but sometimes I'm guts-exposed in my blogs, and sometimes not. It's MY blog after all, so shut it up) that I was currently going through and that it related to something that had happened in the past, and to be mindful of separating the two. Not bad advice in and of itself. But it turns out that was actually a very good observation, for a bunch of words, about what was really happening with me at that moment.

Now, I've come across a similar bit of advice from the mighty tome of nonsense, telling me to work through my fears, which come from a pain experienced in the past. Quite accurate for me right now, this day. I won't say exactly how that ties into the first one, but trust me, it does. As much as I choose it to of course. It continues by telling me not to bury myself in accomplishing external goals, but to allow the changes that need to be made inside of me to take place, to in fact, face this inner turmoil and let it work itself out. This is indeed something happening for me that can be explained in so many words, right now. And I can assure you, these are great changes taking place within me, some I hadn't anticipated, as if I could smell the rain coming across the land, but have up til now, spotted no storm clouds....

Coincidence? Sure. Fact? I don't know. Voice of God? None of my business. Scribblings of a purple monkey dishwasher? Quite possible.

But the really cool thing about today's horoscope is it used the word 'ameliorate'.

This is funny...

What I saw last night at the beach was something that I found peculiar.

I went to the beach to sit and watch the sun go down. I do this on occasion. It's very nice. It takes me away from my world. It takes me out of my head. It is beautiful to watch that big bright sun sink behind the Santa Monica Mountains at night, the mountains silhouetted a pale blue, with the sun the color of molten gold dripping behind them. Every time I watch sun go down, just as the last little sliver is sitting on the mountain's shoulder, I say, "Good night, Sun." And then I sit there, watching the fiery glow of the horizon fade away, as the sky cools.

Today I was up a little past Santa Monica, and I sat right in the sand. I wasn't really prepared for the beach. I wore some nice pants and shoes, and a long sleeve shirt (this is good, as you may remember from my cake blog how sunburned I've been since this past Thursday. Unfortunately I think that blog will drop off the bottom of the page when I post this, since MySpace only shows five blogs in the main page's list. Incidentally, if anyone happens upon this blog, and you know a hack to show more blogs in the list, please let me know what it is, it would be greatly appreciated.)

So i sat there for maybe an hour. And I'd like you to know something wonderful. The sun rises every morning. It doesn't take three or six months to decide if it's going to come up. It's just there, everyday, beautiful, with it's bright face turned toward the earth, without reservation, without hesitation, it gives us everything it's got. The stuff of life. And every night, when the sun goes back to sleep, the stars are there, shining bright. They are in love, the sun and the stars. Didn't you know that?

The peculiar thing I mentioned earlier, is, as I was walking back to my car I came upon a couple sitting in their little Honda. I realized they were sitting there watching the sunset also. Did you catch that? They were at the beach watching the sun go down. IN THEIR CAR. What the hell is that ???

What I was really trying to say is, when I say "this is funny", usually it's not.

Later I went by Mr. Pizza to get some pizza before heading home and I was walking up the sidewalk, and there on the wall facing the Jewish Temple was a little bit of tagging. It said, "fuck you, tubby." I wonder if tubby has seen this....

I, donut

I hold Krispy Kreme donuts in high regard. If you haven't had one, then I pity you. The simple, fluffy, glazed donut is the One Donut, the center of the donut world, a shining light that leads all to the way of filling one's innards with sugary happiness and fulfillment. Now, KK has it's detractors for sure, but they are unenlightened. Like the primitive apes they still fling their poop at one another. May God facilitate their evolution from unthinking trolls to humble donut loving men and woman.

Krispy Kreme holds a place on high, much like a template for other donuts to emulate. The other day, I was lucky enough to have a donut, not a KK, but a donut from one of our local farmer's markets here in Los Angeles. This donut obviously was raised in the fiery heat of the oven put forth by KK. It was a bit larger and definitely glazed. I was fully sticky upon finishing my feast of donut. If I could find out from where this donut came, I would recommend you find one immediately. Alas, this is information I cannot share, and so the Donut of the Unknown Farmer's Market will go down in recorded history as a great donut of mystery.

One donut I *can* recommend is this amazing delicacy put forth by one Alex Donut. Alex Donut is located on Franklin Ave. Just north of the 101 freeway behind the Capital Records. Run, don't walk, to Alex Donut as this donut also follows the path of the KK. It is somewhat larger, every bit as fluffy, and every bit as glazed as the KK. But here is where it is unique: the progenitors of this wonderful Alex Donut have ordained chocolate be laid upon the top of the donut, and then covered in the ubiquitous glaze. Delicious.

I bring you this information as it is my duty. I am Dutch, mostly, and it falls to me, like all Dutch to spread the Word of the Donut. For it was the Dutch, in the late 1800's, who, made sick by the undercooked center of their round cakes, pushed this glob of wet and cold dough out with their fingers. And so was the donut born. A ring of dough, cooked and eaten, for pleasure.

I suggest you have a donut. For life is short and donuts are plentiful.

Also some people will dispute the origins of the donut as being created by a pirate or some girls in the old west or some such nonsense, but they can just shut up.

How I almost died.

This is funny. A friend of mine brought up my ex-wife recently about how little she cared for me and I remembered this story. I didn't think a lot of it at the time, although it wasn't too long after this happened that we separated about 2 1/2 years ago.

I had surgery to correct my deviated septum. Most of you probably know that means you can't breath very well. At the same time I also had my tonsils removed. In case you don't know, doctors are usually very reluctant to take tonsils out, for some reason. At any rate, my doctor looked at mine and said straight away they had to come out.

So my doctor uses lasers for these kind of procedures. Which is cool because it means you don't look like Joe Pesci beat you in the face with a baseball bat after the surgery. Plus you get less packing because there is less damage to the tissue. I guess. I'm not a surgeon so I wouldn't know.

Real quick so you know, for about 4 or 5 days, my wife was out of town for a convention or market for her type of work.

Okay, I roll into the hospital about 6 or so AM and they send me over to the CAT scan, which was outside the hospital in a trailer. Hey, whatever works right? I got scanned and as I was leaving I check over the technician's shoulder and saw what the inside of my head looks like. Well, my head is pretty damn crooked so I'm not surprised that I couldn't breath. Anyway, it was back into the hospital to get some kind of I.V. drip, I can't remember what it was. Probably saline solution or whatever that water stuff is they put in you when you're in the hospital. They took all my clothes and stuffed me into one of those gown things. Very fashionable.

Up next was the gurney and a ride to the basement. I guess this was some kind of staging area for pre-surgery. I can't really remember what they did down there. I think they put more needles in me. The memory is pretty foggy. More on that later. Finally, after what seemed like days, the doctor comes by, introduces my anesthesiologist and off we go to surgery. It's about 10 AM at this point, which is right on schedule.

Now here's the deal, surgery is to start around 10 AM, end a couple hours later and then I go home. So it's supposed to be around 2 or 3 PM when I leave the hospital in the care of my friend who brought me down to the hospital. Then I go home and eat popsicles for a week while doped up on painkillers. Sounds like a plan to me.

They roll me into surgery and put me under. I don't remember counting backwards.

The next thing I know, there is a woman to my right shaking me. "Chad," she says. "Chad, wake up. Wake up. We need you to wake up." I try to moan. I try to open my eyes. I can't. I feel like I'm at the bottom of an ocean and I can't find the surface. And I sink. I sink through the floor, I sink through the ground. I remember seeing grey, then black.

She's shaking me again. "Chad, your blood oxygen is very low we need you to wake up. Can you stay awake?" I try to moan again and again I sink back. I cannot find the will to swim to the top, I cannot find the strength to overcome this. I felt like somebody dropped a building on me and I simply cannot lift it. It's just too much to fight.

This is about the time I start to form thoughts in my head. I'm not wondering what is happening though. I just hear this woman telling me I have to wake up, to not go back to sleep. I did start to feel worried. She seemed so far away, like I was deep inside a mountain cave and I could just hear her voice echo down in the hole. I could make out a foggy opening of light. I knew where she was, that she was close, and I kept feeling like I could hear her voice for a moment, then I'd sink again, then nothing.

Those moments in between her shaking me are just blackness in my memory

It's at this point that my brain starts working and I'm trying to find that pure willpower to just fight my way to the top and I can't, I can't find it anywhere. It's like having an elephant sit on you, you simply cannot, will not have the strength to lift him off. And now I start thinking, I'm just going to sink. This is it. I can't do it. For the first time in my life I couldn't muster the power to say, "I can do this." Instead I said, "I can't do this anymore, I can't make it. Is this how it is? Is this how it goes, you are simply overpowered that one time and you go to the bottom?"

And for a moment I pondered my death. I could just let go right now. This is a point between life on one side and death on the other. Should I just give in? Stop my little efforts to fight. Honestly, I did start to give up. I didn't know what was happening outside my body, but I could feel the fight draining out of me... the harder I tried, the weaker I got, like hands reaching up, grabbing me and pulling me under. I said to God, "It looks like I may be coming to visit for awhile... I didn't know it would be like this."

Now, I have to say, if you've noticed, there is a trend here from blackness, to awareness, to actual thought. So you can see I was already on the upswing. That's a good thing.

Sometimes the body takes care of itself.

Eventually I open my eyes. The woman, the nurse, was still telling me to stay awake. I was starting to become a bit coherent. It was a while before I could actually speak.

You know, if you've ever had one of those dreams where you wake up paralyzed, unable to move or scream, then you have the beginnings of an idea what this was like. Imagine that, plus being sedated so you can't even work up a frenzied moan. And you're at the bottom of a pool. Unable to even open your eyes. Something like that is getting close...

As I became more able to stay awake, I learned that it was sometime after 6 PM and what was supposed to be about 2 to 3 hours turned into over 9 hours of being knocked out. I guess I bled a whole lot. She told me she couldn't give me painkillers. I guess the low blood, the anesthesia and the drugs would have... you know... I guess they would call that a cocktail of sorts.

So around 7 I think it was, they felt I was awake enough to be sent to a room to rest. I was monitored throughout the night. I had a machine on me that did stuff, I don't know what. I had an oxygen mask on. That thing hurt like hell.... because...

I had no painkillers for the next 24 hours. That's right. Maybe some of you have gone through something like that. Well, for me it was rough, but there is nothing you can do for it, so the pain becomes a part of your life. Like breathing or your heart beating, it's just there doing it's job.

About every 30 minutes a nurse would come in and draw blood. No lie. Every 30 minutes. I thought, why are you taking so much blood, when that is exactly what I need right now? Well, they were apparently running a bunch of tests to figure out what happened, why I lost so much blood. They were baffled. They never found a reason.

The I.V. made me pee every 15 minutes. I got needles every 30 minutes. The oxygen mask was smashing my nose which just had surgery.

I didn't sleep that night. It was a long night. Very strange. I was very alone.

Eventually the sun came up into my room. I got some breakfast. That was funny, considering my throat was all sliced up. I didn't eat anything. I tried to drink some water. Even that hurt.

They made me stay for awhile, I want to say until the afternoon some time. Of course they wanted to make sure I wasn't going to fall asleep and whatever. They released me, my friend picked me up, I finally got some painkillers and popsicles, and life went on as normal.

Maybe the title of this is a bit sensationalist, but it does add some excitement, no?

So the point I was making at the top about my wife? She never even called.

Also, the hospital lost one of my shoes.

R.I.P

Somebody close to my family died recently. I've known him since I was a child. This is really sad. Apparently his airbag didn't function. His passenger came out fine. Obviously he did not. I feel very bad for his mother. She lost her son and her mate very close together, and, I didn't know this actually, but her daughter isn't very friendly towards the family. Too bad.

My blogs are getting more personal lately. That seems weird to me.

So one of the things that popped into my mind today, thinking about him, was, he had a brand new Macintosh. About twenty years ago. It was a Macintosh Plus I think, or something similar. It's a little box with a screen on it and a floppy disk hole in the front. It was a pretty amazing machine back in the day. It was one of the early ones that had a graphical interface so you didn't have to do typey shit on it. When it started up it had a face on the screen that was a happy face if I remember correctly. Probably not, because my memory seems pretty faulty these days, but somebody out there knows the truth. So this thing sat there looking like a happy little box head. And it had a mouse. That was pretty cutting edge also I suppose. I was pretty young then so I didn't really know much about these things, but everyone gathered around to see this thing. I don't know what it was used for. Or what it could do, if anything.

But the funny thing, what I really recall about it, is when he dragged the disk icon onto the trash icon in order to eject the disk, the machine made a barfing noise when the disk came out. I thought that was just about the damn funniest thing in the whole wide world. I made him put that disk in and have the machine barf it back out over and over again. It was the coolest toy.

The mind of a child is truly wonderful. That's the impression he left on me. He made me happy, and he made me laugh. Not too shabby.

other points to be made...

Yes, 'iffy' is a legitimate word. Thought you'd like to know. I did... The dictionary is your friend.

Also, that is like, the longest freaking blog I've written. It's like a novel. Or a chapter. Maybe just a couple pages in the newspaper. An instruction manual? Or perhaps some sort of phone book for mental trash.

One more thing. That note I forgot to write? I still haven't remembered what that was about. I'd really like to know since I blogged it. Now I see it all the time. It's driving me batty. Roy Batty. I should just delete it. But I won't. Maybe I like that it bugs me. Nothing substantial in this paragraph. I'll just end it with this sentence.

cake

I'm Herman. I figured that out just a few minutes ago. You remember Herman right? The dinosaur? Well if you don't, then read back. It's the blog called 'Unheavy.' Even though I normally recap things when I reference old blogs I'm not going to do that today. Why? Because I don't have to. Today is a special day.

One good thing happened. And two bad things happened. Like a three way car accident.

They say it never rains but it pours. Well, that's not true. It may just seem like that sometimes.

So, like Herman, I take walks. But I never thought about the correlation until today. Today I was at the beach. Like Herman I decided to go to the beach at lunch today. Except I didn't go just for lunch. I went all afternoon.

Here's the thing about four hours in the sun, if you're white like me, you burn. So I'm burned. Yeah, that's some news right there for you. I think it was the first time in 800 years that whitey's feet have even seen the sun. But man it was nice. It was real nice. Fuck work. Fuck sitting in the dark. I got the rest of my life to do that. Pardon my language.

You see, as I get older I seem to be getting more impulsive. I think it's called spontaneous. Yup. I walked out of the building without even a complete thought formed in my head. Then I was headed to the ocean. Then I was on the beach. Then my shoes were off and my jeans rolled up. Then I took a picture of the ocean on my phone, I wanted to send it somewhere, but I didn't. I *did* draw the word 'gloob' in the sand and take a picture of that, and I *did* send that to somebody. Now if you are unfamiliar with 'gloob' then you are seriously behind the curve. Seriously. It's so cutting edge cool, underground even, an inside joke if you will.

But enough about 'gloob' and more about me. So I walked, I don't know how far, down the beach. I figured I'd walk along and look at the ocean. I was in my work clothes, jeans, a nice shirt, and my shoes which are some leather Sketchers of some kind. Not the tennis shoe type. The cool manly ones with big soles. The point is I wasn't dressed for the beach, but who cares? I walked along the water's edge. Then I walked in the water. Then big waves came and I was up my thighs in water. My jeans were soaked then. What are you gonna do? It's just how it goes, you know?

At this moment I had the impulse to throw my cel phone in the water. I don't know why. It just seemed like that would be freedom. Are we really tied to our phones like that? My phone has insurance so I could get it replaced. I could have pulled my sim card and chucked that little bastard right there. I didn't though. I don't have the guts. Maybe next time. I already lost one phone to water about two months ago... I don't know what that was all about, but there you have it.

So there I was, thoroughly wet. Covered in sand. I sat down for a bit and soaked it up. Then walked along a bit more. A dear friend called me, and she and I talked for a goodly amount of time. It was just what I needed. And apparently what she needed also...

You know, getting reception on a cel phone all the way out at the water is a pretty... what's a legitimate word for iffy?... situation. But we talked for a long time. It was all kinds of good, really. You know, it's good to have a lot of friends, especially when you need to do some leaning, but it's always the best when you got that *one* that you can just... you know... come apart if you have to, and they'll stitch you back together.

Well, this is pretty personal stuff, but... meh. When you have too many things happen at once and they snowball, you just, well, roll with it I suppose. Get it? Snowball? Roll? Whew, this is rich material. I'd better copyright it before you steal it. It's probably too late now.

Okay, so, I'm drenched, sunburned, taking a four hour mental vacation called lunch, and now I have to go buy cakes. Hell yes. Today was cake day. That was the one good thing that happened. Not the 'Good Thing' but it was associated with it...

I got an ice cream cake, with a Darth Vader jammed in the top of it... (My friends brought that one for me). And I brought a yellow cake with all kinds of crazy chocolate inside, with chocolate shavings on it with some sort of chocolate tubes around the outside. These made that cake look sort of like a medieval fort, you know the ones where they cut the timbers and put the pointey side up as a fence to keep out the forces of evil. Or good. Depending on whose team you're fighting for...

Seriously. I am a lobster right now. It hurts.

Oh yeah, one more thing. I've been growing a beard for a week now. Stop reading this. It's just a beard. Lots of people have them. You don't care.

My stomach is upset from cake, I'm going to go make tea now.

I forgot...

...to write myself a note so I wouldn't forget...

Atomic Lavamen

A cooled hard shell conceals the pulsing and boiling magma beneath. The surface cracks to bend. Holes burn through to see. A mouth fractures open, vomiting forth thick lava, cooling and hardening as it runs down his chest. He fights to free himself from the rock, his prison. Around him swirls the steam from vents in the baking ground, beyond him across the black shiny plain, sprays of fiery lava erupt into the air. Arms upraised in defiance, his head back in a silent roar, lava spitting from his cracked joints and from his noiseless scream, running like tears of fire from his eyes. He raises himself up, liberated from the rock, standing in triumph, escaping from his bondage. Here he stands like a monolith of terror, steaming black, his surface catching fire here and there across his body, dripping with the orange red blood of the earth. And he surveys all around him, an army of Atomic Lavamen stand at the ready.

----------------

I presume the atomic part is what makes the lava come alive... like old fashioned comic books... maybe from some nuclear testing years long ago a la Godzilla...

Old man versus bus.

Well, the old man won, but my bet was on the bus. Funny how things turn out.

I had three teeth worked on yesterday. I sat there with my mouth open for three hours. My jaw feels like someone hit me with a baseball bat and then drove a truck down my throat and parked it there overnight. But at least my fillings are not falling out now, and that big chip is now filled in. My teeth sure have taken a beating over the years. What's cool about this work is now I only have metal on one side, and the other side is all that fancy new white stuff. It looks like I have almost normal teeth again. So that's alright. The metal I still have, two of them are silver from over twenty years ago and are solid. That guy sure did good work whoever he is, or was. Now the guy who did my last filling one and a half years ago did a poor job. It had to be replaced. For a third time. I won't say who he is, but you can see him on television if you wanted to. That big dummy.

Krispy Kreme

I landed in Seattle at 9:30 pm, within 5 minutes of Ratchris. I was in town for a wedding, the wedding of a dear, dear man named Shaliboozehound. I walked off the plane and down to the baggage claim and Ratchris was already ringing me on my celly. He had news. The wedding had been called off. I won't go into the details, but sometimes that's how things go. It was Thursday night.

I grabbed my bag off the carousel and turned to find Ratchris already off his plane and standing 10 feet away. We got it together, picked up a cab, and headed into the city. The bachelor party was at a place called 'Fenix'. I don't know anything about that club, but that night they were hosting a burlesque show, and it was a nice show indeed. I got a kiss on my cheek for a dollar and WestSide bought me several double-vodka's and cherry cokes to smooth out my wrinkles.

It was a good night. Within 30 minutes of landing, young ladies were swooning around me and my hands were filled with booze. Later, I was escorted to a lovely home and fed cheese fish, cheerios and Guinness.

The next morning I woke up feeling like I had slept on top of a bicycle. It's enough to know that much.

That day was nice, I recovered mostly, saw a bunch of dear friends, had some more booze, some kind of mud thing drank as a shot, tequila, and a great vodka I can't tell you the name of because it's not been found by the mainstream yet. It is fantastic. And I reserve that word for special occasions.

That was Friday. Saturday the wedding occurred without incidence, of course. We drank, danced, ate bacon and rode a tandem bicycle around a military base in the middle of the night while drunk. How many of you can claim that? A thing of beauty.

The next day was mother's day. Well, I was over three thousand miles away from my mother, so I gave her a call. But I was only a couple towns away from my grandmother. And grand she is. She is a big part of my life, she raised me only second to my mother. I can't imagine not having her as a part of my life growing up. It is as if my life is a building, and without her, it would be like two walls missing.

I didn't call her. I drove over and showed up on her doorstep. I took *great pleasure* in surprising her this way on mother's day. Now I have to tell you that I live over one thousand miles away, but I didn't plan this. I didn't know that I would be able to give her this surprise until that day, but sometimes things just have a way of coming together in such a beautiful way.

They say life is like a play, and all the world's a stage. I say you need to fucking show up, every damn day, because every day counts, and don't ever let go because at the end of your days you'll regret it if you don't. I swear before God regret is the one of the worst evils in the world, and one with the least power. The least of us can greatly over power it should we choose to.

What I was saying somewhere in all of this is, I have finally come to that point in my life where I have already lived a very serious life. I have let a lot of factors steer my course. And now I am the most alive I have ever been. I plan to choose the course from here on out. There are, of course, things over which I have no power, but I will stand for or against them, because I have belief.

And...

I'm scared. But scared never got anyone anything except in the ground with regret. We're all going to the same place at the end of the path, and what you experience along that path is up to you.

Here's a quote from Thomas Edison of all people... "If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves."

Well, obviously, I am not as succinct and clever as Thomas Edison, I prefer this wordy and self-congratulatory method of relaying my thoughts and feelings, but that's just one of my defects. But imperfection is what makes things beautiful. And you know what? I don't know what I am capable of, but like a child taking that first step, when it stands up from crawling, and stumbles, unstable, but on it's own footing, I am finding out that I can lift myself up. I hope I have the opportunity to literally astound myself. I really do.

I don't know what this has to do with Krispy Kreme, but somebody out there who I know personally does. I hope they remind me, because I'd really like to know...

It's all about tabasco

800 years ago, I met this person. They blew up in a fiery explosion. It took me over 100 years to put out the fire. It was pretty gross. I lost my eyebrows. And the tips of my fingers. But you know, that's how things go. So I spent the other less than 700 years roaming the desert. I saw several mirages, and one soccer team on a bus going somewhere, I think to a game, not sure, there was an old WWII fighter plane, but it was crashed and rusted into decay, kinda cool if I'd had a camera, but a camera shop is one of the things I didn't come across in that desert. Somewhere around the 500 year mark (500 years ago, not 500 years since the explosion), I awoke from a terrible dream, I was shaking and dripping with sweat. I drank my own sweat because in the desert you recycle that shit. Anyhow, in this dream I saw a shadow that blotted out the sky, the sky was bright white and this shadow was like a man in a cloak with a hood and he had giant black wings. All he said was "Shame on me" as in shame on him, not me, I'm telling it third person here. And he hovered there, menacing but not advancing on me. Weird I know. So that was the dream. I found a hot dog stand several days later, but no one was there. I had to cook my own hot dogs. That *really* pissed me off. I'd been in the desert like 300 fucking years and I had to cook my own hot dog. I continued then, on my walk and came upon a giant sunken hole in the desert. I had to climb down to cross. It was about a mile deep. Good thing I had several hundred years to waste. I climbed up the other side and continued walking. At some point all my clothes rotted off me. I think I lost my teeth somewhere along the way. A family of crows nested in my hair. They didn't seem bothered by the human that was attached underneath. Anyway, after another 200 years, I came to a tobacco shop. They were closed for the winter, which was strange because it was in the desert, but whatever. I wasn't familiar with local customs. I got ran over by a semi-truck not 2 miles from the tobacco shop. Sucks, I know. So, let's see this brings me up to 300 years ago. Now this is where things get strange. I came to the ocean. Yeah. FINALLY. So I drank some of the water. I know, I know, it's salt water, right? Yeah, I went insane. Thoroughly nuts. I ate that family of crows that lived in my hair, bones, beak and all. Then I ate my left arm. It was chewy, I think. Then I swam out to a small island. The island was your typical cartoon island, a round beach with a palm tree in the middle. I sat there for 100 years, and every 7 months, the tree would unload like a truckload of coconuts onto my head. After awhile, my skull started to flatten out. When I finally became un-insane, I realized what I had done. So I said a prayer for the crows and asked for their forgiveness. I also asked myself for forgiveness for eating my own arm. I mean, that really sucked. At this point I realized there never had been any ocean (remember I said 700 years in the desert) and all that time I was 'drinking' sand, and sitting under an oil derrick that kept pumping up and down. I think it had ran out of oil a long time ago. So I still had 200 years to go walking in the desert. Then it started to rain. But it stopped right away. I found a pair of skates, but skates don't work in the desert. Then I met a person. The first person I'd met since that person that blew up. Man it was nice to see another person after 600 years. That's a long time you know. But then I realized they were just a cardboard cutout. So I used that to start a fire, because even in the desert it gets cold at night. That was the only night time fire I had the whole 800 years. So I slept for a long time and then awoke and decided I should leave the desert but I still had a couple hundred years to go yet. Then I found a flower growing there. I wanted to pick it to keep as my own... but then it would have died. So I figured it was best to leave it. But it was hard. I kept going back to the flower. It took me over a hundred years to finally say goodbye to the flower. Then I walked for a hundred years more in the desert and then just as it started to get rocky and hurt my feet I came up to a desk with a chair, and a computer on it. I sat at the computer, and started posting on internet forums. That was four years ago....

I'm going nuts.

My days are weird as of late. I have *way* too much time on my hands without being able to really utilize it in any healthy fashion. I normally don't blog like a diary type thing, but hey... I really got nothing for the rest of that sentence. So I blog too much. Seems kinda dumb, but whatever.

I have a new story coming up in a minute after I'm done with this informal commercial telling you what's coming up on wicky-vision.

I got my hard drive yesterday so my freaking machine is no longer freaking out. It's sort of like I've been driving around on three wheels and I finally got the fourth wheel back on. I have a bunch of projects to get back to. Some illustration, and 3d work for some friends. Gots to start rebuilding my website. Hopefully productive and not sitting there staring. Of course I will probably spend copious amounts of time just cleaning house. That's my latest OCD.

I started the dinosaur story as something to distract my mind. I called it unheavy as I planned for it to be just that, some kind of a whimsical nonsense about dinosaurs and the jobs they work. Then it sort of ended depressing. You never know where those things will go when you write stream of conscious. Ah well. It's out there now. Deal with it.

ah, I forgot to mention it in the story, but these dinosaurs also carry briefcases... for whatever thats worth.

I think that about wraps up whatever blog loose ends I've got hanging about....

Unheavy

So there were these two dinosaurs right? The T-Rex kind. One was green of course, and the other was pink. That may seem strange to you but in the world in which these dinosaurs live it is perfectly normal, so the sooner you accept it the sooner... you will... have accepted it. That's good. So these two dinosaurs, which had names that I can't remember from the first time I told this story about one hundred years ago, are named Herman and uh... let's say Frank. So Herman and Frank walk into a bar. No this is not a joke, they really did walk into a bar. It was after work for each dinosaur and they occasionally meet for a few drink. Now its important to know that they do not work together. Unless it's not. I don't really know yet because I'm not finished with this story.

Now Herman and Frank showed up at the bar at the same time. Frank held the door for Herman. Frank is the pink one. They both hanged their hats and coats on the coat rack. This bar was sort of an old timey bar, the kind that had a coat rack. The kind of coat rack the was free standing, not pegs on a wall.

Although these dinosaurs wore hats and coats, they did not wear any other clothes. They're dinosaurs.

They both step over to the bar and sit down on bar stools. Herman ordered a gin martini with an olive, not a lemon wedge. I don't like them with olives because gin martini's are harsh enough. But this isn't my story. Frank had a Stoli on the rocks.

They were talking to each other as the walked in and sat at the bar, but when I imagined this story in my head, I couldn't really hear what they were saying. But now Frank said, "Well, I filed two reports about the expenses but I guess she lost them. I mean, they're two pieces of paper. I can't tell you how much she really bugs me."

"Well, Frank, She may not be suited for carrying papers around an office. That takes a special skill. Stegosaurus' don't have hands like we do. You really should cut her some slack though, " Herman replied.

"The problem is," Frank continued, "I stuck those papers right onto the horns on her back. All she had to do was walk over to accounting and they could have just pulled them off, stamped them and she would be done with it altogether. She was missing for two hours!"

"Well I wasn't there. I can say that I don't think she would lose them intentionally. You know, I don't know her that well, but I don't think she would do anything like that..."

"Where the hell was she for two hours?" Frank interrupted.

Herman just sort of looked sheepish at Frank. As sheepish as a dinosaur can.

Frank desisted. "All right. Forget it. How was your day?"

Herman looked down to his drink. "Eh, it was okay. Really long. I didn't have anything to do all day. I just sat there at my computer." Herman brightened up briefly, "I did take a long walk out in the sun. That was nice. You know, they say that sun is good for your skin."

"Who's they?" Frank said, dower.

"You know, doctors. I saw it on the news."

"Hmph. I don't trust the news." Frank scowled

Herman's brightness left his face. He took a drink of his Martini. "Yeah? Well I don't either. I was just saying..." he trailed off. "I'm thinking of going to the beach tomorrow on lunch. And just staring at the ocean."

Herman looked into the distance dreamily, not really seeing the bar in front of him, but looking as if at a distant horizon. "You know," he started after staring for about a minute, "sometimes I wish I was a plesiosaur. I could just drift along the currents of the ocean, not a care in the world." He paused for a moment and then the dreamy look left his eyes and he looked down to his drink. "That would be nice..."

"They don't have computers underwater you know." Frank said matter of fact.

Herman just sat there looking into his drink.

After several minutes he replied, "yeah."

Frank watched Herman for a moment, then went back to his own drink. "I think I'm going to report her to her boss," He said after several minutes.

Herman said, "I've said my piece, do whatever you want."

Frank sighed and took another drink.

faith

There is a cliff
Covered in grass
And a tree stands at it's edge
A tire swing hangs from a branch
But you don't need that anymore
You stand at the edge
And look down to the depths
No bottom do you see
Clouded in dark obscurity
And you look up to the sky
Above you only blue
And you look straight ahead
Into the beautiful puffy white
And you know what you must do
Stretching out your arms
Steeling yourself
Finding no strength
Only a will
Step off the edge
Where there is no longer ground
Behind you the cliff rises
But you don't need that anymore
A rush of wind rises to meet your wings
You didn't know you had them
You are lifted up in discovery
No thought
No fear
But anticipation
And you look straight ahead

for the love of...

My machine choked up it's hard drive a couple weeks ago. I'm pissed. Not the kind of pissed that accompanies anger. No, not the kind of pissed that boils the blood and tightens the heart, and creates some kind of furious arm waving and spasming. No, this is the kind of pissed that is the slow cumulation of molten matter, stripping the layers of quiet cold from the surface melting it down into a churning mass of white hot bubbling oil. Except not black oil. White hot oil, colored white, like it's white because it's so bright. And it's not oil. It's more like magma. It's a metaphor, like the Earth's molten core and volcano's erupting and shit. Forget it.

So I bought a hard drive. It had the incorrect connectors. Although my machine has a hard drive controller that WILL control that hard drive it physically can't connect to the drive. Because of a five dollar ribbon cable smaller than your index finger, which would be harder to procure than the drive itself. You see where I'm coming from? All that molten shit? Shit.

Okay, now here we go. I sent the drive back. That drive came from California, which is where I live. So I got it in a timely fashion (one day). And returned it in a timely fashion (one day). It took me a week to get my refund check. After I got that I ordered the same drive with *different* connectors. Fun. Now *this* drive has to come from Tennessee. Yes. Half way across the country. So a drive that originally arrived in ONE day, has turned into a month long ordeal.

In the mean time, my machine is running on an old drive I had laying about, and is crippled with a shitty hack install of windows, riddled with viruses and spyware (mostly from myspace... so if you have bad shit running about on your machine... you know where you got it) because I just don't give a damn about this install, because it's going to get hosed as soon as I get my REAL drive. Because this drive doesn't matter to me. YOU HEAR THAT, DRIVE ?!?! I'm writing this blog on that drive RIGHT NOW. EAT IT!

Actually, that's not fair. This drive is my saving grace. Without it I wouldn't even have life support right now. This machine would be a cold dark husk on which the best I could hope for would be to set a cold drink upon. Or perhaps rest a book on. Or maybe a potted plant. I could prop open a door with it. Or clock a home intruder upon his or her noggin with it, the thing weighs 14 pounds after all (it's a laptop if you can believe that).

My point is, while I can blog and watch pop-ups pop up all over my display, I can't do anything useful. I can't access my array and all my art or my photos. I can't edit anything or access my FTP or my web page. I just can't do anything because there is nothing on this machine that can do anything.

I can check my email. (and google just died, the whole damn google, and took my gmail with it... *sigh* )

To be fair, that is something. Or it was...

But you know... I'm not starving. My ribs aren't showing from malnutrition. I still have both my legs, and a good job. And you know what? I'm really fucking happy right now. I'm a bit belligerent at this particular moment, because... well, it's been a good day, but there's been a few things that got on my nerves so I'm a bit bunchy, but all in all.... I am blessed I think. Or I'm the closest to it I've been in....

....


...a long time. A very long time...

Overheard No. 7

"...I was raised to throw up."

Now this is taken out of context, to just put it up like this, because there's another half of this sentence that changes the meaning of it all together. But that's too easy, regardless of the intent of the sentence, this is incorrect grammar anyhow. When I heard the entire sentence this part stuck out to me....

Unfortunately I know this person, they're kinda close, and uh.... well.... they usually, under different circumstances are capable of better communication than this. I'd have to write a lengthy blog about how actually frustrating it was to listen to the other 99.9% of the one sided conversation which wasn't much better than this....

So yeah, not a funny blog... kinda... uncomfortable...

*sigh*

It's gurbling again

So I just learned that gurbling is the combination of 'gurgling' and 'bubbling at the mouth'. Assuming you are unconscious, foaming at the mouth, and making noise...

blogging machine addendum

So I've taken to calling my frying pans 'fry pans'.

In light of recent revelations of archaic behaviour, I thought you should know. If you don't get it, you probably wouldn't like it anyway. If you do, you may or may not suck. Time will tell.

Reconsideration

I wrote the following about a month ago, but it seemed preachy and a bit... I don't know. Heavy handed? Idealist? Reactionary? There's another word I can't think of right now that fits a bit better. So I didn't post it. I have many blogs that sort of stew around in the nest and never really take flight and this was one of them. Maybe I had intended to write more, as this was really just the raw thought at the time...

At any rate, I had a conversation recently that brought this back into my mind. The event I'm writing about here happened in Chinatown in San Fransisco. The "event" consists of nothing more than me walking down the sidewalk and past a shop selling all kinds of stuff I can't even remember....

---------------

I don't usually go into this sort of crap, I feel that we all have to find our own way and that experience is the greatest teacher and all that, but one has to wonder, after all the horrors in the world for millenia, what *have* we learned?

I was walking by a shop down the city street, and on the sidewalk was a bin of toys. One of the toys was a plastic machine gun. And although I played with toy guns as a child myself, seeing this made me sad.

Buttonfly's and computing machines

Well I guess I'm a throwback. I think I'm using that right. There's no point to this blog really, except that some things about my personality have come into focus recently. I call my computer "the machine". It's a bit archaic I suppose. It *is* a machine when you get right down to it. I guess it hearkens back to the days when 'machines' were uncommon misunderstood novelties.

I grew up in a town that was built around the turn of the 20th century. The buildings had dates on them from the late 1800's, 1st street runs along the river, and on the opposite bank is a lumber mill. When I was very young the old bridge that connected the town to the mill was made of steel girders, and heavily rusted. God knows how far along that bridge was until one day it would just collapse. Eventually it was rebuilt, and the town decided to paint it to look like the old rusted bridge. Many of the buildings with their backs to the river open up right onto the river itself. All in all it's pretty romantic, in the classical sense... and the romance sense to the right person I suppose...

What got me thinking was, after the 'machine' thing was brought to my attention, I began noticing other eccentric choices I've made. Button fly versus zipper fly. I was in the bathroom the other day and as I opened my pants I stopped for a moment to consider my fly. It was a button fly. I own two pairs of jeans that I wear regularly, they are nice, very comfortable. And they are button fly. I own two other pairs of jeans which I also wear regularly, they are not blue jeans, one is brownish and the other greenish, although they are jean material. These are zip fly. I never considered before the difference between the two. Until now. And I thought to myself... which do I prefer? Do people go around choosing jeans based on the mechanics of how you get in and out of them? I remember Levi's commercials from... I don't know how long ago... touting 'Button Fly'. It was quite the selling feature it seems, so I suppose this is a big consideration. Well I thought about it and, with some things I can be a bit ambivalent about and while this was one of them up until now, I realized I did have a preference. It never came into the front of my mind before, but at this moment I realized I preferred button fly.

Now remember, there was a time, long ago, when button fly was the only way jeans could be had...

There are other things about me which are old fashioned... I shave with a razor... I call my car my 'steed'... and there's probably other things as well, but how boring to just write up a list of useless information.

Well today I bought an electric shaver. It shaves much closer than a razor. I guess I gave up trying to get that great shave with ancient technology. And I'm pretty happy with it.

So I guess I'll take up calling my new razor a 'shaving machine'...

The Return of Fortune Cookie, Part 2

Okay, it's been my job to harass you readers, all 1 or 2 of you, about reading my older blogs and remembering their contents. Yep, today is one of those days. Being a 'Part 2' you can bet your pretty little bum there's a 'Part 1' laying about somewhere buried in the annals of my blogs. If you are unfamiliar with it go find it. If you have forgotten it, maybe you want a refresher. If you are disinterested get out. I'm grouchy.

Well... once upon a time, after lunch finished up, me and my co-workers received the dish of fortune cookies customary at a Chinese restaurant once dining has come to an end. How wordy is that? I have a thing about fortune cookies. There is another fortune cookie post besides 'Part 1' as well, should you be interested about my things. One of my 'things' is I don't choose which fortune cookie I receive. I allow the plate to go around and grab whichever cookie is left or whichever is chosen for me by another or whatever other happenstance decides which cookie for me. It's part of fortune I suppose. Or I'm just a goofball. Probably the latter.

In any regard, my cookie comes my way. The very cookie destined for me and me alone. On that day, in that restaurant, that cookie and I came to an inevitable meeting. One more sentence here, building anticipation. Of course, if you've read 'Part 1' you already know all of this, including what's next. This is sort of the long version of the recap you get at the start of some serial television show, where they basically show the entire previous episode. Humour me. Remember, I'm grouchy today.

And so there it was. In my hands. My fate wrapped in a tasty crunchy cookie shell. I busted it open and ate the cookie. And read my fortune.

"You will have a close encounter of a serious kind."

Well, that struck me right away as not a good thing. And honestly, as much as I tried to shake it, I had a bad feeling after reading that. As if Dracula himself was clawing at my bedroom window, waiting for me to invite him in to feast...

Several days later my ex-wife calls me up and says we are being audited by the IRS.

This is where the story will get less elaborate, partly I'm just not interested in it, partly because there you've got the fortune delivered and the story is pretty much over, and partly because I do not want to give the details of the audit out. Because it was bad. Because it's about trust betrayed. Because I spent over a month digging back through our taxes, and the more I dug, the worse it got. There was a lot of BS in there I didn't know about. People can surprise you with the things they'll do, no doubt about that...

In the end things went fairly well considering how bad it could have been, as sometimes you are able to correct problems. Some of them anyway, others you just shell out for. That's no fun. And I'm still recovering from the financial attack. But you take your lumps and you carry on.

So the close encounter was the IRS. Everything else was just dessert.

It's kind of funny, the timing of events, the fortune cookie, the audit. It really did strike me as odd, and a bit spooky. So laugh. Never mind that I got heavy there. Just laugh, because this event has sunk into the depths of the past... and is now relegated to life as a funny story...